012 Financial Independence Through Digital Products With James Wedmore

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. Hey, y'. All. Mel Abraham here and welcome to this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. This one is a special one. Oh, my God. Do we have some cool things in store for you. I'm bringing on my very first show guest and it happens to be a dear, dear friend of mine. His name, his name is James Wedmore. All right, here's the deal.

All right?

This guy has and we're going to talk about a lot of different things. What does it take to scale a business? What does it take to build a business? What is it? And I think that you're going to be be really surprised at what it isn't. It, it isn't working harder. It isn't running longer. It isn't any of those things. There's something else. So we're going to talk all about what it takes to become what he calls a digital CEO. We're going to talk about what it is to create a business that creates a cash flow that gives you the kind of income you need to build an asset base to become financially independent. So stay tuned for this episode, the very first guest episode. It's a little longer than the rest, but there's a lot of goodness in there. So do me a favor, get a notepad, get a pen, get a pencil, whatever you write with, because this one's gold. I'll see you in the show. Cheers.

This is the affluent entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate as 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 athlete entrepreneur.

I want to introduce you to one of my dear, dear friends and we became fast friends a little while back and he's someone that I followed for, for a number of years. I was one of those lurkers in the background as he was doing video stuff and, and understanding that. And then you'll hear a little more about our story about how we met. But I want to welcome to. This is the first. First, the premier guest of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show. My dear friend James Wedmore is in the house.

You're only friends with me because I'm an affluent entrepreneur.

Well, that's true. That's true. I need you as the poster child, because you do act like a child, as I too, of what is possible as an affluent pres. What's possible? I mean, I know that you have done some incredible stuff over the years and some of my audience may or may not know you. So, hey, do me a favor. Just give us a, give us a rundown of how you ended up here because you're doing some incredible, incredible stuff. Those of you that are out there don't know James. One of the things that he is known for is building processes that allow you to scale your business, your online business, in a way that when you talk about affluent entrepreneurship, it allows you to get your time back, it allows you to scale your revenue, it allows you to scale your profitability, which means that all of a sudden you find liberation, you find freedom in your life. And so he's done some amazing stuff. He's helped me with a lot of things as I've grown and transitioned. But maybe give us a real quick rundown of how you ended up here because you started out doing bartending and dating and relationships and all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, I got here by putting one foot in front of the other, you know.

Yeah, I liked.

I think there's a lot of people in their head overthinking, waiting for clarity, waiting for the neon sign before they start taking action. And I think we have it backwards. I started realizing very quickly that it was action that creates clarity, not the other way around. And so I think the thing I had going for me as I was willing to just try something, do something and make a mistake, look bad, fail, keep going. So where I am today was, you know, oh, wow, we got an eight figure company, we're doing all these things, super grateful for it, but that was never the plan. That's not where like I set out, like 10, 12, 14 years ago. Like, that's where I'm going to go. It was like the first iteration was like you said I was. I had an idea for an online bartending school in 2007. And then I got my first sale and someone paid me 200 bucks from San Antonio, Texas. April 18, 2008. I'll never forget, I'll never forget where I was, what I was doing, like what went through my head and how I felt when that first sale came in. And I was like, how do I do more of this and that? You know, turned from one thing to the next and you're, you know, you're looking for your thing, you're looking for your purpose. I wasn't like going to be the bartender guy the rest of my life, but I love the idea of an online business. You know, like Tim Ferriss's the four hour work week had just come out and I was like, oh yeah, I love the idea of teaching and helping people and I love the idea of like making a lot of money. You know, I think there's a lot of people that have some weird, as I did growing up, money stories and uncomfortable things around money, you know, oh, don't talk about it and stuff like that. I was like, yeah, I mean, be humble, but there's nothing wrong with wanting nice things. There's nothing wrong with having money, you know, it's, it's a tool. And so little by little, I stumbled my way towards more success. And by about 20, yeah, 2011.

Basically created my brand and business around YouTube and video. I went to film school, so that might have been around the time where Mel or some other people started following me because we did. I was in business. I mean, $400,000 in sales in my first 30 days with a $97 product went on. I built a million dollar business. Teaching YouTube and video was my passion. And I was surfing, restoring my old Volkswagen thing and making videos. And I was like, this is the dream. This is the life.

Life is good.

And, and I had a, a person start like stalking me. It wasn't you?

Not, not that year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, not yet. Mel hadn't come in the picture yet. But someone kind of started like stalking me. Like they kept reaching out to me and, and they just kept asking me if like, could you coach me or help me or da da da da. And I just kept saying no. I was like, I kind of just love my life. I was surfing twice a day and come back, make a video, work on my vw. And that was it. I was like living the dream. And finally, I don't know what it was, but something had me say yes. And I charged, actually no. Here's what it was. Now I remember I said okay, you know what? If I charge this guy a ridiculous amount of money, he'll go away.

And I said, yeah, all right, fine, I'll help you, I'll coach you. Because he wanted to know how I was doing, what I was doing. And it wasn't that I was withholding, I just didn't want to like be bothered with it. I just, I was like, everything's fine, I'm good. Like, you want to buy my YouTube course? Like, that's fine. But all the stuff I've learned, it's like thousands of hours of learning and practicing and stumbling it wrong, like years. And I said, you know what? $10,000. And he writes back in an email. Okay, done. When do we start?

Oh, that didn't go according to plan. And the person came in and I actually said, well, you live locally. Just come over to my office. And I had a little office in my house and I started like telling him what I knew. And before I knew it, he went from like $0 to a six figure business by the end of that year. And he's like, dude, this stuff is working. You're right. And this has changed my life. And then there was a moment we became fast friends and we went to. There's a reason why I'm telling all these stories. We went to a New Year's party together and that's when I met his wife for the first time. And his wife hugged me and says, you have no idea what you've done to change our lives and everything. And I was like, wow, that's pretty awesome. Maybe I should do more of this. And so I have. And that's just what I've been doing ever since then, is I love helping people, you know, build their business and make more money and do awesome stuff, stuff with that, you know. And I think what I realized, which is what would one of the things, I guess that would make me unique. Cause there's a lot of people out there, a lot of options, I'm aware of that. But there's a lot of people that are teaching business advice that isn't actually business advice, Mel. And I know that, right? Marketing isn't the same as business. I love marketing, teaching marketing all day long. But there's a lot of like how to build an Instagram following or TikTok or whatever. That's not business advice. And so there's a lot of people entering the marketplace and saying, I want to start a business, I'm doing a business. And they don't actually know how to run a business. And when you don't know how to run a business, it kind of feels like the business is running you. Right. So I really set out to figure.

Out how to call that the treadmill entrepreneur.

Yeah, and treadmill, you can't get off it, and you can't turn it off, and you just kind of keep going and it runs you until you collapse. And that was happening to me, but I figured that out. I figured out how to run a business, and I realized it was so counterintuitive. It's so different than a job, which we can get into all the reasons why. And that's why I was able to go surfing a couple times a day. That's why the business could keep growing, and that's why I continue to do what I love. And. And that's what I realized. That's what people were actually coming to me for. It wasn't like, oh, how to make a course. Like, I can teach you that. You know, or, you know, how to sell on a webinar. It's like, I can teach you that. But what people are really coming. It was like, I'm learning everything. I'm. I'm getting. Putting all these pieces together, but it's not working. And it's not even that. It's not making money. There's a lot of people out there that are making some money, but this is, like, not. They're like, this is not it. This is not what I signed up for. Like, I'm working way too much, way too hard, and this cannot be why I quit my job. This cannot be what I said I'm gonna do with my life. And this is not sustainable. And so I really set out to, like, crack that for me. I did. And today I help people with that as well, you know, And I love working with the.

Influencer thoughtpreneur as you use or authority, the online experts that are doing products.

So here's the thing. The cool thing for me was I watched the transition, you know, because the amount of exponential growth that you had, you know, financially is one. But I think more importantly, operationally, how you did it, your life, all of that stuff just. It just expanded as I. As I watched you start to shift some of the things that were not necessarily like. I think a lot of people will say, what. What tactics is James using?

What.

What's the strategy? What's.

What's.

What. What's the.

The.

The. The new crazy, like, fandangled marketing strategy that caused them to go from here to here? And it was none of that. That allowed you to do and scale your. What we say is that we want to scale the business, scale our money and scale our life, but it allowed you to scale your life life and the people around you also grew. So I think that's important to really acknowledge is that this wasn't about someone marketing strategy. It wasn't about, you know, hey, you know, here's the webinar slide deck. Yeah, you need that. But beyond that, you, you imprison yourself if you're not careful.

What it's like really is, it's all about performance. And so I think a great metaphor that we can use is cars. You look at like a, I don't know what is a stereotypically bad car is like the Ford Pinto. You know, that car would like blow.

Up if you hit the back of.

And then you take something like a Ferrari or something. I'm not really a car person. I'm. So if someone's like, there's way better cars out there, I'm like, sorry, I'm not using a better metaphor. But both those cars are both using a combustion engine. The combustion engine is the technology. Up until like the Tesla and the electric motor that became popularized in the last few years, we've been running off of the same model of how we get around in a vehicle for the past 120, 130 years, which is the combustion engine. And the combustion engine is this. It's the same engine as a principle in a Pinto or any other, you know, crappy car versus a Ferrari, a Lamborghini. It's just, it's just, it's just a better built machine. The same machine, it's the same strategy, which is gas comes into a chamber, a spark ignites the gas, an explosion happens, the pistons move. It's the same thing, but one is high quality, high performance, better built, the other one is not. And so why I share this is because people are always looking for like, what's the thing you're doing different? And it's like, oh, I'm doing the same thing as you. I just might be doing it better. I just might be doing it at a higher level of performance. And why this is important is because so many people are chasing the strategy, they're chasing the doing. And this is where I love to introduce what Robert Dilt of the NLP World Neuro Linguistic Programming popularized. I believe it was psychologist Gregory Bateson from like the 1950s that created this, but he popularized it and put it in the NLP community. Which is the logical levels. The logical levels Are these five levels at a hierarchy of change? Right. So Mel's familiar with these. And so at the bottom is environment. So we want to. A lot of people, we want to change our environment, right? We get motivated. That's what desire is. You see something you want that you don't have, and you want it. Contrast creates clarity and desire, right? Like, man, I want to have that, or I would like that, but I don't. So you have desire. Most people, then that's what. How desire drives us, right? And so we say, what do I need to do to make this change in my environment? So you go up to the next level, which is behavior. This, sadly, is where most people stop. This is where most people live their life. What do I need to do differently? Okay, I need to do it. Action. Even habits are all about doing different actions. But as you already know, you take yourself with you wherever you go. And the doing, the action is only as good as the person that's doing that action, that's doing that doing. And you take yourself with you wherever you go. And two people can do the exact same things and produce a very different result. And so what we started doing, and I started doing this in my life because I struggled for a long time in business and in life, and I started going. It's not just about doing more things, and it's not even just about doing them better. Like, I'm going to do more things than you. I'm going to do them faster, I'm going to do them quicker, and I'll be more successful. A lot of people working really hard right now, they don't have anything to show for it. And I work less today than I ever have, which is amazing. Very grateful. And we're making more than we ever have. So I started in my own life going up this ladder of logical levels, and we can go up that really quickly. We go to skills and capabilities, and then we go to beliefs and values. And. And then up at the top is identity. And when you operate in your life where the change is happening at these higher levels of the logical levels, it's like a ripple effect that changes everything below that. And so at the top of this pyramid, if you see this as a pyramid, so from the bottom we go environment, behavior, skills and capabilities. Then we go up to beliefs and values. Then we go up to the top and the pyramid, the apex of the pyramid, where all the change really originates from is identity. Then you have a ripple effect. You have quantum leap. And what I was doing first in my life was Shifting my identity. And then I took. And then everything started to change. You know, I started going from, I'm a broke loser who hates himself. I did. I had all these issues, like, my life sucks. I hate my life. I'm a loser. I had low self esteem, low self confidence, didn't think I was good enough for anybody or anything. And I changed that identity and started seeing some success. And so all I did, Mel, was I took that to my business. I said, if change really happens from the inside out, not the outside in, then what happens when I take that and apply it to business?

Yeah.

I began to change the identity of who I was, what role I filled within my company, and I began to change the identity of what my company was, and that changed everything. And when we talk about, like, exponential growth, here's the story around that. We had a really good growth year. We went from 2 to 3 million in one year. And we were stoked. And at the end of the year, December of that year, I had just recently hired a coach for my number two in the company, in the business. She'd been with us. I mean, we, like, started over with her. So it was like me and her. And then I groomed her and we'd worked together for like two years, and now she's like my number two. And we've hired a couple other people and. But it's just a small team of us. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna invest in a coach for her. I'm getting coaching, I'm growing, I'm learning. And, you know, it's like so many. I think there's so many struggling entrepreneurs that it's not until they become successful and they, like, you know, finally see results that they realized how much money they left on the table and how much time they wasted not getting coaching sooner, not getting the support. It's like, if you haven't done it by now, like, why are you just assuming you're gonna just automatically one day figure it all out on your own if you haven't yet? Like, how much long are you willing to wait? And so, so many people I talk to, I mean, you and I have talked about this, like so many other successful peers and stuff. It's like, why did they wait so long getting guidance? You know? So I'm like, if I'm doing that and I want to walk my walk and talk my talk, why am I not doing that for my team? So I hired a coach for her. And that's not something you hear most people doing. And I Was like that's a no brainer. And I invested 20 grand for her to get a coach. And she asked our goals and it was the first call, was like a joint call and brought me on and brought her on and she said, what are your goals? And I said, well our goal for the next year is $10 million. It was this impulsive like uncontrollable reaction. But she started laughing.

That's the quickest way to get me going.

Well, it is for me. But most people aren't motivated and wired the way you and I are. We're stubborn sobs. We're a bit contrary by nature. But if you're a coach and you want to laugh at your client when they tell you their dreams, you might as well just quit coaching. Cause that's. You just don't do that. You don't do that. Like don't put your stuff, superimpose your stuff on your clients and. But that did serve me because I'm like good, you laugh. Because I love when they laugh at me. I love. It fuels me. It fuels us, you know. So I'm sure you can assume where the story's going. We didn't hit 10 million. We hit 9.4 that year. And we would have, but I actually closed down one of my programs cause I wanted to work even less. So we had another mastermind that we were doing. I was like, I don't wanna do this next year. I'm try, I'm traveling too much because of it. I'm at too events and like I don't want to burn myself out so I'm not going to renew it. And we did the math. I'm like oh, that would have easily put us over 10 million. And it's not about the money or anything. And that's not why I'm sharing this story. What I'm sharing is, is you want to, you know, success leaves clues. And so what, what caused that? What, how did you go from 3 to 10 million and. Or almost 10 million and we, we, we hit it the next year. We have a CFO consultant. He works with us as a consultant. Like as part of his retirement. He, he was the CFO for freecreditreport.com they took that company to whatever hundreds of millions of dol me and he does this for fun. He said I work with a lot of businesses, I consult with them. I've never seen a small business do what you guys did. I've never seen anyone go from 2 to 3 million and then 3 all the way to almost 10 in one year. And people ask me all the time, how'd you do it? And it's the exact same thing I just shared. I said we looked at our identity first as myself and then as the organization completely differently. I started operating as what we've come to call the digital CEO. Yeah, it's the person that's always at the highest value role in your company and your business, no matter where you're at. And that's what I get really obsessed about today is, is how we can create those exponential quantum leap growths in business. And I realized that how I showed up in the company had to change drastically. What got you here won't get you there. The, the, the value that I created, the, the time where I spent my time, how I made decisions, how I thought about things, completely had to change. And that's the thing is like, people want to grow their business. Growth means change. But they're unwilling to grow themselves. They're unwilling to change themselves. So you want to keep doing things the way you've done them, you want to keep showing up and operating the same way, but you expect a different business, a different result. That's not going to happen. And, and we can go into all the reasons why and mistakes and whatnot, but that's, yeah, that was, that was huge growth.

It's huge growth because, look, you could grow from, from 3 to 9 million, 10 million. But a lot of companies that will do that will stress at the seams, they'll burn their people out, they'll hit breakdown. And the magic behind it, because I witnessed it, is that wasn't the case. It was like the growth was going up, but your time involved was going down. You put in processes, you put in systems, you put in strategies, you refined your focus. There was so many little things that from the outside, they go, wow, look at that. But they don't see the little nuances that made huge, monumental shifts in your income and your profitability and your lifestyle. And I think that's, that's something that, that is really important. But I think, you know, this idea of, of identity, this idea of behaviors, and I have an immense amount of respect for the work that, that Tony Robbins does. And he says, you know, model people's behaviors. And I've said for years, no, no, no, no. If all we do is repeat what others have done, we don't know the thinking behind it. I said, show me the thinking. Let's model the thought process. Let's model the being. Let's model. Because whether it's A financial problem or a business problem or a relationship problem, It's a behavior problem. If it's a behavior problem, it's a thinking problem.

Yes.

That means that we got to get to that level and that if it's a thinking problem, it comes from the identity. That's why we talk about this idea of the money identity cascade and you do something similar. And this whole idea of a digital CEO, and when you talk about what do digital CEOs do, why is that so different than just saying, I have an online business, That's a huge difference. Because how you show up when you decide to put on that jacket and say, I'm a digital CEO, that moniker, that identity, it completely shifts how you approach what would. I mean, you're asking the question in a problem situation or a growth situation to say, what would a digital CEO that's running a $10 million business do right now? I mean, I think some people might be looking at this and say, I'm not where I want to be. I would challenge them and say, ask yourself the question. Stand and look in the mirror and ask yourself the question, am I doing the things that the people that are where they want to be would be doing? Am I thinking the things that they're thinking? Am I doing the things? Am I being the way that they would be? And if the answer is no, there's your solution right there in the mirror.

And I'm going to take that further. Because they say no, Mel, because I don't have the money, I don't have the time, I don't have the skills, I don't have the know how. And so these are all external variables and circumstances in your life. And so the moment you say that and that comes out of your mouth, what you've just declared is that you are driven and governed by your external circumstances. And if you make your decisions and your actions based on your external circumstances, you're doomed to repeat them because they're not going to change until you change. So you're saying, well, I'm not going to change until they change, but they're not changing until you change. So we're in a. We're in a stalemate and nothing changes. And then people wonder why they take their stuff with them wherever they go. That people understand, don't understand. Now you know why, why they're stuck. I don't know why I'm stuck. Now you know why. And it always begins with you. And I think you brought up a huge point, is, yeah, you can model behavior when it comes to something like, I don't know, like learning how to shoot a gun or something, you know, I don't know. I'm just thinking because I remember learning that from Tony and he went, I think he worked with like the military or the army, some branch of the military and like was teaching them how to like shoot better and he was modeling that behavior. Yeah, that might help. But when we're looking at modeling the behavior of like another successful entrepreneur or whatever, it all begins with thought. That thought creates another thought which creates another thought. And the reality is, as I look back and whatnot and I acknowledge. And sometimes it's really hard for people to get into my work and maybe some people aren't up for it, but I think about things very differently than most people. I just have a very different approach and perspective to a lot of things and I can give many, many examples about that. And people kind of, people have filters on where they reject new ideas. Of course that's not what entrepreneurs should be doing. I know this already. No, that doesn't make sense. I already know or I think I know and that's a lot of ego getting in the way. But I had to think differently about things to get to where I am. And if you come into something you've never done before and you think you know everything, you're shooting yourself in your, in the foot big time, you know. So when, if you could get inside somebody's head, model not just their thoughts but how they see things.

Yeah, I like to tell their perspectives. Yeah, yeah.

How you see business will determine what's possible for you in business. And when I look at my growth, the biggest growth is, comes down to, I mean if someone says, James, what is the secret to success? First off, we have to define success. Success is simply a matter of doing what you said you're going to do. If you want to have $100,000 a year business and someone else has a million dollar year business, who's more successful is irrelevant. Success is between you and you first off and what you said you would do. So if you said I want to have a hundred thousand dollar a year business where I don't work at all, and you do that, they're successful. If you say I want a hundred thousand dollar business doing what I love and I don't care how long or how little I work and you do that, you're success, it doesn't matter. Right? Yeah, that's what you said you want. And then you're to tell me what's the secret to success? I can boil it down into two words, but people aren't going to want to hear this because it's too simple. People want complicated. They want some strategy. But it's two words. Letting go the moment you want something. Okay, I think there's like three phases of people, right? There's what we call what all of us entrepreneurs, everyone listening is an entrepreneur, right? To some degree. We're. We're weird, we're different. We're not a part of the norm, right? So we call everyone else normies. Normies. They don't want to build a business. They don't want to. They don't move towards risk, right? They see what everyone else sees. When. When the masses see problem, they see problem. When we see problem, we see what? Opportunity.

Opportunity, yep.

We see growth. And that's. That's what makes us different. You guys gotta understand, like, embrace that we're the. You know, that's why, like, no one understands you at Thanksgiving dinner and all that stuff, right? Like, we're different. So you go to 9 out of 10 people on the street and you say, what's your goals? What do you want? And people will say things like, just to make it to the weekend, you know, just trying to get through the day. They don't have goals. They're kind of like a bag in the wind. Wherever the wind blows, that's where they go. That's fine. Living reactively, that's fine. There's no judging. I'm just saying that's how most people are. It's an observation of fact. But then you meet an entrepreneur and nine out of ten entrepreneurs have goals. You go to a business or a marketing conference and you're like, what do you want? They'll tell you, but we need to elevate that because there's that next phase. And this is kind of what ties in this whole piece of what we're talking about is the moment you want something and you breathe life into that by saying, I want or I intend to. That would be a more powerful way. Or I'm going to. Or I will, or I am you. The moment you breathe, speak that into existence and breathe life into this. This thing. You have to realize that there's a next. Next level, which is that that thing that you want, wants, or rather needs something from you. And until you're willing to give it, you're never going to get it. You're never going to get it. So what that means is you got to be willing to let go of the old you and give something of the new you. And I can go on and on and on and on with. I got a gajillion examples about this. For example, someone gets started and they say, you know what, Mel? I love what you're doing. I want to start a podcast. But they're unwilling to let go of perfectionism. They're unwilling to let go of what other people think. They're unwilling to let go of the stories of I don't know what to talk about, or there's already podcasts like this, or why would anyone listen to me? Or la, la la, la, la, la, la la. You hold onto that crap, you're not gonna start your podcast. And even if you do, it's probably gonna be crap because you're never going to. You know, you're going to just be afraid of speaking up. You're going to be afraid of speaking your truth and your perspective, and it's going to be garbage. So you want something, and then that something wants something from you. Are you willing to give it? That's what it is. And so it's a constant shedding process. It's a constant letting go.

No. Well, this is huge because there's a quote that I love. It's a Christopher Columbus quote, and it says, you can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Christopher Columbus didn't really say that. Come on.

Mel Abraham just.

That's some, like, marketing company that made that. Selling, like, a Columbus product. Great quote. That's beautiful. Yeah. I don't know. He did. I'm just teasing you.

I don't know if he did. That's what. That's who it's attributed to.

But.

But it's true. I mean, if you're not willing to let go of the things that got you to hear, hey, I mean, because you're packing your bags, you gotta. I remember.

I remember.

So when I finished college, I took off for three months to travel Europe. I had a ticket in, a ticket out, and nothing in between. My cousin and I did it. And our. Our doting Jewish mothers packed our bags for us to make sure that we had everything. And we're. We're trucking all this baggage around, and about a week into it, we're looking at each other going, we need three outfits. There's the laundromat. We don't need the rest of this stuff. And we unpacked the bags that were packed by someone else, shipped all the junk home, and then we were lighter, we were freer, we were more open, and we had more fun.

It's kind of a metaphor. We have to unpack all the baggage our parents gave us. Yes. Yeah.

Oh, man.

It's my dad's fault that I'm not successful. I knew it.

But, you know, here's the other thing that I love about what you're doing and the way you do it now when you're on the receiving end, it's always. It's not necessarily fun because I've been on the receiving end. You challenge people. You challenge in your programs, whether it's a business by design, in the mastermind. I've been in the mastermind for years now. I'm like, Tara on your heel. You can't get rid of me. You know, with your other coaching programs, you're willing to do things that some coaches, some. Some mentors aren't willing to do, and that is to go to the places that people absolutely need to go to be able to see the potential, to be able to live the potential that they want to have. And. And whether it's in your online programs or the coaching, I see you do this repeatedly, even with your friends. We do this back and forth with each other and in our conversations. But I think this idea of being willing to challenge the norm, challenge the status quo is one of the biggest reasons that you have had the success. But not only that, your students, the people that you've served, have had astronomical success, too. They've not only taken on the role of a digital CEO, but they've been open and willing and vulnerable enough to accept coaching and accept the vulnerability to step into that role. And I think that's a big difference, is you've never been one of those yes guys. You've never been a no guy. You've simply been someone that challenged it and said, what if, what if, what if? You've always been a what if guy in my mind.

Yeah, well, I've always been just a contrarian and question everything. And that's. That's, you know, your stubbornness fueled in the right, healthy direction. But I started doing that because I realized that's what I needed. And no one, you know, wasn't. Was doing that in my life. Like, everyone was supporting me. I was. I'm so blessed. And like, my parents were like, we love you, and you're doing amazing. We don't know what it is you're doing. We don't understand it, but keep doing it. So I actually started to get some people in my life, like family and some friends that, like, just supported me and were like, Cheering me on, and it wasn't doing anything. And I realized that, like, what I needed, I had to end up doing myself, which was to call me out on my own bs. Like, your ego is really smart. And I'm gonna venture to say it's. It's outsmarting all y' all because it outsmarts me all the time. But then I go, wait a second. So you want to look at it like this. It's like. So I gave a very simple thing of like, there's where you are. There's where you want to be. You want something, and then that something wants or needs something of you, but the reason you've been only willing to give it is because it's going to be confronting or scary or uncomfortable or la, la, la, la. All that stuff. And so your ego doesn't want that. Doing what? Ego wants to keep you in the comfort zone. It wants to keep you where you are because the brain craves familiarity, and we. At least. I may not like my current situation, but at least I'm familiar with it. So let's stay here, because that's familiar to me, and familiar is safe, and I want to be safe. Well, you signed up for entrepreneurship, so what do you expect, right? And that's actually playing safe in entrepreneurship is the most dangerous thing you can do. That's called the paradox of life, the giant cosmic joke. So I realized I had to do that to myself. I realized I was out. My ego was outsmarting me with same things, like using fear masked as logic. For a lot of especially dudes, we say, I don't get afraid. I'm not afraid yet. You're stressed. Stress is just another form of fear. Logic is another form of fear. No, no, no. The time isn't right. It's not ready yet. The timing isn't right. Like, what do you mean, timing? Like, what are you talking about? Timing? You know, like, oh, this, the season and the time and the. Like, I was fooling myself. You know what? It's not ready yet. Because we want to do this in the spring because, you know, in summer, people are on vacation and, you know, oh, and then spring comes, and it's like, oh, you know what? It's Memorial Day, and we don't want to do that. I mean, I would just convince myself that now is not the time. I'm not ready. The market's too saturated. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had no idea I was doing that. I was too smart for my own good. And so I had to start going, wait a second, wait a second. It's been four years of just nothing. Like, I'm working as hard as I can. I'm pretty smart, dude. Like, I should be able to figure this out. Nothing. So I started looking at the last place that I wasn't looking, which is at myself, you know, And I've boiled it all down to one question to begin that conversation of looking at ourselves. And it is where it starts to get really uncomfortable for people, which is you can say, oh, I know this already. You can say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard that. Yeah. You know, you can be whatever about what you know or what you think you know, but it's one question. Yeah, but is your life working? Is your. Is your business working? And that's the thing, is you can. You can give your opinions and perspectives and what you know and what you don't know all day long, but it's either working or it isn't. Yeah. Period. And if it ain't working, you got a choice. You either blame other people, blame external circumstances. And when you do that, by the way, you give your power away to those things and you say those things and those people are the reason why my life is the way it is. They're the reason my life doesn't work, my business doesn't work. Or you sit there and say, what can I do about it? This isn't about, you know, when you put yourself in the epicenter of your life and you choose to be at cause in your life, it's not about blame or fault. It's about saying, okay, that's in the past anyways. It's all in the past. This moment is a fresh, new moment. Let's turn the page. What can I create now? Who am I going to be now? What do differently now? Who am I now? That's that new identity. And slowly but surely, that's where we create from. And that's a very powerful place to work from. And when I started getting that for myself, things started changing. And so I would be doing a massive disservice if I wasn't that person to my clients. Because I was a person. I needed myself. And so today I told my clients, I said, listen, I'm not your cheerleader, I'm your coach. If we want to use like a football metaphor. Cheerleaders, it's so funny. Cheerleaders, you could be losing 49 to zero. I mean, you just smoked. And what are the cheerleaders doing there? They're like, w I n when it's like you have. It's the fourth quarter and we're down seven touchdowns.

Are you out of your mind?

Touchdowns. And you're just sitting there going, yeah, go fight, win. That's not helping. And that's what I had in my life. I had cheerleaders. You guys might have some cheerleaders in your life. You might not have cheerleaders in your life. You don't need cheerleaders in your life to win. You need to be your own best cheerleader. But then you have the coach. And what's the coach doing? Is he sitting there like, yeah, listen to the girls, you know, listen to the cheerleaders. They're, you know. No, the coach has taken the flipboard, a clipboard, and he's slammed it on the ground. There's literal steam coming out of his, his ears and there's that vein popping on the side of his neck, right? And he's pissed. He's like, you guys have forgotten everything. You already know what is the matter with you. And yeah, that's the type of coach I tend to be is if you let your ego outsmart you, you're going to stay stuck, you're going to stay where you are, and nothing's going to change. So we got to kind of call out some of that. And I'm really not concerned with people needing to like me or be my friend or whatever in order for me to help them. And so I tell my clients, like, if I'm not triggering you or pushing you or, you know, causing something that's confronting in some way, then I'm probably not doing my job, because if everything was working, you wouldn't need me. So you're here for a reason, because something isn't working and we have to look at that. And usually it's something rather confronting. Like when I ran my seven figure mastermind, everyone in the room was already at seven multiple seven figure. I mean, we have people at $5 million in the room. You know, it's amazing. And you know what? Universally, every single one of them had an issue with. Every single one of them had a big fat problem that was keeping them stuck. And a lot of people, by the way, think that Walt Disney kind of created a giant. I always tease this as my funny joke, but, you know, people believe that what this lie that Walt Disney spread, which is that the end of the story, it's. It's happily ever after. I don't know if that originate with Walt Disney. I'm sure it was fairy tale books way before.

I think it was Christopher Columbus.

That was good. Wow. Let's. We got to check where you're getting your quotes from, buddy.

Never happily ever after. If you think once you make a certain amount of money, you'll be happy and you won't have any problems, you have been lied to. It's just different problems and you get better at dealing with them. And so the universal problem that everyone in this mastermind, with all this money and all these results and big businesses were, was struggling with was control. Every single one of them had had a. Had an issue with letting go of control within their business. And so at every level, there's kind of like a new battle for us. And they were still holding on to control. And because of that, they were still the bottleneck in their business. You know, and I think we have control issues at every level. And it's unsafe feeling to let go of that control. It's unsafe to, you know, feels unsafe to trust somebody else with that. And it's. If you want it done right, do it yourself, you know, But I'm pushing them to be like, what does 10, $20 million version of you look like? And that person isn't still building their opt in page, you know, and so at every turn when you look and you can coach yourself, but every turn you look, you're probably doing something that is not the version you want to be, should be doing or would be doing.

Yeah.

So the process is letting go. Yeah.

You know, well, I just, I was just going to give you some credit here in the sense of this show and my new program, the Affluence Blueprint would not have come to fruition without your, your pushing and your poke.

I would poke and call you out every chance I, I could get with that.

Yeah, you did. You did. And I still remember sitting at breakfast at Heidelberg and you looked at me and said, what's the problem here? What's the problem? Why are you resisting? And I told you, and you said, oh, it's because you still see yourself as a cpa. And that just like he says. No, he says the world sees you as an entrepreneur and a thought leader that happens to be a cpa. When you flip that paradigm and you owe it to the world to do what you're doing, that's when all of a sudden stuff, well, shit just started to happen. I go, he's right, because you forced me to look at myself. You picked the mirror up and said, wipe away the steam and look at yourself. And why are you going to allow people to continue to suffer? Because of your selfishness. And you didn't do it. Yeah, I mean, you did it more gracefully and eloquently than that, but it still hurt. But it was right. It was right. And it got me to a point where I feel like right now, the show, the program, the things I'm doing, the keynotes, everything has so much more meaning. It's a gift, you know, it's not fun getting there necessarily, but it was. It was a gift, you know.

So do you also have the experience now that like, you're just kind of doing and creating and it's just all happening and there isn't. There isn't resistance and it's like, whoa, Now I've got 10 episodes in the can and whoa, now we did an another launch and whoa, whoa. And it's just happening, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's a flow.

It's. This is what happens. We have these little barriers up, and when you get through, you break through that barrier. So this first barrier was the, like diving into this new niche in this new world for Mel. And like, you know that. That whether it is the approval or the green light or whatever, but then as soon as he got over that, then it's like this natural, effortless boom. And then he'll hit another one. He'll reach a certain level, and it could be a long time from now, it could be next week, but he'll hit it and he'll hit this plateau. And this is what we do. And business growth happens in fast in stages, and we hit certain of these stages and it's like we can't graduate to the next level because what got you here won't get you there. It's a different strategy, different mental game for every stage. And I'm. What I. And this is. I'm just trying to say the same thing over and over again to you guys, but saying it different ways. What got me to, you know, a hundred thousand dollar business to 10. So now we're pacing even more that this. This year is. I have the ability to reinvent myself. That's what I mean by letting go re. That's what reinventing yourself is, is letting go of who you were to step into who you are. And sometimes the old you has to die a really hard death. You know, the male that was the CPA that couldn't possibly do this, or someone else is already doing it, or whatever it was is dead now, Rip. But. But that's hard to let that go because there's some safety in that. And so I've been Able to reinvent myself. And I don't, I don't take as much of the old me with me. And then I'm stepping into the new me and we need to do that now. And this is the three step process. I always love sharing this, you know, just to say it one more time, one different way. So this clicks for everybody because, you know, I can give marketing strategies and all this stuff all day long, but if you're not doing them because you're, you're, you're operating from fear, the old you or you're stuck or whatever, it really doesn't matter. But Tom Watson was the CEO of IBM in its heyday. He took it to, I mean, massive growth, like a small fledgling startup, a couple million dollars to like billion dollar company, right? And when he retired from IBM in the 80s, I believe it was, he was asked this like stupid, asinine, superficial, shallow question by some reporter like Mr. Wilson, what's the secret to your success? He actually gave the answer. And when, when I read this and I heard this three step answer, I mean it changed everything for me. This is where it all really clicked for me. He, he said, here's the secret to IBM success and his three steps. He said, first we had to get clear on what the done version of the business looked like. A lot of people are building a business, but they don't know what they're building, where they're going. You need to have a clear outcome, you need to have a clear destination, you need to have a clear vision, you need to have some, where are we going? Even if it's like six months, a year from now, it doesn't matter, it just needs to be something. And then he said, step number two. I had to, I had. Once I realized what the done vision looked like, I had to get really clear on how that business would operate. How would that business and its team and employees, how would they think? How would they make decisions? How would they operate? How would they show up? That makes a lot of sense, right? And then he said step three. And the step three was that this was it. This was like changed everything for me. So he said, then I realized step number three, that if I ever wanted to get to that finished, done business, that we would need to act that way now. From the very beginning, that's what they did. They acted like the company that they needed to be now. And that's what changes everything. And that's what we did when we were at 2 million and going to 3. And a leadership coach laughs at us. For having lofty goals. Every day that I walked into that office multiple times a day, I said, what does a $10 million a year business do? How does the digital CEO of a $10 million business think, act, operate? What would he decide? How would he choose? What direction would he go? Would he do this? Would he do that? No. Okay. And you know what? What people don't understand is seven out of 10 times, you know, more than 50% of the time, the answer was, I don't know. I don't know. But it's different than what I've been doing. Clearly, a lot of people don't ask these questions because they don't like not knowing answers. A lot of people have a really hard time not knowing the answer to something. And when you can begin to live in the question and the void, the empty space of a question, then and only then do you start receiving a new answer. Then and only then do you begin to start thinking differently. So I had to sit with the. I have no idea, but I'm willing to not know and find out. And little by little, it changed. And how we, yeah, it should change. From the inside out of the company, we became far more structured. Today we talk about the metaphor of the LEGO instruction manual. If anyone's built Legos for themselves or their kids, I just build them for myself. Then you'll realize that in order to get this complicated structure built that looks just like the picture on the box, you have to follow step by step instruction manuals. We started building step by step LEGO instruction manuals for everything in our business, from landing page, to deploying a survey, to sending out an email, to posting on Instagram. Step by step. Then we realized, wow, we could hire anybody to start doing this stuff for us. Now we can let it go. Now we can outsource it. Now we can delegate it. Now I don't have to do it at all. I just got my time back. Boom. And people are like, well, I can't afford to do that. Right? That's what they say. It's like, well, I can't afford to hire somebody or let somebody else. I say, well, there's two things here that's going to solve that. Number one, the only reason you can't afford to hire someone is because you haven't hired anyone. When you're doing it all yourself, that's probably one of the biggest causes why you're not making any money. Because when you're doing it all yourself, you're going to spend 90% of your time doing, doing things in your business that keep you busy but keep you broke because they're not revenue generating activities. Right. Number two, you can get started hiring overseas virtual assistants for very inexpensive prices. So if you can't afford to pay someone five bucks an hour in the Philippines because the power of the dollar carries far more weight down there and that's a dream for them. If you can't pay somebody 10 hours a week, that's 50 bucks a week to put that back into your business. I love you so much. And this is where I become like a little bit of a tough love coach. You should not be in business. If you are unwilling to spend $50 a week to start letting go of the things that you shouldn't be doing, then you need to, you need to reevaluate if you should really be in a business. Because the reality is, is most people have it completely backwards. Like I said, I'm very contrarian and think differently. Most people, most people have idolized money and have done the exact opposite to time. That's silly. That's crazy. People value. Most people value money over time. In other words, I've watched videos on YouTube where people will spend 20 hours doing DIY activities to save 30 bucks. Like when I was in the film space, I do a lot of research around film and video and there'd be like, you could buy like a $200 jib crane thing for your camera, 200 bucks. And people would say DIY, save 150 bucks. Buy 50 bucks of materials from Home Depot and they'd spend two days building something for 50 bucks and two days of their life when they could have just spent the $200. You start doing the math of that and it's like, you know, you're just, you're just working for $10 an hour. And then, and then when wondering why, and I get, don't get me wrong, I love building things, but do it for the joy, not for the roi. But this is what people are doing, is they're giving their time away. They're wasting their time. They're spending all their time on things that are of little value, little value to themselves and their business. And then they hold on to their hard earned cash and won't part with that at all. But here's the problem with that. Time and energy is this precious, finite, limited, scarce resource, your time.

It's the most valuable currency we have.

And then we hold on to something that's infinite. And that's the whole thing with entrepreneurship is it's creating money on demand is what entrepreneur is, and this is what the affluent entrepreneur is really about, is that you can create money and then that money can create more for you. And you know what I've learned from Mel, to parlay this financial success from this business to start additional businesses and how that's generating revenue. And now we have millions in real estate and we started a short term rental business that brings in 40 plus thousand dollars a month, soon to be about $70,000 a month. And it's all on autopilot. I couldn't have done that with this first business and I couldn't have done that second one properly without, without Mel in this different way of thinking. But I value my time far more than money. And when you do that, you find yourself having plenty of both.

So I know that we're getting close to our time, but I just want to hit on just a couple things because I think it's really important. You know, you chose digital products as a business one and, but you also saw that you could use the digital products, becoming a digital CEO, creating digital products. And I just did a recent episode on my podcast. We'll, we'll tie it to the, on the show in the, the show notes that talks about one of the best ways to actually generate additional income or scale your income. And it was really having to do with creating digital income streams. Not bitcoin, but I mean income streams tied to digital products. Can you kind of hit on that and how this really helped you elevate your financial goals and where entrepreneurs might be missing it?

Yeah, I firmly believe that. You know, obviously with last year, 2020, a lot of people have flocked to the Internet and seen the technology and the opportunities that a lot of us have been taking full advantage of for many years. A lot of people said, I want to start my own business and do my own thing. And as a model, I believe digital products are still the most profitable and most scalable model that you can have and that you can operate from. And you know, that's, that's been our experience for a long time now. And that's the first piece, I think the second piece. And I actually just believe this is even more important. And you, you and I are aligned on this. So I can share this because chances are your audience is going to be aligned on this too. But there has to be the fulfillment or the emotional heart piece to this. Entrepreneurship is a path. And when you're going to walk a path, something my mentor told me, that path has to have heart, otherwise why are you doing it? And so for me, I'm like very blessed that I chose a model that can, you know, we can go generate more revenue and do more big things and all that type of stuff. There's so many more opportunity. It'd be really hard to do it if I didn't love doing it. Yeah. And that's the most important thing. It's like, look, we're recording this on Saturday and it's like, you know, anything else in my life, if I had to work on Saturday, I'd be really bummed. But like, this doesn't feel like work like this. This is joy. This lights me up. And there's a reason why I can do this for 14 years straight and not burn out. The first, of course, and at the heart of it is because I love doing it and my heart's in it. And if there's any part of you that loves the idea of like making a difference in other people's lives, like helping them or anything, then that's a really good sign that your heart's going to be in it. But it's a very, it's a, it's a prerequisite because things get tough, you know, and you feel like if you're only doing it for the money, there's so many other ways you can make money. So why not make money doing the thing that you love?

Yeah.

And, and you know, and that's a big piece. And then of course the other piece is like, I'm not going to burn out with. When I'm learning how to structure my business properly, you know, if I'm not doing it all myself, there's the right structure and systems in place. But yeah, that's. It is, is this, this model. I, I love, I love it. My heart's in it. And then from like a brain based thing, it's, it's so scalable. You know, I've, I've been selling one product. Yeah. It has evolution and iterations, but I've been selling one product for five years now, since 2016, and I don't even know, I don't know. 15 million, 12 to 15 million dollars in sales with this one product. You know, the idea of creating something once that's digital that you can continue to get in the hands of thousands of people and then it helps people. That's pretty amazing.

The ripple effect of it is crazy good. And when you talk about the value of time, it gives you your time. It's the high margin, it gives you your time back. It gives you a whole lot of things I tell people the very first financial principle they need to learn. And the affluence blueprint is, is the why before how and how much. Too, too often we get so caught up in how and how much. But, but if we don't get the why straight, then when that, when the, the stuff gets the tough, we start to crawl into a hole.

There's. There's something else that I don't know if you're going to agree with me on this, but Mel got me into the world of like getting your money to work for you. And I started looking like, what can I do and be smarter in that saying. You get a little older, you start thinking about these things. And I don't know if you're going to agree with this, but what I've come to as a conclusion is still, at the end of the day, the best asset that you can ever invest in besides yourself, like investing in your education and all that stuff, 100%, that is going to be your best asset. Right. But is something external as an asset? We could say your business, you know, like, oh, your business is going to be like your best investment. And I actually want to say it a little differently than that. It's actually your personal brand. So you look at someone like Elon Musk today, and he's a household name. Like, everyone knows who that is, most people, I guess. And he takes that brand with him wherever he goes. So what is the, what is his Internet company? Starlink, right? I think that's what it's called.

Yeah.

And that's. You guys wait and see. That's going to disrupt the cable Internet industry.

I can't wait.

Because it's 500 bucks and then 99amonth and you're gonna have like 3 to 5x the Internet speed that you have now, and people will buy it because it's Elon Musk. He was able to do what he did because he's Elon Musk. Right. And, and he's got other products and weird crazy stuff like neuralink and all that type of stuff. I don't even know what's gonna happen with all that. But the point is, is that people will invest in him. People will buy his stuff because it's Elon Musk and he's very smart. You know, there's some people that have done this. You know, they've, they've created that personal brand and they take themselves with this. Mel's a perfect example of this. A lot of people that are following and listening to him now knew him before he started the affluent entrepreneur show. He was doing something different, but he's still Mel. And you got to know Mel and you built a relationship with Mel. And now if he decides to go somewhere else or add a new product line or get into, you know, if he wants to sell T shirts and coffee mugs or something like, he'll have a built in customer base. So for you guys to look at what one of the best investments you can ever make is, it's not just your business, it's your personal brand. Because what that really is, that brand equity is relationship equity. And when you create strong, powerful relationships, there's really very little that's more valuable than that. And you take that with you wherever you go. I was doing my nail your niche training that Mel was helping out with yesterday, and I was talking about my YouTube and VTA Video Traffic Academy days. That's 2011. And I had people on that call. It's 2021, folks. That was 10 years ago.

Decade.

A decade. And people said I was a VTA customer. People are buying my stuff today because of me. And I'm in a completely different space. I mean, not completely different. It's. It's business marketing, but back then it was YouTube video. And they're buying from me today because of that relationship and that brand I built 10 years ago. So.

So I do agree with you.

Yeah.

I think the personal brand, thinking of ourselves as a personal brand. Richard Branson has a personal brand.

Right.

Okay. God rest his soul. When Tony Hsieh was alive, he had a personal brand. They all did. You think of them as their physical products, but they created a personal brand that created a following. Peter Thiel. I can go through, through a whole bunch of them. And the key is this. Look, in 2005, when I got wiped out one third of my net worth in a Ponzi scheme, that the thing they didn't take away from me is one, my skills and two, my brand. And it was that, that I could lean back on to rebuild and in 18 months not only recover what was lost and it was well into the seven figures, but surpass it by 3x. The value that you can bring by creating digital products. Creating a personal brand through digital products, becoming that digital CEO is astronomical because it transcends you at some point in time. It goes beyond you at some point in time and allows you to leverage yourself beyond imagination. You know, so, so yeah, I, I think, I think you're right on. Here's. Here's one thing because I know that before we close out. I know that you've got some things going on to help people because, you know, look, I help people with the money side and the business side and stuff, but you help people in building, becoming a digital CEO. You help people in getting the head stuff straight, some of the strategy straight, some of the taxes straight. You've got so much going on. How is it that we can get our audience to connect deeper with you? I know we've got the podcast and the show and your Instagram, but where can we send them to to learn more, to get more, to, to get some of the gifts that I've gotten through the years that we've known each other in that.

So I think one of the things that we see very similar eye to eye on is like when you look at what you do with your money, when it comes in, you both look at what we do and what we teach and what we create like a machine. And so I look at business as a machine. It's a machine that generates, you know, an audience, an interested lead or prospect, and it's a machine that, that generates a customer, you know, and it's a process and it's. When it's a machine, it works without you. A lot of people say, well, well, my business is my baby. I said, well, the problem with that is, is that your baby is kind of dependent on you like 247 just to survive, right? And then you wonder why you're working so hard and so long. But when you build a machine, that machine starts to in your life. There's machines all around us, you know what I mean? Machines that wash our clothes and cook our food and they do the work for us in a lot of ways. And it's our job to build the machine, not be the machine ourselves. And so we look at business like a machine, like we look at running and creating a business like a machine, a well oiled machine. And so I am doing a free training, it's a three part live training. I'm doing this June 17th and we're going to show you how to build that machine. If you're someone that wants to or already does have digital products of any type, you want to sell them, you want to sell more of them, you want to create them, you want to launch them, you want to figure out how you want to be known, what kind of personal brand you want to create and how you get going with it, you're gonna love what we're cooking up because it just pulls back the curtain of how we built our business. And it's gonna go beyond just some of the same marketing advice people have heard over and over again. And we're gonna start to close the gap between what you already know, but what maybe you've been missing out on and go deeper and have a conversation around how to actually have business advice, how to actually do this like a business, how to actually develop business skills as well. We need that. You know, I think the industry and space is over saturated, inundated with just another, you know, a lot of marketing tactics. But a lot of people don't know how to actually run a business. So we want to solve that for us. So it's called the rise of the digital CEO because digital CEOs know how to run a business. Okay. It's not until you know how to run a business are you going to start to get all those things that people talk about like freedom and it's thriving and success and all that type of stuff. It just feels like the business is running you and it's probably running you into the ground. So that's going to be a bl. We're really excited about it. We rented out this fancy schmancy live studio, paid a bunch of money for it. We're going to be doing that training live. We're going to be doing it free. It's going to be super interactive, giveaways, Q and A, all that good stuff.

I can't wait. We'll put the link in the show Notes for everyone. I'm going to invite you all to be there because one, I'm going to be there, but I'm going to physically be there because I'm a lurker. So I'm just going to, I'm going to drop in because I know where the studio is. But here's the deal. If you're looking to try and scale the incomes, trying to figure out how to get this thing done right. I've watched James's trainings for, for years and they're full of amazing content, but actionable content. And what he does is he's able to simplify it in a way where you go, oh, okay, it's not that complicated. I can do it. It may take effort, but I can do it. And that's, that's the beauty. So it's this, make this the year that I think that you, you stop struggling with your money, with your business, with you, with what you have envisioned. Let's blow up the vision to a bigger vision. Let's, let's give you the tools to make that happen. It's why we created the Affluent Entrepreneur show. It's why I wanted to bring James on because I know what he's done for himself. I know what he's done for me. I seen what he's done for many of my friends because I want it. I want you to have all the tools, all the resources at your fingertips. In other words, I don't want you to have any excuses anymore to not live the life that you've envisioned for yourself. And so this is why I'm going to urge you, I don't know, I'll make sure that it's in the show notes. I'm going to make sure that I'm going to send you the emails if you have questions, questions or anything. DM us, reach out to us because we care. We, this is what we do. This is what bring, like he said, it's what brings us joy, it's what lights us up.

Totally couldn't be doing it for this long if, if that wasn't the case.

So cool, man. Any last thoughts before we, we sign off, my friend?

Well, first obvious thought is, is gratitude to you. I'm, I'm. Thanks for having me on. And as your first guest, feel very honored. I'm very excited for what you're doing. So everyone listening. If this is like your first episode listening to Mel, keep listening. Because you know, Mel spent this episode talking about how much he's learned from me, but I've learned so much from him and he's, he's one of the wisest, most experienced person people in, in my life. And so he's, he's always my number one go to person. So he pours that into the show. It's like everything you should have learned in school but you didn't kind of stuff that Mel offers. So it's, it's a, it's a pleasure to be here. And you know, as far as parting, you know, wisdom or anything like that through to your audience, I never have anything too profound or wise to say.

I can get another Christopher Columbus quote.

If you want, you know, to quote Chris. Chris c. Chrissy C.

Mr. Columbus. Dr. Columbus. No other than, you know, what always comes to me is just reminding people that the expectations we have on how it's supposed to go and how it's supposed to look never match and fit how it actually ends up. I didn't plan where I was here. I didn't plan the path or the route either. It was a lot harder than I thought it was. It was met with a lot more Setback and let down and disappointment and failure. But there's a real simple philosophy that shifted everything for me is once you have this knowing and you'll have to try this on and prove me wrong, but once you have this knowing that your success is inevitable and it's just a matter of time, it's a matter of putting in the work. It's a matter of just making enough mistakes and making enough failures, making enough disappointments, then you can get going. Now, when you get going now, my. My final parting words is to hurry up and fail. Hurry up and fail. Hurry up and mess it up. Hurry up and look bad. Hurry up and look stupid. Hurry up and. And do it wrong. Because it's. It's only in that way. It's only through that process that we end up figuring out how to do it right. And if you're trying to avoid that, if you're trying to circumvent that and you think that's the shortcut, it's actually taking you longer. I'm here today because of all the mess ups and it's all those mess ups that have given me the experience and the value that I get to pass on to you so that hopefully you don't make as many as I did.

Awesome. So I'm going to put. I want to put James on the spot because he's got so much more to share and we've spent plenty of times on. I've been on his show a number of times, but I want to make sure that we bring you back on the show.

He's coming back.

You're coming back.

We're going to.

We're going to have him as a.

Return guest and when I come back and I like, break down our whole, like, real estate investment model and like, all that stuff.

Yeah, let's do it and walk through. Through all of that because it's something. Look, you've done that in a short period of time in a matter of. Of 12 to 18 months.

Oh, gosh. I did it way shorter than that.

Yeah, you did.

I got the first four in eight months.

Oh, my God.

Now it's taken about 14 months. I've been in it 14 months at this point.

Yeah.

And now the. The last one, the last property is about ready to go live, but three of the four of them have been live and rocking and rolling and. And I'm, you know, working out of this last one and we're almost done with it, so.

Yeah.

But it's been awesome. So that'll be the next time you Got it.

My friend. I appreciate everything you do for me, for my family, for. For everyone out there. You're a role model to aspire to, and you make a huge difference. Keep doing what you're doing, and I can't wait for the rise of the digital CEO and being part of that whole journey.

Yeah. Thanks, Mel. Thanks, everyone, for listening.

You got it. Thanks. All right, 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 Podcast, 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.