Yet Another Value Podcast - How to get a job in investing

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker steps away from traditional investing talk to offer a focused career guide for young professionals. Aimed at college students, MBA candidates, or early-career professionals seeking entry into public market investing, Andrew shares practical advice on everything from earning credibility to crafting cold emails, writing substack pitches, and giving impactful stock pitches. He explains actionable strategies like starting a pseudonymous Substack, passing CFA Level 1, and approaching investors with genuine ideas—not just resumes. If you're serious about a career in investing, this is a must-listen blueprint.______________________________________________________________________[00:00:00] Purpose of today’s non-investing episode[00:02:16] Episode disclaimer: strictly job advice[00:05:29] Target audience for this guidance[00:06:32] Proving interest through clear credentials[00:07:19] Value of CFA Level 1 for newcomers[00:09:32] Opening brokerage account and starting early[00:11:06] Substack writing to build skill and signal[00:11:31] Sending effective intro emails with a hook[00:14:06] Why “cold blasts” fail—do tailored outreach[00:17:03] Constructing a unique, memorable stock pitch[00:19:08] Real-world scuttlebutt research advantages[00:22:09] Example: speaking to franchisees or doctors[00:24:11] Using your current background as an edge[00:25:50] Marketing insights applied to public equities[00:27:15] Why and how to start a pseudonymous Substack[00:29:15] Launching your pitch to a real audience[00:30:57] What to do if no one responds[00:32:06] Building credibility and relationships via outreach[00:33:24] Show effort: compliment the “pink shirt”[00:35:56] Final encouragement and sign-offLinks:Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

All right, you're about to listen to 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, MBA students, youngsters looking to make the switch to investing, public market investing specifically. I'll dive 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 think I can really help people

with some advice and everything. So hopefully this podcast, 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 word from our sponsors and then we'll dive into it. Today's podcast is sponsored by AlphaSense. Look, AlphaSense and Tigis are two of my longest time subscriptions. They're two of the podcast longest time sponsorships. I love them both, and I'm so glad they merge. The product is awesome. I've done so much work with them. I consider probably, not probably, definitely the most valuable subscription I've got between AlphaCense burgeoning AI tools. They're getting better every month, and particularly the expert

library on both their, on both them. Look, I'll give you a little secret. 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 do that myself, out of pocket.

Alpha Sense doesn't pay. TIGIS doesn't pay. That's just me. But I mentioned that because, look, I think it's really. really continue 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 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 Tiga's Souta sense. I love the product. They've been a long time sponsor and I'm happy to keep having them on the podcast. All right. Hello. And welcome to you got another value podcast.

I'm your host, Andrew Walker. Today, slightly different episode. Let me start this podcast with a disclaimer. and then I'll dive in the episode, so they'll drive nicely. 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 created. I am recording this episode at middle to late August of 2000, 25. And this is the time when people are starting to go back to college. We're 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 is a time when I start getting a lot of emails from people looking for jobs and internships and everything. And I can 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 brave up and I know I'm probably going to give another 15 over the next three weeks. And this is just me personally. I think most people in findings do this. Try to be nice to people who are up and coming and looking for jobs. It's scary times and exciting time, all that sort of stuff. 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 think there is a lot of room for improvement. And I think the people could make the process a lot easier than themselves, make the process much more likely to resolve 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 a very slightly selfish reason,

but I'll mention at the end. 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 know people are going to put this out and I get the emails all the time. I'm not hiring right now. So if you email me looking for a job, you're probably not going to get a job for me because I have not harmed. However, that doesn't mean 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 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. No, that's not what I'm looking for and not wanting to putting this out there, but hopefully this will be helpful. So who is this for? I have really one group of people in mind when I'm recording this, then I'm hoping to listen to this. It is young people who are looking for a job specifically in investing, right?

So I'm thinking college students, MBA 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 were 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 give a job of your private equity, all that type of stuff. That's great. I think a lot of what I'm going to talk about would 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 adopt it 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 hover in this. I'm going to hover four points in this podcast. First, I'm going to cover proving your, proving your intuit 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 is more likely to get your job. And fourth, I'm going to talk about getting your aim. So let's have into it. First thing I want to talk about, I call this prove your intuit slash show 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 MPA at Wharton and was in a fraternity and your frat buddy is high up at a year, you know, three year up frat buddy is higher you up in 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 going to say here should also work for you and will improve your odds and we'll go 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. Oh, so I'm not saying if that route's available to you, not to go that route, but you absolutely should, but everything here should go to both and beyond that. So if you, if you're soliciting, what should you do?

Okay, first thing you should be 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 studying 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, it is just the clear

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 the 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. But if you were an undergrad, I can tell you there is nothing more powerful than an undergrad submitting to job 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 match your CFN 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 going to answer that for you. It's a lot easier to study it when you're in 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 it. 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 internships. So that's number one. I think that similar to, 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. which is level two. I think I did right after like between college and starting my first job and level three instantly when I was doing my first. So yeah, that's what I did. And I think it helped me get to a lot of places that 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 have that clarity of purpose

and mission. All right. Number two thing, you need to go start a substack, pseudonymous. I'm going to talk about starting a substack at the very end for this. But I'll mention that now and I'm going to come back to it later. But I think a subset's really going to be helpful. And again, is key, but we'll come back to that later. Number three thing, you need to open a broker's account and actually start investing. You are applying for a job investing. You are saying, I enjoy investing. I want to do it.

Actually investing is the way to get better, to learn, to talk. Whenever I hear somebody apply and I say, oh, cool, like, what are you invested in? They say, oh, I don't invest in my own. This is a person looking for a job 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 birch account and go put it into, you know, one stock or to make it crazy, you know, call options that inspired on that Friday.

Absolutely not. Not investing by cent and Denver by cent. But what I am saying is pretty much no matter what your background, you can scrape together $100 and put it into a robin a cut and start buying selling stocks. I'm going to tell you the actual active 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

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 bought this stock and they reported bad earnings and I realized 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 in stories telling it's going to really show when you're interviewing at 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 subsect again at the end, open a broker's account and start a broker's account and start investing reasonably, right?

If you had it reasonably, I'm not saying go crazy, but reasonably. Let's go to the next time, sending your intro email. I mentioned this because I said at this start, I have gotten 15 emails from people looking for jobs, looking for internships, and all that over the past three weeks or so. Twelve of them are cold emails. I'll read one right now, kind of anonymized. Hi, Andrew. Hope you're well.

I'm a student at insert very big name loss. big name Ivy League Law School here. I graduated from Ivy League School here, where I studied this. After that, I worked at insert top-tier investment bank, and now I'm at 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. I have attached my resume. Is that great? Yes. This person has a fantastic background. I am sure they're going to get a job. That email is terrible. I'm going to tell you why. They copy and pasted that email to 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 blast email. You are not going to send those cold blast emails. You're implying 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 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 the unique example versus other people because I have so much public presence from the logs. 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 X, X,X,X, and investing. Or, and I'll mention this a little bit later, I listen to your podcast on how to get a job at investing.

I had some thoughts. Or, hey, Andrew, you will have publicly published this piece on XXX, dot. I thought it was really interesting. I like to talk about it. That's what's going to get your foot of the door. Show that you're not sending a cold email. Sure that you've done work on the company. Here's the second thing you're going to do.

The best hope you can do 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, XXXS, I followed you and I'm really interested in your work. I saw you in position in columns. 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 burglaring 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 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 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 you say, hey, this was great. You do great work. I'm not hiring, but I've got friends who are on, whatever. And maybe they just help you improve your pitch. It 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 big code. 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 the people, right? So you've done that work. B, you're not just asking them for something. You're asking them 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 Burricking. Could we swap thoughts? Could I give you something? And C, you're ending with the clothes, right? Get on a Zoom ending with that. So, 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 think that's a perfect email. Again, you have to adapt it to your needs. 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? Now, if you're applying to, let's just send me, I've said I'm a crypto skeptic. You don't want to come pitching part coin or something, right?

But adapted to your target, but when you send that email, you were just 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 to help 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 activists on a firm.

you can go to your boss and say, oh, yeah, I know activist X, Y, Z. 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 at this on. 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 investor jobs. Craft investment emails. Don't do a cold email. Research the firm. Say, hey, I'm interested in this stock. and do us the 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 violence, 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 know several people for 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 don't need to have, you're going to train 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 investment pitch so people can see. 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 violence. What do I mean by this? Most of the pitches I get from students is, hey, what's you from McDonald's here? McDonald's is trading for 20 times price of earnings. Historically, it's traded for 25 times price to earnings. Three big name

investors have positions in it. And it's got a two percent. dividend Gio. I think it's a buy. That's fine. Nothing special about that. Nothing memorable, nothing that shows that you're relieved. Have a pitch that goes beyond the SFC finance. I'm going to give you one example. I did, the Pershing Square Challenge winners of 2025 came on the podcast recently to pitch Carlisle. CSL. There were two really unique things about that pitch.

And I had, I'll say, I had 15 people email me and say, 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 set it on the podcast, right? We knew who the judges of the Persian Square 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 Farkpoint, pitch something that I would be interested in. 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 building products conferences, and developed all these non-publicly available, not MNPI, but non-publicly available, scuttle button type things, right? We talked to people who buy building products about the products.

We talk 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 finally say this, this, and this, and thus, this is a buying. 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 legwork, 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 meek insights.

let me give some examples that I think would be great first yeah let me get 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 so first 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 in five minutes 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 at bulk, right? If you call up, let's you said. I mentioned McDonald's a few times. You could call up 10 McDonald's franchisees 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, I'm recording this middle August. You can say, look, I've seen the stock prices of Chipotle, Acaba, 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'm wondering if maybe I should go do a search fund and watch a franchise.

I just wanted to ask, 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 or earnings. I think they're going to grow much faster than anyone suspects. And the next slide could be, why do I think that? I've talked to 15 franchisees, 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, MedTech devices. There are a dozen, more than a dozen, publicly traded small and mid-Tac med-tech device companies, right? You could take any of them. You could start calling doctors, you know, a new hit 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 want to figure out

what company is growing, what company I should be joining? I would guess most doctors would spend five to ten minutes talking to you, and you could ask, hey, I saw, you know, company XYZ launched this new hit 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 life spread. I'm switching 100% of my passes to it immediately. 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, boys, you have a really interesting investment piece there.

Whereas if you call up to them and say, hey, you know, that yet 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 card 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 NBC student. But I think this is 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. is a tough switch, but I think you can do things that show, hey, I've got unique skills, I know what to do. Go to 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 bosses who've moved on or contacts in the industry. I called seven advertising managers who manage 100 million, 50 million, whatever it is, advertising budgets. And I talked to them. And of the seven managers, five of them said, hey, I'm switching my advertising spend from Google to Amazon,

right? I'm seeing all of the incremental return is Amazon. Or I'm increasing my spend on Instagram because over the past six months, the AI tools have gotten so good that my ROI on Instagram ads has gone up by 5x. So I have to spend more on that. And I use Google, Amazon, Facebook. I wouldn't advise doing a crazy large publicly traded company 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 ads at 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 another one lulu lemon

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 catching a falling knife or is there a lot of value there, right? These are trading at pretty low multiples. You can call up and your marketing friends and 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 unique insight. I don't think it's quite as powerful as some of the others, you know, the 15 franchisees 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. 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 anything else. You come with that good of 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 said at the beginning, 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 it 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 that 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, 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. 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 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 stop X. You're going to publish something. And eventually, some large investor, large manager is going to read yourself. 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 you 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

and you're going to publish a pitch with some of that non-traditional 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 itself. It's going to say, hey, I've done a lot of work on XYZ company and I've talked to, you know,

10 doctors. I think the market is way underestimating the chances that this company, the chances that this company takes a lot of market share in this. Or I've talked to 12 franchisees and all of them are looking to grow, and Wall Street is modeling zero unit growth next year. And based on my talk with 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've got 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 longed that stuff, right?

And say, hey, I've done this research. I thought you might be interested in it. Now you've built an audience. Now you've built a problem, right? You're going to do that for six months, again, under a pseudonym, so you can divorce it. And then after six 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 six months, you're going to put out an email that says, hey, I really enjoy investing.

I really enjoyed writing the substack. I am a college student, 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, 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 following, whatever it is you need to do. And then you can do the same thing.

And if it comes up, snake us, then you say, hey, I need, there might be something off here, right? You can email me, send me an email. Say, hey, answer, what's off here? What am I doing? Send me an email with your best piece and say, hey, I followed your advice. I put it out. I'm only getting 100 readers on every article. no inbound. I'll try to tell you what it is. Maybe you've got a distribution problem.

Maybe the writing is that good. But we can talk. But what you've done is you've improved yourself. You've put yourself out there in 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. But go look. There are a lot of good subsacts that I used to follow that no longer publish because the authors got poached by an investment fund. So I think it's just an absolute fantastic way to start it. And let me wrap this article up by 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 sends me an email and says, I'm college student. I'm looking for a job. Even as it, hey, I'm not hiring right now. But I tried to respond more to people who had done the work to people who say, Andrew, I like your stuff. 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 Zoom. I don't think I've ever turned down someone who said, hey, Andrew, I like your writing. I like that by Zoom. I don't think I've ever turned down anyone. 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 to myself and you want help, I'm here.

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 again, right? So, look, send me an email, and I'm, for those listening on 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, hey, you're stroking my ego and 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 the podcast. I will know that you've done all that.

And I'm going to spend 30 minutes an hour, whatever it is. We're going to 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 waste of group. If your writing is good, I'll link to you on my substack and, you 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 shirts or 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'm not hiring. I can't promise anything. I can't promise a 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 it like your pink shirt. You can email me and say, I hate your pink shirt, whatever. But I do think this is going to help. And if not, I'm going to try my best help and we'll go from there and see 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 is 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 watch their fund. Multiple people have launched funds off of substack. They get a big marketing. People say, hey, I love your ideas.

And so expose yourself to the serendipity. I think if you follow all these steps, you're going to be in great spot, A, because I think and hope this is a 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 think it's going to work great.

tell me you like my pink shirt if you want to reach out and I'm happy to help and we can go from there anyway hey this has been rambling again my my computer restarted during the middle of this I'll try that's what I have editors for I'll try to 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 hard nowadays but good luck I think if you listen to this 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 advisor. Thanks.