Idiot to investment banker, a motivational story.

Hello everyone, hope all is well. Today I’m going to share my story in hopes that someone can take something from it. I’ve been seeing a lot of newcomers in our forums.

To start, it wasn’t easy. I was never a stellar student in highschool, yet still managed to get into a target based on my extracurriculars. Insane luck. I can confidently say that this will be the biggest blessing that I will ever experience in my whole life.

Life in college started kind of rough, my school was incredibly competitive, cliques were formed after only a few weeks. I managed to squeeze myself in with the wealthy kids and started partying with them. The first thing I noticed about my buddies, their dads were all bankers. We’re talking head of markets, managing directors, etc..

Eventually freshman year summer comes around, and by now I’ve gotten very close with my wealthy friends. So much so that they invited me to come “summer” with them (the posh way of saying vacation). Anyway, incredible fun, we’re talking deep sea fishing off of montauk, houses in hamptons, Miami penthouses. We hung out at my parents house a few times too. I was having so much fun. I was born for this lifestyle.

So there I went, I was hooked. I went back to school and declared my major, finance. I start taking courses on valuation, accounting, management and was loving it, but there was a problem. Although I liked the classes, they were difficult. By the end of sophomore year, I was sitting on a 2.9 cumulative GPA. I knew this needed to be fixed, but first, some wealthy summer vacationing to clear my mind.

Back to school. This was my year, the BIG year. I got tutors and everything. I reduced the partying to the weekends. Every week-day was for studying and making sure I kept up on my classes, unless something cool was happening. As I went through my grind year, the question of “will this all be worth it?” kept bugging me. But I would persevere, and continue to push. I started watching David goggins to keep myself motivated and would set multiple alarms so I’d wake up at a reasonable time (around 10-11am). I was finally in my groove, only missing a few 8am and 9:30s a week.

Started applying to internships. I took so much time and effort building my resume into a spotless artifact of perfection. I was super proud of it and decided to share it with the person whose opinion I value most, my father. So I sent it to my dad, who’s my hero and the hardest working person I know. He told me it looks good, and will even try to send it around to his friends. I trusted him and his opinion but I just wanted to double check, so I sent it to my buddies, whose dads are bankers, so they would obviously know what a good resume looks like. None of them had any internships but they were already interviewing, and said my resume (with no internships) would be fine. I trusted them.

Finally the end of junior year rolls around. I’m itching to see the results of all of my hard work. I open my browser and make a few clicks. Just barely at a 3.0 GPA. A tough loss but things are still possible. I stayed positive and waited for application decisions to come in. I watched goggins every night to keep myself going, and discovered other role models like Jocko Willink and Andrew Tate. Those guys gave me hope.

Eventually the emails started flooding in, rejection after rejection. I was almost in tears as I opened the second to last one. Remember when I told you about my biggest blessing? Well I lied. By the grace of god, I was invited to a super day at a BB. I freaked out and showed all my friends, who all had offers by now. They weren’t as enthusiastic as I was.

A few weeks go by as I prep myself for the super day. A fire was burning inside of me, I was going to crush this. I was partying a lot because of the stress, and looking back, it was way too much. But that’s just how I am, I’m a human, nobody is perfect. Eventually interview day shows up. I am grossly underprepared but I suck it up and put on my suit and tie with my favorite brown derby shoes and matching belt. This super day is mine.

I get to the building, check myself in, and wait. Kind of nervous but at this point but whatever honestly I gave it my best shot. Finally my name is called, this tall gray and balding man leads me to the conference room and sits me down. I seat myself, interlock my fingers and prop my hands up on the table. He looks at me, I think to myself “this is what I was preparing for” and finally it comes out. The first question of my super day. “How’s your dad doing?”

Thanks