Don't shoot the messenger

At the start of this project, I used to tell people I couldn’t wait to present my findings to McKinsey and BCG.

I take it back.

A few days before my first presentation, I was regretting ever setting the bar that high. The dates were on the calendar. The rooms were booked. And I had promised to deliver what I boldly described as “revolutionary insights.” Smart move, June, oversell yourself to some of the most informed and prestigious people in the entire industry.

As an aspiring consultant, it wasn’t just a presentation. It felt like a job interview in disguise. Which made it ten times worse. I didn’t just have the chance to blow the slides; I had the chance to blow my future chances of ever working at McKinsey or BCG. So, you know… no pressure.

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Practice, practice, practice

The meeting room my mom set aside for me to practise

The presentation itself was ready. But that didn’t mean I was.

Some people say it takes 10,000 hours to master something. Which is great in theory. In practice, it left me trying to figure out how to squeeze 10,000 hours into five days. Spoiler: you can’t. But you can practice until everyone around you is sick of hearing your voice.

I practiced in front of anyone who would listen. My friends, my brother, my parents, a kind stranger who found me on LinkedIn and said, “Sure, I’ll hear it.” (Thank you, whoever you are.)

By the end, I could have recited the presentation backwards and in my sleep. It had gone past memorization into something permanent. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever forget those slides for the rest of my life.

And still, even with all that practice, I was terrified.

The outfit

The outfit I wore to the presentation with the flowers I got after one of my presentations

Then came the eternal question: what to wear?

Logic said they’d care more about the message than the outfit of the messenger. But I also knew I wanted to be taken seriously. So I decided to play it safe: black suit pants, black top. Minimalist. Serious. Slightly funereal.

On the street, people may have thought I was heading to a funeral. But in my head, it was “business chic.” Living in Paris for a year gave me a cheat code: if anyone questioned my outfit, I’d just say, “This is the trend in Paris, it hasn’t reached Norway yet.”

Works every time.

The morning of

The day arrived. I woke up with the worst knots in my stomach. I triple-checked the slides. Then triple-checked again. Then checked one last time before saving it as a PDF, just in case googleslides decided to be dificult at the worst possible moment. My notes were stacked, my laptop fully charged, my bag packed with backups of backups.

I left the house early. Too early. Which is how I ended up standing two minutes from their offices two hours before the meeting.

Why? Because my brain was busy inventing doomsday scenarios:

• What if the entire Oslo metro system collapsed?

• What if they had moved the meeting to another building and forgotten to tell me?

• What if I showed up and discovered it was actually scheduled for yesterday?

Better to be absurdly early than disastrously late.

So I killed time in a café with a pastry, pretending to be calm

The ritual

Right before walking in, I remembered something my aunt had told me: “Before something important, listen to a boss song and stand in a power pose for a few minutes.”

At that point, I was desperate. So yes, there I was, outside McKinsey’s glass offices, blasting “All I Do Is Win” through my headphones while standing in a superhero pose on the sidewalk.

For three whole minutes.

It was ridiculous. Embarrassing. Possibly career-ending if anyone had filmed it. But it worked. By the time I walked through those doors, I felt ten times braver.

Three deep breaths. Shoulders back. Let’s go. Time to BLOW THEIR MINDS AWAY! YOU GOT THIS JUNE!

I set up my presentation in a huge boardroom and stand there and wait. until a couple of partners walk in and take a seat. after quickintroductions. It was go time. I opend with my practised opeing: (here is a sneak peak into what it was like in the room) (example from my first presentation)

"My dream is to work as a consultant, but being 19, no one wants me working as their intern. So should I take no for an answer, or create my very own internship at McKinsey? An internship that would be unpaid, unasked for, not in your offices, and with no formal supervision. Sounds like a great idea, am I right? To be clear, I have not told anyone that I am doing an internship at McKinsey this summer.

While I was coming up with the idea for this internship, I faced a bit of a challenge. Unlike the senior partners here, I don’t have the ability to rely on experience. And unlike your juniors, who have the expertise needed to do their jobs, I don’t have that either… so what do I have to offer?

When trying to answer this question, I had to ask myself another one: what types of insights could I provide that would be truly valuable? What are consultants most concerned about as the world is changing? The answer, I believe, is fairly obvious. AI. Is AI your biggest opportunity, or the end of business as usual?"

as I said this I unblacked the first slide:

then came my findings. clear, consise, powerfull and straight to the point. They were not nessesarly the most positive, but I atleast empasised the role of the seniors. The more I got into it the more I started enjoying it. I was in the grove. It was going better than I could have expected.

then suddenly I was done. it was over and now it was time for the questions and feedback. From this project, yes I have learned a lot about the effect of AI on management consultants, but I am very far from an expert, so these questions better not be too hard.

The Reaction

Then came the part I had feared the most: the questions.

I had spent days imagining this exact moment. In my head, it always played out the same way: polite smiles, followed by brutal precision. A partner would lean back, lace their fingers together, and calmly dismantle everything I had just said. Another would raise an eyebrow and point out a glaring flaw I had somehow missed. The room would go cold, and I’d realize this entire “internship experiment” had been one long, embarrassing mistake.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, they leaned in. They were kind, engaged, and—most surprising of all—impressed. The questions came, and they weren’t easy. But they weren’t designed to humiliate me either. They were sharp, thoughtful, and real. They came from a place of genuine interest, not judgment.

I had walked in convinced that the best I could hope for was survival. But in that moment, I realized something I hadn’t expected: they weren’t trying to test me. They were trying to learn from me.

And that was the shock of the day. Not that they listened politely, but that they genuinely cared. They wanted to hear the uncomfortable truths—even when those truths came from a nineteen-year-old with no credentials other than stubbornness and too many practice runs in her bedroom.

Aftermath

When it was finally over, I left the building on unsteady legs. My hands were still shaking, but no longer from fear this time it was pure adrenaline.

I was relieved it was over, of course. But more than that, I was proud. Proud that I had been brave enough to walk into that room and deliver the hard truths I had convinced myself would end my chances in consulting before they even began.

I thought telling them what they didn’t want to hear would be career suicide. But walking out that day, I realized the opposite was true. The real mistake wouldn’t have been delivering tough insights. The real mistake would have been watering them down until they meant nothing.

As for my future in consulting, I can only hope I left a good impression—and that one day, when I knock on their doors again, they’ll remember me as the bold nineteen-year-old who dared to take the risk.

Until next time,

June

PS. I might share the slides at some point… but for free? No thanks. Time for people to start paying.