"It's time to sit down and think about what's truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest. Without this, success will not be pleasurable, or nearly as complete as it could be. Or worse, it won't last"
The Ego Is The Enemy - Ryan Holiday
Even though it actually isn’t the worst decision of my life, its taken me over 10 years and some deep introspection to understand how my ego, my identity and my lack of perspective led me to make a decision whose consequences would dog me for over a decade….
When I left one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in the world in March of 2012, so many people thought I was crazy. They thought something was wrong or something had happened. From my parents who hated the idea that I was walking away from the security of a lucrative job, to colleagues and partners who were incredulous that I would just walk away from this high profile and highly coveted seat in the City of London (The UK equivalent of Wall Street.)
The reality of it is, I don't look back on this decision with any kind of regret at all. Few people knew what it was like to work there. My immediate boss once went 15 days without actually speaking to me - instead communicating only by email - even though we sat next to each other. The head of the entire European operations ultimately ended up in jail - which to me, speaks volumes to the culture and energy that permeated that office and the company as a whole.
Leaving this hedge fund isn't the worst decision of my life.
That illustrious title belongs to my decision to leave my previous hedge fund 3 years before I ultimately left finance.
This firm has gone from strength to strength, driven by the same core-group of individuals who were there when I stepped away.
To understand why I left this firm, I had to go back to my beginnings in the finance industry and my journey to have even been in that seat at all.
I joined the trading desk of the investment bank that ultimately became known as “fortress balance sheet”, after completing an undergraduate degree in Economics at the London School of Economics.
My first 9 months on the desk involved the usual graduate grind, fetching coffees and lunches, as well as house-sitting a 10 bedroom villa in Lisbon for 4 weeks during the 2004 European Championship!
The Lisbon assignment was rocket-fuel to my career, giving me exposure to all of the firm's clients as well as lots of face-time in the best scenarios with my bosses. On my return I was immediately given the dual assignment of taking on clients and hiring my replacement!
2 years later, in the summer of 2006, as a favour to a mate who was a couple of years ahead of me at the bank, I agreed to have him put my name forward for a trading job at one of his top hedge fund clients. For him, I fitted the bill because I was young, building a solid reputation in the industry and he felt I wouldn't let him down in an interview.
I went into the interview knowing very little about the firm, the hedge fund world generally and overall pretty happy with my current set-up and life trajectory.
Over the course of a week I had a few challenging but standard interviews with various partners, before meeting with the co-founder, who had a fearsome reputation for being ruthless, to the point and impressed by very little. I had also caught wind of what to expect.
In a nutshell, he challenged me to travel to 5 different cities, in 5 different countries, with only £500 and within 24 hours, all the while, documenting my journey, my strategy and my feelings via email to the partners of the fund, with a blackberry he handed me along with the envelope with the cash, before abruptly walking out.
After a brief summit with the partner leading my recruitment, where I flatly refused to go, he convinced me that I already had the job and that this was my way of proving to the founder that I had the mental fortitude and character to survive the firm. I took on the challenge.
The how and where of what I did (Paris-Brussels-Dublin-Cardiff-Australian Embassy in London-25.5 hours) will have to be for another post, but 6 weeks later I started on the trading desk, alongside the partner who led my recruitment, as my boss.
Over the next 18 months, the firms assets under management swelled from $4b to over $20b, and our high turnover, high touch strategy meant that between myself, my boss and one other trader, we were rumoured to be trading between 3-5% of the European equity markets every day. We were 3 of the highest profile traders in the city and the faces of one of the fastest growing and best performing hedge funds in the world.
Then the financial crisis hit and unlike other hedge funds, our co-founder decided not to stop investors withdrawing their money and our assets plummeted. In a bid to come out of the crisis leaner and more efficient, the firm dramatically shifted how we did things, resulting in less for traders to do and relying more on computers.
One of my fellow-traders left and my boss, although a partner, began planning his next career move. Despite this shift in the firm's approach to trading, the co-founder and other partners began to evolve my role and broaden my responsibilities to other aspects of our investment process.
But I resisted. Or at least I didn't embrace these changes. I was a trader. I was a hot commodity. I was 29 years old and full of myself. So I started to put out the feelers for other trading roles at other high profile funds.
When I got the call to interview with the fund that I ultimately left finance from, I felt vindicated in my resistance to the changes being imposed on me, vindicated in my belief that I was a hot commodity and vindicated in my belief that I knew best. Even my current boss told me it was right to leave.
That decision to leave would hang around my neck like a millstone for over 10 years. A decision that would give me a pit in my stomach every time I met another successful, wealthy person, or read about the continued success of that fund. A decision that would loom large in my dreams (nightmares) and would bubble up to the surface of my daily life every time I ran into another failure or something I was involved with which didn't work out the way I had hoped.
Over the years, I have come to better understand how that decision came to be, to understand and accept the mistakes I made, but also developed the perspective to appreciate that whilst the decision to leave was an error, ultimately the path that my life has taken since, has afforded me so many different opportunities and experiences that ultimately I am content with how things have turned out.
In the months and years after leaving finance, I came to recognise how much I was defined by my job, by my industry and by the reputation of the firms I worked for. My ego thrived on the recognition I received in social situations, on the trappings of life that the job afforded me, on the adrenaline of the day to day battles.
I can see now that in leaving the first hedge fund for the second, I allowed my ego above all else to control my decision making. I allowed myself to be impressed by the headlines of the new firm - a large number of assets under management, big reputation within the industry, always involved in the highest profile deals and trades - and didn't do enough research to understand the way the firm operated, the culture within the firm and perhaps even try to connect with people who had left to understand why.
I lacked perspective on the longer term trajectory of my career had I stayed. I didn't do any career or life planning back then. I had never stopped to think what it was I actually wanted, or how I wanted my life to evolve, other than I wanted to earn money and be known and respected - not exactly the building blocks of long term happiness!
I sought advice from a very narrow and, in hindsight, biased group of people. My boss from the bank introduced me to the new opportunity - the fund I would join was one of his biggest clients! Meanwhile, my current boss and partner at the firm encouraged me to seek a better role, which I know he thought was in my best interests, but at the same time he was planning his own departure. On top of this, I discounted advice from those closest to me who I thought didn't know as much as I did (the ego again!)
As the years passed, I slowly began to redefine who I was, but most importantly I set out on the journey of embracing that who I am is not defined by what I do for work.
Living in the US, pretty much the first question you get asked by everyone you meet, is “what do you do?” (followed by “where did you go to school?”), so this idea of who you are being closely tied to what you do (and what you have achieved) is omnipresent. Worse still, you can feel some people’s energy change when your answer does not fit nicely into a box they expect, or one that is interesting to them.
Over time, I have come to understand and embrace the idea that true happiness and contentedness comes from being comfortable with who you are, with your experiences, your decisions and your mistakes. That the feelings of growth satisfaction come from taking the time to reflect and learn from moments in your life and using these reflections to adapt.
Ultimately I have been able to let go of the regret, the self loathing and self criticism that for so long precipitated from that fateful decision in 2010. But the journey to get to a place of release - or perhaps better phrased, a place of peace, has been long, arduous and most importantly paved with so much self-knowledge. I have come to realise that that decision wasn't the worst of my life… but for so long it felt that way.
In a weird twist of fate, at the end of last year, the co-founder of the first fund I joined in London began dating the person renting the apartment below ours in New York City (I found out via a package in the lobby!). After a little apprehension, I decided to drop him a text, clear with myself that I had no expectations of a response.
He didn't ever get in touch and the drink never happened. But 6 months later, my 3 kids and I were hustling out of our building on bikes and heading to soccer, as he was walking in with his new partner and dog in tow.
As he approached, he appeared to have a vague recollection that I was someone familiar, so to help out, I re-introduced myself and contextualised it for him.
He grabbed my face and rubbed my beard, exclaiming how sophisticated I looked. After introducing him to my kids, I shared with him my long-lasting feelings of regret for having left his firm and my admiration for everything he had gone on to achieve professionally.
He asked what I did now and upon hearing that I had been angel investing, but now focussed on coaching as well as being around for my kids while my wife had the rockstar career, he asked “Are you ok with that?”
And finally, I had closure.
My challenge to you: Ask yourself the question - why do you do what you do? That is the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can.
