Getting New Clients with a Book featuring Chris Miles

Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here. We have another episode with a great guest. Always want to say great episode, but I don’t know if that makes it more about me and the podcast itself, but we have a great guest. I think you’re going to love and learn a lot from Mr. Chris Miles. Chris has a great company. He is a cashflow expert and is a leading authority on how to quickly create cashflow and lasting wealth for thousands of his clients, and who doesn’t want that, right? As the middle class is disappearing, what we really need is to be in control of our financial future. Chris has been featured in US News, CNN, Money, bankrate.com. He has his own awesome podcast, and of course, a business that really makes a difference for people, Money Ripples. And so, Chris, welcome to the podcast and thanks for being on with us. Also, of course, you’re a coauthor of a great book with Tim Ferriss and a mutual friend, John Lee Dumas. Again, thanks for being on with us today. Glad to have you.

Chris Miles:
Such an honor to be here, Rob. I really appreciate it.

Rob Kosberg:
You are a cashflow expert. I like the way that sounds, but I don’t know if I know what that means. What does that mean for helping people with their cashflow? I imagine that’s what Money Ripples is all about. Maybe you could give me some basics of that, and then we’ll dive in a little bit deeper.

Chris Miles:
Yeah. Absolutely. I work kind of like an anti-financial advisor, right, because traditional financial advising is always about save everything, spend nothing, save it forever and gamble it in stocks, and then hopefully someday you have something, right? That’s pretty typical of the traditional financial model.

Rob Kosberg:
That sounds bad. All of that sounds bad.

Chris Miles:
Because it is. It’s a bunch of crap. It’s the same old stuff that we’ve been falling for decades and people aren’t financially free, right? I get it because I was kind of like, I wouldn’t say raised in that, but when I became an entrepreneur, the first thing I did was I became a financial advisor and I was teaching always the same stuff for four years. After four years, it didn’t take long to figure out that when I start… especially when I started inheriting clients from past advisors, I realized they weren’t better off either. And so, people weren’t becoming financially free and it bugged me. But at the same time, when your wallet’s tied to it, you don’t know what to do. You’re kind of in this dilemma, right? You’re like, well, if I tell people, hey, you probably won’t make your financial goals, even though we’re talking about retirement, you probably won’t make it. You’re worried like, oh, maybe they’ll just go to some other advisor who’ll lie to them and tell them they will. And they’ll feel better because they were lied to.

It was kind of a debate that I had. And then finally it was when I had a friend, right, and this friend, I actually trained him in that business, but he left to go to real estate investing. We caught up four months later, and he said, “Chris, my life is awesome.” He’s like, “My dad and I have partnered up on some deals. My dad’s now doubled his income as a professor at the local university.” I was like, “Wait, he’s doubled his money in real estate?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “Come on. That’s too good to be true. There’s no way that’s possible.” Right? He’s like, “No, it’s happening.” And so we got in this debate about what’s better, stocks or real estate, and finally, he just stopped me and said, “Chris, how many of your clients are financially free, where they don’t worry about money, not retired, but they’re not worrying about money even in retirement?” “Well, none.” “All right, Chris. Great job. How about this, of the financial advisors that you know, some of them have been doing this since the late ’70s, how many of them in your office and other places you’ve met are financially free, not off the commissions, but actually doing the same mutual funds that they’ve been recommending?” I thought about like, well, none, maybe this one guy is, and I found out he wasn’t either later on. He’s like, “Well, there’s your problem.” I was like, “Well, tell me the answer.” He’s like, “I won’t tell you the answer because you just fought with me about why your way’s better.” I was like, “Okay. Well, I’m open, and you’ve got me to admit this.”

Long story short, I actually read a book, a Robert Kiyosaki’s lesser known book called, Who Took My Money, right, and then I also listened to this AM radio show, because this is pre-podcast days. This is 2005, 2006, right? Well, I got hooked, because it opened up this whole new world to what was possible, and as a result, I realized, wait a minute, yeah, people won’t become financially free doing this same kind of stuff. So, I started doing the opposite advice. I started doing the anti-advice, right? Funny enough, later that year, summer of 2006, I was able to become financially independent and retire myself at 28-years-old.

I was like, well, this was easy, way easier than I expected. Since that time, even though I’ve had the ups and the downs and everything else, the whole other story, right, that’s, I talk about my book, for example, I mean, the long story short is that I’ve been teaching people how to do the opposite, right, how to do something that actually gets them freedom now and gets them to work because they want to, not because they have to. Cashflow is the key, because when I was a financial advisor, it was always about growing your money, but in truth, it’s really about what kind of income does it produce for you on a month to month regular basis, like, do I have monthly income?

I’ll tell you, I run into people all the time that are the massive Dave Ramsey fans, hence the name of one of my books, Beyond Rice and Beans, because you got to get beyond that, that’s kind of scarcity of mentality that leads you to being broke. All those people that follow that advice, they’re like, yeah, I’m debt-free and I have maybe two million dollars in net worth, but I have no income coming in from that net worth. Let’s reverse that. Let’s get that money to start paying you so you don’t have to keep working forever. That’s really what being a cashflow expert really is. It’s focusing on cashflow, not just growing your money in gambling and stocks.

Rob Kosberg:
Love it. I love it. As many entrepreneurs either are or should be, I am in a group of really high-level smart guys that I really respect. We meet once a month. Two in Australia, two are Canadians, and two of us in the United States. And so, we meet on Zoom. We used to get together quarterly before this pandemic that they’re putting on took hold, but hopefully we’ll start meeting together again regularly. Anyway, we just started talking about our number, if you will, freedom number, the number that we’re shooting for, and really what it comes down to for us in the same way is not so much what the net worth is, but really what kind of monthly revenue, monthly cashflow we are producing, whether it be from income producing real estate, it could be cryptocurrency or various other things. And so, it sounds like that’s exactly what you’re talking about. Give me some of the keys, break down for me what are the steps to get real freedom via cashflow? What are the things that you look for that you teach your clients?Chris Miles:
Well, I like what you guys did, you created your own freedom number, right, like what’s that money per month, that income per month they need to have to be free, to quit my work or even better yet, with COVID, when all of a sudden certain businesses weren’t necessary anymore, right, what would make sure that even if I had to shut down my business, I’m okay. And so that freedom number, and most people I talk to, it’s like 10 to 30 thousand a month is really common, right, but find that number first. Once you do, then it’s assessing, what do I have? What are my assets and that kind of thing. A lot of times, I’ll look at people’s net worth, but not just net worth, right, I’m looking to see what kind of assets do they have. Is it tied up in stock market and mutual funds and stuff like that? Because I learned as a financial advisor, it’s funny, because there’s this whole fire mentality going on with the younger generation right now, the millennials, which is financially independent, retire early.

The problem with that is that their calculations are horrible, right, because 20 years ago, when I was a financial advisor, I learned that the full 4% rule, which is if you have a million dollars, you can live on 4% or 40,000 a year. I learned that rule was way too aggressive. That doesn’t apply anymore. And that was 20 years ago. It’s even worse today because people are living longer, inflation’s higher, all this is issue. You shouldn’t be living on more than two or three percent a year in a traditional mutual fund scenario. So, think of it, if you have a million dollars saved up in mutual funds and 401(k)s and IRAs or whatever it might be, you’re not supposed to be pulling out more than 20 or 30 thousand a year.

Rob Kosberg:
Terrible.

Chris Miles:
That’s below poverty line, right? The thing that I woke up to in 2006 when I started meeting real estate investors was, well, wait, what if you had money that you’re lending out, or maybe you have money that’s being invested, or maybe you’re buying a turnkey investment property or whatever it might be where you’re not the manager, you’re not the landlord, and that’s paying maybe just 10% cash on cash return. Well, now that million dollars pays you 100,000 a year, and if it’s in the right places, you’re not even paying taxes on it, right? Completely different situation than making 20 or 30 thousand a year and paying taxes on that money for being a millionaire, right, a broke millionaire below the poverty line. That opened up my eyes.

And so looking at that, it’s really about, all right, where are these places we can do that, and looking for good, stable places, because Rob, I mean, you and I know we’ve been around for a while, you don’t want to just be investing with anybody, right? There are so many charlatans out there, especially lately as things have boomed, anybody can make money in an up market. The question is what happens when stress comes on, will that person honor what they agreed to? Will they be an integrity? I remember from the last recession, there was a lot of people that talked a great game, but when it came to paying out, they couldn’t do it, or they went bankrupt themselves.

I’ve learned since then that to me, boring is sexy, right? The sexier it is, the better. Coming back to your question, first step is one, know that freedom number, right? What is that number you’re trying to hit. Two, assess what you have, like what assets you have. Do you have equity or a home? Great. How much? Do you have assets trapped in mutual funds or trapped in savings just sitting around and doing nothing. Where’s their money trapped? Where is it, as I call it, where’s it locked in prison right now? Because that money could be unlocked and actually producing income for you. Do you have debts? If you have debts, great. I’m actually not anti-debt. I’m actually okay with certain types of debt. I have debt on my real estate, and I love it, but you want to make sure that… There might be some deaths that we do want to pay off versus ones that we don’t, or do we want to refinance?

I have so many people lately with home equity going through the roof, we’re refinancing properties right now. We’re getting home equity lines of credit and using that to produce cashflow that’s way above and beyond what the monthly payment is. In fact, just yesterday, I showed a guy where he had about 200,000 of equity he could access, and I showed him, I said, listen, that 200,000 only makes a 10% return and some of them can make more, but I was like, even it’s just 10%, that’s 20,000 a year. The cool thing is that $200,000 a month of payments only about 600 a month, right, so we’ll say 7,500 a year. He makes 20,000, he spends 7,500, he still profits 12,500. He’s making $1,000 a month extra cashflow with no money out of pocket, right? I mean, that’s the kind of opportunity that’s out available right now, but again, you got to make sure, one, that you actually know what you’re doing and you’re doing it with the right people.

Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Beautiful. Well said. The steps sound simple, right, and yet that second part of you got to know what you’re doing and you have to do it with the right people, I imagine that you’ve done it with the wrong people more times than not, because that’s what happens, right, that’s how we get experience by making mistakes. What are some of the bigger mistakes that you’ve made or that you’ve seen others make in trying to come up with this and implement the plan, right? It’s one thing to put it on paper, it’s another thing to implement. What are some of the big mistakes you’ve seen in this arena?

Chris Miles:
Yeah. Biggest one is one, make sure that you have returns coming, right? You don’t always have to invest for cashflow, but I personally like it. I like it when my money’s returning right away, because if something goes wrong, at least you’ll say, well, maybe I lost a principal, but at least I made some interest, right? It’s just like I gamble a little bit with crypto. I remember I bought Bitcoin when it was around 6,000 bucks after the last crash. Now, I bought it there, but right when it got up to the point where I made profit and I had some extra, I pulled my money out. I pulled out all the principal and even a little bit of gains, so I actually tell people, yeah, I actually made money on crypto, versus most people who have a high valuation.

Rob Kosberg:
And write it up and write it down.

Chris Miles:
Writing it up, but they haven’t sold anything out, so they haven’t made squat. I guess kind of going with that, I guess that’s another part two. One is, make sure you’re focused on cashflow streams. Two is stay away from the hype, right? When you know that your classmates that are really not educated in the money space are telling you what to invest in, or they’re asking how to invest in something, that’s probably the time to get out of something.

Rob Kosberg:
Right. Right. When your taxi driver is talking to you about Bitcoin, you might want to move out of it.Chris Miles:
Exactly. I remember actually before the last crash of Bitcoin, I remember I had a classmate saying, “Hey, who wants to pull their money together to buy a Bitcoin?” Right. This was when it was like $20,000 now, which we’re almost there. I was like, “Oh my gosh, if she’s asking and she didn’t even know how to buy a Bitcoin, let me get out.” The next month, it crashed, right, and that’s when I actually bought in. But that’s the thing, it’s like, you got to stay away from the hype. Right now, the stock market’s never lost. It seems like it never lost. It’s up 12 years in a row, horrible place to be right now. I’m not saying it won’t go up more because there’s still dumb money being thrown in. I love how Robert Kiyosaki calls it dumb money, right, because when average Americans and average people start throwing money in, that’s about the time you want to start taking your money out.

Come on. We know Elon Musk did that to us with Bitcoin. He drives it up right after he buys in, and then of course he says, hey, he’s going to sell out early. And then he’s like, “Okay. Guys, Bitcoin is not good. It’s not environmentally responsible.” Then it crashes. Watch, his company is going to buy some more after it crashes, right? You get to stay away from all that hype and all that crap. That would be two. The third one, I guess what goes on with that is that boring is sexy to me. I love boring. I love somebody who, If I’m investing money with somebody else, for example, like a syndication where we’re pooling money together, putting to an apartment deal or something, I want to know that this is a deal they’ve done over and over and over to the point where they could do it in their sleep. I don’t want the guy who says, “Hey, I’m going to go buy a marijuana farm.” I’ve never done it before, but it sounds fun.

Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Big money in it, right?

Chris Miles:
Yeah. It could be big money. I was like, “No, no. I don’t want to be your guinea pig.” I want somebody who’s like, I’ve done the same deal 20 times, and it’s the same thing. I have played it for the same criteria, the scrutiny every single time, and it meets all my criteria. It sounds boring to them and maybe outside, but to me, that could be the sexiest thing in the world, because if I have learned anything from the last crash was don’t buy into the hype, don’t buy into things that are already overinflated, and definitely go with people that have a great track record and they invest their own money into those deals. They have so much faith they’ll put their own money into it. If they don’t want to put their own money in, why should you?

Rob Kosberg:
Right. It’s pretty clear you’re not a fan of the stock market at least from what I’ve heard. At least not now. I have a pretty extensive real estate background, so I get real estate’s cashflow. What other cashflow opportunities are there? Or is it just primarily real estate and maybe diversified in various things in real estate. Or what are A, B, C and D? Give me a few of those for our listeners.

Chris Miles:
Yeah. Real estate, no doubt, when it comes to cashflow, especially, is one of the easiest, safest places with the biggest returns, especially with investment property, like long-term rentals. I love personally turnkey rentals because I am a horrible landlord, right? I’m not a good property manager. I found that out the last crash. I’d much rather farm it out. I personally love doing turnkey rentals where somebody else finds the renters. I don’t even know my renters’ names, right? They do all the work. I just fund it, and I know that my benchmark right now is I want at least 11 or 12 percent cash on cash return, not including appreciation, not including the fact they’re paying down my mortgage for me and giving me equity gains that way. Tax advantages, I’m off the plate. I don’t care.

Now, I love it because when you do have appreciation, man, I have a Memphis property that with my total returns and everything, I’ve made like 150% in three years. I don’t mind that. The equity game was only 30,000 bucks, but because of how much money I’ve put into it, the leverage stability, right, it’s awesome. There are other things like funds, it could be lending, it could be lending in the real estate game or something else.

Rob Kosberg:
Like hard money lending, that sort of thing?

Chris Miles:
Hard money lending. It could be funds where maybe they’re just; I know a guy that does tax liens, and he’s like, “Hey, I want to keep all the profits, but I’ll pay a just steady 10%.” He’ll pay his 10% a year, no matter how much profits he makes, but he contractually says 10% is what I’m going to pay you. It’s nice. It’s great. Now, I would love to have his gains, and there’s opportunities that way too. I’m investing in land this month, right, where that one, we’re partnering up with somebody who’s doing all the land transactions, the seller financing and flipping, and that one’s got some amazing gain potential, right?

Outside of real estate, if you’re a business owner, look to your business because that’s actually how I retired the first time much more quickly than I was just trying to invest money. Because if you look for ways to create what I call not, it’s like the passive version for business, I call residual streams of income, right, can you create residual streams within your business that doesn’t require you to have to babysit it? You set it up, it might take some initial energy or time and effort much like buying a property, you do that upfront, but then it keeps paying you even when you’re not doing it. You’re just managing it and it works.

Rob Kosberg:
Give me an example of that.

Chris Miles:
Yeah. Within my business, I’ve got a few income streams. I mean, one, I’ve got a podcast, I’ve got sponsors. That’s always nice, because I recorded a 32nd blip and then they pay me every month for that, right? You’ve got things like with the online products. I have online products; they have to sell as well. People see that, like, oh, click, buy. That’s always the easy ones, especially if it can be automated through technology. By the way, technology automation, I’m not even a tech guy and I love the potential that you have with that. You don’t even have to have VAs doing all the work like you used to have to do beforeAnother one’s doing anything with affiliate type stuff. I do a lot with referral marketing. I wouldn’t call it affiliate. I’m not massive, like here, let me spam my list type thing, but when I have certain regular contacts and they’re people that have a business service they can offer us, like, hey, this makes sense for my people; let’s connect you, right? I’ve made tons of tons of money just off that alone because it’s a value add that I don’t have to be the expert for, but they are. Those are just a few examples of several that I have within my own business model that works and probably could work within your business depending on what you have going on.

Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Love it. Totally agree. Totally agree. A couple of other, and I don’t know if you have something like this, but a question thought, is there any kind of formula that you have or think about when it comes to cash and cashflow, like a million dollars sitting in the stock market or sitting in the bank, it earns 0.15%, that’s nothing, but a million bucks should produce X amount of cashflow in residential real estate, as you put it, turnkey real estate, do you have formulas for those kinds of things?

Chris Miles:
I do. Yeah. I mean, depending on where they want to invest, sometimes it might go as low as 8%, 9% occasionally. For example, someone’s got a lot of cash to deploy, they’re probably not going to be buying a single-family home, right? They might buy a few just for the extra returns. Like I said, for single family, I like to see at least 12% cash on cash return, but if it’s multi-family, I’m going to be looking more like 9 or 10 percent as cash on cash return, not including all the other gains, right? So yeah, when somebody comes to me and they say, “Hey, I’ve got a million bucks,” I usually do a simple formula because I know there’s other funds that will pay 10 or 11%, I’ll usually say 10%. Like, “Hey yo, 10% is pretty doable. “It’s not guaranteed, but it’s not by no means is it impossible, it’s actually more likely to get that depending on what you’re doing with the money. And so, if it’s a million bucks, great, we could probably make that up 100,000 this year.

I had a client, actually a chiropractor out in Minnesota where we’re looking at their staff, and between cash out refinancing, they had paid off all their debt, but they had no real cash flow, right? So, they cashed out money from their building, they cashed out money from their house at a million and a half to play with, and now they’re like, okay, cool. Well, 10%, that should be 150,000. I’m like, “Yup, but you got your monthly payments,” but in total even there was only roughly about 5,000 or so a month. I’m like, you’re still profiting maybe 80,000 a year for free not including the other savings they had sitting on the sidelines. So yeah, usually that’s pretty easy number to look at. The trickier part of the course is matching them up to find out what’s the right investment for them, or who is the right people, the right connections in that arena.

Rob Kosberg:
That’s good. But it’s a good thought experiment for people to take if they do have cash sitting around or if they do have money even sitting in their home and they’re considering pulling some of that out, these are numbers that they can think about, like, okay, would it be worth it? Look, I know Dave Ramsey and that kind of school of thought, and certainly as I get older, I’m interested in paying off all of my mortgages and all of those kinds of things. At the moment, I’m actually quite happy to give the bank 3% on my mortgage while knowing I can make 10% elsewhere and keep the spread, while my home continues to go up in value and everything else because of inflation and money printing continues to go up in value. So, it is a bit of a game, right, that you have to know what the rules are to the game, otherwise, you really get left behind.

Chris Miles:
Absolutely. You really do. That’s a good point, because people often don’t consider these as possibilities because we’ve been so ingrained that the stock market is the answer, mutual funds, right? But we already know it’s a gamble. In fact, I know from being a financial advisor before that whenever somebody wanted to buy a mutual fund through me, one of the things they had to sign off on was they could not borrow money to put in the market. So, they actually initial saying, no, I’m not borrowing money to put in the stock market because that happened in the great depression, right? The great depression, actually, that was the biggest problem, and that’s why they started saying, no, no, no more borrowing money just to put in the stock market. I love to invest in places that banks don’t mind lending money for, because think about it, banks don’t ever lend you money to put in the stock market. Even if you say, well, I have a margin account. I used to teach how to trade stocks and options too, right, so I know how.Margin account still is completely 100% collateralized. They can call you out because they know what your balance is. They don’t ever want it to go below what you owe. You will never be in debt, right? So even then, you’re not really trading with debt. But think about business, they’ll loan you money for the right business if it’s got a good plan that’s profitable. They’ll lend you money for real estate all day, right? Those are the kinds of things I like to invest my money into. Those are the two big things there. They don’t have you ever borrow money to put in speculative ventures. There’s a place for speculation, but there should be a teeny, teeny piece of your portfolio where the rest of it should be the places where you know banks would invest themselves.Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Good advice, and some good formulas for people to think about. Let’s change gears for just a second. We’ve talked a lot about how you help people. What the idea is with Money Ripples and being a cashflow expert. You’re a content creator. You have your book on your website. You have a book you coauthored with Tim Ferriss and John Lee Dumas. You have your own podcast. Talk to me a little bit about what your books have done for you financially, growing your credibility, growing your authority, attracting clients, etc. Love to hear a little bit about that.

Chris Miles:
Yeah. It’s fascinating because the eBook, that was one of the first things I did. It used to be a white paper and then it expanded to become a book. Now, I’ll admit, I’m not a huge writer. It’s 28 pages with page breaks, right, because I just like to get right to the point. I was like, “Okay, boom, boom, boom.” I put a little bit of a story so that extended it a little bit more, but it’s just like my thesis paper when I was going to college, it was 35 pages because I put in charts and graphs, and they were saying, “You can make it meatier.” I’m like, “I don’t know how to make any more meat. This is it.” I’m not a BSR, I guess is what you could say there, I mean, but that’s the cool thing is that it’s there, and I’ve had many podcast interviews where people say, “Hey, you guys should get a book.” The crazy thing is that, I mean, it wasn’t that hard to create, right? But just because there’s a book there, they’re like, “Oh cool, yeah, we’ll bring you on.” Right. And so, it does give you some added credibility there.

Doing that book with Tim Ferriss and Johnny Dumas, it was interesting because I had a friend who was a mutual friend of ours, right? Now, John Lee Dumas, I was connected to. We were Facebook friends. I had messaged him a few times, but whenever I asked to go on his show, it was always a no, right? Actually, no, it wasn’t even a no, it was just crickets, which in my opinion is a no. Yeah. Might as well be. I was trying to share stuff. I was trying to add value to him, just promote him, right? Try to do whatever I could to get on his radar. Nothing. Well, then I had a friend reach out saying, “Hey, listen, there’s this opportunity where Johnny Dumas wants to write a book. He’s got Tim Ferriss writing the forward, but he wants to have a few other entrepreneurs that are putting their own two cents into it as well. Are you interested?”

Tim Ferris, I had actually met several years before when he was just starting to gain some popularity. I was like, “Okay, he’s a cool guy.” I like him. I’ve read some of his books. And then of course, John Lee Dumas, I’m like, “Well, I’m trying to get on his radar.” I said, “Yeah. Let’s do it.” He’s like, “All right. Well, it’s going to cost you 2,000 bucks which will buy you 200 books to hand out. You can buy more if you want, but at least $2,000 minimum.”

Rob Kosberg:
That’s so cheap.

Chris Miles:
I was like, “Yeah. That’s nothing. I can sell this book for 20 bucks,” which I did later on. I still made money from the book or gave it out as gifts, right, as a nice expensive business card. But the best part was, is after I got done recording the interview, right, they transcribed my words, because again, I’m a horrible writer. I just had it edited a little bit. But after they did the interview, he says, “Well, how can I serve you more?” Now, if I hadn’t said anything, it probably would have been the end of the story, right, but I said, “You know what, I’ve been trying to get John Lee to get me on his show forever. Can you somehow get me connected there?” He was like, “I’ll send an email right now.” Half an hour later, John sends an email back saying, let’s get you on the show. And so, we did. It took four months before I got onto the show actually, right, but I was there.

The first time I was on the show, I just promoted my website and then boom, the numbers blew up on my website, traffic doubled just over night. I can directly attribute, not in selling the books, right, just attribute to the external return from new clients, I probably made about 40,000 bucks off that one interview. So, I’m like, it was a pretty good return. 2,000 becomes 40,000 in about a year. I like it.

The next time around, about a few years later, I emailed John, I said, I want to get back on your show again. I got some new content. I’ve got more stuff. I teach more about investing in things now than I do just about cashflow, freeing up money, paying off debt, that kind of stuff. He said, “Great. Let’s get you on the show.” His assistant comes back and says, “Yeah. Well, you already paid for some stuff, but he wants you to buy $600 worth of journals.” I said, “Easy. I’ll do it.” So, I bought $600 journals. I ended up just giving them away, right? That next interview I did, I can directly attribute to it that over the course of the next four years, I’ve made about two and a half million dollars in that one show, right? Again, that all got traced back to me just doing that book with them. If I would have just said, “No, I hate writing, I’m not going to do it,” none of those doors would open up.

By the way, I actually just had his third show released because I’m like, what else can we create? See what else happens, because those doors you want opened up, it doesn’t matter if the book does anything, because for most of us, the book doesn’t really generate a lot of profit. It’s nice when it does, but we’re not here to be JK Rowling. We’re here to become the authority, to be credible, and to open up doors that would otherwise be closed to us.

Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Love it. Love it. Well, I’d say two and a half million dollars is profit, so that book did lead to a lot of profit just maybe not in the way that a lot of people think when it comes to royalties. I think so many people are close-minded about what the opportunity really is. The opportunity is to make an impact and an income, and there’s lots of different ways to do that. Royalties, like you said, we’re not here to be JK Rowling. So, congratulations. I’ve been on twice. I think it’s time for my third as well. I better reach out because, wow.

Chris Miles:
Third time is a charm.

Rob Kosberg:
I got some catching up to do, man.

Chris Miles:
It’s more expensive now, I’ll tell you that much.

Rob Kosberg:
That’s okay. It’s worth it.

Chris Miles:
But I was okay. I made more than that from his last show, so I’m okay with that.

Rob Kosberg:
It’s clearly worth it.

Chris Miles:
Now, I’ll tell you, it’s true. It’s such a different world today, because I remember working on a New York Times bestselling book with a former partner, right, and it was interesting watching that whole experience because he invested $1.2 million to get that to be a best seller. And then after it became a bestseller, it was actually the same week that the last Hunger Games book came out, I remember that. And seriously, again, crickets, nothing. He hired a media company and got a few interviews, but it just wasn’t great. It didn’t get traction. But I’ll tell you, eventually it did. It did take some time, but it got there. It just took years. But nowadays, like you said, we were looking more for the; I mean, he made money from the book sales. That’s mostly what he made money in the beginning, right? But man, the external rate of return you can make from it, oh man, it eventually did pay off. I mean we made tens of millions of dollars eventually from that one book.

It doesn’t take 1.2 million anymore. That was ridiculous. I mean, that was a whole different world. That’s when you were having to get books into Barnes & Noble and stuff. Amazon was only a little piece you had to get there to get to the New York Times bestselling list. It was all about getting in bookstores, in the airports and stuff. Now it’s so much easier to get that to work.

Rob Kosberg:
That’s telling though, Chris. I mean, so many people think that these big-time authors that get big checks written to them just let the publisher do all the work. What they don’t understand is that if someone gets a million-dollar advance, in most cases, they’re using most of that million dollars on marketing the book, they are, and people just don’t understand that. They think that they get the million bucks and they just sit back and watch the royalties come in. No, they got to go to work. They got to go to work for the publisher that just gave him that million bucks. And so that’s telling. I appreciate you sharing that because yeah, at the end of the day, it sounds like it worked out incredibly well, but that’s the exact same way it is true on a smaller scale. I mean, our clients can pay us as much as six figures, but they do that knowing that the opportunity is to make millions of dollars like you did on one dang show.

Chris Miles:
You got to look past the book sales. You have to look beyond the book.

Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Well said, my friend, well said. Thank you. Thanks for your input and your advice. Let’s give some links. Where can people learn a little bit more about you? Where can they get some cashflow advice from the expert?

Chris Miles:
There are two places you can go. I mean, one, you can find my eBook on moneyripples.com, not money nipples as Entrepreneur Magazine tried to put in there. That is not my website.

Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Don’t go there.

Chris Miles:
Yeah. Money Ripples.

Rob Kosberg:
moneyripples.com. Okay. Got it.

Chris Miles:
Yeah. You can go there, or you can even check out my own podcast. I’ve got the Chris Miles Money show that I have on iTunes or any other podcast app that you use.

Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Love it. Chris, hey, thanks so much. Thanks for sharing authentically, giving a lot of great advice, and our people know where to go.

Chris Miles:
Thank you. I appreciate it so much.