Your cash flow isn’t just about paying the bills. It’s the fuel for building the life, the business, and the impact you’ve always wanted.
Today’s conversation with Chris Miles will shift everything you thought you knew about financial freedom. We’re not talking about stuffing your retirement account until you’re 70 and you can finally retire. We’re talking about creating cash flow NOW, while you’re building your business, so you can live your purpose, not just hustle for it.
Samantha and Chris dig into how to align your money strategies with your mission, how to create multiple streams of income without burning out, and the subtle mindset shifts that take you from scarcity to true abundance.
This episode isn’t just about money. It’s about unlocking the life you were meant to live. Chris shows you how your business can be the launchpad for freedom, not another version of the rat race.
If you’re ready to think bigger, create smarter, and live freer, hit play on this episode.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Why traditional financial advice often fails (00:46)
- How to align your business cash flow with your deeper life purpose (05:13)
- The mindset shift from saving and scarcity to stewardship and abundance (12:34)
- Building cash flow streams outside your main business (18:03)
- How to get lean, get liquid, and get out of money traps (23:50)
- Real-life ripple effects and how financial freedom today sparks purpose-driven living and builds a lasting legacy (28:54)
- Why action beats potential every single time (33:24)
QUOTES
“I always encourage people to find ways to express their, what I call ‘divine genius.’ How do you take the combination of your unique abilities and strengths and your passions and your values, and how do you use that in a way that makes the world a better place?” – Chris Miles
“The powerful thing to do is to get more profitable in your business and then use that money to create other streams of income that don’t take away your time and attention from the business.” – Chris Miles
“Most people think they just got to save, and save this humongous pile of money. But in truth, you just have to have that money working for you, so then you can stop working for it so much.” – Chris Miles
“It’s not just about having that potential. It’s taking that potential and acting upon it. That’s when your life becomes better.” – Chris Miles
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ABOUT CHRIS MILES
Chris Miles, the Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor, is a leading authority teaching entrepreneurs and professionals how to get their money working for them TODAY! He’s an author, podcast host of the Money Ripples Podcast, has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Entrepreneurs on Fire, BiggerPockets, and has a proven reputation with his company, Money Ripples (https://moneyripples.com/) getting his clients fast, financial results. In fact, his personal clients have increased their cash flow by over $300 Million in the last 15 years!
WHERE TO FIND CHRIS MILES
- Website: https://moneyripples.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moneyripples/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscmiles/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscmiles/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@moneyrippleswithchrismiles/podcasts
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:02
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I am your host, Samantha Riley, and today I have a cash flow expert and anti-financial advisor. So I’m looking forward to diving into the topic of increasing cash flow in your business. And Chris Miles, welcome to the show.
Chris Miles 0:18
Hey, it’s such a pleasure to be here, Samantha.
Samantha Riley 0:22
Yeah, I’m looking forward to this. We’ve had some laughs in the green room already, so I think this is going to be fun. Let’s start off with setting a little bit of context, because you call yourself an anti-financial adviser. What was it? Was there a pivotal moment that you just went like, this is it or was it just you had a dream one night? Like, how did this come about?
Chris Miles 0:46
You know, a dream would have been awesome. I’m one of those guys that I fall asleep and I never remember my dreams unless it’s really scary, right? So, okay, if I had a dream, it would have been, it would have been frightening. No. So it’s interesting, because I actually intended to become a business consultant. That was my initial objective when I was going to college, but I figured I should have real life business experience before I do that. So I actually took a sabbatical from college. Figured I would go find some business to start, do that for a year or so, and then go back and finish my degree. Well, the first business that came up, it took a few months, but the first one that came up that was intriguing to me was being a financial advisor, because I figure worst case, I walk away learning about money and investing, and that should be useful, right? And even better, I was even thinking about my father, you know, with my dad, because he is always the guy that was very cheap, you know, he says frugal. We say cheap. He was, you know, he would always save everything, spend nothing, you know. And so he would, I mean, he taught me to do the same thing, and but he would also tell me that he felt that his job would literally kill him from the stress and just never be able to retire. So I figured, you know, this could be good for me. So I went and went to financial advising, got the licenses and everything. And after a while, I realized I don’t want to go back to college. I think I’m going to stay as an entrepreneur. So I did that. I was a financial advisor for four years, and then during the fourth year, that’s when my dad said, Well, when are you going to sit down with me? So I sat down with him. I flew back home, and as we’re sitting down at his kitchen table, the same one where he said, you know, be cheap, Chris. You know, buy everything on sale. We sit down, we look at all of his finances for the first time in my entire life, and I see that he’d paid off all of his debt, including his home. So he’s 100% debt free. He’d also stuffed money into his retirement plan as well for decades. And so I’m hoping, of course, that maybe he can retire. In fact, he’s hoping that I can tell him, Dad, you’re 61 years old, you can retire now, but that’s not what he got. Instead, I had to tell him, and said, Dad, here’s the deal, if you want to retire right now, you’re going to have to die in about five or six years, because that’s when you’ll run out of money. Wow. Okay, well, what do I do? I don’t, you know, I don’t. I didn’t hope for that answer, Chris, like, what do I do? You did everything right. Everything that I teach as a financial advisor, you did it, and that bothered me. And it wasn’t just a few weeks later, I’m talking with a friend of mine who, he went to go do things like real estate investing. I actually trained him and be a financial advisor, but he quit to do real estate. And so I’m talking with him, and he says, Chris, well, my dad and I, we’ve partnered on some real estate deals, and we’ve doubled his income as a professor at the local university. I said, Wait a minute, you’ve only been doing this for five months. How is it possible that you can double your dad’s income? I mean, that sounds too good to be true. There’s no way that’s possible. Well, Chris, how many of your clients are financially free where they don’t worry about money? Well, none, even the retired ones, still worry about outliving their money. Yeah. Okay, good job, Chris. How about this? How many of you guys as financial advisors are financially free, not off the commissions you’re earning, but actually doing these same investments? And when I really started taking inventory of who was in our office and even people that had been working there since the 1970s I said, Well, none, none of them seem to be able to retire, there’s your problem. And so I started taking the matrix red pill, you know. But, you know, instead of going to a whole nother world, right? You know, where I see zeros and ones, I went to the world of like, real estate investing, everything else, and realized that I could actually create passive income, even if I’m not the one doing the investing. And later that next year, not only did I quit being a financial advisor because I couldn’t keep teaching something I wasn’t doing, I couldn’t believe it anymore, but now I was doing something where I actually had enough passive income coming in, I was able to retire when I was 28 years old. So I had enough income coming in, I could stop working. And that was a shocking place to be, because I never thought I’d ever be there. And so of course, you know, any 28 almost 29 year old, that’s saying, Hey, I’m not working a job anymore. People want to know how you did it, right? And word got around between friends and family and stuff. And so pretty soon, you know, 2007 I came out of retirement to teach people how I did what I did. You know, even though I went through the recession, went broke, had to dig back out of that hole again, and was able to retire a second time in 2016, much better the second time around. But, you know, basically, I had to, you know, keep doing that same thing. So I’ve been teaching people really how to do that is, how do you become free, where you work optional. You work because you want to, not because you have to.
Samantha Riley 5:13
I love that. So many people that are in business for themselves do it because they’re chasing that financial freedom. But I’ve seen a lot of people speak on this where they do earn money earlier, or it can be people that start to go down the route, and then they start to lose sight of why they’re doing it. They start to feel unfulfilled or like they’re not living their purpose, and then it’s all about their money. So how do you guide them to align, like the financial strategies, what they’re actually doing with their deeper life purpose, so that they continue to stay fulfilled without, you know, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or walking away from the whole lot, which I have seen people do.
Chris Miles 6:02
Yeah. It’s actually such a good question, because that’s the thing, so many people work so hard to get there, and what they realize when they work with us is that they get there so much faster than they expect, that sometimes they’re subconsciously sabotaging their own results, because then they get fearful about what’s that next, you know, step for me, what do I do when I don’t have to work anymore? Do I keep working at my job? Do I go work on a passion project? Do I, you know, go volunteer my services, or, like, go on a service mission or whatever? Like, what do I do with my time? And it’s scary for people, and it was for me. I mean, because I got there so fast, I was like, wait a minute, what? I almost felt like asking the question of myself, what am I going to do when I grow up? Right? Yeah, yeah. Cuz that’s really what it was like. I was like, wow, I don’t need to work, now I have this time, so what? And so one of the best questions I have people ask themselves is, if money were no longer an issue in your life, what would you spend your time doing? And that was the question asked of me initially, too, that really helped me out. But I’ll tell you the answer I gave was kind of a cop out, because the answer I gave initially was, well, travel. And I remember my friend saying, You’re gonna travel 52 weeks out of the year, right? Okay, well, maybe not that much, you know, like, maybe he’s like, Well, how much, he’s like, Well, I don’t know, maybe a couple months out of the year. He’s like, Well, great. What are you gonna do the other 45 weeks out of the year, and so, yeah, well, that’s a good question. And at the time, I said, Well, maybe I’ll teach ballroom dancing, you know, because I was actually one then US’ top amateur ballroom dancers at the time, like, okay, cool. Now we’re going somewhere, right? And that’s not what I end up doing, but that kind of got me a direction and a path to go on. And it also kind of, it’s interesting, because we have that kind of vision, and you have that clarity of your vision, it kind of pulls you faster to achieving it, too, I’ve noticed. So I always encourage people like to find ways to express their, what I call their divine genius, right? How you take the combination of your unique abilities and strengths and your passions and your values, and how do you use that in a way that makes the world a better place? I mean, even the whole fact I named the company Money Ripples, the whole reason I called it that is because, you know, as I’ve helped people improve their cash flow and create more passive income and things over the years, I realized, I mean, we had over, you know, almost 1000 clients free up well over $300 million in the last years. You know, that’s a ripple effect in and of itself, yeah, and that’s what I have people figure out. It’s like, well, what’s the ripple effect you want to create? What is it that you can do with your time and your money, not just to get rich and just go live on a beach somewhere and just waste your life away being selfish, but no, like, what could you do to actually make the world a better place and that’s really where I have people go with their thoughts and their dreams.
Samantha Riley 8:41
I love that so much. I remember talking to a client many years ago, and we were talking about something similar, like, What’s your why? And she said, Sam, she said, This is great that we’re doing this, but what I really want to do is go and, like, help stray dogs in Bali. And what we did, what she was thinking was she needed to make the money doing the stray dog thing. But then, like, once we had the conversation, it’s like, well, no, what about we create this business so that it gives you the money to go and look after the stray dogs? So sometimes you need to think outside the square a little bit and think, Well, how can this all work together as an ecosystem? So I love that that’s what you’re talking about, because most people have some other reason that you’re some sort of purpose. And it doesn’t always need to be one plus one equals two. Sometimes it can be in different places. I love that.
Chris Miles 9:40
You don’t always have to wait till he hit financial freedom to do it either. One client, he was trying to figure out what to do, and he loved baseball, not playing baseball as much anymore, but coaching it, specifically coaching young men. And his passion was really tied into not just coaching young men baseball, but he knew that he could use that coaching to help them become like very mature great citizens, like great young men, like strong, solid young men that are productive members of society. And so for him, it was developing. It was like it was a passion. And so forever he’s trying to figure out, well, should I make this a business, right? And he went back and forth. And then I finally just asked him. I said, Listen, like you’re already coaching baseball right now, and he was an amazing coach. I mean, he wasn’t a high school coach at all, but he was coaching kind of more of a city League, and he even took that team to state, you know, to in the state tournament even. And he was just like, yeah, like, maybe I should get a coaching job or do this or this. I’m like, let me ask this question. You already have a job. Does that job allow you to be able to coach? He’s like, Oh, yeah, it’s a great job. It gives me the freedom and flexibility to adjust my hours if I need to. I said, Have you ever considered that that job is not a burden, but a blessing, because that job is the very thing that allows you to have the time to coach. Not every job will let you do that. So really, instead of looking at your job, it’s like something you have to get away from, and you’re trying to go towards coaching. What if you looked at this job as the thing that allows you to coach, allows you to fulfill your passions? And he started to see it that way. He’s like, Yeah, you’re right. And I said, You just focus on being the best coach you can be. Follow that passion, follow that path. And as he did that, eventually he did get offered, like an assistant coaching position at a school, and then eventually he got the head coaching position right and he didn’t have to go and be full time or anything like that. But the great thing is, he was able to live his passion. And even when I asked his wife, I said, Hey, let me ask you this question, even though he works this job, what’s he like in the summertime, when he’s coaching baseball? She’s like, Oh, he’s on cloud nine. He’s Yeah, happiest I ever see him like summer times is his time of year. I was like, great. Let’s just see how we can get him to do more of that. And I think that’s the thing, is that you don’t have to wait for financial freedom to be able to do something that you love.
Samantha Riley 11:52
Totally. That does require a mindset shift, right? Because people might be listening to this and going, alright, well, you know someone’s, you got to speak to your friend one on one, I got to speak to this person one on one, but people listening might not have that person to ask those questions. So what mindset shifts have you found essential for people to transition from financial stress to having this abundance mindset to having the belief that they can do this, that they can have abundance, that they can create money, create wealth?
Chris Miles 12:34
Yeah, I always tell people that there’s always a one two punch, there’s principles, and then there’s strategies. Right? The principles are eternal. They never change. They’re not to be confused with strategies. Principles are things that always work. For example, dollars follow value, right? Dollars will follow value create for other people, it’s always about how you go about solving problems and serving people in a way that money exchanges and something just about money, anything exchanges, even if you’re bartering, you can still do that because you’re creating value, right? Well, that’s a principle. The strategies are different. Strategies can change over time. And I will tell you, strategies are so much easier than the principles, matching the principles, and that abundance mindset is all part of that. And so I teach people about that there’s really three money mindsets you have to focus on. The first one’s a spender, the second one’s a saver, and then third one’s a steward. Now everybody always talks about the spender and saver mentality, but unfortunately, they’re both in scarcity like we, the spender always gets the bad rap, right? The spender is always the one that says, you know, it’s easy, come easy, go. They just blow the money when it comes in. That’s why 75% of business owners don’t have savings, because they’re literally spenders that said, How do I make more money? I’ll go into business, right? Yeah. And that’s nothing bad, because it’s not that far of a tweak for a spender to become a steward. You know, the problem is the savers are always the ones that are heralded as being like the greatest, you know, example of financial freedom. But that’s not true either. In my experience, what I’ve seen, I’ve seen 1000s, 1000s of people in this sense, where they are great savers. They’ll like my dad, right? They don’t spend a lot of money. They save what they can. But the problem is they can never save enough. It’s never enough for them, and so they’re always in a trap. And I’ve had so many people reach out to me. They’re like, Chris, I have a net worth of $3 million yet I can’t stop working. Why not? Because I have no income coming in from those dollars, I’ve done everything I was supposed to do as a saver, and it hasn’t worked, right? So I guess I just have to save more. No, stop it. You’re not supposed to just save more, yeah, it’s to be a steward, and a steward does look at things more abundantly. They realize that it’s not like a finite amount of money or resources. See, in scarcity, you believe that making money is a result of luck or exploitation, right? Either have to get lucky, like winning a lottery, or have to screw somebody over, right? I have to be somebody who, like, takes advantage of somebody else or steals from somebody else, and that’s how I make money. And come on, look at Hollywood. Hollywood constantly. I mean, who’s the villain? It’s rarely ever the government agent, right? It’s almost always the corrupt, greedy business Owner, right? They’re always the devil, you know, they’re always the ones that are doing it, instead of saying, wait a minute. I mean, there are some of those business owners out there, but the vast majority of business owners I know I talk to, especially small business owners, they’re all about, I mean, yes, they want finances, they want financial freedom too, but they’re there to say, I have something great. I have something of value to offer you, right? And that’s what some of the abundance realized that dollars follow value you create, not luck, not exploitation. They also don’t believe in that you have to get in at the ground floor of an opportunity or you’re going to miss timing. Those in abundance knows the right time is here, the right time is NOW, and the right place is here, right? It’s always a good time. There’s always opportunity. There’s an abundance of opportunities more than you could take advantage of. Therefore you always have, you know, there’s always enough and despair, right? There’s always enough money, there’s always enough time, right? It’s always finite in our minds when we go into scarcity. But the truth is, like there’s abundance everywhere, right? We have more than we can even handle. And so you have to switch that mentality. And when you look at money, you gotta look at it not just from that standpoint, but look at it from a standpoint of, okay, what’s the highest and best use of my dollars? What can I do with these dollars that creates the best return, not just financial return, but maybe even a lifestyle return too, right? So what do I do with this money? How can I use this money in my business to then amplify. You know, when I, in 2020 I was considering opening up a new franchise, you know, and just diversifying my business investments, because I was in a nice, stable place in my business. I thought, hey, this money, this is turnkey now, I’m working five or 10 hours a week, yeah, maybe I just start a new business. But then, as I thought about it’s like, you know, I could do this business or I could do that business, but why not if I just take my own resources that I would use for that same franchise or something, why not just take that same resource and double down on my own business? Maybe I just create a bigger megaphone? So I started investing more in my podcast. Right now, I’m in my 11th season of my podcast, right? You know, I started looking at ways to build our marketing channels and start hiring more people to then create a much bigger vision and legacy with what I’m doing, right? So that’s what a steward does, is what’s the best use of these dollars? Now I don’t put every dollar in and that’s another myth we want to talk about with business owners when it comes to money, because you shouldn’t always be reinvesting your money. But I do put a lot of money in my business, but then I also take profits, and I use that to create multiple streams of income, right? So that I have over $50,000 a month of passive income that comes in whether I do anything with my business or not. And that’s the powerful thing that you can get to is you start to get more profitable in your business and then use that money to create other streams of income that don’t take away your time and attention from the business either.
Samantha Riley 17:39
Oh, I love this so much. Let’s talk about increasing that cash flow, because it’s not, I think that when we talk about increasing cash flow, what we immediately think is in our business, but you just mentioned that it’s from different places. Can you start to paint a picture of what this could look like?
Chris Miles 18:03
Absolutely. So now don’t get me wrong, I believe if you’re a business owner, your business is your number one investment. So never take that away. Think of it more like your economic engine, right? Like it’s the thing that does produce the income, that can provide the lifestyle, it can provide a lot of things in your life. What I do see happen so often, if you ever read the book Profit First by Michael Michalowicz, I remember, actually had him on my show a few years back, and we brought this up, and he says, it’s like, here’s the thing, if you’re always reinvesting money in your business, you’re not profitable. You’re literally just spending money in your business. Now, if you create a bigger and bigger business, well, all you do is creating a bigger and bigger rat race, right? Because if you just keep reinvesting, and say, you get that company up to $100 million yet you just barely provide a substantial living for your family, so what? What if that business were shut down? You remember five years ago, you know, March of 2020, we started seeing businesses in the US, non essential businesses, get shut down, right? And so we don’t want to get to that place where all of a sudden, you know, you have, you’re having all your eggs in that one basket, you’re all in, and that’s it. And so the ideal thing is be profitable. Yes, invest some money in your business, upfront when you’re starting a new business, it’s, you’re going to invest most of your money back in the business. But as you start to mature in your business more and more, don’t make hustle, don’t make that, don’t make that a habit. Make it more of a temporary situation, right? Hustle in the beginning, but then start to try to back it off. Try to find ways to free up your time, find ways to free up profits. And as you get more mature in your business, take those profits, build up that cash, not just in your business, but outside of your business too, and then that’s the cash you’re going to use to then invest in ways to create multiple streams of income. Now some people, unfortunately, because they have financial advisors in their lives, financial Advisors, I found out for myself, we weren’t necessarily licensed to make you more money. We were actually licensed to sell you specific types of investments, right? So, really, that’s kind of what got me to question everything, and got me to question my integrity as a financial advisor, because I realized I just had a license to sell, that was it. So, you know, understand that naturally to them, it’s like a hammer, to a hammer everything looks like a nail, right? Everything looks like stock market. Everything looks like mutual funds, you know, annuities, you know things like that. You know retirement plans. But what about now? What about preparing for today and so I’ll give you an example. I had one client that, you know, she was a business owner, and she’s making great money, and even has time freedom within the business. So she’s now just managing the business, making, like, multiple six figures and part time. But she realized too, she’s like, Yeah, but what if that industry, what if something happens? I need to have multiple streams of income. And so she started doing things, you know, as we were working together, she’s like, you know, I’m going to do things where I buy some things in real estate, and you don’t even have to buy a property that you have to babysit. You can literally, if you’re going to buy a property, the United States is awesome, like, because United States has literally hundreds of type of markets. So when someone says, What’s the US real estate market like right now, you can’t answer that question honestly, because the truth is, well, which market, you know, which state, which city or zip code, because literally, they’re all different. And when people are like, Oh, is it? Is Real Estate bad right now in the United States? No, it is in some places, but in other places, not right? And so, so she started buying properties that were in other states that somebody else would manage. She started investing things like oil and gas, you know, and getting paid off of the royalties from that and the next thing you know, between all said and done, she’s like, my whole goal, Chris is just have 25,000 a month coming in where I know I don’t even need that business anymore. In fact, everything for my business is just gravy, right? Yeah, I had another woman. She was in her mid 50s, and she actually did the opposite. She was actually at first, when I met her, we met in a business group, and she’s like, You know what? I’m just looking to build my business and grow it. And then the next month, she said, Chris, I changed my mind actually, to one. I’m in my mid 50s. I don’t want to have to keep hustling anymore. What am I thinking? I want to back it off. And so she had about $300,000 that she had after a divorce was finalized. She’s like, I got 300,000. What do I do with it? And so we looked at different things, like lending money to real estate investors, where you can get paid 10, 12% a year. So think about it, if you lend $100,000 to an investor, it pays you 12% or 1% a month. That’s $1,000 a month from that 100 grand, she only needed $3,000 a month. So between some of the different real estate strategies she diversified into, she got two $3,000 a month. She even sold off her property, and in the state of Oregon, sold that off and then, because she wasn’t going to live there anyways, because her whole dream was retire in Bali. She wanted to go to Bali, teach scuba diving every once a while, but for the most part, just enjoy Bali. And that’s where she’s been now since, like 2017, 2018 I think it’s been something like that. She’s been in Bali, comes back to the States every once in a while. She sometimes, because she has to her visa, she has to go to Australia for six months, and then come back to Bali again, right? And do that kind of little jumping, Yep, yeah, do a little hop, right? But she’s, she loves it, and that’s the thing that’s so cool, is that most people think they just got to save and save this humongous pile of money. But in truth, you just have to have that money working for you, so then you can stop working for it so much.
Samantha Riley 23:29
You’ve got, I believe a wealth wheel system that sounded like I said, Will I did not, a wealth wheel system. Is this? I don’t think I can. I can’t say it well, slow. Is that what you’re talking about here?
Chris Miles 23:50
It’s exactly it. Yeah, so like we talk about, like, you know, shifting your paradigm, obviously, as we talked about, as we just talked about earlier on, and as we do that, start to store up cash. I tell people is, get lean, get liquid, and get out, right? And this is great advice for business owners. You know, get lean. Make sure you’re tracking your money. Make sure you’re, you know, even if you’re just using programs to track your money, you gotta track it each and every week. Just see where it’s coming in, what’s going out, and pay attention. Don’t look at your balance. That’s not the way to do it. That’s how people go broke. But start showing, seeing how much money is coming in and going out, and make sure you have surplus, right? You have profit in your business and profit at home. Well, that’s getting lean. Well, getting liquid means, how do I make sure I don’t lock my money away in prison, you know? So, for example, like, I, I have one client that she’s in Australia, and she’s got a first, second, and a third mortgage on her house, and we’re trying to see, like, ways, like, hey, are there ways we can pay off the debt? And they’re like, Nope, you can’t. You have to pay off in exactly this, you know, prorated way. Okay, well, that doesn’t work, all right. Well, can we do something else, you know? So instead of putting money towards a house, paying it off aggressively, can we then take that money and buy other real estate, and specifically in the United States? And so she did, and then she started to generate 1000s of dollars every month, right? So we got that. Be liquid. We got the money out. We couldn’t get out of the house, unfortunately, but we were able to get it out of other places, like her stock investments, mutual funds, things like that. Some people just have bank savings where it’s laying around. Sometimes it is home equity. Or even, I get people that say, Oh, I already do real estate, Chris. I have one client that out of California. He had a property. He had his house and a rental property, and I asked him, I said, How would you make it on that rental property every month? He says, after all expenses are said and done, $200 a month. Okay, now it’s too sexy, but that’s good, at least it’s not negative. All right. Well, how much equity do we have in this property? $700,000.
Samantha Riley 25:40
Wow. And that’s just sitting there doing nothing, right?
Chris Miles 25:44
That’s right. Now he had his blinders on, right? He was a very good saver, right? I find this a lot with a lot of my Asian clients, like, they are penny pinching savers. They will save like, half their income. They’re amazing. And he was doing the same thing, but his goal was pay off my mortgage off my house, and pay off the mortgage of my investment property, and then I’ll be free. I said, Well, if you pay off your house and pay off your mortgage of your investment property, how much is that? We figured out was $4,200 a month, which is like 50,000 a year. I said, Okay, well, you realize you can actually sell off this investment property, take the 700,000, invest it in another, you know, another area of the United States where it’s much better than California, and you could be making, like, $70,000 a year right now, instead of waiting six years to pay off your mortgages. Like, oh, I don’t know any hum, hard. And then finally, he said, All right, let’s do it. He did it. He bought most of the properties, all in Louisiana. And then what happened? He took the cash flow from those and he started reinvesting that money to buy more properties. And so he was literally and he’s even managing his properties. I didn’t recommend him do that, but he thought it was fun. So I’m like, Hey, if you think it’s fun, then do it. You know, if it’s passion thing, then do it. Well, guess what? He’s now, and this is about a year shy when he would have paid off his mortgages. He’s now making over $100,000 a year passively just from that money, he was able to get out of that $200 a month rental. So places like that, that’s what I mean, like, get it liquid, and then get it out, get it out to the places where it can actually work for you better, you know. And, and that’s what’s so much fun, you know. I had one client. They were a couple that they came to us because they had 5 million in stocks, mostly Google, Meta, Facebook, you know, big ones. They said, We want to diversify. But now as we look at their cash flow, we said, well, let’s put it all together. Let’s look at the cash flow. Let’s look at everything, found out, I said, Well, look, you’ve got some equity in your house, and you’ve got some of these loans. Let’s cash out refinance. Let’s pull out the equity of your home to pay off all these other loans, so that really, your house is your one debt, but you’ll free up $3,800 a month. That’s like $45,000 a year. I was like, that’s zero out of pocket, you know. And you free up 45,000 a year, right? And I said, Oh, you’re not done yet. You’re business owners. What if we got you with our accountant, you know? And have you start talking with them about ways to save on taxes. They did, and they’re they freed up over $30,000 a year in taxes. Wow, wow. Even with, again, no money out of pocket, still, 75,000 a year. And then I said, Look, you have a rental property. You know, how much you making on that? Zero. We net zero per month. Okay, but you got a couple 100,000 of equity. Let’s sell a property and then reinvest it elsewhere. So they made another 2000 months. So now they’re at $100,000 a year. But they freed up, and they still have the 5 million in stocks, right? And then we’re like, cool, now you can take the 5 million. Your goal, by the way, was about 20,000 a month. You only need to cash out a million dollars of stocks to then make 10% a year. And voila, you’re pretty much there, and so it’s like it went from, it went from them like, oh, we hope to retire in five or 10 years to oh, we can do it this year? Yeah, yeah. Because makes them get lean, we get liquid, and then we get that money out.
Samantha Riley 28:54
Yeah, yeah. Let’s quickly talk about the ripple effect of that, because that obviously was amazing for them right then. But how did that transform? And, like, how did that transform, maybe their family or the community, or even, like, leaving money for future generations?
Chris Miles 29:16
Yeah, I mean, they’re just getting started, so, I mean, it’s getting going, but it’s interesting, because now they’re like, wait a minute, do I stay working in my job? Do I quit? They said I want to keep working, which is fine, but what is nice, they are work optional, right? So if they did decide, You know what, I just want to take that time and be with my family. I did have one client who actually did that. She actually was in a assisted living type of business for seniors, you know, for senior citizens. And she did that for a while, and she made a lot of money fast, but then she realized she’s like, you know, for me, like, I have two 15 year old twin daughters. I’ve only got a few more years, and then they’re off to college and they’re gonna have their own life. My time is limited, so we said, well, let’s get you to quit. You know. And so she sold off her share of the business, again, reinvested, so that she could do that. And so she’s really the last four years. Now, the girls are adults, but she was able to spend that time with her girls at this critical stage of when they’re growing up. I had another couple. They’re business owners. She had, like, a direct sales business that she owned, and he was working a nine to five job, or maybe nine to nine, depending on the day, right? Yeah, right. And so, they’re saying, you know, our dream, Chris, is that we want to give our children a different experience, like we want to homeschool our children, and we want to do it abroad. We want to be expats, right? Yep. Well, I said, Okay, well, definitely, if you keep plugging money away in your retirement account, you’re gonna have to wait 20 years, and your kids will be old. So let’s see what we can do about now. And so we did like we actually end up having that. They end up selling their house so that they can then move. He quit his job. We took some of their other savings and invested it in different types of real estate. And they got to about $4,000 a month. They said, Well, that’s all we need. And she now, she now she still has a direct sales business that she can do online, part time and everything, but that now that’s become gravy for them. And so what they were really happy about, they’re like, Okay, now we can go anywhere. And they thought, Should we go to Costa Rica, Mexico? They decided to settle in Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, and took their kids there because they want to give their kids, like a real life experience, something that no kids will get in a public school type of education, and so for them that’s they’re trying to do, they’re trying to raise kids that are more entrepreneurial, kids that are, you know, have a bigger perspective than just a narrow US mindset, right? They want to have to kind of open up and see more things. And they’re even like going and serving and donating their time, their money to different charities down there. They even connected us with one of them. Because when we were there vacationing, we said, hey, you don’t even get charities. They’re like, Yes, this is the one we donate to. You should do it too. And so we went down there and donated to that. And so that ripple effect really does, I think it’s bigger than most people realize. I know my ripple effect is bigger than I realize, because, you know, as you have a podcast, you don’t, you know, talk to most the people that listen or watch.
Samantha Riley 32:02
No, you have no idea who they are. No, there’s no report that comes out with a name.
Chris Miles 32:08
That’s right, yeah, you just hope that something will stick and land and will help make your life a little bit better. And that’s why I don’t quit. That’s why I don’t retire. You know, even though I’m definitely in a place I could, in fact, in a lot of ways, my life would be easier if I could, but it would not be as fulfilling as it is right now.
Samantha Riley 32:25
Yeah, and just what I was about to say then, is easy isn’t fulfilling. When it’s easy, there’s no fulfillment. So I love that. I love those stories that you’ve been able to change people’s lives in so many ways. For people that are listening that have just gone, wow, like you’ve blown my mind. I’ve got all of these different ideas. Where can people go to learn more about what you do, get more value bombs from you?
Chris Miles 32:54
Yeah. Just remember Money Ripples, whether it’s moneyripples.com, app Money Ripples on social media, or even our Money Ripples podcast that you can follow on Spotify, Apple, or even on YouTube.
Samantha Riley 33:05
Love that so much. Chris, it’s been great to chat. I’d love to know what is one thing that you really want to leave people with, so that they walk away from this podcast and actually do something like take the next step, take some action. What would that be?
Chris Miles 33:24
You know, the biggest thing is that I think there’s more hope than you realize. You know, like, the one thing in common with all these people, I mean, some of them thought, Okay, I think I have, like, people just have money sitting around is one thing, is when people don’t realize, like, wait a minute, am I sitting on acres of diamonds that could actually be doing something better? As an example, I had a client, Dan, that he retired from the military as a colonel, and then he’s had a million dollars. We got him doing, you know, he was looking for answers. He didn’t want to live on less cash. Was able to invest in making over 100 grand a year. He just passed away a few weeks ago. He was 64 years old, very young still, but that four years that he had, like, had he not, had he just listened to his financial advisor, he would have, he would have been working to this day, but the fact that he was able to free himself and have those last four years spend more time with his family, work on passion projects he loved, dealing with the Forest Service and things like that. That is what I want to have you stick in your mind is that it’s not just about having that potential. It’s taking that potential and acting upon it, that’s when your life becomes better, right? It’s not about being a hearer of the words about being a doer, and that’s when your life changes.
Samantha Riley 34:29
Love it so much. So definitely, if you’re wanting to take that next step, definitely go and listen to Chris’ Money Ripples podcast. Get some more ideas, really, so that you can take the next step. Chris, thanks so much for coming and sharing with us today. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Chris Miles 34:44
Been such an honor. Thanks, Sam.
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