Life has an uncanny way of throwing unexpected challenges our way.
For me, one of the most life-altering moments was hearing those three dreaded words: "You have cancer." It's a phrase that sends shivers down anyone's spine, and I was no exception.
Yet, in the midst of the fear and uncertainty that a cancer diagnosis brings, I found an unexpected gift – a revelation that reshaped my perspective on life, money, and purpose.
On today's show, I take you on a journey through my own cancer diagnosis and how it led to a powerful realization about the importance of financial freedom and meaningful life.
This episode isn't just about my journey – it's a testament to finding strength and positive transformation in the face of life's toughest trials. If you're seeking inspiration, looking to navigate challenges, or simply interested in a powerful story of resilience, I invite you to tune in.
IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS:
Building a financial machine for stability and freedom
Lessons from a life-altering diagnosis
Why understanding money principles matters more than just earning a lot
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This is the Affluent Entrepreneur Show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business us scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur. Cancer. It's a horrible disease. It's something that I hope no one ever has to go through. You know, unfortunately, I did hear those words, you have cancer. But cancer to me, became a gift to me and to you. And we talk about how that comes into play for your financial future in this episode. I'll see you in the episode let's talk about this is the Affluent Entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an athlete entrepreneur. Hey there, I'm back. This one is another video that maybe a little different, but I think it lends itself to you understanding what drives some of the things that we do, the crusade, if you will, that I'm on. You may have heard the story about Jeremy and his drawing and how that impacted me, how that got me to look at business and money and life differently. How do you create a life that what we talked about was affluence being a meaningful life, not an opulent life, meaningful impactful, fruitful life, and a peaceful life. And what I realized, and this was when Jeremy was six years old is that it's truly important to make sure that whatever is the mechanism that you're using to create your income, to create your living, that whatever that mechanism is, whether it's a job, whether it's a business, whatever it is that you make sure that it not only creates a living, but allows you to create a that's that's kind of what came out of the whole thing with Jeremy. But here's the thing. You gotta wonder what would happen if life happened to you. And this is where I want to go with this, is that I was building my business. Everything was going well. I was doing well. I was speaking on some of the biggest stages around the world. I was masterminding with top entrepreneurs that were running 100 million dollar companies, billion dollar companies. I'm flying back on a G five. I mean, doesn't get much better than that. I didn't pay for it, which even is even better. But here's what happened, is I'm on top of the world. Life is good, but just like many of us do, I was ignoring aspects of my life. I was ignoring warning signals. You might be doing that right now. You might be ignoring it in a relationship, the warning signals, or in money or in your health, or in other aspects of your life. You might be ignoring warning signs. And as I was traveling around, I had dialed in our financial picture. I had dialed in the business picture. I had dialed in my relationship, relationship with my son, relationship with my wife. I had all that dialed in, but I was ignoring my well being, my health. The reality was that my wife and I, when we got married, we had moved we moved 100 miles south of where we used to live down by the beach in Laguna Beach, California. And I had no doctors down here, and I was just too busy and doing things. So I never found any doctors down here. And the reality is that I felt good. I was fine. I was traveling. I was doing fine. I was working out. I was eating good. But there was some signs that I ignored until they got so bad that my wife said, you have to go in. So I went in and got checked. And they did a CT scan in June of 2019 and found what turned out to be a seven and a half centimeter tumor in my bladder. And I heard three words that I never imagined that I would ever hear in my life, and that is, you have cancer. Now, I never smoked. I barely drank. I ate healthy. I worked out no one in my family ever had cancer. We had plenty of other things, diabetes and heart disease and kidney and all that, but cancer, never thought that it would happen. And as they told me that, my whole life just got shattered. My whole existence was in jeopardy. And I looked at my wife, started to think about my son, started to think about life. And I go, I'm not ready to go. I'm not ready to let go of life. I love it too much. I love experiencing it, love what I do. I love how I live. Not ready to go. But maybe it wasn't my choice. Maybe it wasn't my decision. I don't know how I got it. We checked. We looked, we tested DNA, everything. I searched. I got bitter. I got angry. I spiraled into darkness trying to figure out what the heck I did in my past to deserve this. And it was hard. It was hard to realize that I'm in for the fight of my life. I sat with the surgeons. We finally put together a team of doctors. And sitting with these surgeons, the person that was going to take the tumor out, he said, look, it's a big tumor. It's on your prostate. I might have to take the prostate out. I can't see the urgent on the right side. We might have to put a tube and a bag in for the kidney, and if it's bad, we might have to remove your bladder. Like, my whole life was handed to me in pieces, I thought, and I was at loss. It was probably the most stressful, obviously, of any time. If any of you have ever gone through that, I'm sure that you or watched someone go through it. It's a difficult time. There's so much uncertainty, there's so much unknown. And they don't know till they go in how bad it is. They don't know if the treatments are going to work. They don't know any of that. And you're sitting back saying, I got to put life on hold. Here's. The thing that I realized, and this is really the point of what we're looking at here, is that the lessons I learned from Jeremy back when, that had me restructure my business and restructure the way we did money. Because through that, it allowed me to sit back and say, I have the business, I have the job, I have all that. And that's creating cash flow. But I needed to build a machine that gave me financial freedom, what I called a money machine, see, because I did that and we'll talk more about that, is that I was able to fight the cancer medically, physically, psychologically, spiritually. I had all that stress to deal with it, but I didn't have to fight it financially. I didn't have to question what doctors to go to. I didn't have to question the treatments. I didn't have to worry about being at a job. I didn't have to worry about working through the days and fighting for my life at the same time. I had the luxury, the privilege, however you want to call it, the blessing, the foresight. I had no idea to get cancer. But because of the way we did this, I was able to shut down the business. I was able to just say, all right, I'm going to step away because I don't need to earn the money. I have a machine that's going to give me money and I can focus on healing, I can focus on the fight. I can spend each day, every day, all day, going to the doctors, working on the treatments, doing all the alternatives, doing all the Western medicine, the Eastern medicine, the far out medicine, whatever you want to call it, to do the things, to make sure that I could stay here with my family, with the people I love, to experience life even more. Here's the thing. I don't know where you are in your life. I don't know what struggles you might be dealing with. I don't know what your journey has been, financially or otherwise. But my ability to navigate the cancer without financial stress is what put the pressure on me to realize this is why I was given cancer. It's. To bring this message to you. To bring this message. To bring this crusade forward. To help other people build a financial money machine, a wealth machine to care for them when they need it, when life happens. Be. It a relationship, be it a health concern, be it a pandemic, be it whatever it is, where you're not beholden to a business or a job. And yet some people would say, oh, well, you got to make a lot of money to do that. No, it's actually not the case. It's actually what you do with the money you make that matters. We just need to understand the principles, the priorities and the processes to make that happen. And when we do that and we build that money machine, you have yourself an ATM. Imagine this for a moment where you get a chance to retire and keep your lifestyle at a level that you have or higher, because you did it right, because you walked the path to financial freedom. That's what gives the cancer meaning for me. See, because I kept looking in my past to find a reason, and there wasn't a reason in my past. There wasn't anything I could point to. I say, that's why I got it. And that's when I looked at it and said, maybe the reason for the cancer isn't in my past, but rather in my future. That the reason I was given cancer, is to say that to raise the attention and my awareness to the fact that people are struggling and maybe struggling financially. No one we don't talk about money, we don't talk about building wealth. We even demonize it. But how do you give the gift of financial freedom to everyone, which I think is a birthright? It may not be easy, depending on where you're at, but it certainly is simple when you understand the principles and the processes and the priorities you need to have in place to make it happen. And when I realized that that just taking what I did for decades for myself, for my clients, even for my son, he's 32 years old, his wife's 30. They've got their first child, second child on the way, three homes and a multimillion dollar net worth. They take off one month to a foreign country every single year. They get to experience life. That's what I want. I want to give people the gift of financial freedom, the pathway to do it. You got to run the miles. I can't run the miles for you. I'm running the miles. I'm out. But I can give you the principles, the priorities and the processes to make it happen. And in the process, you give me a gift. You make my cancer mean something positive, and I appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneurship. With me. Your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the Affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to MelAbraham.com/group and I'll see you there.