An Open Letter to College Students Interested in Business and Finance

Three observations over 30 years in the business world:

Real money is made by owning equity in companies, not by salary and bonuses as a banker, consultant, or lawyer.

The most successful people I know were never bankers or consultants and, in fact, did something unrelated or very low level in their chosen field for a couple of years after college to give themselves a chance to figure out who they are and what they really wanted to do.

For many (including me), going to business school was more important than undergrad for professional success.

None of this is meant to diminish the pressure you feel right now to have a plan, only to put it into a somewhat longer-term perspective than the next 12 months.

You might think about how best to position yourself for business school rather than, for instance, what your first-year salary will be.

Every banker or consultant will apply to business schools, making it a very competitive route, whereas doing something unique and interesting makes you more attractive, not less, to business school admissions officers.

The idea that what you do the first year out of college determines your fate as a human is false and damaging. Throw that notion out completely.

No matter what, the path to real success will demand the courage to do something different from what everyone else is doing, either now or at some later point.

You have doubtless talked to lots of people about your career in a frantic desire to figure it out. Keep doing that.

But at some point, talking to more people is not going to help you decide your next move. A hundred people will have a hundred different opinions about what you should do, many of which will contradict each other.

My advice would be to think about the 2-3 people you have talked to that you trust most. They should be people you admire and want in some way to emulate, not for their success but for their character. You feel drawn to these individuals as a model of whom you want to become for reasons you can’t even explain.

Think about their advice. Reach out to them for a follow-up explaining all that you have learned and the decision you are trying to make.

Focus only on what this very small group has to say, and exclude everyone else’s noise.

Use those conversations as guidance. Not the answer.

Then ask yourself what you think, apart from all the pressure from your peers and outsiders. What is the best use of your time for the couple years after graduation? What makes you truly excited?

It may still not be clear; just go with whatever feels like 51% right. Then don’t look back. Commit.

Short story. I applied to college during my junior year of high school as I was determined to get out of the house a year early. My parents were not involved. I visited colleges by myself. They were all schools no one in my family had gone to.

It came down to Oberlin and Wesleyan. I agonized over the decision. I was 16 and had no one to talk to. Finally, I drove around Wesleyan and just kind of flipped a coin in my head and said: “What the fuck!” I’ll go here. I was 51% sure that was the right thing, but I honestly didn’t know. I was really scared I had made a mistake.

I am sure Oberlin would have been great, and I would now have different friends and perhaps a different life. But going to Wesleyan turned out to be a great choice for me in ways I had no way of knowing at 16.

The point is you don’t have to put pressure on yourself to know things you can’t. Just make the best decision you can and commit to it. And try not to beat yourself up about any part of this.

Your career is like getting married. Are you going to marry the first person you meet or even fall in love with? It takes a lot of dating and experimentation to find your way. And even then you will likely have more than one career (hopefully not spouses). I have had at least three careers: CFO, VC, Search.

The best parts of life are the parts you cannot possibly plan or predict. They seem random, but actually they are not. But you only get there by being in the moment, in some form of flow.

Which is why I fight so hard against the notion that 20-year-olds should be able to plan their careers, or their lives. It doesn’t work that way. What job you love, or what person you will marry, is outside the realm of a plan.

All moments are contained in this moment; your true face is the one before even your parents were born, and we are fundamentally not in your control. All we can do is see what our hearts see in this moment and go from there.

As author Katie Arnold says about uncertainty, “becoming okay with not knowing is a higher form of wisdom and consciousness. Not knowing is so exciting because there are infinite possibilities.” The practice of a lifetime is coming to each moment with beginner’s mind and seeing what happens next.

You are amazing. I am so proud of you in every way. And I promise you, even though it may not feel that way right now, it will all turn out beyond your wildest dreams. It may not be a straight line, but that is the best part of life: when things get fucked up, and then you figure it out. And the most amazing things happen when you are least expecting them to.

Big Love

Tom

—

This post was previously published on Linkedin.com.