Finance or Fitness Career?
Hey everyone,
Looking for some career advice since I’m at a crossroads right now. Wasn’t sure which forum to post this in so apologies if this doesn’t belong in Off Topic. I’m an incoming sophomore at a Midwest semi-target (Michigan/ND) majoring in finance. Originally, I was set on going into finance along the lines of investment management, corporate banking, sales and trading, etc. But for the past 3-4 years, I’ve also been very interested in exercise and physiology due to my background as a somewhat self made D1 baseball recruit (decided against playing in college) , and have built up some pretty good connections in both the high level performance and rehab fields (I.e. guys/orgs that train and rehab top college athletes and pros). And in my own experience of dealing with my own injuries and searching for solutions and bad experiences with generic physical therapists/doctors, I’ve realized that it would be a dream to run my own clinic for both the general population and athletes, but not your usual bullshit Athletico or ATI. I’m talking using the latest technology and methods from respected guys in the field like Cressey, Verkoshansky, McGill, Denis Thompson, etc. Because as cliche as it sounds, I want to make sure as many people as possible don’t have to go through the same mediocre experience that I did. The way I see it after talking to friends in the industry, if I provide quality services it’s not uncommon to clear 200-300k a year after operation expenses after a few years of building the business. To be clear, I’m not in it for the money, but it’s not like I’d be taking a huge hypothetical pay cut. The only problem with that is I would have to go to grad school for another 3 years, which would make me 25 by the time I actually started, vs. 22 for a regular finance job. And then there’s the issue of taking out even more loans for grad school. Is it possible to work part time for a decent firm during grad school just to support myself and hopefully build some connections? Or is that just not something that happens? I’m just wondering what your guys thoughts are on what I should do for the rest of college if this is my intended career? I’ve started to network and am already involved in several finance organizations but does my plan change recruiting in any way? Or should I go through college as if I want to pursue finance, and then see what I want to do at the end? I’m not sure how much needs to be thought in advance, which is why I don’t want to be blindsided and find out I’m fucked because I didn’t recruit and grad school isn’t an option for some reason. To reiterate, interested in asset management, sales and trading (although not looking to learn heavy code, so might be limited there), corporate banking, etc, if I did go into finance. Not interested in IB, so ignore my title. Apologies for the long post, any advice is appreciated. Thanks!
fitness
more prestige
Just follow your passion.
You’re asking a question many of us have asked before including myself. You pretty much laid out the pros and cons yourself. Finance is a risk averse career that pays relatively well that you can get right out of undergrad, whereas the fitness path has some risk involved and additional schooling. There is no right answer here. Only you can answer your question.
Check out Whoop - Will Ahmed (CEO). He was a Harvard athlete.
;Although he didn't do any education beyond his BA and I believe a PE internship, he created a very cool unicorn in Whoop (valued at I think $1.4B now). I'd say if you want to run a clinic, go to PT school? If not, try to maybe network into fitness tech companies like Whoop.
Also hard to startup you own clinic without at least practicing for a few years in PT. My best friend went this route and realized it's going to be a long term goal to run a super tech savy clinic as you were talking about achieving. His realistic hope is to get to that in his 30s when he has the financial stability to give it a try.
I'd pick fitness but I'm too much of a pussy to try to pull it off.
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