Chris Felton is a Founder and Principal of his own financial services business, which he started in 1999. He leads and trains over 220+ agents with over 30,000 clients. He is a top 50 earner in his company out of 45,000 plus agents and is a national speaker and trainer for his firm. He has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Market Watch, Nasdaq.com, Yahoo Finance, US News and World Report and is a top leader in one of the largest financial services firms in the United States.
Chris is Co-Author of Couples Money, a book which he wrote with his wife Marlow which explains how they were able to Quadruple their business in a few short years during the great recession and overcome serious financial struggles. They share their money secrets as well as those of the numerous financially independent business owners they interviewed in the book. People have discovered how to overcome financial limitations in a simple, no nonsense approach that has worked for many. Chris & Marlow are also Amazon Best Selling Authors of Prosperity Factor, Co-Authored with Joe Vitale.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Chris Felton about helping people overcome financial limitations.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- How to claw your way out of debt after hitting financial rock bottom.
- Why people need to change the limiting beliefs that prevent their financial security.
- How people must develop the right muscles to handle your wealth.
- Why desire is the first step towards success.
- How writing a book brings instant credibility.
Connect with Chris:
Links Mentioned:
couplesmoney.com
howmoneyworks.com/chrisfelton
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@CouplesMoney
Instagram
@couplesmoney
Facebook
facebook.com/CouplesMoneyFanPage
Rob Kosberg:
Welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here with another episode of the Publish. Promote. Profit. Podcast. I always bring great guests, but I think you’re going to love Chris Felton and the things that he has to share today, especially if you’re concerned about money, making more of it, keeping more of it. Chris is the founder and principal of his own financial services business, which he started back in 1999, leads and trains over 200 agents with over 30,000 clients. He’s been featured in Forbes, Fortune, MarketWatch, NASDAQ, Yahoo Finance, and now finally, the Publish. Promote. Profit Podcast. I think you have made it.
Chris Felton:
I’ve been trying for years, man. This is awesome. It’s a dream come true, brother.
Rob Kosberg:
Chris is the coauthor, with his wife, of a book called, Couples Money, a book which he and his wife Marlow wrote about their struggle during the great recession. They explained how they quadrupled their business in a few short years during that time and overcame some serious financial challenges. I think that’s really apropos to talk about. Chris, thanks so much for being on, really excited to talk to you today, my friend.
Chris Felton:
Yeah. Thanks, Rob, really appreciate it.
Rob Kosberg:
Let’s dive in. You were just telling me a little of what happened with you and your wife when the great recession was hitting. I got my own story of calamity. I had a business that was doing over a hundred million a year in transactions that went to zero. I wish it would have just got cut in half, but it went all the way down. Tell me, you obviously wrote a whole book about it, and we’ll give links and all that towards the end but tell me a little bit about the story. Tell me about the genesis of this whole thing and how it came about.
Chris Felton:
Yeah, I mean, I call myself a recovered CPA. I was a practicing CPA. I left, started my own financial services company and then grew it from scratch here in Colorado. I met my wife through the business. It’s an entrepreneurial venture. When I met her, I was going through a divorce. My kids were really small. They’re 20 and 17 now, amazingly enough. Time flies, but they were little. My ex moved to Atlanta, Georgia. I’m basically in Denver, and we got married, and what she didn’t know, because of my belief systems around money, the stupid unconscious decisions I made around money, the office leases that I shouldn’t have signed, the car I shouldn’t have bought, I basically created a mess, plus a $5,000 a month child support-alimony payment, and had accumulated about a quarter of a million dollars of unsecured debt. We’re in financial services, we’re entering the great recession, we’re leaking about four to $5,000 a month. I’m running out of lines of credit. I’m running out of credit card checks. I’m running out of the whole thing. I was managing the money, and long story short, we got married, and she didn’t really know. She thought I looked the part. I mean, I’m a CPA, I’m a financial advisor. I tell a pretty good story. I mean, we were successful, lots of trophies and awards, but she didn’t know the root of the problem. Basically, went through a process of trusting my intuition, we could do a deep dive into that, and giving the reigns of the money, the CFO of our family, giving that back to her, because I obviously couldn’t figure it out, but she finally realized how bad it was and was trying to have conversations with me about it. Rob, you know how guys are. We want to talk about what’s coming, and don’t look over here, look over here. One of my favorite quotes is, “Optimism and delusion sleep in the same bed together often.” I was in complete delusion, and basically it hit the fan one night, when I had to come up with a $5,000 alimony payment the next day, and I had run out of funds. My big idea, Rob, was because my wife had money, we hadn’t merged everything yet, the only way I was going to pay my ex was to go ask my current wife for the money to pay my ex-wife.
Rob Kosberg:
How did that go?
Chris Felton:
You’re like, “I should have done more background check on this guy before I had him on.”
Rob Kosberg:
No, this is real, man. This is ruined real life right here.
Chris Felton:
Well, she’s about five foot nothing. All my agents are scared of her, volcanic Marlow. She’s at the other end of the house. Thank God she’s not here to defend herself, but dude, she flipped it. She flipped a lid, cussing me out. The volcano had been pushed down and then it just erupted. I just said, “Well, why are we still married?” Pretty good question, and then dead silence. She went upstairs, and I sat there, and I get goosebumps every time I talk about it, but I’m like, I created all of this. I created all of it. Wherever I’ve had a money problem in my life, I’ve always been there, and wherever I’ve had a problem in my life, I’ve always been there.
Rob Kosberg:
There’s a common denominator in all this.
Chris Felton:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the common denominator. The God moment was really, for the first time in my life, which most people in the United States, unfortunately don’t want to buy into this, but 100% responsibility for what I created. At that moment, it was no longer my ex-wife, it’s no longer Marlow, it’s no longer the recession. It was me. It was kind of a line in the sand moment where I started thinking about, Dad was broke, Mom was broke, Grandma was broke, Grandma was broke, and there had to be something to this handing down of belief systems that I needed to look at. I was already in a massive personal growth and development, but I was talking more about it than doing it. That was the realization. Marlow’s realization was she wanted to stay married, and she didn’t think declaring bankruptcy and being in financial services was a good idea. We came together the next day and I said, “Okay, here’s my promise. I’m going to work on whatever’s going on mentally, I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to flip belief systems. I’m going to treat this project like a part-time job. I’m going to get up at four in the morning. I’m going to read everything I can on it. I’m going to journal; I’m going to explore. I’m going to do everything I can to shift my internal system to line it up, to be successful around money. She said, “I’m going to get on planes, trains, and automobiles, and I’m going to go interview world-class, wealthy couples that came from nothing. They grew it together, and they weren’t just wealthy monetarily. Relationships, spiritual, kids, they’re the whole package of wealth. I’m going to figure out how they think, I’m going to figure out what they do. Then you and I are going to meet in the middle, and we’re going to get this shit figured out.” There’s a lot more to that, but basically what happened, not overnight, but it was an absolute, massive financial transformation that occurred. We wrote the book on it, and we just want to sing from the rooftops to the tens of millions out there that are struggling, because 96% of people in the richest country on the planet retire broke, and they have no clue why. My whole passion, my purpose, my mission is to wake people up around this conversation so they can have a better life.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. I love it. Now, you’ve mentioned a couple of things that are intriguing. You obviously mentioned some false beliefs or limiting beliefs. I wonder if you can speak to that for a few minutes. What are the primary false beliefs that people have around money, that keeps them stuck, that keeps them broke, that keeps them poor?
Chris Felton:
Yeah. I mean, once again, the biggest determining factor of your financial success is actually what was poured into you from about ages zero to five from your parents. Without getting into too much psychology there, there’s a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. The conscious mind, at our adult level, has the ability to accept and reject ideas at will. Zero to five, that’s not developed. Basically, you’re a sponge, you’ve heard that before, and you are literally taking in everything that comes to you. That’s where it starts. The issue is, Rob, is by the time you’re 18, you’re about 95% hardwired, programmed on everything. These beliefs are unconscious. They just run you, and you don’t know that they just run you. The most insignificant thing can happen at age five, and you bring meaning to it, and it literally programs your whole thing. I hired a coach for four years, who’s financially independent, and he said, “Okay, you no longer have a money problem. You have a money project.” We look at projects a lot differently than problems. He’s like, “Get a journal, get a green journal, make it a money journal. What I want you to do is write the word money down and write everything that comes up for you on that.” Powerful exercise. What’s your relationship to that topic? I do this with people around sales. People are, “I’m not successful at sales. Tell me what to say.” Well, what’s the first things that comes up for you around the word sales? It’s usually not a good thing. They got all these unconscious blocks and beliefs that come across and how you communicate. I did it on money, and literally it was what I got from my dad. Making money is hard, hard to make, hard to keep. Rich people are crooks. My dad said that an infinite amount of times, “Rich people are crooks. They make money on the backs of poor people.” My mom, “We either have it, or we don’t,” like you had no say in it. You can’t do anything about it. You’re kind of a victim. You’re powerless to change your thing. Progressive theme growing up, “Us Feltons aren’t really meant to be that successful,” a constant theme. This stuffs running beneath the surface in my belief, because it took me decades to do the work. Most people go their entire lives operating under these false lies. It’s debilitating. When I looked at it, and my coach is like, “So do you see why you don’t have any money, dude?”
Rob Kosberg:
You probably didn’t need him to say that. I mean, you, as you were writing it down, it must have been like a revelation to you.
Chris Felton:
I’m like, “Dude, if you really believe that your thinking creates your world, this connection was as clear as day,” because there’s me, there’s my thoughts, there’s my results. If I don’t like my results, there’s me, but people can do this with health. They can do it with relationships, but the upside was, if I could change that underlying story, I could change my life. It’s not overnight. It’s not a quick fix. It actually takes work, but we were able to do it. It’s a big one. Then we get programmed from the outside world. I’m turning the big 50 in a couple of weeks. Life’s just beginning, brother
Rob Kosberg:
Let me ask you a question around that. There is a lot of entitlement in this country. I don’t know if you’re aware of it. It’s interesting, I have number of friends. I live in Florida, I wasn’t born here, but I’ve lived here most of my life and have very, very good friends who are Cubans, and came over because during the rise of Communism, their families were pillaged. They escaped with nothing, even though in many cases, they were landowners and wealthy people. It’s amazing to me, and I know many that didn’t have any land or wealth that came from, and I use Cuba as an example, and they come here as immigrants and they have this incredible drive and work ethic. Certainly, in a generation, but oftentimes in a lot less than that, they become wealthy people. Maybe not billionaires, though they can, but they become millionaires, and own homes, and put their kids through college. It amazes me that in this rich country that we live in, that so many people kind of either have never had that immigrant mentality, and yet are surrounded by opportunity and surrounded by success. How do you speak to that when it comes to this mindset issue that people have?
Chris Felton:
Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot to it. I’m very fortunate to have lots of wealthy mentors. You’ve seen wealthy people make it easy for people. We have a tremendous number of immigrants that show up. Because of the hardship and the struggles that they went through, they built muscles. I coach and speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, and when I was an early entrepreneur and I was coaching entrepreneurs, I didn’t want them to go through struggles. I didn’t want them to feel pain. It’s kind of like taking somebody to the gym, and you lift the weights for them. You just want to feather their nest and make it easy on them. I mean, you don’t know what you really want until you get a taste of what you don’t want. That was a big lesson for us. I didn’t want this. I like what we went through. I don’t want to ever go through that again, and I’ve done the work to make sure that doesn’t happen, but you take away the struggle, you take away what we’re able to create, we wouldn’t be where we are now. The adversity had to get handed to us to develop the muscles, in order to handle our wealth better. When the middle class is addicted to comfort, and in nature, you’re either growing or dying, there’s no comfort. We got some pine trees out here. Those pine trees are either growing or in their decay. There’s no definition of comfort in nature. If you’re seeking comfort, you’re actually going into decline. What I’m saying is this whole entitlement thing, one of my favorite quotes is, “A life spent seeking comfort results in an entirely uncomfortable existence.” That’s what happened with the pandemic, boom, overnight. The people that were in comfort land, all of a sudden weren’t comfortable. The ones that show up, the ones that have been through the struggles, the ones that have been through the pain, when they get a shot, they operate from a feeling of gratitude and appreciation.
Rob Kosberg:
That motivates them to do the work.
Chris Felton:
It motivates them to do the work, because they don’t ever want to go back to where they were. It’s an interesting dichotomy. When you feather the nest and you make it easy, and my mentor said, “When you rob your kids of the struggle, you rob them of the lessons.” Then they don’t have any confidence. That’s the other thing that’s probably creating it is, they’re seeking comfort. They’re not building muscles. They don’t have the discipline. Therefore, they don’t even have the confidence to even take the action. Then it’s a self-perpetuating disaster.
Rob Kosberg:
The reason I even asked the question was because, it’s interesting, I’m sure that the environment that people that grow up in a socialist or communist country, the environment that they grew up in from that zero to five, when the program is being done that you’re talking about, I’m sure that was as bad or perhaps far worse than the programming that you grew up with. At the same time, and me to a certain extent as well, but the interesting thing is, just like yourself and just like an immigrant that might grow up with that kind of programming, that shock to the system coupled with the opportunity that is in front of us, allows us to overcome all of the negative programming. It’s not a curse that your parents or anyone’s parents passed on what was passed on to them. The chain, I guess, can be broken, and so that’s part of why I asked that question. I was thinking about what programming they must have gotten, and yet that program was totally overwritten when they got to America, and they saw the opportunity and with grateful eyes, they acted on that opportunity.
Chris Felton:
The first step in doing anything great is you got to have desire. I call them compelling, emotional reasons. It’s a lot of people in middle-class mindset, comfort mindset. They think that goal setting or going after something is some logical process, while the real achievers know that goal setting is an emotional thing. At some point, whether they were programmed or not, they made a decision, and they created a desire. You’ve probably heard of Lisa Nichols, a big-time speaker. Her story’s insane, no money, homeless, baby, can’t buy diapers, has to use a blanket and reuse a blanket as diapers, and probably the worst programming on the planet, but she had something called, which you need to have, you need to have sustained concentration to be successful, but you must have emotional drivers. At some point she said, “I’m done with this. I’m not coming back here again,” and then just obviously blew her life up. Most of your emotional drivers are tied back to people. It’s not stuff. My emotional driver, not as dramatic of a story as a Lisa Nichols, or somebody from Cuba or an immigrant, was I never wanted to have another stressful financial conversation again with my wife, as long as I lived. I didn’t want her to have any more stress. I wasn’t able to see my kids. That was BS. There are some material things that I wanted, but I had really big emotional drivers. In that moment, when your ego comes in, it is like, “No, you don’t need to.” All the great achievers have some click, some ability to answer the question of why I am suffering. The people that are entitled, they’re not going to go through the suffering, so to speak. They’re not going to go through the trials and tribulations, because they don’t really have a big enough emotional driver, a big enough why to go to the next level. My mentor said, “The most difficult thing you’re going to do, Chris, in your life, is bust through your comfort zones.” Anytime I want to go to a new level, I better have a list. I actually got a list of 10 right now. I better have a list of emotional reasons that I’m looking at every single morning and every single night, because it’s real easy right now where I sit, to get comfortable, but there’s death in comfort. It’s not what you want. You want to be growing. You want to be serving other people.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s great. I love that. That’s gold right there. I’m reminded of this story that Jim Rohn tells about the moment that he changed his life was when the little Girl Scout came, and he didn’t have $2.50 cents to buy a box of cookies, and he basically lied. When he closed the door, he said, “What am I doing, that I would lie to a Girl Scout, because I don’t have $2 to buy a box of cookies.” He tells that, of course, when he was alive, he told that story over and over and over again, and how that drove him to never return to that place. Of course, he became one of the greatest, Tony Robbins’ mentor. I mean, just a great speaker on mentality and mindset. Love that. That’s real gold there, Chris. I appreciate it. Let me change angles here for a moment. Your book, you wrote, Couples Money. I know how hard it is to write a book. I’ve helped a thousand clients to do it, so I know a thing or two about that. People are driven to write books for a number of different reasons. One is always, they want to help other people, but also underlying and often foundational is you want to do something for yourself, for your business, for your message, for money, income, impact, all those things. Tell me about your book. Tell me, how has your book helped you to further this message? Give me some specific examples, how are you using your book to grow your audience, that sort of thing?
Chris Felton:
We wanted to get a message out. I mean, 60% of divorces are tied back to financial issues. My parents were part of that. We wanted to change that. We also wanted to be a couple in personal development, which it’s usually a guy or a gal. It’s been amazing. I mean, we got our website, couplesmoney.com. We got some social media stuff out there. We’ve got a lot of talks and a lot of speeches. I mean, it’s definitely, without saying, it’s credibility. It’s a way for people to get to know you at a deep level. For me, I want it to be relatable. I want it to be authentic. I want people to see we’re not phenomenal. We just did some things over a period of time and compounded over a period of time. It’s helped us get a lot of speaking engagements, it’s increased a following. I hand it out to a client, instant credibility, instant, like if you are out there and you are in sales, reach out to Rob and get a book written, because it is credibility. One of the big answers in people’s minds when you’re speaking, when you’re talking, is “Why should I be listening to you?” Obviously, I’m a published author. Whether you’ve sold three books or 3 million books, you are a published author. I think it also shows that you’re legit, you’re real, you finish things. It’s kind of like when you’re moving out of the house and you come back, and it seems like all this stuff multiplied, you want to be done with it. She did the work. No, it’s opened up significant doors, significant avenues. From a networking standpoint, the people that it’s attracted into our world has been substantial. People, the world-class, love to be interviewed. It’s great to get out there and see them. That’s been an ongoing relationship. They invite us in to do things. For me, it’s opened up a whole new world for me and my wife.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s awesome. Congratulations.
Chris Felton:
Get one written. Well, we probably need to do the second edition, and each one’s staring at the other one going, “Who’s going to do it?”
Rob Kosberg:
I think that’s a good way to wrap it up. Give us some links. You gave some amazing mindset stuff that I’m sure resonated with some people, especially when 96% of people living in the richest country in the world, unfortunately, are retiring broke. Where can people learn more, get some information, get a copy of your book?
Chris Felton:
Yeah, so couplesmoney.com, our book’s out there. We also have a four-week webinar they can purchase. It’s just how to transform your financial life. I mean, it’s pretty powerful stuff. I got some other talks out there. I’m always available to do talks for anybody that wants someone to talk about how to have a financial transformation, money mindset, those types of things. My personal business website is called howmoneyworks.com/ChrisFelton. My business partner is Steve Siebold. If you go to my website, howmoneyworks.com/ChrisFelton, you just scroll down, send me an email, and I’ll get a complimentary book in the mail to people, because our mission is we want to eradicate financial illiteracy in the United States. We think it’s the number one economic problem in the world, and it’s the fact that people don’t know how money works. Mindset and how-to’s, we don’t learn this stuff in school. Our industry can be a little sketchy at times. The less you know, the more money they make, so we want to make a big difference. Steve joined our mission, wrote the book. People can read it in about an hour and a half. The feedback is they learn more about how money works in an hour and a half reading that book, than they have in their entire life. It’s written in fifth grade language, simple and easy to understand, so happy to do that.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Love it. Awesome. There are two books that people can get, obviously, the book that you wrote with your wife, and then Steve Siebold’s book, which is fantastic. Love it. Chris, thanks so much for being on today. Good to have you, my friend, and great job with everything. Really loved the mindset stuff. It all starts and ends there. Again, thanks so much for being a part of the podcast.
Chris Felton:
Yeah. Thanks Rob. It’s been a pleasure.
