Read on Twitter
So I promised to tell this story. Plus I had someone asking me to post about mistakes, the beginning of my analyst career was filled with them. https://twitter.com/srasgon/status/1268963618667683840
It was, shall we say, not ideal...
Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong.
As I’ve mentioned before, I was a neophyte when I came to Wall Street. No experience. No knowledge about stocks. Never heard the terms “sell side” or “buy side” in their correct context before. And thrust into a very high-profile position. https://twitter.com/srasgon/status/1268949914513334272
And in April 2008, a few weeks after Bear Stearns failed.
Right at the beginning of the global financial crisis (yay!)
My employer gives new analysts about a year in “pre-launch” to develop their industry and company theses.
I spent the bulk of my pre-launch period alternating between confusion and terror, trying to figure out what the job was about while struggling (mostly unsuccessfully) to develop an industry perspective during a period where people thought the world was possibly coming to an end.
(It was a curious, surreal time BTW. I was not allowed to speak with clients, so was out of the flow, and basically on the outside looking in while my colleagues were dealing with the financial market collapse).
I spent way too much time trying to come up with an industry perspective (it kept changing, and as I’ll mention soon I got it wrong anyway), such that the “companies” part of the job was rushed into the end of the process.
But finally I got out of pre-launch and went live.
In June 2009.
Right at the bottom.
With a really negative view on everything.
Without doing any cycle work. I am the only sell-side semiconductor analyst that has ever launched coverage without looking hard at the semi cycle, I thought “I’m supposed to be fundamental here. What does the cycle matter?”
(WTF was I thinking??)
Right into the biggest cyclical recovery in history.
That I (naturally) missed.
About 4 weeks after I launched every single one of my companies started reporting, and beating numbers by double-digits…
And I had nothing to say. No clue how to handle. No idea what was happening.
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic :-)
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic :-)
I had no pipeline of work when I launched.
The job post-launch is (obviously) very different than pre-launch. Before launch you are working on your launch piece. When you are live though you are juggling a ton of balls (sales requests, client calls, meetings, etc). And you also have to start publishing on a regular basis.
When you start and are new, the client and communication stuff takes up a lot of time.
So it is helpful to have some inventory of work on the shelf to tide you through until you can work up a rhythm.
When I launched coverage, I had my launch call written. That was it. No inventory, and no pipeline of stuff. No plan.
Mistake.
(It took me 7 months to get my individual company “launch” calls out…)
Partially due to my inability to plan anything, I didn’t work well with my team. As a result we were low-performing.
But I didn’t know this, as I didn’t know what a high-performing team looked like.
(I feel bad for them now, I was a terrible manager back then).
But it wasn’t conducive to high productivity.
I had no earnings templates (I’ve told that story before) https://twitter.com/srasgon/status/1278830317608898561
I didn’t even have client-ready models, in fact I didn’t know/realize that clients would want a model to look at. And my working models were too much like spaghetti to send out, so we had to build client-ready models on the fly.
I didn’t realize the client-first nature of the job. I let things slip by. And while I think I was just as enthusiastic in meetings back then as I am now, I was incredibly ignorant of what was important to the other side of the table.
I can only imagine what clients must have thought about me in those first meetings.
(Anyone here remember my early days? I’d be curious what you thought!)
My salesforce had no idea what I was talking about.
We hadn’t covered semis in a few years, the field was technical, and I spoke way too fast.
My sector “call” was obviously wrong almost from the get-go.
And I was kind of afraid to sound like I had conviction on any of my company calls (OMG, what if I’m wrong?!) which is not a stance that tends to ingratiate you well with a salesperson.
I had never owned stocks of my own, and didn’t understand the investment process or mindset.
I remember a conversation I had with a salesperson on my first marketing trip with them in the early days on this.
We were walking down the street to a meeting, and he asked me what I had in my PA.
I said (of course) “What’s a PA?”
He said “I'm asking what stocks do you own?”
I said “I don’t own any stocks.”
He stopped dead. Turned around. Walked close till he was about a foot away. And stared at me.
He said “What do you mean you don’t own any stocks?”
I said, “I don’t own any, sorry"
I said, “I don’t own any, sorry"
He says “What?? How are you going to talk to clients about stocks if you don’t own any stocks??”
I say “Uhh, I don’t know, I guess I’ll figure it out”
I say “Uhh, I don’t know, I guess I’ll figure it out”
(He told me years later that he thought I’d be gone within 6 months at that point…)
Anyway, we get to the end of the year, and it’s time for my review.
My employer is very transparent, you know (on an extremely quantitative basis) exactly where you stand in the distribution of your colleagues.
My ranking at the end of that first year?
My ranking at the end of that first year?
Dead last.
Not as bad as it sounds of course, I was the most recent to launch, and it was only a half year. it was understandable that I’d be on the far side of the distribution.
But it still stung.
But it still stung.
Over the next year the shit show continued however.
Sales started to disengage. Clients were polite, but increasingly dismissive.
The team deteriorated. My senior associate left in the middle of my first European marketing trip. My other one was unhappy, and withdrew (and I was too swamped / overwhelmed to notice).
Needless to say, productivity wasn’t great either.
At the end of 2010 (my first full year as an analyst) I get my review.
Dead last again.
Now I’m started getting scared. It was becoming increasingly clear that this couldn’t go on much longer, either I had to fix something or it would get “fixed” for me…
However, I was starting to build a mosaic of the job, observing my (many!) successful colleagues, and starting to figure out what was not working, and what might work instead.
I remember sitting down with that year-end review book, and taking an inventory of the issues that I seemed to be having, based on scores, written comments etc.
It was clear that my salesforce had no idea what I was talking about. They didn’t know what I was telling them, so there was no way they were going to try to take that garbled message to clients.
I was afraid to make a call. I think this was partially due to my launch call going so disastrously wrong, so quickly, it was kind of scarring. But there's no glory in hugging consensus...
But as a result, I hedged a lot. And not in a good way. I have colleagues who are unbelievable at playing the “both sides” game and adding value doing it, but I just sounded wishy-washy.
I was inefficient. I always liked getting deep in the weeds (I still do!) but I was also doing too much of the lower- value work myself, rather than focusing on higher-value-add activities.
And I was a horrid manager. I didn't provide the team sufficient direction or structure. I changed priorities on them arbitrarily so they never knew what was important. And I wasn’t confident enough in myself to trust them to do the work without me hovering or redoing lots of it
Example – one of my associates did a deep piece of work on something. He sent it over.
I spent the next day re-writing it, making changes, etc).
I spent the next day re-writing it, making changes, etc).
The next day he comes storming into my office.
Slams the door behind him.
Throws a copy of the note onto my desk.
Asks (yelled, actually) “How long did you spend revising that?”
Slams the door behind him.
Throws a copy of the note onto my desk.
Asks (yelled, actually) “How long did you spend revising that?”
I say “I don’t know, 4 or 5 hours?”
His eyes bug out.
He shouts “What was so wrong with it that you needed to revise it for 5 fucking hours?”
He shouts “What was so wrong with it that you needed to revise it for 5 fucking hours?”
And I was forced to admit, nothing really. It was mostly stylistic stuff and the order of the story; the latter at least could have been addressed upfront before he started it had I done my job better.
(Being a lousy manager is my greatest shame, the other stuff was more ignorance than anything else but making life miserable, for whatever reason, for people you’re responsible for is not excusable…)
This “inventory of sins” (such that it was) was quite a come-to-Jesus moment for me.
But at least a pattern was emerging. And I have good pattern recognition once I get enough data. And I make tons of mistakes, but I try to only make them once.
So I did a few things.
I realized that my first fix had to be sales, as that relationship seemed the most broken.
On the content side I started doing explicit cycle work. We had been doing it in fits and starts after my horrible start, but on an occasional basis. But this was regular, and packaged so sales could tell at a glance what my latest industry thinking was (I still do it today).
I started watching and listening to some of my colleagues more closely; noting what the most successful ones did. I realized that the best messaging was bulleted, clear, and "spoonfed" without ambiguity (it seems obvious but it's actually hard to do without practice).
I started realizing that my verbal delivery, both in the morning meeting and in client meetings, was wanting.
Someone recommended I look into a speaking/acting coach; as it turned out there was someone at my company that did this on an occasional basis.
Someone recommended I look into a speaking/acting coach; as it turned out there was someone at my company that did this on an occasional basis.
We worked on my delivery, mostly slowing me down more than anything else (I worked with a metronome!).
I still speak fast but before this I could have won fast-talking competitions.
I still speak fast but before this I could have won fast-talking competitions.
It was a lifesaver (Peter, you saved my career).
On the client side I no longer let client requests etc slide, and started developing my client service model as an explicit strategy rather than as a haphazard mess.
I began to be much more proactive about my outreach in general. And I started keeping track of who was interested in what.
I started to value clients not just as voices on the other end of the phone, but rather as real people, with real lives, and took the relationship part of the job much more seriously
(My enjoyment of the job increased exponentially when I did this!)
(My enjoyment of the job increased exponentially when I did this!)
I decided to try being less afraid to make a call. I became more willing to move a rating if I had conviction in it. And I told my team “We’re going to own the bear case on XXX” And we did (which was hugely helpful in building traction, both with clients and sales).
On the team side I began bringing them much more into the process, rather than using them as exhibit factories. I started realizing that the client side was important for them too, and began to encourage it.
And I tried to be more organized (though this one I still struggle with, I am not organized by nature).
And things started (slowly, oh so slowly) getting better
End of 2011 at review time I was still closer to the bottom of the distribution that I would have liked, but at least I wasn’t last anymore, so things were at a minimum moving in the right direction.
It's important to note that there has been no single “moment” in my career when things really inflected, it’s been a slow and steady climb from the nadir, continually trying new things, rejecting those that didn’t work, and moving on.
That’s how the stuff in this thread was developed. No great blinding flashes of insight, just the results of lots of blind alleys and failures, but being ruthless about pruning them while reinforcing the stuff that has worked. https://twitter.com/srasgon/status/1276671145849184258
Continuous measurable improvement.
And I'm still doing it, it's become the driving force of my process.
And I’ve only been doing this a dozen years, there's plenty of stuff left to work on, no reason I should expect to be finished anyway.
And I’ve only been doing this a dozen years, there's plenty of stuff left to work on, no reason I should expect to be finished anyway.
(Though I think this thread is now) :-)
