About Your Divorce Made Simple: Media, Interviews

REPRINTED FROM “NEIGHBORS OF TARRYTOWN”, AUGUST 2024

By Robert Salas

Amy Colton has never faced a fork in the road without confidence that whichever path she chose, she would go forward with faith in her education, experience, and personal strength. From her childhood in a Detroit suburb where she had the strong support and guidance of her parents, to a solid education at two major universities, to years of success in a corporate environment, to facing the hard consequences of a recession, and finally to reinventing herself and eventually founding her own company, Colton has made the most of all of her experiences by being a good listener and becoming a master strategist. And there are two other ingredients, which are not often considered part of a good recipe for business success, which have served her well: compassion and empathy.

The whole gestalt led Colton to a place of wanting to “work with women going through major life transitions,” as she explained.

Colton moved to Austin in the summer of 2005, and these days she’s a financial advisor. Her work goals are the same as those of the other countless numbers of so-called financial experts. She has the requisite training, skills, resources and insights to successfully manage assets and formulate successful plans that protect and grow financial resources. But there’s plenty that sets her apart from most of her peers.

She began to map out her working life as an undergrad at The University of Michigan, where she got her BA, and her direction was further solidified when she continued graduate studies at Michigan State University, where she earned her MBA. Her star began to shine brightly almost immediately when she was hired by IBM and soon after promoted to a management position. That’s where she got her first taste of how being a woman in charge was not so well-received in the workplace.

Colton said, “I spent the first 25 years of my working life in technology, 20 of those years at IBM. And it was a time where there weren’t many women in technology. I learned quickly what it was like to be a woman working in an environment where there were mostly men. I moved from customer support to sales, and while there were more women in sales, I still faced gender discrimination. It was more subtle in sales, but it was there.”

She told a story about when she was promoted to manager at the age of 29, while working for IBM in Detroit. “I was managing men, some of which were twice my age,” she said, “and they announced my promotion in front of a hundred people in the office. And one man who was going to be working for me got up in front of everyone and said, ‘I will not work for a woman.’ He wasn’t alone in his thinking.”

And now, at age 71, she is in another industry whose ranks are made up mostly of men, but she’s mentally in a different place.

She said, “When I made the transition to this business, I wanted to make sure that if I was working with couples, or individually with women, that the women would get their questions answered, that they would be part of the conversation. I wasn’t going to let it be a guy talking to a guy ignoring the woman in the room. I wanted to make sure that the woman was educated, got her questions answered and was taken care of.”

After stops in Boulder, Colorado, and Mahwah, New Jersey, she landed in New York City, where she was named sales executive of the year, no small feat within IBM and the Big Apple, especially for a woman. “But not even winning salesperson of the year made a difference,” she said. “I got a new manager, who had not worked in sales, and he wasn’t supportive.”

So twenty years in, she decided to leave IBM for more entrepreneurial pursuits, and it all worked exceptionally well in jobs selling pharmaceutical and skin care (she is a former licensed aesthetician) until the fateful 2008 recession, which derailed the career paths of so many people. Colton was not spared the impact from a work perspective, as she was laid off like many thousands of others. She was, however, at age 55, prepared to overcome the obstacles set in her way.

Fast forward to 2011, when Amy joined New York Life as a Financial Services Professional, and then to 2013, when she joined Forefront Wealth Partners as a Wealth Advisor, and to 2020 when she co-founded Your Divorce Made Simple, which seeks to intercede in divorce to protect assets and negotiate equitable distribution between spouses before much of the value is lost to attorneys, who typically know little of assets management.

When the light bulb turned on and she started on a path toward doing what she had always wanted to do, which is to mentor people on a more personal level by applying practical and proven principles and planning, she believed that a good place to land was in financial advisory and assets management. She can say that she’s been there, done that, and that she successfully weathered the recession storm because of her knowledge, determination, and careful planning and strategies.

Colton is committed to her personal mission of helping to empower women to take control of their own finances and general wellbeing. She said, “Through mentoring, sharing personal experiences, and providing sound advice, I want to encourage women to get their financial house in order and to make decisions from a place of strength not fear. I want them to move forward with confidence and optimism, while encouraging them to choose their destinies and not be a victim of circumstances.”

She said that life’s biggest transitions are the death of a loved one, retirement, and divorce. When an acquaintance, a family law attorney, grew tired of the emotional stresses of working with couples breaking up, the attorney began to send her clients to Colton in order to work out the details relating to the distribution of assets, and child support in some cases, and the lawyer would then file necessary papers with the courts. That led Colton to start Your Divorce Made

Simple. But she didn’t see herself just sitting in as a financial advisor. She believed that she could serve her clients more efficiently and fairly if she was better equipped in other ways, and so she became certified as a divorce financial analyst and a family law mediator. Now she guides individuals or couples through the divorce process, including tax and financial planning, which are critical long after divorce.

She said, “I try to get everybody in agreement, and as a result of the business that I have built and the processes that we have put in place, we can do this in a much quicker timeframe than if two attorneys are doing it. It takes about 12 to 18 months if both parties are using attorneys, where I can do this in three to six months. So it’s a huge savings in time and cost. When people are getting divorced, what do they usually fight about? They usually fight about money, and yet they don’t seem to engage a financial professional to help them. And unfortunately, women are usually getting the short end.”

After everything she has experienced, something personal still burns in Colton and she’s got a lot more work to do. She said, “I want to mentor and help as many people as I possibly can with as many things as I possibly can. I’ve had a long and very diverse career, and I’ve learned a lot from both my experiences and my education, and I want to impart as much of that as possible to anyone willing to listen and learn.

“I haven’t had many mentors in my life, but when you do have mentors, it makes your life a lot easier, and I really think that’s one of the most important things that people can pursue is finding a mentor. I have been doing a lot of work with students at Michigan State University, in the Business School, and that’s one question they always ask: ‘If you could give me one important bit of advice, what would it be?’ Part of my answer is find a mentor. And a mentor doesn’t have to be someone at work. It could be someone in your personal life. I am very passionate about supporting people, educating people, especially women of all ages.”

You can read about Colton’s corporate world experiences in her book, “Have We Really Come a Long Way, Baby?: A woman’s journey through corporate America from 1976 to 1996”, available on Amazon. You can find her publication, “The Top 27 Tips on Divorce”, also on Amazon. The website for Your Divorce Made Simple is https://yourdivorcemadesimple.com.