Jeff Walker
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Some people, when they work on social change, they had to figure out the geographic level to work on. And you clearly pick the United States, obviously. But many people then start going, well, do I go down to the state? Do I go down to the city? Do I go down to rural versus city? And then there's different levers of change. And so kind of where you focus on, I think, is interesting.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Could you have a work money New York and a work money Arkansas, you know, and have them work together?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Walmart's in Arkansas. I mean, Walmart's everywhere.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
So it's not treating a member as a single solitary image, but, you know, an evolving personality that changes their needs. Yeah. And so in your hundred year goal, you will live their entire life with them. Yeah. So what they need when they're 22. Yeah. And then married in 27 and having their first kid and then on to 35 and retiring is going to change.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
This all sounds wonderful. But of course, work money doesn't run on goodwill. It relies on funders to operate. So how do you get funders to care about increasing wages and lowering costs of working class Americans?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Well, and they must do. I mean, clearly, if you're looking to change the system, you look at your return on investment. And so we as a donor, you know, we come in and say, hey, long term, not just personally, but, you know, ROI to the world.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
It's got to be positive.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
You know, having people be able to be self-supportive, being able to be connected into a larger system, have more confidence, you know, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
So learning those levers and kind of thinking about it is, you know, data as well. And you have a 15 million, you know, member goal over, you know, a reasonable timeframe, but that's a huge number. Yeah. And so creating, you know, a group of people who have that kind of power, if I'm a system catalyst, if I can pull together 50 million, holy moly, you know, that's,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
see changing, you know, you can do things, you know, how would you look at measuring it so that you're talking to, you know, your catalyst looking out saying, Hey, this is, this is how the world's going to change in five to 10 years because of what we're doing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Part of what system catalysts tend to do is look at influencer maps, system maps, partner maps. And so I'm curious who your partners could be. And maybe there's an uncovered group of them, I think. Whereas I think you're really hitting it where it says, our country is going to change. Our country is going to go to more plants that are going to be based here.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
You know, there's going to be, you know, there still is a big demand for a lot of high skilled jobs, like plumbers, like electricians, like others who understand what AI is and how it kind of connects together.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
And if you can take your middle class and blue collar teams and find others who care about that problem, that issue, they'll be your funders. They're going to be your supporters and they're going to be your partners. Because it's going to be more and more an issue and we need to help support them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
And where else do you look other than looking at a union and there's issues around that and you're trying to saying, hey, I'm taking it out of that, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Gee, that's an opportunity. That's a big deal. You know, we are coming to the end and there's a lot of interesting ideas that you've been bringing out that people can leverage off of.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
But as you're giving advice to people who want to change the world for the better purpose, and you created something in 2020 that's amazing and growing dramatically and setting up, you know, really an audience and a group of members that are just, you know, you consider yourself in them. You see yourself in them. Yeah. What advice do you give?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
What would you say is the parting kind of gift to our listeners, you know, for them to think about that based on your experience?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
That's great advice. And, you know, I can take back listening. You can take back focusing on people you're trying to have an impact with, partnering with them, building that vulnerability and trust as you're trying to create this massive movement that can change the world. And people can take that, you know, and build their own based on what they think is an important lever to push.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
So lots to learn here. And I appreciate you taking the time to help me transfer some of that knowledge.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Thank you so much for joining us and we'll catch you all in the next episode. Before we go, I'd like to thank our producers at Human Group Media. We'd also like to thank our incredible network of partners who are supporting our mission.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
The Skoll Foundation, the Aspen Institute's Aspen Global Leadership Network, Echoing Green, DRK Foundation, Maverick Collective, Virgin Unite, Shirley's Throne Africa Outreach Project, Boligo Philanthropy, Synergos, 4Global, Nexus, and New Profit. If you're interested in becoming a system catalyst and would like to learn more about our partners, please visit systemcatalyst.com.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Views and opinions expressed during the podcast are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of System Catalyst or Human Group Media.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
We can't fix the world alone, but collaborating isn't easy and systems are allergic to change. So how do we do it without losing our damn minds?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
I'm Jeff Walker.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
There's a saying in politics that sums up why people vote the way they vote. It's the economy, stupid. And it looks like this last presidential election was no exception. Right now, many Americans feel like they don't make enough money to live comfortably.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
It's this feeling that prompted our guest today, Carrie Jo Grimes, or as I like to call her, CJ, to create Work Money, a nonprofit organization that provides tools and resources to help millions of Americans save money and earn more. And when I say millions, I mean specifically 8.1 million so far. That's how many members Work Money has gained in just a few years.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Despite its size, though, Work Money feels very much like a tight-knit community where the team is always listening and keeping the conversation going with its members. So I wanted to have CJ on to talk about, among other things, how they foster such a trusting environment with such a large group of people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
So if you've ever struggled to connect with the people you're serving, I'm sure you'll learn a lot from this episode. Hi, CJ.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Good. Thanks for joining us. It'll be a fun conversation. Yeah. It's funny. I was listening to some of the things you've been doing and talking about. And my family is from Sutherland, Illinois. They hung out in Evansville.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
I'm saying this connection.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Well, and you and I are connected because some part of my family grew up in Southern Illinois and on Sunday afternoons after church got in their Cadillac, my grandfather's Cadillac and drove around to look at houses and sites. It's so, you know, I agree with you that that dream You know, is it still here and is it possible? And so you've been working to try to, you know, make it possible, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Yeah. So how do you think of your model of change and kind of what you've built with WorkMoney and the six and a half million members you have now, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Well, you are clearly a movement builder and focusing when you're trying to do system change on what is the problem you're trying to address. And it sounds like you took the hook of, you know, the financial need, you know, the angst that comes up with people trying to make it by and trying to build enough to carry their families along. Right.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Go on the WorkMoney website and you'll find plenty of great tools and resources to help you with your finances, like a starter budget calculator, an app that saves you gas money, and a student loan consolidator. As great as these are, they're only the first step to really helping people in the long term.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Well, and there's so many people that are lonely when they find others that are suffering the same questions through the same questions or issues. That's right. You know, it gives them more strength and light around it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
It sounds like once the trust, you start being able to talk about that kind of stuff, which is very angst driven and things that people don't like to talk about necessarily as much.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
And then they'll open up to other things, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
And it's your actions that prove that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
You have it with them. Do they have an amongst themselves relationship?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Carrie Joy Grimes on How to Break Free from Financial Insecurity | EP 585
Despite having 8 million members across the country, Work Money operates almost like a small business. With regular phone calls and in-person events, each individual member feels seen and heard and understood, which further strengthens and grows the Work Money community. It's a virtuous cycle that I wish more organizations would employ.