So first I am far from an expert on anything, but I will say it is good that you see a need for a work life balance before it is too late. I chased money for about 10 years before realizing it’s just not worth it. Don’t get me wrong, money is intoxicating, but there needs to be balance.
As far as career path, you mentioned tech. The biggest stuff in tech is AI and cyber security.
I would imagine a cyber security path might be an option. Military background and clearance you are halfway there. There are many opportunities both private and public, work from home or travel very good money, and it is a growing industry.
This is exactly the dilemma I was looking at the last few months- ultimately I decided to turn down the consulting offers I had. It was a really difficult decision. I understand the benefits, but for me the family and personal cost (even if they were for 3-4 years) was not worth it. There’s also the real possibility that my wife can get deployed at any given time. I have friends at MBB firms that this happened to- ex-Military guys whose spouses were still in the military and who got deployed without a lot of notice. They were trying to manage client work with family life and were really struggling.
While I understand the importance of this, it’s not what gets me going. Finding and implementing optimizations and efficiencies is more of what I’m referring to. Specifically, finding a business that is poorly run, buying it and helping to transform it to realize its potential is what interests me about PE
Do you think opportunities exist for people without an extensive technical background? I did some of this type of work in the military, but always in a leadership/management role. I knew enough to make decisions and have conversations with the military equivalent of “executive leadership”, but I wasn’t the guy on the keyboard
Absolutely. That is sort of the beauty, you can be anywhere from the guy behind the keyboard to a project manager or team leader. Yes the technical experience will help but you can get that pretty easily. This is a field that will appreciate your military and academic experience even if it isn’t directly related.
That sounds like an extremely romanticized version of what actually happens. Like what’s told in a recruiting pitch.
More likely you’ll be doing cap structures all day, just trying to maximize leverage. To the extent you’ll get involved operationally, it will be to cut expenses to the bone. And then some more. Not even optimize expenses. Just slash them to look good before the flip.
I don’t doubt that. I will argue that with interest rates where they are, and the “free money” environment gone for the foreseeable future, PE/VC is going to be very different from when they could count on multiple expansion, and not having to do a lot of work operationally. That is a big reason why it’s something I’m at least considering: PE firms are going to have to really focus on operations and good governance for the foreseeable future specifically because there’s going to be a lot less of that cap structure manipulation available.
I could definitely be wrong, but that’s what one of my classes focused on last semester
Can agree this is exactly what most of PE is. “operational efficiencies” are generally job cuts, and the majority of value add is via financial engineering, which is very hard to do in a period of high interest rates. most of my friends in PE are not really deploying capital, theyre sitting around doing p.co monitoring.
There are many things you can do working for gov/defense contractors & maintaining work-life balance. DC area biggest firms will line up to hire you with your background and clearance.
My wife is a Physician* Assistant also. For the sake of your marriage definitely take the “s” off that title lol.
This is the way. Management consulting is like the new “advanced degree”. You do this for a few years to get generalized experience and exposure to multiple industries. You find the one you like and then you are fast tracked to a role “in industry” as they say.
I did it the slow way. Went right into sales in a specific industry with an engineering undergrad degree. A lot more sales later and multiple roles in sales ops, analytics, presales engineering (midlife crisis), and then finally up the ladder to sales leadership.
I went back to grab my MBA during covid and will be done with that in march (graduate in may). It was to help round out my experience with what I knew from my industry and give me an outside perspective.
The downside of coming up in an industry is you don’t get exposure to how things are done elsewhere.
Although it’s not possible for everyone, whatever you do you eventually need to consider finding a way to work solely for yourself. Assuming you’re in the right industry/field/position, you can hire the people you need to work for you as well.
The benefits of not having a boss, having your own time for any purpose, (with family being the most important), and the tax breaks are without equal.
This also assumes that you can, within reason, choose what clients and customers you want to have.
YMMV. But all the people I know who became mgmt consultants out of school are still consultants. Either they themselves won’t accept the paycut (sometimes immediate, sometimes it’s the expected value of future earnings) or the lifestyle that spouse & kids have become accustomed to won’t.
