3 Things College Didn’t Teach Me About Running a Business That I Needed to Know

Going to college and getting a degree is an amazing life accomplishment that should be celebrated! However, college is not a magic pill that is going to teach you everything that you need to know about your specific field. Especially if you plan on going into business, you better have additional sources of knowledge to be able to pick and choose from.

Olivia Starling, founder and CEO of jewelry brand Starlette Galleria, has created multiple six-figure businesses and shares her 3 tips that college didn’t teach her about running her own business.

“When I went out into the real world, I learned that studying marketing and actually marketing were two completely different things. Everything I have learned about marketing and applied to my business has been done with online courses and following people that have achieved the success that I want,” says Starling.

Here are Olivia’s 3 tips that college didn’t teach her about running her own business:

Tip #1: What You Learn on the Job vs. What You Learn in School
In your classes, you’re going to learn a lot of things, about a lot of different topics. Meaning that you’ll be well versed in the lingo of business and you’ll learn how to conduct market research studies. But you won’t learn how to react when your sales system crashes, your assistant quits without notice, and the roof of your warehouse springs a leak, resulting in a loss of 30 percent of your inventory. I wish I would have learned sooner to ask: Should I have a backup cloud service for my sales? How do I manage the additional stress of the sudden loss of an employee? What should be included in my insurance policies when it comes to protecting my inventory?

Tip #2: How Rapidly Does Your Field Evolve?
Being in the field of communications and marketing, we have to especially be on our toes for changes in the market. One switch gets flipped by Apple, and marketers are having to find new ways to track customer data, changing the industry overnight. To be successful in any field, you need to be open to change, constantly learning, and stay one step ahead of your competition.

Tip #3: Surround Yourself With Diverse Mentors
Find mentors inside your field but also outside of it! When you only talk to people who studied the same thing as you and who are working on the same types of projects as you, your field of vision is limited. This limited vision on how to target a certain demographic will only get you so far. Not being afraid to step out of your comfort zone is a skill that a lot of us learn in the moment when we are willing to take that first step. And let me be the first to tell you, having a group of people around me who think and look different than I has made a world of difference when it comes to how I run my business.

Starling concludes by saying, “Make sure you also consider the debt to income ratio for your degree and what you will earn afterward. You might have a master’s degree and a high five-figure income, but if you are $200,000 in student debt that compounds daily, what is the personal benefit to the degree because now you won’t be able to qualify for a loan with a favorable interest, because of your debt to income ratio is too high.”

If you are new to eCommerce, entrepreneurship, or just want to learn from someone else’s mistakes, check out Olivia’s “Top 5 Ecommerce Mistakes to Avoid.”