Is Management Consulting the best start to become a CEO/own a business?
v I’m still in college, target school, and still not sure which path to follow. I think I would like to follow the CEO/business owner path. Do you guys think Management Consulting is the best start? Have been considering private equity too, but think it might be too much finance focused. Any advice? Thank you!
Definitely can be a good route. Look up Jim Koch's story. Was a management consultant then started his own business.
Koch definitely has a fascinating story but he didn't exactly start his own business. His father convinced him to come run an under-performing business that he owned. So didn't start it from scratch.
Good question. Since you are in UG now, you have the option of going to a startup, a BigCo, consulting or banking.
Building and running a startup will require a lot of strategic and analytic skills (conulting) but it will also require a ton of just plain old, sleeves rolled up hard work and being able to juggle lots of disparate tasks.
Some of that hard work, juggle lots of things, etc can be learned in consulting, but most of it is on the job training.
You could graduate UG, go to a top consulting firm, put in 2-4 years and then go to a startup and spend several years there, working your way up the ladder and then hopping to starting your own thing.
You could also graduate UG and go right to a startup. Having a few years of consulting never hurt anyone's resume, of course I am biased. :)
Real MC certainly can be. I would avoid Advisory arms at the big 4 at all cost. They are complete snake oil sales.
Hey, I'm a PL at BCG, HSW MBA, etc. TO be honest, if you look at the exits from consulting, they tend to go into corp strat type roles with the intention of getting into a line management (P&L ownership role). However, my sense is that that does not always happen. If you want to be a CEO your best bet is to go straight into industry and work your way up. One of the problems with that is that it is a LONG journey fraught with risk (high likliehood you get stuck in MM).
One benefit of consulting / IB / finance is that you can make a lot of money in a much shorter period of time. Here's an exercise I'd recommend to you. Go look at the biographies / linkedin profiles of 20 CEOs of businesses that you think you'd want to run. Into tech? go look at Yelp, FB, Apple, LI, Amazon, etc. Into O&G? GO look at Exxon, Chevron, Anadarko, Baker Hughes, etc. You get the picture. Now look at what those people did and the paths they took. I bet that at least 75% of them did not do anything like consulting or banking.
Second this. I don't have quite the vantage point that bmc has, but I've done this LinkedIn exercise before and was surprised at what I saw. Most (90%+?) VP and Senior VP level people have worked at their company for 15-20 years, and well over half didn't attend a school that WSO would consider to be a 'target.' A lot of no-name state school people that just worked their way up.
Completely agree. I would recommend management/leadership program at such companies, as they give you a head start and more or less guarantee that you’ll at least reach middle management (Director level).
Anything above that = ruthless competition.
I do think so! Working as management consultant gives you insight into operations of many different businesses across many industries; as such I think you get a good understanding of what makes businesses successful and trains you to think about operational efficiency as well as importance of having good strategy! After a while it would also be helpful to specialise in the industry in which you would like to open a business, eg. retail or tech etc.
For sure Management Consulting is a good beginning for your career
Yes, management consulting is good for short-term as it will soon be disrupted in my view by technology-driven ideas.
Try and stay lose to technology as software is eating the world.
Think about scale. If you want to run a, say, $20M revenue business, go consult in the mid-market.
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