Free The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun

was told I’d be in the office from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.—the hours in banking were more demanding, and all the first-year investment bankers I knew hated their jobs. At Lehman I would learn how to manage capital but at Bain I would learn how to manage the operations of a company. My plan was to take one of these jobs for a few years and then go to a hedge fund or private equity shop, where the real money was. Once I had a deep enough bank account, I could go off to start my dream nonprofit organization. But first I needed money and I needed experience, which meant I planned to work in finance for the next fifteen to twenty years.
    I hoped that one of my mentors who ran a successful financial-management firm, George Stanton, could help me make the right decision.
    “There actually will be times in life when you should choosemoney over experience,” he said with a stern voice, “but make that choice when the margin is much bigger, when the margin is millions of dollars, not thousands. Although fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money to you right now, in the grand scheme of things, experience will be much more valuable in the long run.”
    George’s advice rang in my ears that night at BLT Fish when I committed to Bain. I decided I would view my time at the company as a form of paid business school. They could work me as hard as they wanted, as long as I learned along the way. Compensation comes in many forms, and if you define your expectations up front, you’ll gain far more than just money from the jobs you take.
    After several weeks of rigorous training, my first project was to help design the real estate growth strategy for a well-known retailer. I ended up working for the partner whose steak I stole. Fortunately, she laughed about it at our first meeting. “It was a bold move. Ridiculous, but bold too,” she teased.
    The work at Bain was intriguing during the first few months because the learning curve was so steep. The training was intense and I was gaining new skills that I knew would be valuable throughout my career. Building financial models and impressive PowerPoint presentations was fun at the outset, but by the end of my first year I couldn’t look at Excel spreadsheets for twelve hours a day and not lose my mind—so I found other ways to make the environment more entertaining.
    As a middle child I’d honed my skills as a prankster, and this became my calling at the company. I would fill the printer with pink paper, turn my coworkers’ cubicles into newspaper-covered forts, and constantly mess with my closest friend, Priya. I’d fill her gloves with paper clips, reverse everything on her desk to create a mirror image of how it was supposed to look, and place face lotion on her phone headset before calling her extension.
    Although I genuinely liked the people I worked with, I lacked passion for the work itself. I couldn’t get excited about making credit-card companies more money by reevaluating their customer-acquisition process, investigating long-term disability insurance for insurance giants, and so forth. As an associate consultant, my job included taking notes in client meetings. In the first few months I diligently recorded the statements of the attendees, but soon I found myself nodding apathetically while writing personal journal entries in my spiral notebook. I scribbled, I wish I was more interested in this work, but it’s just not for me. Find your passion, and you’ll find your strength.
    Instead, I spent my first year in New York City drinking and chasing girls. I went out partying five to six nights per week, every single week. I’d often guzzle ten to fifteen drinks in a night, bouncing from bars to clubs until sunrise—whatever it took to get me to feel happy, free, and alive.
    I began to detest putting on my consultant’s outfit of slacks and a tucked-in button-down. I felt as if I were wearing someone else’s uniform. When it came to my year-end review, I was told that my