Dream big, but start small

When I entered his office, there was a huge pile of paper on his desk. He pointed for me to take a seat and began reading through my CV in silence.

“How did you get my direct line?”, he asked.

I wasn’t expecting his question. Plus, I hadn’t really thought much about it. He was a team leader of a large advisory team and he recruited the talent. The problem was that it was normally difficult to get through to him.

So I told him bluntly:

“I called up and pretended to be a wealthy middle-aged man with several million to invest and reception put me through to you”.

He gave me a confused look and replied, “I don’t remember doing that”.

“Yes, we spoke for half an hour, I gave you my address and you sent me a brochure with your business card attached”.

He sighed and looked up towards the ceiling.

“Look, you told me that you wanted to work for free for a whole year. I don’t know whether I’m impressed or perplexed”.

I wasn’t sure if I was suppose to say something, so I stayed silent. Then he looked over at the stack of paper and said, “This is how many CVs get sent to me every week and now I’m going to do you a favour”.

He took my CV and dropped it on top of the pile and then smiled.

He waited for a few seconds, then pick up my CV from the top of the pile and said, “So Mr Eagle, shall we begin your interview?”

My Dad once told me, “Dream big, but start small”.

So I did.

When I joined the economics degree programme at the University of Bath, the other students seemed smarter than me. Sorry, let me rephrase, they were a lot smarter than me. And frankly, this wasn’t difficult (context is probably required here).

Up to that point, I had been a lot less academically successful than these well-balanced and gifted individuals. Some of these fine intellectual specimens were only there because they missed out on Oxford and Cambridge. Yet, somehow I had accidently wangled myself onto this degree programme alongside them.

I can’t make up any bullshit stories about background and circumstance, where I fought against the odds that were stacked against me. I got in through by pure luck. Plus, being hooked on economics like it was a class-A drug at the time probably helped. I was obsessed with the subject, so I had no problem keeping up.

What happened was that I started a politics degree in my first year. This turned out to be a big mistake. Studying the science of politics was actually really boring because I had no interest in it. I did, however, strike up a conversation with the head of the economics department in the staff restaurant.

Before you ask, I had a good reason to be there. Firstly, I knew she ate there so it was sort of planned. Secondly, I went there anyway because the food tasted much better than in the student restaurant. And thirdly, for reasons unknown to me, I was never kicked out.

I found this lady so inspiring that I visited her offices a few times, where we usually had a cup of tea and discussed macroeconomics. I then took every optional module I could in economics after following her advice.

At the end of my first year of university, my grades in politics were slightly crap – no surprise there really. My grades in economics, however, were pretty good. In fact, they were very good.

I’m not really sure what happened next, but this represented a bit of a headache for the politics department. I think they wanted to kick me out of the degree programme, but my grades on the economics modules, kept me on the course in a very lopsided manner.

I don’t know what happened next, but there was some departmental dialogue, which lead to the politics department happily offloading me onto the economics department.

Some students saw this as some sort of weird promotion that wasn’t supposed to happen. The minimum school grade requirements to do an economics degree at Bath were far higher than they were for a politics degree.

However, I didn’t care. I was in.

Everything was going well and I was really enjoying the course. That was until I realised I had to find a job for a one-year work placement at the end of my second year.

I was competing for the same postings as the other brainiacs in my class, which was pointless. I had absolutely no chance getting a job at the Bank of England or becoming one of those high rollers at Goldman Sachs. They looked so much better than me on paper. And, to be honest, my interview technique was not yet that great.

I remember sitting in the plush offices of Morgan Stanley, when 15 minutes into my interview, they glanced down at my grades and told me they would get in touch. Time was running out. It was Easter and I still hadn’t managed to find a job.

I changed tactics. I started calling around, asking questions and sought advice. Although frustrating at first, it slowly started to pay off. I managed to get a few interviews even though some of the companies had never had a work placement student before.

Finally, I got lucky. I called up a small discretionary manager called BestInvest and got through to Dominic Cummings. And, that’s how I got the interview with him.

It went well. I got the job. Don’t ask me for specifics because this happened 15 years ago. I didn’t work for free though because it wasn’t allowed. It’s the law you see.

Companies need to pay you the minimum wage in the UK, which was fine by me because I was completely broke and working for free was totally nuts. Dominic’s interpretation of the minimum wage was something about the Labour party and Communists. I’m not sure, but by then I had switched off politics completely and I learnt quickly not to take Dominic’s political views too seriously.

So at the start of my third year of university, I started my one-year work placement. It felt great. I learnt so much during the course of that year. The experience gave me a huge advantage that helped me get into the asset management industry where I work today.

I started to invest with the little money I made. I probably wasn’t in the financial position to do so. However, I found it impossible not too – I was working for an investment firm. I spoke to wealthy and successful clients on the phone everyday and I wanted to be just like them. Although the amount I could invest with wasn’t much at the time, it helped me considerably in the years that followed.

I didn’t make a fortune and I made quite a lot of mistakes. I attracted a bit of attention too. A number of newspapers ran stories on me as a case study of a young investor – don’t ask me why. None of this really mattered. What I learnt is that you should keep a little money aside each month no matter how poor you are. Don’t be afraid to dream.

After I graduated, I got a job at HSBC Global Asset Management. I moved onto Gartmore Investment Management (which was bought by Henderson Global Investors). Then I joined Fidelity and the rest is history.

During this time, I started knocking off chunks of my student loan by overpaying each month. I did the same every time I got a bonus. And, I also did it when I took profits from an investment I had made before.

The loan got paid off in five years, which instantly lead to an increase in my disposable income. It was like getting a pay rise, which meant I could put more money away each month.

A couple of years later, I bought an apartment in West Hampstead, which is in a nice area of London: it has lots of shops, bars and restaurants and meant I lived only half-an-hour away from work. I couldn’t believe my luck.

However, none of this would have been possible if I hadn’t started my humble little investment portfolio years earlier. The truth is you can’t predict what is going to happen in your life or whether you will make money on what you invest in.

Nonetheless, putting away a little each month improves your odds. It widens the scope and possibilities of what might come your way in the future. Your options increase because you are just that little bit wealthier. This is true even though it can be impossible to imagine when you start out. Moreover, those irrelevant incremental amounts also compound (read my post on the power of compounding if you’re interested).

My journey through university was completely unpredictable and so was the start of my career. I’m putting a little aside every month now for both my kids. I hope one day they will have the same rich experiences I had at start of my working life.

I’m planning to increase their odds of success, one step at a time. And, when they turn 18 years old, I’ll tell them the same advice my Dad gave me:

“Dream big, but start small”.