How I made my first $100K

So y' all asked me how I made my first hundred K, so I filmed a short video about it and explained it and it got like a million views. Look what happened here. Which kind of tells me that y' all want more of the in depth answer. I'm thinking that's right. Except this guy, because that's hysterical. So here's the story. So you can copy my homework. As my friend Kim says, in this case, I approve it. All right? The truth of it is you probably won't be able to make your first 100k by investing alone. And. And definitely not passively. Sorry, I'm sure you're not expecting that, but by the way, this is a spoiler alert. It's not exactly easy. This isn't some BS video telling you to manifest shit. This isn't clicking Robinhood stocks to buy and making 100 extra money. You'll have to do the work. But you can copy my homework. So I'll tell you the exact steps I took, the way you should negotiate to get more at each job you take, and how to turn your income into six figures and beyond. Instead of the traditional way that maybe a lot of people talk about how they made their money in the stock market or in one particular asset class that they then can sell you the exact, exact secrets for. I don't have that story for you. I made my first 100k. And I made my first couple millions actually the old fashioned way. I climbed my way up the corporate ladder for my first 100k. And there are two things that meant I got my first Investor Bowl 100k in the first years, three years post graduating. And I'll break them down for you because the truth is, today, although I own lots of businesses and have made, you know, millions, which always feels weird to say on the Internet, by the way. And you know, and I've invested hundreds of millions of dollars. I guess the secret is that in college, you know, I wasn't really anything at all. Like, look at this little rascal. I went to Arizona State University. More known for partying than high IQs. Go Sun Devils. And I had a fair share of fun back then, you know, I think I know what a beer bong is, if that's what the kids do anymore. But my career kind of looked like this. I started, you can see here on LinkedIn, actually. Exactly. I started at ASU. Public school kid. My dad never went to college. My mom was a public school teacher. I don't think I had a unique leg up. Came from immigrant backgrounds. Then Two years later. Then I did two years at Vanguard, one of the largest asset managers out there. Then I did two years at Goldman Sachs, Then two years at State Street Global Advisors, one of the largest asset management firms out there, period. Then I did five years at a private company called First Trust. And then I did two years at a private equity fund as a partner. And then two years completely on my own. And that first hundred K, what led to it, there's something about that, number two. So I'm going to get back to that. But let's start from the very beginning, before I went to go get all of those jobs. One easy thing is I interned a bunch, so I wasn't a complete idiot. And I had a few shekels when I got into the workforce. I think a little bit of idiocy is expected when you're first starting out, but there's a way to get past that. And like many of you, you know, I worked in restaurants. I worked at Houston's as a host. Miserable. Everybody should tip your waiters. I worked at a mental health court, where, true story, I saw a grown man often pee in the jury box. I interned at a construction company and a few financial firms. But then I started to get serious. I wanted to know finance, but I literally knew nothing about it. I didn't know what a stock or a mutual fund was. So lesson one is I wanted money. So I went to the industry where they did money for a living. That's finance. And the way that I got into it with really no backing, is I went to every conference and event about finance I could get into. I took a bunch of notes every time I went and tried to speak to as many people as I can. I think I went to 10 or 15 in my senior year of college. One day, finally, I went to an event I didn't want to go to. I sat next to a recruiter at Vanguard Asset Management, one of the largest investment companies. I knew nothing. Except that I knew nothing. So I asked her a million questions. That was it. I didn't tell her how smart I was. I didn't tell her what my resume was. It was curiosity. I covered my lack of knowledge by, I think, proving I'd go gain it because I was insatiable before I accepted the job. And thanks to Tara, she recruited me back there. I went to my debate professor after that and I did a bunch of interviews and they were going to accept me into this position, which was actually pretty. I think it was pretty highly sought after. It's called a Rotational development program. So it's where you go and you compete. I competed against, I don't know, 150 different kids, most of them from Stanford, Yale, Harvard, to get into this rotational development program where you start in one aspect of a big company and try like six or seven of them within a 12 or 18 month period. And so they kind of, they give you special treatments, you get to see all the inside groups of the business and they're trying to groom their next group of leaders. So I got into this prestigious thing, but instead of just taking what they asked me, I went to my college debate professor because I loved debate at the time. And I said if I was going to negotiate a higher pay, how would I do that when I probably am not even worth what they're paying me? And he showed me something that really stuck with me. He showed me this graph which basically says that if you have two people who accept a job, let's say one is Jim. And Jim takes a $45,000 offer that they give you versus Jane who negotiates 50k salary. And then each year Jim takes the 1% increase they offer, while Jane takes a 1 to 4% raise yearly because she negotiates it over the course of her career. What do you think the difference is between Jim and Jane at the end of, let's say, a typical career? Well, the difference wild, it's a million dollars in wages. So let's say the exact same work and one word is worth seven figures more. And I was like, I'm not a genius of math, but that sounds like I should negotiate more. So my first gig, I was offered 35,000. And being the brilliant negotiator I was at 21, I asked for 38 and they gave me something like 37,250. Vanguard let me know if I'm off here. The key number one is just that, negotiate always. Your earned salary will be your biggest driver to wealth to begin with. Anybody who tells you you'll get there with investing, in my opinion, is full of it. Then I remember getting this advice, Cody, you have to stay at a company for three to five years before you make a change. And I just always learned to question everything. I used to be a journalist and the answer was that no one else will hire you. They said, now here's the problem with that. I went to the data again because I like numbers. And I was like, whoa, look at this graph. Employees who stay at a company more than two years get paid 50% less on average. This isn't my number. This is from Forbes. So my second key was, all right, I'm going to negotiate every year for increased pay and if I don't get it from them or there is a cap, I'm going to say thanks, I'm out and I'm going to start finding a new gig. Which is why you can see in my career I jump a lot every two years. Now, let me quell a fear a bunch of you probably have, which is you think, wow, but won't people not want to hire me? I think that's wrong. You know, they'll say, wait your turn, you're not ready. Maybe someday, but not today. F that their opinions don't need to be your realities. So here's how you get over waiting for somebody else's permission. You have a great response to the next company that'll give you a yes. When the world gave you a no. Let's workshop mine. So when I left Vanguard to go to Goldman Sachs, I said to the recruiter, I love my job. I continue to get promoted. I lead the group in sales and activity. I've built a wonderful foundation. But. But if I had the opportunity to work at Goldman, that would be the opportunity of a lifetime. I've always wanted to work alongside the absolute best and compete at the top 1% in finance. As much as I'm not looking for a new job, that's a white lie. I would be crazy to not take the leap. At which point the recruiter says to themselves internally, wow, I'm flattered. She's right. My company is awesome. Oh, she's not just jumping ship. She's realizing how great this place is because I work here. So of course it's great. The structure that you need to follow is this. 1. I love what I do. 2. I'm great at it. 3. Your company is just too amazing to pass up. 4. I'm ready to absolutely up level and learn from you. 5. I'm not even looking for a new job, aka I'm not thirsty. 6. Reconfirm that you'd only do it to jump there. After I interviewed with I kid you not like 12 people. Goldman's interview process is horrific. And gave a couple stand up presentations and did a project for them. I got an offer. Most people just took the offer. I asked them later. I was offered $60,000 to start and here's what I said roughly because I wasn't going to take that. I said something along the lines of I'm so honored to receive an offer from Goldman and particularly from you. You know Given how we've got to know each other over the past however many weeks, I want to come committed, ready to hit the ground running, be the best hire you've made at my level. There's just kind of a small issue. I need to move across the country, which is expensive. Expensive. I need to break my lease. I really want to pay someone else to help me get a place as quickly as possible. So I spend no time on the transition and all the time crushing this job for you. In order to do all that I've calculated, I really need about $90,000. But I have some savings, so I could do it for $80,000 and totally dig into my savings so that I'm meeting you somewhere. Could you meet me, too? So here's a structure. One, wow, your company chose me. Amazing. Two. Wow, you agree with them. Three, I know you care about X. So do I. I know you care about Goldman. So do I. Four, Small, tiny, really nothing issue, then you state your issue. Five, I need more in order to do that thing you care about for you. Six, I really need a higher number than I'm asking for, but six, seven, I'm not greedy, so how about this compromise instead? And eight, this is really important, this exact line, I will meet you. Could you meet me too? And the reason that that last one is important is it's hard to tell someone, no, I won't meet you. Clever phrasing, kind of puts them in a corner. At which point he chad, I still remember you in your former career as a thespian, if you're still a Goldman. He was cleared to 75k, and I said, let's do this. So we're at 75k, something like that. Bonuses, commission, stock, et cetera. That was basically a bajillion dollars to me. At the time. I didn't realize how much more expensive New York and Chicago were than Arizona. But, you know, I went from, let's call it 45 to 50k to 75k. And that was a huge leap for me. And I wasn't spending that much, so I was saving a lot of money. Now, at Goldman, they were all about performance. So I pretty quickly got up to six figures, but probably not more than 200, 250k. However, I was working like an absolute animal. And fun. Fun. I was doing that during the 2007, 2008 crisis. So they were laying people off like crazy. We'd see boxes packed up at somebody's desk and the security guards would be waiting and we'd never see them again. So we'd walk around sort of, you know, picketing protesters to get in the office. Some days it was, it was a lot. So I liked the work, I was being highly compensated. If I brought in a bunch of business, I made more money. But I was working too much. And at some point I knew I wouldn't see the end of that for three years because that's what the analyst program is. So I wanted to be out closing deals and doing things, not sitting on the phones, building PowerPoint decks and inside of spreadsheets. So that one year mark started approach or that two year mark started to approach. But this one was going to be a hard jump. I was going to go from like an analyst or associate to a vp. And that's hard in finance. Plus I didn't have an MBA yet and I went to asu, remember partying? So all my peers were like Yale, Harvard, nyu, Columbia, blah blah. That said, I saved up, you know, that first hundred, 150k there and I put it totally into the market because I didn't have time to even spend money on anything. I was working so much. And that ended up being a really good bet. I started investing when the S and P was at like 800 or 900. You can look at the numbers in 2007, 2008, it's now at 3900. Well, we'll see. The market's kind of crazy right now. So that was a 4x growth which meant that my money in the general market grew from let's say $100,000 to $400,000. Since then I also bought some Goldman stock which also 4x and from there I climbed a jump to a VP role at state street starting in their cash and short term bond investing group. This led to me being able to finally grab a big gig by the reins at First Trust or run my own business building products and doing hundreds of millions of dollars in deals and billions of dollars in assets under management. But the common thread that hopped me from one place to the other was the chase of the highest return on my time. The chase for the highest learning and the biggest reward and never ever settling. Never letting someone tell me why to just wait my term. No, I don't want to wait my turn. I want to go and get it. And I like to do that on two year cycles. I like to negotiate every single time that I can for a new job. So don't let anyone tell you to just wait, tell you to show them the money. And that's the real way that you can make 100k.