Watch Your Attitude

JC Parets
April 10, 2022

I was just in Boston for a couple of days for a family function.

It had been about a decade since I was last there.

I gotta tell you, I really like Boston a lot. I used to go quite often right after college because I had a lot of buddies who moved there.

Nothing but fond memories.

Anyway, I stayed in Beacon Hill this weekend, which as it turns out is a beautiful part of the city. A ton of bars, restaurants and shops. Right next to the park. Right by the water.

I highly encourage you to take the family and check it out.

So in the afternoon I met a lot of people who I had never met before. Everyone was super nice.

We got into talking about how things were early in my career. I had gone to Catholic school from the age of 4 until I was 22, when I graduated from Fairfield University.

Then came Wall Street. Like 90% Jewish, from what I could tell. I had only known a couple Jewish folks my entire life, until that moment.

I wasn't the smartest of the bunch. I certainly wasn't the one with the most connections. In fact, I didn't have any. My family wasn't into the stock market, like the parents of a lot of my friends were from college. Remember I went to school right next to Greenwich, CT - the hedge fund capital of the world, which is not too far from New York City, the financial capital of the world.

A long way from the predominantly Cuban immigrant neighborhoods of the Miami suburbs in the 1980s and 90s.

So there I was at 22 years old just trying to win, in the same ways I tried to win in sports my whole life. I played baseball and a bunch of other stuff, but mostly baseball. Yes I know, Cuban from Miami, duh.

How was I going to win, yet alone survive, in a new job in Mid-town Manhattan, with people from very different cultures and experiences? I was commuting from Hoboken, NJ where I paid $600/month to live. It was a 3 Bedroom that I split with 2 other friends. The address was actually 500 Grand St.

I didn't have any other responsibilities at the time, basically just do a good job at work.

So I figured that if I just worked harder than anyone else, they wouldn't fire me. And maybe they might be more inclined to even help me.

That's what I did.

I stayed late. I purposely got in early a lot so that when the older guys came in they saw I was already there hitting it hard.

Even if I sucked at everything, they would never think I was lazy. I wanted them to know that I least cared.

I didn't take those opportunities for granted. In hindsight, it's quite obvious than many other youngsters around me did.

Maybe I had an advantage because I was from the outside looking in. Many others seemed to be quite familiar with it all, and felt as though they were just entitled to succeed, because their fathers, uncles, friends dad's and neighbors had done so well in the business of financial markets.

But as it turns out that's not how it works.

And even if you do work your tail off, there's still nothing guaranteed.

Working hard is just table stakes. It weeds out the lazy, the pretenders and the uninterested.

But that's step 1. Without that, there's close to 0% chance of a step 2.

I thought I knew that then. But I definitely know it now.

As it turns out, this new community that I was a part of, this new culture, embraced my hard work. They reached out and helped me.

They knew I cared. The good ones knew I was one of them.

My plan worked. It worked better than I could have ever imagined.

And it wasn't the Italians or the Irish guys. It was my new Jewish friends.

Funny how life works.

Over the last 20 years I've tried to look for that sort of attitude in others. Not on purpose at first, but definitely with those intentions now. And I try to help them in the same ways that others helped me along when I was younger. Heck, they're still helping me today.

They know who they are. And I hope they're reading this right now with a smile.

Thank you.

I will forever keep paying that back.

And if you're reading this, and you're looking for your path, and you feel like you need some help....

Well, work hard. Make sure the people who you seek help from can see the effort, the interest and your willingness to improve.

Go out of your way to make it quite obvious that you're the one. And don't be afraid to ask for help on how to do that better.

Most importantly, if you're one of the fortunate few to actually be given an opportunity, you better deliver. And know that it's not just about how great your work is, but the effort that you're putting in to make it the best it can possibly be.

Because no matter how good you are, you still have a lot of improvements to make. And that process of improvement will go on for decades and decades. So where you are at the very beginning is almost irrelevant, when you really put it into perspective like that.

It's more about your ability to show that you are there to win, you're there to keep learning and improving your craft.

It's all attitude.

You bet on people.

I appreciate those who bet on me. I'm even more thankful for those who bet against me.

And I'm going to keep placing my bets on the people with the right attitudes.

That's working out well.

Male, Female, Indian, European, from Texas, Brooklyn, Africa...

I don't care where you live or where you're from.

I just want to be inspired by someone with passion. And I believe I've done a good job of surrounding myself by those kinds of people.

If you're interested in working at Allstarcharts.com please shoot me a note. What do you want to do? What are you best at? What do you want to improve on?

Let us know why you think we should hire you, and if there's a good fit, and it's what we're looking for, then I'll make it happen.

Love you guys.

JC

 

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