073 This Will Change Your Life (Are You New Here?)

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, they're curious. Are you new here? Is this the first time you're jumping in or you're just trying to figure out what is this affluent entrepreneur show about? And who the heck is Mel Abraham? Well, in this episode, I'm going to talk about why I do what I do the show, how it can serve you, how it can support you, especially in these uncertain times. What does it take to be an affluent entrepreneur and how you can navigate some of the episodes? Because we're up to a hundred episodes now that are out there serving and supporting, and we've got a whole bunch more coming your way. So enjoy the episode. Let's talk some more about how I can help you find financial freedom in your life. Cheers. See you in the episode.

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.

Hey there, Mel Abraham here, the Affluent Entrepreneur show. Welcome to this episode. This one is a unique one. It's. It's one that actually my. My show producer said asked me to do because, let's face it, we've done a hundred episodes. We're getting tens of thousands of downloads. We've got it on YouTube. And she said, you know what happens if people just find you? They don't know who you are. They don't know how to use the show. They don't understand what you stand for. So this episode is really about you. But we're going to talk a little bit about why I do it. How do you use it? How can the affluent entrepreneur show help you move yourself closer and faster to financial Freedom. So this is kind of the calling, the season of my life is to do this. I truly believe that financial freedom, it's a birthright. It's your birthright. It's everyone's birthright. Now, it doesn't mean that it's easy, but it is simple when you understand the principles. And unfortunately, in our world, we don't talk about money, we don't talk about it, we don't understand how to go claim it. And that's what this show was born out of. In 2019, I was diagnosed with cancer. They found what turned out to be a 7 1/2 centimeter tumor in my bladder. Now, went through three surgeries, four tumors removed. And, you know, at the time when it first started, everything was in jeopardy. They said they might have to take my prostate out. They said they might have to put a tube in a bag in for the kidney. And they said, if it's bad that I lose my bladder. So, I mean, my life got turned on its head in a moment. And, and the thing that happened was that I had to battle the cancer. I had to battle it psychologically. I had to battle it physically, emotionally, medically, energetically. I had to battle it on all fronts, but I didn't have to battle it financially. And as I was coming out of that cancer and trying to search for the reason of why I got the cancer, I didn't have any of the risk factors. Not a smoker, not a drinker, lived pretty well, a clean life other than a sweet tooth, worked out six days a week. All the things. No one in my family's ever had cancer. So I. I don't know why I had it, but the problem was I was searching for the why in the past. And I asked myself a crazy question. I said, well, what happens if the reason for the cancer isn't in the past, it's in the future? Because if it's in the future, I actually get to give it the why. I get to choose the why for it. And, and that's what happened, is that June 2019 was, was the diagnosis. And then shortly thereafter, you know, what happened around the world. We had the pandemic. I watched people struggling. I watched people lose their financial, you know, living there. They became, they lost their jobs. All kinds of things were happening. And I. It dawned on me because I didn't have to fight the cancer financially. I didn't have to fight the pandemic financially because I set some things up because I did money a certain way. It's the way I do it with my clients, it's the way I work with my clients in my master's program, in the affluence blueprint program and my one on one clients. It's what allowed my son, who's now 32 years old and his wife 30 with their first child, they own three homes and a multi million dollar net worth. And, and it dawned on me as I watched what was happening to society globally and, and everything financially, that if they just understood the principles of what it means to be an affluent entrepreneur, if they just understood how to deal with money effectively, they wouldn't be struggling, they wouldn't be suffering. And there was my why for the cancer to in this new season of my life. As I was coming out of the cancer, once I knew that I was past the cancer, I'm now two years clear from the cancer and I wanted to go back out and serve. I want to turn my businesses back on again.

It is to bring that message to the world. It is to, to pave the path, to light the way, if you will, to financial freedom because it is a birthright. It's to have safe and sane conversations around money, around wealth, around living a generous life. To do that in a way, whether you're an entrepreneur or employee, okay, to be able to do that effectively. And so everything I do, this show, my YouTube channel, my training, my speaking around the world is all focused on lighting the way to financial freedom, lighting the way to living a rich life, not just a wealthy life. Wealth is a statistic. And so that's what gave birth to this show a little over a year ago. And, and I've been blessed. I, you know, first I've been blessed to be able to move myself past the cancer, to conquer it, to, to go after it. And we can talk more about that at another time of how we did that because we went at it in a very different way. And, and all that. But at the same time is to understand where I came from. I was a single full time dad building a business. My son came to live with me at five and a half years old and like I said, he's 32. And so I had to figure out how do I take care of the greatest gift that was given to me, which is my son, you know, to be a dad, to be a father, to, to, to relish this gift while at the same time live my dream of impacting lives, to create a business, to be the entrepreneur. Because I thought I was doing it right, but I wasn't, you know, frankly I was a Horrible, dad. Not really horrible, but let's just put it this way. Jeremy, at 6 years old, drew a picture of me and he came in from school saying, daddy, daddy, Daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today. Now, he was excited about it, I was excited about it. I knelt down, I got to his level, I grabbed this picture, and next thing I know, it's a stick figure picture in blue felt tip pen, and it's me standing in front of two computer screens with a phone in each ear and another phone on the desk. Re.

And at the hands of a six year old boy, I was taught the most important business and money lesson on my life. See, here's the thing is it was in that moment where I had a lot of people telling me that, that, well, Mel, you got to get work life balance. You got to figure out how to do that. And, and that's when I started to understand that this idea of work life balance is a myth. It's a fallacy. You cannot. Balance insinuates that you have a weight on one side and a counterweight on the other side. It's like this constant tug of war that gives you, on average, balance. Okay? It's like sitting back and saying, my feet are in the freezer, my head is in the, in, in, in the oven, and on average, I'm warm. No, you're cooking on one side, you're freezing on the other. And there is an I. There is no balance, but there is harmony. And that is when you live intentionally. And that's what I started to do, is I started to figure out and say, how do I live a business life, how do I become an entrepreneur without jeopardizing, without sacrificing my relationship, my role as a dad, as a single dad, to be able to make that happen. So that's what gave rise to some of the principles and things that I teach, the things that I lived for the decades that followed. But also, I'm a husband. You know, I've got a beautiful bride, that this, this coming month we will be.

11 years married. And, and she's been by my side during the cancer, during all kinds of things. And, and why I bring that up is I'm, I'm a family guy. I'm an identical twin. I've got an identical twin brother. All right? And you know, our wives actually believe that we share a brain. It's just a matter of who's got it at that moment. So. But I, I say this because I think it's important for you to maybe Understand where, where I come from, family is important, relationships are important. It's the very reason I say that one of the critical outcomes of, of being an affluent entrepreneur see too often when they hear me see, say affluence, they think opulence has nothing to do with opulence. Affluence.

Is all about be having a meaningful life, something that gives you joy, intelligence, internally. It's about having an impactful life, something that.

Leaves a positive impact on those you come close to. It's about having a fruitful life, creating the money and the wealth that you need to sustain yourself.

To get behind your movements, to live your mission. And it's a peaceful life. That's affluence. That's true affluence. But one of the critical outcomes of, of being an affluent entrepreneur is to have a richer lifestyle. And the term richer isn't riches. Richer is about the feelings and the experiences and the relationships that you create along the way.

And so everything that we teach, everything that I talk about is to allow you to get that richness back in your life, to give you the option, the choices to be able to make that happen. You.

It's not about keeping score in a bank account.

I actually think that wealth shouldn't be measured in money. Wealth should be measured in time. How much of the time do you control? How much of your time do you control? Because we don't need the money for the money sake. We don't want to build wealth for the wealth sake. We want the money for the moment's sake to be able to control the moments of my life. And the more moments I can control in my life, the richer that life is to choose who you want to do things with, how you want to do things, where you want to do things and when you want to do things, to have choices and options. Now I hope that this is resonating with you because that's the journey we're on, that's the journey we should be on. And so it, it's really about creating that. Now I'm not infallible. I am a CPA by education, so I've come from a business background, but I came from a blue collar family or white collar family, I don't know. My dad was an engineer in the aerospace industry. So we didn't come from riches, we didn't come from wealth. We didn't come for anything. We had, certainly had everything we needed. I had two great parents. My mom's still with us. My dad passed away a little over a decade ago.

But, you know, I went into a business education, cpa. I started valuing businesses. I was buying and selling businesses. I was consulting. I sit on boards of directors. And I'm telling you this so you understand that I'm not just someone that has never run the miles, that doesn't have the academics or the credit, the credibility or the, or the knowledge or the education around it. So I come from that academic side of buying, selling, consulting, building businesses, buying and selling businesses and doing all those things. But I also come from the street side because, trust me, I screwed it up. I've made more bad investments than some people will ever make in a lifetime. I got caught up in a Ponzi scheme in 2005 that wiped out one third of everything I own between me.

And two other friends. We lost over four and a half million dollars. And I had to figure out how to rebuild. You know, as a single dad sitting with my son, what was it to take? Now, here's the good news. I mean, the. That the good news is that I did enough right to be successful, to find financial freedom, to build a money machine as we talk about, a wealth, wealth machine as we talk about. I've done enough things right to make that happen. But here's the more important and the more valuable thing for you. I've done enough things wrong to be educational, to be able to have the conversation around the mistakes I made, to maybe light the way, to warn you about the potholes, to warn you about the things that maybe could come your way and so you can avoid them. You don't go through the pains that I went through. The, the Ponzi scheme wiped out, like I said, one third of everything I owned. But the principles and the lessons and the things that came out of that are priceless. Within 18 months, the not only did I recover what was lost, but I surpassed it by three times. So we 3xed gave rise to the rules and the principles that I teach today, that I used in my life, that my son is using in his life, and my clients and, and, and the students that are, that are doing that. And so.

This is my calling in this next season of my life. That's why the show is here. I hope. That's why you're here. I want to guide you. I want to light the way. I want to have safe, insane conversations around money. In a society where we demonize money, where we demonize entrepreneurs, where we demonize wealth, where we demonize success.

I want to embrace it. The generosity that comes out of having wealth, having Money, the generosity that comes out of. Of being able to give back, to make a difference in people's lives is huge. I've got a colleague that walked into a school supply store and he walked in and he said he was extremely successful. He says, how much for everything on the shelves?

And the clerk looked at me, says, I can't sell you everything on the shelves. And he looked at me, says, wait a second, aren't you in the business of selling stuff? Why can't you sell me everything on the shelves? Well, he says, well, we have open orders, online orders. We gotta film. He says, great.

Hold some of it back, then sell me the rest. He bought out the whole store and he walked into a school and donated it all. See, the generosity to be able to get behind a mission, a movement, an impact to society is what affluence of is about. It's what the show is about. It's what entrepreneurs do. Yeah, there may be bad ones, but by and large, the entrepreneurs that I work with and the ones that, that, that I see, they're there to serve, serve their team, serve their customers, serve society, serve a movement, serve a mission. And my guess is, if you're listening to this show, you're one of them.

Now, as we go.

Along our way, there's no question that we're on. We're in uncertain times. We've got rising inflation, we've got increasing interest rates. Costs for everything from gas to groceries are going up. People.

May start getting fearful. They may start getting scared. The market is up and down. It's up 100 points. It's up 500 points. It's down 1,000 points. It's all over the place. That creates an amount. Amount of fear in people.

But most of that is. Is something that can be dealt with if you have the understanding of what to do. And we don't fall prey to these TikTok advisors that have no background, that have no experience, but they're out there parading their Lambos, their yachts, their planes, as if that is a measure of their credibility, and it isn't.

So this is as much as it's about money and potentially investing, it's not about that. It's about your life. It's about living a life that's full of richness, living a life that's by your design, living a life that gives you complete freedom. Freedom from a financial standpoint, freedom from a time standpoint, and freedom in your mind. So that's what this show is about. And if you're on this journey with me, or if any of this resonates with you, stay with me. We're gonna make a difference. We'll do this together. No matter how volatile the market gets, no matter what happens in the economy, I will help you out. And even if I don't know all the answers, which I don't, I'll find them. Or we'll navigate them together. So here's what I ask. Here's how to get the most out of this. I want you to watch or listen each and every week. We release shows weekly, at least one a week, and sometimes two or three a week, depending on what's going on. So catch me on YouTube, catch me on my website, amelabraham.com watch the show at the affluent entrepreneurshow.com make sure that you're in with me, okay? And know that I'm there for you. So I want you to submit questions. If you have questions, money questions, wealth questions, business questions.

Send them to me. Better yet, better yet, go to askmelnow.com and leave me a voice message about your question. Leave me your information because in some cases, I might want to bring you on the show and have a conversation, give you live coaching, give you live guidance. In other cases, I might simply record a separate episode specifically for you. In other cases, I might just send you an answer. But I want you to submit your questions. I want to have a dialogue, a conversation. It's time for us to have those same conversations around money, we, wealth, success. And to do that, the other thing you can do is comment on the show, leave a review, leave a review on itunes and Spotify, do those things. And at the same time, I have other resources for you. If you go to melabraham.com you'll see free resources there. I also have a seven day money plan workshop that will take you through to help you understand the fundamentals of building an unshakable financial foundation for you. You can find that at the money plan workshop.com. okay? The money plan workshop.com walk you through it that way. And then those of you that want to go deeper, we can talk about it another time. But we have my affluence blueprint, which is my online training and coaching. I have my master's program, which is my, my group coaching program and all that. And then we have all the episodes that are in, in the show right now that are up wherever podcasts are up on my YouTube channel and everything will hook all that up. But I want to walk through a couple of episodes just to highlight the ones that maybe will help you. So episode number four, we talked about the simple path to building wealth. What are the key things that you need to have in place to start building wealth to make that happen? So it's an episode that I think you can start out with. Then episode eight is what's your number for wealth creation? In other words, here's the thing. People will say, I just want to have a million dollars. But they don't know why.

They haven't thought about it. They haven't thought about what the number should be in reality. Get a vivid, specific plan and vision of what your financial future should look like. What does the finish line look like?

What does the number need to be to give you the lifestyle you want? And in episode eight, we walk through that. Episode 19 is creating your money machine. This is literally one of the things that we kind of.

Focus on is how do you create a money machine that gives you the financial freedom? That's what allowed me to shut down my businesses and focus solely on healing, to give me the flexibility to do what I needed to do without changing our lifestyle, without selling, without draining our bank accounts or, or selling assets to make it happen.

And then some people. One of the, the core elements that we talk about in the affluence blueprint is the wealth priority ladder. In other words, for every dollar that comes in, what, what do you do with it? What do you do with it first, what do you do with it next? Do you allocate it to debt? Do you allocate it to investments? How do you go about it? What are the priorities? Well, we talk about that in episode 24, what to do with your cash. So we'll make sure that we hook that up too. And then we start to look at other things like, like funds, funds and investing funds and that kind of thing. And so episode 25, I talk about the fundamentals of investing in index funds and ETFs. What are they? How do you look at them? And then for those of you that maybe are finding themselves in debt, I have a different view on debt. I have a different view on how to get out of debt. And so I have episode 40 that is getting out of debt. The affluence way that if you have consumer debt, if you feel that you've got debt, student loan debt, auto debt, and you're trying to figure out what to do with it to get yourself out of that place, go to that episode, work through it. See, most of my episodes, they're tactical, tangible, actionable things to do. Because if we're going to move you to wealth. We've got to take actions to get you to wealth. The fact is, is that your wealth is more about your behaviors than it is.

About your money. So let's fix the behaviors. And through the episodes, through the things that we do.

Here on the show, if you go out and execute them, you'll see that you'll start to shift, you'll start to shift your financial future. You know, I bring on guests. I had a guest on that that went from $130,000 in debt to out of debt in 90 days.

I've got some that have built a million dollar net worth in a short period of time. And we talk to them and we talk about the journey, we talk about the decisions. So my point is, is that your resources to find the path to financial freedom is here in the affluent Entrepreneur show. I want us to do this from this perspective. Listen, I'm not an investment advisor by the technical definition because I don't sell investments. I got nothing to sell you. So I'm not selling you insurance. If you need insurance, I'll tell you you need insurance, but then you have to go get it. I'm not, I'm not doing that. I'm here to sell you on your dreams. I'm here to sell you on the possibility of financial freedom in your lifetime. I'm here to get you to realize that whatever your existence is today, whatever your life is today, we can make it better tomorrow. And you don't have to do it alone. That's what this show is about. So I hope that this serves you. I hope that this helps you. I hope that this gives you a perspective.

On what the affluent entrepreneur show is about. What me, Mel Abraham, is about, what my team and organizations about and what my mission is. Okay? And in that process, I hope to be able to serve you, guide you and watch you soar so I can celebrate you. So I hope this helps. We'll hook up all those resources here, but explore, reach out, let me know, let me help and let me guide you until I get a chance to see you in another episode or meet you on the road. As always, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. 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.

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