Where Are They Now?: Bonney Lake's Guy Maughan From Room 102 to Real Estate, Retail, and a Podcast He Was Born to Host

When most sophomores at Bonney Lake High School were figuring out their lunch table, Guy Maughan was calling leasing agents, meeting with bank representatives, and writing a business plan that would actually become a real company.

That was 2012. That business, MCE Apparel, is still running today, 14 years later.

For Maughan, a proud member of the Class of 2014, the path from BLHS to where he stands now isn't a straight line. It's a spiral of overlapping ventures, each one feeding into the next. A clothing boutique. A Chamber of Commerce. A real estate team. And now, a podcast that's entirely his own.

It all started in Room 102.

The DECA Kid (Class of 2014)

Maughan walked into Bonney Lake High School with architecture on his mind. One engineering class later, that plan was out the window.

What replaced it was DECA, the business and entrepreneurship program led by teacher Mr. Stokke, and it changed everything.

"Honestly if it had not been for Stokke, I don't think I would have joined DECA when I did," Maughan said. "The confidence and excitement that he brought to the classroom made Room 102 the place I wanted to spend all day. Skip Language Arts and Biology and Math and just dedicate the full day to learning as much as I could about business."

Stokke encouraged him to run for Regional DECA Area President. He didn't win, but that wasn't the point.

"I don't think I would have had the courage to do that on my own," he said.

For his sophomore year DECA project, Maughan didn't just write a business plan. He called actual leasing agents, account reps, and banks to get real numbers. He took his mom Holly's passion for fashion and turned it into a concept for a women's clothing boutique.

Then he placed first at regionals.

His parents made him a deal: place in the top 10 at state and they'd financially back the whole thing.

"I placed 7th and was only 4 points from going to Nationals," he said. "With that said, it's not very common that a DECA project turns into a company, let alone one that is now 14 years old. That's much better than a trophy or ribbon in my book."

MCE Apparel: A Mother-Son Venture That's Still Going

In May of 2012, Holly and Guy Maughan opened MCE Apparel, formerly My Closet Envy, out of a small storefront off Valley Avenue in Sumner. Guy was 15.

By his senior year, they had outgrown the original location and relocated to a larger space on Main Street. When he chose where to go to college, he picked UW Tacoma specifically so he could stay close and keep his hands in the day-to-day operations.

"I went to University of Washington Tacoma so I could stay present," he said.

Today MCE Apparel operates entirely through ecommerce and pop-up events. The boutique model Holly and Guy built around locally inspired women's fashion is still alive at MyClosetEnvy.com.

It's one of those stories that doesn't get told enough: a DECA project that turned into an actual company, built by a high schooler and his mom, still standing 14 years later.

From the Chamber to the Community

While running MCE, Maughan stepped into another role that would shape how he sees Bonney Lake: Executive Director of The Chamber Collective.

He eventually rose to Board President before stepping down at the end of 2024. The experience, he said, opened his eyes to something no amount of solo entrepreneurship could have taught him.

"More than anything I think my tenure at The Chamber Collective taught me just how important relationships are," Maughan said. "It also really showed me the importance of community. How we support and love one another, whether that be small businesses, making connections to consumers, or just knowing the common shared struggles that business owners face."

He described the Chamber as a place where business owners could ask the simplest but most important question of all: "Who is your ideal customer?"

"We are all so interconnected across industries and can truly help each other out," he said.

Going All-In on Real Estate

If you think launching a clothing boutique at 15 and running a Chamber of Commerce simultaneously sounds like a full plate, you haven't heard the rest.

In the middle of pandemic lockdowns in 2020, with MCE Apparel running and the Chamber on his shoulders, Maughan decided it was finally time to get his real estate license.

"Real estate though was always a quiet passion of mine," he said. "My aunt and cousin were agents, my great uncle is a lender. My grandma and I would tour houses for fun. It was never the right time... Finally in the midst of the lockdowns I decided to just knock out the schooling and worst case scenario get a license and not use it."

That first year was enough. He went all in.

After spending his first two and a half years with a Keller Williams team building his foundation, Maughan officially launched Helix Home Team in 2024. He's still under the Keller Williams umbrella, but now it's his own company, built the same way he's built everything else: from scratch, on his own terms.

"It has been a dream come true to be able to spend time in my passion and help people find their next home or move into that next chapter," he said. "Being able to do it under Helix Home Team feels extra special to me."

The Gaygents of Pierce County

And then there's the podcast.

Maughan and his partner agent Wilfred Fernandez III just launched The Gaygents of Pierce County, a lifestyle and real estate podcast aimed at the LGBTQ+ community living in or considering a move to Pierce County. The show officially launches today.

"This is something I have wanted to do for about as long as I have wanted to own a business," Maughan said. "Wil and I have become good friends and as two gay men living, working, and enjoying Pierce County we have a lot of opinions, tips, and tricks on how to absolutely love where we live."

The goal is bigger than just talking real estate. Maughan wants to build a community, a space where people feel seen and connected to where they live.

"The long term goal is to build a community. To give people that safe space and that connection to where they live," he said. "Something to be proud of and something that might inspire someone to live loud, proud, and authentically them."

They planned it for three months, then stopped waiting for the perfect moment.

"I don't think there is ever a perfect time for something like this. There is just the time to hit record and go for it."

You can find The Gaygents of Pierce County on YouTube, Facebook, and @GaygentsofPC across all major social platforms, streaming on your favorite podcast app.

Guy Maughan & Holly Shaw - Owners of MCE

Still Building, Still Bonney Lake

More than a decade removed from Room 102, Guy Maughan is running a real estate team, a clothing boutique, and a brand new podcast. He built all of it himself, starting at 15 years old in a city that gave him the foundation to actually do it.

"Bonney Lake will always be the community that raised me," he said. "The place I rode my bike to Sonic during the summer. The place where dreams started and eventually grew into reality."

For any current BLHS student sitting in a business class with a wild idea and cold feet, Maughan has a message:

"Don't be afraid to fail. Success is a measurement of failures. Fail fast and fail forward. Life is too short to wait forever to chase your dreams."

And one more thing he saved for last.

"Be authentic. I waited until I had left high school to start living authentically and the way my relationships got deeper and the quality of those connections got higher directly impacted the way I carried myself and how I networked to build the business. When you come from authenticity, people can sense the passion and the truth behind it. Positive energy is contagious."

It all started in Bonney Lake.

Turns out, it never really left.