000 Welcome to The Affluent Entrepreneur Show!

Hey there, real quick, before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training.

This is the affluent entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur.

All right, welcome, everybody. This is Mel Abraham and I'm so excited to be here with you for the kickoff of the Affluent Entrepreneur show. It's going to be an amazing ride for us. But the first things first, I want to celebrate you. I want to celebrate you for being someone that's looking to play a bigger game in business, a bigger game with money, a bigger game in life and a bigger game in having an impact. So I'm really, really jazzed to be here with you because I want to give you a quick rundown of what's in store for us on this journey together and a little bit about me, but more importantly, why. I think that this show is going to be a game changing conversation with you. But first things first, this show, this show is for you. It's all about you. It's all about your business, it's all about your finances, it's all about your money, and it's all about your life. This show is for entrepreneurs like you, someone that's looking to build a business, someone that's looking to scale a business, but more importantly, looking to scale their money and their freedom in the process. So here's what I've seen, here's what I've seen, here's what I've experienced, even myself over the decades. I have been an entrepreneur, actually, my very first entrepreneurial endeavor, you'll hear more about. It started at age 11, but I have been an entrepreneur for decades. I've worked and advised entrepreneurs and here's what I've seen. Often we come to a place in our lives where we feel the need or the yearning or the calling or the pull to. To take control of our own destiny, to live a life of our own design, to live a life that is going to give us the freedom that we want. In the process, we see that having the business, having a business is actually the path to get there. And then maybe it's that we have an idea, an idea that can solve a pervasive problem or issue in society that we see in the world. And we see the business as a way to solve that problem, to bring that idea to life, to create a difference in society. Or maybe, maybe, just maybe, we simply realize that we'll never reach the level of financial independence that we desire, that we dream about, without starting our own business. So what ends up happening, here's what I've seen happen, is that we actually start down this path of entrepreneurship. We start to move down this path of entrepreneurship, and we find that it doesn't unfold the way we wanted it or the way we expected it. See, instead of freedom, we often feel trapped. Instead of controlling our time, we find ourselves running faster and faster and faster on the business money treadmill. Instead of more time with loved ones and our family and our spouses, we find ourselves making excuses why we can't be there. Instead of finding security and peace of mind, we find stress and uncertainty. Now, here's the thing. Maybe you felt some of these. Maybe. Have you felt all of these? I don't know. But not to worry. I've experienced every single one of those in my journey as an entrepreneur. And I can assure you this, it doesn't need to be that way. This show's about getting it right. This show is about you. Like I said, it's about you, your money, your life, your legacy, designed in your own vision, not of the vision of what society says or what the media says or anyone else for that matter, telling you what to do. Now, the Affluent Entrepreneur show is all about having open, frank, direct conversations about money, about wealth, about business, about life. It's about shining a light on what's possible, what's possible, while giving you the guidance, the tools, the tactics that can make it a reality. See, this show is actually the intersection between your business and your money and your life. And when they all come together, that's what gives you financial liberation and the financial liberation you're truly looking for. So join me each week as we go on this journey together, because each week I'm going to bring you real world, educational, actionable, step by step, content and frameworks. If those of you that know me know that I'm a framework junkie that I've been using to build my businesses as well as advising many 7, 8, 9 and 10 figure businesses over the decades of my career. But the cool thing is it won't just be me on this journey. Sharon, Some of the episodes will be pure content and me teaching you through the process, walking you through something that I've learned, walking through some, some of the challenges that I've dealt with, walking you through some of the things that I've seen that are coming along so you don't fall into the pitfalls or the potholes that I've done. But the other side of it is this. I want to bring some of my friends along. I'm going to bring some of my incredible guests and friends along to share their pearls of wisdom, their pearls of wisdom around money, around wealth, around business, around life. I mean, people like their investors, they're angel investors or hedge fund investors, they're entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, professional athletes and Olympic level athletes and other high performing friends that I been blessed to have in my life. But remember I said this show is actually about you. Well, so there's going to be a whole bunch of episodes. There's going to be some episodes where I simply take your questions, I take your questions and I answer them for you to make sure that we remove as many of the obstacles and many of the challenges out of your way to keep you moving forward and even accelerate your path to success on this entrepreneurial journey, on this financial liberation journey, on this journey to affluence, as I call it. I'm even going to bring some of you on live to do some coaching, one on one coaching and mentoring with me. So like I said, this show is for you. It's about you and it's about your dreams. So now you may be asking and saying, well, who the heck are you, Mel Abraham? Well, I get it. So here's a scoop. Let me give you a little bit of a rundown of who I am, where I've come from and why you ought to be listening, why you ought to be watching the show. I am actually a CPA by education, but I am an entrepreneur by exhilaration. I started this entrepreneurial journey, this entrepreneurial game, if you will. Kind of accidentally at the age of 11 was the first time that I actually had my own business. I actually started. I fell in love with magic. All right, the Whole idea of magic because I saw a movie about Harry Houdini and all of a sudden I fell in love with this idea of this man that no chains could hold. But he was so amazing as an entrepreneur. Once I started to study him, I learned later how much of an entrepreneur and a showman he was. But that sparked the love for magic. And what I did is I started to go out and do magic shows for kids birthday parties. And now we're going back a few years. We're talking about in the 19, early 1970s when I was 11 and I was getting paid $50 for a 30 minute show which wasn't bad for an 11 year old kid. But the thing that it sparked in me was this understanding that we could get paid for doing the things we love while bringing smiles to people's faces by making changes in their lives, by giving them gifts in the process. And that to me was an amazing experience to realize that we could get paid for what we love to do when we impact other people. So that spark stayed with me for the rest of my career. Now like I said, I'm a cpa. I went to one of the large accounting firms and consulting firms in downtown Los Angeles and I had the blessing of, of doing a whole lot of consulting, helping build businesses, buy and sell businesses. Bought and sold numerous business six, seven and eight figure businesses. And I left the firm, I went to a small firm and recreated my business there once again until that firm, till my partners pushed me out and I learned the hard way. And you'll hear more about my story there is that I was building my businesses as a single full time dad. Because one of the things that is one of my proudest accomplishments is being a dad. To me it's one of the greatest gifts that was ever given to me. And trust me, there was times where I thought I was botching it up. Now I've raised my son as a single full time dad from his age 6. He's now 30 years old and married. He's had his own business since 16 years old. He's got a beautiful bride and they're expecting their first child. So I'm going to be a grandpa. So I'm going to be honest with you. I don't have all the answers. I've done enough right to be successful. But here's the good news. I've done enough wrong to be educational. I want to share with you some of the things that happened to me along the way. I've lost more money than some people will make in A lifetime by making bad decisions. But the lessons that came from them are lessons that I'm going to give to you so you don't make those decisions. I screwed it up. I fixed it up. I found a different way. And there's no such thing as work life, balance. There's no such thing as that. So we need to understand how do we create something that works in harmony with our vision? How do we create financial liberation? How do we create a richer lifestyle? And it's not just about wealth. How do we have a deeper impact in a way that we want to, not only the people we serve, but the people around us, the people we love and ourselves, who we become? In the process, I've learned that there is an intersection that is indelibly connected to each other, the intersection between your business and your money. Because it is that intersection that's truly going to give you the freedom that you want. And so that's where I want to play now. I had some people will say, what are you talking about? But I had the blessing of having been diagnosed with cancer in 2019. And it was through that cancer that in the conquering of that cancer that I realized something, that I realized that we need to play this financial game differently. As an entrepreneur, as people, it doesn't matter whether you're an entrepreneur or not. As people, we need to take control of our financial shift. It raised the issue in my eyes because all of a sudden I was left. My life was. Life was good. Back in 2019, when this all happened, I was speaking all over the country. I was speaking on some of the largest stages. I was masterminding with some incredible entrepreneurs, people that were running billion dollar companies, multi hundred million dollar companies we were masterminding together. I literally flew home from one of our masterminds together on a G5. If you haven't been on a G5, you gotta try it at least once. All right? It's an amazing experience. But literally two weeks after I stepped off that plane thinking life is amazing, that's when they found what they thought was a 5 centimeter tumor in my bladder. Turned out to be 7 and a half centimeters. Life got turned upside down. Life changed, Life happened. And so for me, one of the things that I realized is that doesn't matter what we do, and it's not about the cancer. It's not about any of that. Because it's easy enough to sit back and say, well, I don't expect to have cancer. Well, you know, I didn't expect to have cancer either. No, One in my family's ever had cancer. I don't have the risk factors of cancer. I'm not a smoker, I'm not a drinker. I do have fun, but I'm not a smoker, not a drinker. And I pretty much stayed healthy, and somehow I ended up with it. And so here's the thing that I realized. It's not about the cancer. It's about are you financially prepared? Are you running your business? Are you running your financial life in a way that when life happens, you're prepared for it? And I think that. That what we realize is that the cancer showed me the need to get this right. But the pandemic, the pandemic that we've been through and everything showed me why this is what I was meant to do for this next chapter on my journey. Because during the cancer, what I had to do is I realized I had to fight it emotionally, I had to fight it physically, I had to fight it energetically, I had to fight it spiritually. But because of the lessons I learned along the way, I didn't have to fight it financially. And I don't want you to do that. And I think there's a lot of people that have struggled right now. I think that there's a lot of people that are struggling because they've had to fight these things financially, because the pandemic happened, because they got downsized, outsized, right sized, whatever you want to say, because they didn't have the principles in place to make things happen the right way, because they ended up with a single point of failure in their business that they didn't see coming, because they weren't skilled up in the tools, the tactics and strategies to give them the financial liberation, the richer life, the deeper impact, and the complete freedom. And so in this next phase, this is what I was called to. This is what gives the cancer to me value. This is why the Affluent Entrepreneur show is being born. This is why I want to bring my friends on to help you out. This is why I want to bring you on, to help you out. And this is why I want to give you what I know in this show on a weekly basis. See, I have some core beliefs about. About where we are and where we're going. I have some core thoughts about all this. I truly believe that everyone should be financially independent. And that is within our reach, and it's within everyone's reach. If you just simply had the right guidance, the right strategies and the tactics to follow, I believe. I truly believe it's time for each of us to take control of our financial future again, to take control of our financial destiny and decide which way we want to go, how far we want to go, how big we want to go. I believe that it is time we take those dreams that are sitting in the darkness in the corner and dust them off again. And I believe it's time to blow those dreams up bigger than you had ever imagined before. And I believe that you know that you deserve this, that you deserve those dreams to be blown up, to live a financially affluent life, to live the life that you dream of, to live in a way that you had envisioned. And I believe that it's within reach. So let's do this together. Welcome to your path to being an affluent entrepreneur. I look forward to seeing you and guiding you on this journey. Cheers. See you in the next episode. Thank you for listening to the affluent Entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of Building your money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.