Starting a Business — Speaker Series Recap Wall College of Business, Coastal Carolina University

I returned to the Wall College of Business for my second Speaker Series presentation, part of a semesterly series I’ll continue until graduation. This session focused on practical steps and honest realities for students thinking about starting a business.

Key takeaways shared with students:

• Understand unit economics: Know your customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and margin per sale from the outset.

• Iterate with customer input: Treat early buyers as co-creators. Their feedback guides product-market fit faster than internal assumptions.

• Prepare for rejection and resilience: Rejection is a resource—learn what it teaches about your idea, pitch, or timing.

• Use campus resources: Professors, mentorship programs, career services, and alumni networks are often underused but powerful.

Student engagement and format

• Q&A was lively and practical: Students asked about bootstrapping, balancing coursework and a startup, funding options, and time management.

Next steps for the series

• The Speaker Series will continue once per semester through my graduation. Future sessions will dive deeper into topics such as funding strategies, scaling operations, marketing on a shoestring, and founder mental health.

• I invite faculty and students to propose session topics or submit startup ideas for live workshops.