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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. Well, I wish that I would have known about entrepreneurship earlier. It's something that never even occurred to me. My career vision was always work at a big company, be an executive at a big company or something like that. And I don't know why. That was just the trajectory. Maybe it was just like in college, I don't know, everyone wanted to work in finance. So I was like, oh, maybe that's what I should be doing. And I think I thought probably a little bit too much about my paychecks. But if I could, I would have encouraged myself to test entrepreneurship. I think there are ways that people can test the waters and see if they actually like it. I would have said to myself, go start a business on the side. Just start a little business making a couple hundred bucks a month and see if like, it's something that's interesting to you. Because the way this all happened to me was a headhunter called me when I was working at Viacom and said, do you want to go interview with this company Freewheel? And I had never heard of it. I didn't even know what startups really did or what what happens at a startup. And if I hadn't taken that call, I probably never would have even started B roll. So it's like, I wish someone in my twenties had told me entrepreneurship is pretty cool. You should test that out and see if like, that's inside of you. Make sure that you are taking care of yourself and your mental health before you really need to find what you like to do outside of work or, you know, making money doing that stuff. If that's a sport, if that's a hobby, if it's, you know, whatever, just find it and try to get started in an industry like that because you'll soon realize that whatever you're doing, when you're working for it and you like it, it's really not work because it just naturally becomes part of your lifestyle and your day to day activity. And I know that's, you know, do something, love. You'll never work a day in your life. You know you're always going to work, right? But it's a matter of making it not feel like work. Think really carefully about who you decide to have children with, because the biggest business decision that you make is who you partner with in life. I think you can become resentful of someone that doesn't pull their weight with things and doesn't play their part. And it holds you back business wise as well. Because if you're getting frustrated or you're having to do all of these things yourself, it will have an impact on you in other areas of your life. So I think being more careful around who you commit to and making sure that you have that, it's important. The zigzag pathway, where it just seems to make no sense as it's happening, that is actually what the pathway looks like. It is somewhat uncontrollable. The most valuable thing that you can do is be open to opportunities that don't fit your original thesis of what opportunity is. But that might turn out to be the most valuable thing that you ever did. Just be open to where the opportunities are rather than limiting yourself to where you think they are. Take care of yourself first, because if you keep pushing and not taking care of yourself individually, you can't show up well to work and you're not going to be as successful and learn some time management skills. That would be really good. I always have my fingers in everything. So if I could figure out how to delegate, I think that would help with time management for sure. Trust the process, be patient. I feel like those jobs that I had that I didn't like at the time, they felt like they were a little painful, but it's like the karate kid wax on, wax off thing where you got to polish the car in order to learn how to block the punch. The repetition, the skill sets that you're learning, you'll use them all, you will use all of them. And you have to just be patient and persist. Take care of yourself and work your business around your life. Work will always be there. There's always time to make more money. Prioritize your health and well being and happiness and prioritize your relationships like spending time with the people that you care about. I'm not willing to sacrifice those times and those relationships. I'm not willing to be stressed in the way that I was before. And that took going through burnout. It took really going through some hard times to learn that lesson. So yeah, it would be great to learn that earlier. It's very hard when you are in your 20s to think about and to really strive to understand what you want to do right? What journey you want to be on and why. I mean, to me, spending time thinking through that can be very, very rewarding to me. That's a big piece if you think about it and figure out what that means to you. And if you have the freedom or the support from your family, from your friends, et cetera, to be on this journey. To be able to dedicate a large portion of your life to something you really want is quite rare, right? Not everybody gets to do it. Not everybody has the environment to do that. And that's truly a privilege if you do get to do that. And then if you actually find meaning, if you find success, if you find happiness, as you're sort of going through, this journey is truly a blessing. This entrepreneur went on holiday and he saw a local going out and catching fish every day. And he stopped him on his way in one time and he said, you know, if you just stayed out there for an extra hour, you'd be able to catch more fish and then you'd be able to buy another boat and then you'd be able to buy more boats and more boats, and then you wouldn't have to be catching the fish, and then you'd have all the time to do what you want. And then the guy stopped him and said, yeah, and then I can go out and catch the fish for my family. So what is it that you truly want in life? And why are you growing this thing so big? Don't care about what other people think. Don't care about what failure looks like. I mean, we're only on this earth for 75 years and worrying about what other people think and about, you know, the path you're taking job wise is the quickest way to living a life that's, that's not fulfilling. Just be more accepting of failure and messiness and like that. It's just okay to be messy. It's okay to look stupid, it's okay to fail. And I think I knew that in principle, and I think a lot of people do. And they tell themselves that. It's another thing to really, like, actually do that and to put yourself out there. You know, my dad used to wear a neck warmer on top of his head instead of a ski cap. And I was just mortified growing up. I was like, how could you ever do that? That. And now I totally get it. Honestly, as I approach 30, I'm like, God, I would go outside with a neck warmer on top of my head. Exactly. Who cares? Surround yourself with positive people. Surround yourself with people who really are going to encourage and listen. Judgmental, critical snipers are really going to tear at your Soul. Nobody is 100% sure of what happens when you die, nobody is 100% sure. So this could be it, you know. So what do you want to do? Do you want to like look back on your deathbed and say, I should have gone after that dream that I always thought about that was always on my bucket list? Or do you want to say, I'm so glad I went out after that and realized I don't want that, you know, or it turned into something great. This whole notion of mind, body, spirit, important to get that alignment right. Important to understand that you have to in a very positive way and not an egotistical or narcissistic way. It's like have that self praise and self worth and self talk that's positive and upbeat and really restorative and supportive, right? So you gotta get that mind and that body. What do you do in your fitness? Like self care is healthcare, right? And spirit entrepreneurs, by definition, have faith. They may be agnostic, they may be atheists, but you have faith. You believe you can build and create something that's sustainable. 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.