The genesis of this first “Blog Post” are the pages & pages of accumulated scribbled notes I’ve taken during my hundreds of discussions with financial advisors this past year. Career wise I am involved in many things having recently founded my own firm. My primary job is as a recruiter/consultant for the wealth management sector.

I make cold calls to advisors for a living. So my career can be simply described as having 3 phases-

1) Equity Trader NYC

2) Financial Advisor/Private Equity

3) Consultant/Recruiter.

There has been an interesting benefit from the pandemic – it’s been easier to not only reach financial advisors (they are home) but also to get them talking. I have had more in-depth conversations with professionals in the past year than I have had at any time in the previous 10 years. Those in-depth conversations with advisors often divulged into deep reflections upon the past. Something about a global pandemic genuinely alters ones thoughts and conversations. What about the past? Discussing what the Street used to be like – the days of Lehman, Drexel, Kidder, Bear, Smith Barney, Morgan Keegan, Rotan….those discussions several times dove into the cold calling days of the ”80s.

Welcome To Merrill Mr. Noble – May I Show You To Your Office? 

Upon arriving my first day I expected to be welcomed with fanfare and I genuinely expecting to be shown to my shiny new office. Yes I was that naive.

When the receptionist asked if I went by Greg or Gregory I thought that was asked for the plaque on my door as well as for my business cards….well, it wasn’t. I would soon find out that the question was asked because as a rookie I would frequently be sitting at the receptionist desk covering the phones. Little did I know that I wouldn’t be getting business cards till I made it through the gauntlet ahead and then passed my Series 7.

Virtually everyone starting on wall street in the ‘80s (and everyone for decades prior) paid their dues by doing one simple and yet difficult thing…making cold calls. My first day I had no idea walking into the corporate institutional services area (essentially middle markets) of Merrill what I was about to face. I had visions of immediately assisting my advisor in picking stocks which would reach great heights sec using my riches in my yearend bonus.

As a rookie on Wall Street that was not how the pearly gates opened for me…it was more like a pit of alligators. In considering that first year in NYC all I can think of are the hundreds, no thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of cold calls I made. Cold calling was what the advisors I worked for did to make it “in”, it was what the advisors before them that they worked for did….it was the way. Much of the infrastructure of the NYC wall street brokerage firms were essentially designed as massive meat grinder – rookies in by the dozens and within a year a few would make it out of the other side – the final test being THE TEST (Series 7).

Business Card Side-note & Confession: That isn’t to say that I didn’t “borrow” or repurpose my advisors cards when myself and my crew went out with purpose to the clubs of Manhattan – heck we answered their phones anyways! Something about a SVP or Managing Director got more attention and respect than numbers on a cocktail napkin. I am sure Merrill saved thousands of trees by not making business cards for all those new hires.

Ahhh the 80’s.

A time when stocks were quoted In 1/8ths, you were given a number 2 pencil for the series 7 and upon exiting the test you were greeted on either side of you by guys jamming leaflets at you advertising & offering employment at their firms. It was a period in time when “Greed”, for the lack of a better word, was good & whistling loudly for a Taxi was the Uber Ap of the day. The subway was seventy-five cents and there were two rules for a rookie from Vermont never go above 90th Street or anywhere near Times Square at night.

Ya Gotta Be Hungry (While Figuring Out How To Afford To Eat) 

In the ’80s on Wall Street you had to be really hungry (& lucky) to make it past that first year……..and most of the time you actually were starving from actual hunger because the starting salary at any firm barely covered your rent and subway tokens. Eating? Well, that took some work. Given that eating was a necessity I had to find a food source beyond raiding the firm’s conference room after lunch presentations and sneaking onto the trading desk for what the lions (kings of the jungle) may have discarded. Getting onto the trading desk was risky but worth it, given the Kings ate much better than the brokers….and they always over-ordered. Between looking at the conference room schedule for the week and befriending some of the wire & tube operators in trading I had lunch nailed but that left dinner. About 3 out of 5 days during the week I couldn’t even afford a dirty water dog or a slice of pizza…there were no microwaves and Raman noodles had not made it from the far east as of yet. So the solution was becoming intimately aware of what days which hotels had their free happy hour food….  “Hello, Mr. Noble good to have you back in town again. Weren’t you here last week?…”

What was all of the struggle worth? Everything…it was worth any amount of pain, any challenge, test, or task laid in front of you. The only goal of that first year was to survive, be one of the few that advanced with a securities license and an actual business card with their own name on it. More than making it that first year the true goal was to get to where all those infant of…above you were.

For any young gun working on Wall Street in New York City in the ’80’s & early ’90’s the “Benchmark” of success, what you new you needed to achieve were classically true to form for the debauchery decade.

• Owning A Peter Lugar’s Black Card
• A NYAC Membership
• A Bronze Plaque With Your Name Discretely (To Most) In The Back Bar At Smith & Wally’s
• The Ability to walk up to the door (Ignoring both the dress code & the line) at Tattoo, The Tunnel, Surf Club, Limelight or Palladium. That was power. While everyone in line is yelling at you to get in line they are abruptly silenced when they notice the door man lifting the red velvet as you approach recognizing you & your posse.

When I think of the term “nicknames” I envision something unique, personal, typically flattering or descriptive and always to a point of fitting. But what nicknames are not are total replacements of your birth name and permanent in the sense that they actually end up on your first business card. When you got a new name within your first year of working on Wall Street in the ’80’s it was akin to receiving one from Bluto during the Delta Tau Chi pledging ceremony. It was not a nickname – it became your actual name. The name you received was not a badge of honor or a name bequeathed upon a rookie inferring distinction, prowess & brilliance.

To this day I am not sure that anyone had ever raised their hand in the entire building for any reason whatsoever. Even now upon reflecting I’m not sure why I raised my hand as if I was suddenly back in Middle School. A hand being raised was so unusual that it captured everyone’s attention. For the entire floor, my raised hand had the same impact that an intense flare fired through a pitch-black evening sky would have. But this flare was not a distress signal (the one who shot it was soon to be in distress) but carried with it an ultimatum – Listen UP! Pay Attention! Whatever is about to leave the lips of the rookie from Vermont is gonna be good. 

The superior responsible for my future as well as my new name looked at me with piercing eyes and said, “Are you fucking kidding me? Put your hand down. What?!” As if the raised hand wasn’t bad enough the question which was attached to the raised hand was so void of any strategic reflection that it carried with it only two possibilities:

1) That I was mocking the entire training program and in the process my superior in some sort of vain attempt to lite the spark of revolution

2) I was the stupidest most naive Wall Street to ever attempt a spot on this 13.4 mile long by 2.3-mile wide island called Manhattan.

What was the question I asked which became the spark of inspiration for my new name while concurrently securing me a top spot of distinction within the rookie archives for generations?

“Mr. Pierce, Fenner & Smith what do we do with these?”

As I lowered my raised hand which just fired the flare I simultaneously lifted my other hand hoisting the stack of index cards well over my head reminding everyone that my question was referring to the index cards which were literally the only thing on everyone’s desk that morning.

“Are you serious Woody? Here’s a suggestion never open your mouth again except when trying to close one of the leads on those cards. Want some instructions? Start with the first index card in the stack and call every single one of the cards. Keep doing that until you speak with every name on every card. But I assure you that you won’t make it halfway through.”

There it was…Woody was born. Once you earn a name like Woody due to a remarkable incident that an entire floor witnesses, it’s gonna stick. Why Woody? “Cheers” was the number one show on television and the bartender Woody was not the sharpest tool in the toolshed.

The horrifying possibilities of the permanence of being renamed became closer to reality when two weeks after passing the Series 7 I excitedly opened the small box of business cards on my desk only to find Woody Noble as the newly registered sales associate that apparently sat at my desk. It took me years to convince many that Woody really was not my actual name.

Those were my instructions. At least he gave me some incentive. I had to make it more than halfway through this stack to prove him wrong. That was the great thing about the ‘game’ there was always a motivator…,.a betcha can’t. I do well with Betcha Can’t. His instructions were not only an obvious answer to my question….but prefacing those instructions by using what would be, (not by choice) my new name for at least the next decade had the effect of pulverizing my pointless query to dust – as well the tone of his answer carried a message of the brutality that lay ahead.

(Note: If only I had possessed 2 buttons those first few years I would’ve been so much better equipped – those two buttons being “pause” & “rewind”)

My superior relished moments like this. “Teaching” (humiliation) moments where he could shout for all others to hear…. using me, yet again, as an example of how not to navigate the colosseum. It was a question thrown to my superior about the size of a pumpkin, underhanded and slow while waiting to be crushed by him (let’s just compare him to Babe Ruth) as it reached home plate.

To call him a superior was such a ridiculous understatement of stature given his lofty place in the hierarchy of the time. In the mind of a twenty-something-year-old this man which gave me my new wall street nickname was the only individual that mattered at the time. Not making it past the Fate Keeper was unthinkable. He controlled who became a part of the thundering herd, who got a business card, and most importantly who would be able to afford dinner 7 days a week next year. Now keep in mind that in this hierarchy where I found myself literally everyone was higher than me in every way. The power which this superior, who in my eyes was more like a Roman emperor, wielded was absolute. He was never wrong and never ever was he to be questioned. He was no different from Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) in the movie Gladiator standing above and in front of everyone hand protruded to his side while the frenzied crowds seeking blood chanted in unison “KILL, KILL, KILL…… .”:

My mind would often go to dark places in those early days under his tutelage with, I was certain, a guillotine on standby in a conference room. He was the sole arbiter that determined the future of not only my Wall Street career but generations of Noble’s ahead. Would they, due to my success, descend from a long lineage of Wall Street Titans? Or because of my failure would their sorted & troubled history be one blamed on that tragic figure Woody. And because of Woody, the Nobles have little impact on the generations to follow outside of appearing in episodes of America’s Most Wanted, Judge Judy and Jerry Springer. And being remembered by the families possible turnaround moment when they succeeded in inventing something which got offers from not one but all of the sharks only to turn them all down resulting in filing for bankruptcy after Mr. Wonderful took the idea because they could not afford a patent attorney.

This career was a matter of life or death for me…because in reality should I fail my backup plan was becoming a ski bum which was not a true backup plan. I had to keep Commodus, my supervisor, pleased with my performance….because he had the power to at any moment to simply rotate his wrist counter-clockwise thumb protruding signaling an abrupt end to my career.

But at Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith on the island of Manhattan in the ’80s your failure on the phones was generally regarded by most everyone to be inevitable. If you were still sitting at a desk after 3 to 6 months with a phone glued to your ear it was just because you were either lucky or someone had forgotten to escort you out. The reason for that glass-half-empty POV was because to think otherwise got one too close personally to the rookies just at the moment when they would fail. In this life and death moment, the odds were never in your favor. You were young and sounded even younger on the phone and to make it worse you were calling old leads that had been called many times before you. When reviewing a lead you could see the scribbled shorthand of those that came before you just like etched drawings by an extinct tribe on a cave wall… Anyone could make outgoing calls starting at “A” and ending at “Z:” But the true task which you were to be judged for, the quest was so much more…did you possess “it”? Were you one of the few that showed ability in the fine art of a cold call? Did you know your ABC’s (alw3ays be closing)? Could you close?

Could you take that tattered 3X5 index card that had been called by dozens before you and turn it into something of value to your brokers and to your firm?

Could you turn a tattered lead on a 3 X 5 index card into Willy Wonka’s golden ticket? 

As it turned out I had just the right amounts of Woody, chameleon, tinkerer, actual real hunger, and the perfect dose of “don’t give a fucks” that “no’s” meant nothing to me – I didn’t even hear no. With every call, I improved by altering my pitch & reinventing myself slightly till I got to a place where I was closing just enough to impress my supervisor, my brokers, and ultimately the firm. When I started the year there were well over a dozen of us spread throughout the building. By the end of that first year, there were only 3 of us left to take the Series 7…then there were only 2 when one of us failed the test…..and it was not me. I had given the Noble family a chance at a legacy and with the bonus, I got for passing the Series 7 I was able to buy dinner every night for a couple of months.

I am so grateful for that first year of my career for the reason that it was so tough and so challenging. At the time I was too young and too naive to realize that the entire exercise was about so much more than calling. But it was only through those thousands of calls that I learned about myself and the business of sales. I spoke with one of the advisors that I worked for in the mid-’80s and to this day he has some of the very same clients that were on those index cards that I closed.

That makes me feel good.