The Art of Doing the Minimum for Max Payouts - Free Up 20 Hours a Week

Level 2 - Value Investor

Welcome Avatar! We’ve been out of the corporate grind for a while and think its time to outline ways to get paid the same (or more) while working less hours. This is going to be tailored to younger people allowing them to play the games as they are (not how they should be).

Your entire corporate life should be centered around two strategies: 1) the likable guy who only works on important stuff or 2) the high performer who is consistently checked out.

The majority of you are probably going to fall into camp number 1. Camp number 2 is really reserved for sales/revenue generating roles. Despite what the HR team will tell you, no one gets fired if they are highly profitable (at best they pay you a whopping 5% less than you deserve to “punish” you for not being obsessed with corporate politics).

First a Quick Review - Basics to Get Foot in the Door

You’re free to be anti-DEI (Didn’t Earn It) and anti-Karen’s in HR. That’s fine and dandy. The tricky part is this: you’re not going to change the world overnight

The current rules/laws/regulations are the ones you have to operate with. No different than a sport you’re playing, you’re not going to change the rules.

Assuming that they will change suddenly in your favor isn’t logical since hope isn’t a strategy. No different than people who make large purchases like homes based on their backlog of potential sales (never ends well)

Instead, the concept is simple, break the rules don’t break the law.

Diversity Items: If you classify as a beneficial group be sure to milk it for everything you can. You’re in corporate which means the vast majority have diversity and inclusion rules.

Then, you can add additional layers to this by checking all the boxes that can qualify you for more protection. Claiming to be “bi” is a smart strategy since it is not provable. You’re not going to go to jail and there is no way to prove or penalize you for such an indicator. If this is remotely offensive, the business world is much worse. Play the game and mark any item that is not provable but qualifies you for more benefits.

As a note all of this applies to any application from college to work. If you know that it’ll be looked at by a big proponent of DEI, it’s not smart to ignore.

Use All Contacts for Work Experience: There is a reason why all those internship slots are filled with kids from wealthier areas. Their parents know the drill and will fill any slot they can for Tom and Nancy to get 10 weeks of work experience every Summer. This can range from calling in favors for finance to law to basic excel work at a large or small corporation.

The real world doesn’t really care about how you got the job. If you got the job through friends/family contacts it’s actually a net positive. It means you likely know other people in the industry via handshakes. Use every single uncle/sister/cousin you can to fill up all your resume items.

Use All Low Hanging Fruit: Look at your resume and decide “what can they actually check”. Lying on your resume is a failure because once it’s clipped you’ll be black balled across the industry. Under no circumstances do you lie about experience. However, there is a smarter grey area.

If you are not good in chemistry and know you’ll do bad, just take the class at a junior college. There are specific classes that can deteriorate your GPA (recruiters typically hard stop at 3.5GPA) and you can simply avoid the headache entirely. There is no honor in purposely hurting your future just to say you passed some class that you’ll never use in your entire life.

If you’re in the application process, hire a professional writer (if you can) to edit/improve the product. Once again, no one is ever going to know, check or care in the future.

Basics Done Then the Final Touches: If any of the above is offensive, pretty much NGMI. The above is what people are already doing. Even with no money on the line, the NCAA is rife with various PEDs and something like 99.9% will never make significant money from anything sports related. Now imagine what happens when Alan’s salary could be $150K or $250K with the stroke of a pen? Yeah. They are all doing the same stuff.

Here is an example of preparing wrong to the point of getting caught, don’t be a robot.

While most would think that this would deter “cheating”, it actually encourages it. He told on himself in the summary: 1) first time “that i know of” and 2) I wasn’t even mad.

As this message gets out there, it means that more and more people will assume their friends are all cheating. This is basically a constant chicken and egg battle. If everyone believes their peers are going to cheat/walk the grey line/insert other explainer, they are forced to do the same to remain competitive.

Summary

All of your peers are going to walk the grey line no matter what. If you drop the ball on guaranteed boosts that have no risk of failure (having a professional writer review your admissions for example), you’re simply toast. This is table stakes in 2024.

Also. You will be using all the tech tools available to you (and research for your area) to avoid all meaningless classes and pre-requisites that will never be used in your future. We’re not aware of your talents/expertise but go ahead and cross off all the ones that you’re certain are useless for your future (a large chunk will be).

Into the Real World

Everyone starts off as naive. Just work hard and you’ll be rewarded. Don’t blame you. It’s a common belief and the smart ones solve this riddle by age 23-24 or so. Some literally drink the kool-aid and end up there for 30 years though!

Unless you’re generating real revenue on day one, this meme should be plastered above your bed frame. For investment banking, until you reach Vice President, absolutely no revenue is generated. The entire game is being liked by the right people (whoever closes the most deals for the office) and simply being likable. Outside of being likable anyone in the world can copy paste numbers from SEC.gov into an excel sheet into a pre-made model template that hasn’t been changed since 2010

Two Strategies: 1) likable guy/girl who is attached to best producers and 2) you’re in a sales/production role already - hit your numbers and are highly profitable. Being likable is optional in the second role since your operating profit margins will be huge for the firm (they will just pay you slightly less). Yes. You are quite literally just a line item in excel with a P&L attached to you if you generate sales for the firm (your boss unlikely decides who gets cut, but his boss who knows no one since it’s just a numbers game)

Forced 60 Day Gauntlet

Before you go full cynic like the clown meme, you do have a 2 month impression sprint to make. This is imperative because you won’t be able to figure out who matters for the Company on day one. It takes at least a couple of months so spend this time learning the below and implementing.

Lean to Being Overly Corporate: This means you want to show up early and leave late in the beginning. Once you’re consistently seen as punctual they will naturally assume you’re an intense person. In the corporate world, being seen as intense is actually a good thing it’s associated with competitive and interested in your profession.

Set Up Emails: This will be a forever thing so practice it now. You want to spend 20-30 mins finding interesting information on your industry every day. Once in a while you will then send this email out to your team/group. The tricky part is you have to go into Outlook and make sure to have a time-released send. Set the timer for earlier or later than people usually show up or leave. This will give the impression of you working later/showing up earlier without actually having to do so.

Get Straight to Numbers: On Wall Street it was easy, just figure out who is bringing in the most deals the past few years for your office. That’s who matters and don’t bother debating it. Being likable or not in the office at that level isn’t really relevant. Some of them are total psychopaths, others are in full corporate mode at all times. Ignore all that and figure out “who make this company the most money”. Congrats you now know who needs to like you at all costs.

Go Into the Intraweb: Every company has some cheesy internet website for the firm. It’s pretty useless except for one major thing: promotions. Go check through the last couple of years and you’ll see some names that are still at the office. Another green light. You can’t get the attention of the Whale in the office at all times.

You can get the attention of promising internal employees. These individuals will show up in the promotion records and you’ll avoid putting your foot in your mouth in front of “just a VP” who happens to be the most loved person in the office by all the MDs.

Begin Automation: After about 30 days, you’ll know some standard procedures that are done every single month/week. Create a faster way to do it and tell no one. On Wall Street the move was to create a simple Macro. Instead of spreading a bunch of comps all the time, you could create a cleaner macro that does it faster.

For example you link all your items to Bloomberg, once the filings hit the numbers fill in, then you create a macro to copy paste everything for the company. All you have to do is click F2 to double check the numbers instead of manually doing the meaningless task every time. Tell absolutely no one you’ve done this and let them do it manually.

Automate Up: No one likes filling their calendar with meetings. Once you’ve developed some rapport with people in the office, create another automated product that fills in their calendar by simply clicking “accept” on their email screen. Be careful. Only do this about a month or two in once you’re *sure* they want to have it on their calendar. If they have to sign up for some seminar/call etc, just do it for them and send them the receipt. They will be thrilled. The trick is to avoid bombarding them.

Pretend to Care and Be Neutral: While you will be out guns a blazing on weekends either with your online biz or having your Saturday night bender, no one in the office should know this. Instead you should choose something neutral to take up your free time.

Any and all active outdoor activities win here. Just be sure to do them at least a few times a month (so you’re not LARPing). Create an image that you go mountain biking on the weekends (which can be time consuming). It’s a lot better than the image of you slamming shots or worse, building your escape hatch (which is exactly what you will be doing).

The Producer - Uninterested

Assuming you’re in a revenue generating role this is a good one to use. The uninterested producer is largely left alone. If sales are continuing to roll in and you give off a vibe about being anti-corporate you’re only going to be bothered with real tasks. The corporate machine will know that you’re not trying. You know you’re not trying. It’s a stalemate.

Since under-performance can be found in every division, they just won’t bother. Much like the theme here, “is there any incentive to care”. Answer is no, they have bigger fish to fry.

Create a Locked in Group: If you spent all your time building a rolodex and now have a consistent stream of income from a chunk of people, they will typically represent around 80% of your total contribution. This 80/20 rule is tried and true across multiple facets in life. Make sure you’re always on top of the main revenue streams and back burner everything else.

You’ll Have a Few Sprints: To keep the inevitable “do you have a minute” from occurring, you’ll be forced to feign interest once every quarter or so. It’ll be pretty obvious. You’ll be asked to deal with some sort of client or issue that everyone knows you can solve. You don’t care about it. They know you don’t care about it. It’s another stalemate and temperature check. They are just making sure you’re not about to quit or completely check out. Plan for a rough 1-2 week stretch every 3-4 month or so. Don’t drop the ball otherwise they will begin to prod further realizing you have been doing absolutely nothing on the 20% (vs. the aforementioned 80%).

Lock Up the Politics: Don’t bother trying to go up the next rung of the ladder. The pyramid only gets tighter and tighter. Once you realize you’d be vying for attention relative to other big league hitters, it’s just not worth the tradeoff. You could get yourself into a political mess sooner than later and find yourself under a microscope. When one of them quits or gets cut, you’re going to get part of the responsibilities anyway.

The Likable Person

Humble and Corporate: That’s pretty much the ideal vibe. We’d say to veer on the side of naive where it seems like you’re part of one big happy family (queue laughter). But the long-term vibe is more humble and corporate. Make sure that HR knows you’d never be a detriment to the public eye and if you appear to be humble in the eyes of your peers they won’t bother trying to back stab you (co-workers are not friends for the 100th time).

More Interactions: This is ideal for someone who is naturally extraverted. You want to have more interactions than most asking about nonsense from how their day went to the weather. You know the drill. You are really just fishing for ways to give them genuine complements. It works because it takes time and effort for the first few months. Someone played college volley ball, someone was a great singer, etc. Give them a real complement and slowly spread that vibe around the office.

Involved in Recruiting: This is pretty much the end all be all of this. If you can get involved in the basic recruiting process, the Corporate machine views you as a good image for the firm. You’re public facing. At this point you’re basically in and can coast.

Summary

You will need to find about 20 hours per week. Going to say that again. You will need to find about 20 hours per week.

That is all. If you find yourself being pulled into meetings where you really don’t belong (a level up). You’re in jeopardy of becoming the star performer. Do not do it. It is never worth it. You will work 10 hours more and get maybe 3-5% more compared to the number 2 and 3 person in the same group.

Once you get to 20 hours its time to build!

Onto Your Exit from Shawshank

As stated many times, the paycheck you’re getting is the rock hammer they give you to escape Shawshank.

Before we hear any complaints about long hours, there is just no other way to do it. The vast majority will not knock it out of the park in the first year. It takes at least a few years to really hit your stride and making gains against your income stream.

Coinbase, the household name in the USA for crypto, was built during off hours while the current CEO was working at AirBnb. (source). Despite being a generational business talent, he states that it took him a year and a half before really feeling like he had traction and enough funding to scale.

Oddly, his comment of 20 hours a week seems about accurate. If you’re building something or are older (middle age) this seems to be the sweet spot for maximum work hours vs. returns. We’re sure he ended up working ungodly hours once it took off but for the majority, 20 hours a week is going to be more than enough to build something that is multiples of your W-2 take home (we’d estimate the typical skilled person can get to around 8-12x - meaning if you earn $100K net you could get to $1M net with nothing but constant effort and iteration).

Summary

So there you have it, the reality of Corporate life today: 1) qualifying for all DEI you can, 2) ideally getting into a producer roles - otherwise politically liked role, 3) making up a believable but neutral hobby for the weekends, 4) clearing up 20 hours a week - if it can work for Coinbase we’re certain it can work for you and 5) never quitting until you’re making at least 2x W-2 from net income.

On that note, best of luck and start that website today! Every month we get a new member of the jungle hitting their first $1K a month or even $100K year. You never know and the best time to start is always today.

Don’t die with regrets anon.

Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.

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