Life Advice From A 63 Year Old Self Made Millionaire

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. In this episode of building your money machine, we're going to do this a little differently. I'm going to have a conversation. I'm going to have a coffee, and you are going to chat. All right, I'll see you in the episode.

All right, so here's this episode is going to be, like I said, very different because I want to have a conversation with you. I think it's that time of year where we get a chance to reflect. And, you know, I've had the blessing of 63 years of life. I've had the blessing of screwing it up. I've had the blessing of recovering. I've had the blessing of lessons and obstacles and friction and challenges. And so the question really is, what are those lessons from over six decades of a journey that I can extract and give to you? And so I've got 14 of them that I want to kind of walk through. And I think number 12 and number 13 are going to kind of blow you away because it's going to change your perspective. Perspective. This is, yes, this is about financial freedom, but it's more. It's literally about your life. It's literally about how do I create something that I love to live that is the life that I'm meant to live. And I think that's where we go. You know, we talk about this show being a show that allows you to master your money, eliminate financial stress, so you can live a life of choice. And I think choice is the ultimate freedom. So here's a couple things, and I think the first one is this. Stay active, okay? I work out five to six days a week still. Still. Since high school. Okay. And so whatever it is, I walk four miles a day minimum with the dogs. I then do some resistance training. I am on supplements. I'm on all kinds of things. But are you active? Are you physically active? Are you getting outdoors? Are you doing the things? Because think about what that does for you.

And not just that active means also intellectually Active. What is it that you're doing with your mind? Because I don't want my mind to get dormant. I don't want my mind to get lazy. I don't want that. So I'm constantly reading, I'm constantly listening, I'm constantly thinking, I'm constantly reflecting. And so the practice here, I think, is this, is that create a habit of being physically active, of being physically active outdoors to get out, even if it's for a walk. But then also create a habit of being mentally active. I don't care whether it's crossword puzzles or word searches or Sudoku or reading or anything like that. Things that allow your body to grow and your mind to grow at the same time. That's number one.

Number two is don't listen, okay? Don't listen to what others say, okay?

We live in an environment where it's easy to find limits all around us. There are people out there that are going to sit back and tell you, you can't do this, you can't do that. Listen.

When I first.

Thought about taking the CPA exam, I was still in college. I was taking 18 units in college. And so I was working full time, and my boss had come to me and said, hey, why don't you try to take the exam? Not necessarily to pass it, but to understand it. And I said, okay.

But then I said, if I'm going to take the exam, why am I not going to try and pass it? So I started studying and I put a program together for me to study and do all the things. And the interesting thing is that.

So many people said, you don't take the CPA exam while you're still in school. You wait till you get out of school, you start working, you start doing those things, and you don't do that. Really. Not only did I take it by doing it the way I did, I passed it all on the first try. So I literally had the CPA exam passed before I ever finished college. And I say this not to impress you, but to impress upon you the importance of not taking on someone else's limits, someone else's thoughts, whether it's society, whether it's media, whether it's parents, whether it's upbringing, whatever it is, to not allow that to limit you. Because the limits are limitless if you just allow your mind to dream. Okay? That's number two. Number three is what brings you joy. I mean, truly, what brings you joy.

Because I think that we get caught up in momentary pleasures, we get caught up in fleeting moments and Possessions and material things. And look, I'll be the first to tell you, I like material things. I like nice things. I don't collect a bunch of stuff, but I like nice things. But more importantly, Stephanie and I have spent a lot of time really understanding what is it that really gives us joy, you know, with the walks with the dogs, the travel with friends, the things that we get the chance to do together. When we do that properly, it's what gives us the opportunity to bring joy into our journey. Because here's what I know. We can be on the.

Journey to financial freedom. We can do all the things that we want, the way we want them. But in the end, in the end, if there's no joy in the journey on the path to financial freedom, there isn't going to be joy in the destination of it. And then we wonder why there's so many people that have.

The trappings of success. They have the homes, they have the planes, they have the cars, they have the money, they have all that. But they live bankrupt lives.

That they don't have the richness of life, the joy in life, because they didn't learn to enjoy life. They didn't learn to find joy in the things that we do. So I think that we really look at it from that perspective. Now, number four is to ask yourself, who really matters? Who really matters? Because it's easy to get caught up in things. Like, I will read a review on my podcast or a comment on one of my videos. Now, there's plenty of really good reviews and really good comments and all that stuff. And then there's one that is a troll or something, yet you start to listen to them, you start to take it into them. And the reality is that they don't have the right. They haven't earned the right, they haven't paid for the right, and they don't have the right to bring you down. And so I would stand vigilant at the doors of my life and say, who really matters? They're the ones that I let in. And those that don't, I keep out until they prove themselves. And it doesn't mean that they're all.

Going to always say positive things and this and that. But I've got plenty of people that test me, challenge me, including my wife. And that's okay, because in the process, we become better. In the process.

We grow. But it's those that don't have the perspective, they don't have the foundation where they start to criticize critical way, critique you in a way that they don't have the perspective to do so. And so they have to earn that right. They truly do. Comparison.

We have it all around us, but we got to ask ourselves, who are we comparing to? Who are we looking at? What are we doing? Okay, number five, I don't think. I truly don't think that you're on a single path or purpose or journey. I hear it all the time. I don't know what my purpose is. Here's why. I don't think you know what your purpose is. One reason is because you don't have just one purpose. My purpose as a husband is different than my purpose as a father, a grandfather, a puppy dad, as a money mentor. I have different purposes.

They all come together to create who I am and to know that my purpose can also shift. Life happens. When the cancer happened, my purpose changed. When I started to come out of the cancer, my purpose shifted again. I'm in a season of service right now, and that season of service is what's allowing me to make sense of the cancer journey. Because I look at it, and I couldn't figure out why cancer was given to me. I said, who did I piss off? Who did I aggravate? Who did I wrong? Why did I deserve it? Because I wasn't a smoker, wasn't a drinker. I didn't have any of the risk factors for it until someone said to me, well, Mel, you're looking in your past for something maybe you did.

As the reason for the cancer. What would happen if it wasn't something you did, but something you were meant to do?

And that's what gave me this new purpose. A purpose of a season of service. That's why I wrote the book. It's why I'm doing all the speaking. It's why I have the show to serve, to help, to light the path to financial freedom for folks. So there is the struggle. There isn't the stress around money. So instead of focusing and trying to find a single purpose or a single path, maybe. Maybe there's more than one and be okay with that. Okay, and then number six, this one's big. And I do this every single day. One of the reasons I take my walk is because I realize that gratitude and lack can't coexist in the same moment. And so I take a gratitude walk every morning. Yes, it's with the dogs, but I get a chance to be out on the beach. I get a chance to be out in the open in nature and to be able to see some things and to appreciate and to find the things that I'm grateful for.

And I think that if we take time to find gratitude each and every day, it makes it much more difficult for lack of, to creep into our life. It doesn't mean that we're not going to have stress. It doesn't mean that we're not going to have those thoughts. I get it, okay? But it doesn't mean that we live there, because gratitude is a regular occurrence. It becomes a habit in doing that. And I think that's the thing that we need to really start to consider. Then.

Number seven, this is something that I learned long ago.

With my son when he drew the picture of me, okay? And that is, presence is the greatest present you can give to anyone.

We live in a time, in a life where things just seem to be moving fast and there's so many distractions and there's so many things that are going on that start to get us to look at things a little different, differently, and say, well, you know, I need to.

I'm distracted because of social media, because of the media, because of everything that's going on. All of the advertising, all of those things. And the reality is, is that then we're not present with any of them yet. Yet.

Presence is probably one of the most important things in our relationships, whether they're personal relationships or professional relationships. To be present in the moment, to see it for what it is, and to know that I'm going to give you this moment, I'm going to give you 100% of me in this moment, and expect nothing less in return. Because presence.

Is the gift that only you can give. Okay? Number eight is find your passions. I know that the passions actually might change, but what are you passionate about? Now, I am going to be the first to tell you that I don't buy into this. Well, do what you love and the money will follow. I don't believe that's the case. Okay. But when you do what you love and find a way to create value in someone else's life with what you love, the money will follow. I love serving. I love having a chance and an opportunity to speak, to coach, to mentor, to see.

Things grow in someone. And so that's my passion. People ask me recently, they said, mel, if you could only do one thing in your business, what would it be? And I said, to speak. Really? Yet so many people say public speaking is one of their biggest fears. Why would it be speaking? I said, because it's the one place that I can see a big audience and I can get A chance to see hope in their eyes when I speak and to give them the glimmer of a path to make it a reality. Find your passions. Find your passions. Live with them. Whether it's hobbies, whether it's in your profession, whether it's your relationships. Find the passions in all of that. Now, that leads me to number nine. And I wrote about this in my book, building your money machine. But here's the thing. Very few things are terminal. You can always go back to first base. And this goes back to a dear, dear friend of mine.

When we were having a conversation and I was thinking about doing something, but I wasn't sure about doing it. And he just said to me this, Mel, if you knew that you could always go back to first base, how many times would you try to steal second?

Every time. Every single time. And so you can always go back to first base.

There's very few things that are terminal. Very few. In fact, one of my first webinars that I did as the tech and the talent, okay, most of the time I was showing up and someone else ran the tech, but I ran the tech and the talent. On this one. It was a couple of hundred people on it from an organization that gave me a lifetime achievement award. That means that a lot of people knew me. It was early in the morning, and I rolled out of bed. Superman pajama bottoms on. It was just a go to webinar. So it's supposed to be my slides, my voice, and nothing else. And I put my earphones in. I start the webinar. Now I got no shirt on because I just rolled out of bed, okay? Next thing I know, I look at the chat, and I see someone says, mel's naked. He's got no shirt on. And I go, oh, my God. Somehow, somehow I turned on the webcam, y'. All. I needed a post. Post it. Notes came to this to save me. But the reality is, is this. On that webinar, I sold $30,000 worth of work, and the organization has had me keynote for their conference with a shirt on for years. In fact, I was keynoting this year, and I'm asked to keynote again next year. My point is, is that, y', all, if I can survive a shirtless webinar, then very few things are terminal. So understand that that's the case now. Number 10, obstacles. Obstacles come into our lives to prepare us for what we're meant to do. I think it's really easy for us to.

Look at obstacles as obstacles. This is getting in the way this is trying to stand in my way. But I look at obstacles now. Look, sometimes I don't handle the obstacles very gracefully. I had just something recently happen, and it wasn't graceful at the beginning, but it's getting more graceful as I start to process it. But the fact of the matter is this just like going to the gym, if I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to lift weights, it's that resistance that allows me to build the muscle, that allows the growth. I look at obstacles the same way. There's a reason an obstacle is put in front of you. It's for you to grow. It's not to stop you. So we need the obstacles to create the resistance, because it's the resistance that creates the growth in doing that. And so this is the thing that I think we need to start to look at when we see obstacles in our life. Whether it's financial, whether it's relational, whether it's health, why is this being given to me?

And then these last few, I think, are really important to bring it full circle into our life. And I think number 11 is this.

We all have a unique gift.

Some people have the gift from birth. You know, they could be singers, they could be dancers. They're really creative. Some nurture it, they create it. But all of us have been given a gift. All of us have been given this gift that we are meant to nurture, to develop, to grow during our lifetime, and to build it into what it was totally meant to be. Because when we nurture the gift that we have, the uniqueness that we have, that forces us to live fully into what we are called to be.

That'S a rich life. But here's the beautiful thing. The gift that you're given, the gift of you isn't something you get to take with you. It's only a gift when you give it to the world. And I think that's the important part of it. Now, I told you about number 12 and number 13. I think they're really important. Number 12 talks about this. It is that I want you to focus on the richness in your life versus the wealth, okay? Richness is the experiences, the feelings, the people, the relationships, the connections. Richness comes from the memories. Richness comes from who you are and how you're sharing it.

Wealth is just in a bank account stuff. It's money. It can be taken away, it can evaporate, it can go up, it can go down. But how you experience life, that's the richness. And it's what I want. The reason that we want the financial freedom is to be able to create the richness in our lives, and it leads to number 13. Number 13 is, I think that your wealth.

Should be measured in time and not money. Here's how I look at wealth. I go, you tell me how much of the moments of your life you control.

The moments that you have agency over, and I'll tell you how rich you are. Because if you have a ton of money in the bank account, you have big. I've got friends that have hundreds of millions of dollars, but they live bankrupt lives on the outside. They look great. They got the cars, the houses, the boats, and the planes, but.

But they're miserable because they're measuring it on stuff. And that's kind of crazy coming from a money guy. But here's what I know. It's not the money that we're after. It's the richness we are. And so measure your wealth in the moments that you control. And that leads me to the last one. Okay? And that is this number 14. Legacy isn't something you leave behind. Legacy.

Is something you live. Legacy isn't like when I met Stephanie. She's from Philly. She thought that when I talked about legacy, that all I wanted was this statue like Rocky on the steps. No, I don't want that. I don't want the notoriety. I don't want any of that. Here's what I want to know. I want to know that it mattered, that we connected. I want to know that even if we connected just for a moment at an event online.

Something I said, something I did, made a positive impact on you. That's legacy. That's stacking the moments and making sure that moments matter. See, legacy is not the assets. It's not the stuff. It's not the material things that we actually leave behind when we die. But it is the interior things that we leave within something and we live within someone. When we interact and when we understand that, we look at the moments with the reverence they deserve because we realize that a simple thing like, I'm proud of you. A simple thing like, you look great today. A simple thing like I love you can change someone's life, can change someone's day. That's the magic in the moments. And that's what living a legacy is versus leaving a legacy. And I think that we're all here to live that legacy, to make each moment matter, to live it fully and give it everything we have. All right? I know that this was different than the normal episodes of my show. But I hope it gives you some insights not only into me, but what a six decade journey of life, of trials, tribulation, success, wealth, things that they taught me. And I hope it gives you perspective to look through.

As you go on with your life and to say, how do I want to live? Because it's how you live that matters. It's not the bank account that matters. All right. I hope that you found this valuable and that you take it for what it is. And I'd love to hear from you, your thoughts, the lessons that maybe you have come away with, the things that matter to you.

See you on the journey. Alright, I want to see you flourish, I want to see you soar, but I want to see you living richly each and every moment that when you get to those last days, when you get to those last moments that you know that you lived a life well lived and you did it your way and it was life by choice. Alright, until I get the chance to see you in another episode or on the road to your financial freedom. As I always say, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. See you in the next one. Cheers. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneurship 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.

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 afraid 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.