Walk onto any college campus today, and you can feel the uncertainty. The next generation of business leaders is paralyzed by the narrative that Artificial Intelligence is coming to steal their entry-level jobs, screen their resumes into oblivion, and render their expensive degrees useless.
Michael Lane, Head of Asset Management at the global financial titan SEI, hears this panic every Friday when he mentors college students. His response is blunt, unapologetic, and exactly what the market needs to hear:
Stop whining about the algorithm and go get a bat.
In a recent episode of Y’all Street, Lane sat down with Evan to discuss his gritty ascent to the top of the financial world and why he believes human relationships, not code, remain the ultimate moat in wealth generation.
The Delusion of the “Dream Job”
Lane’s career wasn’t handed to him. Raised by a single father in upstate New York, he learned self-reliance out of necessity. When he graduated from college, he didn’t hold out for a cushy corporate salary; he took a job as a financial advisor on 100% commission.
“There is no bigger motivator early in your life than to wake up and know you’re not getting paid today unless you actually can find a way to add value to somebody,” Lane explained.
“Don’t get so hung up on the first job out of college being your dream job. Just get experience… the killer of careers is entitlement.”
Michael Lane
Today’s graduates have been sold the lie that their first job must be their ultimate passion project. Lane shatters that myth. “Don’t get so hung up on the first job out of college being your dream job. Just get experience,” he stated. “The killer of careers is entitlement. You don’t know anything yet. So learn, engage… and don’t be a risk.”
Beating the AI Resume Filter
Walk onto any college campus today, and you can feel the uncertainty. The next generation of business leaders is paralyzed by the narrative that Artificial Intelligence is coming to steal their entry-level jobs, screen their resumes into oblivion, and render their expensive degrees useless.
Michael Lane, Head of Asset Management at the global financial titan SEI, hears this panic every Friday when he mentors college students. His response is blunt, unapologetic, and exactly what the market needs to hear:
Stop whining about the algorithm and go get a bat.
In a recent episode of Y’all Street, Lane sat down with Evan to discuss his gritty ascent to the top of the financial world, and why he believes human relationships—not code—remain the ultimate moat in wealth generation.
The Delusion of the “Dream Job”
Lane’s career wasn’t handed to him. Raised by a single father in upstate New York, he learned self-reliance out of necessity. When he graduated from college, he didn’t hold out for a cushy corporate salary; he took a job as a financial advisor on 100% commission.
“There is no bigger motivator early in your life than to wake up and know you’re not getting paid today unless you actually can find a way to add value to somebody,” Lane explained.
Today’s graduates have been sold the lie that their first job must be their ultimate passion project. Lane shatters that myth. “Don’t get so hung up on the first job out of college being your dream job. Just get experience,” he stated. “The killer of careers is entitlement. You don’t know anything yet. So learn, engage… and don’t be a risk.”
Beating the AI Resume Filter
The students Lane mentors constantly complain that their resumes are being rejected by automated screening tools. Lane agrees that an AI filter can eliminate you, but he insists that a piece of paper was never going to get you the job anyway.
The strategy hasn’t changed since Wall Street was founded: it’s about who is willing to vouch for you.
“What’s going to get you the job is leaning on people that can continue to get your resume at the top of the stack,” Lane noted.
Lane regularly speaks to crowds of 800 college students and offers to set up a 20-minute coaching call with anyone who takes the initiative to connect with him on LinkedIn. The result? He gets maybe 50 messages. The vast majority of aspiring professionals simply refuse to do the basic, uncomfortable work of reaching out to a stranger.
“Life is about finding a way to get in the door, getting a bat,” Lane emphasized. “If you can’t figure out how to get in a door with somebody you don’t know, you’re going to struggle.”
The Ultimate Moat: Trust
If you are worried that AI will replace financial advisors, Lane points out that the smartest men in the world have already tried and failed.
Lane recalls a 1997 dinner with a young, unknown entrepreneur named Elon Musk, who drove up in a million-dollar McLaren F1. Musk confidently told the table he was building an online platform that would put financial advisors out of business. That company eventually pivoted to become PayPal, abandoning wealth management for payment processing.
Why? Because wealth generation is deeply personal.
“Consistently, AI experts will say the one thing that can’t be AI is relationships,” Lane said. “I have yet to see anybody succeed in wealth without human interaction… to create an online source where people feel comfortable when they’ve accumulated wealth to just turn it over to somebody that they’ve never met, they don’t trust them.”
The Bottom Line
Technology will absolutely change how the financial sector operates, but it cannot replace the grit, empathy, and hustle required to build trust. For young professionals staring down a volatile job market, the playbook is simple: drop the entitlement, pick up the phone, and force your way into the room.
Watch Michael Lane break down the business of global asset management on Episode 37 of Y’all Street.
