082 The Gift in Cancer...And How it Changed Things

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. Cancer. It's a horrible disease. It's something that I hope no one ever has to go through. You know, unfortunately, I did hear those words, you have cancer. But cancer to me became a gift to me and to you. And we talk about how that comes into play for your financial future in this episode. I'll see you in the episode. Let's talk about it. 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, I'm back. This one is another video that maybe a little different, but I think it. It lends itself to you understanding what drives some of the things that. That we do, the crusade, if you will, that I'm on. You may have heard the story about Jeremy and his drawing and how that impacted me, how they got me to look at business and money and life differently. How do you.

Create a life that. What we talked about was affluence, being a meaningful life, not an opulent life. Meaningful, impactful, fruitful life and a peaceful life. And what I realized, and this was when Jeremy was 6 years old, is that it's truly important to make sure that whatever is the mechanism that you're using to create your income, to create your living, that whatever that mechanism is, whether it's a job, whether it's a business, whatever it is, that you make sure that it not only creates a living but allows you to create a life. And.

That'S kind of what came out of the whole thing with Jeremy. But here's the thing. You got to wonder what would happen if life happened to you and this is where I want to go with this, is that I was building my business, everything was going well, I was doing well. I was speaking on some of the biggest stages around the world, masterminding with top entrepreneurs. They were running hundred million dollar companies, billion dollar companies. I'm flying back on a G5. I mean, doesn't get much better than that. I didn't pay for it, which even is even better. But.

Here'S what happened is I'm on top of the world. Life is good and. But just like.

Many of us do, I was ignoring aspects of my life. I was ignoring warning signals. You might be doing that right now, you might be ignoring it in a relationship, the warning signals, or in money or in your health or in other aspects of your life. You might be ignoring warning signs. And as I was traveling around, I had dialed in our financial picture, I had dialed in the business picture, I had dialed in my relationship, relationship with my son, relationship with my wife. I had all that dialed in. But I was ignoring.

My well being, my health. Here's, I mean the reality was that my wife and I, when we got married, we had moved. We moved 100 miles south of where we used to live, down by the beach in Laguna Beach, California. And I had no doctors down here. I was just too busy and doing things. So I never found any doctors down, down here. And the reality is that I felt good. I was fine, I was traveling, I was doing fine, I was working out, I was eating good. But there was some signs that I ignored until they got so bad that my wife said, you have to go in. So I went in and got checked. And they did a CT scan in June of 2019 and found a, what turned out to be a seven and a half centimeter tumor in my bladder. And I heard three words that I never imagined that I would ever hear in my life. And that is. You have cancer. No.

I never smoked, I never.

You know, I barely drank, I ate healthy, I worked out. No one in my family's ever had cancer. It was never, I mean, we had plenty of other things, diabetes and heart disease and kidney and all that, but cancer.

Never thought that it would happen.

And I, as they told me that my whole, my whole life just got shattered. My whole existence was in jeopardy. And I looked at my wife, started to think about my son, started thinking about life. And I go, I'm not.

Ready to go.

I'm not ready to let go of life. I love it too much.

I love experiencing it, love what I do, I love how I live not ready to go. But maybe it wasn't my choice. Maybe it wasn't my decision. I. I don't know how I got it. I don't. We. We checked, we looked, we tested DNA, everything.

I searched. I got bitter. I got angry.

I spiraled in the darkness, trying to figure out what the heck I did in my past to deserve this.

And.

It was hard. It was hard to realize that I'm in for the fight of my life. I sat with the surgeons. We finally put together a team of doctors. And sitting with these surgeons, you know, the person that was going to take the tumor out, he says, look.

It'S a big tumor. It's on your prostate. I might have to take the prostate. I can't see the ureter on the right side.

We might have to put a tube and a bag in for the kidney.

And if it's bad, we might have to remove your bladder. Like, my whole life was handed to me.

In pieces, I thought, and I was at a loss.

It was probably the most stressful, obviously, of any time. If any of you have ever gone through that, I'm sure that you or watch someone go through it. It's a difficult time. There's so much uncertainty. There's so much unknown. And, you know, they don't know till they go in how bad it is. They don't know if the treatments are going to work. They don't know any of that. And you're sitting back saying, I got to put life on hold.

Here's the thing that I realized, and this is really the point of what we're looking at here, is that the lessons I learned from Jeremy, back when that had me restructure my business and restructure the way we did money, because through that, it allowed me to sit back and say, I have the business, I have the job, I have all that, and that's creating cash flow. But I needed to build a machine that gave me financial freedom. What I call the money machine. See, because I did that, and we'll talk more about that, is that I was able to fight the cancer medically, physically, psychologically, spiritually. I had all that stress to deal with it, but I didn't have to fight it financially. I didn't have to question what doctors to go to. I didn't have to question the treatments. I didn't have to worry about being at a job. I didn't have to worry about working through the days and fighting for my life at the same time. I had the luxury, the privilege, however you want to call it the blessing, the foresight. I had no idea get cancer. But because of the way we did this, I was able to shut down the business. I was able to just say, all right, I'm gonna step away, because I don't need to earn the money. I have a machine that's gonna give me money and I can focus on healing. I can focus on the fight. I can spend each day, every day, all day, going to the doctors, working on the treatments, doing all the alternatives, doing all the western medicine, the eastern medicine, the far out medicine, whatever you want to call it, to do the things, to make sure that I could stay here.

With my family, with the people I love, to experience life even more. Here's the thing. I don't know where you are in your life. I don't know what struggles you might be dealing with. I don't know what your journey has been, financially or otherwise. But my ability to navigate the cancer without financial stress is what put the pressure on me to realize.

This.

Is why I was given cancer. It's to bring this message to you, to bring this message, to bring this crusade forward, to help other people build a financial money machine, a wealth machine, to care for them when they need it, when life happens, be it a relationship, be it a health concern, be it pandemic, be it whatever it is where you're not beholden.

To a business or a job.

And yet some people would say, oh, well, you got to make a lot of money to do that. No, it's actually not the case. It's actually what you do with the money you make that matters. We just need to understand the principles, the priorities and the processes to make that happen. And when we do that and we build that money machine, you have yourself an atmosphere. Imagine this for a moment, where you get a chance to retire and keep your lifestyle at a level that you have or higher because you did it right, because you walked the path to financial freedom.

That's what gives the cancer meaning for me. See, because I kept looking in my past to find a reason, and there wasn't a reason in my past. There wasn't anything I could point to. I say, that's why they I got it. And that's when I looked at it. I said, maybe the reason for the cancer isn't in my past, but rather in my future. That the reason I was given cancer is to say that, to raise the attention and my awareness to the fact that people are struggling and maybe struggling financially. No one, we don't talk about money. We don't Talk about building wealth, we even demonize it. But how do you give the gift, financial freedom to everyone, which I think is a birthright. It may not be easy, depending on where you're at, but it certainly is simple when you understand the principles and the processes and the priorities you need to have in place to make it happen.

And when I realized that, that just taking what I did for decades for myself.

For my clients, even for my son, he's 32 years old, his wife's 30. They've got their first child, second child on the way, three homes and a multi million dollar net worth. They are take off one month to a foreign country every single year. They get to experience life. That's what I want. I want to give people the gift of financial freedom, the pathway to do it. You got to run the miles. I can't run the miles for you. I'm running the miles. I'm out. But I can give you the principles, the priorities and the processes to make it happen. And in the process, you give me a gift. You make my cancer mean something positive. And I appreciate you for that. So here's the deal. I am actually doing a special exclusive live training which I only do once a year, called the Affluent Entrepreneur Life. I'm gonna walk you through the process and the principles, the priorities, the systems that you need to have in place so you can go implement it for yourself. Okay. It's totally free. Okay. Go to affluencelive.com Put yourself on the, on the wait list. It doesn't start till September 15, but we'll get you there. I'll get you there. I'll guide you, I'll be with you every step of the way. I hope that I get a chance to see you on the road and I hope that maybe this story struck a chord, that this story got you to look at your life and say, what could you do? What could I do to bring more freedom, more peace, more impact and more meaning in my life? See, money's a tool, but let's use the tool for good. And let's start with the good in your life. And if I can help you on that, let me know. I'd love to see you there. Affluencelive.com Put yourself on the list. Let's make it happen.

Thank you for being a part of the affluent entrepreneurship with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join the Absolute Entrepreneur, our facebook group@melabraham.com group and I'll see you there. Cheers. Bye.

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.