Chapter 5: From Rejection to Relevance

How I Hacked My Way Onto an Accelerated Career Track in the Consumer World

In Chapter 4, I talked about “worldliness” — the idea of becoming worldly, well-rounded in business and in culture — and how I came to want that for myself. In some ways, I matured pretty early in life. In other ways, I matured much later. Sure, I got up close and personal with death and despair for years treating EMS patients — that takes a certain level of maturity many 20-somethings lack. And I understood the complexity and sacrifice of small business ownership from an early age working with my father… pushing concrete up hills in wheelbarrows over rickety 2x12s, demo work, office and payroll issues. But when it came to cultural maturity — meeting people from other countries, understanding geopolitics and global affairs, appreciating the depth of other cultures — I admit I was underdeveloped right through the end of college and into my early working years.

It wasn’t until the Paris trip I wrote about in the prior chapter that I really “got it.” You just have to be there, I guess. In the world. Try being the small fish in a big pond after growing up where everybody knows you and your family — the bigger fish in a smaller pond as many blue-collar Irish Catholic families can be sometimes. There’s value in that, of course. I just wanted more. I had no idea what the path looked like at the time. But I believed there was a doorway to it somewhere, and I just needed to find it.

Where We Left Off…

So just like Chapter 2 began… there I was, back on the trading desk, still living with my parents and commuting from one suburb to another, relentlessly Googling for jobs and scanning LinkedIn and Indeed — often at work, hoping nobody would notice (the owner of the firm sat directly behind me, facing me). I was itching for something faster-paced, more challenging with a global perspective, “in New York,” and ideally something consumer-focused or in equities. But nothing was landing.

Very Little Money

Back in this 2010–2012 time frame, I was only earning a salary of about