Learn how to advance your career in finance with David Mariano

David Mariano is the founder of Finance Career Launch.

David is a finance executive, with experiences in investment banking and mergers and acquisitions and he created Finance Career Launch as way to share his experiences with young financial professionals who are eager to advance their careers.

But, David is not all numbers and spreadsheets. He is also a podcaster, a blogger, a musician, mentor, and coach.

His goal is to help people build more valuable lives & businesses and he somehow manages to do this all while working a full-time job.

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DAVID MARIANO’S CAREER JOURNEY

David’s career journey is very much like many of ours. He went to school for Finance and started his career in finance.

Through his hard work and dedication, David was able to reach the executive level of the corporate career ladder. But something was missing.

David was so focused on his career that he started to feel like he was spending so much time working that he was denying the other parts of who he was a person.

In his words, after ten years of nose-to-the-grindstone work, he started to struggle with who he really was.

And while there were a lot of good things that came from his hard work and effort, they came at the expense of the other parts of who David is as a person.

In addition, his health and relationships started to decline.

David Mariano knew he needed a change. Rather than continue down his path he made the decision to change course and he left his finance career.

No longer wanting to deny his musical self any longer, David invested in himself and went to a songwriting camp in Nashville.

While at the camp he determined he would give teaching a shot. After all, he had already taught friends and ran workshops on how to play the guitar.

He had his reservations, as many of us do, but he said to himself, “Why not? Why not give this a shot?” And with that, he launched InTune Studios.

InTune studios lasted for about a year but it’s the lessons from that year that David values the most.

THE LEADERSHIP SUCCESS PODCAST

At some point, David Mariano started listening to podcasts and realized that through his studio, he actually had all of the equipment he would need to start his own.

So David decided to share his knowledge on leadership gained from his years of experience in the finance corporate ranks. He shared leadership advice for yourself, for other people and organizations.

The Leadership Success podcast is no longer active but you can listen to it HERE on iTunes.

It was through this podcast, however, that David started to learn other skills such as marketing and building websites. He realized very quickly that he really enjoyed these topics.

This caused him to deviate the focus of the podcast slightly from leadership success to have more of a personal development aspect.

Looking back at the podcast, David now realizes that the mere act of putting himself out there and doing the podcast was actually a big act of self-discovery.

David realized that writing and saying things out loud helped him to clarify his thought process more.

“Going through the process of creating something, you really learn a lot about yourself. Your likes, your dislikes, Your gifts, your weakness”.

FINANCE CAREER LAUNCH COMMUNITY

It was his experience with the Leadership Podcast that eventually lead David Mariano to realize he had a lot of value to offer the finance community.

Throughout his career, people had always come to David to ask for career advice from senior leaders to college students. As he considered that thought, he knew from his past experiences he could add a lot of value by serving the community he knew best, finance professionals and the Finance Career Launch Community was born.

THE SEVEN PILLARS OF SUCCESS

After some contemplation, David developed what he refers to as the 7 pillars of a successful career in Finance. Having gone through the seven pillars myself, I can tell the lessons apply to all careers.

Pillar Zero

The initial pillar is really more of a building block. It’s a mindset thing. The initial video in the series is all about helping you understand that the pillars are not checkboxes.

Instead, they are lifelong skills that when utilized to their fullest, they will help you succeed in life and in business.

Pillar One

David is a strong believer in being a lifelong learner. For David, a lifelong learner is someone who feels as though they’ve never arrived. They read books they’ve read before or new books on the same topic in areas where others may already consider them an expert.

Lifelong learners are constantly in search of new experiences and actively seek out opportunities to increase their knowledge on a particular subject matter.

Pillar Two

The second pillar is all about insatiable curiosity. David considers it a real foundational skill set. Being curious and asking questions is the way to uncover things and experiences you would not have known about otherwise.

David recommends a book titled “How to think like Leonardo DaVinci.”

Pillar Three

Obviously, it’s important as a finance person to be technically competent, but David also believes that is possible to be too technically competent.

In David’s experience, professionals who focus only on the technical aspect of their work, are the ones who miss out on opportunities. While being technically competent is important, you must also be able to communicate to others in a manner they can understand.

Pillar Four

Communication skills might be the biggest pillar. People make businesses work. Every day you are communicating with someone and your ability to communicate between departments and to other people who do not share your experiences and expertise is paramount.

While you may get by with weak communication skills, David tells us that in order to thrive in our careers and our lives, communication is key.

Pillar Five

Pillar five is all about attitude, something that has been brought up on this show more than once. Needless to say, David falls in line with all of the other guests by saying your attitude is everything.

It impacts everything you do and we all have more control over our attitudes then we think.

Pillar Six

Pillar six might make you a little nervous. David believes in order to advance in your career, you need to Stand Out. Dori Clark would agree.

Standing out in your career is how you get promoted, how you get raises, it’s how you elevate your brand in the eyes of others.

Pillar Seven

David has an interesting take on networking that I believe would make David Fisher nod in approval. In a typical week, we all eat approximately 21 meals. David suggests sharing one of those meals with someone else.

Specifically, David Mariano recommends sharing a meal with someone from a different discipline, not necessarily someone who does what you do. Think about that one for a minute.