Transcription
When you work for a management consulting firm, it's almost like you're training for an Olympic sport. You work really long hours; you work at a really fast pace. Most Consultants leave after 2 to 3 years. First of all, why? And second of all, what is the best time to leave Consulting? It depends. What does work-life balance look like for Mackenzie Consultants? It depends. How would you rank the most desirable exit options for Consultants? It depends. Why do so many Mackenzie Consultants go on to become CEOs? Kind of get exposed to like leadership and executive type work so early on. Our Consultants just expensive scapegoats [Music].
Gos hey keeners, welcome back to Jump Start Your Career with me, your host Gary. Today we are resuming our conversation with Lon Zang about her career in Consulting after graduating from Queens and wrapping up her internship at Mackenzie in her third-year summer. So if you're someone who who's interested in consulting, or you're just curious about this career path or how to navigate your career postgraduate, I think this will be a really good episode to listen to. And as always, please subscribe to this channel; follow this podcast wherever you listen. Most of you who are watching this are not subscribed, so how are you going to know when my new video comes out? I'm just kidding, but yeah, without further Ado, let's get into the episode.
What are some signs that you should be a consultant for University students? If you have commitment issues, I think that's a big one for me. Both of my parents have kind of been in their roles for like decades, yeah, and I remember being so stressed in college and in University. I like, there's no part of me that knows I want this career for 50 years. I wanted to keep learning and keep trying new things, and all of that, and consulting's perfect for that because you're doing like a new project, new people, new topic, new industry every couple of weeks or months. The other one I say is like you're intellectually curious; like you like trying to figure out how things work. I think that's why like the engineering brain lends itself pretty well to Consulting. I'm a big like "why" and "how" thinker. For example, like I remember being a kid and seeing like, "Oh, this company rebranded their packaging; like why did they do that?" You know, or you get hyperfixated on the randomest things. Like the one hyperfixation that I had going that summer, actually, it started here in Woodsworth, was trying to figure out how like elevator algorithms worked. Okay, does it optimize for cost or for like getting people to the place that's fastest on time? Like how does that, you know what I mean? It's so random, but if you're someone that like enjoys problem-solving and thinking about these like really niche kind of nerdy things, like that's pretty cool. And then the last thing I would say is like you're a people person. It's such a meme that Consultants are professional yappers. Not every consultant has to be like a huge extrovert, but if you enjoy client work and Professional Services might be like a good spot for you.
So I wanted to ask you a bit more about specifically your time at Mackenzie, not anything like confidential or anything like that, yeah, but maybe more so just like the things you learned or the people that you've met. What does work-life balance look like for Mackenzie Consultants? It depends. It really depends on the project. It can range from literally like 9 to 5 hours, working 40 hours a week, to like working 100 plus hours. I know that work-life balance is something that's pretty important to me, honestly. As much as I wish I was a, you know, perfect capitalist machine, like I I need to sleep eight hours a day or I can't function, which is honestly why I was like, okay, I can't do investment banking. But there's ways you can kind of solve for better work-life balance. For example, if you do like a longer-term project, usually it's a bit more sustainable. If you work with like really great people leaders who know how to prioritize work and minimize churn, you're, you know, working a little bit more efficiently. Certain client types lend themselves to better work-life balance. For example, if you're working with, you know, like an investment bank, if your clients are working around the clock, you're working around the clock. But if you work for like a retail client, they probably work a 9 to 5, so it might be more chill for you.
Okay, interesting. And then I guess this is another question, but um, what does the what does the compensation structure look like for Mackenzie? Like honestly, good question, because I had no idea until I got my offer, yeah, and it really differs. I would go onto this website called like levels.fyi. Everything's public information, so I think when you start at any of these firms, like the base for an undergrad BA equivalent, the names are also different, it usually starts around I think 100K, which is really good for, you know, right out of school, six-figure starting salary, yeah. But the the craziest part about Consulting comp is not like where you start but how fast it grows. If you really accelerate through the development, I think it's something like your salary doubles maybe like every two to three years, so that's crazy. You can see like, you know, obviously caps off at a certain point, but um, you can see all this information on like levels.fyi. I will say the one thing that I didn't realize and I'm so thankful that it kind of worked out for me is that there's a really big compensation gap between different types of consulting firms. So for example, MBB and a couple of other like strategy management consulting firms, I guess at the end of the day they're just like selling a more premium offering; they charge clients more, which is probably why they like pay you more as well. They're like probably all around the same, give or take like 5 to 10K, but at other firms, whether it's like for example like the big four accounting firms that do Consulting, depending on the practice it can be like significantly less, even though like the nature of work might be similar. So I think that's like good to keep in mind too.
So are you saying there's a huge gap between MBB and big four, or within the departments at Big Four? I actually am not as familiar with like big four like within the Department's out works, but I remember like there's a really big gap between MBB strategy firms and then other types of consulting firms. I've heard of like positions starting as low as like 50K, which is still a really good salary, but if you think about it like I didn't think the gap between the different companies in the same industry would be as big as they are. I think yeah, for example, like my friends, some of them are starting at KPMG management consulting literally like soon, and they're getting paid 70K or 75K versus 100K.
So most Consultants leave after 2 to 3 years. First of all, why? And second of all, what is the best time to leave Consulting? It depends. The more I grow and mature, the more I'm like, forget the five-year target, go for the opportunities will help you inform that decision. For me, when I left Mackenzie, I wasn't actively recruiting; I wasn't looking for the next job. It was actually like an inbound opportunity that someone in my Professional Network, they essentially like made me an offer to join them. And at that time, I thought about like the learning opportunities I wanted, all of the things that I cared about, compensation being one of them, professional development, all of that stuff, and it was the right fit for me. People usually leave the firm after a couple of years because, you know, a lot of people are like me; you go into Consulting because maybe you almost want to like extend school for a bit, just yeah, continue your Divergent path of learning, and then maybe you figure out what you want to do next. I have some friends who are working in public health now, like working at really in really cool countries, advancing things that they feel really passionate about. Some people leave for PE to, you know, Chase the bag, pursue Finance. Some people like are at Harvard or Stanford doing grad school, which is comp, I heard like free MBA, yeah. So even now, what's really cool is like even after I left Mackenzie as a BA, they'll let you essentially go to school within 2 years or something like that, and then like pay for it. The thing is you do have to come back for the amount of time that you went to school for, which sounds like a really really good deal, and I was very seriously thinking about that. I think naturally a lot of people sometimes just want to break too; it's like a little bit of a gap year, yeah. I kind of decided to do this little like entrepreneurial sabbatical thing instead of doing the traditional grad school route.
And like speaking of like, you know, exit opportunities, people leaving, how would you rank the most desirable exit options for Consultants? Whatever, like it depends. I I'm such a horrible podcast guest, but it depends on what you want to do. Are you solving for a career in a niche field? Are you solving for money? Are you solving for better work-life balance? Are you solving for a personal reason? I think the biggest thing that I had no idea to even think about when I was a student is like, as much as life is separate than work, they're so intertwined, right? Because especially if you're someone that cares a lot about your career, it could bring you to another country; it changes your life completely, right? For example, especially like as a woman, you think about do you want to have kids eventually? Like how do you want to think about family? Some people have like personal reasons or professional reasons to relocate. So one person's ideal exit opportunity is maybe like whatever job brings them to Australia; someone else's exit op might be like whatever brings them to a million dollars net worth fastest. Yes, you know, I think though like the best thing you can do in your first couple years of your career is to figure out what those priorities are for yourself and solve around that.
Such a mature answer. Like I think like if I ask someone my age, they would be like, um, become a CEO obviously, or like, you know, like go into like PE, like go into hedge fund and make that as much money as possible, or like, you know, work for the government like you have as much power like change the world or whatever. But then I think at the end of the day it's like it's so hard to like put everything into like black and white, like here like most prestigious, most desirable; it's it doesn't work like that sometimes. No, and I know it's not the sexy answer to give, the whole "it depends." No, this is not good for content, not good for content. I would have given you probably a different answer when I was like in the thick of it, when I was like 21, but I don't know, maybe I'm like washed up now. No, I think it's it's like so different because I podcast with like 20-year-olds, and then when I talk to you, it's like such a different experience because yeah, I'm like 43 now, I mean 25, but like which is like basically 30. I'm good. Oh my god. Um, because you worked at Mackenzie, I wanted to ask you about this phenomenon that a lot of people talk about, which is why do so many Mackenzie Consultants go on to become CEOs? I think I saw this stat somewhere that says that 90% of people who leave Mackenzie become like essentially a C-suite executive at big companies in the future. So many Fortune 500 CEOs come from Mackenzie, so like what is this like Mackenzie to CEO pipeline? Like what is going on here?
I think a couple of things. I don't know if it's like causation or correlation. I don't know if it's like you go to Mackenzie, so you end up as a CEO. I think people who maybe like aspire to be a CEO one day care about Corporate America and Leadership and all those things, maybe like Mackenzie is a natural place for them to start. I think the Mackenzie Mafia is similar to a lot of the other mafias that exist; for example, like in Tech, there's like the PayPal Mafia, you know. I think the PayPal Mafia, it's like all these people that worked at these big tech companies that went off to like start unicorns or even like an academic institution. Like think about all the Harvard alumni; they're doing like all these crazy things, you know. Obviously, Mackenzie is very competitive to get into, so naturally they're picking like the best talent, which maybe is like a potential indicator of being successful in the corporate world. The other thing is like you kind of get exposed to like leadership and executive type work so early on. Like I remember one of my first projects at Mackenzie, I was sitting across the table from a CFO, you know. So normally in any other industry, you would never be invited into the boardroom for a really high-level executive conversation, but in Consulting, you you spend all your days working on whatever is keeping like the senior leaders awake, right? Yeah, so you kind of learn how it works; you get exposed to it; you build the network. So naturally, like the more you know, the more you learn, the better you are at it, maybe the more interested you are in it. So that's kind of my guess, yeah.
Speaking of um, I guess like working with CEOs, there is this really popular TikTok where this one guy was saying how Mackenzie Consultants are essentially just really expensive scapegoats for CEOs. It's crazy, but he was talking about how these CEOs, when they hire Mackenzie, they don't expect these Consultants to come in and save the company or like do great work. Instead, they sort of offload these very risky decisions to Mackenzie and get them to come to a verdict or make a decision, like lay off this many people or do this and that. And when things do go wrong and backfire, instead of firing the CEO, they'll just fire Mackenzie and be like, oh, like this is not my fault; let's just Mackenzie came up with this idea, so let's just fire them, and then the cycle repeats when a new CEO comes, and they just hire another company. So the reason you actually end up hiring management Consultants is because you want to offload the risk of a bad decision or bad process to them. So in the case that you hire them and something goes wrong, you as an executive can then say, well, I didn't do the bad work; I didn't make the decision. At the end of the day, it was Mackenzie or Bain or whoever that ended up doing all the work; they gave us this recommendation; that recommendation was bad; therefore, I shouldn't be fired, and instead we should fire Mackenzie and then get another consulting company so that we could do the same thing over and over again. Do you think that's true? Like are Consultants just expensive scapegoats?
I think that's a super sensationalized take, which the name Mackenzie is super sensationalized in the media and everything in itself. I personally don't think I've ever worked on a project where that was the case. If you think about it from a reasonable person's perspective, Mackenzie or any of these firms are so expensive to hire for the clients, right? A lot of like even Fortune 500 companies, like there's shareholders, there's the board, you know what I mean? So it's hard to convince people who presumably are very smart and have good judgment and about how you're spending their money to like for personal gain, if that makes sense. These are like sometimes multi-million dollar contracts. Another way to frame it in a more like value-driven way is like Risk Management is a huge thing. If a company's about to make a really big decision, make a really big investment, it helps to have a second pair of eyes on it, especially a second pair of very expertise-driven, very like smart eyes. Sometimes Mackenzie goes into a client context and maybe comes up with something brand new; sometimes they go in to validate or invalidate a hypothesis that the client has. It's always tied to Value. I don't know, maybe there's like someone out there who knows how to play this game and convince everyone in the world, but like yeah, if you think about it, it doesn't really add up. Like it is there's like so many like procurement governance, like all of these checks that go into place that as much as I wish I could, you know, hire Mackenzie for my own personal gain, like it just doesn't work like that.
What are the most important lessons that you learned from your time at Mackenzie? First one is what like the whole TikTok video went viral for, but like biz dev. The number one thing I think I got from two years at Mackenzie that helped me land a director-level role at 23 is literally this notion of developing biz dev. Yes, which to me is just like how do you have executive presence, build relationships with like really senior leaders, and like know how to hang in these types of like business contexts, especially like as a young woman, Gen Z, whatever, you know, because it's like scary, and you like definitely don't naturally belong. But I think it's like through exposure therapy; the more you surround yourself with people in these environments, the better you are at communicating, relationship building, building your personal brand, things like that. Another thing I would say is you just learn how to be, you just learn how to have like super high horsepower. When you work for a management consulting firm like Mackenzie, it's almost like you're training for an Olympic sport. You work really long hours; you work at a really fast pace, often on like really interesting problems. You got a ton of coaching and mentorship, so you just learn how to produce really fast at a really high quality, regardless of, you know, what the topic or context is. The third thing is this isn't really like something that I learn but something that I gained that was a lot of value, which is you learn a lot about yourself really quick. I think it forces you to maybe grow up a little faster, um, because one you usually just hang out with like older people a lot of the time, yeah, but also it's it's really interesting the lifestyle that comes with it. When I was, you know, 22, 23, a lot of my like really good friends were maybe still in school or like had other types of jobs, um, and all of a sudden you make like this type of money, and you get to like fly business class, and you get to like stay in these really insane hotels.
Spend money like rappers. So when I was at Mckenny, I was at the Four Seasons, the Ritz; my teams were going jet skiing for team events. I'm not kidding when I say we spent money like we rappers. Yes, and no, it depends on the state of the economy and like the people and everything, but um, you really kind of mature quickly, and you realize like what your personal priorities are, your boundaries are, what type of life you might want to live. So I think that's the the biggest thing; like Mckenzie was just this like new bigger pond that I was able to like swim into that is like so interesting, and it's like why like maybe Consulting is one of the most desirable career pathways for people who are just starting out when they're early on, yeah. It definitely wasn't like rainbows and daisies and all of that, but I like I would be lying if I said I like wasn't grateful for it. It was such a privilege to be able to have that type of environment to start off my career, even though it was really really hard and challenging at times. There's a lot more questions that I want to ask you still; I know like we had like so many questions planned out, and we were so excited for this, but I know you have to leave soon, and I keep my word. So the last question that I want to ask ask you is if you can go back in time and talk to an 18-year-old Lonnie who maybe just entered Queens, and you only had 60 seconds cuz it's 11:39 right now, what would you say?
I don't even know what would I say to myself at 18. I would tell myself to go play more. I think the biggest most difficult thing to manage when you are always chasing a goal and being really high-achieving, you know, throughout my whole life, like growing up it was a competitive Sport, and then it was like my career, school, all of that stuff is like mental health, physical health, well-being, things like that. How do you like stay happy and healthy, physically fit? It's so important, and it's really easy to become hyperfixated on something that's like a little bit more materialistic, such as your career, and that matters obviously, but what matters is a lot a lot more, at least for me, is my friends, my family, my health, who I am as a person, my character, things like that. And I think college was such a stressful time for me because I, you know, was spending all my free time making PowerPoint pages instead of like doing an intramural Sport, and yeah, that is something that I really wish I would have done and I think would have taught me like much more sustainable like lifestyle habits.
Yeah, yeah. Lonnie Zen, thank you so much for coming on to Jump Start Your Career. I hope we run it back another time; we're both in Toronto, and this was so much fun, and hopefully you guys really like this episode and don't leave too many hate comments because you've been getting some hate on TikTok. I think I will say first off like the positive feedback is definitely like way more overwhelming than the negative, but obviously like yeah, the haters are the ones that are going to comment and say something nasty. Yeah, I'm trying to be like Demir and not clap back at them, but sometimes they're like a little they're a little silly and funny, and I can't help myself. Exactly. And if you want to keep up with Lonnie's Journey, you can find her on TikTok. Yeah, drop a comment; I'll just sit on my couch and like answer these questions. So feel free to leave your comments in the comment section, and if you have time, feel free to maybe respond to them as well. But yeah, overall, thanks so much again. Okay, that is it of our conversation with Lonnie Zan. As always, feel free to hit that subscribe button or follow this podcast anywhere you listen or watch on; it will really help me out so much. And keeners, I'll see you next week. [Music]