What does it REALLY take to not only have more money but more time freedom too? What levels of financial success do you need to experience FIRST before you can have financial freedom? Financial freedom doesn’t only mean having more money. It’s having the LIFESTYLE and quality of life where you can truly be free with your time too.
In this episode, Cash Flow Expert, Chris Miles, shares what 4 levels you need to get through to become truly financially free. Tune in now!
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Chris Miles Bio
Chris Miles, the “Cash Flow Expert,” is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, and Entrepreneur on Fire, and he has spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results.
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Listen to the podcast here
What Are The 4 Levels To Secure Financial Freedom?
I want to remind you to check out our website, MoneyRipples.com. You can also follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/MoneyRipples. I want to talk about how you can secure financial freedom. What are those four levels? How many times have you thought, “I’ve got this great goal to achieve financial freedom,” but you’ve never been there before? Have you ever wondered if there are steps in between that might get you there?
I’ve noticed that everybody comes from different levels. Sometimes I get people to have some very unrealistic expectations or underwhelming expectations. Sometimes they could do much better, but it depends. This is what I want to talk about. This was sparked by training I went to by a guy named Kirk Duncan. I’m not sure if he’s created this, but it’s a diagram I got from him when he taught at one of his seminars when he was teaching couples. I thought the way he broke it down was pretty nice, but I want to add my own spin to it as well from my own experience because I’ve experienced all four of these levels before.
I want to go through this and I’m going to go through how to get yourself through those levels. If you’ve ever thought that trying to go from where you are to where you want to be and if it seems like it’s unrealistic, it probably is or it could be. It depends on your situation, but there are different levels. Sometimes people want to jump and skip levels without ever experiencing them or going through them first.
I’m here to help you identify those levels and get you through them because it is a process. Whenever it comes to financial freedom, I talk about creating a lifestyle and creating freedom and that’s very possible in doing in a matter of months or years, rather than never, that is possible. You have to understand, too, that there are certain levels that you go through. I want to start from the bottom level.
Having No Money But Have Time
There are four levels here. The bottom level is where I’m going to start with. This is where you have no money, but you have time. If you think back to when you were in high school or college, this might’ve been the case for you. This might be even right after college or something. You might have had time, but you didn’t have any money.
This could be a situation, too, if somebody is a brand-new entrepreneur. Maybe they’ve gone full-time or made the leap as an entrepreneur for the first time. You’ve got the time, but you don’t have the money. I’ve been here, too. This is a stressful period of time because you realize you’ve got all this time and what are you going to do with it? This is somewhere you want to transition out of that and I recommend that. There’s the most potential here, but also believe that it’s also a little bit more difficult, too.
When you have no money and time, you may feel like you don't even have time to think and create. Click To TweetThe thing you have to do is start to decide. This is where you have to make a big shift. You don’t have to fill up all these hours. I’m not saying you have to do that, but it’s not a bad idea. It’s depending on where you’re at. For example, this isn’t a place where getting a job may not be a bad situation. I’m not saying this is the answer because everybody’s different, but sometimes having a job isn’t a bad thing.
I’ve had some people who have had so much time available that they stress themselves out. In fact, I was at that point where after I had launched, I went into my business full-time and I felt like I was living the dream. I was achieving it for the first time like, ” That’s it. I can finally quit my full-time job.” I was working 30 hours a week with that job. Now, I’m going full-time in my business now.
All of a sudden, the stress of, “I got to pay my mortgage,” started to hit me, and all those other things. It affected my business drastically because whether people knew it or not, I knew that I felt the pressure and stress. People got this weird feeling like, “I don’t know. I don’t feel right about it.” It didn’t work out well. Many people that said they were going to do business backed out and that put me in a stressful situation.
Having No Time And No Money
Now, I had time and no money. I only had meetings a few hours a week or a few hours a day at most, and that was it. I had all this time open. I decided to move out of that and move into the next level, which is maybe you have no money, but you have no time either. Essentially, I got a job and I was able to pay my bills, but I was trying to catch back up again because I was behind on bills and things like that.
What’s interesting though is that I ended up getting a full-time job and that job I got was not good. I was doing telemarketing. It’s not the kind that is cold calling. I was doing telemarketing where I was calling people that were already members of the company that already had a subscription. I was calling them if they wanted to renew their subscription and even upsell them on to different subscriptions, something else, or whatever they needed that year.
That was a hard time for me, but it’s interesting that once I got that job and started getting the paycheck and I didn’t “need the money,” that’s also when money started showing up a little bit more. I made more money working part-time in my business than I did working full-time with more hours. That’s because I wasn’t stressing about the money. The thing is I didn’t have a whole ton of money, but it was better.
This is where determination comes and where you get a stick to it. This is where a quote from Robert Kiyosaki applies where he says, “Wealth is made in the overtime hours.” If you’re in this phase where there’s no money and no time, this is a difficult phase to be in. In fact, this is the one that’s the hardest for me to help people through because this is where you feel like you didn’t have time to think and create, but this is the time that you can create the most. It does require you to have a little bit more determination and gratitude and see the abundance that’s in your life, even though you feel like you’re living paycheck to paycheck.
This is the point when you get the most naysayer showing up. You might get naysayers in the first level because you have all this time and no money. They’re going to say, “You lazy bum. Get a job,” and maybe they’re right or not. You have to change the situation. There got to be things to help ease things up. For me, one thing that eases things up is becoming a stock coach. I went from telemarketing and then I got an opportunity to be a stock coach. It took a little time. I had somebody tell me about that position months prior, but I kept sticking with it and kept going.
What happened is that eventually the opportunity came up and I started to make money there. Funny enough, I was starting to make more money in my financial advising business, so for both places, my income went up. This is where you start getting to a new place and that determination starts to get you caught up. You’re like, “Now, I’m more than able to pay my bills.”
Having Money But No Time
I’ve seen some clients hit this phase where they have money, but they still don’t have any time. This is a big one for a lot of people I do work with. If you’re in the phase where you have money, but you don’t have a lot of time, this is where sometimes it’s tough for people to transition out of. This is where you need to start finding ways to create leverage or delegation. Kirk Duncan said to delegate and that’s true in business. I would also add their leverage, which could include delegation, but it could be leverage of your money. How do you get your money working for you? How do you start getting ahead with that?
Leverage is the key here. Where do you start to get your time back? Many people look at you from the outside and say, “Wow. You seem successful,” but you still feel like you don’t have that lifestyle. You don’t have what you truly desire, which is that quality of life. You should want to desire that. If you’re at this phase, you have money, but you have no time, this is the part where I get excited because there’s a lot of potentials, and sometimes it can take little time in this area.
I’ve seen people sit in this area for years or even decades where they have money, but they have no time. If you’re in this level, it’s time to get out of it and up a level. Everybody’s in a different place depending on what that money looks like, how it’s coming in, or what you’ve been doing with it, but it is possible to get into the fourth level where you have money and time. If you’re going from the third level to the fourth where you’re trying to get your time back, this could take a matter of months or years. It depends on where you are.
Whatever you do with your time, you should love it. You should have passion for it and shouldn't just do things for money. Click To TweetHaving Money And Time
To give you an example, I had a client we followed up on a week ago. We’re doing reviews and seeing where she’s at and it’s interesting. She had a business and had been coaching people that said, “Let’s get your business rock and rolling.” She hired an assistant, did this and that, and the other. Pretty soon, she starts getting burned out. She has some life events too that did that.
That’s when I said, “Let’s talk about this.” She started to lose passion for her business. We got down to what the passion was because whatever you do with your time, you should love it and have passion for it. You shouldn’t do things and investments just for money. That’s an easy way to create bondage no matter what people have sold you on.
If you’re trying to do investments for only money, you’re going to get trapped and stuck. You’re going to get stuck in that third level. You will still not have time because you will be doing things that you don’t want to be doing with that time. With her, that was happening in her business. What it came down to is, “Why don’t you do a smaller level of that business?” I told her, “You can quit that business today,” and I showed her, “Financially, here’s what we can do. Granted, the business can help you, but all the expenses you incur in the business and you’re trying to make money with that. You could be doing other things.”
We’d already created some residual streams of income with some real estate and other investments she’d done to where she was making over a couple of grand a month with those few months that we got her moving. She was getting money coming from other sources. She was fine and I told her that. “You have the freedom to quit your business whenever you want.”
Not everybody’s going to be at this place, but many people are at that place, whether they know it or not. She didn’t realize that, but when I pointed it out and said, “You could quit at any time.” The only reason you should be doing this is that you love it.” It’s not because she had the money for it, but because that’s what you should be doing. You shouldn’t do things because you hate them. You might be in that second level where you’re trying to determine and you know it’s a temporary situation. Be grateful that that temporary situation is allowing you to get there to the 3rd level or 4th level faster.
Don’t do things because you feel like you have to and that’s what happened with her. We said, “No, you don’t have to do that. You can quit.” The following month or two, she molded over. I said, “Don’t even worry about doing a lot of my action items and think it over.” Flash forward recently, she’s like, “I’m quitting my business, Chris. I’m shutting it down. I’ll still teach classes because I love doing that.”
“I’ll still do some things, but I’m not doing all this big advertising and marketing or all those big speaking engagements. I might do that occasionally, but I’m not pursuing it. I’m going to have to let go of my assistant. Unfortunately, even though I hired her for this, I feel bad about that.” I said, “You gave her a job for a few months and this is where you are. You can make this happen.” She felt good about that.
In fact, it’s so good that she said, “Chris I’ve got my home. I can rent out my home for $1,700 a month and live in Bali for $1,200 a month. All that extra money that we’re making right now could be put into savings. It could be bonus money.” I said, “Great. It sounds awesome. Do it. You could get a property manager to rent out your property. Now, you’ve got Bali paid for, but you got over $5,000 or $6,000 a month coming in that’s going to be going right to cash reserves or whatever to help you do other things. That’s a pretty sweet spot to be in.” She was like, “I like it.”
When we first start working, she had time, but she was paycheck to paycheck. She had time but she didn’t have the money. She might be in that first level, technically speaking, but she did eventually have money, but she was still in a place of no time. She moved those levels quickly because situations and circumstances changed in her life, and it allowed her to move those levels quickly. It’s so quick that almost gave her whiplash, but now she’s getting to a place where she has money and time. That is where lifestyle and freedom are.
Having money does not mean you have $1 million in the bank. In fact, most of my clients don’t even have that much, even the ones that get in that fourth level don’t even have hundreds of thousand dollars in the bank sometimes. It depends on how you create that leverage and use your resources. If you’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement accounts, bank accounts, or whatever, then there’s something you could do.
Most people I’ve been talking to lately have got at least $100,000 in some account that they could be doing something with their money. There’s something we could be doing that could easily generate over $10,000 extra cashflow a year. That’s being conservative in many cases. There’s that possibility. Granted that $10,000 a year may not create that freedom for you, but it might or it might be $20,000, $30,000, or $40,000, whatever might be. It depends. Every situation is different.
You can move those levels quickly, but it does require going through those levels. If you’re a level one, your goal is to at least get to level two. Level two can be scary. If you’re going from having time to not having time and still not feeling like you have any money, that’s still a better place to be than having a lot of time and no money because that could eat at you. That could mess your head so much that you end up not being productive and ended up repelling results.
If you're trying to create new goals and hit record time, have a clear vision of what you want. Have a new way of thinking, new habits that support that, and a new environment, including new people around you. Click To TweetIf you’re making that decision to go and get after it, then great. That determination can get you to the next level or the third level, where you have money, but you don’t necessarily have a lot of time, but at least now you have money and have extra cashflow every month and that’s where you need to start creating leverage and getting there.
If you’re at level three, then we probably need to talk. If you have money and not a lot of time, then we need to talk. Maybe if you’re a level 2 and possibly even level 1, but it just depends. The thing is every one of you has potential in every situation. Each of you has your own process to go through. If you read the episode from last time where I talked about trying to create new goals and hitting record time, you’ve got to have a clear vision of what you want. You got to be able to have a new way of thinking and habits that support that and a new environment, including new people around you to do that.
That’s my advice to you. You either got to decide, determine, delegate, or leverage. When you’re in that fourth level, then you got to start duplicating it. You got to start creating, managing and maintaining it. You can’t just sit there fat and happy at the fourth level or you can move back down those other levels. It is possible. There’s got to be maintenance, stewardship, and responsibility there.
Where there’s a greater power, there’s greater responsibility. I am experiencing that and I want you to do that as well. Go and make it a prosperous week. If you have any questions for me, email me at Chris@MoneyRipples.com. Shoot me an email and say, “Chris, here’s where I’m at. What do you think?” We’ll see what we can do for you. Have a great prosperous week and we’ll talk to you later.