First episode of the series 'The Education of an Investment Banker' with Paul Giannamore, focused on how to break into investment banking as a junior banker. Paul describes his own path into the industry, what the job actually involves, and frames investment banking as a craft learned under mentors rather than in classrooms. He emphasizes two skills he considers critical for aspiring bankers: selling and problem-solving, drawing on lessons from advertising and copywriting, including positioning, psychology, and communication. Other topics include targeting individual bankers rather than banks, why generic resumes fail, analyst work in the AI era, and a recommended stack of books on persuasion, marketing, and negotiation (by authors such as David Ogilvy, Eugene Schwartz, Claude Hopkins, and John Caples). The series is aimed at aspiring professionals and M&A practitioners interested in both the technical and psychological sides of investment banking. Timestamps provided in the original description cover the full episode from introduction to closing thoughts. # Channel Identity Observations — "The Education of an Investment Banker, Ep. 1" ## Explicit Self-Description - **Host identity**: The creator signs off as **Paul Jan** — *"Again, I'm Paul Jan. Thank you for joining me."* - **Professional scope**: He describes himself as a specialist, not a generalist: *"All I do and all I've done for many many years is M&A advisory primarily or almost exclusively sellside M&A advisory."* He explicitly narrows the term: *"when I talk about investment banking, I'm primarily talking about M&A advisory… the small vertical within investment banking."* - **Firm references**: He repeatedly names his firm (transcribed variously as "PTOAC"/"PTOIC") — *"in a lot of ways, I run PTOAC based on the same way David Ogilvy ran Ogilvy and Mather"* — and mentions AI investment: *"we have a chief AI architect who works for the firm."* - **Channel purpose**: He frames the channel as education with a commercial component: *"I want to make very educational videos I want to educate business owners so they can understand the mechanics of an M&A transaction the psychology of the deal… and of course at the end I pitch my services because I'm not running a charity um but my main priority is to get out there and teach."* ## Intended Audience (Stated) - **Dual audience, with a stated pivot in this series**: *"I'm going to use this series to talk to the M&A professional and those aspiring to get into the field"* — while noting his other content focuses on business owners: *"more so than business owners because the majority of the stuff we do is focused on the business owner as the audience."* - **Series origin**: Created to handle inbound volume: *"I get a ton of inbounds every single day… I want to use this as a medium for me to get back to everyone who reaches out to me."* ## Observable Presentation Patterns - **Masterclass/series branding**: The title and transcript reference an ongoing *"M&A Masterclass"* series ("I just filmed a segment of the sellside M&A masterclass series") and this new episodic series format driven by viewer questions. - **Practitioner authority style**: Heavy use of first-person war stories — faxing resumes to Goldman Sachs and CSFB in 1999, working in the tech group under Frank Quattrone's orbit, a viewer flying from London to Puerto Rico to find him. He claims a target-school background and study at Cornell. - **Opinionated, direct advice tone**: E.g., *"you literally have a 0% chance of somebody like me actually seeing it"* (re: HR submissions), and blunt framing like *"nowadays we know that you probably wrote your cover letter on ChatGPT."* - **Intellectual influences as content**: Shows and discusses copywriting/advertising books — **David Ogilvy** (*"one of my virtual mentors"*), **Eugene Schwartz** (*Breakthrough Advertising*), **Drayton Bird**, **Claude Hopkins** — and ties them to his business philosophy: *"demand in a market can't be created. It can only be channeled."* - **Mentorship emphasis**: Positions teaching as core to his practice: *"I try to do that in my own practice,"* and *"it really helps me clarify thought."* - **Lifestyle/status signals (casual)**: Mentions libraries in *"Puerto Rico as well as in Switzerland,"* international travel (*"I literally just landed from the Middle East 2 days ago"*), and jokes about Tai Lopez's Lamborghini-garage aesthetic. - **Forward-looking positioning**: Frames AI as reshaping junior banking work: *"by sometime in 2026, it's very unlikely that there'll be much human interaction"* regarding traditional analyst tasks; argues lasting success requires **selling and problem-solving** skills beyond "table stakes" like accounting and valuation. - **Audience engagement channels**: Directs questions to YouTube comments (handled by *"my team, who's more competent than me and disciplined"*) or LinkedIn via a description link; notes constraints on his availability (*"they're going to schedule you out two years from now"*). ## Claim vs. Demonstration Distinction - **Claims**: His expertise scope (sellside-only M&A), career history, inbound volume, and firm's AI investment are creator statements, not independently verified. - **Demonstrated**: The video itself demonstrates an unscripted talking-head format (*"I don't use teleprompters or notes or scripts"*), long-form monologue structure, book-on-camera presentation, and an educational-first, service-pitch-second content model. ## Scope Notes - Observations are limited to this single episode; no channel-wide conclusions are drawn beyond what Paul Jan explicitly states about the channel and series in this video. # Delivery Observations — "The Education of an Investment Banker, Ep. 1" ## Overall Style - **Conversational, unscripted monologue.** The speaker explicitly notes: *"I don't use teleprompterss or notes or scripts or anything like that, but I think about what I want to say and I try to like organize my thoughts."* The delivery matches this claim — frequent restarts and self-corrections (*"I mean, I love the questions. I love the comments. Um, a lot of the questions..."*). - **High filler density.** Repeated *"you know," "I mean," "like," "right?"* throughout — e.g., *"it's a craft, right? I mean, it's not a vocation."* - **Rhetorical question → answer pattern.** He poses a question, then answers it himself: > *"What's in it for me? Right?... You always want to write for the benefit of the reader."* > *"What sort of compensation do you want? Like what what's your offer?"* ## Recurring Phrases & Verbal Tics - **"What's in it for them / for the reader"** — the central repeated motif, appearing at least three times: > *"my question is always like, what's in it for me?"* … *"you got to answer the question like what's in it for them"* … *"always lead your communication with, by the way, here's what's in this for you."* - **"Always make an offer"** — repeated nearly verbatim: *"always make an offer. Like always make an offer. Like where's the offer?"* - **"Table stakes"** — used twice when describing baseline finance/accounting skills. - **"Craft"** — framing word for investment banking: *"it's a craft, right? I mean, it's not a vocation."* - **Right-checks:** trailing *"right?"* as an audience-verification device (*"Investment banking is broad... it's very similar to the law... investment banking is the same way, right?"*). ## Teaching Habits - **Extended analogies as the primary teaching device.** Law-school analogy for apprenticeship (*"a young lawyer gets out of law school. They pretty much can't do anything legal related"*), medical analogy for specialization: > *"He's not concerned about your kidneys. He is focused on safely and effectively removing that little gland between your legs... it's the same thing with what I do."* - **Personal anecdote → lesson structure.** Nearly every takeaway is introduced through autobiography: faxing resumes in 1999, courting an assistant named Jennifer, a failed in-person visit by a viewer, his father's surgeon. Each ends with a directive ("target the bankers," "make sure the person is in the country"). - **Physical show-and-tell.** He holds up and names books on camera — *"Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwarz,"* *"my life and advertising"* (Claude Hopkins), David Ogilvy — and reads a passage aloud from Drayton Bird. - **Direct address to the audience** ("you guys," "those of you") and meta-commentary on the series format itself (*"I'll continue with this series as long as I get great questions"*). ## Vocabulary & Register - **Industry jargon mixed with street register.** *"bulge bracket," "sellside M&A advisory," "value creation levers," "sim or pitch deck"* sit alongside *"hell," "for the love of God,"* and *"that's the guy we want, right?"* - **Slightly disguised proper nouns in transcript:** "Maril Lynch" (Merrill Lynch), "Credit Swiss" (Credit Suisse), "David Oglevie/Oggovie" (Ogilvy), "Frank Quattro/Quatron" (likely Frank Quattrone), "PTOAC/PTOIC" (his firm). Names are spoken, so spelling variation is a transcription artifact rather than a delivery feature — noted with uncertainty. - **Self-deprecating asides:** *"my folks on my team make fun of me that I can't even use an Excel spreadsheet anymore"*; *"I'm not as cool as Tai Lopez when I would have the books in the garage in front of the Lamborghini."* ## Communication Patterns - **Service-pitch transparency.** He openly acknowledges promotion: *"at the end I pitch my services because I'm not running a charity um but my main priority is to get out there and teach."* - **Accessibility promises and process framing.** Ends with concrete audience instructions (YouTube comments preferred over LinkedIn, team triage) and a sign-off formula: *"Again, I'm Paul Jan. Thank you for joining me. See you on the next one."* - **Quantified claims for credibility.** *"40 and 50 LinkedIn messages per day," "scores of them," "I've read it that many times"* (seven, per Ogilvy's advice), *"probably between 40 and 50"* — numbers used to establish scale of experience. ## Stable Patterns vs. Isolated Moments - **Stable (multiple occurrences):** rhetorical-question teaching, "benefit of the reader" motif, personal-anecdote → lesson arc, filler-heavy conversational register, book citations. - **Isolated (single occurrence, not enough to confirm as habitual):** the Tai Lopez joke, the anecdote about his father's prostate surgery, the story of the viewer flying from London to Puerto Rico, and the closing sign-off. These recur only once in this video; confirming them as patterns would require additional episodes. # Observation Record: "The Education of an Investment Banker, Ep. 1" **Video ID:** 01a168c7-0023-7c32-935b-3e178625906d **Speaker:** The speaker is not named in curated metadata. He identifies himself at the end of the transcript only as "Paul Jan" ("Again, I'm Paul Jan"). All positions below are attributed to this speaker, as he is the sole voice in the transcript. --- ## 1. Scope and Purpose of the Series - The speaker is launching a series, **"The Education of an Investment Baker,"** motivated by daily inbound questions he cannot individually answer. - He frames his use of "investment banking" narrowly: **M&A advisory**, "primarily or almost exclusively **sellside** M&A advisory." He explicitly excludes capital raising, debt securities, sales & trading, and equity/debt capital markets: *"All I do and all I've done for many many years is M&A advisory."* - He notes the series will cover his background, his M&A philosophy, and process detail "more so than business owners" — while also acknowledging most of his existing content targets business owners. ## 2. Investment Banking Is a Craft - **Claim:** M&A advisory is "a craft, right? It's not a vocation," analogous to law (and, later, medicine): theory is learned in school, but practice requires working under senior mentors. - **Supporting self-disclosure:** He "studied collective bargaining in negotiation at Cornell," took "maybe one or two accounting classes" and "one finance class," and *"couldn't do any of that when I got into investment banking and I learned all of that on the job."* - **Qualification:** He adds it is "extremely important to have the quantitative and the financial skills," while noting his 1999 entry coincided with the dot-com bubble, when banks "was pulling people out of like the Taco Bell drive-thru window." - He says he was long an "Excel jockey" at a bulge bracket bank but jokes his team mocks that he "can't even use an Excel spreadsheet anymore." ## 3. How He Got Hired: Target People, Not Firms - His stated method in 1999: faxing resumes to Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs produced no response ("probably ending up in the trash bin"). - **Pivot:** He decided to target *which investment bankers* he wanted to work for — not banks — specifically **Frank Quattrone's CSFB tech group** in California. - He befriended Quattrone's administrative assistant, **Jennifer**, who "in effect got my CV in front of him." He adds a direct gratitude note: *"Jennifer, if you're watching this... You changed the course of my life."* - He also discloses he attended a **target school** and did not go through recruiting; after a failed import-export venture he went into banking. ## 4. Advice on Job Applications: Copywriting Principles - **"What's in it for me?"** — When he sees applications, his reaction is: *"what's in it for me?"* Typical cover letters list the applicant's accolades; he says he ignores the extreme majority, and most go to HR unseen. - **Copywriting as a business foundation:** ~20 years ago he "delved really deeply into marketing, advertising, and copywriting," not to become a copywriter but to understand how they think. He says his firm, **PTOAC**, is run "based on the same way David Ogilvy ran [Ogilvy &] Mather," calling Ogilvy "one of my virtual mentors." - **Core principles he advocates:** - *"Write for the benefit of the reader"* — "a lot of people write for the benefit of the writer." - *"Always make an offer"* — he observes applicants "don't really see offers," citing his FedEx-letter example of "Mark" targeting "Jimmy" from his sellside masterclass. He even floats: *"Are you willing to work for 6 months for free?... you might want to put that in your cover letter."* - **Tactical advice:** Research specific bankers (via LinkedIn, Facebook), write directly to them, use physical mail ("like FedEx something"), include work examples and references, and close with a "no-lose offer." He claims a resume to "HRXYZcompany.com" has "literally... a 0% chance" of reaching someone like him, and that ChatGPT-generated letters make mass applications "frictionless" and "a throwaway." - **Outreach more broadly:** He receives "between 40 and 50 LinkedIn messages per day." He advises always leading with *"here's what's in this for you"*; asking busy people for "15 minutes to pick your brain" gets scheduled "two years from now." ## 5. Daring Gestures — Qualified Endorsement - He recounts a YouTube viewer who flew from London to Puerto Rico to interview him for a book; the speaker had already left town. He "appreciates his tenacity," admits *"what he did does sound like something I would have done"* (noting he himself once flew to London to interview at Lehman Brothers), and says he will now help the viewer. - **Qualifications he attaches:** "please make sure that the individual... is in the country," and *"I don't know if it's a really good idea surprising people per se."* ## 6. AI and the Changing Analyst Role - **Claim:** With AI, "by sometime in 2026, it's very unlikely that there'll be much human interaction" in traditional analyst work — financial models, pitch decks, and presentations can now be done "better" by AI. - He states PTOAC has "invested extensively" in AI infrastructure and employs a **chief AI architect**. ## 7. Table Stakes vs. Value-Creation Skills - **"Table stakes":** accounting, finance, Excel modeling, valuation — necessary but "not big value creation levers." - **The two skills of long-term success:** (1) the ability to **sell** (bring in clients) and (2) the ability to **solve clients' problems** — in his case, "getting the highest price and the best terms" in a business sale. - **Specialization analogy:** He compares M&A focus to choosing a surgeon for his father's prostate cancer — the local urologist doing "one or two a week" versus the University of Chicago surgeon doing "three a day" for decades: *"that's the guy we want... The guy who focuses on one thing."* His firm similarly focuses on its "core," M&A advisory. - His firm emphasizes **psychological training** as "very key to understanding the minds of buyers and sellers." ## 8. Influential Books and the Demand-Channeling Insight Books he cites (with his stated caveats — *"I'm not telling you to go out and buy any of these books"*): - **David Ogilvy** (*Confessions of an Advertising Man* implied): Ogilvy "once said that in order to work for him, you needed to read this book seven times. So, I took his advice and I've read it that many times." - **Eugene Schwartz, *Breakthrough Advertising***: "took me like two years to read... there's actually parts of it I still don't understand." Key takeaway: *"demand in a market can't be created. It can only be channeled."* - **Drayton Bird**: quoted passage — sales materials suffer because "they are written from the point of view of the writers... rather than the readers." - **Claude Hopkins** (*My Life in Advertising*, *Scientific Advertising*): he attributes his storytelling style to Hopkins. - **Applied insight:** Some businesses simply "can't be sold" (no market, not enough buyers). He built his firm by targeting **consolidating industries** where large public companies and private equity are already buying middle-market companies — "the demand already existed. I just needed to channel it." ## 9. On Teaching and the Channel - He states his "main priority is to get out there and teach," while acknowledging: *"at the end I pitch my services because I'm not running a charity."* - He frames teaching as self-serving in a cognitive sense: *"it really helps me clarify thought"* and "helps me refine my philosophy on psychology and negotiation and M&A." He notes he uses no teleprompters, notes, or scripts. - He directs viewers to leave questions on YouTube (his team will pull comments) or LinkedIn (slower, "less reliable"). --- ## Noted Tensions and Qualifications (Preserved) - He urges readers-first communication while simultaneously running a channel that ends in a service pitch — he flags this himself ("not running a charity"). - He praises the London viewer's boldness but explicitly doubts whether "surprising people" is "a really good idea." - He dismisses HR-channel applications as near-zero-probability, yet also says most FedEx-style letters should still be valued for what they demonstrate ("half the battle is actually getting in the door"), not framed as guaranteed outcomes. - His claim that his name is "Paul Jan" appears only in his closing self-identification; no curated metadata confirms it. # Video Observation Record ## Basic Identification - **Video ID:** 01a168c7-0023-7c32-935b-3e178625906d - **Title:** *The Education of an Investment Banker, Ep. 1: How to get hired as a Jr. Banker | M&A Masterclass* ## Speaker & Role Inventory ### Primary Speaker - **Paul Jan** — self-identified at the end of the video ("Again, I'm Paul Jan"). Role per his own account: - **Creator / host** of this YouTube series and channel - **M&A advisory investment banker**; states he runs a firm referred to in the transcript as "PTOAC" (spelled variously in transcript as PTOAC, PTOIC, PTOIC — spelling inconsistent in source) - **Narrator of personal anecdotes** (analyst at a bulge bracket bank starting 1999; tech group in San Francisco; self-described copywriting student) ### Named Third Parties (mentioned, not speakers) - **Jennifer** — former administrative assistant to Frank Quattrone; credited by Paul Jan with getting his CV in front of Quattrone. Not a participant; addressed in a direct aside ("Jennifer, if you're watching this..."). - **Frank Quattrone** (rendered "Frank Quattro"/"Quatron" in transcript) — then at CSFB tech group; target of Paul Jan's early job outreach. - **A YouTube viewer** — flew from London to Puerto Rico to interview Paul Jan for a book; anecdote subject only. - **"Mark" and "Jimmy"** — hypothetical/example figures from a separate buy-side M&A masterclass segment Paul Jan says he filmed. ## Referenced Sources & Books (speaker-cited) - ***Ogilvy on Advertising* / David Ogilvy ("David Oglevie")** — Paul Jan's stated "virtual mentor"; claims his firm is run on Ogilvy's principles; says Ogilvy required the book be read seven times. - ***Breakthrough Advertising* by Eugene Schwartz** ("Eugene Schwarz," described as deceased) — key takeaway cited: "demand in a market can't be created. It can only be channeled." - ***Commonsense Direct Marketing* / Drayton Bird** ("Drake Bird") — quoted passage on writing from the reader's point of view. - **Claude Hopkins** — *My Life in Advertising* and *Scientific Advertising*; attributed as source of Paul Jan's storytelling approach. - **Cornell University** — speaker's stated field of study (collective bargaining/negotiation); **University of Chicago** — anecdote about a surgeon. ## Third-Party Claims (recorded, not verified) - Transcript-level misrenderings of brand names exist: "Maril Lynch" (Merrill Lynch), "Credit Swiss" (Credit Suisse), "sim or pitch deck," "Leman Brothers" (Lehman Brothers). - Claims about AI replacing junior banker tasks by ~2026 and the firm employing a "chief AI architect" are the speaker's own assertions. ## Promotional Segments (flagged) - **Explicit self-promotion acknowledged by the speaker:** "at the end I pitch my services because I'm not running a charity." The video promotes: - His **M&A masterclass series** (buy-side and sell-side referenced) - His **firm's M&A advisory services** - **LinkedIn** connection channel ("link is below in the description") - **Personal brand references:** mentions extensive libraries in Puerto Rico and Switzerland; joking reference to Tai Lopez. These are self-presentation, not endorsements of external products. - **No third-party product endorsements** detected; all books cited are stated as background influences, with an explicit disclaimer: "I'm not telling you to go out and buy any of these books." ## Comment / Engagement Availability - **YouTube comments:** available; speaker states his team will pull down comments and he will attempt to answer questions there. - **LinkedIn:** alternative channel; link stated to be in the description; described by speaker as "slower" and "less reliable." ## Provenance & Uncertainty Notes - Speaker identity ("Paul Jan") and firm name are **self-reported in the transcript only**; no curated metadata was supplied to independently confirm spelling of his name or the firm (transcript variants: PTOAC / PTOIC). - No timestamps available in the source; all references are positional within the transcript. - All biographical and hiring anecdotes (1999 faxing resumes, dot-com era hiring, London Lehman interview, viewer flying to Puerto Rico) are **unverifiable speaker claims**, recorded as such. Today is the first installment of a new series I'm going to do called the education of an investment banker. And you know, I get a ton of inbounds every single day. Scores of them, more than I can even respond to. So, I want to use this as a medium for me to get back to everyone who reaches out to me. I'm truly grateful. I mean, I love the questions. I love the comments. Um, a lot of the questions I get are, "How do I get in job investment banking? How does M&A work? What should I do with my life? What's your favorite color?" So on and so forth. So again, I'm going to use this series to talk to the M&A professional and those aspiring to get into the field. I'm going to talk a little bit about my experience over the course of this series, how I got into what I do, how I've educated myself, been educated, um my philosophy on M&A running the business, and then I'll also get into probably more detail on the M&A process and things that professionals should be concerned about more so than business owners because the majority of the stuff we do is focused on the business owner as the audience. The first thing I'll say about investment banking, when I talk about investment banking, I'm primarily talking about M&A advisory, right? Investment banking is broad. You've got sales and trading and institutional finance. You've got a variety of different, you know, equity capital markets, debt capital markets. But when I talk about investment banking, I'm usually talking about the small vertical within investment banking, which is M&A advisory, which is where I live. I don't do any capital raising. I don't, you know, I'm not involved in debt securities. All I do and all I've done for many many years is M&A advisory primarily or almost exclusively sellside M&A advisory. That's where my skill sets best reside. I you know a lot of my folks on my team make fun of me that I can't even use an Excel spreadsheet anymore. Now for many years I was an analyst at a bulge bracket bank and I was an Excel jockey. Uh but those days thankfully are far behind me. But when I think about investment banking and primarily M&A, it's a craft, right? I mean, it's not a vocation. It's it's very similar to the law. You know, a young lawyer gets out of law school. They pretty much can't do anything legal related, right? I mean, they have to work under senior attorneys and learn the ropes. and they can learn the theory and the case law and so on and so forth in law school, but they probably don't even know how to really file an actual brief until they get into a law firm and work with mentors or senior attorneys to take them out of their way. In a lot of ways, investment banking is the same way, right? Like there's no investment banking school, right? I mean, hell, I studied collective bargaining in negotiation at Cornell. I took maybe one or two accounting classes. I think I took one finance class. I I did I couldn't do any of that when I got into investment banking and I learned all of that on the job. Now it's extremely important to have the quantitative and the financial skills but I started in 1999 and I mean literally you know Goldman Sachs, Credit Swiss, Maril Lynch was pulling people out of like the Taco Bell drive-thru window to work in investment banking just because it's a dot bubble. Things were blowing up. It was a very different time. But why I mention investment banking is a craft because I think it's very important to work under somebody who you can learn from and who actually enjoys teaching. I mean I've had some brilliant uh bosses over the years particularly good teachers and of course you can learn a lot by just being present like almost through osmosis and watching what they do. Um, but then I've also had some brilliant bosses who spent time actually teaching us and the more interest I took in that, the more they were willing to share. And I try to do that in my own practice. I mention that because when I think about investment banking in general, it's like again it's similar to a law firm or it's similar in some ways to the medical profession. It's like when people hire an investment bank, particularly a boutique investment bank, they're often hiring an individual, right? Just like you go to a law firm. Like I I I deal with a bunch of law firms around the world. I've got a lot of different law firms that are charging me ridiculous amounts of money. I'm not really hiring the firm per se. I'm hiring particular lawyers. And so when I think about a lot of the questions that I get about how do you break into investment banking? I mean I was fortunate I went to a target school. I graduated. I wasn't even I didn't even go through recruiting. I went off and did some import export business for 6 months and then realized it was going to be a total bust before I started or desired to get into investment banking. And the way I did it was the way everyone does it. You know back in those days email wasn't as prolific in 1999. existed, but we used fax. I faxed my resume at Maril Lynch and Credit Swiss and at Goldman Sachs and I was faxing my resume left and right. Wasn't getting any response cuz it was probably ending up in the trash bin. And then I decided, okay, I need to figure out which investment bankers I wanted to work for. Not which investment banks, which investment bankers I wanted to work for. because at the time it was the dotcom bubble and I really wanted to work in the tech space and Frank Quattro was working for CSFB out in California and that's where I wanted to be. I wanted to be you know this was the tech group to be at and Microsoft Gateway Amazon Netscape all these things were going on and Quatron and Bose and those guys were running it. So what I decided to do is how do I track down Frank Quatron? Well, that was pretty difficult. But what wasn't difficult was tracking down one of his administrative assistants. And Jennifer, if you're watching this, which I know you're not, I will always be grateful for your help. You changed the course of my life. So, I tracked down and became friends with one of his administrative assistants. Her name was Jennifer. She in effect got my CV in front of him and the rest was history. I was off to San Francisco and I worked in the tech group which was a phenomenal experience and really changed the course of my life. But I raised that point because many of you and I get these and my colleagues in investment banking and there's not a day that goes by that we don't get a resume or a CV v email with the standard cover letter. Now all of it's done by chat. Uh, and we get the standard cover letter and the CV and I read these things sometimes. The extreme majority of them I ignore. They go right to our HR people and I never see them. But those that I do see, my question is always like, what's in it for me? Right? A typical cover letter is usually your accolades. You know, you went to this school and did that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You were a cheerleader, football guy, blah, blah, blah. Resume. want a job. And I I start to think about, you know, the course of my life and the types of things that helped me the most. And about 20 years ago, I delved really deeply into marketing, advertising, and copyrighting. And I brought some books. Now, I have a extensive library both here in Puerto Rico as well as in Switzerland. I'm not as cool as Tai Lopez when I would have the books in the garage in front of the Lamborghini and all that's \>\> unfortunately not what I have but I do have an extensive library and I do a lot of reading and some years ago I really got into copywriting not because I wanted to be a copywriter but because I wanted to understand how copywriters and advertisers think. In fact what I think about our business but my entire business is basically based on this book in a lot of ways by David Oglevie. This is a book. This is a brand new copy. I have about 15 copies of this. Um, my main copy is marked up on every single page. I actually don't know where it is, which is why I brought this one. Um, but in a lot of ways, I run PTOAC based on the same way David Olev ran V and Mather and I think he is brilliant. Uh, one of my virtual mentors. When I think about your job application, you know, it's like copywriting. When you write to somebody, whether you're writing to somebody because you want to buy his business or you're writing to somebody because you want a job, you know, you got to answer the question like what's in it for them. You always want to write for the benefit of the reader. And a lot of people write for the benefit of the writer. So if you've recently written a cover letter, maybe you should take a step back and read it and say, okay, whose benefit am I writing for? Right? If I answer the question, what's in it for them in this letter? \>\> Another thing that I learned from the school of copywriting is always make an offer. Like always make an offer. Like where's the offer? Um I get CVS, I get cover letters, I don't really see offers. Now, you can of course send out tons of resumes all over the place, but again, I I you know, just an hour ago, I filmed a segment of the byside M&A masterass series, and I talked about, you know, sourcing transactions. And I use the example of a guy named Mark who went out and acquired a business from a guy named Jimmy. He did his research up front. He figured out specifically the companies he wanted to target and he wrote a letter to Jimmy, the business owner, put it in a FedEx envelope and he wrote the letter to the benefit of Jimmy, not necessarily the benefit of himself. And he made an offer. So when I think about, you know, your CV, like what are you willing to do? Like what sort of compensation do you want? Like what what's your offer? Are you willing to work for, you know, you want to get investment banking? Are you willing to work for 6 months for free? I don't know. If you are, you might want to put that in your cover letter. So, in the same way Mark went out and targeted Jimmy, what I would suggest that you guys do if you really want to get investment banking, don't worry so much about the bank. Sure, you could say, "Oh, I want to work for XYZ Investment Bank." That's all well and good. You send your resume to the HR department or the contact form on the website. you literally have a 0% chance of somebody like me actually seeing it. Um, and if we do see it, it's almost like a throwaway. It effectively cost you nothing. I mean, nowadays we know that you probably wrote your cover letter on ChatGpt and your resume, right? Like, so literally, it was a frictionless, costless transaction for you to send something over. Um, but if you can target people, if you could say, you know what, this investment bank has this particular banker and actually learn about this individual, right? Like, okay, you know, nowadays, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, all sorts of stuff. You can do research on people. You can figure out like where this dude hangs out, what he likes to do, what sort of hobbies he has, what sort of interest he he has, and actually write the letter directly to him. And you know what? No one uses mail anymore. like for the love of God like FedEx something like you FedEx something to me. Now I tend to not always publish a real address online for a variety of reasons which I'll get into here momentarily. Um but you can find a mailing address for folks and you can prior mail or FedEx an actual written letter that says, "Hey, here's what I've done and here's what I've done. Here's what I can do for you. Oh, and here's some examples of things I've actually done with my own mind and hands. Oh, and by the way, here's some folks that I work for, and here's their references. Here's what they have to say about me. If you do that, and you actually attack the individuals that you would like to work for, that you would like them to be your mentor, uh, half the battle is actually getting in the door. Half the battle is actually getting it in front of them. And then if you close it with some sort of no- lose offer, I mean, you might have a better chance. actually you've got a definite better chance of sending it to HRXYZ company.com. I think about, you know, writing for the benefit of the reader quite a bit because it's in every single one of these books. Um, and anything that I receive, you know, I receive, you know, I would say probably between 40 and 50 LinkedIn messages per day. And again, I love them and I get I mean I I enjoy the messages that I get. Um I get a lot of job inquiries. I get a lot of business owners that say they want to talk to us over here at PTOAC and I get a lot from professionals like you. A lot of job questions. The best way to actually get somebody's attention and I'm not just talking this is not a request from me but this is anywhere in the business world. Whenever I message a business owner or executive somewhere, I'm always making an offer. I'm always providing value. It's never about me. It's never like, "Hey, you know, I'm trying to do X, Y, and Z. Can I get on the phone with you for 15 minutes to pick your brain?" I find that very busy people can do that, but they're going to schedule you out two years from now. Because if you look at my schedule, I mean, I I travel extensively internationally and I literally just landed from the Middle East 2 days ago. I'm here doing some filming and I'm going to be on the road again. So busy people don't really have time to chitchat about an idea for 15 minutes unless there's something in it for them. So no matter what you do, whether it's a job, whether it's a business proposition, always lead your communication with, by the way, here's what's in this for you. And by the way, here's what I want to talk about. So my best advice to those of you who actually want to get an investment banker is to target the bankers that you want to work with. Figure out a proposition, a value proposition for yourself, put together a nice package, and actually get it in their hand. Uh, that would be my advice. Now, there's folks that go to the opposite end of the spectrum and do some things that probably I wouldn't do. Last week, I was in Asia and one of the YouTube viewers hopped on a plane from London and flew to Puerto Rico. He's writing a book. He wanted to interview me for a book. Unfortunately, I flew out of town last minute. It's not like we had a scheduled meeting and I ducked out on him. I was shocked that he showed up and one of my colleagues called me and I was 12 hours ahead and called me up and said, "Hey, there's a guy here. He's looking for you." I appreciate his tenacity. Of course, what he did does sound like something I would have done. As a matter of fact, when I was applying investment banking, I did hop on a plane and go to London and I interviewed Leman Brothers. My point in saying all that is if you do do something crazy and daring, number one, please make sure that the individual with whom you want to see is in the country. That's probably important. And I don't know if it's a really good idea surprising people per se. But anyway, this fell took the opportunity to fly across the world to come see me. I missed him. He certainly got my attention and I'm going to help him now that I'm back on what he's doing with his book. A couple other things I want to talk about with regard to investment banking jobs is you know we live in a world where technology is rapidly replacing the mundane and routine in our business. So in investment banking, you know, when I started, I was an Excel jockey, right? So I would put together financial statements and financial models on Excel and PowerPoints and presentations and all sorts of stuff. We're seeing in real time 2024, 2025, and by sometime in 2026, it's very unlikely that there'll be much human interaction. Meaning most of these financial models now can be created by AI. AI can probably put together a better sim or pitch deck than you can. It could written better, more coherent, better design. So all of the things financial analysts have done traditionally at investment banks is disappearing. And so you know even over here at PTOIC, we have invested extensively. And when we have a chief AI architect who works for the firm, I mean we are really focused on the AI infrastructure. Now I say all of that because you know there are table stakes in the deal world and the majority of the things that I talk about in my master classes are related to negotiation and psychology and advertising and marketing and sales and so on and so forth. But investment banking, you've got to understand accounting, you've got to understand finance, you've got to understand how to put together an Excel model, you got to understand valuation. These are table stakes. We have to learn those. However, that's not those are not big value creation levers. So the individuals who really succeed in investment banking over time have two skill sets. They're able to sell so they can bring out clients and they're able to solve problems like solve their clients problems otherwise why hire an investment bank to begin with and I solve one major problem here which is the sale of a business getting the highest price and the best terms for our clients and I do that by focusing on our core which is M&A expertise. So over here, we don't do a lot of different things. We focus on our core. It's like, you know, it's like if you've got a heart problem, you I actually I'll give you a real example. Like, you know, my father had prostate cancer some years ago. And his urologist was like, you know, I'm a urologist, but I'm also a surgeon, and you know, I worked part time as a greeter at Walmart. I'm not sure what else he did. Um, and my father was going to have this prostate removed by this dude who was like a local guy. And I went in there and I asked him, I'm like, "How many of these do you do a day?" And he's like, "I do one or two a week." Then I went to the University of Chicago and I talked to another guy and he's a guy do three a day and I've done it for decades. I'm like, that's the guy we want, right? The guy who focuses on one thing. He's not a urologist. He doesn't care about um a bladder infection. He's not concerned about your kidneys. He is focused on safely and effectively removing that little gland between your legs. Um it's the same thing with what I do. The core of our product is M&A advisory and we focus on that skill. And I think as a a younger person, you know, you got to get the table stakes in which is the finance and the accounting and the modeling and so on and so forth. it. But after that, there's not many places you can go unless you develop other skill sets. And within my own firm, I have a very very heavy focus on psychological training because I think that's very key to understanding the minds of buyers and sellers. We're focused on, you know, if you've watched the master classes, you understand the types of things that we focus on over here. And I think those are important to learn. So over the course of this series, and I'll continue to do this as long as I get questions. You know, people often ask me, "What books do you read?" And today, I'm just going to talk about the copywriting books, but all of these sorts of things have had a dramatic impact on my life. Like for example, and by the way, I'm not telling you to go out and buy any of these books. Like Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwarz, it took me like two years to read this. I kid you not. I I there's actually parts of it I still don't understand. But one of the most important things that helped me shape the business that we're in is that you know demand in a market can't be created. It can only be channeled. So advertising channels demand. And when I started to think about this concept in my own business, it's like there's a lot of businesses out there that can't be sold, right? it's just there's not enough buyers or there's a variety of reasons, but usually there's no market for that sort of business. And that does exist. That's not most companies, but that happens. And so, as I began to build this firm, I I literally took a playbook, a play a page right on this is the playbook and said, "Okay, I want to focus on industries that are actually consolidating where I've got large publicly traded companies, I got private equity firms, and they're buying a bunch of these middle market companies. the demand already existed. I just needed to channel it. So from a copywriting and advertising perspective, like I owe a great deal to now deceased Eugene Schwarz. This was very helpful to me. Um this book I love Drake Bird um sells letters itself about Drake talks a lot about um the same sorts of things I just sent to you. Like for example, a quick passage. Like most things designed to sell, they suffer from one big fault. They are written from the point of view of the writers who believe everybody should be interested in them or what they want to sell rather than the readers who have the identical feeling but from the opposite perspective. So, there can be a lot to be learned from guys like Drayton Bird. Um, I don't we're not going to go through all of these. Um, Claude Hopkins, you know, if you watch the masterclass series, a lot of folks talk about my storytelling. It comes from this my life and advertising. It's scientific advertising. Um, our friend here, David Oggovie, who ran Oggov and Mather once said that in order to work for him, you needed to read this book seven times. So, I took his advice and I've read it that many times. I'll skip the rest of these books. I'm not going to get too into advertising, copywriting, but I am saying is like from my perspective, everything that I try to do, I try to provide value for the recipient. whether it's the a you know our audience right what I'm trying to do on this YouTube channel is say okay I'm here I want to make very educational videos I want to educate business owners so they can understand the mechanics of an M&A transaction the psychology of the deal and I want them to be able to understand private equity and valuation and so on and so forth and I do that and of course at the end I pitch my services because I'm not running a charity um but my main priority is to get out there and teach. And I think a lot of the reasons why I do that, and I do that within our firm, and I speak in different places, but I think a lot of the reasons why I teach is that it really helps me clarify thought. So, if I have to get on here and speak with you, I don't want to just come up here like a bumbling idiot. And I don't use teleprompterss or notes or scripts or anything like that, but I think about what I want to say and I try to like organize my thoughts and it kind of helps me refine my philosophy on psychology and negotiation and M&A. So, it's been beneficial to me personally and I hope also it's beneficial to you. Now, I'll continue with this series as long as I get great questions. In a perfect world, you'll put your questions here on YouTube because my team, who's more competent than me and disciplined, by the way, will be able to pull down the comments and I will attempt to answer your questions. Alternatively, you can join me on LinkedIn. My that link is below in the description. You can send me a message. It's going to be slower. It's going to be less reliable, but eventually I or my assistant will get to that. Again, I'm Paul Jan. Thank you for joining me. See you on the next one.