I’m joined by Chris Miles of MoneyRipples.com. Chris, how are you doing?

Fantastic, Jamie.

Chris, for our audience who may be unfamiliar with you, if you wouldn’t mind, go ahead and give us a little bit of your background in what you do.

My background is I’ve been in finance for many years. I started out as a mainstream financial advisor. The guy you rip on this show or I hope you do at least.

A little bit.

I know I rip on my show. I was that mainstream financial advisor. It wasn’t my path intentionally. I wanted to go into business consulting, but I figured if I’m going to go into business consulting, I should have a real-life business experience, so I ended up going with a commission-only type of firm where I had to build my own business. When I got that entrepreneur bug taste, I was like, “I’m hooked.” I always wanted to control my own destiny, my time, my freedom, the amount of money I can make, and all that stuff. I’ll tell you, after four years of being in the industry, I started to get my testimony of it, my strength and belief in financial advising and financial planning started declining. As I started to see real-life experience and see people that had advice for many years had been following financial advisors’ advice hadn’t been much better off.

As I started to see behind the curtain more and how I was a salesman in a suit, that’s what financial advisors are. They offer the same old joke. It’s usually either mutual funds, insurance, or annuities which is in between them. It’s those few things. It’s like Mexican food or financial advising. It’s got the same ingredients but it’s called by different names like burrito, taco, tostada, or fajita. As a result, I thought, “This is hard,” but it wasn’t until I met someone that was a real estate investor. I had known him for a little while, but he left being a financial advisor to do real estate investing. He started to learn stuff including note investing. He was doing hard money lending and buy-in properties.

Cash Flow: No matter how abundant or plentiful, always keep track of your money.

I remember that we’re getting this debate and it’s the end of 2005. We got into this debate about what’s better, stocks or real estate. He tried to stop me and said, “Chris, how many of your clients are financially free where they don’t worry about money?” I thought about it and I said, “None. Even once they retired, they still worry about money.” He said, “Good job, Chris. Way to go there. How about this question? How many of you guys as financial advisors are financially free not of the commissions you’re earning but doing the investments you’ve been recommending?”

I thought for a little while and I said, “None. Maybe one guy in the office.” I found that guy wasn’t either later on. None of them had become financially free. Even some of them have worked in that industry since the late ‘70s. You think since the late ‘70s they would be able to retire. No, they couldn’t. They could only retire based on commissions. That was an epiphany for me. I said, “Tell me the answer.” He’s like, “I’m not going to tell you the answer because I don’t think you were open to it.” He took it away from me so I said, “Give it back. Tell me. You’ve got to admit I was wrong. I’m an idiot so what?” He told me, “If you’re serious, read this book, Who Took My Money? by Robert Kiyosaki, which says mutual funds suck. I shorted the book for you. Listen to this AM radio show that was local that a couple of real estate investors were doing.”

I started listening to that show much like now we listen to podcasts. A few months later, I’m like, “I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to quit.” I quit and vowed that I’d never go back to financial advising again. I stayed on the path of being a mortgage broker because I was mortgage licensed. I did that and I taught ballroom dancing at the local university. I was doing things I loved but the thing is it drove me nuts that these guys knew something that I didn’t about making money. Eventually, I started to learn from them. I made a ton of principles you guys are teaching now. As a result, I was able to retire later that year in 2006.

I was like, “That was easy.” I was 28 years old. I was like, “What am I going to be when I grow up? What am I going to do with my life?” I didn’t expect to have freedom. I thought I have to build up money for decades. Hopefully, if I was lucky by the time I was 40, I save up enough money like $2 million and be cheap that whole time so I can live on less than the interest. That was my plan and all of the sudden it happened faster.

I can relate to a lot of what you’re saying and our audience can relate as well. It’s taking ownership and thinking about alternative investments. That’s cool, so then what happened?

I tell people I retired twice. It’s not a good thing to become financially dependent twice, even though it sounds awesome, but it means you screwed up the first time. In 2006, I got out of the rat race. In 2007, I came out of the retirement mode and started teaching people. I partnered up to some guys and it was before the recession hit. I thought I had the Midas touch. Everything I touched turned to gold, so I started gambling with my real estate and other things. I found myself from a millionaire to an upside-down millionaire. I was in the hole of about $16,000 a month between my business and my personal life.

What real estate were you doing up to that point?

I thought I was doing rentals but what I was doing was I was buying stuff that was negative cashflow properties. I did some note stuff, but it was with guys that didn’t know what they’re doing either. Everything was going to crap. On top of that, I cut off streams of income. This is the biggest thing. Even though real estate was bad, I could have recovered pretty well from that because I wasn’t heavily at risk as much as I could have been. The thing is I also cut off passive streams of income I had to work with that company because this partner said, “If we’re going to do this, we should be all in. We’re in this mission together,” and all that crap.

What streams of income were those?

They were various. Some of them were business streams and income. Some of them were investing but mostly in the business side. I had residual, I call them residual but they’re passive. It’s to distinguish between passive being in investments versus residual being in business passive. I had some business passive stuff going on that I generated. I had various streams of income there but they’re like, “I know you’ve got that stuff going on but should you be focused all over here?” It is ironic because we’re teaching people how to get out of the rat race. You would think that I should live what I preach and not just go all-in like I was a full-time business owner again.

That’s what happened. Everything hit the fan. I wasn’t tracking money well. That was another big issue. Money was so abundant and plentiful. I was spending it however I wanted. I stopped watching my money. That’s where it got away from me a little bit more. I had a backpedal and it didn’t matter if I was debt-free because people were like, “It’s because you’re in debt.” Even if I was debt-free, I still have negative cashflow.

They do say that about the reason most businesses go under. It’s the cashflow issue. It’s not assets.

Exactly. I did avoid bankruptcy. I was stubborn there. My credit would have had a better time if I went bankrupt but I did pay that stuff back. In 2015 and 2016, I was able to get out of that rat race again and be financially independent. I started teaching people again how to get out of the rat race because when I was in the rat race, I felt I couldn’t teach it. Instead, I was teaching people how to be resourceful and how to find the money so they could do things. How to free up cash, invest it, or whatever.

That’s honorable, to be honest. There are so many people out there teaching things they’ve never done themselves or not doing now. They’re no longer active in space, whatever it is. It’s like, “I can tell you how to create a seller finance. I used to do this in the ‘80s.” Things have changed a little bit. Plus, you’ve been able to speak to it from both success and failure, which you learn more from your failures. That’s interesting. 2016, that’s where you retired again.

In 2016, I got to that point, and I was like, “What am I going to do?” I was working maybe 5 to 10 hours a week doing my podcast, and I was consulting a few clients and such. Once again, every time I try to retire, people want me out. There’s a guy who was an accredited investor. He had a big following of doctors, dentists, and things like that. He’s like, “Chris, you taught me this whole thing about how to double-dip my money and get it to work for me twice. You’ve got to teach my people this.”

I was like, “I don’t know. I like it but what about the guy who referred you to do all that work?” He’s like, “He’s okay but he’s a nerd. He doesn’t talk the language of investors.” I said, “I’ll do it if it’s no more than 5 or 10 hours a week.” I came out of retirement and started doing that in 2017. Add that to consulting I’m doing to help people get out of the rat race and the podcast. Things have blown up but I still try to keep part-time. It’s about twenty hours a week, give or take.

You’ve got a pretty big podcast following yourself. Chris Seveney and I were on that. That’s what you’re focused on now. It sounds like those serve a few different buckets.

That’s more of my active stuff. That passive stuff I’m doing investments and things like that has going on. The active stuff, I do it with my time. It’s trying to find that balance between this and family. My wife likes it when I cook breakfast or whatever. I’m trying to create that balance in my life but do the things that I love. Anything I don’t love, let somebody else handle that.

You do a version of infinite banking. Is that correct?

Yes. I do a version I referred to as Max ROI infinite banking. It’s a little bit different than the traditional.

If you don’t mind because we’ve had some infinite banking guests on our show. I personally practice some level of infinite banking. I use whole life insurance and high cash value. Whole life insurance that I borrow against for my note business in particular and also some real estate things. People can check that out on my website, LabradorLending.com. I have articles about that and talked about that on podcasts. I’m curious, how you go about that with your stuff and with clients?

That’s the thing that got me even out more. I was trying to get a friend of mine. We had developed this thing over together. I’m sure you guys, if you’ve read the blogs, you already know a basic thing about infinite banking. I was first introduced to it in 2006. Understand that in the early days of my financial advisor days, I was ripping on it. I was like, “You only make 1% or 2% a year. That’s crap. Invest in the market. You’ll make more money.” I was also saying that real estate only made 3% a year because it goes up with inflation and all that stuff and not understanding cashflow. Things like that.

In 2006, when I started to meet some of these real estate guys, they were doing the same thing. They were using it in banking but not what you are doing or I’m doing. They were doing the long version, the Nelson Nash version, which is the first two years you have zero cash in it, and finally, in year three, you have something. They’re all hyped-up on it. I got the vision of, “You can use this like your own bank.” I got it. 2008 rolls around, I’m in the hole of $16,000 a month. I can’t afford to pay my premiums. Even though I paid about $20,000 to $25,000 into it, I only had a few hundred bucks, so I lost the policy.

Cash Flow: No mutual fund or insurance product will make you free. You have to have alternative investments like notes and other things in real estate that will help you get that freedom.

I asked in the beginning because I understood insurance because I had an insurance license and still am for a couple of years and I said, “Can I overfund this?” The guy’s answer was, “No, if you do, you create a mech. It becomes taxable.” I thought, “We’ll do the way you design it, then.” After I lost that policy because it was the most expensive crappy term policy I could possibly have. I put in $25,000 and lost it all. I was like, “That stinks.” I started to dig in and I realized, “I could have overfunded it from day one.” I got numbers together because I was playing with insurance companies and the guy’s like, “You need the Death Benefit. That’s what allows you to spend money while you’re alive.”

His guardian company focuses which they’re anti-infinite banking. At least the better higher cash version, so I was like, “Let’s do apples to apples. I’ll make sure I have the same Death Benefit as you and all that crap.” Even though I don’t focus on having a high death benefit now, I did it and I beat everything of his numbers. He kept coming up with objections and I shut him down. For two hours, we debated in his office and I’m screaming and yelling at him. I was getting mad.

Everybody outside the office could hear me yelling. Finally, in the end, it got down to, “Chris, I can’t afford to cut my commissions that way.” I was like, “You will never get a referral from me again,” because he was the one I was sending all my people to. I was like, “Here, you’d handle it. You deal with that stuff. I can never do that.” It’s the same thing in 2016. My best friend is doing it and he does a great job but I realized I could do a better life. He was doing the more typical infinite banking you see now, which is you might have 60% or maybe 70% of your cash out in year one.

From an investor perspective, it’s like a tug of war. You’re like, “I’ve got to give money to here to lose it from over here.” I found out that I could do it over 90% but I found out that those costs were too high so I found the one that was right minimum where about 80% goes in and only about 20% comes down to cost versus a 10% but you have more money long term too. You have this perfect balance have more money now and later. The thing that switched in my brain was that double-dip effect because the money inside that policy compounds interest tax-free. You’re borrowing it with simple interest.

Especially when you use it for cashflow purposes, whether it’s for notes, doing long-term rentals, or whatever you’re doing. You’re flowing that money through. What happens is you’re paying that loan down but the interest goes down while your compound goes up. The cool thing is that, even if you’re earning only about a little over half the interest rate, even if you only earned 4% but they loaned you at 5%, you would still beat it. You would still come out with more interest than you would have a savings account. It’s not where it becomes this tax-free, supercharged sales guy, and there are lines of credit you can get now at 3.25% or right around there like prime or prime minus a half percent, you can do all kinds of cool stuff to get that double-dip effect where you make money in two places at the same time.

Honestly, I heard about infinite banking years ago and read up on it. Everything on the internet is true. Unfortunately, infinite banking is extremely controversial. I say unfortunately because a lot of people don’t understand it or more importantly, the policies are not set up correctly. This episode isn’t going to be all about infinite banking but I found that who you’re working with is critical in setting up the policies appropriately that are designed for infinite banking and you touched on it was that my mindset had to shift a little bit.

Once I figured out, “This policy, the cash value is still growing, while I’m able to borrow against it and arbitrage that money somewhere else.” It was a no-brainer for me to jump in. The other thing that people get confused with is, “I can make more money in the stock market. I can make more money and whatever else it is.” To me, it’s not the same because it’s not an investment in and of itself. I don’t view it that way. I will say I’ve had similar conversations.

We have some money in stocks. You’re introducing a concept to your spouse or your family because you’re not the only one that makes all the decisions, so you’ve got to get them on board if that’s what you’re trying to do. When I had this conversation with my financial advisor at Vanguard, she was not happy whatsoever. I was already at the point where I was like, “I’m doing this, so don’t push me. You can keep this amount of money that you have to manage, that’s fine, but I’m taking a good chunk, and I’m starting this infinite banking thing.” How do you use it?

It’s totally controversial because there are so many different ways that insurance guys design it. 1 of 2 things happens. Either one, they don’t know how to get that max ROI, which is common because I’ve helped start certain philosophies. If you go online, you find Cashflow Banking or Wealth Formula Banking, those are the stuff that I started but then I kept perfecting from there. They got stuck and I kept going. When you see that stuff out there, they’ll say, “Do it this way.”

Almost every time I see it, insurance guys always come from an insurance salesman perspective. It’s confusing plus they tell you lies like, “You’re paying yourself back.” That’s bullcrap. You are not paying yourself back. You are paying down to a line of credit. You’re paying to a bank called the insurance company or even a little bank if you’re leveraging the bank’s ability to lend on that. You’re paying interest. What’s different is it’s like having a HELOC that pays you and your interest at the same time, which pays you more interest than what you’re being charged. That’s the arbitrage you’re talking about.

Because of these little lies out there and things like that, you get guys that with their self-interest because they’re not financially independent and they’re like, “If I do this, they’ll still get a good policy, but then I’ll make more too.” Their self-interest battles with yours. They don’t think about using it out there. They don’t think about using it with investments. I get to work for about five years and break even on the cost, by the point where you have as much in cash as what you put in, so the insurance was basically nonexistent. The insurance costs were gone by that point.

You’re doing that with a paid-up additions writer, a combination of whole life, and term potentially.

Exactly. It’s blending it and doing stuff to lower the cost to get the maximum out of cash with the lowest definite and lowest cost possible.

The thing is the mindset. You’re touching on it. Instead of storing up all this money in your 401(k) to eventually retire and hope that you have enough to live off of, you’re taking control now and infinite banking is one of those ways that you’re doing that. You’re taking control so you can monitor your cashflows and take ownership of your financial future. That’s what I love. That’s what our audience is all about, as well.

That’s why I call it anti-financial advising because so many times, you have people saying, “If you do this mutual fund or you do this insurance product, you’ll be free.” The truth is, I ran the numbers. No mutual fund or no insurance product will make you free. Not even your whole life will make you free by itself. You have to have alternative investments like notes and other things in real estate, other places, franchises, or whatever it might be that will help you get that freedom. If you use infinite banking right, it doesn’t compete with it. It uses that money to flow through to those places and flow back and you have this constant cycle of money growing two places at the same time.

Speaking of those alternative investments, what are you looking at either personally or with your clients in the next couple of years? I know none of us have a crystal ball but what are you looking to do on the investment side, not so much on the infinite banking side?

The investment side is fun. Commercial properties, I’m probably held off on for a little while, especially business commercial and things like that but there’ll be a day that could be a great investment. I’m still doing a lot of turnkeys. I don’t like managing my own properties. I’m passive in how I like to invest. Turnkey is one of my favorites.

Cash Flow: Focus on cash flow and make that your primary goal.

Can you speak to that? One investor asks me that he’s not sure what he wants to do, “I want to do notes. What do I want to do? Do I want to do turnkey?” He’s asking me, “Should I do turnkey?”

Why not both?

You can do both, absolutely but I was like, “I need more information first of all. I’m not going to tell you what to do. It depends on what you like.” What do you like about turnkey?

The thing is that you get cashflow and growth. That’s the key. People talk about doing multifamily syndications, which is cool, too. I like that as well. The thing is that it’s usually more growth-focused, not cashflow and income-focus. With turnkey, I usually go for a goal of getting at least a 12% cash-on-cash return. It’s never in the western half of the United States. I was always looking out East. I closed on two properties in Alabama. They were $82,000 out-of-pocket with closing costs but I’m going to cashflow net profit by $900 a month after all my expenses, including property management fees are paid.

Where are they?

Tuscaloosa is where these ones. It’s not too far. I’ve had properties in Memphis and North Carolina. I go all over the place. I like looking for those properties. Granted, here’s the hard part. It’s trying to scale that. You can to some level but you start looking for duplex turnkeys or whatever. I like to be a hands-off investor. The hardest work on a turnkey is buying the property. Once you have bought it, it’s like watching grass grow.

I’ll give you an example. The cool thing is beyond the cashflow, there’s growth happening too. I bought a property in Memphis almost exactly a few years ago, I was $30,000 out-of-pocket and it’s cashflowing about $390 a month, so it’s over that 1% a month rule for me. What’s cool is, it’s now appreciated over $30,000 too. I’ve almost made all my money back and appreciation alone, plus they pay down my mortgage for me, that’s about $3,500, and all the cashflow that I’ve got over for few years. When you add all that together, it’s 130% rate of return.

Plus, tax benefits, depreciation, and all that.

I count that. That’s definitely tax-free income.

After the crash of 2008 and 2010, people said, “Stop relying on appreciation.” The pendulum swung back to all cashflow. We’ve come back where appreciation is real and it can be a big factor into your investment success. It’s hard to predict, but it is absolutely a critical factor in success. Personally, I go for cashflow first and look at markets that will likely appreciate and try to get both wins, if you will.

That’s the same way I look at notes. For me, what I learned from the last recession is you definitely want to focus on cashflow and that should be primary. If you get appreciation, that’s a bonus. That’s the icing on the cake. It’s nice because it does happen for the most part. Other than the last recession, last six recessions, real estate only went down then. The other recession either stayed the same or even increased in value during a recession. That’s important to remember. Sometimes, it’s weird with real estate. We have such a harsh view on it but with the stock market, we have this Dory from Finding Nemo type memory. It’s like, “That was then. It goes up and it goes down.” We give this leniency. Real estate people don’t do that and don’t realize it’s much more stable, steady, and certain than anything the stock market will ever offer you.

The thing with the stock market is there’s literally no collateral. With notes, your real estate is your collateral if you’re doing mortgage notes. Even if inherently it’s riskier, which I don’t believe, you have collateral. That makes it inherently less risky than the stock market.

You have control and freedom. It’s so awesome that you control and name your terms in note investing. You can’t do that in the stock market. You can’t say, “Pay me this much.” They’re going to say, “We don’t care about a couple hundred, thousand, or even hundred thousand in this company. You mean nothing to us.” In note investing, you control your destiny. I’ll tell you, you cannot have freedom without control.

Speaking of note investing, do you work with note investing clients? Did you say you’ve dabbled in notes a little bit yourself?

A little bit. I’m not a genius in any way, shape, or form like I see with you guys. I have another friend Eddie Speed. He loves note investing

We interviewed him and in fact, that episode was released. He’s been doing it a long time. If you want to learn from somebody who’s big in the owner financing space, there are not too many people that know more than Eddie Speed. That’s for sure.

He makes my head spin. I get so excited but afterward, I’m like, “I don’t think I understood a single thing of how he did what he did.”

He’s creative.

That’s the fun stuff. You don’t have to deal with tenants, toilets, and trash as much. You’re dealing with a different space. I don’t do notes where I design them and do all that stuff because again, I’m more passive but I’ll go into note funds where people are doing the note investing. I’ll take a return off of that and split the returns that way. That’s how I invest and that’s how most of my clients invest, too. They’re usually more passive there.

Chris Seveney will yell at me if I don’t at least plug our fund since it was a softball you laid up there for me. We’ve got our Integrity Mortgage Note Fund that is officially opening March 1st, 2021. A fund is a great way to go as far as spreading out your risk among many different assets. The critical piece there is the operator because you are more passive as an investor and you do have a little bit less control than if you’re out there buying your own notes. If you’re working with somebody who’s experienced, it could be an excellent option. That’s one thing I love about notes, real estate, and everything like this. There are so many different strategies. If you want to buy 1 or 2 whole notes, partials, some turnkey properties, or be a beast in the turnkey arena, that’s fine. This is your world. I love that. Is anything else you want to add to that?

I’ll support your plug there. That would be my softball pitch. When I get clients, a lot of times, they have IRAs. I’m anti-IRA and 401(k)s at least putting new money in but how many times we have people that have old money like old 401(k)s where things are like, “I want to get out of stock market especially where it’s at an all-time high, it’s overvalued by 249%.” That means there’s a 60% correction needing to happen still to get it back into balance. That would be drastic for your retirement, but to say if I can get out at the market highs basically buy low, sell high, not the opposite, which most people do and say.

If I get it out of having a self-directed IRA, could I put in the notes because notes may not have the tax advantages of some real estate strategy? If it’s inside of an IRA, you don’t have to worry about that. You can delay that. That was the thing with Eddie Speed. I’m like, “I’m anti-IRA.” I’m hearing him say, “What they do with Roth IRAs and stuff.” I’m like, “Why would you do that with grandchildren’s Roth. That’s horrible.” I’m like, “That would work.” You can make so much money as an active investor notes with that strategy if you have to wait forever. I’m more of a retire early type of person, so I’m anti-IRA and 401(k) for that reason.

If you’re going to go down that path, you may as well go to a self-directed Roth or something along those lines. Get the tax advantages that are not inherent in note investing. I do that as well. It’s a pretty powerful tool for sure. How are things looking for the next couple of years as far as your business? We’ve touched on it already, but your investment thesis, business, or the economy as a whole. Is there something you want to touch on there?

We’ve got to be prepared and somewhat diversified now. I’m anti-diversification normally. I like to quote Warren Buffett. The better quote, if you want to be blunt is Mark Cuban’s quote about diversification. Warren Buffett says, “Diversification is the admission of ignorance.” Mark Cuban’s paraphrased version of that is, “Diversification is for idiots.” That seems like the best guy in the world. There is some good point to that, especially on your active investing, you want to be focused and get good there.

When I’m looking at what’s going on, there are possible deflationary pressures now. All the stimulus money is coming out. People aren’t spending it the way that they hope to. They want people to buy goods and services but people aren’t. They’re storing it out of fear wondering how I am going to get laid off, which is not good for the economy, or they’re paying off debt, which is also not good for the economy, believe it or not. They’re going and propping up Bitcoin on the stock market by throwing in gambling with it, which is what happened in the Great Depression before when they started borrowing money and throwing it in the market.

That’s why banks no longer make it legal to lend money to them in the stock market. Those things are going on now and they’re creating massive bubbles. There could be some temporary deflationary pressure, which could drive rates down, which means cash is king. Holding cash is good. Note investing is good because if you have terms. That means whatever you’re getting paid, it increases in value. The power of your dollar increases in value versus inflation where it’s the opposite. Hyperinflation will eventually follow that, so you’ve got to have that balance. I’m looking at gold and silver, putting some more money into that. We’ve been buying that when it got a little bit lower here in 2020. I’ve been looking at land investing, flipping, seller financing, and things like that. I’ve had partners to a guy on that stuff. Look for a good cashflow from that thing doing seller financing stuff.

I like the way you touched on with your active investing. Get good at one thing because there are too many people that suffer from shiny object syndrome, “I want to do this, I want to do that,” but they mean, in an active way. That’s a great way to approach it. Actively get good at one thing and spread your risk out a little bit with your passive stuff. After you’ve learned that one thing for 3 to 5 years or something that maybe you pivot to something else that you’re doing actively but you can’t do everything all at once in an active way, that’s good.

It should be something you love besides the money too.

That’s true.

You have a passion behind it. Otherwise, you’ll suck at it.

I don’t want to say I go back and forth but I do think that it’s good to pay attention to where the money is. Eventually, those two forces will line up. If you’re making more money, chances are you might be enjoying it a little bit more than if you’re doing the same thing and not making any money. I 100% agree. Life is too short to grind away something you’re not happy at and not passionate about. It sounds like you’re passionate about helping people take control of their financial situation. Briefly, touch on the Avatar that you work with? Who’s your typical client yourself?

My typical client used to be all business owners, but now it’s switched where I have more W-2 employees that are high-paid IT managers. You get a lot of those guys. Also, pharmacists, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and people like that. People who usually make at least $150,000 to $200,000 a year. They’ve got cash sitting around wondering, “How do I work with it? How do I deploy it? How do I use this? How do I essentially accelerate together at risk faster?” In a safe way, not trying to gamble my way there, which is what people do, and they sabotage their own success. That’s the person I have. It’s a person that says, “I want to work because I want to, not because I have to.” They want to be in that place of freedom where they work by choice, not by needing a paycheck.

That’s a great way to go. How about anything interesting you’re working on even outside of your work? Do you have any interesting projects or interesting books you’ve been reading?

I’m semi-retired, so I’ve been trying to stay that way. I’ve been reading more about creating more leverage within the business. There are great books in that. Almost anything by Mike Michalowicz, Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan, and Clockwork was the one I got finished. Those are all great books. The Pumpkin Plan helped me get out of the rat race the second time because it got me to focus on zoning in on what’s going to work.

I did read Profit First. My hang up was, to be honest with you, my wife and I switched over to some more automated budgeting on the personal side, so we’ve got a whole bunch of accounts. It’s pretty automated but it’s still a lot to set up. I couldn’t get over the hump of all these accounts that I got to open for Profit First. I’m sure there’s a more simplified way.

That’s what I did, too. I dumbed it down because you were saying you have different accounts but I only have 2 or 3 different accounts for my business versus 5 or 6.

The main takeaway is you’re paying yourself first instead of the way that most business owners approach things where it’s like, “Let’s see what’s leftover for some profit.”

Reinvest means if you’re spending money on your business, you have no profit. The overall concept is good. How you apply depends on what works best for you. Another book that’s good is called Rocket Fuel. It’s a great book. If you ever heard of EOS, those business systems. It’s about trying to get that visionary integrator role where surprisingly, in my business, I’m both. I’m the lone wolf. I’m in the process, trying to find a good number two person that will counterbalance me and be my Yin to my Yang, so to speak.

That’s stuff. As small business owners, we’re all working on trying to work on the business but there’s stuff that has to be done at the present time, so you’re constantly working in your business. I don’t know if the tension ever fully goes away but you’ve got to keep fighting that good fight. Any other books or anything else you want to touch on before we wrap up?

I mentioned four.

That was good. We’ve got some homework. Chris, this has been awesome. Where can people find out more about you or reach out to you?

You can follow my podcasts the one you were on. My podcast is The Chris Miles Money Show or you can go to my website MoneyRipples.com.

Thank you so much for your time, Chris. This has been great.

It’s been a pleasure.

For everybody out there, go out and do some good deeds. Take care, everyone.

Important Links:

• MoneyRipples.com
• Who Took My Money?
• The Chris Miles Money Show
• LabradorLending.com
• Eddie Speed – Past Episode
• Profit First
• The Pumpkin Plan
• Clockwork
• Rocket Fuel

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 Chris Miles Money Show, has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Entrepreneur on Fire, and has a proven reputation with his company, Money Ripples (http://www.moneyripples.com/) getting his clients fast, financial results. In fact, his personal clients have increased their cash flow by over $250 Million in the last 11 years!