Unlocking Success: The ONE Essential Characteristic for Traders, Graduates, and Business Owners

Welcome back to the podcast. It's the end of the week and doing a bit of self-reflection on the different things that have happened over the course of the last couple of days in markets. And I feel like we've covered quite a bit in recent episodes on things like yields and the curve, investment bank earnings. There have been more, but I know Stephen and I in the episode just 2 days ago covered Goldman's, for example. So you can go back and listen to that one. We've also covered a lot on IPOs. Which have been quite a lot of the focus more recently. So I thought we could take this episode, Piers, in a slightly different direction, and hopefully it gives a bit of interest and a bit of value to our listeners. And I've gone a bit sensational. I've gone for—

That's not like you.

I've gone for the title, The One Defining Character Needed for Success. For traders, graduates, and business owners. The one quality characteristic required. That's what we're shooting for in the next 30 minutes. Um, so in terms of, of that though, I mean, I must admit up front, uh, there probably isn't one. There's probably many contributing factors to success, uh, down to individual circumstances, your starting point, so on and so forth. However, there is one that we're definitely going to lock onto, given that that's the one I typically definitely hear the most when I host people from industry, from different roles, different sectors. This is the one they always come back to me with, regardless of whether they're in PE, IPD, trading, it's always the same thing. However, one that did come in a close second, some might think this should be at the top, was, but we're gonna say it's number 2, uh, was trust. And I know there was a very good article this week that I know that, um, that you were reading. So yeah, what was that article and why trust is important?

Wow. So this article, let's start there, was actually a trending— it was the most read article in the FT, uh, for most of Tuesday. You know, choose, you know, on the FT, and actually a good tip if you don't know, if you're reading the FT on the app, then or on, on the website, there's a, a list if you scroll down a bit on the homepage. So on the right-hand side, there's a list of the most read articles that day, the top 5. And so often if you're not quite sure where to start with the FT, I mean, obviously find the top stories and stuff, but if you're not sure what's hot, then actually that's quite a good list to just have a look at and kind of click into. They're, they're the ones that most people are reading anyway. Top of that list for most of Tuesday was this great story about this guy from, well, I should say this ex-employee from Citigroup. His name, I'm gonna try and pronounce it. It's a great name.

Hang about, they name and shamed him as well.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So his name, I'm gonna destroy the pronunciation of this, but I'm gonna go for it. His name is Sabolks Feket. Okay, okay, senior analyst. Um, but basically the story goes that he'd worked for Citigroup for 7 years and he was off to Amsterdam on a work trip. I think he was there for 3 days and, um, comes back, um, submits his expenses. Okay, and his manager is basically reviewing his expense claim and is going Wow, you were hungry? What's all this food? Hang on, this lunch bill, what the hell? Do you have double lunch or something? What's going on? And Fekete's initial response was, well, hang on a minute. Come on, it's just a bit of lunch, just a bit of food. It's not like these bills are outrageous. I feel a little bit— I'm not sure how I feel about this scrutiny over my detailed line items on my lunch receipt. Right? That was his first sort of response.

And to add, I do know, I did read this article as well. He said at this point, well, I was planning because I'm so hardworking, I was going to get the sandwich now. I'd get the second sandwich for later, so I wouldn't have to leave my desk. And I'll get this. I didn't have a coffee in— yeah, that's the one. He said, I didn't have a coffee in the morning, so I got two because I needed to catch up. That's what he said.

Anyway, the line manager basically calls bullshit on this and says, I don't believe you. You bought lunch for some, you know, who were you having lunch with? And he was like, no, I was on my own. I was on my own, you know, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the manager goes bullshit, right? I'm sending it upstairs. So he kind of, the line manager then escalates it and it goes up the tiers, you know, of compliance and And the questioning started to get more rigorous. To cut a long story short, Fekete ultimately cracks and goes, all right, fine. Yes, my girlfriend was with me and I bought her lunch. All right. Shouldn't have done it, but look, that's it. I've come clean. So Citigroup fire him on the spot. Now, Fekete's not happy about this. And so he thinks there's been an injustice and he goes ahead and sues them for wrongful dismissal. I mean, this is insane, this story. It's basically about a sandwich and he sues them for wrongful dismissal. It goes to court, like full, fully goes to court. There's a court hearing, there's a judge ruling, and the judge rules in favor of Citigroup. And says they were justified in firing him in this instance. So I think there's a couple of— there's a few takeaways from this story in my mind. I mean, firstly, if we look at it from the letter of the law point of view, well then, yeah, Beckett messed up and he shouldn't have done that. And he— I think what made it worse was his initial attempt to when it got questioned, his initial attempt to kind of COVID it up. I think ultimately that was his error. I don't think— I mean, fine, you buy your girlfriend a sandwich. I mean, geez, who cares, right? But his error here was lying about it. So this ultimately comes back to this point about trust. And certainly it doesn't matter what role you're doing, really. Well, I think trust is now more important in today's working environment than it was pre-COVID. Let's just split it out. If you're in a trading role, then fine, forget about COVID Trust is absolutely essential. It always has been, it always will be, because ultimately you're in a risk-taking role and the company has to be 100% certain they can trust you and you're responsible and you've got the experience to manage that risk appropriately on behalf of their clients. Any— even if it's a tiny infinitesimal fractional bit of, hang on a minute, can I trust you? Then basically you're out, you're done, you can't be in a risk-taking role. Okay, not everyone's in a risk-taking role though, so therefore does that mean trust is less important? Well, I think in the post-COVID hybrid working era, I think trust is key because these days a lot of people aren't working in the office for large periods of time. And so it's about just a general level of trust that the employee working remotely is cracking on, you know, is getting on with things and putting in a shift. And I think every, you know, in Amplify, and I can only kind of speak to our own company, you know, we work in a hybrid format and, you know, I trust everyone 100% and, you know, you can see that in the output, right? People are beavering away and their output levels are high whether they're in the office or not. And so fine, that's ultimately how you measure that trust. But if there's any hint that, hang on a minute, you know, why have you not got that project done today or that part of that project done today that you were supposed to have done? You know, hang on, what were you doing then? Well, what have you been doing all day? And as soon as those thoughts kind of creep in, then that kind of trust breaks down and it's kind of the beginning of the end, I think.

Well, you're, you're looking at my virtual background right now. Not— I'm not at home, I'm in Miami, I'm on the beach. It's just super high 4K, you just can't tell.

But I would say, going further, right, fine, the trust thing, I get that. But this, this episode does also shine a light on just how ridiculous ridiculous banking compliance has got, how ridiculous human beings have become. I mean, who the hell's this line manager? I mean, who sends it? Who escalates a kind of language purchase? I mean, it's just get a life, you know? So, but yeah, trust. That's our number 2.

Yeah, okay. Well, look, to lead us into then what is top of the pops here, um, there's quite a few common misconceptions. I would say let's just definitely take a trader because I think that's probably the one that has the most misconceptions about what it takes to be successful at trading. So what are some of those that you've heard before?

I think, well, it's the obvious stuff like you've got to be a genius mathematician.

Yeah.

I think it's probably my favorite misconception. And that idea that a trading screen has numbers on it. Therefore, you're dealing with numbers. Oh, well, therefore you've got to be good at maths. That's not the case. I mean, unless— that's generally speaking not the case unless there is one end of the trading sphere where, fine, these kind of— well, it's probably two ends, I'd say, where that kind of skill set is key. One is the more complex end in terms of products now. If you're kind of starting to price options and using Black-Scholes model and that kind of stuff, well, fine, the maths can get quite heavy. And yes, you do need to be a mathematician. Number two, on the quant side, fine. Well, you might say programming skills would be above maths skills, but they tend to kind of go a bit hand in hand, right? So that's fine. But That's, you know, that's a one corner of the kind of trading world. The, the rest of the trading world, you know, if you can add up small numbers, then you're, you're fine.

Yeah. And I think the, the people miss the point as well, is that most people are trading, uh, very specific products. And so you know those products well. And so it's not like you're coming out with this random interview-style abstract mathematic questions, mathematical questions. They're— it's the same things you're looking at and they're moving in ticks and there's like, it's fairly defined and controlled, I'd say. So it's very, very much like that. The other thing I always hear is about the type of personality that's required. People tend to always go to the default. Surely you have to be kind of cool, and calm and collected and rational, um, and kind of dealing under pressure. You're like the Iceman. And I say Iceman because I am sitting with the Iceman, as your nickname used to be many moons ago. Um, but I know that, you know, the other co-founder of this company, Will, uh, could not be more different in personality and in physicality to yourself. And so, um, what's your take on that? And I know, you know, you, you traded on a, on a big trading prop firm floor back in the day, and I'm sure there was lots of different characters. Yeah, but I'm sure there was lots of different success as well.

And so, so yeah, I, so I would say rather than your character trait Be it, right, you're calm. So although I was in that category from the outside observer, right, in the way I would display my emotions, well, I wouldn't. I'm a great internalizer, right? But that doesn't mean I'm not going through the same rollercoaster journey when you're making profit, taking loss. It's just I display it to the external observer in a different way. And the way that they're seeing it is, well, I'm not feeling those things. I think then with Will, well, yeah, fine, you would very visibly be able to see if he's having a great day or a really bad day in the markets. Was it like, you know, the clichés, you know, he wears his heart on his sleeve, you can see his emotions, like, as if they're kind of written on his face. Um, and yet we were both good traders, even though, as you say, we're kind of opposites in that sense, but both good traders. I guess there's an even more extreme version of will. So there was a guy, a Canadian guy, on our, on our floor who was, um, Andrew Biller. There we go, his name just popped into my head. Andrew Biller.

What was his nickname first? He must have had a nickname.

He actually didn't have a nickname, interestingly. I think that's because people were just a little bit scared of him. They were scared of him for two reasons. Number one, he had this aura. He was basically the best trader on the floor. So it was like, respect. I'm not going to call you a juvenile nickname. You're the king, right? That was one thing. The other thing was how he dealt with his emotions, um, and I'll explain in a minute, but let me make the point first. So I think actually the skill set is not— it's not how do you deal with the emotions, in what way do you deal with them. It's actually can you deal with them. It doesn't necessarily matter how you do it, it's the can you do it that's important. So if you've taken a bad trade and you feel there's injustice and I've been robbed and, you know, all these emotions start kicking up. Well, that's a seriously dangerous moment in time because, um, won't go into the kind of finer details of, of psychology and trading psychology and decision-making psychology under pressure, but, you know, ultimately, if our emotional state is highly elevated then it would typically dominate our decision-making. And our emotional decisions tend to be our irrational ones, which tend to then be the worst ones. So if you're losing money as a trader, it's those feelings of, I want my money back. That's very emotional. So then your next decision, as in your next trade, is very much fueled by the desire to make your money back. And so your decision is no longer analytical based on market fundamentals. It's now based on your emotional desire. Okay, so then you're making bad trades that don't make any sense. You think they're good trades because you, you're now off on your emotional irrationality, uh, trend, right? And then fine, you make bad trades. And the great irony of trading and that approach is, of course, the more desperate you are to make your money back the more likely you'll lose. Um, so it's about dealing with the emotion, number one, getting it out of your system. Then right, bang, what's your next trading decision? And that decision needs to not be influenced by the emotional reaction to the previous trade. Now, Andrew Biller's approach was if he take— basically, he would sit— he obviously had his desk on the floor, and next to his desk he'd have, like, on the floor, just propped up against the wall, like a stack of 3 or 4 keyboards, okay? Not plugged into any PCs, just keyboards, unplugged keyboards, okay? So if he took on a bad trade and it didn't work out in his favor, he'd stand up, he'd grab one of his keyboards, and he'd start smashing it on the desk. And like, keyboard buttons are kind of flying and like hitting people in the face. And he would literally just very aggressively just get rid of all his anger in a very physical way. So he'd spend like not long, like 15 seconds smashing things up. Then he would just quietly put the keyboard back, prop it up against the wall, sit down and write. Let's go, next track.

Piers, you need a cappuccino or anything?

But I guess for me, I was doing the same thing in one sense, in that I was dealing with the emotional baggage of the last trade, but I wasn't dealing with it in a very visible way like that. It doesn't mean to say I wasn't dealing with it, but I would deal with it internally. So I'd internalize it and you couldn't see me dealing with it, but I was, right? And then I, right, great. I was able to then move on and go, right, I'm going to now make the next decision without being influenced by the outcome of Yeah.

And I think it's really interesting actually how you describe yourself because I guess sometimes when you think about things like mental health, it's invisible and it's hard to tell often. And maybe it's the people who internalize, you just assume, oh, they're fine. They're like, they're doing it the right way, even though what's going on inside. Could be exactly the same as you described. So it's quite, I think that's quite, uh, an interesting point that I don't think most people would think if you're not an internalizer, I guess.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, but the, so that leads us then to, to, to where we're heading.

Yes.

Which is, um, so we, we, we've kind of identified then there's ways of letting off steam and that can vary, but the main thing that people came back to us with was resilience.

Mhm.

And I think resilience, um, can be applied across our three kind of areas, if you like. So trading, you kind of really described quite a bit of it already, but trading, perhaps we can dive a little bit further into that. Then kind of education, I think there's two parts of that. There's studying And then there's doing internships and becoming a junior on, on a desk, for example, in whatever capacity that might be. And then there's resilience in being a business owner. There's obviously some, you know, fabulous quotes out there. Elon Musk and the rest, they all say the same thing. It's resilience at the end of the day that's going to see you triumph and have success. So perhaps then we can start off with where we've left off there. Is there resilience in, in trading then? I mean, how, how— I guess from a practical point of view, I always find the, the word resilience a bit abstract to think about. And so what I always like to ask people is, okay, so you're a trader and you— I always hear like, okay, you know, the market will slap you down and it'll— you're going to make money, you're going to lose money, But then the question I always ask is, okay, so what structure or framework do you put in to give yourself room to develop resilience? So how would you answer that?

So I would say, well, firstly, resilience is definitely the most important skill or skill. Is it a skill? I call it an attribute rather than a skill, um, although you do learn it, so maybe it is a skill. Um, but yeah, I kind of, I kind of already said in kind of one, in that literal sense where you're a trader and you're taking risk, and fine, you're going to be losing money, you'll make money, and you know, ultimately it's the resilience to deal with the negative outcomes. But yeah, you said, right, how do you put in a framework then? Because ultimately, if you don't have resilience, you'll and you will not make it as a trader. Um, I think, I think trading specifically is quite— it's quite— it's very binary like that. You're either— you've either got resilience already, or you develop resilience quickly, or you fail and you're out, and that career path's not for you. Um, I think then when you kind of step back from that kind of risk-taking role, resilience is still super important, but it's less binary outcome. It might be that if you're not resilient, it might not mean you're gonna lose your job, but it might mean you progress at a lot slower a rate in terms of, you know, getting promoted and all the rest of it, and your general performance can be impacted negatively. But yeah, how do you put in work a framework? How do you put in place a framework? And I think often resilience does come from life experience. So right there, that's your first problem. If you're young, you don't have much life experience. And so you're like, I'm fed up. Like, if you're a 20-year-old, you know, I would be fed up with everyone going, look, you need resilience, you need resilience. You're like, well, okay, give me a chance to, to get some. Um, but I would say that It's a mental state, it's a conscious mindset, right? So in back to trading, if I'm trading, then as I said, I want to make sure that my trading decision is not influenced by the emotional baggage of the last trade. So how do I do that if the last trade was a negative outcome and I lost money? Well, I'd kind of try and flip it and turn it into a positive. So how can you turn a negative into a positive? From a mindset point of view. So it would be very much for me, well, yeah, sure, it's annoying, I'm pissed off, fine. But right out of that negative event, what value can I take? And so basically it would be for me about analyzing what went wrong, and then that would give me data, like valuable data that I can then feed into what I'm doing next. And to put more simply, just make sure I don't make the same mistake again. So if, if one— now I go around to my next trade, I'm like, I'm like one mistake fewer in my sort of set of actions than I was last time. So higher probability of successful outcome next time. So I would, I would use the negative outcome as a Actually, this is really valuable. And I'd actually even go further with my mindset and say, right, I've lost money here, but actually I'm paying for valuable data. And then I'm learning from that and actually great. And then weirdly, if you trick your mind well enough, you come out of it feeling, wow, I'm really pumped and positive because I've learned a great lesson there and that equips me way better now to make a better judgment next time.

Just a question on that process. If you had a positive outcome, yeah, you did something very well. Yeah, you, from the strategy to the execution, the risk management, whatever it might have been, did, do you equally reinforce that process or framework, or is it just natural as a human, you kind of over-egg the negativity and dwell on that more than you would is successful.

Definitely right, that last point. Humans, that negative outcome's a way more powerful emotion than the positive outcome scenario. But there is a risk on the positive side, and it's called greed. So when you put a trade on and it's a really good one, then don't let it go to your head. I mean, there's a great story actually. There was a guy, So on our trading floor back in the day, the trading firm were aggressive, were quite, were hiring quite aggressively rather than waiting every 12 months to take on a group of interns. They were a bit, they weren't patient enough to wait for 12 months. So they're actually taking on a, basically a group of interns every 3 months, like 15 people every 3 months, bang, new onto the trading floor, brand new fodder. And I remember this kid was probably 2 groups behind me, so he probably started 6 months after I did. And I guess, I don't know, the way I remember him, he looked really young. I don't know if that matters for this story, but he looked like he was like 14. He was a graduate, but one of those people who look really young. Anyway, first week on the desk, he put on He did like 2 good trades one day. I say good, that's the wrong word. He put on 2 trades that made money. Okay. And then he started to, you know, he would jump up out of his seat. He'd be kind of celebrating. He goes, yeah, you know, look how amazing I am, basically. And so, and he said very famously, and to his detriment, he said, I think I've cracked it. Okay, this is like day 3 on the day I think I've cracked it. And of course, all us lot— I mean, we're already 6 months ahead of them, but even us lot were going, oh dear, oh dear. Um, so basically my point is that he thought he was better than he was. He thought his trades that made money were entirely due to his skill. But really, to be honest, when you're that fresh, it's kind of mostly about luck. But he thought that he'd cracked it. Now, when you— then you get complacent, right? You're then in the complacent section of the world, and then you get lazy because you think, well, I don't need to do— I don't need to put in the hard yards on the analysis because I've cracked it. Whatever I touch turns to gold. You know, and you start to relax, and then, then you get found out. Then the market, as you were saying, will come back to bite you in the ass. And so he went the opposite way. He, he did not handle the positive outcome correctly. Um, so yeah, the, the mind is a funny thing. But like, for me, yeah, good trades, you know, you've got to celebrate the good trades. Not in the way he did But you got, you know, when you've done a good job, be okay with congratulating yourself. Well done. You've done a good job. Analyze what you did. You know, what in there is there that I can say, right? What lessons can I take from that? As in, what did I do right that I can do right again? If you wanna try and define the action that actually led to the success and identify that, great. But then ultimately, you know, you are, then, then it's— you've got to be humble, right? You've got to be back to square one for the next trade, because if you think you've cracked it, then yeah, that's the beginning of the end. So it's a bit— a big dose of humility, keeping your feet on the ground, understanding you haven't cracked it is, is essential.

Yeah, yeah. There's two points I picked out there. One was I listened to a podcast with Sir Andy Murray the other day, and he was talking about one of his biggest regrets was that when he won Wimbledon, that was like the big one. I think he'd already won the US Open the year before, 2012. He won Wimbledon 2013, and that was like, you know, the 77 years wait sort of thing. And that was like, you've not really become a tennis player, a true— you've not made it success in his mind, the British public, until he's done that. And he said the thing he regrets most now is that he didn't celebrate that win. It was just such a relief. And he looks back on that and, and now he approaches it very differently. And he would do, if he could go back and tell himself that he didn't reward himself, right? It was like the tortured soul and it was always not good enough and too much dwelling on that. And he said actually, you think that probably held him back a bit, um, ultimately. But the other thing, the other point you highlighted that I thought was very interesting was complacency because we'll move on to the students now and education, internships and so on. Complacency, if we were to pick one thing that I would warn young people about when they go into the workplace in the first couple of years, that would definitely be probably up there. I would always see this. It was just the bankable recurring behavior that would happen typically in year 2. And this would be once they've kind of got their feet under the table, they know, they kind of know the lay of the land, they've understood now the products and generally what they're doing. And then they start to fall into your buddy's trap of, I think I've cracked it. Yeah. And then given that again, I was working in markets, you know, the lesson you always learn, you get humbled.

Yeah.

And the exact same thing would happen. So I think that's something that if you are conscious of that, being complacent, taking your foot off the gas, particularly in your early career, it can be incredibly destabilizing. I'm not sure what the pattern would look like as a chart, but I'd say people who leave the industry or pivot out of it into a different role, your biggest probably zone is year 1 and 2.

Yeah.

And then after that, things actually probably then start to settle a little bit and then become more and smooth out. But yeah, I mean, resilience in, in students for sure. I mean, I think in the education system, the one thing that I've definitely identified is that I almost feel in some ways it sounds quite perverse, but feel quite lucky in the fact that I went to a not very good school. And so everyone came from generally a circumstance of, you know, not being particularly affluent and so on and so forth. And so everyone's life was fairly challenging and the only way really was up. Yeah. So it was like, okay, so we can either just you know, go along, go with the flow, and we'll just remain in our little town, or we can push on and it's just up. You can't really go much further down. But when I meet a lot of other people, one thing I've come to realize interacting with lots of different types of students, because I never really had access to, um, I guess, students on the other end of that spectrum, but it's just the, the pressure that I think that gets placed upon you. And I see that now with my own kids and, you know, the pressure that people put on young people to like get good grades. You gotta get this, you've gotta go to this uni, you've gotta be thinking about this career path. So the pressure is different because then it's like, well, it's all to lose when your dad's an investment banker or something and you live in a nice house in a good area and go to expensive school. I mean, that can be quite debilitating is from what I've seen. And having all that support and infrastructure leads then to this idea of, well, then how can you get resilience? Because you said resilience can come from life experience. I think when you come from the first described place, you have to be resilient to survive, basically. So it's kind of there. What you lack there is kind of access to opportunity, I would say. Whereas on the other side, it's like when you've got great support, kind of pastoral care they have at the school that doesn't exist in some schools, then it's like when you get confronted with failure, I don't know, like I see some students I talk to and they're like super embarrassed because they got an A, A, and a B at A-level. And I'm like, are you kidding me? You don't want to know what I got. But, you know, I guess then it's, or how do you become resilient? And I was thinking about this, and I think there's kind of two parts on the, the study side. I think one of the things is not to get— and I think this is true of trading as well, and it can be with business ownership— is that just looking at other people and dwelling too much on other people's success. Yeah, it definitely then takes it out of, or how far have you improved in perspective. Where have you come from? What have you achieved? Because I can assure you, even halfway through my life now at my age, there's always gonna be someone who does what you do better than you.

I mean, it's just a fact.

I mean, the world is that big. You know, it's kind of, you have to get used to that in terms of like, be ambitious, but be humble and be under— understand that that's fine. Um, and so then it's like, well, how do you practice it to become more resilient? I think it is about, you know, learning to fail is putting yourself in a position of vulnerability where it's almost safe to fail. Now, when I talk about safe to fail, uh, sport is obviously a good go-to because, you know, some people do wear their heart on the sleeve and it feels really painful when you lose, but It's definitely not gonna kill you losing a sports match.

Yep.

But it's good grooming, I would say. I mean, certainly I would contribute that's a large portion of where I got it from, was just like from very young, you know, being competitive and winning and losing, cuz you don't win all the time, is kind of ingrained then. Other things I think more practically when you're at university is, you know, joining societies, networking with people that you wouldn't normally do so. Grab opportunities to, I don't know, demonstrate a skill or deliver a presentation. Yeah, I used to hate all of that.

Yeah.

And I kind of regret that because actually it turns out this is my job now and I'm okay at doing it. So, um, it was in the locker. I was just a bit afraid of stepping out of the comfort zone.

I think especially that last point, do some presentations because I think, A, that's a perfect way to put yourself in a vulnerable space where it could fail, it could go wrong. And then it's such a difficult thing to force yourself to do though, because of course your immediate emotional reaction is to dwell on, well, what could all the negative outcomes of me doing that action be? And then all of those negative potential outcomes, of course, become the barrier that prevents you doing it. So it's actually a really difficult mental challenge to force yourself over that barrier. And it's got to be a very, very conscious effort to get yourself over that barrier, sign up for the debating society, or I don't know what it might be, right? But somewhere where you're doing a presentation. So then, yeah, It's something most likely you haven't done much of before. So it's gonna be something new by definition. Then you are unlikely to be good at it if you've hardly ever done it before, right? It's all about practice. And so, right, this is where then it's almost like a trade in a way where you're doing the presentation, you're putting the trade on, and if it's the first time, it's most likely not gonna go that well. And fine, how do you then deal with that outcome? Well, if it's a presentation, you kind of step back. Well, firstly, you, you ask for feedback from those in the audience, your peer group, your mentors, your teachers, whatever. Ask for feedback because that's, that's where the value is, right? That's where my data— I'm paying for data when I lose money in a trade. Well, here you're, you're getting that data. This is so valuable, the data that can make you better. So valuable. But there's only one way to get that data. It's actually to take the action. Sure, do it badly. That's fine. I mean, what, you're not gonna get put in prison, right? As you're saying, what's the— it's a safe place to fail in reality. The problem is it's not a safe place to fail in your mind before you've done it, because you're thinking, oh my God, this is it, I'm gonna get cancelled, you know, and it's gonna be the most embarrassing moment in my life. And I just want the hole, I want a hole to open up and swallow me. You know, these are challenging hurdles to get over, to then stand at that lectern and deliver the presentation.

And I'd almost go as far as to encourage young people to, you know, take that risk. And fail just in order to get that emotional experience. Yeah. And just to understand that in retrospect, it wasn't as— the fallout was nowhere near the magnitude that you probably built in your head.

Get out there and fail. Here's another one. I've just come up with it. I don't know why this has just come into my head, like other ways you can do that. I've got no idea why this popped into my head. Don't judge. Join the salsa dancing society.

Crikey, you've been watching Strictly, haven't you?

No, I never watch Strictly. You know what? I do know why that's popped into my head because when I was at Imperial, I didn't join the salsa dancing society, but when walking along the kind of central concourse, there was this like common room with like glazed windows, and I used to walk along there a lot to get to lectures and to get to the union or whatever. And that's where the salsa dancing society used to be, and there'd be people in there dancing. But my point is, again, it's just putting yourself in that position of vulnerability. You might not like dancing, you might have no passion for dancing whatsoever, doesn't matter, that's not relevant. What's relevant is do something you're not good at in front of people to put yourself in that position of vulnerability. And that's where you learn resilience. And then you can put it on your CV and they can ask you. If I was to ask someone in an interview, ah, you do, you do part of the salsa dancing society. That's great. Tell me about it. And if you said to the interviewer, well, I don't like dancing. I did that purely for one reason. That was to learn resilience. If that was your answer, you're hired.

Who is this? I'd be like, I'd say to the other recruiters, who's this salsa dancing kid, Piers Curran? We need to get him on the desk. And I'd make you turn up day one in your full salsa outfit. But yeah, and then just to, before we conclude on the business side, because I know we're a bit short on time, but With the internship stuff, the one thing I'd say about when you've secured an internship and you're doing grad positions, things like that, is that with all of these roles, I think I'd probably even go as far as to say even in a quant role in an internship, might be different once you're a grad, but let's say for 95% of roles, they're not particularly complicated. And actually, once you've landed there, then it's just about, okay, what do you like to work with? Can you be trusted? And also, are you resilient? And they will create challenges, projects, situations to test these things. And obviously resilience being one, because as everyone knows, a lot of these jobs are, are quite intense. They're quite long hours. So like with anything, an internship is kind of like a prolonged interview process and they want to stress test these certain things. But resilience is really quite critical given those aforementioned things because working super long hours is tough. Yeah. And actually I always found that, you know, certainly my introduction to working in finance and in markets was I was the option, I was told, of last resort.

Wow.

So at the time, scraping the bottom of the barrel. Exactly. Well, look, I mean, so, yeah, long story short, I was working in recruitment at the time and I was applying to jobs in advertising. My goal was to get a job at Saatchi Saatchi. My life could have been different back in the day. Um, and then my brother had actually spun off the research arm of a big firm, US company he worked for, and he started his own desk with his partner. And they went through, it was something crazy, like 20 analysts in year 1. And they just couldn't withstand the intensity and the heat. And don't get me wrong, the heat was pretty high back in the day because just general working practices were pretty hardcore. And then my brother asked me, he was like, can you help me out just for a week? And so I actually took a week of holiday.

All right. Yeah.

From my job, went to help, and then they were— I knew nothing at all, but I could get up at half 4 in the morning and I could work a shift basically. And lo and behold, that actually turned out to be the one thing that the large majority of these super grads couldn't actually do was have the stamina and have an ability to take— I'm gonna classify it as critical feedback. Some other people might call it verbal abuse, but an ability to just have a bit of a thick skin. And I always used to take that resilience factor whenever I used to have either at that point, one of the senior people or a client, particularly traders, definitely would give you very direct feedback. Yep. I would always have the mindset in my head as a positive in the sense that immediately it would go to a place where I would be like, it's almost like they're picking a fight with me. I wouldn't verbalize it. I'd be like, in my head and in my heart, I'd be like, right, I'll show you. Mr., just you wait, I'm gonna smash you. And I would make sure that the mistake I made, A, would never happen again, and B, everything else I did was so over and above, yeah, what this person had criticized, that then I would, I would force myself to try and flip them from being like an enemy to a fan. And that was a motivation. And so when someone have a go at you, it was like, well, that, that they were the ones I wanted almost to like give you the fire, the desire. And so, yeah, I think being resilient like that is just about taking feedback in the right way because certainly early in your career you get a lot of negative feedback. Yeah.

And you should go into these jobs fully expecting that because you've never done it before. So what, you're gonna be some weirdly an absolute natural at something you've never done before? Very unlikely. So, and don't be afraid to, don't be afraid to make mistakes, push the envelope, you know, really go for it. And then if you make a mistake, immediately talk to someone about it, your senior. Okay, I've done this, you know, if you ever make a mistake and then you're into that mindset of, oh God, I can't tell anyone about this because if I do, I'll look bad.

And then there always is a little period of time, isn't there, where you've got a decision to make?

100%. Now, if you go down the route of, right, I'm not going to tell anyone, I'm going to try and make this right, you, you're on the track to fail. Again, it comes back, this comes back to trust then, right? If I'm, uh, if I employ you I want to be able to trust that you will tell me when something's gone wrong so that I can help fix it and the company doesn't suffer and you learn and become a better employee all at the same time. It's like a double positive if you tell me, it's a big negative if you don't. So yeah, push the envelope, take risk, fail, Tell someone about it, learn. That's where your resilience comes from. Onto the next.

Okay. And perhaps to just finish, a quick word on resilience as a business owner. And given that Amplify now is over 14 years old, I know there's been like a change of pace, so to speak. Certainly feels like that internally in the last 2 years or so. With our kind of new emphasis on Amplify Me and the trajectory we're on, which is fantastic. But there's certainly, I'm sure, some twists in the tale throughout those years. And I know that your father as well was a business owner. And so there's a bit of experience, I'm sure, from your youth as well. So is there any kind of like tidbits of information that you've learned along that way?

Well, if you're a first-time founder, so if you want to start a company, then I actually think, honestly, I don't think there could be a better sort of school than trading to become a successful entrepreneur. Because the skill sets that you need, I mean, in my mind, and maybe it's because I was a trader that I think in this way, but ultimately trading is about, it's about taking risk and it's about resilience as we've been talking about. And it's about analysis and data and making decisions. And so with running a company, it's taking risk, right? Because you're trying new things, you're building new products, you're, and, you know, you're having to invest funds and money and resource and time into all of these things, right? But at the start, for sure, you're doing that without any certainty that you're gonna get anything back from it. So you are invest, it's a trade, right? You're investing time and money into the pursuit of something, a product or service. That then you think you're gonna make more money out of than you put in, right? So that's, that's a trade. It's a risk. Now sometimes it's gonna work great. Sometimes it definitely won't and you fail. So, right, well, why did it fail? So now you are analytical and I, and I mean analytical, analysis, logical, rational analysis is probably the hardest part. 'Cause you can, okay, anybody's got the data, right? Anybody can then start to look at it and draw conclusions, but how are you looking at it? Are you looking at it emotionally? Well, that should have worked. I can't believe that didn't work. I mean, it's the best product the world has ever seen. How did that not work? You know, if that's your approach, well, you're not gonna see what went wrong in that data because you'll emotionally have already discarded it as being irrelevant and you're back to the point that I've already got the best product in the world and you'll just carry on banging your head against the brick wall and you'll never get anywhere. So you've got to look at the data from that reflection point of, right, well, something did go wrong clearly. Either the product's not very good or we didn't sell it, our sales process was ineffective, or maybe the product's good, it's just there's no place for it, no one needs it, right? So you need to analyze the data. So a logical analysis, and then from that, change direction. And then, right, then you're taking risk again, it's trade number 2. And, and, and so on. And it's iterative. So I think, I definitely think risk-taking, resilience, you know, dealing with failure. Then I think it's just having, again, another trading analogy, is being okay with, with having risk on. Like, if you got a big trade on, well, fine, you're gonna have to live in that moment where, right, it could go wrong at any moment. Prices are going up and down and your P&L swinging. And so you're, you know, that's difficult to deal with.

Yeah. And so as a business owner, you might have a catering business and COVID might hit, right? You can't— there's gonna be situations which are totally out of your control, right? An invasion of Ukraine that leads to an energy price spike on top of COVID energy prices go through the roof, inflation rates go up, and then that's it. Your business loan is now you can't repay it.

Yep. So you never, I mean, you never know, right? What might happen. I think for me, the biggest, that trade, that having risk on at all times thing can be one of the most debilitating things for a business owner. And it's because you're responsible for the livelihoods of all of your staff. And as you grow as a business and you get more staff, then ultimately, yeah, are your staff gonna get paid this month and can they pay their rent and their mortgage and all the rest of it? Well, that is entirely a function of whether the business can make money to pay them. And so you're always living with that ultimate responsibility, it feels like. And that can be quite debilitating. But I think trading is a great way to prepare for that kind of risk. It's having those trades on, it's being exposed. You know, something could go wrong at any moment, but that's okay. We're still going to take risk and we're still going to invest and we're going to still march forward to achieve our goals, even though those risks are always lingering and trying to trip you up and push you off course.

Okay, cool. Well, look, we'll look to end it there. So hopefully you've enjoyed a slightly different change-up in our normal kind of routine. Um, I guess the conclusion being to various steps, frameworks to achieve resilience, whichever one of those three kind of streams you sit in, I guess ultimately having a, a growth mindset, yeah, is ultimately key. And if anyone's interested there's a journalist called Matthew Syed, um, who has a podcast called Sideways, uh, but he has lots of, uh, different books he's authored, um, and he talks about growth mindset. And I think that's a really good place to go if you found this discussion interesting and you wanna learn more about that. There's lots of YouTube videos, I think perhaps more easier to digest on that front, uh, to help. But yeah, if you liked it, And do remember to, to give us a rating, leave a review, or a comment if you have any questions. We'd love to hear from you all, and I wish everyone a fantastic weekend. Thanks, Piers.

Yep, good luck with the salsa dancing.