“You make a lot of money?” The immaculately dressed stockbroker seated in a Long Island diner looks up with slight bemusement at the question. “Yeah, $70,000… last month. Well - actually $72,000 - something like that.” The awkward man with large spectacles cuts to the chase: “I’ll tell you what, if you show me a pay stub for $72,000 I’ll call my boss and quit my job right now and come work for you.” A brief silence ensues followed by a nonchalant shrug. The broker opens his briefcase and reveals the check. The scene cuts.

If I had graduated when I was supposed to (2010), there would have been no job for me. The financial crisis had destroyed the job market in the United States, and the recovery was still a few years away. I still know people to this day who entered that job market and make nowhere near the commensurate rate their talents and accomplishments would indicate. According to the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) “... a person hired during a moderate recession (defined as an increase in the unemployment rate of 3 points) could lose as much as 60 percent of a year’s earnings over their first 10 years in the labor market.” This was no moderate recession.

Because I went to school in California at the very prestigious San Francisco State (that is sarcasm for those of you unable to detect), the state school system was cutting budgets and I couldn’t get more than 8 units a semester. It took me until summer 2012 to graduate, and I had no idea what I wanted to do afterwards.

I was working at Whole Foods while I went to school and thought my Dietetics Degree (that is nutrition for the uninitiated) would get me noticed by the higher-ups in the Whole Body department. Maybe I could get a job with corporate influencing strategy for my segment. My job had been slinging vitamins to middle aged suburbanites, and all of RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz’s acolytes since my senior year of high school. Spoiler alert, this was a poor plan and no one at corporate had any interest in me, or my degree. 

In 2013 I was very proud of myself for landing a job in the tech market. In the build-up to me securing the job I had several interviews and several job offers to consider. It was the first time in my life I had experienced some demand for my employment and it felt good. The issue was I still was only making enough money to live with my parents, or in a literal basement without windows underneath a family in the Sunset District of San Francisco. Up to that point, I had chosen the former option. It also didn’t help that there would be lines of students and early career young professionals to apply for the windowless basement. The economy was rapidly picking up steam and the energy in silicon valley was getting contagious. Wolf of Wall Street had recently come out, and I couldn’t help but relate to the character played by Jonah Hill - willing to do whatever it took to better my situation, but also being lucky and privileged enough to live in the right place at the right time to make it happen. 

When I got a call from my friend and former colleague who just landed a job at a unicorn - a company valued at  $1 billion - I was intrigued, but didn’t instantly believe him when he told me he was making six figures a year and was working on a MacBook Air. Better yet, the unicorn was hiring and he was recommending me to his boss! I gave it a few weeks before I called him back and double checked with him that he wasn’t just in the honeymoon phase and that this move could be a real possibility for me. I couldn’t believe that a company like this would be interested in me. 

While I am a little embarrassed to admit it now, I told my friend - “If you show me your paystub and your MacBook air so I can see it's all real I’ll come in and interview as soon as they’ll let me.” I didn’t know what the company did, why people needed its products, or why it would be successful. What I did know was if I was able to get the job offer, my life would change overnight. With just one interview I could conceivably afford to move out of my parents house on my own terms, get a new car (the 2003 Honda Civic was starting to show a bit of its age), and upgrade to a queen sized mattress! When I landed the job my expectations of how my life would change were blown away far beyond these material wants and needs, but it wasn’t the most valuable thing I garnered from this experience:

It was the exposure to different job functions, and technologies. It was having people invested in my success - people that sat there on the phone with me as I made my first cold call (I booked that meeting by the way 🙃), or help set up my first marketing campaign. It was having people be patient with me, provide coaching, expose me to new techniques/styles, and allow me to fail. It was the understanding that I slowly began to develop that the money didn’t feel as good unless the products and services being delivered showed great value back to the customer.

I will dwell a bit more on the last point of representing products and services that actually deliver great value to customers before I get off my soap box. When one has the good fortune of representing a company that seeks a positive experience and value for its customers/stakeholders, the culture around it is one you will gain far more from being a part of than the quick, ostentatious money depicted in Wolf of Wall Street. Dr Scott Galloway, a professor at NYU’s business school and serial entrepreneur has regularly stated something to the effect of “I have a way of guaranteeing you get rich. The bad news is it's slow.” Iconic investors Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger once had a third partner named Rick Guerin. Guerin was every bit as smart as the legendary investors he worked with, but wanted to get rich in a hurry. When the stock market crashed in the mid-70’s Guerin was forced to sell his shares to Buffett for mere dollars that are now worth $730,000 a share at the time of this writing. The real life Wolf of Wall Street and the characters depicting them in the movie end up in jail. 

If you are focused on money (that's okay if you are, no judgement here), just make sure the question “you make a lot of money?”, is quickly followed up with “how?”. The answer to that question will make all the difference in your career. I consider myself very lucky I learned that early on.