096 Traditional Financial Advice Doesn't Work For Entrepreneurs

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. You just might be with the wrong financial advisor. And you know, in this episode, I'm gonna talk about some key distinctions and the things that you need to have in place, especially if you're an entrepreneur, to get the right advisor to help you create the financial destiny you deserve. I'll see you in the episode.

This is the affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that wanna operate at a high level and achieve 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. Foreign.

Are you an entrepreneur? And if you're an entrepreneur, are you going and listening to traditional financial advice? Here's the deal. I don't have to tell you, but entrepreneurs are a different breed. We see the world differently. We see possibility different, we see opportunities differently. And if you're anything like the entrepreneurs that I've worked with, we also see money differently. What that means is that traditional financial advice, traditional financial advisors may not be giving you the right advice for entrepreneur. Here's what I mean by this. They typically focus, most financial advisors typically focus on the money that you have personally and start to build personal wealth without regards to the business, without regards to how the business is operating, without regards to the sales and the expense structure, all of that stuff in the business. And this comes from their upbringing and the nature of their business, which the majority of their business a lot of times is, is for wage earners or W2s or people that have jobs. And the fact of the matter is that those that have jobs, and there's nothing wrong with it, that get a W2, that get a regular salary, unless they're under a commission structure or a bonus structure, they don't have the ability to affect their level of income to the extent that you do. So their primary focus is on expense management versus income escalation. And through the expense management, then we then build the financial plan. But for entrepreneurs, it's very different. It's very different. What we need to do is integrate the business machine with your money machine, with your wealth machine, as, as I call it, as I teach, in a way that they work in concert with each other. This is how you get exponential wealth growth. Because what happens is that as an entrepreneur, not only do you do the expense management, but you have the ability to scale your income. You have the ability to change your income dramatically. I've seen some of the clients, the entrepreneurs that I've worked with, we've scaled their income 2, 3, 4x in a year's time and now that affects the bottom line. That accelerates your wealth creation, that accelerates the building of the money machine, and that shortens your time span to getting to that financial freedom number to make that happen. So here's the thing. All I'm saying is that it's important that you're working with an advisor that absolutely understands the business you're in. Not only that you're in business, but they understand the business you're in. So they can help you optimize your sales, your cash flow and the expense structure in that business. So it can then further optimize their ability to create wealth in your personal life. They understand your business and they integrate the approach that takes in consideration the business and your personal life and puts it together. They don't come at it with a specific in the box structure where they say this is what they do for, for all of their clients. I mean, cookie cut structures just don't work. Every entrepreneur is different. Every circumstance is different. It needs to be bespoke, it needs to be specific. It needs to be based on your circumstances, your needs, your vision for a future, so that they create that in a way that makes sense. And so, because too often what happens is that they do the same thing over and over again. And that's fine if you have a homogeneous kind of set of clients. But typically, especially with entrepreneurs and the ones that I work with, it's not homogeneous. They're all different. They all have different needs, they all have different dreams, they all have different visions, they all have different target numbers, they all have different circumstances. There are different ages and stages of their world. They have are different net worths when they start.

Although that requires a different plan. All of that requires a different way. All of that requires creating something that is specific and unique to your needs.

Specifically, and not something that's generic or off the shelf. That also means this is that too often advisors are corralled. They're confined to offer you solutions.

Based upon what they have in their library, in their ability. So for instance, they may work for a specific broker, and that broker says, here are the offerings you can put to your clients. Now, the question isn't whether the offering is good or not. The question is, is the offering they're putting in front of you the best.

For you in your individual circumstances? So it's really about making sure that they're not confined by that type of bias. Now, some things I want you to watch out for. And like I said, I'm a financial advisor, I'm a financial coach, I'm a money mentor, I don't sell investments. So I have no bias around investments or anything like that. My job is to give you tools, to give you tactics and strategies, to give you the priorities, the principles and the processes you need to take control of your financial destiny and to be at the helmet, at the wheel, captaining the ship with someone by your side, someone like me by your side to make that that happen. So we make unbiased decisions based on the best thing for you. But I want you to watch out for things. I want you to be very, let's say, critical.

In discerning in who you choose to put your financial destiny, your family's financial destiny, your financial legacy in the hands of. And it's okay to be critical, it's okay to be discerning, because this is your future. And so there's some things I want you to watch out for. One is if they're making performance claims, if they're looking at a portfolio and they say, I can beat that, I can beat that. They're making performance claims, and it may be true. But if they're making a, a choice, especially now, given what's going on in our environment in the economy right now, there's going to be a whole lot of people say, I can beat the market, I can beat this, I can beat that. The question really is, can they do it long term and are they doing it at a level that is married to your risk capacity and your risk tolerance so you're not taking on undue risk. So when people start to make performance claims, I want you to be critical about those performance claims. I want you to look at it through a long view set of eyes. I want you to look at the potential of making sure that you're talking to other clients or talking to other people around the long term relationship with them. And realize this, sometimes your advisors work for a season for you. I've had advisors that worked for me for a period of time. I entered a different season of my life and I had to change because I needed something more, I needed something different. And so understand that. So that's one thing to watch out for. The second thing to watch out for is a lack of transparency.

I will only work with advisors and the people that I work with is if they're completely 100% transparent on how they get paid. I have no problem paying my advisors and they get paid well. But I want to know that I'm paying them and how I'm paying them. That means that I don't want to find out, which I have done in the past, where I find out that there's an embedded or buried commission in an, in an investment product that they put me in. And, and the point being is this, is that if they didn't tell it to me up front and then I find out later, then my question is, was this really the best thing for me or were they making the decision because of the bias of the commission and the compensation that was in there? Just tell me is all I'm saying. So if there's any hesitation for them to be transparent about how they charge, how they get paid, where their money is coming from and the level of money that they get paid, walk away. You deserve to know. You deserve to know. The next thing I want you to consider and be cautious of is that the advisor is there not to make the decisions for you, but rather to help you make an informed decision for yourself, for your family, for your legacy, for your future. And so in order to do that, one of their primary jobs is to educate you. This is one of the things that I do a lot with, with my clients and the people that are, that I work with in the affluence blueprint is helping them understand, educate you to a point so you can make the right decision. They're not there to make choices for you, they're there to help you make that now. So if they don't have the patience, if they don't have the, the desire, if they're not willing to dedicate the time, if they want to, they're going to not do that, then they're not doing their job, in my opinion. So whether they understand your business or not understand the business, if they're not Going to take the time to help educate you, inform you, and let you make the right informed decisions and answer all your questions whether it takes a minute, an hour, or a day. So be it. So be it. Okay? And then the last thing to consider is this. My advisors, they know that one of my requirements is regular communication. That means that it's either physical meetings, virtual meetings, on a regular basis, minimum quarterly, sometimes monthly phone calls. They take my calls. We have communication. If they're unwilling to communicate, they say, I only do once a year meetings. I'm sorry, your financial future is worth more than once a year meetings. That means that they're not checking the pulse. I want to know that my advisors are looking at my stuff on a regular basis, on a monthly basis. That they're being proactive and you deserve the same that they're looking at and saying, what is going on in the market today? What is going on with the portfolio? Are we still on track for Mel's future? Mel and Stephanie's future, your future. I don't want them to make the phone call and say, hey, we missed the boat. We should have done this six months ago. No, I want them. I want to know that they're checking the pulse on the patient on a regular basis. And if they're not doing that and they're not willing to communicate and they're not willing to be there for you, and they're not proactive, I'm sorry, they're not for you. That's just my opinion. And look, there's some of them that probably don't like some of the things I'm saying, but I have no problem calling them out. I got. I got no ax to grind. My job is to keep you safe. My job is to keep you sane. My job is that you get to the financial dreams that you have. That's my job. That's my calling. That's what I'm here to do. And if I rub, you know, ruffle the feathers along the way, well, then it's time for them to step up. Then it's time for them to step into a role that they should be playing, and that is a. An unbiased trusted advisor. And if they're not willing to understand your business, they're not willing to understand your dreams, they're not willing to run that path with you, then maybe they're just not the advisor for you. So that's the thing that I want to get across here, is just to realize that entrepreneurs have a different need than wage earners because you have different parameters within your world. You have different levers that you can pull. You have different dials that you can turn. And what we need to do is look at it from an integrated point of view to make it happen, because we can accelerate your path to financial freedom if we do it right. All right. I hope this serves you. I hope this helps. And know this. I've got resources. I've got things coming out. Stay with me on this journey so we can continue this conversation. I can keep you safe and sane. I can give you the priorities, the processes and the principles you need to build financial freedom to be on that path the right way. All right? And also I'm doing a special deep dive training on those priorities, on those processes, on those principles coming up in September. Okay. And I'm going to invite you to be on that VIP wait list completely free. Completely free. Let's dig in. Let's make it happen. Let's do it together. I look forward to seeing you on September 15th. Go to affluencelive.com grab your spot, and let's do this thing. I'll see you soon. 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 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.