Chris Naugle; America’s Money Mentor
Chris Naugle is many things. A disruptor. A constant failure. A fighter. A champion. A bit of a TV star.
But speaking with Steve Sims for The Art of Making Things Happen podcast, Naugle describes his surprisingly humble beginnings. “I grew up in a very lower, lower-middle-class family. Dad was an alcoholic. Mom raised me and my mom always taught me, even though she had no money, she taught me to dream big. And by the time I was 16 years old… I went and I started my own clothing line in mom’s basement called Fat Clothing Company. So I became an entrepreneur at the age of 16 with a loan for $500 from my local credit union.”
Naugle’s biggest dream, however, was to be a snowboarder. In particular, he wanted to snowboard all day and run a shop at night. The only person willing to take a chance on funding this dream was Naugle’s mom, who put her only asset, her home, on the line to give him a chance. Explains Naugle, “Fatman Board Shops came to be November of 1994. And I ran those shops successfully until 2010 when I sold them off. And today they’re still in operation running strong.”
But the dream couldn’t continue forever. After 9/11, says Naugle, “My business took a screeching halt and I was forced to go look for a job. And I had to decide, was I going to deliver pizzas at night or find a big boy job that was going to help me get through it. And I landed in the financial advisory world.” It was meant to be a temporary thing but, instead, it stuck, teaching Naugle important lessons about entrepreneurship that allowed him to eventually sell his business.
Yet, again, the obstacles kept on coming. In 2008, “The Great Recession hit me like a Mack truck at full steam. And it brought me to my knees,” says Naugle. “I got to be one payment away from being completely bankrupt.” From 2009 to 2014, Naugle catapulted into real estate, taking Warren Buffet’s advice to buy low. It didn’t succeed. In 2014, describes Naugle, “Here I was again, living paycheck to paycheck, trying to make ends meet just because of one wrong turn, because I didn’t understand how money worked.”
But even after this umpteenth failure, Naugle didn’t give up. “I went to Thailand with a backpack for a month to clear my head,” he says. “And that was that turnaround point where I realized I had to do something different… And that’s where my journey really began because I dove in and I started following the wealthiest people around: multimillionaires, billionaires.”
Naugle learned a life-changing lesson. “What I found is what the wealthy do with money is the complete opposite of what we are taught to do with money because they don’t give up control of their money,” he explains. “We put money in banks and just leave it to sit there. The wealthy don’t do that with money; the wealthy move their money… They don’t have to mimic what the banks do with money. And because of that, they make twice as much they’re in full control of their money and they hardly take on any risk.”
For Naugle, learning these lessons “cost a lot of money, a lot of years of my life, a lot of hardships, but I’ve learned it and I’ve cracked the code and that’s where I’m at now.”
It’s quite a story. Naugle admits it himself. “My whole life’s been a big rollercoaster as you can see, these incredible highs and these unbelievable lows,” he says. His experiences are, more than anything, a lesson in picking oneself up and rolling with the punches.
Now, with his television show and his books, Naugle has turned to helping other people by teaching them what he has learned on his journey. He says, “I’m helping [people] change their lives and it’s just such a great feeling inside. And that’s what drives me to do what I do.”
To learn more about Chris Naugle:
Website: Chris Naugle
Book: The Private Money Guide
Learning: The Money School
