#63: How to Create Affluence Through Entrepreneurship with Mel Abraham, Founder of The Affluence Blueprint
When owning a business, one of our main goals is to make money.
But what do you do once you do make money?
Today’s guest, Mel Abraham, Founder of The Affluence Blueprint, shared how he was able to shift some of his income streams once he was diagnosed with cancer to help him focus on his recovery.
As well as discussing five income streams every entrepreneur has, Mel also shares how:
To live a richer lifestyle with a deeper impact
Passive income is a myth
You can stand out in digital environment
To learn more about Mel and how he started his entrepreneurial journey at the young age of 11, be sure to tune into this episode!
Learn more about Mel here: https://melabraham.com or check him out on Instagram @melabraham9.
Check out my new free new training on www.yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond.
Listen to the Show:
Laura (00:03):
So here's the challenge: so many entrepreneurs dream of leading a life of impact by creating a multi-million dollar brand, but only a tiny percentage of businesses actually scale to that point. On this podcast, we speak openly and authentically about what it takes to scale your business, following the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts, and leaders, looking at the behind the scenes of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned. My name is Laura Meyer and I'm your host. I'm a serial entrepreneur, wife and mom to three. I love talking all things business, especially digging into the mindset and strategies of scaling joyfully to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond. Let's go!
(00:49):
Hey everybody. I want to introduce you to a new friend. And I feel like we've known each other forever. This is Mel Abraham. He's the founder of The Affluence Blueprint. We were introduced by a mutual friend and hit it off right away because Mel is brilliant and I liked to be around really smart people and you're about to be introduced to his genius. So thank you Mel, for being here.
Mel (01:13):
Gosh, Laura, thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And I feel the same. I feel like it's like, we've been old friends, but didn't know each other and, and, uh, blessed to be on this journey with you.
Laura (01:23):
Yeah, yeah. Same. And I think when you connect with other entrepreneurs who want to embrace thinking at that higher level and solving problems in a way that other people might not necessarily look at it from that perspective, which I think both you and I thrive off of you make an instant connection. And so I know you've had quite the journey from where you started to where you are today. So just maybe quickly let everybody know a little bit about your background and then what keeps you busy today.
Mel (01:53):
Awesome. So I've been an entrepreneur. I actually, I tell people that I started my entrepreneurial journey when I was 11 years old. I actually was sitting with my dad. I remember watching a movie with Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, and it was a movie about Harry Houdini's life. And I was fascinated with this guy that no boxes, no chains could hold. But then as I started to read about him, how he built his business, how he built his reputation, how he, he created the demand for things that weren't in demand at the time and how he navigated who is he's, he's one of the most amazing entrepreneurs, showman genius has that that I think has ever lived in that sparked this whole love of magic for me back at it at a young age. And so at 11 years old, I figured out that you could get paid to do magic.
(02:41):
And so I started doing magic shows for kids, birthday parties at 11 years old, getting paid $50 for a half hour show. And so for me, what that sparked in me was the understanding that you could actually do what you love and make money at it while impacting people's lives. And so that never left me. And so that was, that was the spark that got in me. And then I followed the tradition. I went from magic to CPA, to accounting.
Laura (03:11):
Magic with numbers.
Mel (03:13):
Yeah. And so I followed that traditional path for a short time. I was, uh, one of the larger firms in downtown Los Angeles, uh, consulting and, and helping with valuations. But I realized it, wasn't what I wanted to do. I realized that what I wanted to do is help people build their dreams, help people build their businesses, help people build their financial empire, if you will, not for the sake of the money, but for the sake of the impact for the sake of having an impact on people's lives. And, and so that's how I kind of came to doing what I'm really doing today, which is really working with people in the thought leader space, in the expert space, helping them one, get their selves positioned, build their content and be seen as a thought leader. But more importantly, then how do you use that to, to live a life of affluence, to live a life that is meaningful, that is fruitful, that has a richer lifestyle, not a wealthy lifestyle, but a richer lifestyle with a deeper impact and complete freedom that transcends just a person that moves beyond them from a generational standpoint and living things in a way that allows them to shine. And so that's, that's kind of the way I got to where I'm at. And we had some new turns in and left turns along the way that really made things, kind of fire me up a bit on, on a few topics that I'm sure that we can get to.
Laura (04:44):
Yeah. And you have your own formula for this, which is the legacy maker formula. But before you created that formula for yourself, you helped other really well-known people in the online space create formulas from their own thought leadership. And so what do you think are some of the keys to actually creating a process, a system by packaging up pretty much your genius and presenting it to the market?
Mel (05:09):
There's a couple of things that come to mind that we need to think about. The typical entrepreneurial approach to things is they go out to the marketplace, they look at the marketplace and they say, Oh, there's a gap. A gap means an opportunity. And then they come back to their laboratory and they, they toil and they figure it out and they say, here's the solution. And they go back to the marketplace. And, and so too often, if we try to do that with our thought leadership, it doesn't work. It doesn't work because we're not congruent, we're not aligned. And it is not what we're called to do. And so the entrepreneur's view of building a business is an external outside to inside view. As a thought leader, the first thing we need to do is go inside. The first thing we to do is go deep into our core and understand who we are at the core level.
(06:02):
What is this journey as has given us? What is the knowledge, the wisdom, the experiences, all of that stuff, and figure out what it is at our core, because one, that's your competitive advantage. No one can take it away. There is only, well, I've got an identical twin, but there's only one Mel Abraham in the world. Okay. Although our wives think we use the same brain, it's just a matter of who's using it, we are very different. And, and now we look at this and say, this is my core skills, my strengths, my knowledge, my wisdom. And I look at it and say, what problems does this solve? And we look at the problems it solves, and we go great, who in this marketplace in different markets who needs those solutions? And now we go out and serve. And so one of the first things I think we need to do is that now, you know, I kind of bang the drum on this a lot, but here's, here's the reality.
(07:04):
People want to talk about this space called thought leadership. And in order to be a thought leader, there's two words in there, a thought and leader, right? The first thing is that we need to think, and we need to think deeply. There's a lot of people that, that think that it's, well, I'll just hang up a website, I'll get, I'll get it looking really pretty. I'll get a Facebook group and I'm good to go. And it's, it's fine. You might make some money, but someone that's truly going to lead people, someone that's going to truly impact lives at a deep level, needs to think deeply, needs to go in and think about their stuff in a way that it's never been thought about. And there's a, what I call a hierarchy of thinking that starts to take what is starts out as information and makes it transformation that we need to go through. So that means that it's work. I think the hardest work we can do is our thinking, but when we do it right, the impact we can have is immeasurable.
Laura (08:02):
Yeah. And when we just skim the surface, it disempowers us from I think working at the highest level that we can and serving at the highest level and actually charging level, because what happens is, is that when we skim the surface, we end up generic and broad and not very specific about the transformation. Like you said, it just kind of hangs out more and information. And I see a lot of experts struggling with that.
Mel (08:27):
If you are anticipating or expecting or wanting to get paid premium fees, then you better being premium thinking to the problem,
Laura (08:35):
Right? I'm so glad you're saying this, because I think that we live in a world where there are awards for, you know, how many comments you have in your annual or even lifetime revenue. And we don't always talk about the substance behind the marketing, but the clients that I have encountered, the ones that are doing the best, the ones that work least and make the most are the ones that put the most amount of effort into the quality of what happens after the sale. And I don't think that happens. I know you're shaking your head because you and I are probably so aligned on this, but I don't think that this is actually discussed enough. And I love that you're bringing this up.
Mel (09:20):
Well, and I have a lot of people, a lot of friends, dear, dear friends that are our big marketing gurus and all that. But with all respect to the marketers out, there's a lot of people that can sell ice to Eskimos. They can sell whatever they want. They're, they're great at language. They're great at marketing strategies or, or tactics and all that stuff. The problem, here's the problem with not thinking deeply. It's, there's two things I think we need to master. One is our knowledge, which is what we know second is our notoriety, which is how we're known. Okay. The mistake that most people are making is they love the pazazz of the notoriety, how we're known, and they get caught up in that and they go, great. I got the best marketing machine. That's going to get people out there.
(10:11):
The problem is if we didn't spend the time in the knowing and the knowledge in what we know what happens is we get a whole lot of people in. And after a little bit, they say, oh, emperor's got no clothes. And you become this great imposter and you have no staying power. You have no longevity, and you've blown your chance and really having a deep impact. So we need, we need to always start with the knowledge first, which I get it. It's not the sexy stuff, but it's the meaningful stuff. It'll be the stuff that makes a difference. And has you in the business for, for decades to come?
Laura (10:47):
Oh my gosh. So, so good. And it's funny because I'm the one that loves to build the marketing machine, but there's nothing that makes me happier when I see a fantastic product on the other end of it. And I just launched recently my own membership. And while I received lots of compliments on how it was marketed, my favorite compliment is you've put so much thought into the there's so much care and concern, and we love the onboarding, or we love the experience, or thank you for the thank you gift. Like I think that that is the new thing that we need to be all thinking about in this, in this online only marketing base that we have stepped into within the last 12 months,
Mel (11:28):
How do we actually reach out in a digital environment, in a virtual environment? How do we actually reach out and truly touch someone and connect with them? And I don't mean thumbs up likes or contacts. It doesn't matter. But I mean, truly, like I have a habit when someone buys something from me, you know, I can't do it all the time because it's not scalable, but I have it set up in my system where, when someone buys the system sends me their name, their email, their city, state, and country, their phone number. And I literally will pick up the phone and just say, hey, just want to call and say hello and welcome you aboard because I don't take it lightly that you put your trust in me. and more importantly, you put your trust in you to take this step forward and just, and they're like going, what? And I'm gone. Well, why did we lose that? I don't want transactional relationships, somewhat relational relationships. I want things that are going to last. I don't have a whole lot of, I mean, I have a lot of acquaintances, but the deep, meaningful friends they've been with me for, for, well over a decade. And it's just the way I am. And so that's the way I approach it. And I think we lost that art. We need to bring it back.
(12:46):
Yeah. I think you have, I think you have in so many ways, and I know that you really are the go-to resource for so many people online who have done very well for themselves, and they tend to ask you a lot of questions about, okay, I made all this money now and you know what we like to call good problems, right? So in many of my clients, I think it's really interesting. We bonded over that had a similar issue, which now they've done really well. And like now, what do you just keep scaling? What you have online to diversify your wealth portfolio. And it's something that we have chatted about a little bit and even something I've been wondering about. And I had lots of these conversations with my friends, which is once you have this wealth creation process down, what do you, what do you do with it? So is that a little bit along the lines of what you're now working on?
(13:37):
Yeah. So it's, it's really where the affluence blueprint comes from. It's the culmination of my 35 year, more than that. Well, 35 year financial journey, but it was lessons that I learned to wrong along the way when I was a single full-time dad, when my, uh, raising my son when he was five and a half years old, and I was building my businesses, doing what most people do, running on the treadmill, doing the things that, that matter, bringing in the clients, bringing in the clients. And one day he comes running home and he was excited. He says, I drew a picture of you at school today. And I now down and looked at this picture and there I am in a blue felt tip pen. And it's me in front of two computer screens with a phone in each year and another one the desk ringing.
(14:24):
And it was in that moment that I said, Oh yeah, there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's just life. It's about harmony. It's about how we live our life. Because every decision we make, whether it's in the context of business or outside the context of business, it's a life decision because we affect lives. And so I had an examine and say, how do I run my business? Now, back then I was in the traditional and you kind of, you, it, the traditional swap the hours for dollars type of place, you know, billable hours. And, you know, for every hour, you're going to get paid, which is a treadmill you don't want to be on. You want to get off of it as quickly as possible. But I had to figure out how do I run my business differently, run my financial life differently, because what mattered most, wasn't the profits, but the purpose behind the profits, because Jeremy, my son at the time taught me that he didn't want my profits.
(15:20):
He wanted my presence and I needed to be there for him. And so that's how, how this all came about and bring it full circle in the sense of, I didn't know, no how important it was until just in 2019 I was doing well. I'm speaking on big stages on mastermind with huge, uh, you know, a hundred million dollar multi-million dollar companies, a billion dollar CEOs and flying back on private jet. Everything's great. In two weeks after I step off that jet, I'm in the hospital bed with them saying three words you never expect to hear, and that's you have cancer. You know, they found a five centimeter tumor in my bladder that turned out to be seven and a half centimeters and telling me that, hey man, you might lose the prostate. We may have to put a bag in for the kidney with a tube.
(16:07):
And if it's bad, you lose your bladder. And I'm like going all right. Life was good. Life took a left turn. Life is turned upside down. What do we do now? And the thing that what this whole idea is this, this is especially important for people in the thought leader space. Yes. I knew I had to fight the cancer physically, psychologically, spiritually energetically. But what I didn't have to do is I didn't have to fight it financially. And, and that gave rise to this, this the importance of right? How are you running your business? Not just to scale your business, but how has that business allowing you to scale your money? So you can scale your life because I was able to shut everything down and take myself out of it without affecting my lifestyle. I didn't have to sell things.
(17:00):
I didn't have to get rid of things. I didn't drain savings. We just turned the cash machine on and said, all right, let's keep our living going, but I'm focused on healing now. And now that I'm on the other side of it, we're turning the machine back on again. But the thing with most people in this space is they see one way to make, make money. And they said, I'm going to do a launch. And if I need money, I'm going to do a launch and, or I'm going to have a membership, or I'm going to have this. And the question is not, we get caught up and you, you mentioned it already whole idea of the revenue numbers and the commas and all that stuff and go, you know, it doesn't matter to me. I don't care what your revenue is. I don't care what, whether you did a million dollar launch, a $10 million launch, a hundred thousand dollars. I care what you did with the, I care that you had something left over so we can create a financial machine that gives you the liberation, independence, and peace of mind outside the business. So God forbid, when life happens, you're prepared.
Laura (18:02):
I love this. I love that you are having this conversation because it is not happening outside, I think of your own thought leadership. And it's so interesting because it's something I've been thinking a lot about, not only for my own consultancy and, and it's going really well, but I've been thinking about that for my clients too. And they come to me and they say like, okay, Laura do you know any financial advisors? And like can you send me to somebody who, I mean, I'm doing really well. I have more cash in the bank than I've ever had. Like now what I mean? Thank you. And now what? and that's when you and I connected and I thought, Oh my gosh, this is a really important conversation, because I think what'll happen is, is that sometimes as entrepreneurs, that aspect of us get shut down when it comes down to actually investing the cash that we've made from our businesses and what'll happen is you'll be sold. The same product , the same financial product is everybody else. You'll approach it as if you have a traditional business, when you don't. And then you'll kind of get put in a box. And so I wasn't sure what to tell my clients. And I know that you and I connected recently, and I was like, okay, this is who you need, but what do you, do you think there's anything in business that exists under the category of passive income? Like, do you think that actually is a myth or a reality?
Mel (19:21):
No, it's an absolute myth. I mean, without a doubt, here's why, here's why I say it is because the psychology behind it makes it a myth, the psychology behind it, the notes that I can set it and forget it. And the one thing that I can tell you from working with all the people that I've worked with and in my own world is that if you forget about your money, if you forget about your income, and if you forget about your wealth, it will forget about you. And so what I use is the term, I mean, it call it, it may be semantics, but what I look at it is that, and there's what I call five different income. We call it five incomes. Is that is the level of leverage to your income. Okay? Meaning leveraging your time. When I, when, when I'm in a one-on-one situation, that's an active, engaged situation where the relationship between my income is tied directly to my effort in.
(20:26):
And so the important thing is to start to understand how do I leverage my time back? Because that's what wealth is buying my time back. It's giving me options, giving me choices. It's allowing me to make that happen. And so, so when I had that opportunity, it's about leveraging it, but never ever do we forget, never ever do we not take the pulse of the patient of what doing even my own mom, a loving, amazing Jewish woman that she's, you know, worries about things. If she's not worrying her, life's not complete.
(21:07):
Yeah. I mean, I just, and I told her she calls me up and she goes, do I, really, Mitch is one of our wealth strategists. And I put her with one of my with my wealth strategist. She goes, do I really need to talk to Mitch? Do I really need to have the meeting? And I go, yeah. And she said, why I have you? I go, don't trust me. And she goes, well, you're my son. I said, but how many times have you heard of family members taking money from other family members? And she goes, you would never do that. I said, I wouldn't do that, but what's important to me. And this is the same way I treated my son starting when he was 11 years old. And my wife and I is that all I want you to do, mom is to go in, sit with them and say, here's what I started with. Here's what I brought in. Here's what went out and do the math and check the pulse. When we stop checking the pulse, when we stop paying attention to the numbers, they stopped paying attention to us. And that's, complacency's the first step to crisis. And so we never, never want to get complacent. That's why I don't like the term passive. I want you to think leveraged. I'm always involved. And I am the captain of the ship. Even if I have advisors, I have plenty of advisors, but I'm the captain of the ship. I make the choices. I make the decisions. They inform me, they help me navigate. They tell me, they warned me about things. And then I make the decisions and we need to do that. We need to be CEO of our business. We need to be CEO of our, our legacy.
(22:35):
Yeah. You don't want to delegate that. Nope. Don't want to delegate that. That's so, so good. So when people are scaling to that, multi-million dollar mark, what do you think are some of the key things that they need to be taken into consideration when it comes to their own financial health?
(22:50):
There's a couple of things I think that they need to look at is one, let's look at your income sources, let's scale, your income sources. Let's the more we can have a variety of inflows of income. The more, the more safety, the more, the less risk you have, the less uncertainty you have because, and I did this early on. I learned this early on because when I was building my CPA practice, my valuation practice, I was actually speaking. I was writing, I was, I was doing workshops books, and I was doing all of that stuff for free. So I would get hired to get the gig and I'd get the gig. And the gig would be anywhere from five, 1,000 thousand dollars. But I was doing all this running around to get the gig. And then someone said to me, they said, Mel, you know, you can get paid to speak.
(23:39):
I go, really? You can get paid to speak. I go, I always got in trouble in school for speaking. I mean, I can get paid for what I got in trouble for. And so I learned, I went to NSA and all that, and I got the CSP, but so what happened is he said, wait a second. If I want to make a million dollars, is it easier to make a million dollars by going out and running around six different ways and getting the good to make the million dollars? Or is it easier to make the million dollars by running around six different ways to getting paid six different ways, then getting the gig and getting paid on top of that. And I go, ah, so what we did is we looked at it and said, and this is really important for thought leaders is too often.
(24:20):
We get caught up. I saw myself as a CPA. This is the only way I can go out there and deliver it. But we get caught up in the way we deliver things. We get caught up in an industry. We get caught up in a, in a niche. We say I'm a pro, I'm a course creator. I'm a speaker, I'm a writer. I spoke at a an author's conference and I told them, you need to be entrepreneurs. You need to have an entrepreneur's mind. I think maybe five or 10% went out and did it. The rest of them said, no, I'm an author. Problem is, is, you're not an author. You're not a speaker. You're not, you're not any of that. You're a messenger. And you're getting caught up on the vehicle in which you deliver the message and you become limited by that vehicle.
(24:58):
It's another problem in the space. If we're not careful, because what happens, how many speakers at all they knew was live speaking keynotes. When the pandemic hits said, oh crap, what do I do? Conferences got shut down. They weren't earning, they don't have products. They don't have other things to have income streams. And now all of a sudden it's, it's, it's shut off. I said, we need to avoid that. So one of the first things to do is understand how to scale it. Second thing along the same lines is how do I find income streams that are not tied to my business? What does that mean? That means that we need to take and run our business in a way. Now, when we do launches, when we do launches or when I work with clients in this way, you know, we'll talk about doing a plan for the launch.
(25:48):
We know what our ad spend is. We know what are our graphics are, what our videos are what we know, all the numbers and the thing that I force all of them to do. As I said, I want a wealth expense. I want a sliver of that launch, 10, 15%, whatever it is, that's going into a wealth creation account. That's going to move outside your business at some point. And you're going to use it to build a financial machine that is not tied to your effort to your business. So when or if life happens, you can flip the switch and you have an ATM that's in cash off.
Laura (26:24):
Wealth machine- are we talking Bitcoin, like an Amazon shop? Like, tell me a little bit about the wealth machine just for a minute.
Mel (26:38):
Yeah, absolutely. So let's just take my situation. Okay. I have, I had a little bit of Bitcoin, but it's, to me, it's, it's not, it's one of the investments that we have, but what I'm talking about is there's five different types of income that you can have in your life. One is active, which we're talking about right now. That's, one-on-one, it's active, engaged. The second level is business income. That's when you start to leverage yourself out, but you're still engaged. You're still engaged and you have team and that type of thing. But then the three above, that is where we need to start to think about how can I create income streams from that? And, and so the next one is asset based, real estate equipment, that type of thing. I've got a dear, dear friend James who's he's acquired. We had this conversation and he went on a rampage and he's done it publicly on Instagram.
(27:30):
So I'm not disclosing anything, but he's bought four or five, $2.9 million worth of real estate. He's going to be generating $40,000 a month in income. And, but it's not tied to his business. Now, once it's set up above that is residual income. If you're in a network marketing this could be your downline, but more, more, more typically it's going to be royalties, license fees and residual income that's coming in. And every step of the way we get further and further, we get more leverage of our time back. And then the fifth is portfolio stocks, bonds, real estate, investment trust, index funds, ETFs annuities, all of those things. So what we ultimately want to get is to be able to pay for 80 to a hundred percent or more of our lifestyle would those top three. And so when I got diagnosed with the cancer, those top three were producing income, but we were reinvesting it and building the machine outside.
(28:37):
So I called my wealth guy, said, I'm shutting down the active and business income. I'm going to bring that down to 10, 20% flip the switch on the other one, give me the income from that. We're going to keep cruising. So that's what we did and now we've, we're flipping it back on. So when I talk about a machine, a financial machine, what I'm talking about is something that is more leveraged to your time. So it's going to be investment based asset based, residual based or portfolio based it at a level that you're not spending it, but you're allowing it to produce. It becomes an ATM.
Laura (29:15):
I love that we were having this conversation just so, so important. And I don't think it's happening enough. And you know, what it would take to live off of a dividend, what it would take to. And so many people who are thought leaders and influencers and experts, in course, creators and membership creators, as much as we want to believe that the day-to-day doesn't run without us. It really does. We might not need to be in every meeting. We might be able to take a couple weeks or even a month off and it would be just fine. But at the end of the day, it wouldn't exist without us. And I think it's so important to highlight that and add some practicality to it. So I know you've shared just an incredible amount of information, your passion, your story is so inspiring. And I am just so honored to call you a friend. I know other people are going to call you a friend too. So if they want to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to connect?
Mel (30:12):
Oh my gosh. Send money. No.
Laura (30:16):
Yeah. And I'll take a commission for the introduction. I'm happy to do it.
Mel (30:20):
Instagram, I'm on Instagram, MeAbraham9. My website is melabraham.com and I have The Affluent Entrepreneur is a Facebook group that I have. I mean, I love hearing from people. So I mean, I'm pretty accessible with getting in touch with me, but my website, Instagram or Facebook are probably the easiest, the easiest places to get in touch with me. And we're, you know, we're, we're going to be rolling out a show called the affluent entrepreneur show in, in May. And I'm going to be doing Q and a and coaching sessions on that show as, as some of the episodes. So I'd love to hear and, and help my, my, my belief. And this is what, what got me so fired up about this after the cancer, and then watching people in the pandemic. It's so many people's struggles. So many people suffered. So many people felt like they didn't have a place to go financially. And I think it's time that we take control back of our financial ship and that it's not as difficult or complex as people would have. You believe it takes discipline. It takes effort. It takes work, but I promise you, it works. And so that's new chapter.
Laura (31:31):
That's awesome. And you're proof positive of that fact. So thank you so much, Mel, for being here, it was great to have you and I can't wait to see your show take off. I know it will.
Mel (31:41):
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me, Laura. This was, this was a blessing. It was a blessing. So thank you.
Laura (31:46):
For me too. Thanks so much.
(31:51):
Hey there: before you head out, I want to let you know about a free new training I have right on a brand new website called yournextmillion.me. It's yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses, to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond. And I have to tell you, it is not what you think. So check it out at yournextmillion.me. And if you loved this show, will you subscribe to it and share it with a friend or just say something nice about it to someone, you know? I'd really appreciate it so much. Thanks so much for being here and I'll see you next time.
The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.