Miles Beckler: The Money Systems Behind His Wealth

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly edited for readability, it may contain errors.

[0:00] Sammie Ellard-King: My name is Sammie Ellard-King, and welcome to the Money Gains Podcast. We’re a show all about making, saving, and investing your money, interviewing the top minds in the industry to uncover their tips and tricks to success. And today I welcome a guest from over the pond. His name is Miles Beckler. And my God, this man is an absolute expert in growing wealth and building digital assets, making money online. It was legit a masterclass. Honestly, might be up there with the best episodes that we’ve ever done. So you’re in for a real treat today. But for now, let’s get started on the Money Gains Podcast.

[0:56] Sammie Ellard-King: So, Miles, welcome to the Money Gains Podcast, man. It’s great to have you here. How are you doing?

[0:59] Miles Beckler: Thanks, Sammie. I’m happy to be here. It’s been fun to watch you and your growth and your evolution. And I’m really grateful for this chance to kind of um chat and banter about some of these lesser talked-about things that I think ultimately make all of the difference in the world for people.

[1:14] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%, man. I’ve got to say it to you. Like, I have been a Miles Beckler fan for many, many years. Like when I was first starting out and like creating my own business, your channel was like gold, man. So uh yeah, my little tip of my hat, thank you for uh getting us to this point. You’ve been definitely a big part of that journey. But I really wanted to talk to you today about um your personal finance side of what you do, because obviously, you know, you’re deep in the in the marketing sphere, absolutely, but you’re extremely passionate about this side as well. And uh I think it’s gonna be an amazing conversation. But obviously, we’ve got a lot of listeners here that perhaps won’t know who you are, and so we’ll do the standard, like bring us up to speed. Yeah.

[1:57] Miles Beckler: Yeah, I’ll do it quickly as well, just so we can get into the kind of the uh the meat and potatoes, if you will, or the bangers and mash, if you will. Um so I grew up in a working class poor family, right? My family rented houses all growing up, and I grew up in the San Francisco area. So I watched other families around me who bought houses for $30,000, you know. And by the time I was done with high school, those houses were worth $750,000 or $900,000. And my parents missed out on that entire kind of like um inflation protection. I don’t even know exactly wealth building, maybe kind of. So that at the age of 18 got me really motivated to figure out this money game, right? No one else in my family figured it out. I’m taking it upon myself to figure this out. And along the journey, I learned about entrepreneurship. I learned about real estate. These

[2:42] Miles Beckler: are two things that just about every wealthy family does in one way, shape, or form is they own businesses and they own real property in this world. And so it just sent me on this trajectory to just go full speed ahead and figure this all out. Um, I lost everything flipping houses into the global financial crisis back in 2008. That got me to shift my focus over to digital products, to digital businesses and to digital assets because I could build them from nothing with no money because I was flat broke, and we could travel the world while building them. And then once my wife and I kind of collabed on a niche site in the meditation space and that thing started generating extra cash flow, I was able to kind of work my way back into that investor mode and back into real estate from there. Um, started that business in 09. I’ve been

[3:27] Miles Beckler: full-time online since 2010, and we’ve done something to the tune of six or seven million dollars in revenue at this point in time over all of the different businesses.

[3:37] Sammie Ellard-King: Okay, so I didn’t know that you had the real estate going before and basically had to hit zero. Were you working in a job before that to kind of fund that? How did that work?

[3:47] Miles Beckler: I was in the dorms. So I went to call, I went to university. Um I’ll try to use British terms. So I went to uni and uh I chose to go to a uni that was in a very low cost of living area, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Um, because I grew up in a very high cost of living area and I was like, man, I got to get into real estate. I can’t afford an $800,000 house. So I just literally I had never been there. I knew you could get a house for about $100,000 at the time. This was like 04, 05. And from the dorms, I started learning about real estate investing. I found a group of investors that met regularly locally in Albuquerque. So I just started showing up. I started meeting people, learning the game, and I wholesaled a couple of houses. I flipped a couple of contracts, I started working with other people’s money, the whole zero money down

[4:32] Miles Beckler: thing that ended up collapsing because so many other people were doing that. Uh, but that’s where I learned kind of like how to find deals, how real estate deals work, the different the various creative real estate financing opportunities. Um I thought I was gonna parlay, as in take the profits from one deal, put it in the next deal, take those profits into the next deal. And I was gonna be able to pay off all my student loans because here in America, we’d love to, you know, uh ladle our students with uh extreme amounts of debt. But then we lost $60,000 on the last house, and I had a $50,000 student loan debt. And that was a very uh that was a dark night of the soul, my man. And I think that every really truly successful entrepreneur has had some sort of um bankruptcy, or you just you just you just get down to the the bottom, right?

[5:17] Miles Beckler: You you just know, and then you get to the point where you’re like, okay, like like it all, it all went to zero and I’m still alive. I still have love, I still have my health, I’m I’m okay. Let’s do it again, right? And then I picked myself up for my bootstraps and I realised I didn’t want to be all in on these very large, very expensive. You can’t move them. They’re uh, you know, real estate is at the whims of the parliament or the government and the interest rates and the things they choose. So that’s when I was like, okay, so real estate is a component within my greater strategy, but I don’t want to be reliant on it for the cash flow I need to live because I didn’t feel like it was that um reliable. So that was when I really made the shift over to kind of like the digital world and I put real estate in the investment

[6:02] Miles Beckler: side of things instead of trying to be like a real estate professional who earned cash flow from real estate.

[6:08] Sammie Ellard-King: Okay, really interesting because that’s exactly why I wanted to take this conversation today, which is like around the multiple income streams route, because you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head there. Like you realise that from that one income stream that you had, and it goes up Shits Creek without a paddle, suddenly you’re like, right, uh, I’m pretty yeah, like I can’t do that, right? And it’s the same for someone like sitting here listening to this right now, the boss turns around to them tomorrow and has a bad day, and they get fired and they have nothing else, and they have no emergency pot, no investments, no real estate to back that up. Like, that’s pretty scary, right?

[6:46] Miles Beckler: Yeah, and it’s it’s all too common. So my father worked for the same corporation for 33 years. He was in the newspaper industry, and two years before his full retirement vesting means he gets like the highest amount of retirement. Two years before that, they fired him and they brought in some new college student who they were able to pay less. Uh so they forced him into early retirement. And that was one of those moments when I was like, I can’t trust the old system. Like the old system is broken, and the old system will replace me immediately with AI today. Or uh in my day, it was, you know, they’ll outsource me to the Philippines and because it’s cheaper. So I kind of realised like I have to figure out like there, there is no option. I can’t rely on the system. If I rely on the system, I’m setting myself up for some sort of catastrophic failure that’s outside of my control. And like you can’t build a lifestyle you

[7:31] Miles Beckler: love with that looming over your head at all times.

[7:35] Sammie Ellard-King: So, like, let’s say like someone’s listening to this going, hey Miles, like, yeah, that sounds great, but like, you know, what does that actually mean? Like, how do I even kind of unpack that and start even sort of going right put this plan in place because they’re just paid a nine to five at the moment and they don’t know what the hell to do.

[7:52] Miles Beckler: Right. So the the biggest one of the biggest ideas or concepts that hit me when I was younger is the concept of assets versus liabilities. And this is something my family just didn’t understand. Like these two terms are very simple. And straight out of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, right? I got that book when I was 18. I asked for it for Christmas. Because again, I knew I had to figure things out that none of my family members knew, and they just didn’t take time to read the books. And so he he kind of like summarizes, and this is my summary of his summary um, assets are things that put money into your pocket, liabilities are things that take money out of your pocket. Wealthy people collect assets, poor people spend all of their money on liabilities. And that one distinction right there was kind of that that opening framework that opened my mind to this whole world of like, oh, collecting assets. So that’s when my brain was like, I got to get

[8:37] Miles Beckler: into real estate, I got to buy these assets. I need to find ways to get hundreds of thousands of dollars, or if we’re using banks, maybe 20 grand to get a $100,000 property or whatever. Um, but then I also learned you could build assets. You can build a blog, you can build a social media profile, you can grow an email list. And these are also assets, they’re very tangible assets. People buy and sell social platforms and brands, and these digital assets get bought and sold all of the time. I’ve sold domain names, just literally just the URL. I sold one domain name for over $8,000 at one point in my career. Um, so then it was like, okay, so there’s this whole world of assets, and then there’s this whole world of liabilities. So many of the gurus are flexing their liabilities. Like, look at my Lambo, look at all my fancy things, look at this

[9:22] Miles Beckler: private jet I’m flying on. And when I started to realise, like, oh my gosh, like, like there are people in this world who earn 400,000 pounds a year, 800,000 pounds a year, and they’re fucking broke. Like they’re spending it all, right? Like they’re earning 400,000 pounds a year and they’re spending 413,000 pounds per year, and they somehow end up net negative 13,000. Like, and it absolutely broke my mental model. And it was like, this is the thing my family never understood. And then so once I realised that, it was like, okay, like how do I build? Because I was broke. I mean, I was broke. I had $50,000 in student loan debt. I was working just the worst customer support jobs, getting yelled at on the phone for like $20 per hour. But I just spent my nights and weekends instead of going to the pub, going to happy hours, going to barbecues, I spent my nights and weekends building assets, one

[10:07] Miles Beckler: piece of content at a time. Um, eventually those assets cash flowed. And then so once you get that, there’s a loop, right? So now I’m I’m building assets that generate cash flow. A lot of the cash flow can be automated online. Some people say passive income, but it’s it’s more like automated and recurring income. And then with the income that comes in from these assets, I was living on absolute like the tiniest amount of money possible: beans and rice, cooking out of the crock pot, eating at home every single day, living in the cheapest, ghettoist neighborhood I could because I was living in a house that I was flipping, and all of my extra money went into more assets, into more assets. And this is how you can kind of create this um upward spiral where your cash flow from wherever it’s coming from goes into assets. And then you have your cash flow from your job or whatever your cash flow

[10:52] Miles Beckler: is, but then your assets start generating cash flow and you can buy more assets with the cash flow from both of those, and it really creates this kind of virtuous cycle where you grow the amount of assets that you own and that you have. Um, and then from there, there’s a lot of questions about which assets are right and cash flowing assets versus non-cash flowing assets, and that’s a whole another rabbit hole. But the the framework, the core of it is are you wasting all of your money on liabilities that take things out of your pocket? Like a hot rod GT3 Porsche would be fun, but do you know how much an oil change costs on that? Do you know how much brakes are for an AMG Mercedes? Like I was looking at a G Wagon, a G550 uh Mercedes G Wagon. The brakes on that thing, a full brake job with with calipers and everything, uh like $15,000, $20,000

[11:38] Miles Beckler: for brakes. Whereas I could just keep driving my pickup that I’ve had for several years that’s gonna run until it has 300,000 miles on it, and it cost me literally like nothing to drive. So then I can spend all of that extra money on rental properties, on digital assets, on Bitcoin, on dividend-paying stocks, et cetera, et cetera.

[11:56] Sammie Ellard-King: Okay, okay, cool. We’ve we’ve we’ve jumped the gun a little bit there because we’ve mentioned like some serious, like serious tactics in play. I suppose if you’re sitting there nine to five now, like what how do you figure out like what’s the next step for you? Is it just like opening a opening, you know, we have a 401k or a Roth IRA in the US, but like like is it just that first? And like or is that a trap? Where do you where do you go?

[12:25] Miles Beckler: Yeah, or are those things that is that a trap, right? Is my 401k jail for my money that I can’t actually touch until I’m 60s, right? Like I can’t use that money. Yeah, we do have another um uh investment vehicle in the United States called an IRA, and you can do what’s called a self-directed IRA, and I can actually invest my self-directed IRA into real estate. Aha, right? So um, I like to maintain control. The first thing that people do is audit yourself. Where is your money going? Seriously, where is your money going? It’s the most important thing because most people are absolutely oblivious. They don’t know how much money they’re spending on food, they don’t know how much money they’re spending eating out, they don’t realise how much money they’re spending on streaming, on pubs, on all of these other things.

[13:10] Miles Beckler: So the first thing to do is just to like, and it sucks. Like, I’ll be perfectly honest, this is not like fun, but you if you want to gain mastery over your money, you need to understand where it’s flowing, where it’s going out. And then the real trick is to learn how to live on less so you can increase the amount of money that you buy assets with each and every month. Um, and you can’t know how to live on less until you actually start to move this. So, how this worked for me in the early days, because I was I was rubbish with money. I would overdraft my bank accounts, which has fees here in the US, I would bounce checks, because that’s what my family did. That’s how that was the subconscious programming that I had at a very young age. So, what I started to do is I went into my human resources department, um, the people that manage my

[13:55] Miles Beckler: payment and my benefits at the job I was working at. And I went to them and I asked them to divert 20% of my income, my actual take-home pay, into a new bank account. I did not have ATM cards for that. I cut up all of the checks. I fit and the bank was actually in a different town. I grew up in the Bay Area, so the bank was literally on the other side of the Bay. So I would have to drive from my home like 45 minutes each way to go get my hands on the money because I was so bad with money, I had to literally like hide it from myself in a way. And so I put 20% over there, and then all of a sudden, one day I just looked and it was like six grand the next, not the next day, but but you just forget about it because I learned to live on that 80%. I was still going out for happy hours, I was still able to make my car payments, I was

[14:40] Miles Beckler: still able to make rent payments, I learned to live on a little bit less. Whereas when I had 100% of my money, I spent 100%. And then this, then all of a sudden, at one point I remember when I had $10,000 in that account and it was like, oh my lord, like I’m on the path to be able to buy a house because that was my intention, was like, I gotta get into real estate. I thought that was like the ultimate be all end all at that point in my life. How am I ever gonna get there? And so literally, like using some sort of a forcing function mechanism to divert the money out of my normal account that I seem to spend it all in every month. And then I had 80% less. And what did I do? I spent all 80% because that was my habit, but at least I was protecting myself. So, richest man in Babylon, you know, pay yourself first, these kinds of concepts and and just that real deep knowing myself when I did that audit and I looked, I was like,

[15:25] Miles Beckler: man, I’m spending everything like every month. I just it all disappears. Um, you don’t think in that moment, like Moz, I can’t, I can’t live on less. Like, you don’t, you don’t know my situation. I don’t know how it works in this world, I don’t know how it works in this universe. But when I just literally started giving myself less, I was able to fit into it. It’s like the fishbowl adapts or the goldfish adapts to the size of the fishbowl that it’s in. And this is uh an analogy for how I was able to live on less. And so that was like my beginning of a new habit of becoming a saver instead of someone who spends all of their money every single month. And then as a saver, when it gets large, what do you buy with it? Some people go buy fancy cars that have very expensive oil changes because they want to look successful. If you read a book like The Millionaire Next Door, you’ll learn

[16:10] Miles Beckler: that the average millionaire in America, this was a scientific study, drives like a 10, 12-year-old pickup. Mate, I already told you, I got like I have a 2017 pickup. So I have a seven-year-old pickup, right? Why? Because that’s what millionaires do. So I just started to learn by observing and reading what do wealthy people do with their money. And I started to just try to model what they were doing. Um, and yeah, that was kind of like my entrance point to the path as a normal nine to five employee.

[16:38] Sammie Ellard-King: Um

[17:24] Sammie Ellard-King: I love what you said there, man, because we have a I have a system which I teach people three bank system, you struggle with saving, then have your money come into one account, pay yourself first into an account. And because everything’s digitized these days, it’s so easy to swap 20 pounds, 50 pounds over halfway through the month, like clockwork, you do it every month. But then don’t own the app or the card for that bank account. So you physically have to like phone them up, and then just having that block in place will stop you on 95% of the time. And you really need the money, go and get the money, but like you don’t need the money, right? Because you’ve budgeted, you’ve done your audit, and the money comes in, bank number two, all of your direct debts and bills and subscriptions and like fixed costs come out, and then what’s left in bank number one you’ve budgeted

[18:09] Sammie Ellard-King: for is the money. Spend that money, and then don’t spend any more than that because you haven’t got any of it. Because the money in bank three doesn’t exist to you, and if you separate that, it’s a really good system. And so I love that you did you you did that because I had to do that to myself too. I was crap, I was absolute crap, and so I had to like what do I how how do I just stop myself from spending money on a credit card? How do I stop myself money from like loading up these things? The answer is cut them up and like place blockers in place.

[18:36] Miles Beckler: I learned a five bank account system from uh um an audio seminar on Audible called Prosperity Consciousness by a guy named Frederic Lehrman, and it’s kind of outdated, but brilliant. Okay, so you’re familiar with it. Yeah, so and and so that was so once I started separating for myself, I I stumbled upon that Nightingale Conant um seminar, and that got me because he’s got the play account, because you you we we need to honor that we still need to go out and play. So so some of what comes in can go into the play account, the long-term savings and spending account, the forever wealth account, and like it it really by using this kind of discipline and and operating with discipline in this manner, um, you start to feel good because you start to get the results, and you like all of a sudden I have an emergency fund. All of a sudden something went wrong on my car, and I was actually able to pay for my own price. And I have to like call my dad

[19:21] Miles Beckler: at the age of 22 and be like, dad, like, you know, like and this builds confidence, and these are the little wins, right? And one of the truths about winners is winners just win and we keep winning. And it’s not big wins, it’s little wins. We make lots of little wins and we keep that momentum behind us, and then you start to feel really, really good. Um, and it’s just it again, it’s it becomes a virtuous cycle. And uh I love the fact that you and I both started from this point of being just absolute rubbish with it, which I think 99% of people are. And we were able to build new habits and we were able to implement systems, and just by doing that and then relying on them and sticking with them over long periods of time, massive change is is caused by these little habits over long periods of time.

[20:05] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, 100%. I put out a video yesterday saying I’m gonna have X amount in retirement, and people lost their absolute minds. And uh like that was me being conservative as well, and that was also just from investing. And people were like, How is that even possible? I’m like, it’s totally possible for you too. That’s the point of me doing this video, right? To show you what is actually available when you put your mind to it, because I’m just an everyday guy, just like you. And look, look what happens, and I’m gonna be in that position in 30 years’ time, but I’m also now in a comfortable position after just eight, nine years of doing this, right? So, like that’s the damage you can make if you just go through exactly what Miles said right there. And it’s literally just laid out for you. If you put that into practice in six, seven years’

[20:50] Sammie Ellard-King: time, life looks very, very different.

[20:53] Miles Beckler: And a lot of people will hear the six, seven years time thing and be like, oh, I don’t have time for that. And da-da-da. But like the truth is the next six or seven years of your life are gonna happen anyways. And in the digital marketing stuff and what I teach is I’m like, mate, just start publishing content, right? Just start because six or seven years are gonna pass anyways. And if you’ve been publishing, so I did something like 800 YouTube videos in the course of like seven years, give or take. Um I could have just not, I could have been lazy. I could have not published those videos, but doing that created yet another asset that’s generated additional cash flow. And it’s like small, right? After 90 videos, I had like 150 subscribers. Most people look at that and like, oh, this stuff doesn’t work. But the results compound over time. And our brains, our human brains, have a

[21:39] Miles Beckler: really difficult time understanding exponential growth. We understand linear growth very well. One, two, three, four, five. We’re taught that as a kid, right? But one, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty, two, sixty-four, one twenty-eight, whoo, this the exponential growth, a consistent doubling. If you take a penny that doubles every day for 30 years, or for 30 days, excuse me, you end up with like millions of dollars from a penny that doubles every day. That’s the power of compounding. Um, and so giving knowing when people are like, oh mate, like six years, wow. But when you get to the six-year mark, if you’re making small, consistent actions over time, you’ve got this giant snowball of momentum behind you that

[22:24] Miles Beckler: starts with something as simple as putting 25 pounds away per week into this other account or putting 50 pounds a week into this other account. Um, it just it it I I I barely can explain it, but I’ve seen it happen in my life in so many lives that it’s just I trust it fully now, which is why I just keep looking for ways to how do I put more of my money into these compounding machines at this point.

[22:45] Sammie Ellard-King: It becomes addictive, doesn’t it? Like I I and I would say that, like, even in three years, last month we did more than I made in a year of my job before, and that’s like the compounding effect after three years of building digital assets, right? So, like, that’s what’s possible in that sphere. And what does that look like after 18 months, 24 months? It looks like job replacement income for a lot of people, and that was me getting up at five o’clock in the morning, doing five till nine, going doing my job, coming home, saying hello to the missus, then going back to work again till you know, I basically my eyes wouldn’t stay open anymore. And I did that for I did that for a year and a bit, had a little bit of burnout. Yeah, absolutely. But guess what? I was then making money my job replacement income plus my

[23:30] Sammie Ellard-King: income, funneling all of that into building more assets, looking for more opportunities, and then suddenly it’s like pushing the snowball off the hill. And then you you you have you’ve got choices at that point.

[23:42] Miles Beckler: Choices, options. That’s the it’s just that’s what it’s all about. Because most people feel stuck and they’re stuck because of all the choices and decisions they’ve made in the past. When you spend all your money every month, you’re stuck in that job. You can’t leave. But when you’ve got 12 months of uh if you’ve got 12 months in an emergency fund and you’ve got a budding little digital business that’s making 900 pounds, 1200 pounds per month, you have options. And and you, you, I’ve seen people pull the pin and say, you know what, boss man, I’m done. You know, you you have more options. I did it. I did it. Exactly. Right. And that to me, and that’s kind of what wealth really is, right? I measure wealth in time. How many years can I go without ever having to work again? That’s how wealthy I am. It’s not a net asset value number. It’s not the multimillionaire number, it’s none of those things. It’s how long can I go without ever

[24:27] Miles Beckler: having to work again in my life? Because I don’t believe any human being came on this planet to literally work all day, every day for 40 years. I mean, here in America, we have we have some serious workaholic issues, right? Um, you know, we take the least amount of holiday travel vacation time out of just about anywhere. Um, the the sickness rates and the challenges we have physically from the ailments, from all of this kind of overworking is uh crippling to a large portion of our population here. But at the same time, just with starting to make different choices, with starting to think differently, with learning new terminology, right? Like I just literally didn’t know what an asset was versus a liability was. And I didn’t realise I was spending all my money on liabilities and what that means. And so it’s it’s a process of self-education and then self-experimentation to

[25:12] Miles Beckler: find the process that works for you. Um, and then from there, consistent habits over time. Um, another thing I found is, you know, I work out, I’ve got a big garden,

[26:29] Miles Beckler: I’m harvesting strawberries and berries here. I paddleboard, I camp. So many I hike all the I hike dozens, if not hundreds of miles every winter for my winter home down in the southwest. And and so many of the things that I love to do that just bring me to a state of joy, that make me feel alive, they’re damn near free. Like, really, truly hiking, go park at a trailhead and go hike for four miles in a national forest here. Like I live near one, so that there was an expensive, but like like we don’t, I don’t feel compelled to do expensive things to make me feel good. I actually can feel really good hiking in nature, paddleboarding, camping with my wife. And these are very inexpensive things to do, um, which allows us to funnel more money into those assets that generate more cash flow that creates this kind of positive snowball.

[27:15] Sammie Ellard-King: You’re so right. Like the things that I’ve put back in my life once I got to that point are all things that are literally to do with like getting out with the dog and finding a new trail to like go and walk with him and or uh working with the PT to like increase my health and these things, yeah. Okay, I pay for the PT, but like I could just could just do it in my garden. I like getting shouted at because I need I need that I need that account of the stuff. Know thyself, right? Yeah, exactly. So uh you know, I know I’ll do five reps while he’ll make me do 12. So that’s the that’s the difference. So um, but their interest is interesting that actually all the things that bring me joy, like I’m looking at a hiking trip in Switzerland because I just want to be with nature. I want to go and see the mountains. Like that’s that’s my thing. Like I so I I I resonate

[28:00] Sammie Ellard-King: with what you said there quite a bit because I can actually see how that is value. But if I was stuck in my nine to five, those things wouldn’t be happening and I wouldn’t have been able to have been able to bring choice. So obviously we’ve mentioned like building digital assets quite a bit, but I want to talk about this. If someone’s listening going, yeah, but I don’t want to do that, um, like do you feel like anyone can do it? Anyone can run their own business? Is this a path that reserved for few many?

[28:28] Miles Beckler: Like Yeah. So I used to think that anyone could do it. Like, and I used to actually think that I was on this planet to help everyone do it, break free from the corporation and set yourself. But what I now realise is there are personality types in our world. Like we need operations officers within our businesses. I need people who run media and who can run Facebook ads for my business. Like, like businesses need great employees. So there is kind of this almost like overlap where you can be uh some mashup of an employee entrepreneur, right? And you can take a very entrepreneurial approach to your job to find new revenue streams for your business, to find new avenues for monetisation

[29:14] Miles Beckler: within your business, to find ways to add value to your company, to their customers. And oftentimes, this will allow you to make more money. Because, like, my my philosophy on business is extremely simple. You can have anything you want in this world if you help enough other people get what they want. That’s an old Zig Ziglar quote. And we, as digital entrepreneurs, we help people get what they want through content, through courses, through trainings, et cetera. But even major corporations are helping people get what they want, right? Like REI is an outdoor company here in the United States, and they help people who want to go hike to get the right shoes, to get the right backpack, to get the right things. And there’s a way for someone to improve how that corporation delivers value, how many people

[29:59] Miles Beckler: that corporation reaches, and how much value that corporation brings to the world at large. So there’s always a path to expanding one’s value in the world. And when we expand the amount of value we bring to the world or to the marketplace, there’s a natural, some people call it the law of attraction. It flows back. Now, it might not flow back from your a-hole boss who doesn’t see you and get you, but you might actually build up the courage to switch jobs to a smaller little startup that gives you more flexibility, that allows you to be a bit more entrepreneurial, that maybe gets you stock options, that maybe gets you in that kind of like ownership role a little better versus being a

[30:44] Miles Beckler: tiny cog in a gigantic wheel. And so there are many different paths. I do think that everyone should be building some sort of a personal brand right now, because I think as someone who hires, I want to like people can apply for a job, but what have you been doing with your free time? Have you built a blog? Have you built a YouTube channel? Do you have a social following? Are you sharing? Are you creating content on anything just for the love of sharing what you’re about, whether it’s racing simulators or hiking or travel? If someone applies for a job in my company and they haven’t taken any action in the real world and they’ve got this long resume, oh, I’m so excited. I want to do this. Oh, mate, what have you been doing? And so actions speak much louder than words. And so I think everyone should be consciously curating

[31:29] Miles Beckler: their own personal brand one way or another, in order to kind of open up more doors and to prove to the universe and to prove to future potential employers that they are the kind of person who goes above and beyond, who creates more than they consume. Because this is this is what CEOs want to see. Um it’s one thing to say it on a resume. It’s another thing to dedicate three years of your life writing a blog about something that you care passionately about, and that alone will put you um heads above the rest.

[32:00] Sammie Ellard-King: You’re so right. Like it’s the first question I used to ask people. So what do you actually do? Yeah. And then they would always look at me and go, Well, like, what do you mean? I I’m a social media manager. And no, no, no, no, no, you’re not. Like, what do you what do you actually do? And they they would it this would go on and they would look at you, and then they then they’d have some internal realization, oh, he’s not asking, he’s asking me about me personally. Yeah. And the ones that got the great answer back, oh, I do this. And then you see their face light up. And then the whole rest of the interview is really lovely because they’ve opened themselves up to you and you can actually get to know them as a person as well, right? But the best ones, the ones I always hired would be I do this. I make I make sourdough

[32:46] Sammie Ellard-King: bread and I post it on Instagram. Yep.

[32:49] Miles Beckler: Awesome. I stream rust on Twitch.

[32:51] Sammie Ellard-King: Now we’re talking.

[32:51] Miles Beckler: Right. I swing I stream this game I love on Twitch. Like the the fact that they took the time to learn about the hardware, to connect it to the software, to learn how to do there’s a lot of little skills in there. And it shows it shows ambition, it shows determination, it shows the ability to to clear hurdles and to overcome challenges. Because anyone who streamed knows, and and you even have a little stop set in that, um, that it’s difficult, that systems glitch out, that none of this is easy. And people who are unwilling to do something that’s difficult, I don’t want to hire because business is difficult. And I’m looking for people who are willing to do difficult things, who not just identify problems, but they also create solutions. And if I’ve seen someone’s published 67 streams for their iRacing NASCAR driving, I know that this

[33:37] Miles Beckler: person has all of the little things that would allow them to identify problems in my business and bring solutions to the table instead of just being a squeaky wheel that always needs grease. Yeah.

[33:47] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, 100%, man. Uh I really like your approach to that actually, like being entrepreneur in your own business. That’s the first time I’ve kind of heard of that. And I feel like that’s actually really powerful for someone listening to this because that I do get that a lot. Because I I actually was very similar to you up until very recently, too, which is like I feel like everybody could start their own business. And what I’ve come to find is with when you run these communities and these events, is that not everybody’s cut out for it. And it’s and it’s totally fine. Yeah. And that if you know, actually I was speaking to someone whose name’s Timmy, uh, he runs a uh a financial channel here in the UK, actually. And he said, someone needs to make the glass that you hold in your hand, someone needs to make the chair that you sit on, and someone needs to, if you want to retire early, someone needs to bring

[34:32] Sammie Ellard-King: you the pina colada that you drink on the beach. So we need employees, and that’s totally fine. It’s what you then do with the money that you get paid, is where you can actually then make the big difference.

[34:44] Miles Beckler: And there’s so many examples of you know, janitors who nobody knew they had anything and then they die and they got four million dollars in an account and they were golden and they left it all to retirement, or the mailman who has $10 million because they’ve applied the power of compounding from a very early age. They’ve lived very simply, right? Like it is as simple. If you live on less than you spend and you invest the rest, like it adds up. And if you can do that for 40 years, the compounding takes over and the numbers just get absolutely stupid. Like our brains can’t wrap themselves around it in that sense. When I was working my last job uh back in like 2009, I was a customer support representative. They sold greeting cards online. And I was like, why don’t you have an affiliate program? And I was able to help

[35:29] Miles Beckler: them start and launch an affiliate program because it was something I knew about and it was something I was interested in. And I helped them generate an additional $250,000 per year in revenue by getting affiliates to promote their products as well. So I was able to bring these ideas to the table because it was a very small startup. It was a team of about six. I had the opportunity to go work for a major mobile company. Verizon is one of our, and I was going to work customer support for there. It would have been about the same pay, but I would never get noticed in there. I would never be able to bring an idea to the table for a major telecom company like that. But in the smaller startup scenario, and maybe this is because I grew up in the Bay Area and the dot-com era, I just I’ve always leaned in that direction, but I knew I would have more opportunities to deliver more value to the corporation, to deliver more value to the customers.

[36:15] Miles Beckler: And that did indeed manifest. And today I run affiliate programs for my wife’s business. I have one for my business. And you know, I’m really big into affiliate marketing. And it it somehow emerged from me actually gaining some hands-on experience as a paid employee, kind of like, hey man, I want to help more. How about we do this? Yes, go run with it.

[36:34] Sammie Ellard-King: That’s so powerful, man. Lee, it’d be stupid not to ask you having someone of your repertoire on this on this podcast. Like, if someone is listening to this and going, I want to build a digital business, that sounds really fucking cool. Like, what what like where are you seeing the opportunity right now? Because, you know, as we know, SEO is and blogging has changed its ups and downs again and changed exactly again. Yeah, for the countless time and it’s getting more and more, it’s getting worse, right? So, like, where is the opportunity right now, do you think?

[37:09] Miles Beckler: It’s the same place it’s been the whole time, which is growing email list, right? The whole philosophy of online business is to kind of commit yourself to helping a group of people get an outcome that they want. This can be uh racing simulator people learning how to race their racing simulators better. This can be teaching kinters how to knit better, pickleball players how to play pickleball better. There’s a billion and one niches, if you will. But it always comes down to getting a group of people on a list because that’s the communication mechanism that you own, right? Google can shut down blogs and they can cut off your traffic. So everybody’s run over to Pinterest and Facebook right now. And at some point, Pinterest and Facebook are gonna change their algorithms and their rules, and everybody’s gonna go run over to the

[37:54] Miles Beckler: next platform. And we’ve this has been perpetual, right? Traffic is interchangeable, traffic is irrelevant, I would go as far as saying. But when you grow an email list of people who know you, like you, and trust you, and then you show up for those people through emails to help them actually get the results that they want. Give results in advance. Again, Zig Ziglar, you can have anything you want in this world if you help enough other people get what they want. Um, that is the path to the ultimate success. So whether you want to start posting on Instagram and then you grow an email list with a lead magnet, that’s one way. Uh, I went with YouTube because I’m I I mean, you see me, mate. I just don’t stop talking, right? You ask me one question and I just so like like use that. That’s my personality. So then I started doing the YouTube. My wife loves to blog, she still blogs. Her blog still gets over 100,000 visits per month each and every month, right?

[38:39] Miles Beckler: So that still works very well. So we need to create something, could be advertising. Oh, it’s not dead. Yeah. What’s that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[38:44] Sammie Ellard-King: It’s dead. Blogging’s not dead. I just mean it’s like it’s it’s just wild.

[38:49] Miles Beckler: It is. And what happened is uh so many people got into it, and so many people started teaching all of the hacks and the methodologies to game your way to number one that Google had to react and respond. And this is the kind of forever give and take of a market expanding and contracting. Um, the tides come in and out, the moon gets full and gets like everything goes through cycles. And that’s that’s all that really just happened is things got a little over the top. Um, but yeah, so so create content and publish content in a way that attracts an audience to you. And then you offer them pathways to get what they want ultimately, which is you know, an email, a seven-day weight loss challenge, a seven-day sim racing challenge, a seven-day learn to knit challenge. These are just seven-day audiences, these are just emails. And then they’re on your email list. And

[39:34] Miles Beckler: every day I wake up, I think, how can I help my audience get what they want? What can I create for my audience today that’s gonna help them get what they want? And most people constantly think about themselves. What’s in it for me? How can I get more? How can I get more? And the big shift is how can I give more? And when you become the most helpful person in your little world, you naturally rise above the rest of the people in that world because most people out there are just trying to get somebody on their webinar to make a quick sale because they’re trying to squeeze as much money out of the brand as they can before they, you know, burn it up. Whereas those of us who dedicate ourselves to really helping people, you know, build systems, build whatever it is, um, to just improve their lives, there’s something, there’s some law of resonance, there’s something in this universe that when we

[40:19] Miles Beckler: give freely of ourselves, um, we reap what we sow. I mean, the Bible’s talked about it, um, the Kabbalah talks about it, like all great spiritual traditions talk about it in one way, shape, or form. Quantum physics even literally will prove about the law of resonance, um, the field of infinite potentiality until we consciously focus on a specific outcome and then the field collapses into a wave point. Um, so it’s it’s been said in a million different ways, but there is some mechanism here that when we give more value and we really go all in on helping people, stuff lines up in our lives. And then we got to be smart with it. We can’t think we got it all figured out and go start buying Lamborghinis and overpriced condos. And I’ve got friends who have three, four properties and their their lifestyles

[41:05] Miles Beckler: cost $100,000, $120,000 per month. And uh they never learned some of these things. So now the treadmill’s running them. Now that they can’t get off, they don’t have any time because of some of the decisions that they’ve made. So it’s there’s a balance in there. And we all learn it the hard way. I mean, I’ve I’ve spent ungodly amounts of money on stupid things that that didn’t pan out before, and that’s how we learn, right? We just get kind of tired of doing that over and over.

[41:29] Sammie Ellard-King: Um Yeah, there’s mistakes along the way here. Like let’s not let’s not be around the bush. Like you, you you gotta live and learn often as well, especially when it comes to money, and we’re not taught this stuff, so we’re gonna have to figure it out. And failure is probably gonna happen and quite a few different steps along this journey, right? But it’s I’m on this bandwagon, how do I keep going? How do I constantly innovate? How do I constantly grow? And that’s like the only way you will grow as a human, and only way you will continue to build wealth, in my opinion. Yeah. I want to ask you lastly, really kind of around property, because um yeah, I listened to a podcast with you talking about it, and I just loved the way that you phrased it and put it into place because obviously

[42:14] Sammie Ellard-King: you’ve got you’ve been through this like real estate crash and now you’re doing it slightly differently. Like, what’s what’s the plan now and and how have you kind of got that into this? You’ve taken money from digital assets and put it into this, is that right?

[42:26] Miles Beckler: Yeah. So I love real estate. Like everyone needs somewhere to live. And there’s some financial gurus out there who are like, rent, don’t buy. It’s always a better deal to rent versus buying. Anyone who took that advice three years ago missed out on riding the wave of this inflationary impulse, right? And and now instead of in the US, our average home prices were like $270,000 three years ago, and today it’s like $500,000 is the average home price. So everyone who rented and didn’t buy didn’t have that kind of asset to grow in value. So therefore, what do we want to own? For some people, there’s a concept called house hacking that I think is absolutely brilliant. And this would be if I was to go back to my 20, and this is kind of what I did, my 22, 23 year old self,

[43:12] Miles Beckler: you get a mortgage, you take ownership of a property. Heck, you could even just rent the property yourself and then lease out all of the rooms. Everyone else pays for your mortgage. What does this do? Now you’re not spending 900 pounds per month on your mortgage on your rent or your mortgage or whatever it is. Where do you put that money? Into your assets, right? So house hacking is just one of the smartest ways. We have triplexes in the United States, and you can get a normal mortgage on a triplex and a quadplex, which is a single titled property that has three or four units on it. I’m sure there’s something super similar in the UK. But with 20% down payment, I could purchase four units. I could live in one of them, rent out the other three, all of those pay for more than the cost

[43:57] Miles Beckler: of my mortgage. So these are different ways to use what’s called house hacking in order to get a little bit of leverage from the bank. And you need to have a down payment, right? You need to have been saving and doing these things that we’re talking about, but it’s a way to get other people to really contribute to paying for your asset. Um I personally like living in multiple places. I was a digital nomad for over five years. Uh my wife and I lived out of two backpacks. We traveled the world for five years. It sounds luxurious and amazing. It was for a while, but then it became a trap. And we wanted nothing more than to go home, but we didn’t have a home and we didn’t know where we wanted to have a home. So we bought a property in the Southwest. Um, this is kind of methodology number two, which is called a slow flip.

[44:42] Miles Beckler: So in the United States of America, if we live in a house for two of five years and then sell it, we don’t pay any tax on the gains up to a half a million dollars in gains. So if my wife and I live in a house that needs updating and we update it over the course of two years and then sell it, we can get all of the gains of that tax-free bingo, increasing the speed of our snowball instead of money going out for the liability that is taxes. I can put that money into the next asset. So we’ve slow flipped properties to build our investable asset amount. And the most recent property that we purchased has multiple units on it and it’s in a vacation area. So now I’m doing the short-term rental game. Um I actually just got the numbers back. It’s the 10th

[45:27] Miles Beckler: of the month right now. I got paid for last month. I haven’t been there. This is my second home. I’m only there for a few months per year, but it more than paid for itself. So it’s cash flow positive. Um, I had to buy the home and then I had to remodel, furnish, decorate, paint. Like we spent over $100,000 on both units on the property. And then I have property managers who cost me 20% of. Revenue in order to manage it for me. But this, I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to do anything. They have handyman. They take care of 100% of it when I’m not there. And this unit has two properties. So even when I am there, or this property has two units, excuse me. So even when I am there, there’s still a little guest house cash flowing on the property. And I can’t see it.

[46:12] Miles Beckler: There’s a wall of trees behind it. It’s down a little hill. So I have all the privacy I would ever want. I have my dream winter home in a vacation town where I can hike all winter long and other people pay for that mortgage. This is a really powerful concept. And then here in the US, what state you live in matters. Some states have income tax, some states don’t have income tax. So you can kind of play an arbitrage where you can live in a state that has no income tax, but yet I get to go spend a lot of time in states that maybe do have income tax, but I don’t pay income tax because I’m just visiting for a short period of time. These are all the little nuanced games that we can ultimately build ourselves up to. But my strategy with real estate right now is like I want to have multiple homes, but I don’t want to pay for them. I want other people to pay for these multiple homes. So how can I get

[46:57] Miles Beckler: myself to that point? And I’m I’m leveraging short-term rentals in order to do that. And I’ll know by the end of next year, right? It takes a couple of years to get full year-over-year numbers, but even in the off-season right now, because the Southwest is very hot in the United States of America during the summer, which is when we’re recording this, um, it’s still paying for the whole mortgage of that property. There’s a chance net net, it’s gonna pay for all of my properties, this one short-term rental property. And again, this is just a way to play the game. Like I want to have a luxurious multi-million dollar uh property in a very fun mountain town that’s warm during this, okay, cool, but I don’t want to pay for it. Because if I have to pay for it, then I got to work more. I don’t want to work more. So how can I strategically, logically make this work

[47:42] Miles Beckler: that enter the short-term rental game, which, you know, five years ago really wasn’t the thing it is today. In five years, it’s going to look very, very, very different. But what I’ve done is we’ve gone to the top of the market. Mate, our places are beautiful. Every texture, I bought giant crystals for this thing, like our decor. We cut no corners. We invested as much money as we had to to make this place gorgeous. It is better than a hotel room. And so I think as an entrepreneur in my Airbnb business, I’m bringing a product to market. And I think a lot of people think that Airbnb, oh, just rent that shit room and let the cobwebs be. And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not going to work as the supply and demand finds its equilibrium. But the nicest places in Cornwall will always rent out, right? The nicest places

[48:28] Miles Beckler: in these certain towns are always going to rent out. So that’s what I want to own. Because then the asset’s worth more. Because I bought the property for X, but now that it’s got this cash flow number to it, it’s actually worth a lot more than what I paid for it because of the cash flow that’s associated with it. Um I even think there’s a appreciation. What’s that?

[48:47] Sammie Ellard-King: Plus appreciation as well. Totally.

[48:49] Miles Beckler: And I think there’s actually a model that we’ve thought about doing. If I if I was better at swinging a hammer and wanted to, I would flip Airbnbs. So I would buy properties, I would build them, I would make them turnkey ready, and I would sell them to an investor who has $3 million sitting in a 10 uh IRA and they want to do a 1031 exchange, and I would be able to sell them at an exorbitant premium because I put 60 grand into the house. I did all the decor. You know, we we built that. Um, I’m just blessed to be in a position that I don’t need to um go down that path. And then final note for anybody who’s like, man, I love the thought of short-term rentals, like I love this, but I’ll broke. There’s a whole world of co-hosting. And you can actually become a co-host on Airbnb. You can start to help other hosts manage. This is how my property manager started. They’re in their 20s. They

[49:34] Miles Beckler: now manage like 40 properties. They do something to the tune of $700,000 a month in net rentals that they’re taking 20% of. They have a lot of costs as well, but they are doing very, very well for themselves. So there’s there’s always a way into real estate with no money. I’ve done it two, three times over in different ways. It takes a lot of work and a lot of creativity and meeting people, meeting the players in your space. But um, where there’s a will, there, there is a way. And so here’s my plan to kind of like zoom out a little bit. I use my digital businesses to scale my cash flow. Like, as you know, the amount of cash flow we can generate from an online business is obscene for the amount of time it takes, right? Um, I do yeah, we’ve been doing $100,000 plus dollar months for a very long time now. It still boggles my mind.

[50:19] Miles Beckler: I was like, if I make $10,000 a month, I’ll have made it. And here we are, like 10x that number. So when you get to those kinds of levels, it’s really easy to invest 50, 60, 70, 80% of your net income because I’m not buying Lamborghinis. My pickup’s fine, right? I’m out in the garden or I’m hiking, like, like I have all this excess. So I take my cash flow from my digital properties, and then I invest it into physical properties that also create cash flow. And both of these cash flow streams will generate enough for me to live the life that I want to live. And now I have two separate streams of income that cover my baseline life. I’m completely free, right? Well, well, Miles, if you’re completely free, what are you doing showing up on podcast? Why are you still making YouTube videos? Why are you emailing your list? I just want to help other people on the path. And there’s a lot of charlatans out there, unfortunately,

[51:04] Miles Beckler: who will sell you a 2,000 or you know, a 1997 pound course on how to make money on Instagram. And it’s it’s not actually, it’s just it’s just a fucking scam. So I try to keep showing up to really just help, um, I don’t know, pave pave the right path for for folks who are truly committed.

[51:23] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, man, you need to write a book, man. Any suggestions on titles? Kind of like you the way you talk, it reminds me of like the Napoleon Hill kind of think and grow rich. I’ve been through that book at least 15 times. It’s really interesting. Yeah, man, it’s like my mantra. I love it. Um I’ve been like diving in because Russell Brunson’s recently purchased like an entire, I think he’s like 18,000 manuscripts, and he’s been publishing some of like the non-published manuscripts.

[51:55] Miles Beckler: Like the Napoleon Hill stuff. He bought all of that.

[51:58] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah.

[51:58] Miles Beckler: Gotcha.

[51:59] Sammie Ellard-King: Like he’s got like uh like never seen like scrolls with his notes on and stuff like that, and he published a few of them, and it just fascinating. And most people don’t realise he almost died broke. He almost died broke. Well, he he nearly did because he’s like barely any of his work got published at all.

[52:15] Miles Beckler: Like, so have you read his book Um Grow Rich with Peace of Mind?

[52:21] Sammie Ellard-King: No, I haven’t.

[52:21] Miles Beckler: It’s the last book he published on his own. I highly recommend it because he was at a point where he had this opulent estate in upstate New York. He had multiple uh he had multiple Rolls Royces and he was living that lavish like the life full of liabilities that we’re talking about. And he all he went bankrupt. And it was W. Clement Stone who ran a insurance company who was moved so he was so moved by Napoleon Hill’s content. He like hired him as like this sales motivation trainer for the rest of his life, just so he had uh money to live out the rest of his life. But he even, the guy who learned the secret behind all of the wealthiest men in the world in the 1920s, lost it all because he didn’t learn the secret of keeping it, because he didn’t learn the difference between an asset

[53:06] Miles Beckler: and a liability. And he was trying to flex on the world and show how successful he was through physical things that ended up, you know, they say that the things you own end up owning you. And he he got owned by it. Um, highly recommend that book. And I’ve been through Think and Grow Rich uh like 15-plus times easy. Um, but I I just I always keep that in mind. Like even this guy forgot that little part and it bit him in the ass, too.

[53:30] Sammie Ellard-King: Well, that’s why we’re here to learn from those mistakes. I suppose is a good thing to take on. Miles, I’ve absolutely loved this man. Like I where are you sending people these days? Because yeah, I’m interested.

[53:43] Miles Beckler: Yeah, oh, I don’t know. Uh so I’m on Twitter. I banter on Twitter, I’m Miles Beckler. My blog is milesbeckler.com. It has a start here post that lays out the whole passive path of building a business online. I’ve been most prophetic publishing on YouTube over the years. I’ve got like almost 900 videos on YouTube, but I I do honestly like I would say start at my blog because YouTube is one of the greatest distraction mechanisms you will ever see. Um, they do not allow me to organise my videos well. They’re gonna try to show you some hipster creator flashy hook that gets your attention and all of a sudden you’re you’re over here, you’re distracted, and you’re lost. So I’ve I’ve been doing less on YouTube over time. Um, the best pathway that I’ve I’ve been building is on milesbeckler.com because I can kind of control that flow. But the real key is who can you help? Who are you willing to

[54:28] Miles Beckler: help? Go be of service to them, get your money shit in order. Like you teach them, you’re brilliant at teaching them how to how to get that stuff in order. And then go get assets, figure out the assets. I love assets that cash flow, which is real estate, right? Because it actually brings money in. I do like Bitcoin as a savings technology in between buying properties. So while I’m saving up for my next cash flow property, I’m generally saving in in Bitcoin, is one of my things because I do think on a three to five year time frame, it’s never actually seen a down period over the course of four years. All models break at some point in time, but I mean, they’re printing as many dollars as they possibly can, they’re printing as many pounds as they possibly can, which is why we all deal with inflation. So we got to start to play those games. So the theory is save in Bitcoin, Bitcoin goes to the moon,

[55:13] Miles Beckler: pull out some Bitcoin, buy another cash flow property. That cash flow property is gonna pay for me to be 85 years old and happy as shit. Repeat. Keep giving value online. Yeah, that’s the whole plan.

[55:24] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, so there you go. Money buzz that does buy happiness at the end of it. Oh, but you’ve got to have your shit in gear and you’ve got to know what you want to do. Yeah. Miles, this has been epic, man. Cheers. Absolutely epic. Uh, thank you so much, man. Appreciate it.