002: From Tech Novice to Financially Independent: Lessons Learned

Christopher Nelson  0:00  
Now you know, the secret is you need to think like an investor when trading your time and talent for tech equity.

Speaker 2  0:08  
Welcome to Tech Careers & Money Talk. What if you could hang out with experienced tech industry executives ask them about career growth, equity compensation, investing financial strategies, and more, then take an insight or to guide your own career and lifestyle. Each week on the show, Christopher Nelson shares an in depth look at how to navigate tech careers and hypergrowth companies select the right companies to work for earn equity and build a passive income portfolio. Christopher is an author, tech exec and principal and co-founder of Wealthward Capital. His goal is to give you the information you need to grow your career, build wealth, and make an impact. Now, here's Christopher.

Christopher Nelson  0:51  
Welcome to Tech Careers & Money Talk. This is episode two. I'm your host, Christopher Nelson. Yes, I have been in the tech industry for 20 plus years and after climbing my way to the C suite working for three companies that have gone through IPO and investing my way to financial independence. I'm here to share everything that I've learned with you so that you can do the same.

So in this episode, we're gonna answer the question, why do I have the microphone? Why am I so passionate about tech careers and money in having this conversation of how it all works together and what it has to do with my origin story.

So my origin story starts in the summer of 2001. I graduated from UC San Diego, with a career in Cognitive Science, Computer Science. I'd had a job offer to start with Accenture, super excited, super pumped, this is a high point. Now I went on a, you know, post-graduation trip to Australia and then found out the start date was going to be postponed, 911 happened and you know, all of a sudden there was this.com crash, it was crazy!

But survived that. got through it and started on in May of 2002 is when I started with Accenture. It was a sort of a rebuilding time to be there and it was an opportunity to get a lot of training, I'd made the decision to go to work for a more established company instead of a startup at that time. That was a very conscious decision because I wanted skills, I wanted to find mentors and I also felt that Accenture in technology consulting would give me the ability to see a lot of different industries. And yes, I got all of that. I got a chance to see a lot of different industries.

I knew that I did want to work in high tech for software manufacturers and I got experience doing a lot of communication, probably above where I should have been at that point in time where I got to, you know, walk into different boardrooms present to a lot of senior executives and I got my executive communication really refined. I got an opportunity to start managing teams, and then travel and it was a really fun time. Things really changed for me in 2004, when I had the opportunity to join a brand-new burgeoning practice - the salesforce.com practice. And if you think about it, 2004 salesforce.com was not the company that it is today. It was a SMB company that was really trying to break into the enterprise. So, what I discovered then, and I think is important for everyone to take note is when you do take a calculated risk, and you learn a new technology early, it can pay off sometimes…and it did for me.

After that, my career saw some incredible acceleration, I got the opportunity to travel more I was again getting more high visibility projects and roles. I think this is also something that's important to note is that sometimes when you are in this new technology, you can get some high visibility projects that can mean more risk, more stress but if you're able to deliver on those results, that can again, help you accelerate your career get you again, more opportunity. And that's what I found for me is that this was a true accelerator. And while I was getting more clients and more visibility, what I didn't realize is that it was also starting to weigh on me personally, I want to pause right there. And let's go talk a little bit about the money side.

So, at this point, you know, the early phase of my career, I was a good saver. I was a stock investor. And I was also managing my student debt. I came out of college like most people, not with an incredible amount of debt but with some debt. And so somebody gives me advice to make sure that while I am paying down the debt to save and invest at the same time because you don't want to pay off all your debt and then be at zero. You want to actually leverage compounding as early as possible. So even if it's a small amount, continue to save continue to invest while you're paying down the debt. So that was an incredible piece of advice that I want to make sure and share with you as well.

I also had a friend and we had this idea (we both read Rich Dad, Poor Dad when we were in college) and we realized, if we could start a side hustle that gave us some cash, we could then go and invest that in passive investing in real estate or in real estate that gives you income and we wanted to go buy single family homes with it. And so, we made a decision to go purchase a franchise of sort of a second-tier juice and smoothie bar which we purchased in Tucson, Arizona. We opened our first shop, and we got that thing going.

And so I had my career, I have my side hustle. And you know, from 2004 to 2008, the business grew. We actually, were able to open a second smoothie bar and continue that success. And then the career grew as well. I was doing a ton of travel for the smoothie bar. I would, you know, come back sometimes on weekends and work weekend shifts sometimes be in the bar, but I was doing a lot of the accounting, a lot of the back-office type of activities as well.

2008 call it the “burn and crash”. That is - I was burnt out, I was toasty, I was crispy, because I had the side hustle, was working and then also work itself. I was traveling at that point, when my burnout really hit me hard. I was living in Tokyo; I was out there on an assignment and traveling between Tokyo, Hong Kong and China. I didn't know which way was up. I also didn't know who to talk to about it. Right? It was really, really, really crazy time for me. And then the crash was the Great Recession in 2008. It was bringing everything down.

So our smoothies that were $4.25 at the time could not compete against the $5 footlong people wanted, to have their belly full. They were willing, at that point to say: “No I don't want this healthy smoothie”. Now again, I'm not trying to say that, you know, footlong subs are horrible for you but from a competitive perspective, we could not compete. So, we went from, you know, being in the black to being in the red and I was burning out really hard. I think what happens sometimes is you make emotional decisions and so I instead of trying to make a rational decision, I started taking interviews in my day job, and I decided I really wanted to go work for equity…I wanted to go try this startup scene. So I went and started talking to a founder fell in love with his vision, his company's mission and made a move.

At that point, we were also shutting down our store. So it was a very, very, very stressful time. And then with the startup, we weren't able to meet the MVP, the investors in the large customers, they were losing faith that we could ever deliver. It was really just not a good time. So I went from this crash and burn and even further down this hole I found myself. At some point, the project had ended with the startup company and there just wasn't anything there. The side hustle closed too and I was not in a great position financially. We'd had to, you know, turn everything over to the bank. So at that point, I had a lot of time to reflect on that and a lot of time to reflect on “okay, what exactly happened” right? I have this great career, this great trajectory, I thought I'd made this really bad move and I realized, I like a lot of people I'd seen leave Accenture had gone to work for equity but we never talked about their choices. We never talked about what they did, and for some of them it worked out very well, for some of them it that didn't work out so well.

So I became obsessed with looking on LinkedIn and seeing people who had multiple successes or who had equity and companies that I'd love to work for which I'd love to actually have in my portfolio. And so I made the decision to start just DMing them and saying if can we get on the call, can I really understand what goes into us selecting these companies and anything else? Some said yes, some said no. The people that said “Yes”, I got on a call with and you know, was very respectful of their time and asked them a lot..a loooot of questions. And here's what I found. I found that when you're trading your time and talent for equity, you need to think like an investor.

Very important! Let me say that again. When trading your time and talent for tech equity, you need to think like an investor.

This is what changed everything for me because I had a track record of being a good stock investor before. I'd learned some stock investing through the Motley Fool and I understood how to read financials, how to read company financials, how to really understand a business now I just gotten through running a business where I knew how to actually create the P&L, create the balance sheet and understand what it was to market a product. So now I realized, wait a second, I need to take all this investing knowledge that I have and I now need to use that to look at these companies to say, Okay, how do I select the right one where I'm going to go work for a piece of equity. That was the aha moment. So we're going to take a quick break, and we come back, I'm going to tell you about the second half of the career.

Alright, we're back. And yes, now, you know, the secret is you need to think like an investor when trading your time and talent for tech equity. So I then went, and I got a contract job with Accenture because I wanted to have dollars coming in while I really went in did a full vetting of some of these companies that I was interested in working in. So I was vetting a lot of companies. And then I also really started networking, because I wanted to continue to find people who working for equity, and taking equity off the table for companies that work for was part of their financial strategy. I wanted to just continue to get deeper into this community of people that really thought that way and so as I did. I started getting more and more information, put some packets together, put out some offers and submitted my resume to different companies and then interviewed.

In 2011, I took a position as employee 417 in a company called Splunk. Now, for those of you who know, it was then less than a year later when we went through an IPO. And for me that ended up being a multiple seven figure pay day. It was amazing! And so rewinding a bit, what I did is I really positioned myself, I went in there and I got a director level position. I got the commensurate amount of equity that you got with the director level position and then I just put my head down and I saw it. You know - very impactful projects.

I built deep relationships and then I focused on building a really healthy team to really grow and scale. And these were a lot of things that I had learned previously, at Accenture, I brought everything to bear. And I really wanted to ensure that I was aligned with the company's vision and mission as an owner, to get there. And so the IPO day was absolutely amazing. On that day, you know, it was one of these things where within seconds, all of a sudden, when the stock price starts floating, it literally went out double what we'd all expected anticipated. So it was it was an incredible moment. And I remember I went home that night to my wife who was pregnant. And I was so proud. And I went showed her the you know, the Schwab account, hey, look at here's how much money we have.

She asked me two simple questions. Well, when do we get the money? And when can we buy the house, she was pregnant at the time and we wanted, she was nesting, right, she wanted to house. I didn't have those answers. And I literally went into the next room and fell off an emotional cliff. Because what I didn't realize is I was suffering from what's called Sudden Wealth syndrome, which is a real thing - it is a real, real thing. And I'm sure that many of you are out there suffering in silence of this because you've experienced this, you may not even know what it is. But it's imposter syndrome, saying, you know, you're not smart enough to manage this money.

It's, you know, you feel maybe embarrassed that you want to tell people about this, you know. They know this happened to you, you know, feel like you deserve it or you work hard and earned it, you really did. And a lot of doubt, and fear just creeps in. And so I want to call that out, because this is why we have to talk about career and money together. Because we're in this career, we're here to work for equity to get to these results. But managing the money. There's a huge mindset component to it. And that's what I really, you know, figured out.

And so, from there, I spent an additional four years at Splunk. I spent an additional four years there, really focusing on my career. And so let's talk about the career side for a second, I really focused on building a strong peer network. I wanted other people that were at my level and other companies and understood what they did - marking myself to market, understanding what you know, somebody else was doing well, what I was doing well and how we could share and how we could make each other better. This created just a really strong bond of people that now I'm great friends with to this day, also focused on creating a really good and healthy team where we could really rely on each other. We could give each other breaks. We understood the environment and we're taking care of each other.

And then also my skills, I really took the opportunity to get a lot of training for my skills. On the money side, I really made the decision that I wanted to execute this vision of taking this tech equity and turning it into something that was going to work for me. What did that mean, it meant that I wasn't going down the conventional path of turning it all over to a wealth manager, and they were going to take care of my retirement, it meant that I was signing myself up for a whole other level of work that I didn't even know what that was going to be, but I also knew that I could go in. I found the right tax partner that was helping me take dollars off of the table, very tax efficiently. I was also able to find somebody that set me up with asset protection, you know, able to get things into the right living trust, which is also then, you know, being able to set it up for the next generation, the family. I also was able to set up a “donor advised funds” so that we can be philanthropic in again, a very tax efficient way. And then also risk management, finding the right insurance, to make sure that my family was taken care of if something happened to myself or my wife. Right. And so this to me was this whole evolution of becoming a high net worth individual. But again, there's no training on but we're gonna be talking a ton on this podcast, because that's what we need, we need to understand now that we've worked so hard to get the money, how do we unlock it?

So, let's get back to the story. So after five years at Splunk, made the decision by myself with my mentors, with my peer group, that it was time for me to transition out and to look for a CIO opportunity. Now, keep in mind that at this point, I had a young family, my wife, and three young boys. And so I ended up again, doing the vetting of the other company, and going in doing the due diligence and found an opportunity through a recruiter to go work for a company in New York City. So moved the family out of Silicon Valley to New York City, and was working for a company called Yext and took the CIO position there, which was a great opportunity for me to move up the ladder, get more responsibility and understand what that meant. Now, what I didn't realize is that at that point I had this focus on the career, I was really focusing on investing the money, but I had sort of taken for granted what was going on with my family. Because we'd set up for ourselves, you know, when I was working for Splunk, we had a really nice family balance. Now I went to this new opportunity that had a lot more demands on my time. You know, a whole different commute as we're living in Jersey, and I was traveling into the city. And it was putting a ton of stress and strain on my family. So, while I chose a company that was on track, that was going to go through an IPO, it turned out to not be the best fit for my life, I had to make a very, very hard decision to say, this isn't the right fit for me or my life right now. It was arguably one of the hardest things I had to do from a career perspective.

The good news was we're in a good position financially so financially, I wasn't worried about the decision. From a family decision, one of the best moves I ever made you know and at that point, we started looking. New Jersey wasn't the right fit for us and we were looking for a better place for our family we found. I found an opportunity in Austin to then go for a Vice President's position. I decided to take a step back, professionally, which was a great move for me because I was able to then continue to grow my career, build teams, do the things I enjoyed doing but I didn't have the pressure of you know, the highest rung of the ladder, where it is and I think people need to consider that.

And it was really then in Texas, that, you know, the real estate really opened up for us. And it was at that point that I had some friends reaching out to me saying, Hey, we see what you're doing in real estate? We hear you talk about this all the time, like we want in. And so it was in late 2017… early 2018, five years ago, that I started Wealthward Capital to really help other technology employees diversify into commercial real estate. And ourselves we were able to, again, as a family continue to invest and we're building out this stream of income that was executing this whole idea of how do we take our tech equity? How do we get it so that it's generating checks? I'm talking about monthly checks, quarterly checks that are coming in, just like your paycheck and this whole concept of high yield investments that deliver income which isn't talked about enough and we'll talk about as I do, you know more some more money episodes later, but the career and the money together.

What happened is then is, I was at this company for almost three years - Force Point - was the name of the company. I came here it was a very interesting opportunity to come and try private equity. I'd been working for venture capital and I’d wanted to try private equity for a few years. And so we were looking to go for an IPO. And you know, after two years, there was a couple moments where we were close, but then it was obvious that we were sort of back to the building phase again. And at that point, you know, I've just been running very hard from Splunk, and to Yext and then to Force Point, so I made the decision to take a sabbatical.

I took a sabbatical for nine months. And it was absolutely amazing, because we had income coming in. So we weren't worried about, “okay, where's the next coming from” you know. Regine, my wife was, was working on some entrepreneurial things herself, and she was doing very well so it was a good time for me to reflect, rest. And I think, again, there's a whole other episode on, you know, how do you prepare and take a sabbatical in tech, because I think it's super important. Everybody who I've talked to who's taken one has said, it's, it's been one of the best things they’ve ever done. And the interesting thing is that…it's important to understand that I positioned my career.

As I went into startup companies, I position myself to be somebody who got business applications ready to go through a Sox audit. So I positioned myself so that my phone rang when companies were, you know, 12 to 24 months away from an IPO. And so while I was on sabbatical, the phone rang, another opportunity came up, and it happened to be with a friend of mine, Brian Weiss, who will be interviewing here on the podcast, who's the CIO, who's just had a series of IPO after IPO. I said, ”What's the company?”,  he said, GitLab. I go, wow, I heard about that company. Let's do the due diligence. And he's like, Well, here's mine.

And so started doing the due diligence on the company, everything checked the flag. And then when I saw that, Godfrey Sullivan, who was the CEO at Splunk, and then on the chairman of the board, there joined the board of GitLab. You know, it was really sort of the final vote of confidence that I needed, that this was a company that was going to do something incredibly special. So there, I made the decision to take the very same role that I did at Splunk, I took a senior director, well, that's where I left at Splunk was a Senior Director of enterprise applications. And I went in there, executed over the two years I worked there. It took the company through another IPO and had the opportunity to take some more gold coins off the table, and leverage that for investing. And it was in August of 2022, that I left GitLab to be able to just do real estate do investing full time.

And I know that I've moved through everything relatively quickly. I mean, a lot of this is going to lead to more conversations more episodes. And I really want you to ask me questions about this so you can go to ask at Tech Careers & Money Talk and ask any questions that you want about my career and what you really want to know more of. But the result is, you know, this vision that I had at the beginning, of being able to build up this tech equity or take this, this large chunk and have that working for me is ultimately what was executed.

There was a lot of other things that were discovered along the way - building a career, building out what I call my career capital, and being able to position myself for these, you know, the right roles that I wanted - the right companies that I wanted to be a part of. And then also being able to manage, you know, my own money, my own equity. I've always been a DIY -  I've sought advice from other people but I've never had, you know, anybody else manage my money, I have done that. And this ultimately, is what I want to share with yourselves. Because I do believe that all of us have the opportunity here to grow our careers, build wealth and reach our financial goals. And, you know, my goal was to then be financially independent, to have checks coming in so that I don't have to worry about working a job and work optional, right?

I'm working on projects and things that I enjoy. But I'm also doing it in a timeframe that I define. And this is what I think is available to yourselves as well. And this is really, you know, the spirit of this podcast is to have this conversation around tech careers and money because mine is one way of doing it. There are other people that have done it as well and they're doing it differently. They've made different choices, but it works for them. And I also think that it's important to, to listen to people who have done it themselves before, right? And this is where I think if you're gonna go to the moon, you want to talk to the astronauts, right? The astronomers may say, Oh, it's here to there, they may be able to give you some theory, but the people who are going to know how to do it, we're gonna get you there. If you want to get boots on the ground on the moon, you want to talk to more astronauts than astronomers.

And that's really what this podcast is here for. You know, those are the highlights to my story. I mean, I can literally go deeper. But I wanted to make sure and share that with you today. And we're a new podcast and I want to make sure and I want to ask you three things. Number one, please follow us if you Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, please follow us. Number two, please leave us a review. What did you find valuable today? share with me what you found valuable. share with others what you found valuable, what you're hearing that you're not hearing anywhere else. That would be important too. And number three, tell other technology employees. It's so important. That's it. This is the episode this is the origin story. And I hope that you enjoyed that. My ask would be that you hit play on the next episode. See what's next.