146. Mel Abraham - The Story Behind The Author of Building Your Money Machine

In this episode, Colette Brown welcomes Mel Abraham, author of 'Building Your Money Machine'. They discuss the intersection of health and wealth, Mel's personal journey from seeing his father struggle with finances to becoming a CPA, and his discovery of how money can both liberate and imprison.

Mel shares profound insights on money mindset, the importance of financial safety, and the role of money in living a fulfilled life. They also delve into financial communication in relationships, Mel's cancer journey, and the non-negotiables that guide his daily life.

Episode Highlights:

02:16 Introduction of Mel Abraham
03:10 Early Money Lessons
04:40 The Wake-Up Call
05:46 The Journey to Becoming a CPA
07:00 Early Entrepreneurial Spirit
16:23 Mismatched Financial Mindsets in Relationships
18:35 Facing Cancer and Financial Preparedness
25:03 Intentional Living and Non-Negotiables
31:51 The Legacy You Leave Behind

Grab Mel's book at his Website: www.yourmoneymachinebook.com

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Connect with Colette:

Instagram: @wellnessbycolette

Website: love-colette.com

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In Health,
Colette

Transcript

[00:00:00] Colette Brown: You may have heard that health is wealth. Some people spend their health building their wealth and then spend their wealth to get their health. But what if there's something different that we can do in building financial freedom, building our wealth? 

[00:00:14] Colette Brown: Our next guest, author of building your money machine.

[00:00:18] Colette Brown: It is my great honor to welcome Mel Abraham. Mel, welcome. 

[00:00:22] Mel Abraham: Oh my God. So good to be here, Colette. I can't wait to have a conversation with you and love the stuff that you're doing. 

[00:00:28] Colette Brown: It's great to have you. And we've connected a few times. And the last time was in a mastermind group where we were all coming together to help each other kind of dissect where we're at in business.

[00:00:42] Colette Brown: And we connected and your message, your essence, your being is very powerful and your story. That's the first thing that I want to share with the audience is just about you. So can you take us back to a moment in childhood? Maybe it was five, seven, 11, somewhere that you remember that may have taken you to where you're at today.

[00:01:07] Mel Abraham: I can tell you exactly what it was. And it, and I actually wrote about it in my book. It's one of the first stories. And I was about five and a half years old. I don't know exact age, but it was about five and a half years old. And I was sitting on the bay window in our house. And it was the very first time that I actually saw my father cry.

[00:01:24] Mel Abraham: this was a man that to me was my hero. He was this tower of power. He came here, I'm a son of an immigrant family, came here with nothing at 17 years old to go to school. He got his degree, got an advanced degree. He became an aerospace engineer. So he built things, he fought things, he did things. And all of a sudden I see him in tears And all I remember was that it was my mother and father having a conversation and discussion and I knew it had to do with money.

[00:01:54] Mel Abraham: I didn't know specifics around it, but my dad in tears looked at her and said, I [00:02:00] feel like I'm letting the people I love down. 

[00:02:03] Colette Brown: And do you remember those words? 

[00:02:05] Mel Abraham: I remember the words. 

[00:02:06] Colette Brown: Wow. 

[00:02:07] Colette Brown: How did that resonate in your body at the time? 

[00:02:09] Mel Abraham: At the time. What bothered me was just seeing dad cry.

[00:02:13] Mel Abraham: But the challenge is most of our money lessons are caught, not taught. What I didn't know is that I was going to carry that with me. 

[00:02:21] Colette Brown: And 

[00:02:22] Mel Abraham: what I carried with me was not what happened, but what I interpreted it to be. And what I interpreted it to be was that, you If you don't make money, if you don't make good money, you're going to disappoint the people you love.

[00:02:35] Mel Abraham: And so I got on this journey of how to, how do I make a living? How do I make more money? How do I, because if I do that, then I'll not disappoint the people that I love. And I thought that I had it all right. I went to school ended up becoming a CPA and business and learning about business and that kind of thing.

[00:02:51] Mel Abraham: And I was building a business. I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do. I was on the treadmill, which a lot of people may find themselves on. And it was a time where I was a single full time dad. I was taking care of my son. I was raising my son. He was at the same age as I was at five and a half years old.

[00:03:07] Mel Abraham: When I became a single full time dad and 

[00:03:10] Colette Brown: he came 

[00:03:10] Mel Abraham: running into me at six. Saying daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today. And so I kneeled down thinking, I'm going to see this picture of us playing ball or we're at Disneyland or we're doing the things and that wasn't the case.

[00:03:22] Mel Abraham: What I saw was a picture of me standing in front of two computer screens with a phone in each ear. Oh, 

[00:03:31] Colette Brown: knife through the heart. 

[00:03:32] Mel Abraham: Yeah. It was a mirror into the soul. 

[00:03:34] Colette Brown: Yeah. Wake up. 

[00:03:35] Mel Abraham: Saying, dad, you're failing me. Wow. Wow. Wow. And I think back going, this was, I go back to my dad saying here, I thought if I didn't make enough money, I would disappoint the people I love.

[00:03:48] Mel Abraham: And now I was sitting here with the message that, oh, I was making enough money and I was still disappointing the people I love. And so that was the catalyst of me sitting back saying there has to be a [00:04:00] different way. There has to be a different way to do money. Has to be a different way of living life.

[00:04:06] Mel Abraham: To take care of the things that actually matter most. To nurture and nourish the things that actually create what I call richness in life. And not just wealth in the bank account. 

[00:04:17] Mel Abraham: And that's what started this whole journey. It was literally at the hands of a six year old. 

[00:04:22] Colette Brown: Wow. Of two six year olds.

[00:04:24] Mel Abraham: Two six year olds. Me and him. 

[00:04:26] Colette Brown: You and him. Yeah. So where did that take you? So when, from when you saw that as a child, did it lead you into being a CPA because you thought maybe you could figure out. like, what was that journey? 

[00:04:39] Mel Abraham: I'm an accidental CPA. 

[00:04:40] Colette Brown: Okay. 

[00:04:41] Mel Abraham: typical parents, they wanted me to become a doctor.

[00:04:44] Mel Abraham: So I originally, I got good grades. I was good in math. I was good in science. I did well. And so I went to college thinking I was going to go to med school, but it didn't take me long ago. I don't like the sight of blood. that's a problem. . Yeah.

[00:04:57] Mel Abraham: So I decide I'm not gonna be a doctor. Maybe I'll be a dentist. And so I thought, okay, I'll be a dentist. But then I, I looked at some people's teeth. I go I don't wanna be in their mouth. Yeah. So I didn't even remember who it was, said go get a business degree.

[00:05:10] Colette Brown: Get 

[00:05:11] Mel Abraham: an accounting degree because it's universal and you'll learn these skills and all that stuff and see where it takes you. because I had changed my major already twice by default, I said, okay, I'm a business major now. So I ended up here. But what I did have is at 11 years old was my first entrepreneurial endeavor.

[00:05:32] Mel Abraham: I was watching a movie with my dad. It was a movie with Janet Lee and Tony Curtis. And it was the movie about Harry Houdini's life. So all of a sudden I was fascinated with this guy that boxes and chains and everything would not hold. And so I studied and then I got fascinated with magic.

[00:05:49] Mel Abraham: And so I would go, no, we wouldn't do this with our kids these days, but back then I would get on the RTD, the bus to go across the Valley to a magic shop during the summers when I [00:06:00] wasn't in school at 11 years old. And I would stay in the magic shop all day, learning tricks, talking to people.

[00:06:07] Mel Abraham: And one day some guy comes in and he says something about a gig. And then he leaves. And I look at the owner of the magic shop, I go, What's a gig? He says, Oh, he does magic shows and he gets paid. I go, wait a second, you can get paid to do this? And he says, yeah. So I went home and I put together this half hour magic show that I decided at 11 years old I was going to go and do for kids birthday parties.

[00:06:30] Mel Abraham: Amazing. So I was getting paid50 to do a half hour show in 1972. 

[00:06:36] Colette Brown: Something that you love to do too, by the way. That 

[00:06:39] Mel Abraham: was the spark. That was the spark. Yeah. Because I said, Wait, I can make money doing something I love to do that has a positive impact on someone's life. 

[00:06:48] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:06:49] Mel Abraham: And that stayed with me.

[00:06:51] Mel Abraham: And that's what I always wanted to find my way and path back to. And I wasn't sure how I would get there, but the spark was lit at 11. 

[00:07:00] Colette Brown: That's beautiful. I like that. And I think if we all take a pause, we remember these childhood memories that have pushed us in the trajectory that we're in today.

[00:07:11] Colette Brown: So you, you started making the money. So did you start spending it or saving it? I'm curious. 

[00:07:17] Mel Abraham: Was a prolific saver. Okay. There was a time that I spent and overspent I remember my first years in, in college. Back then, they allowed credit card companies on college campuses. And, you would apply for all these credit cards and you'd get t shirts and things like that.

[00:07:37] Mel Abraham: And and I remember specifically, so I have an identical twin brother, and he went to school down in San Diego. And so I was visiting him in San Diego 1 day, at 1 weekend, and we went to the, to a mall in San Diego, and we literally went from store to store, applying for store credit cards. And we were like, Oh, look at this.

[00:07:58] Mel Abraham: We're getting all these credit [00:08:00] cards and we're getting 10 percent discounts. And all of a sudden we come home with all this stuff. And we got this discount and we thought we saved a whole lot of money, but then the bill came in and we're like, oh man, and it was like the first lesson about what I call destructive debt.

[00:08:17] Mel Abraham: And you go, oh yeah. You're gonna have to pay the bill one day. 

[00:08:20] Colette Brown: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:08:21] Mel Abraham: So that kind of got me to start really focusing on savings. And I always focused on safety, even now when I'm working with people, I said, safety, first growth, second. Let's give you a foundation of safety.

[00:08:36] Mel Abraham: Let's take away uncertainty. Let's remove fear. Let's give you that because that's the better foundation to grow from. I was a saver now, my brother wasn't at the beginning and then he shifted later on. He 

[00:08:51] Colette Brown: learned from his brother. Are you older or younger? 

[00:08:53] Mel Abraham: I'm older by three 

[00:08:55] Colette Brown: minutes.

[00:08:55] Colette Brown: There you go. He learned from his older brother. You can say that. Yeah. So I want to tie this in because my whole premise of doing the podcast was it's called limitless healing. And I believe so firmly and it's not just one dimensional, our health is multifaceted. And one of those is a financial foundation and ability to growth.

[00:09:20] Colette Brown: So can you just sum up in a few words what wealth means to you or what does money mean to you? 

[00:09:27] Mel Abraham: This is going to sound awful coming from me, but I don't, money doesn't mean a lot until I attach it to life. See, I don't believe that it's separate. And when we chase money, we chase a statistic.

[00:09:42] Mel Abraham: We chase this nebulous thing that we think is going to give us happiness and but it doesn't. And it's why I differentiate between wealth Richness. Richness in life is how we experience it. It's how we feel about it. It's who we [00:10:00] share it with. It's everything that gives us meaning, and that's actually what we long for.

[00:10:05] Mel Abraham: Wealth is just a banking account. I know so many people that have wealthy bank accounts. Bankrupt lives. 

[00:10:11] Mel Abraham: And . When I look at money, it is only meaningful to the extentIt provides me the opportunity to live fully into what I was meant to do. And to create the impact that I'm here to create and now it gives it the meaning it needs and it takes away the power and control that it can have on people's lives.

[00:10:35] Mel Abraham: And so all of the work that I do in helping people build wealth and all the tactical stuff has to come from the why. Because money isn't a purpose, it's a result. 

[00:10:46] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:10:46] Mel Abraham: And be driven by the vision of life first and then make the decision. So that's the way I look at it. And I didn't always look at it this way.

[00:10:56] Mel Abraham: Clearly I chased money and I did some things, but life has a tendency to slap you around a little bit and say, Hey, you're not paying attention to the things that really matter. 

[00:11:05] Colette Brown: It does. And I just wanted to bring up for some people, they might be very advanced and following us closely. And there might be others that have just started, and this might be the first time you're hearing about a money mindset.

[00:11:18] Colette Brown: And I want to say that I grew up with the narrative that money is the root of all evil. That was our family narrative. And I have since I turned my back on that because I've found that when you lack and when you have a negative viewpoint of money, that it creates stress. If you don't have resources to live it's a bankrupt life.

[00:11:42] Colette Brown: And so I also share your viewpoint of money to me as freedom. It is opportunity. It gives. ability to have beautiful experiences with my family, my children. It enables us to do things, to move around the world, to have comfortable lives, [00:12:00] to help others. Like I'm big into giving back to others. So how can we do that without money?

[00:12:05] Colette Brown: And we can't. So if you're a person listening and you're questioning where you're at in life and you have these negative beliefs there's a way to change it. So what was your. What was your initial money mindset when you aside from your experience with your dad was there any notions that were delivered to you from your parents growing up?

[00:12:26] Mel Abraham: Yeah. Of one, I grew up in one of those households that you don't talk about money because it's impolite. 

[00:12:31] Colette Brown: And 

[00:12:32] Mel Abraham: I freaked my mother out because I would ask people how much they made. , I had one guy, we called him an uncle, but he really was an uncle and he drove, I didn't know what it was at the time, but he drove this really nice car.

[00:12:42] Mel Abraham: But it was an Aston Martin. He had a phone in the car before phones were vogue. Yeah. Like it was one of those phones that you literally would pick it up, dial a central operator, say, I need to connect to this call. And he would connect the call like, wow. he had more money than an aerospace engineer would.

[00:12:58] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:12:58] Mel Abraham: And I looked at him, I go, how much do you make? And my mom fell off a chair. And so I grew up with that. I also grew up with the idea that money doesn't grow on trees and it's difficult to come by and it's this scarce resource and it can be, but the other thing that happened to me as I started to come into this space.

[00:13:18] Mel Abraham: To teach more about it. I thought as an accountant, I was literally just going to give you the math. Here's the columns, the rows, the formulas. Here's how you make money, how you build wealth, all that stuff. It didn't take me very long to realize that until I deal with the things between your ears, I cannot deal with the things in your pocketbook.

[00:13:37] Colette Brown: And 

[00:13:37] Mel Abraham: So I realized how many of us. Including myself, have stories, mindset, upbringing issues, media issues, social media issues that give us this perspective on money that is an interpretation, but not a reality. 

[00:13:53] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:13:54] Mel Abraham: And that, and I think that's the thing. And you mentioned stress and there's a recent study from the [00:14:00] American Psychological Association that says 72 percent of people say that they're stressed about money.

[00:14:04] Mel Abraham: Three quarters of the population say they're stressed, but then they say, don't talk about it. How do we solve it? 

[00:14:09] Colette Brown: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think what you're doing here is so powerful and it's so timely. And the other thing that just popped into my head is money and relationships. And whether you're dating or you're married, I have a dear friend who is into building wealth and she has a very strong Latin following and talk about breaking barriers and trying to get through how to communicate that.

[00:14:38] Colette Brown: What do you feel in with a couple that let's say that you're, you're moving forward into a relationship. When does that money talk come in to play and then we can get into a marriage in the future, but let's talk about like baby steps into it. 

[00:14:52] Mel Abraham: So it's funny you ask that there's an appendix in the book that says conversation starters for couples.

[00:14:57] Mel Abraham: Okay. 

[00:14:57] Colette Brown: Ooh. I 

[00:14:58] Mel Abraham: don't know. I am absolutely a proponent. of your financial journey is a joint journey. It doesn't mean that everything is all in one account. Like my wife and I, we have combined accounts, we have separate accounts. We've got it all, but it's all driven by a strong ability to communicate and a set of values and a vision that is common.

[00:15:24] Mel Abraham: I think that When you first start out, it's important to to realize that money can be an issue. And there are money personalities, just like there are love languages. And if one happens to be a saver and one happens to be a spender and you're coming together and you don't have the ability to communicate, it's going to be a problem.

[00:15:44] Mel Abraham: And we need to be able to navigate those things. The challenges as couples We tend to talk to each other when it comes to money down at the tactics level. And what I mean by that is this. Honey, why'd you spend so much on your hair? Or, you spent a lot [00:16:00] at the golf club this month. And all of that smacks of is criticism, argumentative judgment.

[00:16:06] Mel Abraham: And it's never gonna be good. It's never gonna bring people together. Where when we started this conversation, I said, the money is to achieve the vision, the dream. And so as a couple, the first place to start is the dream, is the vision and to elevate and say, if we agree on the dream and the vision, we can then start to understand our role in making it a reality.

[00:16:31] Mel Abraham: And now that vision will inform some choices. That we need to make with the money to make it work. And having the conversations at a higher level first, before we come down to tactics, will facilitate bringing people closer together, versus pitting people against each other, and saying, why did you spend, why did you do this?

[00:16:55] Mel Abraham: Because that's never going to feel good, and it's never going to get us to where we want. like my wife, she's informed about everything. She is not in the details in everything. because she doesn't necessarily need to be, but I watched her mother and my mother when both our dads passed away in a panic while they're trying to mourn the loss of the love of their life about do I have enough to live on.

[00:17:21] Mel Abraham: Can I stay in the house? Can I survive? And when, in 2019, I got diagnosed with cancer a couple hours after the diagnosis, I literally went to the attorney's office and said, let's make sure the trust is done, that everything is updated and everything's good. And Stephanie, my wife didn't understand.

[00:17:38] Mel Abraham: She thought you do an end of life planning. And I, and in a sense, I guess I was, however, I looked at it differently. It was peace of mind planning 

[00:17:47] Colette Brown: It was me being able to sit with her and she sat with the attorney once it was redone and all that stuff. And I said, she now knows the two phone numbers she has to call.

[00:17:56] Mel Abraham: She now knows exactly what to do and where everything is [00:18:00] at. And she did before, but I just needed to reiterate it. Everyone that I love was taken care of. And now I could go fight the cancer battle with a peace of mind and knowing that if, God forbid, it's my time, they won't struggle and they won't suffer when I'm gone and that they knew exactly what my, what I was trying to accomplish and they knew exactly what to do and who to trust and where to go first.

[00:18:24] Mel Abraham: And I think it's important to be on the same page. We don't necessarily have to be on the same line, the same word. But be on the same page and use it as the vehicle to bring you together and not separate you Money is like the number two cause of divorce. Why? Yeah. It shouldn't be.

[00:18:45] Colette Brown: Yeah. I agree with that. like my girlfriend says, if you can get naked in bed, like why can't you get naked about your money? Like this is something that, like you said, you can have separate joint, but It's an integral part. So if you can't talk about it, then something's wrong I think so. So really examine that, right? 

[00:19:05] Mel Abraham: Yeah. I totally agree with you. I think it it's an indication of something bigger than the money. If we can't talk about it, 

[00:19:11] Colette Brown: I agree with that full heartedly. And by the way, you came from a single dad.

[00:19:17] Colette Brown: You met this beautiful wife that you have today and you guys are happily married. And you also have, tell us a little bit about your cancer journey because that's that's another part of your life. Your journey. 

[00:19:30] Mel Abraham: Yeah. So life was good. but it can slap you, like I said. So June of 2019 they found what they thought was a five centimeter tumor in my bladder and said, you have cancer.

[00:19:41] Mel Abraham: It looks like it's on top of the prostate. We have to go in and take it out, but we might have to take out the prostate. We might have to put a tube and a bag in for the kidney, and if it's bad, you're going to lose your bladder. And then they said and it's cancer life's on the line. Everything was going fine.

[00:19:55] Mel Abraham: I'm not a smoker, not a drinker. I'm a healthy I try, I have a sweet tooth. Okay, that's why I [00:20:00] want your granola. And, and but the reality is that I, no one in my family ever had cancer. Why me? Why? and so I struggled with all of that, and it flipped me on my head.

[00:20:11] Mel Abraham: But what I was able to do at that time is I knew that the only thing that mattered is living, surviving, beating it. And so what I did not want to do is have to work to make a living during the day, but fight for my life during the night. So I shut my businesses down. I shut everything down. And I solely focused on my my healing.

[00:20:36] Mel Abraham: for hours in a day, we're going to different doctors and I had a team and all that stuff, but I had the luxury of doing it. Because of what I learned after Jeremy drew that picture for me, and I started to rethink about the fact that I will be imprisoned by earning money if I cannot separate my ability to earn from the efforts to earn it.

[00:21:00] Colette Brown: Hence 

[00:21:00] Mel Abraham: the money machine. 

[00:21:01] Colette Brown: And 

[00:21:02] Mel Abraham: I, as much as I understood what it was when Jeremy drew the picture at six years old, the importance of it became clear when I had the cancer. 

[00:21:11] Mel Abraham: And that, that was one part of the cancer was that I said, Oh my gosh, this thing saved me because it allowed me to The luxury to decide on doctors, to decide how I was going to do it, to not be stressed out as far as finances go.

[00:21:28] Mel Abraham: I had to fight the cancer medically, physically, psychologically, energetically, but I didn't have to fight it financially. And yet, that was 2019, 2020 pandemic hit, and so many people struggled financially. 

[00:21:41] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:21:42] Mel Abraham: I was walking on the beach, I was struggling, With cancer because it what happened is it came in 2019 had a couple of surgeries about a bunch of treatments and I was thought I was clear in December in April of 2020 right after the pandemic started, they found another tumor came [00:22:00] back.

[00:22:00] Mel Abraham: So I started a spiral again. And I was looking, he says, you're I said, who did I wrong? What did I do wrong? What? Why did I deserve this? And so he's made a comment. He says, You seem to be looking for something you did that makes it that you deserve the cancer. And I said, yeah, I don't know what I did.

[00:22:19] Mel Abraham: He says what if it isn't something you did, but something you were meant to do? What's the message there? And that's when this all came about is the message was. The one gift that I had that I learned really glaringly, and it's the culmination of decades of a journey, is that people don't have to struggle and be stressed about finances if they just do some simple things.

[00:22:44] Mel Abraham: And so that's when the book came about the teaching, the speaking and all that stuff to really focus in on that and that alone, because when I decided to come back from the cancer and do some things, I said, what am I going to do? Thank you. and this is the gift that allows me to heal and give value to something that can be horrendous in a person's life, cancer, but also know that I can make it matter more.

[00:23:10] Mel Abraham: And that's what kind of was the Genesis of a lot of this. 

[00:23:13] Colette Brown: That's beautiful. And your story, I have heard repeatedly with people who have had cancers and health problems. And. It's not why did it happen to them, but for them. And these people like yourself that have taken that hard situation, iterated, and they use it as a gift to the world to shine out, to be a light, to say, I've been there.

[00:23:37] Colette Brown: And this is how I can help you through what you're going through because you're a beacon of hope and light to so many lives, Mel. And I'm honored to have you here. What are your non negotiables in life on a daily basis? Does that look like a daily basis or is that kind of a mindset into the future?

[00:23:54] Mel Abraham: Yeah I think there's a couple of non negotiables. My priority is my wife and my family. 

[00:23:59] Mel Abraham: When [00:24:00] Jeremy drew that picture of me, one of the things that I realized, because so many people said, you gotta get work life balance and everything, and I think that it, that's a A bill of goods.

[00:24:09] Mel Abraham: We've been sold. There's no such thing as balance 

[00:24:12] Colette Brown: because 

[00:24:12] Mel Abraham: Their definition of balance is compartmentalizing your life or having a weight on one side and a weight on other side of the plane tug of war. On average, your balance. It's not about balance. It's about intentional living. It's about harmony.

[00:24:27] Mel Abraham: And that comes from being intentional with how you live, the choices you make, and the money. And so with Jeremy, one of the things that I did at that point is I created a calendar. And I said, all the red zones, those are yours. Unmovable. So you know in advance when dad and you have dad and you time, then every other color on the calendar, you can change anytime you want to red and I'll be there.

[00:24:54] Mel Abraham: So being intentional, I think is important.granted, if I'm trying to pay bills and I have a job, I got to go to the job and all that. So it isn't about the quantity of time. It's about the intentionality of the time. It's about the intentionality of the living. Even little things when my wife used to be out, she works out of the home now but she used to be out in the field and I used to be one of those, I'm busy, I'm working from home.

[00:25:17] Mel Abraham: She comes home and I go, hi Hon. It didn't feel good for her. 

[00:25:21] Mel Abraham: so I learned pretty quickly, intentionally, just. When she comes home, if I'm trying to complete something, give me one second, and if not, I put the phone down, I stop everything, I push away from the desk, I step over, and I give her 15 20 minutes.

[00:25:36] Mel Abraham: If she wants it, she might not want it, okay? But I want to be intentional and say, the things that are the priorities, the things that we typically want to take for granted, okay? Our health, our love, our relationships, our family, we take those for granted because we just assume they're going to be there.

[00:25:51] Mel Abraham: No. They should be the top priority. 

[00:25:53] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:25:53] Mel Abraham: They should be the thing that we're intentionally giving to first and not the other [00:26:00] things that are more transactional. And so I don't negotiate my health. I don't negotiate my relationship. If anyone in my family absolutely needs me, I've got an elderly mom who's in care and all that stuff.

[00:26:12] Mel Abraham: If they need me, I'm there. All bets are off. I'll cancel everything. And if someone doesn't have the ability to understand that, then they don't have the facility to be in my life. And I'm okay with that. so non negotiable is pretty much health, family and the other side of it is that I had a doctor when I was going through the cancer and he said to me, I said, I made a comment that I need to, I need to eliminate stress out of my life.

[00:26:38] Mel Abraham: And he says that's the mistake that most people make. And I said, what do you mean? He said, it isn't the stress that's causing the issue. He said, if stress is on a spectrum, he says, and you go from stress to no stress. You go from, a plus 10 to zero, but at zero you don't grow. You actually have to go past it.

[00:26:56] Mel Abraham: And he says, it's actually not the stress that's the issue. It's the question of. Is there joy in the stress because there is stress and things we do But if there's great joy in it, it says joy love Is the things that allow us to growso I look at things and say, yeah, it might be stressful.

[00:27:16] Mel Abraham: Is it really joy? Not momentary pleasure, but deep, long lasting joy. And then I say, great, that gets moved to the, to the higher up on the list and lifestyles, especially in hindsight. Now I look at it, lifestyle is always part of an equation. When someone says, ask me to do something. I know that I'm going to give a slice of my life away and I'm never going to get it back.

[00:27:41] Colette Brown: And 

[00:27:42] Mel Abraham: that person's going to give their slice of life. We're doing it. The listeners are doing it. And so I have to feel absolutely convicted to say, I can give 100 percent of myself to that moment and I expect nothing less in return. Otherwise the transaction makes no sense. And so if I don't [00:28:00] feel 100 percent vested in the moment or I can't give to it, I simply say I can't do it because I can't give it my all.

[00:28:07] Mel Abraham: And so that's the metric that I started to look at because I don't know how many slices of life we have, but I know that they need to be meaningful and know that every moment we get a chance to interact with someone is a moment that we can be an inflection point in their life. And we have this idea of legacy, which I talk about at the end of the book, which I think is mistaken 

[00:28:30] Mel Abraham: I hear 

[00:28:31] Mel Abraham: everyone say, 

[00:28:31] Mel Abraham: I want to 

[00:28:32] Mel Abraham: leave a legacy.

[00:28:33] Mel Abraham: And so 

[00:28:33] Mel Abraham: they want 

[00:28:34] Mel Abraham: to build 

[00:28:34] Mel Abraham: these assets 

[00:28:35] Mel Abraham: 

[00:28:35] Mel Abraham: the buildings 

[00:28:36] Mel Abraham: or the portfolio. 

[00:28:37] Mel Abraham: That's not 

[00:28:37] Mel Abraham: a legacy. 

[00:28:38] Mel Abraham: It's a bunch 

[00:28:39] Mel Abraham: of stuff. 

[00:28:39] Mel Abraham: Legacy isn't

[00:28:41] Mel Abraham: something you 

[00:28:41] Mel Abraham: build to give 

[00:28:42] Mel Abraham: to someone. 

[00:28:43] Mel Abraham: Legacy is 

[00:28:45] Mel Abraham: something 

[00:28:45] Mel Abraham: you live 

[00:28:47] Mel Abraham: And you 

[00:28:47] Mel Abraham: leave in someone 

[00:28:48] Mel Abraham: every moment 

[00:28:49] Mel Abraham: that you interact.

[00:28:50] Mel Abraham: And we do that. We give each moment the reverence it deserves. And that's what builds richness. That's what creates legacy. I look at my son and he's the greatest, the proudest success that I have in my life looking at how he is as a husband, as a father, and as a man and take all the money away, take the beach house away, take all that stuff away.

[00:29:11] Mel Abraham: Look you know, we enjoy it. But at the same time that that's the richness. 

[00:29:16] Colette Brown: Yeah, that's so beautiful. Everything you're touching on and that really resonated with me. I haven't really heard it put quite like that of every interaction is giving a slice of Your life away and to be a hundred percent intentional and it's good to know.

[00:29:33] Colette Brown: I went through a phase where I felt like I was just giving and giving and giving and giving and giving and giving. And then when it was time for me to receive when I needed help, there was a lot of crickets around. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting because I never looked at giving as something negative.

[00:29:51] Colette Brown: I grew up in a very giving mindset and giving heart. And so when you understand that it's beautiful to give. [00:30:00] Look at where you're giving and make sure that it's in alignment with you 100 percent because we don't get those moments back, especially when it comes to our children and those that we love.

[00:30:09] Colette Brown: And and I love how you greet your wife when she comes home. That's beautiful. I think that's so necessary and for women, it's those little things like that can build up inside of us. And then we become resentful and we don't necessarily tell you about it because we think you should know.

[00:30:25] Colette Brown: And so it's good that you said that. I like that. As we get towards the end, I just wanted to ask you a question that I ask all the guests, which is if this was your last message that you had to broadcast out to the world, what would it be? I 

[00:30:40] Mel Abraham: think that we are all put here with a gift. We were given a gift.

[00:30:45] Mel Abraham: It may not be fully developed, so our responsibility is to nurture it, to develop it and it's uniquely ours, and it's only ours to, to create not someone else's, and so our job during our lifetime is to nurture and develop the gift, and to live fully into the gift of whatever that is. The money helps you have the flexibility and the choice to make sure that you're focused and you magnify the gift.

[00:31:09] Mel Abraham: Because I think at the end of our days, at the end of our days, as our toes are sitting on the edge of that, that gravesite, we get a chance to look back at the people we shared life with, the people that we loved, and we should be sweaty. We should be dirty. We should be exhausted. And we look back and we say, I get it my way.

[00:31:30] Mel Abraham: I did it fully. I made each moment matter and you hand the gift back and say, now it's yours to take it the next go and you hand it back to the world because it's not yours to take with you. It's yours to borrow for the time you're here, nurture it and give it to someone else to take it the rest of the way.

[00:31:47] Mel Abraham: And I think that's, if we lived our life that way, we would find more richness, more happiness in things that actually matter. The money would come in and the money would actually create the [00:32:00] richness in a way. I mean, There's tactics and all that stuff that we can talk about, but if it's not giving us that, then why are we doing it 

[00:32:08] Colette Brown: I'm just going to let that sit in and sink in and I'm going to listen to it a hundred times. That's beautiful. Mel, you are a gift to the world. I appreciate how you've opened up today, how you open up to the world, how you've taken on writing books, showing up for people, coaching people, and just giving back.

[00:32:29] Colette Brown: You're heartfully. You're just a beautiful soul inside and out. One of the most genuine people that I've met. And I really appreciate you. we do need to talk about your book and how to get your book and what are some options that you've wrapped up in it?

[00:32:46] Colette Brown: I know that there's a workbook and there's some classes that we can interact with you. So tell us more. 

[00:32:51] Mel Abraham: So the book is called building your money machine. If you want to get it, you can go to your money machine book. com. And why go there is that no matter where you are in, you can be in Canada, and that you can be Australia, UK.

[00:33:05] Mel Abraham: I have all the booksellers where you can get the book there on that page. Okay. But I also have some of the bonuses and the gifts that you. talked about. So you'll, you can go there, order the book, pre order the book, get the book, but take that receipt, and you'll pop your information in, and then I'll email you all the links to all the bonuses, becauseI realize that buying the book is one thing.

[00:33:28] Mel Abraham: That's gonna, that's gonna help me maybe make a bestseller list that really doesn't matter. the book will you hope maybe understand it doesn't change your li to do was allow you and f the book, what these gifts and bonu An implementation workbook, a book club guide some additional trainings from me and some opportunities for me to guide you along the way, because I know that if I can get you to do the book, I'll change your [00:34:00] financial life, which will change everything for you.

[00:34:02] Mel Abraham: And so your money machine book. com is the place to do it. And my desire is this, is that we get a chance to live our life fully and that we live a life in a way. That we live a life that outlives us. And the way we do that is we leave goodness in the people that we left behind.

[00:34:20] Colette Brown: Beautiful. I'm going to put all this in the show notes. where people can link out to you and please check out Mel Abraham. He's amazing. Get the book. I'm going to get it. I'm going to go through it. I'm going to do the work back. I, because I feel that we can never have enough knowledge. And also people that we, that resonate with us around us that we're learning from.

[00:34:45] Colette Brown: I can't wait to get my copy. It releases June 11th, I believe. Is that right? June 

[00:34:49] Mel Abraham: 11th. Yeah. 

[00:34:50] Colette Brown: June 11th. And so order your copy so you get it and jump on the journey with Mel and others and myself as we explore how to change this narrative of money, how to make more, create more so we can live the best lives that we're meant to live.

[00:35:08] Colette Brown: So Mel, thank you so much for your time today. 

[00:35:11] Mel Abraham: Oh my God. Thank you for having me. It's a blessing and a gift to me. 

[00:35:15] Colette Brown: Thank you. And everyone else until next time be well.