Lessons from the Elephant Boy
The first part of The Way of the Wall Street Warrior is where you'll learn how to edge your foot into the door and then how to dance the dance when you get there. It provides titillating tips about landing an interview (including scrubbing your social media accounts like leprotic calluses on gangrenous feet). This set of chapters will show you how to knock their socks off when you do get that one-on-one interview.
From there, we'll learn how to play well with others (suck up) and how to have the adaptability of a cockroach (always show how and why you belong). Then again, if you haven't made it past square one, I'll have some gems about using failure as fertilizer, hosting short self-pity parties, and then going out and crushing it.
The middle chapters of The Way of the Wall Street Warrior will focus on making your way up the corporate ladder. If you want to be showered with financial rewards and prestige, the name of the game is longevity, and that means making the best possible decisions to ensure your rise. Climbing the rungs motivates us because it promises more of everything—more compensation, more respect, more power.
This middle part is all about how to lead the pack, like choosing an office consigliere who will point out for you the potholes and political landmines. Remember, with each promotion, the higher you climb, the narrower the room, so ally yourself with the senior person who makes the most money and carries the most sway. Soon only one ass can sit on each rung. Make it yours!
The final chapters are where we discuss the “less critical” aspects of your life, like your health and well-being, significant other, and progeny. I'm being facetious, of course, but sometimes when you're simmering in the pressure cooker, what should be most important takes a back seat to what you think is important. I'll also share some insights on wealth creation and the afterlife (aka life after making piles of dough). This section will stress the importance of developing a personal brand—not the one on your LinkedIn profile, but the description given when someone asks about you when you're not in the room. You always want to manage the answer to the question, “What do you think of Dave Liu?”
One particular chapter close to my heart (yes, I have a heart) is Chapter 15, “Turn Liabilities into Assets.” I haven't always been the cocky guy who comes across in this Introduction. In fact, at my ex-employer, Jefferies, I actually earned a reputation for having empathy for those who weren't making the grade or who were struggling to overcome personal issues. That's because growing up, and then when entering the workforce, I didn't have to be told I had two strikes against me.
First, I'm Asian, and how many persons of color do you see in the top echelons of Wall Street or on any well-heeled street for that matter? But wait, it gets better. I was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate, a severe facial deformity that if left untreated, literally leaves children with a hole in their face. I was bullied and shamed, as kids thought nothing of gawking at me and referring to me as “Elephant Boy.”
Ironically, being different—standing out in an obvious way before even opening your mouth—eventually had its advantages. As a junior player at Jefferies, at every meeting at which I was invited I made a point of trying to make at least one interesting point. The thing about having a scarred face is that you're going to be remembered, so if I succeeded in making just one comment that wasn't totally stupid, I usually ended up being remembered as “that smart Asian guy with the scars who spoke up.”
My disability also gave me a superpower: rhino skin. In life, you'll run into many obstacles on your way to greatness, and I truly believe that not giving a hoot about what people think of you will make you a better businessperson. It worked for me.
It is my hope that this book will speak to my strategies for overcoming disadvantages and that my story will be inspirational for others dealing with their own challenges. I've worked on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and even Hollywood, and I have to tell you, they're all corrupt regimes where white men rule the roost and will likely do so for some time. Unfortunately, I don't have a silver bullet (I'd definitely tell you if I did), and if you're a person of color, a woman in a man's world, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, or a person with physical disabilities, being different can really suck. Fortunately, the media is starting to show some of the cracks through the veneer, but as an insider, I can tell you, it's even worse than you think.
But all is not hopeless. Being different can actually be the recipe for being great. That might sound counterintuitive, but I'm going to show you how I did it; although pay heed to the fact that I'm not going to tell how you should do it. Nothing infuriated me more than a Caucasian person telling me what it's like to be Asian American, so I'm not going to pontificate about how I would do it in your shoes. How the hell would I know what walking in your shoes is like? I may be arrogant, but I'm not stupid. Just know that if an Asian Elephant Boy can rise to the top, there's hope for everyone. Also, if in doubt, I want you to know that every single tip, trick, or smartcut I have laid out is applicable to men and women, and whenever possible, I've tried to get a female perspective on the unique challenges faced by women in highly competitive (and political) industries like Wall Street. By no means are these ideas comprehensive, but my hope is they can help spur your imagination so you can crush it!
Beat C-3PO
There are many books on how to build a great career. This one is for the awoken among you who accept that working hard in the corporate world with all its warts is rarely enough. It's for those of you who practiced sleight-of-hand tricks as kids, delegated chores to younger siblings, and checked vending machines for loose change. It's for you who have realized that the most successful people see opportunity where others see obstacles. It's for those of you who want to learn skills that will prevent you from becoming obsolete—particularly in the not-so-distant future when you'll be competing for work against robots like C-3PO.
You won't learn what I am offering in any school. (I spent over a quarter million bucks at Harvard and Wharton, so I know what I'm talking about.) Our education system doesn't teach the softer elements needed to succeed in the world of high-pressured corporate finance. There are no tactical courses at Wharton or Harvard Business School on salesmanship, emotional intelligence (EQ), or the human psyche, much less cognitive dissonance or biases. (You'll need to slum it at a liberal arts school to find them.) This book assumes you already have an out-of-the-park intelligence, so its primary aim is to help you take the next step and increase your emotional savvy. If you've never heard of EQ, that's a problem, because EQ allows you to identify and manage your emotions, as well as those of others. This book will teach you about EQ. If you have both IQ and EQ, in the business world you will be an awesome, unstoppable combination of Lex Luthor and Superman.
Succeeding on Wall Street or Whatever Street is all about doing the least amount of work for the most pay. Don't get me wrong. You still need to deliver and create great work or your career will be shorter than a reefer at Burning Man,2 but pace yourself. Be the tortoise, not the hare. Be the smartest person in the room by lying in wait and making others think you aren't.
The secret sauce expressed in these pages includes interview tips (exaggerate), maneuvers for getting promoted (you don't need to outrun the bear, just the colleague next to you), ways to fit in (memorizing the top business movies so you can wax poetic about how little Hollywood actually knows about your industry),