Nate’s Notes 138: Bryan Porter | From Sleeping in Cars & Closets to Investment Banking (Goldman Sachs), Private Equity (Carlyle Group), Stanford MBA, and Hedge Fund Portfolio Manager (MIG Capital).

Thanks for listening to this episode of Meikles & Dimes with Bryan Porter. Such an incredible, improbable story of persistence, discipline, and success.

In high school Bryan was sleeping on friends’ couches. He took a job at McDonald’s. He graduated high school near the bottom decile. He slept in closets and in cars.

But when a close friend committed suicide and Bryan got kicked out of his house, he made a change.

“If you realize you’re heading in the wrong direction,” he said, “even if you’re 95% of the way there, you turn around.”

Bryan took control of his health. He served a church mission. He earned a 4.0. And eventually he made his way to Goldman, Carlyle, Stanford, and the hedge fund world.

And along the way, Bryan learned crucial lessons:

Study to learn, not to pass tests.

Make game day easier than practice.

Persistence is one of life’s biggest differentiators. People are not patient and want results now.

An orchid requires just the right amount of water and sunlight. But a weed can grow in bad dirt, with little water and sunlight, and can punch through concrete. Do you want to be an orchid or a weed?

You can’t outrun your diet. A Big Mac meal is 1300 calories. And an hour at the gym burns just 300 calories.

Find your limiter and train it until it’s no longer a constraint. Then find your next limiter and repeat.

And maybe the most important takeaway of all was Bryan’s playbook:

Set some ridiculous goal that’s far out in the future. And then embody that reality with perfect clarity and become it. Smell it, tasteit, live it, and your brain won’t know the difference. And then just persist. People overestimate what they can do in a six-month time frame, but underestimate what they can do in a six-year time frame, if they persist.

It’s a simple idea. Please take it seriously.

Bryan Porter Bio:

Bryan Porter is a Portfolio Manager at the hedge fund MIG Capital, and he’s been a hedge fund analyst since 2013. Earlier in his career, Bryan spent three years at The Carlyle Group in the $14B US Buyout fund, and was an Investment Banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Bryan earned his B.S. in Accounting from the University of Southern California and his M.B.A. from Stanford Business School.

But before all of that, Bryan was working at McDonald’s and sleeping on couches, in closets, and in cars.

Bryan’s incredible story borders on unbelievable.

In his words, if you ran the experiment of his life 1,000 times, you’re going to get 999 gutter balls.

But in this in-depth interview with Bryan, he shares his playbook for how he achieved a most improbable comeback.