“You’ve been gone all week and the first thing you do when you come home is complain? When you’re gone, I’ll hire someone to do all of these insignificant things you get upset about.”
My wife was done with our marriage and planning her exit. Her words were painfully accurate. I was working out of town, living in a friend’s empty beach house week nights while she was alone, hundreds of miles away, raising two toddlers without me.
Within three years following the arrival of our first child, our lives fell apart. Work lost meaning and with it, my purpose.
Exhausted and angry much of the time, I existed, going through the motions in a numb state, failing on multiple fronts; as a husband, father and leader.
How did this happen?
I grew up middle class but in a wealthy Midwestern suburb where everyone else had money; boats, luxury cars, and large homes. We didn’t. They had it and I wanted it. This left me both insecure and focused.
Classmates vacationed on tropical islands over Christmas, skied spring break and summered in Europe or at elite camps. We were middle class but I felt poor. By my 15th birthday, I knew what I wanted — to make money. I would become someone and wealth dangled an alluring ticket.
I studied over lunch in high school. Evenings and weekends, I was busing tables 40 hours a week at a local steak house. Friday and Saturday nights, I worked. When I wasn’t working, I studied.
As an undergraduate, I attended three universities, double majored in Economics and American History and finished in four years. My first summer I took classes, the second, I ran a painting company and subsequent summers, interning in New York City for a large Wall Street firm.
Following my junior year at NYU, I studied for and passed my securities test, receiving my license while still a student, preparing for a future paved in what else, making money.
After graduation, I landed a coveted job at an investment bank lead by Fred Joseph. Michael Milken, the legendary financier, crowned the junk-bond king for funding entire industries from cosmetics giant Revlon to Las Vegas casino construction, reported to Fred while at Drexel. Growing up, Drexel led the bulk of major Wall Street deals and now, I worked for Fred.
Within a year, the firm was sold and with a persuasive recommendation and some fortunate timing, I landed a highly coveted spot on Morgan Stanley’s international trading desk.
IPOs were launched weekly and entrepreneurs, freshly minted captains of industry, passed through, taking their victory laps. Billions of dollars traded hands daily. It was a land for newly crowned kings and my home 12–15 hours each weekday; I had arrived.
A grunt on the desk, I only saw a glimpse of the deals responsible for creating and impacting entire industries. The long hours and lack of personal life wore on me. My limited, siloed life, in my early 20s led me to start asking, “is this all there is?”
At cocktail parties, people ask where I worked, it was a standard question, defining who you were or were not and a continual reminder, I had pulled a winning lottery ticket; not bad for a middle class, public-school kid.
Within a couple years, I would be applying for a coveted spot in an Ivy League MBA program. The path I envisioned for so long was right in front of me, “what more could I want?”
This disillusionment is common among budding high-achievers. There is an unspoken understanding that all options improve with money.
Making enough means attracting the right women, from which we pluck our dream candidate, put a ring on her finger, spawn a model family, with an enviable home and elaborate lifestyle. From there, the rest is a foregone conclusion — happiness would follow, how could it not?
My reality was far different. I woke at 4:30, arrived at the office by six with European markets already open. By nine, it was the U.S. markets and by eight PM, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
I ate three meals at my desk and left work after nine most nights to return to my 750-square-foot apartment which cost the majority of my salary.
Exhausted, I fell asleep before eleven and woke with a jolt of 4:30 alarm. Perpetually tired, it seemed as though my head had just hit the pillow before I had to get up and do it all again.
Unlike investment bankers accustom to pulling all-nighters, traders on the desk were fortunate, we had weekends off. Yet, I would wake up Saturday morning wondering why I didn’t have a life. I remember canceling multiple dates because I needed to stay late.
The work weeks flew by and the weekends, lonely. Long hours left me little time for a personal life, yet at 23 I made more money than any of my high-school classmates and sometimes from the bank’s, Hong Kong and Tokyo offices.
Winning? Happy? No. I didn’t have a life and the money was never enough.
A driver in route to JFK Airport summed it up well with this observation: “Yous seems like a nice guy. Don’t take this the wrong way but…why’s so many others jerks?”
I took a hard look around and didn’t like what I saw; men, who met society’s version of success with their large salaries, elaborate homes, global travel and custom clothes. After putting in10–12-hour days, they would ride a complementary car home to do it all again, early the next day.
Discontent was another discernible thread.
These overworked, frequently divorced, supposed success stories, I aspired to be, were you guessed it — not happy. After their wives and family settled com- fortably in their sprawling suburban, Westchester homes, money became less important. However, not having their husband around was and too many marriages failed.
Late at work one night, I picked up an intriguing research report detailing the Chinese privatization of state-run enterprises. Months later, returning from Hong Kong, a seatmate from Shanghai shared photos of a contemporary city I could never have imagined. China was evolving; rapidly. I saw a future and wanted to be a part of it. Before landing, I decided I was moving to Shanghai.
I collected my year-end bonus check, packed up my apartment, moved back in with my parents and took a crash course in Mandarin. In the spring, I bought a one-way ticket to Shanghai making a two-year commitment to myself.
In 1998, China wasn’t on most people’s radar. Growing up in the U.S., parents of middle-class America informed their children about starving Chinese each time they refused to eat their food. The message was clear, we needed to be grateful for the food in front of us and finish our dinner, as there were people starving in China.
Friends thought I was crazy. Who gives up a coveted trading desk position at one of the world’s most prestigious Wall Street banks to teach English? In China! The truth, I wanted out. In retrospect, you might say I was running to find something better, another life, a new identity.
I began studying Chinese at Jiao Tong University, considered the M.I.T. of China and soon crossed paths with an L.A. native, Luke, who, much like me, came to Shanghai staking his claim. We became good friends and stayed in touch after I returned to the U.S. to study business.
I viewed Harvard as the path to opportunity. More than simply an elite education, it was a solution to my problems. Harvard would allow me to return to life in a far more privileged position than the low-level, trading-desk grunt.
I searched for purpose, for an identity in both an Ivy-League education and Wall Street; my identity and career, inextricably linked.
Too many type A performers fall into this predicament, with a self-worth attached to their career and how much we make. When life’s going well, we’re in charge, deeming ourselves a success and when it isn’t, our self-esteem suffers.
In 2002, with a recession looming, banks eliminated head count and cut back on summer MBA interns; no one would talk to me. About this time, a contact reached out to see if I knew anyone in China who could help with a sourcing project. His employer wanted to offshore manufacturing. A family friend of Luke’s was manufacturing in China and approached him for help with oversight. Luke formed a company and began servicing the one account.
This gave me an idea; what if we worked together, I from the U.S. sales side and Luke, running operations from Shanghai? We agreed on a deal, I put up a website and the phone started ringing.
Companies from the developed world needed to be in China and our services were in high demand. It worked for Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, why not me? I left Harvard without a degree, moved to L.A.’s Westside and began calling prospects. We were a three-man team pitching billion-dollar companies and everyone took my calls.
A Sidney based, home-building consortium wanted to manufacture everything possible in China and hired us to oversee it. Racking and apparel companies in L.A., billion-dollar fitness equipment manufactures in Utah and a multi-billion-dollar window manufacture in Minneapolis; each had one commonality, they lacked a China-based partner they could trust and assist in preventing costly manufacturing mistakes.
Prospects wanted to visit our Shanghai office but courting billion-dollar-company relationships hardly worked with a two-person China team. I flew to China to lease space and recruit employees to fill it.
We opened bank accounts in Hong Kong, and set up a BVI (British Virgin Island) holding company to eliminate challenges of moving money out of Mainland China.
Within three years, we grew a business spanning multiple continents. Every few months we’d entertain another offer from someone wanting to buy us, each one, double the previous deal.
Life was good. Correction, life was great.
Dividing time between Santa Monica and Shanghai, managing global accounts, I would spend a week or two in China escorting clients and prospects eager to see our operations and meet manufactures. Leaving China, I would pass through Hong Kong, filling my pockets with cash before heading home to LA.
Fun was hang-gliding in Rio with a Brazilian girlfriend, night diving with manta rays on the Big Island, clubbing in Buenos Aires, petting tigers in Phuket and riding camels up to the Sphinx at sunset outside Cairo.
I had planned, worked hard and it paid off.
Living the American dream, I was discovering life for the first time. Stuck in LA traffic on the 405, driving a new sports car, phoning my mom telling her how fulfilled and how happy I felt.
I was unstoppable.
At 37, I met the love of my life — an attractive, intelligent, easy-going woman with an amazing voice. Within months, I proposed with a four-carat ring, and after a year-long engagement we married in Buenos Aires, strategically waiting two years to have children, enjoying our time alone beforehand. My focus, hard work and determination proved anything was possible.
According to America’s blueprint for success, I did everything right. Before my 35th birthday, I co-founded a Shanghai-based international trading company and hired, trained and developed teams of people to accomplish great things.
My story — a success.
By 2007 the trading company had run its course. Clients began opening their own mainland offices, buyout offers dried up and our large Shanghai office and global overhead built with ambition and my ego, become too expensive to maintain. Luke tired of visiting one dirt-poor town after another in search of lower-cost manufacturing, we sold the business.
Once again, I found myself searching for a new identity.
I joined an angel investment group in Southern California, men putting money into start-ups and within two years became its president. This kept my ego inflated but investing in early-stage deals which have, on average a 10-year gestation period to reach over-night success, did little to fund our lifestyle and I returned to banking, this time on the commercial side.
After running a global operation without anyone in my way, I now answered to a narrow-minded, county boss imposing limitations. Depressed and directionless, I continued hitting new lows. I was losing the battle, unable to continue feeding my ego in an evolving world that had left me stranded, in a place I did not want to be.
Friends on the golf course agreed, we had gotten most of it right; good providers, present fathers, all who married for love. Yet, in one year alone, three filed for divorce.
Men would say about their soon to be ex: “we grew apart. Things have change. It’s for the best.” I felt disconnected; from work and from family.
Tired most of the time, I rushed home to be super dad but was quick to anger when underappreciated. I worked hard to provide the ideal life. Everything was so much work. Life became too serious.
What happened to the fun, to our sex life, to the meaningful work? Why did it seem as though my most important contribution was funding the ATM?
I wanted solutions, to fix things but there was always something else more important; work, children, something else I could fix. So, I did what so many high achieving men do, put frustrations aside, plowed forward and sedated using alcohol, porn and anti-depressants.
My wife too struggled. Following a successful entertainment career, running finance for MGM’s music division, she found herself home, full-time, alone most of the week, raising two endlessly needy children.
Everything society deems important was at our disposal, yet I appreciated little.
For years, life was moving so fast and now…standstill. The life envisioned and meticulously crafted wasn’t turning out to be the tranquil bastion of bliss.
I was suffocating in the monotony, smothered, failing in conquering the next great achievement my ego needed to prop-up my identity.
Clearly, mine was a superficial understanding of happiness, an undeveloped teenager’s dream. But isn’t this how it evolves for most of us, armed with an imperfect, false conception of the life we want and what we need to do to get it?
To make sense of it all, I reached out to friends for clarity. They too opened up; depression, frustration and anger were common themes. Several were dealing with messy, expensive divorces with children involved.
A close, older friend who had been through his own challenges years ago costing him his family, his wife — everything important to him, pushed me to take an introspective look at myself. He asked, “are you prepared to do the hard work?”
“Yes” I said, “of course.” Not fulling understanding what he meant.
When we wake up to the realization that our plans for a dream-life no longer correlate with reality, we adjust our expectations and correct course.
But where do we go? And is it in the right direction? For some it’s about having the ideal family. For others, it’s a fulfilling career.
For all it’s about winning at life.
Yet we have little vision as to how to get there.
My identity was the root of the problem. “Who am I?” A trader with a prestigious Wall Street bank, a student at Harvard, the founder of a Chinese trading company, president of the largest angel investment group, a mediocre commercial banker or a stay-at-home dad?
I was different people at different times, whose self-worth was tied to the job performed.
For men, a strong self-image and pride in achievement are inseparable. The problem — our self-worth is only as resilient as our next achievement; continue achieving and our sense of self grows, but if not, it withers and eventually dies.
Image is paramount and we assess ourselves externally, according to how others see us. Forever relying on our next accomplishment to feel good, leaves us vulnerable to failure and weak in the face of other’s destructive words and actions.
True sense of self is beyond one’s career and isn’t contingent on material accomplishment.
Our identity is more than our career or the size of our wallet.
StewartRoberts.com
VISIBILITY: Playing to Win the Game of Life
Stewart Roberts: Father, husband, entrepreneur, angel investor, guest lecturer, board member, volunteer. Stewart worked for Morgan Stanley in New York City, co-founded TIX China, a Shanghai-based trading company; studied at Harvard and served as Orange County President of Tech Coast Angels. He has guest lectured at both UCLA’s Anderson School and USC’s Marshall School of Business. For eight years he served as a CASA mentor. Today, he leads men through life’s transitions with books, boot-camps, masterminds and online courses.
