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Ann McGinty
Foreign. Welcome to How I Built My Small business. I'm Ann McGinty, host of the show. While full length guest episodes are on hold for the holidays, I've prepared a collection of short, impactful episodes to keep you inspired until season two. Let's dive in. If I'm gonna die, I'm definitely not dying in this cubicle. I had so many people just questioning what I was doing and saying that I couldn't do it. Like, uncles, friends. Really? Yeah, for sure. Not directly like, you shouldn't do this, you can't do it, but just insinuating like, so what are you gonna do when you need to get a real job? Or like, okay, so what are you gonna do when you finish this hobby? When you finish with your surfing, like, chasing waves around the world? Like, everyone just thought I was doing it to make a few thousand dollars so I could go on my next surf trip. And honestly, everyone doubted me. Everyone. And even when I was like three, four years in, I'd go to say, you know, Auckland and run like a course, and some dad would come in to pick his daughter after, who's an architect, and he'd look at you in his suit and go, so what do you do for a real job, mate? You know? And it was just like, people looked at you like you weren't doing something that was sort of validated to see the transition and to now walk into those beaches and people come up to you and be like, how is the Olympics now versus so what do you do for a real, you know, be more intentional about building community outside with other small business owners. There is a sort of kismet connection when you're talking to small business owners and entrepreneurs where you speak the same language. You understand the challenges. I think it always energizes you. Give us new, new ideas, new perspective. Your relationships really matter. Really treating every relationship like gold is really important. So what I mean by that is really be proactive. Show up, follow up, do the work. Go the extra mile. You know, the sort of colleague that everyone just likes to work with. People move on, right? They go to their next company and their next company and their next venture, and what they take with them are their relationships. It'll go by in a blink. Work your ass off. Take advantage of the opportunity if you have it, and do not allow apathy to creep in for very long. You just learn a lot. So it's just sponge, sponge, sponge. And don't have a huge ego. Don't have a bad attitude and be a valuable, hardworking, thoughtful Team player, just open to learning. If you're looking to build a sustainable long term business, think less about market share and think more about mind share. Which means my goal is to create as many positive associations for my brand in people's minds, period. Have enough funding to get through that first year, because that first year is tough. You've got to have some pockets to carry you through that first year. It costs more than you think it's going to cost. If your mind is not going to be settled and calm, you're going to make mistakes because you're going to do things out of desperation and you don't want to put yourself in that position. If you don't have a year worth of expenses saved. I'd say the first thing, the most important thing you could do is to start early while you're working at a corporate, make sure that you start ahead of time. There's so much that you can learn by starting a year early. If you put in an extra three hours a day and doing this while you're making an income from your corporate world, you're not going to be nervous. You're not going to have that anxiety that oh my gosh, I need to generate revenue today because I need that money this month to pay for my expenses. Ultimately I do love it and I think that's the key to running a successful business is you really do have to have passion for it and love it. I would tell myself not to get too ahead of myself and not to worry so much about growing so big and just take it one day at a time. I think one of the most important things early on is to validate the idea before you jump all the way in. So of course you believe that your idea is awesome, but really you should start by validating it in any way possible. Join groups. I'm part of a couple different groups, a couple different mentoring programs that I just think talking to other people who are willing to share their advice and go back and forth like even other designers, I think it can be such a collaborative environment. It doesn't have to be competitive. It can be community over competition. I just think there's so much to learn from each other. There's enough space in the market for a lot of people. So I just think if everyone kind of shares a little bit, it can really better everyone's experience. I just would be real honest with yourself about your risk tolerance and what your end goal is. Keep going back to like the why. I mean, there's so many people that think it's Cool to buy a company and they're just totally unsuited for it, which is kind of hard to admit to. But like, if you kind of like the free snacks and the fancy offices and you know, the 40 hour work week and your four weeks off, none of those are bad. You should just work at Microsoft. Like you shouldn't go buy a business because it is not like that. It is gnarly and scary and way more fulfilling in a lot of ways. But you're going from working at Google or McKinsey to trying to work at, you know, like a plumbing company. They're real different. So like, it's good to talk to other people about it. You know, I've had some bad managers, but I thank them at the same time because it shows you what you don't want to do. And you can really learn a lot from a bad experience. That's so true. Follow your curiosities. They'll lead to your passions. Your passions can lead your dreams. I think that that's something that I've become very aware of. The reality is that I love what I do. I still love what I do. And that is incredibly important. Whatever your passion is, whatever your dream is, there's an audience for that. You know, you don't need millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people or even tens of thousands of people to make a living. So I think it also depends on like what your goals are. Right? Do you want to build a unicorn $1 billion company? Like, that's not my vision or dream and it never has been. So it depends on what your dream is. But I always say to like anyone I work with, you know, there's enough to go around for everyone and there's an audience for everyone and there's a living to be made from anything that you want to do. It's just a matter of finding that fit right with your audience or product market fit. And one of the key aspects is to really have mission aligned vision, aligned partnerships and people reach out to people for help. Looking for business advice from anywhere. If you don't have anybody in your network of friends, there's a lot of opportunities out there. So just keep your mind open. I learned not to look at the competition next door because then if you're always looking there, you're never moving forward. So I actually stopped following a lot of the places around me and focused on what was going on overseas. If you are just starting out, my advice is to say yes more than you say no. That is how you end up figuring out what works. And it will also teach you how to be a better risk taker. Especially when you're saying yes to something that you don't feel prepared for. Failing is truly, is truly the best, the best way to build up that risk taking muscle. Because when you fail, you come out of the other side and you're like, okay, I'm still here. I'm okay, I am still here. So able to have the confidence to take risk again because you know it's not the end of the world. So don't be scared of being wrong, of failing, of doing something before you're ready. Just do it. Scared. Thanks for listening to this bite sized episode of How I Built My Small Business. If you enjoyed it, share it with someone who might find it helpful. And don't forget to subscribe so you're ready when season two drops. As always, have a great day.