"If You Want To MANIFEST MONEY & SUCCESS In Your Life WATCH THIS!" | Mel Abraham

To me, you can have all the money in the world, but if you don't have control of your time, you're still poor.

You know, there's, there's a lot of different things I want to discuss with you. Obviously, you've had a pretty amazing journey that led you down this, this track record that you kind of managed to prepare the way for you to study as much as you have, help countless peoples the way you have the entrepreneurs and whatnot, you know, with the money concept, because it's, let's face it, it's a deal breaker for business. Right. You can't grow a business without it.

People are figuring that out.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, one of your videos on YouTube I clipped on, you know, in its simplest form, it's a simple question, but it's a very thought provoking question because it doesn't actually take place that often, which is the importance of actually having a financial vision. Like, maybe we should actually run down that track record first. So break down how someone can actually shape a financial vision to kind of help us out a little bit.

So interesting. Here's the interesting thing.

The genesis of the financial vision is actually a life vision because too often we make it a math problem and math is math and we can figure it out. But I tell people one of the core principles, one of the very first principles that, that we need to get a hold of as individuals and as business owners and entrepreneurs is our why before our how and how much. People will come to me and go, how do I build wealth? How do I do this? Mel? And I go, wait one second. Why do you want to do it? Because when the going gets tough, when you reach a challenging problem, when your team. I've got a good, a good friend of mine and he talks about. People are looking for a crusade.

Yeah.

They're looking for a fight. To fight. Whether it's an allied fight, whether it's an underdog fight, you know, whether it's a social injustice fight. They're looking for something to get behind. And if we are simply going after the money for money's sake, one, we don't know when we get to the destination because they haven't really defined what success looks like. Or we get to that number and we go, well, now what?

Yeah, exactly.

It feels empty. I thought this would feel better. And you wonder why there's so many people that I know, I know some people that are, they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but they're totally miserable.

Yeah.

And that's why I talk about this idea of financial liberation versus financial freedom. Because from the outside you'd look at them go, they got a lot of commas, they got a lot of decimal points, they got to be free. And I go, no, they're imprisoned. It happens to be a well decorated prison cell, but it's still a prison cell.

Yeah, very true.

So the first thing I think is really to understand your why, you know, what, what is the lifestyle you're trying to create? And it doesn't matter. Here's another I think key distinction is it doesn't matter what that lifestyle is. Assuming it's moral, legal and ethical, it doesn't matter what that lifestyle is. But too often we define our lifestyle based on what we see to the right or left, what our neighbors are doing, what social media is doing, what the media is telling us to do, versus sitting back and saying, hey, I'm going to be perfectly happy in a tent in Montana. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with tents in Montana. But that being said, is that lifestyle that you're trying to create, is that your lifestyle, is that the thing that you're trying to define? Or is it something that's being defined by something outside of you expectations? And that sort of. So first, things define the lifestyle. Second, and this, if you have a spouse, a significant other, you need to do this together. You need to have these hard conversations. Money conversations are difficult, they're challenging, it's taboo. You never talk about it, but that's the reason we have financial issues today, is that we're not having conversations. And so you don't make this in a vacuum. If you're living your life with a partner, then you live your life with a partner and you have these conversations, say, what life do we want to create? And, and what does that look like? Then from there we can reduce that to a price tag. What does that number look like? So now we have a emotionally compelling target that is connected to our vision that then allows us to come to a mathematical number where we can then apply wealth principles to achieve that number versus what ends up happening is sometimes we just come up with an arbitrary number or not a number at all. And so we never know when the race is done. Not that it's ever done, but we just keep running. And this kind of came full circle for me in 2009. I had a bad bike accident caused by a shoelace, a mountain bike accident.

Oh my gosh.

I flipped a bike coming down a hill on concrete. I was on a road and I came down, my head was knocked Unconscious, grade four concussion. I couldn't speak very well. I was stuttering. I had no feeling on the right side. And a dear, dear friend who had retired at 37 years old came over. I'm in a neck brace, and he takes me out to went to get pastrami sandwiches when I used to eat pastrami sandwiches. And he looked across the table at me, and he said, how much is enough? And I go, what do you mean? He goes, you're stressed. You were distracted. You were angry because of something that happened. You got on a bike. You didn't pay attention to your shoelaces. You said, how much is enough? Because until you answer that question, you'll keep running and you'll keep biking. You'll keep doing things. You'll keep being distracted. And I think that's the key. Then we can reduce it to a number to figure out what that is, what that enough is. At least we know what we're going towards, and now we can then put things in place to make that plan happen.

Yeah, I mean, I think running is a lot more fun if you know where you're headed, right?

Oh, yeah.

Otherwise, it's just that you may as well be on a hamster wheel. Yeah.

I call them treadmill entrepreneurs because they just figure, well, if I just run faster, it'll solve all my problems. If I just build bigger, if I just scale more. No, no, it scales your problems, it scales your stress. It scales all of that if you're not careful.

Well, being an entrepreneur myself, you know, I started my first business basically sleeping in the car, homeless and whatnot. And, you know, I've overcome lots of various things along the way. But one of the things specifically that you're talking about, I think comes down to maturity. I think that's one of the reasons why what you're saying is so powerful, because most entrepreneurs simply don't know what they don't know.

No, they don't.

All they know is they're on the rat wheel. They're just doing it and doing it and doing it. They're not taking time to take stock. They're not taking time to take inventory. They're not taking time to talk to their spouse will tell you, just fully transparent and vulnerable that. I was looking at a larger live event center because I own a live event center here in Raleigh that we do our events at. And I was looking at expanding it because obviously, you know, Covid put some things on sale, and I'm like, well, I got some capital. Maybe I'll deploy it and, you know, and my wife looked at me, she goes, I have a bad feeling about this. I'm like, well, that means I'm not doing it. Because every single time I've gone against that bad feeling, every single time, it's cost me an unnecessary 50 to $100,000. Every single time.

Yep. Yeah.

I like that smile. That means you may have been there before. I have.

I have.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Well, look, in talking about that, you know, money's fickle because it's. It's. It's either a tool or it's a weapon. Right. You know, it seems like the more money you get, the more it just showcases who you already are as a person, as character. Right. So that you got those parts and pieces. I think our ultimate goal was not to just give financial literacy and wisdom to entrepreneurs, but also help them have that holistic life, joy, contentment piece that you were just talking about.

Yeah. So I look at things, and I use the term affluence. Now, some people think, oh, affluence. You're talking about wealthy and this. And I said, no, no, no. Affluence. To me, affluence is having a meaningful life.

Mm.

It's having an impactful life. It's having a fruitful life, and it's having a peaceful life.

Yeah.

And I said. I said true affluence. You know, 25% of it is fruitful is about the money. The rest of it is about everything else. And to truly be affluent, there's three critical outcomes that I see is that one, they're living the affluent entrepreneur versus the treadmill entrepreneur is living a richer lifestyle. In other words, they get the experiences, the feelings, and the lifestyle that's meaningful, that is impactful. They then have a deeper impact. In other words, they're impacting those they serve, for sure. But they understand that the impact is far greater than our customers, our clients, and the people that we serve. The impact is to those to the right or left of us, those that are in our arms, that we care about, our loved ones. And then third. The third impact is it's who we become in the process. And you mentioned that. It kind of makes us more. The money can actually be the magnifying glass of who we truly are.

Yeah.

Flaws and all.

Yeah, for sure.

It can be the accelerator of who we want to become.

Ooh, that's good.

And so we can manage that and do it that way. And then the third thing. So if we have a richer lifestyle, deeper impact, the third critical outcome for an Affluent entrepreneur, I think is to truly have complete freedom. And when people think about freedom, they go, oh well, you know, it's financial. No, no, no. Actually to me you can have all the money in the world, but if you don't have control of your time, you're still poor. Yeah, I don't have the ability. So there's money freedom for sure, but the time freedom, the ability to buy back my time, the ability to have choices, the ability to have options, the ability to say no becomes huge. And then the third freedom in there is mind freedom. The peace of mind to know that you and the things you care about and the people you care about are okay.

Yeah.

And I said, now you've got freedom. Now you have a richer lifestyle. Now you have the deeper impact. Now you have affluence.

Love it, Love it. You know, it's, I was thinking back, you know, I've, I was very fortunate to have people believe in me when I didn't believe in myself back in the day, you know, when I was the homeless kid, high school dropout, ged, adhd, all the other acronyms and letters that come after quote unquote, what a failure supposed to look like on paper. And one of those guys was now the name of Steve Mark. And a story I've shared here on the podcast before, just real briefly, was my father. We were, he had had a knee replacement, had contracted pneumonia, was in the hospital on a gurney with an oxygen mask on. So my father and I go in there and he's laying there of course, and my dad is doting over top of him because he was highly successful. Like he's a home builder in this area. It was worth 5,600 million dollars I think right before he passed. Very, very quote, unquote affluent. He was the kind of guy that was a very gritty business guy, but at the same time was the first one to put a thousand dollar tip under a table or napkin because he saw a single pregnant waitress or something like that. He was that kind of guy and they walk out the door, you know, so he was my end up becoming my role model. I've never forget this for as long as I live. My dad is doting over top of him, talking about, you've done all these wonderful things, you've traveled all these different places, you've, you've connected this and connected that and, and all this kind of stuff, man, it's just been amazing. Never forget as far as I, Steve Myrick took his mask slowly off his face with what little energy he had slid it to the side, and he said, what good is my million dollars with no health?

And he put the mask back on his face and put his arm back down, looked at me with his other hand and said, just pointed at me. And I was like, that's. Like, that's permanently imprinted in my mind. So, you know, when I. When I started developing some financial security and then some financial excess, it helped me keep perspective to make sure that I wasn't just seeking stuff because stuff. We, you know, we've already agree that stuff doesn't make you happy, but the impact that can come along with changing someone else's life like Steve did for me, can. And I guess my question would be if we know that the entrepreneurial mindset, the money mindset, should not be about things as much as it is and just focused on growth. I mean, there's nothing wrong with growth, and there's nothing wrong with earning a certain, you know, certain level of lifestyle. There's nothing wrong with that and directly wrong with it. It's the perspective, I think it is. What are the biggest challenges that you see consistently with somebody who's pursuing it that way and then getting them to just turn their head and say, hey, maybe you should go this way. I know you've worked with countless entrepreneurs. How have you been able to work with them?

Yeah, for me is if we can tap into the partially the pain of what they're feeling, the reality. And I'm. I'm known for in vaccine. My wife says, sometimes you're a little too direct.

I get that.

I ain't got. I ain't got enough time to not be direct. I want them going the other direction. So.

I think sometimes we need to actually grab them like my friend and said, how much is enough? And let it sit. And so I think one of the things to do is to allow them to see almost like what they. They do in the movie Scrooge and everything, Ebenezer Scrooge, and say, let me show you what's what, what's in store for you and for someone.

You know, I've been blessed to work with some amazing, amazing entrepreneurs building businesses and doing these things. And I've seen, Not only have I experienced because I'm, trust me, I'm not infallible. And I've made more mistakes than a.

Lot of people ever made. We just survived him, right?

That's right. I tell people, I said, I said, the good news is that I've done enough right to be successful. But the better news is I'VE done enough wrong to be educational.

Oh, there you go. That's good.

And so the thing is that if we can shine the light on how their journey is currently going, then it becomes up to them to take it on, to look at it and compare it against their values, their desires, their vision, and say, yeah, this is not really what I want to do. Now, there are those that just call a spade a spade. They want money for money's sake. They're not the people that I work with ultimately. They're not the people that I spend a lot of time with, because the people that I spend a lot of time, they want money. But money is not the result. It's just a result. It's not the purpose. And when money's the purpose, that's when we make erroneous decisions. That's when we compromise our health, that's when we compromise our relationships. That's when we compromise our ethics. That's when we compromise things. Because the sole metric we're measuring against is the number of commas, the dollar signs, the size of the launch, those kinds of things. But when we are at a greater purpose and the money is the byproduct, the result of it, then what drives us is the purpose. And what our metric for measuring or judging what we should do is measured not against the profit, but the purpose first.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's.

I think that's really important because it's. It's interesting to me that I think I. I have personally been all those entrepreneurs on my journey. You know, when you come from. When you come from very humble beginnings, there is an element of, especially with, you know, not having college background, GD and all that kind of stuff, there comes this element of, I've got to prove myself. Okay, well, now I got some earnings, so how am I going to show everybody that I proved myself? Well, I'm going to buy some nice things, and then I'm going to intentionally show off to those nice things. And in that entrepreneurial journey, you know, I learned a long time ago that it's impact over income all day long. Create a legacy that outlives you on a regular basis. That's like. That's the core focus. That's what Steve Meyrick witnessed. To me, that's what so many of, like yourself and other mentors that I've got along the way have taught me. The interesting part is it seems like the major difference between the early entrepreneur that is after just money and the ones that have the fortunate ability to work with you now is maturity. And unfortunately, in order to learn maturity, it typically requires a fall.

Yeah.

Have you found that to be the case as well?

Yeah, I think so. I think there's a couple things that come into play. You know, we can look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and there's plenty of studies on this, is that I think that at the very beginning, when you're still in survival mode of the business, money matters a lot. And you're driving to sit back and say, I just, I just gotta get past this point to make sure that it's viable. And part of that is just proving yourself you can do it, it's viable. I've got. But there be. There comes a time where, and I don't want to say money isn't important, it's not the primary driver because once our. And there's plenty of studies that show once your fundamental needs are met, the level of happiness, the incremental increase to happiness doesn't go up as fast with additional income. So if that's the case, what gives the happiness a higher ratcheting? Well, it's fulfillment, it's meaning, it's impact, it's all these other things. A dear friend and client, and she called me up and Alison J. Prince, and she called me up and she says, you're the only one that I think will understand this conversation. And I said, sure. What? She said, I hit all my numbers. I said, well, that's great, and she's doing really, really good. And I said, she goes, but now what? What do you mean now what? She goes, do I just increase my numbers? Do I just put them up another echelon, another level? And I go, hold on a second. We went back to that question of why before, how and how much. And what drives her is to give women the possibility of independence over time. And so what we did is we redesigned her business model like a Tom Shoes model. So every time she sold something, she would create a microloan for someone in a third world country, a woman in a third world country, so she could get a business, an independent type of business started up. So she sent me, it literally sent me a text probably a month ago. And it basically said, just finished my launch, blew the doors off, you know, and I had average value. I don't know, was like a thousand bucks plus. She says, but there was $104,000 going to charity.

Oh, that's amazing.

So you know what that means? She said, that's more than 5,500 microloans. And women, given the possibility My heart is just warm. Oh, man. And that, that's what we, that's where we, we need to start to understand.

We hear the media. The media demonizes entrepreneurship. It demonizes wealth, it demonizes money, it demonizes all that.

And I'm not. Listen, there is a lot. There are bad people out there that do bad things with money. You mentioned that. It's a tool. Money is nothing. It is ambiguous. It is a tool. It's how we wield that tool that matters. To make a difference in people's lives, to have an impact, to reach out a hand and give people jobs, to. To allow us to change technology, change the environment, to get behind movements, to get behind missions, to give families peace of mind that know that their generations are taken care of. It's a tool, but it's a valuable tool if we do it right.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny, I was. When I started following you and digesting your content, learning from you so much, I was very interested to know that in many respects, a lot of the content focused on lifestyle or life mastery before financial mastery. How important is a life mastery approach to financial mastery?

You know, I think that I say that every business inqua. Every business equation has. Lifestyle as part of the equation is one of the variables in the equation. And often we don't think about it. As you know, In June of 2019, I was diagnosed. You know, I was diagnosed with cancer. I mean, the whole story is that I was doing great. I finished a multi six figure launch. I was speaking on some of the biggest stages. I'm masterminding with billion dollar CEOs, hundred million dollar companies. I'm masterminding, I'm in Puerto Rico with some of the top entrepreneurs. We're flying back on a G5 together. I get off that plane in Orange County, California, and two weeks after getting off that plane thinking, life is freaking good. I hear the words, you've got cancer and life gets turned on its head.

Oh man.

And I think what ends up happening is that people ask me, they ask.

Well, I guess you got your priorities straight. And I go, no, no, no. What it did is it wiped the slate clean. And you realized what the only priority is. And the only priority is life.

Yeah.

And when we hear that we only have a finite time here on Earth.

We hear that, but I think we discard it. We just let it go and everything. But when it smacks you in the face, you start to realize that mortality is real. You start to realize that what we have here needs to be meaningful. You start to realize that how we live life matters. And so I think that everything we do has this lifestyle piece to it that we need to.

Take into consideration. So now when I'm asked to do something, when I'm asked to speak or do something, I take into consideration how much life I have to give up to do that. Because I know that we've been given a finite amount of slices of life.

And so in order for me to do something like you and I having this conversation, I'm going to give out a slice of my life. You're going to give out a slice of your life. The listeners are giving out a slice of their life to listen to us, and they're never going to get that slice back. That means that it is my responsibility to make sure that if I'm going to say yes to something, that I can fully commit and give it everything I had. Otherwise, not only am I disregarding the slice of life that I'm giving, but I'm disrespecting the slice of life that you and the audience are giving. And in return, I expect the same. And I think that's the thing that we need to look at when we start to look at making decisions. So I think that the short answer is that your lifestyle vision has everything to do with your financial vision.

Yeah, yeah, it's so good. You know, I was thinking as you were explaining that, that trading slice of life, in order for me to trade my slice of life, right. I have to know that I'm either off offering value or causing value to be offered.

Yeah, right.

So I either, either, you know, so in our conversation, just like you mentioned our hope, the whole reason we're doing this is so we can inspire other people who are maybe ready to give up or don't have a place to go or giving it. Give them some tools and resources that allow them take that next step, that next learn that next level. Because I think that, I think you would also agree with myself and a lot of the friends that we have in common that.

It seems like that is the place where you do find joy, you do find peace. You know, you're making a difference. I'm living out the legacy that Steve Myrick gave me. It's funny, you know, I was telling my friends recently, I was like, you know, Steve Myrick hasn't been. He passed away in 2003. He never got to see me build my first business all the way, let alone five other ones. Like, he never saw it, right? He has. No. He never saw me become an author and then start speaking and all this kind of stuff that has happened over the last, call it, decade. But interestingly enough, he created a legacy that outlived him through me. Because every time I step foot on a stage, every time I step foot on a podcast, every time I'm on a video, I'm able to share the little bit of stuff that he shared with me. And that's one of the things I love about what you're doing so much. I can't get enough of it. It's just amazing.

You mentioned the word legacy, and it's a special. In fact, my license plate of my car says legacy Maker.

Oh, that's amazing.

And now I had one person, when I got out of the car, they.

Go.

That'S awfully egotistical. I said, it depends on your point of view. But here's how I look at legacy. Because too often we think about legacy, about what we leave behind when we leave this earthly place. I think that's wrong. I think that legacy is actually something we create in the moment. When we meet someone, when we interact with someone, we have a chance to create legacy. Because if their life is changed, if their life is transformed, even with a small smile, that's actually legacy. It's not some lofty statue somewhere in a park. It's not some big thing that, oh, wow, he or she did really well and now their name is on a building. No, it's the little things we do each every day that make a difference in people's lives and their lives are better for it. That's really what legacy is. And we get a chance to do it today and not just when we're dead.

I feel like I should say that.

With a finger with you.

Yeah, I thought we should say a hallelujah to that one. That wasn't. That was awesome. You know, as I've worked with entrepreneurs myself, because, you know, I've always kind of said that I felt like the greatest purpose in life you have is serving the person that you used to be. So, I mean, I've been that entrepreneur that was struggling and grinding and trying to figure it out. Not really have a place. In fact, I got to a place of my first company. My top line was 15ish million dollars, I think it was at the time. And secretly I was in my closet on a regular basis, praying and meditating like, please fix me. Don't let them find out I don't know what I'm doing. Please don't let them kind of thing. Totally. I was totally the gunslinging entrepreneur in my early days, big time. And as part of that, one of the things that I struggle with in that moment and one of the things I think other entrepreneurs who are trying to make that maturity jump, struggle with is this essence of emotional control.

Right.

You know, emotional regulations, if you will. Like, you know, I'm not. I have to realize that I'm building a team. I have to realize that that team has value. I have to realize that their families have value. I have to realize that how I treat them as a direct correlation of what our reputation and legacy with a company is going to be. How are you able to shift entrepreneurs emotional state to more of a growth minded approach, for lack of a better word, how do you unlock it?

You know, which is really interesting because knowing that I'm a CPA by education, you know, I'm a left brain data kind of dude. And so like I said, I sit on a number of boards of directors. And there's one, one company that I sit on the board of directors with that was founded in the late 1800s, I mean, and we built that company from 20 million to 250 million. But one of the first things that we talked about when I got on the board, I was the first outside director to come on the board is I said, let's talk about your identity and your culture. Because here's what I know.

A business identity, an entrepreneurial identity, becomes part of the brand and becomes part of the culture and it permeates every pore and sell of the entity itself. It becomes the brand. And the challenge is.

Your culture. If we have a bad culture and a great strategy, your strategy loses. If we have a great culture and a bad strategy, your culture and your strategy will probably win that. It'll supersede it. And so I want to spend the time knowing that.

I've got a group of people in an organization.

That are behind a culture, that are behind a crusade, that are behind a vision and mission that is emotionally compelling, connected to their values too. Because in those times, that's when in difficult times, they'll get behind you. For instance, a client of ours, one of the companies that I've worked with in the past is Clif Bar and Gary Erickson. And Gary, and he talks about this.

In his book Raising the Bar.

Early on he got offered $150 million to be bought out. And he was literally at the closing table. He was at the attorney's office in San Francisco, as I recall, it was San Francisco. And in the boardroom he's sitting there with his partner going, Now, 150 million. They're splitting it 50, 50. And he goes, give me a second. And he takes off. He goes downstairs, he walks around the block. He comes back in the room, he looks at the attorneys, looks at his attorneys, looks at the partner, and he says, I can't sign this. He says, what do you mean you can't not sign it? We've done all the work. We're at closing. What do you mean you can't sign? Why can't you sign it? He says, because I realized something was bothering me. I realized that you don't understand my vision. You don't understand my mission, which means that you don't understand my people, and you won't care for it like I do.

Oh, that's so good.

And he walked out.

That's so good.

Now this guy walks away from basically 75 million just to have a pissed off partner going, you're buying me out. And ends up.

Tens and tens and tens of millions dollars in debt. So what he had to do, though, is because the organization knew that they were in play.

And he had to go back to the team, to the people there, and say, hey, I didn't do it. I didn't do it because of you. I didn't do it because you're one of the highest values that I have in our organization. And it would have been the wrong thing to do.

Yeah.

And they rally. But now. He says, but now we poked the bear. The big bear's coming after us, and they're gonna try to crush us. I said, oh, no, they're not. Because now these people had something to fight for. Now these people had a culture that banded them together to move forward. And when an entrepreneur understands that, because people do not get behind the bo Bottom line, they get behind the transformations that we create in the world. That's where the value is in what we do.

Yeah.

And that's what we need to do as entrepreneurs. That's what we need to start to understand as we build teams.

That is so good, man. I'm getting tingles on that one. That's good stuff, man. Dude, awesome. Look.

I've got another little. I will call it a pet peeve, because I want to hear your perspective on it. You know, I have a couple. Couple of my businesses are tied to real estate. Do pretty well. I do okay. As a result, I have some quote unquote passive income.

And I know one of your things is passive income, so share your perspective, dude. You can see the look on My face? Yeah, you just turned red.

There ain't no such thing as passive income. Here's the deal.

You can call it passive income, but here's what I think the problem with passive income is, what it, the psychological games that it plays in our mind, I believe, is that too often we're chasing this, this, this figment called passive income because we think that once it, I get it and set it and forget it, it's passive, I'm good, and it's just going to produce the income. The problem that I know for a fact is that you have a relationship with money, you have a relationship with your income, you have a relationship with your wealth, just like you have a relationship with your spouse, your team and your friends. If I took a passive approach to any relationship, what's going to happen to that relationship? It's going to erode. And so when I work with people, I said, we don't use the term passive income because that, that puts us in a place where we might forget about our income, forget about our wealth, forget about the money part of things because it's passive. And guess what? We are surprised when it forgets about us. So what we really need to understand is what we're looking for. And it goes back to that whole thing about time freedom. What we're truly looking for is not passive income. We're looking for leveraged income income where the, the relationship between your effort and input into it is far less than the output and the rewards coming out of it. So now we've leveraged our income. So now your real estate, now under the tax law, they'll call it passive income, but your real estate is a leveraged source of income that doesn't require you to have a one on one relationship with input and output. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So now what you've done is created a leveraged form of income. But that doesn't mean you're not checking the pulse on the patient, you're not letting it go, you're not neglecting it, you're not just forgetting about saying, I'll just look at it years from now. Rather, you have a system, you know, we have scorecards that we use that we have a system to make sure that everything is going well. But what we're trying to do is create enough income in leverage speed sources that gives us enough time back that it pays for our lifestyle. So it's really leveraged income we're looking for, not passive income.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot more sense. I was like, why does he hate Passive income.

Really.

I started thinking about, it's like. Well, it's passive in the. It's kind of like evergreen. It does, it does come in monthly, which is great. I've got the hard asset, the hard assets paid for. I'm debt free. Those are good things. Okay, great. So business is debt free, I'm debt free. That's all great. But if I let any of those properties, including the live event center here, if I let any of this property go into dilapidated state, not only do I lose the value of the property, but I'll also lose the value of the rental income that comes from that if I'm not paying attention to it. So now it makes a whole lot more sense.

Yeah, yeah. And I look at asset based like this real estate as what we call level three in the five incomes, the five incomes we talk about. So the first two levels of income are active, which is what most people start out at. You're running the miles, it's one on one, it's solopreneur, it's employee. You're putting.

One ounce of effort in to get one ounce of reward back. Then from there we step up to business income where we're starting to go one to many and we're scaling and we're no longer so much owner dependent, but we still are dependent at a level. So it's leveraged, but not fully leveraged, not totally. Then you have your asset, which is where real estate is, and then above that is residual, and then above that is portfolio. And so those are the five incomes. What I really want everyone to do at some point is I want more than 80%, more than 80% of your lifestyle, your vision lifestyle, to be paid for from the top three levels of income. Because that means, and this is what, what allowed me, okay, we'll go back to my cancer. In, in. Once I got diagnosed, I looked at things and said my focus has to be on healing. Things were up on a trajectory, things were moving, I was getting momentum and we literally shut it down. Okay, I shut it down in the sense of my active role was removed. So the income that I was getting from those bottom two of active and business went to maybe 10, 15%.

Or less. Well, that means how do I pay for my lifestyle now? Some people would say, well, you just dip into your emergency fund and start selling things.

And draining savings and all that stuff, which is fine, you can do that. But I can tell you if I start selling, if I start selling my wife's shoes, it would have been worse than the cancer okay, so. So the reality is, is that what we did, because I have built a financial machine with the top three incomes. I then turned my turn, just had the income turned on and said, send it to me instead of reinvesting it.

Yeah.

And that paid my lifestyle, but it allowed me the time, the options, and the choice to take care of myself during the times that I needed to. And then as I came out of the cancer, I said, great, shut those down, keep them reinvesting, and let's go back to the active in business. And here I am. And I didn't sell things, I didn't drain things. I didn't go through savings. I didn't do any of that. We just used a machine that was built over time using proper wealth principles to make that happen. That's the beauty behind making sure that you're working off of the five incomes.

Yeah. And then it's so good, because people don't understand that you use principles all day long, every day, whether you know it or not. Either they're principles that are building you a future, or they're principles that are stealing your future. They're one of the two, because inside of every principle is a promise. You apply that principle and you get the equated value of the promise back.

Right.

So you've got those things going on when you look at that. I think that's why people need the right principles. Because if they have the right principles, apply the right effort, be patient with the right amount of time to let those principles begin to stack on each other, then you end up having a roadmap. Which is one of the reasons why I like the affluence blueprint is because it does exactly that. Break that down just a little bit. And then also help the audience understand how they can take advantage of it, because I think it's very important.

So here's the thing. And you use the word principles, and I use the word principles. Here's what I believe. Principles are fundamental truths.

Mm.

But they're also a system of behavior. Yeah, a system of behavior. And I use that word specifically because most people that sit back and say, I have a money problem, I can look at them. I can truly look at them and go, yeah, you probably don't have a money problem, which you have as a behavior problem, because it is. The money problem is a. Is a symptom of a behavior problem. And when we fix the behaviors by using proper principles, now all of a sudden, the money problem magically disappears. But it's not that I have a money Problem. It's the fact that I'm doing behaviors or actions that are not wealth building actions, they're wealth defeating actions, if you will. So the affluence blueprint for me was something that was literally created over my 30 plus years as an entrepreneur. Started back in 1996 because I was a single full time dad as an entrepreneur taking care of my boy who was five and a half, six years old.

And I was doing what most entrepreneurs do. You just put your head down, you dig in and you do the miles and you run the miles and you're doing the work. And then Jeremy comes running in from school one day, says, daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today. And.

He shows me this picture of in blue felt the pen. And there I am standing in front of two computer screens, a phone in each ear and the one on desk ringing. It wasn't of us playing, it wasn't of us Disneyland. It wasn't of us doing anything. And here's the thing, I could have sat there and said, hey kid, man, this is how we keep the roof over our heads. This is for you, it's for us, it's for us to be able to live and do the things that you want to do. But see, that's about my profits. He didn't care about my profits, he cared about my presence. And it was in that moment, or well, not in that moment, it was the reflection on that moment that I probably learned one of the greatest money, wealth and business lessons at the hands of a six year old. And that is this idea of work. Life balance is a myth. It's about harmony. Because every choice we make is a life choice. Every decision we make is a life decision. And so I looked at it and said, how do I recreate my business? How do I recreate my wealth? How do I create something that gives me the time back in a way that allows me to live an affluent life, to be the best dad. The greatest gift I was given is being a parent, to be the best dad I could be to this little boy. Now fast forward.

Jeremy's 30 years old, started his business at 16. He's married to a beautiful 27 year old gal. They're expecting their first child. So I'm gonna be a granddad of a granddaughter.

Welcome to the club, baby.

Yeah, bring it on.

We got one and one on the way.

There you go. And they, they, they're 30 and 27, they have three homes already. They.

They'Re got a net worth in the seven figures. They, when they Announced their. The gender of the baby. They looked at us and said, hey, would you take care of our dog Lexi? I go, sure. I love Lexi. You know, the Australian shepherd said, how, you know how long you go For a month? I go, what do you mean, for a month? I go, yeah, we're fine for a month, but what are you. Where are you going to be? He goes, well, when the baby's born, we're not going to travel as much. So we rented an Airbnb in Maui and we're going for a month.

Wow.

This is what having the right blueprint does, is to create something where we have the ability to make those decisions, those choices, to do something in a way that does that. And so what we really focus in on, the affluence blueprint is those critical outcomes of richer lifestyle, deeper impact, incomplete freedom. And the way we do it is saying, let's make sure that you've got the three pillars. A pillar and a system to generate and scale your income and cash flow. A system to accumulate and multiply the cash flow. How do we make it? Build assets to create the financial machine, and a system to insulate it and protect it from loss, from lawsuits or other demons out there, if you will, that can take it away. And that's really what the pillars of the whole system are built on. But it's really how I've lived my life, how I taught my son to live his life. And the clients that I've worked with. And it's worked. And so it's been put into a system primarily because my clients, some of my dear, dear friends and clients that I've worked with, like James Wedmore and Rick Mulready, and some they pushed me and said, you got to get this into other people's hands. You got to stop doing this one on one. You got to stop giving. You got to give this to more people because people need this. And with the cancer, showing me the importance of having the machine was one thing, but with the pandemic, it showed me a whole nother vein. And with that, that, I said, this is so. People said, you know, when I first got diagnosed with the cancer, it was like, why, why, why, why, how, how, how? And that's a dark place to be. What I realized is that I was searching for the why and the cancer in the past. It's not there. The why for the cancer is in the future. And I get to define it. I get to give the value of the cancer. And the value of the cancer is that I get to Help people understand what it means to be financially liberated, what it means to have peace of mind, what it means to build something. Yeah. It is simple. It may not be easy, but. But to build it in a way so they can live a life of affluence and freedom and liberation. And I believe truly that that's a birthright.

I totally agree with you. I think there are far too many people living in fear that. And they're only in fear because they weren't prepared and they weren't prepared because they didn't know any better.

Yep.

And then you've got what my good friend Rory Vaden says is you have this opportunity to have mission. Mission driven messengers. Right. So a mission driven messenger to me is nothing more than somebody who has learned a very valuable lesson. And that lesson should be shared with the world in such a way that it creates an impact that allows that person to find that same promise that was predicated by the mentor in the first place.

Amen.

Why I love your stuff, man. I love your stuff. Where can everybody learn more about you and learn more about the affluence blueprint because.

Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram melabraham9. No idea who the first eight are, but we'll find them.

My website's melabraham.com you can find out about the affluence blueprint and stuff there. I have a Facebook group that's called the Affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group. But I'd love to hear from people. Listen, I truly believe that no matter where we are, we can all be financially independent, we can all take control and we can all have an impact and that's a birthright that we get. And I've. There's anything I can do to serve, to support, to make that happen, then I'm game. Let's do it.

Let's do it. And I'll do it with you, man. We're have some fun. So. Well, I appreciate you taking some, some time out of your day and investing it here. Like we talked about earlier. I really appreciate this. I think this was an important conversation that a lot of entrepreneurs and people that maybe aren't even entrepreneurs, maybe they're. Maybe they're C suite professionals or even blue collar, like whatever, whatever their background is. I think it's a conversation that everyone needs to, to hear, digest and then God willing to take some action on it, right?

Heck yeah. Because you know what? Everyone wins.

That's right. Everyone wins. Well, dude, man, I've enjoyed it. I can't wait to do it again. I know you're going to get back to your other daily activities, so I'll let you run, man.

Thank you, my friend. So good to be here. And let me know how I can support you, my friend.

Sounds good.

All right.

What can you say? That dude is an amazing individual. If you love that interview, I know you're going to love this one, so make sure you check it out. Equals is find people who are your.

Level, who are rising up, who are.

Equally passionate as you, who can challenge you, and you exchange ideas and you learn from them.