In 2015 — straight out of college — Danny Fishman landed what many Westporters consider a dream job: Goldman Sachs.
It seemed like the perfect segue: from Staples High School and Tufts University, to prestige, stability and happiness.
Except it wasn’t.
Fishman had always been successful. At Staples, he was part of state and FCIAC championship volleyball teams. He snagged a Goldman internship in college, the summer before senior year.
Danny Fishman, Staples High School volleyball star.
Yet, he says now, that internship — and the subsequent job offer — was just “a retreat to safety.”
His good friend Andrew Accardi died during Fishman’s junior year at Tufts. “I did a lot of soul-searching,” Fishman says. “I felt lucky for my own life, and terrible that his had been cut short. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just knew I didn’t want to drift passively.”
He set his sights on finance, as “a challenge. I thought I’d find purpose and direction there.”
He moved to Battery Park. He was assigned to the prime brokerage branch in the securities division. He learned the ropes and earned greater responsibilities, including client interaction. There was plenty of socializing with his fellow hires.
However, he says, “I didn’t identify with the values of the people around me. The uniformity, the hive mind, the mentality of what success looked like — it was omnipresent.”
He did not fit in.
Danny Fishman
“From an abstract point of view, I don’t disagree with the sense of vicious competitiveness,” Fishman explains. “I just didn’t see myself that way.”
He felt “beat up, exhausted. I didn’t know if I had a ton to offer, or if I should offer what I had.”
Though it was “a pretty miserable experience from the get-go,” he does not want to exaggerate the experience. Half of his best friends now are people he met at work.
He had made a commitment to himself to stick it out — “if I get good at this, will I feel better about it?” he asked himself — but when he got a how-you-doing postcard from Accardi’s mother, he took it as a sign.
After a year and a half at Goldman Sachs, he quit.
Fishman moved back home to Westport (an option he knows is not readily available to many). He “let go of the fear of trying to pursue something in music” — a hobby that had always brought him joy and energy, but that he had never committed himself to.
He studied the craft of performing. He wrote music. He took a cross-country trip, crashing on friends’ couches and stepping up at open mic nights in Nashville, Austin, Denver and Los Angeles.
Wherever he stopped, he made new friends.
Danny Fishman on stage.
Fishman recorded a demo of songs he’d written. He “stumbled forward,” learning about promotion and booking.
His first single got 28,000 plays on Spotify. His second got 9,000 in just the first 5 days.
Back home, he met Katie Noonan in a doctor’s waiting room. They chatted; he learned she was a musician too. He had his guitar — he brings it everywhere — and sang for her. She’s offered plenty of support (including a gig at her 50th birthday party).
“A rising tide lifts all boats,” Fishman has learned. “And failure doesn’t feel bad when it’s in pursuit of something you want to do.”
When he “failed” in finance, he says, “I beat myself up. In music, failure leads to something productive.”
The music community, he found, is not a zero-sum game. He has been helped by many performers, writers and producers, and tries to help others.
Danny Fishman and Katie Noona
I told Fishman that a story like this will bring negative comments from readers, lambasting him for turning his back on a well-paying job he got in part because of his background, then returning to that very environment.
“I am super, super lucky to have parents with a home I can come back to,” he says. “Westport is a beautiful place, with lots of resources. I know I’ve been blessed in life.”
But, he continues, “Having money doesn’t make everything easy. If people don’t view my experiences as legit, nothing I can do will change that.”
So, if he went back to counsel himself as a Staples senior in 2011 — not knowing what he wanted, or how to get it — what would he say?
“Try not to worry so much about what other people think of you,” he says. “Be who you are, even if it doesn’t conform to the image of success others painted for you.”
Meanwhile, Danny Fishman will continue to record and tour. He’ll try to “stay true to what I want, and pursue it maturely and responsibly.”
Sounds like a recipe for success, in any field.
