Welcome to how I Built my Small Business . I'm Anne 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 2 . Let's dive in .
Don't doubt your passions and interests .
I used to be really intimidated by like , oh , this guy has 20 years of experience , or this company has 100 really smart people working for it . How can you possibly compete against that ?
And so I think that held me back from having the confidence to do something on my own , just because I felt like everyone else was like so much smarter and more experienced than me .
And I think to some degree , every company that's growing fast is flying by the seat of their pants a little bit and people generally don't probably know as much as maybe you give them credit for including us , and that if you really care , like , most things you can actually figure out , even if it seems like insurmountable .
Most things you can figure out if you just keep trying and keep focusing on it .
It's business that you need to know . You know the creative gets layered on top of that , and so I've really learned just from trial and error over the last 12 years of business on how to run a business . But I think I would have benefited greatly from learning more of the basics of just like general business had I been more exposed to it earlier on .
I didn't do a very linear journey through my career . I don't get frustrated by being a jack of all trades , which made it hard to find a job at certain points , because it's like I could kind of do everything pretty well but I didn't excel at one thing and all those different things I did in different companies and jobs all paid off .
Put more money into investments Earlier , yeah , like when I was 12 .
Really be more mindful of the caliber of the person you're working for than what the role is . Show up , work your butt off , check your ego . Try to help , even if it has nothing to do with the job description Like .
Just try to be someone that the person you're working for doesn't want you to leave Hardworking , thoughtful team players and just open to learning .
Everyone has some level of drama , whether it's in their family or with their friends . I would just say that you need to have armor on at all times because you cannot take stuff personally that aren't about you . You're just standing in the middle of when that emotion is being felt and everything that comes on bounces off .
That's not about you , and just have compassion that it probably has something to do with something else . Try and not take it personally .
If I was to do something , I would do it as long as it was enjoyable , and then I would probably reach a point at which it was no longer enjoyable , and then I would . I would change . Whatever you want to go do in your life , go for it . You're going to get a lot of people that are going to resist you .
They're going to tell you you're never going to accomplish it . Why are you even wasting your time ? Take those people and make them push you even more .
We're not our careers . Those are things that we do , and so it's okay to try new things , and those things don't define you , and the most important thing is to try .
Like , if you can set your own bar of success , if you don't let others define it but you get to define it , you take care of yourself along the way I think you'll be much happier .
I wish I had learned that much earlier in life , that as soon as I started defining my own happiness , my own success , not through the bar of anybody else that I can control it that I can control it .
It came out of undergrad school in the mid-90s when the internet was just getting launched , and a lot of the conversation then was hey , do you need a webpage ? Does anyone think that the internet is really going to affect our professional lives , or will it affect business ? Is this important ?
We're kind of having that conversation now with Gen AI , and if you look back at that , it is fundamentally everything about the way we do business , and then the mobile revolution came along . I believe this Gen AI wave will be bigger than either of those .
Entrepreneurial mindset is just foundational to being successful . Building resilience and finding ways to kind of create a bounce back muscle was never in the cards and I realized honestly it's been maybe one of the most important things , because the reality is stuff's going to go wrong .
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 .