Introduction - Non-Target D1 Athlete, Entrepreneur, DCM Intern
Hey guys, I've lurked here before and thought I'd finally make an account. This sub-forum doesn't seem to get much traffic, so my long introduction might seem out of place. I'll go ahead anyway though and follow the custom of introducing myself.
I was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. At a young age, I found that I enjoyed three things: math, piano, and tennis. My parents encouraged me to pursue these passions and provided the means to do so as best they could. By age 7, I was solving quadratic equations and memorized 20 piano pieces to play in my own solo recital. A year later, I entered the Steinway Youth Competition, winning $100 and the chance to play on the radio. On the tennis court, however, I was getting my ass kicked and had a grand W-L record of 0-6 in local tournaments.
Something about the direct face-to-face competition of a tennis match really set me off. I'm pretty sure I'd be a very different, less social, and less confident person today if I'd never gotten serious about tennis. I began practicing 20 hours a week, quitting piano competitions and requesting early dismissal from school in order to do so. When I learned that you could get a college scholarship for playing tennis if you got good enough, that became my only goal for the foreseeable future. My father, who had immigrated to the US with all of $65 in his pocket in order to provide better opportunities for his children, recognized my determination. Instead of saving up for a college education, he spent a third of his annual take-home pay on my tennis. We didn't go on family vacations; instead, we traveled 20 times a year for regional and national level tournaments. At age 12, I achieved a national ranking of #15 in my age group.
That same year, I started working at my family's newly-bought restaurant. I did it all - wait tables, take phone orders, checkout at the cash register. In addition, I learned Excel by myself and started using it to track our revenues, expenses, and sales data. It was exciting and interesting, until I realized we had been operating at a loss the entire time. My parents eventually sold it for 10k less than they had bought it for, which was quite a considerable sum of money for them.
Entering high school, I leveraged my local reputation and started teaching tennis lessons over the summer. Year after year my clientele grew until I was assembling a staff to conduct group lessons of 30+ and delegating some private training sessions to my instructors.
Senior year of high school, I received a scholarship offer to play tennis at a nearby Division I school. I accepted immediately and declared Biochemistry as my major. I was interested in business but reasoned that while I could pick up a finance textbook anytime, only at a university could I learn hands-on in a laboratory. Plus, I viewed my classes as purely an intellectual pursuit. My professional aspirations were to develop my tennis game for 4 years in the NCAA, take my shot at the pro tour, and most likely retire to coaching and giving back from what I had learned.
Playing for a team and not just for myself elevated my game to another level. By sophomore year, I had risen from the #4 Singles position to #1, led my team in wins, and made all-conference. Then injury struck, and I sat out the next season. At the same time, two people in my immediate family were suffering from very different health ailments (one physical, one mental). Now I've never been extremely close to my family in the sense that I needed to spend time with them regularly, but I certainly felt the need to lend my support emotionally and financially.
My tennis coaching business had done very well, but I needed a way to make money during the school year when it's cold outside. That's when I got the idea of starting a short-term vacation and corporate hospitality business. I moved from my 1br apartment into a 3br and created three listings: the two unoccupied rooms in my new 3br, and the entire 1br. Since money was tight and I couldn't float even a month's worth of living expenses, I furnished my rentals in the cheapest way I knew how: Craigslist. I contacted over 50 people for various items ranging from beds, couches, TVs, and tables and arranged 25 pickups all on the same day. Why? Because U-Haul charges by day, and more importantly, every passing day without revenues was another day I was bleeding green.
That day, I rented a 20 footer at 7am, driving all over the city with my $900 in cash making all of the scheduled pickups. It took three or four trips and 16 hours. However, at 11pm I still wasn't done - I'd scheduled the photography session for the very next day because I simply couldn't afford to wait. I worked nonstop through the night getting all of the furniture in place, only finishing about 15 minutes before the photographer showed up at 10am.
Thankfully, the business quickly took off and became a huge success. Just the 1br itself was easily tripling and sometimes quadrupling what I was paying for it in rent. The two rooms in the 3br doubled the rent for the entire place. After 8 months, I was ready to expand. I moved into a new, luxury 3br where the rent was almost FOUR TIMES as much and cost just about as much as my tuition does for one semester. In continuing my procedure of living in one room and renting out the other two, I increased my profits without increasing my workload.
Each expansion I conducted was a painstaking process. I pondered over and over about whether it was feasible, running different numbers to see what kinds of occupancy I needed at what kinds of prices to achieve the revenues I needed, and determining what sort of leverage was appropriate. In doing so, I started thinking about how increasingly larger companies make the same decisions and raise the capital they need.
That's when I started reading about M&A transactions and discovered WSO as well as M&I. It was shocking to find a great wealth of information not just about finance and business, but about networking and career advice too. I started reaching out to as many professionals as I could. At first I spoke to anyone working in finance and quickly realized just how broad "finance" is. After speaking to a couple investment bankers, something just clicked inside me. The topics they spoke about interested me, and I generally found a high level of rapport and chemistry with bankers much more so than any other industry, whether finance or otherwise.
I now realized that not only did I enjoy learning about investment banking, I also wanted to work in the industry. Coming from a school with literally no alumni network of investment bankers, I started sending out hundreds of emails to bankers asking for a chance to speak. Each conversation I had was unique, informative, and insightful in its own right and provided further reinforcement for my desire to pursue IB. Through these conversations, I was able to start taking the necessary steps to position myself: I switched my major to Economics, started studying the Rosenbaum book, brushed up on my accounting and Excel, joined the local CFA Society, etc. Eventually I came across a DCM/ECM banker who had a need for a part-time intern. We worked out an arrangement for me to work as an off-cycle intern during my last (current) semester of undergrad.
...And here I am. Recruiting season is long over for any banks that have structured recruiting processes, but I'm more interested in boutiques anyway. This last semester's going to be a grind as I finish strong in school, take advantage of the learning and networking opportunities at my internship, and search for other full-time analyst positions as well. One thing I could really use is some more interview practice partners - so if you're a student like myself or even an analyst who's interested in some interview practice, please let me know and I'll hop on the phone with you.
