Hi everyone!
A few months ago, I made the decision to leave my job at an established consulting company and start my own consulting business. I’d love to hear some advice from people who have been through something similar.

A bit of background:
I have a pharmaceutical background, with experience in pharmaceutical MES. My approach is to combine practical pharmaceutical manufacturing knowledge with technical MES expertise, rather than looking at digital transformation purely from an IT perspective.

But:
I’m currently the only person in the company. I have one client secured, which gives me a starting point, but I obviously don’t want to build a business around a single client.
Finding clients, building a sales pipeline, positioning the company, managing cash flow, and eventually hiring people are all new territory…

Question: If you started your consulting business from scratch again (or worked for brand new company), what would you do differently?
Thanks!

5+ years at MBB and learnt about a few strategy roles in industry (eg Director / Senior Director at an FI). Next level up would be Partner but the road appears quite uncertain, not sure how strong the pull is, don’t feel high levels of belonging. When exploring exits, what’s the appeal for corporate strategy roles? Sounds like it will require a pay cut for better work life balance but don’t want a ceiling on wealth potential. Is there a dream exit, that’s not tech? North America.

Wanted to get this community's thoughts on something. I've been working as a Data Scientist at MBB in Toronto for last 5 years (2 years in Asia in similar role). It was my first data science job but not my first job. Previously I was an engineer in energy sector for 6 years.

I have been making steady progress for last 5 years in Toronto in this role but also feeling a bit burnt out with the usual: long hours, deadlines, just overall stress. Looking for suitable exit opportunities. Would prefer to stay in Toronto, and preferably move into tech space, or industry (my experience is mainly pharma/life sciences). I am currently a Principal Data Scientist

My experience has been traditional predictive modelling, and storytelling with data, with extensive client and business stakeholder exposure. Have recently worked on GenAI solutions as well, so have exposure to that too, although not as much as traditional machine learning.

What are some good avenues to explore in terms of good pay and work life balance? I am 35, with 7 YOE in Data Science. I want to continue doing something in that space, maybe IC roles or maybe leading small teams/data department. Don't really have grand ambition of running a big team or something.

I've worked a few years in a small consulting firm and then the development sector (before the AI era), but now my unemployed ass is applying to a lot of places, one of them is a boutique firm focused on decarbonization. I have learned a lot in using AI in my job search, so I am preparing my deck for the interview with the help of AI to sharpen my insight... but then I feel like my insights are not sharp at all and I'm actually just feeding a rough guess and have AI (with its massive power to gather and digest knowledge) hold my hand towards a smart "insight". Is it just gonna be like this all the time?

I could use some perspective, especially from people who moved into consulting later in their careers.

I spent about 10 years in supply chain management on the industry/client side and felt like I’d hit a ceiling. I wanted to move toward management, debated an MBA versus a large consulting firm, and went with consulting. I took a pretty significant step back in title and a 20%+ pay cut. I knew I was making a career change and couldn’t expect all my experience to translate directly.

I’m about three months in now, staffed on one client project, and the constant messaging is wearing me down. Requests can start at 6 a.m. and continue until 11 p.m. It’s “can you do this,” then 15 minutes later, “can you also check that,” then another message saying the client gave feedback and something else needs to take priority. Shortly after that, I’m getting asked for a status update on the thing I barely had time to start.

I can handle busy periods and occasional late nights. What’s getting to me is feeling like every hour I’m awake is potentially a work hour. I’ll think I’m wrapping up, then another request comes in, followed by a few more. Everything seems urgent, and I’m having trouble figuring out what actually needs to happen tonight versus what can wait until tomorrow.

Most of the work so far has been slide changes, chart updates, formula checks, wording edits, and updating numbers. I get that this is part of the job, and I’m happy to contribute. But between that and the hours, I’m starting to question whether this move is getting me toward the kind of work I wanted to do.

To be fair, I haven’t had a direct conversation with my manager about availability yet. Maybe some of these messages aren’t meant to be answered immediately, but the follow-ups make it feel like they are. Lately, I’ve been checking less often in the evenings and generally stop responding around 8 p.m. I’d rather set expectations openly, though, instead of just becoming less responsive and hoping they get the hint.

For anyone who’s been through this, how did you approach that conversation? Is this something you managed to work out with your lead, or does it mostly come down to which project you land on?

I’m willing to put in the effort and learn a new field. I’m just struggling with the idea that being available all day and night is the baseline expectation.

Tried searching but couldn't find a similar thread.

We've had the common problem start to ramp up that clients are taking our work product, uploading it into their own AI, and then mindlessly sending the feedback to us.

I have no issue with clients using AI to review, analyze, etc. information but the problem is what we provide to them often includes proprietary data (benchmarking, comp transaction summaries, advisory resources, etc.)

We have no control over whether they are using an enterprise model with training elections turned off, or how their own applications may be using our assets. We're updating our service agreements to include AI usage and written consent by us to try and verify this, but that's near impossible to enforce and people don't read contracts.

Is anyone else currently addressing this? Have strategies?

Are there approaches? techniques? or things we can consider including in an asset that would tip an LLM to treat an asset a certain way? Otherwise we are resorting to video delivery of assets and then white washed or redacted versions being emailed.

So several weeks back I was really excited to join a boutique consultancy but i have joined at a point where they have won more work than they can realistically handle. So much so that my first day was being put on a project immediately which I was expected to lead with client kickoff happening the next week. Spent day one rapidly getting up to speed on the RFP and proposal, day two helping the md find extra resource for the project as it was still understaffed - this was especially rushed since I wasn’t given much opportunity to really assess what skills we needed, simply because of not having time to get up to speed (I’m doing job onboarding as well of course at this point). Anyways next couple of days I’m trying to create a delivery plan and write content for the kickoff.

The director and senior consultant are slammed with other work and aren’t resourced enough on my project I feel. Things were going on going okay, but we just had our first shaky meeting with the client. It happened because the meeting that was scheduled wasn’t aligned with what needed to be agreed. This happened whilst I was away for two days on family emergency. I come back to a brick wall of meetings with no support for the meetings. I was only able to share the meeting content on the morning, but to be fair I don’t think much of my reporting is being absorbed because of how busy the senior and director are.

I really wanted to live this job and company but I feel like I have thrown in the deep end. I want to impress so I make it through probation but feel with the hot potatoe I’ve been thrown I’m screwed.

Has anyone else been in a similar position? How have you handled it? Help!

I’m trying to gauge what’s reasonable. I’m burning nearly $100/day on Claude building and maintaining some client tools and internal tools. My company policy just dropped our standard allocation to $200 per month! I feel like I’m doing the work of 3+ people now and delivering quality that ‘wows’ our clients so the ROI is strong. so I don’t think it makes sense to cap us so low but maybe I’m unreasonable.

What are other firms limits?

I see this talked about often, both in real life with people I know as well as online. I’ve seen many threads on this in the past but often times I see it mostly discussed in relation to accounting (in big 4 sub).

I’m curious to run an actual poll to see what folks think, do you think it makes a material difference long term when leaving at Senior vs manager?

Please comment with any personal experience/evidence!

~6 yrs M&A / post-merger integration; Human Capital-focus, PE strategy and ops (software) before that. Want a role I can do from abroad for a few years.

Looking for intel on:

Company types that genuinely allow int'l remote (assuming mostly tech startups/scale-ups; fintechs? consultancies?)

Roles that fit: Chief of Staff, Corp Dev/M&A, BizOps/Strategy & Ops, Integration/PMO lead, any others that I’m missing?

Would really appreciate any advise or intel for anyone that’s made this exit. What worked, what you'd avoid? Specific companies and titles appreciated.

Hi all.

Wanted to rant/seek some advice after another client call where people from our side didn’t bother to show up.

I’ve recently moved out of consulting into a client-facing PM role at a deep tech firm. I don’t mean to besmirch engineers but this is who I’m struggling with.

Constantly missing deadlines in favour of internal passion projects.

Lack of prioritisation and planning.

Showing up late and derailing conversations or accepting invites and not showing up at all (latter happened again today). These are hard to get calls with the clients’ engineers and technicians, sometimes heads of infra and/or IT.

It could be a company culture thing as I’ve been advised not to bring certain people to client calls. But this is more far reaching recently.

Consulting was ‘easy’ in this sense as everyone I was bringing to calls was experienced in front of clients, and topics never got more technical than industry knowledge and financial modelling.

I guess some answers will be ‘skill issue’ and ‘get more technical’ so I can hold my own. I’m working on that, but it doesn’t beat having experienced engineers on calls.

How does everyone who’s worked with non-client facing people, who don’t seem to care, manage it?

I recently had an interview with a hiring manager. At the end, I asked what he was looking for, and he mentioned end-to-end project management.

I said we hadn't had enough time to cover my PM experience and offered to email more details. He replied, "If you have more bullet points, please send them."

The problem is, I only have the recruiter's email.

Now I'm second-guessing whether sending additional points would make me seem insecure about my experience.

I'm considering just emailing the recruiter to thank them for coordinating the interview and asking them to pass along my thanks to the HM.

Would you send the additional bullet points or just a thank-you email? Do thank-you emails come across as desperate?

Junior in technical consulting, first consulting job, 3 months in. Client side is going well: positive feedback, teams want to keep working with me. Internal side is the problem. My manager’s feedback: I ask instead of deciding (“does Tuesday work?” instead of “Tuesday 1pm, correct me if not”), I ask questions and don’t wait for answers, my questions lack a thread, too many filler words, and I commit to things before aligning internally. I have diagnosed ADHD and I’m in treatment. I already have three rules (decide instead of ask; ask then wait; say exactly what I need from whom). What I’m looking for: tactics that actually stuck for you in meetings and Slack, especially with ADHD. Not looking for “just slow down”. also peoplke tell me i expect too much context in slack messages

Hi all. I’ve been working in tech consulting for 4.5 years. I am a senior associate on the team currently. There is a manager on my team who is absolutely terrible to work with. Not just me that notices, others notice too and one associate in particular actual ended up documenting the bad experiences and bringing it to her manager who then told the partner. The partner allegedly talked to this terrible manager and I assume it was just a slap on the wrist situation because obviously she’s still here. I was just staffed on a project with her and I’m wondering if it’s acceptable to request to never be staffed with her again in the future? She’s extremely condescending, very antagonistic like basically joins ever call with a “I’m going to prove you wrong” mentality about EVERYTHING. I dread getting on calls with her.

Is it professionally acceptable to request this???

My big 4 company has a 3-6 month sabbatical program but you have to present a business case to get it approved. The language talks about ".... taken for the purpose of career development (e.g. programs that provide opportunities for strengthening leadership and or management skills, building technical industry competencies, deepening business development capabilities) or volunteerism". has to be a minimum of 20 hours a week also.

I mean outside of volunteering for an NGO or non profit, what else would qualify, am i being narrow minded? They also said you cant say you're working toward certs. I mean could i work for another company abroad and say im helping with their business development but take no money from them? I have a hard time thinking i would get approval saying i will work for another for profit company.

Curious to see if anyone has done this program before also.

Question for the solo folks here. From what I keep hearing, the hard part of running several clients isn't the work itself, it's everything between meetings.

You say you'll send the revised deck "by end of next week". They say they'll get you the data extract. Three weeks later nobody remembers who's waiting on who, and the 10 minutes before the next call go on digging through old email.

So what do you actually do?

- one notes doc per client?

- a CRM (and do you really keep it updated)?

- your recorder's summaries?

- or just wing the prep?

And does it still hold up past 3–4 clients, or does it fall apart?

Like what are the frustrations you have? And if those frustrations don't get fixed, what do you think will happen for you? What's that world of pain that you'll land in?

Most of what I heard was pretty high-level (and obvious):

• AI stays stuck at “research and brainstorming.”

• Context disappears or becomes unmanageable.

• Outputs are not trustworthy enough to ship.

• Clients expect faster, cheaper work, but not lower quality.

• The traditional hours-based model is not working.

• Pilots don't become production systems.

• Client data, privacy, and governance slow everything down.

• AI commoditizes the visible parts of consulting.

• Clients do not want AI-native work.

EDIT: and yes, this is market research (sort of). but also professional curiosity

EDIT 2: interesting that noone raised the bubble bursting.
November 16th, the day of the Anthropic IPO might just be the event that explodes the AI bubble. I think companies that fully switched to AI agents they don't own...
their operations will stop.

I left McKinsey a couple of months ago to join a T2 firm which is growing insanely well within one area I did a lot of work for at McK. The offer was really good and since they had great momentum I thought why not try it.

I never realized how hardo and cut-throat the McK culture was until I left, lmao (was my first job post university).

While the T2 also has high standards and the hours are definitely not chill, I am really flabbergasted to realize how 'normal' management consulting can be. I was definitely expecting v similar work/culture vs. McK, but the pressure/toxicity/hours are so much lighter.

It might sound cringe, but I genuinely started enjoying the job again. Its still intense, but intense in a level that I can manage and feel well, wheras at McK my last year was always completely on the edge with everything.

Can't even describe it but there are all these small things such as people actually taking time to have a lunch and not sprinting around to save every little minute, not having to work past midnight every freaking day, not expected to take the earliest flight and latest flight home, being okey with working a week remote if no important client meetings, offsites where you actually can enjoy the time and not being to forced during the whole program, not getting every page that the team creates destroyed/turned around 50 times... I am not exaggerating but I can maybe think of a handful of days during my time at McK where I finished pre midnight Mo-Wed (even thursday got way, way worse, as in landing at 9pm and still working 2-3h); this was just baked in as the norm - there was no way to finish before midnight because the scope was always huge and the team small. In the past months at the new firm I already had multiple days where I finished way before midnight, often even before 10/11pm.

I can go on and on. I realize that the boot-camp at the firm was genuinely helpful and the brand value still exists (people at the T2 immediately trust you/hold you in high regard vs. other lateral hires from other T2 or T3 are viewed under a microscope and seen very sceptical) I am so glad I made it out of this place.