No degree or being an expert, but this trick will help you build a successful business: CEO reveals his unconventional secret

Aaron Levant, CEO of media and e-commerce platform Complex, never finished high school or attended college. Yet that didn’t stop him from building successful ventures in industries where formal education is often considered essential.

For Levant, not knowing the "rules" early in his career became an advantage — a chance to approach things with a fresh perspective. That mindset has since shaped his business philosophy: “Ignorance is rich,” he told CNBC Make It.

″I had no experience in trade shows and fashion and media companies and events, and I went in and did it,” he told CNBC Make It. “And my naiveness toward the subject matter allowed me to try things that no logical person would have.”


“Sometimes, the less you know about something, you might actually stumble on being successful,” Levant says. “Sometimes institutional knowledge of a subject matter, of an industry, can actually cause you not to be successful because you have perceived roadblocks."