Damian Prosalendis went from nearly being homeless to creating a multi-million-dollar marketing agency called ProsaMedia in less than two years. What makes his story unique is that those two years happened to be from when he was 19 to 21.
As a university-aged individual going through hard times he turned to entrepreneurship as his opportunity to improve his life and doubled-down on a real-life education rather than going to class.
Through his perseverance and attention to knowledge accumulation, he has grown as an entrepreneur and proven that no matter the circumstances you can overcome adversity.
His story is admirable and filled with lessons for those who are seeking to get out of bad situations and improve their life.
After talking with him about the early troubles that pushed him to hustle for his success and the later scaling process that allowed him to continually push his business to new limits, these were the aspects of his story with the most value for aspiring entrepreneurs.
WHERE THE STORY OF DAMIAN PROSALENDIS BEGINS
Prosalendis’s story begins when he moved off to university to study Chemical Engineering in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, he rented a completely unfurnished apartment that did not even have a shower. Prosalendis spent the first few months sleeping on a fluffy orange carpet his grandma gave him to put in his living room.
Prosalendis had to live on about $200 a month that his grandparents could give him from their pension. He spent that on utility bills and life essentials. So he could not even afford the “luxury” of furnishing his apartment. He became really desperate when he realized he couldn’t even afford used furniture from thrift shops and felt extremely disadvantaged and inferior to his more well off classmates and friends, whose parents were able to provide more for them.
Later on, he found an old mattress next to the garbage near his home, picked it up, carried it all the way to his building block and then dragged it from the stairs up to the 7th floor because the elevator was too small to fit it in.
Things were not good but at least he had a roof over his head and was in university, studying for a degree that could give him a better future.
Eventually though, he could not afford even this bare minimum apartment and had to move in with his girlfriend for a while to avoid being homeless. At the same time, he petitioned to receive government housing.
After a few months he managed to secure what is known as an SRO at his university’s dorm facilities. SRO is an abbreviation for single room occupancy, a form of housing that is typically granted to families with low or no incomes.
At this point though, he has grown tired of his never-ending monetary problems. He decided he wanted to get more out of life and realized that the standard path of university education was not for him.
This was a harsh realization for Damian Prosalendis, because he studied his whole life to be able to access university education. In Greece where Prosalendis grew up, university education is free, but the choice of your faculty depends on your high school grades, as well as your performance in a brutal series of exams at the end of high school.
Everyone he knew told him it was a huge risk to abandon all the years of intense study which earned him the privilege to study Chemical Engineering, which is widely considered one of the top choices for university education in Greece, and requires very high grades for acceptance.
Prosalendis had enough though, and he shifted all his time on reading about entrepreneurship, self-development and online business. He focused on consuming online webinars, videos, and other content to teach him what he needed to know about being an entrepreneur. From there he figured out what he could do to put his life on the right track. He studied copywriting, the art of online sales and became very good at it.
As Prosalendis said, “I knew what I wanted and why I needed to work, so it was easy to put in the time and effort to realize my ambitions.”
After founding ProsaMedia and seeing it grow rapidly, he knew that he made the right choice. That was back in 2016 when it was not so common to make money on the internet.
After he became a millionaire he started traveling the world, living the high life in villas, penthouses and hotel suites in the United States but also all around the world, in Europe and the Middle East.
He set his base in Dubai but spent a large portion of his time in Miami and Las Vegas as well as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, planning his next moves and networking with multi-millionaires.
He eventually ended up meeting with his “online mentors” Grant Cardone and Tai Lopez in real life, and spending time with them in Miami and Los Angeles respectively.
From there his hard work and determination led to further success in business and life. Prosalendis loved traveling and making content, so he created Studio Badass Productions, a video production & marketing agency focused on travel and lifestyle content.
However, after the 2020 global pandemic which made traveling the world extremely difficult, Damian Prosalendis switched gears into another business. He used his copywriting, digital marketing and social media expertise to help others with their personal branding, by creating BadassTalent, a global social media and talent management agency. Today BadassTalent manages creators, influencers and models with followers in the millions.
But Prosalendis did not stop there. With his businesses almost on autopilot, he realized that the fastest way to wealth was by investing. He did not like traditional options like stocks or real estate so much, but he was extremely allured by the new technology of cryptocurrencies.
After buying bitcoin and ethereum for the first time in 2017, he was hooked. In the subsequent 2021 bull market he managed to amass a large portfolio of cryptocurrencies, and that’s when he switched his focus on NFTs to go even further.
He still trades cryptocurrencies and NFTs to this day and has performed some significant feats, such as calling Floki on the launch day before a 15000X and buying NFTs such as DeGods for 10 solana and exiting at 500-600 sol.
His wild success did not go unnoticed in his home country of Greece where he has amassed a large following of more than 180,000 people.
After being bombarded with messages to share his money making strategies, he decided to create Conclavio, an online academy which now boasts over 1000 students, where Prosalendis teaches what he knows to others.
Conclavio started as a side project for Damian Prosalendis (or Δαμιανός Προσαλέντης as he is known Greece) , but now he sets his target at 10,000 students and revolutionizing the education system with digital training for aspiring Greek & Cypriot entrepreneurs all around the world.
Even though he left school, Prosalendis is a huge supporter of self-education.
He attributes his current success to his accumulation of knowledge via reading books, consuming online content and choosing the right mentors. That is the biggest focus for his famous now online academy known as Conclavio (Κονκλάβιο in Greek, which means secret council), where students can find mentors for business and life.
Networking with like minded people is the secret to success, Prosalendis says. That’s why he decided to own two gold-chrome cars, a Lamborghini Huracan and a Brabus G63.
In Dubai, where he permanently resides, appearance is the key to making connections. Everyone is rich, but most cannot handle the attention of two gold-chrome cars, which is a rare sight even for Dubai. That opens the doors to him to many networking opportunities with other successful men.
Damian Prosalendis believes that cars can be an investment vehicle, if you use them to network with other successful people. Apart from his car collection, Damian also invests in luxury timepieces such as Rolex watches, as well as real estate in Dubai and abroad.
For anyone looking to get into the business world or become an entrepreneur his biggest piece of advice is not to drop-out and ignore education, but to focus on learning the things that will help you succeed. That information may come from a classroom or it may come from alternative routes, but constantly learning is crucial for continuously improving your skill sets as a businessman.
