2047 – Creating Passive Income and Regaining Control Over Your Finances with Money Ripples’ Chris Miles

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 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 six to eight 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 upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Chris Miles. Chris, you are the founder of Money Ripples. You're found on the web at moneyripples.com. Chris, it's great to have you. Hey, same here, Josh. Great to be here. Yeah. Well, give us an overview of the work that you do. I see your tagline is create freedom and prosperity today. It looks like you work with a lot of savvy people, a lot of business owners as well, which is this audience. 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.

1:42And that's even true in business, right? I mean, entrepreneurs, we're just as guilty as everybody else being in a rat race. We just have a higher, you know, seven, eight figure type rat race versus some of the typical employees that might work for us, you know? And so it's one of those things to 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. Yeah. Well, so let's talk about 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.

2:25They've got cash flow, they've got good months, they've got not so good months, the typical kind of entrepreneurial lifestyle. What are some, What do you typically teach that crowd? Yeah, the biggest thing I teach them is, here's the good news, is that I don't have to teach entrepreneurs as much because they get it. 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 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.

2:59So I actually dropped out of college with one class to go. and it 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, became an entrepreneur. And the first thing that I became was a financial advisor, not realizing they take anybody off the street that 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 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 was like, you work 40 years, right?

3:33You do the things you got to do. You work hard. Your word is your bond. Go to college and get good grades. And so then you can have a great job. 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 of his debt in 18 years. He'd stuffed money in his 401k, got the match from his employer and everything.

4:04And 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. Cause that's when you're going to run out of money. Oh gosh. And he's like, I know. And I had to be honest, cause he's the kind of guy, he's very blunt. You know, he's pretty bleak himself. So in a way he delivers his message. So, uh, so anyways, uh, so he's like, well, what do I do? I don't know. You did everything right. 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.

4:37I 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 it's like you'd be middle class to be a millionaire. So anyways, so so I sat down with my brother-in-law who had had all this background in entrepreneurship. And I remember trying to teach him, hey, stuff your money in mutual funds, set it 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 10 grand to play with, you're saying you might make me 1200 bucks in a year, maybe.

5:10Yeah. But Chris, I could take 10 grand. I can go put a down payment on one of my products, turn around and flip it 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 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.

5:44And 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 at somebody else's companies. rather than your own, so then someday you might have something. When the truth is, you could invest in your business and then also take the profits with a business, invest it outside in 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 if we have another 2020 crap that happens, so that you have the freedom to do what you want when you want to do it.

6:19That's really been the message and the drum I've been beating for years. Really, now it's gone on almost 20 years of trying to get people to wake up, stop listening to the media, stop listening to all these traditional 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. So you have my attention. So rather than a 401k or a mutual fund, what does this look like or what can someone do within the next 30, 60 days that can get them going down a better road? Yeah. So the key is as any business owner is get your money out of prison.

6:56Understand 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 equity, right? Don't lock it up in the 401ks and IRAs that then you can never touch, especially if you're a business owner, right? You need cash, you need liquidity. So first and foremost, start building up a significant cash. only 25 % of entrepreneurs even have two months of operating expenses in their business. So I recommend a book like Profit First.

7:25Obviously, you probably have heard on this show once or twice, but Profit First is like the Bible when it comes to managing finances as a business owner, right? You got to be doing that kind of thing. Then secondly, once you start to build those profits, you get more than enough operating income, and you've got profits at home. Take some of those profits. Make sure you are profiting 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 hundred million dollar business.

7:51If you walk away with no profit, that's no me 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 tell you to take those profits. And then the profits, what do you do with them? That's where I go into cash flowing 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, it's been like so tainted because they'll say, Oh, create passive income by creating another e-commerce business.

8:25And well, that's, I'm a business owner. There's nothing, there's nothing past about e-commerce, right? You know, or when it's 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 going to 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 that do all the work. I put my money in like debt funds that'll pay me at least 10 or 12 % a year, pay me cashflow.

8:56So, you know, give you an example. I had one client where he had a million dollars he'd saved up. Of course, his financial advisor says, well, now you've have a million dollars in these retirement accounts. You can live on 30 ,000 a year or 3%. He's saying, wait a minute, I'm a millionaire. I'm gonna 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.

9:23You don't have to live there and be in your backyard. Cause I'm in the Western half of the U S real estate out here sucks. Southeast Midwest U S 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 he'll 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 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 principle he doesn't have to like do anything he's not killing him that golden goose that's laying all these bigger, fatter golden eggs than what he had with his financial advisor.

10:08And so that's the thing I recommend is get your money out of prison. Don't lock it up in these IRAs and 401ks where you're not supposed to touch until you're 60 years old anyways. 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 and make money two places at once. You know, there's all kinds of strategies you can do to help do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. I think about the, like if we're to stereotype, the investor personality profile of an entrepreneur, my suspicion is that there's probably like, and I'm sure that this can vary wildly, but you have the active versus passive, how involved do you want to be?

10:52Passive 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. That's number one. And then there's kind of the risk tolerance aspect of this. And I wonder, 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 around 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. profile.

11:29I 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? Well, no, you I think here's 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 business. That's why I invest in myself. 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.

12:02What's the definition of risk? It's chance of loss. When does a 90 % chance of losing equal a 90 % chance of winning? I mean, 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?

12:34Even 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 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. 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 not a conservative investor because you're taking higher risk and gambles than I'm taking in my own investments. You're a comfortable saver.

13:02You'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 hear 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 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 has to be on me is how do I bet on the jockey not just the horse yeah right right 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 trying to figure out the person's track record and everything else or you just borrow somebody else's network, right?

13:53Like, 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 part of our group that way and become a VIP member and do that kind of thing, right? So you can 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 heck, this is not just real estate. For example, we got clients right now that are doing, you know, those kinds of syndications where you pull your money with other investors and they're doing it in places like car wash businesses, right?

14:20Right. You know, there's like, hey, I want to be in business, but I don't have to be in the business. Right. And even then, like you mentioned, like active versus passive, too. 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, investing in a car wash, other partners, but maybe a franchise model that I can 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.

14:50So 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. Yes. Yeah. That's how it feels. They don't really show you 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, I get so pissed off when I hear some of this stuff because you know it's a bunch of crap. But even Dave Ramsey, you look at his net worth.

15:23Now, he claims$600 million to$700 million net worth. I researched it within the last few months, found out it was actually only about$200 million, arguably$200 million. Over$50 million, that was his business valuation. The other$150 million was his real estate properties. Oh, fascinating. 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, listen, if you're going to teach something, teach them what you did. And not to mention, why lie about 600, 700 million versus 200 million?

15:54I think 200 million is an amazing accomplishment personally. 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 too. No, he's like, go buy this crappy 401ks and mutual funds and Roth IRAs when it hasn't worked for him. Your website, moneyripples.com, you've got a lot of resources here. 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?

16:37Profit First. Profit First. Yes. Yeah. McAlloween. So that's a great book. But 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? Where would you recommend they go? What should they do? I mean, you can always follow our Money Ripples podcast where we talk about these subjects and you can go deeper down that rabbit hole a little bit more. So we have that. You can also do this. Like I mentioned, get your money out of prison. Everybody tells you to lock your money away into equity and into mutual funds, or especially not even just mutual funds, but IRAs and 401ks.

17:18Instead 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 the 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 that's a good start, right? And by the way, that's another one to look up too, is that infinite banking strategy we have on our website at moneyripples.com. But the other thing too is like, you know, even with where you save money, don't lock up in those 401ks and IRAs, especially a 401k.

17:52Like when people tell me they're a business owner, like, yeah, while paying 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 into something that probably isn't going to pay you that much anyways, like mutual funds, right, which will only average 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.

18:24I mean, obviously most of you guys probably read Rich Dad Poor Dad. You already get the concept of passive income and why you need it. But really, and by the way, I hate the fact that Kiyosaki never really gives you any answers, which is why we talk about that on our podcast. Like, where are those different investment alternatives? Like, where are 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, 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.

18:51I 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. So things like that. Even like turnkey rentals. How do you find a turnkey company to help you buy turnkey rentals where you're not property manager? You buy it, but then somebody else does all the work. Those kind of things. So if you ever want to go down the real true passive income rabbit hole, then we got plenty of resources either at moneyripples.com or the Money Ripples podcast on our YouTube or wherever you consume podcasts. Yes.

19:23Okay. 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 moneyripples.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 also do some consulting work, right? You mind sharing a bit about that? Yeah. So we get people to say, okay, I can realize my financial advisor is full of crap or they've 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.

20:06What else can I do, right? Can I do something more with my money? Can I get it working harder for me so I don't have to work so hard for it? That's what we do. We're not investment advisors, but we are strategists and connectors in a sense that we can help you strategize, figure out what can you do with the money, what monies work best where, what kind of investments can you do, what are 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 community as well so that you guys can kind of figure out what's the best course for me, create my own little secret recipe of passive income for my own life and get myself to be work optional.

20:45Moneyripples.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. Been a pleasure, Josh. Thanks.

21:01Thanks 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 upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

21:42I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

22:24I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.