Target Audience: The podcast is aimed at young individuals, such as college or MBA students, looking to break into public market investing.
Job Search Strategy: Emphasizes the importance of personalized outreach when applying for jobs, suggesting that applicants should demonstrate genuine interest and research about the firms they contact.
Investment Credentials: Recommends obtaining a CFA Level 1 certification as a signal of commitment and competence in finance, especially for those transitioning from non-investment roles.
Practical Experience: Encourages opening a brokerage account to gain firsthand investing experience, which can be discussed during interviews.
Investment Pitch: Highlights the necessity of having a well-researched investment pitch that goes beyond basic financial metrics and includes unique insights or scuttlebutt research.
Substack Strategy: Advises starting a Substack under a pseudonym to develop investment ideas and writing skills, which can also help build a network and attract job opportunities.
Networking and Outreach: Suggests leveraging Substack and personalized emails to connect with industry professionals, offering to share investment ideas as a way to engage and build relationships.
Continuous Improvement: Stresses the importance of feedback and iteration in improving investment skills and writing, positioning oneself for serendipitous opportunities in the investment field.
Transcript
All right, you're about to listen to the yet another value podcast with your host me, Andrew Walker. Today's podcast is a little bit different. It has almost nothing to do with investing unless you are a youngster. This is just some job interview advice for youngsters, college students, NBA students, youngsters looking to make the switch to investing, public market investing specifically. I'll dive all into all of that, but it's a different episode. If you are 55 and already have a job or retired, probably not for you. But I get a lot of emails from people looking for jobs, looking for job advice and everything. I thought I'd put it all in here in one spot so that I had something to kind of refer people to and see if it and look, I I think I can really help people with some advice and everything. So hopefully this podcast is it's a different podcast, but hopefully if it is for you, it is helpful, informative. I tried to keep it fun. I don't know. I never know if it's fun or not, but we're going to get to all that. First, a word from our sponsors and then we'll dive into it. Today's podcast is sponsored by Alphasense. Look, Alphasense and Tigas are two of my longest time uh subscriptions. They're two of the podcast longest time sponsorships. I I love them both and I I'm so glad they merged. The product is awesome. I've done so much work with them. I consider it probably not probably definitely the most valuable subscription I've got between AlphaSense versioning AI tools. They're getting better every month and particularly the expert library on both their uh on both them. Look, I I'll give you a little secret. I I'm always pushing myself to be a better investor. And one of the ways I'm trying to do that is I've pushed myself to once a week I do an expert call on a company or sector that I'm researching come rain or shine. And it's just a really interesting way to be tapping into new ideas, people who are actually operating, get out of the spreadsheets, get out of the SEC filings and actually talk to somebody about what's going on in industry. I I do that myself out of pocket. Alpha doesn't pay. Tiggas doesn't pay. That's just me. But I I I mentioned that because look, I I I think it's really continued to help improve me as an investor. You'll notice it in the podcast when I talk to people. I do expert calls on the companies we're going to discuss and I just show it like I I get real value out of it. And if you're a fundamental investor interested in learning more, diving deeper, I think you will, too. So, TASense, I I love the product. They've been a longtime sponsor and I'm happy to keep having them on the podcast. >> All right. Hello and welcome to the yet another value podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. Uh today slightly different episode. Let me start this podcast with a disclaimer and then I'll dive in steps so I think it'll jive nicely. Uh this podcast you know disclaimer nothing in this podcast is investing advice. You can listen to a full disclaimer at the end of the episode. But I don't think that's going to be relevant today because this episode is not investing advice. Today's episode is about job advice. So some background first. If you're listening and you know this is not a normal episode. If you're listening and you're in finance and you don't need job advice, then you don't need to listen to this episode. This episode is for you. I am recording this episode at middle to late August of 2025. And this is the time when people are starting to go back to college, people are starting to go get their MBA, all that sort of stuff. And this is the time for the past, you know, I've been doing this for 10 years, but the past 10 years, this is the time when I start getting a lot of emails from people looking for jobs and internships and everything. And I completely understandable, right? That's great. I think I've gotten if I'm looking, let's just call it 15 over the past three weeks, right? So really starting to crave up and I know I'm probably going to get another 15 over the next 3 weeks. And this is just me personally. I think most people in finance do this. Try to be nice to people who are up and coming and looking for jobs. It's scary time. It's exciting time, all that sort of stuff. Uh try try to be nice to them. I try to respond to every one of them. And in particular, if someone has done some research and knows anything about me, I try to hop on a Zoom and give them advice, all that sort of stuff. But, you know, I wanted to record this episode because I think a lot of these emails are I think, you know, I I think there is a lot of room for improvement and I think the people could make the process a lot easier on themselves, make the process much more likely to result in a job and kind of save interviewers and potential interviews some time as well. So, I wanted to record this episode and put this knowledge out there. And I've got some a very slightly selfish reason, but I'll mention at the end. But but that's kind of the thing. So before I dive into all that, I will just say, look, let me leave with this. I am not hiring right now, right? So I I know people are going to put this out and I get emails all the time. I'm not hiring right now. So I if you email me looking for a job, you're probably not going to get a job for me because I am not hiring. However, and that doesn't mean I I can't be helpful. I try to be helpful to everyone who reaches out. If I know of anyone hiring a job and I see a good match, I'll I'll try to make that connection always. So, just because I say that, I just don't want I know you say job advice and 5,000 people will email you for a job and no, that's not what I'm looking for and not why I'm do putting this out there, but hopefully this will be helpful. So, who is this for? I I I have really one group of people in mind when I'm recording this that I'm hoping listens this. It is young people who are looking for a job specifically in investing, right? So, I'm thinking college students, NBA students, or young people who, you know, might have done something, you know, two years at an accounting firm, two years at a marketing firm, something like that, who wants to switch into investing. That is who I'm targeting. If you are a 40-year-old who's going to break into investing, or something like that, this isn't for you. That none of this advice is going to apply. And again, I'm specifically talking investing. If you said, "Hey, Andrew, I want to get a job in investment banking. I want to get a job in private equity." All all that type of stuff. That's great. I think a lot of what I'm going to talk about would uh work well with this, but I would work well for you, but I don't think that this advice specifically would work completely for it. So, you know, you want to you'll want to adapt either stop now or you want to adapt this advice to any of that. So, that's what I'm talking to. Someone who's young and looking to break into specifically public market investing. Here's what I'm going to cover in this uh I'm going to cover four points in this podcast. First, I'm going to cover proving your proving you're into it and showing your credentials. Second, I'm going to cover sending your intro email. Third, I'm going to cover how to do a stock pitch that actually grabs the listener's attention and will is more likely to get your job. And fourth, I'm going to talk about getting your mail. So, let's dive into it. First thing I want to talk about, I I call this prove you're into it slashshow your invest your credentials. So, you know, the best way you can get into break into public market investing is to have natural connections. If you are someone who went to Harvard, went to an investment bank for two years, is currently getting your MBA at Wharton and was in a fraternity and your fat buddy is high up at a year, you know, three year up frat buddy is higher up at an investing firm right now, that's the best way to get an investment job. So, if that route is available to you, you should absolutely pursue it. Everything I'm going to say here should also work for you and will improve your odds and will go o above and beyond that, but you should pursue that. But I'm really talking about someone who doesn't have like that specific route available to you. Uh so I'm not saying if that route's available to you not to go that route, but you absolut you absolutely should. But everything here should go to both beyond that. So if you if you're still listening, what should you do? Okay, first thing you should do right now, whether you're a college student, an MBA student looking to switch right now. I'm not kidding. Pause this podcast. Go and sign up for the CFA level one right now. Study for it. pass it. Put it on your resume that you have passed level one once you have passed it or mention to people I am subbing for the CFA level one right now. Why do I mention that? Okay, look, I have my CFA. Do I think it has enormous value? I will be honest with you, I do not. However, it has enormous syndrome value particularly if you're looking to switch from a non-target investing role. You know, if you've done two years in marketing, if you have your CFA, especially once you start passing levels, it shows PE. It is just the clearest sign, hey, I am willing to work. I am willing to study. I know what I'm doing here. You know, at least if you hire someone with a CFA, you know, they've got some basics of finance and accounting. Look, if you have your MBA, you probably don't need your CFA. If you were an undergrad, I can tell you there is nothing more powerful than an undergrad submitting to jobs and saying, "Hey, I've already passed two of the three levels of the CFA. I know how to do it." It shows clarity of purpose, willingness to work. It shows vision. And guess what? The easiest time to pass your CFA is when you're in college. You never has as much time as you do when you're in college. Do you think it's easier to study for the CFA when you're in college or when you're working a full-time job? I'm gonna answer that for you. It's a lot easier to study it when you're at college. So, the first thing you want to do, go sign up for the CFA right now. Start mentioning your interviews. I have signed up and studying for the CFA. Once you pass it, mention, I have passed level one of the CFA. I mean, if you're a college freshman, go do it right now. You could be done with your CFA by the time you're a junior and applying for internship. So, that's number one. I I I think the signal and again, I you could say, Andrew, you're speaking your own book. You have a CFA. That is true, but I do not I will be honest with you, I don't find tons of value from it. But when you're applying for jobs, especially as a youngster, there's nothing that signals like that. And look, I'm again, I passed the level one of the CFA when I was in college. Level two, I think I did right after like between college and starting my first job and level three instantly when I was doing our first. So yeah, that's what I did. And I think it helped me get to a lot of places that you you can go look at my background on LinkedIn. I think you'd help me get to a lot of places that I would not have got except I had that clarity of purpose and mission. All right, number two thing you need to go start a substack synonymous. I'm going to talk about starting a substack at the very end of this, but I'll mention that now and I'm going to come back to it later, but I I I think a substack's really going to be helpful. And again, synonymous is key, but we'll come back to that later. Number three thing, you need to open a brokerage account and actually start investing. You are applying for a job in investing. You are saying, I enjoy investing, I want to do it. uh actually investing is the way to get better, to learn, to talk. Whenever I hear somebody apply and they I say, "Oh, cool. Like, what are you invested in?" They say, "Oh, I don't invest on my own." This is a person looking for a job who doesn't under who doesn't know what they're doing. You need to be investing. I'm not saying you need to take all your life savings, put it into a brochure account, and go put it into, you know, one stock or to make it crazy, you know, call options that expire that Friday. Absolutely not. Not investing in investing by endeavors that. But what I am saying is pretty much no matter what your background, you can scrape together $100 and put it into a Robin cut and start buying and selling stocks. And I'm going to tell you the actual act of investing is a it's going to be helpful because if you don't enjoy it, then why are you applying for a job for it, right? You'll learn if you don't enjoy it. And if you do enjoy it, this is going to help you improve and it's going to give you stuff to talk about. You know, when you go to an interview, you're going to be able off the cuff to say, "Oh, yeah. You know, I had bought this stock and they reported bad earnings and I realized my my thought process was wrong, so I sold it." Or, "I had done a lot of work and they reported bad earnings." It's just going to improve and you're going to start stories telling it's going to it's going to really show when you're interviewing companies. Okay, so those are the those are the proof you're into it. Show your credentials things. Sign up for a CFA, start a Substack. Going to mention Substack again at the end. open a brokerage account and start investing reasonably, right? Again, reasonably. I'm not saying go crazy, but reasonably. Let's go to the next thing. Sending your intro email. I I mentioned this because I said at the start, I have gotten 15 emails from people looking for jobs, looking for internships and all that over the past three weeks or so. 12 of them are cold emails. Uh I I'll I'll read one right now, kind of anonymize. Hi, Andrew. Hope you're well. I'm a student at insert very bigname law very bigname Ivy League law school here I graduated from Ivy League school here uh where I studied this after that I worked at insert top tier investment bank and now I'm at uh Ivy League law school I'm writing because I'm interested in a career in investing and I was wondering if your firm might offer any internships for someone with my background uh I have attached my resume is that great yes this person has a fantastic background around. I am sure they're going to get a job. That email is terrible. And I'm going to tell you why. They copy and pasted that email to a 100 firms looking for a resume. And that's the type of email that I instantly want to throw away. Right? It has done no work. You're just cold blasting email. You are not going to send those cold blast emails. You're applying for an investing job. Have some interest in investing and show you're willing to do the work. There are two things you need to do when you send the send out the email. Number one, you have to show that it's not a cold blast email and that you've done some work. I'm a unique example versus other people because I have so much public presence from the blogs, right? So, an email that's going to get me to really respond and do work with people is, "Hey, Andrew, I read your piece on XXX investing." Or, and I'll mention this a little bit later, I listened to your podcast on how to get a job at investing. I had some thoughts. or hey Andrew, you have publicly published this piece on xxx stop. I thought it was really interesting. I like to talk about it. That's what's going to get you your foot in the door. Show that you're not sending a cold email. Show that you've done work on the company. Here's the second thing you're going to do. The best hook you can do when you're sending uh when you're sending email is an investing idea and an offer to swap thoughts. Let me give an example. Say you do the research and you see that whatever firm you're talking, whatever person you're talking to has a position in McDonald's. Send them an email that says, "Hey, XXS, I've I followed you and I'm really interested in your work. I saw you have a position in McDonald's. I'm applying for jobs or internships right now and I'm doing a Burger King pitch. I was hoping you could hop on the Zoom and talk to me for 30 minutes and listen to my Burger King pitch and give me ways to improve it so that I can improve my odds of getting a job. What have you done there? I I think that's a perfect email someone sends someone. They would have to be a complete butthole to turn you down and not at least spend 30 minutes on the phone. And remember, once you've got 30 minutes on the phone with them, 30 minutes of Zoom with them, the world's your oyster, right? You've got you've got them at least a little bit on the hook. And once they're on the Zoom, maybe they give you, maybe they say, "Oh, yeah, I'm hiring." Maybe they say, "Hey, this was great. You do great work. I'm not hiring, but I've got friends who are hiring." Whatever. And maybe they just help you improve your pitch. Doesn't matter. You've got them on the Zoom. You're a salesperson, and you've made the first step. You've gotten them on the phone. That's the That's the big hook. So, why does that email work so well? Well, A, you've shown that you've done work on them specifically. You've eliminated the chance that you're just sending massive cold blast emails to people, right? So, you've done that work. B, you're not just asking them for something. You're asking them for for help, but you're not asking them for job. But you're not just asking. You're offering to swap thoughts, right? You're saying, "Hey, I've been working on Burger King. Could we swap thoughts? Could I give you something?" And see, you're you're ending with the close, right? Get on a Zoom ending with that. So, I again, I think you would have I know a lot of people in finance. I can't imagine any of the people I know in finance getting an email that specifically crafted from a young person and not at least spending 30 minutes on a Zoom with them. So I I think that's a perfect email. Again, you have to adapt it to your needs. Uh if you're applying at a complete quant firm, you don't want to come in and say, "Hey, I've got a fundamental pitch on Burger King." You know, if you're applying to, let's just say, I've said I'm a crypto skeptic. You don't want to come pitching Fartcoin or something, right? But adapt it to your target. But when you send that email, you are just so so so much more likely to get your responses. And I know if you're applying to if you're sending this email to a ton of firms, I'm asking you to go do a little work on 40 firms to send a personalized email. But I'm telling you, you're going to get better responses and you want to be an investor. You should be interested in what all these firms are and learning from them. And by the way, if you send out 40 emails, I suspect 37 of them are going to get on the phone with you. Are any of them going to give you a job? I don't know. It's hard to get a job. Probably not. But now you've got 37 emails and you started developing your relationship with 37 good investors who you hopefully like and admire and that can pay dividends longer term down the road, right? You don't know what it would be, but a year from now, one of those people you email does a big position or you finally have your internship and one of those people goes activist on a firm, you can go to your boss and say, "Oh yeah, I know activist XYZ. I talked to him a year ago." You can reply to that email and say, "Hey, I got an internship. We have a position in the stock. you're going after this song. Can we swap thoughts? You're a hero to your boss. You're developing relationships. It's just, you know, it is just expose yourself to serendipity. And I think this is the best way to do it. And it's so much better than sending cold emails. So that's my advice for sending investment jobs. Craft investment emails. Don't do a cold email. Research the firm. Say, "Hey, I'm interested in this stock." And do us this stock swap. And again, you can adopt it any which way, but I think that's the crux of it. Let's go to having a pitch that goes beyond SEC filings. Okay. So, you are applying for investing job. You have to have an investment pitch when you apply for an investing job at any shop that does fundamental research. Okay? Absolutely have to. If you come to me and I I know several people feel this way. If you come to me and you interview and I say, "Hey, what's your best stock idea?" And you say, "Oh, I don't invest." Or, "Oh, I don't have one." You're out, right? You're not passionate about investing. Get out of here. You're just looking for a job. You have to have a stock pitch. That is going to be the crux of most interviews in fundamental investing. Even if you're just a college student, you say, "Oh, I'm just a college student. I I don't need to have you're going to trade me." No, you're wrong. You need to show a passion about investing. Investing, you can do it at any age. You need to show, and yes, people aren't expecting you to have the world's best investment pitch. Get up on a stage and pitch in front of 10,000 people. But you need to have an investing pitch so people can start asking you questions and see how you think about the world and see how you're doing. So, that's number one. You have to have them. But it's important that you have an investing pitch that goes beyond the SEC filings. What do I mean by this? Most of the pitches I get from students is, "Hey, let's use McDonald's here. McDonald's is trading for 20 times price earnings. Historically, it's traded for 25 times the price of earnings. Uh, three bigname investors have positions in it. And I it's got a 2% dividend yield. I think it's a buy. It's fine. It's fine. Nothing special about that. Nothing memorable. Nothing that shows that you're really have a pitch that goes beyond the SC. I'm going to give you uh one one example. I did the the Persian Square Challenge winners of 2025 came on the podcast recently to pitch Carlile CSL. There were two really unique things about that pitch. And I had I I'll say I had 15 people email me and say, "Hey, they have internships." if they didn't have an internship and I would have offered them a job on the spot, right? What did they do that was standing out so much to people? Number one, they crafted a pitch designed they said it on the podcast, right? We knew who the judges of the Persian Square challenge uh challenge were. So, we crafted a pitch that was designed to appeal to them. Right? I mentioned it earlier. If you're pitching to me, do not pitch FC point. Pitch something that I would be interested in. uh if you're going and pitching to a fundamental firm, pitch something that they will be interested. Craft the pitch to your audience. Right? So that's one. Number two, what they did, they said, "Hey, we went and we went to all these conferences, all these uh building products conferences and developed all these non non-publicly available, not MNPI, but non-publicly available scuttlebunt type things, right? We talk to people who buy building products about the products. We talks to industry insiders and that's what formed our opinion and that's what we did. Those are the types of things that you want to have in your investment pitch, right? You don't want it to be, hey, the SEC filing say this, this, and this and thus this is a buy. You want to have something unique. And why is that? A, you're giving the audience something. And B, you're showing them that you're willing to do the work, the leg work to go and get really unique insights. You're showing them that you know how in the modern era the game is played to get me insights. Let me give some examples that I think would be great. First yeah, let me give the examples and I'll dive in. The best one that I could think of, right? That is doable on a very no budget whatsoever, just labor. You are a college student, use that. You can call up any industry, right? similar to what I said earlier. If you call and you say, "Hey, I'm a college student. I'm looking for some help with this." Anyone environments would have to be a butthole to just like kind of shut you down. You can do that with pretty much any industry. And that's something that's available to college students, MBA students, youngsters that really isn't available to people who are older, right? If you call up uh R, let's just said I mentioned McDonald's a few times. You could call up 10 McDonald's franchises and say, "Hey, I'm a college student. I'm interested in the franchise business. Would you give me 15 minutes to talk about the franchise business, the ups and downs?" And you can have them give you a download on the franchise business. And then at the end, you can say, "Hey, how is the franchise business right now?" You know, uh I'm recording this middle August. You can say, "Look, I I've seen the stock prices of Chipotle, Cababa, the same store sales, and all that. It seems tough. How are you feeling?" And you can write down what they said. And then you could say, "Look, I, you know, I'm thinking about franchising. I I'm wondering if maybe I should go do a search fund and launch a franchise. I just wanted to ask, are you ex are you thinking about opening new stores?" Right? And get their answers. And then you could go and your pitch could be, if you were pitching McDonald's, your pitch could be, hey, I think McDonald's is interesting at 20 times price earnings. I think they're going to grow much faster than anyone suspects. And the next line could be why do I think that I talked to 15 franchises and 13 of them told me that sales were going great and that they were plenty on opening new stores in the next year. That is a really unique insight that you have developed and you can take that all across I'll give you another example medtec devices there are a dozen more than a dozen publicly traded small and midcap medtec device companies right you could take any of them you could start calling doctors you know a new hip joint launches a new knee joint launches whatever it is you could start calling doctors and asking hey I'm a college student and I'm thinking about going into medtech I'm really interested. Could you tell me about what devices you're using? Because I don't I want to figure out what company is growing, what company I should be joining. I would guess most doctors would spend 5 to 10 minutes talking to you. And you could ask, hey, I saw, you know, company XYZ launched this new hip product. Are you thinking about using it? And if you call 10 doctors, eight of them say, oh my god, it's the best thing since sliced spread. I'm switching 100% of my passes to it immediately. Uh, you know, I've been training on this other HIT device for 10 years, but I am willing to retrain on this new HIT device in order to because this new HIT device is so much better. Oh boy, if that's what you're hearing, oh boy, you have a a really interesting investment piece there. Whereas, if you call temp them and say, hey, you know, that hip device, it seems okay. It's probably an incremental improvement, but look, I've been working on my hip device for 10 years. I really know how to use it. I think the friction cost of me learning this new device and learning new skills and everything, I actually think it would be worse for my patients than going with my current device. That's a really interesting insight, right? Most people, this is a little bit more geared towards people who are coming from a non-traditional background than college or MB student, but I I think this really powerful. So, you might be sitting there and saying, "Hey, I am in marketing. I've been in marketing for two years. I want to switch over to investing. Nobody's going to hire me. I'm not going to lie to you that that is a tough switch, but I think there you can do things that show, hey, I've got unique skills. I know what to do. Go do a pitch on an ad tech company and your second slide can be, hey, I have been working at this marketing firm for two years. I have a bunch of, you know, bosses who've moved on or contacts in the industry. I called several adver seven advertising managers who manage 100 million 50 million whatever it is advertising budgets and I talked to them and of the seven managers uh five of them said hey I'm switching my advertising spend from Google to Amazon right I I'm seeing all of the incremental return is Amazon or I'm I'm increasing my spend on Instagram because over the past six months the AI tool have gotten so good that my ROI on Instagram ads has gone up by 5x. So I have to spend more on that, right? And I use Google, Amazon, Facebook. I wouldn't advise doing a crazy large publicly traded comp like one of the mag seven or something. I think that's very difficult audience dependent. I use them as examples. There are other smaller adset companies, but that's the type of thing where you say, "Look, I know I've got a I've got a non-traditional background, but I know how this works. I can do deep research and by the way I can bring skills from my non-traditional background that uh would actually increase and help you. I'll give you another one. Lululemon cross these are popular popular investments among value investors. They're kind of you know the question is are you catching a falling knife or are you are you catching a falling knife or is there a lot of value there right? These are trading at pretty low uh multiples. You can call up and your marketing friends and they can you can get feedback from them. They say, "Hey, look, I know Lulu's kind of botched it recently, but their most recent campaign is incredible and it's drawing buzz and we're seeing, you know, across the board it's performing really well." That's a type of really uni unique insight. I don't think it's quite as powerful as some of the others, you know, the the 15 franchises of the medtech or anything, but that's still a really interesting insight that shows you can go and find unique things that show kind of where the puck is going, not where what the future financials say. Uh, look, I'm not saying to do all of those things individually. Figure out your own. But if you're creative, if you think you can think of ways to use your background, your college shoot, whatever, you can think of ways to use that to call people to get your foot in the door with a lot of people and to build a non-traditional pitch that has really interesting, unique insights in it. And when you do that, it's going to open a lot of doors. And when you interview with people, they are going to be falling all over themselves to maybe not falling over themselves, but you're going to really increase your chance. Even somebody who says, "Hey, I might not be looking for nails." you come with that good a pitch, they might put you on as a free intern for six months. It's really getting your foot in the door. So, I think that's great. All right, last thing I want to go through is I I said at the beginning, I I was going to come back to it. Starting a substack. I think if you are not in the investing field and you're looking to break in, you need to start a substack and you need to do it under a pseudonym, right? Think of a pseudonym, do it under a pseudonym. Why do it under a pseudonym? It's so that you can divorce yourself from the Substack at any time in the future if you want to. Right? If you do your Substack under the King of Raccoons, right? I'm just making something up off the top of my head. Five years from now, if you decide you don't want to be investing, you want to run for politics, you get hired by Fidelity, and they say, "Hey, absolutely no public persona, cool. You can just go delete the King of Raccoon substack." And never happened. But a Substack is going to do two things for you. Number one, if you commit to writing a Substack and you write one article a week for the next six months, you are going to get much better as an investor. And I mean that in two ways. Number one, everyone thinks they're the best investor of all time, right? I promise you when you start writing, you're going to get feedback real fast. And one of the feedback is probably going to be, you're not that good. Your writing is unclear. Uh your ideas are uninteresting. And you're going to improve. You're going to force yourself to improve. just the act of writing once a week, your ideas are going to get better, your writing's going to get better, and you're going to start to develop an audience. So, that's one reason to start a Substack that that the market feedback is going to be great. And then as you get better and as you get more reviewers, you're going to get lots of inbound uh feedback on your ideas, and that's going to help you improve more and more and more. And you're going to start to make connections, right? You're going to publish on interesting small cap stock X. You're going to publish something and somebody's going to eventually some large investor, large manager is going to read your stuff and if you've gotten good enough, they're going to say, "Hey, this is a really interesting idea. I'd like to swap thoughts with you on it." And that's going to help you continue to develop and it's going to help your network, right? And here's the other thing you're going to do. Eventually, you're going to publish a pitch, right? And it's tough. You can't do this every pitch, but you're going to publish a pitch and you're going to spend a lot of time on it. and you're going to publish a pitch with some of that non-traditional uh research that I talked about, right? And when you do that, that's the one you really want to blast out to your Twitter audience or send around to all your friends and stuff. It's gonna say, "Hey, I've done a lot of work on XYZ company and I've talked to, you know, 10 doctors. I think uh the market is way underestimating the chances that this company uh the chances that this company takes a lot of market share in this or I've talked to 12 franchises and all of them are looking to grow and Wall Street is modeling zero unit growth." next year and based on my talk with, you know, 8% of the franchisee base who wants to open one to two stores next year, I think units are actually going to grow. These are great non-traditional pitches, right? You're going to publish that article and it's going to get out there and if you're really good, you're going to send it under your pseudonym. You're going to send it to people who are long that stock, right? And say, "Hey, I've done this research. Uh, I wanted I thought you might be interested in it." Now, you've built an audience. Now, you've built a following, right? You're going to do that for six months. again under a pseudonym so you can diverse it. And then after 6 months, you're going to be a much better investor. You're going to be a much better writer and you're going to have some following hopefully. And after 6 months, you're going to put out an an email that says, "Hey, I really enjoy investing. I've really enjoyed writing the Substack. I am a college student, rising rising junior. I'm just graduated from college. I'm 25 and looking to break into investing. I'm an MBA student looking for an internship. I'm looking for a job." If you've enjoyed this Substack, I love it and you know of someone hiring, you're hiring, whatever, I'm interested. Please reach out. And when you do that, if you've done a good job, if you've built an audience, you're going to get a lot of feedback. And I can't tell you how many people have gotten jobs off of the exact path that I just laid out, right? And now you might say, "Oh, Adri, what if I didn't?" It's not wasted time. You've improved as an investor. You've improved it as a writer. And if no one responds when you put out that call, you have to look in the mirror and you have to say, "Hey, maybe my writing ideas were not good enough or maybe I'm not getting enough reach." And you can look in the mirror and you can do it for another three months. And then you can do the same thing. You can improve as a writer. You can get a bigger bigger following. Whatever it is you need to do, then you can do the same thing. And if it comes out snake ass, then you say, "Hey, I need there might be something off here, right? What you can email me. Send me an email. Say, hey, Andrew, what's off here? What am I Send me an email with your best piece and say, "Hey, I followed your advice. I put it out. I'm only getting a hundred readers on every article and I got no inbounds." I'll try to tell you what it is. Maybe you've got a distribution problem. Maybe the writing isn't good. But we can talk. But what you've done is you've improved yourself. You've put yourself out there in a a way that can't hit you long term. I think it exposes you to a lot of serendipity. Right? Again, I can't tell you how many people have gotten hired following the exact path that I laid out. Maybe less structured. Maybe they didn't know what they were doing when they started it, but go look. There are a lot of good substacks that I used to follow that no longer publish because the authors got poached by an investment fund. So, I I I think it's just an absolutely fantastic way to start it. Uh, and let me wrap this article up by uh talking a little bit more about reaching out to me. So, I did this post a little bit selfishly. Look, I try to respond to everyone who does who sends me an email and says, "I'm college student. I'm looking for a job." even say, "Hey, I'm not I'm not hiring right now." Right? But I tried to respond more to people who uh have done the work to people who say, "Andrew, I like your stuff. I you know, I didn't just LinkedIn and cold email you. I read your piece. I like your stuff." I tried to respond a little bit more to them. I will hop on Zooms. I don't think I've ever turned down someone who said, "Hey, Andrew, I like your writing. I'd like to hop on Zoom." I don't think I've ever turned down anyone. Uh, I wanted to publish this piece a little selfishly because I'm willing to help. I'm willing to help. Especially if you've done the work and if you've listened to this podcast and you've started the Substack or you're following some stuff and you want help, I'm here. I I'm absolutely willing, but I want to know that you've done the work and I don't want to just be responding to all the cold emails I get, right? So, look, send me an email. And I'm for those listening on uh video or for those listening on audio, you can't say I'm wearing a pink shirt right now. send me an email and say, "I really like your pink shirt. Could you help me with the Substack? Could you talk to me about career advice for a little bit?" Whatever it is. But when you say, "I really like your pink shirt." A, you're stroking my ego and you're making you're probably making my wife miserable because I know she thinks this is the loudest pink shirt I own and it's just ridiculous and she doesn't like it. You're stroking my ego, which is what I need. But more than that, you're actually saying, "I did the work, right? I found you. I listened to the podcast. I started doing the advice you recommended. I listen to podcast. I will know that you've done all that and I'm gonna spend 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it is. We're gonna hop on a Substack. I'm going to go through your best pitch with you. We're going to talk about your writing. I'm probably going to if your writing is good. If your writing is bad, I'll let you know and we'll talk about ways to improve. If your writing is good, I'll link to you on my Substack and know that's going to get you I promise that's going to get you quite a few extra readers, listeners, whatever it is. But show me that you've done the work. Tell me that. Tell me you like my pink shirt my ego. You don't even have to like it. You don't have to mean it. I just need to send me your pitch and we're going to I'm going to give you 30 minutes, an hour of my time, and we're going to walk through all of it and I'm going to try my best to help you. Okay? I can't promise anything. I I'm not hiring. I can't promise anything. I can't promise job. Nothing on this podcast is investing advice. This was job advice. It's not investing advice, but I'm going to try my best to help you and we're going to try and get you in a better spot. So, just show me you've done that. And look, I think if you listen to this podcast, if you've done all this work, I think you're going to find that it works out. And you don't even need to email me and say, "I like your pink shirt." You can email me and say, "I hate your pink shirt." or whatever. But I I do think this is going to help and if not, I'm going to try my best to help and we'll go from there and see what what happens. And again, look, it's not it's not easy. But if I go back to the substack, by the way, you might start that substack and you might say, "Hey, I want to get a job in investing." You might find the substack as your job in investing. There are a lot of young people who have launched very successful substacks. That's their job now. And then, you know, five years from now, who knows? Maybe they get another job off of that or maybe they just launch a fund. Multiple people have launched funds off of Substack. Uh they get a big marketing. People say, "Hey, I love your ideas." And they start. So expose yourself to the serendipity. I I think if you do follow all these steps, you're going to be in great spot. A because I think and hope this is good advice, but B because you're willing to work hard. You're willing to put yourself out there. You're willing to improve. I I I think it's going to work great. Tell me you like my pink shirt if you want to reach out and uh and I I'm happy to help and we can go from there. Anyway, hey, this has been rambling. Uh again, my my computer restarted during the middle of this. I'll try and that's what I have editors for. I'll try and splice it all together. But good if you're still listening and you're a young person, good luck. I know it's not easy getting jobs. I know it's not easy breaking into investing. It's particularly harder nowadays, but good luck. I I think if you listen to this, you're you're going to hear some good I hope you heard some good advice. I think you're going to be able to find something eventually. I'm here to help if I can. Appreciate you listening and we will chat soon. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial adviser. Thanks.
How to get a job in investing
Summary
Transcript
All right, you're about to listen to the yet another value podcast with your host me, Andrew Walker. Today's podcast is a little bit different. It has almost nothing to do with investing unless you are a youngster. This is just some job interview advice for youngsters, college students, NBA students, youngsters looking to make the switch to investing, public market investing specifically. I'll dive all into all of that, but it's a different episode. If you are 55 and already have a job or retired, probably not for you. But I get a lot of emails from people looking for jobs, looking for job advice and everything. I thought I'd put it all in here in one spot so that I had something to kind of refer people to and see if it and look, I I think I can really help people with some advice and everything. So hopefully this podcast is it's a different podcast, but hopefully if it is for you, it is helpful, informative. I tried to keep it fun. I don't know. I never know if it's fun or not, but we're going to get to all that. First, a word from our sponsors and then we'll dive into it. Today's podcast is sponsored by Alphasense. Look, Alphasense and Tigas are two of my longest time uh subscriptions. They're two of the podcast longest time sponsorships. I I love them both and I I'm so glad they merged. The product is awesome. I've done so much work with them. I consider it probably not probably definitely the most valuable subscription I've got between AlphaSense versioning AI tools. They're getting better every month and particularly the expert library on both their uh on both them. Look, I I'll give you a little secret. I I'm always pushing myself to be a better investor. And one of the ways I'm trying to do that is I've pushed myself to once a week I do an expert call on a company or sector that I'm researching come rain or shine. And it's just a really interesting way to be tapping into new ideas, people who are actually operating, get out of the spreadsheets, get out of the SEC filings and actually talk to somebody about what's going on in industry. I I do that myself out of pocket. Alpha doesn't pay. Tiggas doesn't pay. That's just me. But I I I mentioned that because look, I I I think it's really continued to help improve me as an investor. You'll notice it in the podcast when I talk to people. I do expert calls on the companies we're going to discuss and I just show it like I I get real value out of it. And if you're a fundamental investor interested in learning more, diving deeper, I think you will, too. So, TASense, I I love the product. They've been a longtime sponsor and I'm happy to keep having them on the podcast. >> All right. Hello and welcome to the yet another value podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Walker. Uh today slightly different episode. Let me start this podcast with a disclaimer and then I'll dive in steps so I think it'll jive nicely. Uh this podcast you know disclaimer nothing in this podcast is investing advice. You can listen to a full disclaimer at the end of the episode. But I don't think that's going to be relevant today because this episode is not investing advice. Today's episode is about job advice. So some background first. If you're listening and you know this is not a normal episode. If you're listening and you're in finance and you don't need job advice, then you don't need to listen to this episode. This episode is for you. I am recording this episode at middle to late August of 2025. And this is the time when people are starting to go back to college, people are starting to go get their MBA, all that sort of stuff. And this is the time for the past, you know, I've been doing this for 10 years, but the past 10 years, this is the time when I start getting a lot of emails from people looking for jobs and internships and everything. And I completely understandable, right? That's great. I think I've gotten if I'm looking, let's just call it 15 over the past three weeks, right? So really starting to crave up and I know I'm probably going to get another 15 over the next 3 weeks. And this is just me personally. I think most people in finance do this. Try to be nice to people who are up and coming and looking for jobs. It's scary time. It's exciting time, all that sort of stuff. Uh try try to be nice to them. I try to respond to every one of them. And in particular, if someone has done some research and knows anything about me, I try to hop on a Zoom and give them advice, all that sort of stuff. But, you know, I wanted to record this episode because I think a lot of these emails are I think, you know, I I think there is a lot of room for improvement and I think the people could make the process a lot easier on themselves, make the process much more likely to result in a job and kind of save interviewers and potential interviews some time as well. So, I wanted to record this episode and put this knowledge out there. And I've got some a very slightly selfish reason, but I'll mention at the end. But but that's kind of the thing. So before I dive into all that, I will just say, look, let me leave with this. I am not hiring right now, right? So I I know people are going to put this out and I get emails all the time. I'm not hiring right now. So I if you email me looking for a job, you're probably not going to get a job for me because I am not hiring. However, and that doesn't mean I I can't be helpful. I try to be helpful to everyone who reaches out. If I know of anyone hiring a job and I see a good match, I'll I'll try to make that connection always. So, just because I say that, I just don't want I know you say job advice and 5,000 people will email you for a job and no, that's not what I'm looking for and not why I'm do putting this out there, but hopefully this will be helpful. So, who is this for? I I I have really one group of people in mind when I'm recording this that I'm hoping listens this. It is young people who are looking for a job specifically in investing, right? So, I'm thinking college students, NBA students, or young people who, you know, might have done something, you know, two years at an accounting firm, two years at a marketing firm, something like that, who wants to switch into investing. That is who I'm targeting. If you are a 40-year-old who's going to break into investing, or something like that, this isn't for you. That none of this advice is going to apply. And again, I'm specifically talking investing. If you said, "Hey, Andrew, I want to get a job in investment banking. I want to get a job in private equity." All all that type of stuff. That's great. I think a lot of what I'm going to talk about would uh work well with this, but I would work well for you, but I don't think that this advice specifically would work completely for it. So, you know, you want to you'll want to adapt either stop now or you want to adapt this advice to any of that. So, that's what I'm talking to. Someone who's young and looking to break into specifically public market investing. Here's what I'm going to cover in this uh I'm going to cover four points in this podcast. First, I'm going to cover proving your proving you're into it and showing your credentials. Second, I'm going to cover sending your intro email. Third, I'm going to cover how to do a stock pitch that actually grabs the listener's attention and will is more likely to get your job. And fourth, I'm going to talk about getting your mail. So, let's dive into it. First thing I want to talk about, I I call this prove you're into it slashshow your invest your credentials. So, you know, the best way you can get into break into public market investing is to have natural connections. If you are someone who went to Harvard, went to an investment bank for two years, is currently getting your MBA at Wharton and was in a fraternity and your fat buddy is high up at a year, you know, three year up frat buddy is higher up at an investing firm right now, that's the best way to get an investment job. So, if that route is available to you, you should absolutely pursue it. Everything I'm going to say here should also work for you and will improve your odds and will go o above and beyond that, but you should pursue that. But I'm really talking about someone who doesn't have like that specific route available to you. Uh so I'm not saying if that route's available to you not to go that route, but you absolut you absolutely should. But everything here should go to both beyond that. So if you if you're still listening, what should you do? Okay, first thing you should do right now, whether you're a college student, an MBA student looking to switch right now. I'm not kidding. Pause this podcast. Go and sign up for the CFA level one right now. Study for it. pass it. Put it on your resume that you have passed level one once you have passed it or mention to people I am subbing for the CFA level one right now. Why do I mention that? Okay, look, I have my CFA. Do I think it has enormous value? I will be honest with you, I do not. However, it has enormous syndrome value particularly if you're looking to switch from a non-target investing role. You know, if you've done two years in marketing, if you have your CFA, especially once you start passing levels, it shows PE. It is just the clearest sign, hey, I am willing to work. I am willing to study. I know what I'm doing here. You know, at least if you hire someone with a CFA, you know, they've got some basics of finance and accounting. Look, if you have your MBA, you probably don't need your CFA. If you were an undergrad, I can tell you there is nothing more powerful than an undergrad submitting to jobs and saying, "Hey, I've already passed two of the three levels of the CFA. I know how to do it." It shows clarity of purpose, willingness to work. It shows vision. And guess what? The easiest time to pass your CFA is when you're in college. You never has as much time as you do when you're in college. Do you think it's easier to study for the CFA when you're in college or when you're working a full-time job? I'm gonna answer that for you. It's a lot easier to study it when you're at college. So, the first thing you want to do, go sign up for the CFA right now. Start mentioning your interviews. I have signed up and studying for the CFA. Once you pass it, mention, I have passed level one of the CFA. I mean, if you're a college freshman, go do it right now. You could be done with your CFA by the time you're a junior and applying for internship. So, that's number one. I I I think the signal and again, I you could say, Andrew, you're speaking your own book. You have a CFA. That is true, but I do not I will be honest with you, I don't find tons of value from it. But when you're applying for jobs, especially as a youngster, there's nothing that signals like that. And look, I'm again, I passed the level one of the CFA when I was in college. Level two, I think I did right after like between college and starting my first job and level three instantly when I was doing our first. So yeah, that's what I did. And I think it helped me get to a lot of places that you you can go look at my background on LinkedIn. I think you'd help me get to a lot of places that I would not have got except I had that clarity of purpose and mission. All right, number two thing you need to go start a substack synonymous. I'm going to talk about starting a substack at the very end of this, but I'll mention that now and I'm going to come back to it later, but I I I think a substack's really going to be helpful. And again, synonymous is key, but we'll come back to that later. Number three thing, you need to open a brokerage account and actually start investing. You are applying for a job in investing. You are saying, I enjoy investing, I want to do it. uh actually investing is the way to get better, to learn, to talk. Whenever I hear somebody apply and they I say, "Oh, cool. Like, what are you invested in?" They say, "Oh, I don't invest on my own." This is a person looking for a job who doesn't under who doesn't know what they're doing. You need to be investing. I'm not saying you need to take all your life savings, put it into a brochure account, and go put it into, you know, one stock or to make it crazy, you know, call options that expire that Friday. Absolutely not. Not investing in investing by endeavors that. But what I am saying is pretty much no matter what your background, you can scrape together $100 and put it into a Robin cut and start buying and selling stocks. And I'm going to tell you the actual act of investing is a it's going to be helpful because if you don't enjoy it, then why are you applying for a job for it, right? You'll learn if you don't enjoy it. And if you do enjoy it, this is going to help you improve and it's going to give you stuff to talk about. You know, when you go to an interview, you're going to be able off the cuff to say, "Oh, yeah. You know, I had bought this stock and they reported bad earnings and I realized my my thought process was wrong, so I sold it." Or, "I had done a lot of work and they reported bad earnings." It's just going to improve and you're going to start stories telling it's going to it's going to really show when you're interviewing companies. Okay, so those are the those are the proof you're into it. Show your credentials things. Sign up for a CFA, start a Substack. Going to mention Substack again at the end. open a brokerage account and start investing reasonably, right? Again, reasonably. I'm not saying go crazy, but reasonably. Let's go to the next thing. Sending your intro email. I I mentioned this because I said at the start, I have gotten 15 emails from people looking for jobs, looking for internships and all that over the past three weeks or so. 12 of them are cold emails. Uh I I'll I'll read one right now, kind of anonymize. Hi, Andrew. Hope you're well. I'm a student at insert very bigname law very bigname Ivy League law school here I graduated from Ivy League school here uh where I studied this after that I worked at insert top tier investment bank and now I'm at uh Ivy League law school I'm writing because I'm interested in a career in investing and I was wondering if your firm might offer any internships for someone with my background uh I have attached my resume is that great yes this person has a fantastic background around. I am sure they're going to get a job. That email is terrible. And I'm going to tell you why. They copy and pasted that email to a 100 firms looking for a resume. And that's the type of email that I instantly want to throw away. Right? It has done no work. You're just cold blasting email. You are not going to send those cold blast emails. You're applying for an investing job. Have some interest in investing and show you're willing to do the work. There are two things you need to do when you send the send out the email. Number one, you have to show that it's not a cold blast email and that you've done some work. I'm a unique example versus other people because I have so much public presence from the blogs, right? So, an email that's going to get me to really respond and do work with people is, "Hey, Andrew, I read your piece on XXX investing." Or, and I'll mention this a little bit later, I listened to your podcast on how to get a job at investing. I had some thoughts. or hey Andrew, you have publicly published this piece on xxx stop. I thought it was really interesting. I like to talk about it. That's what's going to get you your foot in the door. Show that you're not sending a cold email. Show that you've done work on the company. Here's the second thing you're going to do. The best hook you can do when you're sending uh when you're sending email is an investing idea and an offer to swap thoughts. Let me give an example. Say you do the research and you see that whatever firm you're talking, whatever person you're talking to has a position in McDonald's. Send them an email that says, "Hey, XXS, I've I followed you and I'm really interested in your work. I saw you have a position in McDonald's. I'm applying for jobs or internships right now and I'm doing a Burger King pitch. I was hoping you could hop on the Zoom and talk to me for 30 minutes and listen to my Burger King pitch and give me ways to improve it so that I can improve my odds of getting a job. What have you done there? I I think that's a perfect email someone sends someone. They would have to be a complete butthole to turn you down and not at least spend 30 minutes on the phone. And remember, once you've got 30 minutes on the phone with them, 30 minutes of Zoom with them, the world's your oyster, right? You've got you've got them at least a little bit on the hook. And once they're on the Zoom, maybe they give you, maybe they say, "Oh, yeah, I'm hiring." Maybe they say, "Hey, this was great. You do great work. I'm not hiring, but I've got friends who are hiring." Whatever. And maybe they just help you improve your pitch. Doesn't matter. You've got them on the Zoom. You're a salesperson, and you've made the first step. You've gotten them on the phone. That's the That's the big hook. So, why does that email work so well? Well, A, you've shown that you've done work on them specifically. You've eliminated the chance that you're just sending massive cold blast emails to people, right? So, you've done that work. B, you're not just asking them for something. You're asking them for for help, but you're not asking them for job. But you're not just asking. You're offering to swap thoughts, right? You're saying, "Hey, I've been working on Burger King. Could we swap thoughts? Could I give you something?" And see, you're you're ending with the close, right? Get on a Zoom ending with that. So, I again, I think you would have I know a lot of people in finance. I can't imagine any of the people I know in finance getting an email that specifically crafted from a young person and not at least spending 30 minutes on a Zoom with them. So I I think that's a perfect email. Again, you have to adapt it to your needs. Uh if you're applying at a complete quant firm, you don't want to come in and say, "Hey, I've got a fundamental pitch on Burger King." You know, if you're applying to, let's just say, I've said I'm a crypto skeptic. You don't want to come pitching Fartcoin or something, right? But adapt it to your target. But when you send that email, you are just so so so much more likely to get your responses. And I know if you're applying to if you're sending this email to a ton of firms, I'm asking you to go do a little work on 40 firms to send a personalized email. But I'm telling you, you're going to get better responses and you want to be an investor. You should be interested in what all these firms are and learning from them. And by the way, if you send out 40 emails, I suspect 37 of them are going to get on the phone with you. Are any of them going to give you a job? I don't know. It's hard to get a job. Probably not. But now you've got 37 emails and you started developing your relationship with 37 good investors who you hopefully like and admire and that can pay dividends longer term down the road, right? You don't know what it would be, but a year from now, one of those people you email does a big position or you finally have your internship and one of those people goes activist on a firm, you can go to your boss and say, "Oh yeah, I know activist XYZ. I talked to him a year ago." You can reply to that email and say, "Hey, I got an internship. We have a position in the stock. you're going after this song. Can we swap thoughts? You're a hero to your boss. You're developing relationships. It's just, you know, it is just expose yourself to serendipity. And I think this is the best way to do it. And it's so much better than sending cold emails. So that's my advice for sending investment jobs. Craft investment emails. Don't do a cold email. Research the firm. Say, "Hey, I'm interested in this stock." And do us this stock swap. And again, you can adopt it any which way, but I think that's the crux of it. Let's go to having a pitch that goes beyond SEC filings. Okay. So, you are applying for investing job. You have to have an investment pitch when you apply for an investing job at any shop that does fundamental research. Okay? Absolutely have to. If you come to me and I I know several people feel this way. If you come to me and you interview and I say, "Hey, what's your best stock idea?" And you say, "Oh, I don't invest." Or, "Oh, I don't have one." You're out, right? You're not passionate about investing. Get out of here. You're just looking for a job. You have to have a stock pitch. That is going to be the crux of most interviews in fundamental investing. Even if you're just a college student, you say, "Oh, I'm just a college student. I I don't need to have you're going to trade me." No, you're wrong. You need to show a passion about investing. Investing, you can do it at any age. You need to show, and yes, people aren't expecting you to have the world's best investment pitch. Get up on a stage and pitch in front of 10,000 people. But you need to have an investing pitch so people can start asking you questions and see how you think about the world and see how you're doing. So, that's number one. You have to have them. But it's important that you have an investing pitch that goes beyond the SEC filings. What do I mean by this? Most of the pitches I get from students is, "Hey, let's use McDonald's here. McDonald's is trading for 20 times price earnings. Historically, it's traded for 25 times the price of earnings. Uh, three bigname investors have positions in it. And I it's got a 2% dividend yield. I think it's a buy. It's fine. It's fine. Nothing special about that. Nothing memorable. Nothing that shows that you're really have a pitch that goes beyond the SC. I'm going to give you uh one one example. I did the the Persian Square Challenge winners of 2025 came on the podcast recently to pitch Carlile CSL. There were two really unique things about that pitch. And I had I I'll say I had 15 people email me and say, "Hey, they have internships." if they didn't have an internship and I would have offered them a job on the spot, right? What did they do that was standing out so much to people? Number one, they crafted a pitch designed they said it on the podcast, right? We knew who the judges of the Persian Square challenge uh challenge were. So, we crafted a pitch that was designed to appeal to them. Right? I mentioned it earlier. If you're pitching to me, do not pitch FC point. Pitch something that I would be interested in. uh if you're going and pitching to a fundamental firm, pitch something that they will be interested. Craft the pitch to your audience. Right? So that's one. Number two, what they did, they said, "Hey, we went and we went to all these conferences, all these uh building products conferences and developed all these non non-publicly available, not MNPI, but non-publicly available scuttlebunt type things, right? We talk to people who buy building products about the products. We talks to industry insiders and that's what formed our opinion and that's what we did. Those are the types of things that you want to have in your investment pitch, right? You don't want it to be, hey, the SEC filing say this, this, and this and thus this is a buy. You want to have something unique. And why is that? A, you're giving the audience something. And B, you're showing them that you're willing to do the work, the leg work to go and get really unique insights. You're showing them that you know how in the modern era the game is played to get me insights. Let me give some examples that I think would be great. First yeah, let me give the examples and I'll dive in. The best one that I could think of, right? That is doable on a very no budget whatsoever, just labor. You are a college student, use that. You can call up any industry, right? similar to what I said earlier. If you call and you say, "Hey, I'm a college student. I'm looking for some help with this." Anyone environments would have to be a butthole to just like kind of shut you down. You can do that with pretty much any industry. And that's something that's available to college students, MBA students, youngsters that really isn't available to people who are older, right? If you call up uh R, let's just said I mentioned McDonald's a few times. You could call up 10 McDonald's franchises and say, "Hey, I'm a college student. I'm interested in the franchise business. Would you give me 15 minutes to talk about the franchise business, the ups and downs?" And you can have them give you a download on the franchise business. And then at the end, you can say, "Hey, how is the franchise business right now?" You know, uh I'm recording this middle August. You can say, "Look, I I've seen the stock prices of Chipotle, Cababa, the same store sales, and all that. It seems tough. How are you feeling?" And you can write down what they said. And then you could say, "Look, I, you know, I'm thinking about franchising. I I'm wondering if maybe I should go do a search fund and launch a franchise. I just wanted to ask, are you ex are you thinking about opening new stores?" Right? And get their answers. And then you could go and your pitch could be, if you were pitching McDonald's, your pitch could be, hey, I think McDonald's is interesting at 20 times price earnings. I think they're going to grow much faster than anyone suspects. And the next line could be why do I think that I talked to 15 franchises and 13 of them told me that sales were going great and that they were plenty on opening new stores in the next year. That is a really unique insight that you have developed and you can take that all across I'll give you another example medtec devices there are a dozen more than a dozen publicly traded small and midcap medtec device companies right you could take any of them you could start calling doctors you know a new hip joint launches a new knee joint launches whatever it is you could start calling doctors and asking hey I'm a college student and I'm thinking about going into medtech I'm really interested. Could you tell me about what devices you're using? Because I don't I want to figure out what company is growing, what company I should be joining. I would guess most doctors would spend 5 to 10 minutes talking to you. And you could ask, hey, I saw, you know, company XYZ launched this new hip product. Are you thinking about using it? And if you call 10 doctors, eight of them say, oh my god, it's the best thing since sliced spread. I'm switching 100% of my passes to it immediately. Uh, you know, I've been training on this other HIT device for 10 years, but I am willing to retrain on this new HIT device in order to because this new HIT device is so much better. Oh boy, if that's what you're hearing, oh boy, you have a a really interesting investment piece there. Whereas, if you call temp them and say, hey, you know, that hip device, it seems okay. It's probably an incremental improvement, but look, I've been working on my hip device for 10 years. I really know how to use it. I think the friction cost of me learning this new device and learning new skills and everything, I actually think it would be worse for my patients than going with my current device. That's a really interesting insight, right? Most people, this is a little bit more geared towards people who are coming from a non-traditional background than college or MB student, but I I think this really powerful. So, you might be sitting there and saying, "Hey, I am in marketing. I've been in marketing for two years. I want to switch over to investing. Nobody's going to hire me. I'm not going to lie to you that that is a tough switch, but I think there you can do things that show, hey, I've got unique skills. I know what to do. Go do a pitch on an ad tech company and your second slide can be, hey, I have been working at this marketing firm for two years. I have a bunch of, you know, bosses who've moved on or contacts in the industry. I called several adver seven advertising managers who manage 100 million 50 million whatever it is advertising budgets and I talked to them and of the seven managers uh five of them said hey I'm switching my advertising spend from Google to Amazon right I I'm seeing all of the incremental return is Amazon or I'm I'm increasing my spend on Instagram because over the past six months the AI tool have gotten so good that my ROI on Instagram ads has gone up by 5x. So I have to spend more on that, right? And I use Google, Amazon, Facebook. I wouldn't advise doing a crazy large publicly traded comp like one of the mag seven or something. I think that's very difficult audience dependent. I use them as examples. There are other smaller adset companies, but that's the type of thing where you say, "Look, I know I've got a I've got a non-traditional background, but I know how this works. I can do deep research and by the way I can bring skills from my non-traditional background that uh would actually increase and help you. I'll give you another one. Lululemon cross these are popular popular investments among value investors. They're kind of you know the question is are you catching a falling knife or are you are you catching a falling knife or is there a lot of value there right? These are trading at pretty low uh multiples. You can call up and your marketing friends and they can you can get feedback from them. They say, "Hey, look, I know Lulu's kind of botched it recently, but their most recent campaign is incredible and it's drawing buzz and we're seeing, you know, across the board it's performing really well." That's a type of really uni unique insight. I don't think it's quite as powerful as some of the others, you know, the the 15 franchises of the medtech or anything, but that's still a really interesting insight that shows you can go and find unique things that show kind of where the puck is going, not where what the future financials say. Uh, look, I'm not saying to do all of those things individually. Figure out your own. But if you're creative, if you think you can think of ways to use your background, your college shoot, whatever, you can think of ways to use that to call people to get your foot in the door with a lot of people and to build a non-traditional pitch that has really interesting, unique insights in it. And when you do that, it's going to open a lot of doors. And when you interview with people, they are going to be falling all over themselves to maybe not falling over themselves, but you're going to really increase your chance. Even somebody who says, "Hey, I might not be looking for nails." you come with that good a pitch, they might put you on as a free intern for six months. It's really getting your foot in the door. So, I think that's great. All right, last thing I want to go through is I I said at the beginning, I I was going to come back to it. Starting a substack. I think if you are not in the investing field and you're looking to break in, you need to start a substack and you need to do it under a pseudonym, right? Think of a pseudonym, do it under a pseudonym. Why do it under a pseudonym? It's so that you can divorce yourself from the Substack at any time in the future if you want to. Right? If you do your Substack under the King of Raccoons, right? I'm just making something up off the top of my head. Five years from now, if you decide you don't want to be investing, you want to run for politics, you get hired by Fidelity, and they say, "Hey, absolutely no public persona, cool. You can just go delete the King of Raccoon substack." And never happened. But a Substack is going to do two things for you. Number one, if you commit to writing a Substack and you write one article a week for the next six months, you are going to get much better as an investor. And I mean that in two ways. Number one, everyone thinks they're the best investor of all time, right? I promise you when you start writing, you're going to get feedback real fast. And one of the feedback is probably going to be, you're not that good. Your writing is unclear. Uh your ideas are uninteresting. And you're going to improve. You're going to force yourself to improve. just the act of writing once a week, your ideas are going to get better, your writing's going to get better, and you're going to start to develop an audience. So, that's one reason to start a Substack that that the market feedback is going to be great. And then as you get better and as you get more reviewers, you're going to get lots of inbound uh feedback on your ideas, and that's going to help you improve more and more and more. And you're going to start to make connections, right? You're going to publish on interesting small cap stock X. You're going to publish something and somebody's going to eventually some large investor, large manager is going to read your stuff and if you've gotten good enough, they're going to say, "Hey, this is a really interesting idea. I'd like to swap thoughts with you on it." And that's going to help you continue to develop and it's going to help your network, right? And here's the other thing you're going to do. Eventually, you're going to publish a pitch, right? And it's tough. You can't do this every pitch, but you're going to publish a pitch and you're going to spend a lot of time on it. and you're going to publish a pitch with some of that non-traditional uh research that I talked about, right? And when you do that, that's the one you really want to blast out to your Twitter audience or send around to all your friends and stuff. It's gonna say, "Hey, I've done a lot of work on XYZ company and I've talked to, you know, 10 doctors. I think uh the market is way underestimating the chances that this company uh the chances that this company takes a lot of market share in this or I've talked to 12 franchises and all of them are looking to grow and Wall Street is modeling zero unit growth." next year and based on my talk with, you know, 8% of the franchisee base who wants to open one to two stores next year, I think units are actually going to grow. These are great non-traditional pitches, right? You're going to publish that article and it's going to get out there and if you're really good, you're going to send it under your pseudonym. You're going to send it to people who are long that stock, right? And say, "Hey, I've done this research. Uh, I wanted I thought you might be interested in it." Now, you've built an audience. Now, you've built a following, right? You're going to do that for six months. again under a pseudonym so you can diverse it. And then after 6 months, you're going to be a much better investor. You're going to be a much better writer and you're going to have some following hopefully. And after 6 months, you're going to put out an an email that says, "Hey, I really enjoy investing. I've really enjoyed writing the Substack. I am a college student, rising rising junior. I'm just graduated from college. I'm 25 and looking to break into investing. I'm an MBA student looking for an internship. I'm looking for a job." If you've enjoyed this Substack, I love it and you know of someone hiring, you're hiring, whatever, I'm interested. Please reach out. And when you do that, if you've done a good job, if you've built an audience, you're going to get a lot of feedback. And I can't tell you how many people have gotten jobs off of the exact path that I just laid out, right? And now you might say, "Oh, Adri, what if I didn't?" It's not wasted time. You've improved as an investor. You've improved it as a writer. And if no one responds when you put out that call, you have to look in the mirror and you have to say, "Hey, maybe my writing ideas were not good enough or maybe I'm not getting enough reach." And you can look in the mirror and you can do it for another three months. And then you can do the same thing. You can improve as a writer. You can get a bigger bigger following. Whatever it is you need to do, then you can do the same thing. And if it comes out snake ass, then you say, "Hey, I need there might be something off here, right? What you can email me. Send me an email. Say, hey, Andrew, what's off here? What am I Send me an email with your best piece and say, "Hey, I followed your advice. I put it out. I'm only getting a hundred readers on every article and I got no inbounds." I'll try to tell you what it is. Maybe you've got a distribution problem. Maybe the writing isn't good. But we can talk. But what you've done is you've improved yourself. You've put yourself out there in a a way that can't hit you long term. I think it exposes you to a lot of serendipity. Right? Again, I can't tell you how many people have gotten hired following the exact path that I laid out. Maybe less structured. Maybe they didn't know what they were doing when they started it, but go look. There are a lot of good substacks that I used to follow that no longer publish because the authors got poached by an investment fund. So, I I I think it's just an absolutely fantastic way to start it. Uh, and let me wrap this article up by uh talking a little bit more about reaching out to me. So, I did this post a little bit selfishly. Look, I try to respond to everyone who does who sends me an email and says, "I'm college student. I'm looking for a job." even say, "Hey, I'm not I'm not hiring right now." Right? But I tried to respond more to people who uh have done the work to people who say, "Andrew, I like your stuff. I you know, I didn't just LinkedIn and cold email you. I read your piece. I like your stuff." I tried to respond a little bit more to them. I will hop on Zooms. I don't think I've ever turned down someone who said, "Hey, Andrew, I like your writing. I'd like to hop on Zoom." I don't think I've ever turned down anyone. Uh, I wanted to publish this piece a little selfishly because I'm willing to help. I'm willing to help. Especially if you've done the work and if you've listened to this podcast and you've started the Substack or you're following some stuff and you want help, I'm here. I I'm absolutely willing, but I want to know that you've done the work and I don't want to just be responding to all the cold emails I get, right? So, look, send me an email. And I'm for those listening on uh video or for those listening on audio, you can't say I'm wearing a pink shirt right now. send me an email and say, "I really like your pink shirt. Could you help me with the Substack? Could you talk to me about career advice for a little bit?" Whatever it is. But when you say, "I really like your pink shirt." A, you're stroking my ego and you're making you're probably making my wife miserable because I know she thinks this is the loudest pink shirt I own and it's just ridiculous and she doesn't like it. You're stroking my ego, which is what I need. But more than that, you're actually saying, "I did the work, right? I found you. I listened to the podcast. I started doing the advice you recommended. I listen to podcast. I will know that you've done all that and I'm gonna spend 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it is. We're gonna hop on a Substack. I'm going to go through your best pitch with you. We're going to talk about your writing. I'm probably going to if your writing is good. If your writing is bad, I'll let you know and we'll talk about ways to improve. If your writing is good, I'll link to you on my Substack and know that's going to get you I promise that's going to get you quite a few extra readers, listeners, whatever it is. But show me that you've done the work. Tell me that. Tell me you like my pink shirt my ego. You don't even have to like it. You don't have to mean it. I just need to send me your pitch and we're going to I'm going to give you 30 minutes, an hour of my time, and we're going to walk through all of it and I'm going to try my best to help you. Okay? I can't promise anything. I I'm not hiring. I can't promise anything. I can't promise job. Nothing on this podcast is investing advice. This was job advice. It's not investing advice, but I'm going to try my best to help you and we're going to try and get you in a better spot. So, just show me you've done that. And look, I think if you listen to this podcast, if you've done all this work, I think you're going to find that it works out. And you don't even need to email me and say, "I like your pink shirt." You can email me and say, "I hate your pink shirt." or whatever. But I I do think this is going to help and if not, I'm going to try my best to help and we'll go from there and see what what happens. And again, look, it's not it's not easy. But if I go back to the substack, by the way, you might start that substack and you might say, "Hey, I want to get a job in investing." You might find the substack as your job in investing. There are a lot of young people who have launched very successful substacks. That's their job now. And then, you know, five years from now, who knows? Maybe they get another job off of that or maybe they just launch a fund. Multiple people have launched funds off of Substack. Uh they get a big marketing. People say, "Hey, I love your ideas." And they start. So expose yourself to the serendipity. I I think if you do follow all these steps, you're going to be in great spot. A because I think and hope this is good advice, but B because you're willing to work hard. You're willing to put yourself out there. You're willing to improve. I I I think it's going to work great. Tell me you like my pink shirt if you want to reach out and uh and I I'm happy to help and we can go from there. Anyway, hey, this has been rambling. Uh again, my my computer restarted during the middle of this. I'll try and that's what I have editors for. I'll try and splice it all together. But good if you're still listening and you're a young person, good luck. I know it's not easy getting jobs. I know it's not easy breaking into investing. It's particularly harder nowadays, but good luck. I I think if you listen to this, you're you're going to hear some good I hope you heard some good advice. I think you're going to be able to find something eventually. I'm here to help if I can. Appreciate you listening and we will chat soon. A quick disclaimer, nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the hosts may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial adviser. Thanks.