Here’s a picture of me in 2018:
I was a workhorse. Back then, I was consistently clocking 100+ hour work weeks in the middle of the Memphis summer. People on Wall Street fantasize about this level of work ethic, but I can’t say that I was particularly exceptional. This is simply what work was like for my team and I. Most days, I woke up at 4 AM, strapped on my work pants and work boots for the day, grabbed the meal I had prepped on Sunday out of the fridge, ate whatever food I could fit into my mouth on my commute, and when I finally arrived, powered through the work laid across the shop until 10 PM. I had a guy on my team that would literally shower and sleep on the shop floor.
I had the foundation of a sickening work ethic, so when I realized I needed to make a career transition, I poured the same mental effort into it as I had back when I was working on large scale art installations. At the height of my transition to Wall Street, most of my days looked like this:
Wake up at 4 AM and read the CFA curriculum for a couple hours
Take a break for breakfast
4-hour study session for the SIE, Series 7, Series 66
Take a break for lunch
4-hours of DataCamp, Algoexpert, and Coursera work, etc.
Throughout the day, I would then mix in calls with professionals, networking, and more career research.
On the weekends, I’d put in 3-6 hours of the same routine. From April to November, I was basically learning 24/7. Even when I was cooking, or doing chores around the house, I had an OpenCourseWare lecture playing in the background. When I finally secured a spot in the Viable Edu fintech apprenticeship program, I didn’t ease up - I doubled-down!
Participating in Viable Edu gave me an additional eight months of learning before I was a full-time employee at BondCliQ, my current company. This put me at over 5,000 hours of study before I was ever paid as a full-time employee in June of 2021.
A lot of people think that you can let up once you get hired, but that couldn’t be the furthest from the truth. I quickly learned that even though I had secured a full time job, I couldn’t afford to stop pushing myself. There were things I needed to learn on the job to make key decisions for the benefit of the company, in addition to capital market concepts I wanted to learn for my own development. It was not until about three months ago that I really took a moment to slow down and reflect on my journey so far.
I did not succeed initially everytime and I racked up a lot of failures along the way, but I did keep trying and eventually that momentum carried me over.
Was there some morning where I woke up at 5 AM? Yes.
Was there some morning where I woke up at 10 AM? Also Yes.
Were there days where I did not see the end in sight? Absolutely.
Did the closest people in my life question some of the decisions I was making? You bet.
Did I pass every exam and every class the first time? Nope.
Did I let anyone become an obstacle to me and my success? No!
I used the people who doubted me as fuel. I didn’t need everyone’s approval - I had a mission and I was going to complete it. I was going to outwork everyone around me until it was clear that I was the only person for the job, and I continued with this mindset even after I got hired. Some people may read this and think I’m hypercompetitive or too focused on my career or money, but I was desperate and determined. I’m not one to believe in luck, but I think that if you set your mind to something and you work hard enough at it, luck just might find you.
Here’s the thing: if you practice anything for long enough, you’ll improve. If you pour your energy into learning a new skill, you’ll eventually master it. And if you pour your energy into doom scrolling and wishing things were different, well, you’ll get better at doom scrolling and wishing. You get to decide how much you will improve and how quickly. I guarantee that if you set this standard for self-study you will find an opportunity. Even if you don’t have the time to spend over eight hours a day studying like I did, I encourage you to make appointments with yourself and to take them as seriously as you would if you were meeting with someone else. Even if you can only put in an hour of study a day, at the end of the month, you can have over thirty hours and at the end of a year, nearly 400.
Here are five takeaways I can share from this experience that will help you persist on your own journey no matter where you are going:
Embrace the discomfort
Change is hard. Growing up, I switched schools often, so I was no stranger to first days. Let me tell you: they’re never easy. Each time, I’d get butterflies in my stomach, and I’d worry that I’d struggle to fit in, but within weeks, I’d be shooting hoops with other kids like we had known one another for years. This not only taught me that change is inevitable, but it helped me to lean into it, and see change as an opportunity. Today, I have a network of friends all across the country, and I consider my ability to make fast friends to be one of my greatest strengths. Change will be uncomfortable. Hang in there. Something is waiting on the other side that will be worth it.
Keep showing up
As a senior engineer, one of the best parts of my job is getting to mentor junior employees. A key piece of advice I always give them is to keep showing up. I don’t mean this just in the literal sense (although, yes, continuing to show up to your job is helpful). Often, the most skilled people weren’t the most talented when they started off. In fact, I tend to find talent overrated. Talent is natural aptitude or skill, when a beginner seems to instinctively “get it”. But if that talent is never nurtured, it isn’t worth a whole lot. This is where showing up comes in. There’s a saying that I think applies here: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”. I’ll take tenacity over talent any day.
Accept failure and rejection as friends, but don’t let them define you
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t experience rejection during this process. I sent hundreds of messages to professionals in the industry while I was trying to transition, and most of those messages remain unanswered to this day. Luckily, the few people that did answer made it all worth it. If they couldn’t personally help, I’d ask them to connect me with someone in their network who could. For me, it was a numbers game. For every dozen “no’s”, I’d get one yes, so I made it my mission to get as many “no’s” as possible. I didn’t take them personally. They could have been dealing with intense work or family pressure, or they may not have been able to help and didn’t know how to respond. Regardless, it wasn’t my job to figure out why people told me no, it was my job to figure out how to get to yes. Rejection or success can’t be what defines you. It’s just you and your willingness to work.
Don’t let your successes define you either - there’s always room for improvement. Success is not the time to sit back and become complacent
Take another shot
And don’t stop taking them, even when you’ve made it. When I was younger, I used to think that you’d get your one shot to make it, and if you missed it, well, tough luck. Now that I’m older, I think of opportunities as stops on a train. As long as you know which train you’re on, you can be certain that there will be another stop at some point, you just have to be ready. Failure is just practice for your success. Dust yourself off and keep practicing so that when you get another shot, you’re ready.
Compete against yourself. This is your race - don’t compete against anyone else!
It can be easy to look at where others are in their careers and feel like you have to keep up, or worse, that you're not enough. But what’s really behind those LinkedIn posts? That person could be deeply unsatisfied with their job, or they could be going through difficulties in their personal lives. This job may not be their dream at all. And does it even matter? At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide on the kind of life you want, and there might not be a social media blueprint for what that life is going to look like. This is a good thing! Your life should be built around the things you love to do, and that can be as unique as you are. If you don’t define what you want out of your life and your career, it’s easy for someone else to come along and tell you. There’s no joy in finishing a race you didn’t want to run in the first place, so make sure you’re defining what your race looks like and how you plan on finishing.
I hope this helped illustrate some of the challenges I encountered in my journey from unemployed to Wall Street. If you’re interested in learning more about my journey, check out my blog and make sure to subscribe so that you get notified each time I post. If you liked what you read, please share with your network. Until next time!