# How to get a job in investing

Yet Another Value Podcast · 2025-08-28 · 36 min · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aphCU2qK2rM

## Transcript

Andrew Walker

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, 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 look, 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 Tegus are two of my longest-time subscriptions. They're two of the podcast's longest-time sponsorships. I love them both and 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 of 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, 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 an industry. I do that myself out of pocket. Alpha doesn't pay. Tegus doesn't pay. That's just me. But I mention that because 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 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, AlphaSense, 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. Today’s episode is a slightly different episode. Let me start this podcast with a disclaimer, and then I’ll dive in. Nothing in this podcast is investment advice. You can listen to the 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 investment 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 don’t need job advice, then you don’t need to listen to this episode. This episode is for you. I’m recording this episode in mid to late August 2025, and this is the time when people are starting to go back to college or get their MBA. For the past 10 years, this is the time when I start getting a lot of emails from people looking for jobs and internships.

I completely understand that. I think I’ve gotten, let’s just call it, 15 over the past 3 weeks, and it’s really starting to ramp up. 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 try to be nice to people who are up-and-coming and looking for jobs. It’s a scary time, an exciting time, and all that sort of stuff.

I try to respond to every one of them. In particular, if someone has done some research and knows something about me, I try to hop on a Zoom and give them advice. I wanted to record this episode because I think a lot of these emails have a lot of room for improvement. I think people could make the process a lot easier on themselves, make the process much more likely to result in a job, and save interviewers and potential interviewees some time as well.

I wanted to record this episode and put this knowledge out there. I’ve got a slightly selfish reason, but I’ll mention it at the end. Before I dive into all that, let me leave you with this: I am not hiring right now. I know people are going to hear this and email me all the time, so I want to be clear: I’m not hiring right now.

If you email me looking for a job, you’re probably not going to get a job from me because I am not hiring. 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 and I see a good match, I’ll always try to make that connection.

Just because I say that, I don’t want 5,000 people to email me for a job. That’s not what I’m looking for, and it’s not why I’m putting this out there. Hopefully, this will be helpful.

Who is this for? I have one group of people in mind when I’m recording this, and I’m hoping they listen to this. It’s young people who are looking for a job specifically in investing. I’m thinking college students, MBA students, or young people who might have done something like 2 years at an accounting firm or 2 years at a marketing firm and want to switch into investing. That is who I’m targeting.

If you’re a 40-year-old who’s trying to break into investing or something like that, this isn’t for you. None of this advice is going to apply. Again, I’m specifically talking about investing. If you say, “Hey, Andrew, I want to get a job in investment banking. I want to get a job in private equity,” that’s great. I think a lot of what I’m going to talk about would work well for you, but I don’t think this advice would apply completely. You’ll want to adapt this advice to any of that.

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 podcast. I’m going to cover 4 points: first, proving you’re into it and showing your credentials; second, sending your intro email; third, how to do a stock pitch that actually grabs the listener’s attention and is more likely to get you a job; and fourth, getting your email.

Let’s dive into it. The first thing I want to talk about—I call this “prove you’re into it” slash “show your investing credentials.” The best way you can break into public-market investing is to have natural connections. If you’re someone who went to Harvard, worked at an investment bank for 2 years, is currently getting your MBA at Wharton, was in a fraternity, and your 3-years-up frat buddy is higher up at an investing firm right now, that’s the best way to get an investment job.

If that route is available to you, you should absolutely pursue it. Everything I’m going to say here should also work for you, improve your odds, and go above and beyond that, but you should pursue that route. I’m really talking about someone who doesn’t have that specific route available to them. I’m not saying that if the route’s available to you, you shouldn’t go that route. You absolutely should. Everything here should go beyond that as well.

If you’re still listening, what should you do? The first thing you should do right now, whether you’re a college student or an MBA student looking to switch into investing, is sign up for the CFA Level I right now. Study for it, pass it, and put it on your résumé that you have passed Level I once you have passed it. Or mention to people, “I am studying for the CFA Level I right now.”

Why do I mention that? I have my CFA. Do I think it has enormous value? I’ll be honest with you: I do not. However, it has enormous signaling value, particularly if you’re looking to switch from a non-target role into investing. If you’ve done 2 years in marketing and have your CFA, especially once you start passing levels, it shows people. It is just the clearest sign: “Hey, I am willing to work. I am willing to study. I know what I’m doing here.”

At least if you hire someone with a CFA, you know they’ve got some basics of finance and accounting. If you have your MBA, you probably don’t need your CFA. If you’re an undergrad, I can tell you there is nothing more powerful than applying to jobs and saying, “Hey, I’ve already passed 2 of the 3 levels of the CFA. I know how to do it.”

It shows clarity of purpose, willingness to work, and vision. Guess what? The easiest time to pass your CFA is when you’re in college. You never have 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 for it when you’re in college. So, the first thing you want to do is go sign up for the CFA right now. Start mentioning it in your interviews: “I have signed up and am studying for the CFA.” Once you pass it, mention, “I have passed Level 1 of the CFA.” 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 1. I think the signal—and again, you could say, “Andrew, you’re speaking your own book. You have a CFA.” That is true, but 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 Level 1 of the CFA when I was in college. Level 2, I think, I did right after, between college and starting my first job, and Level 3 immediately. So, yeah, that’s what I did. I think it helped me get to a lot of places. You can go look at my background on LinkedIn. I think it helped me get to a lot of places that I would not have gotten to if I hadn’t had that clarity of purpose and mission.

All right, the number 2 thing: you need to start a Substack anonymously. I’m going to talk about starting a Substack at the very end of this, but I’ll mention that now and come back to it later. I think a Substack is really going to be helpful. Again, anonymity is key, but we’ll come back to that later.

The number 3 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.” Actually investing is the way to get better, to learn, and to have things to talk about.

Whenever I hear somebody apply and I say, “Oh, cool. What are you invested in?” and they say, “Oh, I don’t invest on 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 brokerage account, and put it into 1 stock—or, to make it crazy, call options that expire that Friday. Absolutely not.

But what I am saying is that, pretty much no matter what your background, you can scrape together $100, put it into a Robinhood account, and start buying and selling stocks. I’m going to tell you, the actual act of investing is going to be helpful because if you don’t enjoy it, then why are you applying for a job in it? You’ll learn whether or not you enjoy it, and if you do enjoy it, this is going to help you improve and give you stuff to talk about.

When you go to an interview, you’re going to be able, off the cuff, to say, “Oh, yeah, I bought this stock, and they reported bad earnings. 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 you, and you’re going to start telling stories. It’s really going to show when you’re interviewing with companies.

Okay, so those are the “prove you’re into it, show your credentials” things: sign up for a CFA, start a Substack—I’m going to mention Substack again at the end—open a brokerage account, and start investing reasonably. Again, reasonably. I’m not saying go crazy, but invest reasonably.

Let’s go to the next thing: sending your intro email. I mentioned this because I said at the start that I have gotten 15 emails from people looking for jobs, internships, and all that over the past 3 weeks or so. 12 of them are cold emails. I’ll read 1 right now, kind of anonymized:

“Hi, Andrew. Hope you’re well. I’m a student at [insert very big-name law school here]. I graduated from [an Ivy League school], where I studied [subject]. After that, I worked at [a top-tier investment bank], and now I’m at [an 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 résumé.”

Is that great? Yes, this person has a fantastic background. 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 100 firms looking for a job, and that’s the type of email that I instantly want to throw away. 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 2 things you need to do when you send out the email. Number 1, 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. 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 in investing. I had some thoughts.” Or, “Hey, Andrew, you have publicly published this piece on XXX stock. I thought it was really interesting. I’d like to talk about it.”

That’s what’s going to get 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 use when you’re sending an email is an investing idea and an offer to swap thoughts. Let me give you an example. Say you do the research and see that whatever firm you’re talking to, or whatever person you’re talking to, has a position in McDonald’s.

Send them an email that says, “Hey, XX, I’ve 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 Zoom and talk to me for 30 minutes, 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 think that’s a perfect email for someone to send. They would have to be a complete butthole to turn you down and not at least spend 30 minutes on the phone with you. Remember, once you’ve got 30 minutes on the phone with them, or 30 minutes on Zoom with them, the world’s your oyster. You’ve got them at least a little bit on the hook.

Once they’re on the Zoom, 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. 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 hook.

So, why does that email work so 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. 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 a job. You’re offering to swap thoughts. You’re saying, “Hey, I’ve been working on Burger King. Could we swap thoughts? Could I give you something?”

And C, you’re ending with the close: get on a Zoom. So, again, 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. I think that’s a perfect email.

Again, you have to adapt it to your needs. If you’re applying at a quant firm, you don’t want to come in and say, “Hey, I’ve got a fundamental pitch on Burger King.” 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. Adapt it to your target.

But when you send that email, you are so much more likely to get responses. I know 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.

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’ve started developing relationships with 37 good investors who you hopefully like and admire. That can pay dividends longer term down the road.

You don’t know what it would be, but a year from now, one of those people you emailed takes 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 them 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. Can we swap thoughts?” You’re a hero to your boss. You’re developing relationships. It’s just exposing yourself to serendipity, and I think this is the best way to do it.

It’s so much better than sending cold emails. That’s my advice for sending investment-job emails: craft investment emails, don’t send a cold email, research the firm, say, “Hey, I’m interested in this stock,” and do a stock swap. Again, you can adapt 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. You are applying for an investing job.

You have to have an investment pitch when you apply for an investing job at any shop that does fundamental research. You absolutely have to. If you come to me—and I know several people feel this way—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 and you say, “Oh, I’m just a college student. I don’t need to have one. You’re going to train me,” no, you’re wrong. You need to show a passion for 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 and 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, see how you think about the world, and see how you’re doing. So that’s number one: You have to have one. 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 are, “Hey, let’s use McDonald’s here. McDonald’s is trading for 20 times price-to-earnings. Historically, it’s traded for 25 times price-to-earnings. Three big-name investors have positions in it, and it’s got a 2% dividend yield. I think it’s a buy.” It’s fine. Nothing special about that. Nothing memorable. Nothing that shows that you really have a pitch that goes beyond the SEC.

I’m going to give you one example. The 2025 Pershing Square Challenge winners came on the podcast recently to pitch Carlisle Companies, CSL. There were 2 really unique things about that pitch. I had 15 people email me and say, “Hey, do they have internships?” If they didn’t have an internship, I would have offered them a job on the spot, right? What did they do that stood out so much to people?

Number one, they crafted a pitch designed for their audience. They said it on the podcast, right? We knew who the judges of the Pershing Square Challenge were, so we crafted a pitch that was designed to appeal to them. I mentioned it earlier: If you’re pitching to me, do not pitch FCPT. 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 in. Craft the pitch to your audience, right?

Number two, what they did was say, “Hey, we went to all these conferences, all these building-products conferences, and developed all these non-publicly available—not MNPI, but non-publicly available—scuttlebutt-type insights, right? We talked to people who buy building products about the products. We talked to industry insiders, and that’s what formed our opinion and 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 filings say this, this, and this, and thus this is a buy.” You want to have something unique.

Why is that? A, you’re giving the audience something. And B, you’re showing them that you’re willing to do 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 meaningful insights. Let me give you some examples that I think would be great.

The best one that I could think of, which is doable on no budget whatsoever—just labor—you are a college student, so use that. You can call up people in any industry. If you call and say, “Hey, I’m a college student. I’m looking for some help with this,” anyone, in any environment, would have to be a butthole to just shut you down. You can do that with pretty much any industry. That’s something that’s available to college students, MBA students, and younger people that really isn’t available to people who are older.

If you 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?” you can have them give you a download on the franchise business. Then, at the end, you can say, “Hey, how is the franchise business right now?”

I’m recording this in mid-August. You can say, “Look, I’ve seen the stock prices of Chipotle and CAVA, the same-store sales, and all that. It seems tough. How are you feeling?” You can write down what they said. Then you could say, “Look, I’m thinking about franchising. I’m wondering if maybe I should go do a search fund and launch a franchise. I just wanted to ask: Are you thinking about opening new stores?” Get their answers.

Then you could go and your pitch, if you were pitching McDonald’s, could be: “Hey, I think McDonald’s is interesting at 20 times price-to-earnings. I think they’re going to grow much faster than anyone suspects.” The next line could be, “Why do I think that? I talked to 15 franchisees, and 13 of them told me that sales were going great and that they were planning on opening new stores in the next year.” That is a really unique insight that you have developed, and you can take that approach across industries.

I’ll give you another example: medtech devices. There are a dozen—more than a dozen—publicly traded small- and mid-cap medtech device companies. You could take any of them. You could start calling doctors. 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? I want to figure out which company is growing and which company I should be joining.”

I would guess most doctors would spend 5 to 10 minutes talking to you. You could ask, “Hey, I saw Company XYZ launched this new hip product. Are you thinking about using it?” If you call 10 doctors and 8 of them say, “Oh my God, it’s the best thing since sliced bread. I’m switching 100% of my patients to it immediately. I’ve been training on this other hip device for 10 years, but I am willing to retrain on this new hip device because this new hip device is so much better,” oh boy, if that’s what you’re hearing, you have a really interesting investment piece there.

Whereas, if you call 10 of 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 would actually 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 toward people who are coming from a nontraditional background than college or MBA students—but I think this is really powerful. You might be sitting there and saying, “Hey, I’m in marketing. I’ve been in marketing for 2 years. I want to switch over to investing. Nobody’s going to hire me.” I’m not going to lie to you: 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 adtech company, and your second slide can be, “Hey, I have been working at this marketing firm for 2 years. I have a bunch of bosses who’ve moved on or contacts in the industry. I called several advertising managers who manage $100 million, $50 million—whatever it is—advertising budgets, and I talked to them. Of the 7 managers, 5 of them said, ‘Hey, I’m switching my advertising spend from Google to Amazon. I’m seeing that all of the incremental return is on Amazon.’ Or, ‘I’m increasing my spend on Instagram because over the past 6 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.’”

I use Google, Amazon, and Facebook as examples. I wouldn’t advise doing a crazy large publicly traded comp like one of the Mag 7 or something. I think that’s very difficult and audience-dependent. There are other smaller adtech companies, but that’s the type of thing where you say, “Look, I know I’ve got a nontraditional background, but I know how this works. I can do deep research, and, by the way, I can bring skills from my nontraditional background that would actually help you.”

I’ll give you another one: Lululemon and Crocs. These are popular investments among value investors. The question is, are you catching a falling knife, or is there a lot of value there? These are trading at pretty low multiples. You can call up your marketing friends and get feedback from them. They say, “Hey, look, I know Lululemon’s kind of botched it recently, but their most recent campaign is incredible and it’s drawing buzz. We’re seeing, across the board, that it’s performing really well.”

That’s a really unique insight. I don’t think it’s quite as powerful as some of the others—the 15 franchisees or the medtech example—but that’s still a really interesting insight that shows you can go and find unique things that show where the puck is going, not 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 can think of ways to use your background, your college experience, or whatever, you can think of ways to use that to call people, get your foot in the door with a lot of people, and build a nontraditional pitch that has really interesting, unique insights in it.

And when you do that, it’s going to open a lot of doors. When you interview with people, they are going to be falling all over themselves—maybe not literally falling over themselves—but you’re going to really increase your chances. Even somebody who says, “Hey, I might not be looking for an analyst,” might put you on as a free intern for 6 months if you come with a pitch that good. It’s really about getting your foot in the door. So, I think that’s great.

All right, the last thing I want to go through is something I said at the beginning that I was going to come back to: starting a Substack. 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. Think of a pseudonym and 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. If you do your Substack under the King of Raccoons—I’m just making something up off the top of my head—5 years from now, if you decide you don’t want to be investing, you want to run for politics, or you get hired by Fidelity and they say, “Hey, absolutely no public persona,” cool. You can just go delete the King of Raccoons Substack, and it never happened.

But a Substack is going to do 2 things for you. Number 1, if you commit to writing a Substack and you write 1 article a week for the next 6 months, you are going to get much better as an investor. And I mean that in 2 ways.

Number 1, everyone thinks they’re the best investor of all time. I promise you, when you start writing, you’re going to get feedback real fast. One piece of 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 is going to make your ideas better, your writing better, and you’re going to start to develop an audience. That’s one reason to start a Substack: the market feedback is going to be great. As you get better and as you get more readers, 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.

You’re also going to start to make connections. You’re going to publish on an interesting small-cap stock, X, and eventually somebody—some large investor or large manager—is going to read your stuff. 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.” That’s going to help you continue to develop, and it’s going to help your network.

Here’s the other thing you’re going to do: eventually, you’re going to publish a pitch. You can’t do this with every pitch, but you’re going to publish a pitch and spend a lot of time on it. You’re going to publish a pitch with some of that nontraditional research that I talked about.

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. It’s going to say, “Hey, I’ve done a lot of work on XYZ Company, and I’ve talked to 10 doctors. I think the market is way underestimating the chances that this company takes a lot of market share in this market. Or I’ve talked to 12 franchisees, and all of them are looking to grow, while Wall Street is modeling 0 unit growth next year. Based on my talk with 8% of the franchisee base who want to open 1 to 2 stores next year, I think units are actually going to grow.”

These are great nontraditional pitches. You’re going to publish that article, and it’s going to get out there. If you’re really good, you’re going to send it under your pseudonym to people who are long that stock 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 following. You’re going to do that for 6 months, again under a pseudonym so you can divorce yourself from it. 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.

After 6 months, you’re going to put out an email that says, “Hey, I really enjoy investing. I’ve really enjoyed writing the Substack. I’m a college student, a rising junior. I’ve 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. I’ve really enjoyed this Substack, and I love it. If you know of someone who’s hiring, or you’re hiring, whatever, I’m interested. Please reach out.”

When you do that, if you’ve done a good job and built an audience, you’re going to get a lot of feedback. I can’t tell you how many people have gotten jobs off the exact path that I just laid out.

Now, you might say, “Andrew, what if I didn’t?” It’s not wasted time. You’ve improved as an investor. You’ve improved as a writer. And if no one responds when you put out that call, you have to look in the mirror and say, “Hey, maybe my writing ideas were not good enough, or maybe I’m not getting enough reach.”

You can look in the mirror and do it for another 3 months. Then you can do the same thing. You can improve as a writer, get a bigger following, and do whatever it is you need to do. Then you can do the same thing again. If it comes up snake eyes, then you say, “Hey, there might be something off here.”

You can email me. 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, and I got no inbound responses.” 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.

What you’ve done is improve yourself. You’ve put yourself out there in a way that can’t hurt you long term. I think it exposes you to a lot of serendipity. Again, I can’t tell you how many people have gotten hired following the exact path that I laid out.

Maybe it was less structured. Maybe they didn’t know what they were doing when they started, 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 think it’s just an absolutely fantastic way to start out.

Let me wrap this post up by talking a little bit more about reaching out to me. I did this post a little selfishly. Look, I try to respond to everyone who sends me an email and says, “I’m a college student. I’m looking for a job,” even if I just say, “Hey, I’m not hiring right now.”

But I try to respond a little more to people who have done the work—to people who say, “Andrew, I like your stuff. I didn’t just find you on LinkedIn and cold-email you. I read your piece. I like your stuff.” I try to respond a little more to them. I will hop on Zoom calls. 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.

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. If you’ve listened to this podcast and started the Substack, or you’re following some of this advice 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 I get.

For those watching on video, you can see that I’m wearing a pink shirt right now. For those listening on audio, you can’t. 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.

When you say, “I really like your pink shirt,” first, 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. I found you. I listened to the podcast. I started doing the advice you recommended.” I’ll know that you’ve done all that, and I’m going to spend 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it is, with you. We’re going to hop on a Zoom, and I’m going to go through your best pitch with you. We’re going to talk about your writing.

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 I 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 you like my pink shirt to stroke my ego. You don’t even have to like it. You don’t have to mean it. I just need you to send me your pitch, and I’m going to give you 30 minutes or an hour of my time. 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 a job. Nothing on this podcast is investment 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 to get you in a better spot.

Just show me you’ve done that. And look, I think if you listen to this podcast and you’ve done all this work, you’re going to find that it works out. 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 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 happens. Again, it’s not easy. But if I go back to the Substack, by the way, you might start that Substack and 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. Then, 5 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. They get a big following. People say, “Hey, I love your ideas,” and they start. So expose yourself to the serendipity.

I think if you follow all these steps, you’re going to be in a 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 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. We can go from there. Anyway, hey, this has been rambling. Again, my computer restarted in the middle of this. I’ll try—and that’s what I have editors for—I’ll try to splice it all together.

But 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 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’ll 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.