Building your Money Machine with Mel Abraham

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

CLARE: Hello and a big, warm welcome to the podcast, Mel. For any of our listeners who haven’t heard of you yet, could you do a quick intro to yourself and how you help business owners?

MEL: Oh my God. Thank you for, first, thank you for asking me, having me here. It’s, it’s cool to be here. I’m, I’m Mel Abraham. I’m actually a CPA in the States. It’s, it’s a, it’s an accountant. It’s, it’s that boring profession of accountancy. But I’m an entrepreneur and I’ve been an entrepreneur. Actually, my first, my first kind of foray into entrepreneurship was at 11 years old. I got fascinated by, I watched a movie with my, my dad, about the life of Harry Houdini and I fell in love with magic and fascinated by him. And, and then I ended up deciding at 11 years old that I wanted to go and try and Do a magic show and get paid for it. So I started doing magic shows for birthday parties. I was making since 1972 was making $50 for a half hour show, you know? And that was, that was pretty good.

And it was, so that was my first foray into entrepreneurship, but the, the, the seed it planted was this. This idea that you could do something you actually enjoy. You could have an impact on someone’s life and you can make money at it. And it was this seed that kind of stayed with me and I wanted to understand business and I wanted to understand that, but I knew that that’s what I want to do. I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to do something I didn’t enjoy. And I wanted to make sure that I had an impact on people’s lives.

And, and so I became an accountant. I learned about business. I realized accounting isn’t for me because it’s boring and I wanted to do something bigger and and so I started consulting and helping people build their businesses, help them build their wealth, help them understand how to optimize profits without destroying their lives. And, and do that. And really that’s kind of been my journey in one way or another for, for decades. And I did it as a single full time dad, raising my son when he, from five and a half years old on, he’s 34 now. So, so, and he’s doing great. And so he’s, he’s a living example of the fact and, and, That you can transcend the genetics and the upbringing.

CLARE: That’s amazing. Hey, I’m really curious because I’m a CPA as well. You may not know. What made you study accounting?

MEL: Oh, gosh. So I did what the typical kid did, you know, I listened to my mom and my dad and they wanted me to be a doctor. So I went to school, started out to be thinking I was going to be a doctor until like a year into it I’m going, why am I doing this? Bye. I cannot stand the sight of blood. I go, it’s not a good combination. It’s not something that I’m going to get used to. And, and so I, I started to search for other majors and someone, someone said to me, you should go into accounting. It’s business. It’s, it’s, it’s a good degree and, and everything. And I said, all right. I had no idea what it was. I didn’t take an accounting class in, in high school. I had no clue. But I decided I would go that route. And, and, and so I, by the time I realized what accounting was, and I thought, God, I don’t know if this is going to be right for me. I was too far into the major to, to not finish it. So I finished it and figured. I’ll figure out how to take the skill set and use it in a different way. And I ended up at 1 of the big. The big back then it was the, you know, the big 8, I was with 1 of the big firms. In the consulting department and audit department, and I went there knowing that I wouldn’t spend all my time there. And I, I, but I used it as as the education grounds for, for, for the skill sets to try and take away. And so, yeah, I, I, I did it. Made the choice because I didn’t know what else to choose.

CLARE: Can I share my journey as well? Like I feel like, so my dad’s actually an accountant, so he kind of, I felt like he really pushed me into accounting. I, you know, finished my uni, went and became an accountant and I hated it. I’m like you, you know, we’re entrepreneurs, you, and but it’s so ironic that both for you and me, that the years I was, I guess, A bit cross at my dad, but now it’s such a big part of my brand. Like, you know, I teach people about money. You teach people about money. Having that CPA label is actually such a blessing in a world where a lot of people are coaching without, you know, having done the foundations of business. So it’s actually, you know, it’s a funny funny way that it all works out in the end, isn’t it?

MEL: It really is. I think it’s, it actually becomes this distinction because you’re right. There’s that we, there’s. People out there on whatever, on TikTok and all that stuff and I mean, and they’ve never, they’ve never lived it. They’ve never done it and yet people are listening to him and it scares the hell out of me. Like, I had listened to one guy that was telling people don’t go get the $25, 000 car, go get the $200, 000 R8 and you’ll make money on it. I go, you’re out of your mind, you know?

CLARE: This is maybe a perfect segue into how you help like business owners. So your big jam is really about actual wealth creation. And I’m really curious to know, so obviously you went from, you know, working in consulting, what sparked this passion. Like, how did you actually transition from working in consulting to saying, Hey, my real big purpose and passion is, is helping people to create lasting wealth.

MEL: Yeah, I think one is the, the short answer I think is necessity that, you know, I was a single full time dad. I was building my firm. I was valuing businesses, buying, selling businesses, doing litigation support. I was the expert witness in cases. I was building all of that while raising my son, and I thought that I was doing it right. And then he comes running in one day, he says, Daddy, Daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today. And he’s six years old, so I’m thinking that I’m gonna see this picture of us playing ball or, or at Disneyland or having fun. And, and I kneel down and I see this picture. And it’s me standing in front of two computer screens with a phone in each ear and one on the desk screen. And it was like this mirror into my soul that, that this six year old did, that I, I was screwing it up. Like the greatest gift I was given was the opportunity to be a father at that time. And I messed it up.

And, and I think that the, the other side of it is that I had so many people in my head in my, in my ear talking about, Oh, you got to get, you just got to get work life balance. You know, you got you got to do that. And, and, and I could have used excuses. I could have looked at Jeremy and said, Hey, man, look, I get it. But we need this because that’s what puts a roof over our heads. That’s what gets us to do the things that we want to do. We need the profits to be able to do this. And, and the thing is that I, I think, and the picture said it, but if he could verbalize it, he was literally telling me saying, dad, I, I I don’t want your profits. I want your presence. And it was like this, this knife in the heart.

And so that was the beginning of this idea or the realization that I will never be free and I will never live a life of choice. Until I’m able to separate the earnings from the effort it takes to make it. And that’s where I became obsessed. So it was more an obsession around my ability to have agency over my time, to control my time, to have a life of choice than it really was about the money. It was what it would allow me to do. And that, that was kind of the birth. Of the concept of a money machine and, and the realization that, Hey, we’re on two journeys. And, and so that’s, that’s how it all started, started out was out of necessity because I so wanted to be a good dad.

CLARE: And so did you start the work in your own financial situation? Is that sort of what, and then you started what, how did you sort of then start helping other business owners or other people with their finances?

MEL: So I started, so I, I, I got my house straight first, you know, I started looking at what I was doing, saying, how could I be there for him? So one, and this happens with money too, is that with his time, with my time, I got, I had, I had to look at it from an intentional standpoint, because here’s what we want. We don’t want work life balance. We want work life harmony. And harmony comes from being intentional with your time that you aren’t just beholden or your time isn’t driven by demands of others all the time. And the more I have intentional elements to my time, the more, more freedom, the more control I have.

And so with him, I, I created a calendar and I said, all the red zones are yours, not to be moved. And he said, and then all the other colors on the calendar, I said, you can turn them red. If you want, you tell me when you tell me how. Now, this is the same intentionality. I, I realized you need to have with your money, because if we don’t do things in advance, before we earn the money, before we use the time. We, we go through the day and we go, I, I don’t, I don’t know where the time went. Mm-Hmm. I didn’t get anything done, or I don’t know where the money went. I, I, it came in, it went out, and now I, I don’t have enough money at the end of the day. And so, so I think that there’s this parody between time and money when we, when we look at it. So I have to look at it and say, okay, I have the ability to earn money because I was, I was doing big projects. I was, there was high margins in them. It’s what we’re all taught to do is to get a job get a career build a business make money make money make money and we believe That’s the answer to our prayers. That’s the answer to freedom and control and all that and it’s not it’s it’s The whole purpose of either a business or a job is to provide a solution, have an impact, and create cash flow. That’s it. Nowhere in there is control. Nowhere in there is freedom. And I didn’t realize that going in. And as accountants, We have the worst business model, you know, because we’re, we’re swapping hours for dollars. There’s no value that there’s nothing. And, and then they tell you, oh, well, you have to have multiple sources of income. Wait, I’m on one treadmill already. You want me to run two treadmills at the same time? It made no sense. And that’s, that was the realization. I said, how do I do this? So I realized that, Oh, the work that I do isn’t my wealth. That’s one of the mistakes entrepreneurs make, but it is the fuel to create the wealth, the money machine.

So I have an earnings machine, but I have a money machine. It’s what I do with the cashflow. And that money machine is where we’re going to find the freedom. That’s where we’re going to find the control because The earnings machine is about optimizing value and cash flow. The money machine is about optimizing assets and time.

And when we understand that we’re running both those journeys, then we can use the business or we can use the job to fuel the machine so we have the flexibility at some point down the line to say, I work by choice. I don’t have to do this. Because I have a machine that’s going to take care of things.

And so I did that for me, and then people took notice and, and said, wait a second, can you help me with this? Because I, I don’t know. And so I started, I started consulting, I started doing some planning for people and, and it just started to grow and that’s. And understanding having the skill set of how to value businesses, and I can see, you know, profit maximization. I can see. So I had this. This dual kind of capacity to work within the business and outside the business that allowed me to do it. But it was always attached to, to the quality of life.

CLARE: So can we, when you say people started to notice, I presume it wasn’t cause you were driving around in Ferraris and, you know, throwing your cash off the top of buildings or anything, people start to notice this changing.

MEL: The biggest thing was they noticed. One of the biggest things was that at, at, at one point, I just said from 3 o’clock on, I’m not available. I started putting boundaries in because from 3 o’clock on, I wanted to go to my son’s practices and I wasn’t going to be at the office. And, from 3 o’clock on, If I was going to work, it was going to be at a home office. So this is we’re going back before it was all vogue. I mean, 1996, 97, I was working from home. But the purpose of it was Jeremy would come home from school. He would do his homework. I would continue to work. But we were together. We were there. And instead of him being at a daycare center. They started to see that I was putting these boundaries in and then when they asked the question, what, why, and, and I explained to them and they go, Oh, I need to do that. And, and so I got, I got really intentional about my time, what I was going to do. And look, some clients didn’t like it. I lost them and I’m okay with it. Okay, they didn’t understand it. And I’m okay with that. And, and so I didn’t, I didn’t drive lavish vehicles. I didn’t, I didn’t do any of that. And so I wasn’t parading anything, but they just saw me, like some of the clients that I was doing evaluation work for, like, there’s one client that I did evaluation for 22, 23 years ago. Now I’m on their board of directors. You know, as an outside director. So they had a chance to see how I live and some of the other things that I was doing. And they said, Hey, can you help? And that was at first I was just helping. Then I said, wait a second, maybe this is where I need to play. And that’s, that’s how I kind of transitioned.

CLARE: Yeah, cool. And so that’s all obviously led you to write your book. Talk to us about your brand new book and yeah, what are you, is the book talking specifically about strategies for building your money machine? Is it? Yeah. I’m really curious to, to learn a little bit more. I haven’t got my copy yet.

MEL: So the reality is, is that the book, yeah, the book is teaching you the process. The book is teaching you the concepts, the principles, the frameworks and everything. But the reason I wrote the book, I had no intention of writing a book. So in 2019, so the money machine was born at the hands of a six year old. It was kind of the idea was sprouted in, but in 2019 I was, I was flying around the country. I was speaking and on big stages, masterminding with really well known entrepreneurs, you know, and millionaires, billionaires, all of that stuff. Everything was great. I’m living on the beach. Life is good. And then a doctor comes to me and says, Hey, we found a five centimeter tumor in your bladder that you, you, you have cancer.

CLARE: So how did that happen? Did you get a test done or was there symptoms? Like, how did you go

MEL: at the risk of TMI? I had no pain. I had no indication of anything except that we, I started to see blood in the urine.

CLARE: Yeah. Right.

MEL: And so that’s when I said, Oh, you know what? I might want to get checked. Like, when I say blood in the urine, I mean, like, It was not spots. It was red and it, and it stayed and it was consistent. So that’s what made me go get checked. And they did a CT scan and they, and they, the CT scan showed it as five centimeters when they finally went in, it was seven and a half centimeters. And it was huge. And that’s why they go, you had no pain. I go, no, I’m either numb or not, but I had no pain. And the scary thing. was that they said it’s on top of the prostate. So we might have to remove the prostate because we don’t know if the, if, if the tumors coming from the prostate into the bladder or from the bladder into the prostate, or if they’re just not even attached. We can’t see the ureter on the right side, so we might have to put a tube and a bag in for the kidney. And if it’s bad, you could lose your bladder.

Let’s face it, it’s cancer, so your life’s on the line. And I’m like, well, this is not the news I expected. I mean, life got flipped on its head in an instant. And so I, I literally at that point, I was with my son. It was on Father’s Day here in the U. S. And And my wife, and I said, life’s changed. We’re, we’re shutting everything down. I’m not working. I’m not speaking. I’m, I’m done until this is done. I’m going to take 100 percent of my time and focus on beating this thing from all directions, Eastern medicine, Western medicine, holistic. It didn’t matter, but that was my 24 seven purpose at that point. And the, the luxury that I was afforded was the fact that I had built this money machine. And I was able to shut down all my work to generate income, tell my team, hey, start sending the cash to me instead of building the machine bigger and bigger. And I didn’t need all of it. So the machines kept growing while I was going through the cancer, but not as fast, but it allowed me the, the, the, the latitude, the freedom to do it. And I don’t know, I don’t know how people do it. If, if I had to work during the day for to make, make a living. And then fight for my life at night. I don’t know how it would have worked.

So I ended up three surgeries and, and four tumors removed and 57 to 77 treatments when you take it all together. The cancer, so I had a surgery in July, August, December of, of 2019. They said, you, you look, you’re looking good. You’re looking good. I’m thinking I’m fine. April of 2020, just, just as the pandemic is starting, I go in for a regular scope and I just kind of flippantly go in like it’s no big deal. It’s just this is routine and they found another tumor. It came back. And so here I was again going in for surgery for which they ended up removing 2 small tumors. And going back through the treatments again, but I spiraled out of control.

I was, I was still trying, I started to try to figure out what’s, why, why am I, why me? I’m not a smoker, not a drinker. I lived a good, good life. Who did I piss off? Who did I wrong? Who did I not return the phone call? I don’t know. There had to be a reason that they gave me this. Why I ended up with this cancer and I couldn’t find it. And and I was talking to, well, a dear friend, you know him, James. James. We, we were having a conversation. He says, you’re really having a hard time with this. And I said, yeah. And he said, you know, you’re looking at in your past for the cause of the cancer. I said, yeah. And he says, haven’t found anything. And I said, no, no. He says, he says, I’m just curious. What would you think that the cancer is because of something you did, but what if the cancer was because of something you’re meant to do? What’s the message in that? And I go, and then he asked another question. He said. You struggled with the cancer all the ways possible, except financially. And then the pandemic hits and everyone is struggling financially. If they had done what you did, would they have struggled financially? And they said, no, he said that’s the message, that’s what gave birth to the book.

It really was about serving. And say, because I could have retired. I could have just stopped and just kept on going it. But I said, no, I’m young. I want to keep going. I feel like I want to serve. But what am I called to do? What am I, what is the choice if I’m going to do that? And so I saw the book selfishly. I saw the book as a way to serve, but selfishly, I also saw the book as a way to heal the psychological elements of cancer to be able to say, no, the cancer was a good thing in my life. It woke me up to the importance of this and to what I really should be talking about what I really should be taking to the world. And so. So that’s how the book came about is, is because of that.

CLARE: Yeah. Sometimes our greatest challenges are our greatest teachers really aren’t they?

MEL: Yeah.

CLARE: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

MEL: Yeah. So that’s, that’s, that’s how I’m on the journey and that’s kind of, I look at it as, you know, This is the new season of my life and I get, and I get to do it. It’s not, it’s, it’s not a chore. I love doing this. I love having the conversations. I love seeing people like I have one person just posted on something saying, I just started six months ago. I already, now I have $200, 000 put away. I thank you for, for your guidance. I’m like going. Yeah, let’s do this, you know, because what’s a gift that we’re giving them?

CLARE: Yeah. I can’t wait to get my hands on this book to learn more about building the money machine. Can we talk a little bit about how the launch journey is going? Because before we started recording, you were telling me a little bit about the success that the books achieved already. Yeah.

MEL: Yeah. So we we’ve we’ve the book has been out for just 2 days now to it’s we’re closing the 3rd day now. So we’ve hit number 1 and a number of categories on Amazon. We are in new releases number 1 in in a bunch of categories as best sellers. We are on the on the best seller list. Or retirement planning for investing, and we’re in the some of the top category for personal finance.

It’s, it’s been a surreal experience, the reception for it and, and people and now they’re, they’re starting to all get the books and they’re starting to post pictures and everything. It’s, it’s been an amazing experience in this. It’s not, the, the journey to it has, has its moments, you know, the, the editing process, the cover design process the writing process all have their own demons around it that you have to struggle with.

When I got this, I think that the big thing for me was there’s so much of it in here of me in here because I, I was very particular in the way I wrote the book. They said, I don’t want this to be a regular money book. I don’t want it to be the typical, I don’t want someone to look at it and pick it up and go, Oh, this is going to be just like another corporate stuffy money book.

So the frameworks are my Kind of my trademark hand drawn frameworks, the language I had to talk to the editor and said, Hey, you’re going to read this thing and you’re going to see like improper English in there. Leave it alone. You’re going to see me put in there and y’all’s leave it alone. And they go, really? I go, this is supposed to be a conversation with me. And if you edit me out of it, my voice isn’t in it anymore. And I said, so the purpose and why it’s story driven also is that I want people to, to feel safe. I want people to, to go through the book. I want people to, to get done with it and feel like they just had a conversation with a cup of coffee on a couch with Mel and not that they went to school. And so, so I was very specific and adamant with, with the publisher and, and the good part is I have a good publisher that was open to it, that understood the vision and has been behind it from day 1. Doesn’t mean that we didn’t have some friction points. We did. But by and large, they’ve been behind this, and the, my vision for it all along and it’s been a cool journey.

And I see it as this. The other side of this is that the book came out Tuesday, June 11th. Okay. That’s the starting line. It’s not the finish line. You know, I got it, I got a text from someone yesterday saying how the launch go. And do you feel good that you’re past it now? I go, I’m not past it. Now. This was, everything was a warmup. The race is on now because now I want people to buy the book. That’s for certain. I want people to buy the book, but buying the book, might put me on some bestseller list that really doesn’t matter. Okay. Other than to stroke my ego. Okay. And I, and, and, and everything. And my wife’s going to still make me take out the trash, empty the dishwasher. So it doesn’t get me out of house chores or anything like that. It’ll put a few dollars in, in Jeff Bezos pocket. He doesn’t need the money.

You read the book then, and that might soothe you, give you hope, give you a pathway, maybe give you a little bit of understanding. That still doesn’t do anything for you. What I need people to do is to do the book and need them to take it, take the frameworks, take the processes and live it. When they live it, I know what will change their life because it’s changed mine has changed my client. My son, my son’s 34, his wife’s 30. They got two kids, three homes and a multi million dollar net worth. Now, mind you, his brainwashing started at 10 years old. Okay. But, but he’s there in it.

And that’s, so that. On June 11th, my whole focus was turned towards, okay, we need to, we need people to buy the book, but I want to make sure you do the book. So I created a companion workbook. A book club guide for people that want to do it in, in communities, churches, temples, whatever they want to do to help them guide them through that. Because if I can get them to do the book, then we change lives. And so that’s been the focus. That’s kind of that, the launch journey and my kind of my philosophy around it. Look, doing a book is, it’s certainly not a moneymaker, but this is me. This, I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. It’s aligned. It’s congruent. And And, and so I’m excited about it. I feel good about it.

CLARE: Yeah, I think it’s a big misconception that people have, you know, I shared on my stories the other day, how little I get of my book revenue selling it through Amazon. Like an absolute fraction. And people are like, what? And they were really surprised to know, you know, for me, it’s only a couple of dollars per book. And yeah, it’s pretty pretty amazing that the person that creates it doesn’t get much of it, isn’t it?

MEL: The YouTubes just today saying, The way to get financial freedom is write a book called building your money machine. So he can get financial freedom. I go, dude, you are so, you have no clue at what it takes one to write the book, two to get the book out there and three, the numbers behind the book. It’s not, there isn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work that way. Now, could you, it’s everything around it. That’s going to allow you to put a business model around it. But there are some, some books that you just write because you feel compelled to write it and you know that, that it may not be a huge money. I’m not, I have no desire to build a book of business. I have no desire to take out a bunch of clients, run their investments, do any of that stuff. I have no desire for it. I want to keep speaking. I want to keep selling the book. I want to keep help facilitating people to to get it in their lives. I’ll do some coaching. I take on 3 to 5 families and as a family CFO a year and that’s that’s it. That’s I don’t need to to do a lot. And so I’m going to do the things that I think will have the largest scale impact and reach that give me the most joy. And, and that’s really where, where my focus is.

CLARE: And that’s another thing that you talk about, obviously, as well as wealth is about impact. And I mean, obviously this book is a great way to be creating impact. Speaking is another way to be helping and inspiring other people. Did that change after your cancer diagnosis, or has that always been something that’s important to you?

MEL: No, it always, I always wanted to matter. I always wanted to do something. I was came from a place of service and I cared about people. And the other thing that I, I think that drove me was the re I have this core belief, whether it’s idealistic or, or, or not that anything’s possible. And, and so I always look through the, through the lenses, if anything’s possible, then how do we achieve it?

And, and I wasn’t going to be held back by the averages of society and, and I would just say, well, let’s see, let’s try it, you know, because at some point, they said, there’s no way an airplane will fly you’re out of your mind, but it does now. And there was someone that said, I don’t know, I’m going to try.

And, and so I think that that’s that kind of drove me the, the thing with speaking and all that stuff was the fact that I realized I can have a greater reach, that I can get. And and then the reason the book came into play was having a greater reach is 1 thing, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to serve everyone and they didn’t have the capacity or the financial wherewithal To pay to have me do that.

So the best, easiest access was through a book. And so that’s, so I looked at reach and then access, and that’s kind of where the combination kind of met. And, but I’ve been speaking, I’ve been speaking since the nineties, because again, out of necessity to build my practice, build my firm, I was speaking. And then I just kind of kept using it as the vehicle. For the things that I do.

CLARE: Yeah. Awesome. Hey, I’m really curious as you were talking before, you know, you’re a CPA, you’re an accountant, accounting nerd, but I know that your friend James is really into spirituality. And I’m really curious to know, is that something that you’re into as well? And if so, how does that affect the way that you deal with money?

MEL: So not at the same level as, as James. But I got involved with, visualizations and all that stuff because of the, my years and years in the martial arts. That’s a lot of that came out of that living in Japan. I trained under a 17th generation samurai bloodline. These certificates are my hand painted black belt certificates from my sensei in Japan.

And that was this… My level of determination, my level of focus, all that stuff, I think, comes from the martial arts. That’s still present. Even, even the dynamics of, the cancer. So, when I first got diagnosed, and I still have them on, on my phone. I live on the beach. And I would go, I would go down on the beach because I realized that there is the, I believe there’s a connection between mind body. Okay. And if I, if I allow the, the fear, the anxiety and everything, the expectations, like I told my doctors do not give me probabilities. I don’t want to hear it. Okay. We’re, we’re moving forward as if the demons gone. And so I would literally go down on the beach every day, at 5 o’clock as the sun is setting and I would walk on the beach, I would get my phone out and instead of journaling, I would record a video of me talking to the phone.

I, I’ve never released any of them. I didn’t do anything. It was for me. It was for me, then I would get in the water for, for 20 minutes and then I would come out of the water and I would sit on the rocks and I would put meditation music in and I would meditate for 20 minutes sitting on the rocks. And then I would come up. I would have dinner with my wife. I would go into a, infrared blanket for 40 minutes and put meditation on again. And then I would wash off, go to sleep, and I did that every night at the, you know, going through the cancer. And so I, so I think that, so I, it’s still, it’s very relevant to me, just not at the same levels, I think. And from a different, a different perspective. So, so definitely it’s there.

CLARE: I was just listening to that practice thinking that sounds divine. I actually live on, on a beach as well. But you would not be going in the water here cause it’s full of sharks. I was giggling to myself when I’m like, yeah, you don’t, you don’t be doing that around here.

MEL: Yeah, we have, we have a closed Cove. We have dolphins, we’ll have dolphins and sea lions that come in and everything. But yeah, I go on the, I go down on the beach now in the mornings too, with my dogs every morning.

CLARE: Yeah, I love that. Well, if you ever come to Australia, don’t go in the water at sunrise or sunset because it’s not very safe.

MEL: Good to know. I, I used to come to Australia a lot and I learned how, how much stronger, for some reason, the sun is there.

CLARE: Yeah.

MEL: Burned like crazy.

CLARE: Yeah, for sure. I know. It was interesting for me. I had the opposite experience because when I first went to Europe and you know, I’m there like slathering myself in sunscreen and everything. And then I’m like, I’m not even getting a tan here. I’m lying in the sun. I’m outdoors all the time. People, that’s because you’re slathering yourself in sunscreen. I’m like, but don’t you have to? The burn time here can be, you know, as little as eight minutes before you get sunburned. So, yeah, it’s, it’s definitely interesting. One of the things about travel is learning how, how things are different in different parts of the world.

I had some other questions that I was curious to ask you, so I want to know what is the best investment decision you’ve ever made and what is the worst investment decision you’ve ever made?

MEL: Let’s start with the worst. I got into an investment in 2005. Turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.

CLARE: Oh, wow.

MEL: Wiped out one third of everything I own. Between me and two friends, we lost over four and a half million dollars.

CLARE: Holy crap. Tell me what happened. How did you, how did you like come across this? How did it not sort of had red flags?

MEL: So a good friend of mine from, for, for, for years had been involved with this guy, investing with him, not involved, but investing with him. And it, you know, just like any Ponzi scheme, the beginning works out really well. So he’s telling me he’s getting the money and this and that. And so I said, all right, I’ll give it a shot. And we’ll talk about how I got into it, why I got into it. But then, and then I brought another friend in after a little while, and it was, it was too late in the game. And the thing went, Went upside down. He just couldn’t carry it anymore. And everything, but what I think really what got me, I did a, a, actually a podcast episode on this is that there’s, there’s psychological, emotional triggers that these con, con men and women know.

And he pulled them all. Reciprocity. You know, forced teaming that there’s so many of them. But what he did is he appealed what he was doing is this, is he triggered my emotions, the emotions of aspiration, the vision, the numbers, what’s your life was going to be like. And so the more my emotions got involved, the less my intellect and my logic came into play. And so I ignored my rules. I ignored my criteria because I wanted to believe so much. This was the answer to to to creating wealth really fast and and everything. I didn’t understand the investment completely.

One of my, one of my rules now is is is that you never invest in anything you don’t understand. And so I got in this thing and ignored the voices and all the things that me as a guy that would testify against someone like this would, would do. And we lost it all. We put him to jail and all that stuff. We never saw, we never really saw a dime back. And and so that is definitely the worst investment I make.

But it led to a lot of the things I teach the lessons, the criteria, the due diligence, the process, all that stuff. Because I said, I had a role in it. I, I can blame him because he’s a con man. He’s a thief. He’s, he’s a parasite. Okay. And I can blame him, but blaming him takes any role that I had off my shoulders, which means that I don’t grow. I don’t learn and I don’t, I don’t. I don’t get any better from it. So I had to acknowledge I had to accept I had a role in it. There’s a difference between accepting your role in it and accepting blame for it. So I wasn’t accepting blame for it. I was just accepting my role in it. So I could become aware of what were the lessons and what could I do.

And so that’s, that’s the worst investment and just so, you know, 18 months after we lost it, I, I was able to recover it all not from him, rebuild it, but not only did I rebuild it, I tripled it. So it was, it was the worst investment, the best investment, this is going to sound odd. Is in myself, it’s in myself because it is, it’s even out of the Ponzi scheme, the 1 thing that I came back to is that he never could take away my skill set. And if I allowed, if I didn’t allow me, couldn’t take away my esteem and my worth. Now, I started to allow him. But it’s that skill set now I need to that to me, the development of the skills, valuable skills. Will always be with you.

And so to start over to try and do anything that, because we’re in a value exchange economy, like it or not, we get paid for the value we provide. And there’s some people get paid more than they should, but okay. But by and large, if we want to get paid more, if we want to make more, then create more value, be more valuable, be, be invaluable to your clients, position yourself, create distinction, skill up, all those things.

One of the things they say, well, you know, how do I get more income? He said, first things first, my question is, do you own your own value? Do you really, with conviction, believe the value? And then are you asking to get paid for the value ’cause of the solution you create? When they brought me into a case that might save $2 million in taxes and they get a bill for a hundred thousand dollars, it’s, it’s an, it’s a good exchange for them.

But the, the traditional approach is, well, how many hours is it?

CLARE: Mm-Hmm.

MEL: And if it only took you 20 hours and you get paid $500 an hour. You’re not, it’s not getting anywhere close to it. So, so you look at it from that perspective and say, what’s the value I’m creating because of the skill sets I have and I’ve developed and am I getting paid for it?

I think that’s probably the biggest investment that I always did was trying to invest in myself to grow. So, you know, whether it’s my ability to speak, communicate, negotiate technical skills, all that stuff. And I think that’s, that’s where I would start first.

CLARE: Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Starting with yourself because ultimately that’s, yeah, that’s behind the money machine, isn’t it?

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I’ve just realized, gosh, time has really flown past. I’d love to be able to share with the listeners if they are listening and they’d like to get a hold of your book, if they would like to find out more about how they can work with you, what’s the best way they can do so.

MEL: So for the book, what, what they want to do is go to yourmoneymachinebook.com com.

Okay. At that page, you’ll have all, all the information. You can go to different booksellers. We got booksellers in all the different countries there that link to it. The reason I’m saying go to that page. Remember I said, I want you to do the book when you get the, when you, you order the book, I want you to come back with that receipt on the page. You’ll see a place to put the information and put the information and that’s going to allow us, cause If you just go buy it at Amazon or whatever books, I don’t know you bought it. So I can’t get you the, the, the resources. So I need you to do it through that page. That’s probably the best place to go.

I’m on, I’m on Instagram at Mel Abraham nine, and my website is melabraham. com. So, I mean, I’m pretty well accessible if you just search my name, but by and large, you want to go to your money, machine book. com to, to really start to, to get access to things.

CLARE: Fantastic. Well, I’ll pop the link for that in the show notes to today’s episode as well. Any passing words of wisdom you have for the listeners Mel?

MEL: Yeah, I, I think that, when we talk about money, when we talk about business, when we talk about things, you cannot talk about it devoid of life. We do things to create a life. Not to create a bank account and the richness of our life will never be found in our bank account. It will be found in moments. It will be found in our ability to express ourselves fully to live fully into those moments to who we were supposed to be. Because I think that each of us have come here with a unique gift, the gift that we are supposed to nurture during our lives to create and to give to the world and to make it, make it, make it alive. And we get to that last day, that last moment, we’re ready to get in the hole and say, we’re done. We should be fully exhausted, sweaty, dirty, looking back at the people we serve, the people we love, the people that we were with and say, I’m good to go now. I’m good to go now. I did it my way. I did it fully. I didn’t leave anything on the field. And you take the gift that you created and you’re going to give it off to someone else to carry it the rest of the way. And you know that because you stacked moments after moments, fully invested that you didn’t leave a legacy, but you lived the legacy. That’s how I would do it.

CLARE: Oh, that is absolutely beautiful.

Well, thank you so much for your wisdom. I can’t wait to get my hands on the book and I’m sure the listeners will feel inspired to do so too. Mel, thanks again for coming on. Appreciate your time.

MEL: Oh my God, Clare, thank you so much for having me and for asking me and, and being willing to do this. This is a gift.

Remember it’s, it’s healing for me and I appreciate you.

CLARE: Thanks for coming on.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio