[music]
-Hey, everyone, and welcome to our video series
that invites experts in their field
to share their stories and career insights.
I'm Gabby.
In this episode, I'm joined by Patrick McKenna,
a partner at Comeback Capital.
I'm excited to ask Patrick for some advice for young professionals.
If we're lucky,
Patrick is going to share one of his biggest career mistakes
and the invaluable lesson he learned from it.
Trust me, this is something you don't want to miss.
We're very happy to have you here with us today, Patrick. Thank you.
-Glad to be with you. -Of course.
Tell us a little bit about
how you made your start and why you do what you do.
-I didn't take a direct path to being an entrepreneur and starting a company.
I actually started a very traditional career.
I started in investment banking.
I worked at Morgan Stanley in mergers and acquisitions.
At one point I decided that
that wasn't the future that I wanted to so I made a big career change.
I took a risk and I left New York and went out to Silicon Valley
and joined a startup to learn the startup business
and launched my career that way.
-A lot of people watching this video right now
are in that place of trying to figure out how they're going to start their career,
just even get a start on it.
Do you have any advice to touch on that?
-I think it's really important to understand
and really think about what motivates you.
I've just found that I'm better at, and I've worked around people-
are better at things when they really love what they're doing.
I don't mean in a passion way.
I mean, they actually enjoy it,
the company need, the product, the problems,
I've just found that that's a way for you to really differentiate yourself
and be better at what you're doing.
-Yes. It completes your identity.
That's an excellent point. You've been in the military.
How did your military experience mold you into the person you are today
and also what kind of lessons did you learn along the way
that young professionals can relate to, even though they're not in the military?
-The military experience is very unique.
A lot of people who've served realize how difficult it is to translate that
experience to the more commercial professional world.
I love this question.
I reflected back after many years and like, "What are the things
that I learned in the military that have served me well?"
It's being a self-starter.
In the military, you really need to take responsibility, completing tasks,
really being focused on the mission and completing tasks
and being responsible for the outcome.
Those are just really important three very specific things
that you learn in the military that apply to any work that you're doing,
whether it's in the creative field, whether it's in finance
or as an entrepreneur.
-Absolutely, yes, that responsibility.
A lot of your career has been rooted in investments.
We're wondering how your process is in deciding to invest in someone?
-I invest on the early stage, pre-seedsm, seeds.
Well, I'm talking to entrepreneurs when the idea is just forming.
What I know is that the business is going to change.
The plan that they're pitching, the revenue that they have,
the idea, it's going to change.
My mentality looking at it is, and say, "What is this entrepreneur,
this person, what do they know that other people don't know?
Where are they?"
When everything starts to change, are they going to see the world
in a unique and different way?"
Because at this level of investing it's about people.
Stepping back to what I learned in the military,
I think I can find that in people who had a lot of different experiences.
In entrepreneurship and startups, it's no different.
Are you going to stay with the task? Are you going to stay on top of it?
Are you going to deliver?
Then this other thing, are you going to be flexible?
-Awesome.
That's what makes a great entrepreneur is that flexibility
and mode of responsibility.
On that note of investment, what kind of advice should you give
to young professionals on how they should invest in themselves?
-If you were starting out in your career,
you're probably not going to start off at 23 necessarily starting a company.
You might, but it's going to come along the way.
This is really important question.
What should you be doing in your first couple of jobs
at a school that are going to set you up as an entrepreneur?
Three really important things, one, is focus on experience.
Don't worry about the title.
It's really not that important because you're not going to be in that job
for more than a couple of years, so the title's less important.
What are you going to learn? What are you going to be doing?
Number two, I call it mastery.
Be in the job so you can master something, a skill.
Whether it's in account management or if it's production, whatever it is,
be in the role long enough that you can really get deep mastery.
What I found, if you can do something really well,
you could do a lot of other things really well
and you can learn those other things faster.
Then number three, this is super important,
realize that you're building your network.
The people that you meet in your first job, one, two, three jobs,
those first five or six years out of school,
not only those are going to be your best friends likely,
they're going to be your business partners,
whether you start a company with them or you're going to be buying
and selling products with them as you advance in your career.
Think about those three things,
get experience, master a skill, and build your network.
-You mentioned a network, do you have any advice for people
starting in their careers on how to build it,
how to find people to mentor them if that's something they'd want to do?
-This is such an important point, particularly, early in your career.
I have two ways to think about your network.
One is your lateral network,
so there's other people at your level around the company.
Say you're in product.
You should be thinking like who's in sales, who's in engineering,
who's in account management.
Look at the other groups around you and go and ask them to lunch
and be like, "Hey, Jennifer, you're a really great salesperson.
I see your name on the board all the time.
I'd love to get a coffee with you and learn about sales."
Asking people questions is a really great way to get people talking.
First is your lateral network.
The other is more the leadership network.
Look around and say who might have a background
that you have some connection to or you're interested in
how they got where they are and start with a question like,
"Hey, Bill, I'd love hearing your updates at the company meeting.
I'm really interested in how you came from X to Y
and I'd love to get a few minutes, maybe 10 or 15 minutes to stop by
and learn a little bit about your background."
What is the thing that ties those two together is asking questions.
I think a lot of young people
underestimate the power of asking questions
because it's not a place of weakness to ask a question.
It's actually a place of strength and it shows curiosity.
-Were these things that you learned from experience
or was there something that you wish you would've known from a young age,
starting out that would've contributed to your success today?
-It's so hard to know.
I probably wasn't the kid who was going to be the entrepreneur.
I was like prison of the finance club in school
and I started off on Wall Street.
It's a very traditional track,
but I didn't like it enough to make the big change.
Then I became an entrepreneur.
I really felt more creative and so it's hard to know.
What I have told myself, "Oh, you should be thinking about
being an entrepreneur when you're 16 or 18 or 21
or should I just be getting as many experiences I could
to set myself up for whatever the market was going to offer me?"
What I would say to myself as a younger person is, "Worry less.
It's going to work out." -That's hard.
-It's really hard.
"Just collect as many experiences you can so you can be prepared
for whatever opportunity arises."
-Absolutely. That's great advice.
One last thing, now mistakes, nobody likes them.
We've, unfortunately, all been through them at some point.
[chuckles] -You have. Oh, my gosh.
I thought you were perfect. -Of course, yes.
No, no, I've made mistakes and the important part is learning from them.
What was a significant mistake or failure in your life that helped you
get to where you are today, that it was a building experience
to your character,
something that our young professionals can learn from as well?
-I think this is a really important question.
I'm going to be honest with an experience that I had that
surprised me at the time.
In retrospect, I think the decisions
I made with this mistake really set up my career.
When I transitioned from banking to startups,
I went and worked for a company.
I didn't start a company right away, so I joined a company.
The mistake I made, this is really interesting,
is I actually took a role below my experience and I didn't realize it.
I thought it was a lateral move, but it was actually a position
that was lower than the experience that I had.
My first instinct was, "Oh, you should go find another job
because this isn't going give you what you need."
As I got into it, I realized actually,
I'm going to learn so much from this experience.
This is a great company.
They're working on an important problem.
I gave myself three months to prove that I should be at a higher level.
I stayed with the job.
I came in as a senior manager.
I thought I should have been a director when I got to the company.
I stayed with it and I worked really hard.
After three months I presented why I should have the higher position.
It turns out I was able to stay with the company
and then get that higher position
and become a director and stayed there for two years in that position
and learned everything that I needed to set me up
for the company that I started.
The lesson I learned from that mistake was
it doesn't always work out, but you really need to understand
what company are you going to join?
What your responsibilities and how they mapped your career.
I made the mistake of not understanding what I was getting into.
Everybody should really understand that.
When you get into something, then you need to say,
"What did you learn from it and what can I learn?"
For me, it was like, actually, I could still learn a lot from this role.
It also gave me a chance to step up and prove that
I deserved the higher level.
I gave myself a 90-day window and it turned out that I was able to
get that higher position and I'm staying with the company for two years
and learning a tremendous amount.
If I had left, who knows what I'd have learned,
but I wouldn't have been able to test what I knew I thought I should be.
-That is just so impressive that you were able to accomplish
all of that in three months.
Do you have any advice on how to make a case for
what you were able to do
if a young professional wants to do as you did?
-The key thing to asking for and earning a promotion
is to really understand the roles and responsibility of the position
that you're aspiring to, to really look at it and think like,
"What does that role does that person," not the individual person like,
"What does the person in that role, what do they need to do to be successful?
What experiences? What responsibilities?"
First of all is understanding it.
The next is, this is my guiding principle in life,
"Just start doing it."
It turns out that when you're willing to do work,
people are willing to let you do work.
In the case of my story,
I saw the role and I knew it needed to be filled.
I just started doing that role.
I started acting in the role, not taking in any positions,
but I was standing in for the role that I wanted to be,
and then in the end I was already doing the job.
-Wow, that's so nice.
That makes me think of just do the role you want to be and--
-Bingo, yes. -Yes.
-Do the role you want to be-- -Just for the job you want, right?
That's what I was thinking. -Yes. That's right.
Everybody can do this, and even if you don't get the title,
you're actually getting that experience.
For young people,
really understand the experience is the most important thing.
-Yes.
Thank you so much for your insight. We learned a lot and thank you.
-Happy to be here.
-If you found this video helpful,
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For more advice for when you're just starting out,
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Thanks for watching.