Damien Peters on blogging, wealth, and building a remote business from Spain (Episode 16)

[01:00] Paul: Welcome to The Boundless Podcast. I'm Paul Millerd, and I created this podcast because I'm passionate about making sense of the future of work and having conversations with the innovators, creators, and thought leaders who are carving their path in today's fast-changing world. You can check out the podcast and more on boundlesspod.com. Today's pod is with Damien Peters, who is a friend and a former classmate of mine from MIT. In the past couple of years, he's come to the conclusion that he wanted to carve a different path, and he's carving a path that involves building a business around a blogging platform, Wealth Noir, which he talks about, and also potentially some work as a product manager on the side. He is also taking the leap to moving to Spain in a few months just to design and build a different lifestyle for himself.

If you enjoy the pod, I'd appreciate if you'd share it, leave a review on iTunes, or send me some comments or feedback. If you want to support more, you can do so on Patreon, and you can do so for as little as $1 a month. And thanks again for the support. Enjoy the pod today, guys. Have a good day. To talk to you today.

Welcome to the podcast.

[02:27] Damien Peters: Thanks for having me. Um, it's really great to, you know, connect again, Paul.

[02:31] Paul: Yeah, so Damien, we were classmates. I've known you for a while, since grad school, uh, almost 8 years ago. Wow. Um, getting older. Uh, but you're the founder of Wealth Noir, which is a platform to preach and teach about the importance of financial Freedom and Generational Wealth to Black Millennial Professionals. So we'll definitely dive into that.

Really curious about how that emerged. And you're a self-described finance nerd, but what I thought was cool is your biggest accomplishment, you say, is being a father. And definitely we'll dive into that as well. But really just want to start with a pretty simple question here and talk about writing. Which plays a big role in your life. When did you first start writing?

[03:22] Damien Peters: Yeah, it's, I was explaining to someone kind of the history in terms of my blogging, and it started back in undergrad, so around 2004, I think. And it was insane just to think it's been that long. I won't say the name of it because it's still up there, but I had a blog, and I typically talked a lot about dating, actually, back at the time. As I, every time I'll go back and read, it's always funny to read my writings of, um, 20-year-old Damien. But yeah, it's been since around 2014, uh, sorry, 2004 I've been writing.

[03:57] Paul: Yeah. I go back and read some of my stuff I've been, uh, randomly writing and blogging and it's like, it's cringing to, uh, I just cringe looking back at my old stuff. But, um, that's the fun part of writing too, cuz you're always improving.

[04:10] Damien Peters: Yeah. No. And even friends too have said like, your way. I have one really close friend who's actually a journalist and who's been— we've been tight since undergrad, and she's like, yeah, you're significantly better now.

[04:25] Paul: Well, that's good. I'd, uh, I'd hope so. So over the last several years, you've been working in product management, working in the tech scene, and, um, out there in Silicon Valley. What has that experience been like, and how have you been thinking about work?

[04:42] Damien Peters: I've been out here now for going on 5 years, ever since after grad school, and have had a great, had the great opportunity to work at a couple of great companies. Starting out at Zynga, going to TinyCo, a smaller gaming company, doing a little bit of independent, and then going to Facebook for 3 and a half years. And it's been a, it's definitely been an interesting experience. So I really have enjoyed work as a product manager. I've really loved tech. I'm very nerdy and geeky.

One thing I didn't realize was kind of growing up in DC my entire life, that life in the Bay Area and tech and both how, you know, the company cultures, how people interact with each other, how offices are set up, how teams are structured, is— was drastically different than my previous life as a government consultant.

[05:29] Paul: Yeah, yeah, I'd imagine.

[05:33] Damien Peters: Yeah, the, the— I think one of the big things that stood out to me with most of the companies was Do it, do it now, do it quick, and then hopefully it will work out. Oh, by the way, maybe check in with someone or let them know. Versus, you know, before, any large thing that I wanted to do, any real initiative needed to kind of get some approval or be justified, where now I find a lot of the work style here has been, if it works, it obviously was justified. If it didn't work, will learn from it and still be justified, which has been very different.

[06:09] Paul: So when did you start writing about personal finance and how did that play a role in your life?

[06:14] Damien Peters: Yeah, personal finance started maybe 2 or 3 years ago. It was actually while I was at Facebook. So before my— the gaming company I was at in around 2012, I actually was laid off. Happens in the Valley, right? Rounds and financing. But it gave me a really different outlook when it came to financial freedom, financial independence, and really thinking about my own personal finances.

I kind of had this awakening that the idea of having a regular salary that someone else is going to pay me is not a guaranteed thing. It's something that you work for. It may happen, it may not happen. And, you know, am I building and preparing myself to have that flexibility to either take an extended period of time off if I want to change jobs or careers because of, you know, to follow my passions versus following a paycheck. And it was a few years in where I started to really invest way more time into my personal finances. And then I started writing originally on my personal blog, DamienPeters.com, and I would talk about what I was doing in real estate, some basic stuff around budgeting.

And part of it was seeing, you know, I kind of wanted feedback on my thoughts. I wanted to put it out there to see if it was wrong or bad or good, and also to help others who I started to realize didn't have that level of dedication.

[07:45] Paul: Yeah, awesome. So who are some of the people you started connecting with through the writing?

[07:50] Damien Peters: Yeah, so initially it was people on my team. So one small thing I realized was a lot of the engineers on my team kept coming to me asking about small things like travel hacking or "Hey, I hear you buy rental properties." From there, it kind of grew to more of my social circle, primarily friends on Facebook, other colleagues, things like that. And then now with Wealth Noir upon that launch, it really has helped me connect with a lot of people who, you know, I've never met before. Either they've found the site, a friend recommended me to them, but they've been writing in and really getting to experience and understand the different and varied financial situations people are in. Obviously, talking to a bunch of people who work in the Bay Area at tech companies is a bit homogenous. Everyone is typically, what should I do with all this money?

Which isn't, which isn't the case domestically or globally.

[08:49] Paul: I find finances fascinating because it's, it's almost, especially in the US, it's such a sensitive topic for some people. It's almost more taboo to talk about than other things you would think are uncomfortable to talk about. But have you experienced any of that and just kind of being like a release for people to talk to you?

[09:10] Damien Peters: It has. I've definitely experienced it. To be honest, one reason I started Wealth Noir was because I realized how— one, because it's taboo, a lot of people don't talk about it. They don't know what they don't know. And when I would have casual conversations with friends, they were shocked oftentimes, or I was shocked at how varied both our kind of like net worth or general thinking about finances were. Yeah, in particular, there was when I was looking to leave Facebook, I told several people, you know, like, hey, I'm thinking about taking some time off, maybe take a year off to be with my son.

And people were shocked that I could do this. Wow.

[09:52] Paul: That's kind of crazy too, because I imagine a lot of these colleagues actually have the savings to do so.

[09:59] Damien Peters: That is the shocking part. So one, some of them do, some of them don't. I have also realized that spending, right, and the role it plays in saving. But yeah, even the idea was unfathomable by people who I knew were well better compensated than I.

[10:18] Paul: How have you been thinking about just connecting with the Black millennial population? How has that resonated with that audience?

[10:27] Damien Peters: Yeah, it's been great, partially because I am that population. But, you know, there's obviously like starting out with just friends and family and close people there. But yeah, through the site, it really has been great to I respond to any email that's sent to me. I respond oftentimes on social media, Twitter. And it's been great to really hear more about like the problems people are facing. Sometimes it's as simple as maybe credit or, you know, like I want to save more.

But it's always, you know, all the way up to how can I deploy large amounts of capital and like a relatively passive because I want to retire in 4 years. And it's been great to dig deep as opposed to a bit more surface-level conversations.

[11:13] Paul: That's awesome. So it's almost like the— I mean, the people you're connecting with, they, they give you fuel of more things to learn about and write about.

[11:24] Damien Peters: Definitely. It's almost— it's funny because I type it every time, but it almost feels like a copy and paste. The first thing I tell a lot of people when they write in is thank you because What you writing in, you connecting with us is really what's keeping us going. It's really what helps, you know, those late nights. Um, why are you doing this for? Um, because people legitimately like give me energy.

[11:48] Paul: I don't think a ton of people know like about the wealth gap. I'd love if you could just, uh, like share, like what does that mean, the wealth gap and, um, how do you, uh, help people think about it?

[12:03] Damien Peters: Yeah, so when it does come to America and when you do look at different barriers, in particular racial barriers, so a wealth gap typically, usually you're going to be talking about race differences within the U.S., but almost no matter the study that you look at, there's many different ways to compute it, but you do see across different ethnic groups different median wealth, different earning powers, different savings rates, and you know, the truth is especially for African Americans as a group in the US, we are underperforming the standard, the averages in many, many different instances such as net worth. There was a recent study on New York Times that said even affluent children who grew up in affluent homes, African American boys in particular, they're approximately half as likely to end up being upper middle class or wealthy themselves.

Compared to other, you know, the higher performing groups, or I'd say the majority groups. And it's— there is— I like to call it now a thousand-year problem, just because there are many different studies and thoughts about why, and, you know, various things that have happened historically versus like current trends. But the truth is, at the base level, if you do if you tease out things such as, you know, number of parents in the home, the areas you grew up in, whether you're rural or urban, you consistently do see a trend where there's less wealth being produced by African American families compared to many of our peers. Wow.

[13:44] Paul: So you have, you have your work cut out for you. 1,000 years.

[13:50] Damien Peters: Yeah, it's, there are a lot of problems. I was joking with someone, it's kind of like climate change where, right, it's like, you know, the first step is there's always something to work on. There's always something to work on, right? And you can always be 1% better. But part of it up front is saying, okay, this is a reality. And either, you know, how, how can I chip away at that problem?

And the way I view, especially talking about generational wealth, it's something that if it completely erodes my time, that would be amazing. But if I can do something where even 2 to 3 generations down, it's a little bit better, I would feel really good about myself.

[14:30] Paul: So you talked a little bit about having a child, becoming a father. You also mentioned just taking time off to spend with your son. How, how did becoming a father shift your thinking just about work and time and all that?

[14:48] Damien Peters: Part of it was born, birthed out of my own kind of childhood. Loved my father to death, but he loved working and he worked a lot. I still joke that the reason I'm a night person is because I spent so many times waiting for him to come home, you know, from the office late. And he ran his own business. And when I knew my son was coming, you know, I just kind of thought about how much I wanted to be around, at what point, kind of what my role would be. Obviously in his life and upbringing.

And it was one of the first times where I, I don't want to say nothing before had been important enough to completely rewrite my entire life, but it was definitely an event that I knew was coming or that was coming where I was willing to really kind of look at the ground up and really take a different assessment of both how I was working, where I was living, how I was living, And then also even the goals I had set for myself obviously change when there's another person you need to take care of.

[15:51] Paul: Right. So when did you decide that maybe you should follow a different path, explore different places to live?

[16:00] Damien Peters: It was actually before I moved here. When, when me and my wife moved here, we, we liked it. We generally liked the area, but we kind of felt that we would move away eventually over time, that kind of went from going back to DC to maybe going to Texas to moving outside of the country. But we always kind of had an idea that our time here may not be permanent, that we may not be settling roots. And partially because of the cost of living, uh, we just always felt it was hard to justify settling here at some point when we know we could enjoy a significantly higher quality of life for the exact same cost, um, in other cities that we really enjoy.

[16:44] Paul: So when did you decide that living overseas was something you were gonna do?

[16:49] Damien Peters: It's a good question. When it first came up, for a long time, I know I've, I think it when I started to travel. So actually, when we went to Sloan together, before then I went to Europe, and me and my girlfriend, now wife, backpacked across Europe. It was my first time traveling outside the continental, outside of North America, and I really became infatuated by how different world, what life was outside the US. I always thought that kind of Portugal would just be America where they spoke Portuguese. Yeah, yeah.

And Korea would just be kind of America where they spoke Korean. But that's kind of when the itch got started, and it's definitely grown over the— it's grown over the years to now where we're actively in the process of moving outside the country.

[17:37] Paul: So when did you decide to quit your job and start following a different path? Was that all when you were becoming a father? Is as well, what triggered you to make that leap and start carving a different path?

[17:50] Damien Peters: Yeah, one consistent theme with a lot of my big decisions is that they brew for a while and then there's usually an event to trigger it to actually happen. I had been considering, again, even before Facebook, there was, I was internally conflicted on whether I wanted to go to a company versus start my own company or things along those lines. Ever since I've been in the Bay Area, I had always been kind of brewing smaller ideas. I actually have several landing pages that are still up from previous ideas where I was trying to get an idea if they had traction or if it's something that I wanted to work on. But when it did come to the actual moment of when it really felt right and everything felt aligned, it really, it was a few months into the pregnancy. Long story short, I think the quick real moment was I was working on a launch about a month before my son was being born.

So it was— I was in a point where I really shouldn't have been getting on planes or flying much. But, you know, I just had a lot to get done and it really turned. So at this point, I had already bought like the domain of Wealth Noir, but I had bought like several domains. And as I really thought about making that change and everything I had looked into, Wealth Noir was one of the first times where I had an idea that I was really happy about what I could build. And it did feel very personally connected to what was important to me. And it felt like a company that I could work on forever, regardless of whether I made money on it or not.

I do plan to make money on it, but I think that for me was part of the trigger. So everything kind of aligned where I had an idea I was really excited about. I was excited about the potential of that idea in terms of supporting both me and my family. The social good that I could actually do with it. And the, you know, bringing in my son really gave me the flexibility to kind of force myself to reevaluate everything and make some big decisions and big changes.

[19:58] Paul: Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, a lot of people would, in your shoes, would say, okay, I'm about to have a son. The least risky thing to do is stay at your job, especially a good job with good benefits. How were you thinking about risk and pursuing something like this at that time?

[20:19] Damien Peters: Yeah, one nice thing about both having attended a school like Sloan, but just my love of personal finances, the complexity of the model to project my run rate versus of multiple different scenarios was quite elaborate. I had, you know, everyone gets laid off kind of scenarios versus like Damien works on, you know, on the company. I had, you know, if the company doesn't make any money for number of years. And also, I tended to be very good with my contingencies. So even working with my wife to understand whether she wanted to work or not work, whether moving to a cheaper place was available, whether that be domestically or internationally.

So I felt really, really good that I had a lot of— I had runway, I had a lot of contingencies, and I I'll be honest, having gone through the layoff the first time and going through the process of getting a job, it did help me feel confident about how long it would take me to, what a new job would look like if I needed to come back into the workforce for some odd reason.

[21:24] Paul: So there's always that step of, uh, I think a lot of people don't take this step of saying, okay, what's my worst case scenario? Maybe I get laid off, but then recovering from that and actually getting another job. Often it's not as bad as people think.

[21:39] Damien Peters: Yeah, I've really started getting into Stoicism a good bit. And you know, some classic Stoic principles are simulate, or really, it's kind of like negative thinking. You're actually supposed to really focus and visualize the worst thing ever happening, right? And then you realize it's not as anywhere near as bad as you think it's gonna be.

[22:01] Paul: Exactly.

[22:02] Damien Peters: Yeah, the fear we have is way worse.

[22:04] Paul: Any writings or things that stand out specifically on Stoicism?

[22:10] Damien Peters: Yeah. Although I haven't finished the letters of— I don't know why I can't remember. Yes, I started them. I've gone through a couple of them. There is The Antidote that isn't specifically on Stoicism, but it is around— it's kind of a new view of happiness. So the author does— he pulls from Stoicism, meditation, meditative practices, but he really talks about happiness in a very different context that it's not necessarily a state that you seek and find.

But oftentimes, if you can accept, really remove fear by approaching the worst-case scenario, being upfront about it, and really accept kind of of things will happen, but you will survive, you will be alive. That happiness is more of a state of— I don't want to say contention, I'm probably butchering the paraphrasing— but it's more about if you are happy with what you're doing in your life and the process that's going, and you accept that your fears are typically over-magnifications of what actually could happen, And happiness is not so much of trying to make yourself happy, but it's more of trying to make yourself kind of at ease or not unhappy. But that book in particular, it was one I read a little— I think it was during like month 1 or 2 with the baby. Yeah, great book.

[23:44] Paul: We'll link up to that for sure. And how are you thinking just personal finance standpoint from— did you go from a mindset of saying, okay, here's the money I have from a salary and then like, how can I spend it, to, okay, what does a good life actually cost?

[24:00] Damien Peters: Yeah.

[24:01] Paul: Um, so do you have a model for this too?

[24:05] Damien Peters: I do, kind of. Uh, there's— this one has been a definite balance, right? There's— so one is kind of a question of, well, how much money does one need per month or year in order to live? Um, and then it's kind of like, you know, there's a bit of a break-even, right? I can If it's $50,000 a year, let's say, it could, you know, that might for me at my current salary net out at $40,000. But if I actually say, well, $75,000 sounds much better, it might net out at $45,000.

And it tends to be a bit of a sliding scale where, yeah, you know, I can earn more now to get to that number. And depending on the lifestyle that I want to live, I'm not sure if you know about like FIRE or Financial Independence Retire Early, and there's a bit of a division in the camp where you have Lean FIRE and then Fat FIRE. So Lean FIRE—

[24:59] Paul: tell us.

[25:00] Damien Peters: Yes. So Lean FIRE, you cut your cost deeply, right? You can— and there are people who've gotten their monthly budgets maybe down to $20,000 a year. So, wow. Yeah, yeah. I mean, It's great.

You have the full freedom that you want, but you do need to make cuts, right? There are certain things you won't be able to do. You do need to live in certain places for that. And then you have fat FIRE, which is, I'm going to continue to live a very nice lifestyle. And I understand this will require significantly more money. So I will focus a lot more on earning that money, investing more actively and aggressively growing my wealth as opposed to just cost cutting.

And so I've adopted much more of the fat FIRE lifestyle. So I've really been kind of, all right, where will my family be? At what point will we be happy? What will college education cost? What's the return I'm expecting on my investments, my diversification? And I'm using that to really run the analysis and figure out at what point do I want to stop working altogether versus work part-time.

If I don't have to pay for housing because of what I've been doing in real estate, what does that look like versus we have a big house that we're still paying a mortgage on? So yeah, I'll admit, I tend to overthink and probably overcomplicate many things. But I'm really about reducing risk when I can.

[26:32] Paul: Yeah, that's fascinating. I probably practice the lean FIRE right now. And, uh, maybe it's the lean, you have to go lean to go fat. Um, because it's so easy to just spend so much, especially if you're in a salaried role. I just found that, uh, when I took the leap to freelancing, I just started cutting out all these things and I mean, there was no decrease in happiness. I was still living the life I wanted.

It was just kind of less pressure and more freedom.

[27:01] Damien Peters: Yeah, one thing I will say is that, um, I had practiced a lot of the budgeting and kind of spending well before. So partially, again, you know, having lost, lost my job, but we had set up a budget actually after I got out of school. I was really focused on paying off debt. So I've never had debt in my life until grad school where I had to take out student loans and I had a bit of credit cards. So we talked with a financial planner. We actually had learned, used LearnVest.

A service that I was a big fan of. And we set a budget. Now, after I changed jobs, I was making significantly more. My wife actually had changed jobs also and had been promoted. So as a family, we were making up to 2 times, a little more than actually, yeah, a bit more than 2x what we were, but we were still living on the exact same budget. And going back to your point of living lean in order to get to fat, that was one of the key things for us.

We invested that money. I would get bonuses, I would get stocks, and I had a— actually had a really strict plan where only 5% of any non-salaried money could be spent on fun things. So if I got— yeah, if I got a vest date, if I got a bonus, I could take up to— and it was up to 5%. I oftentimes would take just 3 or 4% depending on what I wanted to do to be spent on myself and everything else went directly to be invested.

[28:33] Paul: Awesome. So you're moving to Spain in 3 months. Walk me through where your head is at now and how you're thinking about making that move.

[28:44] Damien Peters: Yeah. So one facet of it is just operationally and focus on execution. We need to get a bunch of things in order to get our visa. We're working with someone to relocation, relocation specialist to help us find an apartment. I need to ship things, things like that. But really, that's annoying, but much doable, very doable.

When it does come to kind of the mental space, I oscillate between, oh my God, I'm moving my entire family to Spain, to, oh my God, I'm so excited to move to Spain. And it really has been trying to think a little bit about what I want my lifestyle, what I want my company to look like when I go over there. Wealth Noir, I've built from the start, and the plan has always been for the company to be 100% remote. And even that has led me to exercises in talking with other companies that are run fully remote. There's a shocking— not shocking number, but a good number of startups and other large companies that are run fully remotely and globally. Uh, in addition, it has been just preparing for the, the change in lifestyle that is Spain, um, both in terms of the language, the food, things along those lines, understanding what I won't have that I used to have.

But at the, at the end of the day, a lot of it is, has been really, um, just ensuring that for everybody it's as comfortable a move as possible. And when we get there, we can maximize our new lifestyle.

[30:20] Paul: Yeah, you got to factor in the nap now, right? The siesta?

[30:23] Damien Peters: Yes. Yes. And also the big thing that we've been concerned about is they eat dinner much later. So dinner typically is eaten 8:30, 9 o'clock. Um, our son's bedtime is 8:30. So we're trying to figure out how that's going to work.

[30:39] Paul: Oh man. Yeah, I, that's like, uh, when I moved to New York, I was like, why won't anyone eat dinner with me at, uh, 6 o'clock? And, um. Similarly visited Spain last year and I was wandering around at 7 and nothing was open. I was like, where do I eat?

[30:54] Damien Peters: Yeah.

[30:55] Paul: What are some of the things you've learned from those other companies about running a company remote? I think this is just becoming such a bigger trend of companies.

[31:06] Damien Peters: Just to speak quickly on some of the benefits. One is obviously you get to, you get to pick from the best talent in the world. So it's, you're no longer, yeah, you know, it's not a matter of convincing you to move to Oakland or San Francisco or the Bay Area or working with only people here. If the best designer for my needs is in Bulgaria, yeah, they can, they can definitely join the company.

[31:31] Paul: Well, it's so crazy seeing job postings now and it's like one location listed and it's almost insane like seeing that and knowing it's a knowledge position. It's like, what, what are they doing? Why are we not tapping into this global talent pool?

[31:46] Damien Peters: And this is one thing with, um, it's almost like the human experience a bit, but we don't like change. And this is one thing I've, yeah, just truly come to accept and understand.

[31:58] Paul: Um, if it was an efficient market, people would be looking globally, but we're, uh, we're our own worst enemy of just doing what we did yesterday.

[32:07] Damien Peters: Right. It's, it's the biggest barrier isn't how do I hire remotely or how do I integrate someone to the team? It's almost how can I convince myself to believe that a remote worker will be as good or better than having someone in the office? And going back to your original question, in terms of some things that I've heard from these other companies, one big thing I've heard is everyone does need to meet each, every meet in person once a year. So, well, almost every company does have at least once or twice a year a retreat where the entire company comes together. Great communication tools.

So video chat is a common theme I've seen across all of them, whether Slack or— our personal stack is Slack and Asana, but a meaningful way for people to be in touch with each other at the exact same time. Be in touch with each other remotely so that you can feel connected even though you're not physically there. And some of the challenges too, which I've heard some interesting things about too, is really imbuing culture. So culture oftentimes does happen at the, you know, when people catch coffee or how people interact with each other. One solution I've heard one company does is they actually keep a 24-hour running kind of group video chat. So it's not so much that you're— yeah, and they have a small grid, so everyone has— when you're signed on and you're working, everyone's on video chat.

So if you do need to hop in and kind of have a quick conversation with someone, it's direct, it's there, it's, um, you're seeing and talking to the person versus, um, even as much as I love Slack and other asynchronous channels, I definitely run into issues of We could resolve this in 10 minutes over voice. Yeah. Versus let me type up everything that I was going to say. And even when you do have written something written in front of you, you can really hone in and sometimes unfairly pick apart things where sometimes when someone's communicating to you, it does force you to analyze, paraphrase, and kind of draw out big points. As they're talking. And so I sometimes won't get hung up on a misuse of a certain word or things along those lines when I hear or can talk or see people compared to written communications.

But it's very interesting and it's one thing I'm extremely excited about, both moving to Spain, exploring this, what I think is going to really become a much more common trend that you'll see in companies using knowledge workers.

[34:47] Paul: Yeah, well, I'll definitely have to check in with you in 6 months or a year and see what you've learned. I'm sure, I'm sure it'll be an awesome learning experience.

[34:57] Damien Peters: Definitely.

[34:58] Paul: So how are you thinking about just spending your time on a day-to-day basis? I think doing work on your own, you, you often don't have those set deadlines or deliverables, and it's often you're relying on your personal motivation and energy. So how do you think about just how you spend your time on a random day?

[35:17] Damien Peters: Oh, this is such a, like, a million-dollar question for me right now, just because I've really been iterating and trying to get better at it. So I joke with people I have 3 jobs. So one is Wealth Noir, the company, growing the company there. I actually do consult with a nonprofit here in the Bay Area called DevColor, where right now I'm the head of product there, and I work there part-time. And then the third one is new dad. Like, you know, if you're— I joke that if you're not— yeah, if you don't consider it a job, you're probably not working hard enough.

But between like, yeah, sleep interruption and things like that. So when it does come to my day to day, it's— I'm trying to get better at timeboxing in particular. So I'm getting more in the habit of starting off the day with a list of priorities. And my priorities fall across these three buckets of both like personal and along with my son includes my personal real estate investing. And what I've been doing there, then, you know, things I need to do with the nonprofit I work at, along with things for Wealth Noir. And it has been definitely— it's been interesting.

So one thing I do love about with my client currently is it has helped add some stability to my week. There is a bit of going into an office, coming out of an office, a little bit more interaction with individuals. With Wealth Noir, we do have a team. There are multiple people. So it has been setting goals for us holistically and then ensuring that we drive towards them. But yeah, I wish I could tell you that I had an average day.

[36:54] Paul: So how are you defining success? Just reflecting on yourself and how you're spending your time?

[37:02] Damien Peters: Yeah, I've been iterating on that one a few times, but at the core—

[37:07] Paul: I want to see all your models. It sounds like you have well-thought-out things for all these.

[37:12] Damien Peters: Yeah, with this one, I don't have a model of like what success looks like. Did I put that down somewhere? I may have a pro forma lying around. But no, success for me, and I've really been thinking about it, has been I do want to have a socially mission-driven company that does help benefit the life of African Americans. And, you know, the African American part is just, you know, I do feel strongly connected to my culture and my people. It is an area where, you know, I naturally can connect with people there on certain, you know, shared experiences.

Although, you know, I love everybody, and, you know, even the information we always put out is definitely for everybody. Anyone can benefit. Same thing with our dating site. But we do just try and create a positive experience that other African Americans can see and relate to, which isn't always there present, especially like from financial services in particular. The company part— so there's 3 parts of it: the African American part, the social mission, and then creating a company. The company part for me is really around creating an entity that I think is a little bit bigger than myself.

I do want to— even when it does come to the people who I do hire and bring on, I actually want— it's really important that we are a company that you feel good working for. Like, I actually am already looking into benefits.

[38:43] Paul: I love it.

[38:45] Damien Peters: And yeah, you know, people have had issues and like family issues and I want the company to be in a way where you can feel really, really good. You can feel very supported and I'm willing to sacrifice, you know, profits and gains in order to have a great experience. And a book that really helped me think a lot through this is called Small Giants, which I can't recommend enough to anyone who is thinking about building a company and wants the company to actually reflect a little bit more of their values or certain values as opposed to, you know, just kind of becoming the biggest, largest, highest growth in revenue. And the social mission part, which honestly, if you had asked me 5 to 10 years ago, I would never have thought I would be saying that.

Not to say that I didn't care about this or that, you know, I've always been very self-centered, but I did not think I didn't think the social mission would be as important to me as it was. And what I found over time is that one thing in particular, which I do love with my new job and my new time schedule, is I help way more people than I used to. So outside of Wealth Noir, I've actually volunteered at the Kapor Center for Social Impact, giving free office hours to startups around product market— product management, product market fit, marketing. I've done so many different mock and interview help prep for people trying to become product managers or trying to break into Silicon Valley, the Bay Area. Yeah. And I love— I didn't realize how much I loved giving back to other people.

And even when I think back to it, I remember mentoring— he was a 6th grader for an entire year, years ago in the D.C. area. I used to go to high schools on the weekends. So when I do think back, it's not shocking. I guess all the pieces were there. But yeah, I really, really do love when I can help drive value in someone else.

And so I even have said to everybody at Wealth Noir is that if we become successful but we don't deliver value to anyone who comes to us, it's a failure state. I don't care if we all become, you know, independently wealthy or the company becomes humongous. If at the end of the day We feel that our customers, our clients, our audience isn't benefiting from our existence. We're the only ones benefiting from it. It's a failure state. So, right, when I— yeah, success has broken down over time.

I've merged into those three key components.

[41:20] Paul: I love that, and I almost think that's the only choice for a company that wants to be taken seriously in today's world. We have so many companies who are not actually rooted in truth. Trust or social purpose. And what we're seeing is that there's no transparent— there's complete transparency actually. Now you can see within companies and see that companies really don't care. I mean, you see companies like Wells Fargo.

I, I just don't think they're ever gonna recover. I'm never gonna trust a company like that, right?

[41:51] Damien Peters: And it's interesting even that you mentioned them. I recently was looking to change our business checking and And yeah, I was looking at their offering, but I just don't do it. I almost—

[42:01] Paul: yeah, 5 accounts for you, right?

[42:03] Damien Peters: Yeah. I was almost— I almost felt bad going to the page. And, you know, they're, you know, an efficiently run institution. They offer the services. But I think that's been a huge shift that did not— was not as big, in my opinion, you know, years ago where people do care about the social mission of your company or, you know, your your corporate and social responsibility? Are you trying to be a good steward to your customers and people in general versus we're trying to get as much money, you know, take as much out of the system for our own personal financial gains?

And that's even one trend that led me to start Wealth Noir versus either other ideas I had been thinking about. I think now is a time where people are resonating and are demanding and looking for that level of trust from the companies that they do shop and work with.

[43:00] Paul: What are some of your influences, either books or— I've been asking people podcasts they've been listening to that have helped shape your thinking on all this, in addition to Small Giants, of course, which I'll link up.

[43:14] Damien Peters: So The 4-Hour Workweek was Definitely one of the books. I only read it recently.

[43:19] Paul: Yeah, I actually read this recently too. I— so many people had recommended it to me that I just read it. So it definitely resonates as well.

[43:29] Damien Peters: What I didn't know, I thought it was really more about just hacking productivity and, you know, focusing a little bit more. But, you know, as he started talking about living abroad and mini retirements and kind of his views on work and even his own personal story of starting kind of a successful company and all of the personal turmoil that caused him. I really did love the book and became a big Tim Ferriss fan afterwards. He was actually the one who introduced me to Stoic principles and Stoicism. Podcast element, I'm not the heaviest of podcast listener, but partially because I've been really getting into audiobooks as of late. One podcast outside of your lovely podcast, of course.

[44:16] Paul: Thank you.

[44:17] Damien Peters: Yeah. Is Afford Anything by Paula Pant. So Paula Pant is within the financial kind of personal finance space. And I do love her podcast because her tagline is you can afford anything but not everything. And this, you know, that kind of level of just prioritization, both in personal finances but other, other aspects is super important. And also she really likes real estate investing.

She talks a lot about just general, like, retirement, good things. And I find her to be very approachable too. So I've just been a big fan of her. And, you know, if she hears this, love to meet you.

[44:58] Paul: But we'll tag her.

[45:00] Damien Peters: I'm trying to think what else I mentioned. Small Giants in terms of books that have been motivation. BiggerPockets. So BiggerPockets, I don't want to call them just a podcast. They're a bit of an empire at this point, but they produce a lot of— to me, they're one of the best sources when it does come to real estate and real estate investing. And another nice thing I love about them is they do layer on the concept of lifestyle and living the type of lifestyle and being able to retire early and use real estate as a means.

Even the way their company is structured. And set up, I've really enjoyed. I think they have set themselves up in a way where they can give away an amazing amount of content for free, just insane. They produce their own books too, and I found them to be very good and well-researched. They are doing events, but I love them because one, they're real estate. They add on not just real estate for the sake of investing, but it is as one strategy or means to reach that financial independence and kind of live a different lifestyle that you want.

And that their business model really, I'd say, comparative to even others, the— it took me a while to even figure out how they made money. I just was like absorbing so much. And then I was like, yeah, I guess he's retired and personally wealthy. But no, they actually have a very sustainable business. But, and I also think they've really established themselves as one of the better and one of the bigger names in the real estate investing side. When I do talk to others, there's few names that even come as close personally.

And then the last one I'll mention is a blog called Financial Samurai. The writer, his name is Sam, similar-ish story actually. He's out here in the Bay Area. He was working in finance, really just focused on saving, investing. He made a lot of his, built a lot of his net worth through real estate. Decided to quit, has written posts about like adjusting to a life of early retirement and things like that.

But when you read his articles and they're quite long, he is so thorough. I joke about my models. I aspire to start writing more, more in-depth and bring some of my modeling and the analysis to my articles. But He's a blogger and blog that I'm a big fan of.

[47:34] Paul: Fantastic. What ask do you have for people and where can people find more about you?

[47:40] Damien Peters: So you can find out more about me personally at DamienPeters.com. Wealth Noir is WealthNoir.com to find out more about the company and kind of what we're being up to. The only ask ask for people. I'm just not a big person who asks a lot, to be honest. But my only ask is think about your money. And I'm not saying— my ask isn't to tell everybody, hey, make sure that building wealth is like a key part of your next 5-year plan, or that improving your finances is something that you spend 8 hours a day on.

It is actually to think about your finances, your money, your goals as it pertains to your life. Is it an area of stress? Is it an area of unimportance because everything is good and it doesn't matter? Or is it an area of like interest that you would love to pour into? And because some people, many people haven't even thought about whether they care or not. So if you look at it and you decide that you really don't care, the amount of effort and there's just some basic stuff that makes sense.

At least you thought about it versus you kind of wake up and realize that I should have at least determined how much I cared about my money, my spending, and what my finances would look like. So my only ask to, to everybody hearing this is just take some time to think about your money, your finances, and how it's in the relationship it is what's that having with the rest of your life? And just make a call. Like, think about if you want to do more, if you want to do less, and take action. Because the problem that we're seeing a lot is that the lack of action, the fact that no one wants to talk about it, is just leading to people to ignore it and now turns into a problem. When if you'd just taken an extra 15 minutes 10 years ago, it just wouldn't have been a problem and you would not have spent any more time thinking about it.

Than you do now.

[49:42] Paul: And if they don't want to think about it, wealthnowhere.com.

[49:46] Damien Peters: Wealthnowhere.com. And if they really do want to think about it, especially wealthnowhere.com.

[49:50] Paul: Awesome.

[49:51] Damien Peters: We— yeah, our content, we do try and focus on a lot, I'd say, more intermediate to advanced strategies. So we really are, how can you accelerate and build outsized wealth?

[50:02] Paul: I love it. Well, thanks for talking today, Damien. It's been a pleasure, and, uh, looking forward forward to following your journey to Spain.

[50:09] Damien Peters: Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me, Paul.