Dear 18-year-old Eric,
All I want is a minute of your attention.
You might be surprised to hear that, someday, you’re going to start your own financial advice business. That you’ll have clients who depend on you for their retirement income. That they’ll need help moving on from their careers in the tech industry. That they’ll want a trusted advisor for pursuing their dreams and prioritizing what’s always mattered to them.
It’s exciting, isn’t it? The start of something new. But it’s scary, too.
You’re the first person in your family to go to college. And you aren’t just going anywhere—you’re going to the University of Washington in Seattle.
In the end, it beat out CU Boulder and the military, plus Dad reminded you that you could always come back to work with him in the auto parts store if college wasn’t for you. In another lifetime, you would have been the fourth generation to work with cars.
But Seattle will be good to you. You’ll have a chance to snowboard, just like you wanted. Perhaps a little too much, if you’re honest. The music scene’s a bit livelier than Boulder—especially in the early 90’s—with enough venues to keep your rock band booked and you busy running a twice-weekly karaoke show at the “underage drinking capital of Seattle” (long-since shut down).
You should probably also study a bit. I know you think that psychology is interesting, but when you realize how much fun literature is, you’ll be hooked. You’ve always liked books.
Seriously, just stick with literature.
Trust me.
Oh, and that path you’re on right now, meandering through an eclectic collection of odd jobs? It’ll make sense in a few years. Life doesn’t happen in a straight line.
You’re going to eventually transfer to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where you’ll keep playing music with a new band. Booking road trip gigs and practicing in a dedicated studio is its own reward.
Don’t be afraid to pick up that retail job for an outdoors gear company. Even when it goes bankrupt, they’ll keep you on because you’re a college kid and they need somebody to help plow through that leftover inventory.
You know that Dad can run a business, but not everyone does it well. You’ll learn a lot from a business that fails.
Private equity buyers need someone to provide a sense of continuity as they turn things around. You’ll get to rebrand the store, set up meetings with cool companies like The North Face and Sierra Designs, and open up new lines of credit. Not bad for a lit major.
When you finally graduate and move back to Seattle in 1998, you’ll want to work on your sci-fi novel. What you should really pay attention to is that “Help Wanted” ad for a little company called Amazon. Compared to the world of nightclubs and music gigs, making $10 an hour as a customer service representative will lead to far bigger things for you.
Go figure out what “internet books” are all about. Get your foot in the door at Amazon. Seriously. Trust me on this one.
The place will be full of liberal arts majors with no other marketable skills. You’ll learn Unix and how to manage customer support from the command line, and you’re going to really, really like gamifying customer service.
You’re also going to learn how to anticipate customer needs. Yes, it’s important to respond quickly, but it’s also important to anticipate the next question, and the question after that.
Narratives matter. Editing and polishing and refining documents, whether they’re client emails or FAQs, is important.
The first few months at Amazon are going to be exhausting. Hang in there. Eight hours in customer service and another eight hours packing boxes in the warehouse is… a lot.
But it’s the type of crucible experience that will forge lifelong friends. It’ll also generate future business opportunities; in ways you don’t even realize yet.
Pay attention to your company benefits. Learn what stock options are. Read up on 401(k) plans. They’re going to change your life.
You’re going to hear some crazy stories about how the stock market turned people’s lives upside down.
It’ll be interesting enough that you’ll start your own investment club with your friend, Marcus Maurer—the same Marcus that will help you start a new company someday. The club’s investment minimum of $10 a month isn’t much, but it’s enough to have something real in the market. The companies that you will evaluate in your circuit of Seattle coffee shops will provide a litany of business lessons for you and your tech colleagues.
By now, you’re going to not-so-secretly love finance. Working at Merrill Lynch or Edward Jones or Ameriprise will sound exciting. You will even meet with them and get job offers to consider.
It’ll be tempting to jump ship when Amazon starts laying people off in 2001, but don’t do it.
Stick with Amazon.
After all, you’re in your mid-20s and have already had a career in tech. Everyone in tech has an expiration date, but you’re still pretty fresh. Keep your eyes open for opportunity. Take the opportunity to move to a corporate job at Amazon.
You’re going to need some stability right about now, because things are about to get rocky.
Dad’s only 49-years-old. You thought he would live forever. Or that you’d at least have many more years together. His passing is going to leave a deep hole. It’s going to be a gut punch. If you think it’s a shock for you, remember that your brothers are even more reliant on Dad. Your stepmom is shattered.
It won’t take long for you to appreciate the plans Dad put in place. You and your brothers and your stepmom are relatively fortunate.
He had things planned out with his business partner. He was super clear in his estate plan. Not only did those plans make it easier for everyone, emotionally, but the family trust he set up to take care of your stepmom is going to be your first opportunity to manage a real financial account.
Even after he’s gone, he’s looking out for you. His financial legacy will be the spark that catalyzes the next chapter of your life.
At first, you’ll manage half of the money Dad left. Eventually, you’ll manage all of it. The principal will increase. The income checks will get larger and larger.
All the while you’ll still be working in tech. You’ll have left for startups and gone back to Amazon three times—gaining a deep understanding of what it means to work in the tech industry.
But you’ll still be curious about what it’s like away from Big Tech.
Answer the call that’s been needling you, ever since you were a kid reading stock tickers in the newspaper on the living room floor. Become a financial advisor.
Your dad’s trust account? That’ll be the first trust managed by Prospero Wealth.
You’ll never finish that sci-fi novel, but you’ll have a far greater understanding of the power that narratives hold for clients. You’ll understand the importance of making it easy for clients to adopt and absorb financial best practices.
Mapping goals to a financial plan? Quarterly reviews of client portfolios, rather than large, monolithic annual meetings? The lessons you learned in customer service at Amazon, it turns out they work well for your clients, too. Communicate. Polish. Refine.
It’s exciting, isn’t it? The start of something new. It couldn’t have happened in any other way.
Sincerely,
Eric
Prospero Wealth, its employees, and all third parties listed are not affiliated with TradePMR. No compensation was paid to the author for this article. This article reflects the author's experience. Your experience may vary.