Are you aiming to hit financial high notes and truly optimize your wealth-building journey in 2024? It's not just a dream; let's make it your reality!
In today's riveting 70-minute episode, I peel back the curtain on the secrets to getting rich, and believe me, it's a game-changer. I share not only the essential principles of wealth accumulation but also the profound personal transformation that can redefine your relationship with money. From realizing the brevity of life due to an unexpected cancer diagnosis to learning how to control time through financial mastery, I get real about what it takes to earn, multiply, and ultimately, protect your wealth.
Are you tired of just getting by? Yearning for financial liberation and the freedom to lead a life filled with purpose, presence, and peace? Then this episode is your ticket to the inner circle of affluent entrepreneurs.
So, fire up your ambition and listen to the entire episode, because your financial renaissance begins now!
IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS:
RECOMMENDED EPISODES FOR YOU
If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:
RECOMMENDED VIDEOS FOR YOU
If you liked this video, you'll love these ones:
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:
Website: MelAbraham.com
YouTube: MelAbraham.com/tube
Instagram (@melabraham9):&
Are you aiming to hit financial high notes and truly optimize your wealth-building journey in 2024? It's not just a dream; let's make it your reality!
In today's riveting 70-minute episode, I peel back the curtain on the secrets to getting rich, and believe me, it's a game-changer. I share not only the essential principles of wealth accumulation but also the profound personal transformation that can redefine your relationship with money. From realizing the brevity of life due to an unexpected cancer diagnosis to learning how to control time through financial mastery, I get real about what it takes to earn, multiply, and ultimately, protect your wealth.
Are you tired of just getting by? Yearning for financial liberation and the freedom to lead a life filled with purpose, presence, and peace? Then this episode is your ticket to the inner circle of affluent entrepreneurs.
So, fire up your ambition and listen to the entire episode, because your financial renaissance begins now!
IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS:
RECOMMENDED EPISODES FOR YOU
If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:
RECOMMENDED VIDEOS FOR YOU
If you liked this video, you'll love these ones:
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:
Website: MelAbraham.com
YouTube: MelAbraham.com/tube
Instagram (@melabraham9):&
Arguably, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time is Steve Jobs and Apple and all of that. And I don't know if this was truly him or not, but there's some debate about it. It was written that these were his last words spoken in the weeks leading up to his death. But I think that there's some magic in these words. There's some power in these words as we start to think about it, because he said, people from the outside will see me at the epitome of my success. However, aside from work, he had little joy and that the wealth that he took, so much pride of, the accomplishment, the achievements, paled in the face of debt that became truly meaningless. He said, having wealth is great because you can pay someone to do things for you. You can pay someone to drive things, to build things, to make money for you to do a lot of things. But the one thing you can't pay them to do is to bear your sickness for you. No matter what is lost, we can find a replacement, except for one thing, and that's life. He went on to kind of just say, it's important for you to treasure the love for your family, to cherish the love for your spouse, to cherish and love your friends, and to treat yourself well. I don't know if this is truly his words or not, but they're powerful. And it leads me to this video that I have, which is a keynote that I did at a large audience where I was talking about money. I was talking about wealth, but I was really talking about the richness. How do you take the money that you want to create the financial freedom that you want and build a meaningful life and build a rich life and live fully expressed so you can live loved and cherished. I hope you enjoy it. This is the absolute 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. All right, here's what I want to do. I want to talk about money, but it's really not about money. It's about your life. I talk a lot about this idea of affluence, and people mistake it with opulence, but it's not opulence. So I'm going to give you a definition of affluence for a moment that I want you to just take on for the day and hopefully your life. Because opulence is about getting stuff, achieving, accomplishing, acquiring. But opulence without affluence is an empty, empty existence. All right? And I want you to live not just a wealthy life, want you to live a rich life, something you experience to the core. And so the first thing, there's four aspects to affluence that I see. The first is this, is that it needs to be a meaningful life. Yes. You're going to get some frameworks from me because there wouldn't be a training with Mel. Frameworks is that it needs to be a meaningful life. It needs to give you joy from the inside out, something that fuels you, that's something that gives you the excitement we have in this room. Can you imagine what it's like to just get up every morning and go, yes, that's it, a meaningful life. The second aspect of it is it needs to be an impactful life. See, meaningful is on the inside. Impactful is on the outside. This talks about this idea of what I call the legacy factor. And here's the thing, and I remember when I first met my wife, I kept talking about legacy, legacy, legacy. Now, she came from Philly. Yeah. Go Philly. Eagles fans. Yeah. All right. Yeah, you are. First time I went to an Eagles games, I didn't realize they had jail cells underneath. I'm kind of going that sets the tone. All right, so she's thinking, and coming from Philly, she's thinking that I talk about legacy, I want some statues somewhere on the steps, like Rocky. No kidding. I mean, it would be nice, but here's how I see legacy. Legacy isn't something you leave behind. When we talk about legacy, it's usually we got to die to leave it. I said no. Legacy isn't something you leave behind for someone. Legacy is something you leave within someone in the moments of interaction you have with them. And when you stack the moments of your life together correctly, that's legacy. Yeah, because here's the thing. Here's the thing. It's the moments that actually will matter, and it can be simply a smile, a hello, you look great today. I'm proud of you. That just shifts someone. And in that moment, you've created legacy. And if we understood the power of the moments like that, maybe we would give each moment the reverence it deserves. That's where the richness comes in. So second piece of living a half in the life is making sure it's impactful. The third is the only thing that has to do with money. It's fruitful that it allows you to have the financial capability to do the things you want to do when you want to do them, but to get behind the causes, the missions, the movements that matter to you. I have a lot of folks that they'll demonize the idea of even talking about money. Think about what you can do to give back. I got a friend of mine who was an entrepreneur. He became wealthy. He came from nothing. He was an immigrant that came here. He's doing really well. He walks into his hometown, into a school supply store. He says, how much for everything on the shelves? And the manager looks at him and goes, I can't sell you everything on the shelves. Why not? Aren't you in the business of selling stuff? He said, yeah. He says, but I have orders. I have to. I said, great, put the orders aside and then give me the rest. He says, who needs all these school supplies? He says, the three schools in the neighborhood I grew up in, he bought it all and went and just donated it because he could. So fruitful. And the last piece is that it's peaceful. It's peaceful that you get a chance to live a peaceful life, that you are at peace knowing that you lived in alignment with your values, with your dreams. We'll talk more about dreams with your vision, with your mission, the unique gifts that you were put here to live. That's how I see avenues. Can we take that on? Can I get an I'm in? All right, so that's how I want us to look at this. And so everything that we're going to talk about money, I'm going to get you tactical. I'm going to go through some principles, give you some tactics. I'm going to give you some formulas. I'm going to give you all of that. But I want you to do it through the spirit of affluence. Meaningful, impactful, fruitful, and peaceful. When we do that at the end of our days, may they be long. We're in a much, much better place. But let's talk about the elephant in the room. Yes. Yeah, let's talk about the elephant in the room. And that is this. Many of you might have seen one or two headlines that look like this. Oh, my God. And then this one was more recent. Recession's coming. Oh, and guess what? Our banking system is completely collapsing. I can't tell you how many texts, how many dms? How many people reaching out to me saying, do I need to get all my cash out of the bank? Y'all don't start running the bank yet. Let's just talk about this for a second. I'm going to give you some cents here. That will make you some dollars later. All right? Yeah. If you're staring at headlines, let me just be real clear. The media isn't there to inform you, to educate you, to get you to do anything, but they need viewers, they need ratings, they need advertisers. That's it. And the best way to do it is stir up the fear. Yeah. I don't know about you, but if that was a swimming pool, would you jump in? Well, that's not, because let me give you a little bit of truth here, because you get a chance to sit back and go, I have a choice. And your choice is this. Do I want to be a thermometer or a thermostat? Think about it this way. The thermometer takes on the environment. If you're hot, the thermometer goes way up. If you're cold, it's down low. And if we swim in the ocean of the media and what they want us to believe, you will feel uncertain, you will feel stressed. I just got a text, a DM on Instagram where she's making$150,000 a year and she says, people are telling me I'll never be rich. Are you kidding me? I haven't answered yet, but I will. So that's the thermometer. Or you could be a thermostat. See, because thermostat, we get a chance to go over to thermostat and go, that's what I want the environment to be. We get a choice. And when we understand that and we take that choice, we can go, okay, this is where I want to swim because here's the truth. I want to show you a graph. Here's the truth. This is going back to 1950, all the recessions. Now they're talking about recessions. Talking about recessions. Go, it might be coming. It might be coming. It might have been here. We might have passed. Let me give you a definition of recession so you understand this and we can put this in perspective. A recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. In other words, gross domestic product goes down for two consecutive quarters. That's six months. What's the average recession length up there? Eleven months. Think about it. So it takes six months to diagnose it. By the time they tell us we're sick. We might have five months left, but the way they say it, it's like it's here to stay. No, look at the recessions. This is the red stuff at the bottom. Look how small they are. Yeah. I'm not saying it's not painful. I'm not saying that people don't lose their job. I'm not saying that it isn't tough, but it doesn't last. But they talk like it's going to last. Look at the green and blue. That's when the economy is going great. That's when the economy's building. I don't know about you, but it looks like there's a whole lot more green and blue than there is red up there. Yeah. So we're going to be thermostats from here on out, and that's the way we look at it. Now, here's a beautiful thing. I think I will be 62 this year. I know I'm very well positioned. Yeah, 62 this year. Here's what it means. I've had a chance to live through seven recessions, eight bear markets, 40 fed rates, hikes.com bust, Black Monday, Black Wednesday, 911 energy, cris, financial, cris, global pandemic, and 2020 crisis. Now, that's tiring. But guess what? I'm still here. Yeah. Here's the thing. I sat in seats like this one day, two and a half decades ago, and I listened to a guy like me, except the guy like me was talking about doom and gloom, and he sat back, he says, oh, we're going into the core of the earth. I freaked out. I didn't even let him finish his talk. I walked out the doors, I got on the phone with my broker, and I said, hey, man, I don't want to play this game anymore. Put me in cash. We sold everything, and I sat in cash. The problem is, I stewed in my fear. I stood in the uncertainty. I was scared to get back in. I didn't get back in for a decade. And I'm a financial dude. I should know these things. So because I'm a number nerd, I thought, what would have happened if I just stayed the course? Yeah. You know, I needed a drink. After I saw this number y'all had, I just stayed the course and kept investing the money I was vesting on a monthly basis and got the returns over that time all the way. Today, guess what? My net worth would be that much higher.$3.9 million. My fear cost me $4 million. That ain't happening to you. Not on my watch. Yeah, I've made a few bad decisions in my life. So here's the thing. The choices you make with your money today need to be in the service of the future you want to create. Let me say that again. The choices you make with your money today need to be in service of the future you want to create. And if you aren't currently in that future, it's coming. If you aren't currently in that space and you sit back and. Huh. I don't know what the circumstances are. Let's just look at something that George Bernard Shaw said. The people who set on in this world get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want. And if they can't find them, they go create them. Yeah. So wherever you're at today, wherever you're at, it doesn't matter. We're going to go create those circumstances. We're going to create the thermostat. We're going to create the environment. You're going to get the principles, you're going to get all of that to make that happen. I learned this the hard way. I didn't know all this stuff. They didn't teach it to me in school. Even though I'm an accountant, I'm a CPA. My son thinks that CPA stands for cheapest person around, so. But when I started, I was in a firm, I had partners. They came to me one day and they said, we don't even partners with you. As Brendan said, they go, you're not like us. I go, I know. I like doing what I do. And I was doing it differently. I wasn't doing the traditional accounting process. And so they said, we're going to take the traditional work, you go on your own. And they kicked me out. I had no clients, no client backlog. I had no cash flow. I had to build from scratch. I was $300,000 in debt because I just bought a house in 96, 95 in California. But I had a purpose. Purpose was that little boy. It's my son, Jeremy. See, at that year, he came to live with me. I became a single full time dad when I was five and a half years old. So I figured, well, wait a second. I got no cash flow. I got no clients. I got no money, I got a debt. What am I going to do? I was making good money when I was at the firm, but I wasn't doing money good, so I didn't have anything. So I did what most entrepreneurs would do. I jumped on the treadmill, I put my head down. I started running, and I kept running, and I kept running. I kept running. All of a sudden, I started getting clients. I started to get cash flow. I started to get. And I'm looking at Jeremy and going, dude, this is going to work. We're going to be okay. And, and Jeremy, six years old, he comes running and he says, daddy, daddy, daddy. I drew a picture of you at school today. And he was so excited. He was excited. It was like this kid on his birthday morning. And so I kneel down, I take a look at a picture, and it looks like this. Yeah. See? And for me, I could have turned around and said, hey, kid, but we need to do this. It's the way we get to do the things we want to do. It's how we get to go to Disneyland. It's how we get to do these things. But we weren't doing these things. I could have sat back and said, we need the prophets. But he didn't need my prophets. He needed my presence. And it was this whole idea of people in my ear going, well, Mel, you just need to get work life balance. Well, balance doesn't exist. It insinuates that you've got a weight on one side, the weight on the other side, playing tug of war, and you're balanced. It's like sitting back and saying, hey, I'm going to put my head in the freezer, my feet in the frying pan. On average, I'm warm. And it doesn't work that way. We don't need work life balance. We need work life harmony. Yes. And Harmony comes from intentionally spending the moments of your life in a way that matter. And so Jeremy taught me this. And so I completely revamped how I did business, how I did money, did a lot of things. I didn't realize how important it was. But fast forward 2019, here I am getting off of a g five. I just finished a multi six figure launch. I am speaking all around the world. I am masterminding with some amazing, amazing entrepreneurs. Life is good. I'm living on the beach. I got this beautiful bride, everything is great. And I step off this, it's a g five. If you've never been on a g five, you all got to do it at least once in your lifetime. Yeah, and hope someone else pays for it. Two weeks after I stepped off that plane, I found myself sitting here hearing words that I never thought I would hear. See, they found what they thought was a five centimeter tumor on my bladder. And that was an hour before they wheeled me in for surgery. And the doctor says, you know what we're doing here? I said, yeah, you're going to get this little bastard out, right? And he said, yeah, but hold on a second. When they're wheeling you in for surgery, you don't need the surgeon to say, but their bedside manner is horrible. Sometimes he says, where it's at? It's on top of the prostate. We might have to remove the prostate where it's at. I can't see the ureter on the right side. We might have to put a tube and a bag in and if it's bad, you actually might lose your bladder. Now, I'm not a smoker, I'm not a drinker. I had a sweet tooth, I worked out, I ate healthy. I'm going, no one in my family's ever had cancer. How did I end up with cancer? How did this happen? We went through this process. I knew my life changed, but what had happened is that I realized that I had to do things differently at this point. My son was standing by the bedside, my wife was standing by my bedside. I looked at the two of them, I said, life changed. We're going to have to do something differently. We're going to have to fight this. We're going to have to do something. Here's the beautiful thing. I had to fight the cancer medically. I had to fight it psychologically, spiritually, energetically. I didn't have to fight it financially. And that's what I want for you. Because if I had to fight it financially while I was trying to do this battle, it would have been different. So here's how this looks. I want you to realize that you are actually on two separate journeys financially, and the first journey that you're on is what I call the earning journey. This is you making money. But here's the thing. We often think that the earning journey is our wealth, but it's not. See, the earning journey isn't about your freedom. The earning journey isn't about the wealth. It isn't about control. It's about earning. It's literally about optimizing your value to those you serve and the cash flow that comes out of it. It's about delivering solutions and impact. It's not your wealth. So that's the journey on one side. The second journey you're on is what I call the money journey. This is the affluence mindset. It's the affluence mindset. It's the money journey that comes into play. This is where you take what you earn and you multiply it. Because on the money journey, your focus is to optimize assets and time. Here's my belief. You all shouldn't be measuring your wealth in dollars. You all should be measuring it in time. If I circled down and I flew down into your life and I said, how many of the moments of your life do you control that would tell me how wealthy you really are? Because I know a lot of people that make hundreds of millions of dollars, and they're absolutely out of control of their time. It's not a good existence. So I want you to control your time. This is where you're going to find the freedom and the control. But you have to run these parallel journeys, the earning journey on one side, the money journey the other side. If this makes sense to you, give me an I'm in. All right, so here's the thing. When I work with someone, one of the things that I'll do, we'll start talking about, what's their number? Where do they need to go? What is that freedom number? And they'll turn around and say, I want a million bucks. But sometimes that's so far out. How many in here would say that a $5 million wealth seems really far away for you right now? Hands up. All right, cool. It's going to be closer than you think. You're going to understand the process to make it happen, because here's the problem. When we start to put that $5 million out there or the million or the 10 million or anything, and it seems so far away, we tend to leave it far away. We tend to not do the things that we ought to do. So I want to walk you through what I call the financial liberation journey. We go through four stages, and no matter what your wealth is, no matter what your number is, you will move through all four of these stages. And so when you understand that, these can be your checkpoints where you go, okay, I'm here. I got it. Okay, next step. So it's like the relay race. And this is where I say, you become financially liberated. And so the first stage is this. I need to build enough assets, enough wealth that the income from that gives me financial stability. Stability financially is only paying for your necessities. In other words, it's paying for your home. You can take screenshots and all that stuff. It's paying for your home. It's paying for your transportation, your health, your food. It's the necessities the bottom rung of Maslow's hierarchy needs. Because without stability, we can't do anything else? The freedom number, all that stuff doesn't matter. So it's the necessity. Sorry. It's not Netflix. It's not Manipetti's, it's not technology, it's not any of that. It's your survival. The second stage you're going to go through is once we get stability, we go through security. Security is now allowing us to cover our current expenses. Now throw back the Netflix in, you can get your manipetties, you can buy the iPhone. You can do all that. At that point. You're covering all your current expenses at that point. If something happens, the cash coming out will continue your lifestyle as you need. Then we get to something called financial independence. Financial independence is where you actually can replace 100% of your income. So let's walk through some numbers just real quickly on that. Let's say that your bare necessities, home, transportation, food, health, is $2,000 a month. Two things. First, you don't live in California or New York. Second, you need to have enough assets that generate $2,000 a month so you know that you can survive. But let's say that your current lifestyle costs you 5000. Well, now, at the security level, we need to have $5,000 of income to cover that. But now we get to the independence level. So 2000 in survival, 5000 in your current expenses. But maybe you're making $8,000 a month. So at the independence level, you're replacing the $8,000. That means now at that point, you have the choice to work or not. Then we get to the freedom number. Financial freedom rides above all of these. This isn't about your expenses. This isn't about your income. This is about your vision, your vision for life, your dreams, funding them. You may want to be able to travel. My wealth team, they know when we sat down, I said,$150,000 travel budget every year. They go, what? Then I said, look, I met my wife. We like to travel and we don't do it on spirit airlines. Yeah, nothing wrong with spirit. But those of you that flew in on spirit, thank God you made it. But the reality is you create your vision. Your financial advisors, and if there's some in the room, their job isn't to critique your financial vision. Their job is to facilitate it. Now, I got no investments, insurance or anything to sell you. I just want to sell you on your dreams because they're possible, they're within reach. So let's talk about some financial principles that are going to get you there. All right, I want to talk about four principles that are going to drive this home. Why principles? Because I want to do principles before tactics. Here's what I know. Wherever you are financially, no one in this room has money problems. No one. And you go, you haven't seen my checkbook, but y'all have money symptoms. They're symptoms of the choices, the decisions, and the behaviors that brought you here. Now, I know that can be confronting. I get it. But when I figured this out. So wait a second. Oh, that means that all I got to do is change my choices, my decisions, and my behaviors, and I'm living example that it's absolutely true, because if it is your behaviors, and it is, then you're in control of them. All we have to do is make different choices, we get different results, and we end up where we want to be. The $5 million becomes closer. So the first principle I want you to think about is kind of unique in the sense that it's not financial. Principle one is your why before how and how much someone comes to me say, I want to be worth $10 million. My first question is why? It's just an arbitrary number. And often we do that. But the problem is, if we are going towards an arbitrary number, we can't get through the obstacles, we can't get through the tough times. We can't navigate that because there isn't anything that's drawing us forward. No matter how wealthy you are. There's a 2017 Harvard study of 4000 billionaires. It was a happiness study with money. And the whole idea was to figure out what made millionaires happy. Do you know, in the top ten, it wasn't the money they made, but in the top five, it was how they made the money, the purpose behind it. When you give your money a higher purpose, you will rise to a higher purpose. Introduce you to a friend of mine, Allison J. Prince. I've coached her and worked with her over the years. She calls me up one day and she says, mel, oh, my God, I gotta tell you, we hit all our numbers. Now, mind you, we were mid year. We hit all our. I said, you said, I mean, that's exciting. She goes, I know. I said, well, wait a second, alison, why do I get the feeling that you're not really that excited? And she says, I don't know what to do next? Do I just increase the numbers? Oh, let's talk about your why. What do you want to do this? Well, what drives her is to give the possibility of independence to women in third world countries. So we completely restructured her business and we said, every time you make a sale, she can make a micro loan to a woman in a third world country. Yeah. Here's the beautiful thing. She does it in the name of her customers, not her own. So a couple of months after this, she sends me this text, and she says, hey, we just closed a launch, a challenge launch. It was amazing. We had an average order value of$155. Do you know what that means?$104,900 goes to charity. It equals 5245 micro loans given out. My heart is happy. As of today, that number is over 10,000 loans given out because she's driven by a why. See, here's the other beautiful thing about a why behind your money. It helps define you. You will have to change to be there. You will have to grow to be there. You will have to do something different to be there. And when you do, it prepares you for what is to come. And what is to come is your dreams. And the question is, are you ready when your dreams show up? Yeah. So here's the deal. I'm leaving on a Monday
morning out of San Francisco airport. It's a 06:00 a.m.. Flight. That means I'm at the airport at like
04:35 a.m.. I come walking in and I see the most beautiful girl that I've ever seen. And I look and I go, okay, I don't want to be obvious, so I walk and I sit, like, one seat away from her. I look over her, she looks at me, she's looking at, like, files. I look at her, she looks back, I smile, she looks away, she closes her files, she gets up, and she walks away. Red suitcase, red bottom shoes. There she goes. And I go, dang, I thought I had my best swagger going. So I get on the red carpet. At that time, United airlines had red carpets for frequent flyers. And so I get on the red carpet, and I don't know whether where she went. All of a sudden, I see her coming back and I go, ooh, is she going to LA with me or is she going to the gate next door, which is Denver, and lo and behold, I get on the flight. I don't know, I'm sitting up front of the plane, and she comes around the corner. Yeah. And as she comes around the corner, her bag hits me. And I look at her, and I say something about her purse. She stops, she looks at me, she says, first, it's a handbag. Second, if you weren't leaning in the aisle to get a look, it wouldn't have hit you. I got her right where I want her. So we fly to LA. She's like five rows behind me. We don't talk at all. We get to LA, and I figure she's got to walk by me. I got a plan. So I'm sitting on the plane waiting for her to come by. She sees me sitting on the plane waiting for her to come by. So she stays in her seat, and it's like, obvious because all I'm doing is playing with the magazines. So I say, wait a second. She's got to come off the jetway. So I'm just going to get off the plane and wait at the end of the jetway. So she comes off the jetway, and she comes around the corner. She sees me waiting, the end. And you could just see the looking around going, son of a bitch, he's still here. She starts to walk past me. I start walking with her, and I say something about how cold the plane is, and she stops and she goes, look, buddy, guys, have you ever seen this finger? Yeah. Started early in our relationship, but I thought. I go, she called me buddy. That's progress, right? You got to take the wins. She goes, I just interviewed for a position on the east coast. There's absolutely no reason for us to have a conversation. I said, I totally get that, but I'm in the Bay area all the time. Why don't we just have dinner? I get her to give me her card. I email her. We start emailing back forth now. That's on Monday. On Wednesday, I fly out to Atlanta to go surprise my nephew for his 16th birthday. So we set up a dinner date for the following Thursday. So, like, ten days later, we're supposed to get together on that Friday. While I'm in Atlanta, I get an email from her that says, hey, got the job on the east coast. I'll be moving in the next six weeks, so I don't see any reason for us to have dinner. I step out of the lacrosse game that I was in, watching my nephew. I call her up and I go, hey. She goes, hi. I go, yeah. She goes, am I in trouble? I said, no, but I'm curious. She goes, about what? I said, well, I never really got a dear John letter before the first date. She says, well, did it work? I go, no, I'll see you for dinner on Thursday. This June, we will have been married twelve years. Her version might be a little different, but I want you to know your dream is coming. If it's not here, be ready for it. Be ready for it. All right, so that's her, right? There she is. I got the better end of the deal. And if anyone doesn't think I can sell, take a look at my wife. That leads me to principle number two. Wealth creation is a today thing, especially for the youngsters. Fallon, where are you at? Where's your hand? I want to see if you're still in the room. Fallon. Right there. All right. It's a today thing. That means today you're going to do it. Fallon's 20 years old. Sorry. I just gave it all away. Oops, sorry. Yeah, because here's the thing. What's on the screen? What is that? An egg corn. The egg corn will actually grow into an oak tree, but it takes five to six years for it to gestate and grow. And then it takes another five to six years for it to become stable and fully grown. It's like your wealth. It's like your wealth. My son, he is 33. His wife is 30. They started early on. He didn't really have a choice. The brainwashing started at 1010 years old. Okay, so he didn't have a choice. But here they are at 33, 30 years old, two kids, one and a half year old and a two month old. Granddaughters, princesses. And they have three homes and a multimillion dollar net worth. Yeah. The principles that you're going through here are the same things that they do. But by the time they're 38, they're done. Their money journey has built a money machine that's going to take care of them. And so the thing is that we need to nurture it early, and we need to nurture it often. Here's why that is, because one of the challenges is that we grow up in a society where we typically look at our wealth and we do this. I'm going to make some money and I'm going to spend some money, and then whatever's left over, I'll invest that. So what you're doing is you're taking what's left over to build your future. You're using the scraps for your future. The people that will build wealth will do this differently. They'll look at it this way. They'll say, I'm going to make money. I'm actually going to make investing a priority. And then I'll build my life on what's left. And if you don't like what's left, we have to figure out how to build the income side of it. But we don't forsake our future for current lifestyle. And it's hard in this Instagram world, scrolling and all of that stuff. But there's something you need to understand. This is something that I call the wealth creation curve. It's the wealth flatline. Wealth is built this way. It's built this way, and there's this idea or this space here where you're on the wealth flatline. That means you're putting a lot of effort in and not getting much back. You're saving, you're putting money in, you're investing, and you're going, Mel, this doesn't work. Like, I made $67. It's not going to work. Here's the problem, is that you're still in the wealth flatline zone. The only way to eat up the wealth flatline is time to get in the game and stay in the game, getting in the game and staying in the game. Because here's the thing. All your wealth is on the other side of the flatline. I worked for a large consulting firm downtown Los Angeles, and one day I decided I quit, and I was going to go to Japan. And I was going to just live in Japan and train the martial arts, which I did. Okay. Trained under a 17th generation samurai bloodline sensei. But here's what I did. I had money in a. When I left the company to go to Japan, I cashed it all out. Okay. Number nerd. I actually did the math. Another drink time. Because had I left it in? Because once I cashed it out. Once I cashed it out, because I figured out what the heck, I have time, it moves me right back to the front of the well flatline. And I got to start all over again. So wherever you're at, the best time to build wealth is today. Now, y'all will ask me, well, the market. Yes. Yeah, the market. Well, is it a good time to invest? Are you investing yet? No. Then it's a good time to invest. That's the thing that needs to happen. But here's what it's going to take to do that. You need to stop wanting so much. That sounds od. We're in a self development, kind of personal development. We want to expand. Here's what I mean by this and walk through this with me. I've done a lot of board breaks. Brick breaks, just like this. And every time I did it, I wanted to break the boards. I wanted to break the bricks, just like your goals. Just like, whether it's weight loss, relationships, money, want isn't enough. We'll go at New Year's Eve, and we'll sit there and we'll set our resolutions, and we end up with these resolutions, which are just a list of wants. And then by February, what happens? Well, I'll put it on the list next year, and we just take our wants and just keep booting them down. You know why? Because wants are soft. The only time I would break a brick or break a board was not when I wanted it, but when I willed it. And what I mean by will is that it is a declaration that you are saying, I will do this. And when you take your goals and you skinny them down to a list of wills, declarations of how you're going to live, things will change. When you say, I will be financial free in five years. I will lose this weight. I will build this business. It's a declaration, but it's scary. Think about it. When you go out and declare to the world, or declare to your friends, declare to your family, I will do this. That means that you have to do everything in congruence and alignment with that. But that's what's going to change things. Diagnosed with cancer in June of 2019. Two surgeries. July and August, December. They say, you're good. I had 47 treatments. Late April 2020, I do a virtual live event because of COVID I was going to do a live event. We switched it. The day after the live event is done, I go back to my surgeon for my normal scope. Now I go skipping, and they're like, there's no big deal. Now my surgeon is like, six foot four, poker face, doesn't show a thing. I'm laying on the table scope, and all of a sudden, I hear him go, oop, that's something. What? He says, hold on. Oh, yeah, I see another tumor. Cancer was back. All of a sudden, I start to spiral. All of a sudden, I get in a dark place. All of a sudden, I realize, wait a second, this can come back. And I'm talking to a dear, dear friend of mine. He says, hold on. He says, I feel it. I hear it. Let me ask you something. Do you know what your outcome is? And I said, you mean, like, do I know? Or he says, what is the outcome that you're going for? And I said, I'm going to beat this thing. He says, okay. And if you know that that's the outcome, what do you need to do today to move you closer and what do you need to do tomorrow to move you closer and the next day, and take each day one day at a time, because you just declared it and you just committed to it, and now you have to live into it. I had another 18 treatments, another surgery, and as of March 3 this year, three years clear. Thank you. So, I want you to start willing it in your life. Make the declarations you need to make to live the life that you choose to live, the dream that is waiting for you, that is coming to you. Yes. Leads me to the next principle. Income doesn't make you wealthy, y'all. You can make a whole lot of income, but you won't have a whole lot of money. Because remember, that's the earning journey versus the money journey. It's what we do with it that matters. And I know you may have heard this, but there was a study of 10,000 millionaires. 78% of the millionaires are first generation millionaires, meaning that they didn't inherit it. It wasn't gifted to it, they didn't win it in a lottery. They created it. 80%, y'all. You all can be the 80%. Yes, but it ain't about the income. It's about what you do with the income. We got to create the money side of the equation, the money machine, because you can make a lot of income. Think about these guys. They made hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of them, all of them are broke. Some of them still are. It's not the money you make. It's how you deal with the money. And those that want to create affluence, they realize that there's three lenses that they've got to focus on. But there's three critical outcomes of those lenses. The first critical outcome is that you're going to live a richer lifestyle. You're going to live something that is richer. It's not the commas in the bank account. It is how you feel and experience life. Think about how you've been these last four days. How does it feel, ladies and gentlemen? Yeah. Can you imagine that? That's the way your life can be? Yes. If you can. I want to hear an I'm in. Absolutely. Because here's the deal. I want you to have a richer lifestyle, not just a wealthy lifestyle. The second critical outcome is I want you to have a deeper impact. Deeper impact. Now, y'all are serving and doing things, you're working and everything. That's one impact. But there's two impacts that we seem to forget. The impact we have to the right and left, the people we share life with and love, and the impact in the mirror, who you become in the process, who you want to be. Remember, the why starts to define you. And the third critical outcome is this is that you have complete freedom. Now we're talking about financial freedom, but I'm going to tell you, I know really good. I'm talking about financial freedom. I'm going to tell you it's the most rudimentary freedom you can ask for because I actually don't think you want financial freedom. I think you want two other freedoms that are above that. The first is time freedom. The ability to dictate and decide what your time is. How you're going to use the time. Yes. And above that, you want mind freedom. Yeah. Peace of mind. Peace of mind. In order to do that, you need three things. The three filters, the three focus points. The first is this. That you need a process to generate. This is your earning journey. This is how you make it. How do you make your money? And at some point we can talk about how you expand making that, because that will accelerate your path to wealth. That $5 million we talked about. But there has to be a second piece of this, and this is where most people get it wrong, is that you have to be able to accumulate it. This is how you multiply it when you get your money to work hard, harder for you than you did for it. Oh, it is golden and it feels good. Yeah. Then there's this third piece. I don't like it, but you got to have it, especially in our society, is you got to figure out how to insulate it. I don't want the people to take it away from you, not on my watch. Whether it's taxes, losses, lawsuits, anything like that, I don't want it. So we need to have those things in place to make that happen. And if you sit back and look at this as a checklist, you go, do I have that? Do I have it? No. Then we know what we need to work on. That leads me to principle number four. Principle number four means that incremental shifts will lead to exponential wealth. This is me in Japan at a place called Hanada Gardens. And I had a dojo for eleven years. And the kids would come up to me and say, sensei, why is it when you do a technique, it hurts so much more? I said, because I know the little things that make a difference. It's the same thing with your money. See, if it is a behavior you're trying to create, it isn't about the fact that you're putting $5 away that matters because I hear it all the time when I make more, I'll do it. Now. If you're not doing it today, you won't do it when you make more. Trust me. Absolutely. Think about this. You decide you want to go to the gym, you're going to go to the gym. First time ever walking the gym. You walk in the gym and you go to the bench and you see these big, nice 45 pound plates. You put it on the bar. Never been in the gym before. You lay on the bench and what's going to happen? You pick up the weight, if you can, and it crushes your freaking chest. You're going to get hurt. When you start in this journey and you go to the gym, what do you do? You go to the chrome weights. Nothing wrong with chrome. And you pick up the little weights and you start exercising the wealth creation muscles. So I don't care whether it's$5, I care that you're exercising the muscle, because the five will turn into ten, we'll turn into 20, we'll turn in 100, turn 1000, and we'll get you to your 5 million. Let's look at some numbers. Yes, let's look at some numbers. When my first granddaughter was born, Jenna Kutcher came to me and said, what would you tell your son? In fact, no, not what would you. What are you going to do for your granddaughter? Oh, said, here's what I'm going to do. Put $500 in account, and I'm put $25 a week into the account. We're going to invest it, and I'm going to do that for 20 years. So I'll give her 20,000, $420,500. And Jenna looks at me and goes, dude, you're so much more wealthy than that. You're so cheap. I go, no, hear me out. What's going to happen is that as she grows older and she gets to ten, the training will start on how to deal with the money. And by the time she's 60, the 20,000 that granddad and grandma gave her because of the skills that were transferred. You never transfer assets without skill sets. First turns into$1,465,000. So for less than a cup of coffee a day, I take care of my two little granddaughters. Let's look at what this looks like for you. Let's say that you took$200, $200 a month, put it away for 30 years, it turns into 300,000. You're going, hell, I don't want to do this for 30 years. All right, well, let's look at moving the money up. What happens if it's $800 a month? Now all of a sudden, now all of a sudden, you're at what? Can't see what that is. 1.2 million. Yeah. When you go, I still don't want to do 30 years. Great. Let's go to 20 years. It's half a million bucks. All right, let's say you want to go big time. You go, I'm going $1,500 a month, 30 years. $2.2 million. 900,020. Here's my point. How many of you have businesses in here? Beautiful. All right, here's what I want you to do. The first service, the first sale, it might be 200, might be 800, might be 15, or might be somewhere in between. The first one of every month, you're going to transfer to a high yield cash account automatically. I did a program for a large group of big conference for hairstylists and said, your first service of the week, you're going to put in a high yield cash account. Because all I need is 200 for 300, 800 for 1.2, or 1500 for 2.2. And everywhere in between. It does not take a lot to make a lot. It doesn't take a lot to make a lot, but we got to get in the game, get that wealth flatline eaten up. It doesn't matter. Start with the$5. When Jeremy was ten, I started giving him a commission. And he would take the commission. Yes, it was called a commission. He had to earn it. He would take the commission and he would take a percentage and invest it. He would take a percentage and donate it. He would take a percentage and save it and a percentage and play with it. Start him at ten. You all do this with your kids at ten. Start having the conversation around money. We don't have a money problem in our world. We have a financial education problem. We don't want to talk about it because it's taboo. But let me tell you, we're not supposed to talk about money, sex and politics. Well, politicians, we should. Brian Tracy once told me, yeah, I didn't want to complete that. My wife would have given me house chores for a month if I would have completed that. Brian Tracy, I asked him one time, I said, do you ever want to go in politics? He says, listen. He says, think about it this way. Ticks are parasites that suck the blood out of you. Polly means that there's a lot of them. Why would I play in that space, have the conversations with them? Because that's the way things change. I go get my haircut by a kid that's 23 years old. I'm sitting in the chair and he says to me, one of my best friends, he just bought a $5,000 watch. Said, really? He said, yeah. I said, does he make a lot of money? No, he's 23. Are you kidding me? And I go, why'd he do it? He says, because his friends thought it was cool, beautiful. I said, hey, can I do Fallon? Listen to this one really carefully. Can I do some math for you? And he says, yeah. I said, all right. Every dollar you put away in your 20s is going to turn into $70 to $80 by the time you turn 60. So him going and spending $5,000 on a watch to impress a group of guys that's probably not going to be in his life for two years may have been a $5,000 watch purchase. To me, it was a $400,000 cost of his financial future. Now, I'm not telling him not to do it. I'm just telling to make sure that you want to be conscious, aware, and deliberate in your financial choices. The choices you make with your money today should serve the financial future you want tomorrow. Now, I am not exempt from it. Oh, God. Especially Instagram. Woohoo. I bought $300 worth of shirts. I have no idea if they'll even fit. I bought a $900 coffee maker off. Like, it shows up, and I've set it up. My wife doesn't like a whole lot of change. It's got an app. You can order the coffee from the app. Like, I could sit here and order her a coffee right now. And she says, where'd you get this from? I said, Instagram, just be smart about. So I'm not exempt. I'm one of you all. So the fact is that, yeah, I do it, too. But we got to understand the cost of that to our future and understand that this is the thing that starts to drive everything. Earnings journey. Money journey. The earnings journey is about taking your seeds. They are the seeds of your future. They are the seeds of your future. And the tendency is to eat our seeds and never plant them. We grew up in an industrial age where there was something called pension plans. Pension plans was something where they turned around. They said, we'll give you a lifetime of income if you work with us for 50 years. But pension plans got expensive because we all lived a whole lot longer. So they did away with it, and they gave us 401 ks in the states and iras and other things in other countries. But the problem is, they put the idea of lifetime income on our shoulders and in our lap now, without the knowledge, the expertise, and the guidance to do anything with it. That's what this is about. Because now it's on you to create that lifetime income. And the way you do it is you build the machine that's going to grow a crop and that you're going to eat the crop and not the seeds. When I got sick with the cancer, I knew I had to shut everything down. I knew that I had to stop doing the things that I was doing so I could heal, so I could fight, so I could do the things to survive. Because I loved life and I loved the people around me, and I wanted to be there for them. I wasn't ready to go. So we had a machine, the crop that we could turn the machine on, we could eat the crop, and the crop kept growing and growing. But here's the beautiful thing. When you do this right, this is the legacy factor. When, God forbid, I leave this earth, and may be a long time, that machine moves to Stephanie. When she leaves. It moves to Jeremy when he leaves, it goes to cammie. I'm assuming this is the order to go in, and this is probably a really bad thing to do, all right? And then it goes to my grandchildren. But what happens really, is that I have the blessing and the peace to know that I became a financial inflection point to my whole family tree. And that's what I want for you. So let me give you some next steps. As I close out here. The first thing I want you to do, again is going to sound od. If you are in a relationship, want to be in a relationship, in a committed relationship, or with a significant others, married, whatever, partner, I want you to have a conversation with him. This journey of a financial journey to wealth and a rich life is to be experienced together. It's not a solitary pursuit. And we're not talking about, hey, honey, you're spending too much. We're talking about vision. We're talking about what you want in life, the dreams that you have. The second thing I want you to do is to really get specifically clear on that vision of what that financial freedom looks like. Is it a yacht in Monaco or a tent in Montana? Okay. Nothing wrong with Montana. Sorry, Brendan. I'll take the yacht. Just so we're okay. Define it and then let's get a price tag on it so you have a target to go to. You have a place to go. Too often, we're just kind of going and say, I'm just saving. I'm just building. I'm just building. No, we need to know where the finish line is, otherwise we could have passed it. The third one. This one, you might get the wine, the tequila, the whiskey out. Because I want you to get your bank statements out, your credit card statements out. I want you to start to go through it and mark out what are the wants and needs that you have. Okay, let me be clear. Needs are your survival bottom rung of Maslow's hardcore needs. Just the needs. Now, I'm not telling you to get rid of anything. All I'm trying to do is raise your awareness and consciousness and then define which ones are the wants. And then look at the wants and say, do I really want them? Do I really get value out of it? Do I really enjoy it? Am I even using it? Is there things in there? I got things in mind that I used to have. I still do that. Are there just in case why might need it one day? I kind of do that with my t shirts. My wife, she just like. And she does this. She rolls. Anyone. Roll your t shirts and put them. Yeah, all right, I see. It's all the women that are lifting their hands up. And if you're doing it for your husbands or your boyfriends, you're playing an evil, evil joke because she rolls it. I don't know what's on the t shirt. So, like, I got to take it out and unroll it. And I certainly know that I'm never going to roll it up the way she likes it. So what do I do? I do a guy thing. Throw it in the hamper. She'll wash it and. Oh, don't tell her. Don't tell her. Okay. Don't do that anymore. Shame on me. Sorry. All right, we'll move on to the next thing you want to do. Yeah, just roll it so I can see what's on the outside. All right. She's not here. Thank God. All right, take the things that you save. The ones that you cancel out. You say, I don't need this anymore from the wants. And I want you to transfer that automatically every month. So I don't want you to go spend and go. Who? I got 50 more bucks. I'm going shopping. No, remember, $50 a week is $200 a month. Turns into 300. Anything you can save when you do the wants and needs analysis, I want it transferred to a high yield cash account. High yield cash account. There's three characteristics of a high yield cash account, and that is this. One, it needs to be fully liquid. Two, it needs to have no fees associated with it. And three, it needs to be insured. High yield cash account. Just transfer it automatically. After that, we can figure out where to invest it. But I need to exercise the muscle that you're putting it away. If you don't know where to get a high yield cash account, go to bankrate.com. They have them listed. I'll be totally upfront with you. Get nothing. I'm at Wealthfront and CIT bank doesn't matter. And they're insured and all that stuff. And then set a monthly money date with an accountability partner or your partner. Now, this is not a date of criticism. This is not a date where you're sitting back and saying, honey, you spent $20 too much, or, why did you get that sports channel that's costing us? Because that's not really conducive for a good relationship. You're reconnecting to your vision. You're reconnecting your plan. And when you make decisions financially from the vision, you have the ability to make the right decisions and you have the ability to gel that relationship. Here's the thing. After the cancer recently, I get asked this question. Someone comes to me and they say to me, has the cancer changed you? I said, most certainly has. How did it change you? And I said, well, the crazy thing is, I actually feel like I say, no easier. What are you talking about? Here's what I know. Now, we all been told we only have a limited time here on earth. I was told that I didn't take it seriously until I stared mortality in the face. Now I go, oh, they were right. Here's what I know. If I have a certain number of slices of life left in me, may they be long, and I hand a slice of life away, I will never get it back. You all handed me, Brendan, Trent, all the other speakers, a slice of your life. Now, for me, I look at it and go, the only way that that transaction makes sense is if I have the ability to turn around and say, I'm going to give everything to that moment, everything. And ask for nothing less in return. And when you do that, the moments we talked about are the moments that will drive everything. Yes. I'll get back to it. Take a screenshot real quick. Real quick. All right, so remember the picture that Jeremy drew of me? Ten years after he drew that picture, he was away at a football camp. He sends me this picture. He didn't tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it. When you live the affluence principles, when you live the affluence principles, you will live a richer life. You've been given three gifts in your life. You've been given the gift of time. The choice you get to make is how you're going to spend that time. How are you going to invest that time? You've been given gift of talent. The talent you have and the talent you're going to create. The question is how are you going to use that to create something meaningful in someone's life? And you've been given the gift of treasures. The people around you, the people you love, the journey you're on, how are you going to spend that? To create the dream that you want? And I leave you with this last piece and that is this. To never, ever stop dreaming because your dream is coming. Thank you. 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 forward Slash group and. I'll see you there.