WSO Podcast | E193: Hedge Fund Partner - The Path from The Back Office (Part 1 of 2)

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In this episode, WS_PWND shares his background in classical music and performance prepared him for some of the most competitive jobs in finance. In Part 1 of 2, we learn about the accident that changed everything and the big break he got right after the Great Financial Crisis to land his first job in finance in the back office. Listen to hear how he turned that opportunity into his first of many transitions to a front office role to become a Leveraged Finance Originations Analyst at a regional firm to the same role at a bulge bracket bank and what that meant for his career.

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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, WS underscore

Owned for all you gamers out there, shares his background in classical music and performance, and how prepared him for some of the most competitive jobs in finance. In part one of two, we learn about the accident that changed everything and the big break he got right after the Great Financial Crisis to land his first job in finance in the back office. Listen to hear how he turned that opportunity into his first of many transitions to a front office role to become a leveraged finance originations analyst at a regional firm. Eventually, the same role at a bulge bracket bank and really what that meant for his career. Enjoy. Ok, W's own welcome to the Wall Street Oasis podcast.

WS_PWND: Thanks, Patrick. Thanks for having me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): To be great, if you could just give the listeners a short summary bio.

WS_PWND: [00:01:17] Yeah, sure. So I had a pretty unconventional background and a sort of entrance into to finance sort it out as a musician, which trained at a conservatory for most of my life, I was a musician and, you know, during the greater financial crisis, I unfortunately have first moved to New York City and I was, you know, concerts housing for me and touring have broken my hand that year in about 2009. And so I, you know, obviously in 2009, was the best time to break into finance, you know, for a person with no background in internships or financial experience And so that was A very interesting transition for me. You know, ever since I transitioned into finance, I started really in the back office, clawed my way over the years into a front office, revenue generating role. And that's been a really rewarding process for me personally because I really got to understand the business from sort of back office, the front office, sort of all the wheels that it took to make a financial, a large financial institution run. And I think you have to have an appreciation for all the intricacies that people kind of pay attention to because it really Is important, right, when money is involved. So I was able to get a really a front-row seat to understanding both back office through to front Office through back office. So since then, I've been, you know, I spent about 10 years on the sell side and recently jumped to the buy side, investing in credit equities, venture fund situations, and it's been quite a journey.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:07] Awesome, let's start all the way back, so before we move

On to the finance stuff, I mean, the background super interesting. A musician where your parents are is like, hey, go be in finance, or they were like, Hey, we're going to support you and let you be a musician if you want. But then you broke your Hand and then everything changed. What was the family support? Was there anybody in finance or is everyone a musicians?

WS_PWND: [00:03:25] Yeah, no. Nobody in my family was anywhere remotely closely related to finance at all. We didn't have any CEOs or managing directors or VIPs in the family. Very humble beginnings. My mom was a grew up on a farm. My dad was, you know, son of teachers, elementary school teachers. And I think the idea of finance actually didn't come into play until my mom. I think she was on a trip once in Europe and she had come across a soothsayer or one of those fortune tellers. And I was with her and we just did something for fun. We sat down and we asked the person to tell our fortune, and the person essentially said, Look, you know, your son has a great future for success. And he's a musician now. And we didn't tell this person that I was a musician. They just knew, which is weird. And then so as we went on, the person essentially told us that I was going to change careers at some point and I would make a good addition to the business community, which was this was probably 15 years ago, I think. And on this trip and I kind of walked away from that trip like, you know, like, what is this person now, right? So, you know, this guy is crazy added, it's like, I want my money back. And lo and behold, in 2009, That's what that's exactly What happened. And I think, you know, the introduction was more by accident. It was accidental than purposeful. But, you know, life deals you a certain hand and you just go along, you play with it. And so that's what I did.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:06] So you're getting your master's, you're in performance, right? So you were actually like, were you actually doing concerts and all this stuff? And then about an accident or something, what happened?

WS_PWND: [00:05:15] Yeah. So the way that the

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:18] Yeah, I don't understand how it works, we don't understand the music industry here. We're performers.

WS_PWND: [00:05:23] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, it depends on the type of music that you ultimately focus in. But you know, I grew up before YouTube was even a thing. And so before, you know, influencers and having your own channel was even a thing. So really, it was Straight up hustling and you talked and you call people Whether it's people that you meet at Competitions where you're competing at or after you played A concert or in a city, there were managers or publicists or journalists, and that can make an introduction for you to somebody else. It was straight-up hostile, and that's what you needed to do. You need to manage your career. Twenty-four-seven. So the route is I mean, There are many different routes to ultimately what you want and really what you want to do for yourself. Do you want to be in an orchestra to be a Soloist? Do you want to be a pop musician or do you want to play classical or jazz? I mean, there are just so many different you're trying to do. What did you want to do? Personally, I loved classical. I had I have classical training, but I really love jazz as well. So, I did. I did that. I mean, as a musician, you start out absolutely poor. You end up absolutely poor also. So you were trained to really take any and every gig that came along your way. And so, you know, I've played for bar mitzvahs, I play for weddings and I played at places like Carnegie Hall. I played at. And on top of that, it's like you just take gigs and I

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:54] Anything you can.

WS_PWND: [00:06:55] Yeah, anything you can. And so I play with a friend dueling pianos to pay for rent, I remember. And we were basically we went in and we said, Hey, look, we could do better than these guys hire us and we can bring more people to the bar. And so, you know, these are times that you I think I could say a lot of the hustle that I learned was from my music days, and I took a lot of those lessons over to finance. So.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:19] And so how long were you kind of doing that hustle where you were like surviving on what you were making in music?

WS_PWND: [00:07:26] Yeah, so I mean, it could start as young as when you're taking lessons, I mean, if you're competent and you're your good communicator, you can start teaching if you're a Teenager, right? Were you? Were you? No, I wasn't. I mean, I was too kind of siloed in my own head, and I was so focused on, hey, I need to. I need to get as good as I can in this before I go to college and before I go to competition. So I just I didn't have time for any of that. I think where it really began was in college. Just, you know, there were there would be these low periods, these off times where you're not playing concerts or you're not traveling for competitions and you know, you kind of sitting around twiddling their thumbs and, you know, learning new repertoire. But you know, you learn quickly that if you're living in New York City, you know, there are a lot of there's a lot of people that really want musical lessons. And if you have, you know, prestigious university or conservatory, I presume people be very willing to pay you, you know, 50, 100, 15 Bucks for per hour to teach them. And so. And then once you start to build that network of people who like you as a teacher, then hopefully the word of mouth will start to spread, you know, and they'll say, hey, look Right, like my kids did it for you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:43] Like, did you start doing that? So you got work and then you started building a network and you're actually making decent money at some point.

WS_PWND: [00:08:49] Yeah, yeah, you can make some really decent money. I mean, I kind of did the math and I was saying, Look, if you're charging one hundred and fifty bucks an hour, yeah, you probably To make a Pretty decent living to be able to afford New York City, you can probably have up To about you probably need About 20 to twenty five students, maybe 30. But if you spread that out over you, call it the majority of the over five Days and then maybe One or two students on the weekends, it's very manageable. And that still leaves you, you know, five to 10 hours of practice time if you want to during the day.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:20] And so what are you? Yeah. So what are you looking at there like? It's 80 grand or something a year, something like that? One hundred.

WS_PWND: [00:09:26] Yeah, I mean, like back then when I was teaching, I mean, 80, 80 grand was good, right? I mean, this is before I even discovered what people got paid in finance, right? But you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's not that the two above.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:39] Hey, well, I'm Sure you have maybe had to take a pay cut when you went to work in finance. Is that accurate or so? So let's talk about something. There was an accident. What happened?

WS_PWND: [00:09:47] Yeah. So it was an accident. It was more of a like a recreational sport accident. I was going skiing and there was it was just unfortunate. I've skied and in the past, but there was just this model that I didn't see. I fell. I had my helmet on, thank God. But you know, I landed on my hand and You know, most people Out there were musicians. I mean, one thing that you should understand is that they are very, very careful with the moneymakers, right? And so if you're an instrumentalist, if you're a vocalist, you're not smoking. I mean, I do know singers who smoke, But you know, If you're a pianist or you're a violinist, then you're scared to death of hurting your hands or your fingers. People get those insured.

And so, yeah, I mean, I broke my hand. And unfortunately, that was at the time. You know, a career ending injury. And so I wasn't able to sort of recover from that. I mean, I I've broken my hand before when I was a teenager, but that's when you were a teenager. Everything feels fine. Right? But this was a different type of break. And so I didn't believe it at the time. But you know, I was kind of still practicing with the cast on as I did the first time, but, you know, quickly Realized that this was not going to be something that I could kind of recover from. Wow. Were you insured? Uh, no, I was not injured, and I did not have the money to pay for the premiums. That's how poor I was.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:21] Yeah. Well, I mean, you're in New York living off of, you know, it sounds like you were doing OK. You're doing fine. Yeah. If you hadn't broken your hand, well, so then that was what prompted everything. The shift is like, OK, I can't do this for my life or my career, so now I need to do something else.

WS_PWND: [00:11:35] Yeah. So at the time it was 2009 the world was ending. Mm hmm. And every single one of my friends who had been working in, you know, called the investment bank. They were pretty junior at the time, right? So, you know, things like maybe second or third year associates or a second or third year analyst or maybe first year associates. Yeah, you know, half of them got fired. And you know, that kind of prompted a very similar conversation that folks are having today post-COVID is, you know, the world is ending. I had a really, really crappy lifestyle. I didn't live a life and people basically wondered, hey, are you thinking about perhaps going into a different business? And so for me at the time, I was, you know, I was like, OK, I could see myself in sales. I get along with people. I like to talk, I understand process and I like products. And, you know, essentially, you know, I I focused really on finance because I got an econ degree in college. And so I thought that was quote unquote, the most seamless way to kind of integrate and go over. Little did I realize that nobody cared about where you went to school. Nobody cared about your GPA. Nobody cared about who you knew. In two thousand nine, it was like, you know, it was a bloodbath.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:50] It is really bad. It was really bad. So I mean, what's interesting is, yeah, I mean, so you knew all these kids in this bank because you went to a target school just for the listeners to know. Yeah. So like, It wasn't as if you didn't know what investment banking was. It was just, you know, there was never a thought of, Hey, I'm going to go do this. So you never had any internships in college. You had nothing on your resume that would say, except for the economics degree that would say finance.

WS_PWND: [00:13:13] Correct, correct. And so how do you even start? What did you do? This is back in 09.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:20] Like you said, the world's ending. Everyone's getting fired. You have no experience in finance. So how are you even approaching this, this kind of shift?

WS_PWND: [00:13:28] I mean, it was it's not the best answer, because, well, I didn't have the benefit of watery oasis at the time and I was over there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:38] We were around, man.

WS_PWND: [00:13:39] You didn't find out you guys were around and over sort of through the process. I found you guys and you know, at the time, most of my friends were musicians, and unfortunately it wasn't. It wasn't like I had a network of people that I could go and say, hey, like, what did you go through? What was your process? What did you have to do to get your foot in the door? And so for me, it was, I mean, for lack of a better way of explaining it was like a spray and pray type of approach, right? And you know, in retrospect, it wasn't the best way because like, I could have used my time so much better, targeted my conversations and people a lot better. And so I think I think the one thing that I remember from the time was I had been going to all these job websites, and I don't think LinkedIn was as big back then either. But it was like all these like glasses or I can't remember what the the sites were, but I tossed. I kept count. I tossed about two hundred and sixty resumes to very different places and. I got no responses back in the two in the two months that I had spent. And it was a combination of just my resume, just didn't have anything that the Headhunters were looking for and my cover letters nobody read. And I just didn't know anybody in the industry. And so what I Really started to do and eventually figured out was, and I can talk to this more later, but its networking, networking, networking like you. I cannot stress how absolutely important it is to meet The right people. And that's not to say that I'm not trying to bash on headhunters or HR or by any means they do a very critical job. But there are and there are really good headhunters out there That do the right things. And if you talk

To them and they spend the time to get to know who you are, they can then find the jobs are most Appropriate for you. But away from that, I think you need to talk to people who work in the business, work at the companies that you want to be at, or work in positions that you ultimately want to be in. And so I mean, I'll give you a number and maybe I'm exaggerating here. But I would say upwards of 90 percent of all the Jobs I've ever Gotten in finance have been from referrals or from somebody that I've talked to. Yeah. You don't even hear about the job. Most of the jobs are never posted.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:06] No, they're internally hired or friends of friends are brought in. So it's who you know.

WS_PWND: [00:16:11] Correct. The way it usually works is the need for the analysts or the new hire comes is discussed internally and before any job description is written. In fact, that's probably the Last step of the process Is that the job description is written and it's posted. People internally ask, who do you know? Do you know anybody who would be good for this role? Do you know anybody smart? That's the first round of people that get pinged. And it helps to know folks who are in the business who you've worked with on deals or on opposite ends, and that that word of mouth, that referral, it goes a very, very Long way, right? Because it effectively catapults you to the front of the line and you get to talk to management first. You get to set the expectations and the tone right and the quality of the analysts who they're hiring. You get to Dictate that as well. So yeah, network network, you got to go out and talk to people. It's uncomfortable for a lot of people. Luckily for you, did you feel

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:16] Uncomfortable since you didn't have since? Did you feel there was a little bit of insecurity, given the fact that you had no finance, no music?

WS_PWND: [00:17:22] Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was, I mean, I have, I think by nature of being a performer and music, you’re comfortable being on stage and in Front of people. Yes. Yes, you're very comfortable with stress.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:34] You're you. Were you popping like beta-blockers during your performances, ever?

WS_PWND: [00:17:39] So there was a period in my life where for some reason my hands started sweating a lot more when I was Playing, and that just makes your it. Just it like it makes it harder to play right and you slip off of notes, you slip off the string, whatever Yeah. And then I had a friend who was telling Me how you just used to check

This thing out, like beta blockers. I take it all the time and I'm like, OK, I tried it and I played, and I literally was almost asleep through the entire performance. I couldn't feel

Anything. I didn't feel the drive and feel like my heart pumping. I was like, I can't do this. I need to Feel like I'm on the edge ready to fall over. But where the where that the magic of performing is, is that you have enough control, that you're standing on the edge, but you're never, ever in the danger of, like falling over the edge. Yeah, yeah. Losing it, you just have to you have to keep the audience as Captivated as you, and I think you can't really do that unless you're there with them, right? So I mean, interview is performance right? It is a marketing and selling of who you are, right? Because, you know, in both Situations, I can see a lot of similarities in that. In a performance you're Communicating, you're interpreting Either your own music or somebody else's music, and you're trying To sell that and convince somebody In the audience that there's nothing different about me going into an interview and trying to convince somebody to hire me, right? These are my skills. This is what I do. This is what I'm good at. This is not what I'm not good at. And luckily, I got that type of training. And, you know, interviews itself never was a, you know, there were never a problem for me. I think it was really just about standing on, you know, getting on top of the soapbox and saying the right words and the right, you know, the right buzzwords and not sounding like an idiot that took time and you had to. You have to go through a couple of these and falling your face a couple of times and then sort of learn what they want to hear and what you have to say. So I hate to say that it's a process, right?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:40] The two months, you're kind of getting zero responses. So you're saying realizing you actually have to know people or there's no chance I'm throwing my resume into a black Hole, I have a great GPA, great school. Nothing, no bites. Yeah. And I think it's obvious why there were no bites, just like, you know, it's like you were just you're getting screened like auto screened out or, Yeah, the recruiter was like Two seconds on your resume and throwing it.

WS_PWND: [00:20:04] Yeah. I mean, I think Folks on the, you know, In the business understand that like you probably have been through situations where you're asked to screen resumes, right, like in your first or second year, you know what the job entails. And so one indiscriminate day, maybe somebody will pop by one of the senior guys would be like, Hey, we're looking for someone or analysts or we're looking for a new analyst to join or interns. Here's a stack of like resumes. Take a look at it right? And like these resumes are, there's like a pile of two hundred and they'll dole out 50 50, right? We're even Ways across four people and you just have you have maybe half an hour to screen 50 resumes, Right? And so, yeah, yeah, I mean, you're lucky if anybody spends more than 20 seconds on your resume. And you know, at the time, I just didn't know because I have been a musician and I was like, Oh, OK, I'll just put this, this and this on there and then look at everybody, ignore me. I have other patients. So but yeah, I would say How I ultimately Ended up in getting traction was I was able to network and. Get in touch with somebody I was I think I was a music festival at the time I sent out, you know, I sent out a resume to a bank. And I'm not going to name it. But there were many banks that were that came under the purview of the of the SEC during the greater financial crisis because of the amount of leverage that they put on. And so there was a team that was created Internally across all these Different banks to monitor portfolios of bad assets, write bad credit cards, bad auto loans, bad student debt, whatever it is, they got grouped into a good comb back right for most of these banks. And so that was my Foot in the door. There was somebody. The team was very small. I worked directly with the CEO of the time. Well, how did you

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:57] Meet this person at a music festival just randomly?

WS_PWND: [00:22:00] No, it was. It was. It was weird because my my mom had had have basically talked to her son and her son was applying for college is just a random conversation. I was there and I was at the meeting. Your mom whose mom? Yeah, my mom and I were at this like summer thing. It was like a was like a picnic, call it a picnic or something, and the person was there with her son. And, you know, the person had

Worked at a major investment bank. And so we just got talking. My mom started talking to the kid because he was talking about colleges and where he wanted to apply. And she dragged me over and he's like, Oh, my son just went through this, you know, four years ago, five years ago. So, you know, just, you know, he she willingly volunteered me for this and happy having the conversation we found on the mom comes Over and then, you know, the Mom's like, Oh yeah, I work at one of the investment banks. We're actually looking to build out a team. We need somebody to help out and that's where it started. Know and. That wasn't through a job description, it wasn't through a posting on a job site. It was basically

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:12] It's that connection is that personal connection,

WS_PWND: [00:23:14] That personal connection. They look at you. They see you. They shook your hand. You know, they do that like elevator. Like, hey, give me your elevator pitch. Like, what? Why do you belong here? And it's just it's so much easier than being a two dimensional package, right, that you submit to headhunter or HR department. Again, I'm not ripping on those guys, but they’re dealing with an Unbelievable amount of like Names they have to screen on a daily basis, right? Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:39] Yeah. So really interesting. So you kind of. That was that was the change that was the break, it was just, you know, that some sort of picnic or event or whatever, just talking with random strangers.

WS_PWND: [00:23:53] Yep. And I would say, like at the same time, having understood how this process worked. You know, I would Actually seek out people just to grab coffee or I go to networking or recruiting events. You were doing that After this, right after this.] Ok, you did you get

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:10] The job right away like within a few weeks?

WS_PWND: [00:24:12] So it was a process, right? So it was a process that took over a month. And I would say, you know, I went in for multiple rounds. I did some exercises, some brainteasers at the time and, you know, but this was in conjunction after I realized this was what actually got my foot in the door or actually got a conversation, even got an interview. Yeah, got me that interview this. You know, I started to seek out people who worked in the business, right? Junior level, folks, or

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:39] How are you doing? And we're using LinkedIn. Was it even around then?

WS_PWND: [00:24:42] Yeah, it's a little. No, I don't. I don't. I don't recall LinkedIn. Everybody databases, stuff like that. Yeah. Then I started tapping into the alumni database. I started to ask friends, Hey, I'm so-and-so. I broke my hand. You probably met me at a party in college, you know, and I'm looking for these opportunities. I really started broadening the Net to talk to people. I straight up stop dropping resumes. I dropped those job sites. Yeah. And over the course of calling like next month, month and a half as I was interviewing at this first firm, you know, I got a lot of different Interviews, ultimately didn't Work out because they were looking for very experienced people. Yeah, you have to understand in 2009, there was more supply than demand at the time. And so people were just looking for people who have previous experience and always wanted to work for a long time. Oh yeah. And so that's where I was competing against, you know, I was I showed up with a resume. I remember some guy. I was sitting in the interview and he looked at my resume for a good 15 seconds, didn't say anything. I'm just sitting there waiting for him to say something. So after he read it for 15 seconds, he looks at me and he's like, so why the f are you here? He's like, He's like,

I look at your resume. There's nothing here that I could hire you for. And so, you know, there are many situations where what did you say? I mean, so, so by those trying to save it, save it. Yeah. So there's it's about the story, right? People in the business love A good story, and it's not that it's fake. It's just that you have to be able to tell a compelling story. For me, I just told I told them about my success in music, what I was doing at the time. I was briefly managed by a large musical management company, and I told them, Look, I'm Willing to give all These things up that I've worked for the last 20 years to come work for. You guys like this. This is a life passion of mine. But looking at what you guys do, this is like something that I'm willing to just give up my life accomplishment for and start over and explore with you guys. So that was a story that I went with, you know, not exactly in that told in that exact way. It was better phrased than that, but you have you have to be able to show them and tell them that they're valued. You want to be part of their team and that they're building something really cool, right? So in so many words, so it was it was a real education process for me. It was a real. A time for me to to really Start, to exercise and to practice my speaking skills because. Historically has spoken with my instrument. I never had to get up and be like, Oh, this is what I'm playing this I can score. I hope you like it. You know, get Me off the stage.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:36] No, it's just like, It's like, OK, here we go.

WS_PWND: [00:27:37] Yeah. Now it's like, you know, I have a, you know, eight by 11 piece of paper in front of me. I have to tell my life story in under 30 seconds, and for them not to lose interest, it was like a different skill that you had to learn. But it ultimately is just it. You do it enough times, you know exactly what to say.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:52] Yeah. And so you're kind of coming in. You end up, I assume, not getting the job at that place where the guy was asking you, Why are you here? But you ended up getting a back office middle office role at the first place.

WS_PWND: [00:28:06] Yeah, it was a back office role is purely risk reporting and

it was During the time when the SEC was pretty much like on top of every single bank in terms of their risk levels, their collateral, Their, you know, They call them RWA. Risk weighted assets cover all the bad loans that could potentially go sour. And my job at the time was basically trying to collect data points. I was the bad cop in the group, right? And so the group basically was risk management and. The people were the analysts in the, you know, the senior analysts were All modelling the Companies projections, what they could potentially perform, are they going to bust covenants or is there going to be a liquidity Issue? Yeah, they're Not focused on how much. How big is the loan out to these guys and how much assets are risky to assets do we have against those loans? Right? And so my job was to collect from every single analyst for every single sector what the individual loans were. And so that involved a lot of large data dumps, a lot of kind of talking to people in terms of These spreadsheets were like two thousand Rows long write in like gibberish and format that you Use like it was just Make you dizzy and like you would fall asleep, like going through the spreadsheet because it was so large. And so my job at the time was to collect all this data tried to pivot table all that, put it into digestible form for senior management of the group.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:41] You got really good at Excel. Really fast.

WS_PWND: [00:29:43] I got really good at Excel. Really fast at the tables Like the V lookups like Offset everything. So I actually look back and I couldn't be more thankful for that experience as much as it was such a bad fit for me. I learned Excel. I got my foot in the door. Somebody gave me a chance of all those people that I talked to. This person gave me a chance and this person was a really, really difficult person to work for. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It was terrible. I'm forever going to be in this person's Debt for allowing me to get my foot through the door.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:24] What are you working? What were you working back 80 hours a week?

WS_PWND: [00:30:27] Hundred sixty. It was like 70 hours is my first. Yeah, it was about 70 to 75 hours and you didn't

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:35] Stay for very you didn't stay for very long. This was a bulge bracket back office role, but you didn't stay for very long. So then where did you? What did you start looking right away or within five months? You're like, I can't handle this or you're like, I just I don't want to be the back

WS_PWND: [00:30:46] Office. What was the thought process? Well, during that time, so, you know, I knew that I always wanted to invest. I always wanted to be close to the P&L. So throughout the course of being in this position, I realized that your pay and your performance Is the highest right when it’s closest to revenue generating roles. And at the time when I was working in my free time, I would go and I would network with people and leverage finance over a network with people who are in investment banking. And I, you know, we would just Really informally we go out for drinks and we just people would just kind of shoot off like what they were getting paid right. And so and the opportunities that they were talking about,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:31] What were you? What were you getting paid? You're like 50, 60 something.

WS_PWND: [00:31:34] I was like I was getting paid sixty five, sixty five thousand like

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:37] Almost no Bonus, right? Almost no bonus.

WS_PWND: [00:31:39] Yeah, I was no bonus. I mean, your back office, you're not. You're a call center, right? So you'd be lucky if you'd be lucky to keep your job because I was getting Paid like sixty five two thousand. I mean, it's gone up significantly. I think all I think all analysts at this point get paid, at least like probably seventy five eighty thousand and Investment banks Last year through COVID,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:59] It was like one 10 or something or, yeah, 110.

WS_PWND: [00:32:02] That's what I heard. And there was that Whole the Goldman presentation that got leaked, which was destructive for,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:09] Yeah, we're about to rerun our work life balance survey that we ran and promoted based off of that. And it's going to be interesting.

WS_PWND: [00:32:17] We'll see what I love to see what the finished product is. I'm a little removed from like entry level economics, but it's good to good to be like, you know what? Probably could have waited a couple of years before I started entry level, but yeah, well, I would say I would say so. I was getting paid like sixty five grand, And all the other analysts were probably getting paid, probably 16 to twenty five percent more than I was. And I learned really quickly that, you know, the front office roles were left in banking, trading, sales, right. And you know, I knew I was going to be good at those roles because, you know, creating pivot tables and looking at data dumps. Twenty four seven that I realized very quickly. That was not what I wanted to do. And I Always knew that this was just going to be a first step of many steps that I needed to take To ultimately get to where I wanted to, Because I knew there was no way for me to bridge the music To a front office Investment banker like you have an army to recruit from all the top tier schools from your second tier schools, right? You don't need somebody who's like five years out of college and like trying to do a career change in the worst financial crisis in history, like, you know, the world. And so like for me, I knew that that's what I had to do. And so, you know, under a year I spent there, I eventually was able to get again through network through. Runs a role at a leveraged finance shop, and unfortunately, this was another Sort of Stone that I needed to step in order to get to my ultimate role. The bank had been nationalized. There was no appetite for risk there. And it's funny because if you want to run or be in a leveraged finance group, you have to be able to take on risk or underwrite risky deals. We were having trouble going to credit committee for double B plus names, right? Like, you know, leveraged finance. You would do Triple C's and at the time, in 2009, nobody wanted to touch surfaces. And so it was extremely hard to take risk, so we were never left lead on any deal. I got very

Used to be on the right for writing adventures And, you know, doing Loan deals and book. But the process itself of pitching, putting together presentations, modelling was just another tool. I was adding to my belt and you had to be patient. I wasn't complaining. I just put my head down, just did my work there. Yeah, but it was hard. That was a Really hard job. I remember One summer I was like every all the Senior guys were on Vacation and then we got this deal that nobody on the street wanted, like Bank of America have passed like JPMorgan iPads, and these guys were like, Please like, do this deal for us. And so we got mandated left lead on this. But it was just me and this VP and this VP was pretty new. I think that week in the seven Days, I probably slept 20 hours in seven days, right? So. So this was I was sleeping. I was commuting to Connecticut at the time. And so I was my day for about a week and a half. And by the end of this, I was like hallucinating. So I didn't realize what I was doing. But you know, the commute itself is like 40 minutes, 50 minutes. And so I would get up at five. I try to get on like the six forty five seven o'clock train, get to the office by like seven 40. And I would be there until like 2:00 in the morning. And then you have to take another car or train back. You get home by three and then you're up in like two hours, so. So I did that for like maybe 10 days Or 10 or 14 days. And like by the end, I was just like, it was just me and him or I was doing all the work. So but it wasn't it wasn't like a sustainable lifestyle, and part of the reason why I left was not for that. It was really we just weren't seeing Enough deal flow, and I just Wasn't getting the experience I wanted. I didn't care about. I didn't care about the hours, but you know, I was young enough where I was like, you know what? You could kind of handle it. I can handle it like,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:16] I don't have any friends, but it was you were hallucinating A little bit.

WS_PWND: [00:36:16] By the end of the day I was I was talking to made up friends at the time. And, you know, any friends that I had talked to, I basically just kind of lost touch with because you were working so many hours, right? I'm sure a lot of people in the business understand so. But yeah, I mean, you know, kind of going back to my previous point is that I knew where I wanted to land and I knew what steps I had to take. You knew you wanted to be at a hedge fund eventually? Yeah, yeah, I wanted to be a hedge fund. I mean, I knew In order to. Yeah, in credit or equities, but I didn't. I hadn't figured it out what product I wanted to be in or what asset I don't want to be in until later. But I knew that, you know, I had at this time been talking to a lot of recruiters I have been talking to people about, is it possible to jump into the buy side? And everybody has told me, Look, you need you need experience, Either as an intern On the buy side or you need to have investment banking experience or this and that something that was modeling intensive, something that was quantitative in nature. And I knew, OK, these are the Boxes I needed to check off. These are the jobs that offer those skills. I'm going to spend time on it at the risk of seeming like I was bouncing from place to place, but I knew what I wanted for myself and like what home I want is to be. So that's. It was early enough in my career where I thought this is a risk that I'm willing to take because, you know, I'm getting a five, I'm starting five years later than everybody else, right? So I don't have the time in the years to spare. I need somebody

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:52] Jumping again, meaning jumping again was a risk you're willing to take.

WS_PWND: [00:37:56] Yeah. Like, I can't spend two years I one two years at one job in another three years. I mean, like by the time you get to say you're 50 years old, you know, you know, and like if You wanted to put in like the proper two years, three years roll to really absorb everything. And so I got absolutely what I was needed. And again, this may be the absolutely worst career advice. Don't take it. My situation is a hundred percent different from most of the people on the street. I know there's a lot of people that are shops that aren't getting enough deal flow, so it's that's it's relevant. Yeah, but you know, I Talk to people, I Talk to folks all time and a lot of friends of mine who Are at either advisory Firms or investment banks or hedge funds, They're not seeing deals. It's like, you know, the Most common thing that I hear from My friends is, you

Know, I just want to have something lined up or I'm afraid of moving because I don't want to have a job and like it is that it is that uncertainty that comes along with not having a safety net or the security of a job. But most people I find talk themselves out of finding where they want to be eventually because they're just comfortable and Cushy where they are, Even though They don't like it, right? And I think that's fine. I knew I was always more driven than that, and if I was bored, I would never put in the work where I was at, so I needed to be. I needed to feel driven and excited about my work, right? So yeah, so that's basically what I was wrestling with at the time.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:27] And so you kind of are approaching that. This was like your second, your second gig out of. You're doing the long commute. Not a not that. I'm not crazy long, but you're doing a commute. You're kind of you're in love thin at that point, right? Yep. And then so you're kind of already headed down that path with credit. So but they tell me, like, what's the next thought process that you another person, you know? Now this is your master networker kind of tells you, Hey, we have another role, another analyst role or what?

WS_PWND: [00:39:54] Yes. So the next job also was through a friend that I

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:58] Went back to a bulge bracket

WS_PWND: [00:39:59] Bank once it bulls bracket. And so it was a friend that had worked with at my first job, the first, the first position that I had been in. And then this person had had basically left that previous job and networked himself into this group. And you know, I I hit him up and I asked him, Hey, look, I'm looking for, you know, a role that has a quantitative, legal structuring, background or perspective. And he said, Look, I don't I don't have that particular role. But if you want to get Your foot in the door, this is the way to do it. And so we did. We did, you know, a couple of interviews, a couple of conversations with people on the team. The subsequent role was actually one of the most helpful roles I've ever taken. And why I say that is Because in the investing World, especially in credit, you have to understand legalese, right? And so in situations where you're where you're in bankruptcy or you're arguing over assets or you're arguing about valuation and sort of the waterfall that ensues, It's really, really important To understand the legal Parameters of the Instrument that you live in, right? And so, yeah, it's not enough to have to say, Hey, look, I'm investing in the most senior part of the capital structure. There are busts. There are holes. There are documents that are Swiss cheese, right? And you need to be able to understand that document and understand like where the where the traps are. And so my job in the subsequent role was structuring credit agreements and looking at indenture. And so it was a Great front row seat to how leveraged buyouts are structured. These were, You know, very large, well-known sponsors like TPG And Carlyle, Blackstone And Bain, Bain Capital, and they were the 800 pound gorilla in the room, and they were able to dictate a lot of the terms in these credit agreements and a lot of these legalese. And the rule was the way I can describe this role is that you're a conductor, you're a conductor, like an orchestral conductor. You're conducting internal credit approval, you're conducting the coverage teams or the left wing groups, right what they're willing to underwrite and sell to the market you're under. You're conducting the structuring aspect of it. Meaning you have to talk to your counsel and then your counsel had to talk to the company's counsel, right? So you have to orchestrate that conversation. And then you also. Have to talk to the company and try to manage their expectations because the things that they want and are asking for it, they're not going to get all right. So you have to. It's a delicate dance. So you're managing These Gigantic egos of five different parties. Yeah, me. Meanwhile, trying, not trying to blow up your own position because you are again the bad cop you're telling people. No, the AAP provisions cannot incorporate this. No, I cannot give you secure that capacity. That's going to deliver this company beyond 10 times, right? Like you have to. Yeah, you have to you have to you have to be able to keep that channel open internally and externally and communicate very quickly. Like what is market terms? What is the bank willing to underwrite and what is what? What can you tell the company and the coverage bankers so that you don't destroy that relationship, right? And so it's very, very delicate. But what I took away from that is, Look, I understood. Now I understand how banks Extend their balance sheet, right? These are all the considerations into going into extending a revolver or a term loan or underwriting a bond. And this is this is the process that happens internally. And this is how I talked to capital markets, right? And you know, It's just a really fun process. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it was not quantitative enough

For me, right?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:57] It was a lot of like managing teams and your connector and almost like a negotiator. Yeah. And you were still structuring as well.

WS_PWND: [00:44:06] You were structuring. Yeah, but it wasn't

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:08] Enough for you.

WS_PWND: [00:44:09] Yeah, but you were. You always ended up being the messenger. People shot right like you show up with like something somebody didn't want to Hear, or it's the terms are not as great as they wanted. You know, I saw people asking for like Seven year revolvers. You know, the market Terms at the time were five year revolvers and, you know, maintenance covenants here and there. But some people were asking, No, I don't want five years. I want six or Seven years, right? And then I want term Loans with no covenants. Covenant Lite, right? And this was postgrad greater financial crisis when people were coming out and saying, never again will we have Covenant Lite loans, right? And now everything's covenant life again. Yeah. 10, 12 years later, we didn't learn that much, huh? You don't learn that much, but you Know, you know, it’s funny because it just keeps repeating itself and things like chasing yield, chasing yield chase. Yeah, exactly. And chasing relationships. That's because no sponsor, no company wants to have prohibitive covenants. They want to go out and they want to make acquisitions. So they want massive acquisition baskets. They want massive accordions here and there. And so, yeah, like at the time, I was like, OK, this is really interesting. But you know, I spend I think I spent three years there. Ultimately, again, my next role was also through networking, and this one was this next role actually within the same bullet bracket firm. I was very aggressive in chasing. And so I come across this book on investing written by this guy who actually was ahead of the desk at the time, and I was like, Wow, this guy works at the firm. He's only ten floors below me. I'm going to go and basically bug the hell out of Him until he hires me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:48] 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 dot com. And till next time.