🧠 Weekly Reflections #8: NYC Biz Trip Takeaways.

Hey Everyone –

Welcome to the 8th edition of the weekly reflections newsletter! In this special edition, I’ll be diving into a two-day biz trip I recently went to NYC with other biz students to network with finance companies and alumni. There were about 2-years worth of takeaways from just a 2-day event, so I'm pretty excited to get into this one!

That being said, let's get into it 🫡

💎 Reflections from the Journal:

• 🌟 Margin + Hustle + Resourcefulness = A candidate that sticks out

↳ After talking with alumni across these companies and in the networking event, I took away what would be this formula after asking alumni what makes a candidate stick out from AU compared to other ivy-league candidates for these highly-competitive roles.

↳ Breaking it down: Every successful AU candidate finds a way to create margin to do their most important work. Whether that means getting ahead in their classes, keeping a routine, or anything that decreases the load and increases their limit for margin - they find a way to make it happen.

↳ Next, they hustle. They embody what Mike Schmitz breaks down as the definition of hustle: 1) you know where you want to end up (vision), 2) you need to know what it will take to get there (purpose), and 3) you need to PUT IN THE WORK (grind) to get the role you want.

↳ Finally, they are resourceful. Here's the thing, though:

How resourceful you are isn’t determined by the amount of resources around you. It's determined by how strategic you are with what's in front of you.

↳ This is why people surrounded by some of the best/most useful resources out there may not land that same opportunity as someone who doesn't have them. Those who know how to use what's in front of them with the right strategy will always surpass the person who has better resources without a strategy - it's a mindset.

• ♻️ Master the art of turning your fears into opportunities.

↳  I had the chance to meet some pretty successful alumni (one alum was a CFO of seven different companies) and even the owner of one of NYC's most successful bagel stores by accident (only in NYC - I swear!). The one thing I took away from them? They all learned how to turn their fears into opportunities.

↳ They all had a way of overcoming those areas of their lives that generated the most fear and self-doubt. Instead of backing off from them, they leaned into what they might be communicating to them so they could experience the most growth needed to get them where they wanted to be in their careers.

• 🧠 Cultures shape you and who you surround yourself with.

↳ After being inside Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Bloomberg, PwC, and Carlyle Group's cultures - it was fascinating to observe how each company's architecture, people, and values translated into the different interactions I had with employees.

↳ The opportunity to go from company to company in such as short time period allowed me to see the differences in culture and made me ask: How intentional am I in creating a culture around me that translates into the different spaces I'm in?

📸 Photos from the Journal:

• This trip reflection wouldn't be complete without some photos to accompany it! I’ll drop some of the highlights below 👇️.

🎙️ Favorite podcast moment of the week:

• “When your brain says you cannot go any further, all the studies show that your brain is lying to you.” (43:08)
  

❤️ Quote of the week:

• "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” - Warren Buffet

That's all I got for today. Love you guys, and see you next week!

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