Noob School - Episode 52: Should I Get My MBA? with Jack Sterling

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

In this episode of the Noob School podcast, John Sterling’s son, Jack Sterling comes back to discuss why or why not getting a Master in Business Administration is the right track for you. Jack, who himself got his MBA after getting out of the Navy talks about the benefits of securing the degree, and also talks about when it might not be worth it.  HIGHLIGHTSWhen an MBA might be worth it It's best to start a small business while studying   The two businesses that Jack started during his MBA yearsWhen an MBA might NOT be worth itHave a good reason to get an MBA  QUOTESJohn on why an MBA can be worth getting for veterans: "Coming out of the military, they certainly didn't teach you business. They taught you a lot of other things but not business. So great to get a primer on business, I would think."Jack on the ideal business to run while studying for an MBA: "It doesn't have to be the big, all or nothing hairy idea like you talked about. It can be something small that just makes a little bit of money and you just keep adding on to it."When an MBA might not make sense, says Jack: "It's not gonna be the end-all, be-all whether you do or don't do an MBA. If you're one to start a business and be entrepreneurial, [an] MBA is probably not the right track for you. Unless it's something like Clemson's MBA Entrepreneurship track." Follow Jack through the link below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacksterling/ Connect with Noob School and John by visiting the following links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsterling1/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnsterlingsalesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnsterling_/Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_TikTok: https://twitter.com/johnsterling_Website: http://salestrainingfornoobs.com/

Welcome back to Noob School. This is where we interview sales pros that can help you get off to a great start in sales. All right, welcome back to Noob School. Today, I've got Jack Sterling with me. Jack's my oldest son, and I brought him to answer a specific question. One of the questions we got through NoobSchool.org was, should I get my MBA before I enter the world of sales or world of business? And, of course, the answer is it depends, right? I mean, I tell people if you're, if you've got a lot of business experience already, maybe you grew up in the family business, maybe you majored in business, you know, maybe you don't need it. But if you have no business experience like Jack did at the time, I think it's a great primer to get one, plus you network as well.

So now that I've answered the question, Jack, I'll turn it over to you. You were getting out of the Navy. You'd gone to Rhodes College. major in history, almost 10 years in the Navy, you moved back to Greenville and you got your MBA. So why did you choose to do that? Well, first of all, I had the GI Bill at my back, right? The Navy's going to pay for college.

I already had an undergrad degree, so they won't get another undergrad. So some form of graduate school was very much in the cards. And I also didn't know what I was going to do. You know, kind of what do I do when I'm all grown up now? I've spent nine years in the Navy, you know, got out. and what do I do, right? And that was kind of the big question at the time. So it was somewhat of a delaying tactic to actually have to go out and face the world.

But it also exposed me to a lot of ideas and people that I wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to. So, and then the Clemson NBA program relocating to downtown Greenville and making it a mostly remote program. So you can do it from home and then come in, you know, I think it was one weekend every other month for an intensive weekend. And so the combination of being in downtown Greenville, being that hybrid remote and in person, and having the government pay for it was, those are all no-brainers. Right. And so when you, like, when you would go to your, was it one weekend a month? One weekend, every other month. Every other month.

You would come, as I recall, you would come and check into the aloft hotel. It shipped it around, but a downtown hotel. They put the whole cohort up in a hotel together. Even if you lived locally, they wanted you to be there with your cohort. And then you do class from Friday. It was Friday noon through Sunday noon. Wow. So it was intense.

We didn't have any breaks for two years. And the last six to eight months were in the pandemic. So it's all remote. So that was challenging and kind of stressful. But we got it done. And looking back on it, it was a good experience. Yeah. So to answer the Noob School question, you know,

coming out of the military, they certainly didn't teach you business. They taught you a lot of other things, but not business. So great to get a primer on business. I would think. Right. What about your classmates? What kind of things were they doing? Well, it was the analytics focused MBA.

So most of my classmates were coming from an analyst background. Maybe they were a junior analyst at Misselin. They wanted to get a promotion, make themselves more marketable, either at their current employer or somewhere else. So that was the majority of my classmates. There's not a lot of entrepreneurs. That's a separate track at Clemson. So for me, it was I wanted to be literate in analytics.

Yeah. But most of my classmates were already literate, and they wanted to just improve their improve their resume. And I think I know the answer to this, but didn't you start your first business like while you're in school? A couple months before, actually. So applied to Clemson, got in, had about six months until the program started. And that's when we started Clout Hound. It was beginning of 2018 and decided that it wasn't a full-time program. I wasn't going to be in class all the every day. So doing nothing but Clemson would have been kind of a waste of my time. So Clemson MBA plus startup, up, you know, like, too, make a lot of sense.

And I do know this, the Clemson program encourages people, particularly in the entrepreneurial part of the program, to try to start something or at least come up with a good business plan while they're in school. That's right. And not to be this kind of all or nothing thing where I'm going to get an MBA and then I'm going to start a business. They're like, let's just start something small and see where it goes. And particularly while you have the school resources there.

That's right. Yeah, I remember very vividly the chair of the entrepreneurship. Department of Clemson, Matt Klein, I expressed some concerns, you know, about the whole program and the analytics track, you know, I don't have the math to do this. He's like, just come look at my little side business that I run. And it was the simplest thing in a spreadsheet, and it basically just printed money for them. I'm just like, huh, so that's a business. Okay, so it doesn't have to be the big, all or nothing, hairy idea like you talked about it. It can be something small that just makes a little bit of money and you just keep adding on to it. And so that's kind of how jumped into the program

with that in mind and started this business on the side that we still run. Yeah. So tell us real quick, the business you did start called Cloudhound. Tell us what that's about. So Cloudhound is a scan source reseller, meaning we sell stuff through ScanSource as our primary distribution partner. Didn't know any of that meant when we started and didn't know how to sell anything or anything like that.

So what we found, we started off selling basically everything ScanSource offered to anyone in the world and slowly started to kind of whittle away at that, you know, both on the product side and the market side. to say we sell cybersecurity solutions to businesses located in the upstate through scan source. Okay, good, good, good. And you also do another business that you started where you do security training? So that's a within the same company. You could look at kind of two halves of the same coin.

Security training and consulting is codhound today. So security training focuses on the human side of security, making sure people are aware and equipped to navigate the front world of business security. And the other side is the consultant. things. So when we find a gap that a company has, if they need to fill, we can help them fill that through our scandalous partners. Okay. Good. Good. Any other advice to young folks that are considering to go to business school or not go to business school? I would say it's not going to be the end-all be-all, whether you do or don't do an MBA. And if you want to start a business and be entrepreneurial,

NBA is probably not the right track for you unless it's something like Clemson's MBA entrepreneurship track where they're crying to, you know, kind of curate and incubate that, those ideas. I was somewhat of a fish out of water being kind of the liberal arts, humanities person coming into a highly quantitative analytic world. But that's okay. I mean, I think, and knowing what you want to get out of it, too, is huge, right? I knew I didn't want to go to work as an analyst at the end of the program. I wanted to know about analytics so that I could use them to my benefit and also maybe hire some good analysts and know what to know what to look for. So knowing what you want to get out of it, if it's something that you're going to pay for out of pocket, really make sure that you got that.

stuff figured out and plenty of classmates that were that were sweating because they're paying for their own school and they're kind of trying to you know maybe they're in between jobs during the program and it just kind of makes it a little more stressful so if you don't have that advantage of a GI bill in your pocket then definitely know what you're going to do with it when you're that's great and I'll just I'll try to wrap that up in a little bow for the crew but you know if you go if you if you want to go down that path to what Jack's saying and I agree with him but you should have a good reason have a good reason You want to do it because you want to get to know the community.

Like if you just move to Memphis and you want to go to Memphis State. Or I want to do entrepreneurship at this place. Or I want to go Silicon Valley. I'm going to go, if I can, Stanford or Santa Clara or somewhere like that. So don't just go to get your NBA just to get it. And you can also go to really piss off your uncle who's a huge Gamecox fan. Yes. You're the first Clemson person in the family.

And I put a bumper sticker on it just to mess with him. And who was this you brought with you today? This is my dog, Echo, service dog? Echo. Hey, girl. Wake up, Echo. You're on camera. She's good.

All right, well, thanks for being here today. My pleasure. Appreciate it. Bye.