Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years, and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now, it's Chris Miles. Chris, you are the founder of Money Ripples. You're found on the web at Money ripples.com. Chris, it's great to have you.

Speaker 2 00:01:16 Same here. Josh it's great to be here.

Speaker 1 00:01:18 Yeah. Well give us an overview of the of the work that you do. I see your tagline is create freedom, freedom and prosperity. Today. It looks like you work with a lot of, savvy people, a lot of a lot of business owners as well, which is, that's this audience.

Speaker 2 00:01:33 Yeah. For sure. I mean, definitely, we're all about creating that time freedom, right? Like buying your time back, creating real, true passive income. So you work because you want to, not because you have to. And that's even true in business, right? I mean, entrepreneurs, we're we're just as guilty as everybody else. Be in the, in the rat race. We just have a higher, you know, seven eight figure type rat race versus some of the, you know, typical employees that might work for us, you know. And so it's it's one of those things that get people kind of out of their own, you know, their rat race and within their own business and just get that freedom back, you know, be able to do what they want, with whom they want, when they want.

Speaker 1 00:02:04 Yeah. Well, so let's talk about, some, some, strategies that are going to be really effective for, let's say, a business owner. since a lot of business owners, you know, folks that have owned their business for five or more years, you know, maybe they, took on some business debt at the beginning and they're kind of paying that off. they've got cash flow, they've got good months, they've got not so good months. You know, the typical kind of entrepreneurial lifestyle. what are some what do you typically teach that crowd?

Speaker 2 00:02:36 Yeah. The biggest thing I teach them is, is here's the good news is that I don't have to teach entrepreneurs as much because they get it. You know, the more you use common sense around money, the more money you make. Unfortunately, everybody's teaching you not to have common sense. And I first learned this that my my entrepreneur journey actually started because I realized in college, if I want to have any time, freedom, money, freedom or anything in life, I should probably have a business.

Speaker 2 00:02:59 So I actually dropped out of college with one class to go and actually wasn't my class. It was a paper to write. I just had to like, take my thesis, you know, condense it into a journal format and publish it. And I would have been done and I didn't do it. I dropped out, I became an entrepreneur, and the first thing that I became was a financial advisor. Not realizing they take me off the street, they could, you know, pass a test and not be a criminal and not be a mass murderer or something. So I started doing that, and I did that for several years. And the person that kind of inspired me to want to learn more about money was my dad, because he was the kind of guy he he was like, you work 40 years, right? You do the things you got to do. You know, you work hard. Your word is your bond, you know, go to college and get good grades. And so then you can have a great job.

Speaker 2 00:03:41 But the problem is that he would always talk about with his situation how he would probably literally die working. Right. And it was always about how he couldn't afford things and whatnot. And so I wanted to learn more about money so I could help him. Well, four years into my career, my dad says, well, when are you going to advise me? I sit down with him. He had paid off all his debt in 18 years. He'd stuffed money in his for one K got the match from his employer and everything. And yet, despite all of that, I had to tell him. Dad, even though you're 61 years old and you've done everything right, you better hope you die in five years because that's when you're going to run out of money. Oh, gosh. And he's like, Bleek, I know. And I had to be honest because he's the kind of guy. He's very blunt, you know, he's pretty bleak himself, you know? So in a way he delivers his message.

Speaker 2 00:04:23 So, so anyways, so he's like, well, what do I do? I don't know, you did everything right. And that got me down a journey to really find out what actually works. I like proof in the pudding. Right? Because the problem is I would sit down with other entrepreneurs and business owners. I remember my brother in law came from a family that his dad became a self-made millionaire at 19, after he was homeless at 16. you know, that kind of thing. And this is back in the 60s when being a millionaire actually meant something decent, you know? Now, I was like, you'd be middle class to be a millionaire. so anyways, so so I sat down with my brother in law who had all this background in entrepreneurship. And I remember trying to teach him, hey, stuff your money in mutual fund set and forget it. Put it in here and you might make 12%. And he's like, yeah, but Chris, I could put if I gave you ten grand to play with.

Speaker 2 00:05:07 You're saying you might make me 1200 bucks in a year? Maybe now. But Chris, I could take ten grand. I can go put a down payment on one of my products, turn around and flip it for for 20 grand profit in just a few months. So what, 20 grand versus 1200? Why would I put my money with you? You should be diversified. You should put all your eggs in one basket. Besides, business is risky. Ironic that I had a business. Right? And so, So anyways, I actually started going down the real estate route. I started doing business and real estate. And when I did that, my wealth grew much faster, and I was actually able to get myself to the point where I was financially independent to retire by the time I was 28, almost 29 years old. And and that's kind of the thing that spurred what I did, because I realized if you're an entrepreneur, you cannot buy into the traditional crap of just pay off your debt, save your money forever, stuff it in mutual funds, somebody else's companies, right? Rather than your own.

Speaker 2 00:05:58 So then someday you might have something, when in truth is, you could invest in your business and then also take the profits with a business, invest it outside and like stable assets, like real estate and things like that, that cash flow and produce multiple streams of income so that you're never, ever dependent upon that business income. Especially we have another 2020 crap that happens, you know, so that you have the freedom to do what you want when you want to do it. And that's really been the message and the the drum I've been beating for years. Right. For really now it's gone, going on almost 20 years of trying to get people to wake up, stop listening to the media, stop, listen to all these people and do what actually, you know, works, which is create freedom and prosperity today by creating cash flow and passive income right now. Okay.

Speaker 1 00:06:38 So you have my attention. So rather than a 401 K or a mutual fund, what what does this look like or what what can someone do, you know, within the next 30, 60 days, that, that can get them going down a better road?

Speaker 2 00:06:53 Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:06:53 So key is, as any business owners get your money out of prison. Understand that everything you've been taught is always to lock your money up, right? Pay off your mortgage, right? Lock it up in that equity. But if you ever want to get that equity out, you have to ask the bank for your permission, for your own. Your own equity. Right? don't lock it up in the four week days and IRAs. Then. Then you can never touch. Especially if you're a business owner, right? You need cash. You need liquidity. So first foremost, start building up significant cash. Only 25% of entrepreneurs even have two months of operating expenses in their business. So I recommend a book like Profit First. Obviously you've probably heard on this show once or twice, but profit first is like this. Like the Bible when it comes to managing your finances as a business owner, right? You got to be doing that kind of thing, you know? Then secondly, once you start to build those profits, you get more than enough operating income and you've got profits at home.

Speaker 2 00:07:40 Take some less profits. Make sure you are profitable, your business, not just reinvesting every dollar you have in your business, because that just means you're spending money not really reinvesting. It doesn't matter if you can build your company to be a $100 million business. If you walk away with no profit, that's no equals, no freedom. Right? So you got to do something to where you're not just always plugging money back in your business, and then you're stuck in your own big rat race that you've created. That's why you had to take those profits and then the profits. What do you do with them? That's where I go into cash flow investments. And I'd like to do real what's passive investments. So passive income I hate the term right now because everybody's bastardized a little bit. Sorry I don't know if I can say that word or not, but you know, on this show, but you know how it's been like so tainted because they'll say, oh, create passive income by creating another e-commerce business.

Speaker 2 00:08:26 Well, that's I'm a business owner. There's nothing there's nothing passive about e-commerce, right? Yeah. You know, or when they say like, oh, well, you could do real estate. So you'll be here in the real estate space, passive income. But it's like about creating a brand new business, being a wholesaler or a flipper. Like you're gonna have to renovate and flip properties. There's nothing passive about that. The only way to create passive income as a business owner is to get your money to work hard for you. And so I put my money with those people. I do all the work. I put my money into, like debt funds, I'll pay me at least 10 or 12% a year, pay me cash flow. So, you know, give you example. I had one client where he had $1 million he'd saved up. Of course, his financial advisor says, well, now you have $1 million in these retirement accounts. You can live on 30,000 a year or 3%.

Speaker 2 00:09:08 He's saying, wait a minute, I'm a millionaire. I don't have to live below the poverty line with this money. Screw that. And so instead he said, well, let's find something else. And so we went to other things. Like, for example, we bought a few duplexes where somebody else manages the property for you. You have a property manager and it can be bought anywhere in the country. You don't have to live there and be in your backyard, because I'm in the western half of the US. Real estate out here sucks southeast, Midwest, US much, much better in different pockets. And so I can go buy properties anywhere. So this guy bought a couple duplexes out in the southeast. He also got some apartment ownership where he got into what's called a syndication. You pull your money with other investors, you go put the money there. He also, you know, did some things with like oil and gas space, you know, so he's diversifying a little bit there and getting paid off.

Speaker 2 00:09:50 That. And after all was said and done, his million dollars wasn't paying him 30,000 a year. Now it's paying between 100 to 130,000 a year with that same money. Right? And and that's not even touching the principal. He doesn't have to, like, do anything. He's not killing that golden goose that's laying all these bigger, fatter, golden eggs. And what he had with his financial advisor. And so that's the thing I recommend is get your money out of prison. Don't lock it up in these IRAs and for weeks where you're not supposed to touch it till you're 60 years old anyways. Yeah, see if you can get that here. And we talk about like, strategies like, you know, like this Max ROI, infinite banking strategy you can use to save up money and then use that to invest to make money two places at once. You know, there's all kinds of strategies you can do to help do that.

Speaker 1 00:10:28 Yeah, it's really interesting. I think about the like, if I were to stereotype the the investor personality profile of an entrepreneur, my suspicion is that there's probably like, I'm, I'm and I'm sure that this can vary wildly, but you know, it's kind of you have the active versus passive, you know, how involved do you want to be? Passive doesn't thrill me, but active also concerns me because I don't want to get sucked into something that's going to eat up my time, because my time is precious.

Speaker 1 00:11:01 That's number one. And then there's kind of the risk tolerance aspect of this. And I wonder, what can you talk maybe about these kind of these two, these are the two sliders that I'm thinking about in terms of personality the risk tolerance. And then active versus passive. any observations on there and there may be by the way, other things I'm not thinking of, but those are two things as I'm kind of thinking about my own profile, I think in business I'm very risk tolerant. But yet if this is a secondary investment opportunity, I'm probably I would probably just be thinking about something that's much lower risk. But I don't know what. Am I kind of flawed? Am I thinking here?

Speaker 2 00:11:46 Well no. You I, I think here's a here's the thing. I think as business owners, we've realized that we can control risk much better. That's why we own our own business. Right.

Speaker 1 00:11:52 That's why I invested myself.

Speaker 2 00:11:54 That's right. Yeah. And that's what it should be. Because here's one of the lies you hear from the financial industry, right? Is that high risk creates high returns.

Speaker 2 00:12:02 What's the definition of risk? It's chance of loss. When does a 90% chance of losing equal and 90% chance of winning? So I mean, I'm not I'm not a very good gambling guy, right? Like, I lose pretty bad if I ever go to Vegas. But I know that if I have a 90% chance of losing, I only have a 10% chance of winning. That's math. Right? That's common sense. So when they tell you high risk creates high returns, it's because those banks and those financial institutions want you to gamble all your money in the market, while they make those guaranteed fees off of you every single year. They're making cash flow off of your money, right? Even if you lose money in the market, they still get paid. How criminal is that? And so here's the problem is that when I hear, hear like a business owner, they're like, well, I'm a conservative investor, right? They might say that now a lot of business owners may not say that, but some do.

Speaker 2 00:12:48 they say it to me quite a bit. They're like, oh, I'm a conservative investor. That's why I do mutual funds. I'm like, there's nothing conservative about mutual funds. You're you're not conservative investor because you're taking a higher risk and gambles that I'm taking in my own investments. You're a comfortable saver. You're you're comfortable doing what the masses are doing because everybody's doing it. You think it's safe, but it's not because if it were safe, if we're actually working, you would see here all these stories, all these people get into retirement financially free, which you do not hear. You hear the opposite, right? Because it doesn't work. I like low risk to create higher returns. That's why I do things that are backed by real estate, because I know it's backed by that. Now, if I invest my money with somebody else, then I have the job. I it has to be on me is how do I bet on the jockey? Not just the horse. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 00:13:34 Right, right. Team like that. So the work is different. Like you don't have to be the one doing all the work with the investing. Right. But you do have to like, really screen those people. And you can either do it like what I did, where you built that up over years through trial and error or trying to figure out the person's track record and everything else. Or you just borrow somebody else's network, right? Which is what a lot of people hire us to do. They're like, hey, can I just use the same people you've been using? Like, yeah, you can become a part of our group that way and become a VIP member and do that kind of thing, right? So you could do either though, but you can create your own thing. You might even have contacts in that space. You could actually invest money with them. And this is not just real estate. For example, we got clients right now. They're doing, you know, those kind of syndications where you pull your money with other investors and they're doing it in the places like car wash businesses, right.

Speaker 2 00:14:20 You know, there's like, hey, I want to be in business, but I don't want to have to be in the business, right. and even then, like you mentioned, like active versus passive to, like, sometimes people do have more time. Maybe they're looking for that. Next thing I've had some clients say, you know what, I really want to do a business. But now let's do a franchise. Not just like, you know, invest in a car wash, other partners, but maybe a franchise model that I can, you know, work part time, get the management and team in place, and then I can live on the profits. Right. And have it kind of turnkey itself a little bit more. So things like that. I mean, there's varying degrees of what you can do. And the problem is that financial advisors, they just don't tell you about it because all they offer you are mutual funds and insurance. That's it. They're really just product peddlers, right? Yes.

Speaker 2 00:15:04 Yeah. That's how they don't really show you the the real world of like business and real estate, which is proven, by the way, that that's where all the wealthiest people have their money, right? Heck, even guys like Dave Ramsey, like, I got so pissed off when I hear some of his stuff because, you know, you know, it's a bunch of crap. But I mean, even Dave Ramsey, you look at his net worth now he claims 600 to 700 million net worth. I researched it just a few within the last few months. Found out it was actually only about 200 million. Arguably 200 million. Over 50 a million. That was his business valuation. The other 150 million was his real estate properties.

Speaker 1 00:15:38 Oh, fascinating.

Speaker 2 00:15:39 Almost none of it was ever included in being his mutual funds or stocks or bonds. Everything he's telling you to put your money into, which I think is a bunch of BS. It's like if you're going to teach something. Teach them what you did.

Speaker 2 00:15:50 And not to mention why lie about 600, 700 million versus 200 million? I think 200 million is an amazing accomplishment personally, right? I'm not there yet. That could be why. Right? But still, you know, it's all relative. It's all relative, I guess. But it's like, dude, you don't have to like you don't have to like, go and lie to people. You know, when you can actually just say, listen, I invest in business and real estate and that's what's worked for me. That's what you should do to know. He's like, go buy this crappy for one K's and mutual funds and Roth IRAs when it has even worked for him.

Speaker 1 00:16:21 Your website money ripples.com. You've got a lot of resources here. let's let's give some people let's give the people some next steps here. Chris, on like you'd mentioned, what's the book you mentioned at the beginning? profit for profit first. Yes. Yeah. So, that's a great book. but what what are the what are some other, like, 101 things that you would recommend to people who are interested in this topic, and maybe just haven't really taken the time to research and kind of understand things holistically.

Speaker 1 00:16:55 Where would you recommend they go? What should they do?

Speaker 2 00:16:58 I mean, you can always follow our Money Ripples podcast where we talk about these subjects and go, you can go deeper down that rabbit hole a little bit more. you know, so we have that. You can also do this, like I mentioned, like get your money out of prison, right? everybody tells you to lock your money away into equity and into mutual funds, or especially not just mutual funds, but like IRAs. And for one case, instead of doing that right, instead of paying extra pay off that mortgage, if you've got low interest debt, don't I mean, still, you're going to pay it off anyways. But don't throw extra money on that. Get your money liquid. I don't care if it's even held in a savings account, even though I don't believe that banks are as safe as I could. Like when I do like my infinite banking strategy that I use. But but that's a good start, right? And by the way, that's another one to look up to.

Speaker 2 00:17:41 Is that infinite banking strategy we have on our website at money.com. but, but the other thing too is like, you know, even with where you save money, don't lock up in those 41K as in IRAs, especially for one K, like when people tell me their business owner like, yeah, I won't pay in the match. Why the match doesn't do anything for you. You're just throwing more of your own money at yourself, and you're throwing it into something that probably isn't going to pay you that much anyways. Like mutual funds, right? Which only averaged about, if you're lucky, 8% a year. So instead keep that money liquid and then have it available, build that up. And then you can look into these alternative investments. And and you got to start with the education piece. Right. You really got to start there. That's why I said like the Money Ripples podcast is a great place to start. I mean, obviously most of you guys probably read Rich dad, Poor Dad.

Speaker 2 00:18:26 You already get the concept of passive income and why you need it. But, but really and by the way, I hate the fact that the that Kiyosaki never really gives you any answers, which is why we talk about that on our podcast. Like, what are those different investment alternatives like where the pros and cons, what do you look for? How do you like? I like to look for people that have been investing for at least 15, you know, at least the last 12 or 15 years in the same space if I'm ever going to put money with them and they got a good track record doing it, I want them to have gone through multiple market cycles of ups and downs, been able to maneuver and learn lessons so that I know that my money is more protected. Right. So things like that, you know, even like turnkey rentals, how do you find turnkey rent? Find a turnkey company to help you buy turnkey rentals. You know where where you're not property manager. You buy it, but then somebody else does all the work, right? Those kind of things.

Speaker 2 00:19:12 So if you ever want to go down the real true passive income rabbit hole, then, you know, we got plenty of resources either at Money ripples.com or the Money Ripples podcast on our YouTube or wherever you consume podcasts.

Speaker 1 00:19:22 Yes. Okay. So to our friend listening right now, you're listening in a podcast app search for the term, money ripples and you're going to find Chris, your website or your podcast. You can go to the website that is Money ripples.com. you've got calculators, you've got courses, you've got a blog, the podcast. You've got a lot of resources there. But, Chris, you you also do some, consulting work, right? Yeah. You mind sharing a bit about that?

Speaker 2 00:19:55 Yeah. So like we we get people to say okay, I can realize my financial advisor is full of crap or they got this little narrow focus and maybe they're good, but I only want to use them for buying mutual funds, which is all they can do for me anyways. What else can I do right? Can I do something more with my money? Can I get it working harder for me so I have to work so hard for it? That's what we do.

Speaker 2 00:20:13 We're not investment advisors, but we are strategists and connectors in the sense that we can help you strategize, figure out what can you can do with the money, what monies work best, where what kind of investments can you do? What are like my network of investors and people like that that I've trusted and used as well? that kind of thing. We kind of open up that network and education and, and community as well, so that you guys can kind of figure out what's the best course for me, create my own little, little secret recipe of passive income from my own life and get myself to be work optional.

Speaker 1 00:20:44 Money ripples. Com go search for the Money Ripples podcast. Chris Miles, you are the founder. Chris, thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2 00:20:54 It's been a pleasure. Josh, thanks.

Speaker 1 00:21:01 Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.

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