Anthony Cheung, CCO @ AmplifyME

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Anthony. Anthony, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Yeah, thank you very much for having me. Good to be here.

Yeah, and you are the Chief Content and Culture Officer at AmplifyMe, and I think a good place to start is for those that don't know What is AmplifyMe?

Yeah, so AmplifyMe has a pretty simple mission. We just want to get, uh, broaden the amount of people who can have an opportunity to work in finance, and we do that through creating immersive simulations in different roles in finance. The idea being that we can then measure people based on their performance and not their background. So genuinely trying to find talented individuals from here, there, and everywhere, rather than the more traditional kind of catchments that big investment banks or asset managers would go for.

And Chief Content and Culture Officer, and there'll be some students listening, they're like, I don't think I've heard of anyone in that role before. What does that actually mean in practice?

Yeah, it's probably more grander than my day-to-day job, which is I do lots of different things. So we're still a relatively small small company, probably all in with everyone. We're just under about 50 people. So my job has evolved, my titles over time, even with my current employer. So originally I've been at this firm for several years. I joined, I was the head of running their proprietary trading division. I then kind of moved my title then and before that was head of market analysis. So this is all very much around financial markets. Um, and then, uh, kind of the business grew. I think there's a lot of pains that come with growing a business. Um, it was me and like the two co-founders, one or two others at the beginning. And as you kind of grow, you get more busy and you have to sort of delegate duties. That comes with some teething issues, let's say, because you need to sort of give people responsibility and back them and trust them. So a lot of my job was kind of working facilitating that, freeing up the founders to drive new business, to work on the innovation of the technology, things like that, and I was kind of running the day-to-day, if you like, operations of the business. So kind of pivoted a bit, and then the whole Amplify mission kind of came around with— not an indirect way really, it was more Okay, we were doing the technologies for training purposes, but actually what we started to see was that this is a really great way to just find talent in a way that I always saw it, which was I played a lot of sport as a young person, and if I looked at the teams in the sports I played, you know, we came from all over the country to form one team, and we all were quite different in different ways, but we were the best in our individual roles, and therefore we made the team. So we didn't all look the same, was the point. And so that just brought about lots of opportunities to kind of get involved with instilling in our DNA that that always remained the case as we grew, that the students are ultimately the most important. They're the people who we are trying to give more visibility about what to actually doing jobs in finance feel like, rather than just reading about them and studying the theory at uni. Do them, but don't do them at a junior filing level. Do them as if you were on the desk working as an M&A advisor or programming as an algorithmic trader, whatever it might be. So there's a lot of what I do today is a lot of bridging that gap between talking to the students, making sure that as we develop and we grow more corporate relationships, that ultimately we're still serving that main objective. To help broaden their awareness, help them make better career decisions, and also talk to the corporates I get involved to understand them, to marry those two together. Because, you know, can be quite unrealistic sometimes in what they're, they're looking for in terms of how they want to get across. And I think we, we provide quite a good communication piece, which takes up a lot of my time with the marketing team, of I can talk to the students in a pretty real way that probably a big corporate is fairly handcuffed to do so. And I think that's super important for people to make good career decisions. Like, they've got to be— you've got to be honest with them. And I think young people of today can really see authenticity or not. And I think corporates struggle a bit with that. And so, you know, we feel that, and that's a big part of my day-to-day role. And then culturally, internally, yeah, just allowing an atmosphere where we're still very much of a startup mindset. And so being able to foster that true spirit of, you know, giving fairly inexperienced people, like, a bit of rope, give them some responsibility, they're gonna fail, but letting them have the freedom to do that and then to advise them, mentor them, bring them up. I mean, we used to just recruit grads and train them up, As we've grown, we've managed to bring in experienced people, but we still keep that kind of ethos. So yeah, I'm very much involved in that as well. So yeah, a few different things. Content-wise is the other part of my job. So I did do financial analysis for 10 years before this, writing kind of research stuff for banks and hedge funds. So a lot of my job now is to demystify finance terms, themes, the news, The biggest gap with grads is that they're all technically proficient on their CV, but they have zero commercial awareness. And so my job on the content side is to use various forms like podcasting or newsletter, LinkedIn, things like that, to try and just make finance actually interesting and easy to understand. So that's a big part of my day today as well.

So that's what you, you do now. You mentioned when you were younger you were an avid sportsman, and I want to take you back to your time at Nottingham Trent Business School and figure out at an early stage what you were thinking you might be in a career sense, where you think you, you might have gone out of university.

Yep, uh, the honest truth is when I was at uni I had pretty little consideration, I think, at the time. When I look back retrospectively, it's funny that I have conversations now with students going into like September of year 1, and I'm like, you should be doing this, should be doing that. I'm like, my God, I wasn't even out of bed, I don't think, before 10 AM, uh, back then. So I did a placement year, it's probably the first thing. So I did a 4-year program at Trent Um, and I worked in an American marketing company and it wasn't so much the job or the role. It was just working and having income that I actually enjoyed. And I think I've never really got on with academics because it always felt very abstract. And because I used to, um, travel a lot for playing sport when I was at school. I kind of went to school, you know, not part-time, but missed quite a lot in that respect. So, I was never really taught how to study. I never really saw the purpose of studying. The school I went to never talked about careers. No one was a professional. Everyone stayed locally. So, it just wasn't an emphasis. But when I did my placement year, got paid, had a car, had a nice flat, even though I think I was earning 14 grand at the time. and I felt like a millionaire. This is back in maybe 2001, 2002, and I went back to uni and I thought, actually, I think my final year was a little bit more plugged in, in a sense of up till then I'd just been having a good time and I was running societies at uni. I was quite a sociable person, but then I was like, right, I want to go back to work, whatever that might be. That's what I enjoyed the most. That's what I got out of the uni experience, the working and placement year. When I finished, my goal was to work in creative advertising, actually. So I was talking to people who were working at Saatchi Saatchi and things like that. That's what I was interested in. And then, yeah, kind of out of uni, went back home, helping my dad out in his shop. Didn't want to stay at home because I just thought my horizons are probably broadened going elsewhere and London's the place to go. I mean, I grew up an hour outside of London. My brother was already in London. He was already working in finance at the time, so he was very much different to me. He always had a clear kind of sight of what he wanted to do. And then, yeah, I took a job in recruitment, was actually my first job. I still remember to this day, there was a girl I used to be friends with and she was a year above me and she was living in London. I went to meet her and she had a new boyfriend at the time and we were in this bar in the West End and this guy said, oh, what do you do? I said, oh, I've just moved to London, I work in recruitment. And the disgust on his face was unreal. He worked, I think, at Ernst Young. Or PWC or something like that. He was disgusted to even talk to me and I was just like, wow. I still remember that conversation to this day and how he made me feel. And it was more not against him, but I've always had an attitude, I think, that came from sport of, I'll show you. And it was never about, like, success was never about working at a particular firm, you know, there's obviously lots of measures of success, but I was like, you know, at that age you're like, I'll show you, I'll earn more money than you will, sort of mentality. And anyone who's been around the recruitment games know you can make really good money very quickly because it's a people's kind of game. So yeah, that was quite enlightening to see the perceptions that people have, which probably one of the first times because like I said, I grew up, no one was a professional, so there was never that expectation or you should do this, should do that. That was the first time it was kind of like, whack, you're— I'm good, you're bad sort of thing.

And before we go on, so in that answer, we're sort of beginning to learn a little bit more about who you are, um, not just in a career sense but as a person. I think in this podcast we like to, you know, try and make everyone feel heard in a career sense. And with that being said, what would you, what would you say Anthony is as a person? What was young Anthony like?

Young me? Um, very quiet. I was a very quiet child. Uh, my brother was extremely alpha male, like extreme. And so I was— he's 4 years older than me, so you can imagine that as 2 boys growing up. Physically, mentally, just generally. So I kind of trailed around in his shadow a lot, but the one thing that rubbed off on me was, you know, he and I have a really tight and great relationship because we facilitate two different roles. He's very alpha, I'm very passive generally as a demeanor, I'd say. But what it made me become was very competitive. Internally, and that kind of showed itself in playing sport. So I was always very good at sport, just mainly because of— I would say, as you can probably tell, I'm not— or if you can hear, I'm not the biggest guy you'll ever meet. But I think a lot of sport comes down to dedication, discipline, and hard work. And seeing my parents both being immigrants, both working in kind of blue-collar roles. It's kind of, that's just, you know how to do those things because that's just what you see and what you're immersed in. So I think I was, yeah, hardworking. The other thing that I think benefited me unbeknowingly at the time was I actually, the quirk of my childhood, I grew up in a rest home. So with old people. And at the time, all of these old people had lived through World War II. Because showing my age a bit. And every day I'd be around people telling me about the war and about all their stories and they would all get dressed up on a Sunday like it was D-Day sort of thing, put the LP on. So I got, I got really good at listening to people. And that's why I really love like podcasting now as a big element of my job, because actually I'm sure like you're finding you get to just learn a lot. Through other people's eyes and their experiences. I got a lot of that when I was young, which I kind of encourage students to do now, which is proactively listen, because I think a lot of students typically tend to just think, what's my next question? How do I engineer the right outcome for me in this engagement? They don't just have a conversation and listen and respond. So I think, yeah, I think I got a lot of that, and that's definitely helped my role as my culture piece of my role, which I spend a lot of time listening to people's problems, listening to like what they're enjoying, what they're not, how can I improve it, all these sorts of things. And I think that's a byproduct of that, I would say.

Yeah, I think to truly start building your career into what you want it to be, a lot of it is just understanding who you are and how it meshes together and, and manifests itself in what you do in your career. And I'm gauging from that answer, you know, you've got a little bit of a, you know, tenacity, hardworking, uh, you know, pretty, uh, good listener like you said, and a bit naivety as well, like pretty relaxed in what's going to happen. Um, and there might be someone listening thinking, oh, they don't see that as a superpower necessarily, those, those traits, but You've clearly found a way to make it work in your career and, and find what you love to do. Post that recruitment job, how did this personality start manifesting itself in a career sense?

So I was working in recruitment probably about 8 or 9 months, and my brother worked for a big US trading firm at the time. Now, that trading firm was a listed company, and it and it transpired that the CEO had embezzled like half a billion dollars out of the company. So it crashed basically overnight, but this was one of the biggest finance firms in the world at that point in time. So this would've been late '90s. He spun that off into his own research kind of company with his business partner and some backing. They definitely didn't come to me first. I think they went through 30, maybe 37 analysts or something like that. They were a startup at that point and they were working in and around providing financial analysis. And so, that kind of working in markets is pretty intense and long hours. Then put in that you're a startup and running a big growing of business compounds that. So, I think they've really struggled to hire people. Like I said, I was 37th, 38th man in the queue, and they— my brother asked me if I could go and help him. And at the time, I was doing actually quite well in recruitment. I wouldn't say it was where I wanted to remain, but I had a really good manager, and that's one thing. Loved my manager. I still talk to him to this day, even though I worked for him for just 7, 8 months early in my career. I'll still talk to him, I still ask him for advice. Like, that relationship was quite pivotal for me. So he asked me to help him, my brother, and I said, okay, I'll take a holiday from my job. Told my manager then, I'm just going on holiday. Went to work for 2 weeks and basically—

Nice holiday, that.

Basically never went back. Went back for Monday. It's one of those, you see someone sitting in the glass room with the the boss and yeah, handed my resignation in. And I didn't particularly like the job. So to give you an idea of what the job was, so our job was to provide real-time market surveillance for traders, traders at investment banks, hedge funds, private individuals, whomever. So if you think of like The Matrix, we had like 3 screens up, 10 screens across, so like 30 screens. And our job was to watch everything on planet Earth. That could influence a financial market product and comment on it in real time. So it's very stressful. I had no idea what was going on, but he was my brother. This is his livelihood. I can always get another job in recruitment. This was my mentality. He asks me for help. He's my brother, you know, I die for him sort of thing. So yeah, of course I'll help. Really tough. Because everyone else in my, who they had, who was new, was from top uni, studied economics. What I quickly got to see, which is a little bit of a light going off in my head, was what they struggle with the most was the intensity of the work and the duration of the work, because it's hard. So the watching markets and puzzling together how why this is happening and how do you price these products and all these sort of things they could do. But what they couldn't do were two things. They couldn't stand the heat because it was naturally working markets, every second counts sort of thing. And they couldn't really converse very well with other people because a lot of our job was looking at data and making assumptions, but also it was talking to people, talking to economists, talking to traders, talking to journalists. And then forming a view about markets, and they really struggled to just have conversations like a normal human being because they were so in a mindset of, I need to talk technical terms. And I was always like, oh, hi mate, how's it going? You know, what did you do at the weekend? And you're— what I started to find was that most people, even these traders at banks, would just go, I was at the Chelsea game and, you know, Lampard scored this and that. And you'd be like, oh, you just have some banter. And then a little sprinkling of some markets content at the end. And then they liked you and then they would help you and they would teach you and things like that. So that was something that I thought, okay, all I need to do is ask some questions and these guys offload on me their stories or tales. They get to know me and then they'd help me. And that with the ability to just put my head down and just work hard, I think were two things perhaps that I didn't really understand that I had quite naturally that could be very useful for something I thought would be beyond my complexity, if you like.

That's interesting. I think you're saying that you found your own way once you were in to play the job, so to speak, and I wonder if there is any way of checking or vetting if you are made out for a role other than just doing it? Like, you know, knowing what you know now and actually helping people get into it, is there any ways that they can try and really work out if they're cut out for it? And yeah, so they don't get burnt out and they do enjoy it.

And at the end of the day, yeah, um, it's probably two parts of that. I mean, what we do today with the simulations is it's, you know, when we talk about trading or asset management, whatever it is, it's definitely not talking about just technical prowess. There are things like we're measuring, which is growth mindset or resilience, things like that, where some people have those already inbuilt. And we can, through a pattern of behavior recognition, we can see all of those elements that if you think about the academic or schooling system, no, you're not measured on that. Like, so if someone was to say you're a really tough individual and you can be really resilient, which is the number one quality senior traders tell us on the corporate side that they want from graduates. It's like, well, you're at school, you don't really get a resiliency score, you just get told, I got an A in maths, I got a C in whatever, geography or whatever it might be. So it's kind of like reshaping that, I'd say, is quite important. So yeah, that's just what we're, we're focused on. It's kind of understanding that there are interpersonal skills and quantitative skills that are necessary for different roles, and there's different roles that facilitate that. So in a bank, it's a good example. People's perception of banks are that these really mathematical, uh, people are really working on complicated tasks. That is true for certain roles. If I work in quantitative finance, that's very true and specific. However, all of these people within a bank, you know, it's known as a sell-side institution because they're selling something. They're either selling a product or a service. And within that, then you need salespeople. Now, these salespeople, in my mind, the skills are, you could be working at the VW garage selling cars, or you could be selling complicated derivative products. You can learn both. I mean, if you can— if I talk to a guy at the VW garage, he could probably give me every quantitative statistic about a car just because he knows the car, he's into the car. It's the same thing. It's just that people get slightly blurred because, oh, it's a bank, it's kind of outside of my comfort zone. So it's kind of just letting people understand that there's more than the obvious roles. And, you know, there's operational roles, business analyst roles. These all exist within a bank but require an ability to collaborate and get on with people and extract information out of people rather than just being a doer of a mathematical task, which is also, you know, a specific role as well.

I mean, that is a big problem for graduates nowadays, is that they're very quick to write off an industry or career path because it seems like too much hard work, it will just never be them, without digging deeper into all the different roles you could play in that industry. You know, take for example banking, you mentioned it there. A lot of what you do, um, for me, is demystify what it actually is and help people find what kind of person they are on it. What do you think is like the biggest misconception for someone that, you know, they've gone, I'm never going to be in finance, I'm not like that person? What like, what is that biggest misconception?

Yes, but it's probably like I discussed. I think there is pretty clear visibility about hours, working hours, but I still think people take that too lightly. And I think people in a negative way champion like hours. It's almost like a badge to say I work 110 hours a week. Which I think is not the right mindset to have. You know, it's an option. You either opt in that you're going to have to sacrifice and dedicate your life to work pretty much permanently over and above often your well-being in terms of physically and mentally, or you don't. You don't have to. So, it's kind of like that understanding I think of it's okay and you can have a monetarily and emotionally fulfilling career without having to work 110 hours. You know, one of the things my brother now, who I mentioned, he now works as a CEO of a fintech and he messages me from time to time and he says, thank God we're not working on the desk anymore. He's like, my life is so much more fulfilled because I can pick up my kid from school, I can do my calls. He does a call at 6:00 AM with someone, wherever it might be around the world, he'll drop in, do some emails, drop his kid off at school, and then he'll go and do something else. And he's probably got more fulfillment in the tasks he's doing as well as the growth of the business than he ever had in say a previous corporate role. So it's not to say that one's better or one's worse. It's just that I think there's an understanding of you don't have to do the status quo. And I get it being on campus a lot, like there's a lot of peer group pressure, a lot of parental pressure, but you honestly are going to have a greater chance of success by doing something you're motivated to do. Now for me, I didn't realize what that was. And I would say in my 20s, it was just about head down, just go. And then you start to explore. You don't have to have the answer now. I don't think I had the answer, and I honestly don't think I have the answer until probably now. And I'm like almost 20 years in that I think I've really realised who I am and what I actually want. But I think a lot of that is self-reflection after having kids and family and things like that. You do tend to look retrospectively.

And when it comes to actually getting that job, I think you can have all the, you know, quantitative skills and the ability to do it, but in this current job market where, you know, you have to really care about who you are and you have to make sure they're the right person, there's still— even for these roles where you might not have to be a storyteller in them, you need to tell your story of why you should be there. And I think a lot of that comes down to being able to actually say with chest your motivations. And if your motivations are— it's hard to actually say, I'm gonna love sitting on that desk looking at numbers. Is there power in, like, knowing what's on the other side of it? And, and you said that there's that refreshing point where once you've earned the badges, you can actually start finding your way into more leadership roles, or bridging out from that and getting away from the desk, like What kind of motivations have you seen that make someone stand out in, in your industries?

It's a good question, and I think the— probably the motivations in terms of the average kind of answer you'll get probably changes, I would say. Um, I think the motivation in your early career, particularly in finance, is money, and it's kind of like How much is your salary? What is your bonus? Things like that. I'd be remiss of me to say that that isn't slightly your mentality. As you get older though, you know, you start, you do start to realise about, right, what does, what is fulfilment and what is happiness? And I always think about my friends at home. So, one thing that's always been a very healthy thing and something I've shared with others if they can make use of it, is the— your friends from when you were at high school are quite unique because they know you very well. And I've always found that with them, they've gone on to do a variety of different things. Probably the most happy one, if I was to say out of all of them, is the one who has the lowest income, doesn't own his own house, but has two amazing kids. and a lovely wife, and he has the, a life he's completely happy with. And it, you know, I think seeing that sort of thing, you're like, okay, so what is it ultimately that I want out of a career? Um, when you say money, which is obviously that, that point, then my, my, my conversation with a lot of young people is like, okay, so what is it you want to do with that money? And they say, I just want security. And I go, okay, so talk to me about security. And they say, I want to own a property. And then I'll say, okay, so what kind of property? Do you want to live in Mayfair or do you want to live in Bognor Regis? Like there's a difference in the type of income level you're going to require to have those two options. And they go, probably here. And you go, well, okay. So you kind of go through this line of questioning. Then they say, okay, you've got your house. So what's in your house? And they go, oh yeah, I've got this furniture and I've got this cool thing. And then you go, okay, so what's just you in this big 5-bed townhouse in Mayfair, is it? And then they go, no, I've got, I've got wife, got kids. Okay, so what, so what, you spend time with them or, or you don't spend time with them? And it's like you start actually going down it and they're like, okay, so if I actually think this through, perhaps just that monetary figure isn't the be-all and end-all.

So this train of thought you might go down to work out who you are and why you want to do it, that isn't getting sidetracked, that's actually like imperative and essential. You're saying, right?

Yeah, and I think different people have different circumstances. So I think in our, you know, for me and my brother, we didn't really have a choice. It was kind of like, you have to go to work and it's kind of, you work it out from that. The point being was it didn't, at the beginning, sure, you can apply to the Saatchi Saatchi grad programme, but at the meantime, I'm gonna work at Sainsbury's sort of thing. Because I need to live, don't have a great deal of parental support, those sorts of things. So everyone's going to have their own unique kind of situation that they need to deal with. So yeah, it's definitely not a rule for all, but I think it's definitely not wasted time to at least think this sort of thing. Ask yourself those questions because a lot of students I think suffer from internalising in their head and therefore not actually ever taking a first step. Because when you think about what job could I do and what do I want, and you every morning you wake up and you're, it changes. So what I try and recommend is for people to physically go through a process of writing stuff down and kind of categorising it. What am I good at? What do I enjoy doing? The thing I didn't understand as a young person was all of the things that I was good at were none of the things that were measured in academic achievement. What I didn't understand was that actually I could have a very successful career in jobs I never even heard of because I thought businesses were all run by accountants and people like that because through my naivety. But actually there's lots of different roles. There. So it's like going through that exploration and being honest and also being brave to say, okay, yeah, I'm not destined for banking. That's cool, that's fine. You can still have an amazing career. And it's like, just because everyone else is doing that doesn't mean you have to do it. Yeah, you play to your strengths in that way.

I also get like quite existential, um, about, about this topic, but You know, listen to you say that, I relate to it massively, even with entrepreneurship, where it's like university, I, you know, I'd go through these accelerators where it was just constantly ideating and iterating and validating and never actually doing and learning if you could even be the person to pull that business off. And I think the one thing which is, you know, what we're sitting in now that has become my career now and a business is the thing that never was meant to. I just went out and did and And even like, you know, me sort of working in 4 startups and not just running my own, like seeing if that fit for me, like really like, you know, validating through, through doing. But yeah, the thing I get existential about is like, is there any way that you can actually experience things before you get hit with a, yeah, a massive slap in the face like, this is not meant for you?

Like, like Like, honestly, the older I get, the more you look back through your life and you go, the greatest learning opportunities were when I got slapped in the face. For me, that business that I had with my brother went completely banana, banana-shaped in the end through basically 3 business partners all falling out once the business had become very successful. It's quite a normal situation actually that can happen. I learned a lot through that experience, but it was a very dark time because, um, at the time I was just getting married. You're thinking your next step in your life, and then all of a sudden everything is blown up, and in a very toxic kind of way. But I look back now and go, well, I wouldn't have the opportunities, I wouldn't have the life experience I have now. I feel much more confident to tackle uncertainties, specifically because of that really horrific part that we lived for a good year or two of not knowing what's going to happen. Am I going to have any income? It's going to affect not just me now, it's my wife and my wider family. Like, but you're so much more confident now in yourself and your abilities for that happening, I would say. Yeah.

And then with Amplify Me, obviously you've, uh, you've grown with it and to the place that it's at now. I wonder, those slaps in the face, does it, does it show you how good you've got it, or do you never really know how good you've got it? Like, because it's obviously something that you've stayed in, you're like, okay, yeah, I'm riding with this, this is working for me. But is, is there never meant to be this feeling of contentment in your career? Like, how do you feel now, for example, with the, you know, being the big name on LinkedIn with the fancy title?

Contentment comes in a different way, I think. Certainly when you have children, I think it changes quite a lot. Very much of the mindset of— I've always kind of had the mindset of I don't really care what other people think. Obviously I'll treat people as I'd wanted to be treated myself is the number one rule of how I interact with people. But generally speaking, I don't worry too much about what other people think. So what does matter to me is what the people closest to me think. And I think they're always a really great reference point for where you're at in terms of are you thinking and acting in an appropriate way, because they're the people that know you most intimately and will be the most open and honest with you. So that's a benefit now of having that. So I've been with my wife for 14-odd years. My brother and I having gone through this experience both as a child and our mother passing away as teens and then having a business not pan out in the end. We've had some extreme periods, which means that we're pretty close in that way. And so you kind of lean into and trust from other people, I would say. So yeah, that's the way I kind of— it feels to me. So yeah, am I content? Yeah, it's a good question. I think Because there's obviously this kind of business line of like, if you feel like you're content, or you're probably not pushing yourself, or you've got to step out your comfort zone. I do get that. I guess what I've become better at is kind of drawing boundaries between my personal life, my professional life. When I was young, they were very much blurred, and that comes with, yeah, you get fatigued, becomes very hard to manage relationships, particularly as you start to manage people. That's something I was very bad at, I'd say. I invested a lot of friendships, but then actually when you have to stop firing people and things like that, it's really hard. And so you learn how to be a little bit distant almost. And I think you can be friendly and have good working relationships, but I think as I've got older, and particularly that experience of the previous business, You learn that there is a line and these are my friends and these are my work friends and that's okay, but they are different. And in the work setting, I think, yeah, for sure, as a company, we have targets. We want to grow. We want to impact more people and I'd be lying, we're a commercial entity. We want to generate more revenue. We want to grow this business. And so, we do hold ourselves accountable to that. And so, you know, it does feel stressful, but I've become better at being able to go, right, okay, that's now off, and I can go into my private life. And then, you know, you can switch— you get better at switching between the two, I'd say.

I feel somewhat hesitant slash ashamed to be taking this conversation this way, but, um, especially when we're on this sort more deep, meaningful conversation we're having now. But, you know, the reason we're in this room together ultimately is because of LinkedIn. And, and I think it's become a really valuable career asset and way to build your career. I think maybe for you, like, you're looking at how you can grow your business, and, um, and, and that's like a whole different thing in itself. But for a student looking at this weird app where emojis are flying around and successful people congratulating other successful people How can you actually make it an asset in your career and helping you build it and maybe even helping yourself stand out to employers?

Yeah, you're definitely right. People will, um, it does have a bad rap, I think, as a platform. I think one, because its legacy is a professional networking site, and it's trying to be engineered into becoming more of a community. And so you're starting to see more of that spillover of the styling of content. Secondly, I think content-wise, people tend to champion the good and hide the bad, and that tends to be, um, quite frustrating for, I think, for a lot of people to see, particularly when you're a student, because everyone's securing the roles, things like that. I think you've just got to get over that because there's too many positives, so you've got to embrace it. and you've got to use it, um, in the right way. You've got to almost participate and play in the game. Why? Because it's for your own benefit if you do it right. Now, the ways and means to do that, uh, there's a couple, I think. Um, so we— to kind of qualify this, so myself and at the time my colleague, we were like, okay, LinkedIn, it feels like there's a gap. This was probably 2 and a half years ago. Where there's not really people treating the platform like I've just described. There was, this was the grassroots of that transition for the platform. So we were like, you're pioneers, right? Well, sure about that. But what, so why don't we try and put out frequent, regular commentary about markets, about career advice, things like that, but let's make it a little less dry, bit more interesting, and let, but let's be consistent. When we're doing it. So we started doing it, and at the time we used to drop like finance bro memes and things like that, because what we would do is we had, from a content perspective, finance is quite a niche. So actually, when you're plugged into like the Twittersphere, Insta, all the rest, you tend to see what's trending. It's a similar sort of game as to if you were an influencer on another platform, you know, the same principle applies on LinkedIn. So we used to see these things and we'd just share and we'd actually, you would see massive success because generally the people on LinkedIn weren't on those other platforms. So there was a little bit of gamesmanship of like, actually I can just be plugged in and recycle, reshape content and put it in a new domain. And that coupled with our own original content writing about markets was the first sort of strategy. And so yeah, that kind of picked up pretty quick. I think Eddie really, my colleague, took it upon himself to just go with it to the point where he was a very corporate kind of guy and now he runs his own media agency purely off the back of that exercise we did 2 and a half years ago. So he's now on, I think he's just got, I don't know, quarter of a million followers on LinkedIn, something like that. But he doesn't do any outbound um, type of sales. It just comes into his LinkedIn. That is his website, if you like. And he's built a business on the back of that, which he's now successfully running and growing. For us, it was about, yeah, business leads and things like that. So the tips I would say to students and the things to think about— and now, fortunately, I get to work with the LinkedIn UK team to discuss like content and new tools and things. The basic rules are fairly simple. You have to post consistently. Now the question students say is, what do I post? Because there's this big like anxiety about, is my content good enough? Is anyone going to listen?

Fear of cringe, social pressures.

Right. So there's kind of different pillars of content I'd say you could do. One is talk about your achievements. So they could be, I got this certificate for doing a Microsoft Excel thing, or I did this or that, or I worked on a charity day doing this. So there's these types of things. Then there's the, in finance, there's market-orientated stuff. So every day there's something interesting happening in markets. The key there is to take, don't be abstract. You need to talk on trend, but talk on trend and say something unique, something that someone's not said, or, you know, a thing I find frustrating about financial media is that you read the FT and you just can't understand it as someone who's not really taught because it sounds like a foreign language. So why don't you rewrite it into your 18-year-old tone? So you're taking content that already exists, but you're repurposing it for what makes sense to you. And you'll be surprised, that will make sense to probably a lot more people than the million or Leadership: The FT has. So it's not rocket science. It just takes a bit of practice. I typically find that students find it really hard to write in short form because academia teaches you to write in long form, whereas LinkedIn is all about short, concise, powerful, impactful, thought-provoking. You know, you kind of need to think along those lines. The other element is the visual aesthetic of a post that will make or break the success of your post. I see a lot of students who write fantastic content and then there's kind of this afterthought for the visual. But if you can come up with something quite creative, so you could use Canva, for example, which completely free, you don't need a paid product for that, or you can just find good infographics online. Or you could generate your own GIFs. For example, I've seen students do that where they've actually written a Python automated trading strategy and just filmed it for 30 seconds and it just looks super cool. And literally, the way the human brain works when you're scrolling is this just looks like a chart with loads of coloured lines all dancing around. It looks really cool. Yeah, it doesn't matter what it is, but that's— so the point being is once people see that, they then read your content. So it's all about these little anchors to get people to see it, and then once they do, then hopefully they start to then follow you and it opens up a realm of visibility so people can see your, your platform.

Yeah, and the other side of it then is actually reaching out and the ability to like, you know, find a company that— say you're walking down the street, you see their office, oh, I wonder who's in that role there, or even what roles exist within that. And so it allows your sort of curiosity to run wild there. But the actual art of reaching out, um, and yeah, you're, you're, you, you said you work with LinkedIn. Potentially you can raise a concern that I have with them, which is, uh, as soon as you go to message someone, it'll say like, hey, we've been connected for a while, you know, how have you been? Yeah, there's no personalization there. I think it's almost like setting you off and the wrong foot in how you'd reach out to someone. And I do get a lot of those messages from people. I'm like, yeah, sorry, but are you asking anything? What do you want to talk about? And I think, you know, personalizing your message is going to be the game changer, and it can really like fast-track your career to meeting people that can make that big difference. I think even like the way you messaged me, it was like, hey, uh, you know, when the dust settles, let's, uh, let's chat sometime. And I was like, oh, that's different. Yeah, we should, we should definitely chat. Um, And yeah, I wonder what you sort of would— the advice you'd give back to students for, yeah, reaching out and how you can be intentional with, with that.

Yeah, so you should always have a purpose for your outreach. So again, speaking in my domain of finance, so a lot of big investment banks, their job, as I said, as a sell-side institution, is to sell you something. So there's a lot of publicly available information about what it is they're trying to sell. This can come via a podcast episode, could come via research note, a blog, a soundbite on Bloomberg TV, which is free that you can watch all the time. There's these really great people talking on these platforms, sharing their views on markets. The easiest thing to do is just capture something that someone said, and the ultimate kind of key to success tapping into human psychology is pay them a compliment. Let them know that you've been, that you've, they've been heard with their view about something and you've appreciated that. People find it hard to turn you down when you've paid them a compliment because it's human nature. If someone's nice to you, you want to be nice back to them. So you have to have some sort of unique thing. The other thing is never be intimidated by someone's seniority. You know, kind of the simple line is if you don't ask, you don't get, and be expecting no reply. So managing expectations and also putting yourself out there, like do a bit of due diligence, find something unique, send a very short, polite message, and then if they don't reply, maybe send one more a few days later. And this is another thing I see students agonise over. It's like, how do I handle? I just say to them, look, Think about if you were dating and first date, how soon do you text after the date? You know, just forget finance. You're a human being. You are interacting as a human. So don't overcomplicate it, right? How long would you leave it in that circumstance? And they're like, you know, well, you'll get a range of answers actually when I ask people this. But, you know, that's the point. And then no one likes a pest. Yeah, in both manners. But the point being is then you just kind of don't overthink it, take, take a risk and then put it out. You've got to be consistent because I think a lot of the time people want instant results. They'll do it for a few weeks and then I'll go, oh, it's not worth it. That's when you need to crack on and keep, keep it going. Yeah.

And so the answer, the first answer about LinkedIn was about building your brand and building that reputation. The second one about how you can reach out. I think the more brand and reputation you have, the more like likely you are to get a response, right? So it's, it's important to see them both at the same time. Going off LinkedIn slightly, yeah, one thing I really enjoyed about this conversation and people like yourself is, is that, you know, you've, you've got, you've got success whether you admit it or not, but you're, you've, you've got a self-deprecating and relatable demeanor which makes it easier for me to to speak to and ask questions or just buy into you as a person.

Yeah.

When is that self-deprecating demeanor always been there in your career? And have you actually found it to be like really advantageous? Because I think students have a tendency to feel the need to like blurt out their achievements and what they are and what— without really like, you know, any— again, any sort of storytelling or just getting to know the person. And that, that I think that's more of a winning formula, is actually just enjoying the conversation more and making other people enjoy it more. So yeah, yeah. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, it's strange. It's something I get told. Um, I don't consciously try to act in that kind of way.

Okay.

I think that's why I'm happy that I've managed to land in a role and have a position today where it kind of— I'm just facilitating that ability to just be myself, so to speak. I think a lot of it as well comes with probably age. You start to become naturally more confident with who you are. And I've always, I've always got on with people. I think, you know, ever from being, you know, of mixed race growing up, playing sport and traveling around a lot growing up, I always just enjoyed, you know, my wife is Egyptian, like my whole life has been meeting people and listening to people and I just enjoy that process. And I think generally I found it better when you're just more, you show some humility, you're a bit more open and honest and you're not trying, you're like, This is what I struggle with. My wife, we always have these conversations. For me, I've always been like, I'll just be myself and if they don't like it, that's fine. Whereas I think a lot of people get stuck in the what if they don't like me? Or I'm like, well, I'm not being offensive, I'm just being myself. And if they don't, well, I wish them all the best and they can go on their way and I'll go mine. But I know some people find it hard to have that acceptance of someone because you want to be liked. All the time. So yeah, you just kind of, yeah, it's hard. It's a hard question to really answer. And you know, that's one of the things that actually, as our company has grown, we've ended up moving more and more into running events for big corporations where they'll bring us in and often I'll, I'll be like a host for an event and it just so happens that really plays to what I didn't know are my skills. And so, yeah, that like serendipity's had it that I've just landed in a position now where when I think about, well, what does the next 10 years of my career or post-Amplify look like? It's probably leaning more towards that sort of thing because I enjoy it because it doesn't feel like work. I just get to interact with people and people seem to find value out of conversations and things like that.

Yeah, if there's anything to take from this conversation, you know, from the very beginning where it's like the shy person that, you know, has the alpha brother, and now you're the person up on stage hosting, constantly talking to people, and people want to speak to you. It's, uh, you know, and how that's actually your career now. I think it's, you know, don't close yourself up to the potential of what could— you could be in a career sense, right? Um, and you know, as we come towards the end of the episode Uh, I want to ask two questions. So the first being AmplifyMe, a student's, you know, they've listened to this podcast, okay, I want to use it. How are they using it? How are they making the most of it? Like, how should they, uh, perceive AmplifyMe?

Yeah, so if you go on amplifyme.com, you'll see that there's essentially different experiences that you can do across three different main pathways: markets, Banking and Quantitative Finance. Within those, each streams would sit lots of different roles, but essentially what you can embark on is an on-demand simulation. So it takes an hour and you can immediately start engaging with practical learning. So this is not theoretical, it's all simulations that you'll be doing. I don't like to use the word games, but they are kind of games in a sense of doing those specific roles. That then leads on to more advanced live training. And then if you perform well at those, you then move on and become what we call a high potential candidate. At that point, you're in like an academy. The easiest way to think about it is our whole process is like we are Man City Football Club. What I am is chief scout, and I've developed technology where I can just basically any kid in the world can take part in this test. And in this test, I can see what you could be good at or whether you have the potential to be good at it, even though you might never have played football before. You're a runner, for example. The point being is you could be any discipline. You could study geography, history, economics. It's all the same. But then once you get qualified through some assessments, the simulations, you then get in the academy and it's in the academy You then get upskilled, and that can be in different ways— more specific, um, role simulation training, on-demand videos and webinars and stuff that I'll host. Then ultimately, we then connect you with our corporate partners. These could be big global trading commodity houses, investment banks, hedge funds, whomever. They're coming to us because they want a more diverse, wider pipeline of talent. They will get their normal applicants and we will get those normal applicants also come through us. It's a fair level playing field where the best should rise to the top. Now granted, some pockets of the demographics require a little bit more education, things like that, to ensure that they can successfully get through, but that's the point. So that's what they'll find if they come to, to AmplifyMe. We also work with lots of business schools, so depending on what uni you're at, you will probably get access to some of what we do as well. And then there's the content, which is obviously free. So say like our podcast that we have, I said earlier, commercial awareness is the biggest gap that most students have. So just listen to the podcast. I could point you off and say you should listen to this bank podcast, this asset manager podcast, and it would take a lot of time and it's not meant for students. Just like, this show, you know, it's meant to talk to students. For us, it's meant to talk to students specifically interested in finance. So that's another thing that students can do if they search Amplify Me. Go on Spotify or Apple and make use of that. It's there, it's just whether you want to use it or not to your advantage.

And my final question to you, Amplify Me aside, uh, you know, when you first started off in your career journey, you know, at Nottingham Trent, you have a certain idea of what success might go on to look like in your career, and then fast forward with everything you've learned and achieved, what is your definition of success and how has it changed?

Oh, it's the big one. The big, the big question. You know, I read stuff about this quite a lot. I'm quite interested in psychology and things like that. Yeah. What brings fulfillment, happiness? Again, like I said earlier, it's very different for different people. A thing that you have throughout your entire life is always looking at other people. You know, I think I was listening to an audiobook at the moment and it was talking about why people in America think the 1950s was the best time for America. But if you actually look at the data, life is exponentially better in every single department today than it was then. It's because you look back in nostalgia of that period, but also because after the war, just follow where I'm going here. So, after the war, basically, there was this thing about wealth kind of transparency in a sense of after the war, there was a specific rule in America where everyone got paid similar. So there was no gap in wealth. So what that meant was that everyone saw their peers and everyone had a fairly similar life. And so everyone was very content. Whereas now in 2024, compounded by social media and the internet, now not only is there a bigger wealth division amongst the rich and the poor, but you get to see it. So you've never felt more poor by looking at other people. Whereas back then there wasn't a division and hence the reason why there was more fulfillment. So I think the point I'm making is, is that you kind of— it's looking at other people that can be very toxic and benchmarking yourself. Working in finance is very bad for that because you look around the corner, there's always someone that you think you're smashing it. And it's normally when you say smashing it, you're talking about money and title and all these sorts of things. There's always someone better. In that way. So then I'd say for me personally now, it comes down to having a happy family and seeing my kids content. It's almost like having a family, it goes out from you and it's more about the people that you dearly care about and them being happy. And if they're happy and I can achieve that, then I've had success. So being able to provide for them, making sure they've got an ability. So for my children, it's the ability to have options to, in my mind, I want them to travel, want them to experience different cultures. I want them to have, you know, talk about different religions and things like that so that they can choose what path they want to take without me steering them. So it's okay if I want them to travel though, I need to earn a certain amount of money to allow them to be able to have these experiences. So I kind of think of it more like that. So it's not like it's a target in a, gotta live here, gotta have that, gotta own this. It's more like, am I reaching and hitting that mandate? And if I'm not, what can I do to help facilitate that? And it is hard. You know, you have to make lots of decisions as well based on your own experience. My wife had a very different upbringing to me as well. And so, you know, these are all things that you explore, you talk about, you evolve. I think the main thing is, is also be comfortable that your motivations, your aspirations, your goals will change. My goals now, I can already know, are going to be different. In 10 years' time because by then my kids will probably be leaving home and then it's like, well, what's the next step? So that's another thing. Don't be fixed on, I've got to know now where I'm going. It's like, okay, just know yourself and if you're a good person, you work hard and you apply yourself, I think you can always, you will, success will meet you. That's the main thing. Um, see, I'll leave it at that.

Antti, thanks so much for coming on. Been great.

All right, thank you, Peter Wood. Pleasure.