My Rules for Investing | 437

Everyone has had different paths in this business. There are a variety of factors that can affect decisions such as what is available, what experiences have they gone through, what are their goals.

Chris Miles has had extensive experience in business over the years, especially with investing. Through that, he has created rules or lessons when it comes to investing.

So, what rules do Chris Miles follow when considering an investment?

Hello! My fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles, your Cash Flow Expert and Anti- Financial Advisor. Guys, this show is for you and about you, those of you that work so hard for your money, and you’re ready for your money start working harder for you today. Because you want that freedom that cash flow that prosperity now, not 30 or 40 years from now, if the stock market does smiles on you the right way, but you want that freedom now. So you can do what you love with those you love. Whenever you feel like, but guys on top of that, you guys want to do more than just live a life of comfort and convenience. You want to be a Rippler or by creating a ripple effect through generations, beyond you, through your family and those around you, that you could be a blessing, the lives of others guys.

Thank you for allowing me to be a blessing. Your lives, create a ripple effect through you. Thank you for bingeing sharing. You do everything that you guys do here. It’s awesome. So thank you so much. Here’s a quick reminder. Check out our website, WWW.MONEYRIPPLES.COM Also guys, subscribe to our YouTube page, the Money Ripples Chris Miles page. Check that out on YouTube right now and subscribe. So guys, I want to talk about some of the rules that I have for investing because so many time that I hear people saying, is this a good opportunity or not? Should I do this or not? And the truth is we’re not going to give you advice on the show, right? Because legally that’s a bad thing to do. Also just as a you know, quick thing, I’m not sponsoring Nike right now, I’m just wearing a Nike shirt because I haven’t changed it on my workout clothes yet.

So here you go. I just noticed that I’d never really dressed up a lot for you guys, but one of these days I promise I probably won’t either. So, but anyways, I want to talk about my investing roles, right? Because one thing I learned through the life of hard knocks, especially with investing those, that kind of investing with hard knocks, right? I learned a lot of good, valuable things, especially during the last recession. And the thing is I see patterns happening again. You know, people start getting antsy. They want to jump in. Sometimes people are investing in things that really don’t, aren’t even real things, right? There’s people investing in companies that aren’t even real right now, blank check companies, IPO companies, they don’t even have a product or a service, but people are throwing money at it. Right? this is why mutual fund and hedge funds managers are like your riskiest people right now.

But I want to talk about like, if you’re looking at an investment, how do you know it’s good for you? Not for the person offering for you, but for you right now. So it’s about five key areas. I actually have more questions or more points that look than that. But these are really five key points that if you really answered positively to these, you would probably feel very at peace because I’ll tell you and investments not worth it. If you do not have peace of mind, if you can’t feel comfortable and sleep at night, knowing that your money’s invested somewhere, that’s not the place for you, no matter how good the investment might seem, that is not the investment for you.

So here’s the number one thing I use to eliminate most opportunities is one, is there a reason beyond money that I want to invest in this? Is there a way I can tie it in with my passions or with my interests that I have? For example, I actually think real estate is fascinating now, not every aspect of real estate though. Understand that. For example, you know, I hear a lot of my friends talking about wholesaling properties that has zero attraction to me. Now you can make amazing millions and millions of dollars doing that kind of business. But for me, that is sounds absolutely like just horrible. Like I would much rather dance with that pink Flamingo in the background, right there that’s a burden much yet. Right? It’s just not interesting to me, you know, not to say that’s not a good thing to do, but it’s not the thing for me. So I always look at, is there a reason I would want to do it because here’s the truth guys.

If I want to invest in something, right? I’m not going to invest in something that, you know, and I learned this from retiring twice, right? Becoming financially independent twice. You don’t want to invest in something that feels like a job. That feels like you’re just doing it for the paycheck. If you’re going to put time and energy into it, especially it should be something you enjoy something that kind of lights you up. Right? So that’s number one is, do I have a reason to do, to invest in this beyond the money? Because by the way, everything looks awesome. When you look at the money and the numbers, it’s got to have some personal connection to you.

Number two, how well do I understand this investment? Do you understand what makes it work? Why I get paid? You know, why it makes money? Do I understand the real economic engine behind it? That allows me to be profitable? Because if I, the better, I understand it, the better I understand that there’s something I might be able to do if something goes wrong, right? Or if something goes or could I make it better than it actually is, you know, then what’s returning right now. Maybe I’m not investing at all, but do I have an understanding of it to say, this makes sense. It’s not a mystery to me. I can, you know, I could probably explain it easily to my spouse. You know, even if they might have some intricacies to it, I can at least give the basic gist of it because I understand it. So how well do you understand it? Do you really understand it? If you don’t, don’t do it, you know, give you an example. I had a friend that introduced me to a company where they paid you 12% interest every 24 days.

Right? So 12% interest every 24 days. Oh, sorry, take that back. Nope. It was reverse that 24% interest every 12 days. Now that sounds too good to be true. Don’t worry. It was. And then even he admitted, he said, Chris, here’s the thing. It’s violates all the principles we talk about with investing, but dang! The money’s hard to pass up. He’s like, so my goal is because he used the rule of 72, right? 24%. Well, every 12 days, that means in 36 days, if he reinvested that money, it would double itself. So it would double itself every 36 days, which by the way, is not even possible. It’s like when the guy reached out to me and said, Hey, Chris! This thing makes four to 6% a week. Not a month or a year, even a month would be pretty crazy, right? A week.

And I was like, bull. That is not going to return that. And he told me what, and that example, that other one, right. That guy told me, he was like, yeah, it’s invested in the Forex. I’m like, nobody makes that much money. Even George Soros can’t make that kind of money in the Forex. So no way, well, this lady, same thing, this, this woman actually found out that she owned the company of this company’s called 12 Daily Pro. Right? You could probably Google it and find 12 deadly pro online. Well guess what? Total Ponzi scheme, right? Obviously she could not afford to pay 24%. Every 12 days, the Feds, you know, the securities exchange commission, frozen accounts, the whole thing blew up. People lost their money. People were complaining and whining that they didn’t have any money. Well, they threw their retirement money in there.

And how are they going to retire now? Well, hello you for, you didn’t even understand what it was invested at. Even when I asked my friend what she investing in to get these kind of returns? He said, honestly, I don’t know. And even says in the contract, you could lose all your money. So, and they did. And they lost all their money unless the people like pulled their principal out fast enough. Right? People lost their shirts. That’s the thing guys, is that, you know, do you understand it well enough to know what it actually is a three and this goes really close with it. These are really my big three. Right. You know, one is interest or passion beyond the money. Two is how well do I understand it?

And then three is how much control do I have? These are the three big ones for me. Do I have control of this investment? You know, for example, if something goes wrong, you know, can I get recourse? You know, I we’ve interviewed guys like Mitch Steven on here before, right? Like when he does his investments, I love it because he’ll have people, you know, lend money on a specific property. You were on title for that property. You are basically the bank. You are the bank lender on that property and he’s paying you returns on it. Now, if he, if he, if he doesn’t make his payments, you foreclose on it. You that’s your property, it’s all yours. And because he’s only leveraging about, you know, 50 to 60%, right? So say you gave him, you know, it’s worth a hundred thousand. He’s probably going to borrow from you about 50 to 60,000. So there’s equity, there’s at least 40,000 equity in there.

That’s a good thing. There’s control. There’s some security in there, because you have that first position. Now, do you have control in a stock market? None at all, buying it’s selling, by the way is not control. Just the ability to click an act and say, choose, I’m going to choose that stock or that fund or this fund. That’s not control. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about, if something were to go wrong, can you do something about it? Or if it’s going right, can you do something to make it return better? Just like I’ve explained before, how much control you really have. I will sacrifice return any day to have more control. This is why I love buying my own real estate properties. Cause as much as I’d love syndications and I’ll put money in those too, right? I’ll put it in funds and syndications, just like the ones we’ve talked about on the show, however, it’s, you know, I have to make sure I’ve got good, you know, collateral there.

I gotta make sure I have good control. You know, if, especially if something were to go wrong, if I don’t, that’s not a good thing. And, and that’s why I love buying my own properties. There is nobody else to answer to, it’s me. Right? I might have property managers managing it for me, but all I call all the shots. I don’t have to wait about to hear from different partners or anything like that, I call the shots. So that gets extra bonus points, right for that. So one, is passionate beyond the money or interest beyond the money. Two is understanding. Three is Control.

Four is predictability. Can I have predictable stable cash flow from this property? I like to call this “predictable profits”. Right? You know, the two P’s they’re predictable profits, is it predictable and profitable one, am I actually going to make good cash flow? Is it actually profitable where I’ll make money? Two? Is it predictable? Meaning that how much certainty do I have that it will pay that? You know, for example, there’s some investments that are more speculative. Now, if you go in like the oil and gas industry, right? Even by investments there, there’s some speculation there. It might be profitable, but it may not be predictable. So how much of a predictability can you have? You know, I was just recently talking with one of my past casey, past guests that we had on here before, if you guys remember Randy Lawrence, the real estate preacher, you know, he talked about, you know, how he pays certain returns. He pays like a 7% preferred rate and then a 5% bonus on the back end, you know, per year. And so people will go for that easily because they say, well, I know that I’ll make my money.

I’ll get this set amount of money. Like, I’ll get this every single quarter, this much money paid since 2003 or whatever. Like I know I’ll get paid. And so people we’ll say cool, I’ll buy into that. Even if there is a promise of a better return somewhere else, people are like, yeah, but that’s predictable. It’s easy. It’s not guesswork. I understand it. Right? It’s, it’s simple to do. Sometimes simplicity is like that best option to go with. So again, “predictable profits”. This is why I love buying real estate because I know what my profits are going to be. Generally speaking before I jumped in to the deal before I even put any money into it. Guys, that’s that’s awesome. And if it’s regular stable cash flow, if it’s not monthly, at least quarterly, if you’re getting paid? Awesome! Now, if you’re not going to get paid for years down the road, you might question that, right?

I had a client who said, Hey, here’s the business idea that we’re going to do. And I said, great, well, when you start to be profitable? He said, two years, I said, that better be a back burner and business investment dealers. You’re doing there, put that on a back burner. Instead, what’s on the front burner? What can we actually start getting cash flow today? We went through some different ideas about what he could do his business. Did he take those ideas? Nope. did he ever paid from that deal? Not really. In fact the business idea I gave him, I just said like that’s all folks anyways. The idea I gave him was something to actually sell off the idea to another company, to speed up the process. I guess what, he didn’t do it. He didn’t try to get signed on as like an employee or whatever it might be.

The company actually went and created their own version of it just a few years later. His thing totally obsolete. So it’s key. So again, you know, Do you have interest beyond the money? two, Do you have control or two Do you understand it? Three, Do you have control?. Four is a “predictable and profitable”.

And then five is Who is it invested with? Like when I mentioned Randy Lawrence they’ve been paying since 2003, you know, Mitch Stephen, I mentioned earlier, the guy’s been paying for decades. Right? It’s really awesome to know who you’re investing with. It’s so important. You know, many times like when people are like, Hey, what’d you think of that Grant Cardone fund? I said, Grant Cardone is not an investor. He’s a marketer. I don’t trust that. You know, maybe that’s got nice popularity. Awesome, good for him. I would question that big time because he’s a marketer.

He will attract other marketers. I’ll tell you good operators attract other good operators. If you want to find the right people get in the right circles, don’t go for the people that are going for the pie in the sky, or just talking big numbers. Those people, the people that lose money and they lose other people’s money, including your own. But I go for the people that just do what I call as boring, sexy stuff, because boring is sexy, right? If people are just going and use their money to, you know, do the same deal over and over. Right? And it’s the same thing they’ve done. Like, you know, Lane Kawoka and I talk about his show. There’s a lot of his deals. I mean, he’ll do some new deals every once in a while at some variances. But when he does his normal everyday deal, I think.

Okay. All right. I’m interested in that deal. If it’s an apartment building, just like the ones he’s bought before. Oh, look, it’s Huntsville, Alabama. He’s done that several times. Cool. I would trust that more, but really the thing I’m looking for is what happened? Like, especially in the last recession, right? Did they keep paying, even when things hit the fan, did they honor their word? Who are you really investing with? Again, it’s not about the investment. The numbers can look amazing, but it’s really about who is it you’re investing with? And what does that, what’s going on there? That guys, that’s what I look for. That’s what I think is sexy. You know, the boring stuff they do over and over the guys that have great integrity or women that have great integrity and what they do with their investments. That is what I look at now.

I want you to take these five and think about it. Like thinking about this right here, apply this to the stock market, apply this to your 401k .

1. Are you interested in it beyond the money? Maybe you might have fun watching the markets, but do you really, I will tell you, by the way people that have invest in the stock market, very tiny percentage actually have a passion beyond the money. I trained 200 people I trade stocks and options. Just a handful actually liked it beyond the money. And those, the people that actually still made money now, they didn’t create good cash flow. They were still in the rat race, but at least they enjoyed it and they were profitable to some level. So passion now, do you have passion for your 401k? I bet you, a lot of you guys are ignoring your 401k. You’re ignoring the stock market, right? If you’re doing that, that’s a big warning sign.

2. Do you understand it? Do you understand how they’re making money? Do you understand that you don’t even own a company? You don’t own any stock in a company you own a copy of a copy. You own a piece of paper tied to the real asset, but it has no real value. You’re not an owner in that company. Even in a fraction of a degree, you basically have zero ownership. You know, do you really understand how that works? Do you understand how mutual fund money managers make their money? Do you understand how they have to? When they keep getting more money, they have to find investments. Even if they’re bad that they keep putting money in. Do you understand that in a mutual fund that you can’t that as a mutual fund money manager, you can’t unload stocks. If you know a stock’s bad, you can’t sell it all in one day. Cause that’s actually against the law. You can’t dump a stock crash it, that’s there. If you have so much money, you can’t do that kind of thing. So thinking about that, do you understand those kind of rules? That’s a big thing.

3. Do you have any control over the stock market? No. Zero. Do you have a control over the stock that’s invested in? Do you really think you have control? Warren Buffet, Do you think when he buys a business, he just buys a stock? Or does he buy ownership in the company that allows him to have control? It can go into the board of directors. Meetings, make, call some shots and manipulate his returns. Especially something goes wrong or to make it more profitable. So he makes more money different than being someone in the stock market. By the way you have zero control over it.

Is it predictable? Heck no, it’s not predictable at all. Now maybe you buying that boring stock that pays predictable dividends. Sure. but even that, even that’s not being so great lately.

And then who do you even know who’s managing your money? I will tell you when I was a Financial Advisor with my securities license, helping people buy mutual funds, I could even talk to the fund manager. In fact, they made it completely off-limits. You could not go and call or email and contact that fund manager. They are to be left alone. No one talks to them. Did I know who they were? Not at all. You know, when you buy a fidelity fund, you realize that sometimes a fire fund managers hire new ones. So what made that fund successful before, now

it’s not successful anymore because it’s a different person. See it, just these five questions alone. The fact that you put money in mutual funds and 401k, you are, the riskiest gambler I’ve ever met. You know, if you want certainty and peace of mind at night, find ways to find investments that actually fit this kind of criteria, where you have.

1. Passion beyond the money or interest beyond the money.

2.You understand what it’s doing and how to make it work, how it ticks.

3. You have control you.

4. It’s predictable and profitable

5. And you know, who is investing in it.

Guys, even if you just follow these five things. And there’s more questions that I would ask here. But if you just focus on those five things, it would change your life. So I hope you took notes unless you’re driving, don’t take notes. Let’s do it later. Take notes, but write these down and start applying this to your own investments, right? And actually rate them, say, do I really understand this? Is this something that I like? Is this something I have control in? Do you know, is it predictable and profitable? Who’s making this money for me. Do I even know who they are? Guys, that’s number one. Those are the key things you should be looking for in any investment. If you want. Not just financial independence, but financial freedom, because you cannot be free. If your mind is not free because you’re worrying about it. That is the key guys. I hope you take it to heart and use it in your life, make it a wonderful week! And we’ll see you later.