A Broke Financial Advisor?! How Did That Happen?

After having the biggest fight of my life with my wife Marlow, my mind was racing. The fight was instigated after I asked her to pay my ex-wife’s $5,200 alimony and child support payment because I was out of money. After throwing her purse at me 3 times (and thankfully missing because I didn’t marry her for her hand/eye coordination) she proceeded to go upstairs to calculate her next move.? Should she stay or should she go? I wondered, “How did I get here?” “How can I, Chris Felton, a former Big 6 CPA and fairly successful financial advisor, be $250,000 in credit card debt? How can I be in the red thousands of dollars every month. ?I had been in debt since I was 18. I was now 37 and my debt was out of control.

I wasn’t lazy.? I had a great work ethic.? I was paying the proverbial price for success.? I was working hard, always trying to get better. I wasn’t dumb.? I passed the CPA exam on my first try.? I graduated Magna Cum Laude. I got all A’s in my accounting classes. What was missing? It was insanely frustrating.

I was great at acting. My wife was pissed because she fell for the act. I was great at giving pretty speeches on mindset and success.? With great enthusiasm, I told many crowds, “What you think about comes about”, “mindset is everything,” thoughts become things,” “to think is to create.” People were inspired by the message.? I looked like I had it all together. However, what they didn’t know was I wasn’t eating my own cooking.? I was totally full of it.

There are unfortunately too many gurus that teach concepts that they themselves don’t adhere to.? Time to attend my own lectures. Time to dive into how my thoughts created the financial disaster.? Time to do the hardest work on the planet, thinking. I was great at avoiding it. I had many forms of distraction that kept me from doing the most important work possible.?The ostrich approach wasn't working and my back was against the wall. I could no longer be a hypnotic robot with my thoughts.? If I was going to change my thoughts, I needed to understand what they were.

After much digging, I finally discovered some subtle mind viruses that kept me broke:

“I’ll just work harder” – My #1 go to. I believed working more solved every problem.? When I first hired my coach and proudly told him I worked 80+ hours a week, his response floored me.? “Chris, are you dumb? What takes you 80 hours to do?? There must be something wrong with you!” I looked at “Grinding it” as a badge of honor but realized that anything past 50 hours a week, for me, created substandard results, and I experienced the Law of Diminishing Returns. Also, we complete any job in the time we allocate to it. I was insanely inefficient and ineffective.

“I’ll just make more” – The ultimate mind virus for entrepreneurs that struggle with money.? They don’t take care of the money they have. They spend frivolously. They take unnecessary risks, based on this default program.? I was coaching a couple, and the husband was resistant.? An extremely smart CPA, entrepreneur, and had made seven figures for years. Yet they were beyond broke.? His attitude was “I’m brilliant, what are you going to teach me?” After an hour of visiting, we tripped over this limiting belief.? He was shocked.? As brilliant as he was, this was the root issue that created broke, and he never realized it. He was horrible at managing money because it didn’t matter, he could always just make more.? At age 60, he was running out of time and had lost decades of money compounding opportunities.

“I don’t do my business for the money; I just want to help people”- We all want to make an impact for others and deliver huge value. I believe in “serve people and go to the bank” in that order. Serving others and being compensated are both important.?? Once, I was developing a workshop with a brilliant coach.? I was in awe of his work and the value he created.? He said to me, “I don’t do it for the money.” I asked, “Are you broke?” He said, “How did you know?” I explained that I had heard this many times from other entrepreneurs. ?Based on my experience, these entrepreneurs had a bad relationship with money and placed little importance on it. ?What you don’t appreciate and care for tends to not be present in your life. He then disclosed that he was on BK #3. I realized that money was a scorecard of the value I was creating for others. The more money I made, the more value I was creating. There’s one way to keep score with my business and it was the revenue that was being generated.

“It will happen one day!” – “Hopium” statement #1.? Hoping things turn out well while we insist on changing nothing.? My coach pointed this out to me.? “Chris, you’re pushing your success off one more day. If you keep doing that, you’ll always be one day away, and it will never happen.? WHY NOT NOW?? What are you telling yourself of why it can’t happen now?” Wow, subtle mind virus but very powerful.

The more I dug, I found other mind viruses that kept me broke. This process was empowering. I gave myself grace.? I looked at these thoughts from curiosity.? I didn’t judge them or myself.? It didn’t matter how they got there or where they came from.? It was empowering because I was doing the work to change my financial world and my future generations as well. I carried a piece of paper in my back pocket for over a year.? Every time I caught a mind virus, limiting belief or judgement around money, I would write it down.? It was a win because if I could make what was unconscious, conscious, I could do the work to change it.

This technique is called Metacognition.? Best described in Steve Siebold’s personal development masterpiece 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class. World Class Habit No. 25, Metacognition. “The masses are heavily influenced by external forces, like a pinball being bounced around from bumper to bumper. Their outer world determines their inner world. World Class Thinkers are the opposite.? Knowing their thoughts control their feelings, the great ones have adopted the habit of thinking about…what they think about. Once the performer is aware of the thoughts that create their results they have the power to change any thought they choose. The masses are victims of their own thoughts. They have the same potential for success as the pros do yet are simply not paying attention to what they are allowing to enter their minds and the results are disastrous.

This became the keystone to my transformation.? If I could catch it, I could use the techniques which I will teach in future articles to shift and change.? I realized that I was running a marathon with a bowling ball tied around my ankle.? This released the bowling ball.? It didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen over time.? Slowly as my thinking shifted, the results did too.? It was energizing and worth the effort.? I just needed to stay on it and not drift.? Thank God I had big reasons to stay focused. ?I felt tremendous relief as I knew I would never be back here again!

Chris Felton is an international speaker and bestselling author. Chris shares his story and lessons learned from being on the brink of financial ruin and divorce to building one of the most successful financial services firms in the country. He speaks on stages to audiences of over 20,000 and appears on top podcasts, such as the Ed Mylett show, reaching millions of listeners around the world. He’s been featured in US News & World Report, Market Watch, Yahoo Finance, and Nasdaq.com to name a few.

Does your team or organization want to get off the financial struggle bus? Book Chris to speak to your group.? With his keynote talk “From Broke & Stuck to 7 Figures” he will help your team get out of their own way and transform their results.? He can also do half or full day workshops based on principles from his best-selling book Think & Grow You.

Contact Chris’ agent Lima Maclean @ [email protected] or 201-955-8786.