The Way of the Wall Street Warrior

CHAPTER 13Read the Room, Not the Prospectus: Profile Your Audience

As a junior banker, I prepared thousands of reports for the higher ups, and as I zoomed up the flagpole there were plenty of occasions when I was asked to summarize or present my findings. Early on, I learned that when delivering a sales pitch, a business plan, or even a prospectus, reading the room was infinitely more valuable than reading any document. In other words, to hack your career, scrutinizing the people around you and understanding their goals and motivations is way more important than the written word. If I could go to school all over again, I'd not only get a degree in psychology, but I'd also take courses in FBI profiling.

When I first started my career, I didn't know my ass from my elbow. I had spent my time buried in engineering and business books. I could decipher a quadratic equation, but ask me what someone meant by some passive-aggressive comment? Fuggetaboutit! Early on, I learned the full extent of my stupidity.

I was a newly minted analyst and was rearranging my desk in my cubicle so that everything would be perfect for me to conquer Wall Street. Senior bankers sat along the edges in glass-walled offices overlooking junior banker cubicles in an area known as the “bullpen.” I thought, so appropriate! Like jocks of finance, we were pro baseball pitchers staying warm, ready to be called up at a moment's notice to play in the big game. What a fool. A few months later, I realized the term more ...