001: Maximizing Tech Careers: Avoiding Burnout and Financial Mistakes

Christopher Nelson  0:00  
Tech Careers & Money Talk is going to answer questions by people that have been there and done that. And the value in that is that they're going to answer questions that you didn't even think to ask.

Speaker 2  0:13  
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  0:56  
Hi, Welcome to Episode one of Tech Careers & Money Talk. I'm your host, Christopher Nelson. I've been in the tech industry for 20 plus years. And after climbing the career ladder to the C suite, and 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 in interview others that have done the same, or doing the same right now. Welcome.

So on this episode, Episode Number One, we want to tell you what is the value that we're going to deliver in this podcast to you, and why you should listen. Yes, it is important for us this podcast delivers value for you. We understand that technology employees are very, very busy and we know that you spend every single day working on complex tool sets, solving difficult problems and you do this at speed right? The demands are continuing to get higher and higher. We also know that those are just the table stakes.

If you're managing employees, or you're managing a larger book of business, then it can have more complexity, more stress, more challenges and we know that it's so important that you manage your career correctly, and that you also manage the money that comes with it in this podcast is here to answer that. And so we want to just go through what are our key values that we're going to deliver to you!

So number one is we want to answer key and important questions that you have around tech careers and money. Now you may be asking, well, Christopher, how do you know all my questions? Well, I have a good idea. I have been doing this for 20 years, I have a lot of questions that I've asked, had answers found the answers, I have a lot of other people that are doing the same thing. So we have a great suite of questions that we're going to be able to answer for you. Like when you're starting your career, and we understand that it changes over the trajectory of your career.

So at the beginning of your career, you ask questions like what company should I go to work for? What are the key skills that I should be building? What's more important skills? Or equity? Then there are questions of, how do I negotiate my first piece of equity? What’s this look like? What is even a good portion of equity, depending on the company I'm working for look like? Those are very, very common questions to beginning your career. Those will be answered in subsequent episodes of this podcast. You could be in the middle of your career. In the middle of your career, you're asking completely different questions like, Okay, I'm going to manager I want to get to Director, what does that take? Should I do it? What's the cost to me, my family? Or what's the upside? What's the equity that goes with that? Maybe it's director to VP? Those are questions you're gonna ask the middle of your career financially in the middle of your career, all of a sudden, you could go from doing okay to having an exit having an IPO becoming a high net worth individual. So now, you're asking some very, very serious questions, which is, you know, how do I protect and manage all of this equity they have gotten?

What should I do with this equity compensation? I've got three or four different types of equity compensation, how do I manage each what's my tax strategy? Right? I think in the messy middle, there's a lot of questions that need to be answered. And there's just as many when you get to the end of your career. At the end of your career, you could be VP level C suite or a very mature director, or an amazing individual contributor and you say what's next? Like, do I keep working forever from a career perspective? Many people believe that if you stop working in tech, you lose viability. Right? You know, then you're out of the game forever. And there's there couldn't be anything further from the truth. So we want to make sure that we can interview people that are doing great things beyond working full time in tech in showing you what that looks like answering those questions. There's also how do I make my money work for me. I know many people that have amassed a large sum of wealth, but it's not working for them. It's not allowing, it's not replacing their paycheck so that they can then think work is optional. They think they have to then go drain everything they burned, you know, and hope that it lasts until they die, we're going to bring you people that have solved that problem, so that you can understand the choices that you can make. So that's number one is we want to answer your questions.

And you may be saying, well, Christopher, I have a question may not be on your list, you didn't mention it. Ask as K at tech careers and money. talk.com. Ask your question, we would love to hear it. And we'd love to have an opportunity to respond to it. So we do want to answer your questions. Number two, we want to provide clarity, to this whole fuzzy picture of career and money. Now, you may be saying, well, Christopher, you're answering all my questions, aren't things clear? Well, there's probably not a lot of questions that you may not even be asking yet. It's true. And so this is where it's so important that we are interviewing people that have been there and done that before, people that have more experienced that you have in your career in and around money, so that they can then be providing you answers to questions that you don't even have. So that they can be providing you visibility, to things that are going to happen in your career and helping you think a few steps ahead. You know, so just again, you know, bringing the fine focus into this, you know, fuzzy thing of tech careers and money and allowing you to see end to end and really chart a path through so that you can really start setting some goals and hitting them. The third thing that's so important for us, I mean, this is absolutely critical is we want to help you reach your financial goals. Finances, in managing your money, is key to unlocking owning your own time. It's true. And a lot of the things that I discovered, when you start looking at what ultra high net worth individuals do, is not what's being taught in the mainstream media, you have to really unplug from that.

And you have to really study what they're doing and understand it so that you can get to financial freedom, so that you ultimately own your own time. And that's something that I want for you. And again, this is something that happens in stages. So it could be in stage one of your career, you're trying to understand as you're just getting started in tech, how do you get out of debt? Should you just spend all of your extra dollars paying down your debt? Should you invest at the same time? And you know, how do you set up a budget? How do you start planning for that middle of your career? You're asking questions about, you know, am I buying a house? Am I starting to invest in some rental properties? You know, who's on my team that I'm creating? You know, who should manage my money? Is it me? Is it somebody else? Those are very big questions. And at the end of your career, it's okay, how do I get this working for me? How do I now become in charge and build this financial fortress that will help me live how I want to, you know, post work and beyond, and then maybe, you know, even be multigenerational for my family? What's critical for me here, attackers and money talk is part of my mission is I want to help 1000 technology employees become financially independent. Because I truly believe that financially independent technology employees are going to come back and solve some of the world's biggest problems. And maybe it's not going to be doing hands on maybe it's actually going to be as investors as vetting technology that can do this work. But I firmly believe that if 1000 technology employees were financial independence, we would be solving some of the world's difficult problems. So that's why this is so important to me. So there's two more to go. I'm going to answer them right after this break.

Okay, we're back. So we have the last two that we want to answer of what are the values that we're going to deliver? What are you going to get out of this podcast? Why should you listen? We've already covered that we're going to answer all of the key questions that you have and a lot of common questions that we already know about that we just need to talk about. We're also number two, going to bring clarity, we're going to show you in the end, different visions of what career and money and technology looks like. Number three is we're going to help you reach your financial goals. Number four, we're going to build connection, we're going to build community.

One of the things that helped me tremendously in my journey, managing career, getting to financial independence, was really being in a community being a community of peers, it was really a tight knit community of peers that helped me manage my career, avoid burnout, manage a lot of the failures that I had, quite frankly, and getting through those and getting to much better positions learning and growing. It was also a very similar community that helped me when it came to managing my money and investing. And so, helping you build community, in and around Tech Careers & Money Talk is important to us. And we're going to be looking at different ways that we can do that in a series of live events as well, we're very excited to be sharing that with you.

So connection, building community, is the fourth way that we can add value. And the fifth way that we're going to add value, and this is absolutely my favorite is we're going to have fun, we're going to enjoy ourselves. While we're doing it. That has always been important to me along this whole journey in technology, because it can be so incredibly stressful. And you know, this, you know, the long nights, you know, the weekends, you know, the calls, and then in the middle of the night, right on my site reliability engineers out there can be very, very hard. But we can have fun while we're doing it. Let's enjoy, let's be light hearted for the people who know me personally know that I can be very focused, very driven, there's a lot of things that I really want to accomplish impact that I want to make. But I also want to have fun doing it. I want to have jokes, I want to have belly laughs I want to enjoy it. And so, I'm really excited to be on this journey with you. And I want you to know that we are committed to these values, and we're going to deliver on them, we are going to have conversations and we're going to answer questions that you've had in the back of your mind but you've never know where to get to an answer. This is the place. If you want clarity on to navigate this confusing world of Tech Careers…Money… how do you get it unlocked and working for you so you have a clarity and a clear plan of where to go - It's right here.

And if you also want to reach your financial goals, and you want to think beyond this noise, this matrix that you're in, you're like, something's not right here. Listen in, we're going to be interviewing people, we're going to unveil that you're going to get the opportunity to look behind the curtain and say what are ultra-high net worth individuals doing differently, to get a different result. And then we're going to do this in community. We're going to do this together. Again, any questions that you have on what we're doing here, ask at Tech Careers & Money Talk.com. We want to hear from you. And then we're going to have fun along the way. We're going to enjoy ourselves.

And so, I'm excited for you to listen in to the next episode. But before we go, we are a new and growing podcast so we need to ask that you follow us on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen, please, please, please follow us. And number two is we want to make sure that you leave a review, let us know how we're doing what are the things what are the takeaways? What are you really getting value from when you're listening, that feedback is so important. And number three, tell somebody we know is technology in place. There's a lot of people that have questions around Tech Careers & Money Talk. We want this to be the forum where they can come in, and everything's on the table. We can talk about everything. I'm so excited for you listen to the next episode. In the next episode, I'm going to answer the question that says Why do I have the microphone? Why do why I'm here. super passionate about everything super fired up. Why do I have the microphone, press play now? Thank you