Grace Puma and Christiana Smith Shi have been where you’re trying to go. Puma was the COO of Pepsico, one of the largest brands on earth, and Smith Shi was the President of Nike Consumer Direct after over twenty years at a little consulting firm called McKinsey. Today they join us in the basement to help you reimagine your career and focus on the big picture while still doing a great job at the position you’re holding now. How can you be both strategic AND focused? They’ll share. Plus, they’ll talk about the value of changing jobs (or employers), how to polish your resume, and how to lead yourself through organizations to find the top.
In our headline segment we’re visited by another star….this one in the tax planning world. Ed Slott is back, and he’s fired up about your retirement accounts. His take: stop saving into pre-tax 401k plans and IRAs! Why? Here during tax season Ed joins us to dive into what we SHOULD be focusing on this tax season….and reminding us what we should ignore.
But that’s not all. We also answer a call for help from a Stacker who’s wondering about the latest Robinhood promotion. Even though we’re not fans of the company, should he take the free money? Of course, we also save time for Doug’s trivia question, and much, much more.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- Interview with tax expert Ed Slott
Grace Puma and Christiana Smith Shi


Big thanks to Grace Puma and Christiana Smith Shi for joining us today. To learn more about Christiana, visit Lovejoy Advisors, LLC. Grab yourself a copy of the book Career Forward.
Doug’s Trivia
- What was Mary Tyler Moore’s production company’s mascot?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker Jared has a question about a current promotion from Robinhood. Too good to be true?
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
- The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Louder: How to Avoid Unnecessary Tax Landmines, Defuse the Latest Threats to Your Retirement Savings, and Ignite Your Financial Freedom
- Ed Slott and Company, LLC – America’s IRA Experts (irahelp.com)
Join Us Friday!
Tune in on Friday when you’ll learn why passive index funds have clearly won the investing game with the president of Bone Fide Wealth, Doug Bonaparth, Crystal Hammond, and Len Penzo.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Nail The Basics of Money (Even If You Think You Can’t) SB1491.
Episode transcript
In a world where overspending debt and keeping up with the Joneses rules us all, with the voices from the merchants, restaurants, and credit companies, Lord, over the common man, out of the darkness, like a beacon of hope comes a new voice. A voice that’s rich and creamy, like your favorite butter and delicious like cheeseburger pizza on your diet cheat day.
It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today you’ll learn how to be better in your job from two women who’ve excelled in their careers. Former Pepsi, COO, grace, Puma, and former Nike President of Consumer Direct. Christiana Smith Sheath in our headlines. It’s tax time and we’ve got you covered there with America’s IRA expert ed slot.
Plus we’ll hear why one stacker said I’d better call Saul, see hi and og. And of course, I’ll also carve out time to share some mini trivia. And now two guys who just might make it in personal finance. After all, it’s Joe and oh,
hey, there’s stackers, and what an action pack day. I mean, Doug, when you said Grace, Puma and Christiana Smith, she, I mean former COO of Pepsi, former president, consumer directed Nike and then Ed Slot. It’s like, but wait, there’s more heads exploded. It’s a big day. You know, so many people struggle in their career, and Christiana and Grace have done just a wonderful job.
Of mentoring so many younger people on being better, being better at their job and getting further, getting more out of your career. We’re gonna talk to them later. Ed Slot first, but first the guy crossed the cart table from me. He’s probably gonna answer a listener letter later on. Mr. OGs here. How are you buddy?
Par for the course. Uh, I am here. Yeah, I’m great. I present accounted for, present and accounted for, sir. Just I’m breathing and I’m here. When you told me to be here, I mean, what more do you want from me? That’s the enthusiastic, I was punctual. I’m not drunk. I mean like what else, what kind of rules we got around this place?
Are you got one hand tied behind my back. Who needs the COO of Pepsi and the president of, uh, Nike Consumer Direct. When you got og, just don’t be drunk and show up on time. You’re good. Just fill in the room with energy today, isn’t he, Joe? You didn’t see me wave. I waved enthusiastically. I was like this. I did like the uh, Forrest Gump wave.
Lieutenant Dan, sorry.
Love how the Forest Gump wave changes when we go to the sponsor spot. You don’t walk over. Do that one again, og. Oh boy. It’s getting thick in here already. We gotta make sure the the room is clean. Clean. I invested in some fruit company and I don’t have to worry about money no more. You know, one less thing, as I always say.
One last thing. Grace, Puma, Christiana Smith, she and Ed Slot. We’ll start with Ed Slot. So play the open bumper for us, Steve, so we can, uh, move around the microphones. Hello Doling. And now it’s time for your favor. Part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. Well just in time for tax day. Some people, you know, every spring they think about the groundhog.
We think about Ed Slotback on Stacky. Benjamins. That’s, that’s the side that spring at is almost here. The fact that you’re here. How you been? Uh, good. You know, and I do all these interviews at tax time and everybody asks the same question, so I’m gonna ask the question and answer it, and then we can move on.
Perfect. Everybody’s doing their taxes on every TV show. Every, and this has been going on for 20, 30 years. So let’s just get this off the table. People say, eh, it’s tax time. Just like you did say, very predictable. What can people do to save on their taxes they’re filling out. Now here’s the answer, nothing.
Nothing unless you had a time machine that already happened. What you should be doing is looking ahead. Yeah, you’ll look at your taxes and then you’ll do the same thing you did last year. Oh, if I only did this, oh, if I could have done this, this whole would’ve coulda, should have. That’s in the books. So when people ask, what can I do now?
There’s very few things. Maybe an IRA contribution, a deduction, or stuff like that. But that’s it really. So let’s move off of that and do some big picture planning where you can save taxes for the rest of your life. I. And not even little taxes ed. We’re talking big money. Yeah, big money taxes on, uh, millions of dollars.
Some people have in their IRAs and 401k or hundreds of thousands. You know, there’s a lot of people with the stock runup that have looked at their IRAs and, uh, 4 0 1 Ks say, wow, look at all this money. This is great. Yeah. It’s also great for Uncle Sam too. Let me remind people that not all of that money is yours.
I say in every consumer seminar, your IRA is an IOU to the IRS. It’s not all your money. You don’t even know what part of it is your money. You’ll be lucky if half of it is at least with a joint account, like with your husband or wife, uh, you know, it’s half and half. You have a joint account with Uncle Sam, who’s not even your real uncle, by the way.
You have a joint account with Uncle Sam and his half might be 60 or 70. Percent by the time you reach in for yours. So the big picture is to get that balance down, not build it up, stop contributing to IRAs and 4 0 1 ks. It’s really just a loan. Yes, you get a deduction, but it’s really just a loan you are taking from the government that will have to be repaid.
It’s in the future when tax rates might be much higher. Uh, the, so the big message is take advantage of today’s low tax rates. People have RMDs. Don’t wait for RMDs. Required minimum distributions. Get some money out. Now, do Roth conversions. So at tax time, when you do all these things in one year or in several years, and there’s gonna be that time at tax time when I’m on the show and people will be listening and say, well, I don’t even have any taxes on my retirement account.
I. Bam. Well, uh, 50 things to unpack there. First, the fact that Uncle Sam’s not my real uncle, might startle. Some people might need some therapy there. Ed, I’m, we, we don’t need ancestry, DNA to know that. But it’s funny because I quote you all the time. I’m like, when we’ve had that slot on the show, and he talks about the fact that this traditional IRA, this traditional 401k is a joint account with the government, and people always look at me the same way they look at you when you say that, which is, as this grows later on, you gotta pay the tax.
And when you pay the tax. Part of that growth is going Uncle Sam, when you say this incendiary phrase, stop contributing to IRAs and 4 0 1 Ks, you’re not saying don’t say for retirement. No. And you’re also not saying don’t use tax advantaged accounts. Just be a little bit more strategic. What are you really saying there?
Yeah. Roth IRAs, especially young people, if you have hopefully some young listeners that have opportunities that we didn’t have to start from ground zero from their first day, young people should only be doing Roth 4 0 1 Ks at work and Roth IRAs on their own. Why start building a taxable account? We didn’t have that opportunity.
The only way we can get it to tax free is to pay the tax now. But still rates are very low. Plus you have inflation. You know, everybody complains about inflation ’cause it means things cost more. But when it comes to taxes, inflation is great. Like Frosted Flakes, it’s great. Why? Because the rates don’t change.
But the brackets expand each year and more money can come out at these historic levels. 22%, 24%, getting hundreds of thousands out. I’m worried. I’m worried about that four letter word, which nobody wants to talk about math, I’m worried about the math, the debt, and deficit levels. At some point, maybe I’m wrong, maybe Congress will just keep kicking the can down the road.
But at some point, tax rates are gonna have to go up and who’s gonna be caught in the soup when the music stops? It’s gonna be the people that did nothing that have these large IRAs and 4 0 1 ks. It’s just a tax time bomb, I call it, waiting to happen. Let’s transition that. Ed, which you seem to be implying to, is.
For people that need to do the backdoor. Roth IRA, right where they need to. Yeah, that’s a good thing that you can do still. Yeah. Yeah. Like, well, if we think tax rates are going up, we need to do that now too. Yeah, that’s good. But it’s not the big money. The big money is in the big wholesale conversions and nobody likes to do that because nobody wants to pay the tax.
But what people are missing that they’re short term thinking, they’re shortsighted. That tax is going to be paid. Not if, but when. And the classic foundational principle of all good tax planning, so you could save the most, is to always, and it’s so simple, and people miss the boat because they’re shortsighted.
Always pay taxes at the lowest straits. That’s it. That’s how simple it is. And that may be right now. There is a change of foot when it comes to college planning. 5 29 plans. Ed people have some long-term provisions they didn’t have before. Tell us about those. ’cause we might have, yeah, that’s new.
Something cool that’s new for this year. It’s not gonna solve the big problem. The big problem is people that took advantage and it’s a great provision, these 5 29 tuition plans where you put money away for kids and grandkids. Uh, and some people have put hundreds of thousands of dollars away. And I’ve talked to some of these families and now wish they didn’t because the darn kid got a scholarship and now what do we do?
And they have all this money or they went into business or something. You know, remember people make these plans when that kid is born. They don’t know. And it sounds good. Every new parent, look, I’m a new grandparent, my daughter’s, oh shit. You know? Oh, we gotta do that right away. Yeah. Because we know the kid’s gonna be in co.
Who, what do we know anyway? There’s a way to whittle down those balances. New and secure 2.0, a provision that takes effect this year. Not gonna solve the big problem for hundreds of thousands, because the overall limit on this provision is only 35,000. It’s even less than that because you can’t do it all in one year.
But the provision allows 5 29 balances to be transferred directly to Roth IRAs for the child, a grandchild who the 5 29 was set up for. But there are many limitations. First to qualify. The account had to be set up for 15 years. Yeah. So you’re talking about long term thing and the last five years don’t count and it would have to go to the Roth IRA of the 5 29 beneficiary and the beneficiary would otherwise have to qualify to make their own Roth IRA contribution by having their own W2 earnings or self-employment income.
And they can’t have already contributed to a Roth ’cause. You can’t contribute to a Roth, say this year, 7,000 and do this for 7,000. So you’re limited to the annual amount. But this year, assuming the child qualifies on all of those, or the parents or child grandchild, they’ll qualify. Uh, you can actually double up.
Uh, and not be limited to the say 7,000 because IRS has just confirmed that even though this provision, the transfer has to be a direct transfer from the 5 29 to your Roth, to the child’s Roth, uh, is effective this year. If you do it this year and assuming the child otherwise qualifies. And you do it before April 15th.
This year, the normal deadline for making an IRA or Roth IRA contribution, it can qualify for last year, even though the provision isn’t effective till this year. So you can put 6,500 in for last year, that was last year’s amount and do another 7,000. So that’s, uh, you get a little bump, uh, a little boost for this year.
You can do seven and 6 13 5. 13,500 if otherwise qualifying, but still takes a while to get to the 35,000. But you can get a little boost. It’s a, a little, uh, a little item that just came up for this year. It used to be ed, that you could change, you know, the 5 29 plan beneficiary if they didn’t use the money.
Can I change the beneficiary to me and then stick it in my Roth IRA, uh, you know, you were asking a question. Uh, very brilliant. ’cause everybody has asked the same question. Nobody knows the answer because it was not made clear in the law. And unlike the other provision where you could double up that I just talked about, while IRSs just came out and said you could do it.
Yeah. They haven’t given any guidance on that. But everybody, including me thinks is one 15 year term. The big question is, do I have to start the 15 years over if I change the beneficiary? And I don’t think that’s the spirit of the law. That would be ridiculous. Every time you change it, you gotta start another 15 year run.
I think it’s going to carry over, but we don’t know for sure. But that’s the number one question we’re getting on this. Well, and that’s what we’ll talk about next time you’re with us at. For people not watching us on video. Hidden in the background strategically. You can barely see it. There might be a book that covers some of this stuff, ed.
Well, a actually, it’s not hidden. It’s all over the place. Uh, but this is old already. Believe it or not. I already just finished. I don’t have a copy of it ’cause it won’t be out till June. I have a new version, which is updated for Secure 2.0. Fabulous. IS regulation. These things change all the time. You really have to keep up with this stuff.
The new book is called The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks louder because it’s a ticking time bomb. And remember we’re in 24 now. 25 is the last year before rates are supposed to get jacked back up again in 26. I don’t know if that’s gonna happen, but that’s what’s supposed to happen. Well, and you’ve always said that at some point, back to your math comment, it has to happen, ed.
Well, I, I believe in math, but you know, it doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on, you’re dealing with Congress and any politician that tells you I can cut your taxes is really just saying I’m bad at math. Please help me and thank you so much for being a mentor again to our stacker community. I super appreciate you and your time my friend.
Remember, tax free is always better. Move your money from Forever Tax to never tax at low tax rates right now. That’s the big message. IRA’s bad, anything tax free like Roth Life, AURs, even charitable planning, that’s where you wanna go. Willing to Ed’s website and also to the retirement time bomb ticks louder.
So you can pre-order it at our show notes at stack Benjamins dot com. Thanks a ton, ed. Alright, thanks. Big thanks from Ed slot, and of course we’ll have links in our show notes page at stacky Benjamins dot com, but also we will have more on Roth IRAs and tax planning and the 2 0 1 tomorrow. That’s our big old famous newsletter.
Stacky Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 get you signed up. Always free and always action packed. Speaking of action packed, if your career could go better, maybe even if you think it’s going fine, these are two women who rose through the ranks, and I think you could say by any measure quote made it grace.
Puma is the former executive vice president and chief operating officer for this little company called Pepsi. You familiar with, uh, the Pepsi Corporation og? Yeah. It’s that, uh, stuff you put in your, uh, Jack Daniels. That’s exactly, I’m sure that’s how Grace defines it. Before that, she had senior positions at United Airlines, craft Foods, Motorola and Gillette.
She’s been ranked on the most powerful Latino list by Fortune Magazine, recognized as Executive of the Year by Latina Style Magazine. Christina Smith. She is the former president of Nike’s consumer direct Division. Before that, she was the most senior partner at a little company called McKinsey in Company.
Not sure if you’ve, uh, heard of that one as, as well, guys, Doug, uh, you’ve been in the consulting business. You know that name? I did. I know McKenzie. They are top shelf man. When they, when, when they’re in your corporate offices, one of two things is gonna happen. Major, major improvement to your business. I.
Probably some, uh, cost optimizations. Everyone’s getting fired. Doug is familiar with the phrases. Cost optimization. Yes. And meet me at hr. Yes. Bring a box. Pretty sure that McKenzie has a trademark on right sizing, specifically right sizing Doug. They are up next. But to get there Doug, uh, while we rearrange microphones again, you’ve got today’s bonus pack of, uh.
Seventies television. I don’t know. Let’s find out. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug between Joe and OG and our guests, we have a lot of wacky characters here on Stack and Benjamins. I always thought we’d make a great workplace sitcom like that. Uh, that old show, oh, uh, Mary Tyler Moore OG would be Lou Grant, of course.
’cause the dude’s totally grumpy. Joe would be Murray since he likes to give me a hard time. And I’d be Ted Baxter of course, ’cause I’m the boss around here. Just don’t tell Joe that. Uh, I like to let him think he’s in charge. Set in Minneapolis. The Mary Tyler Moore show ran for seven seasons and dealt with groundbreaking topics for the time, such as equal pay, birth control, and sexual independence.
I talk about my own sexual independence all the time, but you don’t see anyone giving me an Emmy for it. I’ll show them. Wait, I can’t show ’em, or you’re gonna call HR ka. Alright, got it. Fine. My apologies. Where was I? Um Oh. Oh. While the show centered around a single career woman, the real Mary was actually married together with her husband, grant Tinker.
She launched MTM Enterprises, which produced her namesake show, as well as dozens of others, including the Bob Newhart show, hill Street Blues, and cheers. How to start my own production company. Then I can finally make the Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor Doug show. That would be awesome. Today’s trivia question is, what was Mary Tyler Morris production company’s mascot?
Here’s a hint. It riffs off one of the great entertainment mascots of all time. I’ll be back right after I find where I flung my hat.
Hey there, stackers. I’m soon to be sitcom star and Stacking Benjamins mascot, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. After the first season, the final lyric of the Mary Tyler Moore theme song changed from you might just make it after all to you are gonna make it. After all, I guess she really proved herself that first year of producing television.
Today’s trivia question is, what was Mary Tyler Moore’s production company’s mascot? The answer, Mary named her company MTM as a nod to industry giant, MGM, whose iconic mascot was a lion. And so for her own company, Mary went with a kitten. Oh, I get it. I get it. That’s cute. And now let’s go from kitten to Puma with two women here to teach you all it takes to make it to the top of your field.
It’s today’s mentors, grace, Puma, and Christiana Smith sheep. And I’m super happy they’re joining me in the basement. Christiana and Grace are here. How are you? We’re good. Nice to talk to you Joe. Very good, thank you. Well, it’s, it’s great to talk to you, but I’m wondering this, how do two people with your resumes meet?
Because I have to, you know, just thinking about your careers and all the things that you’ve done, I have to imagine that there’s not a lot of time for just going out and meeting people that are, that are doing the amazing things that you two are doing with completely different companies. I get, I dunno who wants to take that question.
I’ll start. You’re right. Doe as grownups, I think we all realize it’s harder to make new friends. And you definitely don’t join a corporate board to make a new friend. But that’s exactly what happened with me and Grace. We both joined the same public company board as directors, same day, two women, which means you notice each other right away in that environment.
And we connected pretty early on. We have similar straightforward styles. We have, you know, similar deep expertise. Grace is in a, in the operations field, mine is in retail and consumer. But I could tell right away that when she said things, she knew what she was talking about. And you know, we’re both pretty straight shooters.
And so I think it started with recognizing and appreciating each other’s contributions, but over time, getting to know each other better as people and really clicking as friend for people listening. By the way, in the audio podcast, that was Christiana and we’ll just do these introductions very quickly.
But Christiana, I wanna stick with you for just a moment on that. Because I know from reading your book that you’ve been accused during your career of networking. I remember somebody rolled their eyes at you or something saying you’re networking all the time with people who this person thought was irrelevant to your career, and you kind of pushed back and said, it’s never irrelevant.
Tell me about you and networking and, and why. Well, I didn’t think of it as networking, Joe, and I think that’s partly why it’s more natural and more organic. I thought of it as connecting with people. What that particular colleague was reacting to was I was taking phone calls from people that were looking for jobs and trying to help them find jobs.
They were either former clients of mine or former colleagues of mine, and it was during the, the great recession a few years ago. My perspective is what goes around comes back around. So if you actually wanna build a professional network, and grace and I believe that a professional network is one of the biggest assets you can have in your career, if you wanna build a good one.
You’ve gotta cultivate it just like anything else, and you’ve gotta pay real attention to it. And the best way to do that is actually helping people when they, when they reach out to you. Grace, what do you remember from that first meeting with Christiana? You know, just give her the, pretend she’s not here.
Tell us the truth. I always do. Yeah. She always pretends I’m not here, Joan. That’s what she, no, I always tell the truth. Yeah. Well, you know what I remember, I remember us sitting down and we were actually, we went out for a drink on Fisherman’s Wharf after a meeting and we started to talk about our personal lives and who we were as people.
And one of the things we found is that we both had adult children, if you could call ’em that. They were a mid-career and we really wanted to transfer knowledge to them and our experiences and transfer learning. And then we went on to talk about, you know, the amount of people that come for mentoring.
And so it was really kind of rooted in how do you share your insights and the insights and the learnings that we have and the strategies that we talk about in this book are very transferable and relevant to today. So from there, you know, with the intent of. Paying it forward and being able to help people have the benefit of some of the things we had to learn along our way.
You know, we, we went and birthed the book and the other thing is we, we really had an appreciation that, I mean, Christiana is an amazing person. We got to senior levels, very different paths and that’s very relevant because as we talked about it, we realized it’s not about becoming me or her or what we achieved, it’s about people really being able to realize their greatest potential and define their journey and their aspirations strategically.
So, you know, that’s really what this is about. Can I ask you about that potential? Because you share obviously, what are some alarming statistics for women in the workplace and the two of you climb the corporate ladder at a time when I’m hoping it was more difficult. Is it getting better grace for women?
I think it’s, look, I think every generation has its challenges, but I do think it’s getting better for women. Definitely. For one thing, you know, we’re living in an environment now where businesses are much more flexible to men and women about how they achieve their career aspirations and how they’re able to integrate.
And we talk about this concept of 360 degree life, how they’re able to integrate their personal lives and their professional lives so that they can be successful at both. So I think that’s a key factor. I also think there’s a key factor on the ability to get exposed to a lot of different opportunities and a lot of different industries now.
So the hiring and the hiring base and people being more mobile opens up opportunities as well. So I do think it’s, uh, I don’t wanna use the word easy, okay? Careers will have our long journeys, okay? There’s twists, there’s turns, there’s economic downturns. I mean, a lot of things that you’re seeing today in the news.
So it’s not easy, but there is, um, an infrastructure and an, uh, that’s helping I think, make this a little more achievable for people. Christiana, the two of you draw a big difference between the job you’re in today and the career you’re looking to have. Can you talk about that? Because I think most of us get hung up in, well, I just wanna be the best worker I am today.
People will hopefully notice and I’ll get promoted. Yeah, I recall thinking those exact thoughts, Joe. So it’s a very common thing, and there is nothing wrong with doing a good job at the job you’re in today. We just want people to remember that your job is not your career. And so what’s that mean? It’s table stakes to be good at what you’re doing right now.
Grace and I talk a lot about a concept called professional equity, which is how you build credibility and a track record at work that you can then leverage and invest in a lot of flexibility and opportunities later. But you don’t build that professional equity unless you’re good at what you do. So when people ask me or Grace, how can we be you?
How can we have your career? We always tell ’em first things first. Be good at what you do. Okay, but why is a job not a career? Because if you’re just chasing the next title, the next salary bump, the next scope increase you may find it’s like jumping rocks across some pond and you get to the other side, but it’s not a place you wanna be.
We want people to think about what their career destination is and what they wanna do over time in life, and what are the capabilities they’re gonna need to get there, and what are the experiences they need and what kind of environment they wanna work in, and what people they enjoy being around and collaborating with.
All sorts of questions we have in the book that you can do your own diagnostic, put together your own career goals, right? We call it your cardinal direction. And then work strategically, as Grace said, to get yourself there over time. Versus, I’m just trying to max out today in the job that I’m in. You know, it’s interesting because when you think about a career forward mindset and the description of really defining your cardinal direction and your strategic path, there’s a ton of practical benefits to it.
Okay? In addition to having a big career, you actually start to realize that you’re driving your career, okay? You’re not dependent on a particular company or a particular job for your career growth. You’re determining how you’re cultivating your skill sets, how you’re growing, how you’re building next gen capabilities, and what jobs you take to help progress you to your aspirations.
So the whole risk profile in, you know, in your job of being, you know, laid off, or the fear being laid off kind of goes away. ’cause you realize that you’re going to be building marketability and you’re gonna be able to make choices in your companies and outside your companies, and that’s a very empowering place to be through your career journey.
Is that what I’m looking for when I’m 30 years old? Grace, because I, I hear you and Christiana talk and I think. You know, when I was 30, my career was in such a fog, right? I mean, I’m with American Express, I have no idea really where I want to go. And when I hear this idea of having kind of this North star, I just look back at me at that age and I go, I, I just didn’t even know what I was looking for.
I mean, it’s as simple as I wanna run a company. But then again, I had twins, I young twins at the time. I also wanted to spend time at home with them. You’re speaking to a lot of people who were like the two of you mothers and having a family. Grace. What does that North Star kind of look like if I’m 30 years old?
So, it’s a very good question. I mean, first of all, you know, when you first get out of school and you’re first few jobs, you’re learning what you like, you’re learning what are the best environments for you, and that shapes a piece of it. But to your point about being 30 years old, I do think you may not know exactly, but we didn’t.
Wake up and say, Hey, I wanted to be the chief operating officer of a a hundred billion dollar company. What we did though, is you, by the time I was 30, is start to realize that there were certain capabilities that A, were starting to differentiate my ability to contribute. Like leading transformations. I love transformations.
Um, there were certain types of work that gave me energy that I actually really, and felt, felt were intellectually interesting, you know, and that time I was in global procurement. So when you start to think about the type of work that you like to do and the type of ways you can contribute and grow, you start at 30 to shape what is it I want to be doing?
And then you start to look for the right opportunities to cultivate environments and work like that. So it may not be, I want this particular job, but it starts to build the tracks towards what you wanna aspire to. Let’s go even younger than that. Uh, you know, my 30-year-old example earlier, Christiana, uh, you made some big moves in high school.
I mean, if we’re talking to our youngest stackers, like just this idea, your parents want you to go to an affordable school. A lot of people, you know in finance especially we talk about you can get it here, you decided that Stanford was the place for you. Can you talk about your education decision and for our stackers that are maybe just starting out, how that can impact positively or negatively their journey?
I think education was one of my unlocks Joe to my career journey because I was the middle child in a big family. Um, we never had enough money to go around. I watched my mom who had gotten married at age 20, go back to school after all of us were in school and go all the way through and get her PhD. And doing it at night and doing it on weekends and taking years and years and years to write her dissertation.
We used to laugh about it, like, can you even sign where it is when you need to work on it again? You know, it just, it took her a long time, but she never stopped and she never explicitly told us that education was the ticket, but she spoke to it through her actions, right? The fact that even with five kids, she was willing to do night school and do all the other stuff she had to do with my dad’s support.
So I think I modeled that and as a kid growing up in San Diego, I also wanted to get outta San Diego. You know, at that time it was kind of a sleeping navy town and I didn’t know what I would ever do there, that that would excite me. We talk about how your career direction gets sharper over time. So in the earliest stages it is okay if your career direction is, I want to learn x, I want to get an education, I wanna understand how to.
Do math, how to talk to people, how to, how to make money. I wanna just get smarter. Okay. And then as you do that, you start to figure out what subjects do you like and what subjects are you good at? What feels intuitive to you at school? What comes, what do people look at you and go, God, that comes so easy to you.
I have to work so hard on that. Right? For me, it was not science for my sister, it was science. And it was very clear to me we were different because I took chemistry in summer school just because I had to take it and I couldn’t wait to get over it. Right? And she was, you know, biochem, blah, blah, right?
That’s what you do in school. Then you get outta school and we say, okay, get a job. That’s how you figure out your cardinal direction at age 25 as you get a job. And as Grace said, you figure out from the jobs that you’re doing one after another. Where do you fit in? What do you like? Where do you hate getting out of bed every morning?
Where are you jumping out of bed every morning? And if your job doesn’t fit you at that age switch, it’s okay because you learned what a bad fit is. 30 though, as you picked a number 30, you kind of drop the flag ish around then because you’re usually committing to other things in your life, right around then you start to actually ask yourself hard questions.
You know, what am I good at? What do I wanna be known for? What do I wanna do in terms of impact? Do I like leading people? Do I wanna be an individual contributor? You actually have enough of a runway behind you to answer some key questions, and we would just argue that process of asking yourself those questions can go on your entire life, and it’s okay if things move and change a little bit in terms of the direction as you go.
I love this idea and, and, and kind of his shades of, uh, who the management guru in the 1990s. I think he still publishes from time to Tom Peters. Tom Peters talks about don’t wait for your manager to, to train you. Like if you wanna be good at your career, take control of your career. Like, that’s kind of what I’m hearing.
I. The thing that I wanna ask about is, Christian, you talk about excitement and kind of following what excites you when you’re young and what really lights you up and where those hot buttons are, and if you’re not getting it where you are now to move on. Both of you have changed companies, uh, uh, many times.
Grace, you had a very comfortable position at, at Craft and moved over to an airline. Oh God. Like I, like, I just remember Warren Buffet saying that if anybody tells ’em to buy an airline stock, take two aspirin, and, and, uh, on the fever’s gone. Yeah. Right, right. But that you moved because, and you said earlier you really liked times of transformation and, and working through transformative opportunities.
By the way, were you there when Oscar was Oscar Munoz? No, no. I was there when Glen Tilton was there. When Glen Tilton. Okay. We had Oscar Munoz on last summer, and, and boy, what a dynamic person. But let’s talk about that move. ’cause that seems. Uh, you know, if we just kind of plot that out, that seems like going from a very safe place at craft to a very risky place with United.
Yeah, it was a very thoughtful but very high risk move, and so why did I do it? I mean, people thought I was crazy. I was, uh, in senior levels at a food company doing well, but I left and took the chief procurement officer job at United Airlines for a couple of reasons. One was my daughter was still in high school and it wasn’t a time to move her, so I was getting called and ready for CPO positions, but I didn’t wanna relocate.
The real reason is, you know, Glen Tilton was running the airline. He was an oil executive and his intent was not to run the airline like an airline, but to truly transform it. And he brought in a lot of different leadership that had different types of expertise from different industries to be able to bolster what they already had and transform the airline and ultimately sell it off.
So it was always intended to be a, uh, three year gig, so to speak. But what I got out of it was I still left a very stable food company, went over there and I was a single parent at the time. And very shortly after joining and transforming, if you would, the function, the procurement function I was running and building up the capabilities, the financial crisis hit.
It was really scary. Our price had gone down. I, we used to joke with my boss, who was the chief operating officer at the time, to nearly the price of a latte. And, you know, I would sit there being the, uh, primary, um, supporter for my family. And I was really wondering what did I do? But what really happened was it gave me invaluable experience.
I mean, first of all. I loved the three years that I had worked there. And because I could be part of a very lean management structure that went through transformation, but also went through major financial and business crisis and being part of that, I was upfront and got exposure to being part of the decisions we were making to turn around the company, whether such a severe situation.
So what I gained was invaluable skills and I loved the people I worked with and you know, it was just like being on a SWAT team together, you know, and it was intellectually expanding, you know, after we got the company turned around, increased performance and we were part of the team that sold it off and into a merger and I went off and it led me, um, with the capability I built to the next big role, which was in the, uh, PepsiCo organization.
You know, you can look backwards, um, and say, wow, what were you thinking? Everybody thought, what was I thinking when I went? I would never trade that experience for anything. And part of what I had in the background was knowing that I had built professional equity and I had ensured that I had built a nest egg that had things gone south and the financial crisis continued to hit the airline and maybe things evaporated.
I knew I’d be okay. I knew I would still be able to count on being able to progress towards my career aspirations. But yeah, it was a great experience and it was something that really helped shape me. Christiana, same question, but you’ve got the opposite, right? Grace is looking at United as as a three year gig.
You’re at, you’re at McKinsey for I think, 21 years. You stay with one organization for a long time. Talk to me about that and the different path that that you took than Grace took. So this is what Grace meant, what she said. We discovered we both had very different careers, but very similar beliefs about what it takes to build a good career.
Management consulting because your teams change every time. It’s project driven work, right? For anyone who doesn’t know you are working with clients on particular issues for a defined period of time, and then you move on to the next project. I have kind of what I call a high rev. Like if a, if I’m at a red light and I’m a car, you can imagine that I’m the one like revving the engine at the red light.
And so that, that high turnover of new projects, new clients, new challenges for me was a constant process of reinvention. And then at the same time, it’s a career path where you move pretty quickly to either succeed or to lead. So your typical path to partnership is about six years. You know, for someone like me, it meant that the level I was at, the managerial responsibilities I had, the clients I served, all of those things were changing constantly.
And for someone like me that was invigorating. And then 20 some odd years ago, by, as you said, I was the senior partner at that point. I kind of look back and realize, I feel like for the first time in my career I’m kind of doing the same things over and over again. ’cause I’d been a senior partner for 10 years.
I had a lot of stable clients, which is great. Loved them all. I’d seen a wide range of business problems. So there weren’t as many, like, you know, new crises that were coming at that I hadn’t at least got some pattern recognition around. And that didn’t work for me. You know, for me I kind of like Grace going to United, I needed to raise the bar again.
You know, we talk a lot about watching out for what we call benevolent stagnation, which is when you’re in someplace that’s very comfortable and you’re doing okay and you lose sight of the fact that you can’t really hold yourself in the same position forever. ’cause gravity will eventually pull you down.
And especially in business today, if you’re not moving forward, eventually you’re gonna move back. And I kind of had that realization and. That’s the next time that I checked in with myself about my cardinal direction and what I wanted to do. And I realized what I wanted to do was be in a position where in addition to solving tough problems, I could actually see the implementation of the solution all the way through and be responsible and accountable for whether it worked or it didn’t work.
And that’s what led me to go from McKinsey to Nike. Well, and I’ve, and even before that, I just love the, the reason you went to McKinsey in the first place, which it turns out Christiana was, was really, obviously it’s a great fit if you stay there that long. But you were at Merrill and didn’t love the culture.
I was on the street, Joe, you would recognize this. Yes. That’s where people lose their hair. Christiana, right there. Yeah. Or lose their mind. Right. I mean it’s, and I was there in the eighties. It was so go, go, go. It was total barbarian at the gate time if anybody’s ever seen that movie or read the book, Gordon Gecko, like Slashy guys in suits and cigars and all that stuff.
And you know, almost no women. It’s an example of what we talk about in the book, which is. Just get a job outta college, you’re gonna learn so much. So I needed to pay off my student loans. Investment banking was one of the highest paying starting roles that you could get out of undergrad, and I figured if I could do it for a couple years, I’d make a decent dent in the big pile of debt that I had getting outta school.
And so I did it for three years. I landed at Merrill and I really admire the firm. I still do, I got tremendous exposure and learning there. I feel like I grew up, I even learned like what cocktails do cool people drink when they go out? You know, I was kind of a student of the whole like, oh, this is what serious work looks like.
This is what big time players do. This is what you know. ’cause we were working with CFOs and CEOs and you know, senior partners in the bank and all the rest of that. So I learned a lot. But I would say by my third week at Merrill, I wrote a note to myself that I was gonna go to business school and I’d never thought about business school before.
And the reason was, ’cause I knew that the longest I could probably stand to work at Merrill was two to three years. At that point I was gonna have to go do something else. And business school or any additional education can, as I told you, can be a great reset point. And so particularly knowing I wanted a business career that was the right choice for me.
And so I laid tracks for the next two and a half years from Merrill to business school terms of who am I gonna get to know who’s gonna write my recommendations? Like thinking ahead so that I didn’t get to applying to business school and have nothing to put on the, the application I. I wanna go back to this idea of benevolent stagnation because you know, you started to feel it at McKinsey after a long time there, which is great if you can go 20 plus years in an organization and not feel that, like, how wonderful is that?
I remember, by the way, Christiana, and there was a, there was a warning in your book, like. The thing to watch out for is not just that you’re stagnating, but the people around you are letting you stagnate. I remember we had this Brad, whenever we had a really tough question, we would go to him ’cause he knew everything.
And then we realized that a lot of our paychecks were way higher than his was. And we were growth stocks to use a term that you use in your book. And he was not. He was the guy we went to ’cause we were very happy to have him stagnate and help our help, help our careers, which isn’t good. But on the other side, grace, you talked earlier about equity and building equity, and you guys talk about these equity players and knowing who the equity players are, and I.
You building equity in your career, can you kind of define that for us? Because a lot of our stackers ears perk up whenever they hear the word equity. Yeah, sure. Well, it does resonate in the concept of looking at yourself as a growth stock, and that’s how you build equity. So when you think about it, when we say growth stock, pick every any company you want, uh, you know, apple back in the day, the growth stocks that are basically known to deliver exponential value over their competition for longer periods of time.
When you double click beyond that, it’s really around investing in the next level of capability and having the foresight for that. So take that concept and apply it to yourself. People who have a career forward mindset and manage their careers with a, uh, as a growth stock, they’re gonna be investing and other people like companies are gonna invest in you to be able to grow their capabilities and it’s gonna be way beyond.
What you do today. So professional equity is really one of the outcomes of that because you’re ahead of the curve. You’re not just looking at your performance review for today and that my boss loves me and that I’m doing good work. You’re thinking about how I’m constantly ahead of the curve trying to build next gen capabilities and contribution.
From that comes professional equity and when you have professional equity, it gives you tremendous benefit. For one thing, it’s gonna open up all kinds of opportunities to you. When you raise your hand and say, gee, you know, I’d like to go lead this particular project that might be outside your scope, or, I know the company’s moving into ai, can I get exposure to that capability building?
You’re, the answer’s gonna likely be yes. Um, if you ever find yourself in a difficult situation or a change situation, you’re likely to be able to have opportunities. So professional equity is really important and it’s rooted in a continual state of insatiable appetite to grow and to develop, and it’s critical today.
I love this idea. Joe, can I give you an example? Oh, please do. Just to make it real, Grayson, I said we wrote this book in part because we’re advising our 30 something year old kids all the time. So my daughter-in-Law, who is in her early thirties, has a baby. My first grandchild, she’s 10 months old. She works in technology and it’s mostly a work from home, like a lot of tech companies that, you know, it’s very flexible.
But a couple weeks ago, she got invited to go to an offsite that was going to require a three day trip. Her first instinct was to turn it down because she’s still nursing to be gone for three days, the logistics, blah, blah, blah. She also knew if she went, she’d get a chance to meet senior management in person, which nowadays in the virtual world, doesn’t happen often, and there’d be a lot of good connections and a lot of learning that she would get right.
So she took it on herself to investigate some alternatives for how she could keep nursing, not waste the milk. I won’t go into all the details, but any nursing mom knows all the calculations you’re trying to make during those. That three days is a long time. She proposed to her boss that she sign up with a new subscription service that is actually aimed exactly at this, that helps women freeze and ship things home.
I won’t go into details, but it’s the coolest thing. It’s absolutely designed for. Yeah, yeah. Really, really cool. Don’t ask me the name, but I just, it blew my mind. But she did the research to find this solution and she had the nerve to present it instead of saying, you know, which would be a lot of our first instinct, right?
Well, I can’t change the situation. It’s either black and white. I either go or I delve, go. She said, okay, I’m gonna come up with an alternative. And then because she knows that she has built credibility with leadership because she is good and they actually want her there, which is why they invited her.
She had the confidence to present this alternative. And she said, I very much wanna go, think I contribute a lot. I think I’ll learn a lot. I need the company to support me by covering this cost. ’cause it’s not cheap. This particular service, as an example, if you can, as you can imagine, is not cheap. And they said, okay.
And she went, she came back so energized and so recharged. Not to mention two full nights of sleep, you know, which as a new mom is a rare thing. She, you know, she FaceTimed the baby a lot. She worried a lot, but she’s so glad she went. And it’s an example of she had built professional equity, she’s good, they want her, they wanna invest in her.
She took initiative to figure out solutions versus accepting a go no go kind of framework. And then she had the confidence to present those solutions and ask for what she needed. And that’s what we’re talking about. If you build that equity, you can then invest it, quote unquote, by asking for the flexibility in these different situations.
Well, and what I love is that I know there’s a bunch of our stackers that don’t think that they have the skills yet. And yet you present many things that you learned in the book and how to teach them like how to begin. I remember there’s a great, there’s a woman in the book who is having trouble getting her point across in a room full of, uh, type A people and you guys teach that.
You, you, you open up, uh, talking about being on stage and how you had to learn to be somebody that could speak in front of it. You wouldn’t do what the two of you have done your career without being able to speak in front of people. And those are just a couple amazing things. The book is called Career Forward Strategies from Women Who’ve Made It, and I believe it is available.
Actually, let me take a look at, um, at, at, at the date. What date does it’s available. The book come, it’s out now. It’s Oh, it’s out now. It’s available. Okay, great. amazon.com. Anywhere you buy books. So, um, literally you have no excuse. Um, if you like what we’ve talked about, you can get a copy. I have to, before I let you go, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you a couple of questions that I’m sure on everybody’s mind that have, uh, really nothing to do with career, but more about the places where you were.
Grace. Let’s start with you. So the COO of Pepsi goes into a restaurant and all they serve is that evil, Coca-Cola. What does the COO of Pepsi do in that situation? How do you navigate that? I. You don’t order a soft drink. The, uh, if you wanna take a step further, uh, you make sure you give that restaurant information to your sales folks in the food service business.
But yeah, I mean, you stand behind your brands and you don’t, and you drink water, you drink wine, you don’t order a soft drink. I thought you might walk out, but instead you’re selling, you’re selling, you’re like, what’s the deal? Yeah. Yeah. That’s better. Yeah. Make a new customer. A second question for you.
You know, when people look at the brands behind Pepsi, they see all of these quirky brands, like you had no idea Pepsi was the company behind X brand. What, what’s the one that surprises people the most about Pepsi when they hear that Pepsi is the parent company of this brand? Yeah, so PepsiCo is huge, a hundred billion dollar company.
And I think the one that’s interesting is that is probably the Frito-Lay business. They think, um, Frito-Lay is a separate company and it is a company, one of the big business units within PepsiCo. So when you’re talking about Doritos or, or any of the other products, I think people think because of PepsiCo that they think it’s primarily the Bever side of the business.
And it’s a very global business too. So there’s a lot of other brands that are probably not as well known under the umbrella. I look at some of those, uh, quarterly reports that you had during your time at uh, Pepsi and I think that my Dorito consumption helped float the company. So you’re welcome Grace.
It did. You’re welcome. And then I was surprised blaming Hots, right, Joe? That’s right. Blaming Hots. I was surprised you didn’t name me in. I didn’t know you then Joe, the piece, there’s this guy in Texarkana and then Christiana Couple for you that are similar. So, you know, there was this great movie Air last year in 2023 that I loved.
Obviously those are the early days of Nike, that, that kind of, that kind of wheeling and dealing thing. Is that still Nike lately there’s a part of Nike that, where that’s constantly needed and that’s definitely sports marketing because Nike is always looking for who that next big athlete will be that epitomizes the brand that has the value that Nike has.
And their sports marketing agents, you know, are out there looking for the next Michael Jordan. I’d also say on the sales side, you know, Nike is very aggressive about growing the brand, but growing it in the right way. So there’s absolutely those parts of the brand. But inside Nike, I think creativity is equally valued.
And it’s probably one of the most creative places I’ve ever worked, whether you’re talking about marketing or you’re talking about product design, it’s filled by soul, literally to be surrounded by people that, that were so idea driven. And the last question for you, of course, about Nike was I think a lot of that, as, you know, springs from the shoe dog himself, Phil Knight.
And, uh, you know, not only does Ben Aflac enjoy, I think presenting him as a quirky character, I feel like everybody’s got a Phil Knight story, Christiana, about just, uh, you know, brilliance and, and madness. So any, uh, good Phil Knight stories? Well, first of all, I am deeply grateful to Mr. Phil Knight for supporting us on career forward.
He actually took the time to write, to blurb for the book. I just am so grateful about that and it’s a longer conversation about, again, how you build and invest in relationships. Because I’ve known him since 1998 as a consultant. He was my client. Phil is pretty accurately portrayed in the movie, I would say.
I’m not sure he completely agrees. He is an example of a CEO that isn’t a big slap you on the back extroverted guy. And I love that because everyone thinks that to be CEO, you’ve gotta be some big, outgoing, you know, glad handing guy and that is not him, right? He’s actually a pretty introverted personality and like a lot of introverts does a lot of thinking in recharging of his thoughts on his own.
It’s inspiring to work for someone like that because it helps you realize that you don’t actually have to be some prevailing style or model to be able to build something as phenomenal as Nike, Inc. I think, man, not just from that, but you know from the book Shoe Dog and from other stories. The fact that he thinks so deeply about so many things, I think shows why Nike’s grown, because of his resilience and ability.
He’s an example too, of many stages in your career because at this point now a big focus for, for Phil and his wife Penny, is philanthropy and the impact that they’ve had on healthcare in the Oregon community and now on access to, to fair housing and other things, it’s staggering, right? He’s also a model, I think for once you’ve made it, how do you turn around and help others?
Grace and Christiana, thanks for mentoring our stackers today. I super appreciate it. It’s a pleasure. Thank you. Enjoyed it. Thank you. This is Darryl from Pennsylvania. When I’m not busy arguing with a 4-year-old, I’m Stacking Benjamins. No daddy. Thanks to Grace and Christiana. You know, OG obviously so many of the things that they talked about resonated.
But back to this idea of, uh, benevolence stagnation, and I told the story briefly as you heard with them, but I, but I totally remember just the dude in our office in Troy, Michigan, who we’d all ask the hard questions of, Hey, do you know what the contribution limit is for a Roth IRA for whatever? If we need to do a backdoor, how do we, you know, if we need to, to do this for our estate planning for our client, how do we, we’d ask him all the tough, tough questions.
And then one day I found out that his paycheck was roughly half a mine. It isn’t about what you know. I know the feeling took the words outta my mouth. og this is, this is really hitting home. It isn’t, isn’t on. Tell me more. Tell me more how you feel badly about that. It isn’t about what you know, but I think they hit it right?
I mean, how many people do you know that, or how many times have you realized you need to make a change because of this? I’m just kind of stagnating, just kind of sitting there in my career, like, what am I, what am I doing here? You know, I, I think people who are especially susceptible to that are people earlier in their career who are expecting, I mean, you’ve really been raised with your parents and then through the whole school system that your achievements will get recognized.
Somebody’s watching them. Somebody is going to assess them and say, you get an A or you get a D. Some people, not me, you know, or your parents are saying, good job, buddy. But you get into the work world and people are not paying that much attention to you unless you are on either end of the spectrum, unless you are to the absolute superstar or you’re really not getting your objectives taken care of.
But that’s a small minority of people. Everybody else in the middle, og, you’ve gotta promote yourself. You’ve gotta, you’ve gotta figure out how to not stagnate for lack of self-promotion. It’s interesting that you talk about this at the school level because I was having this discussion with my oldest about football.
He’s a junior, gonna be a senior. They’re redoing some of their football program. They’re adding some new staff and he’s kind of stressed about that because he doesn’t know the new staff as well as he knew the old coaches. And I said, oh, don’t worry about it. Just set a good example and be in the gym and they’ll notice.
And he’s like, they don’t though you have to. And he picked it up right away. He’s like, you have to go. You have to be the loud guy to be the the one that they go, oh, we should give him playing time. You know, he is like, if you’re tied, they’re not gonna go with the guy who was in the gym the most. ’cause they don’t know, they don’t keep track of that stuff.
He says, I need to be the, the leader. I need to like promote myself or his words, you know, around how do I step up so that not only am I noticed, but I’m like making sure everybody notices that I wanna be noticed. Which is kinda what you’re talking about, Doug. Yeah, I mean, we all love the idea of this pure meritocracy where you just do your job, do it a little bit better and a little bit more than what was defined on your annual objectives.
You get noticed and everybody’s happy, but in reality, the people who should be noticing they’ve got so much on their plate that they have to be worried about that. Unless you really have done something outside of the normal control parameters, you, you sold the $2 million deal or something, you’re, well, that’s why the idea of brand equity, they talked about Doug, was so important.
And also the idea of the ability to speak up in meetings. To be able to be a part of the group is, is a skill that we can all learn and we don’t learn the soft skills. You talked about how, you know, in school it’s a meritocracy. We get an A, we get a B, we get a C, we get a D based on a knowing the material.
But we get on that team like og, like your son. Now I gotta know the coach. Coach has gotta know me. Yeah. The working world is much more like that team. Mm-Hmm. In so many ways. And the good news I think that they bring to the table that I loved is that you can learn those skills. And what always drove me crazy were the people in every organization I’ve worked with who have been like, I don’t need to know those skills.
I don’t. I just need to know the stuff. And you know what? Those are the people that benevolently stagnate to use their phrase again, because those people who say, I don’t need to know those skills, I’m gonna let my work speak for itself. They’re often the ones who say, I’m not a kiss ass. Right? Yes. You know, that’s how it gets characterized because not many people enjoy tooting their own horn.
But you’ve gotta find a way to do it that works for you, because otherwise you’re not gonna get heard. It’s big stuff. And there’s people that’ll even hear this interview and go, yeah, I don’t think I need that. I think that’s not for me. And you just missed out from two phenomenal mentors right there. If that’s you.
What’s that? What’s that shining light coming through the window? Oh. Oh. Somebody said we better call Saul. See hi in og, and like the bat signal all over Gotham. We just got the signal in the basement window. No, it’s just headlights, dude. Wasn’t that the headlight from mom’s Harley pulling in the driveway?
It could have been either or. It could have been, but I’m fairly certain that it was a call for help. If you’ve got a call, go to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail and we will help you. But let’s see who needs our help today. I. I think it’s stacker. Jared. Hey Doug, Joe and OG Jared here. Second time caller, long time listener.
Uh, someone just presented some information to me about Robin Hood. Joe, I know you’re not a big fan of Robin Hood, but it almost sounds too good to be true, so I thought I’d get your take on it. They have a gold membership, which is $5 a month, and uh, if you pay for that, you can transfer your IRAs to Robinhood and get a 3% match for a limited time.
After that, I believe it goes to, uh, 1%. What’s your take on this? Is this too good to be true? Lemme know. I’m an XL working on Double xl. I love this guy. Is Jared telling me that he’s considering being bought by the Evil Empire for a couple bucks thrown his way, og. I mean, why not? Why not? Less money for them to have to Evil Empire with, right?
I don’t know. To bid their evil. Yeah. This is very common in the investment world. Custodian space Fidelity offers a very similar deal. Schwab will offer a very similar deal. So pretty common to get some sort of, um, signing bonus as it were, uh, transfer over, you know, transfer over a hundred thousand dollars.
We’ll give you a three grand. There’s obviously some stipulations with that. You have to keep the money for a period of time. You have to, uh, sometimes it’s tied to trading. You move over your a hundred k, you’re gonna get this $4,000 bonus or 3000 bonus, but you have to do, you know, 20 trades in the next 90 days or the recapture it or something along those lines.
Potentially, uh, the bonus that they give you, generally speaking is not a contribution to your IRA so that money gets deposited into a different account and, uh, that’s gonna be taxable interest to you. That’s how it’s coded on your tax forms. So, interest income is ordinary income, so it’s not free. You’re gonna pay some taxes on it, but this is just like, you know, you get the things in the mail from the bank that say, Hey, set up your direct deposit and we’ll give you 300 bucks, or we’ll give you $900 if you move over 20 K.
You can play this game all day long. However, eventually it gets tiresome or you burn through all of the places. But if you’re, you know, if you’re shopping to move somewhere, it doesn’t hurt to ask if they have any, uh, signing bonuses, as it were to move your account over, especially if you got some decent money.
My feeling has always been Jared, that you are a product of who you surround yourself with. And to OGs point, if, uh, Wells Fargo said, Hey, we’ll give you a few hundred bucks if you open 18 accounts, you, you, you do one application, we’ll open 18 accounts for you. Like we all go, we all go, are you kidding me?
Why would, why would I do business with a company that just did that? That’s really what you’re asking. It’s the same thing. Bank of America, also not my favorite company because of my relationship with them in the nineties and how they were helping me dig my hole faster when I was digging myself into a, a horrible spot.
They were handing you shovels. They were handing me bigger and bigger down there. Would you like, would you like a backhoe? And then when I actually needed their help, it was like, oh, what, what, what, what? Huh? What? You know, and somebody told us the other day, of course, that banks wanna loan a lot of money to people that don’t need it.
But anybody that needs anyhow, whoa. Hey, no, not our, not our business model. Well, they did summarily close the Stacking Benjamins bank account a couple years ago, if you recall. For no reason. For no reason. A letter that just said, that’s so we don’t want your business. Like, okay, it probably has nothing to do with us.
Talking Bank of America the entire time, but not at all. The good news is they assured us it wasn’t us. ’cause it legally they can’t do that. It had to be a class of people. And the class of people were people that talk Bank of America. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They can’t, they didn’t say what the reason was. It just, they didn’t say, I do businesses, Jared with businesses I respect.
I don’t care what the come on is. There’s always a come on. And you know what, then I’m stuck there. So do your homework on Robinhood. Man. If you find less than I found about Robinhood and you find that, if to you all those past transgressions mean nothing and that they’re gonna be good to you where there haven’t been good to people in the past, well then by all means bring it.
Yeah, I don’t think Jared’s above this Look, he called us just to get a T-shirt. He does. So I don’t, he’s not above taking whatever they’re handing out. That’s a good point. That is a very good point. It’s like whatever. He’s already got the application filled out. Just wait my blood pressure pop 3%. ’cause that’s 3% less money that they can do evil with.
There it is. It’s it’s logic. And then move it out the day, the day that you’re allowed to and don’t do any trades. ’cause they’re just gonna front run ’em, making more money on that. That doesn’t make money for you. They’re just gonna hand off your trades to other organizations and you won’t make many money on those either.
But. Not something, uh, let’s all move our money to Robin Hood and get their 3%. I look past the bonuses. What was funny was I can tell nobody from Robinhood listens to the show because you guys know, we just got a pitch from them this week asking if they could send somebody on the show. The pitch in the subject line.
It said, defending our Honor. No, it didn’t. It did not say that. Tell me you don’t listen to the show without telling me you don’t listen to the show. Oh, we love your show. We’d love to have so and so from our organization. Come on and chat with you guys. Yeah. Might, might not be having Thanks for the call, Jared.
If, uh, you’ve got a question such as that one, which is, uh, a lot of fun, we will do what we’re gonna do for Jared here. We’re gonna send him in. XL working on X-X-L-X-L-L-X-X-L-L for being brave and for calling in. Uh, it’s a great time, by the way. The spring every year is a great time to call in because we’re traveling and we record a little bit further ahead.
We can get to your question slightly sooner. Stack of Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. We’re, we are traveling. Joe, we, we, we, me and Cheryl. Am I going somewhere with you? Me, me and me and, uh, and Yes. Uh, neither of you. Uh, sadly because I invited OG six times before he says he wasn’t invited. I. I invited him over and over and over and over, and he just didn’t, didn’t take it.
I don’t think I was invited. Yeah, it’s, wow. It’s wild. Mine got lost in the mail. Mm-Hmm. If you’re not worried about just, uh, whether you should take the Robinhood bonus or not, you’re worried that your money’s going a different way than your values, well then I think you want better help. Uh, head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og because OG and his team are accepting new clients right now.
That means that if you go to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og, you’ll get a link to their calendar. That schedules a first meeting. And that’s the first step in seeing how they can interface with you to make better decisions in the future. Alright, time to wander out on the back porch and Doug. We got a lot to do in a short amount of time here, man.
We do it. You wanna continue our discussion about the show reviews that I started last week and then you just summarily cut me off on. Do we wanna talk about some great reviews that we had left for us, uh, in the basement? How do you wanna proceed here, boss? Man, none of the above. I think we gotta go right to the joke off because we’ve got a brand new joke that, uh, well in the next round here.
That, that we’ve gotta shine a light on the number seven versus number 14 seed to see who goes to the final four. Pretty exciting Karen just, uh, placed this one in the basement so that people can, uh, vote on which one they want. This will round out our final four, right? This is it. This is it. You take seven ’cause you always get the higher seed.
All right, so bring it. Jeff says, what’s the difference between Texas and taxidermy? Once cruel and inhumane. The other deals with dead animals. That’s a good one. A good one. And Jeff’s headed right up against Seth, who submitted here about the constipated mathematician. He worked it out with a pencil. Oh boy.
So dead animals versus constipation. Which one? Which one do you think is funny? Potty humor versus death humor. You can vote at our Facebook page. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement gets you right there. Just sign up, we approve you, and then you’re in and chatting away with all of us. And some fun stuff we share, not just the joke off, but also what everybody’s been reading that week.
What uh, cool things our stacker community has been doing. We play some of those on the show. Tons of great posts, people asking each other great questions. And of course some other dad jokes on top of these. So next week we begin the final four. Yeah. Pretty exciting, uh, Doug. So why don’t we set the clock for a minute.
Oh God. And we’ll spend a minute picking up where we left off. You ready? Yep, I’m ready. Here we go. Uh, so I watched Rewatched, a great documentary called Last Breath. Would strongly recommend this big thumbs up. It actually uses actual footage of the event in question. It’s about a profession you didn’t even know existed.
It’s Deep Sea divers who help get oil wells out in like the, you know, the, the North Atlantic and in the, the North Sea. And I mean, just horrible, horrible places on this earth. Great documentary. Highly recommend, watched American Symphony. Did not love that about, uh, a great musician, Jean Baptist, love his music.
Incredibly talented guy. Just bored with, with that movie, American Symphony. Yeah, that surprised. Love it. I know it. I thought I would love it. That’s really the same thing about, you know, Leonard Bernstein as well. I thought I would’ve loved that, but I didn’t learn anything about Leonard Bernstein during that movie.
Yeah, that was an excellent point you made about like, I think you were right. You didn’t learn about all, you learned about his quirks. Yeah. And, and weirdnesses. And maybe that’s why they’d like every, he could go find out about his accomplishments anywhere you want. We’re gonna give you the backstory on Lenny.
On Lenny. Maybe that’s why they did that, but I understand your point there. Alright. Um, fool me once. Uh, two thumbs down. Another ridiculous show. I think it was Netflix. Uh, just British show. Normally I’m all into like kinda the British crime formula shows love them, but this one sucked. What’s it about Fool Me once?
It’s about a woman whose husband dies and you think he’s dead, but maybe he’s not dead. And you know, just so happens that she happens to be ex-military and a helicopter pilot. So that’s convenient because then, you know, they move the plot along because she’ll be up teaching somebody in her helicopter and spot a car 6,000 feet below her that she wants to follow.
So duh. She’ll follow the car. Yeah, of course. Just ridiculous, stupid stuff. Easy, easy to pick out a car from 6,000 feet. I know. Okay. Even if it was 600 feet, the fact that she’s just able to like conveniently be there and then she goes and lands. Well, you know how some people, like in high school you put like, uh, like kick me on the back of somebody’s, yeah.
Never happened to me. But you do the same thing. I know what you’re talking about. Allegedly it happens. You do, you do the same thing on these shows. You just hit a follow me and put it on the top of somebody’s car and she probably saw that, right? I’m sure that was it. Bad guy this way. Right? Cheryl told me that.
Uh, I was hoping you were gonna say that. Uh, that’s apparently David, uh, tenet has a new crime series out which, I mean, if one of the two main actors of Broad Church out with another one. Hmm. Can’t wait for promising. Can’t wait for that. Promising. Yeah. We’ll see. But we’re out of time. That’s it for today.
Nope, nope, nope. Bull crap. That that is it for today. There’s no way I’m letting you, you start talking and it’s teals away from my minute. I started talking well after the minute. We were already at two minutes when I started talking. I stopped the clock before I started at 1 55. Unbelievable. So, well, there’s more.
It’s exciting when, when we do your reviews, we are slowly releasing the cracking. We get like three minutes of trailer that nobody knows ’cause it’s just like explosion noises and symphonic music. We have no idea what it is. That’s the mood. But before we even start talking about it, that’s the mood. It’s wonderful.
By the way, we, we’ll do that soon with the Argyle. I just saw Argo in the theaters. Oh God. Great stuff. Hey Doug, what should we have learned today? Okay, fine, og, I’ll move things along. What’s on our to-Do list today? First, take some advice from Grace and Christiana. Don’t wait for someone else to train you to be great.
Move your career forward by taking control and building equity. Second, take some advice from Ed Slot. Get that Roth started, but what’s the biggest to do? I gotta get Joe to add my picture to the Stacking Benjamins logo. Then again, that might make it too sexy. Huh? It’s quite a dilemma.
Thanks to Ed Slot for joining us today. You can find out more about his work@irahelp.com. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. And thanks to Grace Puma and Christiana Smith, she for coming on the show today. You can find their book, career Forward Anywhere Books are Sold.
The show is The Property of SP podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Salhi. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show is written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast. With help from me, Joe Kate Yakin, Karen Repine, and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1.
You’ll find the 4 1 1 on All Things Money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Wonder how beautiful we all are. Of course you do, but you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of the show Engineered by Tina Eichenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast.
Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Wanna chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude, Stacey Doe and Julia Garib are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
So say hello. When you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. For more interactive fun, join us on Instagram every Tuesday and Thursday for our Instagram lives. Kate Yakin and Joe Host those weekly. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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