This Episode Appears in Our 'Best Of' Lists:
What does it take to build a top-ranked podcast while balancing passion, financial freedom, and business strategy? In this episode of The Business Owner’s Journey, host Nick Berry sits down with Anne McGinty, the creator of How I Built My Small Business, a globally recognized podcast that ranks in the top 50 for entrepreneurship.
Anne shares the creative and methodical approach behind her podcast, how her background as a business owner informs her decisions, and why internal validation - rather than external recognition - drives her success. From scaling and exiting businesses to making tough calls on guest selection, Anne’s insights are invaluable for entrepreneurs looking to grow, adapt, and make business work on their terms.
Anne’s career has evolved from running multiple businesses - including a Christmas lighting company and a gourmet ice pop venture - to launching a successful podcast. But unlike her past businesses, the podcast is purely a passion project.
👉 Why she's chosen not to monetize the show. No ads, no sponsorships, no courses. Just storytelling, learning, and sharing knowledge.
👉 While business requires strategy and structure, podcasting allows her to embrace creativity, something she initially set aside in her pursuit of financial success.
👉 She treats her podcast like an art project, making intentional decisions about guest selection and quality control to ensure it aligns with her values.
Anne’s entrepreneurial journey started with a simple yet lucrative seasonal business: hanging Christmas lights. What began as a curiosity quickly turned into a seven-figure operation, leading her to launch and sell multiple businesses.
Here’s what she learned along the way:
Entrepreneurs are natural problem solvers - but that can sometimes be a weakness. Anne admits that for years, she was hesitant to seek outside advice.
Anne’s journey from business owner to financially independent podcaster has reinforced one core belief: External validation is fleeting.
💬 “If you don’t ask for help, you’re limiting your own growth.”
💬 “Entrepreneurs are problem solvers, but that doesn’t mean we have to solve everything alone.”
💬 “External validation is fleeting. The real reward comes from knowing you’ve done something great for yourself.”
💬 “Our business was at an inflection point. I didn’t know how to scale from 20 to 50 employees, and that felt scary. I wish I had sought out more expert advice.”
💬 “Every failed business is just tuition. It’s what you pay to learn the real lessons of entrepreneurship.”
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform and leave a review. Your feedback helps us bring you more valuable content.
Follow us:
The Business Owner's Journey Podcast host: Nick Berry
Production Company: FCG
00:00 About Anne McGinty
02:18 The Creative Process Behind the Podcast
05:09 Balancing Passion and Business
07:49 Methodical Approach to Podcasting
10:54 Quality Control and Guest Selection
13:32 Business Background and Lessons Learned
16:18 Financial Strategies and Early Retirement
18:47 Empathy and Knowledge Sharing
31:22 Addressing Inequalities and Learning Opportunities
31:48 The Birth of Pop Nation
33:22 Challenges of Managing Seasonal Businesses
36:23 The Importance of Hiring and Team Management
38:13 Seeking Mentorship and Learning from Others
40:06 Navigating Business Growth and Pandemic Challenges
42:01 Lessons from Podcast Guests
49:42 The Value of Personal Stories and Experiences
51:11 The Role of Internal Validation in Success
Nick Berry (00:12)
Ann McGinty is the host of the How I Built My Small Business podcast for entrepreneurs and business owners.
It has a top 1 % global ranking and is in the top 50 entrepreneurship podcast on business and leadership on Apple podcast.
Anne has a business background prior to the podcast. She founded four businesses, including two successful exits. One of which was a holiday lighting and decorating company that I think she had for like 14 years and exited in 2020. She also started and grew and then exited a gourmet ice pop business Anne achieved financial freedom before starting her podcast.
she's just a really insightful, available resource, super friendly, generous with her time, easy to talk to, great storyteller, but somebody who has this track record of success. And so we talked about everything in this episode. business background, lessons learned.
We talked about the importance of mentorship and learning from others. She has a funny story that she shares about that.
And then we spent time talking about the role of internal validation in her success. We talked about everything, entrepreneurship, financial freedom, how to grow and exit businesses, how to grow a podcast for entrepreneurs.
And she's just a wealth of information and a pleasure to talk to. Enjoy this episode with Anne McGinty.
Nick Berry (01:38)
What's your method or how are you like reverse engineering these things so when you start out you're giving yourself the highest likelihood of being successful?
Anne McGinty (01:49)
Well, I think it differs from the podcast and business just due to medium. The podcast is quite a creative process and businesses, maybe just a little bit less creative. It's more analytical and strategic. So the approach differs, but I'd say that my mind still functions in the same way when it comes to figuring out how to grow it or at least how to get started.
Nick Berry (02:15)
let's start with the podcast because I think that's the thing that is occupying your focus right now. Right. And we can kind of, we can even go include in that what you took from your business background that helped prepare you to do what you're doing with the podcast.
Anne McGinty (02:32)
Well, and it's interesting because when I say that they differ, it's probably because my approach to both came from a different place. When I started the podcast, I really started it as a way to try and live my life more in the legacy of my dad who died four years ago. And that's why I started it January 25th last year and then season two just launched last week. I don't know when this is getting released, but it's January 29th today on this recording and.
So season two just launched and when my dad died, it really changed something in me. It made me want to do more to get intrinsic value out of whatever it is that I was doing. So a little bit less about the money, but more focused on constantly challenging myself. So we were previously just talking about how I have high functioning ADD. So listening and communication are skills that take a lot of effort.
and practice for someone like me. So the podcast is perfect for that. And continuous learning is another skill just that my dad, he was always working on. He always had a science magazine or was watching a documentary. And then he had passion. So he was not just passionate as a doctor, but he spent, I don't even know how many hours daily in his garden. And that's because he was passionate about it. And
for about 20 years of my career, I did not really have a passion. So this podcast is kind of tickling that a little bit because I love storytelling. So that's where this has all kind of come from. But when it comes to business, I look at business differently to the way that my guests do. Like when I've started my businesses, they've mostly been driven by a desire to make money.
And a lot of the guests that I've interviewed have not been that way. They may want to have a legacy or a lifestyle or they want to give back in some way. that wasn't me. And so that's why I say I have two different approaches. This one's my creative and then that one is more my analytical.
Nick Berry (04:39)
Mm-hmm.
Okay. And so do you think, I think I'm following what you're saying there. I probably, I might have described it a little bit differently, but I get what you mean with the, you know, now the passion is there. You're chasing the passion rather than like the financial. And that was not the case before.
Anne McGinty (04:56)
I'm not chasing money at all with the podcast.
I'm not monetizing. I am not selling a course. I'm not trying to become a speaker. I'm not coaching anybody. I have nothing to gain from the podcast monetarily. So it is all just the craft and the creativity and inspiration, challenging myself, helping other people learn. Entrepreneurship was something that allowed me to reach
Nick Berry (05:13)
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (05:25)
pretty early financial freedom, along with investing in just financial strategies. But I see it as one way that I can help other people who want to reach the same in a way that I know how. I know there are a lot of other ways that you can probably get to the same endpoint, but for me, this is what I know. And so this is what I can help share.
Nick Berry (05:48)
Do you think that you're more naturally a creative person or an analytical person?
Anne McGinty (05:53)
I think that I am probably naturally more creative. I wanted to major in art history, but I was told that I couldn't. And my dad, my parents said that they wouldn't really accept it. So I could do finance, law, or pre-med. And so I chose economics, which was the closest degree to business that my college had. And I think it was a good choice because it gave me that analytical brain. It helped me.
just study more like the applicable skills that you need in life, which is unfortunate, but in this world it costs money. So you do need to have some savviness there.
Nick Berry (06:36)
Yeah, there's, I'm sure that that's something that you brought with you even into the podcast, which is maybe being driven by your creative side. Like there's a way that Ann does things that includes you like leveraging some of what she knows analytically, right?
Anne McGinty (06:50)
Well, for sure. So like when I decided that I wanted to start this, I made a little mind map and in the middle of the map was my goal. was like inside a little cloud. And the goal was to get my show and more listeners ears. And then from that, I kind of branched off and created the next layer of the mind map. And it was like, okay, well, how could I do that? Well, I guess I could connect with other podcasters. I could try to get some PR. I could reach out to entrepreneurship clubs.
I could try to get certain high profile guests on there. I could do LinkedIn posts. So there were all of these different avenues. And I think I came up with probably like 20 or so different ways that I could get my show on more listeners ears. And then I would take that step. So let's say the step was PR. It was like, well, gosh, how am gonna get PR? So I started looking into that and it was like, there's this platform called Quoted.
WOTED and it pairs people with reporters and the reporters put out these requests for pitches. This is the type of expertise I'm looking for. Can you answer this question? And if there was one that felt like it was a good fit for me, I would respond, but I would respond for the benefit of the reader. But this again was kind of breaking that step into tiny and tiny and tinier steps.
I gave myself a goal of just reaching out to, I think I said one quoted reporter a month, for example. So I had all of these micro steps that I could take and it helps my brain focus because when there's a lot that you can do, then it can feel paralyzing sometimes to move forward. So if you just take that step and you say, well, let's say you wanna start like,
exercising and getting fit, well, if you just tell yourself, I'm gonna start running five miles a day and I'm gonna do weights three days a week, like that might just be pushing it a little bit too much. You could start out by saying, okay, actually, why don't I just start with one mile a week? And then when I do that one mile a week, then I'll add on and you then feel really good and you feel capable and you feel like you're celebrating.
the process of getting there. And I think it all becomes like the self-perpetuating cycle. Good things happen, you feel good, more good things happen, you feel good. then the momentum just starts to build.
Nick Berry (09:19)
That's why I would be what gave me the impression from you. Like there's a method. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Even because you told me some of that when we've talked before. so then in the last few months, I've been like listening to your show and there so there are things that you do with your show that I'm like, I want to know why she's doing that because I know that there's a reason like everything is thoughtful, right? Like you're not doing anything willy nilly.
Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. So I think, I think I kind of understand how Ann does things and it resonated with me and I've just, I've had an appreciation for it. Go ahead.
Anne McGinty (09:48)
That is correct, yes.
And I have made
some tough calls where I have not released an episode that I recorded. And it's because maybe the sound quality was just really terrible. And it was unfortunate and I couldn't do anything about it in the moment. And I also really could not fix it afterwards. And I just had to tell my guests, I'm so sorry, but the gain I think on their speaker was really high. And so it was, was.
Nick Berry (10:09)
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (10:24)
doing that blaring sound where you almost would kind of like want to cringe your ears because it's painful. So there's that or I'm really focusing on trying to bring guests on who have an expertise that I'm truly fascinated by. So somebody that I'm excited to have a conversation with, but also that fills a need in the lineup and.
Nick Berry (10:31)
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (10:49)
is not coming on the show for self-promotion. think 99.99 % of the pitches that I receive are people wanting self-promotion and that is not what my show is about. So I did also record another one and it was very clear after the interview that the goal of the guest was total self-promotion and I didn't release it because it didn't fit with my overall project. This is like a...
creative art project to me in a way. I kind of felt like, you know, I minored in photography and if I took all of these photos and I had to present 20 and one of them just didn't have the quality I was looking for and it didn't quite match the rest of them. It didn't make me feel satisfied with putting it out up on the wall in front of people. It's the same thing with the podcast.
Nick Berry (11:17)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. mean, I think you, you're very upfront about all of that with, with your podcast and with potential guests. So like, it's pretty clear what you're about. It seems like to me anyway. Yeah.
Anne McGinty (11:49)
I still get a thousand pitches
from people who they don't know that. They haven't maybe heard it.
Nick Berry (11:55)
There, think a lot of those pitches,
yeah, a lot of those pitches are coming from people who not even seen the site. Yeah.
Anne McGinty (12:00)
Yeah,
exactly. Very cold, cold pitches.
Nick Berry (12:04)
So what from your business background do you think carried over and maybe informed the way that you've done things with the podcast?
Anne McGinty (12:11)
I wonder if it's mainly just time management and organization and scheduling. I, for our businesses, was in charge of doing those things. You we had six teams, each team had three people, we had people working in the office. I had to handle clients and relay information to the teams in a productive, efficient manner so that if something was changed last minute, it was easy and it was a no fuss.
So I think there is a level of organization, but if I were to approach this podcast as a business, I would be doing things a little bit differently. I would be actively trying to find sponsors and I would be focused on that. I would be focused on the monetization because you can't grow a business without money. And so,
I'm not really, to be honest, I am not approaching the podcast as a business. It's almost like the opposite in a way. But I don't think, I really don't think there's as much overlap there only because I'm not trying to turn this into something that generates income. Maybe it will in the future if I wanna keep it going. I can't even guarantee.
Will I do season three? Will I do season four? mean, right now I just commit to one season at a time and just see how it feels. Am I still enjoying the topic? I've found since season one that the interviews are shifting a little bit to being a little bit more about knowledge, expertise and wisdom with elements of how I built my small business. But the actual steps in
Nick Berry (13:40)
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (13:58)
business are, they're taking a little bit of a back burner. mean, they're still a part of the show, but in season one, there was a greater emphasis on the actual how to start a small business. And now it's because I am finding that if I talk about the same thing over and over again with guests, it's gonna get boring. And so it's.
Nick Berry (14:17)
Right, there is a finite
number of business fundamentals that you can discuss, right?
Anne McGinty (14:23)
Yeah,
and then you start seeing the patterns and you realize that everybody is saying a lot of the same things in different ways. And the stories are the part that are truly unique. So now the focus is much more on who am I bringing on the show and why do I wanna talk with them? And could I possibly show up for the interview with very little preparation and just have a conversation with them? Season one was a lot of preparation.
Nick Berry (14:51)
I think the probably I'll have to think about this some more, but I think I probably look at it still as it's operating on some business principles. If for no other reason, because Anne has some standards that she's pretty clear on and like you and you organize things in such a way to produce that. And you may have adjusted what the outcomes that
that you're aiming for with those standards, but you probably could pretty easily repurpose them to include being a profitable business. like, you're just, you do things well.
Anne McGinty (15:25)
I think
I could easily turn this into a profiting business. I sort of feel like if I do that, it may change the motivation for the show. It may just slightly change my approach because it's more geared towards growing. Right now, the...
If I were to want to grow, it would be solely for the benefit of the listener so that I could have high output on the video content that I've been storing away or that I could hire an editor so that the process becomes more sustainable. But I can tell you on the back end, like the way that I organized this, let's see, we're recording again, it's January 29th today. I have the interviews prerecorded all the way through April 8th at this point.
And so the reason why I do that is because it removes any pressure. I have no pressure. If I wake up tomorrow and I decide that I don't feel like doing anything on the podcast, it really doesn't matter. I have plenty of time and space. I've got lead time and a back catalog. And then
I have a scheduling Excel sheet and the scheduling Excel sheet has on the left hand column the episode number and the next column is the guest name. The next column is the title of the episode and then the columns from there say scheduled, recorded, edited, uploaded, artwork and blog, I think.
And so as I schedule those columns get highlighted in green. I know, well, that's, can look out and say, wow, I've got interviews scheduled all the way for episodes through May. And then I can give myself plenty of time to research or stumble upon who it is that I'd like to interview.
after that. So for example, somebody just wrote me today for a book that's coming out in a few months. And so they're offering me an advanced reader copy. And it's about immigrant philosophy on business. I'm very curious. So I've asked them, please send me a copy. I'd like to read it. And depending on what the content is of that book, if I feel like it's a great show, potential good episode, then
I'll reach back out to them and say, let's bring you on. But I have to, I want to read the book first.
Nick Berry (17:54)
Yeah, totally understand. You have a really clear picture of the standard of what you're trying to accomplish. You're a piece of art that you're creating and you've And so you're not going to sacrifice any portion of that by lessening the filters.
Anne McGinty (18:04)
That's the rewarding
And I worry
that if I turned it into a business, then that could happen. Because I've received, they were, I don't know if you call them pitches or what they are, but people have reached out to me before and said, hey, do you wanna come on my show? It only costs this much. And I'm like, wait, you charge people to come on your show? Is that a thing? That's a thing.
Nick Berry (18:18)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's.
Anne McGinty (18:39)
So there are actually quite a few shows out there and I'm like, but that's just long form advertising. That makes me feel like, what's the point? I don't wanna listen to a one hour advertisement because if you're receiving payment, that's what it is.
Nick Berry (18:39)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think you're in a great spot with being able to protect the integrity of what you're trying to build. You've been able to shield it from whatever effect having to monetize it would be.
Anne McGinty (19:07)
Yeah, I've turned down networks.
Nick Berry (19:09)
Well, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see where it goes because you definitely have momentum. The decision may not get any easier to maintain, but kudos to you. I think that's a fantastic way to look at it.
Anne McGinty (19:12)
I agree.
I think it's also a very, I say lucky, I was about to say lucky, but I don't know what the other word would be for it, but I don't need to make money from this podcast. I don't need to. And so when the need is removed, it's a real choice. So I can make money, much more money probably than I could make from the podcast by doing other things. So I can choose to make this a passion project.
Nick Berry (19:49)
Yeah. And you've earned the opportunity to be able to make that choice, right? That's not an accident that you're here. So let's talk about your business background a little bit more and the path that got you here. What were you doing prior to launching the podcast?
Anne McGinty (20:08)
So back in 2006, my husband and I started a Christmas light hanging business. And that was a very good business. Surprisingly to many people, it was a topic of conversation that at parties people always wanted to know more. What are you doing the off season? Wait, can you actually live off of that? Like the questions and curiosities that we would hear were pretty fun to talk about.
We ran that until 2020 and we sold it. So during that window of time, we also started another business that was a gourmet ice pop business where we took kind of overripe fruit from local farmers that was organic and we would turn them into gourmet ice pops that we would then vend at a lot of corporations or pop-up events or music festivals. And we also sold that one and
Also during that time we started another business that was importing LED lights, had incredible branding, but we made a lot of big mistakes. And that one, while it could have been our most lucrative, we ended up having to shut it. But you learn with all the mistakes you make. So I always say, like when you make a mistake, it's just like paying to go to school. I mean, how much is education these days when you go to college? It's an insane amount in America.
It's got to change actually, it's not sustainable. But let's say it is $50,000 a year to go to a college or $100,000 a year. When you break down how much that actually costs per day for you to learn something, well then when you have a failed, so-called failed business, then it's just in-person school.
Nick Berry (21:51)
that you were probably going to have to go through no matter what, because you don't get to skip levels. I think we know that. You're going to find these things out one way or the other.
Anne McGinty (21:54)
Exactly.
Exactly.
And there are some real consequences.
Nick Berry (22:03)
Yeah, and those are the things the out of school lessons are the ones that they can't you can't learn that in the classroom. There are things that we had we're going to have to experience to fully grasp. So yeah, I like the way you're looking at it there. Like that's just tuition.
Anne McGinty (22:20)
Yeah, and it's if I had it in me to start that business again, I don't think the timing is right for that because we were We started importing led christmas lights back when leds were really very new in the country So anybody who started an led lighting business at that time importing and had know-how for manufacturing overseas and quality control and understood that process they probably had a
greater chance of success just because the technology was relatively new. that, if I were to start it again today, I can't guarantee that we would have as much traction. I still think that we could because we presented it as a professional holiday lighting line of lights specifically for installers. So was very niche.
Nick Berry (23:14)
Okay. So that one I think I get where the idea came from. How did you land on these different businesses? The Popsicles? that Pop Nation?
Anne McGinty (23:25)
Yeah, the Christmas. So the Christmas lighting business,
we stumbled upon that by chance. So I was speaking with one of my coworkers. This was my first job out of college and she was so good at sales. And she told me that her cousin made six figures working just a few weeks a year and how ridiculous it was, but he was so savvy. And I thought, she's making that up. Right. No, I legitimately thought she was making it up. I thought she was being salesy. And then my husband, Mark,
Within two weeks, he struck up a conversation with somebody else completely unrelated. And it was at a grocery store. And the person said, yeah, my boyfriend's really got it sorted. He just puts up Christmas lights for a living and he only works a few weeks a year and he makes six figures. It's a bit ridiculous. And then he came home and he said, you are not going to believe what happened today. And he told me the story and I was like, we both...
sat there and we were like, is this like a sign? Is this like a doorway that's just like wide open, hey, come walk through me? And we decided that it was. And so I think it was a month or less than a month later, we were starting a business, not intentionally wanting to be entrepreneurs, just wanting to make more money.
Nick Berry (24:40)
And that was your first business for both of you.
Anne McGinty (24:42)
That was kind of like our second business. So I had also done a photography business before that on the side where I was shooting and I had a greeting card line that was kind of underneath that umbrella as well. But that business was so tiny. It was an extra $15,000 a year. So it was just extra money. But all of the money that I made from that went into a savings, like don't touch it account, like save it for an investment kind of account. And so once that built up,
to a size where we could make an investment we did. And so for us, it was just this game of like, we need to make as much money as we possibly can so that we can get our money to work for us so that we can get out of this rat race. Because we both really missed our time. We wanted to be able to see a future that wasn't bound by somebody else's schedule of telling us when to work and where.
Nick Berry (25:25)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So was that perspective that like the rich dad, poor inspired getting out of the rat race? That was your game plan from the beginning?
Anne McGinty (25:40)
Totally.
Not necessarily from the
beginning. think we were both just trying to get some knowledge on how we could get out of a paycheck to paycheck situation. So we were both having such difficulty saving and getting ahead in San Francisco. Every single dollar that we made seemed to evaporate and we weren't even spendy people. mean, we were both previously backpackers who learned how to live off of very little money. So
It was disheartening to us that you could work a full-time job and have a nearly impossible time saving enough money to get a down payment. Or just enough money, enough capital to do anything significant with. Because that is, I believe that is what you need in order to actually make big steps in your potential sort of income.
Nick Berry (26:35)
Okay. And so I know that some of the things that I found in researching you had to do with like financial, I'm going to say guidance loosely because I'm not exactly sure what category would fall in, but like sharing some expertise on how to save and do exactly what you just said. So that came into place somewhere along the way, right?
Anne McGinty (26:54)
Well, so we realized that there were, there's obviously two ways to do it, right? You can either save or you can make more. And saving was proving to be very challenging in an expensive city. And so we started exploring the ideas of making more. How can we do that? I picked up a job working at a newspaper on the weekends. I picked up a job working for a photographer in, across Golden Gate Bridge up in Marin County. I...
looked on Craigslist, back then Craigslist was a little bit more normal and now I think it's gotten a bit weird, but I would look for gigs if somebody had an exhibition showing a gallery and they wanted somebody to shoot images of the party, then I would offer, even if it was just, know, 150 bucks. Whatever it was, I would just say yes, because I'm like, that's 150 bucks I didn't otherwise have, or there's a...
Nick Berry (27:27)
here.
Anne McGinty (27:49)
If I work this weekend, that's another $400 I didn't have. It was the extra, because I felt like if he and I could live within the bounds of our income, then anything extra, we can stick it away. Stick it away and save it to do something bigger with. So yeah, we started buying real estate and selling real estate. And then we started our businesses. That increased our income tremendously.
and then we started investing in financial instruments. I we could go down a whole rabbit hole of this. I don't know where you want to go with this episode, but there's so much between business and finance that I love these topics.
Nick Berry (28:31)
Yeah, I can tell. So what I was asking about is now I'm remembering a little bit more about it, but I read there was an article that maybe you were quoted and it was talking about creating a plan for early retirement. Like building your financial plan? Is that ringing a bell?
Anne McGinty (28:33)
Hahaha!
Yeah.
Well, mean, so I'm a bit geeky when it comes to spreadsheets. Like I really love spreadsheets. I think that might be part of the econ thing. But yes, we were forecasting and we were being strategic with our finances, but we're also being strategic with our business growth. So we would approach both with like, if we're again, moving forward on both fronts, then this is good news. But there gets to be a point where
you if you have enough money, it just gets it's it's not fair. You know, it really isn't fair, but it is the way that this world works with the more money that you have, the easier it gets to make money. And I think as I found that I started feeling it's like a wealth guilt in a way, like you see somebody else coming over. I like, for example, we have a house cleaner and she works so hard, so hard.
and she works long hours and would probably work seven days a week if she had to. And we did that at one point. We did that for many years. But when I see what it takes for her to earn an equivalent amount to what we can earn, but we earn it in a fraction of the time without necessarily doing anything, it starts feeling very unfair. And so that is also like,
another motivator behind the podcast because again, knowledge is part of what got us here and I can't tell everybody the exact steps that they need to take in their own lives. can offer insights and I can say how we did it but again, it's sort of up to the individual to put the hard work in and want it and believe that they can, that they can do it.
Nick Berry (30:37)
Yeah. And I think you, from what I know, are in a position where you've been on both sides. You've come through kind of down that path of having earned it. So you can empathize better with someone who's not over the hump yet. And that probably, I mean, that's a really good thing, but it also means you can kind of carry some weight that...
Anne McGinty (30:52)
Yeah.
Nick Berry (31:00)
can be really heavy at times.
Anne McGinty (31:03)
Yeah, I think you just start seeing, you see the inequalities out there that are happening and there's not a lot that you can do about it, but what you can do about it is help other people learn.
Nick Berry (31:08)
Mm-hmm.
Right. Yeah. Like that's what we can do is focus on what we can do. Right. Yeah.
Anne McGinty (31:23)
Yeah, that's right.
Nick Berry (31:25)
I meant to ask you when we were going through, do these ideas come from? Pop Nation. How did you get into that? The popsicles? Yes.
Anne McGinty (31:32)
The Pop Nation, we,
I think at that point, I have to look back to see when we started the Pop Nation. I think it was around 2012. So we'd been running our other business for about six years and we had significant time off. So I think at that point, we probably had about nine months off a year because our business, so when our business first started, the Christmas lighting one, the first season was only about a month and we made, I think it was $156,000.
big jump in income compared to my full-time job selling toothpaste, which was between 30 and $50,000 a year and a lot of driving and I was a sales rep. it was a pretty like soul stripping kind of a job. It had no reward really. so after, let's see.
six years or so. think the season had probably worked up to be about three months a year, maybe four, but so we had this significant chunk of time and it felt complimentary to start a summer business, which was why we thought the Pop Nation. Summer, winter, and then still have four months off a year was kind of our, that was our thought going into it. And it just turned out to be a little bit too much work without enough recovery time in between because
Nick Berry (32:43)
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (32:53)
seasonal businesses have such a hyper peak that when it's go time, you're on and you know that that day isn't going to come back for a whole year and that day's income earning potential could be say upwards of $12,000 for that day. So if you don't book that day, then you got to wait until the next day to go next year to go and get that day. So when you have
very peak pop, it's ice pop business, and then you have a very peak Christmas business. They sort of overlapped in this area because we have a late summer here. So it extends all the way through around October 15. And our Christmas lighting season surprisingly started by the end, it started in July.
So there was too, it was not, it was too much.
Nick Berry (33:50)
It didn't fit together quite as well as you thought it would.
Anne McGinty (33:52)
It didn't fit, there
was too much overlap in the calendar and it just made it feel like a lot of work to manage both to the maximum efficiency that we could. You were tired, everybody was tired. We were working long days, like slinging ice pops at a music festival, even if you have staffing and everything requires, let's say we had six carts, each cart would have
three backup coolers, you're stocking those, you're working actually before the summer season to produce your thousands and thousands and thousands of ice pops so that you don't have to produce it all during the selling season. And they were just long days. So we decided to focus on the Christmas one because it was more lucrative.
Nick Berry (34:34)
Yeah.
So at peak, when you had those two operations at the same time, like how big head count was, how many people were you managing?
Anne McGinty (34:47)
For the Christmas lighting business, was 20, around 20. And then for the ice pop business, we had, I think, six carts. So we could be in six locations at any one time. And then we usually staff with two people each. And then we obviously had our, the kind of like office and bat crew and production. So it was probably part time only.
12 to 15 people, very part time. Because you wouldn't necessarily sell Monday through Wednesday because there may not be anything going on.
Nick Berry (35:23)
And so this, you and your husband were managing everyone or did you have, I think you mentioned teams, right?
Anne McGinty (35:28)
We, yeah, both businesses.
Yeah, we had teams. So we had an organizational structure for the Christmas Signing business again was a much bigger business. And we had an org structure. But I think if I were to reflect back on the ways that we maybe didn't do as well as we could have, you you learn these things in retrospect. And I've learned a lot since I've started interviewing people, but.
we probably could have benefited from hiring people who knew as much as we did or more to fill our spots so that we could start working on the business instead of in the business. Because there was a bit of a bottleneck. We could not handle a team that was more than 20 because it felt like we had 20 children. And I did not know enough about HR.
Human resources is such a specialty and a skill set that we really should have hired maybe a third party as a part-time basis to come in and handle that part for us. We did not have a pulse on what was going on kind of interrelationship-ly between our team sometimes because we were trying to manage everything all at once. And we would find out through the grapevine that so-and-so
that are where two of our employees had a little bit of a falling out or they were fighting about something and it was like, wait, is this something that I'm supposed to handle or is this like, I just didn't know. And I think that right there should have been the light bulb moment where I said, I don't know, I need help. But instead what I did was, I don't know, hmm, let's think about this. Let's see if we can come up with an answer ourselves and let's just try our best.
Nick Berry (37:14)
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (37:23)
And sometimes trying your best is not as good as just seeking the advice elsewhere or hiring that person.
Nick Berry (37:30)
Ideally, can get out in front and prevent or mitigate these issues, not just be ready to react to the next one. So, you have any, like how did you learn other than the hard way? Did you have mentors, coaches, peers? Yeah.
Anne McGinty (37:38)
Yeah.
No, that's what I mean. think that
has been a repeated advice that I've heard so many of my guests say is seek out mentors, put yourself in the room with people who are doing what it is that you want to do and tap their advice because especially if they are not a competitor of yours, but they can just be an inspiration. The one time that I did do this was when my husband and I were trying to figure out the next big growth phase because we, our business
was doing, it was probably doing seven figures at that point, the Christmas lighting one. And we didn't really know how to grow it from there. Like we just had these questions, should we have a warehouse where we have trailers that people hook up onto the back of their trucks? Should we require that our employees have trucks? Do we do all company owned trucks and have them pre-stocked by a warehouse manager? There were all of these different ways that we could have done things.
And so I reached out to someone and I want to say they were in Chicago. I didn't know this person. I just knew they were running a very successful business. And I cold called him and I said, Hi, my name is Anne. I have a Christmas lighting business out in the Bay Area. And I just was calling to see if maybe you'd be willing to just chat business for a second. We are wanting to grow our business and I'm curious about how other people are doing it.
And he was a wealth of knowledge, which you would think would have been another light bulb moment where I went, I should do that more often. But I didn't do that more often because I didn't know. It wasn't, it didn't click for me, the value, even though it was so obvious. So that's what I would have done. And then this, when we sold our business in 2020, it was, there were multiple reasons for why, but
Nick Berry (39:27)
Yeah.
Anne McGinty (39:37)
One of them was the pandemic is coming. So if we want to sell it before the pandemic, then we should do that. And if we don't, then we should probably be willing to stay in for at least five more years because it's going to take a little bit of a hit. We were putting lights up in places where people gathered like big municipality sort of city centers or malls or downtown districts or amusement parks and zoos and things like that. So those places.
were likely not going to be able to open. So we knew that we were going to take a hit. And we both were thinking, maybe it's time because the business was at an inflection point. If there had been no pandemic, the business wanted to grow. So it had grown every year since we started it. And again, erase the pandemic. And I think it would have just continued to grow. But I didn't know how to handle going from 20 employees to 30 employees to 40.
to 50 to 60, that was a big unknown for me. And it felt very scary, felt very just like I didn't have the skills to do it. And I wish that I had just talked to Jeff Smart or one of those types of people who really understood hiring and team building to help if we were gonna take it to that level of growth. I think now in retrospect, we could have done it.
Nick Berry (40:56)
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (40:59)
with the knowledge that I've gained from my own show.
Nick Berry (41:02)
Yeah.
So, and we'll talk about that in just a second. someone who I had coaching me for several years told me one time, like I've always felt like I knew that I needed to get the input from other people. I have a hard time asking, not in a resistance way, in a articulating, like what I need from you. That's the part that I struggle with. And he said,
Really, it's probably all difficult for me. People, if you are predisposed to being a problem solver, you're so used to, you just do it and you don't think about needing to go outside. So that's probably like what you were so accustomed to just it's mine to solve. That's what I'm going to do. That's what I always do. You don't even have to think about that part of it. Why would you think outside of, you know, the way that you do things, but that's a mold that needs the sooner you can break it, the better, right?
Anne McGinty (41:31)
Yeah.
You're so,
yeah, you're so right. think a lot of entrepreneurs are problem solvers, which is an incredible skill, but it limits them when they don't realize they lack the knowledge.
Nick Berry (42:03)
Yeah, it's not the only way to solve it, right? These hands. So you mentioned the lessons that you've learned, things that you picked up from your guests. So what are some of the most impactful or enlightening things, your aha moments?
Anne McGinty (42:05)
Yeah.
from the guests or from the journey?
Nick Berry (42:18)
Let's do the guest.
Anne McGinty (42:20)
The guest is a fun one. I think you probably feel the same way about this. It's almost like talking about what the best qualities are about your children or about people that you really care about. I have learned something from every single one of my episodes. And a lot of times it was what I wasn't expecting to learn. I will try to, I don't have it up in front of me, like the list of all of the episodes, but just recent ones are ones that are upcoming. So Shanda Bell, she was,
one of the co-founders of The Elf on the Shelf. And I just found that her story was so real because of how much rejection she faced. Nobody would publish her book. Nobody believed in her. They told her it was gonna fail. And it got to the point where she and her sister and her mother just, they got together because they believed so much in their own idea. And they said, we're just gonna have to do this on our own then because nobody else will publish this. So that I thought was,
an amazing, amazing lesson, if you can kind of imagine what that must have been like. And then, Anna Humayun, she started the Green Ivy Education Consultancy or Consultants. And I was intrigued by what she had to say because I am a parent. And it brought to light just how often people really start developing their personal interests in
middle school, even as early as middle school. And what you get on your tests and your grades, they do not define where you will end up in life. And there is legitimately a place in the adult world for a meaningful life for every single person. And it starts by knowing who you are and knowing who you are oftentimes takes reflecting back to who you were, like who you were when you were
a teenager or in your early 20s, when those identifying parts of you really started to emerge. So I loved that about what she had to say. Andy Hunter's episode is coming out next week. It'll be out I think by the time your show this drops, but he co founded bookshop.org, which if anybody is out there listening and they have the ability to purchase their books from bookshop.org instead of Amazon. His story is so inspiring because
He is a lover of books and he was wondering when anybody, so he's been working in the literary world for his whole career. He kept on wondering like, when is anybody gonna do anything about the indie bookstores closing? Like who's gonna come in and rescue them? And he said he had this thought for 15 years and then he realized nobody was coming to the rescue and he was watching more and more books close. So he got a six pack of beer.
stayed up late one night and decided he was gonna have to try to solve it. And he created a system, it's a B corporation, and you choose the local indie bookstore that you would like the profits from your book order to go to. So if you select the bookstore, they get majority of the profits, and then bookshop.org only takes like,
15%. I mean, there's multiple different pricing structures there depending on how the book is purchased. But to date, and this only launched right before the pandemic, think they've given almost $40 million to indie bookstores. Because what they did was they filled this gap where indie bookstores could not create an Amazon platform that made ordering super easy.
they needed collective power to do that. So he created the collective power by creating the platform. And then there's, let's see, Hayes Hitchens is coming up. He is the founder of Moondance Adventures. Moondance is an adventure teen travel program. So they send over 2000 teenagers a year in June and July to over 20 countries around the world. And he is just such an inspiration. I also personally know him. So I think that had a rewarding.
feel with the reconnection to be able to reconnect with him. But there was something he said that I really loved and it was, has been your favorite day in your life?
Right? See, so I can see you start thinking, I can see your eyes moving, right? What's been your favorite day in your life? And you start producing these ideas and these memories. And he said, what he really wants people to know and learn is that it's measuring your life and those memories that really matters. And so what he hopes to do is create an experience for these teenagers so that when they're
Nick Berry (46:41)
Yeah.
Anne McGinty (47:04)
20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and someone says, tell me about some of the best days in your life that they will remember that experience. So, so inspiring. like, I could just keep going on and on. Rachel Platten, she is, she's actually a friend of mine. She's the fight song singer. She's, yep, she's like a pop star. And she, I've known her since college.
Nick Berry (47:13)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Anne McGinty (47:30)
And when she became famous, I feel like we kind of lost her a little bit. Like the fame really changed her for a moment, but then she's come fully back and she's realized that like all of that external validation gives you a high for a moment and then the crash happens. And then you realize that it's empty and there's no real reward in that external validation. It's only temporary. And that the real reward comes from
going internal and getting your own internal validation. And that's where she is now, which is just like such a beautiful arc to go through as somebody who is just a normal everyday person, skyrocketed to fame, literally, was her dream or so she thought. And then she realized that it was empty and she just came back to who she was. So.
Nick Berry (48:22)
Yeah, that's very, I mean, I just, she just sang at one of the, maybe one of the NFL. Yeah. This is like in the last week, two weeks.
Anne McGinty (48:26)
at a football game. Yeah. And
what's funny is that, so I knew her back when we were 18 or whatever, and she actually had a boyfriend in high school and she told that boyfriend when she saw maybe, I don't know, Faith Hill or Shania Twain or somebody singing at a halftime show at one of these games, I wanna do that. And the boyfriend said, you're crazy, you're never gonna do that. And then she did it.
Nick Berry (48:53)
That's awesome. Good for her. Yeah. mean, like what you're talking about though, like that's one of the beautiful things about doing the podcast, way that you do it and like with what I'm trying to do, it's just like hear the story and take the things out of it and that you're not going to find in a textbook that are not like necessarily always the...
the not teaching the fundamentals, right? That's not always the lessons. It's somebody coming on and saying, look, you know how you feel this way about these certain moments in your life? I think that you like, it's a pretty rich life to imagine having a lot of those that you can like call upon. Like that's what you're trying to build for.
Anne McGinty (49:31)
yeah, I learn, and I know not everybody learns this way, but I learn through stories and anecdotes. For me, I see the journey and I feel so inspired and very deeply curious about people's journeys that brought them to who they are today. it's, there's endless, I guess, there's endless stories out there. And I think,
Nick Berry (49:53)
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (49:55)
everybody has a story to tell. I am not bringing everybody on the show, but I do believe that there is exactly, but everybody does have a story and their stories are important.
Nick Berry (50:03)
There's a place for everybody to tell it and it's not the same place.
Have you always been curious like that? Yeah.
Anne McGinty (50:15)
Always.
Always, and I've always been a pretty deeply supportive person. I, if I had a friend that was someone in high school that I knew, let's say that they started a business and became like, oodles more successful than me, and sold a business for 200 million dollars or whatever it is, like, I would be so deeply happy for that person.
if that was the goal that they wanted, if that was their dream and they were happy, I would be so happy for that person. The only time I think when I am not supportive or happy is if I feel like the person is turning to the dark side or they're becoming mean or they're egocentric or so greedy that they don't have compassion for people, then it's...
I can't be supportive of that because I feel like they've lost sight of themselves and they are not truly happy. But I would encourage and support and want them to find that happiness again. So I just like to see people succeed and be happy.
Nick Berry (51:15)
you
I mean, it makes your life better to be able to kind of share in it, right? Like it's just enjoyable to see good things and feel good things.
Anne McGinty (51:35)
Well, and their success doesn't change anything about my own success. And their success may not even match my definition of success. So I think it really comes down to what is it that you want? Why do you want that? And knowing that it is for you and it's not for other people.
Nick Berry (51:38)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Another thing that I picked up from you, maybe a sense of agency or like internal validation. Like you're pretty set on, you're the one who decides what, what Anne is and like what her standards are. It's not external validation so much. Is it, how have I done on the assessment there? Is that.
Anne McGinty (52:13)
Not at all.
Yeah,
I think that it used to be much more influenced by external validation, my dad, I love, my parents are amazing. My dad did put quite a bit of pressure on me though, so he did push us for perfection. And so I think when I was younger, I strived for that. If I got a 96 out of 100 on a test, he would literally say, well, what happened to the other four points? And I was like.
Nick Berry (52:16)
All right.
Really.
Mm-hmm.
Anne McGinty (52:42)
96 is an A plus, like why aren't you happy? And he's like, I'm just saying, so what did you miss? So he was just always curious about, you know, where was the gap? And I wanted to make him happy and I am very sort of motivated and driven by the lessons that they taught us, but I don't think that external validation is something that ever really mattered to me.
I mean, I've never been motivated to be in a magazine or like, I guess it feels good when you are. Like our businesses have been featured before and that always felt really validating. But I didn't, I don't know. I guess it's just a short lived sort of spike in excitement. But again, it's, you go back to living the way that you're living and.
Nick Berry (53:29)
you
Anne McGinty (53:33)
your business continues the way it was.
Nick Berry (53:34)
Yeah. You
can appreciate it without, but be very aware that it doesn't define you or change what you are. Like it can be a good thing. It can even be like kind of a means to the end. Maybe a milestone, but you're like, that's not the purpose of you, of what you're doing.
Anne McGinty (53:41)
Yeah.
Yeah, it doesn't define me. Somebody else telling me that I'm doing something well doesn't matter to me quite as much as me telling myself that I think I'm doing a great job.
Nick Berry (54:05)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Anne McGinty (54:07)
Because like, what are you gonna, you know, I guess it's, I don't know. Like if I enter awards for the podcast, the motivation is not to win the award, it's to get more exposure. So that's, but you do have to play a little bit of that game, I suppose.
Nick Berry (54:18)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
Anne this has been fantastic. hope you've enjoyed our conversation because I think you've been, you were exactly what I thought Anne would be. You're exactly what you've been whenever we've had our previous conversations. So thank you so much for spending time and sharing everything and congratulations on what you're doing with the podcast. It's, I'm excited to see what's ahead for you because.
I just feel like you're on the front end of something that's going to keep getting bigger and bigger.
Anne McGinty (54:51)
I really appreciate you inviting me on. I always enjoy talking with other podcasters and I know you're a business person as well. So we have shared interests and it's been great connecting.
Nick Berry is an accomplished entrepreneur and CEO, whose track record includes founding and leading numerous companies since 2002.
He is also a mentor and coach to other entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking for a trusted (and proven) advisor.
Among peers, colleagues, staff, and clients, Nick has been referred to as both 'The Business Guy' as well as 'The Anti-Guru', due to his pragmatic approach and principled leadership.
He shares his insights and lessons learned, along with those of his expert guests,
on his podcast, 'The Business Owner's Journey'.
.png)
