WSO Podcast | E78: Bear Stearns Survivor to Renewable Energy Expert

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In this episode, @dcorey shares his path from how he broke into Bear Stearns from a complete non-target school right before the financial crisis to how he survived once it was acquired by JP Morgan. Listen to hear why he followed a managing director to a smaller firm in the renewable energy space as well as one piece of advice he would give to his younger self.

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WSO Podcast (Episode 78) 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 talk 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, De Corey shares his path from how he broke into Bear Stearns from a complete non-target school right before the financial crisis to how he survived once it was acquired by JPMorgan. Listen to hear why he followed a managing director to a smaller firm in the renewable energy space, as well as one piece of advice he would give to his younger self enjoy. All right, Dan, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Oasis podcast.

Dcorey: [00:00:58] Hey, great to be here. Thanks, Patrick.

Patrick (CEO of WSO) [00:01:00] It'd be great if you could just give the listeners a quick summary of your bio.

Dcorey: [00:01:04] Yeah, of course. So undergrad I went to Moravian College, majored in economics, picked up little technical side with physics and mathematics along the way. From there, coming from a Tier three school took me a bit, but I finally broke in and worked at Bear Stearns doing principal investment, learned commodities, tax and hand structuring, survived the merger, hung around JPMorgan and called it quits surprisingly, but did a not so uncommon tale of followed. My own managing director off of the Great Frontier, where I built a couple of hundred megawatts of renewable energy power as a developer, the VP of finance role type, and then followed that market move back towards the buy side, doing asset management for the like all sorts of renewable energy for Sumitomo Corporation, one of the big five Japanese trading companies which led me to where I am today, working with my partners at age Atlantic. And we do a bit of the same of what I just described where strategic advisors working on ESG and other impact oriented investment structures.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:32] Great. Thank you for that. So let's start all the way back at your undergrad. So Moravian College, where is that?

Dcorey: [00:02:40] My favorite question? Where is Moravian? It's in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It's started in seventeen forty to one of the oldest colleges in the country. I would say they've been keeping the secret ever since.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:58] And you were. You were a dick. You did the decathlon.

Dcorey: [00:03:01] Yeah, that was. I majored in track and field, right? Yeah. Yeah, a little bit of a jack of all trades type. So I was a three sport athlete in high school, and when I got into college, I just knew it was a big part of me, a big part of how I focused.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:03:17] Tell me a little bit about why, Mike, why Moravian? What? What drew you there and tell me about a little bit of your upbringing and kind of like, what were you always thinking finance? Or when did kind of finance come onto your radar?

Dcorey: [00:03:29] So I went to Moravian for two reasons. One was that they were affiliated with other schools in that area. Lehigh was one of them. And I had a engineering track in mind when I went there, so I started off majoring in physics undergrad, picking up Econ Minor, Psychology Minor and Moravian. Let me into a program where I got to design my own curriculum just soup to nuts. It's a liberal arts school, so the standard formula is two years of core classes, two years of your major,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:07] And they didn't force you to do that.

Dcorey: [00:04:09] They did not. So I traded classes like basket weaving for differential equations, which certainly was. Certainly was a little more challenging of a route

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:24] You wanted to make it hard on yourself. You're basically

Dcorey: [00:04:29] Turns out yes,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:30] And you and did you do well or were you're with your GPA kind of mid threes or what? How did you end up there?

Dcorey: [00:04:37] They let me out early for good behavior.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:40] What does that mean to me?

Dcorey: [00:04:42] I did. I had less than a three GPA graduating.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:46] Ok, so you had you had a less than a three point zero? You went to school that most people haven't heard of in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And so how in the world did you end up at Bear Stearns?

Dcorey: [00:04:58] All right. For a little magic in the middle? Yeah. So I knew what I what I wanted to do. In essence, keep in mind, I grew up right outside New York City, so the city and the finance track was always something I understood. Sure. So having that more technical, quantitative reasoning, background always sent me back that way. And I just did the old fashioned method of networking. Being a twenty two year old coming from a small school, you didn't know a lot of folks, but there were a couple of strong contacts that I didn't abuse. But I relied on for guidance and asked for, You know, you never asked for a job, you always ask a question and advice. Now somebody is at this point in my career, I totally understand it. Everyone's favorite topic is themselves. So ask somebody, Hey, how did you get there and guarantee somebody who likes telling this story will be happy to share it with you?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:05] And so you said good old fashioned networking, but even I mean, it's not like you graduated like 30, 40 years ago, where maybe some good old fashioned networking would get you in the door. So it still surprises me. You know, you graduated what? No. Six or so? Or what was it? Five? Oh, five. So like

Dcorey: [00:06:23] Own age?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:24] So, yeah, I mean, maybe the economy was good, so maybe they were just looking for bodies and what do you think it was?

Dcorey: [00:06:30] So I definitely stepped in off cycle. Yeah, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. So when I say good old fashioned networking, I mean, it's like you work. I mean that you work really hard to be in the right place at the right time by being in every place you possibly can be at all times.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:45] So what were you using we're using with LinkedIn even around that? And it probably wasn't. How are

Dcorey: [00:06:49] You? How are you? It wasn't the thing. There were other job boards at the time where I could get a sense of flow. What my break ended up being was that a a family friend knew somebody who worked at Bear Stearns, and this is this almost feels like a movie every time I describe it. Family friend said, Hey, I talked to my neighbor who worked at Bear Stearns. Let him know that you have some questions about what it takes to get in to a company like this, and he'd be happy to talk to you. So I took that, as you know, twenty to twenty three year old kid as well. Somebody is willing to help me. So the next morning, I picked up the phone. He worked on a trading desk eight, 30 a.m. Picked it up. Hello,  Mr so-and-so, this is Dan. Thanks for taking my call. And I barely got anything out and I'll just pick the rest of the language. But he just says, Listen, kid, I do not have a job for you. You can imagine he used a little more colorful wording and wow, everything. I was expecting that this phone call just went sideways. So I apologize. Of course. Hey, sorry, I came across that way. This is really like ten seconds into the phone call. Yeah. And I explained I was hoping to ask him questions. You gave me some guidance. He again says, Look, I just don't have a job for you. Totally understand. I'll tell you what you sound really busy. I'll call back another time that you have more time to speak. Slam. I hang up the phone because I wasn't going to get anywhere. Oh my god. You hung up on the guy. Oh no. Call me God. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:34] Do you feel like it was like you panicked in the moment and like he was just pushing you and you just like slander?

Dcorey: [00:08:38] You like it was a little bit of flight or, you know, fight or flight, but somewhere like something calm, cool, collected took over me because I called. I set myself up to call him back the next morning at 8:30, and he didn't have enough time to say no, right?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:54] Ok, so you basically you hung up so you couldn't say no or like, don't bother or whatever. And so you ended up calling him again the next morning.

Dcorey: [00:09:03] Yeah. When he was polite enough to give me the head of global air personal phone number, which was a total train wreck in itself. But what this what this person accidentally did was he turned me into a referral by. Putting my name into the stack, so then you can imagine somebody's job in air is to create all of these filters, so they have a stack of one hundred resumes, right and take the top 90. Now, let's consider some 10, I mean, I've hired myself, I know the process, I don't even see all the application applicants. If I want to do my HR teams would never even show them to me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:42] Right. So you're basically you're now in as a referral, even though so tell me when you said that other call when like disaster. So he. So tell me a little bit more with that call. So you called them back. You left me hanging. Does he be annoyed the second day when you call back?

Dcorey: [00:09:57] I think he was getting the point that I was just going to hopefully get some advice out of him. So he passed the buck along. Yeah, I just need some help guiding the beginning of my career.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:10] And he said, OK, well, just talk to HR and you gave you their phone number.

Dcorey: [00:10:14] Give me give me a phone number of the person to call anything. And little did I know that. I mean, this was like the managing director of human resources who is very like, Yeah, this is it. It was truly a small shop in that sense. Very flat dynamic. Ok. That guy was very helpful, very friendly, very direct, that there's nothing he could do today on the phone other than keep my name on file.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:43] And were you pushy? Were you saying, you know, I'm looking for a job? At that point where you asking when it's a process, how do I get my what were your questions? And if you can remember, I know is 12 years

Dcorey: [00:10:53] Ago, I really was just trying to understand what the process was to get in. Yeah, and I felt like I got as far as I humanly could through this avenue. Ok, so

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:05] He basically says, Yeah, just I have you on file. There's nothing I can do right now. How did it end? Call me back. And a couple of months coming back in a month.

Dcorey: [00:11:13] Yeah, like a soft lead. But that wasn't how I got my start at Bear. How I got my. Yeah, so. What I ended up doing was then going back out to job boards, finding openings, and I did find an opening for an off cycle analyst role that I that I made a point of applying to. And when my name popped up, twenty five, twenty six, there was some sort of system that might that I made the 10 percent cut because I was a referral.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:11:43] You're saying the 10 percent cut of people who don't just get thrown out in the trash right away? Exactly. Ok, so you are actually you're your application actually got viewed by a human? Ok, so go ahead.

Dcorey: [00:11:57] So, so that got me that got me viewed. I think he said it from there, you know, the hard part. I knew coming from my background was getting my foot in the door, getting that network and instead of having somebody intentionally referred me, just figure it out, just figured out the system and get myself. I got myself through when I finally got my resume in for a job that I thought was appropriate. I had to do the same standard interview. It was a lean mean shop and interviewed and pretty much got an offer on my first in-person interview

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:41] On the spot. They gave you the interview or the offer right there. Yeah. So do you feel like they knew? Tell me a little bit. What were you specifically interviewing for? It was on the principal investing side. Or what was it?

Dcorey:00:12:54] Yeah, it was a commodity arbitrage type of group. And this was they call them, we called it strategic structured transactions. So it was a lot of finding things that were related to tax credit. So if you had to and other sorts of anything, really? How can I describe everything under the Sun? It was anything and everything under the Sun. What?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:24] You're actually trading, you're actually trading at. You're on a desk with the monitors trying to track different markets or what do you

Dcorey: [00:13:29] Work day to day traders? My role was more long term structured transaction support. So I was supporting New Deal transactions, you know, M&A, in-house support, as well as after the close where we were a tight shop. So it was asset management to follow all that, OK? This group ended up becoming what was later known as bear energy. And one of the major investments that JPMorgan bought Bear for, so their entire trading and large scale power plant investment operation was the broader. More publicly known stuff other than, like, you know, lumber trading or doing synthetic coal fuel transactions, commodity payments, working with municipal public bankers

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:14:31] Like you're hired to come in and you're so bare energy. So you basically came in and like, Are you making markets? Are you like, how should I think about it in terms of like sales and trading? Is it, you know, how to how do I think of it as like as an analyst or an associate? You coming in, it's your first job out of school. What were you doing day to day like? You're on a team? How are things structured? What's the training like?

Dcorey: [00:14:57] Oh, sure. So it was a lot of on the job training. Yeah. Nothing was formal. Like I said, being off cycle, it really took me out of any sort of rotational program. I was hired directly on to a group and the group had we had a mortgage portfolio and we needed a daily risk reporting on that. We were also originating the mortgages into a larger portfolio of that. So it was a kind of a catchall.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:31] So was this like almost the heart of the financial crisis, which you call this the heart of the financial because you're dealing with the mortgages and when you talk when you start talking about mortgages in two thousand eight? So tell me a little bit about that. The mortgage default swaps all that fixed for floating interest rate swaps. Well, this is like this is the heart of the financial crisis. So tell me a little bit about. What was going on in there? I mean, printing money, things were going great, I think through twenty where there were some cracks, maybe. But when can you just guide me through that timeline and just tell me, like what was it like at the beginning? And then when did kind of things start? Did it all just crumble super fast and shock? Or was there kind of some writing on the wall

Dcorey: [00:16:16] For us for the way we had things positioned? One day we were funding a portfolio and writing off the default risk, and the next day we were not. We had investment banks. Job is not to sit there and incubate risk. You're supposed to take it in, pass it up, dole it out.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:35] Mm hmm.

Dcorey: [00:16:37] So we had a sizable portfolio of commercial notes, and the default risk was basically bought out at like one hundred and fifty BEPS ET all worked in our structured transaction. Life was good. And part of my job there was to build out another hundred million dollars worth of commercial notes, which you did successfully get everything all tidied and two thousand eight came around when Jan are sitting in with their team meetings, saying, OK, this is now we have the whole portfolio put together. Let's go get rid of the risk. I should mention this is a tax credit portfolio, so it was way more complicated than standard bucket up and send it out CMBS type of stuff. Ok. So I mean, here I was an analyst or associate day in trying to put pitch books together when the market's going sideways. And I just came back like we cannot we can't afford to sell out the default risk at thirty five percent per year because everything just blew up. So it went from one hundred fifty bips to three thousand five hundred bips GS in the month that we were trying to trade all this stuff. And that's that that totally overlays with JP Morgan's pick.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:57] And so you weren't able to you weren't able to. Basically, your group wasn't able to basically offload that risk fast enough right to keep the bank solvent long enough?

Dcorey: [00:18:09] Well, our group, our group is

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:11] Really the tiny. It was a tiny fraction of the overall problem.

Dcorey: [00:18:14] Drop the drop in the bucket,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:16] Drop in the bucket compared to what was happening in the mortgage side, right? Right.

Dcorey:00:18:20] So we were we weren't sitting on any default issues. Just say at that time, some of our credit was AAA that in the portfolio. So we really weren't concerned. However, it still wasn't the business model. Well, so.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:41] Yeah, it's tough for me to wrap my head around in terms of everything that was going on at that time. I'm not in in that type of. I, you know, I worked in restructuring and banking and more of like a little bit of M&A and then to private equity. So this whole world of structuring and selling and bringing on products and selling them off is is interesting. I just don't I don't really understand it. It's hard for me to understand and wrap my head around. I don't know if you can maybe give an example to the listeners to help us kind of like wrap our head around. Can you talk about a specific deal you did or how how you'd think about it? So this was like they should. Mostly you're dealing with like energy products or. Tax arbitrage or whatnot, but how would you like, what's your role and then like, how would what's like an example deal? I guess you would work on a project.

Dcorey: [00:19:29] Sure, there's a great trade I can talk about. It was, is all tax arbitrage. So OK, my company, Bear Stearns, has a 40 percent tax rate. Every dollar we take in, we're paying 40 cents out. We purchased a we purchase an energy facility from a from a another utility that had a lower tax rate. I think they had because of a backlog in tax credits that they had. Yeah, they were probably paying about 10 percent effective tax rate. Yeah. So it just wasn't hitting their internal rate of return requirements on these investments, not to get too murky into the into the science of it all. But it was a synthetic coal fuel facility. So you're taking coal bricks, you're smashing them up, turning them into powder, mixing in the chemical equivalent of pine tar, bricking them and selling them off. And then that process entitles you to a tax credit per ton.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:42] Got it, and so that tax credit was being so you guys actually purchased company.

Dcorey: [00:20:47] Yeah. So we so we went out for purchase the operating company.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:51] Yep. And that gave you access to those tax credits, which shielded some of the income from bear.

Dcorey: [00:20:56] Right? Yeah. So that was that was business model 101 for us. We're just we're sending tax credits up to the mothership and they're paying us on a dollar essentially makes sense.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:09] Ok, so you're I mean, but was did Bear want to be in this space saving or was it was it being done across all different industries? It was energy kind of real focus for you guys.

Dcorey: [00:21:18] For us, energy was a real

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:20] Focus, maybe because there is more tax credits there to be had.

Dcorey: [00:21:22] Yeah, it's a pretty liquid market for these types of transactions, basically, because there's a really deep market in principle, commodities trade on their own rate. Yeah. So tax enhanced structures are it's easier to hedge the same the same year. You're talking about markets blowing out the trade I just described, we were planning on collecting, basically earning our place in terms of tax credits. And that was the year that oil spiked at one hundred, so I had a hedge on this project that I would manage every day through a little day to day work in there. That just went, I guess, right side up. We were we just had it there to protect the phase out of the tax credit. Not, which was something like fifty five dollars up to seventy one dollars per barrel and then oil spikes at one hundred. So same kind of stuff. I pull all stuff together, have a quick meeting, say, Hey guys, bad news. We get no tax credits this year. The tax credit trade failed, but good news that hedge that we placed just pay it out like eighty million dollars. Here we go.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:37] So it's awesome. So you're sending it out, so you're it worked out in the end. So tell me a little bit about as things started to kind of go south. What was the what was it like on the inside? And he said one day things started kind of the spreads widened and some of your trades and you just you couldn't you couldn't do the deals anymore. You're upside down. That was in your little, your group, but just kind of firm. Why did you know that it was systemic that it was kind of across the firm? There were issues.

Dcorey: [00:23:09] I mean, it really it really did happen fast, I would say in that regard. We were working closely with the Commercial Mortgage Origination Group and they were there on the front lines of fault. Yeah. You know, there was the initial funds were closely related to a lot of a lot of that stuff, that trading volume and it was harder and harder to communicate internally with groups that are probably having some uncomfortable conversations within their own team meetings. Right. So like looking back and piecing it together, you can say, Oh, that was a good clue. Ok, that was a that was a telling moment. But at the time, it wasn't, you know, nobody was running down the hallway, you know, with the hair on fire right up until one weekend and nobody was running down the hallway at all.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:02] Hmm. And so what was that like? What happened? You came in one day and what they said, go home or what?

Dcorey: [00:24:08] No, I.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:10] So you just got JPMorgan? Yeah. Came in and said, Tell me about that. What was that transition like?

Dcorey: [00:24:18] So as there was a very flat organization where you could do a whole bunch of different things? Mm hmm. And what I learned, career path wise, was that what I was doing? Like you said, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that in JPMorgan. It was a little bit of this silo, a little bit of that silo. So my job in one company doesn't necessarily exist in another company. Yeah. So I watched part of, you know, part of what I'd like to do, the energy side of the business that was all shifted completely out of New York moved to Houston, the the real estate, the mortgage tax AH portfolio that was moved semi in New York only because I was there and there were some other admin on site. They're all headquartered out of Chicago. And then other new business that we were we were chasing after just went off into its own different individual books. So I kind of got chopped into three and then offered one third of all of that. So it's you can

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:29] See your was your page chopped in a third or you just say, Yeah,

Dcorey: [00:25:31] You're doing the math that I was doing. Do I can. I can follow this.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:36] Let's talk a little bit about let's talk a little bit about pay then, since we're on it. So at Bayer, where are you getting paid really well to do this? Kind of a little bit of this, a little bit of that during those years leading up to it, the crisis?

Dcorey: [00:25:48] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It was a very risk reward oriented model.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): 00:25:54] You mind sharing like around a range of what you cleared in the a couple of years that you were there in.

Dcorey: [00:26:02] Yeah, it's awkward, but it's helpful. Yeah, I put it in context, after my time at Bear, I realized that people refer to their bonuses and percentages and that multiples. Mm hmm. And that was it was it was not a culture shock, but just like, Oh yeah, right? I was getting used to that. You know, you basically your base salary is enough to keep you in an apartment fed and clothed. New York City, I think my base is probably like 60. Yeah. So it's not going too far.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:41] No, that's fair. Ok, so you're kind of in this transition, but things are getting chopped up. Move around. You feel a little bit like, I don't know if there's a future here. What makes you jump? You followed your somebody from bear?

Dcorey: [00:26:55] Yeah. So my old senior managing director who actually hired me. He was gone pretty much right away a lot, along with a lot of other senior folks at Bear. And he went off and did the same type of math that we were doing all day long, I can't stress enough for. It was just math all day long. Ok? And he ended up with a renewable energy developer. Which is a bit of what he and I were working on before he was let go from there. And it made a lot of sense. It was the same kind of modeling. But just from a, you know, from a different side of the transaction,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:36] The economics made sense meaning like to be in that space at this point or it made sense to have you come along because you were part of the team.

Dcorey: [00:27:45] Well, that and the career path for me made sense. One, no. Having a team that you already know how to work with day one is always huge. Yeah, building a rapport is invaluable. Knowing how to communicate with people that you work with is everything. Mm hmm. The economics were. Certainly good. So coming on to a smaller, private shop was exciting, it was enticing. There was the future that I felt like had an impact in and if you have an impact, you tend to have some control on it. Yeah. And also following getting to be a subject matter expert instead of a highly sharpened focus generalist on a bunch of different markets. That was that was I felt that that was a good move and I felt comfortable in that decision.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:44] And so when you say renewables specifically, only where you guys just doing all wind, where you guys just doing or are you doing all types of renewables?

Dcorey: [00:28:51] Yeah, it was. It was all wind. So that company was based in the Midwest and focused on large scale utility, utility scale, wind generation.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:04] Great. And so you were there for many years. It sounds like you had a pretty good run. Why change? Why leave?

Dcorey: [00:29:11] So the whole market was dependent upon the tax credit that expired?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:17] In twenty twelve or thirteen twelve, yeah, well, so it started getting rocky in terms

Dcorey: [00:29:21] Of, yeah, there was a big rush, and you can see the history of renewable energy is ups and downs. Every time the tax credit is set to expire, there's a huge rush in the year before it expires that basically can't move forward, cannibalizes all the all the inventory of developments. Yeah. So we did a whole bunch of that. We forward sold some projects and it just seemed like my job was done

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:50] And it was over.

Dcorey: [00:29:52] It was over. I did my job. Now please go home.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:56] Was it was the thought process when you kind of came in there, you knew that was coming down, but you thought, Hey, there's a good three year runway. Who knows how it'll develop? Was that the thought process going there before you jumped or was like, Hey, I just know this managing director, I'm comfortable working with him. I trust him. Like when? When did you realize that it was done had to be before the credits expired? I assume.

Dcorey: [00:30:17] Yeah. Like, you know, like the, I would say, the 12 months leading up to the you're doing the math and you're and you're seeing everything accelerating. You know, what's going to happen to 12 months after then? Yeah. But the impetus to work on this team, there was not so much that we could just be hired guns to go out and develop projects, but really to take this company and bring it public. This was all pre NextEra and other big firms spinning off and doing their yield goes. But our white board was essentially the same exact thing of taking a developer and bringing them public, raising capital at that level. So looking forward and seeing a three year pipeline of stability, definitely a thing of comfort, but also seeing the opportunity. Hey, if it's successful, that's fantastic. If it's not, I'm not going to be starving to death along the way, right of taking this company and turning it into a real operating company. Great. I think that was the that was the hook, the always the carrot to keep. Keep things going for sure. And it's a it's a tough choice. Do you develop a project and sell it or do you bring it all in to the point and try to raise capital? It's ebb and flow with a developer, for sure. How to manage that?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:38] So you're the vice president of finance there. You kind of can see the writing on the wall 12 months leading up to it. So did you start kind of putting out feelers right away or did you wait a little bit? Were you so busy that last year that you just waited till you were done?

Dcorey: [00:31:50] You know, I was just working it hard all the way up, all the way up to the end. Yeah. Once I was once I was out of that role full time, I did a couple other kind of I call them just like personal side projects, things that I explored that I could. I wasn't living paycheck to paycheck.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:32:14] So you had saved along the way.

Dcorey: [00:32:17] Yes, I'm a I'm a I'm good at squirreling things away, recession-proof and as proven a few times here. That's good. Yeah, so explore exporter working on a real estate fund with a college friend and even help setting them up to help him set up a bit. Co-invest invested a bit, but then decided I didn't want to go on that exact route, so went right back to back to what I just developed is my now core and found a position essentially managing the portfolios that I was helping, helping put together by, you know, on the development side.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:33:03] So you went to a large corporate, you went to Sumitomo, right? Right. Then you say you were helping run their renewable energy infrastructure group or actually purchasing new ones or managing that portfolio or divesting or both.

Dcorey: [00:33:16] So my primary role was managing the portfolio and dealing and dealing with the total process of asset management. But I was also working on. If you're running the portfolio, you're part of the team. So anything that came into the portfolio, I had a soft, not quite official veto. I could at least say we should probably stop looking at this project. Somebody might still want to do a whole bunch of work on it and see if it works and see if it changes. But it was a. You know, a hybrid rule

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:00] Got it, and did you enjoy that that time there because you were there for a good six years?

Dcorey: [00:34:05] Yeah, no, I did, I did like it like very salt of the Earth, type of type of environment. It was interesting to change everything from wearing a suit and tie. Hop on a plane to go out and God forbid, you wear a suit and tie to a power plant because it's really we. We owned steel on the ground. But same type of same type of math and analysis in the background. You're generating electricity to make enough power, to make enough money to pay your operating expenses and then your dirt broke again. And the projects don't make sense unless you earn the tax credit. So there was all that same, that same tax equity. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:34:48] Is there any is there anywhere listeners or someone else who's interested in the renewable energy space or the math that goes behind all this stuff where they could find or learn more?

Dcorey: [00:35:00] Wow.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:01] And if not, that's OK, if it's something where you just had to learn on the job or.

Dcorey: [00:35:04] Yeah, there's I can't think of a single class that I've looked at undergraduate or graduate alike that really gets to the heart of tax equity. You end up getting into an accounting track where people describe tax accounting, but it's really not taxed account trading that that you study. That's really it's. It's kind of a mix of commodity trading in itself. A dollar is a dollar tax rate is a tax rate, but you might have a different one than I do and no different than poker. I might have a fair basis and you'll still beat me with fives and a seven.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:47] Right, right. Fair. Ok, so you're there for a good run. You're sounds like doing a little bit of a little bit of everything there. And then you end up kind of start as this is outlandish. I think of it as your own shop. Did you go out and your co-founder there or something that had been established,

Dcorey: [00:36:06] Established shortly before I came on board? One of the co-founders was somebody that I worked closely with at Sumitomo. So from there, and I was able to add in my own subject matter expertise and, you know, my own view on risk and methods and process into my colleagues and their own methods on risk and networks and private equity backgrounds, and having experience working in the World Bank and understanding globally economic impacts. We all we all tie it together.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:46] So that's something which what strikes me about your background is, you know, you go large firm, small firm, large for small firm and you will

Dcorey: [00:36:55] A little bit of bracketing

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:56] And you're yeah, and you're following your almost your mentors are the people that work you work closely with at those larger firms when they move out, which is kind of a nice way to. You know, make that jump that they're riskier jump a little bit less risky, less risky, so it becomes less personal risk and more kind of business risk only.

Dcorey: [00:37:17] Right? Yeah, I mean, that's a risk management one on one, though if you have too many unknowns, then you can't manage them. You want to you want to quarantine. You're unknowns and focus on things that you that, you know, are a challenge.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:35] And so tell me at your current firm, are you doing? What percentage would you say is like consulting versus actual and investing in projects

Dcorey: [00:37:46] About 50 50? Oh, really? So we do work on a lot of the business practice advisory, but it is. It is it's an important task, I would say, to be out there in the industries knowing what kind of deal flow is out there, if you're just taking that as a second hand report, just trying to read whatever I just said about the market today. Then you don't need me. You just need IHS, right? I think a big, a big value that we try to put forward is being able to hang up the phone with a client and then pick up a phone with somebody that I think the client needs then needs to connect with based on whatever we discuss with the client.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:37] I mean, you're very well connected in the renewable energy space, obviously at this point.

Dcorey: [00:38:42] Right? So and being able to understand what that what a client needs from a discussion with them is, that's value add for sure otherwise.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:55] So what's next for you?

Dcorey: [00:38:57] So next is actually something totally outside what we just discussed. Yeah, part time I am with the National Guard as a cavalry officer, right? So mixing in between my busy schedule of professional and family duties, I'm going off to armor school.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:20] And what is one is that is that going to become a full time thing or is it something you

Dcorey: [00:39:25] Know, it's not a full time thing, it's just it's a way to put some of the put some of the goodwill I got back into local community, hopefully if if they need. But it does have some full time training and some April, which I mean, there's a little 12 year old in me that's all excited about driving a tank, right? Like what? Little kid doesn't want to do that. But then there's the responsible practitioner in me that's also saying, Well, OK, so with this, you're seeing a different side of infrastructure. Mm hmm. Honestly, when the people I train with, when they're going through a base, they're just worried about how far the next the next mile run is. And I can't help but look around and just think man who got the contracts for that solar panel array on the side, and then I just get lost. Next thing I know the mile is gone.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:27] That's great. So anything else before we call it in terms of best lessons or anything you learn or something you would tell your younger self looking back on your career to date, you've been out of school now for what is it, 14 years?

Dcorey: [00:40:44] Yeah. Five fifteen.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:47] Yeah. So what would you say is kind of a takeaway or what would you tell your younger self knowing

Dcorey: [00:40:52] What you know everything? You know, be confident in it, but keep testing it. And I would say sometimes you have to you have to believe in yourself, and I'm really stealing from Rudyard Kipling,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:07] Not stealing, if you quote, if you quote him.

Dcorey: [00:41:10] Yeah, very good. Make allowance for other people's doubting too, which means that. Everything you know, you can go forward and lead your plan, but then feel free without having to beat yourself down to reevaluate where you're going. Along the way, set up a checkpoint. You have a like. You described a three year stint I had at one year to year. Just create some sort of milestones. Just stop, pull yourself out of your shoes and make sure that this is what you want to do. So and then or figure out how to make it be what you wanted me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:49] Fair. We'll leave it at that. Well, Dan, really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to share all your wisdom and to tell us all those stories, those crazy stories and back end at Bear Stearns. Really appreciate it.

Dcorey:00:42:02] My pleasure.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:42:03] 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.