The Killer Instinct

I have worked with a bunch of young people in my career. Some smart ones, some dumb ones, some hard-working ones, some lazy ones. I have had a dozen interns and taught about 200 kids at the local university. Some have gone on to be successful, and others haven’t. I will tell you the one thing the successful ones all had in common:

Hint: not SAT scores.

It’s the killer instinct.

It’s the attitude that I am going to get what I want out of life if it freaking kills me. You don’t stop. You never stop. And if you do get to a dead end, and it’s checkmate, then you pivot and do something else, and don’t stop at that, either. You never, ever give up.

The killer instinct cannot be taught. It cannot be modeled. I am convinced that it is almost entirely hereditary. You are born with it, or not. I will say that the rich kids are at a disadvantage, because there is a safety net. The poor kids did it as the child did—without the rope. That’s a Batman reference, if you didn’t pick up on it.

Let me tell you the story of how I became a Wall Street trader—the abridged version:

I read some books and decide I want to become a trader. A friend connects me with a guy who is a trader. I call him on the phone. He tells me that I have no chance, and hangs up on me. I call him back. Finally, he tells me that I had to have a story about how I always wanted to work on Wall Street and the path I was going to take to get there. So I got a job on the floor of the Pacific Options Exchange, and worked there for about 18 months. My typical day: I would get up at 3:45am, take the train down to the trading floor, work from about 5am to 12pm, go back to my Coast Guard job at 1pm, work until about 10pm, drive home, and study until about 2am. On the other days, I went to school at night. I was working—no joke—about 22 hours a day, and sleeping 2 hours. I was delirious from lack of sleep. So I went to Wall Street and told this story and I got hired.

I had the killer instinct.

I’ve bulldogged my way into a bunch of other things in life, too. Books, radio, music, etc. I don’t take no for an answer. Where did I get it? Did my parents teach me? Ha—my mom was not the type of parent who would kick my ass if I wasn’t first in my class, even though that was so desperately needed. I skated in high school and I skated in college. I had a professor in college tell me that I would never amount to anything. Sometime around the age of 24, I got serious, and I decided I was going to be successful no matter what. As corny as the saying is, failure was not an option. And I did it without the rope—there was no plan B if I didn’t get a job on Wall Street. The plan B was that I would be an option local on the P. Coast, and it was a good thing that didn’t happen, because the trading floor was a boneyard in about three years. Sometimes you want something so badly that it’s in your body and your soul, you think about it every waking moment, you dream about it when you’re asleep, and then you finally get it—and it’s not enough. You want more.

This cannot be taught.

I saw a screenshot of a Reddit post recently from a person who wondered aloud why rich people continue to work, because this person said that the whole point of getting rich was that you wouldn’t have to work anymore. I know one thing for sure—that person is never going to be rich. 51 years old, still bulldogging. Trying to grow the newsletter. Trying to write a bestsellilng book. Trying to crank out returns in my fund. Hustling DJ gigs. Teaching at school. I will say that at my age, I am starting to get tired. When I sit down on the couch at night, I am fatigued. I don’t have the energy that I used to—but the brain is always going. Thinking about the next trade, thinking about the next book, always thinking. Let me put it this way: I don’t smoke weed. I don’t drink. I don’t ever mentally “check out.” I do downshift every once in a while, like I am this weekend with my wife out of town, watching baseball and hanging out with the cats, which is a departure for me, because I used to not have a lower gear.

I have the killer instinct.

The key is to never be content. Not that money is always the barometer, but having the killer instinct means that you’re never content with what you have. The minute you become content is literally the end of your life. I suppose I will get to that point someday, maybe at age 70 or 75—I’ve done enough here, time to relax—and then I will be dead within a year. I am very scornful of these people who are in a big fucking hurry to retire. I could retire, you know, in eleven years, and collect Social Security. In eleven years. Some people do very well in retirement. The vast majority don’t, and I suspect I would fall into that category. I mean, sure, I have hobbies, but I don’t think I can spend 12 hours a day on my hobby. One thing I am thinking about doing in retirement—paying one of my favorite DJs (like Tim Green) a huge amount of money to live with me and teach me music production for two weeks. I’d be like, hey, Mr. Green, how much money would it take for you to live with me and teach me music production for two weeks? $50,000? How does that sound? And then at age 70, my goal would be to get tracks accepted by labels and maybe actually get some gigs out of it. At age 70. That sounds like a good retirement to me, screwing around with Ableton or Logic, making beats. But even at age 70, my goal would be to be the best at it—to get a track at number one on the Beatport charts. Killer instinct all the way to the end.

The option trader and writer Kris Abdelmessih once told me that I had a “first-class motor.” If I’m ever at a cocktail party, and I strike up a conversation with someone, and they say they are an attorney, my instinct is to ask them, “What else do you do, aside from attorneying?” If the answer is that I just go to my attorney job and do some attorneying and come home after work and crack open a beer, I am not too impressed. I would be more impressed if you were doing some volunteer work, or playing some sports, or teaching, or painting George W. Bush-style, or you’re involved in local politics, but if you just have a job and you do your job and come home and park your ass, that is what I would call the bare minimum. And this is what 90% of people do. This is how people have affairs, by the way—too much time running around inside your head. Someone once told me about how some of her old high school classmates back in Maryland were having neighborhood swinger parties—this is the product of boredom more than anything else. That old saying an idle mind is the devil’s playground is the most truest thing ever said. I’m too busy to get into trouble. Pro tip for leading a happy life: don’t drink or do drugs, and have some extracurricular activities, and you are more than halfway there.

The reality is that you can pretty much do anything if you put your mind to it. Within reason, of course. I will never be able to dunk a basketball. But the truth is that you can do anything at all. So I mentioned before that I wanted to write a bestseller. I really believe that I can. And I am going to do it—if it kills me. I’ve read some books and learned a thing or two about storytelling that I didn’t know before. I have the right agent. I have people that believe in me. And this last point is crucial—if you have someone in your life (frequently a spouse) who tells you that you can’t do things, then you have to kick them to the curb as soon as possible. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Founder, I’m thinking of Ray Kroc’s first wife, who is probably the best screen villain in any movie next to Dolores Umbridge. Every step of the way, she was telling him that he was going to fail. Eventually, he found someone who told he that he will succeed, and the rest is history. If you want to do something, then do it. Do step one, do step two, do all the steps, and at the end of it, you will have a pile of money, a bestseller, or a number one track on Beatport. Far less capable people than you have become more successful.