In this special episode, join me, Anne, and my husband Mark as we co-host a journey down memory lane, reflecting on the origins and evolution of San Francisco Holiday Lighting, Inc, a full-service holiday lighting and decor installation company. Mark, with a background in carpentry, and myself, formerly a sales representative for a nationwide oral and body care company, share the story of how we built our business.
Tune in for valuable insights as we reminisce on the lessons learned during our path to netting seven figures annually, all within the dynamic world of holiday lighting - a business that only operates for six months a year.
Article mentioned in the podcast:
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
Subscribe on Apple Podcast , Spotify or other major streaming platforms.
If you have a comment, a question you wish I’d asked, an idea for an episode or want to say hi, I'd love to hear from you!
For inquiring guests, please keep in mind that this podcast is for the benefit of listeners and I am not interested in any “puff pieces.” Thank you for understanding!
Feel free to send me a message through my website, or through LinkedIn.
A diary of episodes are posted on Instagram at
How I Built My Small Business.
In this special episode, join me, Anne, and my husband Mark as we co-host a journey down memory lane, reflecting on the origins and evolution of San Francisco Holiday Lighting, Inc, a full-service holiday lighting and decor installation company. Mark, with a background in carpentry, and myself, formerly a sales representative for a nationwide oral and body care company, share the story of how we built our business.
Tune in for valuable insights as we reminisce on the lessons learned during our path to netting seven figures annually, all within the dynamic world of holiday lighting - a business that only operates for six months a year.
Article mentioned in the podcast:
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
Subscribe on Apple Podcast , Spotify or other major streaming platforms.
If you have a comment, a question you wish I’d asked, an idea for an episode or want to say hi, I'd love to hear from you!
For inquiring guests, please keep in mind that this podcast is for the benefit of listeners and I am not interested in any “puff pieces.” Thank you for understanding!
Feel free to send me a message through my website, or through LinkedIn.
A diary of episodes are posted on Instagram at
How I Built My Small Business.
Mark McGinty (00:00.066)
That was a great way that we used to reset, grab our backpacks and then we would leave San Francisco, which was incredibly expensive. And we would go away to a country where it was a lot more affordable to get around.
Anne McGinty (00:16.571)
Welcome to the 11th episode of How I Built My Small Business, the show that is dedicated to sharing the insight that entrepreneurs have about how to start and grow small businesses. I'm Anne McGinty, your host, and today I have a special episode for you. My husband Mark will be co-hosting the episode as we reflect on what it was like starting and running a Christmas light installation business together.
Mark McGinty
Hey everybody.
Back in 2006 when we started our business, now known as San Francisco Holiday Lighting Inc., we winged it and bootstrapped it because we didn't have much money to get started. And it was profitable from our first season, albeit a bit clunky for years. But gradually we fell into a rhythm, learned how to divide and conquer, and our business experienced exponential growth all the way until we sold it in 2020. I ended up handling the sales team.
getting jobs, the communication with clients, and scheduling, Mark would say, just book the work, and I'll make sure it gets done. He ran operations and was in charge of all of the installation teams, which by the end was six teams and about 20 people. From start to finish, running the business was a whirlwind with many highs, including lighting iconic landmark areas that brought people together over the holidays, building a core leadership team, and of course, the significant profit.
But that always came with a handful of lows, such as dodging rain and the backlog of scheduling that would cause a revolving door of seasonal employees and a few challenging clients. We also expanded our business at the same time as our family, which is now five of us. I'll include a link to the business in the episode's description. So let's dive in. One question that I know we've been asked repeatedly is,
How did you even get into the business of hanging Christmas lights? I'll start us off before I hand off the baton. So back in 2006, I was working for a body and oral care company as a sales representative in the Bay Area. In a nutshell, I went to every grocery store and natural goods retailer between San Francisco, Monterey, and Fresno. And either made appointments in advance or showed up and asked to speak with the buyer to try and get them to carry new lines of product and to schedule demos where you hand out free samples.
Anne McGinty (02:40.754)
My back hurt. I was getting tired of driving around so much and my paycheck and bonuses were capped. So there really wasn't any incentive to go above and beyond. At least that's how I felt. Anyway, one of my co-workers told me how her cousin in Southern California was making six figures, putting up Christmas lights and working a couple months a year. She was a very good saleswoman and I didn't really believe her at the time, but I mentioned it to Mark later that day.
Mark, why don't you tell them what happened next?
Mark McGinty
Sure. So I had been roped into doing a demo at Whole Foods where I would pretty much stand there for two hours and ask people if they'd like a free sample of toothpaste. And lo and behold, there was another girl that was representing a different company that was right next to me and she was handing out samples of Larabar. So.
I ended up chatting away and she found out that I did a little bit of construction and I was up on ladders and it turned out that her boyfriend lived in the county that was just north of us and he put up Christmas lights for a living. And I think this was in the space of a two-week window when Anne had an independent referral to this business and then I had an independent referral to this business.
Anne McGinty
You came home from the demo.
And you said, get this, get this. You're never gonna believe what happened today. And I was like, what? Shoot it at me, what is it? And he said, well, the girl who was handing out Lara bar is next to me at Whole Foods. She said that her boyfriend puts up Christmas lights and makes six figures a year in a couple months. And I was like, seriously? That's twice in like two weeks. So we started looking into it. We didn't know anything beyond
Well, that sounds like a lot of fun, working just a few months a year and making enough to live off of. Let's look into this. And we found a company called the Christmas Light Pros, and they were selling licenses to operate underneath their name. It was very different to a franchise. They were basically selling the use of their incorporated name, access to a group of established installers around the nation, comprehensive training.
Anne McGinty (05:00.598)
bulk purchasing power as we were a part of a group, and a 1-800 number that would funnel calls that came in from specific zip codes straight to our cell phones. And for us, this was worth it because when we stumbled upon the idea, it was already August and the season was quickly approaching and this provided us with a shortcut to the know-how. And for us, in our situation, it was honestly worth it.
Mark McGinty
So we went down to San Diego and
We proceeded to go through the basics of Christmas light installation. We did some basic calculations on loads because if you plug too many Christmas lights in together, they stop working. I think Anne separated off from me while I was getting taught all the install techniques and she was focused on how to do the accounting, how to invoice, how to write up estimates.
Anne McGinty
Learning from them gave me a really good foundation.
a base from which to grow from. But from that point forward, we really started to change how we did things to suit our own desires and needs and custom craft how we wanted to go about it. Once we got back to the Bay Area, got a business license, got our website working, and we needed a work truck, we needed ladders, and a general
level of inventory to get started. We actually borrowed some equipment from a contractor who was very nice to just offer us a few ladders, extension ladders, just to get us going. It's called Redhill Painting in San Francisco. That was really nice of them. And I don't remember what the connection was, if we had them do some work for us or something.
Mark McGinty
We didn't have any money.
I met them building a crazy expensive fence for a customer that we ended up putting Christmas lights up for. I was working for a contractor. Down in the marina. And they had a painter on site that was finishing up the residence for these guys. And he had a bit of an Irish accent. And so I just connected with them straight away. And we just started making jokes around the work site pretty much.
But yeah, so when, when it came time and I told them that I was finishing up working for these guys, cause I had to put my notice in cause I was going to go hang Christmas lights. He, he just offered.
Anne McGinty
He just offered to let you borrow his extra ladders.
Mark McGinty
Yeah. It was amazing.
Anne McGinty
That was really nice.
Mark McGinty
Yeah. Super, super supportive.
Anne McGinty
So Mark went on Craigslist and found, what was it like a $1,400 box truck?
Mark McGinty
It was a very cheap box truck.
Anne McGinty
It was good enough to go and drive. It lasted the season. It did its job except for when it broke down.
Mark McGinty
We got a phone call at one point because my buddy was stuck in traffic in a broken down truck.
Anne McGinty
I laughed, but it actually was super stressful at the time. And we ended up having to rent a truck from a local company just to make ends meet. So we had a box truck and needed to get some branding put on the outside, but we didn't have enough money to get it professionally wrapped. So we printed stencils and word document.
one letter to a page, cut them out, and brought a couple of cans of red spray paint into a remote park of Park Presidio where we could tape up the stencils and spray the side of our truck. I don't know if you remember, but we went to the extent of putting some 12-volt Christmas light wrapped garland around the top and lit that up for when we weren't using the vehicle and then we'd park it in highly trafficked areas in our ideal neighborhoods just to try and get some free advertising.
We would park the truck in some of the most affluent areas of San Francisco, parked in prime position as a billboards.
Mark McGinty
Oh, I would park it up there overnight.
Anne McGinty
Yeah, yeah.
Mark McGinty
Much to the annoyance of the neighbors probably.
Anne McGinty
But you couldn't help but notice it, I think in its location. Rewinding just a little bit, as I had mentioned, we didn't have any money really to get this started. So.
We used a credit card with no interest for 21 months and spent about $18,000 to get up and running that first season. At this point, we had a truck, but we didn't have any clients. So Mark and I printed out two early installation flyers per page and printed out, I don't know, maybe like a hundred of these. And the advertisements offered a 15% off labor for early bookings. Have your lights installed before Thanksgiving.
Anne McGinty (09:43.102)
We picked a neighborhood where we wanted to work with that same neighborhood where we parked the truck and started walking around, dropping off flyers at these multi-million dollar mansions. And it wasn't even two hours and we got our first call. And you and I were walking around the block in opposite directions and then meeting up on the other side. And my phone started ringing and I was like, is there any possibility? Do you think? And
Just in case, I picked up the call and said, this is Anne at the Christmas Light Pros. Would you like to schedule a free estimate? And to my great surprise, they said, yes. I was psyched. So I met with the client the next day and gave the impression that our calendar was getting booked up, even though we literally did not have a single job on the calendar at that point. And I got her booked for installation on November 4th. We set up a pre-programmed timer, left the lights unplugged, and
just told her to plug them in when she was ready to have them start turning on. So we installed that day and the neighbors saw the box truck parked outside her house and more requests for estimates started rolling in. I mean, it was incredible advertising from November 7th until December 15th. We were booked every single day. But that season was not without its challenges. We thought we were smooth sailing, I think.
It was the week after Thanksgiving. We were so psyched. Two more weeks of installs to go. We were calculating how much we were going to make. And I mean, this was just mind boggling to us. And then it rained. And then the service calls started rolling in. And I think, Mark, I don't know if you remember this, but that first torrential rain of the first season. And I kid you not, I think that I got like 23 service calls.
all on the same day calling in, my lights aren't working. And you and I were a bit dumbfounded, right? We didn't know what was going on.
Mark McGinty
So we had to problem solve any possible issues in our Christmas light system. So you'd be working from where the lights were plugged into the trees through any sort of connection that might be lying on the ground, all the way up into the trees and inspecting each individual bulb. So...
when it came to many lights or other different types of products that we would use, it quickly became a very complicated process.
Anne McGinty
And at the beginning and for years, it was all incandescent lights because LED Christmas lights hadn't really been developed to the quality that they are today. And let me tell you, incandescent is a completely different game than LED when it comes to Christmas light installation. Do you remember the first LED Christmas lights that came out?
I think we were putting them up on Fillmore Street and the client ordered white and they were literally neon blue.
Mark McGinty
They were horrible.
Anne McGinty
Yeah.
Mark McGinty
They were the type that would flash intermittently in your eyes as you're installing them.
Anne McGinty
It's been incredible to see the improvements over the years, but we went on a little bit of a tangent there. So getting back to solving that influx of service calls that first season.
You guys went out, it was 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night sometimes, and you went and you fixed all the problems. You found the broken bulbs or you found the connections that were loose and you guys got the lights all working again.
Mark McGinty
Quite often within 30 minutes, right? Someone would call in and within 30 minutes we could be on their doorstep attempting to fix the issue.
Anne McGinty
Definitely at the beginning.
We didn't have as many clients as we did towards the end. Within 30 minutes is an extremely quick turnaround time.
Mark McGinty
Yeah. For sure, but we were working for ourselves and we were motivated to make sure that we did the best possible job, right?
Anne McGinty
Yeah, we wanted our clients to really know and understand that their happiness with our service was of utmost importance. And I'd pick up the call and I would listen. They would tell me what the problems were.
But I would also not tell them that, hey, I've got 23 service calls just like yours. I would say, let me get somebody out there to take care of that right away. Because I didn't wanna give the impression that we're, hey, we're a new business. We don't really know how to problem solve yet. We needed them to believe in our desire to just do a good job. So I made sure to ameliorate their concerns and Mark took care of it.
Anne McGinty (14:13.986)
That first season, we brought in about $156,000. And we still took a two week holiday for Christmas. And we had all of the lights down by January 6th. And then from there, the business just continued to grow every single year. We had an 85% retention rate. And I remember that every year we would calculate this because we would know if we dipped below an 85% retention rate, well then something was wrong.
Either we weren't providing the service to the level that we needed to, or it was too expensive or maybe a competitor was able to cut jobs, minimum job away from us. That was always a metric that we were able to use just to validate that we were doing things the right way.
Mark McGinty
I'd like to say too that it also allowed us to plan and forecast, right?
Anne McGinty
Yeah.
Mark McGinty
So you could take that 85% and then use that.
as a multiplier on your income or gross revenue. And then you could work out approximately how much you thought you might grow next year. And then you could plan for how many staff that you'd need, how many vehicles that you think you'd need, like how busy you were going to be and when you should start booking work.
Anne McGinty
And the other helpful thing was that we had our client list from the prior season. And so when the next season was approaching.
I could contact all of them and incentivize them to book even earlier. Because the earlier we could get people to book their jobs, the longer our Christmas lighting season would be, and the more profitable it would be as well. Without having to ramp up to, you know, 12 teams in a, say, six week period, we could continue to have six teams and operate for three months.
Mark McGinty
Yeah, which also helped with like employee retention.
Anne McGinty
Yeah, exactly.
Mark McGinty
Yeah, because then we had a longer stretch that we were employing these individuals for. And so then we could pay them more dollar-wise across the entire season. So then it became more financially viable for these awesome people that worked for us.
Anne McGinty
It did. And at the beginning, I remember that was so challenging to figure out how do you find and train employees seasonally? Because at the beginning, it was only a six-week season.
Anne McGinty (16:25.494)
We had to find people who usually had never done this type of work before and train them and let go and trust that they could do the job as we had trained them to do. And that was such an investment of time to get people up to speed to where we needed them to be. What we ended up incentivizing was that the employees would hopefully come back.
Mark McGinty
And so we tried to encourage employee retention because then my job of re-educating and retraining and getting our new hires.
up to speed became substantially easier because now I'm just dealing with a minority. And then also I have experienced people on hand that can demonstrate different techniques. And I remember we talked about this and we came up with a bonus structure, right? Where we would offer people a signing bonus just for returning.
Mark McGinty
Yeah, and it was substantial. Like I think it was in the thousands of dollars.
Anne McGinty
Exactly. So just return and come and work a season for us. And that was your bonus, although we wouldn't pay it until the end because
We didn't want to give people a signing bonus to show up and then have them disappear in the middle of the season. So we really needed to keep that incentive there. On top of that, we did a bonus structure for the full season as well.
Mark McGinty
And that was more of a performance based bonus, right?
Anne McGinty
Yeah. So I remember you and I called our friend who worked in human resources. And she was familiar with all of these different bonus structures. And we asked her.
what do you think we should do? And she said, well, you could do a 15 to 20% bonus and base it on individual performance, team performance, and then company performance. So as soon as we learned that method, we implemented it straight away.
Mark McGinty
You never know who's in your friend network. You should look around if you're looking and interested in starting a business for people that have done things that are in a similar marketplace. And just ask their advice.
Anne McGinty
You're right.
there's always going to be something that someone does better than you. And you should take that opportunity to ask that person and learn from them. So don't be afraid to get out there and just ask about something that you don't know how to do. So Mark, what to you was the most challenging job that we had?
Mark McGinty
We were subcontracted by somebody else to come in and do the lighting portion of the job. So we did it and we did an amusement park that's based in the Bay area. It's a huge park.
with multiple areas. And so we were moving large pieces of equipment past roller coasters, through kiosks and these entertainment areas. And I've got multiple people working in this job site. And we needed to be safe, we needed to be efficient, and we needed to be able to get the lights up in a way that was gonna be representative of who we were as a business.
Anne McGinty
This was about a month long install for our entire team.
And I remember writing up the work order by day, by team and by area of the park based on your input. But you also had to juggle the logistics of the supplies because we weren't providing them. And it's not like the supplies were where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be.
Mark McGinty
Yeah. And the first time we worked with this company, I was literally driving around the entire park looking for pallets of goods.
that had been downstacked from a truck and placed in some of the most obscure parts of this amusement park. So that was part of my job that I hadn't, we hadn't budgeted for that. So I was completely distracted driving around. And then I also had teams of guys that were trying to install lights up in certain areas, running out of equipment, running out of supplies. It was really hard.
Subsequent to that year, which we did a great job, I might add, because they had us come back, which I think is proof that we did a good job.
Anne McGinty
And the following year, the amusement park contacted us directly and didn't go through the contractor who was subbing to us anyway. And that actually didn't have anything to do with our doing. They just reached out to us directly.
Mark McGinty
When we came to take all the lights down, we were very fastidious about packing, stacking, labeling.
all of the supplies so we knew exactly what we had, where it was, and where it was supposed to go when we came to turn around and install it the following year. This was before we knew that we would be coming back.
Anne McGinty
Whether they brought us back or they hired another person or they did it in-house, we wanted them to know exactly where everything was in a coherent fashion because that is just a good business practice to treat your clients how you would want to be treated if it were the other way around.
Mark McGinty (21:12.286)
Also too, if you can see it stacked up and if you can see it all created and organized, it's very easy to evaluate what you have on hand, what potentially you need to reorder for the following season too, right? So as far as like running their business and making sure that they were personally organized or the company was organized for the upcoming Christmas season, they could do an assessment on their own without too much stress or hassle. So that was definitely one of the more challenging jobs that we had.
Anne McGinty
But to me, that one actually became pretty streamlined. We knew the job. It was in the Bay Area. And after the first year, it got easier and easier to do. And it expanded as well.
Mark McGinty
That was partly too, because now we had all the supplies and everything on hand to maximize our efficiency in certain areas before we started. There were all these processes that you want to put in place for a big install like that.
that you get everyone together and you focus on one area and then you just get that area done. And when you combine teams of people together, there's almost like a multiplying effect of productivity that you can gather.
Anne McGinty
A hundred percent.
Mark McGinty
Yeah, and so if you have all the supplies there for people, if you have the people all working together for a common goal, moving towards like completing this area, you can move quite quickly.
And so we ended up covering a lot of ground around that amusement park very efficiently and to a high quality of light install.
Anne McGinty
So going back a little bit and rewinding to that first season, we worked seven days a week, sometimes 16 hour days. And I was out there installing lights with the crew and Mark. And we really learned efficiencies on pre preparing supplies and installing faster, but to the same quality.
Mark McGinty
and how to install in a way that makes take down way faster.
Anne McGinty
Yeah
Mark McGinty
and see you develop these efficiencies, right?
Anne McGinty
Yeah, and sometimes a job that would take, say, four hours to install, you could have the lights down in, what, 30 minutes?
Mark McGinty
Yeah, for sure.
Anne McGinty
And because we were operating in San Francisco, we were able to be very methodical about how we scheduled our jobs. I always tried to book neighbors on the same day. Or if there was a residence, say, a block away,
Anne McGinty (23:34.954)
I would try to group the jobs together so that the team didn't have to move very far and have that opportunity cost from transit between job sites. And then when we moved from one team to eventually six, I also tried to keep the teams together. Just in the event that one of the team leads forgot to grab a supply from the warehouse, and if they were missing, say, timers, extension cords, SPT wire, or plug-ins,
There was a good possibility that one of the other teams was just down the road and they could skip away a few blocks and get what they needed from them. It took us a moment to figure that out because at the beginning, we would take any job that came around, even if it was an hour and a half away. And that was just because we needed the work in the calendar, we had the space and we needed the money. At the time, our minimum was only a $250 labor minimum. And
As we grew, we changed it to a $500 labor minimum, and then $750, and then $1,000. We stopped at a $1,000 labor minimum, but we did make any jobs that were over a 30-minute drive away from San Francisco a $1,500 labor minimum. And that's really because there is so much lost opportunity in that driving time. And if we could keep our customers close together, our teams were functioning at their highest capacity and we didn't have that lost opportunity.
Mark McGinty
That unproductive time, right?
Anne McGinty
Yeah. I remember that first season we were living in that tiny apartment. I think it was maybe, maybe 600 square feet. And we were ordering lights and supplies. I mean, we were living in a warehouse. We had boxes that were stacked from the floor to the ceiling in just about every single room. And even in the kitchen, where the cabinets have a little bit of that space above them, we would tuck boxes up there because we were bursting at the seams. And at that point, we were.
eating, breathing, and sleeping Christmas lights while we learned. I was able to have a better idea of how to quote jobs because I had installed them before. Because that first year, maybe even the first two or three, I knew how long things would take. Oh, and would be up there climbing trees. My hands were sooty. I was fast because I was motivated. So speaking of that, like how did you keep everybody motivated on the team to work at top speed and not just dawdle?
Mark McGinty (25:53.106)
I think part of that comes back to the culture, right? So initially our key people had been trained, were very focused on moving fast. Like I have all these stupid phrases that I used to just throw out to people who would work for us. And they honestly, they would just laugh, but you know, I was half serious. I was like, oh, how do you, you know, put up Christmas lights faster. Well, you move your hands faster, don't you?
Anne McGinty
Yeah.
And you were definitely the fastest out of everyone. I mean, if you were ever actually working a job, which towards the end, I feel like you were really overseeing in an operational way. But when you were installing and you would sub in as the team lead, you were like three times as fast.
Mark McGinty
I remember one of those houses that I did. I think we were short people. And so I ended up going to decorate a house that was up in Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights, somewhere.
And it was a beautiful house, but it was on a steep slope in San Francisco. And I was using multiple extension ladders. I think I had a 32 foot extension ladder and a 24 foot extension ladder, and then a six foot step ladder. And I smashed this house out in two hours. I installed all of the Christmas lights scrambling up on roofs. I had to go up through a balcony and sit on a roof edge and do a section. And at the end of it.
I think I completed the job in about an hour and a half, maybe two hours. It would take a team of three guys.
Anne McGinty
I mean, you were really practiced at that point. You had been doing light installs for years.
Mark McGinty
There was a lady that came out, I don't know if you know this, but she came out of the apartment across the street just to say how impressed she was with how fast I was. She was honestly, she was blown away. She's like, you put those Christmas lights up so fast.
Anne McGinty
And you know, I should mention because I'm sure some people listening are probably thinking,
How did you know how to price the jobs? Because Mark could install it by himself in two hours, while a team of three could do it in four hours. There's obviously some discrepancy there. We couldn't just price based on Mark because he was only one person and as the owner of the business, he was extra motivated. Plus he had some experience using ladders and tools as he lived in London for a few years working that way. So we always priced based on a team of three. Just sitting here and reminiscing about this together is
Anne McGinty (28:15.586)
bringing up so much. Oh, we were so excited. I remember, and most people that we met and many members in my family thought that we were absolutely nuts. They were like, you're gonna do what? You're gonna start a Christmas light hanging business? I think most people felt like there wasn't any possibility that we would be able to make a substantial livable salary doing that.
And we didn't go into it expecting to, but we knew that it was better than what I was getting paid selling toothpaste. And, you know, it was better than what you were earning working construction job.
Mark McGinty
Sure.
Anne McGinty
And then once the lights were down at the end of the season, you and I would pack up and we would go overseas for months.
Mark McGinty
That was a great way that we used to reset, grab our backpacks, and then we would leave San Francisco, which was incredibly expensive. And we would go.
away to a country where it was a lot more affordable to get around.
Anne McGinty
Oh yeah, I remember we traveled, I want to say that first season we booked tickets overseas for something like four months and we subletted our apartment while we were away. And I think we came back with almost the same amount of money that we left with because we didn't have the overhead of rent in San Francisco.
Mark McGinty
Yeah, and our budget, I think, per day, we budgeted $20 each a day.
for one of the countries that we went to. And I think we struggled to spend $20 between us.
Anne McGinty
Yeah, we did. Yeah. And that was for accommodation and food and all of the activities that we were doing. I mean, we weren't staying at five star resorts and we were also choosing the $3 a night hostel over the $20 a night hostel.
Mark McGinty
Sure. So when you take into account your rent, your lattes, your car parking, your gas.
everything else that you're covering on a day-to-day basis by living in a developed country, you can, you can cut those costs substantially.
Anne McGinty
And I remember we would come back and feel just really reinvigorated to tackle another season and to get started on figuring out how are we going to do it even bigger and better this year. And I don't even think we ever spent any money on marketing.
Anne McGinty (30:31.89)
All of the growth was entirely word of mouth. We didn't do any magazines. We did, though, get... Do you remember we had that reporter call us on Thanksgiving Day?
Mark McGinty
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I do.
Anne McGinty
And you and I were sitting in that 600 square foot apartment. And because it was our first season, we didn't leave town because we didn't have a clue how we would do that. We were like, oh, we need to be here for the day after Thanksgiving, because that's big. We need to start installing lights.
make the most out of this season.
Mark McGinty
But that was mainly because we were it, right?
Anne McGinty
We were it, yeah, exactly.
Mark McGinty
We were the business. So if we left town, business was leaving town too.
Anne McGinty
There wasn't much going on. But this reporter called on Thanksgiving Day. And I assumed that it was somebody calling for Christmas lights. And I picked up the phone, as I always did. This is Anne, the Christmas Light Pros. And the reporter took a gasp.
"You're actually open? Honestly, I didn't expect to get a real live person. I can't believe that you're open on Thanksgiving Day. Oh, this is even better." She interviewed me right then and there and told me that the newspaper article was going to be coming out sometime around the second week or so of December. And to my surprise, I was so excited. I told my parents. And then when the article came out, the title literally said, Even in the rain, They Light the Lights. I was like.
Wait, that was the best title you could come up with? I mean, I thought we talked about so much more. It was more exciting than that. And then a second article came out and it was like, Bay Area roof lines go dark as holiday lighting installers deal with the rain. I mean, everything was so negative. And I was like, oh, great. But they say any press is good press. And one piece of press, good press, did come out of that.
And the San Francisco Chronicle magazine called us and asked if they could feature us as the owners of a Christmas light hanging business because it seemed like a relatively new concept in the area. And they met with us and Mark is a very candid person. He's from New Zealand. Very honest, really good ethics. I'm trying to highlight you before I just said what you said. And then they asked.
Anne McGinty (32:53.018)
What would people in New Zealand think of what you're doing hanging Christmas lights?
And I kid you not, and they printed this and he said, oh, they think it was a load of rubbish. If they were going to put up Christmas lights, they just do it themselves.
Mark McGinty
I think I said they'd laugh. Surely.
Anne McGinty
I'm pretty sure this article is still around. Maybe I'll even link to it in the description of this episode so people can just go and check it out and we can see who's right and wrong here. ;)
Mark McGinty
I'd like to say Kiwis are a very cost conscious people. I think they'd like to save a dollar if they can save a dollar.
Anne McGinty
That I will give you because the cost of living over there is significantly higher in comparison to the wages.
Mark McGinty
Yeah, but in their defense too. You can save your money and put it somewhere else that's more productive.
Anne McGinty
So I didn't realize at the time, but that magazine actually has a really large circulation and we started getting a lot of calls after that.
And multiple people said, well, they would literally they would call in laughing and they would say, "I knew when I read what Mark had to say that you guys are good people. I'm going to have you put my lights up because I know you're honest, because who in their right mind would say something like that in a news article?"
Anne McGinty (34:13.642)
Now that we've sold the business, what would you say you missed the most?
Mark McGinty
Just the people that we got to work with. Yeah, just amazing people.
Anne McGinty
I think our team appreciated that we really tried to be good employers. Even when we made mistakes, they knew we had good intentions and we always aimed to pay really high wages, which benefited our employees, but it also benefited our company. As the season started working out to six months a year, we really...
couldn't afford to have our entire team disappear and not come back the next season because it would have just been impossible to train that many people to start against. And so we effectively ended up paying the value of a full year salary for six months worth of work for our key players. And that was okay to us because then it meant that the employees were able to suffice for the off season and feel ready to come back for the next season as well.
Mark McGinty
I always felt like when we had a large percentage of our employees that would return, it enabled us to focus our energy instead of training and getting staff up to speed. We were able to take that energy and apply it to our customers and maybe generating new leads. So as our business grew, how did you feel comfortable quoting to these larger commercial jobs?
Anne McGinty
Of the commercial jobs that I did.
I won most of them, 90% or more. And I knew that I could do this for several reasons. One is that when we would show up, first of all, we would show up on time because I think it's really important to set a precedent with clients that you respect their time. And if you make an appointment, either show up on time or early.
Mark McGinty
That worked for all of our Christmas light installs too, right?
Anne McGinty
Yeah.
Mark McGinty
Yeah, we always were very conscientious of making sure that our teams, if they were going to be late, would have to call the customer and client and let them know exactly how long that would be.
Anne McGinty
That's right, because it's better to give more information than less. If you say, hey, we're running behind schedule, I just wanted to give you a heads up. It's way better than showing up two hours late without them having any notice at all. You're going to have an upset customer. So more communication rather than less.
Anne McGinty (36:31.986)
Anyway, so when we would go to these larger commercial jobs to bid them, when we would get there, I would greet the client and shake hands and try to establish some sort of a connection with them. For example, how long have you been living in the Bay Area? Or what have you done at the site in the past? What did they like and not like? And what are you looking to do this year? So those types of questions, just trying to get a feel for their end goal.
Were they trying to draw people there? Was this for their employees? Or to create Instagrammable moments, what was the end goal? For us in that moment, it was to try to get to know our clients. So we would walk the site and first ask the clients if they had ideas, because sometimes they really did. And if they did have ideas, we could talk about them further and figure out exactly
how high up do you want the lights to go? Because if somebody says, well, I want to light this tree, it's like, OK, do you want to light the trunk to six feet, or do you want to light the tree to 20 feet? Because that's a really big difference. And do you want the spacing to be one inch, or do you want it to be three inches, or do you want it to be really long and just want it to have gentle sparkle throughout? And so I would write all of these details down very specifically in each section so that when they got the quote,
there was just no room for discrepancy. And I remember at one of these larger jobs that we got, that was about a half a million dollar project. And they told us about halfway through the site walkthrough, you are by far the most organized person that has come to bid this job to date. And there was a very good probability that we were going to be awarded the job. And I asked out of curiosity, if you don't mind me asking, how many other people have come to visit the site?
And they said that three other companies had already come. And I said, well, what did they lack? I wanted just a little bit more clarification as what they were talking about. And they said, well, for one of them, it was a one-page quote that said the number of Christmas lights and a vague description of the park and then a dollar amount. Another bid didn't ask any questions about logistics and power sources, and the third, they thought, was exorbitantly high. To give you an idea of the comparison,
Anne McGinty (38:49.266)
My quote for this job ended up being about 15 to 20 pages and was accompanied with satellite maps that corresponded to each section of the written bid, a separate price per section, and details on how many strands, bulbs, extension cords, and a description of how power would be run, plus a custom-crafted email explaining how wonderful it was to meet with them and how we would be honored to be selected.
Mark McGinty
We were talking hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work there, right?
Anne McGinty
Exactly. Yeah.
Mark McGinty
So these competitors were just wholly unprepared for what they were getting into.
Anne McGinty
I know. I guess I just thought that at the very least somebody wants to know what they're paying for. For sure.
Mark McGinty
And then what subsequently to, if you were awarded the job, what do you have that's going to allow you to be able to do the job for the client too? If you have no notes.
Anne McGinty
Totally.
We always aim to provide full transparency for the client. And I really whittled it down so that it would also be easy to create a work order if approved. On top of that, it made ordering super easy. But growing, the business had positives and negatives. I remember at one point, one of our operations leads asked if we would be open to some feedback. And he said, I think you would really benefit from doing exit interviews at the end of every season just to keep a better pulse.
on what's happening on the ground. And so we did that and we learned so much about the team, about the culture, about what employees liked and what they didn't like. We learned how to best schedule our teams for maximum efficiency and camaraderie. And we were able to adjust and improve our operations based on employee feedback.
One thing I noticed was that everybody always said that you were such a good manager, such a good boss. So something you were doing was really sitting well with the employees. What do you believe contributed to the positive feedback and high satisfaction expressed by the crew about working with you as their boss?
Mark McGinty
Yeah, I think that comes from an exposure to a wide variety of peoples. Right. And so I think as long as you respect each individual for who they are and what they bring to the table.
Mark McGinty (40:59.114)
You know, maybe they don't have the same education or they didn't have the same upbringing or they didn't have the same opportunities. But as long as they extol those virtues. Yeah, I think that you've always been very good at talking with a wide range of people and you are able to make people feel at ease. We had an employee that came back after taking a break for quite a few years, I think.
But when he came back, he said he mainly came back because I was such a good boss to him. And I'm always amazed at how people will put up working for an individual that's just not very nice.
Anne McGinty
Yeah. Well, I'm not going to mention any names, but I remember when you were working for somebody. I've had lots of sucky bosses. And you accidentally broke something on the job site.
Mark McGinty
Oh, that's right. I was carrying solid oak doors down a three story walk up beautiful house.
San Francisco all the way down to their garage. And I swung it around a corner and knocked a light fixture that she had hanging. And this light fixture, believe it or not, was over a thousand dollars.
Anne McGinty
And your boss told you that as the employee, you had to pay for the fixture, even though he had insurance. And at the time, I don't think you and I had anywhere near that in savings. No. And you came home so upset about it. But.
I think having that experience also made you a more empathetic leader. If we were to do this again, which we wouldn't, but mainly because we're just at a different stage in our life, right? Like I don't have any desire to start this back up again.
Mark McGinty
If I had to.
Anne McGinty
If I had to, but we're not in the need to. But let's say our kids decided, hey, I want to do that. I like the lifestyle you guys have created. What tips would you give them?
Mark McGinty
I'd say efficiency is very key. The more efficient that you can be. If you're going to climb up on a roof.
You take everything that you need. So you're not running and expending energy going up and down, up and down. When you're doing sort of a labor orientated job, the more energy that you're having to throw out there to get that job done, the more tired you're going to be, the more tired you're going to be the next day and the next day after that. Till eventually you get to a point where you're just exhausted. Eventually it's going to lead to, you know, a loss of productivity. Okay. So what would you say?
Anne McGinty (43:16.818)
I'd say that learning how to problem solve is really important. And also learning how to build relationships because a lot of people think that sales is intimidating or they'll say, I'm not a salesperson. And if you're good at making friends, and you're good at getting to know people and listening to people, well, then you are a salesperson because sales has nothing to do with trying to get somebody to buy something. I mean, in theory, that is the end goal. But you get there by getting to know them.
and by trying to give them what it is that they want and need, and you just remove the greed from the situation, if the service is something that they want for the price that you're quoting, well, great. And if you are over-quoting, you're going way too high because you want to make a bigger profit on that job, the chances are that the client will probably be able to see straight through that, that your motivation is based on your own needs and wants rather than theirs, and that just doesn't work as well. So.
Building relationships is the core component of being good at sales.
Mark McGinty
You shouldn't sell yourself off for too cheap, too, right? Because eventually, you just won't be that enthusiastic about going to complete that job because you realize that it's not really financially worthwhile anymore for you to do that, right?
Anne McGinty
There was one year when we went through all of our jobs and worked out what the profitability was on each of them as our team and expenses had grown. And some of them were probably a break even.
And that was a hard thing to swallow. I mean, we had to go through and significantly increase some of those clients' job prices because we had initially underbid them.
Mark McGinty
Sure. And we hadn't increased their job prices since we'd initially started, right? We just kept rolling that, that quote over and over again, to a point where I think gas prices had left us behind. Our wages had gone up.
Anne McGinty
All of our costs. Insurance had gone up.
and we hadn't increased prices. Yeah. And doing that always feels a little bit uncomfortable. But we hadn't increased prices in probably about seven or eight years. And that created a problem because we had to increase the job prices significantly and suddenly. And I crafted emails individually to all of the clients to explain what their job price was going to go to. And for some of them, the job price was doubling. And it felt so awful to do that.
Anne McGinty (45:42.838)
But at the same time, I just explained that our operations have grown. We're paying higher salaries now so that we can continue to have employees stick around. The cost of lights and supplies has gone up. Fuel has gone up. I mean, insurance has gone up. Everything has gone up. And I should have been increasing prices gradually along the way instead of making this giant leap seven years later. So that is another lesson that I think others could benefit from if you are in a service business.
and you haven't increased your prices for a while, it's okay to do it, but do it in smaller increments than what we did.
Mark McGinty
Do you remember too, we had that client, it was a commercial streetscape where we would do quite a intense installation over two blocks, shall we say.
Anne McGinty
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Mark McGinty
And the job itself was incredibly complicated and they balked at the price one year and they decided to go with another vendor.
Anne McGinty
That's right. Yeah. But only for a year.
Mark McGinty
Yeah. I think subsequently that vendor took.
Anne McGinty
I think they took three times as long as we did to install, which on a commercial street is significant. I remember the client calling us sheepishly the following season. And again, I felt like I was friends with the client. So when he called and I said, oh, hey, it's so good to hear from you. How how did it go? You know, I'm not going to treat them.
poorly just because they decided to go with a different vendor. And he just, you know, continued to say, well, you know what? You're right. And we want you to come back. Can you come and do our lights for us? And I was like, well, we can. But you remember we had to increase the price. So let's meet. Let's talk about it. I think I even increased the price slightly more because that job was honestly so complex.
Mark McGinty
It was hard work, really hard work, really hard work. And the organization on my end was intense.
Anne McGinty
Speaking of hard work, at what point did you decide that you wanted to entertain selling the business?
Mark McGinty
From the outset, right? We were working towards the ultimate sale of our business. I do remember you saying, I don't want to be doing this when I'm 45. I always just resolved within myself that if I was to do something, I would do it as long as it was enjoyable. And then I would...
Mark McGinty (48:05.806)
probably reach a point at which it was no longer enjoyable and then I would change.
Anne McGinty
It was kind of a scary idea to sell it because we had gotten used to the cash flow from the business and using that money to invest. And we knew that if it stopped, well, then we needed to come up with something else to fill its space. So for a few years, I think we talked about it as an idea that we wanted to one day reach, but we didn't
take any steps to actually get there. And then I think our 12th season was very intense and the business was still growing. And we had kind of reached our max capacity for what we could manage. And the kids were getting older and you were out of state for a month. And it kind of just started feeling like this is getting more and more intense. And I said, well, what do you think we could get for it? And neither one of us had a clue.
as to what we could get for it. And so the conversation would usually end there. Well, there was one year we were on our way to New Zealand and I was like, you know what, I'm just curious. Let's just find out if somebody can give us a valuation so we have a clue as to what we're talking about and whether or not we can take this step. And I contacted a business broker and I said, we really just don't have a clue what.
our business is worth and I was wondering if you can help us out with figuring that out. And we scheduled a call and he got all the information that he needed to and then he got back to us with what he thought our likely multiple would be of our profit. And I was like, whoa, seriously? And I talked to Mark and I showed him and he was like, well, if we can get that, let's do it. And we were in New Zealand and COVID hit. It was spring 2020.
And we were about to go live with our listing with the business broker. And two weeks before it went live was when COVID was shutting everything down. And I was like, well, there goes that idea of wanting to sell the business because you're putting up Christmas lights in places that get people to gather. I was like, we're gonna get a hit this year. Our business broker was like, let's just, you know, we'll list it, we'll see what happens. And he started fielding calls and he vetted people before he would schedule
Anne McGinty (50:28.682)
Zoom meetings between us. And we started getting offers. We got offers from private equity groups, from bigger businesses that were offering to swallow us and our team into theirs. And we got offers from regular everyday people. And that process of selling is probably a separate podcast, but that experience in and of itself was also fascinating. And we ended up closing on the deal in September of 2020.
Mark McGinty
I'd like to add too that we chose a time to sell
where we were still energized by the business, right? If it didn't work out, we would have been fine running it for another year, another two years, another three years. Like we were making good money. So it wasn't a horrible depressing time for us to be selling, right?
Anne McGinty
We talked about that too. We were like, well, if we wanna sell the business in five years, we might be really at our wits end, just kind of done and tired with it. And then we won't wanna run it the next year. It will be more of a pressing need to sell it. And I think people would be able to sense that. Yeah.
We listed it and we were very transparent with the people who we met with and said, it's very likely that our amusement park clients won't be able to operate this holiday season. So we have to factor that in, but they'll likely come back the following year or as soon as they are able to open. And everything was pretty smooth. I'm so happy that we started the business. I'm so happy that we grew it. And I'm also incredibly thrilled that we sold it.
And it is still continuing to operate and grow today under the new ownership. And they're doing a phenomenal job. And they're bringing in new technologies to light up sides of buildings in ways that we couldn't and creating immersive lighting experiences that we talked about doing, but that we also didn't do. So it's exciting to see that we built this little baby and handed it off, and it is still thriving.
Anne McGinty (52:29.438)
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