Been a while since I’ve posted here. It all started a long, long time ago. 2006, by my count. Here it is 12 years, two home and three kids later. It’s been a hell of a ride. I started in ops making around $35k a year. I’ve added around $225k to that number since. I’ve done that by being genuinely interested in what I do. I started on this board as AssociateGuerilla. Then came AVPGuerrila. Now I’m a VP, hopefully getting promoted this year. I was a fresh CUNY grad, humanities major, planning to go to law school. The bank had a job open in ops. I applied to bide my time while I studied for the LSATs. I didn’t know the difference between a stock and a bond. But I guess I got lucky. They picked me up as an ops analyst, basically reconciling two systems all day every day. Down to the dollar. I was a checker. My job was to flag the no-checks, and move on to the next check. It was awful. But I did my job, and worked hard. It was around the time I got into Seton Hall and St John’s Law that I learned about our banks commodity business. I’d always been interested in Commodities. My folks were both metals traders. Maybe I’d make it into the Commodities business some day. Why not? To hell with law school. I can do this. I told my manager - I wanted to be a Commodity Banker. Ha! He laughed. People don’t make it from ops into banking. It just doesn’t happen. Not here, not anywhere. Watch me. I could write a book about the ensuing twelve years. Maybe one day I will. Suffice it to say, I made it out of ops and into the Commodities business. I’m now helping manage our business development group. It’s hard to say exactly what I do, but I’m part banker, part investment advisor, part corporate advisor. I work exclusively with family owned businesses. I help generate revenue for the bank, be that through lending, corporate advisory or new wealth management relationships. I love my job. (Most days.) Ask me anything.
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How is your daughter doing?
Dude. You win. My daughter is doing miraculously well. The darkest days of life have turned into sunshine. Thank you for asking.
No problem. 1. I get to do something new every month or so, so I’m always learning. My role focuses on helping family owned businesses in the physical commodity/logistics sectors with either corporate advice or capital. One month I’ll be underwriting a term credit deal to join a syndication that funds the construction of vessels for the Coast Guard. Next month I’m be structuring a working capital facility for a crude marketer that combines family personal wealth with corporate equity and puts leverage on it. I just won a buyside/acquisition engagement for a frac sand transloading facility that’s in the market. So - always something new. It’s a unique aspect of the role I have at the bank.
I also run a t-Shirt design business (for amazon) on the side that clears me $2-3k a month, I spend about an hour a week doing that at night. Side hustle/passive income stuff. Check out Merch.amazon.com
Make SVP and be named Head of Business Development for the group.
Tbh man I need a good hobby. Life gets crazy though, less ‘fun’ as it goes along, but a lot more purposeful. So if you’d ask me what I do in my down time that Is fulfilling, I hang with my kids and spend as much time with them as I can! They are the reason I do this anyway. I’m not some crazy Patrick Bateman banker- I’m just a family guy who likes what I do, works hard and lucked out With the whole career thing.
Hi,
I'm more interested in the t-shirt business you run haha. What exactly are you doing? Just creating random designs and then putting it onto Merch by Amazon?
Yep. Pretty much sums it up. I have around 600 designs up of 1500 capacity. Vast majority self designed (examples below). To fill out the rest of my slots I am hiring designers in the Philippines and a virtual assistant to do the SEO research and keyword optimization. I have no time to design any more but can easily get this to 4K/mos mailbox money if I fill out my slots.
The long and short of this hustle is to balance out legit designs with others that skirt the grey areas of IP infringement. Parody shirts sell like fire. But you can’t mess with technical “IP”. Yeah. I am def in process of putting this shit into an LLC. :)
Grey area sellers: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CKHDFBM https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077LBP5NR https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078KGHP2S
Legit/original sellers: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BLTV7LV https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C7TSR3Y https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072LPN3CH https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BWK8925
Now that I have a successful (provable) track record on amazon I’m focused on monetizing it further. I do coaching calls here and there for $100/30 minutes.
This is where the street in me comes out.
Most of the Merch platform designers aren’t bankers. They’re designers. Just dying to make a buck. And I have a provable sales history....... so yeah.
Banker by day T shirt hustler by night
No questions. Just here to say congratulations. Stories of perseverance are always encouraging and very much needed in this forum.
You know what happened to the guy who sold himself short?
Nope. Nobody does. Because he fucking sold himself short!
Some call it arrogance, others call it perseverance. It’s probably somewhere in between the two. But if you don’t genuinely believe you can accomplish marvelous, life-changing things (a trait perceived as arrogance) then you probably won’t try.
Go do it.