If you are someone who’s been in the business-building mode for a long time, but you are not sure if you’re really setting yourself up for generational wealth and affluence, then this episode is for you!
My guest in today’s episode is financial wizard, Mel Abraham. Mel has bought and sold numerous multi-million dollar businesses for himself as well as his clients. He’s worked alongside incredible people like Arianna Huffington, Brendon Burchard and Tony Robbins. He’s a certified CPA who became a true financial expert.
After a really scary cancer battle just a few years ago, Mel woke up to the idea of affluence and financial liberation for himself and for his family and that’s what he’s breathing into us today – this idea of how you can have your business AND you can strengthen your business. But what else is happening outside the walls of your business that is also providing freedom and possibility and cash flow into your world to set you up for wealth, legacy and possibility beyond the “right now?”
Legacy starts right now. Building generational wealth starts now.
Sometimes we think of it as this future thing, this concept that we’re working really hard for right now, but we will have some day. This is why today’s conversation is really going to wake you up, shake you up and open your mind to the possibility of how you’re leading in business, how you’re leading your family and what you’re leaving behind.
It’s not just about money. It’s about the moments.
Entrepreneurship and Financial Independence
Mel got exposed to entrepreneurship when he was only 11 years old. After watching Harry Houdini movies with his dad, he started getting fascinated with magic. Pretty soon, he started learning magic and spending every day at the magic shop. One day, Mel hears one of the customers talk about “having a gig”, so he asks the owner what a gig was. When he learned that he could get paid to do magic, he started his very first entrepreneur endeavor, doing magic shows for kids’ birthday parties.
This gave Mel the gift of seeing that you can take what you love and you can affect people’s lives and create a life out of it.
That stuck with him to a point where he always knew that somehow, someway, he was going to do his own thing and write his own rules.
He became a CPA, but he knew he was meant for more. So, Mel decided to take his skills and talents and use them to help people light up their dreams again.
After going through a difficult battle of cancer and being able to totally focus on healing (and not having to worry financially), he realized that most people aren’t taught how to create financial independence. And for him, it was his financial independence that allowed him to focus on his healing.
This ignited a passion in Mel to help people find security, independence, and affluence.
How to Create Generational Wealth
According to Mel, the biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs make, especially in the thought leader space, is that they believe that having a business will give them impact, freedom and control.
They go into business thinking that those things are going to happen automatically, but the freedom and control never come. They end up on a treadmill, running until they break down and burn out.
The business was never meant to give you freedom.
The business was solely meant to create a solution, to have an impact on people and to generate cash flow. What most entrepreneurs don’t realize is that they need to use that cash flow to build, what Mel calls, a money machine outside the business—to build that generational wealth. That’s how they can get their freedom. Otherwise, they just have a glorified job and they’re going to keep running because they get nothing at the end of the day.
What is the Best Way to Build Generational Wealth
Diversify, diversify, diversify! The idea of having multiple income streams is no longer a luxury. It’s a requirement.
You need to diversify your income streams to reduce risk. If your primary source of income is your business or your job, you need to put money away so that you can start investing and creating that money machine outside of it. This means you have to manage your expenses, you have to find ways to scale your revenues and you have to look at how you’re living your life.
One other thing that Mel believes is a challenge for a lot of people, especially in the social media world, is to remember that it’s more important that we live a rich life than it is to look wealthy in the eyes of people that don’t matter.
Too often we’re trying to make sure that we can paint that false façade on the social media screens.
Visioning Your Affluence as an Entrepreneur
There are a lot of metrics by today’s society standards in the entrepreneurial space that everybody focuses on—followers, how much money people made in their launch, how their book is ranking, etc. But what are some metrics that really matter?
Mel believes that we should always keep two things in mind:
- Anytime you are giving of yourself, ask yourself what currency are you trading it for? Are you making an investment in the richness of your life or are you making an investment for the ROI?
- We each have a certain number of slices of life. Rather than us measuring our wealth in dollars, we should measure it based on how much time of our life we actually control. Too often, we’re so caught up in saving money and getting money that we will waste our time doing it. And it should be the other way around, because we can always make more money.
But, before you get to the metrics, one of the first things to do is to ask yourself what’s the life you want to create? What is your target, what is your goal? Mel does this in a process he calls the Affluence Visioning Process.
Now that you know what it is that you want, you need to know the price tag that it will take to get you there. Now you have something to plan against, you have a goal to achieve and you do it through the business, through other endeavors, through the income streams.
Create Your Affluence and Legacy Now
Mel doesn’t believe legacy is something we have to wait to die to create. He believes that legacy is created in the moment when we interconnect with someone. Whether it’s our child, whether it’s our spouse, whether it’s an employee, whether it’s a customer, whether it’s a stranger, we have the ability to shift perspective, shift attitude, and change a life. The importance of that moment is a legacy moment.
So, when we come at it from the perspective of understanding that each moment matters, we’re going to put everything into it. Because the string of moments that we put together is the legacy that will continue to live on long after we’re gone.
Mel talks about the legacy in the finance space: the portfolio, the investments, the estate and all that, but he also talks about the legacy of the lessons: the legacy of our philosophy, our perspective.
When we can allow that to continue through the generations, that’s a life that outlives you.
When it comes to money, the most important thing is to understand the “why”. We need to understand the “why” before we worry about the “how” and “how much”, because when we give money a greater purpose, our money will give us a greater purpose, because we have to rise to that purpose. When we live by virtue of a greater purpose, then we make choices and decisions that feed them. Those things last more than the money in the bank account.
How to Pass on Generational Wealth
Most millionaires in the world are first generation millionaires, meaning that it wasn’t given to them, they made it themselves. By the second generation 70% of that money is gone.
Mel strongly believes that you do not ever transfer assets to a child before you transfer skill sets to the child.
You need to transfer knowledge, understanding, perspective, philosophy, values, beliefs to your children first.
The money is just the fuel. Money is never the purpose.
It’s not about the buying power of the money. It’s about the deliverance of the enriching of lives with the money that matters. When we look at building wealth and businesses from that perspective, profitability becomes the byproduct of serving a higher good.
So, start having conversations about money with your kids early on. Talk about generosity, about saving, about wealth. Give them the right perspective and the tools and skills they need to deal with it the right way.
I hope today’s episode gave you exactly what you need to strengthen your business and get that freedom and control you’re craving, so that you can start building your generational wealth today.
RESOURCES:
- Connect with Mel on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melabraham9/
- Mel’s website: https://melabraham.com/
- Mel’s podcast the The Affluent Entrepreneur Show
- Get on our email list and keep up-to-date with what I am doing!
- Connect with me on Instagram!
