Episode #238: Chris Miles – Why Mainstream Financial Advice Sucks

Dr. Eric Block: Welcome to the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Eric Block. As always, I want to inspire, entertain, and educate you on the best tools and technologies out there. My goal is to help make your practice and career more profitable, efficient, and most importantly, more enjoyable. And check out all of my nonfiction and children’s books on Amazon and check out thestressfreedentist.com for any upcoming events. And if you’re feeling you’re a dental professional that’s burnt out, or you just feel stuck or want to get to that next level, visit the International Academy of Dental Life Coaches or www.iadlc.com, and we’ll get you matched up with a life coach that understands dentistry. I also wanted to thank our amazing sponsor, Ekwa Marketing. They have helped me and my practice over the years to improve with SEO and website performance. And to find out how you can make your practice dominate in your area, go to www.ekwa.com/msmsfd to book your complimentary meeting. Again, that’s www.ekwa.com/msmsfd.

Okay, everyone, welcome back to another episode. And today I’m joined by Chris Miles, who is the CEO of Money Ripples, and he is known as the cashflow expert and anti-financial advisor. Chris, thanks so much for joining us.

Chris Miles: Yeah, it’s a pleasure to be here, Eric.

Dr. Eric Block: Uh, Chris, I wanna hear all about Money Ripples, uh, cashflow expert, uh, and everything you’re up to. But first, what is an anti-financial advisor? What does that mean?

Chris Miles: It basically means someone who says, don’t listen to financial advisors. That’s what it means. Um, and the reason I say this, ’cause I used to be a financial advisor, right? Back in the day, about almost 25 years ago now, I was a financial advisor where I was a salesman in a suit. I was the one that told you, hey, you should spend nothing, save everything. Save it in the mutual funds that I offer, ’cause that’s how I get paid. Um, and then save it forever. And then hopefully someday you’ll have something.

And I did that for four years. Really enjoyed teaching people, educating people about money. I was drinking the Kool-Aid. I actually was believing for myself, if I just, you know, am cheap my whole life, save lots of money, maybe by the time I’m in my forties I can retire.

Well, four years in, my dad reaches out and says, "Well, Chris, are you gonna advise me at some point?"

Now, understand that my dad was the penny-pinching, like cheap son-of-a-gun type of saver, right? This guy was like Depression-era mentality. This guy is the kind of guy that Dave Ramsey would look up to. You know, stuffing money in his 401k, paid off all his debt in 18 years, including his house. And I’m looking at all these numbers and I said, "Dad, you’re 61 years old. If you wanna retire today, you’re gonna have to die in about five or six years, ’cause that’s when you’re gonna run outta money."

He’s like, "Well, what do I do?"

I’m like, "I don’t know. You did everything right. Uh, all I can say is just work longer, save more. I mean, that’s all you can do, really."

And I was not satisfied with that answer, obviously, because again, I was on the same path that he was on.

Chris Miles: I was the kind of guy that was being cheap. I would turn off the AC in the summer, turn off the heat in the winter to save a few bucks, right? And that just wasn’t working. And just a month later, I’m talking with a friend of mine who I trained to be a financial advisor with me.

He worked for me, but he left to go do real estate investing, and we’re arguing about what’s better: stocks or real estate. And he finally just stops me.

He’s like, "Okay, Chris, let me ask you this question. How many of your clients are actually financially free, where they don’t worry about money all the time?" I said, "Well, even the retired doctors still worried about running outta money too soon or outliving their money."

He says, "Well, great. So none of them got it. How about this, Chris—how many of you guys as financial advisors are financially free, not off the commissions you’re earning, but actually doing these same investments you’ve been recommending?"

And this is in 2005, and I’m thinking about it. I’m like, well, there’s guys working here since the 1970s. I can’t see them quitting anytime soon either. They seem pretty dang broke. So I would say none. He’s like, "There’s your problem."

And I started going down this whole rabbit hole of alternative investments and real estate investing, and not just buying a rental property—that was the easy thing that everybody thought of—but I didn’t realize, wait, I could lend my money to real estate investors and make 1% a month or more. Back in 2006 especially, they were paying all kinds of crazy returns back then.

And, uh, you know, so I could do all these kinds of things. And what would happen is not only did I quit being a financial advisor ’cause I couldn’t keep teaching something that I didn’t believe in anymore,

I just vowed to do, you know, uh, mortgages, a little bit of stock trading on the side. And I taught ballroom dancing as well, uh, part-time. So I was doing that. But I wanted to, again, figure out how you could actually get outta the rat race. And I literally did it in 2006. I actually had enough money coming in that I didn’t have to keep working anymore. And that blew my mind. I was 28 years old, almost 29. I wasn’t sure what to do with my life.

And so in 2007, I came out of "retirement," quote-unquote, you know, to coach people to do what they did. I partnered with some other partners and stuff, and we were gonna save the world right as a recession hit. And then recession hit—and I went broke. During that time, I went from millionaire to like, on welfare, pretty much. Literally on welfare.

I was over a million dollars in debt. I didn’t go bankrupt ’cause I refused to go bankrupt if they didn’t force me to it. But still, it was a pretty big hole to climb out of. Luckily, I stopped teaching people how to get out of the rat race, ’cause I was now back in it. I can’t teach something I’m not doing.

I started teaching people how to find and free up cash. Especially chiropractors and dentists. Tons of ’em. On average, we saved them something like $3,500 to $4,000 a month in cash flow. On the high end, even sometimes like $200,000 a year. Not even investing—just finding ways to find cash, you know, pay off debt or be creative with it, free up money on taxes. I had one chiropractic coach that freed up $50,000 a year in taxes.

Chris Miles: He’s like, "Okay, I’m pretty much crying now." I’m not sure if it was out of pain because his accountant cost him so much money, or if it was out of joy because he doesn’t have to pay that extra $50,000. But just things like that to find and free cash. And as a result, I started to pull outta my debt hole too and started to pay that back.

Finally, uh, you know, I even launched Money Ripples in 2012. I split off from those other partners. And then 2016—December, to be exact—I realized, I looked at my numbers. I said, "Wait, I did it again. I have enough passive income coming in that I could literally—I’m work optional. I work because I want to, not ’cause I have to." And that’s exactly what we teach at Money Ripples, is how do you find and free that cash?

How do you actually increase your passive income to the point that you literally work by choice? Because I can’t tell you how many docs I talk to, they were saying, "You know, honestly, I don’t really want to quit." Like, 2020 was a really telling tale for a lot of docs because either they said, "I want outta this practice now, let’s sell it," or, "I don’t think I want to sell my practice. I just don’t wanna have to be, you know, chained to it. I wanna be able to maybe just work, operate outta like two, three days a week, just enough to feel fulfilled, and then I can have my free time."

And that’s really what we do, is we help people become work optional where they actually can do it. We strategize and connect ’em with those deals. And rather than you try to figure out how to do it on your own and then mess it up, and then you lose hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars investing in bad things, we actually help people do it in a way that they can do it within five or ten years easily.

Dr. Eric Block: And I’ll just give you an example of, uh, a pretty classic case right now. Especially with the amount of debt that, you know, the young dentists are coming out with. Mm-hmm. They’re probably coming out with $400,000 worth of debt, and then, you know, they want to buy and invest in a practice—that could be another $500,000, right? Buy a house, then get married. I mean, you could easily be in one to $1.5 million in debt, you know, pretty quickly. Um, what, what, what do you say to those young dentists out there?

Chris Miles: I see it all the time. The biggest thing you’re battling is not the money. It’s what’s going on in your head. You know, the fears, the self-talk, everything else. You know, one is, be aware of lifestyle creep. Don’t just, like, run up your expenses, you know, just because, "Hey, I’m getting paid more now. Yeah, I’ve got more debt. I’m getting paid more. Let’s get the nice house and get the nice car because I’ve sacrificed for so long." I would hold off a little bit.

It doesn’t mean you get a crappy, you know, piece-of-junk car that doesn’t even drive, right? I’m not saying that. I’m just saying be reasonable with it. But I’ll tell you this: most of the time when we analyze dentist student loans, as an example, or even the business loans, they’re not that bad.

So let me give you an example. Like, a lot of times they’ll see their student loans—like, they’ll say they have a half million. Not too uncommon. See $300,000 to $500,000 in student loans when you come out. Well, that number—like, you might have, say, $500,000 you owe—but if the payment is, say, $3,500 or $4,000 a month, that’s awesome.

Now again, you’re probably looking at the big balance saying, "Oh, this is horrible. This is destroying me." But it’s really not. Because the truth is, if you had a half million dollars and, like I said, "Hey, if I can get a practice and say it is another half million dollars, but that’s starting to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for me," that ROI is way better than paying, say, $45,000 a year in debt, right?

So I always look at things from a cashflow standpoint—like, what’s gonna give me the most profit?

Even if somebody could pay off their student loan debt and they try to aggressively pay it off—do not aggressively pay off your student loans. Pay the minimum payments. Pay what you’ve gotta pay, but keep the cash on hand. It is so, so important.

I learned this the hard way in the last recession. I would’ve thought I could just throw my money into paying down my house. If I ever needed the equity out of it, I’ll just either, one, do a cash-out refinance, or two—I didn’t want to—but I’d go, "I could always sell."

But when the recession hit, they stopped letting you get cash-out refinances. And then by the time I finally decided, "Okay, I’m gonna sell my dream home," guess what? Values had dropped so much I couldn’t even sell the property anymore. Right?

So don’t lock your money up in prison.

Chris Miles: Don’t lock up in those 401(k)s. And I know that’s kind of against what a lot of people teach, but the truth is, it’s like locking your money away in those things just aren’t worth it. You know, like you wanna make sure you have that liquid cash on hand where you can get to the point you could pay off that debt at any time—but you may not still, right?

You might have—and I’ve learned this the hard way too—don’t just build up enough money to say, "Great, now I’m gonna pay off all my debt," and then have zero savings. Dangerous. Don’t ever do that.

Make sure you have at least—I would say, as a dentist—at least 12 months of personal expenses at home in reserves. And then in your practice, minimum two months of operating expenses, right? Mm-hmm. That you have just in case we have another global shutdown like we had, where you were no longer—you were non-essential.

Unless you’re doing emergency cases. Yeah, you don’t wanna be in that place again. And so you wanna make sure you have liquid cash on hand.

So don’t get so hyperfocused on trying to pay off that debt. Get more focused on: how can I build up to get my first $100,000 in my hands? Right? In my control—not in a 401(k)—but in a savings account, even if worst case. Or how do I get it to like a couple hundred thousand, even half a million, or even over a million?

Focus on that first. And you’ll realize you’ll feel so much more free and abundant than someone who’s just trying to throw every little dime they have on that student loan, where the payment doesn’t go down anyways if you keep throwing extra toward it. So just build up that cash to have more than enough to eventually pay off that loan—if it makes sense—versus where you could invest it, maybe make more money to pay off that loan for you.

Dr. Eric Block: And now, exactly—can you tell me what Money Ripples is? Is it a program, is it a coaching program? Uh, how does that work?

Chris Miles: We do one-on-one coaching. Um, so we actually work with you, you know, kinda like what you hope a financial advisor would do—but not try to pitch you the same crap, right? Because financial advisors will always pitch you the mutual funds, the IRAs and 401(k)s and Roth IRAs, and they’ll pitch you annuities and things like that, or insurances. That’s all they do. That’s ’cause that’s all they’re licensed to do.

We don’t gamble on Wall Street—especially right now with the stock market so overly, like, ridiculously high. It’s prime for a crash right now. So instead of trying to gamble your money with them—and then they get paid whether you make money or not, which I think is BS—we actually have you invest outside of Wall Street. So we show you places where you can go with that one.

We do analyze the cash flow, figure out how do you find and free up cash like we talked about. Like, can we save money outta taxes? Can we restructure your debt and do some things that free up money without money coming outta your pocket—or very little coming outta your pocket—right? Things like that too.

But then we look at, great, you have this cash, where can you invest it? Start generating some passive income so that you get to the point where you literally have all your monthly bills covered—that you are financially independent. And the younger you start, the better.

I mean, if you can get that done by the time you’re in your thirties or forties—man, so few dentists and orthodontists ever get to that place where they could say, "You know what? I don’t even need to sell my practice to be financially free. I’m there right now." That’s the key. So that’s what we help people do.

Dr. Eric Block: How would you create, uh, for a dentist—you know, let’s say they’re just, you know, a couple years out, mm-hmm—either they’re working as an associate for someone else or they’re looking to buy their own practice, they’re so focused on that. What’s your—how would you create multiple streams of, of passive income now?

Chris Miles: You know, in that stage, I probably wouldn’t. Mm-hmm. I might actually advise to stay focused on the practice, you know, because if you really are building that practice—I mean, I was looking at it like this, and I learned this lesson from one of my brother-in-laws. He came from a family that was self-made millionaires. His dad actually was homeless at 16, became a millionaire at 21. This is in the 1960s.

And so I remember talking with him—in fact, I was a financial advisor at the time—and I was trying to sell him on being one of my clients. ‘Cause I figured if I get in with him, I get in with the whole rich family.

Well, I talked to him. He says, “Okay, Chris, let me understand this. I give you 10 grand to invest right now. You’re saying you could put it in a mutual fund, you might make me 12%.”

I was like, “Well, there’s no guarantees, but that’s what the market’s done since 2000 B.C.” Which is not true—it hadn’t. I thought it did, and then I found out otherwise. It’s like 8% is the average for the market, not 12.

But I told him, I was like, “Yeah, 12%.” He’s like, “Well, okay, Chris, well that 10 grand makes $1,200 a year. But Chris, I can take that same 10 grand, I can invest that in my business, and I can make $10,000 in a couple months profit. So why would I invest with you?”

“Well, you should be diversified. You shouldn’t put all your eggs in that one basket. Besides, business is risky.” Ironic that I owned a business myself that literally was trying to sell him to invest with me, right?

And that was a big lesson. Now, he sent me away with my tail between my legs. He’s like, “Yeah, thanks, Chris. Goodbye.” But I learned a good lesson, because especially early on, when you’re trying to really get your practice to a point of stability, you’ve gotta really focus on getting that to be profitable. That should be your number one goal.

So think of it like phases, right? Almost like when you’re playing a video game—you have different levels. You have easy bosses, but you eventually get harder and harder, but you also get better and better weapons along the way. I always think Zelda when I think of this.

But you know, as you do that, the first phase is just: focus on the practice. Get it profitable. Build it up—marketing and everything else. All the energy goes there. You don’t even worry about investing. All you wanna do is just keep saving some of the profits and keeping that money, you know, both in the practice and at home. Do that.

Then as you start to get to a place of stabilization in your practice and a point where now you have some systems, and maybe you have another associate doc in place, things like that—now you’re gonna say, “Okay, cool. I’ve got a lot of money set on the side. I feel better about my practice. It’s growing, but now it’s not so much labor-intensive.” Now we start looking at investing. And that’s when we look at multiple streams of income.

And that’s where I look at things that are usually real estate-backed—that have some sort of real asset backing it up. For example, we have a lot of docs that will do lending, or they’ll lend their money out to real estate investors. You do nothing. You’re hands-off. I always look at hands-off investing. I don’t like the active investing stuff. So hands-off—you lend them the money, but you’re also on the property.

So just like when you have a mortgage on your house, if you don’t pay your mortgage payment, the bank takes the house away from you. Same thing—if that investor doesn’t pay you, you take the house away from them if you had to. Which means you not only get your money back, but probably a lot more because you did it for less. Not the ideal situation, but again, that’s where you can actually make double-digit returns—usually 10–12% a year just lending your money out.

You can get rentals, although they’re not very good right now. But you can do things where you might buy rentals in another part of the country. See, I live in the western half of the U.S. Rentals out here are horrible. But out in the Southeast, for example, or a little bit of the Midwest, rentals are better—if you find the right ones.

And again, I find a property manager so I don’t have to manage the property myself. So somebody’s there managing it for me.

I have a raw land partnership where literally they’re buying and selling raw land. I’ve put about a half million or so into that so far in the last four years, and it’s kicking off about $12,600 a month. You know, like that’s over, what, $150,000 or so a year, right?

So I mean, things like that that you can actually do that allow you to be hands-off. Oil and gas—I do things with oil and gas, but again, I’m not drilling it. I’m not doing anything. I don’t even have to find the wells. They’re doing it all. I’m just being the financer. Mm-hmm.

So that’s the next phase you get into as you start to really stabilize the practice and you start to feel like, “Okay, now I don’t have to be in it as much.” Now you start moving to this.

And I’ll give you a warning too, ’cause many docs get caught in always reinvesting in their business. This is a rat race in and of itself. This is where docs get trapped until their sixties and seventies, ’cause they keep thinking, “Well, my best investment is my practice. I gotta reinvest in that and reinvest and reinvest.”

And it’s not that you don’t reinvest, but if you’re not careful—if you’re not taking some of the chips off the table, some of your profits from the practice, bringing it home—not to just have a great lifestyle, but to save up and then use that money to create more freedom by creating more passive income—if you’re not doing that, you’re gonna be stuck in that rat race forever.

And I’ve seen way too many dentists do that very same thing, as they get stuck into their sixties and say, “When does it end?” Especially if they’re listening to financial advisors— even worse—because their money’s locked away, and, you know, with a key and everything else, and you can’t even get to it because it’s stuck in your stupid 401(k) in your practice, and you have to pretty much quit your own business to get to your money. Not a good recommendation.

So you gotta be careful, right? You gotta make sure that you’re focusing on creating that balance, right? You know, again, focus on the business—the practice first—but as you get it stabilized, you start to become more profitable, take some of those chips back home so then that money can be used to invest to create passive income.

Dr. Eric Block: And tell me about your concept of infinite banking—how to get your investment money to pay you twice.

Chris Miles: Yeah, that’s a great thing to do, especially as a young dentist, right? If you’re like, “Well, I wanna do something. What do I do with this money?” I don’t wanna sit in the bank earning point-nothing percent, and then they tax me on point-nothing percent. And if you’re a dentist in California, you’re already hating it ’cause you lose half your money to taxes.

So what you wanna do is this: infinite banking. It’s basically using whole life insurance. This is not the same as term life, which is death insurance, where you only have a death benefit and you have to die for anybody to get paid. Whole life insurance has a death benefit, but it also has a tax-free savings account inside of it.

Now, understand—it’s not about the company, it’s about how it’s designed. Most insurance agents—because that’s how they make their money—charge more in fees and insurance costs than you should be paying.

And so this is where we came up with our own method called Max ROI Infinite Banking, which is: this is money we can use. Because this is not only a tax-free savings account, but it’s paying—right now—like 6% a year. So you’re making a much better return than the bank at point-nothing percent, but you’re not getting taxed on it.

And by the way, this is huge for you as a dentist—in most states, this money is 100% protected from lawsuits and creditors. No one can get to it. Even better—especially as you start to think in the future about your kids, you know, your kids maybe want to go to college themselves.

If you’ve ever had parents that were trying to qualify for different types of financial aid for you, you might remember, like, “Oh, well we make too much money, we have too many assets.” This money does not count as an asset when your kids try to go to college. You can have millions here, and they won’t count it. Which means your kids might be able to get better financial aid—saving you more money.

But even better too—on top of that—I can actually have that money showing as proof of reserves. Like, if I’m trying to get a loan even for a practice or for my own house, anytime I try to get a loan they say, “Hey, we want to see proof of cash reserves.” I show them that statement because that money is liquid and available. I can get to that money whenever I want.

So it’s a great place to store your cash, especially as you’re building it up. And when it comes to the point you want to start investing, you can also use it to make money in two places at once. ‘Cause you can actually get a line of credit against it from either a bank or the insurance company that’s at a low rate, but they’re still paying you on your money too.

They’re paying you compounding interest while you pay them simple interest, and you can still invest it and make passive income as well. So it’s kinda like having your cake and eating it too.

Dr. Eric Block: And what about—you have, uh, written down here—the seven secrets to free up cash today and find money you didn’t even know was there?

Chris Miles: Yeah, that’s like where the, uh, all the cash flow stuff came from, you know, in the beginning, like when I was going broke. Uh, so for example—tracking your money. That’s something that so few dentists do, is tracking not just money in your practice—that’s very important too—but also tracking your money at home. How much is coming in, how much is going out. Don’t just focus on what you’re spending. I mean, that’s important, but you gotta focus on what’s coming in as well. Be a wise steward, right?

See, spenders only pay attention to what they’re making, but they ignore what they’re spending, right? Savers hyper-focus on what they’re spending, but don’t really focus on how to make more money. Stewards do both. They wanna control their expenses and they wanna make more money too. They wanna be wise with it. They wanna be able to make more with that in the here and now.

So that’s a big thing that we teach with the cash flow processes: track your money. That’s part of wise stewardship—knowing what’s coming in and going out. How can you increase your income? How can you reduce your expenses without having to cut out all the fun and joy outta your life, right? Those kinds of things.

You know, can we save money on taxes? I mentioned that. You know—debt. Here’s a great one with debt. I use a method I created back in 2008 called the Cash Flow Index. And what I do is I take the balance of that loan and divide it by the monthly payment—the minimum monthly payment—and I’ll get an index. I’ll get a number.

So for example, say that you have two different loans. They’re both $10,000 each. One’s a credit card, one’s a car loan. Let’s just say the credit card—with high interest though—is $10,000, but it’s charging you $200 a month. Well, $10,000 divided by 200 is 50. But let’s just say I have a car loan as well that’s also $10,000, but the payment’s $500 a month. Well, $10,000 divided by 500 is 20.

In that method, I want to pay off the lowest index first—especially if it’s below 40. So in this case, the car gets paid off first—even though it has a lower interest rate—the car would be first, because really, you get a bigger bang for your buck. That $10,000 to free up $500 a month is better than $10,000 to free up only $200 a month, regardless of the interest rate.

Everybody tells you, “You focus on the interest rate,” but that’s not where the power is. The power is: how can I get the biggest bang for my buck if I gotta pay off a loan?

This is why when we start to look at it, we look at student loans and the index is well over 100. I tell people, like, “Hey, if it’s over 100, don’t pay it off.”

By the way—my student loans? I didn’t pay off for 15 years. I paid them down, but I didn’t pay them off for 15 years—until finally the index was like… and I was paying like 3.6%. So I was like, “I’m definitely not paying this off early. Inflation alone is bigger than my student loan payment.”

And so I actually let that thing go on and on until the index was below a 20, and then I finally just paid it off. Mm-hmm. In one lump sum.

But that’s one thing you can actually use to say, “Hey, are there some loans I should be paying off versus others?” It’s not the interest rate. In fact, I tell people, ignore the interest rate—unless the index is a tie. Then you go for the highest interest rate.

Dr. Eric Block: Now, dentists are—you know, we’re notorious for just trying to work harder, um, which can often lead to—you know, dentistry’s a grind. A lot of physical pain, working long hours, um, you know, often injuries—neck pain, back pain, you name it, it can happen. Tell me about what’s the real price of hard work, especially, you know, when it comes to a dentist that, you know, maybe they’re thinking they have to practice for 40 years and they’re gonna grind it out.

Chris Miles: That’s so true. I mean, I even hear this with orthodontists. They’re just like—I mean, I’ll tell you, orthodontists seem to burn out by 40, and by their late thirties, they’re already ready to retire. You know, and dentists might go a little bit longer, but you’re right. Like, it takes a huge toll on your body.

I would almost say comparable to when I’ve worked with construction workers, right? Usually by the time you hit your fifties, your body’s about ready to be toast—unless you’re taking really good care of it.

I mean, one—yeah, definitely take good care of your body. But two—I think this is why you want to become, and put a focus on becoming, work optional as soon as possible. This is why you want to create passive income. Because you want to at least get to the point where you can say, “You know what? I could be hustling five days a week and burning myself out…”

And everybody, you know, has this dream of getting an associate doc in to do some of the work—and that’s not bad. The problem is, though, is usually there’s a lot of other headaches that go along with having a team that you may or may not want.

And so for you, the big thing is: how can I get myself to be able to reduce my hours while still doing what I love? Right? And then that’s—that’s ultimately the goal. How do we spend more time doing what we love? How do we get more time with the family?

Right now, I have eight kids between my wife and I—between our two marriages—and almost all of our kids, other than some that are, like, you know, one’s 21… all of our kids are in their teens right now. And very soon—you’re gonna see this, as I’ve already started to see it myself—as they’re starting to empty nest, they’re gone. Right? Like, you’ve lost that time.

So you don’t wanna squander that. Especially in that field. It doesn’t mean you quit, but it does mean like, let’s buy your freedom—that time freedom—as much as we can. Because that will actually help your body last longer.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. Yep. Um, and a lot of what you’ve been discussing today does remind me of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, and maybe I’m totally off on this. Uh, I’m not sure if you’ve, you know, had comparisons, but how do you differ from that philosophy?

Chris Miles: Yeah, and there’s definitely a lot of similarities to that Rich Dad Poor Dad book, for sure. Um, I like to tell people, I’m like, Rich Dad Poor Dad actually shows you how to do it. Mm-hmm. You know, uh, I think that’s a big difference, ’cause he talks about a lot of concepts—and it’s good, because you have to expand your mind to be open to that philosophy of cash flow now versus accumulating money forever.

But where it does differ is in a few different ways. Um, one, he talks a lot about being an active investor. I find, at least with my kind of people—my tribe—we don’t want to be the one doing all the work. We don’t wanna be the one dealing with tenants, the toilets, and the trash, right? We don’t wanna have to deal with that kind of stuff.

We’d rather be the ones that could be hands-off and let our money do the work versus us doing the work ourselves. And that’s the big, big difference. It’s really—I’m more of a hands-off investor.

I know he’s not always opposed to Wall Street. I am. Even though I was a trader—I was a stock trader—I taught 200 people how to trade stocks and options themselves. I was a financial advisor. And yet, I’m kind of anti a lot of the stock market stuff that’s going on because I don’t like to gamble with my money. Mm-hmm.

So, uh, I’m very much about low risk creates high returns. You know, so there are a few differences there, but a lot of it is similar.

My new book—you’ll notice that with the new book, The Work Optional Blueprint, that just released—we do talk about a lot of those things. But again, we go more granular. We go more into: how can we improve your life from a day-to-day basis? How do we create that cash flow now—not just talk about it and give it lip service, but actually do it.

Dr. Eric Block: I’m gonna wrap up with, uh, a few final questions. Um, number one, how do we find out more about what you’re up to?

Chris Miles: Yeah, anything Money Ripples—whether that’s moneyripples.com.  We have our Money Ripples podcast—we just, uh, released our 1000th episode recently. Um, we’ve got also the, um, um, app Money Ripples on social media. I mean, anywhere you follow—just look up Money Ripples.

Dr. Eric Block: Um, second-to-final question—the skeptical dentists out there that hear what you’re saying and they just don’t think that this is possible. What, what’s your advice to them?

Chris Miles: If you wanna make more money—especially in your practice—stop asking, “How do I make more money?” Focus on: how do I go about creating more value? How do I serve people? How do I solve problems for them? How do I, you know, master my craft and my trade?

Do that—but don’t stop there. Eventually, it’s not just about dollars following value. It then becomes: how do I communicate that value to others?

You need to become a great communicator. You need to become a great marketer. ‘Cause the truth is that you’re not a dentist—you’re in the business of marketing your dental business. And the sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll create freedom from your practice and also create freedom financially too.

Dr. Eric Block: Oh, that’s great, man. Chris Miles, thank you so much for joining us. Such a great episode.

Chris Miles: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

Dr. Eric Block: Thanks again for listening to the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast. And don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at thestressfreedentist.com.  And if you haven’t already, please subscribe on your favorite platform and leave us a review.

Until the next episode, I’m Dr. Eric Block, the Stress-Free Dentist.