Consultants Club Spotlight: Rachel Jackson

It’s time to welcome another new member to the CCN Consultants Club. Congratulations to Rachel Jackson!

Background

Rachel Jackson discovered her love of finance and accounting in college at UT Austin.

She graduated with a degree in finance but immediately put her skills to work in functional accounting. She gained workforce experience in a variety of settings, including software, peer-to-peer marketplaces, private equity, publicly traded companies, vacation rental companies, and more.

Making the transition to consulting

After a point, Rachel felt like it was time for a change, but she wasn’t particularly excited about the career path she was on.

“I was working 60-70 hours a week pretty regularly. I was burned out,” she says. “I had a couple of offers, and they just seemed really lateral. I wasn’t excited about any of them.”

That’s when she reached out to Sarah Weil at CCN and scheduled a call with Andy Cox.

“I had spoken with other consulting companies before, but it was day and night talking with Andy,” she remembers. “I feel like he was really listening to me and hearing what I was saying. I felt like he really cared about me being happy with the decision I was going to make — without applying any pressure.”

Three years later, she couldn’t be happier with her decision to become a consultant.

“On my fifth client now. It’s been great. I haven’t had one regret.”

“Before I moved into consulting, I had this fear of working an hourly role … but really my income has increased, my flexibility has increased, my personal time has increased. Benefits all the way around.”

Professional projects

Now that she’s a consultant, Rachel enjoys projects that allow her to learn new things and make an impact.

“The most exciting projects have been things like financial analysis and reporting,” she shares. “I like being able to take big data and make sense of it for the client and give them insight into their operations so that they can move forward and make decisions.”

Right now, she’s working with a newer company that doesn’t have much reporting in place, and she’s enjoyed creating engaging charts and graphs that allow them to visualize data in a whole new way.

Rachel also likes implementing automated solutions: “I love taking something a client had been struggling with and turning it into a solution that just takes a couple of clicks.”

“Moving to consulting with CCN has been one of the best professional decisions I’ve made. I’m just overall happier. I like working with different clients and getting exposed to different issues, business models, and all types of people. I take a little piece of new experience with me from every client I work with.”

Work-life balance

Rachel loves that consulting gives her both the time and the mental space to truly relax.

“Those long hours bleed into the rest of your life,” she says. “Even when I had the time in previous roles, I didn’t have the energy or the mental capacity to socialize outside of work. Now, when it’s time to shut my computer off, I’m off. I feel like I really took control of my own schedule.”

She’s also the kind of consultant to likes to take a couple of weeks or a month off between clients: “I still have some trouble disconnecting when I’m on a full-time client, but when I’m able to take that time off in between clients, it’s a true period of disconnection and an opportunity to reset.”

During those breaks, she’ll often take time to travel. She visits family all over the country, and sometimes she tags along with my partner who works in transportation. Recently, she went to Belize and Puerto Rico with her mom.

As an Austinite, she loves spending time outdoors, preferably near water, whether that’s on a stand-up paddleboard, at Barton Springs, or at a friend’s pool: “On the weekends, you can definitely find me near some water with a beer in my hand!”

Celebrating in Vegas!

After racking up over 5000 billable hours, Rachel has earned herself an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas with the CCN team in May.

“I’ve been a couple of times, but it’s fun every time,” she says. “We’re going to Circ de Soleil (the Michael Jackson version) and Meow Wulf!”

Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn and help welcome her to the Consultants Club!