WSO Podcast | E162: IB to Corp Dev + M&A with Internship Stacking from a Non-target
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In this episode, @monkeydomination015 shares with us his path coming from a non-target university in the south. We learn how he was able to stack internships during his time at university to land himself at Fortress in the real estate arm right out of school. Learn why he decided to go into investment banking at a boutique shop and how he was able to leverage that role to land in corporate development at a large healthcare company.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 162) Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me! As I talked to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Monkeydomination015 shares with us, his path coming from a non target university in the South. We learn how he was able to stack internships during his time at university to land himself at Fortress in the real estate arm right out of school. Learn why he decided to go into
Monkeydomination015: [00:00:41] Investment banking at a boutique shop,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:43] And now he was able to leverage that role to land in corporate development at a large health care company. Enjoy. Monkey domination zero, one five. Welcome to the Debate podcast. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. It would be great if you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio.
Monkeydomination015: [00:01:07] Yeah, definitely. So to start off with, I went to a non target university. When I was there, I did five internships on investment banking, venture capital, real estate, private equity and private equity and then graduated magna cum laude went to go work for Fortress Investment Group on the real estate funds, which was definitely an interesting time and then proceeded to go from there to a boutique investment bank that was really lean shop with really only four managing partners. And it's kind of a startup where I get to kind of learn all the facets of the investment banking process and work directly on all parts of the transactions, both the buy side and sell side. And then subsequently, my last kind of stop and where I'm currently in is at a Fortune 100 health care company where I work in corporate development and working on mergers and acquisitions, specifically kind of small surgery practices, as well as just physicians in general.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:14] Very cool, yeah, I think there's a lot of people wanting to make that jump from banking to Corp Dev, so I think that'll be interesting to talk about that.
Monkeydomination015: [00:02:20] But let's go. Let's go back
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:22] Further all the way to undergrad. Tell me a little bit about, you know. Did you come from or were you down in that area, is that why you went to that non-target?
Monkeydomination015: [00:02:31] Was was
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:32] There alum
Monkeydomination015: [00:02:33] Family where people say, Hey,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:35] You should go here? Or whether the thoughts of going to different schools, what was the thought process? You know, why not go to a target school if you knew you want to do finance and you had so many great internships? Yeah. So the intrusions were kind of after I
Monkeydomination015: [00:02:48] Started in undergrad, but to choose undergrad, it was based on really proximity was kind of one of the things where I was considering a few schools in the South, which is where I'm from. And this option, when I applied, actually gave me a full scholarship where I got paid a stipend just to go and also put me in their business owners program. So it was free college on top of being in their honors program, so they made it a pretty easy choice. That's a pretty that's
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:19] That definitely makes it easier, I can see why you went there, so tell me a little bit about when you first went freshman year, was it freshman year where you just started saying, Hey, I need to get all these internships? What kind of what guided you to that point?
Monkeydomination015: [00:03:30] Did you have a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:31] Mentor telling you like, Oh, you really need to get interest right away? Was Finance. I'll always on the radar or tell me about that. Yeah.
Monkeydomination015: [00:03:39] So I had definitely had some mentors, kind of, especially at the beginning, and it was freshman year when I really was kind of starting to look for an internship, but just couldn't get any traction. No one really wants freshmen. So after sophomore year, I definitely got a little bit more traction and I actually had a friend that was in my fraternity that had another friend that was up a real estate private equity shop up in Chicago. And he told me that you could help me get an internship that would be unpaid. So I was actually sleeping on my aunt's couch for a summer and just kind of walking over to the real estate private equity firms right in downtown Chicago, which was a lot of fun, but kind of just how that got started.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:22] Very cool, so what did you do your freshman summer then with no internship? I actually I worked
Monkeydomination015: [00:04:27] In Macy's and sales. Oh, there you go. Yeah, you got paid at least. They just tried to make some money.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:34] Do you remember what they paid you? Was it an hourly thing? Yeah. Nine bucks
Monkeydomination015: [00:04:38] An hour.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:40] Nine bucks an hour. I love it. So you're working there for the summer of my freshman year. You come in sophomore year, you keep you keep kind of grinding and how are you kind of networking to try to get these internships? It sounds like it was a friend of a friend in a frat that helped you get this first real estate private equity internship that was unpaid, you know, couch sleeping summer.
Monkeydomination015: [00:04:59] But tell me, tell me about like, was there other
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:01] Opportunities or was that like the only one you got? I mean, if it's the only one you got, that's fine. It's really hard. Even as a sophomore, I'm just curious. So I actually did have two or three other opportunities, and at the time I was kind of just starting on that LinkedIn networking game as well as just kind of also some emails here and there and just applying through whatever resources my school gave me.
Monkeydomination015: [00:05:21] And I actually did have a couple of other options, but the other one was being doing like tax appraisals for real estate, and it was, I think, like 15 bucks an hour. So I had a chance to take a paid internship where it would have been doing tax work. And at the time I was a finance and accounting major. So the accounting side, I was kind of interested. But then later on I got my accounting major. But you know, it happens. But at that point, I kind of made this decision at that point, but I'd rather kind of focus on more on the investment side and start kind of building that investor mindset. And that's kind of why I chose real estate private equity shop instead.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:02] I think it was a really wise move to take
Monkeydomination015: [00:06:03] The unpaid sleep on the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:04] Couch for the summer and take the unpaid because you get real estate, private equity internship on your resume sophomore year. Kind of opens up a lot of doors, right? Definitely hundred percent. Tell me a little bit about like, why did that friend of a friend say they could get you an internship there? Was it because it was super small shop and they were just like, hey, we'll do you a favor? Or was it because something you said to them or you some trust that you kind
Monkeydomination015: [00:06:29] Of engendered with this
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:30] Friend of a friend? Or how did you kind of how did you get them to
Monkeydomination015: [00:06:33] Vouch for you? And why was he or she taking that internship? Yeah, so they were actually at Bam Corp. finance time. And they were kind of impressed me as a freshman just because I always had kind of the highest GPA out of the class I was with my fraternity, as well as just always networking and always trying to be on top of things and just kind of trying to stay in front of people as well, because I asked them a few times and had conversations about how he thought the best way to approach it was. And I think he just kind of like, enjoyed that. And so when his friend said he's looking for an intern, he just kind of recommended me right off the bat.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:13] So when you say you were saying in front of people
Monkeydomination015: [00:07:14] With these, these were your like frat brothers that were older or
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:18] These were friends. They tell me about that because I think it's there's a lot of listeners that probably are in a similar situation. They don't realize the number of like opportunities, even just through their friends of friends that are available to them. So talk to me about that. How were you staying in front of people when you say that? What does that even mean, like emailing them once every three months? Like what? Yeah, no great question. So even in particular, I think he was a senior at the time and he'd already done is like finding spam or like internship and accepted his full time offer at that point. So he was going there. And so I knew that that was something
Monkeydomination015: [00:07:49] That I would consider very interesting. And so, yeah, I was. Any chance I'd kind of talk to him. You know, we'd hop on calls every once in a while. We still do to this day, actually. And then there were kind of a couple of others. There's one who worked in M&A in New York, and so he was an alumni. And so I would just reach out to him, like every two three months via email, give him an update
on what I've been doing, what I'm looking at doing and try to understand kind of what he was doing a little bit better. And also just kind of set up time to chat. So it's really just like finding touch points, people.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:24] Is there any chance you could put? Is there any chance you could give us a sample like what you would say and something like that, because I think a lot of kids get lost in like, what do you mean? Give an update like, I'm taking these courses. Was it like that specific or was it like just a two line thing of like, Hey, I saw you did this deal? Congrats. Yeah. So he works. It works at a hospital. So I actually didn't know too much about kind of the acquisitions he was doing.
Monkeydomination015: [00:08:48] Interestingly enough, now we would actually consider that group of competitors. So it's kind of interesting how the world works. But yeah, we just kind of, yeah, kind of say what I was kind of working on more actually what I was kind of I was always kind of thinking back in the day. So at one point I was thinking about making an investment fund for like my friends where I could make it like, I didn't really take a fee, but just like made it away so they could invest in the stock market, get some Etfs and like large cap stocks, put them into a fund and just be like, Hey, if you want to invest in the stock market, I can help you do that just as like something as an idea to like kind of have to kind of help my friends invest in like stocks instead. At the time, I was kind of talking to him about the ins and outs of that, and he was he was kind of helping me through think through kind of the liability side of it with like if you were to start that and something went south or if you kind of messed up on distributions or something like that, they could you'd be liable to a lawsuit for reasons that you know you may not want. So it would just be probably good advice. Yeah, definitely. And so it was kind of just. Someone of just kind of chatting with them, as well as just kind of talking about the things I was thinking about, some kind of always thinking.
Monkeydomination015: [00:10:07] Yeah, tell me about like, so
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:09] Tell me about that summer in Chicago on your aunt's couch, you're going. They said it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun because you were just in a new city. And like I know, Chicago in the summer is pretty awesome. Yeah. Which is tell me a little bit about tell me a little bit about just like your summer there and what it was like. Were you working full 40 hours and everything? Yes, it was actually interesting. So it was a new city, which was, you know, awesome. Chicago the weather's beautiful as well, which is just, you know, they also can. I just have so much to do and all the different neighborhoods you can kind of go to different places and get different vibes, which is pretty cool. And so I made a few friends there and so was able to just kind of hang out with those people as well, kind of when I wasn't working and honestly wasn't working too much just because it was an unpaid internship. I think what I had done is committed to work like twenty five hours a week. But then, like just because I was there and wanted to learn, I would end up working like forty forty five hours a week
Monkeydomination015: [00:11:09] Where I would just actually ask for like special projects or like just specifically just to focus on like modeling, because my actual like.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:18] Your goal is the resume
Monkeydomination015: [00:11:19] Build, right?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:21] Your goal is building that on the resume, right? It was a couple of things when I was asking.
Monkeydomination015: [00:11:26] Honestly, not really like my thing has always been. I'm always about the learning and the experience you get from doing something, and it's really has been the case just because why else would you going to do like the unpaid internships, which I did a few of like the first three I think were unpaid and one of those for like a year. But it was just to learn, really, because I knew I didn't know what I didn't know, and he was someone who was the person I was learning from at that shop was someone had been doing it for a few years. He'd worked at some really large firms and he had like really deep experience. And so I just wanted to be able to kind of like, soak up all.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:05] So you'd ask for some sort of like modeling
Monkeydomination015: [00:12:06] Projects, even though
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:08] You had already hit your twenty five hours, you stayed for an extra 15 hours that week and kind of built out a model or whatnot on a specific real estate deal they had done or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And it was like a historical deal.
Monkeydomination015: [00:12:20] So I had like a model I could compare it to and just kind of compare and contrast and be like, Oh, this is how he did it. This is how I should be thinking about it. And then just picking apart the formulas and making sure I could do it all, but then trying to build it from scratch myself to.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:34] Yeah, was it like you would take a SIM or whatever like and try to like reconstruct what they had done for, like the investment committee memo? Yeah, exactly. It was an investment demo where I tried to kind of rebuild. That's a great exercise. Yeah, he had actually just printed it out. Yeah, he actually just printed it out and kind of handed it to me and was like, Try to rebuild this. And then like, I was going through that process and then I would like pull up the model, like after I had tried to rebuild something and check to see how he did. It was how I did it.
Monkeydomination015: [00:13:06] How did you do the first time? Terrible. It was awful. I don't even think I don't think I fully finished because the other thing is like it was one summer and it was a pretty detailed model. I mean, it was like like a model with a good like 20 30 tabs where it's like really getting it. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:25] Yes. The operation, the buildup of revenue, just the buildup was insane. Yeah. Or like it was a ton of properties or something. Yeah. So the buildup was kind of insane. And then they also kind of they did a lot more deep diligence in terms of like all the different parts of the assets
Monkeydomination015: [00:13:43] To because they would buy like packages of investments and they would have different kinds of assets in them. So you'd have to be like working through different kinds of asset class, modeling all real estate, all kind of different. Like they'd have some that are land that have some that are retail, but they'd be buying like packages Like multifamily
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:59] Office. This that, and it's like, Oh, you're rolling it all up. That's tough, right? Yeah, it sounds like a beast. So you didn't even finish. You didn't finish by the end of the summer. Yeah, I wasn't able to get through the whole investment, but I actually kept working on it after the summer for a little bit.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:15] That, yeah, so it sounds like it sounds like it didn't discourage you and you kept going,
Monkeydomination015: [00:14:20] Tell me as you kind of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:21] That, that was your sophomore summer as you came in to kind of junior year.
Monkeydomination015: [00:14:26] Were you thinking at all? What did you know
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:28] About like investment banking, private equity? Were you fairly well educated at this point? Were you on Wall Street Oasis every day or were you like still, I was all here. What was your thought process?
Monkeydomination015: [00:14:37] Yeah, no. Back then, I think I was on Wall Street Oasis practically every day, and I was always just kind of digging to the forums to try figuring out the different parts. It's just really helpful to be able to, like, learn from someone else's experience and skill like way back you. So you get some depth to it too, like some of those forums can go back to like 09 and stuff like that, where you get some kind of detail about how the firms used to be a little more insight on culture and stuff like that. And then kind of on top of that, I was doing a lot of other research on the side about like investment banking, private equity, the ins and outs and just trying to get a better understanding of like the non real estate side as well.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:19] Got it, so like as you're going into junior year, what was your thought process where you're like, Hey, I'm
Monkeydomination015: [00:15:22] Gung ho on investment banking?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:24] Or were you saying, Hey, I'll take whatever at this point because you're still like, you recognize you're still on target, right? So. Yeah, so it was kind of interesting. I was for some reason convinced I could get to private equity without doing investment banking. I was kind of under the impression like, OK, if I do enough,I'm actually not that that's not that unheard of to be overconfident as a 20 year old guy can college. It's actually very common. A lot of people think, Oh, I have a good GPA or
Monkeydomination015: [00:15:57] This is just why wouldn't
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:58] They choose me, right? Right? Yeah, it's
Monkeydomination015: [00:16:01] Kind of how I felt back private equity.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:04] You thought you'd stack private equity internships and they would just fall into your lap. But yeah, tell me what happened. Yeah, so I was I mean, I think even before I came back from that summer, I was already hunting for my private equity internship in Dallas.
Monkeydomination015: [00:16:18] Yeah. And yeah, yeah, I I won well. So there's also some stuff that are not always on my resume. So the actual the one that I actually got when I got right back, this is actually super interesting. I think like so I joined the private equity firm. It was pretty great. But I realized pretty quick that there were a lot less like. Operationally efficient and like. I guess, like you kind of you can notice, like a lack of edge, like when they were kind of like when you were having discussions with them, you weren't like, super like, Oh, like this is like super impressive and like you kind of like, It was just a different vibe. And so after like, I guess maybe like a month and a half, I was like, OK, I think I need to find like another internship because I realized at some point, like some of the modeling was kind of weird. You like notice random heart codes and a bunch of other stuff. And so they were royalty based private equity fund and they were kind of making the assumption that they could like put in a good amount of capital upfront and then just kind of take royalties off the bat for a certain amount of time off the top line revenue. So it wasn't anything like super intense, but. Anyway, I kind of thought something was off about that firm, and so I ended up leaving that firm and going to like this boutique investment thing, the internet and about a month after they actually
got shut down by the SEC and the CEO is saying you were out previously. Yeah, the middle one, the royalty baseline. Yeah. And the Ceo is indicted by the FBI for fraud. Oh, my God. It was crazy, crazy.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:03] So were you working for free for that?That was an unpaid internship, too.
Monkeydomination015: [00:18:08] Yeah. And I didn't have like an email or anything. So you got out just in time. Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:15] Tell me about that. That is not. So do you know what it was for? I was just fraud and they were he was just making things up. And it was like the worst Ponzi scheme of all time,
Monkeydomination015: [00:18:23] Basically, because it's like it literally was a Ponzi scheme. But the dollar figures would be like minus zero than you're used to. It was for like 13 million. Yeah, it was weird. But I didn't know how much you have started.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:41] Yeah, I can't even believe they didn't get away with it. You know, with such low rate that would even be on the radar that they even care, that don't they have bigger fish to fry anyways? That is very interesting. So you got out
Monkeydomination015: [00:18:52] Of there, you kind of think you were thinking, there's something weird about this place
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:56] You started interviewing. How did you get that invest in making ownership middle of the year? This is winter at this point. Yeah, so that's actually you like.
Monkeydomination015: [00:19:05] So you made that
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:06] Realization of like, I need to get out of here. What was the. What was the what was the steps that you took to kind of get that investment banking internship? Yeah. So I knew that the previous internship was going to be ending about then. And so I was kind of already on the hunt again, and I actually
Monkeydomination015: [00:19:24] I had joined like my school was like finance honors program and they had just kind of circulated a internship opportunity with this investment bank. And it was actually a pretty easy process to give more context. This was another unpaid internship. And so and by the way, for
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:48] The listeners out there,
Monkeydomination015: [00:19:49] You were doing this during the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:51] School year. Correct. All of this during the school year. You were working. You had a full course load. Yeah, 15 hours. The Chicago, the Chicago was summer.
Monkeydomination015: [00:19:58] Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. No, no, it was. Yeah. But then.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:02] But then you kind of continued it technically because you have to work on the model, but like then you ended up at this kind of sketchy other fund close
Monkeydomination015: [00:20:08] On royalty fund that got shut down. Then you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:11] Jump to this investment banking boutique internship that was sounds like it was just an on campus or
Monkeydomination015: [00:20:15] Marketed through the business owners
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:17] Finance honors program. But this is all like full course load. So how are you keeping your GPA up or did your GPA suffer from any of this? No, I always had a three seven plus at all times.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:28] I just. And so your study? You just studied hard and you just worked hard.
Monkeydomination015: [00:20:33] I studied to get them out.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:34] Yeah, yeah. And so tell me a little bit about kind of the process of getting that internship kind of mid-year. It sounds like they were looking for somebody anyways for unpaid for. What's it supposed to be a full year like you had it? Or no, no, they're only looking for someone for a semester. I think that once I just got there, it kind of just worked out where I kind of just stuck.
Monkeydomination015: [00:20:55] And this is actually where I would later go full time, by the way, just to connect the dots. And yes, I was there. The interview process was honestly like. It was interesting because you could tell that there was kind of less of an onus for it to be like a tough internship just because it's kind of unpaid, and so it's kind of just always like kind of the underlying a little bit. But the other thing is that when I showed up, they were the main question they asked me is how did you already have two private equity internships like before my, you know, at that point? And so they actually told me when I was leaving like, honestly, if you want to join us, like join, like basically, they gave me an offer when I was walking out the door. There was just like, Yeah, like, I'm
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:44] Really impressed with your internship experience. Yeah, yeah, in the way I could like talk to it and my GPA, they were just like, honestly, like your resume is just like far and above, you know, the competition here.
Monkeydomination015: [00:21:54] So if you would like to join us, we'd love to have you. So I was like, Yeah, was there an alumni there
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:59] Or something
Monkeydomination015: [00:22:00] That had? Is that why
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:01] They were pulling from your school? Well, the so the finance program director, I mean, he's just a beast and I mean an absolute beast. He's always has internships full time. All kinds of companies. He has a really good background. It was investment banking two years at Stevens and then went to a lower middle market private equity shop. Actually, no, I think they're a middle market private equity shop. And then we just had connections in the industry, and he's continued to try building those and just bring more people to the non-target. Bring more recruiters there, at least. Yeah, that's cool. So you ended up there, they're like, Well, I guess if you want to join us, you can join us and you're like, Yeah, for sure. And so tell me about the thought process, because it sounded like you weren't so keen on kind of going into banking right out of school. You hoped you could skip it. What was did something to switch or was it just like, Hey, I just need to take this because it's just another just stacking? It was it was about the time where I realized, like, Hey, you might not be able to go straight to private equity.
Monkeydomination015: [00:23:01] Why did you realize that you just kind of read enough About it? I feel like at that point I was just like, Oh, OK, like, I think there was like a three month period where I was like, oh, I think I can do this. And then at some point I was like, oh, no, I can't. But it's kind of it's kind of funny because after the full year of doing investment banking, I was convinced again that I could use that to try getting into private equity. So it's really just a constant cycle of me thinking I could and then seeing if I could or not. That's fine. That's fine. So like
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:30] You stuck there for a full year on this iby internship where you like running deals with where you actually building the models and
Monkeydomination015: [00:23:36] Doing all this, like actually
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:38] Closing any deals? So yeah, that was the interesting part is that so it was a for partners as the managing partners and then the rest is just a few interns as like their analysts. And so, you know, the managing partners are great. They're awesome. They really let you take on as much responsibility as you want to. And me being the way that I am, I obviously wanted to take on as much as possible. So for instance, like there was one time they were like, OK, we need a model, a
Monkeydomination015: [00:24:08] Deck, and like all of this kind of for a pitch that we have tomorrow, right? And so they gave it to us at like eight a.m. in the morning before, and they were like, OK, you can start with this. And then like, once you're done or like
once you've kind of done as much as you can, you can just pass it off to the next intern and they can pick up from there. But like, I just kind of never put it down. And then by, like one a.m. that night, I had sent them like a model in a deck. And the kind of rewarding part about it is that at the end, the managing partner actually just boarded the deck with no comments directly to the client. He was and then he responded to me and was like, Hey, this was perfect, and I was just like, wow, that literally never happened.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:52] So how did you? Yeah. So how did you even
Monkeydomination015: [00:24:55] Know how to do that?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:57] I mean, you had a couple of private equity internships. How did you know and what kind of deal was it like? How did you even know? Was this like a little bit further into the internship? So you felt like a little bit better? Or was it M&A deal sell side by side? What was it? It was a sell side M&A deal to sign up a client with. I think it was one hundred million in revenue at the time. They did hydraulic fracking
Monkeydomination015: [00:25:20] Because we're down south and we did a lot of oilfield services at that company. It was a lot of us out of the 20 deals is probably like,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:29] How did they how do these parts, how did how do these partners even? Mike, if you're relying on interns, how are they like? Is it mostly just a relationships? And so they're getting deals just to the relationships and there's not like an expectation of like these decks or the outsourcing.
Monkeydomination015: [00:25:44] It's somewhere besides the entrance or is it they have like a constant
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:47] Rotation of four to 10 interns in there? They have a constant rotation of like four interns and there are relationships selling guys. That's enough. I'm surprised that's enough for four partners. I wanted to make the argument. It wasn't enough when I was full
Monkeydomination015: [00:26:02] Time there if we wanted to really do it. Well, better than we had been. But, you know, it's at some point someone asked for your money. Yeah, and someone has to keep track of all of them, which can be interesting, which is actually what I ended up doing. Once I was an associate, there was having to like, keep track of all of them and all the work product and like, Yeah, yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:32] Ok, so let's move on, so like you're yeah, I mean, you
Monkeydomination015: [00:26:34] Basically sounds like you had
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:36] A great year there. You were doing some actual deals. You were getting actually your your work sent to clients. And so sorry, I interrupted you. You were doing a deal, and so that did that deal actually come to fruition and you? Worked on it. No, it did not, actually, yeah, I don't think any deals. Well, actually, I think one deal closed when I was there, but it was a deal I
Monkeydomination015: [00:26:59] Hadn't worked on, but it was a by side advisory, one for an acquisition of a company that I actually later would also work with when I was full time, which is kind of interesting. Their relationship stuck around, which is kind of the interesting part. So that was like my junior to my senior year is when I was at the investment bank. But at the end of that, the last semester, I actually did a second internship at the same time at a private equity firm. Was that the Riverside Company? And I did that one in this investment bank and a full set of classes all at the same time.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:35] Or not, so why? Well, I would say no, why? Because Riverside is a great riverside. Riverside is a great company.
Monkeydomination015: [00:27:41] So like, why not drop
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:42] The investment banking internship? Because I thought I had a full time offer there at
Monkeydomination015: [00:27:46] The time, But it didn't come to fruition as I had thought when I graduated or they kind of told me before that. But yeah, there was a deal. We were. Oh, so you might have
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:57] Been you were kind of left in a tough spot
Monkeydomination015: [00:27:59] Because you were you were finishing up
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:02] That internship thinking you have a full time
Monkeydomination015: [00:28:03] Offer there. And then basically.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:07] You also are working crazy hours. You're at the riverside, you know, doing riverside stuff. So how many hours were you working
Monkeydomination015: [00:28:12] For the boutique investment
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:14] Bank and how much of a riverside? Probably about like 20 percent paid to. No, no, they paid. No, they paid 20 an hour.
Monkeydomination015: [00:28:23] They're pretty good.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:25] Nice. Yeah, it's better than us. Go ahead. Yeah, it's recipe. Well, I thought I had a full time offer. They were working on closing it since it was kind of it's kind of a startup, right? Because it's just these kind of poor guys that kind of came together, actually. I was the first intern
Monkeydomination015: [00:28:45] They hired, which is the interesting part for an interesting part. And so at the time, they were waiting on this deal to close to decide if they were going to hire me full time or not. And so the deal closed. And so at the closing dinner, I leaned over to the managing partner. I'm closest to it and I was like, hey, like, so how's that offer looking? And he was just like, hey, I'm sorry to tell you, man, we're just not going to be able to do it. And says it's pretty disappointing at the time, but at the same time, he like, made it really clear he was like, look, honestly, if we thought we could kind of like, make it work, we really would. But we know that we're not going to be able to give you a market competitive offer at this point. And so like kind of at that point, like as soon as we are able to give you a market competitive offer, then we will. But like right now, we can't really commit to that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:33] Just because there wasn't enough deal
Monkeydomination015: [00:29:34] Flow, right, like there's not a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:35] Cash flow coming in, they don't want to
Monkeydomination015: [00:29:37] End up spending a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:38] Hundred k on you. Yeah.
Monkeydomination015: [00:29:41] They had deal flow. They just didn't have deal closings because they probably had like 10 or 12 live in ideals. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah, because they're not getting the fees.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:52] Yeah. Yeah, the money's not flowing. So it's like they're like,
Monkeydomination015: 00:29:55] We're only making like three hundred k
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:56] Across the four, you know, like you're, you know, a million bucks across the four of us. Like, Where are we going to pay you a hundred? Right, right? That's what it was like, I assume. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about then.
Monkeydomination015: [00:30:07] So you kind
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:08] Of were riverside, too. It looks like they both ended kind of January of your senior year. Your why did that, you know? Why did that happen, I guess why did you stop because you were like, Oh, I need to actually go full time like job search mode? Yeah, I was actually really funny spot. So technically I had actually finished all my classes so I could have graduated right then.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:33] That's kind of what I got a sense of, like when I see January, yeah, yeah, but I didn't have an offer in
Monkeydomination015: [00:30:37] Hand, so I was like, OK, That's not true. I had three offers. They were all corporate finance because I was interviewing at the time for corporate finance because I wasn't sure if I wanted to do Iby or a corporate finance. So I wanted to have my options. So I was still interviewing around. But I wasn't trying for investment banking because I thought I had an investment banking offer. Right. So but at the same time? I knew once I knew that I did not have an offer there full time, I went ahead and was like, Hey, I'm going to be ending this internship. And then Riverside had told me even beforehand, like your internship ends in December. So both of those kind of just ended. And so I'm sitting there in January. I don't think I had the corporate finance offers in hand. Yeah. So much time and so literally so much time. And so I had like a venture
Monkeydomination015: [00:31:30] Capital like programme.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:32] Your classes were done to your classes or you were like taking one class not to graduate early or something like that or. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I took one class not to graduate and it was like this venture capital program at. They call it the Blackstone Launchpad, which is like a thing that our school had, and I think other schools have it as well. And so that was kind of how I just spent my whole semesters because you basically get to lead a student venture fund where we're only looking at investments
Monkeydomination015: [00:32:01] Of people's companies who have come from the school, either as an alumni, staff or faculty. And so I thought I'd have some fun and just started to try my hand at like originating deals, which for venture capital is easy because everyone wants money, especially early stage. And so I was just kind of going around calling random people. I'd just go on LinkedIn like just trying to find like CEOs, and I would be just trying to bring in some like deal flow. And so like, it was kind of funny. I had so much time, but like when we actually like we're finished with like the origination process. The whole fund had 30 potential investments and out of the 30 I brought in like 5 of them and they were like there were eight other venture associates or whatever. So it was like, like, that's how much I was just having fun with it, to be honest. It's kind of fun talking to people and learning about their companies. And then like we go through like a full investment process from start to finish, including some modelling, Including management, because
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:07] They close 30 deals. Then you're saying they invest in 30 companies. No, we had 30 potential investments at the time, like 30 total originated investments and out of your origination. How many?
Monkeydomination015: [00:33:19] How many, actually? Yeah, how many close? We only took two investments. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:24] Got it. Ok. Yeah, so tell me as your why are you spending so much time doing this when like you don't really have a full time job lined up as opposed to doing it for
Monkeydomination015: [00:33:32] Fun? You were,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:33] You were interviewing on the side. Yeah. I was interviewing on the side a lot. Yeah, I'm still interviewing a lot. That's actually when I was able to kind of get my fortress interview to was in that time span.
Monkeydomination015: [00:33:46] And so I think it was probably like February, March.
I had like three corporate finance offers in hand and then I was working on the fortress offer.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:56] When you say corporate finance offers, can you explain to the listeners what you mean by corporate finance? Yeah, definitely. So just. Can of more bread and butter, finance, financial planning and analysis DNA, as well as some more operational finance. And so just to give an example, the companies that I actually had
Monkeydomination015: [00:34:16] Offers with were Raytheon, BBVA, compass and Capital One. And so all of them would have been kind of similar positions, I'm sure, with different nuances, but just kind of working through like financial analysis and more kind of like operationally working through kind of different modeling scenarios, I think.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:39] And so you had three offers, you said. And there are around like, what, 50 to 70 K a year, 50 to 60. Yeah, the top one was 60. Ok. Yeah, so. You were at the same time kind of in this process with Fortress. And what was your thought process there, I mean, kind of different, you hadn't really done any sort of. Thank investment management, internships, right? It's all private equity or banking, so how did you even get that in that interview?
Monkeydomination015: [00:35:08] So it was actually the real estate group, which is where I got lucky because I had that real estate private equity internship. So when the interview, so how I got the interview is LinkedIn networking. I had talked to this dude.
He was he was an alumni from my school and I had talked to him like three or four times over the last year and a half. And so he was actually leaving the role he was in, which was at like the kind of portfolio analysis level as opposed to like more working on direct investments. And so he was leaving his role to move into direct investments. And so he was saying like, Hey, we have this position open, I'm going to be I was the one who did the role, and so I'm going to be kind of helping run that process. And so he got me in the process. I interviewed, I think, with. It was his boss and then two portfolio managers, the one managing director, and it was super real estate heavy, but since I had taken that time to build those real estate models like I could actually talk to it relatively well. Like, yeah. And so that on top
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:20] Of the super complex crazy bill that you had done from that internship cargo kind of pay dividends later?
Monkeydomination015: [00:36:27] Yeah, definitely did. And then on top of that, then they would ask questions Llike, Oh, like, we work a lot like, Can you handle the workload? And I was like, Oh, well, I had two internships and a full set of classes on top of all each other, and I knocked a three nine GPA that semester. So that tells you. Yeah. And so
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:46] They're like, OK, Yeah, they're like, Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Do you mind
Monkeydomination015: [00:36:51] Sharing what the what the pay was?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:53] Because this was one. This was not a direct investing role. This was like a more of a portfolio management role. So you're doing analytics on the portfolio, helping kind of build up models and run that. So I assume it's slightly less than a direct investing role. Is that accurate? I think that's accurate. The thing about. The thing about a lot of those companies, I feel like they have a really good pulse on the market. And so they made it sweet enough to where it was like, wow, like, OK, yeah, that's really solid compared to my other offers because I had actually had asked me about my other offers and I told them like the leading offer, and I was like, This is what I was,
Monkeydomination015: [00:37:29] You know, minimally expecting, which I never should have done. Terrible, terrible idea, especially on the negotiating side.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:37] They just want a little bit above that. Don't tell me they offered you sixty five. No, actually, to their credit, they
Monkeydomination015: [00:37:45] Did, they did, they offered pretty competitively, so they matched on the base right, which went all in would have been, I think all in on that job was going to be like 60, including base plus bonus earlier. And so they matched the base with the 60. And then they said that you in your first year, you could earn up
to a 30 percent bonus. So all in looking at closer to like 80 day, which actually is exactly what happened. So I ended up actually making 80 that year.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:17] Yeah, it's a great it's great for first year out of school,
Monkeydomination015: [00:38:19] Especially in like looking at the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:21] Other options you had on the plate. Tell me about that.
Monkeydomination015: [00:38:25] The salary
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:25] Negotiation did tell me, like when they asked you how what you wish you would have said, yeah, that was the thing. Like, I tried pushing on the winds of being my future boss. I tried pushing them on them a little bit
Monkeydomination015: [00:38:40] And I was like, Oh, is there like room to negotiate this? And he was like, Yeah, there's room. But like, just let you know, like, since you're kind of coming straight out of undergrad, like, we really think we've prompt you to exactly kind of the level we think. And so like, if you kind of push this, then expectations will rise with that. It's just like, what? And so I kind of was just like, I kind of honestly just folded at that point, I was like, Yeah, like this, honestly, like,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:09] You're just like that. yeah, he definitely got in my head.
Monkeydomination015: [00:39:13] But the other thing is, like, I already told him my best offer was at that point. Yeah. So at the end of the day, I should never have revealed what my best offer was. I really should have just said something like, oh, like getting a market competitive or something like that. Yeah, because
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:29] I think how did they ask you, what is your best offer? You said I have several offers right now and they ask you, what, what's the pay or something?
Monkeydomination015: [00:39:35] They ask you that. Yeah, that's exactly one. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:37] I mean, at that point, it's
Monkeydomination015: [00:39:39] Hard to say at that point, it's
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:40] Hard to be like, Oh, I'm not going to tell you.
Monkeydomination015: [00:39:43] Yeah. It becomes, yeah, at that point, it's kind of like a pissing match.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:49] Yeah, I mean, I don't even know how I would deal. I think if you get in that situation, I'm trying to think just for the listeners who are like forced into that hand
Monkeydomination015: [00:39:55] Where they're asking you,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:57] What's the best advice for that? Should I almost feel like? Are you in some other processes? You could say something along the lines of, Yeah, I'm in several. I actually have some offers right now. However, it's in corporate finance or it's in. It's in. You know, in a different type of role, I'd much rather be in this role, this is my top choice. And they'd be like, what are the other ones paying? You be like, Well, you know, I would just expect market for whatever is right for you guys, whatever you think is. I think that would be a better approach than to being like,
Monkeydomination015: [00:40:28] Oh my, because they're just there
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:29] Anchoring you to the corporate finance. Yeah. Four words probably would have paid 70 base. And who knows? I definitely think they would, too. But that's short. It's shortsighted to like, get to like aggressive
Monkeydomination015: [00:40:42] There and your first job
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:43] Out of school.
Monkeydomination015: [00:40:43] Anyway, it's really the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:45] Not where you make your money in your career. So I think I don't think I don't I think you're a little too hard on yourself, think, Oh, I shouldn't have done this.
Monkeydomination015: [00:40:53] You know, they kind of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:54] It's tough as a as an undergrad to know exactly how to navigate that. The that one is that the guy who actually like had the position that was like helped me get the job. He had told me that if I had tried to push on the front end, they could have just pulled it out of my bonus on the back end. So like it, at the end of the day, they're going to pay you what they want to pay you. And then I had another who was actually my dad. He had told me, like, honestly, next time you need to give a range, you just need to say, like low to mid sixties.
Monkeydomination015: [00:41:25] And then if you give a range low to mid sixties, they might just go with medicos and they're you get yourself like a five day bump just right there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:35] Yeah, that's actually good advice, thank you. So you're there for a little over a year. Why only a year? Why not stay and run and do a similar transition internally like your, your alum and up to get in because he went to direct investments? I assume the pay is much higher there. And were you thinking that you were going
Monkeydomination015: [00:41:52] To follow in his footsteps
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:54] Or her footsteps? That that was the plan, actually. And that's actually what my boss could have had told me to is that I could get to there. There are two components that I didn't love about it. One is that
Monkeydomination015: [00:42:06] It would take in like three or four years, probably. oh, wow. It's yeah, it was kind of a place where you've really got to like, prove yourself and like, I mean, really prove yourself because you have to prove you're better than the people doing it. Basically, the album that I was going was kind of a stud. He was just like he was really well respected in the group, even though he was not in an investment role. People would ask his advice on like different things. And so he was just really well respected, so he was able to make that jump, but it took him a while to build that credibility. And then the second part took him, what, three years, I think yeah, it took him about three. I think it might have been four even and he wasn't like at the beginning of his career when he joined. He had been there for a few years.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:54] But. Oh, wow, OK, so very different. Yeah, but the other yeah, and the other thing is like the people I was interviewing against.
Monkeydomination015: [00:43:04] He was telling me later that they would have like MBAs and like 10 years of experience. So like the general for the role was like just kind of generally hard. But then. The other thing, though, is I actually kind of seen like how the role was on the direct side and I just wasn't super interested in real estate. So at that point, I was kind of just like, OK, yeah, I think I'm going to go another route. And when I kind of decided,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:31] How many hours are you working at this point?
Monkeydomination015: [00:43:34] It wasn't terrible. I think 60 was probably my Average, but On a bad week, you'd probably get up to like 80 ish. It wasn't terrible. Ok.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:46] Too horrible. Ok, so you're kind of what makes you at what point are you saying, OK, I'm going to look to get out? Was it like month, five month, six, seven one and then tell me about the thought process of like how you're preparing for this exit?
Monkeydomination015: [00:43:58] It's probably about seven. And at that point, was just like, Wow, I don't really know what's next because I don't really know what the
exit ops here. So I actually interviewed for a lot of like by side roles just couldn't nail them because all of the competitors would be coming from like a two year investment banking background. There were some I got really close on, or I'd be down to one or two people and, you know, wasn't able to just kind of hit them just because the experience didn't really line up, You know, it was coming out of real estate and I wanted to go into corporate side. So it was kind of just tough sledding for kind of getting traction to go to more like a corporate role. I was having a lot of conversations. A lot of you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:45] Like you met like you were looking to get in. You were looking to get into Corp Dev basically like the role you're in now. So you wanted to do like M&A, but you didn't have like
Monkeydomination015: [00:44:52] The M&A background, really.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:54] So it's tough. You had like a portfolio real estate portfolio background where, yeah, you had the modeling, but it was it was going to be a tough, tough sell, right?
Monkeydomination015: [00:45:01] Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:02] So tell me, so you started thinking, OK, I need to go banking first, right?
Monkeydomination015: [00:45:06] Yeah, exactly. So tell me how you tell me how
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:10] You started that process and what happened. So to be fair, I knew I needed to go investment banking, but I still wasn't really looking. I don't know why I just. It was really adamantly like, I don't need to get into investment banking
Monkeydomination015: [00:45:24] To get where I want. obviously, I ended up back in investment banking anyway, but it was at a boutique firm so completely, probably completely different, definitely completely different. But about the time I had already kind of primed some of those managing partners from that old investment bank, I was like, Hey, I'm looking for a job if I need a recommendation to give me a recommendation. They were like, Yeah, we'll give you your recommendation. And then randomly, there's just like one afternoon, I'm actually like in the office and they call me. I'm like, Why is my old managing partner calling me? And so I step out of the office. I kind of go for a walk and they're like, Yeah, we'd like to make you an offer. Just like, what? And they were like, Yeah, like, you know, we know your work product. You've kind of worked with us before. So we like to make you an offer. It's like, OK, well, awesome. Okay. Yeah.
Which was definitely
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:24] Tell me a little bit about what was. Are you are you willing to share kind of what the offer was? And, you know, was there any kind of nervousness around the fact that you knew they weren't able to give you that offer, you know,
Monkeydomination015: [00:46:36] A year or two a year and
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:37] A half earlier? You know, what was the thought process going through your head was like, should I make this jump or not? What was how did you make that decision? Yeah, I was a little on the fence just it was there was definitely still sting from kind of knocking to offer on the front end, but. At the end of the day, I'm a pragmatic person, like if you give me everything, I need to kind of be happy and kind of achieve what I want to next like, I get over it. So I kind of just sucked
Monkeydomination015: [00:47:06] It up a little bit and it was a pretty decent offer. So basically, they agreed to match my current base, which was at the time, I think, sixty five because Fortress said, given me a little bump too. After the year end and then every deal that closed, they agreed to give me one percent of the total sorry of the total fee, which generally speaking, wouldn't normally be too great. It's like it's not bad.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:41] Yeah. So if it was like a two hundred thousand dollar fee, you'd get and get a $2000 check. Exactly. Yeah, like that, yeah. But the time they had like 15 deals in the pipeline and a couple of them were like massive, I'm talking like seven hundred and fifty million in revenue, massive for a four
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:58] Percent to seventy five K. That's a seventy five K cheque that closes. It wasn't, you know, because the transaction value was probably like seven hundred fifty mil, but the fee was only, oh, the fee. The fee.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:13] Right? A few
Monkeydomination015: [00:48:14] Million, like two
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:15] Million or whatever. Yeah. Well, there'd be no said the fee would have been like twenty mil. In this one, if you would have been 20 mil
Monkeydomination015: [00:48:23] Because it said 80 percent on the seven, yeah,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:28] Yeah, yeah, three percent, OK,
Monkeydomination015: [00:48:30] So yeah, that's it's still good.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:31] That's a nice check. Yeah. They definitely didn't close. Glenn Close, yeah. Which is part of the reason I kind of was like after a while at the shop, I was kind of like, OK, I actually told myself
Monkeydomination015: [00:48:43] Before I started. If in six months they don't close the deal, I kind of have to start looking again. I've already seen the writing on the wall here. And so the new year started and they hadn't closed the deal at the time since I started. It's been like six months. That was kind of just like, OK, I kind of have to start looking again. But that's time. At this point, I was like, OK, well, now I have the background to get into the roles that I really wanted to if I could just speak to it well enough and pass a modeling test. And so it's kind of how that exactly kind of how that went down.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:20] And so we're there out throughout this whole process, like
Monkeydomination015: [00:49:22] While you're working,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:24] You were given an associate title, what, but it's kind of irrelevant because you're basically helping manage interns and it wasn't exactly analyst below you, right? So tell me a little bit about kind of. That whole was their super frustrating one like deals with die.
Monkeydomination015: [00:49:38] It was and we'll guess the extra funny part actually was a senior associate
Monkeydomination015: [00:49:43] At the firm, but I just didn't. It's just like I'm not a senior associate like senior to what? So I just I actually took the senior off my own title when I put it everywhere. That's kind of, yeah, it was like, that's a like too much at that point.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:00] Yeah, they can call me a VP, but what does it mean? Yeah. Like when you look at the amount of experience, it's like, OK.
Monkeydomination015: [00:50:08] And so I just kind of call myself an associate. But yeah, it was it was definitely frustrating, it deals kind of fell apart which and it would be crazy because like some of them, I mean, the worst parts like they're not really ever anyone's fault per say, you know, like one of them, like it was literally perfect. Like everything was lined up. We had a buyer. It was under undercover. It was really hot deal, like when we were actually marking it. I was literally calling different on the phone with different PE firms and like talking to like associates or partners or whoever was calling about it and just kind of having a conversation trying to pitch the deal to them. It was probably like the best process of I've ever seen. It was just super smooth. We got it to a large buyer as well. Well, nice cap size like they could have definitely pulled off the deal. The client only had wanted. It wasn't as large of a transaction, it was the client wanted 20 million of enterprise value and he had started the engagement. We got him an offer for twenty eight and a half. And then he realized how valuable it was right now and how much he thought he could grow it more. And then he got cold feet at Lai while we were starting off diligence and he was certain we were actually through a good amount of diligence. I think it was like closer to signing. And he was just like, Yeah, at this point, like, I realize now I can maybe get a lot more for this company in like five years. So I'm going to keep running with it because this is my life's work and this is what I want to do. And there was a young guy, the dude was probably like 30 35. So I was kind of just like, Damn. Like, there's like, there's really not much more you can do on that one, you know?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:54] Yeah, yeah, that's frustrating. So you you're there, you realize,
Monkeydomination015: [00:51:59] You know, it's been six seven months, their new year turns
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:02] And you're thinking, we haven't closed one deal. And you're thinking, OK,
Monkeydomination015: [00:52:07] Now is my chance to kind of make that jump to
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:10] Corp Dev. That the thought process? Yeah. It's exactly what it was.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:13] And why? Why Corp Dev? Why were you so attracted to Corp Dev? Why I knew you were trying to get there before. Why, yeah. Tell me a little bit about that. So there's kind of a couple of parts to me. One is that I really wanted to get into the operations of the company, which I really have been able to do, which has been like the coolest part of my job personally. I wanted to learn kind of what makes a company tick. If you're like working through a transaction, what are all the pieces that actually have to fit together to make it happen? And then also kind of dive into like a large company, understand kind of the dynamics of it in corporate politics and just kind of really get into it
Monkeydomination015: [00:52:50] As well as kind of see a buy and build strategy happening and actually be a part of it and actually kind of gets grow out of market and see like, what are the issues you run into and how does it work? Because like long term goal, I would want to start like a rollup strategy myself.
Monkeydomination015: [00:53:06] And so I want it's going to be able to get that learning process and learn kind of the ins and outs of that side of it. Cool. And so tell me how the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:14] Interview process started. How did you find this role you're in now? Yeah, the interview process is good. The first couple were just phone interviews, so my manager and then a VP. How did you even how did you find it like, was it LinkedIn again? Yeah, this one was LinkedIn. This one was actually just like a random application just applying online. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:38] And it actually it was a resume drop and you actually got contacted, yeah. Mm hmm. Wow. I must have looked really, really Polish, really good. That's hard to do,
Monkeydomination015: [00:53:49] Yeah, because I would have the ability to just talk about a lot of stuff I was able to do because I went to such a small shops. The responsibilities were crazy, like I had built out, like their new elbow DCF models as well as like their sins at that shop. I completely revamped their sins and into PowerPoint because they were using word before, and so it was a lot ] I could talk to, and I think that's what really helped. And so when I was interviewing me about tell me
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:21] About that, tell me about the revamping their stems from ward to PowerPoint, why you did it and just how you changed it and why, why you felt like it was much better. Yeah. So when I was at Riverside, I would go through since, like every week, right? And there'd be like 20 30 sins, all the large banks, right? You just kind of going through and
Monkeydomination015: [00:54:41] You know, like every time you look at one, you kind of get a little bit more of an understanding and appreciation for all the little details and everything. And so when I went to this investment bank and I saw the wrong word, it kind of pained me a little bit like I got a little heartburn over it and I was just like, Wow, like. If I if I sent this like, you know, riverside, it'd be like really out of the pack compared to anyone else, like it would just be like painfully different. And so it was just like, OK, Well, let's fix that. And so it was actually a really long process because all the partners kind of wanted input. And so when one of the biggest one of the bigger deals that we brought in was going to market, I was like, OK, I think we should do a PowerPoint. And honestly, like, I got a lot of resistance from some of the older managing partners, and I was we were sitting in a meeting. I can't forget this. It was all of us. It was like all the interns. It was all the partners in the meeting. We're talking about the SIM. And I was like. Quite honestly, I think our current sins are outdated. I don't think this is an industry standard. I think we really need to change it to a power point. They all just kind of stared at me for a while. Because they've been doing this for 20 years. You know, this is how they start good.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:56:01] Be like when I was at Riverside, none of I mean, did you say that? Did you say, Well, that's exactly what I said. Yeah, yeah. Not a single one. There was some resistance, there was some like comments back that were just like, look like there's a reason
Monkeydomination015: [00:56:16] We do it this way so we can really explain the company. And I was kind of just like, honestly like people want to be visually entertained more than they want to look like. They want content, but they also want to be like visually aesthetically pleasing content, otherwise they don't pay attention to it. I like it kind of hurt me to read some of those things at times because there was just, there's so much in it and it was it was it was great information, fantastic information. But there's so much you just couldn't like and can't keep it all in, like you can't soak it all up. Right? Anyway, so, yeah, and so then it was like a really iterative process to actually get this built. But I've heard that to this day, they still use that as the template for every new deal, which is pretty cool.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:57:00] Yeah, that's awesome. All right. So you're you're interviewing with you somehow land this interview at this corporate corporate development analyst role. Tell me a little bit about, you know. Were you just applying on LinkedIn? Were you hitting up alarms again? You're just your network. And were you keeping up a network? Kind of. And warm bleeds throughout this
Monkeydomination015: [00:57:20] Entire, you know, few years. Honestly, no, I kind of had fallen off after starting the investment banking role, but I kind of started to pick back up a little bit. And honestly, a lot of it was a lot of cold outreach, and this one kind of hit and so I kind of just ran with it. There were kind of a there were a good amount of others when I was working with a few recruiters to actually that we're just kind of constantly sending me different options. But then just once I understood this role, it just it was exactly what I wanted. So I kind of went like, drove kind of hard at this one like I had. I'd reached out to a few people and there was like this random V.P. in Minnesota who sits on like the global strategy team that I could just happen to get on the phone. And I just kind of like grilled him about everything they're trying to do long term, like all they're trying to like, really push toward. And just like with like the global kind of context and as well as like strategic like focuses. And then I snuck those things into every single interview where I would talk about it would be like, Oh, and I just really think health care is pushing more toward this. At the time, it was telehealth, and it still is, but it's just like it was a little less talked about back then because it was like pre-COVID, actually.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:58:42] So like at that point, you sounded like a genius. You sounded like super knowledgeable about the industry because you had grilled this guy, but like a week earlier or. Exactly. Yeah, no. Like during the process. Yeah. How did you get on the phone with how did you come in? Did he know you were in the
Monkeydomination015: [00:58:58] Process with the for the position? Yeah, it was just a cold outreach just reached out to him. He did know I was in the process I mentioned like, Hey, I'm interviewing for this other role, and I just would love to talk to you if you have a few minutes.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:59:12] It was like, Sure. That's a super, super nice pack that I think everyone should listen to. Like if you can talk to somebody in the organization, even if they're not directly where you'd be or in the office, you'd be.
Monkeydomination015: [00:59:22] You can get a ton of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:59:23] Insight on the firm, the culture, the whole like, the whole party line. So you can start parroting that
Monkeydomination015: [00:59:29] In your interviews and suddenly like, you're this, you're like
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:59:32] Almost one of them. You're an insider already. Yeah. And they're like,
Monkeydomination015: [00:59:35] Wow, yeah, the funny part. I had no health care experience. They were like, oh, like, you must be really like trying, you know? I love it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO: [00:59:46] Yeah, so I'm going to say I'm like, there's no health care on your back, on your background at all, like the fact that you got the role is pretty impressive because I'm sure there is other bankers that had the health care background that they were interviewing. Yeah. And all my counterparts, the banks, they come from, Houlihan, Wells Fargo, like,
Monkeydomination015: They're all like elite boutiques, at least, you know.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:00:05] Right? So it's pretty shocking that you got it. Yeah, it was. Yeah. So. Any other kind of advice in terms of how you besides that, I mean, I think that's a great tip, but anything else you did in the interview process, did they give you like a modeling test, like a merger model or something like that? They give me a DCF test. It was like over WebEx,
Monkeydomination015: [01:00:27] Where they were like watching me do it live. It was pretty seamless, honestly. It was nothing more complicated than what I used to do at the investment bank I was at before or something it fortress. And so it was pretty easy. Low key, but it was definitely kind of a process working to do that. It's like working through the process in general to kind of figure out where and when to say or like try to slide in some of those things. And then it was also interesting because like after every interview, I would just kind of soak up and I'd take really copious notes on everything and I would just like ask the next interviewer the same things that the other person was talking about that were, like, really detailed health care, things like. So for instance, one was like population health and like the push toward a more patient centric like health care model. And like at the time, like, I didn't really know anything about it, but they kept talking about it, and so I kept asking about it. They love that because that's like where everything is pushing forward.
Monkeydomination015: [01:01:31] So it's like stuff like that going to just help. That's cool. Yeah, it's smart.
Patrick (CEO of WSO [01:01:36] You're really keeping your ears
Monkeydomination015: [01:01:38] Open and trying to find the
Patrick (CEO of WSO [01:01:39] Patterns and then just like parroting it back
Monkeydomination015: [01:01:41] To them
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:01:43] To kind of seem like you're in the know too, right? So tell me a little bit about like, well, let's talk about pay quickly so that your pay had kind of been flat from fortress through to you were like sixty five base there. Did you make the same? Do they ask you the same question when they were going to make that offer? Like, what are you getting paid now and what did you say? I was surprised. They didn't even ask like once
Monkeydomination015: [01:02:05] Was it was really just like, this is like the top range of what we can offer you based off your experience like years. And this is like the offer
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:02:15] A nice pay raise. It was nice pay raise, I assume. Yeah, it was like a thirty over six figures. Yeah, 30 percent pay raise. Yeah, it was all in.
Monkeydomination015: [01:02:26] It's probably about like one tennis.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:02:29] Yeah, that's a great jump. So. Yeah, in terms of like how you thought about the corp dev teams, if I let you go soon and it's been long a lot longer than expected, I think it was entertaining. But tell me about like.
Monkeydomination015: [01:02:43] Corporate development, I think some people get
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:02:45] Worried about going there because if suddenly the firm becomes less acquisitive or if the team oftentimes these teams are pretty small, like they can be like one lead
Monkeydomination015: [01:02:55] And in and
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:02:56] You, how did you get comfortable kind of going to this specific firm? Was it a larger
Monkeydomination015: [01:03:00] Team and they were very acquisitive? Or how did you kind
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:03:04] Of do that
Monkeydomination015: [01:03:04] Diligence? Yeah. So we're extremely acquisitive and like the name, if you google it in acquisition, it's just like a list. It's just like a constant list and all sizes like it goes. It really runs the gamut. Like, I think the last one I saw was like 19, No. 13 billion. But the ones I work on are like two to 10 million because it's like different kinds of acquisitions, but extremely acquisitive group. The one I'm also in is like super small. And so the small team actually, for me, was a plus just because I had previously been working directly with managing partners. So like, I really wanted to kind of like keep learning from kind of the highest powers I could know for lack of a better
word. But. I just it kind of just kind of dives into that whole like wanting to learn to like just soak up knowledge, that's just always been my philosophy for like wanting to grow. Speaking in terms of like
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:06] On those small teams, do you feel like I think I think the fear for a lot of
Monkeydomination015: [01:04:09] People is when there isn't when it is a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:10] Small team, it's like a little bit of where you go next, right? Because sometimes those the people that are already at the top or they're
Monkeydomination015: [01:04:17] The lead corp dev
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:18] Or whatever they call them, BP or or whatnot, they may be in that seat for 20 years, right?
Monkeydomination015: [01:04:24] Ten years or whatnot. So where
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:26] Do you
Monkeydomination015: [01:04:26] Go? You know, if
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:28] The team is fairly
Monkeydomination015: [01:04:29] Static in terms of head count,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:04:31] Is there a thought process there anything you could say to the listeners that are kind of considering that, yeah, this may not be like the best thought process, but my thing is like, I mean. There's a which is you grow with
Monkeydomination015: [01:04:43] Your team, right? So I have a manager, I'm currently in a senior analyst role and then the next person after my managers is BP. So there's at least like two positions between probably three between him and there, between me and their I, you know, like at least 10 years, there's some room to grow. Oh yeah, there's a ton of room to grow.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:05:07] Yeah, yeah. And should would you would you advise would you
Monkeydomination015: [01:05:10] Advise people who are
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:05:11] Going to like, let's say, it was a
Monkeydomination015: [01:05:13] Smaller firm with a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:05:14] Smaller corp dev department? Would you tell them to be careful about that? Or would you say, just go for it, get the experience and then you can potentially transition to like other corp dev teams?
Monkeydomination015: [01:05:22] Yeah, I would I mean, I think what you get your foot in the door, you know, the opportunity is just flow, right? So if you really want to do Health Care Corp Dev, but you don't see too much room to grow, I would still take Health Care Corp Dev if you're not in it right now. And then I would just figure out how to lateral later on, because then at least you have the foot in the door and you can really talk to it because I've had this approached me even now for Manager roles within Dev as well. And the thing is, is like if I wanted To flip over to a different kind of specialty or if I wanted to go into a different kind of health care corp dev, it's just so much easier now that I kind of have that experience. For sure, for sure. Great, man.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:06:04] Well, I appreciate you sharing all of your wisdom with the listeners. Anything else you want to share any final words of wisdom before we call it or anything, I guess in terms of next. It sounds like next steps is just keep growing with your company. Any other final words you want to give before we call it? I'd say it's just the two things that are key to success is one is learn as much as
Monkeydomination015: [01:06:25] You can put yourself in a position to really be able to grow from the people around you and make sure you have a good mentor To learn from because it Makes a big difference if the person you're learning from. Doesn't do things the right way, or can it has their own way of approaching it? I mean, it's not a bad thing, but just make sure that that person has good experience.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:06:46] Get investigated for fraud from the FBI, the FBI. Exactly, yeah. Now you want your. Exactly. You got it.
Monkeydomination015: [01:06:54] You really got to pick them. And then the second one is just networking is key. And being able to kind of stay in front of people as well as kind of keep, I guess, about like a lack of a better term, keep warm leads and making sure you're kind of In front of people. Which reminds me I need to send out some Networking e-mails pretty soon and catch people up.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:07:16] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I said, Hey, I'm here, I'm doing great. Here's the best time to network right is
Monkeydomination015: [01:07:22] When you don't need it, right? Right? You can just have a conversation.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [01:07:26] Exactly. Well, listen, man, I really appreciate all the time. Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom. Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure and thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis. And till next time.
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