In this special Crossroads interview, Michaela shares her recruitment preparation strategy that resulted in her landing a coveted consulting role. Christie provides career advice towards launching a successful career in consulting.
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For this episode, we are doing a Crossroads, and this is actually a special Crossroads. I’m excited to speak to our guest. With this individual, she has just gotten a consulting offer, which is awesome and still wrapping up, so I want to make sure we can share her story. She can give you guidance on how got started and her recruitment story and give you ideas if you’re thinking about going into recruitment or a consulting role. With that, also get some guidance based on what I wish someone told me when I first started my career, because the foundation is critical. This is a near and dear type of conversation to me and I’m excited and honored to introduce Michaela.
Interview with Michaela
Michaela, welcome to the MECE Muse Unplugged.
Thank you so much for having me. I love listening to the show.
Thank you. I so appreciate you taking time to connect. Before we delve into this conversation, maybe can you take a moment and give everyone a little bit about your background and where you are in the present?
Absolutely. Currently I’m a scientist and I got into science a long time ago when I was starting high school. I liked answering questions, I liked the challenges of science, I liked that not everything was known. That led me into the field of neuroscience because the heart is important, we know a lot about it, and the brain, people are going into doctor’s offices every day and we still have to say, “Sorry, we don’t know how to help you because we don’t understand the brain.” That has driven my passion for neuroscience because I want to help people and to answer more of those questions so that we don’t have to say that anymore. I went straight from my undergrad in neuroscience to a PhD program and I’ve been doing research and I love the research. It’s absolutely necessary, but what I found is that it doesn’t check all of my boxes. I have a lot more to offer the field as far as bringing therapies to people. I am excited about bringing patients and payers and physicians together, and that passion has led me to the field of consulting. For the past couple of years now I’ve been gearing up to make that transition and just got an offer an excepted, so I’m excited to get started with that.
Congratulations on getting that. I think that’s a good transition. I didn’t know that you had that neuroscientist background. That is awesome. How did you decide to go into that in the first place? Did you know that as a kid, or did you tumble into it? Maybe you can share a little bit of that.
It was probably two-fold. I knew personally I had experience where family members had gone through stroke and dementia, and it’s a terrible process. When I was younger, that was the first time that I experienced the limits of modern medicine. It made no sense to me that you’d go to the doctor and there’s nothing they can do for you. They don’t know why it happens, and there’s no way to treat it. I’ve always been fascinated with the brain and wanted to tackle that. It’s a growing field and it’s taking off so it’s been an exciting place to work.
You mentioned you just getting an offer. Can you share with the audience what type of work you may be doing?
Definitely. It is a boutique life sciences consulting firm. It’s on the smaller side and it’s focused on the life sciences and biotech space. That was important to me. I knew that I wanted to stay in the science but I wanted to get that business perspective. I’ll be working on science projects for pharmaceutical biotech companies. They do everything. They try to focus more on the strategy side than the operations side, but they do a lot of market entry, a lot of positioning, and some competitive intelligence. I expect to learn a lot and for all of my projects to be new and exciting for probably the next five years.
Before the types of projects, when you were going through the recruitment effort, did they share a little bit of the typical lifestyle life cycle of a project? Some consulting firms it’s a couple of months, a couple of weeks, some are like year-long sprints.
I had the unique opportunity to participate in some of these summer programs. What some of the life sciences consulting firms started to do is they’ll bring candidates in who are applying this cycle in the summer and you apply. It’s a phone interview, sometimes two phone interviews with six questions and a case interview. They’ll go from a hundred or hundreds of candidates down to about twelve. What they’ll do is they’ll bring you into the office and they’ll show you how they work basically. It was actually an incredible opportunity because you get to meet with tons of people in the firm, you get to get an idea of how they work and what the culture’s like, and they bring me through an actual case that they’ve done with. Obviously it’s codified and everything, but you start out with a question and you’ve got a little team of also aspiring consultants and they give you a little bit of guidance.
They say, “Here’s how we would do our qualitative research. Here’s how we would do our quantitative research. Here’s how we put our slides together,” and then you present to the partners and principals and other people in the role that you’re hoping to go into. It gives you a great idea for how they structure their cases, how they task their cases, and what deliverables they produce for clients. That’s actually how I got my offer. I went through that process and they bill it as, “Come visit, get to know us,” but you and I both know life is an interview. You need to be on your A-game all the time, be yourself, and that paid off. They offered one spot and I got it. They offered a job and I took it.
I love it when firms take the time to do more creative types of interview format. The one you mentioned, of my fifteen plus year span, I’ve seen that like maybe twice. Once at a huge firm, the practice, the leadership, was big on collaboration and they wanted that type of teaming culture so they incorporated that technique. Another place actually I had interviewed and they went through that and I thought that was cool because sometimes the big firms have so many people and so much to go through in the recruitment that they don’t have that type of time, but that that’s good. You got a chance to live it in that moment.
It’s great for them and it’s great for us because they get to see. When you’ve been working from 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM for three days straight, can you still hold a conversation at dinner? Can you still stand up and present? How do you interact with your team? They are watching the whole time. It’s great for them.
I want to go back to a point you made Michaela, because it’s so spot on about the “Life is an interview” moment. Where I’ve seen sometimes aspiring consultants may fall into the trap is when they have what I actually call social interviews. There are sometimes opportunities where you may meet a partner for lunch or someone for breakfast or even for drinks, I’ve seen interviews experienced them as those types of tactics. Sometimes, especially candidates, they may think, “It’s just drinks, it’s just breakfast,” and they let their guard down, and that was a task. Listeners out there, if you’re going through the recruitment process and you get selected to have those types of one on one, those type of what I call high touch interview opportunities, you’re still being interviewed. Spoiler alert, do not think like you’re in there and everything’s good and then you start getting a little too casual. It’s still an interview. Thank you for reminding me about that.
I just want to add that it’s not easy. When you’re tired, everybody gets tired, I would rather curl up with a book than start a conversation with someone that I don’t know. I think that is fairly normal, but you need to practice it. Honestly, I went out and networked my butt off, people that I was comfortable with and then slowly worked my way up to people that could make a difference in my career, and just trying to get comfortable with putting myself in that situation and being able to be comfortable and be myself and that was important for me to do.
To that point, what you just talked about is what I call the ability to flex your style. That’s another key point. I talk about it in my book. In terms of being a great consultant, just because you may be one way by default, you have to learn how to adapt and flex and bend. People may not realize this, but I’m actually a very introvert person like you. I prefer to be home or read my book, get online. I love those alone moments, but I chose a career that in order for me to be successful at it, at least here in the US, I had to adapt. I’ve now built up a muscle so now I can go off and talk. I can spend the whole day talking to people and networking, and then when I get home my husband knows I’m exhausted. I need to decompress; I need to reset back to the way I normally am. Now that I do it, I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s an unconscious competence. I just do it and I go in and out of that mode easily. It’s good that you’ve that early on because at the beginning of my career, I didn’t do that per se. I stayed within the way I am by default, and sometimes there were missed opportunities. I felt like I left a lot on the table just not flexing, so it’s good that you know that up front.
I’ve definitely been working on it. I would encourage anybody out there to practice, even practice me, practice with Christie, call people up, ask them out for coffee and talk. It doesn’t have to be all work either, you can talk about your lives, everybody is human.
Let’s take a step back and talk through your recruitment story. What were some of the things that you felt that you did? You mentioned earlier about case interviews. What were some of the things that you did to prepare that you felt helped you differentiate your candidacy versus others?
I was purposeful. I knew that there were certain elements and boxes that I needed to check. It honestly isn’t just one thing. All of these things are absolutely necessary. It was the case prep, the networking, the internal experience, the external experience, and then the general biotech news. I’ll go through each of these. For the case prep, I started probably about six months ago doing a case a week with our local case practice group. I would do try to learn as much as I could from more experienced members and then building up. I knew it was going to be a phone interview, so I practiced on the phone at least a case a day for a couple of weeks, which sounds intense. I know everybody’s different, but I needed that level of practice to feel confident in my abilities, so that that worked well for me.
Then the networking, I also tried to be purposeful about it and not waste an opportunity. Anytime that a name was mentioned, anytime I had a question about something, instead of Googling, “How do you do a SWOT analysis?” I would call up a consultant and say, “Would you be interested in getting coffee with me? I’m looking to get into the consulting field and I have this specific thing that I’m trying to learn.” That helps me because sometimes those conversations can be awkward, but when you have an actual thing that you’re trying to learn, “I need to do a SWOT analysis for this volunteer consulting group I’m doing, then they get to learn a little bit more about you and they’re able to give you some tangible advice and help. You can keep in touch with them and say, “Thank you so much. We just had the wrap up and it was great. Your advice was so helpful.” I found that form of networking helpful and effective. Then I tried to get all of the internal experience I could get. At my current university where I’m doing my PhD, we have a business club, we have a graduate student council, we have a case competition, and I started a volunteer consulting firm basically because I knew that I was going to need to get all of the real world experience. Consultants don’t actually sit across from each other and practice cases. That’s not what a consultant does. What they do is they work on projects, so I wanted to be exposed to as many projects type work as I could. I did that internally.
Once I felt that I had a little bit under myself internally with students teaching students, I said, “I need some external experiences.” Through my network and I actually had three different connections at a single place where I wanted to do an internship before I got the internship. They were a venture creation firms so they have a lot of early-stage companies. Being able to see what they do on a daily basis was helpful, and being able to see how fast they have to work, how they have to work on incomplete information, what kinds of things that we’re asking, for me that was fantastic and really validated a lot of what I’ve done before, but also expanded my knowledge and my vocabulary so I felt confident in saying, “This is how parts of the biotech industry work. This is how a small company operates, which I never would’ve been able to do if I hadn’t seen it.”
The last thing is reading biotech news. Here I recommend doing whatever you like, because if you like it, you’re more likely to do it. There are all kinds of newsletters out there, like here’s biotech, here’s pharma, you can get email subscriptions and they’ll send you emails every day, but if you’re not someone who’s going to click on those and read them, then find something else. There are amazing podcasts. One consultant actually recommended Twitter. I asked, “Where do you get your biotech news? How do you stay up on what’s current?” This consultant actually said Twitter. They have a feed full of all kinds of different news outlets and companies and that’s how they get their info. I found that little bites accessible. Now on my commute into work, I’ll read the Twitter feed for the day and that keeps me up to date. That was helpful in the case interviews because they’re definitely looking for you to know the industry, not just have the basic knowledge. That was a lot, but that’s the five things that I would say you have to have to have under your belt.
This is what I call the making of a rock star right here. You just said so much and you just covered most of the things that I would’ve covered. To me where it became rock star status is when you were like, “I started a volunteer consulting firm to get experience that citizens.”
You just got to do it.
I’m all about. “Just got to do it,” so kudos to you. Your firm is so lucky to have you. I’m sure they knew it too when you walked in and you were prepared. You all should follow Michaela, everything she just does. She just laid out a playbook. For those out there, you can go back and listen to this podcast episode one more time, pass it on. If you want to get a great role in consulting, take a page from her playbook and you’ll be great.
When you think about the practice of one case a day, I want to go back to that because I think that’s an important piece. I know I hear sometimes people talk about in order to get good cases, you have to do at least x amount of cases. You got to have at least fifteen cases, or you’ve got to do at least 20or 30 or 40 or 50. I like what you said about you knew where you were and you knew you needed to do the case a day in order for you to build up where you needed to go. That’s an important base to play from. Listeners, you may have people telling you got to do X amount of cases, it goes back to knowing where you are, assessing where your skill sets are with cases, whether it’s from a quantitative perspective or qualitative, and where you need to be and how much time do you have to do that. For you Michaela, you made it work where for you it was about the case a day. When you were doing the case of day, did you have like a specific focus? Were you trying to get faster at calculations or trying to talk through the different things? What were some of the things that you were focusing when you were doing the case a day?
Almost all of the cases I had in this early interview stage were market sizing and market entry in the life sciences space. I specifically requested from my team partner that we do those types of cases and so I got comfortable with them. I heard in some of your other episodes it’s hard, you don’t want sound automatic with them, but you want to be comfortable enough that you can get into the details of what they’re asking you and adapt it. I did mostly market entry and tried to find some tricky ones so that I would be prepared for a curve ball. The map was huge because when you’re under pressure, all of a sudden the simplest things become hard. I work on the map a lot independently of the cases and I asked for cases with a lot of maps so that I can be more comfortable with that. The point where I felt good about it was where my case partner was like, “Yes, you nailed it.” You could go through a couple of those and be like, “Okay. It is a different disease. It was a different drug,” but I was able to pull out what I knew about the industry and the benchmark pricing and say, “That’s a good market size or no, that’s not a good market size.” All of that felt good. In the interviews they’re still scary, but it obviously works because I got in.
I have one last question before I want to pivot. What advice would you give to those that are in the throes of looking for a consulting role? The fall is coming; it begins the new recruitment season for many individuals. What advice would you give them knowing what you know now, now that you’ve gotten your first offer?
Everything I just said, those are the basic, the bread and butter. You’re going to need that to get an interview. You’re going to need that in networking. You’re going to need to be able to perform in a case interview. If I were to add some cherry on top of that performing in a summer program for three days with people and what I’ve heard from your other podcast too is that you need to be client ready as well, and that’s important. Almost more important than if you have the best structure and the best strategy out there. I grew up in a restaurant, my family had a restaurant. I learned early on that the customer is always right. You need to be able to present yourself in a professional way, no matter if you’re stressed, no matter if they’re challenging you, you need to stay positive and try to bring the team together always. Don’t freak out if at all possible and try to say positive and move forward. That would be my advice in this whole process because it’s stressful and it’s hard, but if you can do that, you’ll be well off.
Going back to the volunteer consulting firm, I actually would love to have you on a future episode to talk through that. For people that may be interested in creating that opportunity for themselves the way you did, that would be a unique perspective. I don’t know if you would mind in the future to think about maybe coming back and talking through that for those that maybe be interested in it.
It’s an incredibly rewarding experience so I would encourage other people to do it as well.
I took time to think about what would be the top ten things that I wish someone told me going into my first career. I’m going to pass these on to you and I actually wrote down a couple of books as well that I think you should think about picking up while you’re getting ready that for me were books that helped define and refine my brand. Before I go into the books, I’m actually going to go through my list here. I feel like I have ten, but I can already tell like from our conversation and how awesome you are, I probably want to add a couple more off the cuff. I’m going to tell you this is from the lessons learned. This is what I would give my younger self a couple of days or month before I started my first consulting career. The first one, it starts with self. You have to go in with the mindset of learning and experimenting and stretching. I believe that whatever mindset you go in with is the type of experiences you manifest into your life. When I say that, meaning if you go in with your first job, you go in with the mindset that you’re like, “I hope I do okay. I hope my clients like me, or I hope that my leadership likes me.”
If you go in with that mindset that you would have doubt, that doubt and that nervousness is going to play out in the energy you give off. It is going to play off into the decisions you make, and it can project a level of uncertainty and awkward situations that happened to you. You’re in neuroscience, this you probably already get from a scientific perspective. I’m probably preaching to the choir here. Going in with that mindset, saying, “I’m going to learn, I’m going to do the best that I can, and I’m going to knock it out the park. I’m going to have fun along the way, and I’m not going to know everything and that’s okay.” If you’re open to that, it makes a difference. To me mindset is everything, first and foremost. The second thing I wrote was play sponge. I feel like with you and the way you are, I’m sure you’ll be doing this already. When you’re playing sponge, leverage your newbie card. When you’re new at a firm, you’re like spanking brand new, straight out of school, leverage that card to your advantage. Do you ever see a little kid? If you ever heard a little kid like between the ages of five to seven or eight years old, they ask so many questions. The thing is people will stop and answer those questions because they’re young. You can tell this because they’re new, they want to learn, and they’re curious.
In that same lens, leverage the card. Ask a bazillion questions and don’t be scared. Don’t like create self-imposed boundaries like, “Maybe they don’t have time for me.” Don’t do that. Ask questions, ask about the practice, asks about the work, ask why they do certain things, why do they go to market the way they do, what are some things that you should be taking thinking of when you’re putting together a deliverable? Whatever it is, don’t assume you know the answer. Just ask because it’s always good. Even if you do know the answer, it’s always good to hear it from somebody else in here from a different perspective. Leverage that card. Do not use it sparingly, really use it. That was my number two. My number three, I feel like you’ve already mentioned it, the building of relationships. For number three, I put balancing both the technical side of the work and building the relationship part, but part of relationship building is learning how to sustain relationships. It’s one thing to go and meet people and create a first great impression, but it’s another thing to hear what they told you in those interactions. Follow back up. If it’s sending them an article that you saw that connected with the. If they mentioned something about a presentation they were doing, you can follow back up and say, “Last week when we spoke you were going to do X. How did that go?”
Whatever it is, it’s more than just networking, it’s how to sustain the relationships that you’ve started to create. That’s another thing I wish someone told me. It’s so important because I know for me at the beginning of my career, I spent a lot of time building my technical side. I didn’t take time to sustain relationships and so it’s important. Four, helping your team out. Help them out. It’s right now actually one of my favorite things. I have one of my colleagues that says, “One team, one dream.” That sounds cheesy, but it’s so right. If you’re part of a team and let’s say you’ve finished what’s been assigned to you, see who else needs help. Don’t wait for someone to tell you. Just say, “Do you need help?” I call it building consulting karma. When you can help somebody, roll up your sleeves and help them out in their time of need for whatever it is, it can be your manager, it can be your colleagues, it can be like a peer, it can even be someone that’s younger than you that maybe an intern themselves, help people out. Don’t wait for people to ask you for help because that helps in that sustaining of relationships. Sometimes people come and help you in the most unforeseen times, so it’s good to help your team.
Being present is my number five. Be present and be open-minded. When I say be present, don’t worry about checking Twitter or checking your Facebook or your Instagram account or checking personal things. When you’re at work, you’re at work. In the beginning of your career, you don’t want to start to create the habit of constantly being on your phone and hearing the dings. What I do is I actually put my phone away. I don’t have my phone out with me, I deliberately leave it in my purse. I don’t take it with me to meetings or anything because I know if I start to see that little light blinking or I hear a buzz, it’s going to make me want to answer it. I want to make sure that my team knows I’m there with them 100% and they don’t feel like I’m distracted. Being present is important and being open minded. You’re going to meet a lot of smart, amazing people that are going to have different worldviews than you and that’s okay. Being open minded is important to not feel like you have to know the answer, you have to be right, or you have to be the smartest person in the room. Sometimes I’ve seen that with younger consultants. There’s sometimes a little bit of “I’m smarter than you. I’m going to try to out-articulate you.” You see that dynamic play out sometimes and it’s not about that at all. It’s about us getting together, creating value for our clients, and helping make an impact. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about these off agendas.
Number six, always have an elevator pitch. When I say an elevator pitch, what are you doing right now? If someone asked you what are you doing right now, you have a quick sound bite of a project you’re working on or a quick soundbite of the proposal you’re working on because you’re going to run into people at different times. What do you do if you run into someone in an elevator? What if a client comes to you and say, “What’s your job on the team?” You’re at happy hour and you see a leader in your practice that you’ve been wanting to get a hold of them. What do you say to them? Personally, I have five elevator pitches that’s ready to go at any time. Depending on the audience, what is it that I want them to know about me in the split moment that we have together. Because in that split moment, you may have been able to create the space to set up coffee with them and tell them a little bit more about what you’re doing. You may have created the space to get put on a new project. You may have created the space to hang out with them on the weekend that you didn’t have because he was right there at the right moment, at the right time, and the right words they needed to hear.
Again, it doesn’t always have to be a thing at work. One of the things I’ve been talking about with folks is about my book. It’s not related to my work, but I have an elevator pitch. If I haven’t seen someone in a while I’m like, “Here’s what I’m working on.” If I’m doing something around the house, I remember when I was first moving location, they’ll think, “I’m doing this or I was telling you about my step son. He’s going to camp later.” I may talk to someone about that, so it’s always having a couple of pitches ready so you have something to hook people so that they want to know more about you and you hook them into your world.
That goes back to the skill of communicating with people and presenting yourself too. Some, I guess when I’ve seen it previously, it looks automatic, but honestly it’s something that you can practice and be ready for.
It’s always changing. Things are always happening. It’s always having those back pocket pitches. Another thing to think of is know who the players are in your ecosystem. That’s important. You can start to do this now. What’s amazing is this generation is so blessed. You have Google. You can find out so much stuff on Google about someone and never have met them before and you know so much about them. Take the time, figure out who are the leaders in your firm, who are people that are currently working there, who were some of the clients if you’ve got names? Start to create almost like a mosaic. “Here are all the different players, here are the little data bytes that I know of them,” and start connecting the dots. Start connecting the dots. Are you around a lot of people that are enthusiasts? They’re runners.
For example, I remember it was on a project, everybody was a runner. It wasn’t by design; they just gravitate towards each other sometimes. Figure out who are all the different people are and what roles they have. The role versus the level of authority and influence are two different things so it’s understanding that distinction, and just connect the dots, figure it out, and that gives you an idea. When I go back to the elevator pitch, if you know someone’s a runner and that’s something that you may be doing or you’re interested in it, that may be part of your pitch to say, “I just started doing things.” They’ll say, “I know you’re a runner. What are some tips you can give me?” Maybe I don’t have time to talk to you in that moment, but they may say, “Let’s set a time. Let’s talk about that or hey I’m going to go for a run tomorrow after work, you can join me.” It just creates the space.
My number ten I put here, I said learn the art of detachment when it comes to what you want. I say that meaning whatever expectation or mental map that you may have of what you’re going to do, it may be a little different than reality, and that’s just how it is. You may think, “I’m going to do all these different things.” You may do something that looks like that, but when you’re in the throes of it, it’s going to feel a little different, and that’s okay. It goes back to if you have goals and certain things you want to do, let people know. That was one thing I wish someone told me. Tell people what you want to do, but at the same time don’t hold onto it. Let it go. If you tell people what you want to do, you do good work, you build that trust, you build that social capital, what do you want to do is going to come back to you in some way. It may not be in the time that you want it, it may not be in the way and the manner that you think it was going to happen, but it’s going to happen eventually. I always say learn the art of detachment. Get used to putting yourself out there, letting people know what you want, putting out your expectations, but then letting it go and letting the universe do its job.
It’s hard particularly for me because I am focused and excited about things. When they don’t work out or it’s not the right time, then it’s easy to get down about it and to focus on it, but if you detach from it and always focused on doing good work, it’ll come around. It’ll happen.
It will, and it always does. You and I actually have a lot of similarities. I am the same way. I’m always specific about what I want. I know exactly what it is. It’s funny because I don’t deviate. Since I was a kid, I have certain things I definitely wanted. Once I get it, then I’m good, but until I don’t, I’m laser-focused on that and I had to learn over time that it’s going to happen. Most of the things that I’ve ever wanted to do, I’ve been blessed to do them. I’ve actually had to create new big goals because a lot of things I’ve already done, but in that time, I think about the journey I took to get to turn those things, and some of them I felt like I forced the situation or it was aggressive. I’m like, “I didn’t have to do that. It was going to eventually happen in one way or another.” I learned the art of detachment. Put it out there, work hard towards it, it may not come out the way exactly, but it will eventually manifest in some way. Those are my big things. There are two books I would recommend for you to pick up to read that were helpful for me. The first one, if you have it already, you may have, it’s called the First 90 Days. It’s by Michael Watkins. That’s a book that anytime you start anything new, it’s a good book because it talks about success strategies at any level. What are things you should consider doing? That book is important and if anyone out there knows the author, Michael Watkins, I would love to speak with him because his book has been an anchor in my career for so long. I would love to talk to him.
C (image of book): Title of book
The second book, I would also love to talk to this author, it’s called Be Your Own Mentor: Strategies from Top Women On the Secrets of Success by Sheila Wellington. I remember the day that I made the decision that I was going to take accountability for my career and not wait for people. I remember I didn’t have mentors, and the way I operated was, “I don’t have a mentor me. Let me Google that.” I remember it was one of the first things I Googled and then I came across her book, it was called, Be Your Own Mentors. I was like, “That’s what I’m trying to do.” I read that book and that set me on a path as well. I would love to speak to Sheila about that book. I highly recommend those two you’ll take throughout your life and your career. I wish you the best, Michaela.
Thank you so much. This is phenomenal.
I cannot wait to hear the next steps in your journey. I’m going to be following you along. Anyone that has started a volunteer consulting firm definitely is one to watch for sure. Thanks again, Michaela for joining us on the show. Go getters, if you have a career dilemma, a question, or want to be a guest, feel free to drop us a line at MECEMuseUnplugged@Gmail.com. Thanks for tuning in and here is to your journey to greatness.
Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. This pop-up podcast was inspired by my book the MECE Muse: 100+ Selected Practices, Unwritten Rules, and Habits of Great Consultants. I have people asking me many questions about this book, but the one question that comes up constantly is, “Christie, you have such a demanding career. How did you find time to write this book?” Honestly the answer is simple. I sought to become the mentor that I wish I had earlier in my career. In the beginning of my career, I didn’t have many mentors and mental maps of what success looks like, and I struggled with that in a lot of different ways. What’s nice about struggles is that I overcame them. I grew stronger and more competent, and I’m so excited where I am in my career. I want to share what I’ve learned and be able to help you.
I wrote the book with my years of experience, but I also had an amazing opportunity to connect with over 50 or so consulting partners and leaders across the industry, sharing their stories, their antidotes, and their resources on how you could be a great consultant yourself. Do me a favor. Pick up your phone right now. Go to www.MECEMuse.com. If you scroll down, you’ll see a little box to sign up for the book notification. Go ahead and sign up for it. I’d love to hear your feedback on my book as well as the podcast. Thanks again for listening, and here’s to your journey to greatness.
Links from today’s episode: