How My Mom Built a Business That Lasted 50 Years

What does it take to build a business that lasts 50 years?

For this episode, I'm sitting down with someone who has shaped so much of the way I think about business: my mom, Gina Hutchinson.

Fifty years ago, she started what would become the Red Stars baton twirling program. She wasn't setting out to become an entrepreneur. She was a schoolteacher who agreed to coach a high school majorette team, started giving 50-cent baton lessons after school, and eventually found herself with a growing business of her own.

Over the next five decades, that business evolved in ways she never could have predicted. Her teams competed nationally, traveled around the world, performed in places like Spain and the Soviet Union, and created opportunities for generations of young women.

And along the way, she learned a whole lot about running a business.

You Don't Have to Have It All Figured Out When my mom started teaching baton, there was no grand business plan. In fact, she says pretty clearly in this episode that she had no intention of starting a business.

One opportunity simply led to another.

She took on the majorette team. Parents started asking for lessons. Someone offered her space above a furniture store. She suddenly had rent to pay, which meant she had to start thinking about pricing, expenses, and what it actually meant to run a business.

Sometimes we think we need to know exactly what the business will become before we begin.

Her story is a pretty great reminder that you can start with what you know, pay attention to what's working, and allow the business to evolve from there.

Sometimes You Have to Jump Out on a Limb One of the things I've always admired about my mom is her willingness to ask, How could this work?

That willingness took her teams from New Hampshire to national competitions at Notre Dame and eventually around the world.