* My time spent on business development & sales (most of which don't pan out)
* My time spent in training & development (probably ~4 weeks in the first year)
* The time of managers spent training & developing me
* My support staff (industry analysts, Powerpoint designers, internal experts)
* Multi-million-dollar IT investments to build tools and databases to support me in my work
* A couple first-class flights a week
* A few nights a week at expensive hotels
* Lyfts & Ubers everywhere
* All meals expensed
* The firm's partners working the case
* New employees for whom we don't bill
* Fees for market reports
* Fees for expert interviews with industry executives
* Office overhead (rent, power, insurance, etc.)
* Office support staff (HR, finance, janitors, etc.)
* Profits for the firm's equity holders
(Now a few of these expenses were billed separately I believe, but it shows the wide breadth of costs that a firm has to cover.)
Lastly, none of this opportunity would have existed without the firm, the network, the brand, and the partners. It's amazing to think that all I had to do was show up and work, and in exchange, I would get paid a high salary, get experience working with senior executives, get a prestigious brand on my resume, and accelerate my career relative to most career tracks. I don't regret the job, nor do I think it's surprising that there are crowds knocking on the door trying to get in.
Looking at other industries, I wouldn't be surprised if a cashier at a grocery store made less than 5% of what they put in the register each day. And I wouldn't be surprised if a oil drilling engineer got paid 5% of oil that they extracted each day. Even if we're the ones touching the revenue, we're still a small part of what it takes to run a big business.
Here's what that billing had to cover:
* My normal work hours [the thing we billed for]
* My overtime hours
* My annual bonus
* My benefits & retirement savings & overhead & employer-side taxes
* My time spent on business development & sales (most of which don't pan out)
* My time spent in training & development (probably ~4 weeks in the first year)
* The time of managers spent training & developing me
* My support staff (industry analysts, Powerpoint designers, internal experts)
* Multi-million-dollar IT investments to build tools and databases to support me in my work
* A couple first-class flights a week
* A few nights a week at expensive hotels
* Lyfts & Ubers everywhere
* All meals expensed
* The firm's partners working the case
* New employees for whom we don't bill
* Fees for market reports
* Fees for expert interviews with industry executives
* Office overhead (rent, power, insurance, etc.)
* Office support staff (HR, finance, janitors, etc.)
* Profits for the firm's equity holders
(Now a few of these expenses were billed separately I believe, but it shows the wide breadth of costs that a firm has to cover.)
Lastly, none of this opportunity would have existed without the firm, the network, the brand, and the partners. It's amazing to think that all I had to do was show up and work, and in exchange, I would get paid a high salary, get experience working with senior executives, get a prestigious brand on my resume, and accelerate my career relative to most career tracks. I don't regret the job, nor do I think it's surprising that there are crowds knocking on the door trying to get in.
Looking at other industries, I wouldn't be surprised if a cashier at a grocery store made less than 5% of what they put in the register each day. And I wouldn't be surprised if a oil drilling engineer got paid 5% of oil that they extracted each day. Even if we're the ones touching the revenue, we're still a small part of what it takes to run a big business.