153: Finding Financial Liberation with Mel Abraham

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback? On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst, learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. In May 2019, after finding a cancerous tumor in his bladder larger than a baseball, Mel Abraham, always called the influencer to influencers and the thought leader to all thought leaders, he found his true passion and calling to help entrepreneurs find the same financial liberation that allowed him to shut down his business temporarily so that he could heal. Now, Mel was no stranger to entrepreneurship. In fact, he started his journey at age 11, performing magic shows at parties. He quickly became successful as an adult and then he had to learn how to build a business from nothing after a partnership breakup left him with no clients, no cash flow, no work backlog, and almost a half a million dollars in debt. It was during that time when Mel rebuilt his business and life that got what he calls his greatest business lesson from a six year old boy. Now, through childhood beliefs that needed to shift, a custody battle, business successes to business failures, and then a super scary and real cancer diagnosis, everything is finally in perspective for Mel. Join in today and learn exactly how Mel Abraham has leveled up time and time again, creating everything from nothing. Today on leveling Up, I've got Mel Abraham who I'm so excited to talk to today because I first met him years ago through a mastermind that I was in. He was speaking at it and he was talking about finances. And I remember he was one of the first people that really opened my eyes to, you must look at the numbers. You must look at the numbers and all things finances. And then, you know, I ran into him again recently and so much had pivoted in his life and I started diving in, asking him a million questions and I thought, oh my gosh, I've got to get you on the show. I've got to. You've three stories in one and I cannot wait for my audience to hear you, meet you and understand how you went, how you, you became a thought leader to thought leaders and then all the dips and ups and downs. Thank you, Mel for being here today so much.

Oh my God, thank you for asking. I mean, it has been a journey and I don't know if the Three stories in one just means that I've been around for a long time.

Nah, we were talking before we started prerecording that. Like, just when you think you're on one path, life sort of hands us things and it can pivot you in a whole new direction that you weren't expecting.

Like quickly, really quickly. I mean, open your eyes and smack you on the head. I mean, it gets your attention really fast.

Yeah. So we're going to have a good chat today. I had so many questions for him, but I want to start and I want to tell you kind of the ending before the beginning. For those of you listening, like, long story short, which we're going to get more into. He had a very scary cancer diagnosis not too long ago, a really scary life threatening one that forced him into a huge pivot. And I want to dive deep into that. But before we can even get to that, I want to take you back to mel at age 11 and talk about his journey a little bit because I think there's a lot of lessons in here for a lot of people and I. So many questions. So, Mel, take us back. Who were you at age 11 before you were this thought leader to thought leaders?

You know, for me, I was this idealistic kid who happened to be sitting there watching a movie with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, the movie about Houdini's life. And I fell in love with this guy, Houdini that would escape from chains and would, you know, rise above challenges, but. But also the way he showed up in life. And I started studying everything that was possible around Houdini and then the element of magic. And I literally would go get on back then we called it the RTD Rabbit Rapid Transit. I would get the bus all the way down to the only magic shop in the area during the summer months. And I would go down there at 10, 11 years old and sit there for all, all day watching them demonstrate the tricks, learning and doing that. And then I overheard one of the guys coming in talking about how they were making money doing magic. And I thought, wait a second, I can make money doing this. And so at 11 years old, I set out to. I decided I was going to start doing magic shows for kids, birthday parties.

Okay.

But instead of just doing magic shows, I thought I would do it as a clown. You know, I think when I think back on that, maybe that was my way of kind of putting a mask on so I could show up differently. And it wouldn't be interesting, it wouldn't be Mel. I had this name and my mom, my mom actually sewed the clown outfit and she made. I still have it today.

It's like you had an external alter ego.

Yeah, yeah. Which was a clown. It's not. And I was getting paid like $50 for a half hour show and like so at 11, that was 1972. So that was a lot of money back then for an 11 year old kid.

Yeah. Super entrepreneurial as a kid. And to combine the clown and the magician, I didn't ever seen that.

It seemed like a good idea. This is like a lesson to test your market. The parents love the idea. Kids are scared of clowns. Yeah.

They're kind of creepy. They really are. They're kind of creepy.

Yeah. So the whole clown gig was short lived, but it taught me that you could kind of create your own destiny. You could decide how you want to do it and that you just go and give it a shot.

Yeah. So something was definitely standing out with you even as a kid. Because I don't. There's not a lot of 11 year olds that are entrepreneurial. Like that's not. So to be thinking one, how do I make money and then how do I entertain and all those things. So did, did that stand out at school? Did. Was that making you like more popular, more not liked. Like what was happening with that?

Well, I wasn't one of the popular kids. 1. I'm an identical twin.

Okay.

So I was an oddity back then because there wasn't that many twins. We were the only twins in the school. And I, and I grew up with a name like Melvin. So I wasn't really, I wasn't really the popular kid. And I was a scrawny little kid. Even going into high school, I was only 130, 35 pounds, something like that. I think for me what drove me was something that happened before that time. And I was probably six or seven years old when my dad came home. My dad was. I had two great parents and dad was. He never really taught us a lot by teaching us, by talking to us, but he taught us a lot by the way he showed up. And his work ethic was amazing. His giving to the family and giving to people and taking care of people was incredible. And he came home one day and my mom, I don't even remember what it was about, but all I remember was my dad saying we can't do that right now. And my mom had gotten upset and my dad, for the first time that I remember, I saw him cry because he felt like he wasn't able to Provide. And I think that really started to drive this whole idea of I want not financial freedom, but I want financial liberation. I didn't know what liberation was back at that age, but I do now. And so I started to look at, as I grew up, how do I become more independent? So I'm not beholden to a job because my dad lost his. He was an engineer, a chemical, plastics engineer in aerospace industry. So he went through a couple of layoffs and I watched these things happen. And I said, I don't want to hand my future to someone else that treats me like a number and then decides, yeah, we've used you up and we're going to let you go.

So you had this whole internal conversation as a kid, like without. You're just witnessing your dad and you're thinking, I'm not going to be in that situation. Yeah, interesting. You know, it's interesting how parents try so hard to protect us from those things, but it's like that's actually what helps us build and helps us create when we see that authentic side, you.

Know, I agree and I would love for parents and, you know, I was a single full time dad to have more frank conversations with our children about, about life, about the things like my son and I, we talked about everything. He was involved in all the decisions because I wanted to understand the thinking behind it, not the doing behind it. So he could either duplicate it or avoid it.

Okay, so I now every time you say something, I got even more questions. So like now how did you go? Okay, so how did you go from that to like this first business and then I want to also hear the single dad. How did that come about within all this?

Wow. So I went to college. Now, traditional parents. My mom wanted me to be a doctor and I thought, okay, I got good grades, I can go be a doctor. Until I realized I don't like the sight of blood.

That would make it challenging.

So I decided I wasn't gonna go to doctor. I thought maybe I would do dentists. But that was something that I realized I don't want to be in people's mouths all my life. And so someone, I don't even know who it was, said, go be an accountant. It's a good degree and you can do a lot of things with it.

So glamorous.

My dad was an accountant, so I went to get a degree as an account. And I got so far into it that I couldn't change anyways. But during that time I got a job as a kind of a. Just an employee. Intern at a CPA firm. But he was an entrepreneurial cpa. He was one that was doing real estate development and he would invest in businesses. He did all. He wasn't the typical accountant. And he was the one that said to me, go to the big firms, go to those things for education, but at some point do it on your own, at some point, take control of your future. And he drilled that into me for the three years during college that I was working for him. And in fact, he was the one that said, hey, while you're in college this last semester, why don't you take the CPA examination just so you get the experience behind it, so you know what it's like when you have to take it for real when you're out of school. And then about a month and a half before the exam, he said, you know, I'll pay you for a month and a half. Go give it a shot. And so I took a month and a half off. I studied six hours a day, and I ended up, it's a four day exam, you know, four parts of it. And I ended up passing the whole exam before I ever got graduated college.

That's amazing.

Yeah, amazing. But he influenced Gary. It influenced me to say, okay, so the trajectory for me at that point is go to a big firm, get a great education on how to run businesses, and then find my way into a space where I can do some things on my own. And so that's. I went to one of the large firms in downtown Los Angeles. I had the first job they put me on was to do an inventory for a company called Bandini August Bandini manufactures fertilizer. So I stood in mounds of steaming manure. This is what I went to school for, which further motivated me to get out of it. Yeah, that's funny. So I was there probably four or five years before I just up and quit because I really enjoyed it. But at the same time, I watched like I was looking at the partner that I was working for. And the partner that I was working for was probably 60 to 70 pounds overweight, stressed out as hell, working long, long nights, and probably an inch away from a heart attack. And I said, that is an image of my future and there's got to be more to my future than this. Literally, on the night that I looked at him, it was 10 o' clock at night on a Friday night in downtown la and I walked into his office and said, quit?

Yeah.

And I just, I just walked out and I said, I'm not coming in on Monday. I did something I would never recommend anyone doing, but I cashed out my retirement account and I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't have a job, I didn't know anything. But I knew that I didn't want to work for a big firm and I wanted to have a bigger impact. So the first thing I did was I took literally a week and a half later, I found myself in Japan for four and a half months just training in the martial arts. And that's all I did.

Just super random. Like you just were like, I'm gonna go train in martial arts.

Well, I've been in the martial arts since my early teens.

Okay.

And so my, my instructor, who was a 17th generation samurai bloodline, was in, in Japan. And so I, I sent him a note and said, can I come and train? And he had a little apartment there. So I showed up in December of that year, in 89 or so, and I lived there and I trained twice a day. And that's all I did. I took all my retirement money and I used it to live in Japan for that time. And then when I came back, I said, well, I'll have to figure out how to make money and go from there.

So you literally just followed a passion and did something fun and different and not having any idea how it was going to turn out or how you were going to make more money later. And you just went, yeah.

And my Jewish mother was beside.

Yeah, I was gonna say my, my Jewish mom would have a heart attack listening to this. Okay, so, so what, so what happened next?

So I went to a small firm. When I came back, I got a job at a small firm, became partner within six months, and then I became managing partner that following year.

Okay.

And, and it was in that, it was at that time where I said, I want to build something more than just an accounting firm. And that's when I started doing consulting, valuing businesses, buying and selling businesses, which led to the point in, in 1996, 97, when my partner said, you're not the traditional accountant. You're not doing the traditional thing. It's what got me, how I built that business. Part of how I built it was speaking around the country. So I started to go out and speak around the country. I was traveling a lot, I was bringing in a lot of business and I was doing all that. But that, that's what led to the split up of that partnership where my partners at the time said, we're a traditional firm, we don't know what you're doing. I know you're bringing in a lot of money and bringing a lot of clients, but you're kind of going in a different direction.

Gosh, what an interesting limited thinking. Like here you're bringing in business from the marketing and that's all they could see is this tunnel vision of you're not traditional. Interesting.

It was. And I think, well, in hindsight, you know, you know those things that happen in your, in your life that cause you to pivot, sometimes those, those gifts come to you disguised as disasters. I thought it was a disaster. It was totally. I was pushed out of a firm with no clients, no client backlog, no cash flow. I literally had just purchased a house. So it was $320,000 in debt and going, all right, how am I going to do this? And that was also the same year that I became a full time dad to my son who was at that time five and a half years old.

Wow. And okay, so what happened? How was that happening? All this was going on at one time. And by the way, I love that you're sharing this, so. Thank you. Because I think so many people listening, a lot of people are attracted to this show too, because they're struggling with something and they're in a rock bottom or they're in that downturn. And every single guest I've ever interviewed and including sharing my own stories is through those breakdowns that those breakthroughs happen. So I love this. So I hope everyone's really hearing this, that this is like the worst time of your life or one of the worst times of your life. There's another one coming later. But this is like you feeling like you're devastated and I'm assuming that you have a relationship changing or something's happening, that you're now going to be a single dad.

Yeah. What ended up happening, what ended up happening in that whole situation was this was probably one of the most difficult times in my life. Some of the difficult decisions I had to make. I realized my responsibility was to my son, his mom, who we are. We are great friends today. Back then, we weren't so much, but we went through a really bad custody battle. But she had decided to go with a gentleman at the time. I wouldn't, you know, that ended up becoming abusive. And I refused to let my son.

Yeah.

Go that way. And it became a battle. And in the end, the courts had allowed me to take him and raise him. And, you know, that the other relationship, obviously it ended with her and everything, but they had moved around a lot and it Was a difficult time for Jeremy. Was a difficult time for me.

Yeah.

But. But I, you know, I regret the emotions that had to go on during that time. I don't regret the outcome.

Yeah.

Because I think that it was the right thing for the right reasons.

Totally.

And I had some good counsel during that time.

So when you're in this rock bottom, I'm. How did you pick yourself up from that? Like, what did. What was the process in that? Because this is. That's a lot of stuff happening at once. You're losing your job, you're in debt, you're in a custody battle. You got a lot of stuff happening over a period of time. How did you keep going? How did you create a vision from that space? Like, how did you know what was next? Because it's hard to even get out of bed in those moments.

It is. And I think that part of me leaned back on some of the martial arts training that I did by that time. I probably did 20 years in the martial arts where I started to look at. My instructor in Japan used to tell us, be present in the moment, especially if you're in a battle, because the moment's the only thing that matters. If I'm worried about the past, then. Then I'm. I'm living in the past with nervousness or I'm thinking about the future, then I'm not present. I can't defend myself. I can't do anything. I think what I ended up doing is. Is just that what's the most immediate problem that I have to deal with right now? That. That I've got to go through. And part of that I remember during this time, his. His teachers, Jeremy's teachers called me and said, you know, he's at. He's at risk of failing the third grade, you know, and everything. We can get him going. So I sat with the teachers. I said, right now, the most important thing for me is not whether he succeeds or fails the third grade, but that we get him to the end of this year and he believes in himself.

Wow.

Do that. The rest will take care of itself. And he didn't fail the third grade. We were able to orchestrate it. We were able to support him. And I think that what happens is that I would have been in a tremendous amount of overwhelm had I not sat down and said, let's just put everything down and say, what's the most important thing? And I think that that repeats later on in life with me to say, what's the most important thing? What's the Most important battle that I need to fight today to move me forward for tomorrow.

That's good. So I love that too, because I feel that that is. Life is constantly working at us to force us into that present state. Because that is where. And if we don't do it ourselves, if we don't figure it out, that's when I think things happen to us like these crisis just to wake us up and say, hey, no, right here, right now. Yeah, well, that's what I believe.

And, and I can, I can. And I did wallow in it a lot. Like, why is this happening? Why is this happening throughout my life? And once I got through with throwing a pity party, I had to look at the reality of the fact that I had at that time, you know, I had a five and a half year old boy that was an innocent victim in this whole journey and this onslaught of things and said, I gotta take care of him. Yes, that's gotta be a top priority. And what does that look like? And that's what really started to drive everything, is that I knew that Jeremy was watching.

Wow, so what did you do? What was your next move to earn money? I mean, did you think, I have to get a job, I'm gonna have to go wait tables? What was going through your head?

So that went through my head. Do I need to go to a firm, get a job? Because I could have gotten a job and got paid decently and been okay, but I knew that it wasn't really the journey I wanted to be on. So the first thing I did is I said, well, I was bringing in clients at the firm. They're there, the firm's clients. So why can't I just keep doing that? Why don't I dig in? And so I, I put my head down and I created a plan that said, all right, what are the strategic relationships? The strategic, in my case during that time, because we're talking in the 90s, the Internet wasn't. I didn't have an email list, we just didn't do that. So most of my business building was networking, physically networking, and primarily using speaking engagements, speaking and press releases and article writing to do that. Which is a. It's a longer term play and game to play because you got to plant the seeds over time. So I looked at and said, what are the strategic conferences I need to speak at? And there was one conference that. This all happened in September. There was a conference in November that I was able to book myself into to speak as one of the keynote speakers. And there was 350 people at that conference. It was in Little Rock, Arkansas, and it was actually one of the reasons the partners didn't want. They said, why are you going to Little Rock, Arkansas? So I had booked myself into that conference, so I changed my speaking a little bit to a point that I was pointing out the pain points that they could have if they didn't do things right. And by the time I literally, by the time I got off that plane back in Los Angeles, I had a call from one of the attorneys in the audience and said, when can you come back to Little Rock, Arkansas? I have a project for you. And that landed me a $25,000 project, which is really kind of what started me in motion to start building on. So it gave me that launchpad that I could work from. I just started building from there. The other thing that I did, obviously I put a budget. I know that's a cuss word for a lot of people, a budget in place because I realized I got finite cash coming in, I've got bills going out. I got to be smart about how I spend it. So I had a budget in place about my spending and that type of thing. But I just dug in, put my head down, and started doing the work, which I thought was the right thing to do until about. Jeremy was six, six and a half. He came running in from school one day, and I would walk him to school each day, but he came running in from school one day and said, daddy, daddy, Daddy. I drew a picture of you at school today. And I knelt down and he hands me this picture. It was me and blue felt tip pen. And I had two computer screens and a phone in each ear.

Oh, gosh.

And I thought, oh, crap, I'm screwing this up.

Yeah. Wow.

That was. You know, I say that that's the. The biggest business lesson that I've ever gotten, and it came from a six year old boy.

Wow.

Which is what led to. Some of the things that I'm talking about now is that, you know, because there was this struggle of can my. The gift of being a father, taking care of Jeremy, coexist with the dream of being an impactful entrepreneur? And the short answer is yes, but we have to be intentional.

So. Okay, let me back up just for a minute because I have a couple questions coming up for me, starting with the $25,000 project. Because when my experience is when people are in this place of almost desperation and debt and stress, they start losing some self worth and they don't know how to price themselves. They don't know how to. So what. When they. When this person called you after speaking in Arkansas and said, hey, we've got a job for you, were you having those thoughts come up, like, I'm not worthy? Like, what do I charge? Like, how did. Or was it just like, hey, we have a project that's $25,000. Can you speak into that for a minute? And then I'm going to go back to your son.

Yeah, I can. I think the initial response was to actually look at my bills and go, maybe I can price it at what my bills are for the month. But then what. What really kind of shifted it is they told me who the client is.

Okay.

And that was one of the wealthiest. It's not the. It's not Walmart, but Because they're from Arkansas. But it's one of the wealthiest families in Arkansas.

Okay.

And I thought, well. And that's when I started to rethink this whole idea of not swapping hours for dollars, but being project price based on the value provided. And so I. I turned around and said. They said, can we fly out? We'll walk you through the project. We'll pay. Well, you know what? You know, what? Do you want to fly out? So they paid me a fee to fly out, and they paid my expenses. And then I sat with them and I met the family, and I realized, oh, my God, these guys, I mean, they've got. They're the founders of a New York stock exchange company. And so when I. He says, you don't have to give me. That was the good news, is that when I met with them, they said, you don't have to give us an answer now about the fees and all that stuff. So. Because in that point, at that moment, had they pressured me, I probably would have undercut my fees.

Yeah, you said $5,000. Cause that's what you needed right then. Yeah.

But they gave me the time to think about it. And so I said, well, you know, what I am going to do for them is probably going to save them, you know, tens of millions of dollars.

Yes.

So that's when I learned that, said, all right, here's what I think we can do. Here's what I think we can accomplish. It'll probably save you tens of millions of dollars. The fee is $25,000.

Now. You would charge them a million dollars to send them 10, though.

Yeah, I know, I know. Oh, my God.

Yeah. I hope people are really hearing this, because, you know, I struggled with this, too. I think so many people do struggle with, like, Pricing your worth. And it's not about the things you're giving somebody or the hours. It's about the value you're providing. And what you said is, save somebody that kind of money, like, and to put your experience around that, that's worth something. So it sounds like the answer in that is to sit with it, not just not to react, to really take in the information, do the research, understand, and then come say what comes up for you.

And I think that there's a. If we understand that there's a difference between price and cost, we tend to look at, well, what does it cost me? And then try to come up with a price based on cost.

Right.

But price should be equated to value, not cost. And if I turn around and I can solve your relationship problems or I can solve your health problems, it's difficult to put a price.

Yeah, it's like, what's that worth? What's that worth? Yeah, I'm with you. So, okay. Thanks for answering that, because I was curious about that. So your son teaches you this lesson. Obviously, you don't want. No parent wants to be portrayed as the two computer screens, the phone in both ears. So you obviously pivot. Then what changes then to go to this impact thinking and like, how can I be the both And. And a present parent? What did you. What happens there?

So this is when I started to say the realization that wealth is a statistic. Richness is an experience and a feeling.

Oh, I like that.

And. And rather than chase the money, which is important and it's not to downplay it, but to understand what experiences and feelings am I creating? And one of the things is, I was traveling and speaking. I had two wonderful parents. Every time I would travel, they would come and stay. They didn't live too far, but they would come and stay at my house. So Jeremy's routine was not interrupting with family the whole time, but it allowed me to do the things that I wanted to do. The challenge is that I could have, when he sent me that, showed me that picture, I could have looked at it and said, hey, kid, I get it. I'm sorry, but this is the way we make a living. This is how you get to do this, schools and all that, and use it as an excuse.

That's what parents do. They get defensive like that.

You do. And I had to look at it and say, but he didn't even understand the concept of profits at that point. That's what I was focused on. And what he really needed was my presence instead of my profits.

That's amazing.

One of the things I did was we created a calendar and there was unmovable time blocks where were marked in red where he knew absolutely this was dad and him time. And. And it would never move and never change. The other thing was I did a lot. I did as much as I possibly could to make sure that he knew that he was my top priority. And if he needed me, whether I was out of town or going out of town, I would cancel everything to be there.

That's amazing.

And so those were the things that I started to do with the relationship and just having more conversations with him around it to. To make sure that he felt heard, that he felt supported, that he felt loved, and that he felt important and that he wasn't being bounced around from parent to parent and that type of thing. And I always said that if he became my greatest success, then I did okay while I was here.

Wow. Powerful. So you restructured business to move in a different direction based on him. And obviously that started to thrive because now you are more centered on the true values and impact and all of those things. And then what happened?

There was two things that happened. One, I realized we tend to confuse and assume that what brings us wealth is our income. And it does. But if we're just chasing income and not using it correctly, it doesn't bring us the. The peace of mind, what we really are expecting. I mean, there's so many people we can point to. Francis Ford Coppola, you know, Mike Tyson, even Michael Jackson, all of them. They earned tons and tons of income and they ended up broke for a period of time. And so it's not. What I realized is not the income that was going to drive the flexibility of Jeremy and I, my life, because at that time I wasn't dating anyone and I wasn't married. And it was primarily him and I, but it was how I took that income and was good about not overspending and building an asset base that allowed me to live off of the earnings off of the asset base. And I didn't know how important that is until we get full circle back to today.

Yeah. So what happened that made you realize that? Because we all hear it. And then it sounds like I hear it too. And I can't say that I've fully embraced that yet. And we hear it, we know it, and then what happened?

I think the thing that hit me, another thing with dad was he retired at the worst time. It was right before the market dropped and he didn't. So he was under the impression that, all right, I got this income, and it's going to keep coming in. And when the market dropped, that nest egg got cut by 40%. But he didn't have the ability to earn, and he didn't look at the long term and how that was going to. How that was going to impact us. And so I started to look at if I'm going to think about this long term. There's three freedoms that I think that we all want. And what most people do is they focus on one freedom, and that's financial freedom. And financial freedom. Yeah. So we can buy the things we want when we want them and do the things we want to do when we want to do them. That's great, but I think that that's at the very, very base. It's a basic freedom that we want. But beyond that, I think what's more important is first to have time. Freedom to have the freedom to decide on what do I want to do when I want to do it, and to choose that sometimes I just don't want to do anything or I want to just take off. I remember Stephanie and I were visiting her family in Virginia, and we had some friends that were staying in New York, and instead of coming back home, we just said, we're crashing your party. We're coming to New York. And that's what we did. And then the third freedom was peace of mind. It's mind freedom. And in really understanding, you know, that I have peace of mind that everything will be taken care of, that Jeremy's taken care of, and now my wife Stephanie's taken care of, that I've done things that allow them to be okay. Those are the things that started to drive me to say, all right, so how do you make that happen? You don't make it happen based on the broken advice that we get, the broken retirement system that we have today, where you say, save, save, save, save, save, and then whatever you end up saving, you're going to spend it, and then you pray that your life doesn't outlast the money versus why not create a machine that you can turn on at some point and say, it now takes care of me? The mistake we make is what I found is that we earn money, and those are our seeds. And those seeds, the money can turn into crops, but we tend to eat the seeds.

Yeah.

And if we plant the seeds or a portion of the seeds we earn to grow crops, we can live off those crops year after year after year and never, never eat the seeds. And what I realized is that that doesn't just change my life, it changes my whole family tree's life.

Such a good analogy. So this is interesting. And now I want to really get into what happened with the cancer because just from what you've said to me and the little bit that I know, I'm assuming that you saw this, you felt it, but maybe you weren't making an impact with it fast enough. So then you got hit with this, with the cancer, which, like propelled you into. This is a vision, this is a focus. I'm assuming. Just I'm planting the seeds here, thinking that must have been what happened, but because I heard. Did hear you talk about this years ago, before the cancer was in the picture. But it wasn't your full passion yet. It wasn't your. You didn't lead with that messaging. It was more like, okay, you guys are already successful. Here's this versus, like, this is the need for it.

Yeah. The resistance I had was. I had this resistance because I was a cpa. And what I didn't want to have happen is have people call, you know, say, hey, can I buy an hour of your time? So I didn't want to get into that, that CPA mode. So I was resisting this whole having the conversation. And until someone, you know, James said to me at one point, hey, you teach people how to build their thought leadership. You teach people how to take what they do. Create a system and a process. You've used a system and a process that built your wealth, that built your businesses and did that. And you've done it repeatedly for yourself and for your son. And it's 29 and his wife's 27. They have two homes already and 300,000 in the bank based on doing this. And so I said, oh, I guess I got to drink my own poison. And so that's when I started to realize that it was important. And this became so important to me to start talking more about it and that it is a system process. It doesn't make it simple. It doesn't make it easy.

So, Mel, when did the cancer happen and what was going on in this process when that diagnosis happened?

And I think this is something that everyone needs to realize. I was at what I think was at a prime time in my life. This was earlier this year. I had just finished a six figure launch masterminding with some of the top people. I'm flying back on a G5 from Puerto Rico with people that you would know, and I'm living the life.

Yeah, you're like, I've made it, yeah, great.

I'm living on the beach. I mean, things are great. And I had literally no pain, no nothing. But I was at an event that I was speaking at with my friend Brendan and we, you know, when at Brendan's events, I'm with him backstage, I'm kind of helping him co create the event, the content. And we spent a ton of time together and we were having lunch and you know, we had in the suite and I come out of the restaurant and I go, I think that there's blood in my urine.

Wow. Like that was the first sign. Nothing else before that.

That was it. And I, I started to kind of downplay it and say, well, maybe I'm not drinking enough. It's dehydration.

That's what we all do. Find the reason right away.

In 06, I had kidney stones. I thought maybe it's kidney stones, but I don't have pain and this and that. And so I kind of ignored it because I had another event that I was at the week after, which was Bo Eason's event. But I kept seeing the blood.

Wow.

I ended up taking picture of it because I wasn't with my wife and she knows this stuff. And I said, I sent her a picture and. And when I came home that night, she looked at me and I could just tell from look on her face, she goes, you need to get in. And she didn't just see blood in the urine, she saw clots and realized that this is, this is serious.

Yeah.

And so that was. At that point, she wouldn't tell me what she thought it was because she didn't want to diagnose it and everything. But just look on her face. What do I do? I go to Google, which is the worst.

Of course, we all do that.

Oh my God. So we ended up finding a doctor that we ended up not using for a lot of reasons. But we went in, they did a CT scan. The CT scan showed a 5 centimeter tumor in the bladder.

Wow.

And it was sitting in a really precarious position. It was on top of the prostate at the opening, blocking the ureter for the right kidney. And this doctor then said, we need to go in quickly, we need to go in and everything. But the way he did it, there was a 12 day gap between the CT scan and me going in for a scope.

Okay.

Knew that it was a 5 centimeter tumor and he was flippant about it. But then all of a sudden it became an emergency. That was a Thursday. He wanted me in for surgery on Monday. And I said, first off, we got Steph. And I walked out, we got into the parking lot, and I looked at her. I said, I don't need a surgeon. I need an artist.

Yeah.

Someone that can artfully go in because of where it's at and do this. So we weren't comfortable with this surgeon. And we started. She knows so many people in the medical field. She started making calls. And this one doctors, this one surgeon at UCI, name came to the top a few times. And we reached out to his office, and, I mean, you talk about universe working for you. They said, we happen to have an opening at 9:00 clock tomorrow morning.

Wow.

So we were supposed to go to London on Friday. We ended up going to this surgeon. And he looked at it and. And he thought I was there for a second opinion. And I said, no, no, no. I said, you're my surgeon, so tell me what we need to do. And he said, all right, we got to take it out. I need to get you into a special operating room with a special scope, because what this is, unlike the regular operating rooms, it'll light things up, so I'll see the margins better and I can see what else is in there. We can clean it all up. And so that ended up holding us out until the first surgery, until July 13th. July 11th. So July 11th, I went in for that first surgery, which turned out to be. And at that time, what he told me was, look, we don't know how bad it is. We know it's big. Here's the possibilities. If it's really bad, you lose your bladder. And I'm like, what's it like to live without a bladder?

Yeah.

And he says, we're not. Let's not even talk about it. We'll talk about that if the time comes. We don't know if the tumor is coming from the bladder down into the prostate or if it's coming from the prostate into the bladder. So there may be an issue with the prostate and we can't see the right ureter, which means that there may be an issue with the kidney and the ureter, and we might have to put a tube in a bag. In with all the years of martial arts and. And teaching and defending myself because I've been in, like, two knife fights, which is stories for another time.

Oh, gosh. That's another podcast episode. This.

10 minutes before I went in for that surgery, staring at Jeremy and Stephanie sitting by my side, was probably the most scariest time of my life, because I truly. One, I didn't Know if I was coming out and if I was going to see them, and I didn't know what I would be like if I would have the bladder, if I would have a tube and a bag, and I'm an active person. And it took him a good four and a half, five and a half hours to take the tumor out, and it turned out to be 2 1/2 cm larger than the CT scan.

Wow.

So larger than a baseball. He said it was the most difficult extraction that he's ever done. As soon as he touched the tumor, it started to hemorrhage and bleed, and it took him an hour to just stop the bleeding.

Wow.

But the good news is that I came out of that surgery and I'm waking up, and the only thing I'm doing is inventory what's attached to.

Yeah. Like, do I still have everything?

Yeah. And at that time, the bladder was still there. There was no tubes in the kidney. They still were unsure about the kidney. And they kept me in the hospital for a few days just in case there was blockage, and they had to do an emergency surgery to put a tube in. So they kept me in the hospital for a few days to watch me, and then they let me out, which then led to a second surgery because he was still unsure, and he wanted to make sure that it was clean. Now, during this time, I handled kind of approached this just like I approached things when I was fighting competitively. I said, all right, I got to get in a ring, and I got to do this fight. And when I got in the ring before, I would have someone that would help me with my strength, my hand speed, footwork, my stretching, all that. And said, all right, so who are the people I need in my corner? Everything from a naturopathic oncologist to meditation to acupuncture to chiropractics to surgeons. And I found the best that I could to do.

Yeah.

And I said, I get it. I'm the one in the ring, and I'm going to have to do this fight. But you need to prepare me for that fight. You need to get me as strong as possible. Tell me what I have to do, and I'll do it, and we'll go after it at the same time. We literally. I extracted myself out of all my businesses and shut. Didn't shut the businesses down. I shut my involvement down and said, once again, what's the most important fight that I need to fight right now? What's the most important battle? And it had to be my health and the beauty behind it was because we built things the way we did. Instead of that save and pray and built the assets, we were able to turn some things on. So from a life standpoint, we were financially okay.

Incredible. So with the cancer, did you go through chemo, radiation? Where are you now? Are you cancer free?

So the second surgery was Aug. 22. They found a small little tumor. They took that out, they took a pathology of the wall and it came back. And when your surgeon calls you up and says, I'm amazingly delighted. So he called up and we went in and saw him and he said the pathology came back that there is no cancer cells in the wall, it didn't invade the muscle.

Incredible.

And we're clear in that second surgery what they did is they did a chemo wash on the inside of the bladder to hopefully just eradicate anything else was there. But it wasn't systemic, it was just inside the bladder. Then they, then I just finished about a week and a half ago, a six week treatment of immunotherapy directly in the bladder.

Yeah.

So I finished that. I'm waiting now two more weeks. I go back in for a scope and a scan to see how did the body respond to that and what the next steps are. The expectation, the way I feel, they're floored at how, how I've done and how I've approached it. Most of our patients don't approach this the way you do. I said I'm not gonna be most of your patients and I'm not gonna give this little gremlin a chance to grow again.

Yeah.

So we've, you know, diet, everything has, everything has completely shifted and changed. And on the 13th we'll go back in and see where we're at and probably come up with a plan because they'll probably put me on a one to three year maintenance plan of the immunotherapy. As long as it's working, the body's responding to keep it away. Because like I like to say, we've taken the beachhead, but we may have some more battles in the war. Because it says 60 to 70% reoccurrence rate for cancer like this. And it's like I don't have any of the risk factors. So I did spend a lot of time asking myself why. I mean, smoker, drinker, or around chemicals. I'm not any of that. The average age for this cancer is 73. And unless my mom lied to me, I'm not close to 73.

Why do you thinkso a couple questions on that? Because I Do believe, like, when I ran into you, first of all, you guys can't see him right now, but he was, like, the best shape I've ever seen him. And so I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, well, I had cancer. I was like, not the answer I was expecting. Which is interesting because you truly. I know without you even saying it, you operate from. Things are happening for me, not to me. And I know you operate not from victim mode. So I believe with so much certainty that that has a lot to do with why you're coming through this and thr those two things. I think most people tend to go to the opposite to why me? Victim mode and not going to. I'm going to get myself ready for battle. It's more like taking it on as it's happening to me. So I think those are. Those are incredible things. How did. How did you stop that conversation of why me? And why did you. Or did you come up with why it might have been you? What was your thoughts on that?

I. Look, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I didn't have my dark moments. I remember just laying in bed with Stephanie and we cried.

Yeah.

Just kind of going, what? We were. You know, one week we're supposed to be going to London to attend the Royal Ascot with a. And the next thing we know, I'm in surgery, and we're dealing with this, and life's changed. So there was plenty of, why me? Even going through the treatments. I would sit in that waiting room, and there's like. I remember this guy coming in and probably 350 pounds in an electric wheelchair, barely fitting in there. And it sounds. I mean, I guess it is judgmental, but I'm looking at him going, dang, I know why you're here. I don't know why I'm here. The realization is, though, we have some ideas of what could have contributed to it, but we'll never know why. And the only reason that would be important to know why is so we can make sure it doesn't happen again. And so I had to ask a different question. So over time, I started to look at and say, well, okay, if there's good in this or if there's something to take from this, what is it?

And what is that? And what do you think that is?

I think for me, one of the biggest things is it stripped away my whole guilt around saying no to people.

Gosh, that's so good.

Because I realize we all trade in different currencies. You Know, at different times, we'll do things because it gives us, we'll make money. We'll do things because it gives us status. We'll do things because it makes us feel good. And those are all currencies. But I think the ultimate currency, what I've realized is that we're given a finite number of slices of life. And when I say yes to someone, then, or someone says yes to me, but when I say yes to someone, what that means is I'm willing to hand you a slice of my life that I can never get back again.

Yeah.

And at that point I got to ask myself, is this transaction or this relationship valuable enough to do that? Otherwise I need to say no.

So good.

Now, by the same token, those that come to me, like we're sitting here and this is something big for speakers. I think that when I go out on stage, like I just spoke for one of the first times last, last week since this whole thing happened, and I look at this audience and here's an audience of 300 people that have chosen to give me a slice of their life and that they can never get back again. And I am entrusted with that, which means I need to deliver, I need to give them everything I possibly can in that moment. So they feel that that transaction was worth it.

I love this, what I'm hearing from you. I don't even know if you know that you're saying this underlying, but I believe this happened to you to give you a deeper sense of gratitude and purpose and to remind you to be fully present. That's what, that's a theme that I'm hearing because I believe that's what worked for you as an 11 year old. It's what works for becoming that single parent, fighting that battle. It's what worked for you growing your business initially. And then it was almost like, well, I'm a little too comfortable. I'm in the, I'm in the jet, I'm on the way, like, I've got popping back up. So, like, let's remind you, it's gratitude, purpose and presence. So I don't even know if you realize that, but that is a theme that you've sort of weaved throughout. And I just, I believe it's not going to come back, the cancer. And I believe that you're just getting started on a whole nother purpose here.

I believe it too. I mean, I'm excited about this new decade ahead of us and this new journey. I'm excited to hopefully impart some lessons. Listen, I've Been fortunate enough to have done enough things right to be successful. I've also been bad enough to do enough things wrong to be educational. And if I can hand those lessons to folks from this journey to allow them to change their family tree, to live their dreams, to know that their slices of life matter, then that's what I'm here to do.

Yeah, it's so good. So good. Mel, where. What's next for you? Obviously, you're battling the health thing. We're going to. But we're going to stay healthy. What's next? What do you want people to know? What do you believe your next lesson for them is or that you're walking through that's going to help people?

Right now? I think the biggest lesson is I want them to have. There's two things that I think come out of this. And one was a conversation about a doctor who told me that they had two petri dishes, one with cell. Both had cells and one with toxins, one with nutrients. And over time, the. The cells with the nutrients would combine, but the cells with the toxins would not. They would stay apart. He said to me, this was early in the cancer that you can't heal, you can't heal, you can't grow, you can't do any of that if your body is in distress, in stress or diseased. What people do is they make the mistake of thinking, I got to eliminate stress from my life. He says it's not the elimination of stress that matters because elimination of stress gets you to the zero point. It just gets you to baseline. He said, what matters is that to get past that zero point and that baseline goes back to what you just said. Gratitude, love, and joy. So he says it's not the elimination of stress that matters. It's the liberation from stress that matters. Which means that it's not about stopping what you're doing, but making sure that what you do brings you joy. And I think that's one part of it. The other part of it is this element of how do I give someone the process that I've used with my son, with myself, to say, how do we create what I call that affluence in life, what I call the affluent, what's becoming known as the affluence blueprint to build that machine. So, God forbid, I built it because I wanted peace of mind, because I wanted the three freedoms. I built this. I didn't build it because I thought I would have cancer, but it served me during this time. And whether someone, I hope, no one ever has to go through it, whether it's cancer or relationship breakup or work or some other issues, an economic downturn. If we do this right and we don't follow necessarily the conventional wisdom, especially for entrepreneurs to build something right, you have those freedoms and you have the ability to just decide. And I think that's really where I want to spend my time, is giving those messages and those tools to folks so they can live fully and freely.

That's so good. Where can people find you? Where do you want them looking for you? Where are you most active?

I'm on the Instagrams. Melabraham9 I guess. Guess it took eight tries. Mel Abraham's before me. Okay, my, my website's melabraham.com and then I have my own, my, you know, Facebook page. And there'll be more stuff because this is all, you know, kind of new stuff that we're putting out, new content we're putting out around some of this because it's something that I feel, I.

Think you're just getting started.

Yeah. I don't feel pushed to do. I feel pulled to do.

I love it. Thank you so much, Mel.

Thank you.

Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review, I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find back valuable. And come interact with me over on Instagram @nataliejill fit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.