Most people think franchising is about income replacement. At the high-net-worth level, the real conversation is about enterprise value.

Because the operators who approach franchising seriously are not just trying to buy themselves a business. They are thinking about cash flow, unit economics, operational infrastructure, EBITDA growth, private equity demand, and whether the business can eventually become attractive to a larger buyer.

And once you understand that, the way you evaluate franchising starts to change.

Most franchise buyers don't miss the opportunity because they fail to recognize a good brand. They miss it because they evaluate the opportunity too narrowly. They look at the concept, the customer demand, and the upfront cost, but they do not always understand how to vet the system, read the disclosure data, identify red flags, or think through the exit before they get in.

In this episode of Money School Elite, I sit down with Scott Jones of Franchise Guide Group to unpack how serious operators and high-net-worth investors should think about franchising as a wealth-building vehicle.

Scott has owned 10 franchises himself, advised operators for more than 20 years, and worked across the franchisee, franchisor, and supplier sides of the industry. And in this conversation, he breaks down how to evaluate franchising through the lens of diligence, capital efficiency, scale, cash flow, and private equity exit potential.

About the Guest

Scott Jones is the founder of Franchise Guide Group, where he helps high-achieving professionals, business owners, executives, and franchise operators evaluate franchise opportunities that align with their experience, goals, and long-term vision. With more than 30 years of business experience, Scott has worked as a CEO, franchise executive, entrepreneur, and multi-unit, multi-brand franchisee. He has helped hundreds of people explore franchising as a path to income diversification, career transition, business ownership, and greater personal freedom.

Through Franchise Guide Group, Scott brings a practical, operator-level perspective to the franchise selection process, helping clients understand which opportunities fit their background, interests, capital, and desired outcomes.

For Money School Elite listeners, Scott created a dedicated page where you can take the quiz, learn more, and schedule a call: https://connect.franchiseguidegroup.com/ms.
You can also follow Scott on Instagram: @‌franchiseguidegroup.

About Your Host

From pro-snowboarder to money mogul, Chris Naugle has dedicated his life to being America's #1 Money Mentor. With a core belief that success is built not by the resources you have, but by how resourceful you can be. Chris has built and owned 19 companies, with his businesses being featured in Forbes, ABC, House Hunters, and his very own HGTV pilot in 2018. He is the founder of The Money School™ and Money Mentor for The Money Multiplier.

His success also includes managing tens of millions of dollars in assets in the financial services and advisory industry and in real estate transactions. As an innovator and visionary in wealth-building and real estate, he empowers entrepreneurs, business owners, and real estate investors with the knowledge of how money works.

Chris is also a nationally recognized speaker, author, and podcast host. He has spoken to and taught over ten thousand Americans, delivering the financial knowledge that fuels lasting freedom.

Resources

Private Money Guide: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/book-podcast

Wealth Wednesday Webinar: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/wednesday-webinar-podcast

Mapping out the Millionaire Mystery: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/newbook-podcast

Most investors think wealth preservation is about performance. At the high-net-worth level, the real conversation is about structure.

Because the families that keep wealth across generations are not just trying to get better returns. They are thinking about education, tax strategy, access, capital protection, charitable planning, and the systems required to make wealth last beyond one person's lifetime.

And once you understand that, the way you evaluate wealth starts to change.

Most successful investors don't lose wealth because they have never learned how to make money. They lose it because the structure around the money was never built to preserve it. The next generation inherits assets without inheriting judgment. Tax strategy gets treated like an afterthought instead of part of the portfolio. And high-income earners often assume better tax outcomes require extreme lifestyle disruption, when the real issue may be access to more sophisticated planning.

In this episode of Money School Elite, I sit down with Mark Miller of Hilton Wealth and the Hilton Family Office to unpack how wealthy families actually think about preserving capital, reducing tax drag, and building systems that last.

Mark works inside the family office world, where the conversation is not about chasing returns. It is about protecting wealth, structuring it intelligently, and making sure the capital and the knowledge behind it survive over time.

About the Guest

Mark Miller is the co-founder of Hilton Tax & Wealth Advisors alongside Bradley J. Hilton, grandson of Conrad Hilton, and a partner in bringing family office-level wealth strategies to investors, business owners, and high-net-worth families. Mark's work focuses on helping clients understand how the wealthy preserve capital, reduce tax drag, structure portfolios, and build long-term wealth with the same principles used inside family office environments. He has been featured in Kiplinger's, The New York Times, Fox News, and more than 200 national outlets, and was honored as a Presidential Businessman of the Year with personal recognition from President George W. Bush. He is also the author of Hilton Wealth: How to Invest Like an American Dynasty and The Tax-Free Business Owner.

To learn more, request a complimentary copy of Mark's books, or book a call with Hilton Wealth, visit http://HiltonWealth.com.

About Your Host

From pro-snowboarder to money mogul, Chris Naugle has dedicated his life to being America's #1 Money Mentor. With a core belief that success is built not by the resources you have, but by how resourceful you can be. Chris has built and owned 19 companies, with his businesses being featured in Forbes, ABC, House Hunters, and his very own HGTV pilot in 2018. He is the founder of The Money School™ and Money Mentor for The Money Multiplier.

His success also includes managing tens of millions of dollars in assets in the financial services and advisory industry and in real estate transactions. As an innovator and visionary in wealth-building and real estate, he empowers entrepreneurs, business owners, and real estate investors with the knowledge of how money works.

Chris is also a nationally recognized speaker, author, and podcast host. He has spoken to and taught over ten thousand Americans, delivering the financial knowledge that fuels lasting freedom.

Resources

Private Money Guide: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/book-podcast

Wealth Wednesday Webinar: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/wednesday-webinar-podcast

Mapping out the Millionaire Mystery: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/newbook-podcast

If you think life insurance is about protection, you'll miss what it can do at a high net worth level.

For wealthy investors, business owners, and families with meaningful assets, the question is not just where to invest. It is where long-term capital should sit, how it should be owned, how it should grow, how private it should remain, and how efficiently it can move to the next generation.

That is where Private Placement Life Insurance, or PPLI, changes the conversation.

Most investors dismiss life insurance because they think they already understand it. They picture ordinary policies, limited investment options, and a product built mainly around a death benefit. But at the high end, that framework is incomplete.

PPLI is not ordinary life insurance. For the right investor, it can function as a long-term asset structure, allowing capital to grow in a tax-advantaged environment, support estate planning, simplify reporting, preserve privacy, and create a more strategic way to hold assets over time.

In this episode of Money School Elite, I sit down with Mike Malloy to unpack how PPLI actually works, why wealthy families use it, and why the structure around an asset can matter just as much as the asset itself.

Mike works with high-net-worth clients, families, and advisors on advanced tax and estate planning strategies using Private Placement Life Insurance. In this conversation, he explains why PPLI is not simply about buying insurance.

It is about building a structure around long-term capital, especially for investors who have already used the obvious planning tools and need a more sophisticated way to think about tax efficiency, privacy, liquidity, and wealth transfer.

About the Guest

Michael Malloy is a founding partner of EWP Financial. With decades of experience helping global families and advisors use PPLI and Expanded Worldwide Planning to enhance tax efficiency, asset protection, and compliance. To learn more, visit https://www.ewp-financial.com/ or call 530-692-1007.

About Your Host

From pro-snowboarder to money mogul, Chris Naugle has dedicated his life to being America's #1 Money Mentor. With a core belief that success is built not by the resources you have, but by how resourceful you can be. Chris has built and owned 19 companies, with his businesses being featured in Forbes, ABC, House Hunters, and his very own HGTV pilot in 2018. He is the founder of The Money School™ and Money Mentor for The Money Multiplier.

His success also includes managing tens of millions of dollars in assets in the financial services and advisory industry and in real estate transactions. As an innovator and visionary in wealth-building and real estate, he empowers entrepreneurs, business owners, and real estate investors with the knowledge of how money works.

Chris is also a nationally recognized speaker, author, and podcast host. He has spoken to and taught over ten thousand Americans, delivering the financial knowledge that fuels lasting freedom.

Resources

Private Money Guide: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/book-podcast

Wealth Wednesday Webinar: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/wednesday-webinar-podcast

Mapping out the Millionaire Mystery: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/newbook-podcast

Most people treat taxes as a cost. Something to minimize, settle, and handle once the year is done. But what if that framing is the problem?

What if you start treating your tax burden like a profit center, instead? By making that shift, taxes stop being about what you owe and start becoming a question of where that capital should actually go.

In this episode of Money School Elite, I sit down with Mark Myers to unpack how that shift plays out in practice, and what it looks like to operate at the strategic layer of tax planning rather than just the compliance layer most people are familiar with.

Mark works with high-income earners and business owners who are already doing everything right on paper, but haven't been exposed to the kinds of strategies that sit above traditional planning.

In this conversation, we get into how solar can be used to replace a tax payment with an income-producing asset, how multiple layers of tax treatment can be stacked within a single strategy, and how the sale of a business can be structured to defer and control the tax event.

About the Guest

Mark is a Tax Savings Architect and the founder of TaxWise Partners. He brings over 20 years of successful business operation and high-level consulting experience to the table for the clients and financial professionals he serves. Mark employs the same discipline and tenacity in finding tax savings as he did serving his country as a former Marine Corps Sergeant in Bravo Company, 4th Marine Division. Semper Fi! TaxWise Partners and its affiliate partners have helped thousands of individuals increase profit and permanently reduce their annual tax bill to enable them to better grow their business and accelerate their wealth. If you want to see what this could look like in your own situation, go to taxwisepartners.com, book a free consultation here to get your Tax Savings Blueprint. You can also reach out directly at mark@taxwisepartners.com.

About Your Host

From pro-snowboarder to money mogul, Chris Naugle has dedicated his life to being America's #1 Money Mentor. With a core belief that success is built not by the resources you have, but by how resourceful you can be. Chris has built and owned 19 companies, with his businesses being featured in Forbes, ABC, House Hunters, and his very own HGTV pilot in 2018. He is the founder of The Money School™ and Money Mentor for The Money Multiplier.

His success also includes managing tens of millions of dollars in assets in the financial services and advisory industry and in real estate transactions. As an innovator and visionary in wealth-building and real estate, he empowers entrepreneurs, business owners, and real estate investors with the knowledge of how money works.

Chris is also a nationally recognized speaker, author, and podcast host. He has spoken to and taught over ten thousand Americans, delivering the financial knowledge that fuels lasting freedom.

Resources

Private Money Guide: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/book-podcast

Wealth Wednesday Webinar: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/wednesday-webinar-podcast

Mapping out the Millionaire Mystery: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/newbook-podcast

Diversification sounds straightforward in theory, but in practice, portfolios don't behave the way most people expect them to.

Exposure is layered, concentration often shows up in places that aren't immediately obvious, and decisions that feel like you're spreading risk can quietly lead to doubling down on the same themes.

Once you start looking at portfolios this way, the question shifts. It's no longer just about what to add, but whether that exposure already exists, and what role it's actually playing.

In this episode of Money School Elite, I sit down with Jonathan Steele, who manages over $1.3 billion in assets, to unpack how modern portfolios are actually structured and why many of the assumptions investors rely on don't always hold up.

Jonathan works closely with high-net-worth clients, helping them think about capital not as a collection of individual positions, but as a system of exposures that interact in ways that aren't always obvious.

We get into why Bitcoin and precious metals are often grouped incorrectly, how indirect exposure through index positions can lead to unintended concentration, and why holding cash in the current environment is less about being defensive and more about maintaining flexibility while still earning a return.

About the Guest

Jonathan Steele, CFA®, is Co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at One Wealth Advisors, where he leads investment research and portfolio management for high-net-worth clients. With over 20 years of experience, Jonathan specializes in portfolio construction, tactical and strategic asset allocation, and behavioral finance. As a Chartered Financial Analyst® and member of the CFA Institute, his work focuses on how portfolios are structured and how different exposures interact within a broader system. Outside of investing, Jonathan is deeply involved in the arts, having served on the advisory boards of Bard Music West and Vanguard Music and Performing Arts. He also mentors students across finance, technology, and engineering, and supports local organizations, including Muttville Senior Dog Rescue and the SF SPCA. To learn more, go to https://onewealth.net/.

About Your Host

From pro-snowboarder to money mogul, Chris Naugle has dedicated his life to being America's #1 Money Mentor. With a core belief that success is built not by the resources you have, but by how resourceful you can be. Chris has built and owned 19 companies, with his businesses being featured in Forbes, ABC, House Hunters, and his very own HGTV pilot in 2018. He is the founder of The Money School™ and Money Mentor for The Money Multiplier.

His success also includes managing tens of millions of dollars in assets in the financial services and advisory industry and in real estate transactions. As an innovator and visionary in wealth-building and real estate, he empowers entrepreneurs, business owners, and real estate investors with the knowledge of how money works.

Chris is also a nationally recognized speaker, author, and podcast host. He has spoken to and taught over ten thousand Americans, delivering the financial knowledge that fuels lasting freedom.

Resources

Private Money Guide: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/book-podcast

Wealth Wednesday Webinar: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/wednesday-webinar-podcast

Mapping out the Millionaire Mystery: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/newbook-podcast

Most investors think Bitcoin is about price. At the high-net-worth level, a far more important conversation is happening around taxes.

Because Bitcoin isn't treated like a stock or a business. It's treated as property. And that classification opens up strategies around taxation and capital movement that simply don't exist in traditional asset classes.

And once you understand that, the way you evaluate Bitcoin starts to change.

Most high-net-worth investors don't dismiss Bitcoin because they don't understand it.
They dismiss it because, from where they sit, it doesn't meet the standard.

If your entire framework is built on fundamentals, intrinsic value, and cash flow, Bitcoin feels like a contradiction. It's volatile, it doesn't produce income, and it doesn't behave like the assets that built their wealth. But that framework may be incomplete.

In this episode of Money School Elite, I sit down with Eric Runge to unpack how Bitcoin is actually being used inside high-net-worth portfolios, and why the conversation at that level looks very different from what most investors see.

Eric works directly with family offices and high-net-worth investors, helping them think about capital, risk, and structure beyond traditional asset classes. And in this conversation, he breaks down how Bitcoin fits into that picture, not as a speculative bet, but as a strategic layer.

About the Guest

Eric Runge is an RIA working with family offices to build capital preservation and tax strategies using Bitcoin, an approach that challenges how most investors think about the asset entirely. He is the founder of Veritas Bitcoin Strategies, a registered investment adviser focused on integrating Bitcoin into high-net-worth portfolios through risk-managed, long-term allocation frameworks. With over 20 years in financial markets, Eric works with families and sophisticated investors who aren't looking to speculate, but to understand how digital assets can be positioned within a broader strategy focused on preservation, structure, and tax efficiency. His work sits at the intersection of traditional wealth management and emerging monetary systems, helping investors rethink where Bitcoin fits, not as a trade, but as a strategic layer inside a portfolio. To learn, send an email to eric@veritaswealth.net.

About Your Host

From pro-snowboarder to money mogul, Chris Naugle has dedicated his life to being America's #1 Money Mentor. With a core belief that success is built not by the resources you have, but by how resourceful you can be. Chris has built and owned 19 companies, with his businesses being featured in Forbes, ABC, House Hunters, and his very own HGTV pilot in 2018. He is the founder of The Money School™ and Money Mentor for The Money Multiplier.

His success also includes managing tens of millions of dollars in assets in the financial services and advisory industry and in real estate transactions. As an innovator and visionary in wealth-building and real estate, he empowers entrepreneurs, business owners, and real estate investors with the knowledge of how money works.

Chris is also a nationally recognized speaker, author, and podcast host. He has spoken to and taught over ten thousand Americans, delivering the financial knowledge that fuels lasting freedom.

Resources

Private Money Guide: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/book-podcast

Wealth Wednesday Webinar: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/wednesday-webinar-podcast

Mapping out the Millionaire Mystery: https://go.moneyschoolrei.com/newbook-podcast