In July 2015, I started my dream job at Goldman Sachs.

5 months later, I was sitting in Starbucks with my mentor, Nimesh, not realising how close I was to getting fired.

My first few months had been pretty terrible. I had produced some mediocre work and made some stupid and immature mistakes.

I had come off of a year of "finding myself" while traveling round New Zealand and South America and, in the process, had forgotten how to work.

I knew I wasn't off to a great start but that was the moment when I realised how bad it was.

Nimesh said it in a nice way, but it was something like "You need a fresh start or you don't have a future here."

I was desperate to make it work, so that day, I went home, shaved my beard, took out my earring and showed up the next day looking like a new person.

Over the next 3 years, I brute-forced my way to becoming good at the job. I overcame my lousy attention to detail by printing out every piece of work and checking it before sending it to my boss.

I leaned into everything that you needed to do to be successful there.

I would work until 3 in the morning if needed because I wanted to be the best. I had a point to prove to myself and to everyone who had doubted me at the start.

And finally, in my third year, I was ranked as one of the top 3 associates in my year.

By then, I had ticked all the boxes you're “supposed” to want to tick.

But the whole time, I had neglected my superpowers. I had all these skills - understanding people, reading a room, figuring out why someone thought the way they did, building relationships... and none of them really mattered in finance.

My desire to brute-force my way through made me ignore something important:

This environment didn't use my skills.

My ego had me stuck playing the wrong game - one I was never going to be truly great at.

Finally, 10+ years after that moment in Starbucks, I am playing a game that I am really good at, building content-led businesses.

The toughest question I ever asked myself wasn't "how can I succeed here?"

It was "should I even be trying to?"

See you next week,

Will

Will McTighe

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