How Entrepreneurs Can Create Passive Income Each Month with Chris Miles

Are you ready to create riches in your work and life? It's time for Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negativity so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches in life you deserve. So let's welcome your ball of fire host, Bernadette Boas.

Good day, good day, good day everyone, and welcome to another episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio. I am so excited that you're here because who doesn't like to talk about money? Actually, many of us don't, but, but we must, we must. And yet this conversation is going to be one of those conversations you definitely want to be having because we're going to be talking about how to create an extra $10,000 a month in passive income. With our guest, who I'll introduce in just a minute. But before I do, um, let me just share with you my thanks, not only because it is that time of year, but because of the fact that so many of you are new, and our current listeners are really creating a swell of new viewers and listeners, whether it's on any of your podcasting streaming services or on our Shitting the Bitch YouTube channel. And I am so grateful for that. Thank you for your likes, your shares, your tweets, your ratings, your— and especially very important, your subscriptions. So please continue to do that. Also continue to give us suggestions on the topics you want to hear about, as well as the experts you want to hear from. And as you do, we certainly go out and pursue them because this is your show. And therefore, we'd love to hear what it is that you want us to bring to you each and every week. So thank you so much for your fellowship, your followship, and continue to do it and invite your friends, peers, colleagues, bosses to do the same so we can help as many female entrepreneurs and corporate professionals to create the riches in their work and life they deserve. I also need to thank our ongoing sponsors. We have both North Georgia Tax Solutions. Debbie Snelling and her team provide awesome and very powerful financial and tax services needs to small to corporate size organizations all around the country, and they do a bang-up job. They've been on my team for about 10 years now, and provide the best service that I've received from any of my professional services, um, um, businesses. So, uh, they will not steer you wrong. So go to NG Tax Solutions to learn more about them. And then of course I've been sharing with you our latest and newest sponsor who are— who's right here in Atlanta, Georgia, which is perfectly fine. And that's Up Top Roofing of Atlanta. And Jay and his team Again, they've been part of my, my team at home for about 6 or 7 years. And, um, he has been following and participating with us in our Shedding the Bitch community for about 5. And so has recently come on as a sponsor. And so we're grateful, grateful for them. They do awesome home services needs, especially from a roofing perspective, but also offer other products and services that you might need to keep your home beautiful. So you can reach out to Jay and his team at uptoproofingoatl@yahoo.com. All right, let's get into this conversation, shall we? Our guest today is going to discuss with us and share with us tips and advice, and sometimes we have to hear some tough love about what, what it takes to create extra income. So traditional financial planning sucks. Can you relate to that? I know I can. Financial planners are not financially free, so why are we taking their advice? You need an anti-financial plan. I absolutely love that. You need an anti-financial plan to have any hope of passive income and financial freedom. Learn how to get your money to pay you now and become work optional. Now what we want you to be listening for during our conversation is why conventional financial advice is broken and where you can invest that will pay you cash flow now. Also how you can get your savings to pay you twice and how you can become work optional within 5 to 10 years. Now let me introduce our guest, Chris Miles, the cash flow expert and anti- financial advisor. He 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, Entrepreneurs on Fire, BiggerPockets, and has a proven reputation with his company Money Ripples. You can find more information about that, and I'll be sharing it as well throughout our discussion, at moneyripples.com. Getting his clients fast financial results In fact, his personal clients have increased their cash flow by over $250 million. Yes, I said million, in the last 11 years. Well, Chris, I am so excited to have you as part of the program. Thank you so much.

Hey, it's such a pleasure to be here, Bernadette. Appreciate it.

Yes, I love your business name too, Money Ripples. It creates a great visual of just what we want our money to do, right?

Yep.

So help me understand before we get into all the business and the money stuff, but who is Chris Miles?

That is a loaded question. There is so much to Chris Miles that I didn't want to go there, but, uh, I'll give you the really small, like, Reader's Digest paragraph, right? Uh, basically, I live here in Utah. I've got my wife. We actually recently married about 5 years ago. We've got a blended family of 8 kids. Oh, wow. Definitely, it's a Brady Bunch here, but there's no room for Alice, right? Yeah. So, we've been here for, you know, been living in Utah for the last 20 years. I'm originally from Oregon. She's originally from Venezuela. So, we just kind of met in the middle somewhere, you know. But, you know, I'll tell you, like, with my company MoneyRipples, like, I'm an anti-financial advisor, like you said, right? Didn't always start that way. I actually started out as that traditional mainstream financial advisor about 20 years ago. So, I was that person that's also known as a salesman in a suit, right? The person that's always telling you to don't invest money in your own company but invest it in some other random company in the stock market, right?

Right, right.

That person, the person that's called a broker because they're broker than you and I are, those kind of people. So, that's kind of what I was doing for about 4 years in the early 2000s during like Y2K era. But during that time, I'm the kind of guy that likes evidence, right? I mean, even when I was in college, like, I actually made the semifinals of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, kind of a little-known fact, you know, like, like, I just had a lot of useless information. But I like to not just hold useless information but create a story around it. And when I look at evidence, you know, especially my little sociology brain was looking at all the evidence of people and clients and even financial advisors. I realized they weren't financially free. In fact, it took one of my friends, Doug, you know, in the end of 2005, I called him up to wish him Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, you know. And, uh, and see how broke he was because he decided he's going to do stuff like real estate investing. So get, you know, just risky stuff, right? So he goes and does that. 4 months later he says, Chris, life is awesome! My dad and I, we've doubled our income from just 4 months ago. And of course I said, come on, that's too good to be true, right? Because nothing beats the stock market. Nothing beats that maybe 10 or 12% a year, you know. Slowly over time, like, just, you know, why just— why the crap just keep going on and on, right? You know, so, and so we got this debate about what's better, stocks or real estate. And finally he stopped me, he said, Chris, how many of your clients are financially free where they don't worry about money? And I said, well, none, because they all do. Because they watch, you know, most of the news, you're going to freak out over everything, the sky is falling, right? So no, they worry about running out of money. So none of them are free by that by that actual definition. He said, "All right. Good job, Chris. Way to help nobody. How about this? How many of you guys as financial advisors are financially free, not off the commissions you're earning, not off that, but actually doing these investments?" And I thought of guys that were in my office that had been working there since the late '70s, still could not retire. So, my answer was, "None. Maybe this one guy over there might be." And I found out that guy wasn't either. He was just, all show, right? Right. You know, so it was just, it was just once he got laid off, he needed money again. So none of them were free. I said, all right, well then tell me the answer. He's like, I'm not going to tell you the answer, you're just going to argue with me about why stocks are better. I said, come on, give me something. He said, all right, how about this? He's like, go get this book called Who Took My Money. That's by a book by Robert Kiyosaki. So a lesser-known Rich Dad Poor Dad book, right? So get Who Took My Money. So to sum it up for you, you know, save you 3 hours of audiobook, Mutual funds suck. Okay. And then, and then he said, go listen to this AM talk radio show, pre-podcast era, right? This AM talk radio show with these two real estate investors. And so I did, and, uh, and it blew my mind. I was like, wait a minute, like, this is the stuff that were in the back of my brain even when I was a financial advisor teaching people. Because again, I would say things and be like, yeah, but is that true? You know, because when I start to look at the real return of the stock market, you know, for example, they tell you it's 12% a year, right? Even Dave Ramsey, I mean, even Dave Ramsey spouts off crappy, dumb advice that doesn't even apply. It's not even true. He says things like the stock market is 12% average. But in truth, even the last 30 years, despite 13 up years in a row, which is a record for the stock market, by the way, the last record was 6 years. We've more than doubled that. 13 years in a row up. Despite that big uptrend, the actual real rate of return on the stock market is only about 8.5%. That's even without us hitting another low, which we're guaranteed to start hitting the bottom here again, right?

Right.

That's, that's the kind of stuff. Now, when you put those numbers in a calculator, it's not just a few percent off. Even though it is a few percent, it doesn't look like a few percent. It's the difference between you having, you know, what you hope would be a lot of money versus having a third of your money in retirement. Yeah, a lot less. And so all those things, and people, you know, and we would try to minimize inflation because that would be depressing, right? Because if you put in real rates of the return of the stock stock market, real rates of inflation, you pretty much are guaranteed to lose. Do it— saving your money in 401s, IRAs, mutual funds, it will never get you to be financially free unless you live like a pauper. If you live below poverty level, right? Here's the problem: you're told to live on 3% a year, right? So if you happen to save up $1 million in your mutual funds, guess what? Now you're supposed to pull out only $30,000 a year, right? That's, that's living below poverty level, and that's before taxes. That's not enough to live.

Right, right. So that— so was it all that angst that kind of made you make the switch? Is that kind of where your journey went?

It is. Yeah. That's, that's why, you know, I try to make it— I try to resolve it. I try to see if I could have a foot in both worlds of truth versus myth, which is where financial advisors live. Again, financial advisors have good hearts. They don't intend to do wrong. For the most part, vast majority are good people. The problem is we're taught by institutions, financial institutions that tell you, "Hey, invest and keep your money here. Let it sit there forever because that's how we get guaranteed income every year," because they're charging you fees every year, right? Even the financial advisors are in that too. You'll never see a financial advisor say, "You know what? You should cash out your money out of my funds that I got you in that I don't do anything for anyways besides just sell you this crap, but you should go cash out and put into your business, or you should cash it out and buy some more real estate," or whatever it would be. They never say that. In fact, I just met with a dentist yesterday where she actually had $3 million in the stock market, pulled it out to invest in these different places that we'll talk about here, right? Invest the $3 million, making way better than the stock market. And the advisor is at the point, after 6 months of doing this, he's at the point he wants to fire her. Well, the truth is she kind of fired him first, right? Because you can't— they can't fire you. The truth is you're the one that is in control of your money, not the other way around. You should never be You should always be the boss of your own money, right? But he's mad because now he just lost at least $30,000 a year of income because she pulled that money out. That's, that's making a difference in the lifestyle.

Yeah, well, I had, I had a very similar, um, experience with my financial advisor in 2008, uh, when I was leaving corporate and I wanted to pull my money and he said, no, no, no, that's not a smart idea, you're not doing that. I went, I'm sorry, whose money is this? And I said, you're fired, give me my money.

And, uh, so yeah, so You know, isn't that funny how it's always a good time to buy for a financial advisor? So market goes down like 2008, they'd say, no, no, no, you won't get out now because you'll lose money. Or worse, it's on sale, you should buy it now because it's on sale. But even though it's on sale when it goes down, they never tell you to stop buying when it goes up either, do they? Because they're like, so keep buying it, right?

Well, and it was, it was fascinating. This is a little digression here, but because it was actually, uh, early, early 2008, long before the crash, And so I did. I pulled it, pulled it all out. And he actually reached out and he's after the crash and I didn't lose a dime.

Yeah.

He was just like, did you know something that none of us, that none of us knew? And I'm like, no, I'm not that savvy. But, you know, it was just something I needed timing at the time. So, okay, so we understand the anti-financial advisor type of approach. Uh, what, what does Money Ripples stand for? What is that all about?

Well, it's, it's kind of like, you know, you mentioned when you're doing my intro, right, you said like, you know, I've saved people over $250 million, helped them make an extra $250 million in the last 11 years with just my one-on-one clients, you know. Um, the great thing is that as I've seen over time, like, it's that ripple effect it creates in people's lives because it doesn't just change you as a person. I mean, it definitely frees you up, right? Where the average person has found at least $34,000, $35,000 a year that they either free up and/or make in the first year alone, and that keeps increasing year after year. It's, it's such a change in your life, you know, to have that difference, you know, right? And what I've seen is it doesn't just affect them as a couple, right, but it affects the family. It starts teaching the kids a whole new abundant way of seeing money and how it affects everything. And then it affects the community and ultimately across the world because the truth is that so many people are selfish and not selfish in the sense that you're trying to do anything wrong, but we're so focused on our own needs, trying to survive, that we never have the capacity to really look outside of ourselves to really do more. And the truth is the more financially prosperous you are, the bigger impact you can create, a massive impact. You can really bless more lives. The fact that I have more than enough money coming in, I don't have to coach people, I don't have to do anything, right? I'm financially independent regardless, right? But that money coming in, it allows me to create a bigger message, a bigger megaphone to tell people, listen, here is a better way to live. And that's really what that ripple effect of Money Ripples is all about.

I love that. Do you at all— because, um, you know, I just have been really focused on, um, really learning more and more and more about energy, how everything's energy. My, my story before would be that I'm a robot, so I never understood all that. But all of a sudden, you know, over the last 8 years, yes. And money is one of those things, and you know, that is energy. And what you, you know, and therefore the energy that you put into that thing, money, um, either works for you or against you. Is that part of the ripple?

Absolutely, absolutely. You are a steward I mean, we were born with nothing, we leave with nothing. Everything in between is stewardship. Our time and our talents, our money, everything that we have is a stewardship, right? The question is, what are we going to do with that stewardship? Are we going to expand it? Are we going to make the world a better place while we're on this planet? Or are we just going to survive and just consume our resources while we're here, right? And that's really what it is about. It's about creating more. Amplifying and really beautifying the world with what we do. And you're right, it's definitely energy. I mean, that flow of money is essential. Unfortunately, traditional money advice teaches us not to flow money. They say set it and forget it, right? That's something we hear, right? That does not work. Banks don't set and forget it. Banks are always putting money in motion, which is why they have more money than you, right? That's, that's the whole purpose. It's to get that money to flow And when you have flow, you have life, you have energy, you have just amazing freedom. Yeah.

Now, do you find that some of your clients are coming to you with this idea that, you know, wanting more and more money is actually greedy and is selfish and negative, as opposed to what you're saying is no, money is, you know, that energy that is giving you an opportunity to do more and more and more and more. So that's not selfish, that's selfless. Do you deal with that at all with your clients?

Oh, absolutely. I was in the same boat. I used to think that was a zero-sum game, right? For somebody else to win, you had to lose. Or if you wanted to win, somebody else had to lose, right? As a financial advisor, I thought the same thing. I thought, if I'm going to be a benevolent person, I need to sacrifice my livelihood so that my clients win. I'll cut back my fees and do whatever it takes to do it, right?

Right.

But the truth is, I was starving, and, and really, they didn't see it as valuable. The funny thing is when I started charging just what anybody else would charge, even as a mortgage broker or a financial advisor or whatever, they actually liked the service more, funny enough. It's kind of completely counterintuitive, but it had to get back to the real root of money, which is value creation. Money is just a receipt of service rendered or service to be rendered. It's evidence of service. It's how you serve people. Solve problems and add value in people's lives is why there's an exchange of money. If you stop looking at it that way, you start to realize that money is just evidence of you providing value, of providing a service or a solution. You start to realize, wait, if I'm— the most good I'm doing is the evidence is the money. The money is the evidence. It's not everything, right? But definitely there's evidence coming back in the form of money, of dollars. That's the easiest form of exchange that we have, and that's why it comes back to us.

Right. Well, and I, and I love, um, a recent kind of practice I've been trying to get to is that every dollar I put out is helping that not only that individual and that business, but also the vendors and the manufacturers and the shippers. And, you know, the whole supply chain is being— is benefiting. And therefore, you should look at generating money and spending money or giving money as that ripple. That's right. Yeah, so I love that business name you have, that brand, but the analogy and the visual that it creates. So what areas of money do you focus on with your clients?

Yeah, so it's all about cash flow, right? What's going to actually create the better bottom line month after month, year after year? And not just with business, right? Although we've done some of that too. We don't really focus as much on the business side as we used to, as we do on the personal financial side.

Right.

Nice. Because the people we typically see are like, often they're entrepreneurs, or they could be high-paid professionals. They're like saying, hey, I have money, I have profit, now what? Because you can only spend so much if you're a business owner. You can only spend so much in your business to the point where you say, kind of like what Mike McCallowitt says, the author of the, of of the Pumpkin Plan and Profit First, he'll say, if you're just spending money, you're not profitable. You're actually just spending money, right? You have no profit unless you actually take profit. And that's the focus too, is that we want profit, but then what, right? Does it just sit in your savings account? Like, I had an attorney in California that had $900,000 sitting in his account wondering what to do. He didn't want to put it in the market because he knew that was a gamble, but he didn't know what to do with it. And so we're like, all right, let's look at this $900,000 because Here's what we look at. We look at cash flow, like creating passive income from it. So that $900,000, even if he only made a 10%, which is like the baseline return we look at for different deals that we do, whether it's in real estate, it could be in oil, it could be in franchises, whatever it might be, we want to get at least a 10% rate of return. Well, $900,000 now becomes $90,000 a year. By the way, his goal to be financially independent is only $15,000 a month. Right, $180,000. That's halfway to his goal. If we just reinvest that $90,000 a year, eventually it bumps him up to his goal within about 5 years, right, as he's been saving and doing everything else. So he could be in his early 40s and financially independent, work— being work optional. Yeah, and that's the big difference, because remember that $900,000, you know, just like when I use the million-dollar example, you know, the Wall Street Journal just came out saying people should not be pulling out more than 3% of their money, right? They said the 4% rule of being financially independent old news, which is no news to me. That was news that even as a traditional financial advisor, we were questioning 20 years ago. We're like, right, 4% too much because people are living longer, the returns on the retirement assets are going down, right? Is this enough? If people want to retire young, 4% definitely not going to cut it. So, 3%, even that I think is aggressive. 3% on $1 million is $30,000 a year before you pay taxes. So, maybe you're left with $2,000 a month. Yeah, contrast that with $1 million that pays you even just 10%, and usually we get deals that are bigger paying than that, but even just 10%, that's $100,000 a year. So it's like, well, do I want $24,000, $25,000 a year, or do I want $100,000 a year that I pay almost no taxes on?

Right?

That's the difference. And it shortens the time frame. And it— I'll tell you a secret, if you're a business owner, huge secret I've learned: the more financially independent you are, the more people want to pay you money in your business too.

Yeah, sure, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Yep, they want to see you financially stable and even abundant. Um, yeah, and yeah, now does that—

I don't want that business breath. Yes, yes, you reek of that business breath throwing your business cards at us. Like, we don't want to see that desperation. It turns us off. Exactly. When you know you're relaxed, you're like, I don't need this business, I'm here to serve. Yeah, man, does that draw people in like crazy. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that also is on a personal basis too. I mean, it's, you know, the more you're putting out, the more you're going to receive, um, in whatever it is that you're, you're, you know, looking to do, if it's a good putting out.

Definitely has to be good.

Yeah, it must— it has to be good. It has to be good. Um, so what is your— well, first off, I, I did want to ask, um, who is your sweet sweet spot of a client? You know, what do they look like? How much money? You know, how little money? Who is your sweet spot of a client that's perfect for you?

Yeah, they're probably like a lot of people you talk to, right? They're entrepreneurs, high-paid professionals, people like that. So they can even be intrapreneurs where they work as an employee of the company, right? But they typically have at least a few hundred thousand that's either, you know, sitting in the markets, sitting in cash savings, you know, it could be sitting in IRAs, or it could be even sitting in home equity in your house, right? And wondering, I've got this money, but it's not paying me. How do I get this money to start paying me so I don't have to keep working so hard for this money? Those are the key people.

Right.

Okay.

All right. Just want to make sure. And this could— I might need to ask this next question second, but I'll ask it since we're talking clients. Is it domestic?

Is it— Yeah, generally US-based, although I do have a few people like in the UK. Australia, New Zealand. So I don't speak Japanese as well anymore, so I don't take on Japanese clients really. But, um, but yeah, I mean, definitely the typically US-based people are the easiest to work with, right?

Okay. And what is their— what is the biggest challenge or pain that they're having when they come to you? Not just the fact that they want a passive income, and— but what is really driving them kind of considering this big mindset change, you know, that they're going to have to take in order to, to, to be successful and have that passive income?

It usually comes down to a few things. I mean, either one, they got somebody who's managing their money, they think, is this really the best for me? Should I really be here? Am I getting the best advice? Because this person isn't free, why should I be following it, right? The second reason is kind of because of 2020, you know, it woke people up in a lot of ways, right? Because you know, we for the first time heard people becoming non-essential businesses, right? And that was a real wake-up call. I mean, I had a lot of dental clients or chiropractic clients that were saying, whoa, hold on, they could shut us down? You know, like they thought maybe it would be a health department. They didn't know it could be the entire government shutting everything down, right? The state government and whatnot. And even lately we've seen people trying to defund police and get rid of healthcare workers. Now we don't even know who's essential anymore. If those people were apparently essential last year, and now this year they're not essential anymore. So that's the stuff that you got to be— it's got to be a wake-up call for everybody to say, listen, even if I own my own business, I could be shut down, right? Oh, I could be laid off from my company at any time. What am I going to do to create that independence from that, from my business, from my job? How do I make sure that I I'm going to be okay regardless of what goes on in this world. Yeah.

Does that message resonate with a certain age group or generation?

Yeah, definitely more like my generation, Gen Xers and baby boomers, right? For the millennials, they're starting to see it more. The hard thing is, depending on the age of the millennial, because like I said, we're going to the 13th year in a row of the stock market going up. It's really easy to be kind of duped, I guess you say, really be misled and have the illusion that the market will always go up. So, for millennials that are usually 30 and under, it's tougher for them to see it. But if they're wise, if they see it now, this could be the best time to say, "Hey, maybe I got 12 years of up in the stock market. Maybe it's time to move it away. Maybe it's time to do something different with this where I can actually now have real cash flow." cash flow, real income coming in, right? So generally 40s and 50s are very typical clients, but I'm getting people more and more in their 30s starting to come out now.

Well, Nate, and those younger people, they really weren't around for the, for the 2008 recession. Mm-hmm.

Now they were in high school or college at the time. They weren't really investing, right?

Right. Now, and, but at the same time, they might have seen their parents all of a sudden take a significant hit, and, and, you know, kind of start creating a belief system around money that, you know, it's kind of not good, so to speak. You know, you can get it and work your butt off for it, and then all of a sudden it's gone.

Yeah.

Um, you mentioned that you've retired twice. Did I understand that right?

Yeah.

Okay, so help me understand that. I mean, I know what it means practically, but help me understand exactly how you were able to retire twice.

Yeah, well, it's not a good thing for one. So, uh, so 2006, you know, when I quit being a financial advisor in March, I said I'm done, I'll never teach about money again. But I wanted to learn from those guys how they did what they did, right? So between creating residual streams of income in business— unintentionally actually, that was completely accidental— and with doing real estate, I was able to be financially independent later in 2006 by the summer of that year. Now granted, I only needed $3,500 a month to live, right? So it was a much smaller, leaner time with less children. I only had 2 children at that point, not 8. Exactly. Um, so anyways, I mean, so I was 28 years old. I'm like, what am I gonna do with my life? So 2007 rolls around, I come out of retirement to teach people how to do what I was doing, get out of the rat race. Well, the people I was teaching were people that were real estate investors, but they were gambling, which is what I was starting to do as well, because I was starting to hang out with these people. I'm like, Well, I can make cash flow, but man, if I can make $50,000 or $100,000 on a property, let's do that. So I made a huge mistake of gambling on appreciation. Plus I was marketing to just one group who was also going broke when 2007, when the credit markets went like that. Remember, I remember July 2007, it started happening, and by September, completely dry. We couldn't get access to money, especially if you're a business owner. So anyways, like, so all this started happening all at once. It was like this perfect storm. I went from millionaire to upside-down millionaire, where I was over $1 million in debt, right? Because I was just trying to make ends meet. I was $16,000 in the hole each month between my business and my personal life, kind of just manage it all, right? So anyways, I had to pull myself out of that. I didn't file for bankruptcy, but it would have been easier if I did. Um, but I did pay that back, but it took until about 2016 to pay back the debt and be able to get my passive streams of income back up to where I was making well over $10,000, $20,000 a month of passive income so I could say once again, I'm financially independent. So, that's how I retired twice by the time I was 39. One time, went back in the crapper, had to pull myself back out of the bootstraps with no money, no credit, and do it again.

Well, and what did you— so, there had to be tons of learnings and beyond the pains, a lot of learnings that you were able to then use to change everything and make shifts that were needed. What were some of those things that people should pay attention to?

Yeah, like I, like I mentioned, like cash flow was a focus, right? Like I was banking on appreciation and trying to make big home runs. But the truth is you want to make base hits, right? You want to make sure that you're just getting the nice, stable, predictable income coming in. That's the thing. I— and by the way, that was one mistake I made because when I started that company, I was going in with other partners. They said, hey, you got these other multiple streams going on. We want you to focus everything right here. We want you all in. So I said, be a team player? Sure, I'll do it. And next thing I know, of course, I cut off all those income streams, which ironically is the thing we were teaching people to do. So, I mean, it's kind of like that dumb moment, you know? The other one too is like, I've learned, I have a mantra now is that boring is sexy, right? Because, you know, like, it's funny because in marketing, like even like the real estate world, you know, like people that are out there selling real estate education stuff, they always tell you about that $100,000 flip that they did, that they made huge money and, you know, it took them a couple of months and made so much money doing that. You don't often hear people say, hey, you know, I put a down payment on a house for like $30,000. I'm making $400 a month. You don't hear people bragging about that too much. $400 a month, right?

Right.

But that is exactly what I aim for. It's like with my money, I was like, how do I get this to start generating monthly or quarterly income on a regular basis that is predictable? And even if I go and invest my money with somebody else, like, for example, if I pool money in what's called syndication, right, where everybody pools their money together to buy an apartment building or a self-storage unit or something like that, you pull your money together. I want to make sure that that person actually is staying in their lane. They're doing what they're best at. You know, I don't want someone who says, you know, I buy apartments, but you know what, this marijuana field, I think I want to buy this and just try it out. You know, I'm not going to put money with that. I don't go for speculation. I don't go for like people gambling in like digital currencies and stuff. It's like, that's great, I think it's cool, and I know it's going to happen, but there's so much flux with that right now. It's just there's so many greedy people, and the more greedy you get, the more I want to run away from it. Yeah, because I know that greedy makes people stupid, right? And when people get stupid, that's when they lose money. It doesn't matter if they say, I became a millionaire off crypto or off Bitcoin, I guarantee they're going to lose it. Because even if they keep the money they made there. They'll move it somewhere else, gambling, thinking that will still work, violating real principles of wealth. And then they're going to lose it, and they're going to be broke again. It's like a rubber band— they expand and then they contract to nothing. And right, I don't want to ever do that again.

Yeah, so that was a big lesson that you learned.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, woke me up.

Oh yeah. So are there any, um, like— well, I'll back up and say My brain works faster sometimes than my mouth. Are there, are there standard or typical— or just was in my head— vehicles, vehicles that you use and that you coach and that you advise people to invest in to generate? You mentioned real estate, you mentioned franchising. I heard franchise in there. Can you kind of explain some some of those for us?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's always custom to the person's situation and what they're trying to achieve, right? Because sometimes things are better for growth while some are better for cash flow and income. You know, you want to make sure you eliminate some of those options because the truth is, if you go in this alternative investment space, there are so many options out there and so many people in this space, it's hard to know where to turn, who to trust, right? And so we don't ever give investment advice. We never say you should buy this or you should buy that. Okay, but we do say, hey, based on what your goals are, if you want income or passive income or, you know, cash flow coming in, here are the better options for you. And here are people we vetted that, you know, again, no guarantees, but these are people that even through the last recession kept paying out. Like, we have one guy that he pays a consistent 12% a year. He's been doing that since 2003. So despite all the different ups and downs and everything, he's always held his integrity and paid his investors even when he wouldn't get paid himself, right? You know, that— those are the kind of people that, you know, it's hard— you can't, you know, invest in, in integrity, right? You— somebody has to just have it. And so having those kind of people in, in your back pocket to say, hey, this would be good or not, is very strategic and connecting to make sure they get to connect to those right deals. So examples, uh, you know, like, um, you know, I mentioned like, uh, real estate investing, right? Rentals. I specifically like turnkey rentals. Turnkey rental, what that is, is that you don't have to find the property. And by the way, most of the time in your backyard, it's not the place to look. I'm in the western half of the United States. Anything in the western half, I never look at because it's just horrible, horrible numbers. Okay, when I get people from California all the time, they say, I've got a rental here, I'm like, sell it. You haven't heard the numbers. I don't have to, I already know. California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, even where I am, it's like you should probably sell it and go buy out east in the Midwest or Southeast, more close to your neck of the woods, right? Georgia and stuff, right?

Right.

Look in those areas because there's great, you know, great prices with great rents. Yeah. And so with a turnkey company, they find the properties for you in those areas. They not only find the property, they connect you with the lender, help you get set up that way, to connect you with— get an insurance agent for your homeowner's insurance even. They connect you with the property manager. In many cases, they are the property managers, so they're property managing. You do nothing with the property. You are not the landlord. You are just the owner that collects the rent checks. Right. And what I love is even for a single-family home, I might put $40,000 down, but if I'm getting paid $400, $500 a month, doesn't sound like a lot, but when you think about it, that's at least $5,000 a year you're making from $40 grand, right?

Right.

That's a huge return if you think about it, because I mean, that's what's happening is that's not including all the other returns you might get with appreciation. The fact they pay down your mortgage for you. I have a property I bought in Memphis 3.5 years ago. It's paid me a total of a 300% return right now. 200% of it is, is appreciation. The other 100% the last 3.5 years was just getting paid cash flow from the rent. That's the net profit after we've paid the property management fees, taxes, insurance, mortgage payment and everything, right? Right. That's one of my favorites, right? I love that. And it gets great. And by the way, I keep all the money because there's no taxes, because you can write off everything we make. It's kind of like being in business, you know.

It is. And I have to say, a friend of mine, um, actually did exactly that— bought a multi-unit, rent, and is renting it. And the next thing you know, she tells me, oh, I'm going off to Paris for 3 months.

Yep.

I'm sorry, but I didn't realize that, you know, that you could just leave your work. And she's like, oh, I'm not working anymore because all this passive income is creating such a swell of income. So I'm retiring and going off to Paris for 3 months. I'm like, okay then.

I had a client in her mid-50s that she was in Missouri. She's like, hey, I'm actually sorry, she was in Oregon. She lived in Missouri, but she moved to Oregon, was there. And she's like, you know, I just hired a business coach to tell me to ramp things up in my business. I actually want to wind down instead. So she basically went opposite advice. I said, all right, well then let's not worry about ramping up her business. Let's focus on passive income, right? For her, she just needed $3,000 a month to retire to Bali. And so that's exactly what we did. We took $300,000 of her money. Some of it she bought properties, the other she went and invested in like those syndications, right, where you pull your money together with other people. It's like apartment buildings, storage units, whatever. Yeah, did that. And she's been living in Bali now for the last 4 years. And just enjoying it. Scuba dives, does some yoga, just enjoying that life, you know, which was what she wants. Most like— most my clients, most of them don't want to stop. They just want to keep working by choice, not because they need the paycheck, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So there's various ways to do it right now.

Many of our listeners, uh, they may or may not have $200,000, $300,000. So what is a minimum— maybe not for you, but what is a minimum that they can you know, kind of seek you or someone out to help them with those type of decisions. What's the minimum that they would need to have in order to be able to invest in like a rental or whatever other vehicle?

Yeah, it varies. I mean, for a rental, for example, if you have at least $30,000, $40,000, you can get a pretty decent rental. Not the crappy ones you see in like Cleveland, you know, something like that, but really good properties. Uh, you can even invest with as little, you know, with some of these funds as little as $100 or $1,000. You know, you could actually create passive income with that little as well. The word of warning though I have for people, and this is why, you know, we have a different online program for people that aren't quite ready. They don't have at least a few hundred thousand to invest with, right? We do that because it's so easy for people who just want to throw their money into an investment and get paid. But you got to have foundations too. You got to make sure you have good cash reserves because again, you don't never know when you're gonna become a nonessential and you can't trust the government's going to bail you out, right? You got to have some cash reserves on hand. I usually recommend at least 6 months of reserves, you know, to pay for your expenses.

Right.

That's why, you know, you talked about earlier in the show about getting your money to pay you twice. So people are starting out, sometimes we'll use a strategy, a savings strategy, which I use life insurance to use, not the stuff you gamble with, like the universal life type stuff, but more like whole life that's guaranteed. I can use that money to not only save and build reserves and make tax-free returns better than the bank,. But I can also use that money to invest and make money in two places at the same time, because I can actually get a line of credit against it from a bank at like 3% while it's paying me 5% or 6% over here. So I make money over here and I can still take that money and invest it and buy like a real estate property or whatever it might be, make money off of that and flow the money through. And even if I make, say, 10% on that, that investment, they'll add at least another 3% or 4% a year on top of it. Just by using that strategy versus just using my checking or savings account.

Right, right. Well, and one, one thing too, um, I want to make sure that you can address for everyone. Topic title for today was creating an extra $10,000 of passive income, but then you did emphasize 5 to 10 years. So I want to kind of touch on what is the realistic timeline that people can expect that they could be generating once they start making the investments, just so we can set expectations that it's not necessarily in a week, but it could be in a matter of what?

It depends on how much they have and what we're working with, right? It's always case by case. For example, that dentist I mentioned, right? I mean, even without her $3 million that she had pulled out of the stock market, you know, we were looking at her goal was $10,000 a month, same exact goal, right? Now, for her, she was, she was worried because in California she's like, man, I don't get any of the tax breaks or the breaks on the, you know, on the health insurance. Right. So she doesn't get any subsidy because she makes over $100,000 a year. Well, her health insurance premium got quoted because she's 60 years old at $3,000 to $4,000 a month.

Oh, my Lord.

You know, just by using the marketplace. Right. The Affordable Care Act, you know, the Obamacare is no longer affordable. Right. So she's like, what do I do? I said, listen, I already know a guy that's in the medical insurance space. I have the same plan as you. I am younger by about 15 years, but I guarantee we can get that under $1,000 a month. That'll free up $2,000 a month minimum right there. What that does is instead of $10,000 a month, now she only needs $8,000 a month, right? Because now she's not paying that extra charge. Right. On top of that, I actually showed her how she could refinance her house, free up about $1,800 a month., right? Um, and be able to still choose to pay it off later if she wanted to or not, right? So the cool thing is, between those two things, now her number came down from $10,000 to $6,000 a month. We said, well, now all we need is about $600,000 of that money to make the, make the difference, and you're there, right? So it's about doing both. Sometimes I've had some of the best results I've had with clients are ones where they didn't have money to invest. They might have a little bit, but we might have said, listen, let's not invest this. Maybe we refinance. Maybe we pay off some certain loans instead first, right? I actually just showed a client yesterday, because he didn't have a lot of cash to work with, um, I showed him, I said, listen, you got a credit card you've had for 15 years, let's get the balance down just $1,500 more. There's a, there's actually a service out there where you can actually lend out your credit card, so to speak, right? Like, they don't get the access to the credit card, but they can borrow the credit history from your credit card and you can get paid for it. Just by lending, you know, because it will bump it. For example, if somebody doesn't have a lot of credit history, if they're in their 20s or 30s, right, if they get a card that showed that was 15 years old and you get— you add them as a user on your credit card, you can do this with your kids too, by the way. It's great if you don't have to co-sign for auto loans, right? But you put them on as like an authorized user, but you shred the cards, they can't use it. What ends up happening is that now they get all that credit history for 15 years and their rates come down, they save money, especially with the way mortgage rates are. I mean, you could save hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month just by boosting your credit score 20, 30 points. Yeah.

Wow.

There's actually brokers out there that will connect you with those people. You get paid every time you add a person on that credit card. So you can get paid maybe at least $50 or $100 per user. I have a credit card right now that has 5 open slots that I can use at any one time, and they only get on there for a couple months. So after a couple months, they get kicked off, bring the next one on, and you can actually get paid. You know, I was getting paid a couple hundred dollars a month just with that one credit card. And again, no money out of pocket doing that strategy.

Right. Fascinating. Yeah, absolutely would not have ever thought about that or considered that.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's very cool.

So timeframe-wise, it just depends on what we're working with, right? Like what resource you have, both money, but then even without it. I even have people that do short-term rentals, but they actually don't buy the property. They rent it from a landlord, then turn around and sublease it to the short-term renters, right, for Airbnb or VRBO. Right. They can make a couple thousand, you know, a couple thousand a month with only maybe $10,000 out of pocket. So it depends on, again, time. How much time do you have? How much money do you have? All those resources are considered. But the goal is always within 5 to 10 years. Some can do it within 1 year. Some might take a good solid 10 years. It just really depends on where you're starting from.

And how aggressive, I would think, because an older, you know, I don't want to say old, but a more seasoned individual who has a shorter time frame of wanting to retire or, or whatever, they would just need to then look at other type of vehicles that are more aggressive. Would that be fair to say?

Yeah, well, I wouldn't say more aggressive, but just different, because I actually, I'm very in the sense of conservative being low risk. I'm more conservative than almost anybody you'll meet, right? Because here's the, here's the, here's the litmus test. If you still have money in the stock market, you're more aggressive and you're more of a gambler than I am. If you have money and a bunch of money in Bitcoin or crypto, you're more of a gambler than I am, right? Like, you're more speculative than I am. I like certainty, right? So, um, when people say conservative investor, they're like, well, I put money in my 401k because I'm a conservative investor. No, you're not. You're a comfortable saver because that's the masses are doing. But look at the masses. They're not financially free. Why would you follow the evidence that hasn't worked, right? Follow something that actually has worked, which millions of us have done this. Out of, out of 300 and almost 50 million Americans, I can guarantee there's at least 10, 20 million of us that are doing this very thing right now. But again, it's not sold by financial advisors because they don't make any money off of telling you how to do this stuff, right?

And so what is one last tip that you would provide other than the fact that I want everybody to go to moneyripples.com and reach out to Chris and see how we can support you. But, um, what, you know, what last tip or two would you have for our viewers and listeners when it comes to really creating that stability and that financial freedom?

Get your money out of prison. That's what I would say. Get your money out of prison. It could be locked up, like I said, in the stock market, you know, in IRAs and 401s. It could be locked up in your savings account, losing to inflation right now. It could be locked up in home equity. Almost everybody, if you have a home right now, has home equity unless you bought the house in the last 6 months, right? So what do we do with that, with those resources? How do we make sure that that money will start to pay us versus us always paying for it? That's the real thing I would look at is what are those resources? Because that's the very place that you can actually use to create that freedom that you never realized it was available to you.

Yeah, yeah. Love it, love it, love it. All right, everyone. Chris, that was fantastic and just mind-blowing as far as just all of the different options. And I know you said that there's like hundreds of them and we only covered, you know, probably a handful or more, but thank you so much. It's this perfect time of year for people to be considering this and to really looking at options. And plus I would just emphasize to everyone too is I made mention at the beginning about, You know, money— people don't like to talk about money, people don't like to talk to other people about money, but it is a vital, vital energy that you want working for you. So someone like Chris is the perfect person to be able to guide— because you're like a guide as well, you kind of guide them through the process, right?

Absolutely. Definitely much more of a guide is how I describe myself.

Okay, awesome. And we— every one of us needs it, especially when it comes to something that we're a little bit unsure and insecure about. And, and for a lot of our viewers and listeners, that could be money. So I appreciate you being here to talk about it. Thank you so much. Moneyripples.com, everybody. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

So everyone, thank you so much for participating this week in Shading the Bitch Radio. And like Chris and many of our experts. We bring them to you each and every week on various topics that are impacting you each and every day so you can create riches in your work and life. Be sure to subscribe and be— and like and tweet and share the program, whether it's in on any one of your podcast streaming services or on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. And until next week for another episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio on Tuesdays at noon Eastern time, this is Bernadette Boas. Have a rich and prosperous week. Take care, everybody.

Thank you for taking part in Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV with Bernadette Boas. We would love to know what your biggest takeaway was. Go to Shedding the Bitch on Facebook or YouTube and leave a comment. You can also subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and YouTube so you don't miss a single episode of the show. And with your input, we can help other powerhouse women just like you find the show and decide if it's right for them. Learn more about Bernadette at balloffirecoaching.com. See you next week.