The MECE Muse Unplugged Podcast - Empowering Go-Getters on Their Journey to Greatness

 

Quick Wins episode with Jenny Rae La Roux, former MBB consultant and now the Managing Director of ManagementConsulted.com, the largest website globally for the management consultant community.

“Great consultants are fantastic listeners, deeply convicted of what the best solution is for their client, and incredibly focused.”

Jenny Rae has an impressive background which includes graduating from the University of Virginia,   writing a book, working on financial public policy in South Africa and sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. Jenny Rae also co-founded a tech company where she has advised over 45 different early- and mid-phase companies around the world, retired twice, and built up a real estate portfolio.

Jenny Rae discusses her career journey, provides her definition of a great consultant, and highlights the founding story of Managementconsulted.com.  She also provides her perspectives on the state of the consulting industry.

Listen to the Episode Here:

For this episode, we will be doing a segment that I call Quick Wins. If this is your first time tuning in, Quick Wins is when I have an opportunity to discuss products, services or ideas to help wound out your consulting toolkit.

Our guest is Jenny Rae Le Roux. She is an ex-MBB consultant. She’s the Managing Director of ManagementConsulted.com. Jenny Rae shares a little bit about her career journey, which is quite fascinating and a little bit about the things that the team at ManagementConsulted.com are doing. You’ll enjoy some of the perspectives she shares as well as where you can use the site, whether you are working in corporate consulting or you’re independent consulting. so definitely check out ManagementConsulted.com.

The first one I’m going to talk about is we’re going to take a break. We have Episode 28 that’s going to be coming up on December 8th. We’re going to take a hiatus and give you some time back. We will pick the show back off the first week of January. January 5th, 2018, I will be back on online. That leads into my second announcement. This week, we’ll want to kick off our first improvement study. I’ll put it in the show notes. You’ll find there’s a link you can click on and you can take the survey. You can always send us feedback at [email protected].

We want to definitely make sure as we round out the 2018 calendar and take the show to the next level. We want to make sure that your voice is heard. I’ve gotten so much great feedback, so much information. It’s been such a blast since we’ve watched the show. Let us know what you’re thinking, what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see more of or less of. Would love to hear your feedback on how we can improve the show. Third announcement, I mentioned to you last time that the book is done and we’re now going to kick off our launch campaign starting with some freebies called The MECE Muse Manifesto. I created it. It’s part of my book and it’s a set of guiding principles that any great consultants should be living by. I highly recommend you check it out. It’s a freebie. It’s from my book. If you click on the link, you’ll be able to sign up and be able to get a download of that. There’ll be some more exclusive information and tools and resources that I will be sharing over the next three to four weeks. Definitely check that out and sign up for those freebies.

Next week, we have Episode 28. We are doing another Quick Wins episode. We’re doing it with Lynn Robinson. She’s an author and an intuitive advisor, which is a cool position to have.

 

AMA (Ask Me Anything) interview with Michael Beddows, a seasoned consultant, serial entrepreneur, and founder of the IT Consulting Group & Enterprising Group.

“Good consultants deliver value, but great consultants teach their clients how to deliver value for themselves.”

Michael shares his career journey going in and out of consulting and serial entrepreneurship as the founder of multiple start-ups.  He discusses four types of consultants – contractors, advisors, freelancers, and coaches- and how he did work in data mining, customer relationship management, content management, knowledge management, and enterprise collaboration. Michael now advises clients on customer experience and user experience.

Christie and Michael discuss the importance for consultants to have coaches as part of their career support system to go from good to great.  Michael shares his new venture, Enterprising Group, a peer to peer learning network for enterprise practitioners on various topics.   The first component of the Enterprising Group is called the IT Consulting Group, which focuses on providing coaching services to teach professionals how to be an IT Consultant.

“How can you achieve your 5-year plan in the next 6 months?”

Michael provides additional advice for younger consultants

* Do not be intimidated by older, more experienced professionals

* Begin working on your long term career plans now instead of later

* Keep an eye on the impacts of artificial intelligence

* Don’t underestimate the value of taking notes

Listen to the Episode Here:

On this episode, we’ll be doing a segment that I call AMA, Ask Me Anything. If this is your first time tuning in, AMAs are when I have the utmost pleasure of connecting with either a season or former consultant. They share their career journey and give you advice. We’ve got Michael Beddows. He is a consultant, seasoned consultant, entrepreneur, as well as the Founder of the IT Consulting Group. Super cool coaching services that he can provide. I want you to take heed to some of the things Michael shares. I’ve known Michael for many years. He’s been a high performing consultant. He’s always on the cutting edge. I love talking to him and brainstorming. He’s always got some great perspectives. I think you’ll enjoy his conversation.

If you want to be a great consultant, I highly recommend you attend TEDx Talks. I had the utmost pleasure of attending the TEDx Beacon Street talks here in Boston. I actually was part of the team. I volunteer, got behind the scenes. I was able to connect with speakers. It was so fabulous. I want to highlight some of my favorite talks. I’m adding that to my mental map of a great consultant. Great consultants should really consider attending this TED Talks. The one I attended was a completely free for someone to register and the amazing thing that they talk about and the ideas had shared, I think anyone that really want to be on a cutting edge of any particular industry, those are the places to be or even to do your own TED Talks. TEDx Beacon Street team, they’re working really hard to get the recordings up and running or the various different talk that took place.

Interview with Michael Beddows

Michael, thank you for taking time to join us on The MECE Muse Unplugged. How are you doing?

I’m doing great, Christie. Thanks for inviting me.

It’s going to be a cool conversation and you’ve just got such a colorful background as a consultant and an entrepreneur. Maybe before we get started, if you can take a moment to introduce yourself to the go-getters of The MECE Muse Unplugged.

I’ve been working in a variety of enterprise technology fields for about twenty years now.

 

AMA (Ask Me Anything) episode with Michelle Florendo, a former consultant, a decisions analysis expert & career coach for Type A professionals.   A Stanford University graduate with a degree in decision engineering & analysis, Michelle shares her career journey in consulting and some of her lessons learned.

“What we were taught was to be successful but not to be happy.”

Michelle unpacks the concept of decision making for those that may be feeling stuck in their career or at a crossroads.

“The quality of your decision is separate and distinct from the quality of the outcome.”

She breaks down  the components of strategic decision making, providing simple yet actionable steps, best practices, and recommendations on how you can make decisions to live a happier, healthier life.

Listen to the Episode Here:

For episode 25, we will be doing a segment that I call AMA, Ask Me Anything. If this is your first time tuning in, AMAs are when I have the utmost pleasure of connecting with a seasoned or a former consultant and they share their career journey and give you advice. We have Michelle Florendo. A little bit about Michelle, she’s a former consultant, engineer, and now a career coach for Type A professionals. In our conversation, she really discusses her career journey and helps break down components of strategic decision-making techniques that you can actually apply immediately in your life. You can also check out my website. Go to MECEMuse.com for tools, links and videos from the show notes where Michelle provides some really actionable information to really help you along your journey to greatness.

We want to get your thoughts. Let us know what you like, what you dislike, what type of guests you want to see more of and less of. We love to make sure that we continue to meet your need and we thank you so much for all of your support. We’ve gotten such a great outpouring of support and that’s really kept this pop-up podcast going. In the meantime, if you’ve got advice or any feedback, feel free to drop us a line [email protected].

Interview with Michelle Florendo

Michelle, thank you so much for joining us on The MECE Muse Unplugged. How are you doing?

I’m doing well. Thanks for having me.

I’m definitely excited about our conversation today. Before we get started, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to the go-getters of The MECE Muse Unplugged.

I feel like with all the different things that I’ve done, the way that I boil things down. I’m essentially an engineer by trade, that’s where I started, but also a Type A management consultant, former brand marketer turned career coach for high-achieving professionals.

It’s just such a nice mash-up, so engineer, consulted and then was a coach. Maybe if you can take a step back and share how did you decide to go into consulting. If you can share with us, that’d be great.

Looking back, I have no idea what consulting was when I started college. I feel that can sometimes be a common thing because to this day, my dad does not understand what I did when I was a consultant. Originally, I was really good at math and science, and so going into school, I went to Stanford, I really knew that I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to be able to use my analytical skills to be able to solve problems. Engineering seemed to be the way to do it, settled on industrial engineering with a specialization in decision engineering. Over the course of my undergraduate career, I found myself interacting with a lot of different students who were interested also in problem solvi...

 

AMA (Ask Me Anything) interview with Naresh Vissa, a digital marketing millennial consultant, CEO of Krish Media & Marketing, and a best-selling author of Fifty Shades of Marketing: Whip Your Business into Shape & Dominate Your Competition and   Podcastnomics: The Book of Podcasting to Make you Millions.

Naresh turned down an offer from a leading management consulting firm to join a startup company and several years later, launched his own company.  In this episode, Naresh and Christie touch on a myriad of topics including:

* How taking a big risk in turning down the management consulting offer from a prestigious firm to join an unknown startup paid off

* Naresh helped the Houston Rockets basketball management team select 2007-2008 draft picks in a remote internship through the use of digital and predictive analytics

* Embracing and exploiting the opportunities digital and its disruptive effects will have across every industry

* Forging into political consulting, the digitization of politics and how it impacted the 2016 U.S. elections, including the launch of Naresh’ newest book, Trumpbook: How Digital Liberals Silenced a Nation into Making America Hate Again

Listen to the Episode Here:

We will be doing a segment that I call AMA, Ask Me Anything. AMAs is when I have the utmost pleasure to connect with a seasoned consultant and talk about their journey to greatness. We have Naresh Vissa. He’s a millennial consultant, CEO, and Founder of Krish Media and Marketing, as well as a best-selling author. He takes the road less traveled in consulting. He turned down an offer from a reputable Big Four firm, decided to venture into the world of startups, then created his own firm. He’s foraging into political consulting, which I found very intriguing. We have a conversation about some of the things that he’s seeing out in the entrepreneurial space. What’s cool is Naresh came on the show and he showed up with gifts. He gave us links to free audio books of his two best-selling books. He’s got two books. One is called Podcastnomics, The Book of Podcasting.The second book is Fifty Shades of Marketing. You’ll be able to download those immediately and start listening to them. Let me know what you think. Drop me a line, [email protected].

Stay tuned for episode 25 when I get a chance to connect with another seasoned consultant. We have a conversation about the psychology of decision making. If you’re like myself, you always want to try and make the best decision with the best information and data and circumstances that you have in front of you. What I like about my conversation with my guest is that she brings out a cool technique. She studied decisions analysis at Stanford and has some cool points of views that you can start to take and use in your personal and professional life.

Interview with Naresh Vissa

Naresh, thank you for joining us on The MECE Muse Unplugged. How are you doing?

I’m doing awesome.

Before we get started with the interview, if you can take a moment and introduce yourself to the go-getters of the MECE Muse Unplugged?

 

Crossroads episode with Dustin, a defense industry professional with less than 5 years of work experience, is seeking a pathway into management consulting.

Dustin and Christie discuss ways to reinvent and curate a personal brand that would be attractive to consulting firms, including how to identify experience gaps.

Listen to the Episode Here:

We will be doing a crossroads interview. If you are new to the show, crossroads is where you have an opportunity to connect with a person that is deciding to go in or out of consulting, and we have a conversation about that. Our guest has a common situation. He’s got a couple years of experience in the industry and is seeking to make a pivot into consulting and wants some guidance on that. I’ve actually done several pivots in my career in consulting and we have a really nice conversation helping him understand how he can bridge the gap between where he is and where he wants to be and focus on it.

If you are in the midst of a pivot yourself and looking, what are some next steps you can do, you can take some of the topics that we talked about. For our next episode, we have an AMA. This consultant has a very interesting story. He actually turned down an offer from a major consulting firm to join a startup and several years later, ended up starting his own firm and authoring a couple of bestselling books and doing all types of amazing stuff. We’re going to have a really great conversation with him. Stay tuned for our next episode.

For this episode, I think one thing to take away as you hear our conversation is really think about the word reinvention. I know with so much disruption out in the world with technology, I think some of the tactics we talked about are just a couple. There are so many other ways, like when I share my story, I really talked about it for the things that I did over a decade ago. Think about how some of the topics I shared and how they can be applied to today’s world and help you create the pivot that you may be looking for in your career. If you have a question or any feedback on our conversation, I would love to hear and continue this dialogue. I know there’s several folks that’s already reached out to me, but feel free to drop me a line, [email protected].

Interview with Dustin

Dustin, thank you for making time to join us on The MECE Muse Unplugged. How are you doing?

Thanks, Christie. I’m excited to be here.

Before we get started, if you could maybe take a moment and introduce yourself to the go-getters of The MECE Muse Unplugged. Share a little bit about your background and what crossroads you’re at.

I went to a large school in West Coast. When I was in school, I wasn’t always exactly really sure what I wanted to do and it seemed like each year my future career plans were changing. It started off with sales, then I went abroad twice. Then I actually decided that wanted to go into investment banking. Then in my senior year I realized that was not for me and I wanted to do consulting but it was a little bit too late. I ended up taking a really good job though with an international defense contractor. I had great experience so far, but I know it’s not 100% for me. That’s why I was actually able to get in touch with you, Christie, and we’re here to talk a little bit about what are my next moves and how I can pivot forward to get to where I want to be.

We can talk deep and see what’s going on. Before we talk about why consulting, you mentioned you were unsure and you had different career changes, which is actually normal. For me, I knew I want to go into consulting by my junior year. I have a marketing degree and I was doing a marketing internship which is what I thought was like the logical step for my immediate future.

In this Quick Wins episode, we discuss the importance of your image in consulting with personal image stylist Elsa Isaac.   Whether you realize it or not, scientific studies have shown that you are being judged by how you dress, especially in the workplace, which could impact your credibility, promotions, project opportunities, and raises/bonuses.

Style image is an important component of your brand and because it is such a personal choice, it is not always openly discussed, making it sometimes the “elephant” in the room.   Great consultants take their personal image very seriously.

Benefits of dressing well and creating a personal signature style:

* Being well dressed can help you build relationships

* Enhances your credibility and create a lasting impression when working with clients

* Image can boost your self-confidence and elevate your energy in a way that helps you performance

Elsa helps us understand why image really matters & dispels the myth of image.  “Image doesn’t have to be a vain thing” Elsa shares.  She dissects how image could impact performance, shares her definition of being well-dressed, and provides a framework for creating a signature style and shopping techniques.

Listen to the Episode Here:

We will be doing a segment that I call Quick Wins. Quick Wins is when I have an opportunity to connect with individuals, discussing ideas, products, or services to help round out your consulting toolkit. We get a chance to connect with Elsa Isaac. She is a personal stylist, specifically for women entrepreneurs. We have a conversation that is applicable to any gender. If you are looking to become a great consultant, you have to take heed and create a personal brand that helps you become effective in doing so. Image is so important. It’s such an elephant in a room. No one likes to talk about image, but to be a consultant, in order to be effective, you have to show up in a manner that helps you create a credible impression. It’s important to figure out how to do that in a way that makes you effective but that’s authentic to you. Elsa helps us create some techniques and tools that you can use and take away.

After my conversation with Elsa, I did a social experiment. I don’t like to go shopping, but I got a chance. I said, “I’m going to take some of her techniques.” I did a couple of her exercises, and I took a shopping trip. I went into a retail store, and it was one of the more effective shopping experiences I had. I ended up picking a lot of garments and different types of outfits and nailed it. Normally, when I go out shopping, I feel like I’ll have all these different clothes I’ll like look at and try on, and then I will leave feeling frustrated and not buying anything. That’s why I try to stay away from shopping sometimes, I just shop online. Using some of Elsa’s techniques, it gave me a framework. Consultants love framework, and so this was perfect. You’ll find a lot of value in the techniques that Elsa covers.

In episode 23, we get a chance to connect with a go-getter interested in breaking into consulting. We have a great conversation on a way that he could look at creating an experience and a pathway into a prestigious consulting firm. Stay tuned next week to talk about that. For today, definitely take heed to some of the techniques that Elsa talks about. Check out our website, MECEMuse.com on our show notes to get some of her freebies and some tools and information that you can use to round out your toolkit. With that, let’s get started.

Interview with Elsa Isaac

Elsa, thank you again for joining us on The MECE Muse Unplugged. How are you?

I’m great. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

 

In this Where are They Now? episode, Christie interviews Jonathan, now a Senior Vice President at a global marketing firm and a former consulting colleague with the brand of a rockstar. Jonathan shares stories of his career journey and how he transitioned from the media & entertainment industry into consulting and back into the music industry.

Jonathan also discusses a myriad of topics including:

* Moving from Virginia to NYC to Los Angeles and living differences between the various cities.

* Genesis of shareholder value as a strategic priority in corporations and its impact on organizational cultures.

* Things to consider when deciding to pursue an MBA and how to get a free education.

* Realities of firing a client that compromises integrity and values.

* Becoming a trusted advisor for your client and Jonathan’s definition of a great consultant.

* Hacks to get promoted quickly as a newbie in a consulting firm.

In career dilemma segment of the show, Christie and Jonathan gives advice on how to manage conflicts and build relationships with a difficult client.

Listen to the Episode Here:

We will be doing a segment that I call Where Are They Now. Where Are They Now are essentially opportunities where I connect with an individual that I used to work with, a former colleague, who had the brand of a rock star. We have fun re-connecting conversation on the show. If you want to hear about the journey of how I wrote my book, you can check out Episode 2 where I share a little bit of what I went through. If you’re every interested in publishing a book, let me tell you. Writing the book was actually the easiest part. The publishing aspect of it is pretty intense and lots of lessons learned, lots of twist and turns. It’s taking a lot longer than I anticipated. That’s the key idea from every other author that I have spoken to. It takes more time than you sometimes anticipate but it helps to round out and make a great product.

In our episode, I had a chance to connect with Jonathan. He is a former consultant. He is now a senior vice president at a global marketing firm. Jonathan has a great background in media and entertainment. In today’s career dilemma, I had a mentee reach out to me about a client that continues to throw her under the bus, and what she should do about that? In this episode, we are going to give my mentee some advice and things that she can consider to help manage that dynamic. I had other people asking me about a previous Where are They Now episode I did. Check out Episode 12. I did connect with Ron in that episode.

Interview with Jonathan

Jonathan, thank you so much for making time to connect with us today on the MECE Muse Unplugged.

Thank you for inviting me.

It’s been so many years. So much has changed in our lives and in the world, so thank you for your time today. Maybe you can share with the go getters of the MECE Muse Unplugged a little bit about who you are and your background.

My name is Jonathan Jordan. I am right now in LA, Los Angeles but originally I’m from the East Coast. I’ve been out here for about two years. I grew up in Virginia and DC area, and then migrated up to New York City, which is when we met when we were both working at a big four. I’m in New York for about seven years. After that I moved out here and there’s tons of great opportunity out here. My current role is focused around the same stuff that I’ve been doing most of my career in consulting. Most of the work I do is focused on people strategy. Whether that’s people in organizational change management or whether...

 

Quick Wins interview with Ed Lively and Stephanie Cole of the International Institute for Learning (IIL), seasoned project managers discuss the importance of consultants need to have strong project management skills.

In this episode – Christie, Ed, and Stephanie have a roundtable discussion walking through key techniques along the phases of a typical project lifecycle – initiate, plan, execute, monitor/control, and close.  Episode also covers International Project Management Day coming up in November and how you can enhance your project management skills by attending an upcoming virtual conference.

Episode also covers International Project Management Day coming up in November and how you can enhance your project management skills by attending an upcoming virtual conference.

Learn more about project management:

International Institute for  Learning 

IPM Day 2017  |  Registration | A Virtual Tour

Listen to the Episode Here:

We will be doing a segment that I call Quick Wins. Quick Wins is when I have the opportunity to connect with individuals, discussing products, services, or ideas to help round out your consulting toolkit. In this episode, I’m going to call it a round table. We’re going to do a round table on project management. If you’re new to consulting, what you’ll soon discover is that regardless of the type of consulting projects you do, whether you work on six-week strategy cases or you end up on large multi-year implementation types of engagement work, you’re going to need to understand how to optimize the operations of that project, which is what project management is all about.

Why is that important? It’s important because we think about the crux of many projects that fail. If you are a consultant, there are some concerns or challenges you may be having in your projects. Chances are the root causes of problems may go back to the project management of that specific engagement. Consider the statistics, because it’s staggering. For every billion dollars invested in projects in the US alone, $122 million of that is wasted due to subpar product performance. That’s according to PMI. They also share that 75% of both business and IT executives anticipate their projects will fail. Standard Group states that only a third of all projects were successfully completed on time and on budget in 2016. These numbers go on and on the stats of projects and why projects fail.

When you go back to being a great consultant and the journey to greatness, that also includes becoming a great project manager. We have a couple of seasoned project management experts joining us from the International Institute for Learning. We have Ed Lively and Stephanie Cole, and we’re going to have a conversation about project management. We’re going to have almost a round table discussion around some tactics, techniques, and best practices that you can use and bring to your projects. We’re going to do that across the typical project management life cycle. The language changes depending on your projects and depending on your firm or your clients, but initially, the beginning and the end of a project are the same.

There’s typically an initiate phase, a plan phase. There is execute, monitor, control, and then a close phase. That’s the rhythm of most projects out there.

In this MECE Mentoring Moment interlude, Christie provides answers for some of the commonly asked questions about the MECE Muse Unplugged podcast show.

Listen to the Episode Here:

The MECE Muse Unplugged pop-up podcast is a variety show where I get a chance to connect with all types of people and do interviews, storytelling, and provide career advice for any newbie consultant or aspiring consultants and help them along their journey to greatness. What’s interesting is that the podcast was inspired by my upcoming book. I am right now in the throes of finishing the publishing process for my book. The book is called The MECE Muse: 100+ Selected Practices, Unwritten Rules, and Habits of Great Consultants.

What does the word MECE mean? A lot of people ask that question and with good reason. MECE is essentially an acronym and it stands for Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive. It is really a term that is used in consulting. It’s a consulting lingo we use as we go into projects just to make sure that as our clients hire us, they want us to help them take their business to the next level. We got to make sure that we are getting and identifying the root causes of some of the problems that they’re having instead of the symptoms. We use MECE as one of many other techniques to do that.

I really wanted to make sure that the conversation that we bring on the show is really balanced. I used the word balance because I hear a lot of people and I know for me, when I was first thinking about coming into consulting, you see the glamorous side of it. I really wanted to provide a balanced perspective. I wanted to show the great sides of consulting, but also show the downsides and show the underbelly of some of the challenges that a consultant experiences. I wanted to do that in a way that really stays away from labels. One thing with consultants, many still thinks they work at prestigious firms doing really important work out in the business, having really important conversations with executives. I didn’t want it to be that, “This is a show just for this type of consultant or only consultants that work at this firm.” I didn’t want any of that.

Purposefully, I want to make sure, we don’t mention labels, we don’t mention firm names, client names. Even our guest, I only mention their first name because I feel like that distracts sometimes from the conversation. I really wanted it to be about the journey of greatness of all consultants. I really want new or aspiring consultants to really be heard, to be supported and to be successful in any endeavor, any way that they want to use and leverage their profession. I believe that every consultant have a right to do so. It doesn’t matter what firm you work for, it doesn’t matter who you are as a specific individual, I really believe that consultants carry the burden of the business world on their shoulders. I think we deserve to have this type of dialogue and transparency in order to advance our profession as a whole.

I remember when I first grew up in consulting, there was the have and have nots. Whether that was real or perceived, that was how it came off to me as a new consultant, is that if you fit this specific profile, whatever that meant, fill in the blanks, then you are privy to certain information versus those that were not. I really want to dispel that. That type of undercurrent that’s sometimes is in our profession. I understand that there is a mistake to consulting and that mistake always be there just because of the sheer nature of the type of work we do and the lifestyle we lead. However, there should be a transparency among our community and one that includes everyone of all types of consultants, regardless of the clients or the firms that they...

 

AMA (Ask Me Anything) interview with Kofi Kankam, a former consultant turned serial entrepreneur. This is the 4th and final installment of our Welcome Back to Campus series, specifically focused on undergraduate and graduate students seeking to begin a consulting career.

In this episode, Kofi who is both a Harvard and Wharton MBA graduate, discusses his career journey and how he made the leap from school to consulting to entrepreneurship.  Kofi co-founded AdmitAdvantage.com and launched Admit.me, both services focused on helping individuals gain admissions to the top undergraduate and graduate programs across the world.

Listen to the Episode Here:

We will be doing a segment that I call AMA, Ask Me Anything. If this is your first time tuning in, AMAs are when I have the utmost pleasure of connecting with either a seasoned or a former consultant and they give you advice. We had the chance to connect with Kofi Kankam. He is not only a former consultant, he’s now a serial entrepreneur. Kofi’s background is pretty remarkable. He is a Harvard graduate. He has his MBA from Wharton. In both of his businesses, he focuses his services specifically on helping people get into top tier colleges and universities across the world.

Some of the advice he is going to give is on how to make the best of your application and your candidacy for schools will be pertinent, not only for aspiring consultants, but also for seasoned or new consultants as well. This episode also concludes our Welcome Back to Campus series for all of my undergrad and grad go‑getters, so I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to drop us a line, [email protected] if you’ve got any questions or feedback or thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

As a preview for next week’s episode, we’re going to do a deep dive. We’re going to talk a little bit about project management. If you’re in consulting, consultants primarily work on projects. That’s what we do. In order to be a great consultant, you have to have great fundamental habits of project management. We’re going to dissect that. We have a couple of seasoned experts that will talk to you next week to talk a little bit about project management, give you some specific tactics that you can use on your engagements.

For this episode, you’re going to get a special treat. I have the utmost pleasure of connecting not only with a former consultant, but also an individual who is a serial entrepreneur that’s going to give us a lot of lot of great information. I am super excited to welcome Kofi Kankam. He is the Founder of Admit.Me and Co-Founder of Advantage.com.

Interview with Kofi Kankam

Kofi, thank you so much for taking time to connect with us on The MECE Muse Unplugged. How are you doing?

Great. Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be here. A little worried that I can’t live up to that introduction, but I’ll do my best.

This is going to be fabulous. I’m just very excited that we’ve gotten a chance to connect with you. Before we get started with the interview, maybe you can take a moment and introduce yourself to the go-getters of The MECE Muse Unplugged.

I run a company called me Admit.Me, which is like the LinkedIn for college and grad school applicants. We help candidates get into school. We’ve been doing this for awhile as an admissions coaching company via AdmitAdvantage.com.