Geoff Robinson, Managing Director @ UBS

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Graduate Guide. Today's host, I'm Charlie. Working as a chief of staff at Hustle. I'm joined by the amazing Geoff Robinson today. Geoff, would you like to introduce yourself?

I'm not sure I've ever been called amazing. Yeah, my name's Geoff Robinson. I run a company called theinvestmentanalyst.com, which is pretty aligned with, I think, what a lot of your listeners are listening to. I'm an ex-investment banker. I think loosely you can call me an entrepreneur. I've built a couple of businesses, sold them to various people. I've had quite a weird career. Yeah, I started off as an accountant. I was probably one of the worst accounts you could come across. I mean, talk about being on a graduate scheme and thinking, oh my goodness me, this is the job. And then kind of getting sort of stuck there for 3 years, get qualified, and I kind of left and then started building businesses.

Nice. Could you kind of give our listeners a bit of insight into those businesses and kind of what the journey was like?

Yeah, so did 3 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, long time ago, so mid-'90s. Left that, pretty much instantly because you get a 3-year contract.

Yeah.

And then it's 3 years was up and I was out. Um, and then kind of wandered around for about a year and bumped into some lads that I knew who had set up a consultancy business working with, um, investment banks and teaching their bankers to be better bankers. And I got involved in that very— I mean, similar to you really in terms of getting stuck in with a startup. Where you kind of felt the people you were working with, the idea that they had seemed quite amazing at the time. And, you know, disruption then, disruption now is very different. But I always felt with this group of people, if we couldn't build something that was quite amazing, if I couldn't do it here, where could I do it? And back then, you know, you didn't have the scale propositions and the networking effects that you have these days. So We just built a business that just generated a lot of cash. And eventually somebody took notice and they came and made an offer for us. And we were like, you know, we quite like our business, we don't want to be owned by anybody else. So we kept saying no.

Yeah.

And they thought we were negotiating hard. We just didn't want to sell the business. And then eventually I remember saying to one of my partners, if you take that number and divide it by 5, that's quite a big number. You know, just sell the business, 'cause, you know, ultimately it was a business based on intellectual property. Intellectual property is pretty mobile in terms of you have stuff in your head. So we sold the business, we gave it a good crack, it didn't work out, we left, and then we set up again. And then we did a leveraged buyout like 30 minutes before the global financial crisis kicked in. Oh, wow. Good timing. So we almost crippled ourselves with debt, but managed to get through with that, and we sold a second business in 2013 to Fitch. My mates all retired, I was the youngest, and then UBS offered me a job and I went over to UBS to be a research analyst and ended up being a managing director there, ran a franchise that was ranked number one, I think, 9 times. Yeah. And then I just really wanted to go back to kind of building businesses again, and that's what I've done now because, you know, that confluence of education and technology and scale just creates so many wonderful opportunities, and I guess that's what I'm, uh, I'm getting stuck into at the moment.

Yeah, I wanted to kind of go all the way back to the beginning. You mentioned that after the 3 years was up at PwC, it was very quick to leave. Was there any particular reasons that you can kind of flash back to as to why that was? I know that a lot of our student listeners will probably be right now thinking about applying, or applying to careers at PwC.

Yeah, I just, I think there's always a danger I went to Durham University. I'm a kid from a working-class background. I'm from Newcastle. My parents are hairdressers. Nobody went to university from my family. Nobody did A-levels from my family. Nobody had done— I think my mum's the most qualified with 3 O-levels. So there's no pathway here that I could follow. And what it did for me, if anything, it created quite a bit of insecurity at Durham where my mates are going for jobs in London at JP Morgan and the like. And I kind of played it a bit safer by staying in Newcastle, qualifying as an accountant, because it felt, it felt secure. The one thing I would say is, um, there's a million people out there who are not going to support your dreams, and I think you've got to go with your dreams. I think you've got to back yourself. Um, there was a quote when I was at UBS, so you came onto the trading floor there was a quote on one of the windows that says, and it's so true, is, you know, don't let your limits— what was it? Don't limit your challenges, challenge your limits. And I think you've always got to do that, of chase your dreams, you know. Yeah, you're going to fail at times, but don't let anybody else talk yourself or talk you out of what you can go for. The job market is so incredibly competitive But somebody has to get that job.

Yeah.

You know, and there are a number of times in my life and my career where I've kind of backed out of the fight, certainly when I was younger. Something triggered me in my 20s where literally I looked for the fight and just thought, right, there's a fair chance I'm going to lose here, but I'm going to try. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's what got us ranked so highly as analysts, is that we just looked at the data and tried to do things differently. Nice.

So, so a piece of advice then to any student listening who maybe comes from a background like yourself where they don't have that internal support network? Is it just to back yourself, always believe in yourself?

You've got to back yourself. I think you've got to look for the networks around you. You've got to look for the, you know, one brilliant thing about being a mixed-race kid in Newcastle in the '70s, which I can let your imagination, you know, take that where you want, is it really gave me a battling mentality of trying to prove people wrong, really. I mean, I remember at 11 at parents' evening, my teacher telling my father I wasn't university material. Arriving at Durham and my professor saying, listen, just face it, you're not a high flyer. So I mean, I must give off this air of just not being that great, but I think you've really got to back yourself and don't let the odds put you off. That resilience of just sticking to task because it's so easy to quit. But if you quit, you never get yourself into a position of being in that top 3-4%, and it's just sticking with it even when it feels like you're bashing your head against a brick wall, because those who last and survive, I think, ultimately will succeed.

Yeah. So was it always a dream of yours then to found your own business? Because you mentioned there about, about quitting. Obviously some people could argue that PwC, could you have kind of kept fighting through that to try and rise up the ladder?

Yeah, I just knew I wasn't the right character for that job.

Okay.

So I knew the fit wasn't there. I knew it was a wonderful qualification.

Yeah.

That's why I, you know, joking aside, I stuck around for 3 years. I qualified as a chartered accountant. That's been invaluable to me all the way through. But I've always been the kind of person that's had ideas. And I might have 10 ideas and 7 of them will be rubbish and 1 of them will be decent, 2 of them will hopefully work into something. And working in an environment where you're going through that startup mentality allows you to have that agility to try, fail, learn, succeed. And that's always been really attractive to me. I mean, I've enjoyed the corporate life as well. Yeah, because that's a very different set of KPIs or key performance indicators. Um, but yeah, it, it was never— there was never this desire to be an entrepreneur or to build a business. I just was given an opportunity that seemed to really knit with the DNA that I had.

Okay, that makes sense.

I loved it.

Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it was.

I knew you're in a similar situation now, so you know what I mean.

Yeah, no, I completely understand. I guess from that experience, what would be great, I think, for the listeners to understand, what would you say from having experience both at a startup and a company that's growing super fast and is really agile versus the experience in a more corporate environment what would you say are the biggest benefits of both so that for students out there that are maybe considering which career path is right for them at this stage, they can maybe use that to actually kind of evaluate?

I think working at a big organisation, resilience and adaptability is key. You will have bureaucracy in a big organisation because you need it to control and kind of cajole what is now 120,000 people at UBS. So you need those rules in place, but it makes the navigation of those rules quite sometimes tiresome, long-winded. You can run up against no more often than you'll run up against a yes. But I think having that adaptability to work through those obstacles is absolutely key. And again, it gets back to resilience. But the nice thing about a big organization is you're a couple of phone calls away from somebody who's always going to be able to help you. I know very little about social media marketing campaigns, but I remember Vebi, who worked for me in Switzerland— in Switzerland— in Switzerland, was— it took me two phone calls to, to find someone who could help me. So you've got a huge network there, you've got good resources, you've got diversity of thoughts and input, which is, which is massive when you're in a startup. The agility is really the big attraction for me, and the fact that I can try, fail, repeat, succeed all in a day.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Sometimes faster, whereas at UBS it might take me months. Yeah, you know, just to go through the process of finding a new software vendor to use. You know, and it's a smaller business, it's a lot more adaptable in that way. So I think a lot of it gets back to The personality traits. I think there's a huge amount of value for working for a big organization early in your career, just to learn the ropes.

Yeah.

And to see cultures, see different parts of the operating business and how that works. Um, and then taking that experience into a startup is, is pretty useful as well.

Yeah, I mean, this episode isn't about me by any means, but I can definitely relate to that. And I'm sure that you can, even though you may have had 3 years of experience at PwC. That initial experience in a startup, you can feel a bit lost. Yeah, and unsure.

So yeah, I like that though.

It is, it's fun.

I like the fact that, um, you know, with my business, I've, you know, I've built the app, I'm using AI avatar technology, we're doing spatial video, we're messing around with wonderful technology. And at the start of it, I don't have a clue what I'm doing. And it's the experiment, the experiment, the learn, the fail. And then before you know it, 3 weeks later, you're speaking the language. And you know, I'm talking about you know, um, ultra high definition video, and I need my frame rate to be 29.97 FPS in order to do X, Y, and Z. And like a month ago, I'm thinking, I don't know any of those words I've just mentioned, you know. And that's the wonderful learning curve that I have, that kind of childlike desire to know more.

Yeah, yeah, no, I 100% agree. In terms of, as you mentioned then, throughout your career you've had a lot of times where maybe people haven't believed in you, or I'm sure that you've had numerous setbacks in your career. Is there anything that you've learned throughout the throughout that journey that students who are going through very similar things now— I know I was a student myself recently, I applied to loads of roles, got rejected. It can feel very tough in the moment and you can kind of lose that self-belief. Is there any tips you would have for students that are going through that at the moment of how to get better at dealing with those setbacks?

You're not alone. First thing is that you are not alone. And I think part of that process you're all going through is important because you will have people who don't see it through, who stop doing it, and it's the resilient who are surviving. And that's an important trait to see as an employer, is I want that resilience because there will be lots of times where things do get tough and the hours do get long, and you want those people with those survival skills really ultimately kind of coming through. But I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was my first year at university, and this is not career advice. I didn't do so much work. I'd come from a fairly strict upbringing, arrived at Durham, I did economics at Durham, and most of my friends went to these very fancy schools in the South that I'd heard of on documentaries and things. And they'd all had a year out and I didn't know what a gap year was and all this kind of stuff. And I partied pretty hard in my first year and then pretty much flunked my first year university exams to the point of getting to the point whether I'd be invited back for the second year. And I remember my principal talking to me and the best piece, one of the best pieces of advice I've had was, it's not important what has happened, it's what you do next. Yeah, you know, so if you have a setback, it's what you do next. If somebody rejects you, it's what you do next. And it's that survival, because think about it, let's say there's 10 of you in the room, 7 quit, and you're still there, you've just already won because the odds have just gone in your favor.

Yeah.

And I think that's the way I always view it, because you're all in the same boat. It's super, super hard. And the easiest thing to do is to quit.

Yeah, I think it goes back to what you said earlier, right, about when you don't quit and you keep going, you will find that job because then someone does need to be hired for those roles. And so as long as you're that person that keeps showing up and keeps applying—

and to be honest, I think you sent some questions over a couple of days, and I was really thinking about one of them where I think you asked me along the lines of, you know, how, how do you stand out?

Yeah.

And I was thinking about my— and this is totally my personal experience If I was interviewing, I didn't want to interview people over a period of like 5 or 6 days because it is quite disrupting to your day because you're at your desk or I've got an hour's interview, I've got to go up to the 7th floor, prep for the interview a little bit, look at CVs, maybe it's an hour and a half to do an hour's interview, and then I've got to come back downstairs and then re-engage. What I like to do is kind of do the interviews in batches, so do 4 interviews or 5 interviews take a day out and then it's a little bit cleaner. And the problem with that is, is that you are interviewing pretty high-caliber people. The CVs are always more impressive than mine. And the difficulty that I had was just remembering who I'd interviewed. And it's like being in the markets. You only make money in the markets if you are able to take a view that stands out from the crowd. And you're right. Yeah, obviously if you're wrong, you take your view, you've been stung. But if you just always follow the crowd, you'll never make any money, right? You'll just follow the market. And it's a bit like getting a job. If you don't stand out for the crowd, you're not going to be remembered. And I think it's really working at what you can put into your application that just sparks somebody's interest. And to be honest, most of the time it's not your qualifications or your degree or your A-levels or your GCSEs For me, and this might go against every HR policy that's out there, is I read the resumes or CVs from the bottom up.

Yeah.

Because at the very bottom, that's usually where you saw the interesting fact, you know, that somebody had gone off to do some sort of charity work in a third world country, and I want to know more about that. Or I remember one guy that I interviewed who'd done ballet for 15 years, and I'm just thinking, having watched Billy Elliot and been from that part of the world, that what was it like being a guy going through and doing ballet, you know, what did you have to go through, what prejudice did you have to deal with, and what did that do to your character. I remember another chap who ended up working for me had 6 A-levels. Wow. And, um, 6 A-stars at A-level. And, um, what was amazing is he was such a normal bloke, and I just found out, how did he manage to kind of balance being so academic and then being such a cracking personality? And I remembered him not because of his A-levels, more because his personality stood out so much. So you're looking to identify and sell your diversity in these interviews and through these applications. And I think what you're trying to do is you're trying to manage any conversations you do have once you get to that stage of trying to sell that hook to somebody. Yeah, so it sticks in their head, and when they get back into the desk, it's not like, oh, I interviewed 6 people today, don't really recall huge differentiation between them except for, you know, this young lady or this young guy, you know, and it resonates.

I think that's really valuable advice because I know that when I was applying for roles and I was kind of even receiving CV advice, for example, from the careers mentors at UCL, yeah, the often— the thing that you'd hear often is make sure that all of your industry experience is really well laid out and it's really clear. And there would never really be much said about the outside interests or the additional hobbies that you have, or like you said, what really makes you unique and different from the crowd. And looking back on it, 99% of the people applying for those roles all had the same, same thing as I did. But the thing that would have really made me stand out is those hobbies.

Yeah, it is. It's the hobbies, the interests, the societies, You know, just things that you've done. I mean, I look at my bio now, nobody asks me about UBS managing director, number one ranked analyst. I get asked about the fact I'm a PADI qualified dive instructor, you know, and why did you do that? I was a bit bored, you know, and I like diving. And then, you know, we end up talking about the diving more than we do the actual kind of what I've spent 30 years of my life doing, which is trying to be, you know, a good finance person.

I mean, it's amazing, but I guess that's how you connect with people, right? You find similar—

you find hooks. You find hooks. I mean, um, and it's just, you know, going back to again key skills, and this is a skill that I could always be better at, is— and I work at it really hard— is just really in-depth listening, you know. So if you're interviewing me, you know, I'm trying to pick up on anything where I can think, oh, I can hook into that and I can take that conversation to the next level. And that ability to really switch off, almost like switch off your mind. And again, the way my mind works is I'm listening to you, you say something, and then my mind's off at a tangent. Yeah, I try and quieten that down and just really focus on what you're saying so I can engage in that conversation and build that rapport. Ultimately, in the day, whether it's on a Zoom call or whether it's through a telephone interview or face to face, it's still the same sort of skills that kind of work through.

Yeah, no, I 100% agree. I mean, as well, given the fact that you've obviously had experience leading companies, leading teams as a managing director at UBS, but I'm also sure when you was at the businesses that you founded as well, there's a lot of experience there managing people. I think a lot of students listening will look at the future and will say, okay, I want to be a leader, I want to manage teams. Is there any skills that you would suggest them honing in on now that can allow them to actually kind of become an effective leader when they get to that stage? Or is there anything they can do that would allow them to progress in that way in their career?

Oh, there's a whole host of things. I think trying to pick a few just to stick to. I think the soft skills, that's such an important skill set.

Yeah.

Which I don't think really gets taught at school or at university. You're kind of left up to your own devices to either pick them up or maybe you go on a training course. But I think one of the most valuable skills I have is not my technical skill, quite frankly. I think it's my soft skills, it's the ability to emphasize, to also never forget what it's like to be in somebody's position. You know, I know, I remember how hard I found accounting when I was 20, 21, and how boring I found it at that stage, but how incredibly useful it's been all the way through my career. And I think holding on to that empathy is absolutely key, because otherwise you will never connect with the people that you're speaking to. So that's something I've really concentrated on. The listening, as I said before, that, that's really quite key in that respect. And I think the learning, you know, um, my pet peeve, and I'd probably be annoyed with myself if I look back at my younger self— I mean, at 26, I thought I was it, right? In terms of, I just, you know, I'm a graduate, I've got a great job, I've got my own place, I'm in London. I mean, literally, could anything be any better, and I just thought I was the bee's knees. Now at 51, I feel like the holes in my knowledge are just cavernous, and I've had nearly 25 years to try and kind of close those holes. That idea— nobody's the finished product ever, never mind 25, 35, 55— but trying to hold on to that mindset of continual learning is so absolutely crucial so you can adapt to the dynamics of the market, to technology, But also, I think the secret or the benefit to learning is you will never disrupt anything unless you understand something, right? So you've, you know, I think the benefit of education is to understand how the current systems work and then see where there's opportunities to disrupt that current system. Yeah. And that's what education is there for. So I'm still learning as much now as I probably more actually than when I was 26 or 27. I love finding out about things that I don't know. And it's not necessarily, and I think sometimes you can be a little bit too blinkered in your approach at the earlier stages of your career, thinking, well, I want to be an analyst or a lawyer or whatever, so I'm going to learn about law or finance. I'm a huge believer of taking or learning about other aspects of life and having these different kind of mental frameworks that I can apply to the work that I'm doing. I mean, I did something a couple weeks ago, and I'm no expert on philosophy, but I find it fascinating. Um, I did a series of videos for my platform which was looking at, um, how the beliefs and frameworks of ancient philosophers can be applied to the world of investing today. So I'm talking about Aristotle and virtue.

Yeah.

And how that applies to the investment mindset in the markets today. And I thought that was a fascinating route to go down, but where you could just pull on different aspects of, you know, the education that is not necessarily the one focus you're looking at, which is finance. So think about philosophy, think about engineering, think about artificial intelligence, um, look at Gen AI and how that can maybe disrupt your working day.

Yeah, no, I completely agree. I guess you never know when those different pieces of knowledge are going to come in handy.

It changes so quickly, doesn't it?

Yeah, I mean, like, the best example I always go back to is Steve Jobs.

Yeah.

Doing a calligraphy class at university, and all of a sudden then that influences how he built the Macintosh, which then makes Apple the success it was today.

So yeah, I mean, and you don't know how or what's going to influence you. I mean, I've got influences I can trace back to, you know, random things. Going back to your leadership question before, um, my boss who promoted me into my first management position, um, said, I'm only going to promote you— I remember this, and my heart sank— if you read this book. I read the book. Give me the book. And he gave me Plato's Republic. And I don't know if anybody's tried to read that before. It took me months. You know, so I'm reading a paragraph thinking, oh my goodness, I'm less informed now having read that paragraph. But I went through the whole thing. I stuck at it. And there are bits of Plato's Republic, you know, the pursuit of power and philosopher kings that still sit in me today. And that's, you know, over a period of 25 years, that kind of stuff has just sat there. And it sometimes just nudges you in the right direction.

Yeah, no, 100% agree with that. Do you have any kind of thoughts on how students can best balance, because you mentioned that something that's often underlooked and undervalued is the soft skills and developing soft skills. Is there any advice, because of course in a field like finance you do still need the hard skills.

Correct.

Do you have any thoughts on how students can balance the development of both while maybe they're at university or in the early stage of their career?

Um, how do you do that? I mean, that's, that is a tricky one, I think, at the best of times. I mean, from a finance perspective, Alright, let's just change the tack slightly, because I could say go and read a load of stuff about behavioural finance, right? Super interesting, bias, inside view, outside views. I mean, if there's one book to go and read if you're a finance person, is go read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Daniel passed away a couple of days ago, which is a fantastic book, but I think I would say is start looking at what you're learning through different lenses. And if I say pick up something that I know, which is valuation, and looking at cash flows and discounting them, you can look at that and just think, "It's cash flows and I discount them," and you look at it kind of head-on. What I've always been forcing myself to do is to look at things through multiple angles, not just to accept the fact that I've been taught, but also to understand what it meant, why it works, why are you teaching me this way, and what was it like coming at this idea from the left side or the right side or below or from the backwards. Yeah, it's coming at different angles because again, going back to standing away and standing out of the herd, if you look at something from a slightly different angle, you will see something most people won't because most people just look at it head-on.

Yeah.

And not from the slightly different angles. And I think that's when you get opportunities to see things that are different. So that's not really your technical skills versus softer skills, but I think the idea of looking at different angles is a great skill.

More like a breadth of learning.

It's a breadth of learning. It's making sure you fully understand the why. 'Cause if you also understand why something works, you don't have to learn that much. You know, I'm in the process of almost like digitizing my knowledge onto the platform. And I'm slightly surprising myself about how much stuff I do know, but it's sort of resident there in my brain because there's a logical understanding of— I think you need to learn how to learn.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of people don't do that. I think I was pretty terrible at learning until about my mid-20s, so all the way through my degree trying to force knowledge into my head. Yeah. And then regurgitate it in that 3 hours where I'm going to pick my 3 essays and write them. And a lot of that was just parrot fashion regurgitation, and that really hurts you when you go into a corporate role or even a startup role, because what you know is only useful if that same circumstance or scenario is replicated in real life. And as you know, that never happens.

Yeah.

So it's almost like your knowledge becomes irrelevant because you've only got that one use case for it. Whereas if you really understand what's happening, why it's happening, and you can tear it apart and you can derive different alternative circumstances, then you've got this adaptable dynamic framework which is hugely useful.

Yeah, so it sounds like there you're saying that the first thing students listening today should do, rather than trying to build these kind of, I guess, impressive but more kind of further down the line skills, is focus on the fundamentals. Like, learn how to learn. Yeah, learn how to communicate. Those type of skills that then you're going to be able to build on top of later in your career.

Yeah, I think that's really fair. Really good assessment actually, is it's getting brilliant at the basics. I'm not that good, right? Ultimately, I mean, I look, I think what I do well is I do the basics really well, and I might have 100 basic skills, but I pretty much execute them not faultlessly, but pretty, pretty well over that process. And when you put 100 basic things together, the impressive The synergy of that impression is much bigger than the individual parts, and I just do basic things well. And that's being the same as a junior analyst, even as a managing director. I mean, I had imposter syndrome all the way through, thinking, why is this person listening to me? I feel like I'm not telling you anything particularly special, but they were hanging on my every word. I mean, I got a— I'll not mention his name, but Peter Wood, one of the biggest investors in the US, the guy's worth tens of billions of dollars. I got him to change his investment strategy from selling the S&P 500 to going long the S&P 500. And I was right, he probably made billions off it. But the idea that I came up with was probably 6, 7 fairly simple things that most people didn't look at, and I just looked at it from a slightly different angle. And I was able to gain kind of an informational advantage there.

That's amazing. It's a shame he didn't cut you in.

He didn't cut me in. No, no.

And he's, uh, yeah, I mean, so over your career then, obviously you must have learned a lot, especially like I said, going through different startups, working kind of in, in bigger enterprises. What would you say is the biggest thing you've learned that if you were to, that you would kind of give as advice to your 18-year-old self, let's say?

That's a great question. Um, I think it's, it's a resilience point. Yeah, you know, I mean, there's so many times where things have been really, really tough and it's easy to quit. And I go through emotional ups and downs all the time where I'm thinking I'm literally going to take over the world today, and the next day it's like, there's no way this is going to work. And it's just trying to Actually, I want to answer that question again. It is the resilience thing, but linked to that, I think, is— and I was never good at this as a younger man— is celebrate the little wins. Because if you don't celebrate the little wins, you never feel like you've won. And so when things do get tough, your resilience gets tested. And I think a great example is this: we were ranked number one, actually quite amazingly. We were— we had the fastest ever number one ranking in this surveys history that we have in my world. And the day after we became number 1 and we beat the next person like ridiculous amounts, I came in the next day and I was like, okay, how we're going to do it next year and how we're going to win by more. I never celebrated the fact. Yeah, I went straight into next year. And that's a real shame because that was a massive win and we should have dined out on that for a long time. I'm now dining out on the fact that my computer hasn't crashed. You know, so it's little tiny things. Or I fix this. I mean, I came in today on the tube and I saw a little glitch on the app and I fixed it on my iPad, which I just mentioned to you beforehand. It's amazing you can run a business on the tube through an iPad. And I walk away and I just think, oh, that's great. And if you do that, there's a little endorphin rush that if you do that 10, 15 times a day and celebrate those little wins, I think it does a lot for your soul. And when you do have the tough times, you've had that rush beforehand that kind of reinforces that bit of confidence. So that's my big takeaway, and I think I learned that really— to be honest, I think the first time I properly got this right was I was promoted to Managing Director in 2018. I've been in UBS a year, and that's the first time I literally celebrated in my head for about a month. You know, waking up each morning thinking, awesome. You know, going walking to work thinking, awesome. Leaving work, oh God, awesome. Whereas normally it'd been, right, I'm MD now, right, what's next?

Yeah.

You know, and I think if you're in that kind of world of trying to achieve, which if you've been through school, you're going through university, you're trying to go for these great roles in all of these different industries, it's so easy to forget that. And I think that's a real shame.

Yeah, no, I 100% agree. I think often it can lead to issues with burnout as well, right?

Absolutely. And I've been there, don't get me wrong. I mean, I had 4 months chatting to a therapist towards the end of my UBS period, and that was complete burnout. Not like I was going to do anything silly, but I have a passion that burns in my soul that is there every day, and then it just went. Where nothing was exciting me. I mean, give you the, the— not the analogy, the story here is I was with my wife and my son in Vienna, and it was a beautiful summer's August, summer's weekend. We were there to see Ed Sheeran in concert. We had front row seats. It was amazing. I couldn't care less. I literally was so flat, and that was a consequence of not enough sleep for months and working 100-hour weeks, working 7 days a week, smashing it, but not looking after your mental health.

Yeah.

So that's really key.

So, so now that's become a massive priority.

Do you want a huge priority? And it was a huge priority even, it's, you know, UBS, I made those changes where I thought I'm not going to get in, I had to get in at 6:30. Actually, in my head I had to get in at 6:30.

Yeah.

I came in at 7:30 and it was amazing, the world did not stop. Yeah, it was fine. And I left at 6 instead of leaving at 6:30, 7, 7:30, and the world did not stop. And we were still as productive, um, and I was getting more sleep, and that was key. Yeah, you know, so, um, I, I definitely went through a spell of 2 or 3 years of absolutely smashing it at work, but at the cost of a huge number of things.

In that time as well of smashing it, was you really ever celebrating those small wins, or was it more just kind of, um—

Yeah, I think I, I was, but it's almost like addictive because you want more wins. Yeah, you know, and so you're chasing and chasing it, and you've got to find— I think balance is so key. And I think that's a generational issue because, you know, guys of my age always moan about people your age. Yeah, you know, they're not working hard, this. But I think, to be honest, you've probably got the right attitude. Yeah, you know, go to work, work hard, have a life. Yeah, get some sleep, you know, find that balance, do something that's not work. And you will have a longer and probably more successful career.

So fast forward to today then, you're now founding The Investment Analyst.

Yep.

What is that and kind of why did you found it?

So I needed something to do, so I thought I was retired last year. So, um, I always had in the back of my mind, um, I come from 25 years of education, uh, did the UBS thing, um, I feel really disappointed by what I see in the finance training market, um, I think it's got very commoditized And again, if the training market is delivering a commoditized product to your audience, your audience is learning a commoditized output that doesn't make them stand out from the crowd. Yeah. And I love education, I love learning, I love teaching, I love technology. So our house is littered with gadgets and goodness knows what, and I wanted to put the, the two together and really produce something where I can help people understand investment, accounting, analysis, financial model valuation, investment thesis building, but using technology to deliver it. And so that's what the Investment Analyst is. It's one part of it is there's an app which we're going to give your listeners a code to, um, and they'll have 3 months access, I think we've put up there, um, and that'll help them prep for interview. And I love the fact that they can get access to that. And we're not charging them anything because also there's a social mobility side of things that I'm— being a Newcastle lad, not many investment bankers come out of Whitley Bay, but I want them to because there's some great talent there. So there's the app. And then what I do is I have a little jaunt around the world every so often and go and teach funds and sovereign wealth funds. And I do it on my own terms. Normally, it's— I'll give you one example. I had one client, just to make you laugh, said, 'Can you come out to do some work in this particular country?' And I said, 'Yeah, I can.' And they said, 'When are you available?' I thought, 'Okay, I've got to figure out what's on in this country at this time.' And they're like, 'Oh, there's a Grand Prix on at that time, I can come out this weekend.' So I came out, watched the Grand Prix, delivered the work, trained their investors and their analysts, and then came back. So that's what I do to kind of keep the wolf from the door. And then the app is something I do which is, um, starting to get real traction. We had— interesting, it just shows you the power of the networking effect. I mean, yesterday we had a 600% increase in one day of the signups.

Wow.

And what's happened here is— and this is in India, so at Delhi University, goodness knows how they found out about the app because I'm not marketing it— is somebody's clearly found about the app and it's just raced through that university, and I've just got all of these Delhi University signups out of the blue. And that is where Scale kind of comes from. And yeah, I thought that was an incredible, uh, thing to witness from a startup mentality. I mean, you'll see it with Hustle as well, where, you know, you can't explain what's just happened, but you can see the data react and you just celebrate it, right? You see, and I'm still dining out and celebrating that little win today.

That's amazing. So you mentioned obviously that students will be able to get Advice on interview prep. What would you say is the biggest mistake students make when preparing for interviews, especially in finance, but also just across the board? I think it would probably be applicable.

Um, I think you've definitely got to know your company.

Yeah.

Um, not inside out, but know— and I would say know 5 facts that you can drop into conversation because you can just find a place to say, oh well, I'm familiar that, you know, UBS connected with Credit Suisse because this, but it's been around since 1837. And he just picked that up from the internet. So finding information you can drop into the conversation about the company's history, trying to find out as best you can what the role is, or certainly what that part of the division of the bank does. And that's something I'm doing on our platform as well, because I mean, I never knew, you know, what does a research analyst do, and a salesperson, and then a sales trader? It's just quite alien to me. It doesn't seem that that information is they're not that widely available because they're all fairly generic definitions that you find on the internet. So I think know a bit of the history, know a little bit about the job that you're going for. And I think it takes a little bit of practice, that idea of the listening, is you can find out a lot about the person that's interviewing you quite quickly and just even asking a few questions. Will give you information. People like to speak about themselves, so just asking an open question whilst in an interview, I think, gives you— you know, don't ask the question and just sort of like vacate your brain for a while. It's ask the question, look at the body language, look at the eyes, and just see what you can glean out of that. That gives you that little bit of competitive advantage.

Yeah, I think that's great advice, a great way to wrap it up. So as you mentioned, we— that you'll be providing a free code, right, for them to access to the Investment Analyst?

Yep. So I think we've called it Hustle 100, but we'll put this in the notes.

Yeah, we can for sure when we announce the episode, we can kind of put in the notes and add a link there.

Yeah, and there's just a link you go through, um, you stick the discount code in, it'll give you access to the platform, to everything. Yeah, you know, because I'm kind of relaxed about this. It's not like I'm trying to— I'm not trying to build an empire here. I just want to build something that's kind of cool.

Yeah.

And I want people to see it.

Yeah.

So get on to it, do it for 3 months, cancel it if it's no use to you after that. For me, at least you've walked away smarter than when you entered.

Amazing. Well, for all the people that are looking for a career in finance, definitely check that out. And thank you again, Jeff, it's been amazing.

No, pleasure. Thanks.

Thank you.