IAM1767 – Cash Flow Expert Teaches on Financial Freedom

Transcription:

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Chris Miles Teaser 00:00

In 2015, I had a business coach telling me to do one thing in expanding my business. I did the opposite because my gut just said, that doesn't feel right. In fact, I'm gonna do not more like she recommended. She wanted me to do more live events. I started doing less live events. The funny thing is my profits went up and my revenue still went up too.

I think that's the key is that it might seem crazy, but if your gut says do something, do it. If your gut says, don't do something, don't do it.

Intro 00:26

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs and founders, without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:5

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners. Or what I like to call the CB Nation architects, those that are looking to level up their organizations.

In this month, we are focusing on knowing thy numbers. I could hear the phrases from Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank, and if you understand or don't understand exactly what numbers is, think finance, economics, accounting, capital, investment, funding, bootstrapping, anything that's around numbers. So, we have to understand how important it is to know your numbers and how important that is for you to forecast, make decisions, and to be able to truly strategize around your business and do that successfully.

Things are gonna be a little bit different obviously, this month. So look for CEO hacks and CEO nuggets and interviews that focus around this. But more than everything else, make sure that you know your numbers because they're extremely important to the life of your business.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Chris Miles of moneyripples.com. Chris, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Chris Miles 02:18

Always, man, always a pleasure.

Gresham Harkless 02:20

Definitely pleasure is all ours and definitely looking forward to hearing more about you and all the awesome things that you're doing. Before we jump in, I wanted to read a little bit more about Chris, so you can hear about all of those awesome things.

Chris, 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, and podcast host of the Chris Miles Money Show and has been featured in US News, CNN Money, EO Fire, and has a proven reputation with his company Money Ripples, getting his clients fast life-altering financial results.

In fact, his personal clients have increased their cash flow by over 200 million in the last 10 years. Chris, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Chris Miles 03:03

I'm so excited. Let's do this.

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Gresham Harkless 03:04

Let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through your CEO story, what let you get started with your business.

Chris Miles 03:13

Yeah. So, it's funny because I actually had no intention of going to a business other than being a consultant. My whole goal was to become a business consultant, but I figured if I'm gonna do that, shouldn't I have real-life business experience? So I was in the middle of college, I was just about to get my bachelor's. I decided to drop out with one class to go. Actually It was a paper. I just had to create a paper. It was an independent project, finish that and I get my bachelors. So I dropped out, and said I'll just take a one-year hiatus. Just build some extra experience before I get my master's.

The first thing that came up when creating a business was being a financial advisor. Not realizing they take anybody off the street. So, I said, Hey, let's do this. Great. It's commission only. So really I was thrown into being an entrepreneur right from the get-go. The thing is, I ended up liking being an entrepreneur because I wanna control my destiny. I wanna control my freedom and that was really my motivation. I didn't want somebody else to tell me what hours I need to work and how much money I can or cannot make. So I actually stayed, dropped out of college, and never went back. Although I did try once after I had retired when I was 28, and they said, sorry, you're gonna have to take a year and a half of school. I said, for a bachelor's in sociology? No, thank you. That's not worth it.

So I stayed dropped out. But that's the thing. I started going on that journey. I did that for four years as the traditional mainstream advisor. I realized that people that were doing that, following that advice, including advisors themselves, were never financially free. So I had left that started following what other like business owners and real estate investors people were doing. Then I was actually able to retire myself when I was 28.

Gresham Harkless 04:43

Nice. Absolutely love that. Now you're giving, all the keys to the car, so to speak, or keys to the all the knowledge away to so many people. But I think that's, so you know true about so many people where you don't actually become financially free. You hear that this is the way to do it, but you don't really have that knowledge and information on how exactly to make that come to fruition. So I appreciate you for creating so many opportunities for people to do that.

Chris Miles 05:04

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 05:06

So, I know I touched a little bit upon what people can find on your site. Could you talk a little bit more about that, how you serve your clients, and also what we can find and listen to on your podcast?

Chris Miles 05:14

Yeah, so now I'm in semi-retirement mode, right? I can never fully retire because nobody wants me to. So I just do a couple of things part-time. One I do consulting. I actually help clients figure out ways to get out of the rat race, and retire early and do it generally outside of the stupid stock market and things like that.

But whether it's in real estate or wherever it might be, getting them to be financially free and out of the rat race where they work because they want to, not because they have to. That even includes business owner because the thing is, we think we have a business, right? We paint ourselves into a job. That's the thing is like, how do we free ourselves from that, the shackles of that business even to where we work by choice, not by necessity.

Gresham Harkless 05:51

Yeah. That's absolutely huge because I think so many times especially, if you're passionate about what you start as far as your business, you really love what you're doing. But as you said, sometimes they can quickly turn into that job that you want to get away from, but you can't even fire yourself. So you get stuck by. I love, how you're able to help people, free themselves, no matter where they're at.

Chris Miles 06:10

Yeah. Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 06:11

Awesome. Can you talk a little bit more about what we can find and listen to on your podcast too?

Chris Miles 06:17

Yeah, my podcast, just goes into that like your show, it's pretty quick. I try to keep about 20-minute episodes, but it's really all about changing their mindset around what you think about money is true, right? Because everything we've been taught about money by the mainstream media and everything is completely false. It's really just brilliant marketing is what it is. Like banks and these financial institutions that want you to throw money with them forever. It kind of brings me back to when I was the traditional financial advisor, I remember I met with a brother-in-law of mine whose family had become self-made millionaires, right?

His dad I remember was so awesome. His dad had actually, in the 1960s, he was homeless. At age 16, he ran away from home. And then when he was 18, he was able to go to Georgia and convince Chrysler to start the first Chrysler dealership in the state of Utah. The cool thing is by the time he was 21, he was a millionaire. In the 1960s, being a millionaire was a lot bigger than being a millionaire now. It's not hard to be a millionaire now, right? But then he was actually able to be a millionaire by the age of 21. I remember I went to go talk to my brother-in-law. I was like, I'm gonna put on my best suit. I'm gonna prepare, like overly prepare to show him why mutual funds is the place to invest, right?

I went to him and I gave him my nice little 45-minute spiel, little PowerPoint presentation I made just for him, and I even brought the best guy from my office to back me up so you know, we could try to convince him that he's wrong. By the end of it, my brother-in-law said, okay, let me get this straight. You have 10,000 bucks that if I just gave you $10,000 to play with, you're saying you can make me 12%, or that's 1200 bucks a year. So there are no guarantees, but yeah, that's what's been done since 2000 bc. So Yeah. Pretty much like 1200 bucks. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Here's how Chris, I can take the same 10 grand. He has a semi-truck business, right? I can buy a semi-truck if you do a down payment with 10 grand on a semi-truck, turn around a few months later, flip it and make $30,000. So, Chris, why would I invest my money with you? And I was like you should be diversified. You shouldn't put your eggs in one basket. You should put more money in other places. Like the things I offer you, the things that I can sell you right? That's when I realized I was a salesman in a suit, right? That's really all I was, is that financial advisors are not financial experts by any way, shape, or form.

Ask a financial advisor if they've ever been able to retire off of the investments, not off the commissions they're earning off of you, but actually, the investments they're recommending. You won't find them. I guarantee it. It's so rare you'll find somebody just because they made so many millions of dollars in their, business from sales and then they just throw it in some crappy account, that pays them a little bit of interest. Right?

But the truth is, as a business owner, you have the greatest opportunity for wealth possibly. There are other things, almost everything outside of what financial advisors offer is better than what they offer. So you could actually create more freedom, and do it that way. That's really what my show and all my stuff, my website, and everything goes into.

Gresham Harkless 09:05

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. I think so many times, as you kind of referenced and we definitely know, as entrepreneurs and business owners, you want to have ownership. You want to have freedom.

That's why you created, that's why you put your blood, sweat, and tears into everything that you do, and you quickly find out that you're listening to the marketing, as you said, and the sales, not so much the, I don't wanna know if I wanna say logic, but just that information that we sometimes aren't aware of. So I appreciate you for creating, that information, that knowledge and that awareness in so many different ways for people.

Chris Miles 09:34

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 09:35

Awesome. So, what would you consider to be what I call your secret sauce, which is the thing you feel sets you apart and makes you unique. It could be for yourself or your business.

Chris Miles 09:44

Yeah. They're one and the same in some ways, shape or form. Definitely with my business. You just won't find people that are telling people to do the opposite and actually create real results where they become free. Part of my gift, that I have is, I've always been good at finding patterns and seeing things. I remember in fourth grade, we were doing our little multiple times tables, and we got to the 10 times table. I remember as I was going through it, I saw the pattern and I raised my hand to the teacher and it was a quiet test, and I was like, I just have to add a zero behind all these numbers.

She's shh, don't tell the rest of the class. She would make them do zero times six this, and then, try to do the whole long multiplication way. I'm like, screw that. Like I'm going, no, I'm just getting this thing done. Hand it in. Yeah. That's kind of what it's been like for me. Like I'm really good at finding resources, finding the potential and the money, and saying, how can we make this create more? I get so many people, even business owners that have cash that's sitting around, whether in their business or at home, they're like, What do I do with this? Because I don't trust these stupid financial advisors in the stock market because if I'm gonna invest in a company, it's gonna be my own, right?

So what do I do with this money? And, that's the thing that's so much fun is that, there are so many options to actually create those multiple streams of passive income to create freedom.

Gresham Harkless 10:52

Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This could be like an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Chris Miles 11:04

It may not be an app or anything because I'm low-tech, but I'll tell you the number one book that I listen to. I used to say, I don't read books, I just use Audible. So there is an app I do use but on Audible, there's a great book called The Pumpkin Plan, which is by Mike Michalowicz. If you've heard of Prophet First, which he's most famous for right? Great book, but he has another follow-up book that's lesser known called The Pumpkin Plan.

This is what changed my business in 2015 because I started becoming more active, right? Like I had to retire a second time in 2016. To do that, I had to cut off all the crap that was there. The pumpkin plan is really about that. It's finding those core activities that drive the majority of your revenue, who are the best clients at everything, and feeding the crap out of that.

Gresham Harkless 11:47

So, I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. That could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Chris Miles 11:58

The biggest thing I would say is to follow your gut, right? Trust your intuition even if it goes against advice you've gotten from mentors, business coaches, or whatever. Because I'll tell you that in 2015, I had a business coach telling me to do one thing in expanding my business. I did the opposite because my gut just said, that doesn't feel right. In fact, I'm gonna do not more like she recommended, she wanted me to do more live events. I started doing less live events.

The funny thing is my profits went up and my revenue still went up too. I think that's the key is that it might seem crazy, but if your gut says do something, do it. If your gut says, don't do something, don't do it. Follow that despite whatever logic you might hear out there.

Gresham Harkless 12:36

Yeah. I love that in so many different aspects as we talked about, in your story, how you've been able to do that. I think so many times we feel like we should be doing everything and especially in entrepreneurial form. A lot of times you're by yourself, so to speak, because you're going against the grain, and sometimes that's the uncomfortable part.

But a lot of people that become free and become wealthy, however we define that, is because they go against the grain and they try something new.

Chris Miles 12:59

That's right. Yeah, it is and that's fine. We're entrepreneurs, we go against the grain anyways because we don't want the freaking W2 job. We wanna create a different life that other people don't have. If you follow that gut, that intuition, I'm telling you, like that will pay you more money than almost any advice you're gonna get out there.

Gresham Harkless 13:15

Yeah, I absolutely appreciate that. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote, CEOs on this show.

So, Chris, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Chris Miles 13:28

To me, being a CEO means the buck stops here, right? Like ultimately everything rolls up. Whether you succeed or fail, it's really up to you. You have that control, that ownership, and as a CEO, you got to speak different languages. You got to be able to speak the language of marketing. You got to be able to speak the language of operations. You got to be able to speak a language of finance, you got to speak a language of. It's just about everything, right? You got to understand all your departments, but you don't have to be the expert in all of it.

So you really are that visionary. You are that person that's helping to move forward that vision and that passion, that real vision of the company and what you're trying to create and when you're trying to create value for other people. So I really feel like you are kind of the generalist, right? You are the person that's really the captain of the ship to lead it forward.

Gresham Harkless 14:10

Yeah. I love that kind of metaphor you talked about, learning and knowing these different languages because I think so many times in business there's so many different moving parts that it's really hard to control everything. But you want to be able to be versed in that knowledge and language, whether you're working or you're working with experts like yourself to be able to understand exactly what's going on.

I think that you talked about that decision piece with the business coach that was telling you to do X, Y, and Z and I think a lot of times we forget that the decisions that we make allow us to be able to serve our clients on a higher level. Because if you had not made that decision, maybe we'd be having an entirely different conversation. So sometimes those decisions that we make add up to the impact that we can have as well.

Chris Miles 14:49

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 14:51

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. So, Chris, truly appreciate that and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course how best they can get ahold of you, subscribe to the podcast and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Chris Miles 15:06

Yeah, I'll just say, I encourage you guys that no matter what level you're at man, there's always another level. There's always a next and keep that fire burning, that's the big thing. You can follow me in one of two places. You can either go to moneyripples.com as you mentioned earlier, or you can go follow my podcast, the ChrisMilesMoneyShow which you can find on iTunes or any other podcast app as well. But yeah, I'd love to serve you any way I can.

Gresham Harkless 15:27

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Truly appreciate that Chris. To make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too. But I appreciate all the work that you do, appreciate the time that you took today, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 15:39

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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