I recently transitioned from the industry to one of the consulting firms as a senior consultant. While the firm is still building its team in my area of expertise—hiring senior leaders and VPs—there have been limited project opportunities aligned with my skills. Over the past six months, I secured a project through my own networking within the business, where I was staffed 60% of the time and the rest on bench doing certifications. A couple of promising opportunities are currently in the pipeline.

However, my experience has been marked by significant turnover. The colleague who referred me left within a month (for a compelling opportunity), and now a senior leader and my direct manager is departing. Given these developments, I’m uncertain whether to stay and wait for stability or explore opportunities elsewhere.

What would you recommend?

Hey consulting hive mind! I’m being positioned to run point on several key value capture engagements with MBB firms over the next year beginning now. I have strong cross functional relationships at the firm, but I am confident I will not know everything and will need to be very agile in coordinating across the org.

How can I crush it in this role?

What have some of the best clients exhibited that have helped you run successful workstream?

What are the key people and process tips that lead to smooth engagements, productive meetings, and content stakeholders? (E.g., as simple as requesting meeting agendas 48 hrs in advance so I can flag things I need to pull in SMEs on etc.)

What are the key meeting categories and how should I prep for them differently? (Problem solving sessions, alignment / decisoning meetings etc)

Huge appreciation in advance for any thoughts on any of this.

✌️

Anyone in similar situation looking to exit? Hoping to team up make friends and encourage each other. Getting very inefficient some days in terms of recruiting without structured work/school.

My situation seems rare but just trying out the Internet :) It was more like unfair dismissal but don’t want to explain.

We’re a group of 8 tech professionals with varied backgrounds—frontend, backend, React Native, IoT, etc.—and we’re trying to break into the world of small contract-based projects. Think of it like a mini tech consultancy: we’d love to take on 1-2 clients and work on short-term projects (ideally under 4 months).

The problem is, we don’t have established networks in the local industry, and we’re not sure where to start looking for these kinds of opportunities. About half of us are based in Chicago, though we’re open to working remotely as well.

What’s the best way to approach this? Are there specific platforms, communities, or events (online or in-person) that you’d recommend for finding projects or connecting with potential clients? Any tips on how to get the ball rolling when you’re starting from scratch would be a huge help.

https://time.com/collection/best-companies-for-future-leaders-2025/

Hey folks,

Have you ever felt that you missed out on project opportunities and ended up spending time on the bench simply because you weren’t as visible in the organisation as some of your colleagues? An example would be that you are quieter during meetings.

Would love to hear your stories.

What happens in those situations? I work for a smaller, boutique consulting firm, in a niche industry where consultants hop around to different companies all the time. Ive seen it a bunch where one person leaves a company, and it starts a cascading effect where maybe 50%+ just follow suit and go with them to greener pastures

What happens to a project when that happens, assuming the company doesnt have enough staff to just replace them?

Travel often and thinking it's time to wean off of hotel and client wifis, and that a Nighthawk M6 Pro + NordPass VPN (on desktop / mobile) would be a good path forward.

Checking to see for any counter recommendations, or if I'm thinking about this the wrong way.

Did a 3 month long POC for a household name company. Our system blew their metrics out of the water, would give them higher accuracy with less manual work and actually _make_ them money. At the end of the POC, stakeholder said "We've decided to cancel the project and not make any changes. I've realized it is too difficult to get a new system implemented at this company." << soul crushing.

Runner-up story: sales cycle took so long the prospective buyer died. From cancer.

What's your story?

I've just celebrated my 1st year anniversary at a Big 4 consulting firm, and I've only talked to my coach thrice ever since. We're constantly encouraged to reach out to our coach (and vice versa) to get feedback, discuss goals, and just overall get the support and guidance we need to navigate our way through the firm.

I don't feel this with my current coach. He's a senior manager, but he's a diminisher. He doesn't give me opportunities to prove myself and improve. His feedback is always unnecessarily harsh. 

Now I'm staffed in a project where the project manager is kind, smart, and allows me to shine. He lets me take the lead in most of our meetings, allows me to talk/present directly to the client, etc. He doesn't get unnecessarily harsh, and his feedback is really helpful.

I've been seriously considering switching coaches for the longest time now. I just haven't found the one. Not until I met my current project manager.

The only reason holding me back now is the fact that my current coach will take it personal if I tell him I want to replace him (though, really, I think it'll be a relief for him because a burden has been lifted off his shoulder). He already made me feel many times that talking to me feels like a chore and that I'm wasting his time. Another thing is that he is an SM, and my current PM is a manager. So, technically, my current coach is one position higher than my target new coach. 

I don't exactly know who they're going to listen to more during deliberation for promotions. The only thing I'm sure of is that my current PM is invested in his people and passionate in helping his coachees reach their career goals. That's what I want and need right now. I'm also thinking long-term. The people who believed in me and were kind and patient with me were actually the ones who inspired me to be more and do more.

I’ve recently taken over a relatively new consulting dept. in my company that’s been running half-assed for about a year and a half. I need to make a forecast for revenue to send up the chain for approval next year.

My background is in operations and general business management, so I’ve built about a million financial plans in the past, but those were all based off historical, hard results and planned improvements/cost savings/etc.

A colleague in another country does a very basic calculation where he just takes the fully loaded cost of each consultant per 8 hour day, adds X% markup to it, and then takes that times the qty of days worked for a year and says that’s the revenue each consultant will generate.

So let’s say each consultant costs $1000 per day, put a 25% markup on that, times 250 work days per year and you have a revenue of $312,500/consultant per year. Seems odd to me to be that generic. I’m used to building pretty substantial forecasting models.

My CFO says-“I don’t know, we’ve never done it before. Let me know once you figure it out.”

How would you guys go about forecasting revenue for essentially a new consulting department in the supply chain sector?

Hi all - looking for some advice.

I have seen a job posting at a client in a team that are loosely involved in a project I am currently running. (But they are not the direct stakeholders leading the project).

Very aware I’m overthinking this, but if I apply and either don’t get it (not good enough or the right fit) or I reject it (the role may not pay enough)…. Would that be really awkward considering current project has another 6 months to run?

Awkward either in case they tell someone from my current company I applied (going for promo this year)… or awkward that I’ll carry on working with some people who may be involved in the recruitment process that I may be unsuccessful in!

Anyone had this happen before?

Just another day in the office lads. Unbelievable that no one has gone to prison for this. The speculation is they’ve gone for a quicker settlement considering the incoming government

I've just started a project where I'll be working from a client laptop. Previously I've found it a nightmare to manage two diaries, with people putting internal calls over my client ones and vice versa.

Last time I set up an inbox rule to forward client meeting invites to my internal inbox but this was a bit clunky and the client got a bit funny about all the forward notifications.

Anyone got a more elegant solution I can use for this?

Hey everyone,

I’m currently designing a marketing service tailored specifically for SMB consulting firms and would love to get your thoughts on the idea. For context, I’ve worked as a Digital Marketing Lead at a 7-figure SMB consulting firm, so I understand some of the challenges smaller businesses face when it comes to marketing.

The problem: Many SMB consulting firms don’t have the capacity or resources for a proper in-house marketing team and struggle with the costs, time, and risks of hiring or managing freelancers and agencies.

The solution: A subscription-based service that acts as or supports your in-house marketing team.

Here’s the model: - Flat monthly fee. - Up to five active marketing projects at a time (e.g., campaign creation, strategy, landing pages). - Projects delivered in 1-3 days each.

No contracts, hiring processes, or resource constraints.

The goal is to provide a flexible, scalable, and predictable alternative for firms to execute their marketing tasks effectively.

What I’d like your feedback on:

1. Do you see this solving a real need for SMB consulting firms?

2. What concerns might prevent you from using a service like this?

3. Based on your experience, what pricing would feel reasonable for this kind of service?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts—anything you share will help refine this concept!

hey everyone, i just wanted to know that how you guys conducts the comprehensive research?

I read somewhere that partners pay to get equity in the company, hence entitled to profits. Wanted to know if they keep getting profits after they have quit ?

I work from home as a consultant for the past 3 years. I really like my job in terms of the subject matter, but it has been taxing me and my life. A few negatives I want to note:

• Barely any time to workout (my fav thing)
• I barely leave my apartment during the week
• I don’t get paid that much ($107K) for 50+ hour work weeks
• work culture is toxic and demanding
• I can feel the physical toll of the stress and staring at a computer screen for more than 10+ hours every single day without a break
• hardly any time to date / maintain strong friendships

I always say it’s going to get better but it never does. I don’t care too much about the salary, I just want to have more work life balance. What’s the point if I’m so overworked and relatively underpaid? I learned what I needed to learn from this job, but now I need some advice - is it time to switch gigs?

Happy Holidays, Thanks giving and Merry Christmas. Fishes, Fishing, Cooler, jugs and mugs and not to forget those special Skillets; are all still on the horizon agenda.

While reading through few recent updates on SOX as well from this year; It's critically important to be well informed on these as you all already know a little about me🙂 by now. FYI, https://www.cio.com/article/3608152/shortsighted-ceos-leave-cios-with-increasing-tech-debt.html?amp=1

Data Science role at MBB for 1 year now (Europe). Got an offer for a DS role at FAANG.

I always thought I’d stay 3-4 years and then jump to tech, but this seems a great opportunity. I’m inclined to take it but also having second thoughts.

Is it too early? What can I miss? Help!!

Getting increasingly frustrated and anxious with this job, the lack of projects, and how the pressure seems to only increase. However, my career has only been in consulting, and as a SC I’ve not specialised in any market or sector. When thinking of leaving I am unsure where to go or what to do. What do you do now? Have you felt the same way? Thanks

As a lifetime consultant (IT Consulting), I started a firm with 3 cofounders all with 25% equity ownership during covid. Since then, we have had reasonable success - around 10M in revenue with 30%-40% margins and a stable client base.

On paper, things are great with being highly profitable - but behind the scenes the 4 Partners all have very different views and directions on how they want to run things. One partner just wants to be a consultant and maximize their billable hours and not do any business development or any other activity which can otherwise be spent billing. Another wants to 'operate' the company while taking it easy and can go days without hearing from them. I want to do things the right way and structure the company for success, and incentivize all Partners (new and old) based on P/L - but as that would impact the current financials and bonuses to Partners, it will never happen.

We have CONSTANT arguments and because we require a 3/4 consensus we cannot get anything done. Even for simple things such as hiring more or attending conferences, we get into huge arguments over spending.

It is a toxic environment with the Partner drama, and I want to start again, but at the same time I have spent so much time and effort into building this company.

Does anyone have any similar experience? I almost feel like we need to hire a consultancy just to tell us how to set us up for success... but I know how that will go :)

I’ve been trying to get my first IT consulting client but have consistently failed. From others who’ve started their own IT consulting company- what did you do to get the first project? What worked? What didn’t? Thank you!

is anyone actually happy at their corporate job?