046 6 Phases of Affluence

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 there. Welcome to this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. This one's a good one, but then again, I guess I say that all the time. But here's the thing. So many people are looking at trying to figure out, how do I become wealthy, how do I become rich, how do I live an affluent life as we call it here at the affluent entrepreneur show. And I'm going to walk you through the six phases, the six stages of affluence that you can be in, and let's figure out where you're at and what to do next. All right, so stay tuned.

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 to this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. Now, here's the deal. We're going to talk about the six stages and six phases of affluence because it's a continuum, you know, whether you're trying to live a rich life. When we talk about this in the affluence blueprint, you know, we say the three critical outcomes of an affluent entrepreneur of affluence is one, that we get a chance to live a richer lifestyle, which is not just about money. It's about the experiences, about the feelings, it's about the memories and the things that you create. The second critical outcome is that you have a deeper impact, a holistic impact, impact on those you serve, but an impact on those you love and an impact on who you become, you know. And then the third critical outcome is that you have complete freedom. Now, we talk about finances, we talk about money, and there's plenty of that we're going to touch on. But financial freedom is the most rudimentary freedom we can talk about. I actually think that beyond financial freedom, there's some freedoms that are actually much more powerful. And that is one time freedom to be able to choose what you do, when you want to do it, how often you want to do it, how long you want to do it, to have control of your time. And then the third is mind. Freedom to have the peace of mind to know that things are good. So those are the three critical outcomes of affluence and affluent entrepreneur. And we're going to talk about the phases here to make that happen because we're going to move through, we all move through these phases. And you may find yourself in one phase or another. And that's okay because we're going to be continually moving through them. All right? The point is, is that our financial journey is just that. It's a journey. And wherever you're at, you're at. That's okay. We don't demonize it, we don't blame, we don't ridicule it, we don't lament over it. It just is. And we move from where we are to where we want to go. Okay? Are you with me? All right, so before we start, before we start, I want to eat. I want to read a recent review of the show. As you know that if your review, leave me a review. If you haven't left me a review, leave me a review. Okay. Because if I read your review on the air like I'm going to now, you get a chance to have a one on one laser coaching session with me. So I don't know who this person is. It's J Kot. K O T 15. J Kot 15 left a review and they said this, the headline said, fantastic approach to Business Finances. I recently started listening to Mel's podcast and already it's changed how I view my business finances and how I choose to spend my money personally and in my business. This has been such a huge eye opener. Well, thank you, Jaycott. Do me a favor, reach out to successmelabraham.com let them know that I read your review on the air. We'll get something scheduled so we can do a laser coaching session for you. But you're right, this whole show is about you. It's about your business. It's the intersection of money, business and life. And I'm hoping that we get a chance to start to look at things a little differently. A little differently. And start to feel like we can take control of our finances, to take control of our money destiny, to take control of our own financial independence. And so if I've done any of that in the slightest, then I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. All right? So thank you. Thank you, Jay Cott. I hope to hear from you, and we'll make sure that we get this dialed in. I look forward to chatting with you. All right, onto the show. Let's talk about this whole idea of the six phases of influence. And I've got a framework that I'm going to draw out for you. Those that are watching me on YouTube or on my website. You'll be able to see it if you're on the podcast. If you're just audio. Totally cool. Go to the show Notes. We'll make sure that this is a downloadable graphic for you. So you have it in front of you, too. But here's the thing. The first idea is this, is that the first stage, the first stage of affluence, the first phase of affluence is what I call creating an unshakable foundation. Here's the thing, we can't build a home. We can't build a building. We can't build a home or building if we don't have a good foundation. And too often, we don't have a good financial foundation. A lot of it is it's not your fault. The fact of the matter is, is that most of our lessons are financial lessons. Unless you're listening to this show or you're studying any of it, most of our financial lessons are caught, not taught. In fact, we observe our family, we observe our loved ones, we observe society, we observe the media, and we get the lessons from there. But the problem is that we're getting the interpretations of the lessons and not the true lessons. And so one of the things we need to think about is how do we create an unshakable foundation? There's a couple things to consider as we start to move through this. And when we look at this idea of unshakable foundation, the way to consider is this is under the unshakable foundation, there's three things I want you to think about. The first is this, is that you raise your awareness. Listen, y' all are listening to this. Y' all are watching this. You all are on this journey with me. So you're raising your awareness level. You want to raise your awareness to the things, the choices, the habits, the decisions that you're making and how they Impact your financial future. Here, let me give you an example. Just this week, I happen to be going in to get a haircut, which as the days go by, it seems like these haircuts take less and less time. I guess it's because there's less and less hair, I don't know. But I digress. And the guy that does my haircut starts talking about a buddy of his, and he says, my money, because he knows what I do. So we talk money and we talk about finances and, and his wealth creation and that type of thing. And he says to me, his Buddy just spent $5,000, $5,000 on a watch. And I go, really? So does your buddy make a lot of money? And he said, no. How old's your buddy? He says, 23 years old. So this 23 year old who doesn't make a lot of money dropped $5,000 on a watch. And I asked him, I said, why is he a watch collector? He says, no, he just wanted to look cool in front of his friends. He wanted to look cool in front of his friends. Well, this is the whole thing of keeping up with the Joneses. This is the challenge with our social media society. The comparisons we do and people parading their Lambos and their planes and their perfect lives on social media, we tend to make decisions based on comparison versus based on rational and sound financial thinking. And so I said, let me do some math for you. Every dollar that you put away at an average market return at age 20 turns into approximately 85, 88, $90, okay? Just by the time you retire. So by age 65, a dollar turns into, call it $80. Okay? So 80 times. So his $5,000 purchase of that watch cost him $400,000 in wealth at retirement. But he has no awareness. He doesn't realize that. Now, would he still purchase the watch? Maybe. But if with that awareness, would he make a different decision? And that's what I mean by this, is that when we start to get more aware, we start to do things a little differently. That leads me to the second piece of this unshakable foundation is this. It's education is to get yourself educated, to read books, to listen to, to follow this show, to ask questions, to get mentors and that type of thing to, to help you out, to skill up, if you will, your knowledge, your wisdom, your financial expertise in doing this. And then the third is this is debt and expense management. Okay? We can't build wealth. We can't create an unshakable foundation. If we're digging a Hole by going into debt, okay? So we want to use debt smart and use as little as possible. And at some point, I want you all out of debt. But if we're digging a hole, that's digging a hole, that's not creating a foundation. So we need to be aware of that. So those are the three things. Awareness, education, debt and expense management for the unshakable foundation. That leads us to phase two. Phase two of the phases of affluence is this is powerful planning. Powerful planning. And when we look at powerful planning, this is one of the processes that we do in, in the affluence blueprint is that with powerful planning, one of the things to think about is this, is that we want you to create, I'm going to change the color here, an affluence vision. In other words, what do you want your life to look like? What do you want your life to look like?

Not how much income do you want. Remember, we're talking about richer lifestyle. So let's design the life and then figure out the price tag to make that happen. And then let's build the machine to fund it. So this whole segment, this whole phase, if you're in this phase, okay, where you've got the awareness, you're building, the education, you've got your debt in control, you've got your expenses dialed in, and you now should be in a powerful planning phase of affluence. Now we need to create the affluence vision. And we have a specific process in the affluence blueprint that we walk you through to do that. And then we need to from that, create an actual financial plan, a map, a roadmap, okay, A detailed roadmap that's going to get you from where you are today to where you need to be to build the financial machine, the money machine, as I call it, that's going to fund your lifestyle, okay? That leads us to phase three. So we now have the vision, we now have a plan, and now we have our roadmap to work from. Well, that leads us to phase three. In phase three, this is all about methodical execution. Methodical execution. All right, what do I mean by this? This is really important to consider. So when we talk about execution, we got to do something, okay? We can talk about it, we can read about it, we can listen, we can watch the show, but if we don't take action, we're not going to get results. Remember, this whole idea of wealth creation and wealth building, it's a behavior issue. It's a Habit, it's a choice. So execution is a parade of actions, action steps. Execution is the use of your habits, it's your behaviors in place. And so the first element obviously is to sit back and say, let's take action. Okay, so execution, the first step is action steps, if you will. What are the action steps? Breaking it down. Now we break it down into 90 day increments to start to build a 10 year plan and beyond. So execution, methodical execution starts with specific action steps. Second is that we then make it easy by creating automation. We then turn around and say what are the elements of the action steps that I got to do that I can just automate, that I can just like automatically invest, automatically, pay bills, automatically save. Because the less friction there is in my wealth creation, my money machine, building, my affluence life, the easier it's going to be. Out of sight, out of mind. Create automation. And then the third is that we want.

Some level of measurement metrics. We need to know what numbers that we need to measure. So we know are we on plan or are we off plan? Are we hitting it, are we not hitting it? So you can't tell whether you are on track if you're not measuring and tracking it. That's why we have scorecards and dashboards in the affluence blueprint. So you have this one sheet that you can follow to make sure I'm on track, I'm doing well. So when it comes to methodical execution, we need to have action steps, we need to have automation and we need to have measurement metrics. Now depending on where you are in these phases, you may not have this in place, but this becomes your checklist of what you need to focus on to get in place to go through the phases of affluence. Then we went from methodical execution to a different type of execution. And that different type of execution is now we're going to go into deliberate execution. And when I say deliberate execution, this is more about how we're building the machine in here than anything else. It's, it's, we're, we're literally trying to build the machine. And the way we do that, the way we do that is first.

First by making sure that we have the proper. So let's just look at deliberate execution. So the first thing is to make sure that we have the proper asset allocation. Okay. Especially where we are today in the world. Your asset allocation is going to save you from the volatility. It's not going to completely eliminate it. But one of the Things to consider is, what are you investing in? How are you investing in it? So we need the right asset allocation and we need the right diversification, okay? And that asset allocation and diversification is all going to come from your risk tolerance and your risk capacity, your ability to tolerate risk.

Where you stand, but your ability to sustain yourself during volatile times. That's the capacity part of it. So once we know that we've got the plan in place and we're starting to execute, we're setting up automations to save and this and that. Now we start to look at it and say, all right, what's the proper asset allocation? What, how do I want to diversify it? In conjunction with what your risk profile is and your risk capacity is. Okay? Your level of response that now leads you to phase number five in there. And phase number five is kind of cool. We start to look at things in a different light, and that is generous affluence. Generous affluence. This is kind of where, I mean, this is a fun phase to be in because you're living your plan, okay? So number one is you're living your plan. Number two is you become a role model to those around you, okay? So when it comes to generous affluence is that you are actually living your life. You're living the plan, and you are a role model to those around you. Your children, your grandchildren, your team members, your community. You're a role model of what's possible when you start to follow the affluence blueprint process to make that happen. And so this is the stage where you really start to ramp up also your charitable causes. You get behind, okay? Because now you've got the plan in place. You've got execution, you've got automation. You're measuring things, you're doing those things. You've got the asset allocation, you got diversification, you've got multiple streams of income that are leveraged streams of income that we talk about with the five incomes. And now you got a chance to sit back and say, now I want to start giving bigger. I want to start making get behind causes even larger in doing that. That's generous affluence. Which leads us to the last phase of this. And the last phase of this is a loving legacy. All right? So when my wife and I, Stephanie and I first met, I kept talking about legacy because it's a big deal to me. And she thought, now she's from the Philly area, so, you know, Rocky is big there. And so she thought when I was talking about Legacy that I was thinking that I wanted some statue of me somewhere, and I joke around with her saying there's going to be a statue in the house when I'm gone. But reality is that, no, that's not what legacy is. To me, legacy isn't what you leave behind when you die. Legacy is what you create in the moment you interact with someone. So right now, for those of you that are watching or listening, we're creating legacy because we're interacting. And if I can turn a light on in your mind, in your heart, in your soul, then we've created legacy together. When you go home and you talk to your wife or your husband or your child, you have the ability to create legacy because you shift their mind, you shift their heart, you shift their soul. So at this level, this is where loving legacy becomes really important. Because now we're sitting back and saying, let's go beyond this. So there's a couple things to consider in this final six phase of legacy of affluence, and the first is this. It's making sure now that you have the proper trusts and wills in place. I can't tell you how many people don't have this stuff in place. I know it's a pain in the butt. You got to deal with attorneys, you got to deal with accountants. However, here's the thing. God forbid something happens to you and you don't have this stuff in place, then the decisions about what happens with what you created are left to the courts and the government, and those are the last people. We want to control our legacy. So why not define it? So that's why we need trust and wills. There's other reasons for trust and wills. But by and large, I don't want my future, my legacy, to be handed over to the courts or the government to control. We know what's going to happen with that. So number one is trust and legacy and wills, then it's really a matter of having a protection in place. This is why one of the core pillars of the affluence blueprint is insulate. How have you protected the assets? How have you protected your money machine? How have you protected your family? What kind of insurances, all those things. We want to make sure that we have the proper protection mechanisms in place at this point to protect the legacy in there. And then our focus at this stage is really about preservation. How do I preserve what I've created? How do I preserve the machine so it can continue to create the legacy, to get behind the causes, to fund the life that we've had. So those are the six phases that we will walk through. First, we got to create the unshakable foundation. Next, we have to have powerful planning in place to kind of set us in motion in the right direction next. And then number three is that we have methodical execution, action steps, automation, and metrics that will make a difference. And then we go to deliberate execution, which is all about asset allocation, diversification. It's about building the money machine and the five incomes to make that happen. And then from delivered execution, we move to stage and phase five, which is generous affluence. You're living the plan. You're a role model. You're boosting and escalating your charitable causes, the missions you've gotten behind. And then it's all about loving legacy. So those are the six phases of affluence. We all pass through them. We will all be on this journey together, and may we all get to that loving legacy level to make that happen. So I hope that this helps. I hope that you can start to look at your life and say, where am I? And so let me be clear, it doesn't matter where you're at. What matters is you've raised your awareness to where you're at. You know where you want to go and that you get the process to move you to there. Because we all start. We all start at the. At the bottom. I remember dear friend of mine Brian Tracy said, those at the top always started at the bottom. Well, doesn't matter where you are. We don't judge ourselves. We don't blame ourselves. We don't beat ourselves up. I don't care whether you got the unshakable foundation in place or, or not. If you don't, let's do it. If you do, let's move on. Okay, so with that, that's this episode. But I want you to seriously go back through this and use this as a checklist about do I have these things in place? What do I need to get in place? And if you have questions, if you have comments or something comes up, do me a favor, send me a dm. Send me, you know, post in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group. Let me know. We'll get it answered on an upcoming show. We'll get it answered and get you supported. I might even bring you on and coach you through it. All right, so make sure that you let me know on, on that. And until we get a chance to see each other, talk to each other on another episode or another video, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. Look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Cheers.

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.

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