My First Podcast Appearance!

Summer of 2020. That statement already says a lot on its own. There have been plenty of negatives in 2020. But there have also been some positives sprinkled in. One of those positives was me having the opportunity to join a long-time friend as a guest on his podcast.

Matt Story is the creator and host of the What’s Your Story? podcast. He’s a marketing guru and entrepreneur. We first met as interns a long, long time ago and went on to work as colleagues for several years after that. Though things have changed quite a bit since our early 20’s, where our top priorities were partying, video games, and searching for the holy grail of entertainment, the open bar with the lopsided girl/guy ratio, but we’ve remained good friends and it’s really cool that we can now support each other’s ventures.

As the host of the What’s Your Story? podcast, Matt chops it up with diverse leaders “to explore how the experience as person of color has helped them in blazing new trails.” In this episode, I get to tell my story…where I’m from, my education, my career, my challenges, my successes, and of course, the story of The Money Whys Guy. I hope you enjoy!

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Transcript

Matt: All right, so today’s guest and I go back to the early two thousands…back to baggy khakis, striped polos and our days interning at Proctor and Gamble in the IT department. Lucky for us those days were pre-Facebook so I’m hoping the visual evidence is gone. You know, it may be sitting on a backup hard drive somewhere, but for the most part, you’ll never see those if we have anything to say about it. But with that, I’d like to welcome C.J. Gunn to the show.

TMWG: Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I’m also glad those days are past us.

Matt: You know, they say fashion is cyclical, so we may see it come back. But, but you know, you never know. But I appreciate you taking the time brother. But before we start, I know a question you probably get often is what does C.J. stand for?

TMWG: C.J. stands for Charles Jr. I wish I had something way cooler than that, but that’s it.

Matt: Gotcha. So just to help the listeners get to know you a little bit better, can you share a little bit about your background, how you grew up, what was, what was little C.J. like?

TMWG: Yeah. Yeah, definitely man. So I was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And then growing up, I really only left Louisiana a handful of times throughout my childhood. So we would go to maybe Houston or Florida. I actually came to Atlanta once for like a soccer tournament. So like really driving distance type stuff. The first time I got on a plane actually was in the ninth grade when I went to my sister’s graduation. She graduated from Howard in Washington, DC. So really all of my life experiences, like tied to Baton Rouge and a few cities around in Louisiana because that’s where all my family was. And I went to a small school. My entire school was K through 12 with like a thousand students in total. So my graduating class had like 77 kids, seven black kids in the whole class. And so that was kinda my environment and growing up.

Matt: And you also attended Howard yourself. So was it you following in kind of the family footsteps? Or what led you to a DC?

TMWG: So kind of. Howard, funny enough, was actually a last minute decision. So after my junior year of high school, my mom signed me up for this summer program at Southern University. So for those that don’t know, Southern is in Baton Rouge. It was this biomedical program sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. And just some quick background. Howard Hughes was like one of the OG eccentric billionaires, like before Richard Branson and Elon Musk came around. And so he was really into science and technology and aerospace and he founded this Institute, which has this crazy endowment of like $20 billion. And so Southern got some of that money and started this program and my mom said she signed me up for it. I was like, “nah”, cause I was really more into computers and technology, that was my thing. So I was like, “no, I’m straight on that”. And then she was like, “well, one, you don’t really have a choice because you’re doing it and two, she said you get an $1,100 stipend at the end of the program”. And all I heard was that $1,100 because to 16 year old C.J., that was like life changing money. So I’m like, “yeah, let’s do it!”. So I spent my days that summer on Southern’s campus and just being in that program, one, it had like some of the smartest Black kids, from like different schools around the city so I got a chance to meet some new friends and then the other part of that was just being on an HBCU campus and just getting to hang out. The building that we were in was kind of on the main strip of Southern so you’d see people driving and walking up and down all day so it was great people watching. So between that and hanging out in the union…I learned how to play spades that summer. That whole experience, it just felt like a big family reunion every day. So by the end of that summer, I had made up my mind. I was like, I’m going to an HBCU. Getting back to your question, though, about why Howard specifically. My senior year of high school, I went to a recruiting event that actually Florida A&M was hosting in Baton Rouge. They brought their band, they brought the cheerleaders and like, it was a big party. Based on my ACT scores at the time, they offered me a full scholarship right there on the spot. So I was like, “oh, this is great”. This is a no brainer. What I didn’t know is that she hadn’t really said it yet, but my mom actually really wanted me to go to Howard because she wanted me to be closer to my sister and my sister still lived in DC at the time. For some reason, she thought that I would be safer in DC than in rural Florida. And this was like 1997 pre-gentrification DC so take that for what it is. But anyway, we went back and forth for a few weeks and in that time, Howard also offered me a full scholarship. And so she [my mom] just kind of won me over and I was just like, “all right, fine. I’ll go to Howard”. Turns out it was one of the best decisions of my life. So I got to Howard, I got to meet people from all kinds of different cultures and parts of the world and the country. And so this was all pre social media so this was really like my first time getting to see some of these cultures that I hadn’t seen before. Nowadays, everybody kinda knows when music comes out or like when styles change, but you could distinctly see, you know, these people from the East coast dress like this, and these people from the West coast are listening to this music. And so all that, that just whole thing was like super cool to me. So East coast, West coast. You had like West Africa, South Africa, the Caribbean, all these people coming together. So that was just really cool. Coming from Baton Rouge and experiencing that for four years, I was a completely different person by the time I left.

Matt: It’s funny. When you think about some of those pivotal moments that, you know, set you on your path, it sounds like this was one for you. I’m curious. Given your high school, it sounds like there was roughly 10% Black students. Going into the HBCU experience, was that a transition? Was that something that you kind of ran towards given the summer program and other things you were exposed to?

TMWG: Yeah. And plus I see you doing your fast math right there too. [Laughter] But, but yeah man, it was honestly a little bit of a culture shock, but definitely a welcome shock. So that summer that I spent on Southern’s campus, like I said, kind of primed the pump for me, so to speak. And so I had some idea, but until you actually get there and you’re like, “Oh, this is where I live now and I’m doing this every day”. And living in the dorms, I met some of, you know, still to this day, some of the best friends that I have and just the experiences and things that I learned there, both in and out of the classroom. I just don’t think I could have gotten that at a non-HBCU.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, definitely makes sense. So after Howard, you interned at P&G for a couple of summers. How did Procter get on your radar?

TMWG: Good question. So the first couple of summers I was at Howard I went back home to Baton Rouge and I was working at a casino valet parking cars for $4.25 an hour. And I would make like, you know, on a good day, $15 to $20 in tips. And so this is middle of the summer in southern Louisiana and it’s just hot…just hot for no reason. And so I’m just working hard trying to try to make a little bit of money to live on. So I get back to campus that fall and overheard some Comp Sci classmates talking about an internship that he did over the summer and how he was getting paid $600 a week to sit in an air conditioned office and use his brain to make money. And at that point I realized I was hustling backwards and, I was going to say no one told me different, but really I didn’t ask anyone differently, so I just didn’t know any better. And so at that point, I made up my mind like, OK, I’ve got to do something different. I’ve got to get an internship. There was this other guy that was in my class from Cincinnati and he talked about how he did Inroads and interned at P&G through that program. So when P&G came on campus at the next career fair, I spoke to them and I showed them my less-than-impressive resume at the time. I didn’t really have any work experience in the area I was trying to go into in IT. And then also my GPA wasn’t great because I absolutely had been prioritizing partying and socializing my first couple of years at Howard. I’m not encouraging that. I’m just saying that that’s kind of what it was at the time. For whatever reason, the recruiter I guess saw some potential in me and passed me on [to the next round]. At that time, I don’t know if they still do it, but you would take an SAT type test that P&G gave to assess your ability. And I did really well on that so they offered me an internship based on that and based on some follow up interviews. And so that’s how I ended up with the internship. I got invited back to do one the following summer and then at the end of that, they offered me a full time gig.

Matt: We talked about the transition from Louisiana to DC. How was the transition from DC to Cincinnati?

TMWG: Uhh, poor. [Laughter] So really dude. DC is, you know, so much culture and diversity and you can pretty much do or see whatever you want there. And then coming to Cincinnati, which is a really conservative city, or at least was then, I haven’t been back in awhile. So it was almost like hitting a wall. I chose to live close to my office, which was about 20 minutes north of downtown Cincinnati. And that’s [downtown] where the “action” was. So where I was, was fairly rural. And so what I would do is, even though I had multiple grocery stores within like a five minute drive for me in all directions, I used to drive like 20 minutes across town to go grocery shopping just so I wouldn’t be the only Black person in the store. Then I was often also the youngest person in the store. It’s not that I ever felt threatened or uncomfortable, but it felt like pressure because I felt like I was representing the entire Black race every time I showed up to a store full of older, white retirees.

Matt: Yeah, definitely. I didn’t have the DC to Cincinnati experience. I was coming from St. Louis at the time, which is probably, from a level standpoint, on par with Cincinnati from the makeup of the city. So for me, I feel like we had our tight knit group of young professionals that, you know, didn’t know any better. It was kind of like we were all figuring it out as we went and it was definitely one of those things where you kind of look to the left and right…and we all lived close to where we worked because some of us were in different offices. Then, you know, we kind of did what each other did. You know, you bought a new car, you bought a house. It was literally like a kind of monkey see, monkey do kind of thing where we didn’t have a game plan per se. It was more following that path, which, you know, I think there are positives and negatives associated with that. But ultimately it was a stop that got us to where we are today.

TMWG: Exactly, exactly. I met, again, some of my best friends in Cincinnati. And you know, we held each other down and there was always that, “Hey man, when you getting out?”, type thing, when you found out somebody got a job somewhere else outside and you’re like, “Yes!”,  and you congratulate them.

Matt: Yeah, definitely. So I’m going to fast forward to your professional life where you are now. So you’re currently a Customer Engineer for Google Cloud. I know this wasn’t necessarily a planned career change, but would love for you to share a little bit on how you ended up in this role.

TMWG: I guess I’m not sure where it came from, but apparently I have an entrepreneurial bone in my body somewhere, which sets the backdrop for the story I’ll tell. In the middle of 2019, I was working at this boutique consulting firm. It was a pretty good job. I enjoyed doing it. I was making some good money. But I left there to join a three man startup, with me being man number three. It was a retail technology company. We were serving up data and analytics solutions for apparel retailers so our primary customers were pretty much any retail store in a mall. On paper, it seemed like a solid bet. I talked to my wife about it and I felt like they had a great model. The product idea was solid. I had worked in this space before and I’d actually worked with the cofounders before so we had relationships in the industry and everything seemed like it was on track. And so I said to myself, and I told my wife, I’m going to work at this, give it all I got for the next few years, and I think this might be our big payoff. So then fast forward nine months and every one of our customers is shutting down because some dude ate a bat. [Laughter] Real talk, our revenue went to zero pretty much overnight. It was crazy! Since I was the only one that was actually taking a salary and the only non co-founder, it was kind of the obvious choice that, “Hey, we gotta let you go”. So I was laid off back in late March [2020]…whenever that was when everything started going crazy. I went through the stages of grief in like 72 hours and then once I got past that and it was like, “OK, this is reality”, I actually began to embrace my unemployment. So this was, like I said, during the heart of this initial pandemic lockdown, and really nobody knew what was going on and nobody was going anywhere. And so I really had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the family. I got a lot of projects that had been on my to-do list done, both around the house and just personally, I got to work on some stuff. And since we didn’t have to go anywhere, like we weren’t running to soccer practice or taking kids to whatever activities or we had to, you know, meeting up with people for stuff, it was almost like a stress relief, like we could breathe. And we realized how much we had going on in our lives. From the financial side of it, I had been preparing for a rainy day for the past almost 20 years. Plus, my wife was still working and we had unemployment so it wasn’t hurting from the money side. It gave me an opportunity, like I said, to just kind of work on myself. As I started job searching, I saw this role for Google come up and it seemed like a really good fit for me. Some of my technical skills were kind of rusty so I did well enough to get past the screener interview, but the recruiter was like, “Hey, here’s some things you should work on”. So I spent the next month and a half just going HAM on all these classes online and researching and learning about the company and learning some of the skills. Apparently I did well enough so I got the Customer Engineer job. I’m basically the technical person supporting the sales team so they’ll bring me in once the customer or the prospect says, “Hey, we actually want to see this work” and I’ll do a demo or build out a proof of concept. And hopefully that helps get the deal signed. So that’s kind of what I do.

Matt: Well, yeah. I appreciate you sharing that, that perspective because I think it’s something that a lot of people are experiencing right now. Whether it be positions eliminated, potential plans turned upside down, etc. I think the thing that impressed me with how you went into it headfirst is one, as you mentioned, focusing on yourself and your family and really having that as a priority. But also to using it as a time to kind of reset and take inventory of where things are. And ultimately you’re still netting out in a very positive place, not only from your mindset, but also just from the opportunity that you stepped into. I think a lot of that obviously speaks to your pedigree, but also just speaks to your growth mindset to not just make that 72 hours 72 weeks of wallowing in grief.  You know, not wanting to come out of the room and whatnot.

TMWG: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Matt: So I know that you spent nearly 20 years of a career in IT across various organizations, leading teams, different angles of IT programs, delivery and whatnot. I’m curious, how has it been navigating that experience as a Black man?

TMWG: I started at P&G as a database developer in pharmaceuticals. This was back when P&G actually had a pharmaceuticals division. I basically wrote code for a living. And then after that role, I went on to be a Project Manager leading business intelligence implementations for some of P&G’s largest customers, like Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, some of those guys. Then after that, my last role at P&G was, well, it was basically like what you would call a Product Manager today. They called it a Solution Manager back then. But anyway, after that I left P&G I went to this much smaller company and I started getting back to my technical roots, doing more hands-on-keyboard work again in the data and analytics space because I really missed the technology. Being in this role, this was a professional services role, so customer facing. I traveled to customer sites a good bit. And then I became the manager of that team after a couple of years. I’m kind of giving some history to give some context to answer the rest of the question. After that, that job, I went to this boutique consulting firm. And then following that, I landed back at the startup we talked about a little while ago. So that quick trip down career history lane was all to say that I was pretty much always the only Black person in the room whenever we were in leadership meetings. Over my 18-ish year career, I can probably count on two hands how many times there’s been another Black person in customer meetings or management or leadership meetings. The fact of the matter is that just aren’t a lot of us, like if you look at the whole, like the larger numbers, I think P&G and some of the other large companies do a good job of promoting these, Google calls them employee resource groups (ERGs), where you get together with other people that look like you or are from similar backgrounds. But just on the whole, if you look at the IT industry, there just aren’t a lot of us. A couple of jobs ago, when I was in professional services, this was a company of about 1200 people. I was the only Black manager in the entire company. The impact of that is I spent a lot of my career dealing with imposter syndrome. Like am I really supposed to be here? Because it’s intimidating when you look around and nobody looks like you. And then frankly, a lot of times, like I said before, I was also the youngest person in the room. And so all of that kind of compounds. So even though I was getting the job done and sometimes, hell honestly doing a better job than some of the other people in the room, there was still this nagging feeling of “you don’t really belong here”. It was kind of tough to shake that in my own head. It really hasn’t been until the last few years, honestly, in my career where I’ve come to that realization that “Hey, I am supposed to do this work. I’m supposed to be here. I’ve worked hard to be here and I really deserve this”. I’m happy with where I am in my career and I can’t point to any instances of blatant discrimination or anything like that. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite. I feel like I’ve had people from across the spectrum that have been solid supporters of me. But it was kind of in my own head that I had that lack of confidence earlier in my career. I think all that goes back to that subtle privilege that we always talk about from some of our counterparts in the workforce, where they can just focus on the task at hand and not have to be constantly thinking about how they’re different from everybody in the room or how they’re representing for an entire race, in some cases. It was just that pressure. I guess I learned to be who I am from that, but it was still just that pressure and that lack of confidence that I experienced at times.

Matt: Well, it’s commonly referred to as the minority tax. Anytime you don’t fit the majority of who’s in that room or who’s in org chart or what have you. You’re dealing with imposter syndrome, with code switching and all the various other things that get talked a lot about in being more inclusive and building inclusive environments. It definitely is something that you carry with you and at times it’s hard to focus on the task at hand if you’re thinking about the fact of like, I can’t say this, or I can’t say it this way, or I can’t present myself in this way. I look back at our time starting out at P&G together, we had a lot of  leaders that look like us and not knowing any better, I took it for granted. I also think it allowed us to, again, we were know nothing young 20-year olds that just showed up with the baggy khakis and the polos that we just got from the polo outlet, we didn’t know any better. It was almost like this other world. I think as many of us went on to other experiences and other roles that we were doing well in our career, but the room changed and we quickly found that not every company has an ERG group set up for Black employees and many companies don’t have enough Black employees to have an ERG group. I think that that is definitely something that unfortunately hasn’t changed in the last 20 years or so. It’s consistent across IT and in many other fields, but definitely in this time we’re in now, I think people are starting to realize that there is a tax on many of us that kind of go into these rooms and have to represent for a larger section of people because we are the only one…and we’re not sure when the next one’s going to come.

TMWG: Definitely. Definitely.

Matt: So I want to switch to a bit more upbeat topic and the brand of C.J. for a bit. So how would you describe yourself in three words?

TMWG: I’m gonna take something from this book called The Ideal Team Player. Patrick Lencioni. I actually had to look that up to make sure I was pronouncing that right. So it is…I heard him say it. He’s the author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. That’s probably the book he’s most known for, but he wrote this other one called The Ideal Team Player. In there, he talks about these concepts of building the right culture and who you’re trying to get on your team or get in your company and the attributes he lists are hungry, humble, and smart. That’s how I like to describe myself. This book is similar to The Five Dysfunctions of a Team in how it reads because it’s like a parable, but they talk about those three traits. I see myself as hungry because I always want to learn more. I always want to understand the how’s and why’s of things. Like I talked about before, when I was laid off, I really enjoyed that because I was just consuming information and at that time, companies were offering all these free classes and stuff. So I was like, this is great. I just get to learn without boundaries right now. And then the humble piece is really kind of my natural personality. I don’t feel like I need to always take credit for stuff and this is actually sometimes to my detriment. I think I tend to downplay my successes, especially like we talked about before, the imposter syndrome comes into play. I try to tell myself I should promote myself more. And so, you know, here I am on this podcast. Hey! Then there’s the smart piece. He talks about it not being so much your SAT type smarts or your grade type smarts, but it’s more emotional intelligence. You can look around a room and read the room and know what to say or what not to say, or things like that. So those are the three words that I’ll use.

Matt: You hit on a couple of things in there that I just want to kind of spend a little bit more time talking about. One, the fitting in because I truly think that anyone, a person of color or someone that is in an underrepresented group, we tend to focus on assimilating and blending in. And we don’t necessarily want to do anything that’ll make us stand out. And to your point, that can be a detriment to your own personal advancement and your personal development. It impacts how people see you because you may have a great idea or you may have done something that could be of value, but we want to kind of blend in and not be called out separately because of all those other things we talked about. Then the second one you hit on is something that I think is also not a talked about enough topic is the concept of emotional intelligence and how that is truly the capital you have to have if you’re in a successful organization or if you’re running a successful team because there’s always going to be smart people. There’s always going to be people that know everything needs to be done, but you do need someone that has that emotional intelligence to be able to manage the interactions, to be able to manage the functioning of the team. Otherwise you’re going to quickly burn people out. I think those are definitely two great things to keep in mind as anyone’s looking to further develop their own skill sets.

TMWG: A hundred percent. And especially in my industry in IT, I know some crazy smart people, but sometimes you don’t want them to actually talk to anybody. They can tell you about the technology inside and out, but in a sales role, if you’re trying to convince somebody that this is something they need, they can easily take the conversation somewhere you don’t want to go.

Matt: Well I’m gonna jump to another topic because I’m curious how this impacts the hungry, humble and smart. You mentioned your family. You and your wife, Kelly have two beautiful boys. I’m curious, how has husband hood and fatherhood shaped your journey?

TMWG: So let me correct you on one thing. You said two “beautiful” boys. We thought we had two beautiful and wonderful sons and then we were quarantined with them for several months and now we realize they’re just a-ight. [Laughter] They may work their way back to beautiful one day. But no, to answer your question, I honestly find them inspiring. They really push me to keep going and do greater things because I know they’re watching me. And it may not seem like it, especially with my wife sometimes, but they’re actually listening to me and it’s given me a different perspective on life. I’m not just living for me. Kelly (that’s my wife) and I are working to leave a legacy for our kids. And not just for them, but actually for future generations and that’s kind of our driving purpose. My family takes me out of my comfort zone, and I would say for the better. Taking a step away from the professional side of it for a little bit, we have kind of a wooded backyard. I looked out the window of a couple of weeks ago and I saw a copperhead snake out there, back in the wooded area. For those that don’t know, that’s a pretty venomous snake. Unfortunately, I’ve seen some of my neighbors on Nextdoor posting about seeing them so I was confident that’s what it was. I don’t really do snakes at all, but this thing is out there where my kids play and my wife hangs out so just kind of instinctively, I went out in the garage, grabbed my shovel and, you know, had to go to work. I’ve never done anything like this before and was scared out of my mind. But long story short, C.J.: one, snake: zero. The kind of stuff you’ve got to do to hold a family down, man.

Matt: Exactly, exactly. We had a similar experience. It was actually a few months after our youngest was born and the crib was just set up and she had just, I don’t even know, I think she was sleeping in the room at the time, but we had a mouse in her room. And the reason we knew there was a mouse is because we saw him. It was literally one of the things, because we’re both in the room at the time with her, we see it. And I’m just like, Rebecca, take the baby. I got this. And it’s like, literally close the door. It’s me and you mouse. And one of us is walking out. I’m not going to say how many screams there were. It might not have been my most proud moment, but I will say I walked out and the mouse did not. It’s funny how you get put into these situations, like you say you’re not a snake person.

TMWG: You’re put in those situations where you look around like, I guess this is my job. But that’s what I think what makes people, right? Like you can you step up to the situations when your name is called.

Matt: Exactly. Your family will put you in those situations. On a more serious note, I do want to add, because I’m team girl-dad over here and many things that come with that. Given you’re raising two black boys in today’s world, I just would love your perspective on how has that weighs on you and how do you think about that in today’s environment?

TMWG: Yeah, man. It’s honestly tough. The boys are eight and nine now and part of me just wants to preserve their innocence for as long as I can…just let them be kids…like, the world is great. But at the same time, I don’t want them to be naive and then just get blindsided by the reality that is the world. It’s this delicate balance. Amidst everything that’s been going on this summer, we’ve talked to them…about the Covid pandemic. We’ve talked to them about the Black Lives Matter movement, so they can both tell you why it’s Black lives matter versus all lives matter and so we kind of broke that down for them. A couple of years ago, we were in DC and we went to the African American History Museum and coming out of that, they had a lots of questions about stuff that, just from their perspective, their age or their eyes, it just didn’t make sense to them. They were like, why are people being mean to other people just because they look different? And I’m like, that’s a great question. We’ve all have been trying to answer that. But I mean, they’re really smart kids and they start putting these things together and you see these little aha moments. As we’re talking to them, I’m really careful not to give them this jaded view of the world and of humanity. I’m really explicit about saying most people are good and not painting this broad brush of just saying like, all white people are bad and they’re all out to get you because I feel like, frankly, that message just perpetuates the very thing that we’re all trying to fight to fix. I give them a message of, love your neighbor. I try to have that attitude, but then at the same time, you gotta be like, but don’t be a sucker and you need to be able to recognize when your neighbor doesn’t love you back. And also if your neighbor doesn’t love you back, see that neighbor as an individual and not as a representative of an entire people. I’m trying to promote that mindset and it’s just hard, man.

Matt: Yeah, it’s tough. I know one of the things that both you and Kelly prioritize is entrepreneurship and financial independence, and you mentioned earlier having an entrepreneurial bone. Why is that of particular importance to both of you?

TMWG: One of the things I say is money isn’t everything, but it’s something and it’s a lot of something. Our society that we live in, it operates on money. You just can’t get around that. So even if you talk about things like spirituality and love, which are also very important, even the holiest church in America still regularly deals with money matters. Our church growing up in South, we always had a building fund. There’s always something about money and I feel like if you have financial freedom, meaning you earn way more than you spend and you have the majority of control over how that income is coming in, then you have choices in life. That’s freedom and that’s what’s really important. I feel like entrepreneurship helps to strip away those boundaries and those ceilings on the earning potential side. Then it also allows you to be creative and really work passionately on what you want to do. Then, in addition to that, if you do it right, what Kelly and I are trying to do, is create this legacy of generational wealth. And like I said before, that’s really the ultimate goal.

Matt: I know you just launched a project around this really focused on helping other people understand the importance of not only financial literacy, but being able to set yourself up to build that. Do you want to share a few more details about that?

TMWG: Yeah. So I’ll start by saying that we try to instill this message in my kids, too. We talk to them, and probably me more than my wife, but we talk to them about money a lot…to the point where they start rolling their eyes, but that’s fine because I know they’re still listening. At this point, like I said, they’re eight and nine and they can tell you level 100 stuff about saving and investing, credit cards and passive income. And my wife and I intentionally include them in conversations about money so they can know what’s going on. So a quick example and I’ll kind of get back to the project I’m working on. We bought a commercial property a couple of years ago with the intent of renting it out. We were getting some work done to it, kind of get it fixed up, ready to rent. We would take the boys with us down there while we were doing that work and the whole time, we’re explaining to them what was happening; how we were looking for tenants and helping them to understand how the tenant/landlord relationship worked. Of course, them being kids, they moan and groan, like this is super boring, but I know one day they’ll grow to appreciate it. It’s far off, but one day they will. The other thing that we did to help them understand entrepreneurship was we bought them a gumball machine and their barbershop agreed that we could put it in there. So that’s their business now. Whenever they go get their haircut, they have to clean it out and then when it’s time to empty the money, they have to count the money and roll the quarters. Then with that money, we talk about the different buckets of where it needs to go. Some goes to, “rent” to the barbers as a thank you for letting them use the shop. Some goes back into the business. We need to buy candy to refill the machines and then my oldest son talked about eventually wanting to buy a second machine so we’re reinvesting some of that back into the business. They put some towards charity, some towards their own personal savings and then I tell them the rest they can split and spend. We talk about how that’s passive income. It’s not a ton of money, but every couple of months it’s enough for them to buy a video game, which is pretty cool and they didn’t really have to work for it. So you asked about the project that I started. I didn’t really know the stuff that I’m teaching them. I didn’t know about this stuff until I was grown, like real grown. Fortunately I was always pretty frugal and saved money, but I never really knew why I was saving it. So when I first started at P&G, people were like, oh, you should put money in your 401(k). I had no idea what a 401(k) was, but I was like, yeah, yeah, okay. And then they were like, oh, you should participate in the employee stock purchase plan. Yep. Again, no clue what that was, but I was like, hey, these people have really nice houses and they go to Hawaii for vacations so I should probably do what they do. And so I did it. Again, at the time not really knowing what it was, I was just clueless about money. When we’re in Cincinnati, we used to mentor high school kids and one of the stories that I would tell them was about how I wanted a new car when I first started working. I would see commercials and they’d be like, get this fully loaded Honda or whatever for $19,999 and I’d be like, how do people have 20 grand laying around to buy a car? Because I’m looking at my bank account like, I’m not even close…like I might get a car by the time I’m like 40 maybe. I had no clue. I was 22 years old and I had no idea what financing was or how it worked. In hindsight, it may be a good thing because it kept me from going into debt. If I didn’t have the money for it, I just didn’t buy it so I avoided that. But all that to say, I had a lot to learn and I’ve since learned a lot and I really enjoy learning about personal finance. And so I want to give back. I started this blog called The Money Whys Guy and the “Whys” is W-H-Y-S so kind of a little play on words because I want to help explain some of these concepts of personal finance. My audience is kind of the people like me. There’s a bunch of personal finance blogs out there, but really the audience is people like 22 year olds C.J., just trying to figure it out, trying to make sense of some of the basics of saving and investing. I know some people that are out there just wandering, like, “I’ve got a good job, but how do I take this extra income that I have and build wealth with that over time?”. That’s really kind of the audience I’m after.

Matt: It’s interesting, the story of showing your sons how to develop passive income. I’m literally like, okay, how can I do that with the girls? I’m literally stealing that idea. I know that there’s simple things like that, we take for granted. And to your point. Yeah, you’re going to get the eye rolls. You’re going to get the heavy puffs of why are we doing this? But that’s the kind of stuff that sticks with kids. We can all think back to when you first learn how to do laundry or you first learned how to cut the grass or whatever the thing is, your parents taught you at an early age these tasks and develop these skills in you. And finance should be one of those. So first and foremost, kudos to you guys for doing that. And then I think secondarily, it’s interesting because when I think about financial planning, we tend to get to a point in our career where we’re saying, okay, I’ve made enough money that I should be thinking more broadly about how I’m doing this. But there’s a Delta between that and when you’re starting out that you’re probably helping people with with the blog and helping people understand this is, to your point, the play on words, this is why you should do this and this is why you should not do that. I’m sure it’s something that people will want to check out and even if you think you know, just make sure you know what the rationale and the reasons are.

TMWG: Yeah. Yup. Yup.

Matt: Cool. So looking back at your career to date, obviously you’ve got a lot of stuff coming up, but if you were to look over your shoulder, do you have a “Mama we made it” moment?

TMWG: I do. I think it would be the first time I flew business class. Early in my career, we had this conference in Rome, Italy. We flew business class over there and this was my first time and I’m like, dude my seat goes ALL the way back…waaay back. And it was an overnight trip, like to the point where I didn’t want to get off the plane in the morning. That was one of those moments where I was like, man, this little dude from Baton Rouge is sitting up here in business class. So I think that was probably my moment.

Matt: Comedians describe it as the first time you went left on the plane versus right. Those that have had the chance to relate to that can experience it. I think that for me, I don’t know if it’s on the “mama, we made it”, but, my wife and I, we went to Vegas, with my in-laws and they were just about to retire. They’ve been working hard, just living a really good life and set her [my wife] up. I’m obviously appreciative of that. And we were going and we’re like, you know what, we’re going to upgrade their tickets. You know Vegas is a quick jump for us so it wasn’t a significant amount of money, but they had never flown first class and just that experience and seeing them come off the plane, I’ve never seen such a big smile, being able to go left so that’s definitely a moment that I encourage everybody to either experience yourself or help someone in your family experience. If someone were looking to follow in your path or to follow in some of the milestones you hit, what would be the roadmap you would suggest they follow? Or what are the things you think they should consider to get from where they are today to the destination?

TMWG: I don’t know if they want to follow my path exactly because it was definitely a little bumpy at times, but I think the advice I’d have for someone to help them avoid some of that is to learn from people who’ve had that experience in what you want to do and are frankly, sometimes smarter than you. That was something I alluded to earlier…something that I struggled with. Hubris was, and to some extent still is, one of my biggest challenges. It took me a long time to start to learn that it was okay to ask for help…that I didn’t need to figure everything out by myself and that asking for help doesn’t make me weak or it doesn’t make me appear weak. I think that was something I kind of had a belief of growing up and it took me a while to learn that, oh, wait, this is actually how you grow.

Matt: So I’m going to close out and hopefully have a little bit of fun with this. When they turn your life story into a movie, who do you want to play you on the big screen?

TMWG: I’ve never actually seen it myself, but I’ve heard it from other people that I remind them of Will Smith…that I have some of his mannerisms. So I’m going to have to go with him. That’s not a bad guy, if I have to choose somebody. Then, as far as the story of my life goes, I’d say something like, the story of a man in search of his why. And I say that because I like to think that I haven’t gotten to the climax of this movie yet. I like to believe there’s still a big reveal coming. Like, ooh, he was the mastermind the whole time. So I feel like I haven’t gotten to that moment yet.

Matt: Nice. Nice. So I’m a huge fan of stories. That’s why I enjoy sitting down like this and listening to people’s unique experience and journey. But for you, if you had the chance to pick three people to do this with and sit with and hear their firsthand story, they could be still with us, they could have passed, who would they be?

TMWG: So number one…actually I would say it is not in any particular order, but one of those people would be Einstein, Albert Einstein. I know I’m an IT guy, but I’m just fascinated by the universe and astrophysics and nerdy stuff like that. When you look at some of the stuff that he did to figure out how our universe works, like his laws and stuff, we still live by those today. And he had relatively rudimentary tools back at that time. I would love to sit down and talk to him just to get a glimpse of some of his brilliance. And then another one, this one’s cheating a little bit I guess, but all of my grandparents. I wasn’t super young when they passed, they passed at different times, but I never really got a chance to sit down with them and have a grownup, one-on-one conversation and just hear their story so that’s something I would definitely love to be able to do.

Matt: Gotcha. So is there anything I didn’t ask that you want to share or anything you want to ask me?

TMWG: Not at this time but, I do want to say something. I just want to say thank you. One, for this opportunity to share my story. This, this was great just having the chance to converse like this and kind of get this out there and then two, for allowing this for other people for just doing this podcast and putting these voices out there. I’ve kind of been running through the shows in preparation for ours and like I learned a lot. I laughed and I had some aha moments. So I think what you’re doing is great man and huge props to you and keep it up, man.

Matt: Appreciate it. Appreciate it. That’s the reason that and I think I definitely relate to you that, in the search of my why, that I’ve definitely left some things untapped and I’m looking forward to tapping into them and this is selfish for me because, just like you listening to them, I get a chance to sit with people like you and learn from them. It’s crazy because a lot of these people are people that are in my phone, people that are in my contact list, that I’ve had the opportunity to talk to for the last 20 years, but we haven’t had conversations like this. And so hopefully this is, this is not only opening up people to learn about the people I know, but hopefully other people are sharing their story in other forums, too.I think that’s really where the power is. But before we go, if anybody listening wants to find out more about you, they want to connect with you. Where should I send them?

TMWG: The blog, www.themoneywhysguy.com. So again, that’s, that’s W-H-Y-S for the “whys”. Then also, The Money Whys Guy on all the social medias. So Facebooks Twitters Instagrams, and then if you’re just looking to connect for more general networking, you can look me up on LinkedIn, C.J. Gunn.

Matt: Cool. I’ll include all those links in the show notes. Well, again, I appreciate you taking the time. I really enjoyed this and hopefully you and the family stay well…and those kids return to beautiful sons.

TMWG: [Laughter] Thanks, man. I appreciate it.