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MS wrote:
Hi Marquis,
I came across you interview on Management Consulted and found the interview very informative and helpful. Let me briefly touch upon my past, present and future to make this discussion more meaningful. Before starting my entrepreneurial journey in August 2010, I worked as an Equity Research Associate in Nomura’s (erstwhile Lehman Brothers) Asia Power Utilities and Renewable Energy team. After working for more than four years in the financial sector, I decided to join my father in his horticulture business in August 2010 to get deeper insight and to understand the realities at the grass root level of Indian agriculture. My plan is to leverage my family business strengths – farmland assets, understanding of rural India, relationships/contacts with agribusiness companies and agriculture experience – to start a business in the long-term.
I will be applying to business schools in the US this year. The plan is learn new skills, build a network, and gain international exposure (education and job). But my main focus is on switching to a career that can help me meet my entrepreneurial goals. Based on my personal experience, I do not think that I’ll end up learning required skills by working in IBs. Hence, I am confused about the right career path to take post-MBA that can help in my entrepreneurial endeavors. It would be great if you could share your thoughts on the following:
- How did your Management Consulting experience help you in your entrepreneurial venture?
- Management Consulting vs. Industry (aligned with my business interest for eg. Cargill) – which one would be more helpful?
- In the interim, I am planning to work in a startup company to get exposure and feel of starting a company – do you think it’s a good idea?
- Based on your personal experience, which skills have helped you the most in your entrepreneurial journey so far?
- Any other suggestion you would like to pass on.
I understand that the answers to some of my queries may be subjective, but still, it would be really helpful if you could share your thoughts. I am sorry for the long email; I really appreciate your help on this.
Thanks,
MS
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My response:
MS,
Thanks for checking out my website and thinking of me as a resource for your issue. I’m sorry for taking so long to get back to you, but I get a TON of emails and I’m just now getting to the ones that came in when you wrote to me. I hope this message isn’t getting to you too late to be useful to you as you think about your business school applications.
I’ll address your questions one-by-one below, but, since I’ve covered some of these items before, I’ll give more high-level responses for some of them:
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How did your Management Consulting experience help you in your entrepreneurial venture?
Before answering this question, I should remind you that my entrepreneurial venture has been done as a side business. My reason for mentioning that is that Consulting laid the foundation for me having my current full-time corporate gig. If it weren’t for having a full-time job, I probably wouldn’t have the flexibility to do anything on the side in the first place.
Now, to answer your question, the Consulting experience primarily helped me in 3 ways. First, I leveraged the structured thinking and problem solving (developed during my Consulting years) as I thought through the initial service lines and corporate structure for my business. Furthermore, I continue to leverage those skills every day as I think about better ways to deliver my current services and new ones that I might want to add at some point. Second, my past life as a Consultant gives me the credibility to offer some of my key services (e.g., Consulting interview prep and business consulting services), so without it, I probably would have had a hard time making a play in those areas. Third, I often fall back on useful frameworks and techniques learned as a Consultant when delivering on different kinds of services and when communicating with clients.
My response to this question is mostly based on the nature of my business, so you’d probably hear something different if you talked to a former Consultant who had a retail, technology, or product-based business.
Management Consulting vs. Industry (aligned with my business interest for eg. Cargill) – which one would be more helpful?
I’ve answered this question many times in past blog entries, so I’ll hit this one quickly. With this question, you’re basically trading off breadth of knowledge/experience (via Management Consulting) vs. depth of knowledge/experience (via Industry), so the choice of which one to chase is really up to one’s personal preferences. If you know for sure that your business interests will stay aligned with your family business strengths, then going the Industry-focused route makes a lot of sense. Just know that doing this might restrict some of your flexibility to go into other industry areas later on. Personally, I’m a fan of having more flexibility in learning and experience early on in one’s career, so my vote would go with Management Consulting…but, I’m obviously biased, right? 🙂
In the interim, I am planning to work in a startup company to get exposure and feel of starting a company – do you think it’s a good idea?
Great idea, but just make sure that you’d actually get the “exposure and feel of starting a company” that you’re seeking. I’ve heard stories about people going to startups and getting invaluable experience in seeing the company develop from the ground up, which is the ideal situation. I’ve heard other stories about people going to startups and being stuck either not learning what they’d expected, being stuck doing non-enjoyable work with no other benefit, or being caught in a culture that isn’t as free and refreshing as they’d hoped. If you do your due diligence on the startups that you would consider joining, I’m sure that you can set yourself up for a good experience.
Based on your personal experience, which skills have helped you the most in your entrepreneurial journey so far?
See the answer to your first question for info on skills from Consulting that have helped me on my entrepreneurial journey so far. In addition to those, the overall business toolkit provided by my MBA studies, which includes concepts in Strategy, Finance, Accounting, Leadership, and Communication, have been crucial in a number of ways. If it weren’t for that great business foundation, I’d probably still be sitting behind a computer writing Java code and dreaming about having a shot in the business world.
Any other suggestion you would like to pass on.
Oh man, I could give you so much advice that it would take you hours to read it, but it would also take just as long for me to type it all out 🙂 Instead, I’ll leave you with the following high-level points:
- When you start on your MBA application journey, be sure to put sufficient time into building your MBA story (i.e., your MBA applicant positioning). It may seem like a simple thing to do, but it can be harder for more people than they would have expected.
- It’s great to have a plan for yourself career-wise, but also think about contingency plans just in case things don’t work out exactly as you had projected.
- Going all-in on being an entrepreneur is a tough thing to do because of the financial sacrifice, so put some serious thought into whether doing it by starting off with a side venture might work for you.
- Before launching any sort of venture, put a LOT of thought into the services that you’ll provide, whether there are customers who would want those services, and whether those potential customers would be willing to spend money on those services. If anything seems fishy during that thinking, then you might want to change directions on your venture.
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Again, if you’re looking for more details on the items above, I recommend that you spend some time reading through my archived entries. I’ve been answering people’s questions for 5 years now and I’m sure you’d fine LOTS of additional information on your issues.
Take care and I hope the answers listed above have been helpful to you.
Marquis
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