092 The Steps to Financial Freedom

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.

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In the free training.

We hear it all the time. Financial freedom is what I want. Here's the thing, it's paradoxical because at the same time that financial freedom may.

Seem to be this.

This lofty goal that you could never reach, it actually is one of the.

Most rudimentary desires that we could ever have.

There's other freedoms that we should be looking at, and there's other ways to do it, and there's stages that you need to pass through to truly have an affluent life and to get yourself to financial freedom. In this. In this session, I'm going to walk you through what it means to live an affluent life and the stages to move you through what I call the.

Financial liberation Journey to financial freedom. I'll see you in the episode. 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 it all the time, Mel.

I want financial freedom.

Well, interestingly enough, it is a lofty goal, financial freedom, but yet at the same time, it's probably the most rudimentary.

Freedom we could ever ask for.

Financial freedom. The reality is, is that. That it's not financial freedom we want, it's the results that financial freedom will.

Give us the that we want. For instance, it gives us two other freedoms that are actually the things that we're after, and that is time freedom, the freedom to be able to control my time, to do the things that I want to do. And the other is mind freedom to have peace of mind.

See, the three critical outcomes of the Affluence blueprint include complete freedom. One of the critical Outcomes is complete freedom, which is those three freedoms.

Financial freedom, time freedom and mind freedom.

Imagine what your life would be like.

To have those freedoms in your life, to control your time, to have peace of mind and to have the finances to do the things that you want to do. Here's the thing.

When we start to talk about this whole idea of affluence, and we start to talk about this whole idea of financial freedom, it actually can feel like a lofty goal and so far fetched and so far away that we don't.

Even go towards it.

And in fact, when I talk about affluence, many people confuse it with opulence. And it's not opulence that we're talking about.

Affluence is about how we experience life.

Actually, affluence to me has four aspects to it and only one has to do with money. The first thing to have an affluent life is that you're living a meaningful life. Something that gives you joy from the inside, something that just wakes you up from the inside.

It shakes your soul alive each day.

The other aspect of it is that if it is meaningful, at the same time it's impactful, that it helps the people you get to serve, it affects the people you love, the people to the right and the left, the people.

That matter to you.

So it's impactful.

So it's meaningful, it's impactful.

The third aspect of it is then it's fruitful. It pays the bills. It pays the bills, it builds the money machine, it gives you the financial freedom you want.

And then the last piece is that it's a peaceful life, that you're at.

Peace, that you have walked your path.

You did it your way, that it's.

In alignment with your values, your beliefs.

Your vision, and that you're taking care of the movements, the missions, the people you care about. Imagine what that is, an affluent life. Something that's meaningful, impactful, fruitful and peaceful.

I think that that's where we want to go. But in order to get there, one of the aspects of that is to make sure that we have the finances, to make sure that it comes clear. But here's the deal. If we turn around and say, in order to have that financial freedom and you're standing at ground zero.

You need five million dollars, you need to build a five million dollar machine. It seems so far away that you.

Could never get there.

And so what ends up happening is that people shrink down and say, yeah.

It'S just a dream. And because it's just a dream, we actually don't chase it. We don't do the things that we need to do. But here's the thing.

In order to get to financial freedom.

We have to walk the, what I call the Financial Liberation Journey line. And the Financial Liberation Journey line walks through four stages. Okay?

And when we start to break it down in stages, you can see where you are along the path to financial freedom and what you need to do next. See, when we look at the journey, the Financial liberation Journey, the journey to financial freedom, the first stage is to find financial stability. See, at the very fundamental level, until we can take care of our necessities, our needs, this is like at the lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Our survival, the roof over our head, the food in our gut, you know, our health, our transportation, our shelter, our utilities, the necessities to allow us to survive.

Financial freedom is a long ways away.

So the first stage we need to do is to sit back and start to understand, what are my necessities? What do I require?

Just to live.

Now, this isn't where we want to stay, but it's the first stopping point. It's the first stage in your journey to financial freedom. Now, it could simply be that, you know, my mortgage and my living expenses, my utilities, my medical, all that stuff is $2,000 a month. That's the level. That's your financial stability income level. You need to be able to generate $2,000 a month to just be financially stable. Imagine for a moment that you had $2,000 a month coming in. You knew the necessities are taken care of, your baby's taken care of, your husband or wife are taking care of, the housing's taken care of. Those key elements are taken care of. But if we don't have that, then we're living in a stressful, panicked situation.

Now, how do we make that?

At first, when we start to build, we start to generate that $2,000.

By virtue of active work, by virtue of doing work, whether it's in a job or creating a business, services, offerings, online, offline, whatever it is. But at some point, this is why we need to create the money machine I always talk about. We want to build a money machine that will generate enough income to cover that. And if I know that I have the ability to generate the $2,000 from investments and my money machine, then I know that my survival is taken care.

Of and I don't have to worry about it now, I can then start to build to the next stage.

And the next stage goes from financial.

Stability to financial security.

Financial security is when we not only.

Cover our necessities, but we also cover our current lifestyle.

That means that the mani pedis, the Netflix, and the things that really aren't.

Needs, but their desires, I can pay for.

So instead of that $2,000, maybe it's now $4,000. And now I know that my current lifestyle wouldn't change. So if I build that machine up to the point where it's generating $4,000 a month, it covers my current lifestyle. That means that my life, if I stopped working today, the machine takes over.

And my lifestyle doesn't change. This is exactly what happened when I shut down my businesses because of the cancer so I could heal. Is the machine generated enough to cover all of our life and more?

Because we were up, we weren't at.

The financial security level, we were up higher at the financial freedom level.

So what happens is that once we get to this point where we know we have enough that's covering our current expenses, we can then graduate from the financial security level to the next stage.

And the next stage is financial independence. See, at financial independence, not only do you cover your expenses, but you actually replace your income. Here's what I mean by that.

If at the financial security level, $4,000 is your expenses, but you're generating $6,000 in income, which means that you have $2,000 left over, extra over the expenses. At the financial independence level, you're generating the full 6,000. So it covers your necessities, it covers your expenses, and it covers that, the additional amount over and above that, which.

Means that you're completely independent, that the.

Machine is producing enough for you to reinvest in the machine, to live your.

Current lifestyle, to pay for your necessities and do it that way.

And once we've passed through this stage, now we can think about financial freedom.

Now, your financial freedom number, the way I see it, is built on your, what we call an affluence vision.

When we talk about things, when I work with people in the affluence blueprint, or even coaching, or even one on one, one of the first things we.

Do is figure out what your affluence vision is.

In other words, what is the ultimate vision for your life and what is.

The price tag to make that happen?

So now financial freedom isn't generating your.

Current lifestyle, but it's generating your dream lifestyle. Yes, that could be lofty.

But if we've walked through the stages.

Of stability, security and independence, we're good. And now we'll work towards freedom that's the way we need to play the game.

So I don't know where you are.

On this, on this journey, this financial liberation journey. You could be at stability, you could be below stability.

But you know that our first stopping point is stability. We take off these little chunks because they're easier to digest, they're easier to strategize. They're different things that we need to do at each stage to move us forward. And when we understand that we can.

Take it one step at a time.

They say that that whole cliche or that whole proverb of a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Well, that single step is to stability. And if you're already at stability, then we go to security.

And if we're already at, then we go to independence. And when you're at independence, we're going.

To move you to freedom. But it's one step at a time based on priorities, based on principles, based on processes that have been proven and that work.

The first thing you need to do is understand where you are in this journey without judgment, without beating yourself up, without, you know, saying, I wish I could have, I would have, and all that stuff. Because it doesn't serve you just to get real and say, where am I on this journey? Now I know where I'm at, now I know what I need to do.

I also start to define where I want to go and we break it down through the four stages.

I hope this starts to give you perspective and hopefully this starts to, to get you to understand that it is.

All achievable in bite size steps. Let's just make it happen. Let's give you the priorities, let's give.

You the processes to give you the.

Principles that work for the long term, that are sustainable. Okay.

One of the things that I want to do with you is to continue to give you as much information and much tools as I can. This is why I do this, the show, is why I do these videos, why I do the training that I do. The fact of the matter is that in this season of my life after.

The cancer, I feel like this is what I'm called to do, to light the way for you to financial freedom. After all, I believe that financial freedom is your birthright. We just have never had the conversations to help you. Go claim it. Let's go claim it. Let me help you. Let me light the way.

Okay, let's do it together.

You don't have to do this alone.

So I'm also doing a special exclusive live training only. Do it once a year and I'm going to be doing it again soon is totally free. That is called the affluent Entrepreneur Live.

I want you to join me. Okay.

Join me. It's September 15th.

Okay.

Go to affluencelive.com grab yourself a spot.

Or put yourself on the wait list so you get notified.

Join me. Let's go.

Deep dive.

We're going to do a series of trainings. I'm going to walk through the priorities of processes, the principles, the frameworks you need, the tools you need to make sure that we move you through this process and give you the thing that.

You need to move from stability to security to independence to freedom to claim the financial destiny that is rightfully yours. Go to affluencelive.com I'll see you in the training. I look forward to being on this journey.

Cheers. Thank you for being a 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 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.