Episode 17: Cancer, a Ponzi Scheme, and a Six-Year-Old's Drawing with Mel Abraham

Make money, make money, make money, as if that's the thing that will give us the freedom. You actually don't want to leave legacy. You want to live a legacy. They're different. No one has money problems. 80% of wealth creation is behavioral. It's what we do. It's the choices we make. It is 80% behavioral and only 20% having to do with money. And yet we have it flipped. We think, I got to make more money. I got to make more money. That's my wealth. Wealth creation is not a spectator sport. The business we're creating is not the wealth that we need.

All right, everybody, I am so excited to introduce you to today's guest, whose zone of genius is very much outside of my wheelhouse and zone of genius. However, we share a lot of commonality in our, uh, belief and growth, I would say, through grief, through grit, uh, through resiliency, um, and, and just choosing into the opportunities around us to create a life or a bank that we love. And so there's going to be so much value drop for you, whether you're tuning in and you feel intimidated by building your financial wealth, whether you feel confident about it. Either way, get your notebooks out, you're going to learn something new. Mel, welcome to the show.

Oh, it's so good to be here, Melissa Dlugolecki. So I'm just, I'm excited to get into it and and have some fun and, and, and serve some people.

Well, Mel, um, your area of expertise is around building your money machine, right? That's what you've become known for. That's what you've written, um, your book on and really built a movement around. Now, that resonated with me when I heard it because, uh, as an entrepreneur— and a lot of people listening to this are entrepreneurs— I built so much on grit and work ethic and grind, but never really considered, uh, how am I best taking care of that revenue that I create? So I want to hear a little bit more about your story, but before we get into that, let's just start right off with what would you say to an entrepreneur listening right now who feels like, uh, they're on a hamster wheel of generating revenue, but they just can't see really any needles moving in their wealth?

So, and this is, this is such a huge question for entrepreneurs especially, and and this may feel a little bit in their face, but one, we have to find a way to separate your earnings from the efforts to earn it. Okay? Otherwise you will be trapped on that hamster. I call it the treadmill of earnings. It's what we've been indoctrinated into, uh, growing up. Get a good, get education, get a good degree, get a good profession, go build a good business, make money, make money, make money. As if That's the thing that will give us the freedom. Now, as entrepreneurs, a lot of times we think, well, the freedom is down the road when I get a chance to sell or do something like that. But 80% of businesses that are listed never sell. So, so I think that we need to realize that the business we're creating is not the wealth that we need. It is the fuel for the wealth we need. And so when we understand the position of it, now we can look at our business and say, my job is to ca— is to maximize the cash flow from the business so I can use a portion of that cash flow to give me the freedom I want in my life. Hmm.

That's so powerful. And I'm gonna wanna dive more into that sentence. I wrote it down. Freedom is not down the road, right? Like the freedom is not when that thing happens. And my goodness, how often we say that in all aspects of our lives, but Can we let the listener know a little bit about you, where you're located, and how you got into what you're doing and built what you've built?

Okay. So, so I'm, I'm a CPA by education and, and, uh, but I didn't, I didn't walk the normal CPA journey. Uh, I went with one of the big consulting firms and everything, but, but bottom line is that I had an entrepreneurial spirit and wanted to help people allow their dreams to come to life. Now, at the same time, I, I had a group of partners. I was in a firm, I was valuing businesses, I was buying and selling businesses, I was consulting, sitting on boards of directors. I was doing a lot of things. And then my partners came to me and said, we don't want to be partners with you anymore because clearly I wasn't in the mold of the normal CPA. And so we were going different directions. And so they, they basically shoved me out of the firm with no clients, no client backlog, no, no cash flow. And I was $300,000 in debt. And that happened to be the same year that I became a single full-time dad. So at, at, at 5 and a half years old, my son came to live with me and I found myself with this greatest gift of, of being a dad and and trying to figure out, okay, I got $300,000 in debt, I got no income, I got no business, I gotta figure this thing out. And so I did what most entrepreneurs do. I got on the treadmill and I started to run and I put my head down and I started to, to speak and do things to try and bring clients in. And it worked. So all of a sudden I'm getting clients, all of a sudden I'm getting cash flow, things are working. I'm looking at my son at at that point, 6 years old. And I said, dude, this is gonna work. We're doing okay, you know. And, and he comes running in from school one day and he says, Daddy, Daddy, I drew a picture of you at school. And I kneel down because he was so excited about this picture that, that I kneel down to look at this picture. And here I was standing in front of 2 computer screens and a phone in each ear and another phone on the desk ringing. And Jeremy wasn't even in the picture. And at the hands of a 6-year-old, I, I got a mirror into my soul that said, hey, Dad, you're screwing this up. And, and it was that moment where I had a choice, and that choice was to come up with excuses like, hey, kid, we need this to keep the roof over our heads. We need this to, to do the things that we need to do. And, and all the people in my head saying, hey, you need work-life balance. Well, it wasn't balance I needed because balance insinuates that I gotta wait in one side, wait on the other side. We're playing tug of war and that's friction and that's stress and that doesn't work long term. And it was when I realized that it isn't balance we need in life, it's harmony. Harmony is built by intentionally choosing how we spend our time. And that's when the whole money machine concept got, got just birthed is, is at the hands of him. Me realizing that until I could separate my earnings from the efforts to earn it, I was not gonna be able to do the things that were really important to me, to take care of my son, to be there for his practices, to, to do those things. And it doesn't happen overnight, but that's where The obsession came from, for me to start looking at it and saying, I got skills like a CPA and, and building businesses and doing those things, but how do I mingle those skills and marry them to designing a life that I want to live each and every moment? And that's kind of how I got where I'm at and, and just refocusing on everything.

That's unbelievable. I mean, I just had this visual of your son with this picture, and here you are, newly single father, right? Working, thinking you're getting out of it, building momentum, and that must have just halted you right in your tracks as you described. It reminded me of, uh, what's that song? Is like Cat's Cradle, Cat's in the Cradle. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, yeah, Cat's in the Cradle.

Cat's in the Cradle reminded me of that when you said it. Like, the lyrics just came in into my head of, of what that felt like for that father to look back and felt like, uh, he he had missed his son's life, right? 'Cause he had been working. And so your son was like just kind of giving you a gift there. Now I always talk about work-life integration because I don't believe in work-life balance, especially when you're building something. And the days of operating 9 to 5, it's just not how it works. And if I feel like I have to get everything in a 9 to 5 and I'm either on or I'm off or I'm on or I'm off, like it just creates this kind of yo-yo feeling, right? I have never heard it positioned as work-life harmony. And I love that. So for anybody listening who's like, what's work-life harmony? How would you describe if they've achieved work-life harmony or how they can like take steps to cultivate that?

Yeah. So the key with it that I found was too often we get caught in a current, uh, a current or a path by profession, by degree, by expectations, by society, by media. And we're going down a career path, or we're going down a professional path, or we're going down a life path because everyone else expected it. Yet we find that we are not happy. We're not fulfilled, or we're not, we're not, it feels like there's friction. Well, there is because it's not your path. And so that's where the idea of intent, becomes really important. Being intentional to choose the path and choose the time and, and everything. I have a different version of legacy. See, when you ask someone about legacy, they say, you know, I want to leave a legacy, especially when I was talking to them about finances. They say, I want to leave a legacy. And I look at them, I said, no, you actually don't want to leave legacy. You want to live a legacy. They're different. And when my wife came into my life, she heard me talk about legacy a lot and she thought, now she came from Philly, so she thought I wanted to a rocky statue on some steps somewhere. Now, now don't get me wrong, a statue of me somewhere would be kind of cool, but that's not what I was talking about. Legacy to me is what you leave within someone in the moment you interact.

Hmm.

So the small little things like, I'm proud of you, you look nice today. The little things stacked up create your legacy. And, and when you share that, when you look at the moments of our life through that lens, then we start to give the moments of our life the reverence they deserve. Because it's the stacking of the moments that actually create the legacy, and it's the stacking of the meaningful moments with intention that give us the fulfillment in life. The money, the financial side of it is just the vehicle to allow us to control the moments in our life. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's where I look at this idea of harmony, saying, how do I be more intentional? Now, you mentioned something about integration because, you know, we have different seasons of our life. Let me make it practical for, for the listeners, the viewers, and all that stuff. When Jeremy did this, I sat back and I started to think about things, say, how do I do this? Because I was traveling, I was speaking, I was doing things. So what I did is I created a calendar for us, a big calendar, and the times that were his were in red. So he knew well in advance where Dad was and, and, and when time with Dad was gonna be. At the same time, I also told him that any other calendar he knew, and it happened a few times, any other color on the calendar he could turn to red in a moment. So he knew where he was in the priority. But it was, it was this intentional design to create a relationship, to be there for his, you know, for his practices and all that stuff that I went ahead and designed. Now, did I lose clients over it? Yeah, there were some clients that said, wait a second, you're not taking calls after 3? Nope, I'm not. And that was okay because I was clear on my values. I was clear on the path and doing the things that I wanna do. Now, fast forward, I'm gonna be married now 15 years coming up in a few months. My wife and I do the same thing. Stephanie and I do the same thing. Our vacations and everything are done a year in advance. We block the time for ourselves. If it's that meaningful, if it— that's, then let's be intentional about it because those are the moments that matter. That's where the richness of our life comes from. It's not the wealth. Health and the bank account. And so, so when I look at the idea of harmony, harmony doesn't mean equal. It just means that it's intentional. And now everyone that matters knows what that intent is.

It's like a dance.

Yeah, yeah, right.

It's like a dance in the different parts of your life, right? And then obviously, as you're saying, always prioritizing the parts that are the most meaningful and the most fulfilling for you, the most important. I love that frame of it. Now, a lot of people listening to Scar Tissue have a connection to grief. And one of my missions is to redefine our understanding of grief, that grief isn't just death, though of course it encompasses that, but it could be the life that we envisioned. It can be divorce. It could be a job loss, change of identity, pet loss. I mean, so many different facets of grief. And for me, as a bereaved mother, I always want to be the reminder because a lot of times people will say, well, I didn't go through that, so I can't feel that grief, right? And it's like, well, no, yours is grief too. Like, it's not just because I felt like— there's not a pie of grief where if my pie slice is so big, yours is now smaller, right? And what I'm hearing from you though is that, like, a loss of what you envisioned at first, which was probably You probably didn't envision being a single father to your son, 5 and a half years old, right? How you turn that into this identity of working, working, working, working. And then there's almost a death to that identity, right? And this reshaping. And so anytime there's like an identity change or an identity death, that will create loss. It could be loss of clients, as you were saying. But there's always the opportunity to then clear out what doesn't work. So How would you speak into how the challenges or the losses that you've encountered have impacted your journey and your career?

There have been many. Yeah. When you frame it the way you do, I think the biggest thing for me is when I finally realized that often we don't see the gift. In the disaster we're living at the moment we're living in. We gotta ask ourselves. So I'll, and I'll tell, tell the story because I think it really kind of demonstrates how I see the things that happen. And, and in 2019, I got diagnosed with cancer. Life was good before that. I was traveling, I was speaking, I would, um, everything was going well and I find myself in a situation where they found a 7 and a half— what they thought was a 5-centimeter tumor in my bladder. It turned out to be 7 and a half centimeters. I'm not a smoker, not a drinker. The surgeons look at me and they say, here's the deal. It, it's in an odd place. You might lose your prostate. We might have to put a bag and a tube in for the kidney. And if it's bad, you lose your, your, your bladder. And, and he said, and so let's be real, it's cancer. So your life's on the line. So like in a moment, everything turned, everything turned. Mm-hmm. And, you know, you talk about priorities. In a moment I realized it was only one priority and that was life and living and everything else didn't matter. Now fast forward, I, you know, I had 2 surgeries, I had 3 tumors removed. Went through a series of treatments. That was July of 2019. December of 2019, they said, you're doing great. After I did a series of treatments, I go back in for a set of treatments again in beginning of 2020, before COVID End of April, I go in for another scope, and I just was flippantly going in like it was no big deal. It's just, it's just a standard protocol. And the surgeon is doing the scope and I hear him say, oh, that's something. And I said, what do you mean? He says, it looks like it's back. So the cancer came back and I started to spiral and I started to get resentful and bitter. And I was, because I wasn't a smoker, I kept saying, what did I do? Who did I piss off? Why me? Why me? Why me? And I think during times of grief, times of loss, we start to ask ourselves these questions that actually don't have really good answers.

Okay.

And I was walking on the beach talking to a dear friend, and he says, you are trying to figure out a reason, something you did in the past that caused the cancer. I said, yes. He says, what are you finding? And I said, nothing. Darkness, bitterness, resentment. I don't know. He says, let me ask you a question. I said, what's that? He said, what if it wasn't something you did that caused cancer, but something you were meant to do? Where would that take you?

Oh, chills.

Yeah. And I never thought about it that way. But once I thought about it, it was right that second surgery or the third surgery, that second round. Started right at the beginning of COVID And he, and when we're having this conversation, he says, people are struggling financially, but you fought the cancer medically, physically, psychologically, energetically, but you didn't fight it financially. And it's because of the drawing that your son did, because of the whole idea of the money machine, the power of that money machine. He says, if clients knew what you knew, if people knew what you knew, would they have survived and move through the, the COVID the pandemic financially better? And I said, yes. He says, well, I just leave that with you. That's what gave rise to me writing the book. That's what gave rise to this season of my life to bring and more openly speak about this. Because I looked at, I said, this is how I can make sense of the cancer. This is how I can take what I thought was devastation and fear and all of that and find a positive outcome for it. And, and so I write the book and I said, I'm in a season of service. It's why I speak and, and everything. And it allows me to now look back on something that in many people's lives is a horrendous thing. And I hope no one ever has to go through what I went through or what you've been through and all that. Um, but we, when we start to ask the question, as hard as it is, what is in this for me? What is the lesson that I need to take? We start to look through it through a different set of eyes. And it's, it's not an easy thing to grasp. It's not an easy thing to do because when you're in the middle of the grief, when you're in the middle of the pain, all you want is the pain to go away.

100%. Yeah. I mean, really what you're speaking into, and thank you so much for sharing and sharing the human experience of it, not like, oh, it was an an easy switch. It was easy to pull myself out of why me, because that's a typical— I mean, I went through the same thing. How could this happen to me? Why me? Why me? And I often speak to a moment where it was like this intervention, like this voice coming from— I was walking around the hospital outside, outside the hospital in Boston, and it was like this light came in and it was like, Melissa, you're walking around like you are entitled to a healthy child. You can grieve on. You can be sad, but you're not entitled to anything. And I was like, wow, that's the message I'm meant to share. Like, that became my purpose, right? That created my whole entrepreneurial journey. I think so much of my business has been built on the fact that I don't think I'm entitled to anything. I can earn, I can create it. Just because we post on social media doesn't mean people are going to come flooding in our DMs and hire us, you know? Like, you got to share value, you got to get out there. And, um, and so you just spoke into that, uh, very similarly. And ways in which I do of rather than how did this happen to me, how did this happen for me? What is supposed to come from this? And it is not easy. And I think what's very important is for the listener, the viewer to understand the coexistence of that. You know, I talk about it a lot, all the time, the word and. Like, I can be angry and like I can be resentful, angry, all these things, and I can choose to find a purpose. I can choose to find a path. So I don't know if that resonates with you, but that's what came up for me.

It, it, it does, especially because I'm not out of it in the sense that I just crossed 6 years. So I am, I am clear. They, they've kind of said you're now low risk, but I go in every 6— now they pushed it to 9 months, but every 6 months I go in for a, for a scope. So there's this constant reminder that it— and had it not come back the, the one time, I wouldn't have thought that it could come back, but it, but this cancer that I had is a 73% recurrence rate. So every time I'm scheduled for a scope, there's this reminder, this humbling of reality that I can come back. I joke around with my wife. I said, I hope I'm never a defendant. I don't see myself as ever being a defendant in a criminal case. But I know what it's like. I feel like I know what it's like for that defendant when they say, "The jury has come to a verdict. Come back into the courtroom." Because every time I go in for the scope, I feel like the defendant waiting for the whole, you know—

You're powerless, right?

And it's like, "Wow." Um, but I think it also grounds me into knowing, like you said, not entitled to things. We're not entitled to tomorrow, we're not entitled to the moment. So there goes back to why the moments matter so much, you know, and how we, we bring that to bear. I look at— we just lost my mother. It'll be 2 years in this September. And I, and And she died, I believe, with a lot of regret. Not— but not the typical regret that you would think. And this goes to what we're talking about. But the regret, it wasn't the regret for the things she didn't do. It was the regret for the fact that she didn't appreciate what she had when she had it. You know, my dad passed away 15, 16 years ago, and she, for the rest of her life, said, oh my God, he was a good man. Oh my God, he was a good man. And I wish I appreciated him more. Mm. And, and the other things, but looking through the eyes of what we, and this is really hard in today's world because we have social media and comparison and people putting their facades on display like it's their perfect life. And, and we compare and say, I don't have that. And we feel bad. Mm-hmm. And if we're feeling bad because of that comparison, there's no way for us to have the gratitude and appreciation for what is in our life. Mm-hmm. And as much as I talk about money, wealth is a statistic in a bank account. And if all I did was solve a money problem, then I failed. I wanna solve a life problem. I want people not to have wealth in a banking account. I want them to have richness in their life. And the richness in their life, the currency isn't money, it's moments and how we experience them. Mm-hmm.

Oof. Retweet that one. I don't even have Twitter or X, whatever it's called anymore. But great. No, I mean, and you spoke exactly into what I think is the weapon against our challenges and our heartaches and our grief is the gratitude. But, and I very much emphasize this in my book, it's in the COVID of it, it's so important to me, it's like without toxic positivity. We're not like, "Everything's great." There are generations of— I grew up around me with generations of Olympic broom sweepers. They're just really good at sweeping everything under the rug, like really good at that game. And that's just culturally how it was. But I want everyone listening to hear what I believe you're saying and what I want to reinforce for us is that finding that gratitude, it doesn't mean that we're toxic positivity or bypassing, but we're really truly seeing what is in front of us that we can be present for and grateful for. And when we— it's like a law of attraction. When we see that, it multiplies, it amplifies. And we don't have that moment like you shared about your mom where you look back and you feel like, wow, I missed the opportunity to let that person know how important they were to me. That's so powerful. Now, we've spoken about several types of grief in wealth, and I do want to get into a couple of financial tips that you have because I want to get my notebook out. But before we do that, I want to hit one other type of grief that I observed that you have encountered in your, in just the parts of your journey that I know. So you spoke about your, one, your family dynamic changing, right? The loss of your mom, the loss of your own identity, in different ways. The loss of your health, right? Those are a lot of different griefs I think a lot of different people can resonate with. So I want to drive home that those are all challenges and griefs and different things. And, you know, I think grief is the most universally experienced. I think we all experience grief more than we experience love at certain depths. Do you know what I mean? Like, not everyone actually fully experiences love, but we all experience grief and loss. Maybe I don't mean that in a negative way, just a reality. Like, we get weird around grief, we get weird around money, Mel. Like, we don't Both of us talk about things we don't like to talk about, right? But you had a loss in— I believe there was a financial scam, right? Ponzi scheme?

Yes. Oh yeah.

Which I would consider grief, like a loss of sense of safety. Can you speak into that and maybe how you maybe use the skills or what you've been speaking about or whatever it may have been to navigate out of that? Because there's a number of people that are there. The trust— distrust is at an all-time high.

Yeah.

For reasons that are understandable.

Yeah.

Right. Um, and so I know I've had that. I've had different things happen to me in that pace. So talk to us what happened. Yeah.

So this was— so this is huge because I, I— the proliferation of scams and everything is running deep right now and, and growing. And, and with AI, y'all need to be careful. I mean, it's huge. And, um, this was well before AI. This was in 2004, 2005. A friend of mine had been involved in this investment. He introduced me to the guy, and, you know, parades his two kids, his house on the bluff in Malibu, uh, nice cars, family man, everything Everything ticked the boxes, but I got involved in the investment and the investment itself sounded too good to be true. Mm-hmm. And I, as a financial dude that did a lot of testimonial, Melissa, I should have known better, but I ignored my rules. I ignored the voice in my head. I ignored all of it because the promise of what was possible just superseded. And I, I tell people, I said, when you come from an emotional space with your money, when we make emotional decisions with our money, they're never good. And he knew how to get the emotions, uh, attached to it. I got involved, uh, turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. And between me and two friends, we lost over $4.5 million. I lost one-third of everything I own.

My God.

Yeah. Now, to give you an idea of how you handle grief, and what pulled me out of this was the one guy that got me into it. He saw this as the— before the whole thing fell apart, he was thinking, I'm retiring, everything's great. Um, but he got so bitter, he got so resentful He destroyed his marriage, he destroyed his business, and then he started to destroy his liver from drinking. We're talking 2005, 2006. He is literally— it took him until 2015, 2016 to pull himself out. Okay. The other guy that was involved with it, he retired at 37. He didn't have He had the smallest amount in involved in it. So all he did was reduce his life and said, mm, chalk it up to a bad investment and just kept on going. Hmm. I was dealing with a couple of different things. One, I'm a CPA, I'm a financial guy. So all of a sudden you talk about identity being in question. Hmm. What? Yeah, dude, you, you're an idiot. How could you get caught? How could this happen to you? Give up your license, stop doing what you're doing. And, and give it up. And so I was starting to spiral down that resentful, you're a loser kind of thing, and judgment and everything. And another friend of mine said, be careful. I said, about what? He said, this is adversity at its worst for you right now, and your son is watching. He's gonna pull some lessons out of it. And if you curl up in the corner and hope this storm passes, then you'll know exactly how he's going to respond when adversity happens. And he says, it's time for you to look at what they took from you. And what they took from you was just money. Everything else you still have. Yeah. So what happened, what, what, what allowed me to get out of it was one, connecting to something outside of me that was much more important. And the fact that my son was watching and he was old enough at that time, he was 15 at that time to understand. So I could have a conversation with him and a dialogue about it and say, we're not ruined. I mean, it's painful, but we're not ruined. Mm-hmm. I then looked at it and said, I still have the skills that built it in the first place. But now I have more knowledge. I have new rules. I have new things that I can keep myself protected. And so that's what got me back in the game to start to rebuild it, is to— is the fact that I had something outside of me that I was rebuilding it for. And, and that it was no longer me building something of a bank account and rebuilding a bank account. It was me making sure that my son could see a recovery from something that was horrible.

So powerful. That's like twice just in this episode you've spoken to the way in which your son has just held the mirror and almost saved you, you know, like really saved you.

Very much so.

Going down path twice that, uh, could have been very destructive, you know, in different ways. Um, yeah, I often say it's so, so interesting and, and the Just so much respect for the way in which you did handle that and found your way through. And just what really stuck out to me too was just hearing that was the second time, you know, with your son kind of being that little guardian angel. I often say that my daughter was like my guardian angel. Her case was termed a catastrophe, meaning she wasn't supposed to die. But if you really were to ask me, like really hold me to like my very highest self, I I genuinely feel like she came back and was here for the time she was meant to be, or came here rather, and was here for the time she was meant to be and was like, Mom, you're on the wrong path. Go. Like, you're not seeing the signs, you're not paying attention. This is what I have to do right now. Like, go. And so I had a moment where very similar— I mean, different, but where I had to sit with myself and be like, well, if you believe that could have happened, how are you going to live your life? How are you going to live your life? Because if you think that she came in here and did that to get you on the right path, are you just going to sit back? And isn't that amazing how our children, whether with us or not, can be that mirror of really how do we want to show up, how do we want to live, how do we want to impact?

Right. We don't think about it. It was never a thought when he was being born or when she was being born. It wasn't. It was never there, but by far the greatest teacher.

Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's just— it's— and it's something that I think when we take stock in it and allow it to guide us and allow our ego and our own stuff to kind of get out of the way, we'll rise to a different level.

I completely agree. Oh, this was so good. Now I want to pull something out of here that I just felt popping up over and over before we get into like a financial little tip you can give me and the listeners and viewers, and then let people know where they can find you to learn more because you are just such a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. But, you know, in every example of grief that we talked about, your own health, right? Being taken advantage of, I think a lot of people can relate to. I had that happen to me. I had a coach run my credit card, you know, took over $40,000, which for me was everything, you know. Like, there's just, I mean, you know, the life that you envisioned, the loss of your mom, all these different things. And every single time, it's like what I've heard is you've been at a choice point of I can be in blame, I can be a victim, I can ask why me, I can point fingers, I can be resentful, or I can choose something bigger than me. I can choose gratitude, I can choose presence, I can choose how do I want to impact those around me. And I would just invite anybody listening, whether whatever type of grief you may be navigating or not, but to just know that we are constantly, constantly at a choice point of which place we operate from, right? A growth-producing side or like a finger-pointing-producing side. But I don't believe that we can be in finger-pointing and victim at the same time as growth. We just can't be, right? And so every time I heard that was what you chose in one situation after another.

You know, less they think that I'm not immune to it. Um, but don't think that it wasn't ugly at times. Uh, you know, after the diagnosis with the cancer, my wife and I, it was a Friday. And we cried all Friday, all Saturday till we had no tears left. And there was a moment where we said, and I think this is the same choice point in everything, even financial, where I said, okay, this is the hand I've been dealt. What can I control? What can't I control? Yep. And now let's get on with it and see what we can do with it. Um, my, my surgeon, he had a poker face for, for years. He literally just last year said, I gotta tell you, I didn't expect you to be where you are today because when you first came in, I really thought that this was not going to go well.

Wow.

And I think that His perspective was the way I attacked it. He says, I've never seen a patient ever go after it the way you did. Um, and I think that if we don't believe that our mind, our thinking, our lifestyle, um, the elements of, of our life contribute or don't contribute, I think we're mistaken. Um, and I think that we need to realize that there's far more things that we actually can control and have choice over. And when we do that— and it could be as little as how I'm going to allow this to impact me, or it could be something big, like when with my cancer they said it's environmental, we can't find a reason why. So what we did is we changed the environment, you know, we put home filtration systems in and all those things now. So, so there are things that we can control, and those are the things that we need to lament on and think about at those choice points. Because the stuff we can't control, I can't tell you how many people call me and go, you know, the market, the stock market's going crazy, and what should I do? It's this. I said, stop worrying about it. I don't make the market go up. I don't make the market go down. Let's put a plan in place that works no matter what happens. And let's get you going and let's focus on what you can do, which is how you invest, how you do this, how you show up for your, for your marriage, your relationships, what all those things we have control over.

Yes.

But then we get all upset and tied up in knots about the things we can't control.

I say that all the time.

We'll never get to control them. So we'll never find happiness if we're so worried about trying to control the things we can't control. Mm-hmm.

Oh, I mean, we could do an entire episode on that. I've already written down, like, I mean, Live a Legacy, by the way, it needs to be like a keynote for you or your next book. Like just that title right there. Oh, I love that. I love what you said there. Uh, you know, I, I think so often we neglect what we can control. Yeah, when we neglect what we can control, because there, there aren't that many things that we can control. It's how we show up, how we treat people, our energy. Like, we work on our mindset. Like, our default reaction in our mindset many times isn't even controllable, but how we train that or react to it or respond to it is controllable, right? And so many people neglect that, or they neglect maybe how they even navigate their finances, which, uh, and I always say in entrepreneurship, people, uh, neglect the process. They They just want the result, but they neglect the process of building a business and building funnels. Obviously my thing's funnels and all of that. So with that, now before I let people know how they can find you, because you've shared so much value here, what is a major mistake that you see people maybe make or neglect in their financial health, right? In building their money machine. And then we'll let them know either one thing they can do or where they can go. A little cliffhanger. Where they can go to learn more and really absorb your work?

Yeah, thank you for that. I think there's, there's one or two things that are really important to understand. One is no one has money issues. No one has money problems. And, and no matter what your bank account says, no matter what it says, it's not a money issue. It's a money problem. It's a money symptom.

Oh.

And it's a symptom of the choices, the decisions, and the behaviors from the past. 80% of wealth creation is behavioral. It's what we do. It's the choices we make. And so the beautiful thing is that it's kind of confronting for people when they hear me say that and, and they say, you haven't lived my life, and that kind of thing. I came from nothing. I came from negative and I came from nothing. So it wasn't something that was handed to me, but I get that that is confronting. At the same time, you should be celebrating it because that means it's part of the controllables.

Yes.

That means that all we have to do, it's not some hard thing. We just gotta change your behaviors. We gotta give you the habits. We gotta show you the decisions, and math will always math out and we get you on the right track. So it, it is. 80% behavioral and only 20% having to do with money. Mm-hmm. And yet we have it flipped. We think, I gotta make more money. I gotta make more money. That's my wealth. So that's the one thing. The second thing I think that is important is to realize that no amount is too small. Wherever you're at, just start. Mm-hmm. Wherever you're at, just start. Wealth creation is not a spectator sport. You have to be on the field playing the game. And if you're not on the field playing the game, then you can't win the game because you're not playing the game. And, and what I mean is that you can't even be on the sidelines. The people on the sidelines are the ones that are parking their money in a, in a high-yield savings account. Maybe they're making 2%. But if I took $5,000 a year for 40 years from age 25 to 65, put it in a 2% savings account, you would end up with just a little bit above $300,000 by the time age 65. Okay, so $200,000 in, you get $300,000 out. But if you, if you got on the field and played the game and you put it into an investment that averaged 8% over that same time frame, same decision, $200,000, $5,000 a year for 40 years, same decision, just a different way to play the game. That person would have over $1.5 million. Oof. So the key is this: get in the game, stay in the game, don't delay it. Don't worry about the amount and understand that it's a behavior game and not a money game. Oof.

That's a mic drop right there. Well, um, I don't know about anybody else listening, but as soon as I get off this, I'm ordering my copy of Building Your Money Machine. I have a nice little road trip this weekend. I'll read it in the car. I've already gotten bits and pieces in the CliffsNotes, but I want to fully dive in. Mel, thank you so much for that. I mean, um, I really hope the takeaway for anybody listening, whether what resonated with you was loss, whether it was health, whether it was what Mel just shared around wealth and getting in the game, the word that comes through to me and everything is empowerment. Yeah. Is like your messaging empowering people to choose. To get in the game, right? To choose the reality that they create. And how beautiful is that? To remember that we do have choice no matter where you're at, no matter if you come from nothing, no matter if you're in $300,000 of debt like you were, Mel, right? $100,000 of debt like I was when I started. And so I just encourage everybody to take that last little bit from Mel and get in the game. And if you aren't sure how to get in the game or what that Like he said, just start, but you can absolutely learn more and take in his work. Um, Mel, where can they find you? What is the best way they can continue to learn from you?

Oh God, probably the, the best way I— is on my YouTube channel, which is under my name. Uh, we put out— I put out 2 long-form videos a week now. Um, and it's been growing like crazy, but, uh, YouTube, Instagram. I love having conversations with people. Um, and keeping them, keeping them on the, on the right track. I'm not an investing— I don't have investment license. I don't sell investments. I don't sell insurance. I sell people on their dreams. And my job is to be unbiased. And, um, and there's people out there that don't like me because I'm gonna tell people the truth. And if, and, and, and so just getting into my sphere, into my, you know, my podcast, my YouTube, and my Instagram, and having those conversations and know that you have a safe place to have those conversations, then would, would you do me a favor? Because you're making sense of the cancer for me. But then I know that I'm giving back to you.

Oh, thank you so very much. I cannot wait to share this episode out to continue to learn from you and just to see how your work and impact continues to grow. Mel, thank you so much for being here. You guys will link everything in the show notes. Below. So Mel's YouTube, his Instagram, and absolutely go absorb the information, empower yourself, and go get in the game. It could change your life. Thank you.