Unlock Your Financial Potential. Christopher Howard

Bob Wheeler:

Christopher, thanks for joining us on today’s episode.

Christopher Howard:
My pleasure. Yeah, really thrilled to be here. What I’m really thrilled about is I saw you take your glasses off. I had no idea that they did that. That’s…

Bob Wheeler:
There’s a yeah, they have a magnet and they’re pretty awesome. And yeah, it freaks people out all the time. They think I’m ripping my glasses apart like I’m Superman, but

Christopher Howard:
That was fantastic.

Bob Wheeler:
just really handy.

Christopher Howard:
Right? Well, when you get your money issues handled, you become very strong. So…

Bob Wheeler:
You just, that’s right. My money muscles are being flexed. Exactly. So talking about money muscles, Christopher on your site, you talk about going from broke to becoming a millionaire. And I’m wondering what core mindset shifts did you have to make or that it enabled you, um, to have your financial transformation?

Christopher Howard:
For me, you know, and I mean, life is, it’s kind of like, it was Frank Sinatra that said, you know, I’ve been a pirate, a poet, a popper, you know, all those,

Bob Wheeler:
right

Christopher Howard:
right? Yeah, but so I’ve been through every kind of experience of life, but what shifted for me in terms of being able to attract a million dollars or. At one point, we were doing million-dollar days over and over and over and over again. But what shifted for me was a couple of things. The idea of modeling, which reverse engineering success, looking at what’s the result that somebody is produced, and then breaking that down into manageable chunk sizes so we can make it transferable to ourselves, like the recipe, learning the recipe for that kind of success.

So that 1,000% made an interest or made a difference in terms of my mindset. And it was really a combination of that modeling people within my field, modeling people outside of my field. So I went and I was modeling the billionaire mindset. And then I also found a mentor who had previously built a $60 million dollar clothing business and having him he got his MBA from Harvard when I was four years old.

So his mentoring helped me to kind of close the gap on the shorter distance type things modeling is to become Richard Branson overnight, it’s pretty big leap, but you know, so he was able to mentor and guide me along the shorter distance thing. So there’s a number of things that changed in the mindset though for sure.

Bob Wheeler:
Now that’s awesome. And I’m curious because mentors are so important. How do we know when we found the right mentor? Because there is a lot of life coaching out there. There’s a lot of great people and there’s a right fit and sometimes not a right fit. And if I’m gonna spend all this money and go for that, how do I know I’m getting the right mentor? Do they just drop into my lap?

Christopher Howard:
Right, no, it’s an interesting question, isn’t it? Well, I think, you know, I love what Warren Buffett said when he says, tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you what your life will become. And I think that, you know, the types of people that we look up to, if we’re, if we’re looking to reverse engineer success, one of the first things we say from a modeling perspective is you want to find a true role model of excellence.

So if you model mediocrity, you’ll get mediocrity. So being, you know, being able to identify that true role model of excellence, why are you picking that person to look up to? And there’s a big, there’s a difference between a hero and a mentor. But, you know, why are, and I would go to heroes first and say, why are you picking that person? And then, or that company that you might be looking at, that you’re looking to reverse engineer something, you know, to get a template that you can follow and replicate a result.

So I think being able to, you know, quantify what they’re doing, to be able to look at, you know, are they somebody that walks their talk and that sort of thing, and then to break it down from there is probably the first go-to, I would say.

Bob Wheeler:
Okay, and let me ask you this for yourself Did you already have a mindset like when you were seven eight nine ten fifteen of saying? I want success, I want abundance, I want to contribute to the world in some way. Or was it like, I just want to be a fireman and, and did the tools help you get there or did the tools then help you decide that’s where you wanted to go? Does that make sense?

Christopher Howard:
Wow. Yeah, no, it’s super interesting. It’s, um. I think that from an archetypal perspective, that it’s been kind of a similar journey. Like when I was a kid who, there’s a sociologist, Dr. Morris Massey says, who we are today is based to a large extent on who we chose to model when we were 10 years old. And you look at who your heroes were, for me it was Luke Skywalker and Spider-Man. So there was like those types of heroes. But then for me also things kind of evolved over time.

When I realized that, I could model again. I could go back to that time when I was 10, and I could look and kind of redirect and change the trajectory a bit. And so then I started looking up to, that’s when I started to do the modeling projects on the billionaire mindset, so that I could re-channel the same energy. It’s the same archetypal energy of, I look at what I do today, traveling around the world, helping people transform their lives.

There’s very much a, I think it’s a very important part of the project kind of the superhero archetypal energy within that. But as an adult, I’ve learned why you can go out and you can learn the business acumen and the strategies and the financial vocabulary and all the stuff that helps you to upgrade your or uplevel your game. You can learn that and put and who you can become or who I can become is far beyond what we would have even dreamt of when we were a kid, just because we were a bit naive.

So it’s like, oh, well, we can express it in all if that makes sense.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m curious, you know, you work with a lot of people. I see this sometimes. Imagine you see this sometimes where somebody like I want the success. I’ve got the skills and I’ve got the determination But I’m not quite the person that everybody else is so I’m not gonna quite get there I might get there 70% I can’t fully be there because I’m the exception to the rule

Christopher Howard:
Right. And I guess as I was hearing that from you, I was, I had two kind of two paths that I could go in my thinking. One was, is this person, you know, do they just have a lot of limiting beliefs? Are they did they not believe in themselves as their self esteem? Not all that sort of thing. And then you’ve got the other side. Is the person just making excuses because they really don’t intend to step up, nor would they ever really want to step up? You know,

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Christopher Howard:
there’s in terms of taking charge of our our. destiny, physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially. Like the only way that we’re gonna do that is to take responsibility, is to step up in that realm. And there are some people that just don’t wanna take that level of personal responsibility for anything, let alone their financial success.

But if it truly is, I want it, I want it badly, I just don’t believe that I can have it. I don’t believe that, then at least you’ve got the inherent motivation there, they want it. So now we just got to help them get rid of those things that would prevent them from doing what they really want to do. The other person were like trying to push the mule up the hill where they’re going, ah, you know, and so one of the things that I’m sure you’re familiar with is the idea of cause and effect.

And if we take, if we put ourselves at cause for the results that we’re producing financially in our life. then we’re responsible. We’re the beginning, we’re the end, we’re the alpha, the omega. We’re like, we’re everything.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
So it all lies on us in terms of whether or not we produce that result. If somebody is justifying why they are where they should be or blaming others or shaming others for making it work for them in their lives, you know that person is just making reasons and excuses that ultimately will keep them trapped. at the effect of life. And so for me, it’s like, how do we get rid of people’s reasons and excuses and move them over to the other side? And there is a difference between the two types of people, I think.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think as you’re saying that and you’re pushing the mule up the hill,

Christopher Howard:
Hehehehe

Bob Wheeler:
there’s this piece that I think sometimes, and maybe I won’t say anybody else thought this, I think I thought this, I just wanted it all come really easily.

Christopher Howard:
Right.

Bob Wheeler:
I didn’t want to have to look at myself. I didn’t want to have to do a self-evaluation. I didn’t want it to be difficult. I didn’t want to see the blind spots in myself. It’s uncomfortable.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah, yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
And I think I wished somebody had said to me, hey Bob, it’s not gonna be a fun journey, but it’s gonna be an amazing journey, right? And so I held back on certain things because people might not like me, people might sabotage my work. There’s all these things that I had going on and so limiting beliefs. And so I chose to, well, I’m just gonna sit back a little bit, because it seems uncomfortable

Christopher Howard:
Right.

Bob Wheeler:
if I move forward.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah,

Bob Wheeler:
Can you

Christopher Howard:
no,

Bob Wheeler:
talk

Christopher Howard:
I get

Bob Wheeler:
to that?

Christopher Howard:
that. Yeah, no, I get that. That’s so it’s kind of a combination. It’s the limitation of those limiting beliefs are preventing you from tapping into the motivation that would help you to move. You know, I heard somebody say at one point that it’s not so much motivation that we need, it’s momentum that we need more than anything because, you know, if you start to take your body there, so I like in telephone sales, they say smile and dial because it’s going to carry a certain energy.

It’s going to take your body to where you want to go energetically in that case and the energy that you want to elicit in that other person. But I think it’s the same thing here If we know that we want to transform our lives financially or otherwise, and how

Bob Wheeler:
I’m

Christopher Howard:
do we know? It’s been

Bob Wheeler:
going

Christopher Howard:
said

Bob Wheeler:
to go

Christopher Howard:
that

Bob Wheeler:
ahead

Christopher Howard:
in

Bob Wheeler:
and

Christopher Howard:
life

Bob Wheeler:
turn it over to

Christopher Howard:
we

Bob Wheeler:
you. So,

Christopher Howard:
pay

Bob Wheeler:
I’m

Christopher Howard:
attention or we pay with pain.

Bob Wheeler:
going

Christopher Howard:
And

Bob Wheeler:
to go ahead

Christopher Howard:
if we fail to pay attention to our relationships, we’ll pay with pain. If we fail to

Bob Wheeler:
and

Christopher Howard:
pay

Bob Wheeler:
turn

Christopher Howard:
attention

Bob Wheeler:
it

Christopher Howard:
to

Bob Wheeler:
over

Christopher Howard:
our

Bob Wheeler:
to you.

Christopher Howard:
health, we’ll pay with pain. If we fail to pay attention to our finances, we’ll pay with pain. And so if we’re paying with some pain and we go, well, I want to pay attention in a different way, and we know that we want it, but we’re afraid, and we’re sitting in that place where we just don’t believe it yet, our body going through the actions.

It’s like breaking through the initial inertia when you go to the gym where you’re you know, you’re afraid it’s not going to feel good, it’s going to hurt. But if you just start going, you hit that point where the motivation can kick in. And the more you do it, the more you like it, the more you like it, the more you want to do it, you fall in love with it. And eventually things can change. I think there’s faster ways to do it too.

We can use tools such as neuro linguistics to change what we call those sub modality distinctions. actually change the way we feel about it and dive in. But I also, I think in most cases, if people take their body first there could be a good starting point.

Bob Wheeler:
Absolutely. And I’m, you know, you bring up NLP wondering for those folks out there that haven’t done it, neurolinguistic programming, it’s an amazing remapping. Can I just do this once? Can I do a little NLP? Can I do a little neuro hypnotic transformation? One and done. I fixed myself. I adjusted the dial. I’m good, right? Through the rest of my life.

Christopher Howard:
It depends, right?

Bob Wheeler:
Ha ha!

Christopher Howard:
No, that totally depends. Like I’m not one that says that would ever say that. The idea is, I’m not even talking about, here’s how you make change and change your life permanently. What I would say is, here’s how you open your mind to new neurological choices where you might’ve been previously stuck.

So let’s take a look at that. So the person that avoids, let’s say, managing money, and they avoid managing their money because of the certain associations that they have with that. Well, that same person is going to have something abandoned, you know, like they don’t even hesitate on.

And so the way that they think about like for me, Brazilian jiu jitsu, I love jiu jitsu, I dive right in, I train sometimes three times a day, there’s no and there’s a way that I think and feel about jiu jitsu. Well, if we map across as you indicated, these the distinctions, the way that we code and store, in this case, jiu jitsu and our been my mind and body into we put we actually take the it’s actually goes the other way, you put it into the submodality distinctions of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, then it’s like, you can choose to feel a new way about it.

And they say that successful people are the people that get themselves to do the things that unsuccessful people are unwilling to do. But I think it wants to have further successful people are the people that get themselves to love, to do the things that unsuccessful people are unwilling to do because if we can change that, then we can dive in and we can, we don’t have to go through that initial inertia, we can dive in and I’ve used those types technique successfully in many cases of my own life. I went from making 10 cold calls a day to 100 a day and loving the process because I changed my experience.

So when we can take charge of our experience of life, we become infinitely more powerful as well.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, that totally makes sense. If I’m going to enjoy it, or I’ve found the pleasure in it… Well, who doesn’t like pleasure?

Christopher Howard:
Right.

Bob Wheeler:
I mean, I’m sure there are people out there that don’t, but

Christopher Howard:
Right, right.

Bob Wheeler:
they like the pain. For me though, yes, if I can find a way to say, oh, even though it maybe isn’t always a hundred percent joyously fun in the moment, but I know the process and where it’s gonna lead me is gonna be pleasurable.

Christopher Howard:
Well, absolutely, but you can also learn when there’s ways to map it across where literally we fall in love with the process So like I remember my buddy Jim Gillespie was helping me with, and I’ll map it across to money instead. So I’ll change my story just a little bit so it matches what we’re talking about here. But let’s say that somebody was hesitating on learning about, let’s call it financial management. And they were hesitating on that. And we said, okay, well, how, and let’s say that they love dancing.

And you say, okay, well, how is financial management just like dancing? Well, your partner in this dance is your money and you need to lead. You can’t just expect the, to follow if you’re not, and you can map it across. You start take the analogy and you find, and you can map across the lexicon, the language of it, the key words that really jump out there so that you start to understand it in a new way that’s more approachable for you.

When you say that the power of analogy is it takes us from the known to the unknown where financial management is unknown for somebody, but dancing really resonates with them or sailing for that matter. You know, it’s about how you trim the sails and pull it in to catch the wind. It’s not, and are you, you know, Are you an excellent sailor that’s really honed your craft in a way that you can get from where you are to where you wanna go.

And you hear the metaphor in that could be a very brilliant way for helping people to map across an affinity or something to something that they don’t have the natural affinity with but causes them to become extremely wealthy as a result of that. That’s pretty cool change.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, no, I love that. I love that because we can all find something. I love to dance or, you know, I’m thinking I’m, you know, big Lord of the Rings. And

Christopher Howard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
so Return of the King and being able to see that model of, wow, okay, he’s not always winning, but he’s always showing up.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah, the life’s

Bob Wheeler:
And

Christopher Howard:
an adventure and you like you’re on this adventure, you know, on this quest that to and to, you know, find the treasure and slay the dragons. Like we can use so many metaphors like that. Like for Warren Buffett, for example, once again, his, you know, his business is artistry. He sees it as creating his mosaic, you know, bringing in all these different investments under his banner of Berkshire Hathaway.

He sees that as creating the mosaic of, creates from an investment perspective. And anyone can understand falling in love with artistry.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah, it’s easy to understand. But not many people fall in love with the finances in a way that set themselves free. Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, I love that. And I don’t know if it’s anchoring or attaching or whatever, but being able to see a similarity so that I can hold on to as a guideline or as a guardrail that I… Oh yeah, I don’t know this, but I know that.

Christopher Howard:
Right.

Bob Wheeler:
And if I can bring this over here, this can be a little bit smoother sailing.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah, so to speak,

Bob Wheeler:
Right. Exactly.

Christopher Howard:
right? Yeah, and there’s a couple of thoughts that I have about it too is that when we sort by differences, it makes it sometimes more difficult to take on a new task. So like I remember when I was learning to do public speaking. I had done a lot of stage work before that. I worked, I did a lot of microphone stuff, but I thought it was so different from what I wanted to do, which was to speak and teach. It seems so different what I did before, but it wasn’t until I said, well, how is this exactly like what I did before?

The entertaining of people, but this type of, and then when I brought that in, it came alive. And I think it’s the same thing when we stop sorting by differences, say, how is finance so different from everything I’ve done? You go, no, how is it exactly the same? as the things that I’ve done. And then we can infuse even more of our uniqueness into the way we’re expressing ourselves. And the other thing I always say is that the meaning that we associate to anything determines everything.

So the meaning we associate to work, is it a place to express ourselves, to make the impact we wanna make in the world, or is it the place, the necessary evil that we have to go through in order to make some money so that we can pay our bills? The meaning we have associated the money, is it a tool for good? 

to set us free or is it the you know the root of all evil so the meaning that we have associated the things determine everything and when we can change our meanings through mapping across and that sort of thing we can take charge of our salivary response so we can learn to fall in love with those things that really enhance our life rather than taking it the other way.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, and what I love about that, a lot of people don’t like to do something that’s unfamiliar. So if, you know, oh, that’s scary, it’s unknown, I haven’t done it, so I think I’ll go over here where I don’t have to do that. If I can then find where it’s exactly the same, well, now it’s not going to be that unknown.

Christopher Howard:
Right.

Bob Wheeler:
It’s not going to be that uncomfortable because I already know it’s pretty much just like this,

Christopher Howard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
it’s gonna get me there a little bit closer, it seems like.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah, I think you take more ownership of it in a positive-based psychological way. So you’re having expectations of positive results. You’re approaching it with that familiarity, so you own it more. Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. Well, Christopher, we’re going to take just a moment to test your nerve.

Christopher Howard:
Uh oh.

Bob Wheeler:
Test.

Christopher Howard:
Ha

Bob Wheeler:
Yep. Test

Christopher Howard:
ha

Bob Wheeler:
your

Christopher Howard:
ha!

Bob Wheeler:
nervous test. Your nervous brought to you by the money nerve. And for the listeners out there, if you want to test your nerve and uncover the dirty truth around your finances, visit test your nerve.com for our free financial quiz. All right, here we go. Down and dirty. We’ll see. You’ve mastered the art of reprogramming the mind for success. If you could hack into the minds of all of our listeners and install one belief about money, what would it be?

Christopher Howard:
Huh, interesting. The belief would be, you know, and it’s about money, but it’s a quote that I heard from Marcus Aurelius when he said you can be due, or no, what did Marcus Aurelius say? He said, if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach. And so for me, that’s the aspirational quote that really encapsulates the idea that you can have it all.

Bob Wheeler:
I love that. I love that. What’s one belief or ideology around wealth that society accepts as normal that you might disagree with?

Christopher Howard:
Um, that, uh, that, well, I mean, obviously that you have to be born into it. I mean, that’s one, you must hear that all the time, you know, but, um, yeah, the, I mean, the reality is if you look at the top 10 richest people on the planet, most of them were self-made. If you, you know, it’s like, um, so yeah, just the idea that it’s, uh, it’s, it’s your upbringing or where you came from. And that’s just doesn’t hold true.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, I think that’s true. What’s one of the craziest things you’ve ever spent money on?

Christopher Howard:
Uh-huh. Craziest things I ever spent money on. Um, let me think. I probably, oh, I bought this little expanding bow staff because I’m a martial artist. It was like this little metal thing that you’re supposed to click like that and it pops out. It just looks so cool. But I did this as an adult. This is the scary part. And then it folds down like that, but it was very dangerous. You take this little clip off and it’s gonna cut you up and stuff. I don’t know how they possibly sell those, but that was pretty.

Bob Wheeler:
But you bought one.

Christopher Howard:
I bought one anyway, yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
You bought one anyway. What’s one money rule that others might say is unconventional? What’s one money rule that you follow that might be conventional to other, unconventional

Christopher Howard:
Might be

Bob Wheeler:
to other?

Christopher Howard:
unconventional to others. It’s a lesson that I got from Richard Branson and Sam Walton. They both had a belief that in times of cash crisis, it’s time to expand rather than contract. And I think that’s really helped me out at various times throughout my journey. Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
Alright, and last question. What’s one unusual or quirky money ritual that you have?

Christopher Howard:
Um, you’ve heard… No, I was gonna say something really inappropriate. Ha ha ha!

Bob Wheeler:
That would be totally fine. It’s all welcome

Christopher Howard:
I was just going to make it up, but now let’s see. I have an unusual ritual that I have. Oh boy, I don’t know that I have any unusual rituals. I don’t have one. You got no

Bob Wheeler:
Okay.

Christopher Howard:
answer for that one.

Bob Wheeler:
Do

Christopher Howard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
you ever talk to your money? Do you ever like, have you ever talked to your money?

Christopher Howard:
I don’t talk to my money but I suppose I could. Yeah, I don’t. I don’t. Do you talk to your kids a lot? I do.

Bob Wheeler:
I do sometimes. I do.

Christopher Howard:
No, I like it. I like it. It’s good.

Bob Wheeler:
I like to have fun with it. Like I don’t get, you know,

Christopher Howard:
Yeah, it’s not weird. It’s not weird.

Bob Wheeler:
you know, I’m sure people saw me talking to my money or my wallet. They might think I was weird, but that’s, I just do that in private.

Christopher Howard:
Now I can think of weirder things now that you said that, but I’ll keep it all to myself.

Bob Wheeler:
Well, let me ask you this. So you talk about martial arts. That’s something that you really enjoy. And I’m curious. Martial arts to me is a discipline and I’m wondering if it’s the discipline piece to it, the focus that is the attraction, or is it just fun to kick and punch like, and how does martial arts play into your financial success or success?

Christopher Howard:
All of this stuff, yeah. Martial arts for me has been, discipline was probably the greatest lesson that I’ve learned from martial arts. I know like amongst everything, but the attitudes that were passed down from martial arts have been hugely instrumental in everything I’ve done. 

I’ve always said like in our personal development seminars, I say the attitude with which you apply the tools are more important than any tool you’ll ever learn. And so, that I got from martial arts. The discipline, the whole idea of discipline for me was just showing up. Because one of the things that I’ve learned in martial arts is that every, you know, you might go in one day and you might get your. butt kicked and you might go in another day, you might be on top of the world,

but it doesn’t last that you feel on top of the world every time, especially when you’ve got the reality of the litmus paper of having to tap out or lose in a match or something. And so I’ve always had that present. So for me, it wasn’t about whether I had a good day or what I might perceive to be a challenging day, it was just showing up.

It’s all I had to do was show up, show up, show up. And if you show up enough and you continue to make distinctions and you keep attitude and check, you keep your spirit high, eventually you’re going to make the black belt, right? And so,

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
and so I got three black belts. I got the first one when I was 21, I got my fifth degree in Chinese Goju recently, and I’ve got a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, which is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is tough to tough to get. That’s a tough black belt to get. But I love it. And it wasn’t because I was so special. It was just because I showed up. So that discipline pervades everything.

And then you look at it and you go, okay, well, how do these things impact? how have they impacted my success? There’s no doubt that they did. I remember reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich eons ago. And when I read that book, the one idea that I said I was gonna take to heart was the single mindedness of purpose. Because

Bob Wheeler:
Yep.

Christopher Howard:
the whole idea is if you take piano lessons for 20 years, you’re gonna get pretty good. There’s no doubt about it. So all I had to do was pick my really long hill with my really wet snow, that.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
and stick with it and eventually good things would happen, you know, and so, and that’s exactly what happened. So for me, that was the magic was, I was picking that really long hill and stay on the course. And then eventually the flood gates fly wide open and you’re rewarded tremendously, you’re on to straight tipping points, you know? So

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah,

Christopher Howard:
kind of.

Bob Wheeler:
no, absolutely. And I, you know, for me, I call, I put my blinders on and become singularly focused, uh, obsessive almost when I have a goal, um, annoying to other people because I can’t let anything distract me, you know, if I’m in a. get in shape. I can’t look at the milkshakes and the cookies that are

Christopher Howard:
Right.

Bob Wheeler:
calling out my name. It’s got to be… I’m looking ahead.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah,

Bob Wheeler:
I’m

Christopher Howard:
you

Bob Wheeler:
looking

Christopher Howard:
got to not

Bob Wheeler:
ahead.

Christopher Howard:
buy them in the first place and make sure your house is clear of any of the things that would pull you off track, right? So you could focus

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher Howard:
on what you

Bob Wheeler:
Help

Christopher Howard:
got to focus

Bob Wheeler:
set yourself,

Christopher Howard:
on.

Bob Wheeler:
help set yourself up for success in that way.

Christopher Howard:
Right?

Bob Wheeler:
I’m wondering, you know, you can show up and I’m thinking about, so when my therapist said, you know what you need to do, you need to learn kickboxing many, many years ago, you’re going to do kickboxing. So I went to this guy, um, and one-on-one and all that stuff. I was learning all the moves. It was amazing. Um, scary. Um, but it was amazing. Then I had to get in the ring, right? Then I actually had to spar. Like you can learn all the skills,

Christopher Howard:
Right, sure, yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
but you gotta step

Christopher Howard:
Different

Bob Wheeler:
into the

Christopher Howard:
thing,

Bob Wheeler:
ring.

Christopher Howard:
yeah, right.

Bob Wheeler:
And I remember the first time, and my coach, my mentor was a national champion, all these things. He wasn’t just,

Christopher Howard:
It was legit.

Bob Wheeler:
he read a book and was teaching it, right? He was a master. And when he punched me in the face,

Christopher Howard:
Ha ha!

Bob Wheeler:
You know, I was, I’d never been hit like that. And I stopped. I was thinking to myself, do I cry? Do I run in the corner? Or do I turn around and punch him back and fricking take this dude out? And so I had this whole…

Christopher Howard:
Right?

Bob Wheeler:
you’re gonna die. And you know, but for people that are listening, I’m wondering, but there has to, for me, it seems like it wasn’t until I actually engaged and then actually got over the fear, got hit in the face, started sparring and realizing, okay, I’m not gonna die. I might die, but most likely I’m not gonna die. And it wasn’t as scary as I thought it was once I engaged.

Christopher Howard:
Right, right, right. Yeah, I think that’s what we find with most things. You know, that’s why like in dream, when we do dream analysis, they say that if, you know, if you’re having a repetitive nightmare where you’re being chased by something that, you know, turn around and face it and that’s,

uh, you know, and that’s the same thing in life, turn around and face it and see. And I think that goes back to the beginning of our conversation. Is it, is it the momentum that you need to take by just taking your body there and then letting the rest follow?

Is it shifting your mindset so that you fall in love with the process and you’re able to, or you put your mindset in the best place for handling the task at hand? a combination of all that, you know.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Christopher Howard:
And that’s what, you know, takes us and helps us to break through things. I mean, ultimately, if we can fall in love with those things that are really healthy for us and make our life better, it’s a better thing. Right?

Bob Wheeler:
Sometimes easier said than done, but you can get there. You can get there, right? So I’m curious, like you use these cutting edge techniques, NLP, hypnosis. Can you explain how these modalities really actually help reprogram someone’s money mindset on a subconscious level?

Christopher Howard:
Well, I mean, you know. One simple definition of things, Brian Tracy at one point said that the difference between the rich and the poor is that the poor associate pleasure to spending and pain to saving and investing, and the rich associate pain to spending and pleasure to saving and investing.

So we could look at it from just a very chunked up perspective of the world and say, when we change our associations to things, we change our world. And so, That’s a very basic way to look at it. But the other thing is also, if we think of the idea that reality is subjective and the quantum theorists were bugged by this. Niels Bohr famously said, do you mean to tell me that the whole world changes simply because a mouse

Bob Wheeler:
All

Christopher Howard:
looks at it? But…

Bob Wheeler:
right.

Christopher Howard:
you know, what becomes of the world through the eyes of a mouse, it’s a different place. And, you know, you have your own subjective experience of reality. I have mine, Oprah Winfrey has hers, you know, Richard Branson has his. So we all have our own unique way of sorting in the world and looking in the world.

And it’s based on who we are, it’s based on the basis of our personality. So we have sorting patterns, but we’re living in this quantum soup of pure potentiality. Every possibility we could want exists, money, they both exist. But some people look at the screen of life and they see poverty and they mistake that for being what there is, because they don’t know how to change the programming. So, but

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Christopher Howard:
if you type in new words into the search engine of life, both experiences exist, you pull up different. different experiences, it’s like turning the channel and all of a sudden it’s like, wow, no, that’s all there. And that goes even for something as simple as somebody needs to produce 50 grand in a month. They’re like, wait, this month I need 50 grand. Okay, well, if you don’t see it any places because of the channel you’re on, when you change the channel and you start focusing on the opportunities and the things that are there, you know, things get,

your world can start to change. But once again, people go through their lives with it on the wrong channel and not knowing how to change anything. Oprah said when she grew up in the poverty and what was it, Cusco Mississippi, she said, I would have never known there was anything existed other than the poverty that I grew up in if it wasn’t for the books that I read. And

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
reading those books transported her imagination to other places where she could begin to, you know, forge a new life for herself. But so many people don’t do that. They stay stuck, you know.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, and I guess you would say maybe this is also just changing the channel, but I’m thinking about people that will say It’s not that there’s, okay, there’s wealth and there’s poverty. Um, if I have all this wealth, somebody else isn’t going to have it.

Right. Or how can I celebrate all my abundance when people are sleeping in the streets or there is, uh, you know, unhappiness in the world and, and right. Maybe that’s somewhere in the middle, but maybe again, it’s a different channel of learning to say, it’s okay. I can’t solve the whole world. And so I don’t have to take myself out. I mean, where.

Christopher Howard:
I think it’s also microcosm, macrocosm. So Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. If you want to wipe out poverty, it’s not going to help you by feeling feelings of poverty. The way to do it is to, first off, wipe it out within your own consciousness, step into a wealth consciousness, then look to elevate the world. There’s a guy named Taddy Bletcher who ran the first free university in South Africa called CEDA.

And back in 2006, I had spent some time on Richard Branson’s island and he suggested that I go out there and work with these guys. And so we did, I brought 30 coaches out to South Africa. We worked with this group of 400 South African kids out there. And one of the things that Taddy said, he said, Chris, he said, South Africa is not poor. He said, we’re rich. We’re rich in natural resources. We have diamond, we have gold. We have so much in terms of resources. He said, what’s impoverished is people’s minds.

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
And he said, the key to transformation and raising people out of the poverty they’re in is financial education. And there, it wasn’t like doing microloans and stuff like they do in some countries. It was about teaching the, helping people to uplift their entrepreneurial mindset so that they could create more jobs and transform things out there. But that really stood to really hit home for me was if we wanna change the world, the best way to do it is to change ourselves light of inspiration for other people to see and to step up as well. I think that’s the way to change.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. And I wonder, like, as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, people that are, yeah, I’m halfway there, or I’m sort of established. And I’m going to, I’ll equate it to stand up. If you do stand up for a while and you get to a certain place and you’re funny. Well, now people expect a certain funny. Do you take the risk and do something that fails and then sets you back? Or do you just maintain, well, I’m sort of funny.

Christopher Howard:
Got

Bob Wheeler:
It’s

Christopher Howard:
it,

Bob Wheeler:
good enough.

Christopher Howard:
got it, got it. Yeah,

Bob Wheeler:
And

Christopher Howard:
the

Bob Wheeler:
I’m

Christopher Howard:
good

Bob Wheeler:
wondering,

Christopher Howard:
one.

Bob Wheeler:
you know, in this place where some people have, you know, I present, well, I’ve got a couple houses. If I ask for more help or if I seek some advice from a mentor, well, then they’re going to see that maybe I’m not as far along as I thought I was. So maybe I like, do you know, trying to

Christopher Howard:
I

Bob Wheeler:
find

Christopher Howard:
do

Bob Wheeler:
that balance

Christopher Howard:
that.

Bob Wheeler:
of

Christopher Howard:
So I think there were it sounded like there were a couple of things in there. There was the You know, there’s the okay, I’m at this, you know, the status quo is fine. But then there was also, how am I going to put myself out there as if I’m supposed to have a veneer, right? If I’m supposed to

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
be, yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
That’s correct.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah, that’s, it’s an interesting thought. I’m like on the second part on the, how do I put myself out there? Like I remember I came to a point in time where I was like, I was very well known in my space. And this is about 10 years ago. I had the largest personal development presence in Australia, second largest in the UK. So we had a big, big presence that we were making.

But I remember there, I hit a point in time, and I used to love to go to seminars and trainings and all sorts of things to pour good things in. So I was constantly doing that, you know, it’s like Sam Walton said from Walmart, he said, I, I spend more time in my competitor stores than I spend in my own. Right. So he said, I never had an original idea in my life.

But nonetheless, so I was going out there and doing that until one day I hit a time and I was invited to a very, very well known speaker seminar by his team in London. and I went over to go to the seminar and they came to me in the back of the room and said, we have to ask you to leave, our promoter says your competition. And it was like, and I was invited by them, but the promoter had an issue with it. And so I had heard somebody say at one time, study while you can, because there’s gonna be some day where people aren’t gonna wanna let you in. But

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Christopher Howard:
yeah, so it’s like immerse yourself while you can. But like, my whole thing has always been. immersion, constantly learning. I’m a consummate student. Like I said, I’ve got three black belts, one of them’s a fifth degree, but I’m a student. I never think of myself, some people will say master to me, and it just feels kind of weird. But like I say, I’m a student. And it’s the same thing with everything that we’re learning.

The idea that we know nothing is probably much more accurate than we know something. So, you know, that’s kind of my thought about that. And then on the other side of, you know, the kind of the good enough type thing. I don’t know about good enough. I think, like, I think there could be a couple of things happening there. Like, I think that person’s limitations, their limiting beliefs may be so covered things up that they’re just not really tapping into the passion that could be there.

Because if, you know, if we’re, if we love what we do, if we’re inspired by what we do, I think we’re gonna wanna get up and start to change things. So it could be an issue of passion. It could be an issue of trajectory. What’s the trajectory the person’s on? It also could be an issue of they’re just, the limiting beliefs are so caked on that they don’t wanna let themselves through it. So the approach to it, I think, is gonna be a little bit different based upon who we find. One thing though that I’ll say that really changed things for me was just on a daily basis starting to ask myself, what am I most inspired by right now?

What am I most inspired by today in my life? And right now in my life, and what’s important to me about that? And how does that make me feel? I’m really getting anchoring in states that I know are driving states. States like inspiration, states like determination, states like enthusiasm. Powerful high vibration states that if I’m living in those states, there’s gonna be good things happening. How do you live in good enough inspiration at the same time. It’s like they can’t coexist, you know,

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
so one way could be changing the states.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah.

Christopher Howard:
Probably the easy layperson’s way is changing the states and then we might look at other things too.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, I love that. All right, I’m going to ask you this. Why do you think coaching can be so instrumental for someone who’s looking to improve their financial situation? And what’s the reason for that? What can they gain by working with, I won’t say an expert, you know, with a student like you?

Christopher Howard:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I think. I think it’s huge because I think it was Carl Jung who said, until we take that which is unconscious and make it conscious, we’ll continue to get it reflected back in our life and we’ll call it fate, right? So that’s the concept of projection. So we all have our stuff, our emotional baggage that we bring to the table. I can’t tell you how many people that have come into my seminars, like thousands over the years that have gone and they were doing share trading courses and things like that. And they would come to me and they’d go like, what I was taught would be working if I just didn’t invest emotionally. You hear the same thing every

Bob Wheeler:
Right.

Christopher Howard:
time, if I just didn’t invest emotionally. And so they’ll come in and they wanna put things straight in terms of their own consciousness. And you’ll hear in wealth creation courses, they say it’s 70% mindset and 30% strategy, but then they typically will teach 70% strategy. So it’s like the mindset is so important in terms of everything that we create.

So I have a program that I teach in. I’ll be doing it in Bali, November 1st through 7th, called Billionaire Bootcamp. And what we do inside that training is we model the billionaire mindset. So we take all these billionaires, we reverse engineer, we look at their, uh, the reverse engineer, their success, but look at what strategies did they employ, um, what are their values? What are their beliefs? How did they think?

Um, all of that sort of stuff so that we could install it in people to open up the super highways of their neurology so they can go out and create things that they could never create before those types of results don’t come from just. popping out of the womb and living your life, that type of result doesn’t come unless we’re blessed with having it introduced to our lives. And I was blessed by having that introduced to my life and it radically transformed everything for me. Not even just a little bit, like radically. I will say that everything was necessary. The mentor was a necessary component of that. If I just did the modeling,

I don’t believe that I would have created what I did. But it was all of those things. And eventually we did $100 million in sales of our seminars around the planet. But. that would not have happened had I not radically shifted my thinking. So in terms of the methodologies that I use with people, it’s not because I’m so great that we’re able to create that.

It’s because we’re modeling the best of the best. And the water is always purest when it’s closest to source. So that’s and I always tell people, if you don’t want to be a billionaire, you can always scale it back. We’re not going to make you be a billionaire. You know.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing that I want to just name here, not every billionaire looks the same, right? We’re not, you’re not going to create 8,000 people that each have a portfolio that’s

Christopher Howard:
Right. Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
10% precious metals, a horse farm, right? It’s, everybody’s gonna bring in their own unique flavor. It’s about that mindset that says everything is possible.

Christopher Howard:
This is everything. Yeah, like the 100% and there’s other aspects of it too. I mean, they’re like billionaires are obsessed with expansion. They’re constantly expanding and many, if not most cases. Right. But. Yeah, there’s gonna be those similarities between the mindsets that they have, but to your point, and I love that, that there’s different cast, there’s different,

it’s like, you’ve got a flashlight, which is the light of consciousness, and remember those little things you could put over the flashlight with shapes and dinosaurs and stuff? And you just change the shape, that’s the filter, and you change it on, and you project the world of Richard Branson or Oprah Winfrey or whatever it is. So changing our filters helps us to project into the world in an infinitely more powerful way. but it’s also our choice, we can choose.

Like, you know, the billionaire that I related most to was Richard Branson, but when I started studying Warren Buffett and got his common sense, wisdom, just like it just, I fell in love, like I was like, oh my God, and I never would have known that had I not gotten out of my own zone of thinking. But then if you take the. the investment wisdom above it and you combine it with the, you know, the flamboyance of a brand. So then you get something new, you know, this other,

Bob Wheeler:
That’s right.

Christopher Howard:
and essentially who we are today is based upon the different pieces that we took from different people and colors and we create, you know, our life. So,

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah. No,

Christopher Howard:
yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Christopher, we’re at the M&M moment, money and motivation, our sweet spot. I’m wondering if you can give the listeners a practical financial tip or a piece of wealth wisdom, something that’s worked for you.

Christopher Howard:
Um, I think that, uh, you know, I’ll actually say two things. I think the number one is being on your true north and life. I think we’re. And you hear that from everybody. And it’s so important that probably I am not the only person who’s ever said this on here. I know that I’m not. But following your passion is so critical because if you don’t love what you do, you’ll never stick with it long enough to be truly financially successful.

And it’s through the passion that we have the desire to become the best in the world. And if you’re the best in the world, there’s always a market for you. So it’s that love of what it is that you’re doing and the love of the process as you’re growing it. And I think also just your ability to turn obstacles into opportunities, your ability to look at, because we’re all going to get the obstacles, we’re all going to get the challenges that come up.

But your ability to look at that and say, how do I turn this into the best thing that ever happened in my world? How do I turn this into the best thing that ever happened in my investors’ world? How do I turn that, you know, if we keep that mindset open, then that will help us to develop the resilience and the stick-to-it-ness to eventually make it to what we’re creating.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Christopher, I appreciate that. And I also, you know, one of the things I really appreciate, and I was just talking with somebody about this the other day. I think we all have. my belief, we all need to come in as students. If we come in as experts, our ego takes over.

I know this, I know that, and we don’t open the mind. And staying as a student, as somebody that’s constantly learning, our mind continues to stay open to possibilities. So I appreciate you naming that. I was just having this conversation with somebody

Christopher Howard:
No,

Bob Wheeler:
about

Christopher Howard:
that’s awesome.

Bob Wheeler:
how it just feels like, you know, our leaders don’t have to be experts. Our leaders… I’d like them to have some experience,

Christopher Howard:
Right.

Bob Wheeler:
but not that they’re coming from, I know everything.

Christopher Howard:
Yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
And that just feels real important. The other thing that you talked about, and again, these are things that I hold very near and dear. If we don’t bring our unconscious to consciousness, it’s gonna stay there and it’s gonna keep driving us sort of like those little things at Disneyland when you’re riding a ride and you’re like, why am I going this way?

Cause underneath, This thing is taking you down a path you maybe don’t want to go. Um, but, but that’s where you are. Right. And if we can bring it up and say, Oh, change the track. I want to go over here. Um, if we don’t bring it to conscious that we can’t name it, we can’t claim it. We can’t own it. And so I appreciate you touching on that and really just this piece around mindset. It’s mindset.

And like you said, 70% mindset. 30% strategy. I think some of us focus on, just let me learn these techniques. And then I know I can, right? And then it comes from, then I know. And that’s again back to ego when we’re like, just give me the recipe

Christopher Howard:
Right.

Bob Wheeler:
versus, oh, let me get in the kitchen and start exploring with the

Christopher Howard:
how

Bob Wheeler:
ingredients,

Christopher Howard:
to put the recipe together, right, yeah.

Bob Wheeler:
right? Some skin in the game. And, you know, so I just, what I didn’t hear was a lot of, you know, you can never have it. Uh, it’s only for certain people, right? There’s a possibility if you, you know, if it’s humanly possible and it’s been thought or funk, um, then it’s possible for all of us and I, and I like that piece.

And I also about being close to the, the closest to the source is going to be the purest. Um, so I appreciate you bringing all that cause it’s so important in the world. And we all just need to be out there learning and being students in this journey called life. Where can people find you online and social media? All that good stuff.

Christopher Howard:
Let’s see best place to go for me that we are site Chris Howard www.chrishowardgift.com and I have three gifts on there for anybody that jumps on there. Jump on there fast in case I change the page, but

Bob Wheeler:
Hahaha.

Christopher Howard:
it happens. But there’s one if you’re looking to break through barriers within yourself. I’ve got a gift on there for you. If you want to be a transformational coach or speaker, I’ve got a gift on there for you. And if you want to build your business or scale up, I’ve got a gift on there for you too. And you can reach me on Instagram at Chris Howard live.

So that’s one place you can reach me as well. And super thrilled to have been here with you today. This has been a whole lot of fun. Great interviewer.

Bob Wheeler:
Yeah, thanks so much. Well, I really appreciate what you’re doing out there. And I hope that our listeners will go out there and be the students that they wanna be and have the life they want. So thank you again for joining us.

Christopher Howard:
Cheers.