Bryan McAnulty: Welcome to the Creator's Adventure, where we interview Creator's from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. My name is Bryan McAnulty. I'm the founder of Heights Platform. And today I'm talking with Chris Miles about how being over a million dollars in debt helped him gain the skills to be able to build a thriving business.

And how your business can thrive during a recession.

Hey everyone. We're here today with Chris Miles, the cash flow expert and anti financial advisor, a leading authority, teaching entrepreneurs and professionals, how to get their money working for them. Chris is an author podcast host of the Chris Miles money. And has been featured in major publications, such as us news, CNN money and more his company money ripples helps achieve financial fast results, fast financial results.

And in fact, his personal clients have increased their cash flow by almost $300 million in the last 12 years. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Miles: Hey, it's a pleasure to be here,

Bryan McAnulty: Bryan. So my first question for you is can you share with us a little bit of the story of how you started your business and the idea behind money ripples?

Chris Miles: Yeah. You know, as a kid growing up and maybe I'm like a lot of you where, you know, I, I was raised by good parents, you know, they had they're good, hardworking people had taught me good values. But when it came to money, they were, you know, that's where they kinda lacked in the, in the education department.

Right? Most of the time is really a conversation about the scarcity of money than anything. You know, things like, Hey, we can't afford it. Or money doesn't grow on trees, you know? Or what do you think I am made of money? The one that was the saddest one I heard from my dad was I'm gonna work until I die.

Like he would keep saying that over and over. He came from that, that kind of depression mentality that you, you work for a company for 40 years. Eventually you get a nice retirement, but the problem is the companies wouldn't stay loyal to him and they would lay him off or cut his, you know, cut his, you know, job down to where cut his pay and things like that.

So he was always struggling for money. And even though he was a good middle class guy, still, he never felt like he could get out of that rat race. And so, you know, at that dinner table, you know, I, I vowed I'm not gonna be that kid, you know, I'm not gonna follow my father's footsteps. So when I went to college, I wanted to control my own destiny.

I decided to become an entrepreneur. I actually dropped outta college to do so. And as I became an entrepreneur, the first thing that really came up then intrigued me was become a financial advisor. I thought, well, man, like if I can learn about money and do it differently than my dad did, this would be worth it.

So after years of training, You know, I, I got to the point where I sat down with my dad where he was asking me for advice versus giving me the money advice. Right. And as he sat down with me and, and he did everything. Right, right. I mean, he's, he was cheap. He's. I mean, he was penny pincher, he's scripted. He saved everything, you know, packed in his 401k.

He paid off his house early. I mean, he was like a Dave Ramsey's proudest moment, you know? And then as I looked at his finances realized he was nowhere even close. To become a financially free. In fact, I told him, I said, dad, I hate to say this, but you've got five years of retirement and then you're outta money.

that's it. So you almost will work until you die. And he's like, well, what else can I do? I said, well, I don't know. I don't have the answer. And I realized that I had, even though I was trying to go a different path than him, I was actually on the same exact path because I was penny pinching. I was saving everything I could as a financial advisor to try to become financially free someday.

I was trying to pay off my debt. I was doing all the same mistakes that he had made himself. And, and that's when I was realizing like, wait a minute, this isn't working and not just, and make matters worse. It wasn't just working for him or me, but it wasn't working for any of my clients either because my clients weren't financially free.

If you were to really look at their finances, and and so I remember a few weeks later, I'm talking with a friend who left being a financial advisor to go do real estate investing. And and I said, well, Hey, how are things going with that? And I was expecting him to say it sucks, you know? Right.

Nope. He's like, man, Chris life has never been better. My dad and I partnered on some deals and we've doubled his income as a professor at the local univers. Said, oh, come on. That's that's too good to be true. That there's no way stocks are better. Right. And and finally, after this little debate, he said, Chris, how many of your clients are financially free?

Where they don't worry about money? I said, well, none. Okay. Good job, Chris. Well, how about this? How many of you guys as financial advisors are financially free? Not off the commissions you're earning from, from taking this business in, but actually doing these invest. And I said, well, I, I know there's guys been working there since the late 1970s.

So I would say none of them and he said, well, there's your problem, Chris? And and so over the ensuing months I started try to learn what, you know, what he was doing. And in fact, I even quit being a financial advisor. I couldn't stay an integrity and teach anymore. If it wasn't working. And months later I was actually become financially independent myself, where I had enough passive income coming in to pay my expense.

As a 28 year old which was something was unfathomable, even as a financial advisor, I was hoping and praying I could do it by 40 if I was lucky and I was cheap, cheap, cheap. Right. But no, I mean, I did it just months later following doing the opposite advice, what financial advisors teach. And that's the big, the big epiphany for me is that now what we do is, is we teach people how to get outta the rat race, how to have enough passive income, where you're work optional, you work because you want to not because you have to.

And it's an empowering place, especially if you're an entrepreneur, cuz every entrepreneur needs passive victim, every entrepreneur needs, you know, especially after 2020, when you, when business became non-essential right. Mm-hmm I mean, we could be shut down in a heartbeat, even if we control and own our own businesses.

And so that's the big thing that we're really out there preaching today with money ripples is how do we get you to a place where you got multiple streams of passive income coming in, where your money's working harder for you than you are working harder for money.

Bryan McAnulty: Got it. Well, yeah, that's awesome. By 28 even.

So I, I think you made a, a really interesting point there that I think it's the way I like to think of it as well. Or like, I don't know the way that it, it made sense to me becoming an entrepreneur that it's not actually less risky to work for somebody else than to start your own business, because yeah, if you work for somebody else, everybody, the, the traditional outlook on that is, oh, this is stability.

But the reality is that the, hopefully you have a great boss. Hopefully the, your boss cares about you, but the company doesn't necessarily care about you. And that's just the unfortunate reality you could be laid off. You could, you could lose what you're hoping is that actual stability. And when you're building something yourself, yes, that's difficult.

Yes. There's so much risk involved and all of these things, but you're in control of your own destiny. Well, I feel at least a much more certain way.

Chris Miles: Mm-hmm oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's that's the thing is that security and freedom are in opposition to each other, right? Mm. I mean, if you want maximum security go to a maximum security prison, right?

I mean, they'll give you three square meals a day. They give you a roof over your head clothes on your back, even if it's the same color. Right. I mean, they give you, you know, priv TV privileges, workout time. I mean, you get all that good stuff. The problem is you're still in prison. And that's the, that's the one thing that's, it's different between us as entrepreneurs versus those that are working as employees.

And we need both, right. There's, there's different personalities and different strengths for each one, but yeah, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, you work for somebody else. You have no guarantees. And even as a business owner, even though I have more control over my own destiny, but I've started realize that, that, you know, the government, they could essentially be like a boss and lay us off too.

If they, they chose to. If I had to choose between two, obviously I chose to be an entrepreneur. Cause I like that kind of control and freedom. But but that's where I learned that, you know, I can't just rely on one stream of income to keep me safe. It's gotta be multiple streams to keep me going.

Got it.

Bryan McAnulty: So you're known as the anti financial advisor. Can you explain a little bit more about like the reasoning and what's behind this name?

Chris Miles: Yeah. I mean like, like you noticed, I mean, , you know, I, I don't believe in mutual funds in the stock market and those kind of things. I mean, you take high risks to get mediocre returns.

You know, I just did the numbers just, you know, yesterday, in fact, and the average, you know, even with the S and P 500, the average, or last 30 years has not been 10 or 12%. Like every financial advisor claims it's 7.7, 5% current. And that can go up or down depending on what happens in the next few years.

And and, and that's, and that's before fees come out that's before taxes and everything else. So you take these high risks, just like my dad did, you know, when I met with him as a financial advisor, Y2K had just hit his, his retirement account. He was hoping to retire around 2000 when the market tanked, he knew he had to delay it.

Well, it started to come back and then bam, the recession hit he'd added delay retirement. Again, he had to delay it until really 2016, 2017, when he was forced to retire based on his health, he was over 70 by this point. And that's where people are. Amy. I mean, remember he did everything. Yet. He still had to delay his retirement and, and that's what I'm seeing happening across the country is that people are keep buying into this traditional thing of, you know, spend nothing, save everything, save it forever.

And hopefully someday you have something, but in truth you gotta do something completely different. And so when we teach it, we talk about going in the alternative investment space, which doesn't mean that it's it's, you know, in this dark underground or anything like that, there's, there's literally probably 20 30 million of us that do this just in the country.

Right. Which is doing things with different types of real estate investing, you know, things with, you know, I can even pull money together with other investors to go buy an apartment building. I don't have to do it. In fact, I'm very passive. I don't, I don't have to go and find the deals or anything like that.

I just have a network of people that offer those deals for me. And then we go in together and we're making 10, 15, 20% returns a year. On our money and even better is that it actually provides real passive income. Now, not just, Hey, when you're 60, you might have something there. Right? So for example there's a, a, a military commander that was in California.

He just retired last year and he's saying, okay, Chris, I have about a million dollar retirement plan that had with the military. What do I do with it? Because so far my financial advisor said, I can pull off about $2,000 a month. so you know, think about it. You're, you're a millionaire, right. But you're pulling off like 25, $30,000 a year.

That's like a broke millionaire. You live in poverty line. And so he said, can I do something different? And so over the last six months, he started doing different things with like actual, like turnkey rentals, where he manage the property. And not in the west coast where he. Out in like the Midwest Southeast, where he is making 10 plus percent returns on that money.

He's did things with like oil and gas. For example, he did some things with some apartments and, and whatnot and all in all. Now his his passive income is at $12,000 a month, not a couple thousand, like the financial advisor is saying. And so that's the big difference is that we actually get your money to really work for you where you can make at least a 10 plus percent return.

And that's paying you income now versus I hope someday I make something cool.

Bryan McAnulty: So, yeah. I wanna ask a couple questions to see how we can kind of apply this to like our Creator's and our audience. So they can get some ideas for themselves. And I wanna preface it with that, like we're not providing financial advice or, or anything here on this podcast is.

For entertainment and, and hopefully to inspire you to, to go out and do some research on your own. But so you've helping, you've been helping clients for many years now. You're growing their portfolios and helping them create cash flow. So when you start working with a new client, what would you say is like the biggest common mistake that you see made?

Chris Miles: Oh, the biggest common mistake, especially with entrepreneurs is that they're not tracking their money. I mean, that's gotta be the number one is you gotta, just like you watch your money in your business. You gotta watch it at home. And, and sometimes you're not doing either. Yeah. And that's the most common first step that I think everybody needs to do.

Don't worry about budgets. I mean, budgets is a bad word anyways. I don't like that. I like to create spending plans because even in business, you spend money so that you can make more. Right. I mean, you understand investing already. In fact, if you take the very things you learn from. And apply it to your personal finances.

You'll actually be more of the anti financial advisor than you think, you know, because that's exactly what we're doing is we're just taking the same thing you do as an entrepreneur, apply it to personal. And so you gotta track your money, how much money is going out and also how much is coming in. I had one entrepreneur that she was a graphic designer.

Just always busy, busy, busy, go, go, go, go, go. Right. And, and and she's like, Chris, I'm too busy to track my money. And I said, well, in my experience, and this is after working with hundreds and hundreds of clients, I was like, in my experience, if you say you're too busy, you're losing at least $500 a month.

It's not even just blowing money. In fact, that's what we found out with her is that she wasn't just blowing money, but it's like, you know, we found things like subscriptions, like they were still paying for Comcast, you know, like $300 a month cuz you wanna watch sports. I'm like, you can get streaming services for way cheaper than that.

Now you don't need that crap. You know, you can save a few hundred a month there. And so we just started, you know, look at places where it just wasn't, you know, it wasn't doing them any good. Wasn't really adding to their lifestyle anyways. We end up freeing up $1,800 a. you know? Wow. So you can imagine someone who's like busy, busy, busy, busy, now frees up $22,000 a month.

You can imagine that now she doesn't have to be so busy. She can relax a little bit, which actually funny enough, when you relax in your business, you actually earn more money in your business because you know, you don't need that next customer, that next client. To be able to make things work. I had somebody else, a couple, they were making a quarter million a year together and they couldn't figure out whether paycheck to paycheck in their case, they were blowing money.

They just didn't know it. We found out just eating out. She was spending $5,600 a month. Just eating out that didn't include the grocery bill, which was like 1200, 1300 a month. So we actually had them do some adjustments freed up like that year, like between that and some taxes we saved on taxes and stuff.

It was like $70,000 a year. We saved just there and that wasn't even doing anything with investing. So that's why that's that first step. Even more recently, I had a couple where they actually freed up $4,000 a month, you know, you know, consolidating some of their debts and things like that. All because we actually looked at the money and started tracking it and understood what's there.

What are the resources you have? and then you can kinda move to that next step, which is all right. Now I have money. What if I have money in savings or whatever, you know, I'll tell you another mistake in business that people make is they, they don't, they don't focus on profit in their business. It's funny cuz people say I reinvest my profits.

What that really means is you're not profitable. You know, if you were to quote Mike, Mike MCIT who wrote profit first, right? I remember hearing him speak, you know, I actually had him on my, my podcast recently and and he's like, Hey, listen, if you don't have profit, you're not, you know, if you're not, if you're reinvesting your profits, you're not profitable.

You don't really have profit. You need to get money away from your business too. You've gotta bring that profit home. Otherwise you're just spending money in the business and you'll get actually, you'll actually create your own rat. And that's a common thing to see with entrepreneurs. It's not just like in the beginning, I understand reinvesting your business, but it gets to a point and you always do to some level, right?

We're always spending money in the business, but sometimes it becomes a habit where you put all of your money back in the business and you're taking no money out and you become the lowest paid employee of your business. And that should never be the case. You should be the best paid employee. If you're the reason that the company exists in the first place, you should be the highest paid employee, not the other way around.

So focus on profit and then take that profit home. And then that's the money you can use to generate other streams of passive income that creates that actual stability. That security, where, like I said, like the funny thing is, is that when you get to that place, you relax, you end up making more money.

I had another client in the Midwest, did the same thing. We we end up freeing up $50,000 a year, a little like 4,200 bucks a month for him. And then we freed up some money in taxes, but then the cool thing is because he relaxed a little bit. His conversion, his his sales conversion percentage increased because now he wasn't like so stressed for money where he was kind of pushing away business.

He had to work harder to make the same money. He started to relax. He started having fun in his business again. And the thing is just within a few months, he was making extra two, three grand a month. so even though we might've used and we actually cashed out part of his retirement, which you'd think, oh, that's stupid.

Every financial advisor would say that's bad. Don't ever cash out retirement, but cashing out just a hundred grand of his retirement to help free up some money, help him get more breathing room to then generate more income in his business that end up totally like $90,000 that year. I mean, think about it.

Most people, if they have a hundred thousand dollars with the financial advisor, if they make 10%, they're thrilled, right. That's 10,000 bucks. He made 90,000 bucks. I can guarantee no financial advisor will say, oh yeah, I'll make you 90,000 bucks to that. A hundred grand. It'll just never happen. And that's why like, money is never just a separate thing.

We can't compartmentalize like us men love to do. Right. We like compartmentalize everything, everything flows into everywhere. And so when you're more free with your money, when you know that your personal finances are taken care of you relax and your business actually makes more money too. Yeah. It's interest.

Bryan McAnulty: I I think it it's really interesting that in school, they don't teach you any of this really. And there there's things that there's not that complicated when you sit down and actually do them. And like you're saying, just to, to track and look at what's happening in your business in your life. And I could relate to some of your examples that starting out my business as a freelancer and then, and turning it into more of a business in 2009.

I was kind of like that. I wasn't really paying attention to what I was really earning. I was figuring, okay. I'm busy that there's invoices. Money's coming in. Okay. I'll just keep doing that. And then I keep working and that's what'll happen, but I didn't really pay attention to it. And same, same some of the same kind of mistakes saying like, okay, well I'll, I'll reinvest this thing into the business.

That makes sense. But then yeah, some of that became a habit and then some of the things I wasn't really paying attention to, what am I actually earning? And it, it was working out. Okay. But the problem was until I got to the point that I just really took a look at that. I wasn't able to really grow past what I had been doing for a couple years.

Once I took a look at that. I was able to see, okay, well, if I want to get beyond this, then I have to realize that certain things have to take less time, have to be done a different way, have to, have to get more clients from this thing or that, and that completely changed everything for me. I feel,

Chris Miles: yeah, it's true.

It's like really paying attention, whatever you put your attention towards we'll grow and expand. Right. And most of us will hyper focus on revenue. We're just like, how do I get that? How do I just keep making more and more money? And we just keep hustling and keep hustle. But the truth is, is how much do you really keep?

How much profit do you really have? That's always the most important number. Even if your company was a stock, if you became a stock, guaranteed, every investor looking at your company would say, I don't care about revenue. What's your profit? Like, what do you actually, you know, actually have as extra ability to, to reinvest in your business, if you want to, or be able to have that buffer and be able to have extra assets and, and money under man, you know, that you have under your own management.

That's that's what really matters is how profitable can he be? I mean, heck I even hit seven figures in my business spent in less than 10 grand a month, you know? I mean, if I can do that, you know, again, mine's been more of a coaching business. Right. But if I can create that kind of thing, you know, everybody else can do, you, you can get to a place where you get lean and mean just become a profit machine.

And then you start to do that. Then that opens up so many more options in the rest of your life, too.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. Cuz like you see examples probably of business owners where they're, they've grown to the point of success where they're making million dollars a year, a few million dollars a year, but then their actual profit and what they get to keep.

Is this really small amount. It's, it's probably under a hundred thousand dollars and they're, they're just about able to survive. They're paying their employees, they're paying all their expenses, but then you have somebody else out there who they're just by themselves. They don't have employees, they don't have a giant office and maybe they're only making a hundred thousand dollars a year, but it's what they're doing themselves.

And it's almost all profit. And of course, like there's different businesses. I know different people enjoy doing different things. And, but I think there are a lot of examples out there of people who have gotten to this point, that people would look at it from the outside and think, oh, they must be really successful.

But lack of maybe looking at how they're managing their own spending on certain things. They're actually not getting to keep the money that they're earning.

Chris Miles: Yeah. I mean, the true measure of success is really how much freedom do you really. You know, can you step away from your business? And of course in the beginning, we all get it and you start a brand new business.

You're not gonna be able to do much of anything other than try to get that business off the ground. Right. It's always that extra effort. It's just like pedaling a bicycle. You start to pedal that first gear, just trying to get it moving before you start shifting those gears. And then it starts to increase more and more speed with less and less effort.

Right. They get that momentum behind. So we, we get it if it's in the beginning stages, but don't, don't get caught in the trap that seasoned business owners get into where they keep that habit going. They keep pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, and they're focused on just that revenue, getting that top line up, but their bottom line going up too, and they're just trapped in their own business.

They, they created a very high paying job, you know, they created their own rat race and you don't never wanna be in that place.

Bryan McAnulty: So many people and financial experts believe that we might now be moving towards a global economic recession. Is this something you would agree with and if you do can you share some tips about how other online business owners or entrepreneurs can get through this recession or even potentially profit from.

Chris Miles: Yeah, I do believe we're moving to a recession. It's, it's interesting that people are finally starting to say it. And in fact, because so many people are saying it, some people are saying, well, maybe it's not a recession. I mean, this would be, you know, like my third recession I've been through, I mean, ever since Y2K recession, then we had the recession from you know the last great recession that we have.

This one, I wouldn't count 20, 20 as much a recession. It was supposed to go into recess. But we just delayed it. Right. So we just over inflated the balloon even more. And now it's just piddling out. One thing I would definitely say is every recession is different. So if you try to live by the rules of the last recession, and I mean, when I say like the rules, I mean, like, by the strategies of the last recession, you'll lose like I have so many people that say, oh, well real.

Remember when real estate tank that was bad. Well, yeah, well, so did stocks, they tanked too. Bonds tanked everything. But it doesn't mean it's gonna happen this way again. There's been many recessions where the stock market went up, even though I'm anti stock market. It could go up, even if you're in a recession, right.

Real estate, I don't think will go down. I do think like pockets of like California, some of those hot markets will, will drop a little bit, but the real estate that I do, it's like very stable and steady, you know always there's risk, but but again, if you create those multiple streams of income, I think that's one of the safest things you can do right now to provide that safety.

That being said in your business, the best thing you do in a recession is focus on principles first, then strategies come second. And, and I'll even say, like even my own personal, I went through the last recession, went over a million dollars in debt. Had I went back in the rat race during the last recession, had to dig my way back out, even without failing for bankruptcy long road, but eventually by 2016, I was back outta the rat race again, whereas I had enough passive income to pay for my expenses.

but it, it, it, it replied the same principles, by the way. I went through a divorce during that period of time too, in 2015. So that set me back a little bit too. That's a lot. And you know, it kind of sucked. It's like a country song, you know, but you know, but here's the thing that was cool is that, I mean, the principles that always apply that always worked for everyone of those recessions still works even through this one, which is how do you go about solving problems?

Serving people are adding value in a way where money is just the natural by. It's always about how do you create value, right? How do you become valuable to other people where they know that their life is better having you in it than not in it at all? And they're willing to pay to have your, like your, whatever it is that you offer, your service, your product, whatever it is to have that in their life.

That's what they want. So many people the people that get this, actually not only make it through a recession, but they thrive through recession. They actually end up squashing their competitors, you know? Not because they're trying to squash competitors, but because the competitors during recessions usually start backing off.

I saw this in 2020 in March, everybody was freaking out. Everybody stopped advertising all of a sudden, like people started holding on their money. That was the time I was like, let's get aggressive. I started putting more money towards marketing and advertising. You know, I thought this is beautiful.

And it was such a short period of time. People kind of came back a few months later cuz you know, governments were pumping money in artificially, but that was a perfect opportunity. And I think that's gonna happen again where people are gonna get scared. They're gonna start pulling back. And this is your opportunity to shine.

And so if you, again, focus on the true principle, which has worked from the beginning of time, that's always helped a people prosper financially, which is how do I go about serving people and solving problems in a way that they want to be able to pay, to have that service to that product in my life, always look at that, always look at what kind of solutions you can provide your solutions provider.

Right? Always look at that and you'll, as long as you help people get what they want, you'll never want for money. Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty: That's a great way of putting it and. Yeah. I think as for those out there who are coaches and course Creator's like, you're, you're doing something like that already in your business.

And so yeah, whether times are tough or, or not like the, the value that you're providing, like it still there, there still is value. So I, I like that point. So you talked about diversifying assets and having these different in income streams, things like that. What would you say is maybe an example for like Creator's out there, that they could create another income stream for themselves.

So somebody out there who maybe they're a coach they're course creator, what's another income stream they could create to add to that.

Chris Miles: Yeah. I mean, so there's two types of income streams you can create, right? Other than your active income stream and the actors are fine. That's your economic engine, but you need to have other streams.

So there's residual and then there's passive. This is kinda how I define it. I define residual as like passive income inside your business. Passive income is PA is income that comes from outside your business. So for example, residual income, I mean, you can definitely do things where, you know, you're trying to create alliances.

You can create affiliate type relationships, or you can say, Hey, listen, you offer a great offer, great service. If I funnel people your way, I've got connections. If I can connect you, can I get it paid, you know, referral fee or some kind of, you know, affiliate fee or whatever it might be. A great way to be able to say, here's a way we can offer something of value that we don't have to deliver on.

Right. It's a great Alliance, you know, so building alliances, which during a recession is great. Just like getting lean and mean during a recession. Right? You gotta make sure you're, you're really lean with your expenses and make sure you're doing everything really well. Focus on profit, same thing, create alliances so that you have multiple streams that.

You know, you can create other things that are like, you know, depending on what kind of business you're in. I mean, there's online types of education and things they can do that can offer or intellectual property you can offer, they be sold. But again, it just depends on your business. You have various ways you can create other students of income, but I would say at least one thing that binds everybody together, whether you're a product or service business is creating affiliations, right.

Creating those affiliate. Type of relationships or referral relationships that can be valuable and actually can support each other, even during good or bad times. On the passive side, you know, this is where you gotta start building up some savings. Now, if you only have like 20,000 bucks in personal savings, great.

Keep building that up. Your first step is just to build a six month cash reserve. And in business, this is the thing that I ignored. You know, even before, just before I got outta the rat race, I was like, well, if I can just keep reinvesting, keep investing every dollar I have, but it seemed like every time I got all my money out, something would come up where I'm hustling again for money.

Right. Having that good six months of expenses, you know, of your monthly expenses that are sitting in saving. Great way to do it. And there's better ways. There's ways you can make more than point, nothing percent in your bank account. You know, like I teach a concept that's on my website, money, ripples.com called infinite banking that you can actually make a lot higher returns than you do at the bank and it's tax free.

There's things like that you can do to diversify your emergency fund and things like that. But but still it's it's really about building that CAS first. Then once you go above and beyond that, you keep taking more profit. You start building it up, then we can start investing in other places, especially, especially if you have at least 25 to 50 grand.

And actually you don't even need that much, but that's where most of the investments are. That are good. You know, 25 to 50 grand. I mean, you can go into investment generating at least another few hundred or so dollars a month off of that. I mean, simple math. If you have a hundred thousand dollars that you can go and use to invest, you should be able to generate at least $10,000 a year, right from that money.

It won't cover all your expenses all at once. But it can at least get you to a good place. And so again, make sure that profit comes home, starts to build up that savings, those reserves so that he can start building up those passive streams. I'll give you an example. I had a, a guy, he actually works in the film industry out in Hollywood.

And and of course it's always with projects, right. He might be working on a big movie and then there might be a few months where he has off. So his income's like this, and then it's like this. Right? And so with him, like we had about three, $400,000 even money that was like equity in his house. We were able to pull.

He has some money in savings as well. Even these crappy retirement accounts, we found ways to be able to get the money out of it, get it out of prison as I call it, right. Get the money out and be able to use it. And and it's generating now for him over $4,000 a month. So even when he has those months where he is off the film industry, he's not trying to hustle get to that next, next project.

He's like, Hey, I've got 4,000 a month coming in. I can take my time. I and relax because I was a grueling, you know, middle, you know, 20 hour type Workday. I was working. Let's take a break for a while and then worry about my next project later. And so it kind of just gives him that freedom to release and, and get rid of those, those big rollercoaster months that he has.

I have another client right now. She's actually in network marketing and it's kind of cool because for her, I mean, obviously they always talk about freedom and stuff, which is. but but for them, she's like, you know what, even though I have that stream of income coming in for my business, I wanna just be free regardless of that.

So then if I'm ever bringing more people in my company, I could say, I don't need you. honestly, I don't need you at all. I don't need your business. And and with her that now her and her husband and her young family they homeschool now. They they're traveling around Mexico and Costa Rica live this expat life.

And she doesn't even, and now all the money coming in from her business is gravy. And so, and they did things. They bought some, you know what they're called turnkey rentals, which is rentals you buy, but you don't manage 'em, you know, some other property manager does all the work for you. I've got several, I don't even know the names of my tenants.

I mean, I have the contract if I have to pull it up, but I don't know them. I don't deal with 'em at all. The property manager deals with all that stuff, I just get paid the. Right. Same thing. If I have money in like, you know, raw land, even I'm getting paid from a hundred grand, I'm investing raw land, I'm getting paid 4,500 a month off that, you know, and you know, just different things.

You can do. Apartment buildings and self storage units, you know, self storage units by the way, are great in a recession cuz people will downsize. And use storage units more, you know, same thing with affordable housing. So, I mean, there's, there's so many things, you do oil and gas. I I've got money in oil and gas right now.

If, if, if I gotta pay more at the gas pump, I might as well profit from it too, you know? And so there's, there's so many different things you can do that. Really just create a lot of just extra streams of income that can you know, free you of your time free of your business, but allow you to build it money, worry free.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah, I think a way I like to think about, I guess, is for, for somebody listening to this, like, if you're just starting out in your business, you're not really making too much money yet. And, and this, this idea of even having this extra money to invest somewhere is, seems like a pipe dream. At this point, what I would say is like a, a really motivational way to kind of look at this is that.

I think that a lot of people struggle where they reach some certain level of income and then they have some spending in their business in their life and they're they're content or it's, it's good enough. It's working out. But then for whatever reason and, and things change in your life, you, you have a bigger family, you need a bigger house.

You want your business to grow. There's this gap sudden. And the getting across those gaps is where everyone faces difficulty. I think because now you're at this level and now you realize you need to be at the higher level, but your income doesn't magically just jump to the higher level. You have to grow your business or do something else and getting to the point of having some kind of other income stream or these other investments can help make those, those gaps.

Instead of feeling like this, be more, more, at least like a wave. I feel. And yeah, so yeah, that's, that's a way I like to look at it. But definitely I think it's, it's super powerful to consider things like this.

Chris Miles: Well, and even if your business is a side hustle, I mean, a lot of times people are like, if I can just get my business to the point where I can replace my income at my job, Well, great.

If we got money that you've already been building up and saving for that maybe we can use your money differently to help get you there faster. You know? So while you're building your business, build some passive income, so you can make the leap faster into your business, but have some safety too, at the same time where you're not just starting from zero in your business.

Right? So there's so many ways to do it, but you're right. I mean, if you're just starting out, you're just barely getting business off the ground. You're just paycheck to paycheck. Your biggest thing is just to get some cash reserves. It might only be a two weeks of savings. It might be a month's worth of saving.

Just having that savings there, even if you could use it to invest, hold it. That's the one thing my wife taught me. She's like, wait, you just keep reinvesting your money or you keep paying off a debt with it. Especially when I was over a million dollars in debt. You just keep paying off, keep some money and still don't use it, which was so hard to do, especially cuz I created the have as entrepreneur to always use my money.

Best thing I ever did. Like, I actually got to my goals faster, not using the money and letting it sit there and create that little safety net that security. And you definitely need it. If you're trying to make a launch into your business, full-time you gotta have that safety net security. So then, you know, you can make the launch and not spazz out, right?

Because the more you go into the scarcity in business, the more you drive business away, which means you just have to hustle hard. If you can just be relaxed when you go into business and be able to say, I'm good, I'm financially set. I don't need this money. Like I want it. And I know I can serve people, but I don't need the money.

I'll tell you. It's amazing how customers and clients will respond so differently to you than if you're trying to go out and hustle. Right. I hate the word hustle. family just keeps going. Hustle, hustle, hustle, all the. They'd just burn themselves out and you don't have to do that. It's not about working harder or even smarter.

It's just about working with the right energy to attract the massive amount of business that you deserve.

Bryan McAnulty: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. It, it may take effort to, to build up some of that savings and, and the mindset shift to, to, to create that. But really you're, you're fighting against your, your mindset and everything.

You're making it harder for yourself. If you don't have that. To try to present yourself the right way in, in front of potential clients and everything like that. So I totally agree. That's right. So you have your own podcast, the Chris Miles money show. And in our research, we were listening to one of your recent episodes where you talked about inflation, and you said that the best hedge against inflation is to increase your skillset.

Can you explain a little bit more about.

Chris Miles: Yeah, kinda go back to what I said earlier, right? Where you're talking about, like, how do you go about serving people and solving problems, always look for ways to better yourself to increase your skills, increase your ability to be better at what you do, whatever your niche is, whatever your ability is in your business.

Keep just getting better at that. Like for example, I mean, during the last recession, you know, I was teaching people about money and it was very theoretical, had some practicality. But there wasn't a lot of like rubber meets the road. It was more like mindset stuff, which is needed. But during the recession, of course, I remember a lot of people kept telling me, Chris, like, we'd love to pay you, but we just can't find the money.

Now I wouldn't tell them this at the time. But remember I was over a million dollars in debt. I was in the whole like 16,000 a month, so I was always falling, coming up short. And and so I'm thinking of their situation thinking there's no way they're worse than I am. I bet you, I would find the. So I remember telling him, I said, well, if I help you find the money, would you then pay me?

They said, well, yeah, of course. And that started to become like this almost new evolved business that I was able to create within my business was I started to help people find the money. Right. How do we free up the cash flow? Just like, you know, I mentioned with the guy, we free up 4,200 bucks a month with him and another couple free up 4,000 a month.

All that was cuz I was going through crap, myself, trying to get creative with my own finances and trying to make the best use of whatever little I. I was just doing the same thing with them. So my pain became everybody else's gain as a result. And so, and I just kept, you know, refining it over the next year or so refining it, getting to a better and better process where eventually finally, like some of the best relationships started to show up and our company just exploded when we were almost bankrupt in 2009.

And then also 2010, we jumped up from like a few hundred thousand a year to up like over 5 million, you know, just because the right relationship showed up with the right value, add that people were asking. So that's what I mean by increasing your skills, always look for ways to keep adding value and becoming more valuable to people in their lives.

Never, never settle with just being good enough, right. Never settle with that. Always find ways to improve and be better. And like I said, like once you help people get more and more of what they want and the more valuable or invaluable even that you become to your clients or customers, the more you'll never want for money.

Awesome.

Bryan McAnulty: I love that example. That's a, that's a really great example. So I think we're gonna leave it at that. One thing we'd like to do on this show is to have each of our guests ask a question to our audience. So if you could ask our audience anything,

Chris Miles: what would that be? Yeah, the question that would be is, is similar to what I've kind of been dancing around.

Right? Which is, you know, how many, multiple streams of passive income do you have right now? And what are you doing to get those right? You don't have to be there. You don't have to have accomplished everything cuz nobody hardly anybody's that at that point, that's a rare place to. But the real question you have to say is what are you doing right now?

What first steps you're taking based on what I just said, to be able to get to that place where you can work, because you want to, not because you have to. Awesome.

Bryan McAnulty: All right. Well, Chris, before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Chris Miles: Yeah, easiest place you can go to is money ripples.com. That's M O N Y R I P P L E S.

Dot com go there. We got plenty of information. We even have a passive income calculator. So if you're kinda curious to see how much passive income you can create in your situation, you can actually plug in a few numbers and see how much you can generate in the next 12 months. All right. Awesome.

Bryan McAnulty: Thanks so much, Chris.

Chris Miles: Thank you.

Bryan McAnulty: If you enjoyed this interview and won the chance to ask questions to our guests live tune in on Tuesdays when new episodes premiere on the Heights Platform, Facebook page, to learn more about the show and get notified when new episodes release, check out the Creator's Adventure dot com until then keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.