The Grant Williams Podcast Ep. 121 - David Leiter FULL EPISODE

**Grant Williams** (0:10)
Before we get going, here's the bit where I remind you that nothing we discussed should be considered as investment advice. This conversation is for informational and hopefully entertainment purposes only. So, while we hope you find it both informative and entertaining, please do your own research or speak to a financial advisor before putting a dime of your money into these crazy markets. And now, on with the show. Welcome, everybody, to another edition of The Grant Williams Podcast. Joining me in a short moment is author David Leiter, whose new book, Stop Making Stupid Investments, 7 Rules to Avoid the Hype and Build Real Wealth, is a fantastic book. And we're going to talk about that. And it's something that I think everybody listening to this will get something out of. I know I certainly did when I read the book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I'm really looking forward to talking to David about it. So without any further ado, let's welcome David Leiter to the podcast.
David, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited to talk about this book you've read.

**David Leiter** (1:21)
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, Grant.

**Grant Williams** (1:23)
Let's start because you had an unusual entry to Wall Street. Why don't you just give us a quick overview of your journey to Wall Street, because it wasn't the usual route you took.

**David Leiter** (1:31)
I started as a musician. I started playing guitar when I was eight years old. The reason I got started, my best friend down the street, was taking guitar lessons in the summer.
And he came to me and told me, and I went to my mom and I said, Mike's taking guitar lessons. I want to take them too. So it was a group class. And right away, I loved it. So my father's friend had gifted me a Giannini classical guitar. It's like a nylon string guitar. It's actually great if you're going to learn guitar for kids because its strings are soft. So I was playing. I go to this class once a week. And then as usual became something I would end up doing my whole life. I was goofing around in the class. And the guy said, Sit in the middle of the class and play for the class and sing. And I had to sing Guantanamera.
So anyway, I couldn't sing at all. And all the kids were laughing. And he finally, the teacher finally stopped. Everybody goes, okay, he might not be able to sing, but he plays circles around all of you.
And so I just loved guitar and I just played and played. But you know, when it came to my after college, I had done that 10,000 hours. Like I just played all the time through college. But when I got out, it was like the real world, I had to get a job. And I rented an apartment on the Upper West Side. It was $650 a month. I could barely pay for it. And I got a sales job and I was working in that for a while. And it was just a crazy sales job. It was like we'd stop people on the streets to sell them coupons to comedy shows and all this stuff. It was a nutty job, but I learned a lot about rejection and sales. And eventually I got caught up in some things.
One thing early on which promised to make me rich was some multi-level marketing thing. And I spent a lot of money on that. And eventually I kind of went broke and I said, I got to get a job. So I got a job at a temp agency. And they put me at Credit Suisse. And it was at the time Credit Suisse was merging with First Boston. And they were going to move into the new headquarters on Park Avenue and 24th. It's now UBS by the way.

**Grant Williams** (3:39)
Yep, no, I spent my years there too, yep.

**David Leiter** (3:42)
Oh, okay, yeah. So 11 Madison, I worked with the lady who was coordinating the move when we got there. They liked me a lot. I worked hard and I stayed late every night. And they said, you know what? We have a job sales assistant on the Syndicated Finance Trading Desk. Would you want to interview for it?
I said, sure. So I interviewed, they gave me the job. I was the youngest guy on the desk.
And everybody was at least 10 to 15 years older than me, making a lot of money. I wasn't. And in there, I stayed, I was there for four years. And I learned a lot. They put me through credit training. They offered to send me to business school. And they would pay for it based on your grades. They had a system back then. This is pre-99, pre-2000 crash.