Pod Insights Masters of Scale How to get better at money, with Carrie Joy Grimes About this episode Money = Math + Feelings. That’s the equation at the heart of Carrie Joy (CJ) Grimes’ nonprofit WorkMoney, which has scaled to more than 9 million members since it started during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grimes joins host Jeff Berman to reveal the strategies that can improve not just how much money we have, but our relationship with it.
CJ’s book: The Joy of Money https://thejoyofmoney.com/
Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 We've all spent money on something that seemed incredible, but didn't live up to the hype. A kitchen gadget, a car. When it doesn't deliver, the disappointment is real. Marketers suffer from this too. Chasing metrics that look great, but don't translate into revenue. LinkedIn calls that bull spend. Invest in what matters and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more. LinkedIn Ads also generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/Scale. That's LinkedIn.com/Scale. Terms and conditions apply.
0:48 Speaker 00 The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet, when it comes to their own wealth, most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them. Creative Planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, estate strategy, investments, all under one roof.
1:32 Speaker 00 Creative Planning, where wealth works together. Learn more at creativeplanning.com/mastersofscale.
1:41 Speaker 01 AI is full of possibilities. Enterprises run on realities. That's why Pega combines the world's most powerful AI with the governance, transparency, and control enterprises demand. So you can move faster, adapt faster, and scale AI with confidence. All the power of AI, none of the uncertainty. Learn more at Pega.com/AI.
2:11 Speaker 02 Money is math and feelings. But having had thousands of conversations with individual people and having had the experience at Work Money of being in conversation over text, email, and phones with 9 million people all the time, one of the things that became very clear is that the thing that holds the most people back is the feelings part.
2:37 Speaker 00 This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, C.J. Grimes. C.J. Grimes is the founder of Work Money, which helps 9 million and more, growing number, Americans deal with personal financial issues, has a fascinating history, and is also a dear friend with a big new book coming out. C.J. Grimes, welcome to Masters of Scale.
3:03 Speaker 02 Thank you so much, Jeff, for having me here.
3:08 Speaker 00 So why don't we just start with, like, what is Work Money? And how did you get started doing this?
3:15 Speaker 02 Work Money is the thing I wish existed when I was trying to figure out money. It is a nonprofit. We've got 9 million members, and we help people figure out how to earn more and save more and spend less. And we do that through programs and services and coupons and discounts, kind of like the AARP. The other thing that Work Money does is we figure out how to use the power of 9 million people to bargain for cheaper stuff, to make sure that people understand how the economy works and what they can do to navigate it. And it started in COVID. You know, it was 2020, and everyone's money kind of got turned upside down. People were trying to figure out, what are these stimulus checks? What's a PPP loan? What is unemployment? And I put up a website to answer all the questions I was getting from people, and it just took off.
3:59 Speaker 02 And then after COVID, it became pretty clear that there wasn't one place everyday Americans could go to figure out what to do with their money. Like, not one trusted website, brand, person who you could really lean into, who would give you the straight information. And that's why we are not done after COVID. That's why we're now 9 million people, and we're growing pretty rapidly.
4:21 Speaker 00 What in your background led you to not just identify this need, but say, oh, I'm actually someone who can really help with this?
4:28 Speaker 02 I was a union organizer for just about 20 years. And I had this incredible gift of talking to working people at their homes, at their churches, in bars, in union halls, and just asking people about their money and their lives and figuring out how to help folks negotiate for higher pay and better benefits. So I got to see what happens when regular people kind of get together and they put their shoulder to the wheel of doing better. And there was a very obvious set of problems that emerged after thousands of conversations. Thing one was that most people didn't really have the money basics down. Like, nobody sat me down and taught me how to do money. And then the other was, most people felt like they were kind of in on all of it by themselves. Like, they were just alone, having to navigate it.
5:13 Speaker 02 And so when I put the website up, I had a really strong sense of what I needed, which was help with the basics of money. But then also, the idea that we really can change the circumstances that we're all trying to earn more and save more in.
5:30 Speaker 00 I very much want to get to the scaling of work money. Zero to nine million in five years, basically, is a pretty impressive number. And these are people who have a text relationship, an SMS relationship, with not just people like nine million visitors to a website or, you know, an Instagram or something. But before we get there, what led you to the union organizing work to begin with?
5:50 Speaker 02 You know, I'm a pretty cantankerous person. I don't like it when people have a bad deal and they can't fix it. And, you know, I was in college, I was a history major, and I went to Northern Illinois University, go Huskies. And I got really into how we improved America over time. Like, how did it get better? And it wasn't magic, it wasn't nature. People got up and decided to shift things over and over again. And I was lucky enough that somebody who I went to college with was like, you know, you might make a good union organizer. And I was like, unions? Those old things that, like, people need when they work in a factory?
6:33 Speaker 02 But I was like, okay, you know, let's, let's check it out. And so I moved out to Ohio, where this local union was organizing workers. And I said, okay, I'll try. And I hated it for the first 90 days.
6:44 Speaker 00 What did you hate about it?
6:45 Speaker 02 It was really hard. Like, really good organizing is listening.
6:51 Speaker 02 And I really liked to talk.
6:53 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
6:53 Speaker 02 And so I had to learn to listen first.
6:56 Speaker 00 One of the things that struck me reading the book was the 20 years working with working families, paycheck to paycheck voters, et cetera, gives you incredible grounding for the work you're doing at Work Money today. And also, you have some pretty extraordinary personal stories that help you relate to the nine million and growing number of Americans you're serving through Work Money. You reference moving to Ohio for the first union job. There's a story in the book about the boss you were working for effectively at that time. Would you mind sharing that story with us?
7:29 Speaker 02 No, I wouldn't. When I moved out to Ohio, I had negative money. I mean, I really had no money. I had shoes with holes in them and I had like my rust bucket of a car, which is literally what I call it in the book. Like, she barely got there. She had a name. Her name is Mo. I called her Mo. She barely got there and it was, it was like, please don't die on the road. I mean, we've all lived those, those years, or not all of us, but many of us have lived those years. If you know, you know. And I show up for my very first day at work and we're at this union hall office and we're doing a bunch of stuff. And then the organizing lead says, well, let's go out to dinner and we'll sort of finish up the night. And I didn't have any money. I was like, gonna go back to my Red Roof hotel and get some, you know, ramen noodles
8:13 Speaker 02 and watch Law and Order, which is the only thing on the television in hotels at that time of night. And the organizing lead was like, no, no, you gotta come to dinner. And I was like, that's okay. And he like, knew, he knew.
8:26 Speaker 00 He saw those holes in your shoes.
8:27 Speaker 02 He did. I was so threadbare and I was so obviously like strapped for cash. He's like, I got you. And, oh my God, I hated that. He was like, no, no, no, you gotta come. And I couldn't say no. He was like, I really wanted to impress him. So we have dinner and he pays for my dinner and then he gives me a hundred dollars and he says, here, buy some new shoes and like, give yourself some cushion, basically, until the next paycheck.
8:52 Speaker 00 Yeah. And let's be clear, like, a hundred dollars, also 20 years ago, when you have, your next paycheck's incoming for two weeks.
8:59 Speaker 02 Right.
9:00 Speaker 00 Right? You've got absolutely nothing. Like, that is Godsend money, but also... How the heck do you pay that back?
9:06 Speaker 02 I mean, this is the question. This is part of why this book even exists is because, look, I'd had, I'd tried budgeting here and there. I'd, you know, like we all had, I'd kind of like, I'd had a bit of an emergency fund and then I'd kind of spent it all on an emergency and then hadn't figured out how to fill it back up. And this was the first time I was so aggravated that I owed this man money. It just ate at me. So I did, I sat down in my Red Roof hotel room and I took out a pen and I wrote down all of the money I had to pay for things, how much I was going to make, and I was determined to pay him back.
9:39 Speaker 00 That sounds suspiciously like a budget.
9:41 Speaker 02 And it was my first real budget to this day. The way that I figured that out has become like my method for budgeting. It's not rocket surgery. It's like, here's what you gotta spend and here's where the extra money can go. And so I paid him back and, and I just had this feeling of accomplishment. And this is the thing that I, I realized I had been telling myself I was terrible at money because I was poor.
10:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
10:04 Speaker 02 And I, and I was working poor and I was like, I couldn't keep it in my bank account. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I'd had these moments, which some of us have had, where you go to the store and you give them your card and you're like, I hope it goes through. And I just assumed that all of that was evidence that said I'm bad at money. And the reality was, when I thought I was bad at money, then I behaved like somebody who was bad at money and I kept behaving like somebody who was bad at money. And that moment where I paid this guy back and I felt like I'd really done something with my money. And I decided in that moment to change the way I thought about how I did money. And I thought, wow, I can be good at money. I really can. And then I was like, well, if that worked
10:46 Speaker 02 for that guy, I should pay down the credit card debt that I've got. I should save up an emergency fund and so on. And I did. And every time I found myself thinking I couldn't do it, I'd be like, tch. Of course you can be good at money.
10:59 Speaker 00 So I mean, I go back to my first job out of law school where I went to be a public defender rather than going to a big law firm and, you know, making insane amount of money. And, you know, I made 29.5 that first year out of law school. And the local Safeway would triple coupons on Sunday nights after nine or 10 p.m., whatever it was. And I would literally like wait for like the clock to strike so that I could walk up to the register and get that triple coupon value and buy my like huge thing of chicken thighs, which I'd have to stretch out to make the week. The idea of setting money aside.
11:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:31 Speaker 00 At that time.
11:32 Speaker 02 Crazy.
11:32 Speaker 00 It's like insane for me. How did you do it?
11:35 Speaker 02 Let me be really clear. Most people, the problem they have is that they don't have enough money. I just want to say that plainly.
11:42 Speaker 00 It's a math exercise.
11:43 Speaker 02 It's a math problem.
11:45 Speaker 00 Yep.
11:45 Speaker 02 And in this economy and in our society, you play the hand of cards you're dealt, no matter what they are. And I think holding both of those realities together is hard. And so I say this without judgment. I chose for myself, say, I choose to do this. It is important to me to pay this guy back. So it took me longer than I would have liked to save up a hundred dollars, but I did it. And the choose to not have to thing was really helpful for me. But I also worry that I don't want people to weaponize it.
12:12 Speaker 00 There are several personal stories from the book that were quite powerful to read and felt formative. There's a story about when your mom is passing, which, which feels really foundational. And so I was wondering if you could share that as well.
12:25 Speaker 02 Yeah. My mom, bless her heart, she died in 2022. I'm going to say some things that are a little hard about my mom. And just to pay for that a little bit, I'm going to say she was so smart. She was a card striker. She was a very Christian woman who believed it was her God given right to cheat at cards and beat you any way she could. She was a huge Cubs fan and a Bears fan. And she lived long enough to see the Cubs win the World Series. And my mom died. In really shocking conditions. By the time she passed away, she had been living on Diet Coke and cheese and crackers because she wasn't sure how much money she had. So she had been spending nothing.
13:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:05 Speaker 02 On like the barest of like sustenance living. And her house was filthy and everything she owned was set out at counter level because her health had deteriorated from her lack of nutrition and mobility. So she couldn't really bend up or down.
13:18 Speaker 00 Hmm.
13:18 Speaker 02 And so she fell and then we moved her into rehab and then an independent living facility where she passed away pretty quickly after we moved her. And what I realized is that my mom had been living this like kind of pauper's existence. And she'd been afraid to go to the doctor. She hadn't been taking her medicine because she was afraid she couldn't afford more. And so the end of her life, she just, her world got so small and she was so afraid that she wouldn't have enough, that she did nothing. And I, to this day, I know that if, like if my mom had called me 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, I could have sat down with her, looked at her money, figured out maybe some in-home help for her. We could have budgeted differently.
14:01 Speaker 02 We could have, I could have helped her think through what the end of her life could look like. It was hard in the moment. And then the reflections afterward were really like, it was very like, oof, I don't want my kid to go through that.
14:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:14 Speaker 02 Or my husband and also me, like, I don't want to go through that. But I wanted to make sure that other people's moms and other people kind of maybe didn't get to the cheese and Diet Coke and crackers stage.
14:25 Speaker 00 Yeah. And it's such a moving and powerful part of the book. One of the more mundane, but for me really striking elements was even people who are not in the financial circumstances that your mom was in can have a lot of issues around money.
14:41 Speaker 02 Oh, my gosh, yeah.
14:42 Speaker 00 A lot of fear can be avoidant. I'm an avoider. I, you know, I mean, the book really helped unstick me on a couple of things that I'd just been like, I don't want to deal with it, so I'm not going to do it. And it's like, Yeah, I have to do this.
14:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:55 Speaker 00 Right? And so why do so many of us have so many issues around just facing the facts and dealing with the matters, the basics of our personal finance?
15:05 Speaker 02 Money is math and feelings. It's math and feelings.
15:09 Speaker 00 Math plus feelings equals money.
15:11 Speaker 02 Math plus feelings equals money.
15:13 Speaker 00 Got it.
15:13 Speaker 02 But having had thousands of conversations with individual people and having had the experience at work money of being in conversation over text, email and phones with nine million people all the time, one of the things that became very clear is that the thing that holds the most people back is the feelings part. You know, that's the part where you go to Target and you go in for like, I don't know, pick a prescription and you walk out with like peanut butter pretzels and a throw pillow and that really cute little solar lantern that you're like, this is going to look perfect on my back porch, but it wasn't really in the budget, but you really wanted it and I'm just going to do it anyway. That's, there's nothing morally wrong with doing that. But I, I got really curious like, well, why did I do that? Like, why did I, I knew, I know I have a budget, it's not in there. Why did
15:56 Speaker 02 I, why? And for me, it would usually be, I had a hard week. I felt like there's no joy in life. I just needed some bit of pleasure in my daily week, which is a note that I need to figure out some pleasure in my week. Or for me, avoidance was also, I cannot stand evidence that I might not be good at this. So I would just not want to open the envelope or look at my bank account. It's like, I just don't need one more person telling me that I'm doing a bad job at something. Cause there's a story in my head that runs pretty hard telling me, you're doing a bad job. You're doing a bad job. This is obviously in the past. And so the feelings part is part of why, when I, in the book, the very first chapter is figuring out what your money story is and what you want it to be.
16:38 Speaker 02 Cause that's the thing, more than anything else I've seen make it hard for people to implement all the math.
16:47 Speaker 00 Still ahead, how CJ Grimes scaling work money into a movement.
17:00 Speaker 00 We all know the disappointment that comes when a grand gesture falls flat, something that seemed impressive in the moment, but didn't deliver the results you expected. Marketing budgets too often fall into that trap, aiming for big impressions, big reach, but without the revenue to back it. LinkedIn has a name for it, Bull Spend. LinkedIn Ads generate the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. They target by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/Scale. That's LinkedIn.com/Scale. Terms and conditions apply.
17:43 Speaker 00 When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious. Creative Planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity, when to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building. Creative Planning, where wealth works together. Learn more at creativeplanning.com/mastersofscale. Stripe Treasury is your new financial operating system built for what's next. With Stripe Treasury, the place your business accepts payments is also where you can store balances, move funds, and pay vendors worldwide. If
18:28 Speaker 00 you're building for global scale, get a business bank account that lets your money move instantly, whenever and wherever you need it. Learn more at Stripe.com/Treasury. Stripe is not a bank. Banking services provided by Fifth Third Bank, National Association, Member FDIC.
18:46 Speaker 00 Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and much more on our YouTube channel, and be sure to check out the show notes for a link to our newsletter. Let's talk about work money. What happens that this goes from being sort of a project or a side hustle or something that like might have potential to something that starts actually scaling?
19:06 Speaker 02 I thought when the pandemic was over or subsiding, that we would see interest subside, that our signups would would would drop. This was meant to be like a, let's get us all through something hard and then let's see what happens. And it became, I mean, to be blunt, I'm also a person who believes in organization. And so, of course.
19:26 Speaker 00 20 years of union organizing will do that for you.
19:28 Speaker 02 I wanted to build something that would be sustainable, but I was aware that this was launching to solve an immediate problem. And I had been thinking about sort of the concept up till this point. Like, I'd been thinking about the concept of work money, but work money was really meant to patch a hole in in the moment. And then the test for me was, for all of us, was, okay, once the pandemic is over, do we see traffic drop? Do we see signups drop? And it turns out, no, because the economy hasn't really gotten dramatically better for most of us.
19:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, no, I mean, there was a chart that you and I were looking at this weekend that showed like basically the delta between where the stock market is and where Americans, how they feel about the economy has literally never been larger since they've been measuring this.
20:09 Speaker 02 That's right, that's right. Look, there's always going to be those of us who get dealt a hand and have a really hard time getting into financial security in the American economy. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm very aware that that is, that's, that has been a story for some people perennially in the American economy. But the number of us who feel squeezed in today's economy, who make very good living, who are watching healthcare costs, education costs, housing costs, childcare costs, go so, go up so much faster than our wages.
20:36 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:36 Speaker 02 It's, it's staggering. And when the pandemic ended and our signups went just as fast, if not faster, and right now, we're seeing a lot of signups because middle-class families are stretched. It was a real clarion call after the pandemic. It's like, okay, this really is about. For me, this is about how do we build a permanent civic institution
21:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:00 Speaker 02 in America, a place that anybody can go to get the individual information about money, how to save, how to invest, how to, you know, how to learn about buying a house or not. And then also, how do we use our collective strength to bargain for better in the market, to make sure that decision makers who are politicians know what everybody wants? This isn't about political parties, it's about right and wrong. And how do we think about using all of our resources to build the businesses that we want? And I feel even more passionately now than I did during the pandemic that the problem isn't just a one-time crisis, you know? I mean, that was a particularly gnarly one, but there's a need to shift how the economy works right now and to make more success more possible for more people.
21:46 Speaker 00 On the road from zero to nine million, were there inflection points you can point to and go, oh, that really changed? We hit a scaling moment there.
21:55 Speaker 02 We started in the pandemic, so we're fully remote. We're still fully remote. And that moment when you go from one Zoom screen to like two, do you know what I mean? Where you have to like hit the little arrow? That was a big deal because it meant that we had gone from like passionate generalists to passionate generalists and experts in some things.
22:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:13 Speaker 02 It meant that also a lot of things I was doing were leaving my hands. And I'll just confess, like as a founder's founder, I really love solving hard problems all by myself. And I am very lucky to have an incredibly talented team that can do a lot of work, but also can give me some grace as I learned to let go. So me, I don't want to make this about me, but me learning how to like, like let the team take things was great, was a moment. And then I'll say figuring out how to deliver dollars in people's pockets in a material way and realizing that. One, solving, this is kind of antithetical to how some startups work.
22:58 Speaker 02 Defining the problem in a very specific way where it's like one kind of problem. So for example, we could have decided, you know what? The problem we're going to tackle is car insurance costs are too high. We're going to focus on that. We're going to be really narrow. We're going to be like, okay, we're going to talk about car insurers and how they can do better. And we're going to deal with regulators on that and lower costs. And we're going to cut a deal with some car insurance. So we thought about doing that, like picking one or two specific problems that could put dollars in people's pockets. What became really clear is that being able to scale fast meant how quickly could we talk to anyone and figure out what kind of money help they needed? And then deliver the best version of that. So we kind of broke some of the startup-y rules where we didn't get really specific.
23:43 Speaker 02 We actually got, we actually leaned way back. And so we have a bunch of partners now. And we think a lot about like, how do we provide an individual person with the most help they can that does two things? Immediately add some value, whether that's a dollar in your pocket or information you really needed. And then also give them the chance to, to influence what happens in the economy more broadly.
24:07 Speaker 00 What's an example of a partnership that gives you additional capacity so you can scale the impact you have for your members?
24:14 Speaker 02 You know, here's a great example. There is an app called Upside. Upside is an app you can download it to your phone and you buy gas at a gas station and Upside will give you a discount per gallon. If you do it and use the code WORKMONEY, you get an extra discount. And so I've saved myself 25 cents a gallon in some places. Now Upside's not perfect. They track your data, you know? And also they, it's not the best deal in every single market, but it's like a way that somebody who's really thinking about gas can like save a little bit at the pump right now. And it's a, it's a good example because we look for partnerships that are going to add value, but we're very eyes wide open about it. You know, there's very few perfect things out there in the world. And I really like Upside personally, and I like having cheaper gas, especially in this
24:58 Speaker 02 economy where gas is off the chain. And I think, you know, a lot of us could use a little bit of breathing room. And so one of the things that WorkMONEY does is we look for the highest, the best possible partner. And then we're, we're very eyes wide open about it. We say, okay, here you go. You can sign up for it. It might not be perfect for you, but here's a way in which you can use it. And here's how it does better for you and for your family.
25:18 Speaker 00 Right. So you don't have to develop the expertise yourself. You don't develop the service yourself. You really are almost really, to your A or P point, you're a marketplace for them to choose options that might work for them in some cases.
25:30 Speaker 02 That's right. And mostly what we do, so we have, those are a bunch of different options. Mostly what we do right now is we're looking at the economy. We're, we're really understanding where prices are at. We're understanding where things are going and we give people a heads up. So for example, we read every word in the new tax bill. And we said, okay, y'all, here's what the tax bill means. Here are the tax credits you should look out for. Here's what you should be mindful of. Here's the benefit of this. Here's where it's not going to do you as much good. And so we really help people parse what's happening in policy and in the economy. And then we also have the coupons, the discounts, the partnerships. Cause it's really a full stack thing. Money's individual. Make your good choices, do what you can with it. Everyone should play the cards you're dealt.
26:11 Speaker 02 And there are things we can do that improve the odds that we can do better.
26:17 Speaker 00 How do you think about the political power of the middle class, of paycheck to paycheck voters, of the kind of the core of the work money community in this moment? Are these two examples you've offered a representation of where you can go?
26:30 Speaker 02 I think yes. I am very, very clear that if politicians could solve the problems of the American economy, they would have. And so I do not look to politics to fix anything. Politics is like an outcome. You know, and I don't really think much about left or right. I think a lot about right and wrong.
26:54 Speaker 00 Politics is an outcome, but politics is also the process by which we have policies. That tax bill that you referenced exists because a bunch of politicians passed a law that the president signed, and there were a lot of big money interests trying to influence the fine print of that bill.
27:07 Speaker 02 That's right. That's right. So when I say politics is an outcome, I mean, the decisions that get made are the end result of a lot of stuff that happens. So when I think about work money, I think about work money having power in five ways. I think about market power. That's like get together, bargain for cheaper stuff. I want to get so big, we can bargain around healthcare costs. It does not seem impossible. There's a bunch of things like that, that we could bargain for cheaper on. I also think a lot about. Constituent power, right? Like, everybody together, telling politicians and regulators and, you know, elected leaders of both parties, here's our expectation. You have this job because we put you in it.
27:44 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
27:45 Speaker 02 And your job is to represent all of us. And what we want from you is this and this. So I'm a very big fan of working to middle-class people really flexing their power at the constituent level. I also think a lot about audience power. You know, like, how do we decide what we listen to and what we make for ourselves? And so Work Money does a lot of that. Like, as part of what I talk about, we make content or we send out messaging around, like, here's what this economic thing means for your wallet. So how do we know who to trust and who to follow? How do we make our own content? I also think a lot about entrepreneurial power and ideas. And how do we make our own businesses? How do we launch our own stuff that makes life better for us? And so we have a, it's not official yet, but...
28:26 Speaker 00 Breaking news.
28:26 Speaker 02 Breaking news. We're launching a bill negotiation service. It's called Money Finder, moneyfinder.com.
28:32 Speaker 00 Will this work with my health insurance company or my healthcare providers?
28:35 Speaker 02 Not yet. That is on deck. But right now, we can negotiate to lower anybody's cable, internet, and cellphone bill.
28:43 Speaker 00 Wow.
28:43 Speaker 02 And so you go to it and upload a bill. We analyze it, and then our negotiators get to work. And we've saved, so far, an average of 400 bucks a pop.
28:53 Speaker 00 Which is a lot of money. So I upload my Verizon bill, you all come back and say, yeah, we think we can do better than this. What am I paying for this?
29:01 Speaker 02 So you are paying a maximum of $75, but you only pay if we save you money.
29:07 Speaker 00 I'm basically going to give you a commission on what you can save me. And I say, great, I'll make the deal, go ahead. You go off and you negotiate.
29:15 Speaker 02 That's right.
29:16 Speaker 00 Right, so we rise or fall together.
29:18 Speaker 02 But most people have saved 400 bucks or more. There's all their bill negotiation services out there. We wanted to make one that everyone can trust. This is nonprofit-backed. We're not doing anything except literally trying to put money in people's pockets. And this is the first stage. I want to add a bunch more to it. I want to add healthcare bills. I want to add health insurance bills. I want to add car insurance and home insurance. Tons of different things we could do, once we get the negotiation team built out. And so right now, we're starting with cable, cellphone, internet. People should get while the getting's good.
29:48 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, I think there's huge value here, not just in the actual dollars, but in the time and the exasperation cost of it. I mean, you know, I'm a lawyer by training. I've been a professional for a lot of years at this, at this point. And, you know, several years ago, I was negotiating for months over a five-figure healthcare bill that like absolutely should have been covered by insurance. And granted, I didn't have the benefit of, of Claude or Gemini or whatever to go to to coach me through it, but I had the internet and it took me forever. And so to say like, I'm happy to give up a portion of what I get back. If you, because you'll have the pattern recognition, then you know what the trigger words are going to be, et cetera. I mean, this is real benefit for people. Before we close, I want to come back to the book for a moment.
30:32 Speaker 00 CJ, what is one of the biggest pieces of advice that proliferates through the internet? That is just really bad advice when it comes to personal finance?
30:41 Speaker 02 I'm torn.
30:42 Speaker 00 Give us two.
30:43 Speaker 02 Okay, okay. Okay. The first is anyone that makes you feel like crap about yourself or your choices? Any advice that makes you feel bad about yourself? Any shame-based money advice? Just walk away. And, and look, that's not just a moral thing, although it aggravates me morally. It's also short-termism. It won't actually fix the habits. Friend used to say, he was a baseball player. He used to say, there's always a guy eating a hot dog in the fourth row yelling at you to hit the ball better. And it turns out that doesn't actually work to help people hit the ball better, you know? And so the first thing is just those shame messages. It can be really tempting. We have a lot of training to listen to them. Do what you can to ignore those people.
31:28 Speaker 02 I don't know who hurt them, but.
31:30 Speaker 00 That's a them problem.
31:31 Speaker 02 That's a them problem. And the second is please max out your tax advantage retirement accounts before you go throwing money into some other investment. There is very little.
31:46 Speaker 02 The everyday person can do that's going to make them more money than just maxing out their tax advantaged retirement accounts. That's a 401K, that's a 403B, that's an IRA. Read the book, you can learn about Roth versus traditional, you can make your own choices. But there's all this sort of cowboy investment culture right now. Is it crypto? Is it housing? And should I be in which, how do I trade stocks? And look, no shade, my husband loves that stuff. He is good at it. He puts a lot of time into learning about crypto. He's a crypto person and figuring out how to maneuver inside the markets. And I ain't got time for that. And also, it takes a level of skill and it takes a level of knowledge in the industry that most people don't have.
32:27 Speaker 02 So the one piece of advice I wish everyone could hear me say is it's not complicated. Get yourself a $1,000 emergency fund. Pay off any credit card debt you have. You will not invest in things that will make you more than your credit cards are costing you. After you pay off your credit cards, you want to save up three to six months' worth of expenses and then you're into investment and retirement. It's not that hard. The math is pretty clear on it. So the third thing I would say is this, nobody gets to tell you what matters. No one tells you what matters about your money. No one should tell you, you know, you're only successful if you buy a house, have a kid, 1.2 kids, whatever that is.
33:08 Speaker 02 Like, the reason I called the book The Joy of Money is because the joy is what the money is for. And whatever that is for you, you know, maybe it's being a homeowner, maybe it's not. Maybe it's something entirely different and you can build wealth by investing. Just don't let other people tell you how you're supposed to do money. Like, you get to decide. Don't give that power up to somebody else. There's less joy in it.
33:32 Speaker 00 The book that I have most recommended and reread on personal finance is The Psychology of Money.
33:39 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, Morgan Housel, he's great.
33:40 Speaker 00 The Joy of Money is a phenomenal companion to Morgan's book and they really should be read together. I'm so excited to discover this. CJ, thank you for being on Masters of Scale.
33:51 Speaker 02 Thanks, Jeff. I really appreciate the chance.
34:06 Speaker 00 Global hiring is such a headache when you're building fast, but don't let payroll, compliance, or onboarding slow you down. Companies like Eleven Labs and Mistral are scaling globally and effortlessly with Deal. Eleven Labs quadrupled their headcount in 2025, and Mistral pays 364 employees across 15 countries, all from one system. Build your global team with Deal. Visit deal.com/mos and start expanding your business today. That's D E E L dot com slash M O S.
34:42 Speaker 00 Every business hits the same wall the moment your business outgrows the systems that got you here. Spreadsheets everywhere, five different logins, data scattered across entities that don't even talk to each other. If your finance team spends more time finding data than using it, that's when you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite is the AI-native ERP solution that's powerful, painless, and proven, built for businesses scaling fast without the complexity that usually comes with it. From the makers of QuickBooks, learn more at intuit.com/ERP.
35:23 Speaker 00 Before we get to the rest of our conversation today, I want to spend a moment sharing with you about Masters of Scale Summit, which returns to San Francisco this October 20th to 22nd. So many of us feel overwhelmed right now. It feels like so much of the world is careening, and we don't have power, we don't have agency. That's the thing about the Masters of Scale Summit. It's really designed to remind us that we do have agency, agency to lead, agency to design, to build the relationships and the partnerships that empower us and to make the change that we want to see. We program a stage, we curate an audience, we set a schedule that builds in time for these relationships to be made and to grow, so that by the time you leave Summit,
36:08 Speaker 00 you are fired out of a cannon, ready to run through walls to do better in the world with the agency that you actually have. I hope to see you there. Visit mastersofscale.com/summit.
36:27 Speaker 00 Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Senior supervising producer is Tricia Bobita. Associate producer is Masha Makatzenina. Video editor is Noah Walstein. Senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and mastering by the audio boys, Aaron Bastinelli and Brian Pugh. Original music by the legendary Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Leetam Malad. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our newsletter. And be sure to check out our YouTube channel.
37:09 Speaker 03 Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.
37:12 Speaker 04 There's going to be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't.
37:17 Speaker 05 How do we build a future that is human centered?
37:22 Speaker 06 I'm Rana Elkhayubi. And on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.
Previous Why success destroys the companies we love, with Eric Ries Next The race no one can win: AI’s anti-human crisis, with Aza Raskin Page updated October 13, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
