For Episode 164 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast, Rennie is joined by Chris Felton. Chris is an Amazon bestselling author and a 7-figure financial services entrepreneur. His company has helped over 17,000 clients, and he’s achieved Top 1% status out of 60,000+ agents. Chris shares his lessons from being on the brink of bankruptcy and divorce to building a top financial services firm. He’s been featured in US News & World Report, Market Watch, and Yahoo Finance.
For Episode 164 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast, Rennie is joined by Chris Felton. Chris is an Amazon bestselling author and a 7-figure financial services entrepreneur. His company has helped over 17,000 clients, and he’s achieved Top 1% status out of 60,000+ agents.
Chris shares his lessons from being on the brink of bankruptcy and divorce to building a top financial services firm. He’s been featured in US News & World Report, Market Watch, and Yahoo Finance.
Are you ready to learn how to get out of your way and level up your life?
In this episode, Rennie and Chris cover:
01:52 What Chris does and what makes his approach unique.
04:21 Chris shares his favorite charities and how he and his wife give back.
06:27 The type of clients that Chris prefers to work with.
07:45 What Chris considers his biggest challenge and what insight he learned from that experience – the basis of his book Couple’s Money.
12:05 How Chris improved his situation by hiring a coach to help him figure out his relationship with money.
14:20 The friend that Chris coached and how he loves seeing the generational ripple effect from his work with others.
16:57 How you can get Chris’s Four Keys to Level Up – from his book Think and Grow You – at https://chrisfelton.me
18:11 How Chris learned that “There is no happy ending to an unhappy journey”.
“I was actually talking to a 31-year-old advisor yesterday and he's just super frustrated where he is and he wants to be further. And he's kind of making himself miserable and I can identify with that. And I just let him know that, you know, there's no happy ending to an unhappy journey, bro.” – Chris Felton
To get Chris’s Four Keys to Level up visit his website at https://chrisfelton.me
To learn more about Chris visit https://chrisfelton.me/about/
If you'd like to know how books, movies, and society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is visit wealthonanyincome.com/tedx. You'll hear Rennie's TEDx talk and can request a free 27-page Roadmap to Complete Financial Choice® and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or money.
AND if you'd like to see how you can increase your wealth and donate to the causes that touch your heart. Please check out our affordable program ‘Wealth with Purpose’.
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Rennie Gabriel (0:09 - 1:39)
Hi folks, welcome to episode 164 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money, tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration around your business and your money. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel. In past episodes, we spoke about how to understand the numbers from your business, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in 5 to 10 seconds, and what determines how close you are to Complete Financial Choice®, and how to run your business without being in your business. Last time, we had Chris Quintana, who is an international best-selling author and philanthropist, and that Chris is a woman. Today, we have as our guest, Chris Felton, and this Chris is a man.
Chris is an Amazon best-selling author and a seven-figure financial services entrepreneur. His company has helped over 17,000 clients, and he's achieved the top 1% status out of 60,000 plus agents. Chris shares his lessons from being on the brink of bankruptcy and divorce to building a top financial services firm.
He's been featured in USA News & World Report, MarketWatch, and Yahoo Finance. Chris, welcome to the Wealth on Any Income Podcast.
Chris Felton (1:39 - 1:42)
Rennie, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
Rennie Gabriel (1:43 - 1:51)
Terrific. Well, tell me a little bit more about what work you do and why you're doing what you're doing.
Chris Felton (1:52 - 3:33)
Yeah. I've been a financial services entrepreneur for 25 years. I help people in all holistic planning, all different levels of net worth and income and those things.
I think one of my unique approaches is I'm best positioned to serve the person I once was. I'm getting ready to publish my LinkedIn article. I published one two weeks ago.
Why is there so many Smart, Talented, Broke People? I was one, so I know that one. And then my next article that's coming out is, Broke Financial Advisor - How did that happen? I'm going to talk about that because I think my uniqueness is really my mindset around money and my mentality. I call myself a recovering CPA, actually, I'm a fully recovered CPA. A CPA and financial advisor, and then right around the Great Recession, my back was against the wall and it was pretty messy. So I think I have a lot of empathy around smart, talented people that are broke, and I can coach them around the mindset and the mentality around it. Because I have my coach say, Hey, Chris, what's more important, the golf club or the golf swing? And I'm like, well, I don't want to work on my golf swing. So I keep looking for the club. And I think there's a lot of financial advisors out there that sell a lot of clubs and they don't really get into the golf swing, which is really your mindset, your mentality, and your relationship with money.
Rennie Gabriel (3:35 - 4:20)
I agree with you completely. That's why you're on the podcast. As a matter of fact, I could be a contributor to both of those articles because I've gone through the same thing.
I was certified as a financial planner, chartered as a life underwriter. It didn't prevent me from going broke. And I could say I'm fully recovered as well, not from being an accountant, but at least from being a certified financial planner.
So I appreciate having that perspective on the show. Now, one of the things that's important because I donate 100% of the profits from the work I do, supporting other people to handle money powerfully, I donate to various animal and veteran charities. So tell me about a particular charity that you support and what they do.
Chris Felton (4:21 - 6:15)
We are big animal lovers. And in fact, we got a nine-year-old lab female named Maggie, that my wife cooks her food. And I open the refrigerator and I'm like grabbing for what I think is my food, and it's actually the dog's food.
So my dog eats better than I do. But so we have rescues and shelters, and I mean, we're ginormously involved in that. I do work with a C-Corps here in Douglas County, Colorado.
I'm in Castle Rock, Colorado. And the fastest growing segment of poverty in the United States today is suburban poverty. So somebody's making six figures or whatever, it's super expensive to live in Colorado.
Somebody gets sick, something happens, somebody passes away. As you know, they're a couple of paychecks away from absolute financial collapse. And they're living a six-figure type lifestyle and all of a sudden it's taken away from them.
And so C-Corps has got the food bank, they got the job service, they got called a hand up versus a hand out. And in a specific area I focus on is they deliver bags of food to kids at risk on Fridays because what they found is a lot of these kids that are in these homes, the last time they eat is Friday lunch. And then they go home and they don't eat all weekend or they eat very little.
And then come Monday's, and they're just ravenous eating the school meal. Anyway, so these bags get dropped off of just tons of food and they take them home over the weekend. And that program's called Food for Thought.
Rennie Gabriel (6:16 - 6:26)
Oh, bless you for being involved in that organization. Thank you. And well, let me ask you in terms of business, who are your target clients?
Chris Felton (6:27 - 7:38)
Well, I got a no-jerk rule. So I don't work with jerks. Anyway, if anyone's listening, that's a really good rule to have.
I didn't use to follow that early on because I needed the money, right? So I wasted alot of time dealing with jerks. So I have a no-jerk rule.
I am .... coachable people, right? As you know. How much of your career have you spent talking and coaching uncoachable people?
As my mentor says, it's a whole separate career. And so I'm not interested in that career anymore. So yeah, so good people, coachable people.
I don't get too hung up on how much money they have and how many assets they have. And I just want to guide and help them. And I'm in a spot much like you where it's a lot more purpose-driven than it was a decade ago, right?
It's really about helping them and guiding them. And it's awesome to watch people apply what you tell them to do and it transforms their lives.
Rennie Gabriel (7:39 - 7:52)
Beautiful. Thank you. Now, this is a two-part personal question.
One of them is, what was the biggest failure, whether it was personal or business? And then what insight did you gain from that?
Chris Felton (7:54 - 8:04)
Yeah. I mean, it really was the basis of a book that my wife and I wrote called Couple's Money. And then my book that just came out a year ago called Think and Grow You.
Rennie Gabriel (8:05 - 8:15)
We've got to take a pause here. You had a book called Couple's Money? And 25 years ago, I published a book called Couples and Money.
Chris Felton (8:16 - 8:17)
I had no idea.
Rennie Gabriel (8:18 - 8:24)
Yeah. We ought to trade books and see what overlaps.
Chris Felton (8:25 - 8:25)
Yeah.
Rennie Gabriel (8:26 - 8:28)
Now you can talk about the other thing.
Chris Felton (8:28 - 11:27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, Think and Grow You, is the book that came out a year ago. And the subtitle is How to Get Out of Your Own Way and Level Up Your Life.
But really back to Couple's Money, it was the bottoming out, it was the beginning of the Great Recession. I'm a financial services entrepreneur.
I just got done with a very painful and expensive divorce. My kids were very small. I'm in Colorado.
They lived in Georgia. And then my second current and last wife, Marlo, in case she's listening, walked into a financial crap show that she was unaware of because I'm a pretty good sales guy. So I did a pretty good job of closing her on how successful I was.
But what she didn't realize was I was $250,000 in credit card debt. I had a 6,000 square foot office lease that was stupid that I couldn't afford. And I'm paying my ex-wife $5,200 at the beginning of every month.
And so the bottoming out and the turning point was I was, Rennie, I was so broke and so out of money, I had to come home and convince Marlo, who was good with money and she was smart enough not to commingle her money with a broke dude, I had to convince her to give me the money to pay my ex-wife the next day.
So we call it the purse throwing incident because she got so pissed. She threw her purse at me not once, not twice, but three times. We had the fight of our lives.
And she's just like, how can you be a financial advisor? How can you be a CPA? How can you tell people what they need to do?
And you're a disaster. Like, how, how, how? And then I'm like, Well, why are we still together? So she went upstairs to figure out the answer to that question. And then my awakening and my turning point was I realized wherever I was, I was the common denominator in all my problems. And everything that happened, my divorce, the disaster financially, it was an awakening moment where I had to take 100% responsibility for the crap that was my life.
And it was a pretty . . . we came together the next day, she decided to keep me and we linked arms and experienced a, I would call it a jaw-dropping financial transformation in a relatively short period of time, a few years. So, but it was really the mindset work I had to do that I was avoiding. And the work I had to do there, the work on my golf, you know, my golf, my golf swing that was, you know, the impetus for the transformation.
Rennie Gabriel (11:29 - 12:03)
I'm just kind of astounded, Chris, at the commonalities between your road and my road and how similar they are. The only difference at this moment is that I'm on my third final and best wife while you stopped at two. Now tell me, you know, the people who work with you, who follow your advice, do you have a case study you could use as an example on, you know, how someone transforms in addition to the transformation that you experienced?
Chris Felton (12:05 - 16:01)
Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, my transformation was really just understanding. I hired a coach who was financially independent, duh.
Everybody wanted to coach me, but I realized they were just as broke as I was. And so, you know, and I have, and this is a process I take everybody through, but, you know, I'm a CPA, I'm a financial guy, and I think it's a how-to thing or, you know, it's strategery, right? And it's not.
And he said, we got to figure out what your relationship with money is. And I was like, what does that mean? He's like, well, money's a relationship and it's working or not based on what's going on with you.
So based on no savings, debt, broke as a joke, you have a pretty bad relationship with money. And so he's like, I want you to get a green money journal and I want you to sit for as long as it takes, took me a couple hours. I want you to think and I want you to write the word money down and I want you to write down everything you make up about that word.
And I listed it in my book and it was like hard to make, hard to keep, right? Most broke people have some hard thing going on, right? Rich people are crooks.
My dad told me that, you know, when I was little. So, you know, won't make you happy, can't take it with you. You know, I mean, just the, you know, I mean, money's the second most mentioned topic in the Bible, right?
Like camels through eyes of needles and you know, all this garbage that we get hit with. It's really hard to get wealthy in the United States. Long and short is I did the work to start rewriting a better story of I'm a good person.
It's going to make me better. I'm a business owner. Money's a scorecard of the value I'm creating for other people. You know, it's just, so I just started writing, Rennie, a little more of an empowering money story and just kind of doing the work that I let out in my book. And so, you know, a couple of instances, a good friend and she's just like, holy crap, lost my job. You know, this, this, you know, and it's just this repetitive cycle.
And I just coached her on and she's looking, what do I do? What do I do? Where do I borrow?
Where do I this? Where do I that? I'm like, we got to get to the root of the symptom.
We can't just keep treating the symptom. We got to get to the root. And her dad was horrific with money and passed it down and all that.
And so I had her kind of do that exercise and then guided her to some, you know, technologies I used and some meditation stuff I used and some reprogramming and she's changed it, man. She's doubled her income. And you know, and then I have a really good realtor client who had never saved, who had a hard thing going on and I just get by and you know, we, we attacked her money story and holy cow, man, prospering big time.
All right. Saved a bunch of money. I just did kind of a Zoom for her daughters. She's like, They're not listening to me. They're really good kids, but they're not listening to me. And so hit them with both barrels of what you told me, you know, four or five years ago.
And so I love that, man. I love the kind of rippling. And then also, I mean, I've had 40 or 50 advisors that have thankfully followed me and stayed in business with me for 20 some years and just watching them level up their prosperity.
But most importantly, like watch how that stuff gets handed down to their kids. My kids are 22 and 19. I mean, they're great with money. They'll never struggle. So, that ripple effect, I'm sure you've seen that a lot in your work is, it's pretty substantial.
Rennie Gabriel (16:01 - 16:18)
Yeah. Terrific. Yeah.
And it's funny, like the parallels between your life and mine keep going on. You know, I broke the cycle for myself. I'm looking at my son, my daughter and how successful they are.
And I have grandchildren, the age of your children.
Chris Felton (16:18 - 16:21)
How's that possible at 50?
Rennie Gabriel (16:22 - 16:25)
Yeah, it's a joke.
I'll be 76 this year.
Chris Felton (16:25 - 16:27)
Dude, are you freaking kidding me?
Rennie Gabriel (16:27 - 16:27)
No.
Chris Felton (16:27 - 16:28)
You're 76?
Rennie Gabriel (16:28 - 16:30)
Yeah. So.
Chris Felton (16:30 - 16:32)
Dude, I would have guessed early sixties.
Rennie Gabriel (16:33 - 16:34)
So, I got a few years on you yet.
Chris Felton (16:34 - 16:38)
Good for you, man.
76. Holy cow, brother. You look amazing.
Rennie Gabriel (16:38 - 16:50)
Oh, well, another, let me have you tell me if you have some valuable free resource that people can have that'll have them be in touch with you.
Chris Felton (16:51 - 16:54)
Yeah. Website's chrisfelton.me. Okay.
Rennie Gabriel (16:54 - 16:57)
I'll put that in the show notes. Spell it correctly. Okay.
Chris Felton (16:57 - 17:24)
Yes. Yes. C-H-R-I-S-F-E-L-T-O-N.me. And I got my four keys to level up. So the four top concepts in my book, Think and Grow You, it's a four day free training, five, six minutes a day on just, the top four key components out of my book that made the biggest difference.
Rennie Gabriel (17:24 - 17:34)
Terrific. And let's see, so we're running out of time, but if you could answer one question that I should have asked, it would also give some great value, what would that be?
Chris Felton (17:35 - 18:07)
I mean, I think we're just super, super busy with life and we're busy getting over to where we want to get to. And I, I'm assuming there's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to your show. And I was actually talking to a 31 year old advisor yesterday and, you know, he's just super frustrated where he is and he wants to be further. And, you know, he's kind of making himself miserable and I can identify with that. And I just let him know that, you know, there's no happy ending to an unhappy journey, bro.
Rennie Gabriel (18:08 - 18:10)
Oh, I got to have you repeat that.
Chris Felton (18:11 - 19:50)
Yeah. There's no happy ending to an unhappy journey. And if I had to go back, you know, my 22 year old was with me for three years. I was so consumed with me and my business. I mean, you know, thank God my first wife got away from me and married the guy that was infinitely better husband than I ever was to her. But I missed a lot of time because I was so self-absorbed and this whole, you know, putting your life on the layaway plan of like, Okay, well, I'm going to do all this. And one day I'll be happy. And I was, and we were kind of coming out of our mess and I qualified for a company trip to Hawaii. And this big time coach and mentor with our firm, we're at the luau, and I'm just like, he's like, dude, he's like, You never smile. Like, he's like, You never smile. I'm like, What's there to smile about? I'm not there yet. I got to be focused and serious and uptight. And I got to grind and I got to, you know, the grind culture and all that garbage that we get programmed with.
And he just, you know . . . And then I hired my, you know, my coach is like, Dude, you got to like chill out, loosen up, relax, have some fun, convince your face that you're having fun, right? There's no happy ending to an unhappy journey, bud. And that unlocked a lot of blessings, just relaxing and having fun.
Rennie Gabriel (19:51 - 20:04)
That's so beautiful. I'm going to say it a fourth time. There's no happy ending to an unhappy journey.
Chris, I want to thank you for being on the Wealth on Any Income show.
Chris Felton (20:05 - 20:07)
Yeah, Rennie, awesome. My pleasure.
Rennie Gabriel (20:08 - 21:06)
Great. And to those who are listening if you'd like to know how books, movies, and society programs you to be poor and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free 9-Step Roadmap to Complete Financial Choice® and Philanthropy, and receive frequent emails with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or your money. And if you'd like to see how you can increase your wealth and donate to the causes that touch your heart, please check out our affordable program, Wealth with Purpose. To my listeners, thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth on Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform, and please rate, review, and subscribe. Until next time, be prosperous. Bye-bye for now.