Advice for MBA Hopefuls: From Buy-Side to Strategy Consulting

I’ve been trying to write for about six months. Rather, I have been writing drafts in Word and then deleting thereafter, as an almost ritualistic release. During the Oxford days, I used to update the blog monthly – but I’ve had trouble with the quality of my work and self-imposed expectations of writing lately.

Most of this content has been topical, on views of coming technology trends within health and wellness and some has been introspective on my journey repatriating back to the States after Business School. While I plan to share something along those lines soon, this piece answers questions on my career progression I’ve received by fellow alumni looking at both Finance and Consulting as career options. It’s an extended response to “Why _____ career move?”, ?if you will. The views are my own and specific to the context of my background alone, but I hope that students and job seekers can find some value here to guide their own journey.

What Makes a Good Business? What Makes a Good Investment?

I never understood accounting until I had to apply the analysis to a 10K or model a company. While my undergraduate education at Georgetown observed high standards, the lessons were constrained to a vacuum or volume of case studies.

Curiosity drives much of my professional life – taking an interest in the ways forces of economics and sociology intersect; generally this manifested in consumer driven business when I was an investor. Tangency to the product helped frame my thoughts. I went to a 7-Eleven most days, so the concepts were intuitive; and working in Emerging Markets was exciting and filled with nuance on every adventure around Southeast Asia. I do cherish those times.

While I learned all the technical concepts as an investor in Singapore over 6 years; much of it was esoteric in that numbers were detached from function. I’ll unpack that shortly.

What I mean is that my ability to see trends and insights in numbers only got me as far as valuation techniques can drive an understanding of the real world in an abstract sense. One of my early mentors taught me the difference between a good business and good investment.

And the colour added by sitting around pale rectangular board rooms helped – faint scents of incense and burning palm in Jakarta, sweaty drives in traffic around Manila, visits to markets, seeing milk cartons fill up as they soared through conveyer belts. All of these elements told a story and helped me learn how to ask the right questions to understand what makes a good business.

I also got better at framing questions, developing open-ended sequences to make an executive feel comfortable with their guidance. I could ask ‘X product was growing at 10%, we see the market going in Y direction and believe competitive advantage Z implies results will exceed performance and drive equity performance’. I would even use antagonistic techniques such as throwing out wild projections so the risk of walking away with a false perception would weigh on the leader until they gave at least a range guess on a number.

But what was it for? We made investors money and at times, subtle activism around ESG helped offset the void of ‘not actually producing anything in the real world’. I enjoyed my time as an investor and learned a great deal, but I didn’t actually know how to do anything.

How Can You Advise Leaders to Build a Good Business?

So, I went to Business School. Initially I considered a dual degree in Government/Public Policy – as a hedge for future political work; yet, I opted for a go at Class President at Oxford to give me a taste of leadership, but also empathy and active listening; ironically, corporate skills that could apply to elected office I guess?

I currently see myself in Phase II of my career. I want to learn the ‘why’ and ‘how’. Consulting provides the toolkit to do just that. It structures your thoughts, provides organization to the world and offers the levers to drive good businesses. I’m genuinely happy doing this work for the moment. If you’re in school doing case studies, looking to move to strategy consulting, then you’ll be pleased (or dreaded) in that the job is quite similar on the day to day.

Moving to a direct client focused role has also been a shift in perspective. While you’re generally in a position of influence as an investor, serving interests as a Consultant becomes complicated – selling work, building consensus around an idea, trickling in value – adding insights is quite different than updating an investor on stock performance and the macro environment in Thailand.

I’ve found it challenging, but equally rewarding to manage multiple stakeholders with conflicting, yet valid, vantage points on a challenge – understanding biases, vested interest, and end goal helps establish rapport. I find myself developing these skills faster than expected, but haven’t had much time to reflect on how the culmination of these activities have come together on my own ability.

How Do You Run a Good Business?

I don’t know. That ignorance is invigorating on one hand – and intimidating on the other, in that the only answer is experiential in nature.

Depending on where life leads – I’d like to eventually figure it out. I had personal reasons, but tangency to Silicon Valley and living in San Francisco was strategic as well. Even through osmosis the past 19 months, I have multiple friends building companies or evaluating them as venture capitalists.

The reality is that public investors generally hold little accountability on an individual firm (less, activists with large holdings). Consultants are measured on their value to a client, but the consequence of not performing is a broken relationship and pipeline drought of additional work. Operators, with a vested equity interest, have skin in the game.

Generally, I am risk-averse (aside from that large hedged long/short position on gyms at the start of the pandemic that traded neutral as a brush of luck..). Unprecedented times right?

But realistically, it’s a function of psychological mapping and circumstances growing up – breaking socioeconomic cycles can be done in America, but it’s tricky. Less than 10% of my teenage peers made it to any proper college. For me, going to a good school and shooting for a high paying career, B-line to Business School and choosing the safer option has made sense and worked out.

I wouldn’t say living abroad was a risk. It adds colour to my background and I have some great stories, but the apprehension and anxiety operators face is something I have never experienced.

I have a good grasp of managing people throughout my career, developing ideas and testing them – but failure has been constrained to personal liability.

There may be a Phase III. And at 32, sometimes I wonder if not soon, then when? It takes a specific personality trait to make that decision and another to execute on that vision. I’m observing the qualities in friends who have gone through YC, the ones who have failed and can bounce back, the ones who stay investors and never plunge into their own venture. I’m still in learning mode and figuring out if that’s who I am or could become as a person. And would that make me happy?

In general, my advice would be to first understand what excites you. If you’re reading this considering an MBA, and like me couldn’t do anything real like code or perform surgery, then your options fall into the organizational sphere. I do get the question as to why I left buy-side to opt for Consulting, as many people move the other way – generally into private equity over asset management. While unorthodox, my story makes a lot of sense to me when laid out this way, but the inverse holds true as well.

I am confident in saying that following the mob in business school will end poorly. You might land the job, but the lack of enjoyment from your job won't be worth it. Explore during your program and get a good sense of everything since you’re likely going in without a plan or plan to change during this time (because your essays were rubbish, everyone knows it’s fluff). You’ll figure out whether a case study is fun or miserable and you’ll either fall asleep in your lectures on Efficient Frontier Theory or the wheels will be turning and you’ll pick up a pile of cliched investor books the next day. Listen to those instincts and then, and only then, begin executing on the requirements to land a job in one of those fields.

Whatever you choose, it’s going to be personal – atypical paths like my own are out there. Advisors will say to have this story in place before BSchool, but that’s easier said than done. Just as I have little idea on the day to day of my Phase III, the only way to understand is generally vested in hindsight. That’s what exciting about life and your professional journey though – else, we would have static repetitive careers, or jobs rather. If you’re reading this, that’s probably not you – so explore and look forward to the unknown.

Michael