In this episode of Careers in Finance on FinPod, we sit down with Duncan McKeen, a seasoned equity research analyst turned financial modeler and educator at CFI. Duncan’s career journey is an inspiring example of adaptation and perseverance, starting in mechanical engineering before transitioning into finance.

Duncan shares how he leveraged his sector expertise in mining to break into equity research, despite having no formal financial background. He candidly discusses the challenges he faced, from learning on the job to mastering financial modeling, and offers insights into what it takes to succeed in high-pressure finance roles. Whether you’re curious about equity research, financial modeling, or considering a career change, Duncan’s story is full of actionable advice and inspiration.

Transcript

Anna Talerico (00:14)
Welcome back to another episode of careers and finance. I’m Anna Talerico and with me today, I’m so excited, is Duncan McKeen, my colleague at CFI, who I have been dying to get on the podcast here for the last couple of weeks. So Duncan, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.

Duncan McKeen (00:33)
Yeah. Thank you, Anna. Just delighted to be here. This is going to be fun.

Anna Talerico (00:36)
It is going to be fun. So as you know, I like to explore careers and finance and people’s journeys. And I find it so fascinating, you know, the different paths that people take. And our audience seems to love these stories as well. It helps people I think see where their career might go or understand, you know, how does one thing that happens in their career build on the next thing. And it’s always so interesting to hear how people get started and then where their journey takes them. So I’m going to dive right in to

your origin story, did you always know that you were going to go into finance? Did you study it? Tell me a little bit about that. How did you come to be in finance?

Duncan McKeen (01:15)
Yeah, great question. I did not think I’d ever be in it when I was in school. I studied mechanical engineering. I went to work as a sales engineer, effectively selling big pieces of mechanical equipment into like the construction industry and that for about five years. And I quickly realized that like the products weren’t that complex, even though I was selling like the most complex products that we had to other engineers. It’s like, they weren’t that complex. It’s like from one year to the next, it was like, wow,

5% more horsepower other than that the machine didn’t change right and over time I just thought like man I have so much more to offer and this isn’t you know it’s not really like challenging me that much so I started to think about you know how I could leverage that into a next step and most of my work at that company Ingersoll Rand was in the mining industry and so I thought okay that’s probably my in because then you know I could work

you know, in capital markets. And what I was envisioning was equity research covering the mining sector because it’s it’s when they’re hiring into capital markets roles, it’s pretty easy actually to find people with financial experience. It’s it’s more difficult for them to find people that have sector experience and have expertise in a particular sector. So they really like that. But I had to I had no financial experience when I started down that path.

Anna Talerico (02:39)
I love it. And well, number one, knowing you now for several years, I’m not surprised that you started as mechanical engineering. I can see that part of you. And I think you bring that in some ways to your, your approach to engaging learners and teaching and how you think about things. So I didn’t know that about you. And somehow I’m not surprised it fits for sure. So there’s a question though here. So effectively a sales engineer doing this, how did you even know

what equity research was? How did that come into your worldview where I’m not going to do this, maybe stay in my sector experience with mining, but parlay that into a finance career? How did you know what equity research even was to know that that’s what you might be able to jump into?

Duncan McKeen (03:21)
That’s a great question. Yeah, that’s a great question. Like at the beginning, I didn’t. I was just looking for more complex things that I could be doing and how I could be making next steps. I was living in Toronto and I had a lot of friends working in finance. So I started to hang out with them and ask them, have conversations with them about what are the different roles and what do people in finance and capital markets do? And through those conversations, I started to hone in on the idea of equity research because I thought, well, this is really neat. I’m a very analytical person. I’m very like…

numbers-driven and I also like learning new things and figuring things out and that’s a lot of the work that that equity research analysts and associates do. So that was a fit but I had this you know the biggest issue or the biggest thing that I had to overcome is I literally like in engineering I took one course that was like finance and accounting and all these things just lumped together just like one chapter on each thing and so I had

I guess broad knowledge, but really not very deep at all. Like I literally didn’t fully understand the difference between debt and equity as I was going in for interviews on Bay Street. It was crazy. Like I had nothing. In fact, my first interview, my first interview, the analyst who I ended up working for, the first thing he said to me was, I only looked at your resume five minutes before the meeting. I did not see an MBA or a CFA on here. I don’t even know why I took the meeting.

Anna Talerico (04:25)
I love it.

Duncan McKeen (04:45)
Like that was like right after I shook his hand, he said that to me and I was like, my gosh. Like, wow. Okay. You’re right. Yeah. But, yeah. So that was tough.

Anna Talerico (04:48)
I’m sorry.

So a little bit of luck there, a little luck that he took the meeting, right? So, and by the way, I think it’s important for people to hear these stories because there’s such an assumption that you have to study it to get into a career in finance, but there’s so many different careers and so many paths in, and I think that people don’t realize, you know, there’s different ways. It’s not just about, you know, necessarily getting a degree in economics or finance or anything. So,

Duncan McKeen (04:57)
Yeah.

Anna Talerico (05:22)
you go into this interview, you don’t really have any experience. He doesn’t see what he needs on your resume. Is that the job that you got?

Duncan McKeen (05:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, in the end, but like, maybe it was luck that I got the interview, but after that, it was not luck. It was just fighting and hard work to get in there. It was like, I think the way I answered that was I said, I have five years of mining experience. And like, I said carefully without insulting him that in, in engineering, I had done much higher levels of mathematics that ever get done in finance. So it’s like, okay, I can figure this stuff out. And it’s just, I know this math. It’s just, I need to understand

Anna Talerico (05:31)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (05:55)
like the language that you use within finance, because different than the language that you use in engineering. So it started there. He still wasn’t convinced. And so, but then the meeting ended with me saying, well, OK, so I think I understand what research analysts do. You build financial models, you use them to form an opinion, and then you communicate that opinion through the equity research that you publish. And I said, OK, well, how about if I built a model for you and then use it to form an opinion or write a report?

You know, not even knowing what I was getting into. I was like, my gosh, what have I signed up for? Cause like, so he bought into that. Okay. So, you know, and I left the meeting and I was immediately started phoning all those same friends. I was mentioning earlier. I’m like, what’s a model? How do I build it? Give me some examples of models or equity research. Cause I just, I had to say that otherwise I was dead in the water. So I thought, well, I’ll commit to that. If I don’t deliver, I don’t deliver, but at least that’s my only shot. So I did that.

Anna Talerico (06:27)
Hahaha!

Amazing.

Duncan McKeen (06:52)
in a couple days of working all day all night almost and and then I made it he was based in Montreal I made up a reason why I was gonna be in Montreal was totally fictitious and I said I’ll just drop in and I’ll show you what I built and it started there but it was it was still a fight after that gosh they hadn’t even I was like their second pick by the end of that and then the first pick didn’t take their offer so they reverted to me but still I had to do calls with the head of equity research and there was probably four or five outgoing calls to the

hiring analysts and the head of research to try to convince them to hire me. I’m like, I’m not the best guy now. I’m admitting that I’m not the best guy, but in six months, I think I’m going to be the best guy because I have sales experience. I can sell these products like I have mining experience. Like it was a fight though, like…

Anna Talerico (07:35)
So much hustle, you know, to work to do that, to get to set your sights on something and get it and then to like self confidence to say to just feel confident enough to say I’m going to do it and jump in knowing that you didn’t even know what a model was. So I don’t know if you remember this, but do you even know you say to this guy, I’m going to build a model to show you, you’re going to your friends and going like, what’s a model? Like, do you actually even remember those, those days of like, how did you

Duncan McKeen (07:58)
Hmm.

Anna Talerico (08:03)
get started. So you pull up Excel, obviously, but how did you get your, your mental framework without, you know, examples and things in front of you?

Duncan McKeen (08:06)
Yep.

I just, I ended up getting my hands on about three different models, I think, and maybe three or four pieces of research. And I just sort of emulated what was there, but I had to do it for a different company. Cause he said, fine, go do it for this company, knowing that he had to initiate coverage of that company. So he’s getting me to do his work for him. It was fine. Cause I was trying to sign up for doing his work for him. that’s, that’s what I did. I just sort of emulated what I saw there. It was not, I mean, looking at it today, it was like awful, but I think he,

Anna Talerico (08:28)
I’m sorry.

Duncan McKeen (08:42)
appreciated like the drive and the hustle, making the effort to go see him. So yeah, it was really tough. And then so I ended up getting that job. But then that was like, wow, what a relief. I got the job. But then then it’s like just that was just one mountain I had to climb. Because then it’s like, I still don’t have financial experience. And so and there was no CFI in those days. So it’s like, so I made the choice to do CFA. That’s another mountain I had to climb, like while I was working 80 hours a week.

Anna Talerico (08:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (09:11)
So trying to figure out that and I built this one terrible model and this one awful report. So like then how to build better models and learning the companies he had under coverage is like many mountains to climb kind of thing. Yeah.

Anna Talerico (09:26)
So tell me a little bit about, well there’s kind of two parts I want to dig into on that first role. First is like, what was the role like, you know, day to day and everything, but really to this like learning on the fly. What were those, what was that first year or two like where you’re kind of just trying to figure it out as you go along. So you’re kind of probably thrown in a bit. Did they provide you training actually at all?

Duncan McKeen (09:50)
No, I was no training provided. So this was an independent brokerage and a lot of the training which gets done is happening by the banks will provide training going in. There’s the most training provided to people in investment banking. They’re bringing the lion’s share of the revenue into the capital markets group. They have more budget to spend on training, less on equity research, and even less in a non-bank-owned equity research jobs. There was no formal training.

Anna Talerico (09:50)
No, no, no, interesting. Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (10:20)
Not initially, I think I did some maybe a couple of years in, but not initially. It was really looking at the models he built, which by the way, weren’t great. So I was learning his bad habit and asking a ton of questions, right? And being careful that when I got asked questions, if I didn’t know the answer, I’d just say, I’m not sure, but let me try to figure it out for you. That’s really important. You can’t pretend. They’ll see right through it. There’s no experience. Yeah.

Anna Talerico (10:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Such an important skill, right? I wish every professional and young professional, all professionals knew, right? If you don’t know, just say it and just say, I’ll get back to you. Yeah, and true in any career for sure. So what was that first role like? Tell me a little bit about day to day. What was a day in the life like for you, you know, this first couple of years in that role?

Duncan McKeen (10:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, totally. So ultimately, what you’re trying to do, first of all, you come in in the position of an equity research associate, and then if you’re successfully progressed to an analyst. I just mentioned that because it’s the opposite on the investment banking side. You come in as an analyst and then you progress to an associate. It’s just confusing. So I came in as an associate and an equity research associate, the relationship with…

with the analyst is really like a marriage designed to not last. People last like a year to maybe four years in that role because they either become so experienced that they can do the same job as the analyst and they want to be an analyst or they gain a bunch of experience and they leverage that to go somewhere else. So typically it’s not forever. For me, I wanted to be an analyst. So from the first day I was just thinking, okay, I got to learn everything that he does. And that generally would start with,

Anna Talerico (11:35)
I’m going to go ahead and close the video.

Duncan McKeen (11:59)
taking over some responsibility for the financial models. So first of all, getting into them, seeing what’s there, and then understanding what happens and what you do with them when new information comes in. So could be quarterly updates, company reports, results, and you’re going through and you’re updating the model, which is like the really heavy periods, like reporting season’s awful, inequity research, because it’s like all the companies report within a span of a week or two.

And you’re just like, sometimes the reports are coming out late at night, and then you’re trying to like digest them, form an opinion to get, get things into compliance by the next morning at six or they release a report announcement at in the morning, which is really terrible. Cause then you’re under the gun to get something out before the market opens. so it’s yeah, it starts off as a lot of work in the models. And then once you get familiar with them, you start taking over some of the responsibilities for writing

the reports as well. Once you understand that person’s view, and you also need to understand their writing style because you’re trying to really pretend that you’re them, because their name’s at the top and your name’s underneath them, so it’s as if they’ve written it, so you need to write it in their voice. So then eventually if you’re successful, you get to the point where you can just do all that stuff. And that’s the point where, okay, you’re ready to take on coverage on your own. Yeah.

Anna Talerico (13:22)
Yeah. So we’re going to come back and talk about modeling as you know, that that’s a, that’s a big one. But what in that role and what you were doing and learning and all that, did you love it? Like, what did you love about it?

Duncan McKeen (13:26)
Yep.

Yeah. I, so I loved being like a private investigator. That was, that was so cool. So you’re like company releases results and they say these things and you’re like, really? You know, let me find out. So if you look at the financials, sometimes everything looks fine. You got to go into the notes. That’s where they’re going to hide all the dirty little secrets and you want to get to those. Cause that’s what the buy side wants. That’s what a portfolio wants to, a portfolio manager wants to hear is like,

Anna Talerico (13:46)
Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (14:03)
Is there anything that they’re trying to hide in here? Is there anything going on that’s not obvious on the surface? And that’s what they want from you. And then you try to see if it’s major enough that it would actually change your opinion on the company. And yeah, I loved that part of it. I loved the modeling part. I loved all the parts. I loved the modeling because then it was really played to my engineering side, attention to detail and building an electronic replica of the company.

And it was really neat that when you came to an opinion, then you got to get creative about how you were going to express that opinion and how are you going to sort of pitch it because half of the job was digging into the models and trying to get to an opinion. But the other half of the job is like putting on a suit and going to New York or Chicago and pitching these ideas to portfolio managers on the buy side. Once you got to the analyst position.

Anna Talerico (14:57)
Yeah. So did you, and so what was your next role after that, that first role that did, was it analyst?

Duncan McKeen (14:58)
So I loved all the parts of it.

It was analyst, yeah, after a couple of years. and, it was super fun. It was, I couldn’t do it today cause it’s like, it’s super high pressure and it’s very, very intense and can be stressful hours. And in equity research, those hours also start really, really early in the morning. Like I was up for a decade. I was up every morning at four or 30 or five, trying to see what happened overnight in different markets and try to understand whether or not.

Anna Talerico (15:07)
Nice. Okay.

Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (15:33)
that will impact our markets when they open. And if there was a press release through the night, then you got to write it up immediately and get it in so it it’s out. So you can start talking about it ideally before the market opens like the whole thing. Now a lot of the trading volume and stuff is happening really, really early in the day when the market first opened. So you’ve got this crazy, crazy intense morning and then it kind of quiets down a little bit in the afternoon. Yeah.

Anna Talerico (16:00)
So a little side road, I don’t usually ask this, but you know, you’re talking about the reality of these roles. You’re up at 430 every morning for a decade. You’re lots of, you know, just all, lots of pressure, odd hours, lots of work. Was there a time in the, your time as an analyst that you found a way to balance your personal life too, or your health, or the things that were important to you? Or was it just all grind flat out, you know, leaving it all on the field?

Duncan McKeen (16:27)
Hmm. Pretty good balance. All things considered, I guess, as much as you can have balance when you’re constantly doing about 80 hour weeks. And then like, I loved it. I like, I really, really loved it. But I just got to this point where I realized I couldn’t do it forever. Those kind of hours and that kind of like the, so the intensity I’m trying to describe is really like, so the best research analysts in the planet are still only right 60 % of the time.

Anna Talerico (16:32)
Did you? Yeah.

Now.

Duncan McKeen (16:57)
That means 40 % of the time, by the way, their clients are really aggravated with them, right? You have to have thick skin. And that’s a lot of pressure because you’re also, you’re putting your opinions out there in print and that’s forever. So then if you’re wrong, they know you’re wrong. You know, they can, they can look back and see the research reports from two years prior and you’re going to be wrong. You just got to live with that. You just got to understand that without you, they’d have a 50-50 chance.

Anna Talerico (17:01)
Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (17:26)
And with you, maybe they’ve got a 60 % chance of getting it right. And that gives them the advantage that they’re looking for, you know, so that kind of pressure. And I also got to the point where it was like, I couldn’t find anyone working in those roles or even senior to those roles that had a life that I wanted. Like it was, it wasn’t balanced for a lot of the people. And I’m like, I want more balance than that. So that was, that was when the transition or the thought to transitioning into teaching started for me. Yeah.

Anna Talerico (17:30)
Yeah.

Okay, so you were in that role for about 10 years, same firm, or did you do that time where you had different firms?

Duncan McKeen (18:01)
Two different firms, yeah, GMP Securities, which is now Stifle, and then Macquarie Capital, which is like the largest bank in Australia. Big focus on natural resources, mining and oil and gas and infrastructure there, yeah.

Anna Talerico (18:14)
Yeah. Yeah. So, high pressure. I mean, when you, as you’re describing it too, it’s like not just the, it’s not the pressure of the time, right? It’s the pressure of the responsibility and the, right. And like you, as you said, of just the making the calls or putting out your opinion and people relying on that. I mean, that’s, I think there’s, there’s several paths in finance that are like that. Right. I think about, you know, venture private equity, say, you know, you’re taking LP money and

it and there’s a pressure. There’s a big responsibility with those. Yeah. So you do it for a while and then you start to think maybe something different because you’re looking at the people that are, you know, maybe further in their career and think that’s not the life that you want. Let me ask you this before we jump to just those moments of your thinking about a different path and you’re perhaps teaching. By that time, you know,

Duncan McKeen (18:42)
Yeah.

Anna Talerico (19:09)
Spoiler alert, Duncan, Rikki, and you are an incredible financial modeler, incredible trainer around financial modeling, very passionate about financial modeling. During the time as an analyst, those 10 years in doing equity research, had you kind of transformed from those early days of that and what the heck you were doing in modeling to what you would consider to be expert or did that come later as you jumped into teaching?

Duncan McKeen (19:15)
Thanks, Anna. For sure, yep.

I would say like I got to the point of being like being an expert in equity research in the sector I was covering take me out of that sector and I’d be like, my gosh, I don’t know other sectors, right? It’s hard and you you really do get pigeonholed into one sector. That’s another thing which is frustrating because it’s like mining is very cyclical and what do you do when it literally just the whole thing rolls over which it did and I was literally not bullish on any of the companies I’m covering.

Anna Talerico (19:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (19:59)
So I’m writing these reports saying like, sell, sell, sell. I’m like writing my own eulogy, right? It’s like, yeah, I need to find another job. Right. So I did transition to other sectors. I started covering like fertilizers and other things. but yeah, so, so that was a part of the reason, but I guess your original question. So like, I didn’t know at that time I wanted to go into teaching, but there’s, there’s a teaching component to equity research because you’re, you have to know the companies really well. And then you end up

Anna Talerico (20:05)
Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (20:28)
teaching them to the buy side a lot and you teach them about your investment thesis. So you’re writing and you’re training people on how it all works because a lot of them are in these roles. They don’t necessarily know how your sector or subsector works. So there’s a big teaching component to that. And I enjoyed that aspect of the job. My parents are both teachers too. So I kind of had this inkling that maybe this could be a thing.

Anna Talerico (20:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Okay. So, so, so tell us a little bit about that career, that career transition. Like did you just, it sounds like, you know, you’re reflecting on, you don’t like continue where you see in the life. if you were to continue, were you exploring lots of different options or did you pretty quickly hone in on you wanted to become an instructor?

Duncan McKeen (21:13)
Yeah, I was exploring a bunch of different options. I explored the buy side. I worked on the buy side for a very short stint, not even a year. so that, that was a little bit more interesting to me because you could, you could move across sectors a little bit more. You also didn’t have the pressure of like, we’re trying to sell equities all the time. Like there’s no pressure to be bullish on stuff. You could just be bearish on it, or you could, if you’re looking for a long short fund, you can just short a sector that you think is going to go, go down. So,

Anna Talerico (21:33)
Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (21:42)
But yeah, ultimately for me, I just came to the realization teaching might be really, really interesting because I’d become an expert in equity research. I was a decent financial modeler. I wasn’t an expert though. I’d been using the mouse shamefully for 10 years on in equity research. I should be embarrassed to even say that, but so I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t even at the upper levels of like what a financial modeler should be doing. Partly because I didn’t have that much formal training in it.

Anna Talerico (21:58)
okay.

Duncan McKeen (22:12)
So I started learning to become a really expert modeler as I started teaching it, sort of learning on the job. I’m like, okay, I’m going to be in front of people now. I got to use the keyboard because it’s like the right way to do it. No more mouse. I quit the mouse instantly and like just switched in like two weeks or something over to the keyboard. And that’s when I really gained a ton of experience in financial modeling, I think. Yeah.

Anna Talerico (22:37)
And was it, I just have to ask because knowing you on the outside, it just feels like you have such a spark and a love for it and a passion for it and a passion for doing it well and teaching others how to do it. Well, did you find that there was a spark? Like at some moment you said like, this is really important, modeling well is important and I love it and I love teaching it. Did you find that there was some kind of spark in you?

Duncan McKeen (22:45)
Yeah.

Yeah. The other was when I first figured out I wanted to teach, first of all, I thought that was like at a university. It’s like, well, that’s where people teach. So I went and started teaching in university, taught like an intro to finance course at Queens. And, but then I got, back in touch, well, back in touch with some people at the marquee group because they had taught me one course and so I knew them. And that’s when kind of the spark happened. It’s like, wow. I could do teaching and I could do it on financial modeling.

Anna Talerico (23:10)
I’m going to go ahead and close the video.

Duncan McKeen (23:30)
And it doesn’t have to be so theoretical and academic. It can be more practical, which resonated a lot more with me. So that’s really when the spark happened and things started to align. And I really started seeing like, like the next vision for where I wanted to go. And, it was just a great fit and an amazing fit. And I loved it. did that for like, well, no, including like what I’ve done at CFI as well as probably over a decade, maybe 12 years now,

teaching financial modeling, mostly in person, but now for three years asynchronously.

Anna Talerico (24:04)
So two questions, I guess, really this is maybe the easier one. What do you love about teaching or what do you find, why is it right for you?

Duncan McKeen (24:16)
I love like, first of all, I like learning things myself. And so when, when I sort of, when I, when I learn things myself and I have those like aha moments myself, I want to share those. I want to share those with others because it just, it just feels really good. And in, in live teaching, I was able to see them have those aha moments in person, which is very, very rewarding. Now I have to imagine them having aha moments because they’re happening, you know, asynchronously, or they’re happening through the comments later or something like that.

Anna Talerico (24:44)
Yes. Yes.

Duncan McKeen (24:46)
So I do love really love that about teaching. I also think I’m just naturally good at like boiling things down to basic principles and then communicating those those out So yeah, I just I don’t know I just think I’m thankful because I think I was just born with it I did not really go through formal teaching training really not much. So I’m very very thankful for that I just think it was just something that I just have

Anna Talerico (25:13)
Yeah. Well, it sounds like that was in your blood with your parents, but I would agree that it is a natural gift of yours having sat through some of your live training. Lucky enough, you’ve done some macabre training here with us and the staff, which is always so fun, but your courses as well. I mean, it definitely seems like you’ve got the gift, the touch. So switching gears a little, what do you love about modeling? Like just what is it about it that you, that really speaks to you?

Duncan McKeen (25:16)
I think so, yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

No.

Hmm. It’s a good question. It’s almost I don’t think about it too much. I just love it. I like Excel. It feels very fast and efficient to me when you’re on the keyboard. It’s like, it feels like you’re just getting a lot done. I do like that. I also like it. It’s like it’s an art as well as it is a science to there’s it’s not just numbers. It’s it’s design. good design is not easy to do. I like that challenge.

Anna Talerico (25:47)
Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (26:12)
I like the mix of the creativity of the design of the model and also the sort of the analytical aspect of the quantitative things that you’re investigating. also like the idea of it’s also probably the best way to learn about a company. And a lot of people would say until you’ve modeled a company, you don’t really know it. I like, I agree with that. You can think, you know, it great. Go build an electronic replica of the whole business, like replicate everything that’s in the business inside a model.

And then you’re done through that process. You learn so much about the company. It’s really important. So I do love that because it’s like an opportunity to learn about a lot about a business. So I really liked that about it too. I also, I also think it’s something that, a lot of people haven’t had formal training on. So I think that like, like doing it also, I get this sense that like, wow, people are really going to appreciate this, you know, cause a lot of people just haven’t been through that great formal training before.

Anna Talerico (26:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (27:12)
They just learned like I did from somebody else’s bad habits. It’s very common.

Anna Talerico (27:12)
So true.

Yeah, it’s all it’s so true. And it’s always it’s always surprising me. It shouldn’t surprise me anymore that, you know, sometimes in the middle of the night when I can sleep and I’m listening, looking at all the subreddits and there’s invariably every night, there’s somebody saying, I just haven’t got asked to build a model and some sub, you know, finance sub subreddit, and I don’t have any clue where to start. Like, and so I think so many people are going to get thrown into it. But, you know, it strikes me not only that you love modeling, and you’re passionate about that, but you’re really true

Duncan McKeen (27:32)
Yeah.

Anna Talerico (27:46)
about just doing it right and doing it exceptionally well. And so why do you think that is? It’s not just that you like modeling, right? You like to do it really well and teach others how to do it exceptionally well. And I think there’s this, I don’t know if that comes from your mechanical engineering background maybe or just your perfectionism.

Duncan McKeen (28:01)
Yeah.

It might. Yeah, it might. The perfectionism and the mechanical engineering background are actually two things which were a hindrance to me at the beginning. Like my first models were awful. They were like, I was replicating every transaction inside the company. This is a way too complex. Actually, and this is a true story. When I started working and covering my own companies and ultimately the buy side asks for your models a lot. I’d send my models out. I wouldn’t hear from them again

Anna Talerico (28:21)
I’m sorry.

Duncan McKeen (28:35)
because they probably open their up and they’re like, this is a disaster. I can’t understand it. Like his brain maybe understands it in his way, but this doesn’t work for me too much. So I had to learn how to like, whittle them down just to like, like, okay, what are the important things? Okay. This, these 400 rows, this can be like five rows. Don’t need this detail. It doesn’t matter. You know, so a lot of it was just learning how to strip it down to what’s important. so it was a hindrance a little bit at the beginning for sure. Yeah.

Anna Talerico (28:36)
So as I wrap up Careers in Finance, I always ask, what does it take to be successful in the person’s role? So I’m going to ask you three times, because there’s three things I want to ask you about that. I guess the first thing is, somebody who wants to get into equity research or have a successful career in equity research, what advice would you give them? And what do you think it takes to be successful?

Duncan McKeen (29:30)
That’s a great question. I guess whatever I’m going to say probably applies to investment banking too. Attention to detail is huge. Really huge. So like you think about either of these roles. The advice you’re giving to people, whether it’s investment banking advice, whether or not they should go buy another company or equity research, whether or not they should take a large position in a company. You’re asking somebody to make a big financial decision

on your advice and that advice is based on analysis you’ve done. You have to double, triple, check it four times, have peers check it. You have to have attention to detail. It really, really matters. You can’t have them find an error in a model or an error in a presentation. Otherwise, you’re shot. It’s over. They’ll just go to the next analyst and that’ll be that for that client. So important for sure.

Anna Talerico (30:21)
Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (30:29)
That’s a huge one. So just you have to do that and you have you have to enjoy it and care about it enough to do it. If you don’t like it, then that’s not for you. Maybe. Right.

Anna Talerico (30:40)
Yeah. Well, so that was, you know, what does it take to be successful in equity research? And I bet, so the next thing I was going to say, what does it take to be a successful modeler? And I bet it’s attention to detail too, right? Similar answer, you think? Yeah. Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (30:54)
Efficiency too is a big one. Like I wasn’t an incredibly efficient modeler because I was using the mouse. So shameful. But you have to be now. You really do. You have to move fast on them. You’re under a time crunch all the time. It’s important. Also what we mentioned earlier is that if you don’t know, do not ever, ever pretend. It’s so OK.

Anna Talerico (31:03)
I’m going to go ahead and close the video.

Duncan McKeen (31:19)
Sometimes people in capital markets will ask you a question that’s tough. They already know the answer to, and they’re only asking you to see how you answer it. And if you say, when you don’t know, it’s just a test. I didn’t know that going in, but I did have the advice like, do not pretend you can’t. it’s totally fine to say, okay, I know this one thing that you asked about this other thing. I’m not sure, but I’m going to look into it and I will get back to you. And that’s totally fine. That’s what they want to hear

because they don’t want to then communicate something that’s incorrect across to a client and tarnish that relationship.

Anna Talerico (31:56)
Yeah, such good advice. And then what does it do you think take? Well, let me ask you this. Somebody who wants to get into training, right? I think there’s finance professionals who are thinking about what is the, what does the next chapter look like for them? And training is an option in a route. What do you think, what advice would you give to somebody who wants to maybe transform their current role into

Duncan McKeen (32:12)
Morning.

Anna Talerico (32:21)
a teaching role in finance and banking? What do you think it takes to be successful or what kind of advice would you give somebody?

Duncan McKeen (32:27)
I would say that if they think they might be interested in it, then go try it in some small way. For me, it was, I was doing a tiny bit of it in equity research and I enjoyed those parts of the job. So then it didn’t immediately start in going into university and teaching. I went to the university and just started doing little guest lectures, like just little 15 minute stints inside somebody else’s course. And that’s a great, really low pressure way to just see if you like it.

See if you like it, see if you think you’re good at it and stuff. And eventually that transitioned into a course and then like full -time teaching, which is what it’s been for a number of years now. But I would just say go figure a way to just do teaching somewhere in some small way or mentoring or something.

Anna Talerico (33:09)
Love that. I love that especially because I find the more of the careers and finance podcast interviews I do, the more this idea of just throwing yourself into something, just doing something becomes this advice and it’s through line through all of these interviews because there’s so many moments in our professional development that we just have to go for it, right? We have to say, I’m going to leave mechanical engineering and I’m going to jump into equity research and I’m going to go for it. Or I’m going to

Duncan McKeen (33:22)
Yeah.

Anna Talerico (33:38)
leave equity research and go into teaching that you just have to kind of sometimes take the leap, right? Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (33:45)
You not always have to take a full leap, but this is why I like to just go, go try it. Like I would give that advice to, to somebody who thinks they might be interested in, in a financial role or might be interested in FMVA. It’s like, so go build a model. Go see if you like building models. It’s not for everybody. You might love it. You might also be like, man, this sucks. Way too many numbers. My wife comes in and sees spreadsheets up on my screen. She’s like, how do you do that? So boring. I’m like, I don’t know. I love it. So let’s like, go try it. See if you love it.

Anna Talerico (34:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Duncan McKeen (34:14)
Because if you’re going to go into an interview, financial interview nowadays, you kind of have to have done some modeling prior to that interview anyways, because you need to know about it. You need to speak to it. You need to even maybe have examples on hand that you can show them the things you build. Either it’s printouts you can take in or files that you can send them after the interview. That’s pretty important. So best to find out if you like it.

Anna Talerico (34:37)
Yeah, and I like just get in and just start doing things and playing around, get some model examples or templates and start to work on it, right? Scott and I were just talking about this and one thing that’s different in finance today, you know, it’s such a, historically you got the job and then you got trained. You know, when Scott started 30 years ago, he got the job and then he spent six months being trained by his employer. And he was saying, you know, these days people, the employers expect you to come

Duncan McKeen (34:42)
Thank you.

Anna Talerico (35:03)
with skills or with having done some things that you can show. And I find that across not just finance and banking, that’s true. I was saying, you know, even today, right, you don’t, you write a book and build your audience before you get a publisher. It used to be, you got a publisher and they did those things with you. So I think in every industry, that’s more and more true. Like we have to be self, you know, learning and exploring and being curious and doing some of these things before you can’t just kind of walk in cold, right?

Duncan McKeen (35:32)
No, it’s very true. You have to walk in with the skills. They’re not going to put you through six minutes of training anymore. For sure. Yeah. It’s like, if you don’t have the skills on day one, they’ll find the person that does. So yeah, you got to get them for sure.

Anna Talerico (35:35)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, well, Duncan, thank you for joining me. I, I feel really lucky to get to work with you. You’re such an inspiring teacher and, just you’re the creativity and innovation and the passion that just comes through. So I feel really lucky and I feel really lucky that you are a guest today too. Thank you.

Duncan McKeen (35:54)
I mean.

Thanks, then.

Also, I feel very lucky to be here as well. It’s fun to do the podcast too. A lot of fun.

Anna Talerico (36:11)
Yeah, yeah. All right, well, thanks again and thanks everybody for listening to another episode. See you next time.

Duncan McKeen (36:18)
Yep, thanks everyone.