WSO Podcast | E89: Director in Business Development in Private Equity from Compliance
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In this episode, member @Yologoose96 share his path from being unemployed when he first graduated in 2011 to working as a paralegal for $43,000 per year to now making well over $200,000 as an Associate Director at a large private equity fund in a business dev function. Learn how he was able to make an internal pivot from compliance to business development at a large asset manager, what was the key inflection point in his career and how he was ready to take advantage when the opportunity presented itself.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 89) 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, member YoloGoose96 shares his path from being unemployed when he first graduated in 2011 to working as a paralegal for forty three thousand dollars per year. So now making well over two hundred thousand is an associate director at a large private equity fund in a business development function. Learn how he's able to make an internal pivot from compliance to business development at a large asset manager. What was the key inflection point in his career and now how he was ready to take advantage when the opportunity presented itself? Enjoy. Josh, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast.
YoloGoose96: [00:01:08] Thank you, Patrick. It's an honor and a privilege to be here.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:11] Great to be awesome. If you could just give the listeners a short summary.
YoloGoose96: [00:01:14] Sure. So I graduated in 2011 from the University of Michigan. I was an economics major. Graduated with three four. Didn't really have job offers. You know, the job market was totally different. Post-crisis eventually got a job as a paralegal for about a year thinking I wanted to do law school, which several of my friends did. I ended up on the buy side on a compliance role analyst level. I was in the midst of a ton of regulatory reform, spent a couple of years doing that and then landed in business development role within my same company. Really, just a great career change. Great opportunity. Spent a couple of years doing that, so almost seven years at one firm and then realized it was time for a change. And that's what brought me to my current role. Diversified manager based in Europe with a decent sized office in New York.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:10] Very cool. And you're out in New York, correct? Yes. Awesome. So let's start all the way back at Michigan. So you're you're kind of in your freshman sophomore years. Are you thinking like law school all the way? Law school is what I want and legal or what kind of.
YoloGoose96: [00:02:27] I don't think I was thinking anything down the road freshman and sophomore year. Yeah, I want to say
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:33] Kids today who are on top of it.
YoloGoose96: [00:02:36] The amount of people who reached out to me, you know, through Michigan, you know, like they have such a well-developed networking program and mentorship thing too. Yeah. And it's not that I it didn't exist. It certainly may have. I just didn't know what resources I had. And I think part of it too is just how much the internet has really grown in the past decade. So what I'll say is, you know, I really wanted to get into either sports management, sports marketing, a lot of my internships and summer gigs in college were focused around either sales. Marketing tried to get a job at CAA. It didn't really pan out. And then I spoke to someone who was a, you know, a connection of a connection through my parents, who was not necessarily encouraging about law school, but he saw a route. If I went and did the legal education that I could end up in a sports management or an agent type role. Eventually kind of had to rule it out, especially after 2009, when it just became readily apparent that whatever rules there were were getting filled by either people coming out of the Ivy League or people who just had connections, you know, out West or whatever the case may be.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:52] So like you mean for the sports management, it just became incredibly competitive as the economy collapsed. You are going to be graduating kind of in the depths of the recession.
YoloGoose96: [00:04:03] Close to it, and not definitely not as bad as the class of 09. But I think, you know, I think people my age would probably agree that the first few years were very. Testy in terms of are we all going to lose our jobs again?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:19] Yeah, fair. Ok, so you're you're kind of switching gears midway through college. So what happened like your for your internships where you're just trying to find anything? I mean, your grades were OK, they weren't stellar, but they were good. I mean, certainly not. They weren't, but they weren't horrible. It's not like you had a sub three or anything like that, and you're an econ major, which is pretty well respected, I assume, at Michigan. And like you said, the networking was really good. Were you not taking advantage of that or was it something more like you were just making a lot of kids do this in college? They just didn't really know what they want and they're kind of floating floating around.
YoloGoose96: [00:04:51] I think a lot of it is just trying to figure out for myself what I wanted to do. Financial services was always kind of in the back of my mind. I sent my resume to Goldman as a freshman and I had a three five my freshman year and they said, Oh, we won't look at anyone with below a three, seven five. And that was 2007. And things were maybe starting to decompose a little bit, but it certainly wasn't 08 09, right? And I said, OK, well, I'm just not going to do that because, you know, I want to have a social life. I'm in college and. You know, the economics program at Michigan is a little bit different from the business school and obviously, you know, there are plenty. I'm sure you've spoken to plenty of people from Ross where in 2011 you couldn't study abroad, which was a deal breaker for me to even consider applying. I wanted to study abroad, and that was the one thing I knew I want to do in college. But again, financial services were in the back of my mind, but really, I was focused on either sports management, sports marketing until it just was one of those. Ok, well, this probably isn't going to happen given the circumstances,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:54] But let's be honest, you had an amazing four years.
YoloGoose96: [00:05:57] Yeah, I did. It was. I mean, I loved college. Michigan was great. The football team was actually awful. While they're still haven't fully recovered.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:08] Yeah, I've heard I have a friend out here who's a big follower and it's been rough. It's been rough for him. But anyway, so yes, you studied abroad. And was it the University of New South Wales?
YoloGoose96: [00:06:20] Was that? Yes, Australia.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:22] Did you enjoy that?
YoloGoose96: [00:06:23] It was great. You know, the big thing for me was I. I'm also fluent in Spanish, so I was looking at Buenos Aires, Barcelona and Sydney, mostly because Australia so far away from New York, that it's one of those. Am I ever going to get a chance to go if I don't do this now? And that was the ultimate deal breaker for me.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:41] Yeah, I I lived in Buenos Aires for almost a year. Did you know that? I did not know that. Yeah. And my mom, my mother's Colombian, so I speak a little bit. I try to be stay fluent. I'm semi fluent, I say. Fair enough. My kids are helping me. But anyway, so OK,
YoloGoose96: [00:06:58] What is actually a Spanish teacher? So he and I get to practice a decent amount.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:02] Nice. That's awesome. Yeah. So you're so you're kind of coming up to graduation. Are you now getting are you freaking out? Do you have something lined up or are you unemployed right when you graduate?
YoloGoose96: [00:07:13] All the above, I thought I had something lined up. I was interviewing at a firm, a pretty large teach company that has a huge office in Ann Arbor. They ultimately decided to pass on my résumé because I didn't have the requisite experience, even though they knew I was a college senior. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do with that information, but I did graduate. I was a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:34] Little cold last second or was it you did an internship for them and then they pulled it?
YoloGoose96: [00:07:38] No, I was just interviewing for a role that, you know, like just essentially a lateral hire type role, I think. And I was very upfront with, Look, I'm still in university, you know, I'm still in college. Is that going to be an issue? And they said, No, we don't think so. We're looking it's an entry level role. And then they turned it into you just don't have the experience, right? But again, you know, that was kind of the post-crisis mentality where everyone's kind of taking a step lower probably than they were otherwise qualified for. So I did graduate, I didn't have an offer lined up. I was somewhat freaking out. I spent the first, essentially two months after graduation of just, you know, talking to as many people as I could. Linkedin was barely what it is today, you know, is really just pulling as many strings as I could, leveraging my parents' personal networks. They're both doctors. So they have nothing, no insight into financials.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:32] Totally useless like my dad to the doctor.
YoloGoose96: [00:08:36] Yes. Other than the personal network, by virtue of living around New York City, they couldn't really advise me on anything, necessarily.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:43] Ok, so you're. You're basically graduating, you're in a pretty tough spot. Do you go move home for a while?
YoloGoose96: [00:08:51] I had to and thankfully, you know, I grew up in Long Island. My parents were living there at the time, so it was easy enough to get to New York City for interviews to hop on a phone call.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:03] Oh, that's huge. Huge advantage.
YoloGoose96: [00:09:05] Huge. And it's one, you know, I'm very blessed to have had that because if I had, you know, been living in the Midwest or, you know, somewhere where that was definitely more affected by the actual housing crisis, who knows what my circumstances would have been. So I'm thankful to have been given several opportunities that I just kind of was born into.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:26] Yeah, I feel like if you were in the same situation and yet you were in, let's say, middle of nowhere, Idaho Southfield,
YoloGoose96: [00:09:35] Michigan is a pretty well-off area that was decimated in the financial
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:38] Crisis. Interesting. Yeah. So I mean, if you were there and. You didn't have the wherewithal to somehow get to New York, I mean, I almost would tell people, is there somewhere you can crash something you can do at night, working at night just to pay your rent and get into a tiny like share like a share, a three bedroom apartment with eight people or a two bedroom apartment with five people something crazy.
YoloGoose96: [00:10:03] I've done that, and after I moved to New York, we'll get to that. I'm sure later. But yeah,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:08] Because you know, the advantages of being in the city, whether it's in New York or another big in L.A. or Chicago, is cannot be understated for opportunities because you're just able to network so much more effectively. And if you treat the networking like a full time job and you somehow are able to work a side hustle to pay for your rent and your food, you just you're going to you're going to eventually hit it if you get if you if you get good at telling your story. Absolutely. So, OK, so you're living at home, you're doing the trips into the city and you're still looking at legal at this point. Are you looking at anything and everything?
YoloGoose96: 00:10:43] I had taken the LSAT, my junior year of college before I went abroad just to have a score that I could leverage between my. I lived in a frat house for a year and a half, so that obviously affected my ability to really focus and put in the effort required. But it was a decent LSAT score. Again, my GPA was fine. Yeah, and I was still considering law school. I ended up getting an offer around July of 2011. So, you know, two months after I graduated the law firm that I knew it wasn't the long term answer, but it was a job and it was again, 2011. Anything that was income was better than nothing, right? I was living with my parents for a couple of months. I moved into the city with one of my closest friends from growing up and
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:27] September you mind sharing what the pay was around for. That was like a 40.
YoloGoose96: 00:11:31] Not at all. It was 43 K a year with overtime. So that was nice. But again, you know, it was anything that could at least cover even if 80 percent of my paycheck was going to rent, at least I could live in the city.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:45] Yeah. So you're you're basically living in the city with your friend. You're getting paid just enough to survive, basically. And are you? How much overtime are you actually bringing home more like fifty five sixty K because you're doing so much overtime or is it forty hours?
YoloGoose96: [00:12:02] I mean, it was very much ebb and flow, and that law firm was far more dependent on what the partner was doing in terms of business. So I got assigned to a team where the partner was kind of treating it like he made enough for himself. And if there wasn't enough work to go around, then whatever. Yeah. So after two or three months, I realized there were a confluence of factors that said time to do something different already. Yeah, I moved to a corporate law firm pretty well established in New York, a couple of offices around the world, and that was far more interesting to me in terms of where I saw potentially a legal career going. Mm hmm. And also, the workload was considerably more so. You know, I think it's one of those things that you probably hear from investment bankers or bankers where the bonus and the pay is really good and you have no time to spend any of the money, so you end up saving a ton. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:57] So what was your pay jump from what, forty three thousand, let's say fifty thousand with overtime up to right?
YoloGoose96: [00:13:03] I think if you had annualized it, it probably would about 75 to 80.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:07] So it's a massive jump in pay. Yes. So massive jump in pay. You're actually not you're not like eating ramen noodles with like 20 roommates anymore.
YoloGoose96: [00:13:16] No, no. Mind you, I'm also in the office till midnight or two every morning, and I'm not getting banker pay. So you know everything is relative. I guess
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:26] You were. You were working for that extra pay. Let's put it that way. Absolutely. So your dollars per hour, probably more that different, but it's good. So you're kind of developing that work ethic to at least a little bit. You're you're getting through the grind. Tell me. So the first place, you're out pretty fast because you saw the writing on the wall. There wasn't consistent work, necessarily. You get to a bigger corporate law firm. Tons of work, you're grinding, you're not getting you're not you're getting paid pretty well for most people in the country, but for New York, you know, it's it's good. But you probably wanted more. Tell me what made you kind of start looking around and what were you looking at in that next round because you didn't have much time to recruit, right?
YoloGoose96: [00:14:08] Not really, so I was at that, the second law firm for a year and about a month or two in that time. Hurricane Sandy also happened, which was a pretty formative couple weeks, I would say. But after I took the June 2012 LSAT and while working at this law firm, you know, you get to work with a couple of different partners, a couple of different associates, you know, different teams. And it was a really great experience covering M&A securitizations, really just kind of everything in financial services. The biggest thing that happened was I would talk to associates and the one who I really respect and I'm still in touch with today pulled me into his office and said, Look, this is really good work. You don't want to be an attorney. Go do something else. And that kind of stuck with me because as I started hearing that more and more and seeing my friends in law school who were going through it, you know they did. Summer associate. Gigs at that point and were like their weekends would be shot and everyone in the law for industry kind of knows that you're a summer associate working terrible hours, it's only going to get worse from there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:21] Yeah, they're miserable.
YoloGoose96: [00:15:23] I don't know that my friends are necessarily miserable, I mean, some of them are still doing it and they actually
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:27] At the state level, what they do. You can get paid really well, but you got to suffer for a while to get those top rungs. You really have to put in the time. It's similar to medicine, though, you know, residency, you suffer for
YoloGoose96: [00:15:41] Sure, and the pay is a lot better than it is in medicine and you don't have to do seven years of residency and all that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:46] Yeah, yeah. So but I really love it if you really love it. But so tell me why this person brought you into his office and said, like, don't do it.
YoloGoose96: [00:15:56] I think he I mean, he ended up leaving a couple of months later. Go get his MBA. So maybe it was also for him. It just wasn't the right decision. Right now, I had the benefit of hearing and coming to that realization before I took out a quarter of a million dollars for student loans, which that was the ultimate deal breaker for me. I think, you know, you look at how bad student the student loan crisis is in America today. It's a trillion and a half dollars at this point. I didn't want to. The, you know, to take out money for a job I did to go to school, I didn't want to do you get a job I didn't want when I could just avoid all of that entirely was the why I ultimately decided not to go to law school, I think.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:39] So then what were you thinking in terms of alternatives? I mean, I know you ended up. I know where you ended up, but tell me how you came to that. Like, was there somebody who kind of set you down and started explaining things to you? Was it because you were working in capital markets M&A that that intrigued you more? Like you said, Hey, I want to go to the finance wrap.
YoloGoose96: [00:16:55] Honestly, the company that ended up hiring me for the legal and compliance role was a client of that law firm, and I knew them by name and. You know, I started poking around, you know, websites, career pages, and they had an analyst level opening on the legal side and I said, OK, great, you know, if it's, you know, even if it's just doing much of the same, but at least it's a foot in the door that's perfect for me. And it end up being totally different because it was posted under legal, but it was much more of a compliance role. Mm-hmm. And again, you know, to just get my foot in the door and really say, like, OK, I'm on a path that I think I want to go, or at least it's a closer to the path. But that was the ultimate decision.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:40] You're getting under the right, you're getting under a financial firm, an umbrella, but you're still in the legal or compliance capacity. So were you? Were you telling yourself like, I know I can make that leap eventually or was there somebody saying, Hey, this has been done before? Because from what I know, that's not an easy leap to make going legal compliance. You know what many people are like?
YoloGoose96: [00:18:01] I don't know that that was even a twinkle in my eye. At that point, I was just happy to be at a financial services firm. Ok? And at least have some semblance of a career path. Ok. And I ended up doing compliance for almost five years. So, you know, I did enjoy the nature of the work to some extent.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:20] Tell me about them. What were you doing? Like what types of compliance? What anything? You could tell the listeners that I know nothing about
YoloGoose96: [00:18:27] Compliance without everyone's eyes rolling to
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:30] The back of their head? Yeah, let's see. I'm getting bored.
YoloGoose96: [00:18:32] A lot of it was around Dodd-Frank and some of the European. Regulations that are coming into effect, so it was a lot of it was just project tracking where, I mean, it is monkey work. Yeah, it's you know, you have three different attorneys or BP's directors, MDS running a project and it's delegating who's going to cover know, making sure that these trading regulations when they come into effect, we have the framework in place. Do we have the reporting infrastructure? What do we need to tell clients like if we're going to need to change investment guidelines, we would work with those teams. Everything that you can kind of imagine, the regulatory compliance space, given the scale of the firm was in scope and they do, you know, they had hedged hedge funds, private equity fund of funds, business standard, long short equity long only. Etfs, if you name it, they do it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:19:35] You feel like getting exposure to all that stuff was helpful in terms of your overall perspective and knowledge of how this firm worked in finance in general.
YoloGoose96: [00:19:43] Without question, I would say the biggest inflection point for me was two years after I'd started, I had been promoted from outlets to associate. By then, the SEC came knocking and said, Hey, we're going to run a pretty routine examination on one of your advisor entities. Here's like the list of everything we need you to produce, and it was 60 to 70 different individual line items, not a small examination, and that was just the first letter that they sent us. After a couple, you know, a couple of months go by that we're in the throes of the examination, they're looking specifically at the firm's fixed income business, partly because in 2014 was a giant high yield dislocation where ETFs Navy was totally unrelated or really just diverging wildly from the actual basket of underlying securities. And the SEC wanted to understand from our firm and with two or three other firms who are pretty well developed in that space. What did you see? Explain to us how, like, if this happens again, how do we correct for it that type of thing? Yeah, but was for me, a personal crash course in the fixed income and high yield, which I found really interesting. I got to work with a bunch of business managers and I was on a first name basis at that point with the head of fixed income.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:07] That's cool. That's really cool. So, yeah, so tell me is that that was kind of the inflection point where you developed a relationship right internally?
YoloGoose96: [00:21:15] For sure. I think one of my greatest skill sets is just the ability to cultivate relationships with people. Hmm. It's something I definitely don't take for granted. But at the same time, it's a recognition that I just don't have a lot of the technical skills by not doing the banking or research right curricula, either in college or having that internship and training experience. So I, you know, you do it, you're good at. And I was able to really develop strong relationships inside the company. Eventually parlayed that into a second role in compliance, which was essentially being the point person for advisory any time a portfolio manager or a trader ran into a compliance bloc under internal systems.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:01] Ok. And so then like what was next for you, what was did you see, Hey, I'm going to be a path? Is this like a promotion?
YoloGoose96: [00:22:09] Would you say it was a lateral thing? They just set it up to make it sound like my ceiling would be higher, but I think they were just like, we just lost a VP and we can backfill with an associate who knows the company even better.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:21] Yeah, fair. Ok. So tell me about like, how did that develop?
YoloGoose96: [00:22:30] And so they hired a new director for the team. We got along really well, did that for another year or two, and eventually I just said, You know what? This really isn't going anywhere. I really need to do something different. And I've hit the road at the end of the road with compliance. So I pulled more strings internally, you know, use my network at the company as best as I could. And one of the other groups and businesses that I covered was really just the institutional sales team. So everything from, you know, your small single family office where the guy sold the company and he has a couple of hundred million dollars to invest up through your mega pensions, that entire realm was covered by one business at the firm. They had a dedicated alternative sales team, which covered on the more liquid side private equity infrastructure real estate down to their more liquid alternative hedge fund business. One of my really good friends at the time, still in touch with he was his team had a couple openings, met with him, met with him.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:35] Sorry, was he on the hedge fund or the or the? He was. Yeah. Ok.
YoloGoose96: [00:23:39] And again, the team was, you know, they had a pool of associates analysts who covered really just every different business line. It was more segmented the more you were on the team. But if you join as an analyst, you know you got to get a good exposure to everything. I was running his associate, so I was more dedicated on the hedge fund side, met with the hiring manager, met with a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:01] Couple of listeners, like as a large asset manager. What what this team means. This doesn't mean you guys are running. You guys aren't actually putting the money to work or is it your you're coming up with like products? Or is it an actual hedge fund with where you're raising a great question? Or are you or are you like when you say clients? Explain it, explain to listeners like what you mean by the client? So yeah, I get it. The single family office all the way up to the huge pension funds. But what are you doing for them? Are you actually creating a pool of capital and investing that in direct as a hedge fund?
YoloGoose96: [00:24:35] So it is a mix of both the firms hedge fund of Funds business where they would take investor capital. And, you know, if they want to do a diversified, you know, multi strategy. Hedge funds, you know, like the firm, had relationships with really a number of different funds on the street, right? But they also had a direct hedge fund business where they would have portfolio managers who would run some long only capital, maybe hedge funds or mutual funds or use it strategies in Europe, more retail oriented products. But then they would also be able to maybe not run a best ideas book. But if you don't have the ability to go short because of the 1940 Act or, you know, retail limitations, this was an ability for them to really run and not untethered, but essentially their best ideas. Capital book for lack of better description.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:30] Ok, so there was still kind of a direct investment component to it.
YoloGoose96: [00:25:35] Yes, although we were not necessarily on the investment teams, we were really the fund raiser is the business development team. Got it. We would partner with what we what the firm would call product strategists and portfolio managers to create a more targeted narrative. Depending what the client was, each individual client was looking for perfect.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:56] Ok, that helped me a lot. Frame it in my mind. Oh, yeah, of course. Ok, because yeah, I feel like if I can't understand, some of the listeners don't understand it either. Ok, so your took me
YoloGoose96: [00:26:05] A year to iron out that, so it's still pretty choppy.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:09] Yeah, it's still confusing because when you have such a large asset manager controlling so much money, there they are both in the Fund of Funds business, meaning they're allocating dollars to specific fund managers. But they're also kind of creating products themselves. Individual products right with yes, the portfolio, the product manager and all that stuff and coming up with a large endowment comes in and says, Hey, we want to allocate to XYZ industry with this type of risk reward profile. Help us create that exactly. Figure it out.
YoloGoose96: [00:26:43] At least on the alternative side, you know, there would be a dedicated person to cover the relationship writ large where they might do the long only equity, the fixed income book multi asset, whatever the case may be. And so we would kind of be the dedicated adults coverage, really the really informed team to speak to.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:05] Got it. And so your role as an associate coming in there you are, kind of, as you said, associate a little more dedicated words. Analyst was more general in that group. You're more dedicated on the hedge fund side. So tell me, what did that mean? What did your day to day look like for the most part?
YoloGoose96: [00:27:20] I would say it was probably a mix of like, I guess would be 40, 40 20, where the first 40 percent is just new business, you know, trying to find potential clients. If we use an industry, get database or other internal sources of knowledge to say, OK, we know that these three large scale investors are looking at long, short equity, but we have these hedge funds that might be of interest. These this group is looking is really into AI or machine learning and how that can affect their equity book. We have a whole platform for that. If they're just looking for multi strategy, global macro, we can help them with that too. So really, it's identifying clients, identifying or prospective clients, finding the strategies that may be best for the best fit, how to make them full clients of the firm. Right. The other 40 next 40 percent would be existing clients, you know, ongoing reporting, due diligence questionnaires. If a portfolio outperformed or underperformed in a given quarter, we would have that kind of conversation. And then the other 20 percent was support for other teams. Just general, corporate, what have you.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:36] So the 40 percent were with existing clients, with the reporting stuff where you on the phone with the clients or was there like a there was a relationship manager and you were helping support that relationship manager?
YoloGoose96: [00:28:45] It was a mix. There were certain dedicated alternatives platforms that we were essentially the full relationship manager. Yeah. Most of the time, it would be like with the pension plan or something we would we would be on the phone to talk about the book while maybe they had someone who maybe not the deputy CIO or that level, but a more holistic investment analyst. And one of the other people from the company who governed the relationship as a whole.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:15] So interesting. It's confusing and interesting, like how things stay organized because it's such a behemoth, such a large
YoloGoose96: [00:29:22] It's several overlapping circles that all are kind of accomplishing the same goal. Got it. Ok, so there's a lot of it does create accountability. And if someone's out of the office or whatever happens, it does, you know, it maintains continuity. So I think for that, it was definitely beneficial.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:39] Yeah, yeah. Ok, so fair enough. So, you know, you made that switch after four or five years of the firm, almost four years plus at the firm, from the compliance to this kind of biz dev. I'll call it Biz Dev Roll. Yeah.
YoloGoose96: [00:29:52] I want to. Overall, it was almost seven years I was at that firm. Yeah, which I think, you know, for our generation is a pretty long time to do anything. I remember when I it hit me that I'd been at the firm longer than I did college or even school. Yeah, and it was just one of those. Wow, I need to leave and just get a drink somewhere.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:12] Yeah, it was. It was depressing you a little bit from.
YoloGoose96: [00:30:17] I mean, it wasn't depressing because I really enjoyed it. But at the same time, it's like, you know, you do anything for a long time and it just kind of it becomes a part of you.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:26] Yeah. So what was the thought process? I want to try something new is that was that there's an answer like what else is out there? Or was it did you think ever think, Hey, I'm going to stay here long term, I'm going to stay at this large asset?
YoloGoose96: [00:30:39] My first thought was, you know, like, why can't I just stay and, you know, get promoted every few years and just, you know, build a career at one firm? Yeah, I think the big thing for me was, you know, like I got married in twenty eighteen and above all else, like between that I did the CFA curriculum, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. The big thing for me was like, we're trying to buy a house and I recognize and heard from friends, I heard from people who left the firm that you get paid a lot better once you leave these walls. So that was kind of the ultimate push for me to really start thinking about it as happy and as much as I enjoy the work.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:24] Tell me again, hey, and how it progressed, so obviously, I assume with compliance it was still under six figures or around six figures like the one hundred one hundred and twenty k my
YoloGoose96: [00:31:34] Last year of compliance. It was all in six figures, which included a pretty sizable bonus component. The issue for me was the base pay was still pretty low. Got it. And that was the harder thing for me because I mean.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:50] But even when you jump to the business development arm as an associate didn't, it didn't take.
YoloGoose96: [00:31:54] When I moved because it was halfway through the year, they said, Well, we'll make you whole at the next promotion cycle. Not that I got promoted, but they basically brought me up to what I will assume was around the standard
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:13] Basic one hundred twenty five or something.
YoloGoose96: [00:32:16] It was one oh six at that point. Which again? I thought, you know, it was better than I had been making in compliance, but I kind of knew in the back of my mind that if I left, it would be higher elsewhere. It's part of that, too, is
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:32] The type of role you were doing, like business dev and that type of stuff. Exactly. Did you start talking to people at smaller asset management funds and private equity funds in terms of like what kind of where you could bring your skill set? Like when did you so you kind of woke up one day you're like, you're married, you want to buy a house like this isn't cutting it. So what was the next step for you? Did you start networking like crazy on LinkedIn? Because LinkedIn at this point is actually really built
YoloGoose96: [00:32:59] By 20 16, LinkedIn was actually pretty solid. Now, I think the thing for me was when I was in compliance, too. It was the field was growing so rapidly that even after two years, recruiters were reaching out to me. And if I left, then what? I still be in compliance now. Probably, yeah. But at the same time, I would have certainly gotten a, you know, the I would have had more comprehensive, I would say pay increases just by virtue of bouncing around the industry more or going to a firm with higher margins. So I just had I had a pretty good network of recruiters that I was in touch with people who were looking, if not if they were only compliance recruiters, there were people they had people that they could connect me to on the business development side. So I just it's not that I was. Every year I get in touch with recruiters and think about it, but it was definitely helpful to have that resource. Linkedin or personal connections to just talk to people, see what's going on and, you know, toss my resume into the ring or, you know, put up for consideration.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:10] And so how before for this, this next jump, this biz dev role that you jumping into? How many places did you interview at? How long was that process, did you? Did you get more aggressive before you jumped? Or was it something where like, you had been looking for a couple of years, just kind of passively?
YoloGoose96: [00:34:29] I was fairly passive about it up until about twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. I got married in twenty eighteen, so everything got kind of put on hold professionally at that point. And then twenty nineteen I took.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:42] Why do you say everything I put on hold professionally?
YoloGoose96: [00:34:44] Oh, I just between getting married, the dealing with all the wedding logistics, I'm sure there's somewhere there's a listener hearing this and just nodding solemnly. So, you know, you just prioritize certain things as they come about. And for me, it was, Look, I'm getting married, I'm going on my honeymoon. And I couldn't even take the CFA Level three exam that year because they moved it three weeks later when my wedding was that day and my wife was not going to let me sit and take the exam in a tuxedo and just run to our wedding venue.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:19] Yeah, yeah, I would not be good.
YoloGoose96:: [00:35:22] No. So I took the Level three exam in 2019 and focusing on that to make sure I passed. I couldn't really network or interview anywhere, right? And then after I took the exam, it was OK. I think it's really it's time to start putting your foot down and seeing what else is out there. Got exam results on in August, about a week or two before Labor Day, so at that point, no one's even checking their inbox for resume submissions connected with recruiter in person. He put a couple of different things in front of me, one of which is the role I ended up accepting where I am today. And, you know, it was just one of those, you know, you put the comma in the CFA after your name and people really just start paying more attention to your resume.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:13] Hmm, interesting. Tell me about that. Do you think that this because CFA, oftentimes I think of it as someone gets a CFA, if they want to go on the market side, right, they want to do something at a not too major hedge fund whatnot? Absolutely. Business development, I don't often see CFA is that is that incorrect? Do a lot of people in business development on the asset management side have the CFA?
YoloGoose96: 00:36:38] So definitely, say my previous employer, it's kind of throughout the firm, you can find people who have the their charter in any business line. Yeah, for me, you know, I as much as I like the business development space, I knew when I was at my previous role that sales was a little too. Away from the markets, I think if that makes
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:01] Sense, it does, yeah.
YoloGoose96: [00:37:03] And I really wanted to get more on the product or the strategy side, which is really the role that I ended up accepting was the perfect blend of sales support covering helping the actual business of all development managers, sales people, but also kind of being the liaison or a nexus point between the portfolio managers and the investment teams to understand the risk profiles, the exposures, geographic, you know, market caps like essentially the fields in which in which each fund is playing and understanding why, you know, Fund X may not be a good fit, but Fund Y actually is a perfect fit, right?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:47] So just being able to be closer to the strategic, market oriented side of the business, not just being pure sales? Exactly, yeah. And so that was more interesting to you. I agree. I think that's cool that you're able to kind of bridge those two. I feel like that's such a common theme, whether it's technical skills, sales skills, it's like the people who really start to accelerate in their career tend to have a blend of two and then find the role that kind of leverages both.
YoloGoose96: [00:38:15] I would have to agree. I mean, I think, you know, just I mean, just learning and doing the CFA curriculum itself is extremely beneficial. You know, having never done accounting, you know, when I was in undergrad having never really done, you know, fixed income or equity valuation, even the Gordon growth model, I think I remember seeing that at some point when I took like high school calculus. Yeah. And. You know, you do that, and that's when it comes back to you. But just having it fresh in my mind and being able to relearn all of that, it gives you additional context when you're sitting in a client meeting and you're hearing the portfolio manager talk about VAR or value at risk or. You know, relative exposures. It's just that much more beneficial, I think, to get a form your own holistic opinion.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:06] So you're a big proponent of the CFI.
YoloGoose96: [00:39:08] I would have to be yes. Yeah.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:11] Do you feel like? And you've got a big pay bump because of that or do you feel like you've got a big pay bump because you finally made the jump?
YoloGoose96: [00:39:19] I would say it's a confluence of factors. I don't know if I had stayed at the previous firm like what my comp would have looked like after if I had stayed and gone into the next cycle with the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:28] Designation sharing a range of what you ended up negotiating.
YoloGoose96: [00:39:32] My base now is about one forty one, forty five or so with a 30 percent bonus. So all in it's about two to twenty.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:40] That's amazing. That's great. There's a huge rate. Yeah. And tell me a little bit about specifically the like. So the interviews went well and they seem to like, like your background. I assume when you're in there, obviously you got the offer. Tell me about, yeah, tell me about how that that process went, though in terms of were there any tough questions? How did you prep for it, if at all? Did you just kind of go into it with? Like any technical like brushing up on the CFA stuff, or did you brush up at all on like your compliance stuff or did you just kind of more brush up on your own resume and kind of the project you worked on?
YoloGoose96: [00:40:20] I think the biggest thing is with any interview, it's knowing who you are and what your value add is and how it relates to the role for which you're interviewing. I didn't have like, you know, there was no technical assessment. I didn't have to provide a writing sample, which is funny because we're now interviewing people for junior role on like what will be my team and they all have to submit resumes or on top of resume is like a cover letter in a writing sample. And my only thought was, I'm so happy I didn't
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:54] Have to do this. Ok, fair enough. So yeah, go sorry. Go ahead. Now you go ahead, you go ahead. So you're saying the interview.
YoloGoose96: 00:41:05] I think, you know, the biggest thing again is knowing yourself and knowing it your own narrative. You know, I
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:12] What was your narrative? What worked for you?
YoloGoose96: [00:41:15] My narrative was I had sales experience. I had operational experience. And by virtue of getting the CFA charter for me, it was I didn't an how I want to do sales. I'm in a sales support type role or I will be should you hire me. And I want to make sure that all the people who are actually on the road pitching meeting with prospective clients, they have all the resources that they need. They have the bullet points for each fund. They know what the multiple on invested capital is because we're mostly a PE firm. What the what our comparables and public market look like, what our competitors are doing based on whatever public info we can attain. So it's really. I basically framed it as I know what the sales process looks like. I've gone through a comprehensive sales cycle. I just don't want to do that. I want to help you do it. And thankfully, that message resonated pretty well.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:17] Did you do that intentionally based on what the job description was or did you do that just based on knowing what you wanted to do?
YoloGoose96: [00:42:24] Partly both. I knew I didn't want to do sales. I didn't want to be, you know, traveling 80 percent of the week. You know, seeing my wife and future kids, you know, a couple of days, three or four days instead of six or seven. Yeah. That was the big thing for me, and also I knew that the role they weren't looking for someone who wanted to ultimately become a salesperson, they needed someone who was happy to be part of the business development function, but was more focused on the product, more focused on
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:55] Supporting the
YoloGoose96: [00:42:56] Exactly, but also knowing much more comprehensively the investment strategies. And that's where I think, again, the CFA curriculum really came in handy.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:05] Are there a lot of seats like that? I assume the fun has to be a certain size to build to support a role like that.
YoloGoose96: [00:43:11] I mean, I think if you know, if you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:13] Go to got to be like a five hundred million plus, at least like probably a billion plus worth
YoloGoose96: [00:43:17] Several billion.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:18] Yeah, yes. My guess is like this type of role wouldn't happen at a billion dollar fund or five hundred million dollar fund. It's more like. That's like a nice. Your seat is I feel like, a really nice to have and makes you make the team much more effective. But to get the leverage that you provide, you almost need to have that a little bit of scale, I assume.
YoloGoose96: [00:43:38] I would agree. I mean, in terms of headcount at the firm, it's above 500 people, less than a thousand, I think. So it's, you know, it's a large company. You know, it's not like JPMorgan that employs two hundred thousand people around the world. But right, it's still big enough where you have that operating infrastructure and you have more specialized seats, I would say.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:59] So tell me how you know you've been on this job and it's still pretty new for you. But is it kind of what you expected? Do you feel like you went in eyes wide open?
YoloGoose96: [00:44:08] Yeah. Overall, I think I was definitely better prepared for this, and even when I moved internally from my previous role, from compliance to the business development side where I kind of I don't want to say a rested on my laurels and it was like, Oh, well, I've been at this firm for five, four or five years already. I know exactly what this role entails, and it's like, actually surprise you don't. This one, because I had been is really a similar type of role, and I had that type of experience. Yeah. You know, the everything else that comes with it is just knowing the firm itself, which is, you know, that tech platform that you really enjoyed at your previous role. We don't have that. There's no internal chat box that, you know you can just fire off a quick message to like. Right? You know, even internationally, because we the firm is based out of Europe. You know, you have to dial like 12 different numbers before you even get to the actual phone number, the person you're trying to call.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:06] Have you tried to push them to invest in technology and like the internal chat and the what it is, slack type of thing or?
YoloGoose96: [00:45:14] I only have so much capital I can burn on that front and I'm not trying to burn it all in the first four months in there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:19] That's fair. Maybe in a year, maybe in a year, you'll be like, you know, guys, we could be a lot more efficient with this. Yeah. Very cool. Anything else before we call it, you'd like to share with the listeners in terms of kind of looking back what you would tell yourself or what you want to share with your listeners. Because I mean, you've had kind of a very non-traditional path. I mean, compliance to business a at a what I call a P fund, basically. Yeah. Is not traditional.
YoloGoose96: [00:45:48] I mean, what I would tell myself if I can talk myself like, you know, my senior year of college after that last interview before I graduated fell through. Yeah, and then I ended up tracking my BlackBerry into the wall. Definitely don't do that. Don't ever throw a phone. But also, I would probably say. I don't know, don't worry. You know, things always work themselves out. And especially coming from, you know, the amount of people I think who lost their shirts in 2007 2008. Maybe that rings, you know, that falls on deaf ears. But at the same time? You know, there's nothing wrong with taking your time to figure out what it is you want to do, because if you feel that you need to run headlong into something, and it turns out that wasn't the right decision. That's far worse than taking your time and figuring out what it is you want to do. Even it takes you five years to get where you think you want to be.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:49] It's interesting that you say that because we've had some other I had a guest on recently that said, you know, at least for investment banking, they're like, People tell you, you know, take your time, figure out what you want to do. He's like, That's a lie. He's like, because if you don't, if you don't know when you get into undergrad that you want to go invest in banking, for example, the boat sails really early. But I think your perspective is that there's a lot of other ways to be successful besides investment banking and look at yourself as an example of you've kind of scaled up. You've been out of school for a while, but you're still gotten to a point. That's pretty incredible. For and on any one scale, so
YoloGoose96: [00:47:33] I would like to think so. And, you know, look, if you do the banking route and you go actually to maybe an emerging PE or hedge fund, whatever the case may be and you know, maybe you end up, you know, making a couple million dollars by the time you're twenty eight, you know, that's great. You know, that is far more of the, you know, three standard deviation per person, you know? That's it's a very difficult thing to accomplish, and it's not that people shouldn't try. It's just that it's OK if you try it and you don't succeed because you've got a lot of time to figure it out, you've got a lot of other options. And you know, the first thing that happened to me in college was I sent my resume to Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs said, Your resume isn't high enough. Would I even consider you? And you know, it's like, OK, well, do I take offense to that? And I sulk? Or do I just say, OK, well, let's find a different route.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:48:33] Well, it sounds like it was really interesting about your story is that even though you are in compliance, you're bettering yourself through that CFA curriculum and putting in the hours to do that. So you didn't just sit in the you were you were still building something, you know, you're still investing in yourself, if that makes sense. And I think that's an important point where people can get into a back role, even if maybe they hate their life. They hate their job, but they don't do anything about it. They just complain versus like you actually started building relationships internally. I think that's a really important takeaway. You're building relationships really kind of made a pivot within the firm while you were building up your profile through a strong credential. I think it's I
YoloGoose96: [00:49:18] Think I mean, you're touching on something that I would love to expound on further. But you know, we've been doing this for almost an hour at this point.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:25] Go ahead. Well, expound.
YoloGoose96: [00:49:27] The big thing for me is, you know, if you're not learning or if you're not constantly bettering yourself, everyone around you probably is. So you're by virtue of being idle, you're falling behind. Whether it's a CFA curriculum, I mean, I also took the GMAT and as I mentioned, I took the LSAT, you know, I kind of looked at everything. And am I still considering business school today? Yeah. I just don't know if it's necessarily going to continue me on the path that I see for myself. But at the same time, you know, I think the big thing is if you don't like something about what you're doing, the worst thing you can do is worry or complain because if you have the ability to change it. You can then do something, and if it's something that's completely out of your hands, then there's no sense in worrying because it will resolve in its own due course. Or you'll it will change enough to the point where you have the ability to do something about it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:50:28] Did you feel like that ever when you were in compliance? Like, I don't like this.
YoloGoose96: [00:50:32] Oh yeah, of course. But I mean, you know, I I every day in my article, which I love 90 percent of the time, there's that 10 percent where you're slamming your head into your desk. I think that's, you know, it's the nature of anything. People who really enjoy I banking and even if they make the jump to the private equity. Research at the end of the day, you know, if you're looking doing the operational or due diligence. If you've been doing it for 10 years, it's probably pretty rote at this point, but you still got to do it.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:01] Yeah, yeah, any job, even what even what I do with Wall Street Oasis, I feel like sometimes I'm slamming my head against the wall. Of course. And it's like, there's a lot of fun stuff that I get to do, like talk to people like you, but I do. Maybe it's a it's a fun part of the job. I love these podcasts, I love talking to people. Thank you for taking the time. I think he was really insightful. A lot of people.
YoloGoose96: [00:51:24] So I appreciate that and thank you for having me and, you know, looking forward to staying in touch.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:29] All right, Ben. Thanks. Thanks, Patrick, 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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