088 Making a Lot of Money Doesn't Guarantee Wealth

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. Having a whole lot of money doesn't make you wealthy, and in fact, it doesn't guarantee any kind of success financially. In this session, I'm going to talk about some of the mistakes that people make and the things that you need to worry about, because it's not just about acquiring assets that matter. It's not just about generating income that matter. There's a missing link. I'll see you in the episode. Let's make it happen. Cheers. 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.

I hear this all the time. Hey, Mel, how do I make more money? Now my question back is, why do you want to make more money? And typically they say, because I want to build wealth. I want to. To be financially. I want to. To have that rich life that you always talk about. Mel, what if I told you that having money doesn't guarantee your success or a successful financial future or your wealth? Here's what I mean. Here's the thing. There's a lot of people out there that make a lot of money. There's a lot of people that don't have an issue with making money. Many entrepreneurs, one of their greatest skills is generating income. The problem is, is when their next greatest skill is spending the income. See, here's the thing. Money, yes. Is one of the tri. One of the three things you need to build wealth. Because we need discipline, we need time, and we need money. Okay.

Here'S the thing with money, it's just not enough. Why do I say that? Let's just talk about it. Because we can accumulate a lot of money and we can lose it. I had a family that came to me a while back, the two boys, the two sons. And they came to me when their mother died and said, you know, what do we do? We have, they had $5 million.

And, and I looked at it and we were having conversations about what they could do with a $5 million, you know, and everything. But in the conversations, I find out that five years earlier, five years earlier, their dad passed away. So they lost their mother and their father within five year time period. But here's the thing. Five years earlier, when their dad passed away, they were worth a hundred and eighty million dollars. So in a five year time frame, mom and the boys went from $180 million to five. They lost $175 million. You have to try really hard to lose $175 million in five years. Now it doesn't, doesn't help when you have bad advice, bad investments, quite frankly, some thievery going on, all kinds of things. But why I tell you this is that too often, especially as entrepreneurs, we get so caught up in acquiring, achieving, accomplishing, accumulating, and then transferring those assets, transferring those assets to our, our children, to our spouse, to our legacy. And we're so focused on the assets, we never take the time to focus on the skill sets. I truly believe, and the people that I work with understand this, is that you never, ever transfer assets without first transferring skill sets. The reason they went from 180 million to 5 million is because dad never took the time to transfer the skill sets to mom and the boys.

Therefore, they were saddled with the assets without the skill sets to do it. This is like getting behind a fighter jet, getting in a fighter jet cockpit. And you've never flown in your life. You don't have the skill sets to navigate. You haven't, don't have the skill sets to fly it. You're going to crash. And that's what happened. And so the important thing is to start to ask yourself, what are the skill sets that you need as an entrepreneur to navigate.

Your financial future? I get it. You have the skill sets to build your business because that's what you're doing. You have the skill sets to do the job, because that's what you're doing. But there's another set of skill sets. And as much as you might sit back and say, I don't want to deal with the money, if you don't deal with the money, it won't deal with you, it has to be something that you're proactively involved with. That doesn't mean that you need to be some analyst like me. You don't have to read charts, but you have to have to check the pulse on the patient.

Here's the thing. You may hire advisors. You might have a cpa, you might have attorney, you might have financial advisor, you might have a broker. You might have all these people in your life, but none of them, let me repeat this, none of them should have the hands on the wheel of your financial ship, except for you. The fact of the matter is, is that you're the captain. You need to step up to that helm, you need to grab that wheel and all the advisors, whether it's me or other, other folks.

They need to be to your right and left, helping you navigate, helping you look for the problems in the sea, helping you navigate to your financial future. But you have to be the captain of the ship. That means that you need to learn some skills to make that happen. So let me give you a for instance. And these boys, unfortunately didn't get this to happen. And I think sometimes we don't want to talk about money. We say, oh, we shouldn't talk about money with our kids. I actually think that's wrong. And I have firsthand experience around it. I raised Jeremy as a single full time dad, okay? He came to live with me, my son, when he was five and a half, six years old, okay? And it was just the two of us. And I started right around 10 years old. I put him on what I call a commission. I didn't give him an allowance. He had a commission. And the commission was tied to value that he provided. Now the value is chores or this and that. But I wanted him to create and understand this concept of value exchange. You don't get paid because you're entitled to payment. You get paid because you provide value in someone else's life.

And in that process, he got paid a commission. And from that commission, then we had the opportunity then have money conversations. How do you balance the checkbook? What do you do with the money? What is it like to invest? What is it like to give and donate? So he had a segment of that money that he was able to spend. He had a segment of that money that he was investing. He had a segment of that money that he was giving to charity. And the fact of the matter is that it allowed us to have a different conversation, was using it. He paid his school lunches from it. He bought his clothes from it. He bought his toys from it so indirectly I was funding it, but in the process he was learning about money.

And when we start to have those conversations around it, they start to appreciate the value of work, the value of a dollar, the time value of investing. Jeremy today is 32 years old with a wife 30 years old. They've got their first child and second child on the way, three homes and a multi million dollar net worth. He understood the dynamics of creating wealth. He understood the richness of life. It wasn't all about the money. The two of them get it. It's about experiencing life and the money gives them the facility to be able to experience life. They're taking a month off to go to Portugal and they're going to travel a month, a year because they want to experience life together. We talked about it on a recent interview with him. And that's the thing. I think it's your turn, I think it's your turn to do this now. Whether you have children or grandchildren, you want to have this conversation. Listen, my granddaughter and my soon to be other grandchild, which you don't know, whether it's a boy or girl, we're going to have these conversations. We're going to build the skill sets in them so they can become independent financially.

But what will happen is then they can create their own wealth and they can acquire wealth through inheritance if we choose to do that. And if they don't need it, it goes to charity, it goes to good causes. And so the point is, is that we want to make them self sufficient. The point is that money itself without skill sets isn't going to create wealth, whether it's in your life or your children's life. What we need to do is build the right skill sets based on principles, based on priorities, based on processes that are proven. When we do that now, Whether you have a $100 or $1,000, we have the skill sets to turn it into a million, 2 million, 3 million, 10 million or more. But if we give them 10 million or you end up getting 10 million without the skill sets, you'll turn it into a dollar. It is the reason that you see lottery winners going broke within a couple years of winning the big lottery. Because they haven't developed the muscles, the behaviors, the thinking that they needed to sustain themselves for that wealth. That's how these boys went from 180 million to 5 million in five years. And I don't want that for you. The whole purpose of what I do, because I sell no investments, the whole purpose of what I do is to coach you, to help you, to inform you, to do these, these videos, these shows and my programs to educate you, empower you, and to give you the tools, the skills and talents that you need to navigate your financial future. Grab a hold of that, that wheel at the helm of your financial ship to know that you have the right people on your right and left to help guide you. But you get a chance to make some informed decisions, that you all of a sudden found yourself completely in control of your financial future, your financial destiny, in a way that it never happened before. And that's the key. That's what Affluence Blueprint is all about. That is what in this new season of life, because you need to build that money machine to give you that financial freedom. I want to help you do that. So here's the deal. I hope that this helps. I hope that you start to look at money differently and look at the way you do this differently. I get it. Maybe this is new for you. Maybe you've never done it. Let's take it one step at a time. That's all we need to do, one step at a time. And you'll learn along the way. Okay? It's all learnable skills. And there isn't anything that you can't learn that can't make a difference in yourself and your finances moving forward. So also, I'm going to give you access to something that I think is going to be helpful. I'm doing a special live exclusive training for free Deep Dive, a series of trainings called the Affluent Entrepreneur Live. I want you to join me. I want you to join the VIP wait list by going to affluencelive.com okay, join the VIP waitlist. Let's dig in. Let me give you the priorities, the processes, the principles you need to make sure that you take control of your financial future, your financial destiny, to build the money machine that gives you the freedom that you deserve. So you're no longer on a treadmill, but rather living an affluent life, a life of meaning, a life of impact, life that's fruitful, and a life that's peaceful. So go to affluencelive.com I'll see you in the training. I look forward to it. And thank you for being here. Let's go make it happen. Listen, financial freedom, it's your birthright. And when it's your birthright, it becomes your legacy. It changes the lives of you, your children, your grandchildren, and the movements and missions that you want to get behind. I want to see that happen. All right? I'M here to help. I look forward to seeing you. I'll see you next video. Cheers. Thank you for being part of the Affluent Entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join the Affluent Entrepreneur 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.