How to Change the World in Retirement with Matt Glynn – Ep 66

[INTERVIEW]

Matthew Peck: Welcome again to another edition of SHP Financial’s Retirement Roadmap podcast. I’ll be your host, Matthew Peck, joined by Laura Russo, another returning member of SHP Financial. And today we’re going to be talking about things such as impact and making a difference and significance, words that we sometimes will toss around but truly can mean something because it’s a form of legacy. It’s a form of, okay, that old line of, “Leave the world a better place than you found it.” We couldn’t think of a better guest to come on to the podcast to discuss this than Matt Glynn.

He is also a past guest talking about entrepreneurship and leadership in regards to building a company. And so, Mr. Glynn, Matt makes it. He reaches that peak. He’s able to build a business and then sell a business. And then what is the next stage like for him? Well, over the next 30 minutes, you’re going to find out exactly how much good work that he is doing and how much good word he is spreading with all of the different campaigns and endeavors, all with leading by his heart. And again, I’m honored to have you on to talk about all the different programs and projects that you’re doing. So, without much further ado, Matt, welcome to the show again.

Matt Glynn: Thank you, man. It’s glad to be back. Hey, Laura.

Laura Russo: So glad to have you here.

Matthew Peck: Well, this is the first time because I think last time it was just me and Matt. So, now we have Laura, obviously, grace us.

Laura Russo: Yes. And I’m actually very excited because I’ve known Matt for a long time now. It’s gone by fast. But it came across my calendar what the topic was going to be and I saw Matt Glynn, I was like I know it’s going to be a good episode.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, I certainly want to be a part of that, to say the least. So, Matt, I want to begin with, have you always been charitably driven? Was this something that happened later in your life or was this something that from day one you wanted to volunteer and you wanted to give back?

Matt Glynn: I would say no. I was probably like most people, I’m very concerned about myself only. And that’s how I grew up. And my mother was a great and wonderful person, always helping people but it was really family and only family. And then we had Joshua and all of a sudden I decided, “Hm, what am I leaving him?” You know, my legacy is more than what I’m doing for just him. It’s about what are you doing to make the world a better place. And then my wife and I started going to church. We both became Christians. And then it became the overall part of it is how do you help people? Because we’re not only going to a better place here but a better place in the hereafter. And you know I talk about that a lot.

Matthew Peck: Well, and to ask about that more specifically, so did the church itself lead projects that you then joined in or was it vice versa that you came in with these ideas and then you kind of helped get the congregation to take action?

Matt Glynn: Probably it was the same thing at the same time. My wife tells me that she’s always telling me to be quiet.

Matthew Peck: Your wife says that too, man. Okay. I was like, “Yeah.”

Laura Russo: Wait, you’re spilling our secrets as wives. Wait. Wait. Don’t worry. We’re not a secret community that we have a code of conduct.

Matt Glynn: Oh, I think you are.

Matthew Peck: Yeah. Is that girl code for something, Laura?

Laura Russo: That’s right. And I think probably for some of our listeners, let’s talk a little bit about the actual project that you’re working on with the church right now because that’s consuming a lot of your time and that’s kind of at the forefront. So, could you give us a little background on what you’re doing there?

Matt Glynn: Well, before we get into that, what I’d like to say is I don’t want this to become what a great guy I am. I do what I do because I love to do it and I love to help people. And Evan asked me to come on because it’s a way just for people to how to get involved and where to get involved and why to get involved. And being a company that had the ways and means started that because you had to have the ways and the means to do it. And then a number of years ago, I remember somebody was talking to me and they said, “You know the difference between knowledge and wisdom?” And I was like, you know, I thought about it and I was like, “I really don’t.” And they said, “Wisdom is the application of your knowledge.”

And I thought that was pretty profound, simple, but as you get older, you accumulate all of this knowledge and the stuff we don’t forget because we’re old, you can actually start to use to do stuff. So, I just want to make sure that this is not a, “Great job, Matt.”

Matthew Peck: Right. Right. Not a complete atta boy 30 minutes of it.

Matt Glynn: Most of the time I do it without people knowing that I’m doing it.

Matthew Peck: Yeah. Well, and I kind of want to go back to that. So, I mean, as you mentioned about the older that you got and then obviously with Glynn Electric and whatnot, did the ends justify the means? You say, “Okay. I’m going to continue to grow this business because I know that the more growth in the business, the more time I put into it, then the more impact it’s going to have.” Or was it, again, always secondary or is it, okay, you compartmentalized it where you said, “All right. I’m going to work here, and then eventually I’m going to move on to stage two.”

Matt Glynn: That’s an interesting thing as well. And I’m going to go back to the Bible for a moment because that’s where a lot of my wisdom and knowledge come from is, “To whom much is given, much is expected,” is part of it. But the other part is if you try to outgive God, you can’t do it. He will press it down, give you back more than you can handle. And believe me, I’ve tried to outgive Him a couple of times and it sort of seems like the more I do, the more I have to do more with. It’s an economy I don’t understand, but you have to get there by faith.

Matthew Peck: For people that are into retirement, I mean, it sounds like you were always active. And for people that are just about to retire or are already retired, what piece of advice do you give them in regards to where to start?

Matt Glynn: Interests. What interests you? And that could be a two-edged sword. If you liked what you used to do, you can continue to do it but it’s more fun because you’re not having to rely on it for an income and you can pick and choose the parts you want. Like, I was in the building industry for 40-something years and we talked about the church. We’re building a new church. It’s the largest church in the last hundred years in New England. It’s off of Long Pond Road on Joshua’s Way, which was a road that was named after my late son, which was kind of a…

And I was involved with this back when the developer had the property, helping figure it out, how to get it all together, and get it developed, and getting it through approved permitting, which was a lot of fun I’d say. And when we got approved, we had X amount of dollars at a certain amount of rate. And then by the, I mean, that’s what we had before we started the process. It took us so long to get approved that we ended up financing a lot more money because construction… Look what happened with construction during COVID. It just went crazy.

Matthew Peck: Yeah, with cost of materials, everything. Labor and materials is almost double, it feels like.

Matt Glynn: And then we hit that interest rate hike. So, we were approved to 3% and we borrowed close to 8%. So, all that. So, now it became a struggle to get the project into the same bucket.

Matthew Peck: But if I go back to the kernel of it of where it all started, for all of our listeners, it’s really kind of where your interests are. I mean, if you are going to look into volunteer work, so if you are in the building industry, you end up kind of applying, I guess, I’ll use that same wisdom and knowledge in the sense that you were applying your knowledge in a wise way, of course, but you were applying your knowledge towards that volunteer efforts is really where a good place to start is.

Matt Glynn: Well, you know, a real good place is if you can combine a number of your interests. So, I used to take youth groups to third-world countries and work in orphanages and AIDS camps. And we went to Haiti, to Mexico, to Kenya, South Africa. And I got to see what the third world was like and it wasn’t a pretty sight. And then my building stuff, we were able to put together some ideas, and my son’s music, which I was very interested in. So, I was able to put those three together and that’s Project Trinitē is one of my projects of which SHP has helped a lot in. Thank you.

Matthew Peck: Absolutely. And anything we can do to help to say the least.

Matt Glynn: And we were able to put a pod together that has solar and internet on it through Starlink, which was my knowledge in the construction industry. Because of my connections in Kenya and South Africa and through Haiti, we’re able to develop a training program and we actually have a pod deployed in Haiti right now that’s training 30 people to get in to become computer literate and to get jobs working remote with large companies on computer stuff so that we can improve their means of living while letting them stay in their own country, because people want to stay there.

And people that are in third world countries, they don’t want you to just give them money. What they want is to have hope and pride in supporting their family. They want a good-paying job just like everybody in America. So, then with that, and then we’re able to put another one in Kenya. So, we have another 30 people being trained in Kenya right now. And we’re getting ready to deploy a third to South Africa.

Matthew Peck: Wow. That’s phenomenal. So, let me ask kind of like more logistic question. Does the church connect with people in the third-world country? Like, that’s another area of I don’t even know where to start in essence. I mean, like in regards to boots on the ground, who reaches out to who in order to even begin that project?

Matt Glynn: Would you like to answer that?

Laura Russo: Oh, yeah. I can answer that.

Matthew Peck: Excellent. All right.

Laura Russo: So, those of you who don’t know, I actually go to the same church as Matt. So, I know a lot of what he’s been doing behind the scenes with our projects. But it’s pretty amazing because people like Matt, you use all of the tools that you’ve been given in a practical way but then you also use the tools that excite you for outreach with global missions. And a lot of churches have different opportunities through missions, both global and more of small community-based. So, for example, our church, we have a really strong ministry that’s all about missions. And if you want to do something in South Korea, you can. If you want to do something in Africa, there’s all these different wonderful opportunities like clean water.

There’s a project for getting clean water well. So, there’s just so much that you can do and I think for a lot of people in retirement, starting there with your local church and looking at missions. And then we have, you know, it’s even smaller. We have a wonderful ministry for our homeless ministry. So, we have every Friday at our church, we have a luncheon, and there’s always opportunities to serve and to donate and to be there. You can be there serving the food. My mom’s currently retired and she makes cake for them every single Friday. And she’s not a building person by any means, but she makes a really good cake. So, she brings a cake every Friday. And that’s something that gives her the excitement to be able to bless all of the homeless people in our backyard. Literally, they’re right there.

Matthew Peck: So, I’ll kind of put your mom on the spot here, too. Was she also always volunteer-centric and charitably inclined, or is this something that she only then started to do in retirement?

Laura Russo: Yeah. I think she’s always had a very generous heart and she’s been involved in our church since it started but when you’re raising five kids, you don’t really have that same opportunity. You’re working full-time. You don’t have that same capacity. So, I saw a lot of it when she retired and when she stopped working where she started wanting to do more. And she is absolutely involved in so many different things. So, I think retirement is a huge blessing for people because it allows you to be freed up and do what you want to do. And I’m interested at some point, if you can talk about too the balance between when is it maybe too much that you’re doing and you need to kind of take a step back and also kind of protect some of your own personal time.

We can save that for after but I am interested because I think a lot of people who are, I want to say type A maybe, it’s easy to fill up your calendar. And we were joking around earlier saying that I think there’s actually secretly three Matt Glynns out there all working at once doing these things.

Matthew Peck: He’s cloned. There’s three Matt Glynns clones running around.

Laura Russo: That or he hadn’t watched TV in 25 years. It’s got to be one of those two things.

Matthew Peck: You know, it’s a great question, though, Laura. I mean, yes. So, I mean, did you ever find yourself like almost too busy or taking on too much?

Matt Glynn: I like to use a lifeline on that. Can I call my wife? My wife thinks I’m busy. I’m busier now than I was when I was working.

Laura Russo: And we hear that a lot, which is interesting.

Matt Glynn: There’s no end to the need and there’s no end to the impact you can make. And I’m not talking – dollars is a part of it as well. Fortunately, I’ve done well in my life that I can put my money where my mouth is in a lot of cases also to impact, like your mom baking a cake and you don’t… It was kind of interesting. I was there a couple of weeks ago just helping with the homeless. And this man walked in and he looked like he was ten years older than me. And I recognized him. I went to elementary school in junior high and he’s homeless and he lives in the streets of Plymouth. And I took the time to sit down with him, which being retired gives you the time to just talk to people sometimes. And I said, “What’s the difference? What happened to you that didn’t happen to me or vice versa, that you’re homeless and I’m, you know?”

Matthew Peck: You’re on a podcast with SHP and Matt and Laura Russo.

Matt Glynn: Exactly. And we ended up probably the short version is he ended up in a bottle because of some bad things that happened in his life. But after we got up, he walked over and he gave me a big hug, and said, “Thank you for taking the time to even talk to me.” He said, “I was afraid to approach you.” And I was like, “Why?” He said, “Because you’re successful and I’m a bum.” I go, “That’s not…” I said, “We’re all equal under God’s eyes.” And he said, “Well, thank you for that, too.” But your mom is touching people like with a homemade cake. I remember when we were in Africa, we were walking through Kibera, the streets of Kibera.

Kibera is considered probably the worst slum in the world. And when I say slum, people in America think of like Harlem or Watts or something. But in a third-world country, slums are it’s like living in a septic system with dysentery everywhere. The roads run, right? The roads are the sewer system so it runs right through. And when it rains, you have fecal matter all in your house and that’s what you’re using to wash your clothes and drink with. And you’re cooking with kerosene in a place. And people have cardboard houses that they coat with burnt tires so it keeps the wind out. It’s just the worst scenario you can imagine.

But my wife, they called her the Great White Mama because she was a white woman that when she listened to these people and they’re very dirty because there’s no place to wash and stuff and the smell was pretty impactful. And she would go up and hug people. And these other women were like that hug to show that somebody cared about them. I remember this. And Joshua became the How Are You boy because he kept teaching the kids to sing the How Are You song. But I was so proud of them. But I remember we were in an orphanage and this great big black woman came up to me, and I’m holding this baby, and I’m just sitting there and I’m crying and she’s like, “I know you’re thinking.”

She says, “You’re thinking that you’re going to quit and come over here and help take care of babies.” She goes, “The last thing we need is you doing that.” She goes, “Just go tell our story. That’s enough to know that there’s somebody that cares for us telling a story.” So, I guess, my point with that is your impact doesn’t have to be this massive thing that you’re trying to do. You’re not trying to build a 25,000-square-foot church. The unfortunate part is the church itself does a lot of good and they help a lot of people. However, it’s the 90/10 rule or the 80/20 rule. The 90/10 rule is 90% of the work is done by 10% of the people. Or in a church that is more outward focused as New Hope is where 80/20. But that’s still only 20% of people. Can you imagine if we could flip it?

Matthew Peck: Right. Right.

Matt Glynn: You got 80%.

Matthew Peck: Right. Got 80% working that hard and all working together. I mean, and that’s the thing too I want to say about the sort of like the ways and means and essence. I mean, I truly enjoy that about our job, Laura, is the fact that we can create financial plans for people and give them the time or give them the liberty to do what they want with that time. And so, we’ll handle the finances. We’ll make sure that you have a plan in place through thick and thin, bear markets, bull markets, interest rates up, interest rates down but trying to boil it down to a client. And I think too this is what, you know, today’s podcast really at the heart of it is all about is what do you do with your time?

If I wave a magic wand, and sometimes I wouldn’t call it a magic wand, but I’ll wave my magic financial plan, meaning that I can then create a plan for somebody, create a plan for clients of mine. And now I’ve created time. I’ve created a free calendar of how clients then fill that calendar. I enjoy watching. I enjoy seeing that play out and living vicariously through our clients. And so, that’s kind of what it’s all about because, obviously, we know where Matt dedicated his time to and kind of just trying to put that spin on it so that for all of our listeners that either are approaching retirement or are already retired think in terms of that because time is a finite resource. And what you do…

Matt Glynn: Especially at my age.

Matthew Peck: Clearly.

Matt Glynn: Ow. Ow.

Laura Russo: Harsh words.

Matt Glynn: Hmm. Is Derek available?

Matthew Peck: But, yeah, I guess it’s like and I love these too. You know, comparing it to, Laura, to your mom about it’s not necessarily the means of donating millions and millions of dollars. It’s also one of my other favorite sayings, “It’s not what you do for somebody, it’s how you make them feel.” And so, as I said, by baking that cake or whatever that may be just that alone, you can have ripple effects.

Laura Russo: Yeah, exactly. That’s a great point. And I think that a lot of people don’t realize how much impact you can have with tax planning. You know, there are so many strategies that we can take that are just so wonderful to be able to say, “Hey, I don’t really need this money for some people.” Like, I don’t have to have it, so why don’t I just take it and give it to organizations and charities that can do so much with it? And not only do you get the benefit of having that on your taxes but you also get the benefit of knowing that your money did good. You know, it did some really powerful things for people. And I think that’s something that a lot of other firms out there don’t really utilize as much.

Matthew Peck: Well, and to that point, I mean, I will credit the government for having a – they do incentivize charitable contributions, right? They do have that tax write-off and tax incentive to do that. And then, Laura, to your point, there are all these different great strategies. I mean, I love donor-advised funds or DAFs is what we call them. But donor-advised funds are a fantastic way of almost creating your own scholarship or almost creating your own foundation. So, for all our listeners that don’t know, you’re able to donate appreciated stock or property or any other large asset, and then it goes into a donor-advised fund.

And then each year it stays invested, but you get a write-off on the way in and then every year ongoing, you’re able to donate to different causes or whatever that may be. And so, you can literally see your, as I said, this little mini foundation going and pretty easily set up. Obviously, there are ways and means to do it like we were saying but there’s all these amazing strategies, tax planning to your point, Laura. The other thing I was going to say too and this is also where I sometimes stumble is how do you choose what to give and where to spend your time, especially in a charitable way? Because there are so many amazing causes and so much need out there.

Like, Matt, you kind of referenced that earlier. You said there’s a lot of need and, obviously, there is. Sometimes, again, I stumble because like where do you dedicate yourself or how do you choose?

Matt Glynn: One of the first things I look at is the balance of the charity. If they spend more than 85%, I mean more than 15% on their overhead and fundraising, I usually don’t contribute to that. So, if they can keep it, and a lot of them 90% goes to the work so that’s great. The second thing is what are their missions? Another part of that is, are there other means for people? And people have asked me, “Why are you helping in a third-world country?” I said, “In America, if you are driven, not even driven, if you are competent, you can be raised in a single-family house, be a minority, and you could become president of the United States like Barack Obama did. That guy could have been down here but he became president of the United States. So, there’s not a safety net in other places.”

The other thing is sometimes what I look at is what their accomplishment was like. There’s a house almost across the street here that is a halfway house for people. And when you come out of a drug program and you’re clean and everything, and then you go back to the same place with the same people, your chances of a full recovery are next to none. So, if you can get them to a place where other people are living there that have been through this and it’s out of their old environment, they come into Plymouth, and it’s too hard for them to connect with those, they have a better chance.

So, you kind of have to look at everything together and then you decide if you’re going to work in it like I work in the Project Trinitē so I donate a lot to Project Trinitē. I’m a board member at E3, which is in South Africa, and so I donate to that because I can see where the money is going.

Matthew Peck: You have direct involvement. And I know we touched on it but I really just want to expand a little bit on Project Trinitē. I mean, the idea that there is – it’s almost like work from home but for a third-world country. I mean, the idea of having these sort of like storage units which you can see on these container ships, basically, but completely repurposed for work, for outsourced logistical work that a lot of companies, large companies, small companies can outsource. And, I mean, gosh, even if they get paid like $5 an hour, that’s triple what they would normally get paid. I mean, I couldn’t even imagine. And then, as you say, with Starlink.

And for all of our listeners, Starlink is that satellite-based Internet. So, now they have Internet. They have working good, solid working conditions. And now we’re teaching them to fish rather than just giving them fish. And so, I mean, so we have two so far. So, tell us a little bit more about that program.

Matt Glynn: Well, there’s even more on Project Trinitē, which has morphed into something completely different. And it was my friend, Jim Goldenberg. He came to me and said, “What do you think we could do with our knowledge?” And we both were able to put in some money, him a lot more. And then we hired Dave Connor, who was another member of our church, who’s our executive director, who has a huge heart for what we’re doing. So, we started doing this. We’re training, getting ready to train people. And then what we found out is in a third-world country, if you pay somebody too much money, you will ruin their lives and you’ll drain the country because if you take a guy… So, a teacher in Haiti makes $80 a month.

Matthew Peck: A month? Okay. $80 a month.

Matt Glynn: Right. So, we’ve just hired two teachers in Haiti to help with our young adults and we’re paying them $300 a month. They think they hit the lottery. They’re just like, “Wow. What am I going to do with all this extra money?” You pay somebody $50,000 in Haiti, the first thing they’re going to do is leave their family because it’s too much hassle. They’re going to move to Miami and there goes the brain drain. So, we decided that Project Trinitē is more than we’re going to become an employment agency. We hire the people. We produce the product for them. We train them. They’re great students. They become great employees.

Now, each pod becomes positive income generating. If you hire 20 people, two shifts of ten because ten people can comfortably work. And think about this. In Haiti, this is your personal space. In the United States, this is your personal space. So, you put a pod together, you can get more people in there is my point. And we’re hot at 72 with they go to 90 in there. Okay. But we do have air conditioning, too. So, anyway, my point with this whole thing is that we’re charging $50,000 per student, but we’re paying them we’re thinking somewhere around $1,000 a month, which is way more than they can make anywhere else.

So, then we’re taking the extra money. The first thing we do is we’re going to put a well in the community because now they don’t have to walk to get clean water. You said that before. Then what we’re going to do is we’re going to put in a housing development. Because we’re going to have somewhere around $300,000 to $400,000 a year of excess income from each pod. So, you can build a house in Kenya. I keep jumping between Kenya and Haiti, but the economics are very similar to each other. You can build a house for $8,000 or $9,000 with two bedrooms, running water, which they don’t have.

Matthew Peck: Yeah. It’s a luxury item, basically.

Matt Glynn: A bathroom and a kitchen, not cooking on a kerosene stove. So, our idea is if they’re a Fidelity employee, they’re going to live in a Fidelity house for free for five years and then we’re going to hand them the deed to the house after five years. So, they become the middle class in Haiti. Why would they want to leave Haiti? People don’t want to leave their country. They want to be safe. They want to make a living. And unfortunately, you guys know about all the stuff going on in Haiti. We’re far enough away from Port au Prince that we’re not being effective.

And the other thing we found is we will partner with a charity, an NGO, a non-government organization that already has credibility in the area because then they don’t think you’re the great white savior coming in, trying to save them, and then get out, which is what happened when the earthquake hit. Hundreds of millions of dollars are donated and less than 3% made it to the streets. And corruption is rampant in these third-world countries. But it’s the way they make a living. And so, that’s how we can start to control and start to change it.

Matthew Peck: Well, and for all of our listeners, too, how would they… I mean, we put in the show notes, Matt, how would they get involved or learn more about Project Trinitē?

Matt Glynn: ProjectTrinite.org.

Matthew Peck: Well, that’s an easy one. Okay. Yeah. Right. Good.

Matt Glynn: It’s T-R-I-N-I-T-E not Y. And I have to credit my wife. My wife came up with that. And our symbol is education, employment, empowerment. Those are the three Es.

Matthew Peck: That’s fantastic. Well, Matt, thank you so much. We’ve already sort of taken up. I don’t know if you have any more questions, Laura, I’m just going to wrap up.

Laura Russo: No. Just thank you, Matt, because you are such an inspiration. And I think even for people who get daunted by the amount that because sometimes you see someone who does so much, it’s like, “Well, I’m small, I can’t do that much.” I think that you’re incredibly inspiring for people because even the smallest act of kindness, even the smallest thing that you can contribute, make big impact.

Matthew Peck: Well, and to that point, I mean, it becomes inspirational. I mean, it’s like, okay, if he can do it and he or she can do it, then I can do it. And it’s almost like we’re talking about that 90/10 or that 80/20. Well, the 90 just following 10% that is working so hard, and maybe we can get closer to that to the 80/20.

Matt Glynn: So, can I say one last thing? To the people that are thinking about this and going, “Wow, I could do that,” is, first of all, start small. Don’t jump into too much stuff. Second of all, no is an acceptable answer when people ask you because you’re going to find that when people find that you’re involved, especially if you’re going to financially contribute to what you’re involved with. I probably get three or four requests a week for people to say, “Come on, do this, do that, do this.” So, learn to say no. And you have to guard your time just like you guard your money.

And everybody wants something out of you and you have to learn that especially for somebody to get something done, everyone wants to be connected in some way. And I’ve said to people before, “I just don’t have time to be your friend,” or something because it takes a lot of time to do things like that. And so, you have to learn to guard your time and your money.

Matthew Peck: Now, Matt, that’s fantastic because really the theme of that is you’ve worked, obviously, we know what you’re doing with your time during your career because you’re working, you’re paying your mortgage, you’re saving for retirement, etcetera, and now you’ve hit retirement. And what do you do with that time? Because we all know it’s so precious. Where does that, those energies, the energies that took you to where you are, to get you to that point where you can retire? You know, financially, that’s where Laura and I and everyone here at SHP helps, to make sure that the foundation of a plan is in place. But now suddenly finances are not a worry. And now time is really the most important thing, the most important decision that you make.

And again, Matt, I want to thank you again for coming on because we’re seeing where Matt Glynn’s time is being spent and the impact that its having, and the innumerable projects that he’s working on and contributing to. And we certainly hope that everyone else kind of takes inspiration in that and applies themselves with their knowledge and applies them in wise ways so that we truly can change the world. Whether they’re small ways or big ways, it all adds up and it accomplishes the goal. We talked about the beginning, which is to leave the world a better place than you found it.

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