Member Spotlight | Soliman Abbas

Meeyeon (00:06)
Hi everyone. And welcome back to another episode of the CFI Member Spotlight, where we sit down with real learners from around the world and share their unique stories behind their success. Today, I am joined by Soliman Abbas, an investment banking analyst at HC Securities, a recent graduate of the University of Bristol,

and newly minted FMVA holder from CFI. So, Soliman’s journey into finance has been shaped by a variety of experiences from early roles in sales to internships, virtual programs across banking, private equity, and trading. And he’s really steadily built up his skills and industry knowledge. So, in this conversation, we’re about to talk about how he navigated the first steps after graduation, how he sought on that hands-on experience that everyone requires

and his approach to staying motivated while keeping a great positive perspective. So welcome, Soliman to the show.

Soliman Abbas (01:04)
Meeyeon, thank you very much for this lovely introduction, and I’ve been really looking forward to this podcast for like weeks, I guess. Really excited to start.

Meeyeon (01:13)
Yeah.

So let’s dive right in. So I know that I know where you did your undergraduate degree and you did it in economics, but I’m wondering, did you get an interest in finance earlier on in your life? Did you have any family influences? Did you have someone around you that worked in the industry? How did you first get your interest?

Soliman Abbas (01:39)
So I guess like the first time that I was really interested in finance was in my first year of uni. So yeah, so like the course that I chose to

Meeyeon (01:47)
Okay.

Soliman Abbas (01:54)
get enrolled in was economics and management actually, where it was very diversified when it comes to the number of modules or the diversification of the amount of things that I get to learn, including economics, business management, finance, accounting, marketing. So it was basically a small bit of everything. And I think that starting from the first year when I first started talking with my flatmates,

or my colleagues from the same course, from economics, economics and finance, economics and accounting, I really got to see their perspectives in life. What are their dreams? What do they aspire to become after uni, after finishing those three years of uni? And I reached the conclusion that finance is actually…

Like it’s an industry where you can get to learn things like each and every month. It’s always changing, it’s always evolving. Like the number of skills that I would just try to develop from finance, it’s way more than economics, way more than business management and other sectors. So I started going to these society meetings, which was mainly the banking and investment society.

I got to speak to like-minded people, people who are really interested and curious to become tomorrow’s leaders in finance. So after that, I started reading books about finance. I’ve started talking to lecturers, professors in finance, and I found it really interesting,

like an interesting thing to pursue or like an interesting career to pursue after graduating. But then I came to realize how important it is to start building my CV, adding experience, adding internships, certifications. And I think since year one, I was able to develop some of these skills,

talk to people in networking events related to finance, getting really to know how can I break into finance, especially investment banking.

Meeyeon (04:25)
And were you an international student at the University of Bristol?

Soliman Abbas (04:29)
Yes, I was an international student coming all over from Egypt to the United Kingdom to study at the eighth best university in the United Kingdom which is called the University of Bristol.

Meeyeon (04:42)
And

the reason why I ask that is I know that we have a very global audience and I think it’s really important to appreciate that being an international student is not easy. It typically means that you are, what is it, when you start university, are you 18? I forget. I forget when we start university, but we’re quite young. And to be going, yeah, exactly. Be like turning 18, leave your family, the country that you’re familiar with.

Soliman Abbas (04:58)
Yes, I was…

Yeah, I was 17.5 actually.

Meeyeon (05:12)
go to somewhere that is completely new and all of a sudden have to start thinking about, I’m like someone either you’re paying or your parents are paying or there’s a debt involved for this university. You have to make the experience worthwhile. It’s only like three or four years, then you have to get a job. But in order to get a job, they want you to have work experience. So where do you start? And it’s, I think it’s

important to appreciate that if you are an international student, there’s a lot of, I think, a lot of quick maturation. Like you have to become very mature very quickly because you don’t necessarily have that family and support system right next to you right away. So I think that’s something that I really wanted to highlight with you is that you left your country

went to University of Bristol and already you’re thinking about, okay, like I wanna do well in these courses. I wanna find people that are like-minded where we could learn from each other, support each other and join the university associations, get that internship. You’re thinking about all of this right away, which I think is all like, it’s the beginning of a long journey, but it’s really important I think to recognize how much effort goes into that and how quickly you need to mature from it.

So basically I just want to make sure, like I’d want to say like great job on doing that. It’s not an easy thing to do. And I know that after you graduate it also becomes very stressful because as an international student you have only a certain amount of time to get a job, to renew that visa, etc. And so when you were at university, how did you find your very first work experience? Because I find that

You know, that’s a long time ago for me, but I remember it was like, man, like even the internships that you apply for, they’re, generally open. You’ll talk about how certain internships are like really great for the very first ones. But typically I remember when I was looking for internships, they always wanted people that were on like their second or third internship potentially. And it was so hard to get that very first one because they always look for work experience. How did you go about that?

Soliman Abbas (07:40)
Well, I think that basically the… just building the first floor of any building is usually the hardest. Like when you’re just a first year student… Like, usually first year students, they barely have anything on their CVs, it’s very hard to differentiate between one another.

Meeyeon (07:50)
I love that analogy. I’ve never heard of it, but I love it.

Soliman Abbas (08:03)
as like fresh, or like fresh students. So it’s always the toughest time where you just try to prove that you actually, you’re worth having this internship or this experience. So it’s mainly like, I think that the recruiters at this stage or like the specific internships that I applied for, I mainly relied on my passion.

dreams that I want to achieve at such a young age. yeah, I basically think that my net worth at that time was my age. Like recruiters finding someone who is 17.5 years old or 18 years old who is just as passionate, I think, as myself. Someone who really wants to learn, wants to develop, wants to know the key fundamentals of breaking into finance, investment banking, private equity.

That’s how I was able to convince them to give me even a short internship. So I think during the summer between my first and second year of uni, surprisingly, something that I still can’t believe until now, I’ve completed three internships related to finance. The three of them were based in Egypt.

One was finance and accounting in a startup. Another one was in private equity in one of the three top investment banks in Egypt. The third one was in a corporate bank. So I think during each and every one of these internships, I was able to demonstrate my passion and my skills that I want to learn even more about the industry. Like even though I was just a first year student,

We only knew the fundamentals, the basics. We didn’t really know much about the skills needed, the valuation process that’s needed in investment banking. example, the technical interview questions, how can I ace them? All of these things, I just wanted to learn at that time. I wanted to prepare myself for the second year of uni, third year, like the next stages. Like I know that I was only on level one at that period of time, but I wanted to know what do I actually…

What skills do I require to have in order to jump to level two, which is the more intense internships in that field. And these kinds of fields and industries and jobs, I think it’s super important to just start early on in your career. I guess people who are just maybe in their mid-20s or late-20s, it’s much more difficult for them to break into investment banking and private equity, for example.

So yeah, I think that’s basically it.

Meeyeon (10:51)
And so what was your final internship before you graduated? And how was that experience like for you at the time? Because I get the sense that you are very intentional about the choices that you make, the internships that you go after, probably every kind of chapter of your life you treat as a learning opportunity. A great phrase that a friend of mine and CFI collaborator Paul Barnhurst has used is he thinks it’s really important that

people keep in mind the idea of skill stacking, especially today where everything is so competitive, information is so easy to access. It’s so important to be like, okay, like I currently have a university degree from a great university. I’m slowly building internships that are leading to the path that I want to go down. How do I make myself, you know, stand out amongst peers? How do I make more improvements along the

path that I traveled to have more and more skills that are suited for the role. And so you are skill stacking from like day one in university. What was your last internship like for you?

Soliman Abbas (12:01)
So I think the last internship that I had, it was in private equity. This is really when I came to realize how important it is to just learn the fundamentals of the valuation process, whether it’s DCF valuation, trading comps, or even the president transactions. At that period of time, I was in my second year.

We barely had any modules or courses that were related to valuation. So that was the challenge. I didn’t really know what to do in order to be able to learn the basic skills of valuation. We’ve only learned accounting. We’ve only learned corporate finance. But we haven’t really kind of engaged in Excel spreadsheets. We haven’t really gone through sophisticated.

formulas and all of these valuation processes that we go through. So here’s the time where I came to realize certificates like FMVA are super important and it’s worth the investment at that period of time. So…

During that time, I’ve gone through lot of interviews with heads of investment banking, private equity, applying for graduate roles because our uni was basically three years. So there wasn’t much time to do loads and loads of internships, even though I did. But we only had two summers in between our university.

Meeyeon (13:38)
And I want to ask was, so

I think you were in university as the coronavirus was kind of peaking and then tapering off. Were you doing, were any internships like in person, in office, 100 % of the time?

Soliman Abbas (13:58)
Yes, I think all of them were in person. Luckily, they were in person. So I get to kind of network with my colleagues, with the heads, with my coworkers. So I think that’s a huge advantage that I really enjoy more than just the virtual one. just going back to the question that you asked, I think the FMVA certification has helped me a lot. It was mainly a bridge between

the theoretical part that we got to learn from uni and the practical part. So over there, like in the 16 or the 17 modules, I think most of them I’ve used in interviews, like even if it’s a small bit of every module or every course, it helped me understand the practical side. How can I balance…

you know, a balance sheet, the assets liability and equity. How can I do that? It was basically the answer, all of the answers that I needed for the questions were found in the FMVA. It helped me a lot, even in landing my graduate role in investment banking.

Meeyeon (15:10)
Yeah, and that’s so great to hear because for me, when I am showing a little bit of my age here, when I was in university, there was nothing like this. There was no FMBA. There was no real online learning path. There were blogs and really, know, like very simple websites that talked about, you know, what the interview process is like. But largely for me, I then this was before Amazon. I had to go and buy a book, like a published physical book.

Soliman Abbas (15:24)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (15:40)
about careers in investment banking and just careers at an investment bank. So not necessarily in, know, M&A transactions or industry group coverage, but to also learn about, you know, at an investment bank, there’s also capital markets, there’s ECM, DCM syndication. And so that’s how I went about my research. But I remember going through the interview process and prior to that doing internships and a friend of mine, he did his internships. He did his first one or second one at Merrill Lynch.

Soliman Abbas (15:55)
Okay.

Meeyeon (16:10)
back when was Merrill Lynch. And I just remember him being like, okay, so like, do I bring with me on day on to work? He was at a trading desk. He’s like, Do I bring a book? And we were just kind of laughing and like, well, obviously not. But at that point, it was the reality that everything that we learned in school and we were in a finance program, we were learning like good background knowledge that was very relevant to the role, but we were not ready.

Soliman Abbas (16:10)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Hahaha

Yeah.

Meeyeon (16:39)
to be like operational on day one. We had no exposure really to Bloomberg. We had no idea that there were gonna be all these turnt phones everywhere. And certainly we just had done very insignificant work in Excel or in PowerPoint. And so to hear someone say that FMVA was a really great condensed practical,

Soliman Abbas (17:03)
Absolutely.

Meeyeon (17:05)
warm-up to the real world is so, so nice to hear. Because it’s stuff that I wish I had. So then after when you graduated, I’d love for you to take us through the experience of being an international student that’s looking for full time. And eventually you did find your full time role, but take us the in between.

How did you navigate that process?

Soliman Abbas (17:29)
Yeah, absolutely. Of course, during my second year of uni, as I told you, it’s a three-year program. So I already have to start looking for graduate programs during the second year or during the middle of the second year. So during the second year, I’ve applied to hundreds, if not…

I don’t want to exaggerate hundreds, thousands of jobs where I was just tracking each and every job on an Excel sheet. Green means that they still haven’t, you know, replied to me. Red is with a rejection and orange is still like I’m still in the interview process. So after applying to loads and loads of jobs and just going into, you know, tens if not hundreds of interviews.

especially technical ones like after each and every technical interview when I get when I get asked like some questions related to you know like investment banking and specific like I just get to realize that I still have loads to learn like uni is not it’s never gonna be enough even it’s a top ranked one it’s very important to start looking into 

these kinds of certifications that would help you bridge the theoretical part with the practical part. Like during these technical interviews, some of them have asked me to do a full valuation process for Company X, but unfortunately, that wasn’t really offered like in my university. It wasn’t an option to any of us.

It’s not even part of the pure finance program in our university. So I thought that I have to look for external sources. I have to delve deeper into valuation, into learning more about DCF, trading comps, about LBOs, and all of these types of models. So I think after going through like

loads and loads of interviews one after another, I got to realize that I’m just improving like after like one interview after another. Due to myself just you know doing a deep search, it was mainly like using you know ChatGPT external sources, but then at a specific point, that’s like some interview, one of the mentors or like one of the interviewers has actually recommended the FMB certification myself.

And this was a game-changer to me. I think it changed the entire game. It was kind of a shortcut.

Meeyeon (20:14)
Wow.

Soliman Abbas (20:27)
achieving my short-term goal which is to land an investment banking analyst role. Like this interviewer he really kind of you know stressed on the importance of you have to complete that certification it’s gonna be a game changer to yourself to your career. After that interview of course I didn’t get accepted at that interview but at least I got to learn from the experience or the feedback.

Sometimes rejection is redirection. So that FMVA certification was, it was just like, think, the real first step into achieving my short-term goal. So, yeah.

Meeyeon (21:12)
So one thing that I just want to, I have to say this…

is that I really, I find your level of maturity at your, I mean, relative to me, young age to be extremely impressive because I think, I don’t think I’ve heard many people frame the interview process as such a genuine learning opportunity because typically people go through, especially the first full-time job search process. I mean, I’ve been through that before.

Soliman Abbas (21:23)
Haha.

Meeyeon (21:42)
And like still, know, decade later, it’s like, it’s something that I don’t really love to remember and reflect upon, because it was a very stressful time, right? You feel like you go through this undergraduate program, you have this one shot to land this investment banking job. If you don’t do it, then you have to go to graduate school and then there’s another opportunity there. But whenever you get, whenever you go through an interview process, regardless of how far you make it, if it doesn’t give you the outcome that you want,

people typically take that as such a personal kind of failure. But to be able to say, you know, sometimes rejection is the best source of redirection. And then to be able to say each one of those interviews was actually such a great learning opportunity because chances are when you take it that way, the next one you’re gonna do better. You’re gonna do even better. And I think that’s very,

Soliman Abbas (22:17)
Yep.

Absolutely.

Meeyeon (22:41)
It’s such an astute observation and to be able to have that at your age and in your current stage of life, think is not, like, I don’t think it’s common, but it’s ultimately a characteristic to you that’s landed you an investment banking role today.

Soliman Abbas (23:02)
Yeah, absolutely. I know that it’s not really common that you find a lot of people at that specific age who have the same mindset. mean, midway when I was through that stage of loads and their series of interview process, I found it really disappointing. But I just had to kind of fight against my mind and just tell my mind, OK, Soliman, believe me.

each and every interview one after another, you’re just improving at least 1%. That’s what we call progressive overload. Every time you just get better, Exactly. Every time you just get better, you get exposed to more questions, whether it’s behavioral or technical.

Meeyeon (23:41)
Yes, exactly, in the world of weight training, exactly.

Soliman Abbas (23:52)
You get exposed to more case studies Including VCF value like all of these skills that we get to learn in the FMBA certification Even if my first VCF model wasn’t perfect The second time is gonna be at least 100 like 1 % better if not more like it’s it’s again It’s one step after another and that’s I think what was really like the reason why I ended up

know, achieving my first short-term goal, is to break into investment banking, even though, again, the chances and the likelihood is really not high, especially in nowadays markets and international markets. It’s super difficult to a job at this field, of course.

Meeyeon (24:33)
Disconnect.

And one of the most important things for, think, a successful career in finance, but especially in investment banking, is mental maturity. I find that it was at least, so I was in debt capital market, so it’s very different. It’s like a different-ish area to investment banking. But the, I found that the first kind of three years of my career, I did so much condensed learning.

Soliman Abbas (24:51)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (25:13)
whether, and it was not just like the actual technical job of debt capital markets, but it was, you know, how to connect with colleagues, how to build your network in a way that is genuine and sincere and really fosters long-term relationships, meet the right mentors, how to navigate that very, very corporate atmosphere. All of that requires, I think, a lot of maturity very early on.

And so it’s not a surprise to me that you were able to persist, find this role and now be in that dream job of yours. Because in order to get into investment banking and then not a whole lot of people that I know stay in it for a very, very long time. But let’s say you do, you want to do it for the rest of like your career, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. It requires a great deal of mental maturity and I think a good even keeled,

balanced personality, someone that can persist through stress, someone that can withstand rejection, someone that can be wrong, be wrong in a crowd. I think it speaks to a lot of someone’s personality when you have a long career in investment banking. And now that you’re in this role, tell us what is it like versus what you’ve expected? How are you finding the job? And tell us how it’s been so far.

Soliman Abbas (26:40)
Well, I think what I expected was a little bit different from the reality. What I expected was investment banking was basically going to be this job where you get to meet

people who are kind of toxic somehow like all of the like that’s what we thought like including the Instagram memes things that are shared on LinkedIn yeah exactly all of these types of you know issues that okay that your heads or your managers are just gonna always you know bully you somehow yeah, absolutely but

Meeyeon (27:08)
We have the videos and the movies.

I’d totally crazy.

Soliman Abbas (27:28)
When I really got into the field of investment banking, I thought it’s a bit different one. So a bit of a different side from what I expected. So I think that my coworkers are really collaborative. I think it’s more of a collaborative thing. So you’re only one player in a team, just like in football, just like in soccer, all of these teams.

So it’s really important to kind of collaborate with coworkers to be able to communicate with them, to be able to become friends with them, connect with them on a personal level. Because I think investment banking is mainly about, specifically it’s about communication. It’s about being able to communicate with the clients and build a very strong relationship with them that is genuine.

So I’m not going to talk about the technical side, the valuation process, LBOs, M&As I’m not really going to talk about this. But what I really think is investment banking in reality is way deeper than what people think it is. It’s mainly related to how we’ll be able to communicate with the clients and be able to build trust.

with them because at the end of the day, the valuation is just a number at the end. All of these technical things, they’re just numbers, but they don’t really have the same impact or the same meaning as being able to build a strong network.

That like you get to speak with CFOs you get to speak to CEOs of companies of other companies I mean you get to meet them in person and try to absorb the way that they think. You try to kind of you know learn from them even the basic, know things related to the body language that they have The strategies that they always try to you know say in meetings or try to convey in meetings

you try to learn more about their mindsets, how they’ve actually managed to reach this level of being seniors or C-levels in top companies. I think it’s more of a personal development to myself. Looking into the soft skills aspect, I think it’s super important. But I think…

What was kind of different as well, technical wise, was that investment banking, were mainly just working on Excel sheets and PowerPoint presentations. Like your entire world is just built around Excel sheets, formulas, shortcuts, and preparing the pitch decks, PowerPoint presentation for investors, creating teasers,

which is something that’s not easy at all. So you also have to kind of develop the marketing aspect as well of being able to create a teaser, for example, in investment banking. Like again, that’s something, unfortunately, you won’t be able to really learn on like in specific certifications. That’s something that you have to kind of observe.

Meeyeon (30:53)
You have to have the deal transaction exposure, the industry exposure. At first, like six years, I think it’s very different now. I think due to the nature of investment banking, the climb is shorter now.

When I was in investment banking, was like three years as an analyst, three years as an associate, two and a half years as a VP, and then it was Murky Waters thereafter. I think it’s more like two, two and a half years as an analyst now.

Soliman Abbas (30:58)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Meeyeon (31:21)
The job market is just very competitive generally. But as you said, in that kind of first, I would say, let’s say four to six years, analyst to associate, you’re spending so much of the time getting to understand the nitty gritty technical details of the transaction work, deal valuation analysis, all of that, and really getting to understand the industry deeply by supporting the seniors who bring in those deals. And then all the while,

Soliman Abbas (31:40)
Thank you.

Meeyeon (31:51)
as you’re alluding to, really appreciating and understanding that it’s not just about the technical analysis. The next step is going to be showcasing your soft skills, your ability to interact with C-suite level executives at companies to build strong relationships with them that are really founded in genuine trust and then to bring in business that way. And then when you do be able to then take all that technical expertise that you’ve developed

and direct that analysis that the analysts and associates help you do. And so with that kind of outlook, now that you’re in the role that you, like your dream role, what does the next like three kind of years look like for you? What do you hope to achieve in the next three years if you’re to play this podcast back to yourself?

Talking to future Soliman.

Soliman Abbas (32:47)
I think it’s a lot

of to future Soliman. Wow. I think that’s like that’s a very interesting question to myself. I keep asking that to myself every now and then. Like I think I always look I always try to plan each year from the beginning like from the beginning of 2025. I kind of I have like a small board in my room,

where I would say, okay, Soliman, so like by the end of 2025, you have to achieve one, two, three, four, five, whatever it is. I tried to do a specific timeline where I just have to stick to that specific task,

first task. Okay, so I just tell myself I’m gonna have to complete it by the first three months of 2025 and so on. So, looking to like the next three years as an investment banking analyst, I’m really trying to evolve when it comes to financial modeling. I’m trying to become even more of an expert.

I mean, I’m not an expert right now, but I’m trying to reach that level. I’m trying to, again, know basically how the whole game of modeling is. I’m trying to look into more advanced financial modeling, whether it’s courses, certifications, whatever it is. I’m trying to…

Go through Excel even faster like just memorize the shortcuts formulas faster like I’m just trying to again Keep you know records of the time where I was just able to go from like cell X to cell Y for example I’m trying to see how fast I am To go through Excel trying to become faster the third one is

also trying to develop the soft skills that are required that you would never be able to learn anywhere else but the job itself the soft skills the client relationships how to actually build a genuine relationship with CEO CFOs and you become someone who they won’t really forget fourth thing again I’m trying to look into AI and how can AI

help me become, help me to like stand out from other candidates at that specific, you know, age or that specific level of, entry level like jobs. I’m trying to look into these four main things.

Meeyeon (35:41)
And I have no doubt that you’re going to get there because there’s something very, and I totally agree with this from a very personal perspective. I did one of those vision boards where I had a friend of mine that works at, she used to work at Lululemon. They go through this exercise where you did this goal setting thing and you don’t have to really share it with anyone. They encourage you to share it with a colleague or a friend of yours where you have like your photo and then you put your immediate goals and then your three, five kind of tenure vision.

And there’s something I think that’s very powerful about writing down the goals that you want to achieve. then constantly, not constantly, not like every day, but being able to look at those goals and they’re not just living in your head, but they are out there. And I think that really helps you achieve all those goals that you want to, that you set, because you are a walking example of that. You’ve already done that. And then this is just going to lead me into

a fun, like you’ve already alluded to this, so rapid-fire round. These are just some fun questions. Speaking of Excel shortcuts, today, what is your go to Excel shortcut? The one that you use the most?

Soliman Abbas (36:53)
The one that I use the most is definitely F4. I know it’s a very basic shortcut, but I think that’s the most useful one because you can just repeat any kind of cell or formula that you’ve previously done or done a couple of seconds ago. So it’s better than just trying to write the formula again. F4 is just a huge time saver, I guess. It saves a lot of time.

Meeyeon (37:18)
Mine was, I remember the first time I learned this during my investment banking analyst training camp that we did for like a week was Alt-A-Q. because I was in debt capital markets, there’s a lot of data analysis and generally in fixed income and doing advanced data filters and then having ones that were saved that apply to the table itself was just such a hugely used shortcut for me. But yeah, after a while, I think it’s the…

Soliman Abbas (37:32)
Yeah. Mm.

Yep.

Meeyeon (37:48)
And my colleague Duncan will, as well as Jeff Schmidt will say this a lot, but the idea of getting used to Excel shortcuts is not because it’s like, it’s fun and look at me. Like, I could just do it without a mouse. But the, if like you do so much data analysis as an investment banking analyst, if you can make the motions that you physically do to do that analysis, if you could turn that into muscle memory.

Soliman Abbas (38:00)
Yeah.

Salute!

Meeyeon (38:18)
Then all you need to do is focus mentally on doing the analysis, and then your hands just kind of do the motions. And it makes it so much easier, I find. It just makes your productivity accelerate so much more when you’re able to take away that physical aspect away from your mental thoughts. And let’s see here. Who is your dream mentor, dead or alive?

Soliman Abbas (38:30)
You…

Does it have to be in the finance field or can it be just… Okay. I don’t know whether you’re going to be familiar with him or not but he is a popular football player. He’s called Mo Salah. He is a Liverpool player.

Meeyeon (38:47)
doesn’t have to be in the finance field.

Now I am not,

I don’t know much football, but there’s so many listeners that do. So tell us why he is the person that you’ve chosen.

Soliman Abbas (39:09)
Ha.

I mean, if people were watching, who they don’t really know, who is Mo Salah? Let’s say Cristiano Ronaldo. I don’t want to sound you know cliche or like just saying something that it’s just widely common, but there’s something really common between these two that I am really obsessed with these two, and they work like super hard consistently regardless of how they feel,

like every single day during the year or during the season or even the off season like the 365 days a year they just train they try to train football no matter where they are no matter how they’re feeling whether they’re you know they’re feeling a little bit upset today they don’t really have energy on that day they don’t really care about any of these things they basically train regardless of how they feel even on vacations

They just have to train as well. It just becomes an obsession with how much they are obsessed with this game of football. It’s just a miracle how someone can stay consistent for 20 years playing on it, like in the top-level football for 20 or 23 years now. That’s such an insane thing to do. It just takes, I think…

like mental strength, like the mental strength is insane at that level. Being able to always fight against your mind, like whenever you feel a little bit, I’m tired today, he doesn’t care, he just goes up and goes to the gym for myself, to study financial modeling, for example. So again, it’s the mindset that really differentiates one candidate from another. Mo Salah, for example, he came from a very poor environment,

very poor city. No one would have ever believed that he would reach that level of becoming basically like that. He’s like the best right now, one of the top three, but like football players in the world. That’s insane. He didn’t reach that level. By coincidence, it wasn’t a coincidence. He basically just worked every single day

He trained, he tried to look at the weak points that he has as a player and as a person trying to develop it. And each season, one after another, just, again, it’s accumulated experience, you know, accumulation of learning from your mistakes. Getting ready to observe yourself, sit down for a bit for an hour and try to observe.

Like, what did I do wrong in that game? Okay, I’m watching the replay of the football match. I did, like, he would just sit there and observe. What did I do wrong? What am I missing to become the complete or the perfect version that I want? That’s exactly what I’m trying to do in that field. I’m always trying to think how can I become competitive? How can I become better than last year?

I try to, I’m a type of person who usually listens more than speaks. I know that this podcast is not really like, it doesn’t really show that, but I’m a type of person who really likes to listen to other people’s experience and to learn from mistakes, their mistakes, not only mine, but to learn from their mistakes and try not to do it. Yeah.

Meeyeon (42:41)
And that actually leads to, this is gonna be my final question. And this is a little bit more, this is a deep for a rapid fire question. But something that really stuck with me is when you said rejection can just be some redirection. What is one mistake that you think that you’ve made that has been a turning point for you? A mistake that you made that you feel like, I’m so glad I made that mistake and I feel like it made me better.

Soliman Abbas (42:48)
Yeah.

The mistake that I did was not believing that it’s all about consistency. It’s not… It’s just about, you know, working every day regardless of how you feel.

It’s just about believing in the process itself. Believing that each and every rejection that comes, it’s like each and every interview that you even, you know, like enter or attend. It’s just a small lesson that you would never realize how important it is or the importance of the value of that interview until you actually get accepted on another one. Like later on. Like basically that…

after each rejection, you’re just getting closer. You’re just getting closer to the acceptance that you really want. So that mistake that I did was that I thought that going through all of these interviews were like, especially in the early stage, it was just like a waste of time, but absolutely not. I think that if I go back in time, I would really try to make even

most out of each and every interview and keep on asking them questions and how can I make like Soliman like the perfect candidate what am I missing what am I missing in order in order to become the perfect candidate that you need so yeah I hope this answers this question by any chance

Meeyeon (44:35)
It does. like,

I can’t think of a better, like a higher note, to end off the podcast. Soliman, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. You’ve shown us what’s possible when you combine persistence and intentional learning with a mindset for growth. For anyone that’s listening, I hope that this has been a really inspirational podcast for you to listen to, because I think it’s proof that whatever you put your mind to, you can achieve. And this is a little bit delayed, but…

Soliman Abbas (44:42)
Thank you.

Meeyeon (45:04)
Congratulations on you getting that dream job of yours! I hope it is everything that you have hoped for it to be. And I just can’t wait to see where you go next.

Soliman Abbas (45:15)
Thank you very much, Meeyeon, for this lovely podcast. I’ve always been a follower of you before we even talked about that interview or that podcast. Again, I think you’re one of the reasons why I found the FMVA certification very lucrative and full of learning opportunities. So thank you very much.

Meeyeon (45:40)
Thank you so much. Until next time, everyone.