Meikles & Dimes Nate Meikle

Bryan Porter is a Portfolio Manager at the hedge fund MIG Capital, and he’s been a hedge fund analyst since 2013. Earlier in his career, Bryan spent three years at The Carlyle Group in the $14B US Buyout fund, and was an Investment Banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Bryan earned his B.S. in Accounting from the University of Southern California and his M.B.A. from Stanford Business School.
But before all of that, Bryan was working at McDonald’s and sleeping on couches, in closets, and in cars.
Bryan’s incredible story borders on unbelievable.
In his words, if you ran the experiment of his life 1,000 times, you’re going to get 999 gutter balls.  
But in this in-depth interview, Bryan shares his playbook for how achieved a most improbable comeback.
In this episode we discuss the following:
In high school Bryan was sleeping on friends’ couches. He took a job at McDonald’s. He graduated high school near the bottom decile. He slept in closets and in cars.
When a close friend committed suicide and Bryan got kicked out of his house, he made a change.
“If you realize you’re heading in the wrong direction, even if you’re 95% of the way there, you turn around.”
Bryan took control of his health. He served a church mission. He earned a 4.0. And eventually he made his way to Goldman, Carlyle, Stanford, and the hedge fund world.
And along the way, Bryan learned crucial lessons:
Study to learn, not to pass tests.
Make game day easier than practice.
Persistence is one of life’s biggest differentiators. People are not patient and want results now.
An orchid requires just the right amount of water and sunlight. But a weed can grow in bad dirt, with little water and sunlight, and can punch through concrete. Do you want to be an orchid or a weed?
You can’t outrun your diet. A Big Mac meal is 1300 calories. And an hour at the gym burns just 300 calories.
Find your limiter and train it until it’s no longer a constraint. Then find your next limiter and repeat.
And maybe the most important takeaway of all was Bryan’s playbook:
Set some ridiculous goal that's far out in the future. And then embody that reality with perfect clarity and become it. Smell it, taste it, live it, and your brain won’t know the difference. And then just persist. People overestimate what they can do in a six-month time frame, but underestimate what they can do in a six-year time frame, if they persist.
Follow Bryan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryandporter/
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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/
 

Cory Sanford is the Vice President of Culture and Talent at Guidant Financial, where he led the transition of the entire organization to remote work. He has also helped two different companies win #1 best place to work honors.
Cory is both a graduate of and an instructor in Cornell University’s Executive Master’s in Human Resource Management program. His book HR You Kidding Me? Surprisingly Simple Steps to Unlock the Power of People is a #1 best seller on Amazon.
In this episode we discuss the following:

It’s impossible to dive deep while wearing a life jacket. The things that helped us in the past can be the same things that hold us back today.


Cory has found power in the words, “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure, let’s look together” or “What do you think?” By being okay with not having all the answers, Cory has accelerated his own learning.

Follow Cory:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-sanford/
Website: https://www.guidantfinancial.com/about-us/leadership-team/
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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

In this episode Tozer and I talk with Jake Garn, an international law attorney at Garn & Graber, who is Nate Garn's younger brother. We discuss how Jake became Tozer’s first friend and co-tenant, and how Jake set the stage for all of the youth who came after him.
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

In this episode we continue our discussion with Nate Garn. We discuss how Tozer helped Nate’s friend from Guatemala (Luis) come to the United States and how Tozer picked out Nate’s future wife.
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/
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In this episode we bring in Nate Garn, the current president of Sizzling Platter, which owns and operates more than 650 restaurants, and we learn how Tozer supported Nate in both high school and college.
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/
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Ann Tenbrunsel is a business ethics professor at the University of Notre Dame. Her research examines why employees, leaders and students behave unethically, despite their best intentions to behave ethically. Ann is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six books on this topic—including Blind Spots (with Max Bazerman), Behavioral Ethics (with David De Cremer), Codes of Conduct and (with David Messick)—and she has also published 50 research articles and chapters.
Her research has been covered in the New York Times, NBC, ABC, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, US News and World Report, the Associated Press, The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Huffington Post, Washington Post, NPR, and in blogs for Psychology Today and Freakonomics.
Ann was also my advisor when I was a postdoc at Notre Dame, and she is, in a word, awesome.
In this episode we discuss the following:
No one is immune from behaving unethically. And sadly, over and again we tend to overrate our own ethics.
When facing an ethical dilemma, we predict we’ll behave ethically, and after making our decision we recollect that we’ve behaved ethically. But at the time of decision, we all too often feel unexpected pressure, make some excuse, adopt some rationalization, and behave unethically.
We’re in a constant battle with our want self and our should self. And all too often we give into our wants, rather than standing by our shoulds.
To improve our ethics, we need good sleep, continued education, and practice. Just as we wouldn’t expect to perform well in a meeting without preparing, we shouldn’t expect to perform well in an ethical dilemma if we haven’t prepared.
Study ethics. Take a class, read Ann’s book, learn about the ways that power, pressure, and circumstances can lead us to unethical behavior. And then check your ethics with other people, conduct a pre-mortem, and let your “should-self” win.
Follow Ann:
Ann's Book Blind Spots: https://amzn.to/4cVxgSH
Website: https://mendoza.nd.edu/mendoza-directory/profile/ann-tenbrunsel/
Follow Me:
X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/