Money, Debt, Dopamine & Freedom with Frank Benedetto

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. Oh, this one's a good one. But they all are. I am talking to a dear friend of mine, Frank Benedetto. He is a physical therapist, but we met under some, let's just say crazy circumstances when I got hurt backstage. You'll hear a little bit of that story in this episode, but we're going to also talk about his. His tumultuous journey with money ups and downs. Selling his business, losing the money, going into debt, and how dopamine and addiction tendencies. Not that he was an addict, but that dopamine hit can affect his buying decisions and how it may be affecting yours and what to do about it. This is an episode that is full of tips and ways that he navigated to put himself and his family into the financial freedom path. So enjoy this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur show and let me know what you think. See you there. 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, Frank. So good to have you on the show. God, it's been so long. For those of you that don't know.

Let me just kind of go back. Frank and I met by a kind of a weird set of circumstances. I am, you know, I do a lot of speaking around the country, and I happen to be speaking at a. At an event, and I was bouncing around backstage and. And I was announcing, and next thing I know, I felt like someone took a baseball bat to one of my calves and I was laying on the ground trying to announce the next speaker to stage from the ground.

And it turned out what they thought I Did. Was. Was strained a. Or tore my Achilles tendon, which would have been real. Real problem for someone that's going to go stand on stage and speak. And in someone that was backstage, from one of the speakers was one of the husbands. He says, you know, my. My physical therapist happens to be in the audience. Would you. Would you want me to text him? And I said, yeah, it can't hurt. I mean, by this time, I had already gone to the emergency. I'd come back from emergency. I'm on crutches. I got a brace on. I'm not moving the leg, and I'm, like, hobbling around. And so they. They text Frank, and Frank says, where are you?

And.

And I'll meet you. Now, I want to give you this perspective because I think it's a really important perspective when we start talking about some of the things that we've gone through. And. And then I'm gonna let Frank give his background. But so I meet Frank behind the stage back, you know, and. And we meet out. He sees me in. In the crutches, and he sees me in the brace, and he looks at me, and he said. He looks at it and he says, all right. He says, first things first. He says, you're getting rid of that brace. And I go, what? He says, what'd they tell you? Six weeks in the brace? And I said, yeah, something like that. Six weeks. They want to go to see an orthopedic surgeon. And this thing goes, yeah, you didn't really tear. The Achilles is fine. You may have torn a bit of the muscle, but here's the problem. He says, you're sitting in a brace that they're going to put you in for six weeks, and by the time they take that brace off, is that the first thing you're going to have to tackle is get your mind to believe you can use the leg again? And he said, having that brace on isn't doing you any favors. We need to start moving it and getting to start moving. So he gave me some exercise, and literally within a day, I was moving on the leg. Now, I wasn't running on the leg, but I was moving on the leg.

And we can talk about this after Frank introduces himself. But I think that there's some things to take from that. You know, mine happened to be a calf muscle, but the question is for you, what are the things in your mind that are holding you back? Because you think that that's what should be done? Or maybe someone handed that to you and said, this is what you should do. And now all of a sudden, you've limited the movement in your life, in your money, in your. In your world by doing that. And it was one of the most profound.

Kind of knowledge pieces. When I met Frank, when he said that to me, and I just dawned on me, and it stuck with me. And it's been. It's been a number of years now. So with that introduction, this is my. We've become dear friends. He's successful. He's had the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. He's a dad, he's a. He's a husband. He's. He's just a good soul on a movement and a mission. You're going to hear all kinds of things about him. Frank, welcome to the show. How are you, my friend?

Mel, if you. If you would have told me that that day would have ended up with me here on this show with you, I would have called you a liar. I would have said there's no, there's no way that this calf sprain turns into all this, but I am that that day was one of the. The best. Meeting you is a transformative moment in my career, in life. So I'm ever thankful for your. For your sprained calf. And I can only say that because it ended up being a very minor injury. So it was. Anything more severe, I wouldn't say it, but I'm pretty grateful you strained your calf that day. And actually, I want to continue on what you shared, and then I could circle back and give a quick intro. So there's now a growing body of research around this concept, and there's actually a phrase for it. So we all know placebo effect, right? Most famous for, like, give somebody a sugar pill, tell them it's going to. It might cause this effect or this effect.

And.

And the person has that effect a very majority of the time. Well, a nocebo effect. Nocebo is the same phenomenon with a negative outcome. And there are parallels to this. It's predominantly a medical term, and it's a really. It's a major issue in medicine because most healthcare providers across all credentials, nocebo their patients into fear and lack of movement. And the lack of movement is actually the number one driver of most of the ailments that we. That we incur as humans right now. And maybe it's not directly causative to diabetes, but there's no doubt somebody who is moving freely, exercising, not fearful of movement, is exponentially less likely to then get diabetes because of the whole, you know, negative downward spiral of medicalization. So there's definitely a parallel where nocebo language around money and how that keeps people stuck. And I'm excited to share my journey around my relationship with money because I really hope it saves someone from reaching the depths that I had to go before learning the lessons that you teach. And many of which only became something I addressed when I had met you. And you gave me, you know, this, this new worldview around how to look at both my business as the money making machine and then what to do with the money once it's been earned. Because I had made millions of dollars for making some of these corrections and it's kind of painful to look back on.

Yeah, yeah. Now. And you are in the medical field?

I am. I'm a doctor of physical therapy by trade. I do not practice in any sense of the traditional way. I think that the traditional way is beyond broken. I would say that most people, if you had physical therapy, you could relate to that. At some point it felt a little bit like nonsense, like why am I going to this clinic three times a week to barely see the physical therapist doing low level exercises? So my mission is to help inspire the healthcare renaissance. I formally have been saying revolution, but I'm going to explain to you, I've switched it to renaissance and that is starting with the movement professions. And my goal is to expand laterally and help evolve all fields of health care to what it should be and what it could be.

So good. So good. And you've done, you've been on this journey. There's a couple of things that, that catalyzed you coming to this space, in this place, in this journey and building your business. And you actually built a really successful business and then sold it and then. And have been building more businesses since then, correct?

Yes. So it. I graduated from physical therapy school in 2008, worked for somebody for six, seven years, 2015, made the plunge into my own practice and decided to do it my own way. I had a business partner and we had a vision for, for this new way of doing physical therapy. We built that to five locations and we were able to sell luckily just before COVID before the lockdowns because that, that would have destroyed our business. That, that business model was high touch in person, unlike any other PT clinic experience out there. But it hinged on low volume and in person care and we would have been wiped out had we gone through the lockdowns. So the. So we were very lucky to exit four years and four months later from that start date. Prior to the sale, though I had started already Working on the next two business models. One an incubator to inspire more creative businesses in health care and then another direct to consumer business that represented what I believed in the next version of health care could be which both are now continuing to grow to this day. Both rely heavily on technology, asynchronous care and our lockdown proof, future proof, AI proof, all of it proof, you know, because, because we are on the cutting edge of the technology that's coming out and utilizing it.

Wow. Wow now. And you, I mean you did a successful exit. You were financially actually in a, in a pretty good shape. But things kind of, maybe they, they went, they, they kind of went awry for a little bit.

Yeah, I'll go back to even before that Mel, because okay, it's something I think most people would have a hard time speaking about but I, I share openly because I do believe that there are more people out there in these situations that we've realized that if I found myself here that means there's at least one person in your audience and if it helps them then it's worth me dealing with ever emotions I have to relive this thing. But I graduated with my doctorate at 23 years old. I had a way, way ahead head start. I had no student loans.

And I had, I owned a home by the time I was 26, had two kids. My dad passed away in front of me unexpectedly that same year when I was 26 years old. And for some reason I did not have the coping skills, I did not have the coping skills to deal with it. And I unraveled that head start all the way to rock bottom when I was 30 years old. You know, three and a half year fall to, to this unimaginably low place. And starting off with no student loans and finding myself at 30 years old with no home and $200,000 in self created debt to every possible place that you can have debt.

There was, there was no farther I could fall financially, emotionally.

It was a true rock bottom. There was no, it's not just the phrase there. I don't, I actually don't jail death. Like I'm not sure what could have been.

It, it was financial and it was emotional.

All of it, all of it. And that year when I woke up on my 30th birthday, I think that we have pictures of these landmark years more clear than we have other points of our life. And 30 is, is one of those and I had a clear picture because I'd always been an ambitious person. I always had dreamt big when I was 17 and I wrote my college applications, I said I was going to revolutionize the field of physical therapy in my college application. So I always had the vision, but something went, something I lost along the way. And when I was 30, I could not see there was just this, the discrepancy between who I thought I was going to be and who I was, were two polar opposite human beings. And it was that day that I decided I was done. It was with an Eric Thomas video I found on YouTube. That day he was just screaming about this year, this year's the goals. I'm going to make this dream become a reality I won't talk about anymore. And he starts changing. I can, I can, I can. At the event where I met you, where he happened to be the surprise guest who had to say that in person. I still get chills thinking about that moment. And I quite literally that day decided it was far from this straight lineup because that doesn't happen. It's the rags to riches story is way too easy to paint this, you know, this like I decided and then I did it. Lots of hardship, lots of struggle, but I became determined again and I set my sight on a vision. And I'm grateful for how much of a hole I was in financially because no small, moderate or large size win would have even made a dent. You know, it was, it would have been if I had made a hundred thousand dollars a year, it would have been quite literally a drop in the bucket with what was left over from life expenses to actually be able to start paying off the 200k and start making progress towards a financial future again. So I went big. I always had said from almost a more image short place that I was going to be millionaire by the time I was 30. So I said, I'm going to make a million this year. So I, I, I knew that I wasn't going to be a millionaire, you know, in net worth. But I, I did own and say I am going to make a million dollars this year. My business partner and I had a shared vision for that and we did it. So one year later, just short, just short of that, like a random Tuesday In December of 2015, my business partner, who's really the guy in the numbers, calls me and he's just screaming, we did it, we did it. We did what? We did what. And keep in mind, we had no financial knowledge at all. I don't, I didn't know what a P and L even was. I would have thought that meant like a type of candy or Something. So he's like $1.1 million. We, we, you know, revenue was 1.1 million in our first year of business, and wow. We doubled the next year. We. We went to 3 million. Year three. And then we did sell in year four, which came in just a little over 3 million again. And so unbelievable recovery, yet it didn't correct all the money issues. So. And I think in some ways actually accelerated some of the money issues because I started to see my income earning potential without actually having a strategy or a understanding of what to do with it afterwards. Yeah. So even when I had sold that business, I was still nowhere near what you would imagine.

As far as financially secure.

Yeah, yeah. Because I know. And it was. The other side of that was that you also felt that you were not, as I recall.

Present for your kids and your family, and that that was driving you baddie too, because it felt like they couldn't maybe. And I'm putting words in your mouth, so correct me if I'm wrong, that. That you were struggling to figure out how they could coexist.

Yes, yes, that. That. The way I had built that business was unsustainable and in opposition with. With family life, with health, with the. The pie chart of life. And all we want to experience in. Took up almost all of it. And again, I could look back now and say, I'm grateful because without that, I don't know if I'd have the business model that I have now, which is the polar opposite of that, you know, which is. Which is one that is coexist and facilitates the rest of life. It's the fuel for the rest of life too. And you know, time leveraged is my thing. Everything I do, I look to do any time leveraged fashion. And that's only because that business was built on my time. It was built on. I evolved the business accidentally into a job that I hated. So I had five locations and I was the regional manager, if you had to put a title to it. So I spent most of my time driving a car to these different locations, saying what? How did I succeed into a job that I hate? This is insane. And I think that happens to a lot more business people than I realized. And you were instrumental in helping me get off what you refer to as the treadmill.

Right.

I was on the treadmill. A lot of movement, you know, money coming in, but not much progress if we're not careful.

That treadmill turns in dreadmill pretty quick, pretty quickly.

Yes, Yeah, I was there. I was there.

But the story, the cost with that and I'll let you complete the story I think that we need to be mindful of is not just financial. It's emotional, it's physiological, it's spiritual, it's energetic. The cost is dramatic and it's too easy to say later, I'll fix those costs, but they come back to haunt you.

The debt, the debts will need to be repaid. And the reality is that there's kind of not a reason to do business like that in the modern day, Even compared to five years ago, 10 years ago, the realities of what it took to get into business. The barrier to entry was just gigantic. Huge loans, lots of equipment, big teams, all this other stuff. And now no matter what industry you're in, you need almost none of that or such a tiny, scaled down version of that. You need a laptop, a cell phone, social media account, maybe a couple of investments here and there, but it's a fraction. But the way, and the mechanics of which the way the business can work just no longer needs to create these debts. But what I see happening is people still making decisions and modeling business frameworks from 5, 10 years, 20, 30 years ago and basically creating this situation when it really does not need to happen.

Yeah. What shifted for you? What, what did, what changes did you make? What that, that allowed you to start to move? Actually, let's do this. Let's talk about where you are today, so they see where you are today and then we'll talk about how you got here.

Okay, so can I fill in the gap of that, that last phase?

Yes.

So I, I sell, I sell that business. I now have no debt, you know, I'm debt free. I still have a mortgage. I own a home and I have a mortgage, but normal mortgage. And that's my only form of debt. And you know, I have, I have money, you know, positive net worth, you know, aside from the mortgage for the first time ever. And I also feel a little bit lost. I was a little burnt out. The selling process, selling a business, especially that kind, was really arduous. Selling a business is much more difficult than most people could ever imagine. Oh yeah. And especially as a newbie, without maybe the proper guidance. So I finished the sale and I'm just fried, man. I am fried emotionally. Yet I still have this vision and I took time off and I'm just reconnecting with my kids, spending so much time with my wife and going to the pool or going to the beach, doing all these things. And I'm just wondering, what am I going to do? I didn't make it anywhere near enough money to take more than a few months off. And I'm saying, what am I going to do? And I stumble upon this event where Mel tells the story originally. And at that event I create the vision for the next phase of my career. And at that event I meet Mel who just so graciously offers his guidance in helping set up that business and set up, you know, some. So many other assets of what led to the current picture. So when I first met Mel was at that issue, my savings was dwindling because I've been living off of it. And I have a family of five at this point, which is not cheap, especially in northern New Jersey.

No.

And, and you know, I'm, I'm like kind of lost and I have no social media presence. I, when I sold the business, I really lost all my connections through that I was starting at ground zero all over again. And I saw this vision when I was there at this event and I, and I pursued it from that day forward. So fast forward to who I am now and where I am now. One, I live in Florida, which is much better than New Jersey for a lot of reasons, but mostly the weather. I live right by the beach and it is amazing. It is just a joy and a blessing to be able to go outside every day. But I am truly entering a CEO phase of the business that I had the vision for when I met mel back in 2019. I believe it was 2019. And the. So, so I have, I have, you know, it's, it's a multi million dollar entity now and we are expanding that to launch a venture capital arm in the next six to eight months where we started an incubator. Now incubator is very different than a business coaching program where a business coach is designed to take a proven model and help you implement that proven model. Just copy and paste, copy and paste. There's great purpose for that. There's lots of people who could benefit from that. My mission, my purpose in life is to inspire innovation in health care. That's, that's why I'm here. And an incubator uses principle based learning to help people with any idea bring, bring that idea to life and start serving the niche population that they feel called to serve. We've had 600 clinicians through this program and we have been slowly creating the plan for the venture capital army where myself and my business partner had invested. Now in six businesses total, including one that I founded, a consumer facing one, and we will soon open that up to fundraising from other sources. To then invest into our fund which will be spread between these, these, these startups. And man, to think about that as a reality From a guy 8 years ago who had a negative 200k net worth and zero business experience is just kind of unbelievable. And then from the other side, financially, obviously there's, you know, so much positive going on in life. But more importantly, I wake up and see my kids every single morning. I often take them to school. I can meet my wife and my youngest who's not in full school yet, for lunch. You know, whenever they're in this part of town. I have a co working space a few minutes from my house to keep some good work, life balance separate. I'm home every day for dinner. We eat dinner at the table like an old school family. I can't believe that's old school. Now all the time I play sports and poker with a whole bunch of friends here I have a better social lifestyle and it's honestly just a dream come true. You know, it's far from perfect. I don't want to misrepresent. There's still struggles, there's constantly things I'm working on. But in a, you know, a comparison from 2015 Frank to 2023 Frank, I'm eternally grateful for, for all that I have.

What, what is.

What is the current Frank doing different than, than the 2015 Frank?

Oh man. I mean, everything I would say, everything I'd say, the only thing that somehow didn't change is back then and I look back and I, I, I give reverence to myself, which I think more of us need to be doing, is that I held a vision even despite such a dark, desolate place. And when money would come in, I would just consistently reinvest it into the business, which was both what propelled it to the levels it did, but also propelled my downfall. So I won't treat it because it brought me here, but I do that very differently now. So I do invest in my business, but I was definitely the entrepreneur who every dollar that came in, I was almost automatically just looking to feed it directly into the business. Constant business growth, constant business growth and very little personal financial growth in any other buckets. And I would say that that fundamental mindset shift is a major one.

Yeah, and this is, look, this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs I think struggle with. Especially because they say, well, if I invest a dollar in my business, I can actually probably make $20. But you're saying invest it outside my business and I might make $10. Why would I do that? But if we just look at that $10 versus $20 as the only metric, then you got a case. But you can't look at it without the other costs, the other elements. How much risk are you taking on when you put everything into the business and nowhere else? And if the business goes south or you end up like, if the pandemic hits you before you, you sold the business or any of those things, and everything 100% is going into the business because you think it's the highest return and, and you have no diversification, you know, no stratification. You put yourself at risk. The other thing is, what's the emotional costs? What are the other costs around that? And we tend to discount those. And why I keep saying that we have to be on parallel journeys, an earnings journey and a money journey is for the sake of choice, that Frank has a choice. Now I'm going to get up and I'm going to hang with the kids. I'm going to walk them to school, I'm going to have lunch with my wife, and I have a choice. And I have the ability to say yes, no or indifferent, but it is no longer. I'm on the treadmill and I know if I slow down I'm going to stumble and fall. But you have a choice. And I think that's really the driving force behind.

Figuring out how do we run these parallel journeys? And whether you're, whether you. And just so those of you that are listening, because I know I have some that are not business owners that are listening.

Is that it doesn't matter whether you are a business owner or an employee, a wage earner, you still have to be on two parallel journeys. You still have to have an earnings journey, which is the job, but you have to have the money journey. We no longer live in the industrial age where pension plans are prevalent. Pension plans, meaning lifetime income streams after you retire, they don't exist anymore. They do exist in very few businesses. But the fact is that we have been burdened and blessed with the responsibility to create our own lifetime income stream, our own pension, if you will, in this new era, in this new season. And it is possible if you follow principles and we don't get so entrenched and enmeshed in old way of thinking and an old way of doing things. And I think that's part of what you did.

Yeah, absolutely. And from a really more micro level. So if that's a macro zooming all the way in, I fully adopted your principle of giving every dollar a job. So if every dollar was an employee, if every dollar was a team member and I were to be delegating and assigning tasks or duties, I just for some reason didn't get that for so long. And now my wife and I meet. We just met yesterday over Starbucks. My older two kids watch the little one. We go to Starbucks. We started talking about what are our goals for the rest of the year. How are we dealing with the goals we set this year? You know, we're coming into April and I'm sorry, finishing April, we're going into May. Like, what's the goal for the summer? What's on the docket financially? Oh, we're going to Disney on May 26th. Well, how much per day are we going to assign? How much per day are we doing this? Oh, let's look back. My kid's 13. He needs an allowance now because he's spending money. So we either need to assign it and control it and delegate it, or it's going to just happen automatically. And we're going to pass on these, these, you know, perhaps old money habits that we got away with because of my income earning potential that they might not have or they might not desire to have. And I want them to have the optionality and the freedom to choose. But having every job, have every dollar, have a job is without a doubt one of the the biggest changes that that's occurred and attribute to where I'm at now. It's also flipped. Budgeting. Budgeting. That word always had meant restriction to me. That word was meant like less. No, you know, if you just were to like throw out words that budgeting cheap, you know, no cutting corners, you know, all those type things. And now budgeting to me means ensuring we're putting the money behind what actually matters most. So if that. Sometimes that is something that's a little more superficial, sometimes that is something a little bit more frivolous. But that's very by conscious design now saying, okay, you know what, yeah, we're going to splurge on this thing this month because we understand the full spectrum of where the money is going and we're allocating a little bit each month to be able to do that. That budgeting now allows for that instead of the other way around, which was a very negative and almost restrictive type philosophy.

So. And you said a couple things. I want to make sure that the viewers and listeners here. First off.

You and your wife got together and you talked. This wasn't sitting at Starbucks and going, honey, you spent $20 too much on that manicure. This was about you talking about your life, what the goals are, what the vision is, what is. Because when we find ourselves. Because one of the first things takeaways that I'll tell people in one of my keynotes is I say first things first. If you're in a committed relationship, should be in a committed relationship, are married, whatever your significant other, sit down, have a conversation. But not a conversation about spending. A conversation around dreams, a conversation around vision, a conversation around what you want in life. Because we don't have those conversations. And when we come together on that common vision, that dream, that desire, that goal, when we then start to say, okay, how do we make it happen as a togetherness? It doesn't separate us. Like, money is one of the highest causes of divorce.

Behind infidelity, which is crazy. It should be bringing you together because you should be on a common journey. That's the thing that I think you, you, you, you hit on. And I want people to hear that this isn't about you guys going over the budget and saying hey and judging each other and, and saying, you got to stop. Because now when we both make decisions from the dream forward, we can make decisions because we know the purpose behind those decisions.

The second thing that I think is important.

Jumping on the marriage.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah yeah, yeah.

The. An effort to make sure that I'm always being really transparent that moment. Know. And I would say this is the last year's worth of, of evolution. Like we, we have been meeting now for about a year in this form. That has only happened because we weathered the storm of do it. Try attempting to do it the, the wrong way. You know, like, hey, how come you spent this and how come you spent that? And it's going both ways or, or feeling like I was coming across. I was reading about all this stuff and then bringing it even with good intentions. But it would put her sometimes on the defensive, even though I wasn't accusing. But this notion is not normal. Most people have never had a conscious relationship with money, which means then that they struggle to share a conscious relationship with money. They don't have one themselves. So if one partner is, is leveling up their, their financial knowledge without keeping the other one informed or like trying to bring with or inviting to bring with or something, it. It will be misrepresented even if you have the best of intentions. So it really did take a couple years of inviting and saying, hey, this is, you know, and now with the language that finally made it click, was budgeting in this form of budgeting that we're Doing is the vehicle for this co created future. But I don't want it to be about my future. Do you want to like, sit down and co create our, our goals to another level? Because I'd love to just, you know, we've clearly achieved a lot. You know, it's a. Jacqueline and I have a, a track record now where we can say we hit our goals. You know, when we work together and she supports me and I support her, we hit our goals. Well, let's get even more tangible and we'll hit those too. So let's dream a little bit bigger and then through that, that shared creative, creative vision. Starting there, then we could reverse down to, ooh, wow, we spent $140 last month at Starbucks. You know, that's a, you know, the run rate of that per year, that's another thousand dollars. Let's say if we cut that back and 75%, that's another thousand dollars we could be putting towards this dream vacation. That's frivolous. You know, it's like not, it's not a normal one. Let's just, but let's, you know, let's take it from there and put it over here. And all of a sudden not going to Starbucks when you want it is because you're holding the vision for that dream vacation and, and not because, you know, the husband or the wife said you're not allowed to or something like that.

Yeah, you're making the decision out of desire and not deprivation.

Wow, man, you're so good with those things, Mel. One day I. What are those called? Alliterations? Yeah, they just stick to people's brains. I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to train. You gotta train me on this. Oh my God, those things.

Well, I. Here's the other side of that, because. What is it? What do you think it's done for your, your relationship with Jacqueline?

Oh, there's just so much less friction in that realm. You know, that's just the truth. That's one less thing to, you know, potentially get in the way of a more meaningful relationship. Most of it was, in retrospect, to just the misunderstandings or because we. It was an omission of talking about it. Not that the actual issue was what if we had just talked about it using a shared language and shared vision for an outcome. Almost all the problems actually just figure themselves out.

Yeah, I think that's the issue is we don't talk about it. And you used a word which I love, and that's that you are conscious with Your money discussions and what, you know, people say, well, the whole thing with budgeting everything. You're going to tell me I can't spend. No, no, no, I'm not. Actually all I want you to do. Yeah, if you want to. You want to do Starbucks, you want to do whatever, just do it. Just be conscious of it and be aware.

Of the actual cost. And if you're doing it fully informed, who am I to tell you how to live? I mean, trust me, I spend a whole lot of money doing things that probably people look and go, what are you doing? But it's conscious, it's intentional. That's where I think that we get caught up in the money game is when we're unintentional or we're unconscious, blindly swiping, going, that looks good buy, you know, and we don't realize the cost of that over time and the repetitive cost of that, because what we're doing is we're buying mindlessly and for something other than utility or need, we. We're buying to satisfy some emotional response or something like that. That's when we start to get in trouble. So.

I love the fact that you're looking at this and saying we're just simply going to be conscious about the choices we make and be together on that journey and not just allow unconscious spending or unconscious money things. I can earn it again. I can do that. Those kinds of things come into play. And then you find that we're. We're in a hole.

Yeah, yeah. And what's helped me drive that home, and then we'll go back to second point where, because I interrupted you, hopefully ever written down somewhere, is when it makes it into our budget, we actually have to spend it. That's like our rule is, so we put away $2,000 a month as a family for anything in the category of health, fitness, wellness supplements, coaches, you know, meaning like health coaches or anything in the, in the health and wellness ring. Trainers, gym memberships, gym equipment. And I expect us to spend that 2,000. Or if we are saying, oh, let's actually make this big investment into this huge piece of equipment, maybe we'll slice off 500 from it and then put that away. But we're, we're, we're like, if we're saying 2000, it's what do you want to spend 2000 on in the health and fitness realm to get us to our health goals, you know, so if it's family fun and there's 200 bucks left at the end of the weekend, at the end of the month. And there's one weekend left. We say the kids, like, what do you want to do? We got 200 bucks left. Let's. You want to go to the beach, Aquarium, the zoo? Or like, let's, let's, let's go spend that. And that, that mindset then actually enforces compliance with the other areas of, oh, we're out of money. We're going to the free beach, you know, where you walk a half a mile and drag your stuff on and, you know, like, and we're going to pack lunch and we're going to eat the sandy sandwich. It's because that there's no more money left in it. And that's okay because we consciously spent it in some other fun stuff earlier in the month.

So cool. So cool. Well, the second point was the consciousness, so, so we hit it.

That's cool.

But you, you also mentioned something about your, your, your, your kid being 13. I can't believe. 13 already.

I know, dude. Yeah.

So, yeah, here's, here's the question. How are you bringing them? Because we didn't have this conversation, but, but how are you bringing them into the money conversations? Because I, you know, I mean, you know, my son, he's now 33. I've got two, two, two beautiful granddaughters and, you know, and his wife's 30, and they're doing really well. But I brought him early into the. Into the money conversation.

So this one's deeply emotional and personal because Frankie is old enough where he has witnessed my. He's conscious of. Of my, my. I don't want to say bad, but my pre. The years where I was not conscious of money, he is aware. He watched me just spend tons of it. He watched me be workaholic. And I do have some fears around that. His actual earliest imprint of money is that you could always make more and a bit hedonistic, you know, so the. How are we trying to offset that one is. I very purposely have financial conversations around them. They know how much money I make. They know how much money the business makes. They know how much money that means that I take home, right? So we think like, oh, million dollar business. That means you're a millionaire, right? When you're a kid, you hear that, oh, no, no, no. Now they know about profit margins. They know about taxes, and I tell them how much taxes I pay. And I'm just very transparent with them, and I show them that respect by just giving them a glimpse into what's real. I will consciously have budgeting conversations. Not all of them. But monthly budgeting conversations where we look at some of the apps we use and say, oh, hey, babe, I think we're over this month on this. Like, what do you think? What happened? Did we. Like, where did we not catch that? And then they'll hear that, oh, where. Where should I pull the money from? So they hear that that money doesn't just come from dad's business. That. But that money comes from the health and fitness fund because we went over in cars, something along those lines. And then lastly, we do use, with your permission to mention one tool, because I do think it's the only one available right now for kids is Green Light. Green Light is an app where you can. No affiliate, by the way. The. The. Where you could give kids a checking account and actually has categories within it that they can choose their spending. So we are now giving him a monthly budget, and he is in charge of managing that 120 bucks between school lunches, dinners with friends, because there's like a town center here. Everybody rides their bikes to snacks, ice creams. If we're choosing not to eat out as a family. But he wants to, he actually can. You know, he could say, I'm not going to have this meal. I'm going to go to Jersey Mike's. And. But. But whenever money runs out, that money's. That money runs out.

Beautiful. See? And that. And that's really. That's kind of where I was. I was going is because when we start to have these conversations, because I grew up in a household maybe much like you, we don't have money conversations. I. I didn't know what dad made. I didn't know what it was all about. I. I did see mom and dad.

I'd say bicker at times of, of because of money, and we can't afford this, and we're not, you know, they didn't have. They didn't have good money conversations in front of us. It impacted me. I remember seeing my dad when I was five years old. It was the first time I actually saw my dad cry, you know, and it was. It was not.

Tears because he couldn't handle it. It was tears because he felt like he was letting the family down. But it. I mean, Lord knows he. He was. He'd never let us down. We had a good life. We had everything we needed. Did we have everything we wanted? No.

But did.

Did we need everything we wanted? No. Clearly. You know, and. And so I know with Jeremy, I started having conversations like this, and there was nothing like Green Light back then, but same Thing created a checking account. He would get a, what I called a commission instead of an allowance. So there was an earnings attached to it. And he would have an allocation, you know, school lunches, clothes, games, generosity, you know, savings and investing. And. But the reason for it was, was to build the muscle around the money, to create the conversation around the cash and to give him a vision and an understanding of what could happen if we started early. Because time is the most powerful tool we have to wealth building. I mean, and so there are 33 and 33 homes in a multi million dollar net worth right now, you know, and so, and the best part about it is he ain't coming to live on my couch. I know he ain't coming home in his 30s home, you know, but I think that we have that opportunity to create lessons for our children that we haven't done. That's when it came driving time, when it came to where he wanted to get his first car or something. I said, all right, here's how we're going to do this.

I will match whatever you have for your down payment. And so I created a matching with him when he would put money into.

An invest like he was earning money so he could put money into a Roth IRA or something. I matched it just like a 401K. And so for him it was like, wait, wait, dad's giving me free money. You know, can't touch it till you're 59. But now all of a sudden he's getting that, that, that flavor around it. And I think that you're doing such a gift for your kids to create financial independence and independent thinking. And so, I mean, I honor you for, for doing that with little Frankie.

Thank you. Thank you. It's not always easy.

No, it's not always easy, no.

But it's definitely worth it. You know, it's. I can only imagine, I constantly tell them if, if I had this education now, if I, if I had the education that you're getting at your age, what life would look like for me, right? I mean it would be incomprehensibly different. You know, not complaining, I'm not, you know, it, but it just factually it would be incomprehensibly different if I had the, the know for savings mentality from time I was 13, you know, through now, the, my net worth would be, who knows, 10, 20, 100 times higher potentially.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean you tell Frankie that, that for every dollar he puts away, for every dollar he put away at 20 years old, it's going to turn into 80, 80, 80 plus times, you know, 90 times by the time he's ready to retire at 13, as he's putting money away, that's going to double. It's going to be a couple hundred times. And so literally, if he, if he's putting money away in small increments, but does it consistently for the next decade, he's. That whole thing will get so much money, momentum over the years, over the decades, that it's going to set him up beautifully down the road.

It's the goal.

Yeah, yeah. And it's not you just handing him money, it's you handing him a skill set before the assets so he knows what to do with it. And I think when we do that with our children, we, we give them the, the opportunity to be financially independent, not dependent on government handouts, any of that stuff, not dependent on debt, and we give them the smarts and the tools to do it right. You're doing the right thing, my friend. I mean, in a short period of time, you've completely transformed from what I've seen as an outsider, your financial life, your family life and your relationship with your children and the time, the way you do it and your relationship with money.

Absolutely, it is. From, even from 2019 through now, it's a 180, you know, so I, I had been, I'd financially achieved a certain goal, but the relationship had not changed yet. And if the relationship didn't change, I am confident I would have tanked the, the money that I did get from the exit from the sale of that first business. And I'm, I'm really grateful. It's still a work in progress. You know, it's, it's one of those things where if I'm going to be 39 this year. So for 36 years, the conditioning around money was a certain way. It's really easy to default or subconsciously, unconsciously slide back so that it's not one of those things where you arrive and now it's just locked in place. It is one of those things where you have to set up systems so that you could catch the trends while it's happening. So we will, you know, use the Starbucks example again, because that literally was the one from last month where the kid, you know, we're out on a road trip. Yeah, we'll stop the cold, you know, five Starbucks drinks because all, all three kids wanted them. We get them and we said yes to it. So it's like $35, right? So it's $35 you do that a couple of times a month. Me and Jacqueline go a couple of times on our own, and all of a sudden we're at 150, 200 bucks. So it's less about that. There's some point that we arrive that's such a trivial little example. Hopefully people could see beyond that. But it's about setting up these systems, many of which you taught me of having the data to then snap you back into awareness. So you could say, oof, that's actually not in line with our values. That's okay. We caught it so super small. There's no, like gigantic mistakes anymore. Where there used to be impulse buys, the reversal of the relationship around dopamine and money and savings, I think was the other.

Fundamental process here. So I was someone who got more dopamine, and I believe that part of this is genetic. I believe it's part. Part upbringing, part genetic. But I was somebody who's dopamine receptors are wired that spending money released more saving money. Had almost no dopamine response in any capacity. It was almost a negative. And.

Getting a system in place so that when I'm tracking a net worth tracker, almost gamifying this by design and putting it in front of me in multiple different ways, yo. And on the budgeting tool, on its own tool, in. In a net worth calculator, because there's a billion of those you could use. And now reversing the dopamine response so that when savings goals are hit, I have actually now reconditioned my brain that that actually releases the dopamine and bigger purchases at the appropriate level actually release stress hormones. Whereas the relationship used to be reversed. And I had to very, very consciously tackle that. It was probably the hardest one to tackle.

And I think that you bring up a point that so many of us, maybe.

We'Re completely unconscious of that dopamine hit. We're completely. They can call it retail therapy, they can call it whatever they want to call it, but there is a chemical response to that. And in an. In a world where everyone's parading their supposedly perfect facade of a life on social media, and you think, oh, wait a second, they got a, they, they got a Denali. I got to go get a Denali too. And, and, and we're keeping up with the Joneses. Well, the Joneses are freaking broke. And, and, and their life is a mess. They're in debt, that kind of thing. And, and we just don't realize that that dopamine hit. And I think that that dopamine Is, is.

Is not just in the money space. It's, it's in a lot of areas of our life if we're not careful about it.

Absolutely. And part of my recovery from that, and I do believe it was literally at an addictive level, was the, the seeking of dopamine from other areas of life like exercise, like local adventures that cost no money. You know, going to learn how to surf. After you buy a hundred dollar surfboard, you then just go to the beach and you hop on a surfboard, you know, so a huge part of the reinventing of my life that really happened most in the last year and a half when I moved to Florida because the outdoor lifestyle is what actually gives me my dopamine. Everybody's different, everybody's got to find mix there, their neurochemicals flourish. But outdoors, a sense of adventure, a sense of variety, those are the things that, that really are my values, you know, beyond the business stuff version of values. So once I loaded up on my arsenal of hiking, biking, surfing, going to the beach, playing with my kids, certain things, I love playing pickleball with my kids. It's like so fun. When you start to train yourself to get dopamine from the real world again, you then wean yourself off of the dopamine from our digital world in the form of social media, in the form of online shopping, in the form of even business. You know, my main form of dopamine for a long time was just seeing my stripe accounts receivable monthly. So seeing it hit 100k and gamifying like we got to get 100k a month. 100k a month. 100k A month. Well that, that was more of a dopamine response for me than let's say going for a bike ride. So I've been able to hold those goals, you know, but duality, be able to do both while reorienting my dopamine response to the real world and seeing saving, seeing as wealth as a pathway to doing those things for the rest of my life, you know, so.

Hopefully that serves somebody.

Yeah, no, I think it's something we don't, we don't talk about enough. We don't talk about that. You know, when we start to see the unconscious elements of, of spending and, and money decisions, a lot of times it is satisfying that dopamine hit.

Yeah.

So yeah.

And I. Another strategy that helps me rewire the dopamine thing was, and I think you were the one to give me this is any major purchase over a certain dollar amount. So that dollar Amount has changed, but in the beginning, it was like 250 or something like that. $250? I would be. The answer was not no. The answer was wait a week. I'm pretty sure that that was one of your coach calls with me. That one changed my life. Because a week later, like, what was I. What did I say I needed less? You know, like, you can't even remember what you're on. You know, it's like. And if it does stick, you say, okay, that. That means it's important. Now you're coming at it from this very logical brain, not hyped up, not believing that there's only 24 hours left, not falling for the buy one, get one, not falling for all these other things. But that one week, though, that changes everything. Now, within that week, doing a visualization of is this another thing that then in one to two months, I'm just looking to throw away and. And replace and get another one of. Oftentimes, visualizing having it gives you the same dopamine. And then when that wears off, you have a real perspective, and then you can list the negatives of owning it. So oftentimes we embellish in these fantasies that when I buy this, I will be so much happier when all things are balanced, right? So if we spend more time saying, well, I want to build a home gym, and that's a major investment, I just did. After moving from Jersey, where I sold my home gym mostly because I couldn't fit it in the pods that we had rented, it wasn't worth getting a third pot, but I joined at the local gym here. And I recently said, well, let's budget out what it would look like. Wait a week. Six grand is the total. Because I wanted some very specific equipment.

Weighed. All the pros and cons visualized, there are a lot of negatives. You know, it's going to be boring. It's going to be lonely. I said, I live in Florida. Florida garages are hot. There's not a room in my house. So when you list out all the negatives, you. You neutralize the neurochemical cocktail that gets created by purchasing something. And if you still feel like purchasing it afterwards, chances are it's more grounded in a reality and is in line with, well, me having a home gym means I actually take the kids to school more and I get to shower in my own house, and there's just, like, less to pack and I don't have to wait for these machines. So I'm going to deal with the negatives I'm going to pull the trigger on the six grand. And it's all calculated and it's just a completely different way of making these money decisions.

I love this. So good, so good, Frank. So good. The kinds of things that you've done over the number of years that we've known each other. And I've watched you grow as a person, as a man, as a husband, as a dad, as an entrepreneur, and it's just a joy to see you. You have been by my side. For some of you that don't know.

He has helped numerous people through cancer. He was with me during my cancer journey to the point of monitoring everything. My sleep, my nutrition, everything. When I didn't sleep well, I'd get a text from going, dude, what's happening? I'm going, man, you know too much. You know too much. So, you know, just. That's the kind of heart and soul Frank has. As we start to close this out, a couple things. One is.

What would you say to someone that's starting this money journey? And the second is those that maybe want to follow Frank or know more about Frank, how do, how do they, how do they catch up with you?

Yeah, I'm going to give one, one other thing first. Everybody who's listening, give this man a chance to change your life. Because if you do, he will. I've been a part of group programs. I've been a one on one client. I've done a whole slew of what he has to offer. And I don't know if anybody else has the kind of pride.

That he puts into each of these things that he. Mel doesn't do anything at 99%. You know, sometimes people say this guy doesn't do anything half assed. No, Mel doesn't do anything at 99%. The guy only knows 100%. He probably only knows 200%. So out of the transformation I've made, yes, I do own my own accountability through it because that's something I used to not do too much. So I did take the steps. But I'm telling you that most of the steps that I've outlined today were put on the. Handed to me in a platter by Mel. And without that platter, I don't know where I'd be right now. And without that, I don't know if my kids would be on the trajectory they're on. There's no greater gift than that. The, the, the, the passing down of, of the lessons that you've taught me. There's nothing greater than that. So thank you. And if you're listening to this, you've been thinking about taking one of Mel's things. Just do it. There's, there's zero chance. There's, you're not going to change your life. As far as the other questions goes, it was first starting out. I, I really do think that more people need to get clear on their greater vision, especially employees. You know, I work with a lot of healthcare employees and their vision is so myopic. It's paycheck to paycheck. It's go in, treat the patients, and their job is important. Many of your jobs listening are important. But it's time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Look at a year, look at 10 years, look at 20 years, look at the end of your life. Imagine you're at the end of your life looking backwards and ask yourself the questions that you think you might ask yourself then. And chances are one of them is going to be something like, how did I use my time? How did I use my money? And you know, time to me is bought by money, so my time with my kids is bought by the money that my business earns. And I think if you get zoom out, it all of a sudden becomes really clear of what to do in the short term. But our modern day society does not promote zooming out very much. If you'd like to follow me, if you're in healthcare especially, that's where you're gonna get the most value on following me is Frank Benedetto. And you know, check the show notes for the spelling on that. That's a nice Italian last name. And that's, that's where I hang out mostly. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, all the same handles and I answer all the DMs. So if you do have a question specifically about how I approach healthcare businesses, I'm happy to help you out. I have an entire library of free trainings that we give away to try to evolve health care using technology. Happy to hook you up with those.

Dude, man, thank you so much for your time, for your heart, your soul and how you show up. I appreciate you jumping on, on the show with me today, man.

Appreciate you having me. It's a, it's a full circle moment for me.

Ah, bless you, man. I can't wait for more and to, to hopefully see you soon, man.

Yep, take care.

All right, buddy. 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 youg 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 your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.