I didn't grow up around deals, not really, but I wasn't as far from them as it might sound. My dad worked in PR and is now head of public relations at a big law firm, close enough to see how deals get done without ever being the one doing them. My mom still works in insurance claims. One grandfather was a union electrician; the other side of the family worked for the government. Solid, respectable, entirely normal Midwestern jobs. My older brother went into investment banking, and watching him do that up close is honestly what got me interested in finance in the first place.
I didn't come into this with a head start. What I had was a degree in human and organizational behavior, a semester abroad in London my senior year that knocked the insularity out of me, and then work in New York private equity, first at Blue Wolf Capital, then Coastal Partners, then Kingfish Group, where I learned firsthand how deals move.
Being inside those three firms showed me who was building durable wealth versus who was collecting a salary and a carry check while sitting near it. It wasn't the fund people. It was the owners, the ones who held equity, made the calls, and kept the upside when things worked. They were also, not coincidentally, having a lot more fun than the analysts modeling their deals. They also picked up their own phones instead of routing everything through an associate, which is a smaller thing than it sounds like it should be.
That's the entire reason Salt Creek Advisory and HelmIQ exist. At Salt Creek, my brother and I run every deal ourselves, no handoffs, no junior team, so an owner selling something they spent decades building actually gets top dollar for it instead of losing value to a rushed or mismanaged process. HelmIQ exists so the busywork behind a deal doesn't eat the time that should go toward the deal itself. We're just getting started, but the plan is not to stay small. I want Salt Creek Advisory to grow into a real, successful investment bank, not stay a two person shop forever. Nobody handed me any of this. I saw where the equity and the decision making sat, and I wanted to be there. Salt Creek Advisory and HelmIQ, run out of Chicago, are how I get there.