10 Lessons I’ve Learned from 2 Years of Investment Banking

As a long time WSO reader, I wanted to make my first post to inspire new / prospective investment banking analysts. I hope that you can find something useful here.

Over the past two years in my investment banking experience, I’ve had many trials and tribulations. I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything, but I wish somebody had taught me the below lessons before getting started.

1. Mindset is everything
   • There is a massive difference between thinking “I have to get this done” vs “I get to work on this.” As an analyst, you should look to keep your child-like wonder and high motivation levels up for as long as possible. Too often bankers’ motivation falls, and the job actually becomes more mentally difficult towards the latter half of their stint.

2. Learn how your group works as fast as possible
   • You’re not going to reinvent the wheel as an analyst – so you should find somebody who is a top performer in your group and emulate their work habits as much as possible. How do they communicate with their boss? How do they set up their Excel and PowerPoint shortcuts? What routine do they have? Do they live a balanced life? Learning from top analysts / associates early on is your best chance to develop your skills and maximize your chances for success.
3. You’re not special
   • During recruiting season, I would receive hundreds of emails from potential candidates. Resumes started to look identical. Everyone has a 3.9 GPA, involvement in an investing club, wealth management or private equity internship, and most importantly a passion for finance and numbers. In the early stages of your career your experiences do not differentiate you. Your ability to interact with people and positively influence how they feel does. You should still maximize your experiences; just know that they don’t differentiate you as much as you might think
4. Not everything matters. Focusing on what does is very important
   • Banking is all about being detail oriented, but far too often precious time is wasted on meaningless things like overly detailed call notes, brainstorming how to word an email to a client, or pondering whether to show net vs gross revenue instead of just asking your associate. Things that do matter is your ability to produce error-free work, a positive attitude, beginning a task with the end in mind, and efficiency. Don’t sweat the small stuff and make sure to focus deeply and maintain your attention on what matters.
5. You should probably specialize, or at least begin to think about it
   • The top finance professionals and entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly specialized. To create immense value, one must have incredibly deep knowledge in a single area of expertise. Whether it’s restructuring, healthcare, or Latin American M&A, you should find something that you enjoy and focus all your efforts into it. I believe that generalist bankers and investors will have a harder time than specialists at generating fees / alpha.
6. Stay healthy
   • Work out every day (even if it’s just a 25-minute walk) and eat relatively healthily. The lack of sleep that comes with this job will reduce your physical and mental baseline to below what you’re accustomed to operating on – your goal should be to bring that back up as high as possible. Two things that really helped me were getting sunlight (especially on work from home days) and avoiding compulsive social media habits.
7. Preserve your habits
   • Too often when young professionals meet new people they ask, “what do you do?” instead of “what do you like to do?”. Make sure you preserve your love for basketball, reading, weightlifting, or whatever hobby you had in college as much as you can.
8. Focus on the big picture, then bring it back today
   • Realize that this job is for two years. 24 months. 104 weeks. The optionality that investment banking brings you is better than 99% of other business roles. You should take advantage of that and use it to motivate you to get through the 2:00 am nights and repetitive tasks you need to complete. I’ve seen a surprisingly high number of friends quit prematurely and severely damage their career prospects – mostly due to having a high-time preference and not seeing the big picture.
9. Realize that nobody ever did anything impressive without a ton of work
   • No one has reached the pinnacle of anything (including life) without working hard. Banking gives you the opportunity to “master” something over 50% faster than others. Your efforts and accompanying additional knowledge won’t go unnoticed by future employees.

10. Never stop learning
    • When you first start, you’ll be learning new things every hour. As you gain experience, you’ll focus less on learning and more on execution, but don’t let that stop you from continuously learning as much as possible. The best continuously stay up to date on their industry and genuinely have a burning desire to learn everything there is to know about it.