Doing Nothing with Your Money Isn't An Option!

As many of you might know, I just finished my annual Affluent Entrepreneur Experience. It's a live experience that I do, offering free deep-dive training on the processes, the priorities, and the principles of building a money machine, and how to find your path to financial freedom. 

This year, I've noticed a significant amount of fear, uncertainty, and angst among people when it comes to making decisions about their financial future. 

In this episode, I want to explore this issue and provide insights on how to navigate it.

Join me as we explore the wealth flatline, the power of time and consistency, and the behaviors needed to create lasting wealth. 

We'll discuss the common fears and uncertainties that hold people back from taking control of their finances and share strategies to overcome them. I'll also emphasize the importance of consistency in building wealth and how they can help you break free from financial stagnation.

Don't let uncertainty hold you back; start making informed choices today. Your financial freedom is your birthright, and it's within your reach.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS: 

• The consequences of doing nothing with your money
• The concept of the wealth flatline and its impact
• How fear and uncertainty hold people back from making financial decisions

RECOMMENDED EPISODES FOR YOU
If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:

• EXCLUSIVE: Building Your Money Machine For Financial Freedom - PART 1
• EXCLUSIVE: Building Your Money Machine For Financial Freedom - PART 2
• EXCLUSIVE: Building Your Money Machine For Financial Freedom - PART 3
• Create a Money Machine for Financial Freedom

TAKE THE FINANCIAL FREEDOM QUIZ:
Take this free quiz to see where you are on the path to financial freedom and what your next steps are to move you to a new financial destiny at http://www.YourFinancialFreedomQuiz.com 

OTHER RESOURCES:
7-Day Money Plan Workshop: https://www.TheMoneyPlanWorkshop.com
Affluent Entrepreneurs Private Facebook Group https://www.melabraham.com/group/

CONNECT WITH ME:
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GET MY BOOK:
“The Entrepreneur's Solution The Modern Millionaire's Path to More Profit, Fans, & Freedom” – melabraham.com/book/

Transcript

1:56

Hey, there. Welcome to this episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show. This one is very different. As many of you might know, I. Just finished my annual the Affluent Entrepreneur Experience. It's a live experience that I do training for free, deep dive training on the processes, the priorities, and the principles of building a money machine on how to find your path to financial freedom. And I do some additional trainings, but in that process, I get an opportunity to talk with many of the viewers and the listeners of my show, the readers of my stuff. And this year, more than any other. Year, I just felt that there was. A tremendous amount of angst, there was a tremendous amount of uncertainty, and there was a tremendous amount of fear that. Were holding people back that were holding. People back from making a decision to move themselves forward, to change their financial destiny, to take control of their financial future forever. And so this episode was really just. Me just speaking from the heart. My truth, what I see and the. Ways that you can navigate this. If you feel yourself stuck, if you feel yourself in any way, shape or. Form, afraid to make a choice, afraid. That you might make a bad choice with money or something like that, this. Episode is for you. It's just a conversation. I don't have any fancy framework for you. It's just me. It's just you having a conversation in hopes that I can shed some light. On a different financial future. I want you to be the financial. Inflection point for your family tree, where. People get a chance to look back on you and say, because of you. Because of the choices you made, everyone better off. All right, enjoy this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show, and I look forward to seeing you in the episode. Cheers. This is the affluent entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, mel abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom, because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur. Hey, there. Welcome to this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. And this one's kind of a unique. One, because, as many of you know, you may have been listening, watching, receiving, reading. I just finished my annual affluent entrepreneur experience. It's a live experience that I do three multiple trainings, three primary trainings, and then a number of additional trainings to help people try to understand the priorities, the processes, and the principles that drive financial freedom. One of the great things that I. Get a chance to do during that time is talk to a lot of. You, to have conversations, either on the. Phone or on zoom or through a video chat of some sort, and just to get a feel for what's going on and what the feelings are and how to navigate things. And this year, more than any other. Year and this is why I'm doing. This episode is it's on my heart to do it. I feel called to do it because. This year, more than any other year, I felt that there was a tremendous. Amount of uncertainty, that there was a. Tremendous amount of angst financially in the. Folks that I'm talking with, that their debt load is going up, that they're. Unsure about their financial future. And because of that, they're frozen and. Not making decisions around their money. They're not making decisions to move forward. They're not making decisions to make to. Try and change things, to take control of things. The thing that I want us to. Start to explore, we'll explore a little bit of maybe why that might be happening, what can be done about it, and why it's really important to not. Allow it to hold you back. Because the fact is that if we. Choose not to make a choice with our money, with our investing, with our. Financial journey, then that in and of. Itself is a decision. But does that decision truly keep us safe? Or does that decision move us forward or does that decision put us in a state of decline? All of this is really to try and shine a light on it, not for any other reason, but to maybe give you some tools, some perspective that maybe allows you, if you're feeling any of that. Because I know I have felt it at times where I felt uncertain when I lost the money in the Ponzi scheme. I felt uncertain about my financial future. I felt uncertain about making the right choices, the right decisions. And so I was starting to not make decisions. And so one of the things that. I've talked about a number of times is this idea of the wealth flatline. And if we're not careful with what we're doing, what we can find ourselves. In is languishing in the wealth flatline. And for those of you that are on YouTube, you'll be able to see. This, but what I'm doing is drawing basically a hockey stick curve. And so what happens is our path. To wealth looks like a hockey stick. And there's a segment of it it that is pretty well flat. It's not growing. It's not going anywhere. We're not seeing any results. And so this is the time where a lot of people will be putting money into their 401K. They'll put money into their brokerage, they'll do it in their IRAs, they'll do these investments. But after a couple of years, they keep doing it and they say, this is what Mel says to do. This is what Mel says to do. And after a couple of years they're looking at and they go, god, I only made$67. Or worse yet, I lost money because. The market went down. And we have to realize that there's this space that I call the wealth flatline. It's the beginning of your financial journey. And during that beginning of the financial journey, we have not reached a critical mass to gain what I call money momentum. And so the only thing that's going to allow you to transcend and to move beyond this wealth flatline is time. Time. But in order to do that, we. Have to actually get in the game. We have to actually start making the investments. And the tendency is that every time we stop or worse, we say, well, it's not working. So you take everything out of the IRA, you take everything out of the say I'll do something else. Every time we do that, we waste. All the time we've been in the flat line getting us closer to the acceleration zone. And we have to go all the way back to the beginning. No one gets away from having to go through the wealth flatline. But on the other side of the wealth flatline, what we really see is all of a sudden this rapid increase in wealth. And that's the acceleration zone. Now, that might be depending on how. Much you're putting away and the investments and everything, it could be five years, but it's likely ten years or more where you start to see that. And when you do this right and. Do it consistently, what you're going to. See is that there comes a time that your money is making more money. With it invested than you're making money. With the efforts that you're putting in to create a job, to run a business, to generate the income. This is the dynamic we're up against. And so when I hear people that. Say, well, I don't think I can do it right now, I don't think. I can make the investment, I don't. Think I can start doing it because. I'm not making money, what you're doing is you're stalling out your journey to the acceleration zone. You haven't even started on the wealth flatline. And remember, that wealth creation, it's truly a behavior, it's a habit, it's a decision, it's not the money. And the sooner we start developing the behaviors, the habits and the decisions, the sooner we get into the wealth flatline, the sooner we get on the other side of it and the sooner the money starts working harder for us than. We did for it. But if we. Allow uncertainty, if we allow the media, if we allow the fears to get us to stand still, what really happens is we never stand. Still by doing nothing. We actually decline because we're losing time. And time is our greatest lever when. It comes to wealth building. A dollar put away at 20 is going to turn into 88 by the time you hit 65. But if you wait a decade, it. Becomes like 40 times, it cuts it in half. So the sooner we get in the game, and the longer we stay in the game, the better off we are. Now I get it. People are struggling. People are unsure. People are fearful. So what causes that? And what can you do to make that happen? I'm going to walk through a number of them, and you might feel some of this, you might have experienced some of it. We'll just talk about it. This is really for us to start. To examine our money situation and be real with ourselves. Because money there's two sides to the money equation. There is a side to the money equation that is rational, it's logical, it's mathematical. But there's another side that's emotional. And a lot of times the emotional side overtakes the rational, logical, financial, mathematical elements. For instance, one of the reasons that a lot of people will stand still is just scared to make a mistake. I know that was me. You lose one third of your net worth in a Ponzi scheme, you start to question, maybe I ought not to be doing anything. Maybe I can't make good money decisions. So rather than make a bad money decision, we make no money decision. And I don't want to make another. Mistake, because if I make another mistake, then what happens? If you have this thought or this. Concern about making a mistake, well, then there's a couple things that I think you can do to solve that. And the first is to educate yourself. Even with the Ponzi scheme, after that, I educated myself. I asked myself, I tried to extract lessons. I tried to learn. I tried to grow. Listen, if you lose money in an investment or you lose money in a. Bad decision, at least take some lessons from it, okay? Otherwise it's truly wasted. So look at educating yourself, being part. Of listening to this show, watching the show, going through any of the programs, all that stuff. When my book comes out, this is. Part of the process. Because the greatest gift you can give yourself on a journey to financial freedom is financial literacy. You didn't come out of the womb understanding it, but wealth creation is a. Skill, and all skills are learnable. And there's plenty of resources out there, good resources. When you get credible resources, have the background that have run the miles, that. Have the proof, then start getting yourself educated. And then the other thing about making mistakes is just start small. Put your toe back in the water. Put your down ankle deep. Don't jump fully in, but start small to get what I call micro successes under your belt and say, oh, okay, I can do this. And as you get those micro successes, your confidence is going to start to grow. And as your confidence grows, then you can take more and more steps in that direction. So fear of making mistakes is one. The other one I think is similar to it but related to it. It's lack of knowledge. I just don't understand. I don't know this. I've never done this before. Like I said, we didn't come out of the womb. Understanding money, understanding finance, understanding investments, it can be complicated. Well, at least the financial world would. Love to make you think it's complicated. Because then we have to be dependent on them. My job is to make you independent of them, that they become ancillary support to you, but you have enough of an understanding and command that you can control it. It isn't complicated. It may not be easy depending on your situation, but it's certainly some simple things that we do. And the tendency is if we don't understand it or we don't have the knowledge, we tend to avoid making decisions. So what do we need to do? How do we solve that? If you're feeling like, hey, I don't have the knowledge, well then it's a. Matter of seeking the knowledge. Look at who are your advisors. But when we're talking about advisors and I talk about this in the Affluence blueprint, I give my students some specific questions to ask advisors. We want to understand their bias. Are they biased by commissions, transaction fees? How do they get paid, all those things? Because the idea is we want to make sure that you get sound, unbiased advice. It's one of the reasons I don't sell investments. I just want to sell you on your dreams. I want to be a safe place to have real conversations that are unbiased. And direct for what you need. And in fact, I just did an episode on life insurance that I'm sure is going to piss off a whole lot of insurance agents. And I'm okay with that because my. Calling, my job is to take care of you, to make sure you're safe, to make sure that you don't get caught into some sales flow that someone's doing because that's where they get paid. But to get you to get what's the best thing for you. And so getting the right advice and advisors around you and looking for trusted. Resources, who can we trust? What are proven, what are trusted resources. In doing that that allow you to move that forward? So that's the second reason. I think the third reason is similar to the first is fear of losing money. I can't lose the money. Well. We deal with fear of losing money and fear of making a mistake slightly differently in the sense that fear of losing money, if you make investments. You will lose money. The thing is that we don't want. To explode our whole financial world by making the wrong investment or doing it the wrong way. And how we do that is making. Sure and we have something that I. Call the wealth priority ladder that puts. Things in place on how you're allocating your money to make sure that you've got some things to keep as a safety net. So having the right, what we call peace of mind fund, some people will call it an emergency fund. Having that liquidity that if you did lose money or you lost a job, you have a cushion to come back to. But more importantly, when you start to. Make investments, the kind of investments you make need to be across different things, diversification. This goes back to a conversation around what's your risk tolerance, your emotional abilities. To sustain risk and what's your risk capacity, your financial ability to sustain risk, and what's your risk need, what risk. Do you need, level of risk do you need to take on to achieve your goals? And so there's this balance in there. But the key is that the more we can diversify, the more we are insulated from a huge traumatic downturn or loss from doing it. So using sound wealth principles, sound investing principles, testing plans, testing investments, stress testing portfolios, doing those kinds of things that we talk about in the Affluence blueprint allows you to start to reduce your exposure to losing money. Now, it will never eliminate losing money because investments are inherently risky. It's just a matter of the level of risk that you take on and we can reduce that. Okay? Another reason that people will sit there frozen or uncertain is that there is past traumas PTSD. I had a client and a friend. Mark, who went through this. He decided to invest and he was into some different real estate deals. He in fact borrowed money from his parents to do it. And this is back in the eight. Era and he lost it all. He lost his parents money, he lost his money and he was traumatized, traumatized so much that his perspective when we. Met was, I'm just going to work the rest of my life, I'm not. Going to invest again because I can't I don't want to make a mistake, I don't want to lose money. I'm not good at it. So all the things that we've already talked about were affecting him, but it created this traumatic experience for him where he just figured he was going to work the rest of his life because he didn't understand things. And so one of the things that. We did was start to walk through the stories, the money set point, the money story dynamic that I talk about and how to separate the facts from the interpretations and the meanings, to allow him to get a new perspective of. What happened and to get new understanding. And take the lessons from it. And then allow him to reflect on. It and then give him some specific rules and criteria to keep him safe. To give him comfort, to know that he's following a set of rules that. Are proven that work. And now he's back in the game. Doing some things, and he knows he's not working the rest of his life, but past traumas can hold us back and everything. So there's a lot of those kinds of things, and I've got a bunch more that I listed out. But I think that just to start. The important thing here is that if. We truly want to find our way. To financial freedom, then we need to. Make the decisions that will move us towards that goal. Standing still, whether it's because of fear, whether it's because of lack of knowledge. Whether it's because of past trauma, that it's because of mistrust or anything, is. Actually allowing you to decline because we. Lose time, you'll never make 100% all good decisions. You'll never make 100% all good investments. But when you make your decisions and you make your investments based upon a. Process, based on sound wealth creation principles. That have withstood the test of time, that aren't driven by memes or fads. Or crazy trends, then in the long. Term you'll be all right. Because in the long term, the market goes up eight out of ten years. In the long term, you'll be okay. Because you're in the wealth flatline, and you're going to move past it, and you're going to allow time to do. The heavy lifting, and you're going to use diversification. You're going to do that, but we have to make the choices. And so if you're feeling any of. That and that angst, to make a. Decision, to learn more, to do more, to start the behaviors, here's the thing that we know. If you're not where you want to. Be financially, doing the same thing you've. Always done won't get you to where. You want to be. And so we need to do something different. What that is is dependent upon you. But it is important to sit back and say, I got to change my. Behaviors, I got to change my habits. I got to change my decisions. And I have to have the courage. To step forward, even though it feels. Scary, and to do it with the. Right advisors, with the right knowledge, and with the right people around you, to help you, to comfort you in the. Process, to know that you're doing it right. Because by standing still, we know what the result is. You won't find financial freedom, and you. Probably won't find even financial stability or security. And that I don't want free. This wasn't an episode that I planned. This wasn't an episode that I had some fancy framework. This was an episode that I just wanted to have a frank conversation. I just wanted to talk about my. Observations, the feelings that I had after having conversations with so many people during the affluent entrepreneur experience. And as I walked, I've been traveling. And doing a lot of speaking, and. To give you maybe a little bit. Of light to move forward, to step into a new you, to understand that. You have the capacity, you have the. Capability to be financially free. Whether you understand money or don't understand money doesn't matter because it is a. Skill and all skills are learnable. And so I'm going to invite you, I'm going to implore you, I'm going. To ask you to take the steps to take control of your financial future. Whatever those steps are that are right for you. But at least take step, take a. Half a step, take a fraction of a step, because anything's better than nothing to move yourself closer to financial freedom. If there's anything I can do to support you, if there's anything I do. To help you on this journey, reach out, let me know. It's the reason I do the show, it's the reason I do the programs. It's the reason I go out and speak. I don't believe that anyone should have to live with financial stress, and it's. One of the largest stressors in life today. It's one of the biggest stressors in relationships and the second leading cause of divorce behind fidelity. It stresses people out at work and affects their productivity. And if you have stress, it's going to affect your health. If you have stress, it's going to affect your relationships. If you can't get control of it, all of a sudden, it affects your. Family, your children, your grandchildren. I want you to be the inflection. Point for your family tree. I want everyone to look at you and say, because you made a choice, because you decided to take half a. Step to take control, their financial destiny is different. Because I truly, truly believe financial freedom is your birthright. We just got to give you the. Path to claim it. And if I can help you on that path, that's why I'm here. I hope that this was valuable. I hope that this was meaningful. I hope that this hits you in. A place where you can sit back. And say, I got to make a choice and I got to make a decision, got to do something and know. That you're not out there alone. It's not a siloed or solitary pursuit that I'm here to help and so is our community. All right? Thank you for being here. Thanks for being a listener, thanks for. Being a viewer, and thanks for being on a journey. All right. As I always say, until we get a chance to talk, till we get. A chance to see each other on another episode, always, always strive for life. Outlet. Cheers. Thank you for listening to the Affluent Entrepreneur show. With me. Your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the Affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to Melabraham.com/group and I'll see you there.