In this episode, Chris Miles welcomes back Coach Craig Feld to discuss the benefits of joining a community of like-minded individuals on the path to financial freedom.
Chris and Craig dive into the highlights of the recent Money Ripples Mastermind, discussing the powerful impact of learning from peers, facing financial fears, and celebrating wins together.
They emphasize the importance of building a network for shared learning and mutual encouragement.
Key Takeaways:
- Surrounding yourself with a community of people who have similar financial goals can accelerate your journey to financial freedom.
- Financial freedom isn’t just about how much you make; it’s about how much you keep and grow.
- There is value in connecting with others who are open about financial struggles and learning from their challenges.
- The Money Ripples community offers a supportive environment where people can ask questions, celebrate victories, and seek guidance from those further along in the journey.
TRANSCRIPTS
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So if you are somebody who wants financial freedom, you need to surround yourself with people who are already in the place that you want to be.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mike. It’s really not about how much income you’re making, it’s about how much you’re able to keep and then put to use and get it to produce for you. The one thing that I love about community is that they all said, I feel like I found someone just like me.
(00:36)
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and anti financianal advisor. This show is for you that works so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today. You want that freedom of cashflow right now. You don’t have to wait 30 or 40 years, but you want it today so you can live that life that you love with those that you love. I know though, it’s not just about getting rich because for you, it’s about living a rich life because as you’re blessed financially, you now have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you because you’re prospered and you can share that prosperity with other people too. Thank you so much for letting me tune for you guys tuning in, allowing me to create that ripple effect for you. I appreciate you guys.
(01:12)
I always binging, you’ve been sharing this with other people and really helping this ripple effect go worldwide, and that’s all because of you guys. Thank you so much for doing that. As a reminder, guys, if you want to be able to know how to go deeper down that rabbit hole, go visit our website, money ripples.com. Lots more information, whether it’s looking at infinite banking like Max RY, infinite banking, or even if you’re looking at ways to create passive income, go check that out today. All right guys, so I’m bringing on a special guest today here with Craig Feld. Now Craig has been on, I think this is third or fourth time we’ve had Craig on. He’s also affectionately known within our group as Coach Craig, where he is literally the guy that’s coaching our clients, the one-on-one clients that we have working to try to create passive income and doing those kind of things.
(01:53)
Just recently we had a mastermind, our annual mastermind we do with our members, and I’ll tell you, it was amazing. It was awesome. There’s some great lessons there that I want to be able to share with you guys. Obviously, we’re going to keep it anonymous because whatever we share in the mastermind group stays within the mastermind group, but at the same time want to be able to really share with you kind of the big lessons that you could take away from this and help you get results faster in your life than you would just trying to do it on your own. So definitely excited to have Craig. Good to have you on, man.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, thanks Chris. Great to be back on.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, so I mean obviously I know if people went back at least a couple months, if they binged far enough back, they know that obviously you’re a coach, you had a Wall Street background. Tell us just quickly about your little background and what you do.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Sure. Yeah, spent about 10 years working with high net worth individuals on Wall Street, the typical stock market type of investing. And then I got the passive income bug when I started to get into real estate in around 20 17, 20 18, and have jumped in with two feet into the deep end for sure. So now I have the opportunity to coach our clients and talk all things passive investing, which is my passion and which is what I love to do.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, the cool thing about you of course is that you’re not just coming from a higher holier than now, higher than mighty, whatever you want to call it, right? High and mighty type of perspective because you were actually a client back in 2017 and 18 as well, so you know what they’re like being in their footsteps.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Absolutely. Yeah. I think it was 2017 when you and I started working together and I had that kind of light bulb moment that we want our money to work for us, we want to be in control, we want options. So I have been in the shoes of our clients and am blessed enough to now be able to coach ’em
Speaker 2 (03:48):
For sure. Well, I know we had a huge privilege to be able to meet some of these people face to face for the first time ever. What were some of the biggest impressions or takeaways you got from what our members were picking up from this mastermind, what they were learning with each other?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Gosh, we had so many incredible takeaways from the weekend. It was an intensive two days. One day is kind of really mastermind focus where a lot of group breakouts, we had some really great presenters come in, and then we spend day two in nature, which is just amazing. Those relationships have been formed. People are able to really connect in a more relaxed setting, which is great. I will say in that post covid culture where so much interaction is Zoom focused to be able to connect in person, gosh, it’s so powerful and we have a lot of what we call mini masterminds throughout the year on Zoom. So a lot of our clients already know each other, so it’s not like they’re meeting for the first time, but you’re really able to take relationships to the next level When you meet in person, we’re out of the daily grind of our day-to-day lives.
(05:03)
We’re able to focus just kind of on money mindset, goal setting. What does that look like for each individual? And when you’re able to have those intimate one-on-one conversations, it can really move the ball forward in regards to what your goals are. So I’d say number one, Chris is the human connection really allows people to form those bonds. And I love the phrase, your net worth or me your network is your net worth. That could not be more true. And just seeing people really connect and bond. And we had, gosh, we had people talk about off-market deals, forming their own kind of investor groups to look at other opportunities. We have some smart people in the Money Ripple Bulls community, that’s for sure. Some type A go-getters. And so just to be a part of some of those conversations was awesome.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, for sure. It is interesting. There is a wide variety of people, but I remember one person that was looking at our group possibly hiring us as coaches and she was like, boy, I don’t know, maybe I’m not good enough in the sense I don’t have enough money or I’m not making enough money. Some of these people have millions of dollars or might make millions of dollars and some of ’em make hundreds of thousands and I make 70,000 a year. Is that worth it? And I told her, it’s like, honestly, there’s plenty of people in our group that do that as well. And even more importantly, it’s not even about how much money you make or even how much money you have, although that helps. But more importantly it’s how much money you have left over each month. What do you have to work with? Because I said for you, some of these people want 30,000 a month passive income, but for you, you want 5,000 a month, you might be able to achieve your goals of financial independence faster than they will because you’ve got some cash you could be using to generate less income because you don’t need as much, you’re not spending as much either. So I’m like, it’s really not about how much income you’re making, it’s about how much you’re able to keep and then put to use and get it to produce for you. That’s
Speaker 1 (07:09):
A really good point. And I would also say too, being in the right rooms with the right kind of people, and in our case it’s people who are on their journey towards financial freedom is really inspiring. So when you look at your life and what you want to achieve, you want to be around people who are already walking the walk and talking the talk, and that’s the kind of community that we cultivate. We have people in that room that have hit their financial freedom numbers. So if you are somebody who wants financial freedom, you need to surround yourself with people who are already in the place that you want to be. So it can be intimidating, especially as a new investor to say, oh my gosh, I’m so far away from my goals. Look at all these people. They all started in your own shoes, whether it be five years ago, 10 years ago, there’s no better time to start than today.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, I’m always amazed by the people that keep coming back year after year after year. We have one couple that I think they’ve literally come about 10 times to our events, which is awesome, and they always get something new. And even though they can come from a lot of experience, I think for them it’s also a teaching ability. That’s one thing. It’s like you hear people talk about it’s not just about trying to learn from other people, but it’s also what you can teach the people that are maybe further behind than you, but then also associated with people that are at your level too, your peers. It’s like a three directional type of learning and you learn so much faster. You master things so much faster when you have people look up to people to mentor and then people that are your peers.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, well said. I will say too, with this year, I think we had our record highest attendance, which was great to see, and I would assume that’s going to continue to grow year after year, but it is really great to see people who have been coming consistently since we started. I know the first year, which was before my time, you were hosting at your home, which is no longer feasible given the amount of people we have. But it’s great to see the kind of continued growth and especially when it comes to managing your own personal finances and investments. There’s no set it and forget it button, right? It’s just like watering a plant. You need to continue to focus on what your plan is, make adjustments to what the market’s giving us, and really kind of being surrounded by other like-minded people is the best way to do that. I mean, I know this year we had some clients who were stressed about certain deals that they’ve done and just being able to have an open and safe place to be able to share some of those frustrations. Talk about how are you dealing with this challenge in your life, being able to share your experience, talk with other members of our community about what their opinion on their own challenges are. There was a great group share just about different solutions people had about a specific issue that one of our members was dealing with.
(10:23)
And it’s great. We always want to celebrate the wins. That’s what everyone likes to talk about and post on social media. But it’s really the challenges I would say that are most important to talk about because oftentimes in our day-to-day life with our family and friends, it’s something we can’t discuss or don’t feel comfortable discussing. And so it was really nice. I felt like at one point we had a little therapy session with the group and the feedback was, I feel like I found my tribe, my people that I can really be myself with. And I love hearing stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Oh, me too. Maybe some of the listeners here can kind of relate to this, but it’s kind of tough in some ways when the rest of the world is telling you, you should just have that safe job. Get your college education, have the safe job, put your money in the 401k, save it forever. Live in retirement at some point in your sixties or seventies and eek out the rest of your days. That kind of thing has always been taught. And one thing that was shared from our members, they said, yeah, it’s kind of tough because you don’t want to just tell people, Hey, I’m in this real estate deal, or I’m in this oil investment and things like that. And then people say, oh, I did that once and it was horrible, right? It is like, well, yeah, because you did it by yourself and you were probably just gambling with your money versus doing something smart with it.
(11:38)
And that’s why you have a community. That’s why you have mentors and people like that to help you along to ensure that you don’t just try to hit a home run but actually hit a lot of base hits that allow you to actually score and get that freedom that you wanted. And so people were saying, yeah, it’s really hard, but now I found people like you guys, I can talk to you. I can talk to you about questions. And yeah, there might be some occasional person. One of our clients brought one of his friends who actually had just hired us last month and then came to that event, so they were coming together to support each other. And that makes me happy because I know that as those two elevate, they almost become pacesetters for each other. They almost help speed up the process. And that’s where the whole point of the topic of this show, this episode here, is how do you speed it up?
(12:23)
And that’s a great way to do it is that you’re not just running alone. You’re running together not just with a coach or mentor, but you’re even running with your peers with other people that can help elevate you as well and encourage you and even give you perspective because maybe you’re, I’m in my head, maybe I’m going a little crazy here. And then someone to say, yeah, you are. Or maybe somebody just to tell you, no, actually, that’s great. I see the same thing too. I think you’re on the right track, and that means a lot. I mean, I could tell that there’s a lot of people that 24 hours later they’re saying, wow, I feel like I’ve made great friends. And I mean, playing a game together does help too because you get people to share and do stuff. But it was really exciting to see that connection jell between people because I can tell that it’s creating friendships that are not just just, oh, I know you.
(13:12)
It’s like, wait, this could be somebody who I can actually really run with, somebody I can really run alongside with and maybe even help me help change my life. If you’ve been following this podcast, you’re probably looking for great ways to create passive income right now, right? Well, we got you covered here With central lending. Central lending specialized in alternative investments that actually are designed to create steady returns and long-term financial security for you and your family. Now, they prioritize transparency. They love building those strong relationships, giving you those, that confidence, peace of mind, knowing that you have your money working harder for you so you don’t have to work so hard for that money. You want to learn more how to do that, go to central lending.com and check out what they’ve got today to create your passive income and wealth creation right now.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Absolutely. Yeah, really well said. And great summary. Having somebody you can trust that, you know, trust our core values are very similarly aligned and be able to get real time honest feedback from, especially when it comes to not only deals, I mean, this is a smart group of people, so I know there’s some people coming into the group with one-off deals they’ve discovered on their own, and just kind of being able to have people to do deep dive due diligence with is super powerful. Whether you decide to go forward with that deal or not, having that honest feedback is really something special about our group. And I would say too, it’s really interesting when you do bring a friend, right? I would say most people came either by themselves or with a spouse, but we did have a couple people who brought a friend or who were friends before they joined or they joined around the same time.
(14:54)
Seeing them be able to connect their friendship on a really deeper level to really talk about money. Business investing is really powerful, and I think that it can only enhance other relationships. And I have a prediction. I think more people will probably bring a friend either into the group next year or maybe as a prospect, right? Oh, hey, can I bring my buddy from college? I think he will get a lot out of this weekend. And we allow that with our clients if they have two tickets to the event, and if they want to bring somebody to prospect with us to have an outsider’s perspective, we welcome that. Because what our mission is, right? It’s called Money Ripples for a reason. We want to create that ripple effect and no better way to start that than through friends and family.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
That’s so true. I’m thinking back to beginning of my journey when I was a financial advisor, I just quit. And I remember my wife at that time, she said, Hey, we’re inviting the Andersons over to our house. You’re going to teach ’em about these principles. And I started panicking and that group that was following at the time, they’re no longer in business, but the group I was following at the time had their 13 principles of prosperity. So literally I was nervous, kind of shaking a little bit, pulled out the card. I was wondering, are they going to think I’m crazy a little bit? But I’m like, I’m learning cool stuff. I knew I was excited about it, and I know I didn’t describe half those principles the way they should have been. I was just guessing on some. But man, the cool thing is that we were able to run together a little bit more,
(16:34)
Started with them, and then they started listening and start to learn things. And then we brought in a few other friends and whatnot. And so we soon had this group, they were like couples. There’s like four or five couples of us married couples talking about these principles and how to make it work, and hey, how do we actually really get out of the rat race and that kind of thing. And so it gave me an opportunity to mentor, but it also gave us an opportunity to run together as well, while I’m still learning from other people until I felt like I was starting to get more of a mastery of it myself. And no, it’s so cool to see how that works out. It’s cool to see how that’s worked in our own community
(17:13)
And seeing that gel. I mean, that was the thing I really said about having 30 people. It’s actually more like a mastermind. It’s not like I just got back from a mastermind, but it’s really a conference with over 300, 400 people. There’s no masterminding happening. It’s really just a conference. And then you might connect with some people individually like, this is good. And I’ll tell you another thing I’ve learned too, and this is important for anybody who’s in business or maybe it’s trying to run a community of sorts. When I used to put on my events, these used to be three day events, I would put on, it used to be a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and I would crash that whole rest of the weekend. I’ll even get sick sometimes because yeah, I could bring in some guest speakers, but I was doing probably two thirds of the speaking, and it was so exhausting.
(17:59)
And I remember a big aha for me was several years ago when I started to have longer break times. They used to be a military, okay, guys, you got seven minutes. Be back here in seven minutes. We’re going to shut the doors on you. We wouldn’t lock ’em. We’re not like freaking cult, but we were like, no, you got to be back in the room. We got a lot of the content to cover, and I would just blast the content and then they would tell me this. Yeah, Chris, I think I remember one thing. I’m like, wait, why did we teach you 30 different things? You only can remember one. And then I started to change it up. I started doing a two day event, and then I said, you know what? Let’s have more time for ’em to have longer lunches and more time to share and talk to each other. And pretty soon, I mean, you saw this last event, I didn’t do any teaching really. I mean, we talked a little bit when we actually did a little circle or mastermind circle that we did for a little bit, but for the most part, I mean, there was people that were guest speakers that spoke almost more than I did.
(18:55)
And the great thing is that people remember those things more. They remember it and they walk away with more things learned and they take action
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Better. I would say it’s an intense two days. There’s a lot of interaction, a lot of communication, but people felt energized as I did, and as you did, so that’s kind of the mark of a really powerful, powerful mastermind is when you leave, do you feel exhausted that you want to go to sleep or do you feel excited, energized? My internal fire was lit. I was super pumped for all the takeaways and the value that our clients got. And I know the two of us have a lot of exciting plans on how to make improvements to our own program based on a lot of the feedback from our clients. So those are the types of things that I love and get me really excited. I also want to point out one thing too that is really powerful, and that is we client bring his 18-year-old son to the group, which I think was maybe one of the, and he was there for all two days, really.
(20:04)
It was like a sponge absorbing a lot of information, and I had a couple side conversations with him and I said, what an opportunity for you to be exposed to these not only great clients, but really kind of this financial education that we all wish we had when we were 18. And I said, if you really continue to learn, talk to me. Talk to your dad about what he learns. This kid could be financially free by 30 realistically, which is pretty incredible. Time is obviously the biggest thing we’re fighting against, and to be able to start at his young age is really going to pay dividends for him could really totally change the course of his life. And so I think starting young, I think next year, we’ll probably as clients bring some of their teenage kids early twenties just because it’s so powerful to learn these concepts at a young age.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, how many times have we heard, man, I wish I knew this stuff 20, 30 years ago, right? From our clients. Most of ’em are usually anywhere from their thirties to their fifties typically, right? But man, it’s true. It’s so cool what kind of legacy you can start to create because it’s not about just passing on money to your next kids. It’s like, how do you teach them the things that you’ve learned and you’re starting to master yourself? How do you pass that wisdom along to them so that their lives could be even better than yours? I mean, isn’t that what any loving parent wants, right? You want your kids to not be spoiled, but you’d rather want them to become wiser than you were.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Absolutely. Yep. Well said.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I’ll tell you, the one thing I’ve seen from these events that I think really changed my perspective and why I stopped being such a big talking head there, my ego at first was a little bit offended, I’ll be honest, where people were walking away saying, man, I got so much, but not from you, Chris, but from talking to Joe over here, or talking to Sarah, or whatever it might be. I remember one thing that impacted me the most that got me to make this switch was when a client, he had gone a couple years, had not done a single deal. He was so scared to leave the mutual fund worlds world there and go do real estate investing. And we tried. We tried, and then finally he says, you know what? I’m going to come to this mastermind. And it was a smaller mastermind. I just saw the memory of my Facebook before we recorded this today.
(22:37)
It was from four years ago, and there was maybe 14 people there, 15 people. And what was interesting is he would talk to the other members, and even at the end of it, he said, you know what? I think I’m ready to do this now. He had to talk to another member that said, yeah, I’ve had that same fear. I get that. Because for me, yeah, I had fear too going back into real estate because somebody even asked me that this time around. They said, well, you went broke. Did you have fear trying to get back into real estate? I said, oh, yeah, I had some emotional meltdowns a little bit before I did it. In fact, it was harder for me to buy my own house. I emotionally started breaking down because I thought, this is the same price of home that I bought when I foreclosed on that last house back in 2009.
(23:22)
Oh my gosh, what if I lose it again? All that kind of things like, yeah, I’ve had that. I had let more faith in a rental that I didn’t manage myself than I did in buying my own home. We all have those fears and scarcity and challenges that we deal with, but for him to talk to those other people to say, yeah, I dealt with that too and here’s what I did. Maybe I just buy one. And so he did. He bought one property and then he a second, and then a third and fourth, and now he’s got seven of ’em. And that’s exciting to see that someone who was so scared to do it taking action and then his life is now shifting and changing as a result. That to me is why it’s worth us flying here and there or everywhere or whatever it might be, or just trying to invest this time into people is because you get to see that change and that glow, that happiness and the joy that happens as a result,
Speaker 1 (24:13):
And no better environment to share your wins than with other people. I love when our clients are talking about this investment they made and somebody else made a similar investment and they both went from zero to a thousand dollars in cashflow, right? And it’s that kind of first, oh my gosh, this truly is passive. This can work. I’ve got control and the education in order to be the CEO of my financial life, having people to share in those wins is really powerful, and that’s what really gets the ball moving
Speaker 2 (24:47):
When people are asking like, Hey, has anybody ever done this investment? I’m thinking about getting into it, and they’re like, yeah, I’ve been in for the last four or five years. They’ve been great. Or Watch out for this if you’re going to do that one, especially some of those outside of our network. I mean, we definitely had a good section of time where people were saying, yeah, before I joined Money Ripples, I did this investment.
(25:06)
Granted is the worst two years of real estate investing for certain asset classes within real estate that we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes, and just with a higher interest rates. Everything has put a lot of stress on the apartments and multifamily and commercial, even with 2020 and self storage, all that kind of stuff. I mean, we saw a lot of things hit the fan all at once, and still we see people coming out of the other side surviving. They’ve got money, work for ’em and doing stuff, and it, it’s really, really encouraging to see that happen. Well, Craig, I appreciate your time today. This has been awesome. I know we could talk about this forever, and it feels like we kind of did in some ways, but yeah, I mean, I really appreciate you being on, but everybody, of course, if you’re looking for something like this, I mean, it doesn’t have to be our community.
(25:54)
If you found something that works for you, then do that. I’ll tell you though, the one thing that I love about our community is that they all said, I feel like I found someone just like me, and these people were generally good-hearted, salted the earth people. There weren’t big egos that we had there. I mean, we had people that definitely loved to share and teach, but they weren’t. They were good hearted, salt of the earth, like real authentic people, and that’s the kind of people we like to attract. If you’re like a faker or a poser or whatever, you’re not going to enjoy our people. You’re going to say, I’m better than everybody else. Good, you can get out. We don’t want you in. But man, we’ve got such amazing people that that’s why they want to hang around with each other, right? Because they’re such good people and they’re like, yeah, I feel like I know you because you’re like me.
(26:43)
You’re somebody who actually wants to do good in the world. You’re not just wanting to get rich. You want to live that rich life and help others along the way. And so guys, definitely invite you. If you’re that kind of person, feel free to reach out to us, money ripples.com, but ultimately, guys, if you want to go fast or don’t do it alone, do it together and do it with people that actually are doing the thing that you want to do as well as Craig had so wisely stated earlier. So make sure you do that, guys. Go and make it a wonderful prosperous week. See you later.