A Founder's Life
Join me as I explore the powerful intersection of entrepreneurship, health & wellness, and parenthood. In each episode, I’ll be interviewing inspiring individuals who excel in one or more of these areas, sharing their stories, insights, and lessons. My goal is to provide valuable takeaways that can help you thrive both personally and professionally.
A Founder's Life
What Startup Failure Taught Me About Fear - Brad McGinity - S5 - E18
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👤 Connect with Today’s Guest – Brad McGinity
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What happens when your career in SaaS, your faith, your marriage, and your health all collide in real life?
Brad McGinnity, Chief Revenue Officer at Tithely, shares his journey from stumbling into startup sales to leading revenue at a 50,000-customer global fintech platform serving churches and nonprofits.
We talk about startup pressure, almost running out of cash, getting married young, raising three daughters, rebuilding after divorce shaped his teenage years, and why he believes in exercising every single day — no matter what.
What you’ll learn:
• Why founders shouldn’t chase the exit
• How near-bankruptcy builds confidence
• The “GPA method” for balancing life roles
• Why exercise is non-negotiable for leaders
• How faith and business can align
⏱️ CHAPTERS
0:00 – SaaS Career, Tithely & Serving Churches
3:08 – Marriage, Kids & Building a Family Young
5:38 – Soft 60, Health Habits & Daily Discipline
13:54 – The GPA Method for Life Balance
18:23 – Divorce, Startup Fear & Advice to Founders
Website
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Welcome to the Founder's Life. I'm your host, Leo Gastetna. On this show we dive into the real stories behind the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and how we pursue a more balanced and meaningful life along the way. This podcast is brought to you by Thanks, helping founders like us scale with reliable remote talent. Email founders at Thanks.com. That's T-H-A-N-K-Z.com with the subject line of Founders Life and you'll achieve preferred pricing. Now I'm excited today to be joined by Brad McGinnity. Brad, thanks for joining. Would you like to introduce yourself to the audience?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on, Leo. As you said, my name is Brad McGinnity, based in Raleigh, North Carolina. I have spent my entire career on the sales and marketing side of SaaS companies since 2006, I suppose. Came up through the sales track, started a company back in 2011 while I was in business school that was marketing software. Then I moved into uh HR software at a company's called 15.5 and another one called Hone. And today I'm the chief revenue officer at a company called Tithely, which is online giving software for churches.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Thank you. Would you like to talk a little bit about a bit more about what brought you to where you are today? So sort of your journey, and then a little more about what the current business is doing for your clients. And are your clients all churches or what what what are you really doing for them?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So I I really stumbled into software sales. I know that there's lots of people coming out of college nowadays who are specifically pursuing a career in software. Back in 05, I was not doing that and just needed a job. And uh got lucky to go to a startup and do sales. And it was uh a couple of great founders, it was email marketing software. And as I stumbled into startups and sales, found that it was something that I really loved. And so decided that was where I wanted to spend my career. And uh it's it's worked out extraordinarily well with the last 20 years. In terms of Tithely, based on our name, you can imagine that we probably mostly serve churches. People tithe to their church and do those donations. We are a vertical SaaS fintech product. And so you have to be a nonprofit to work with Tithely, but most of our customers are churches. But we have synagogues and mosques and schools and, you know, childcare centers and things like that who are all somehow processing payments or using our other CRM and messaging, email, SMS capabilities, website, a church app, things like that, in order to stay in touch with their members, constituents, whatever those people might be in relation to the organization. We are about 50,000 customers. We're in seven or eight different countries. And uh it's been a lot of fun. It's it's really neat to bring together something that I love and I'm passionate about, which is kind of Christian faith and that type of stuff, with my professional expertise on the sales and marketing side.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Helping people get back. And uh talk a little bit about how family looks for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, I got married young and had kids young. So my first daughter was born when I was 26, which was a month before I started full-time business school. And my second daughter was born a month after I graduated from school. And at that point, I had committed to co-founding this marketing analytics company with a couple of other guys. And so with business school in there, I ended up going two and a half years without a paycheck while doing school and then the startup, which was a blast. And my wife felt was a great ROI on my MBA. And then a few years later, we had uh daughter number three. So today my daughters are a junior in high school, a freshman in high school, and a fifth grader. And so it is a, as you can imagine, a very busy life.
SPEAKER_00Yep, I I don't need to imagine, I remember it well.
SPEAKER_01Yep, absolutely. And uh this August, my wife and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary. So she has somehow stood by me through all of this chaos. That's lovely.
SPEAKER_00And uh what do you like to uh do for fun?
SPEAKER_01There's the two sides to that, right? So there's hey, give me a Saturday afternoon and some nice weather. What am I doing for fun, right? So mountain biking, water skiing, in the winter, I'm snow skiing, love to play ultimate frisbee and frisbee golf. I run a lot, which is partially for exercise. I sometimes enjoy it, but much prefer to be out there on the mountain bike if I can. I also, at 41, I started to play soccer. Had never played soccer in my whole life, and uh, I joined a soccer league, which is over 30 coed rec. So we play our games on Thursday nights. Games kick off anywhere between uh 8.15 and 9.45 at night. And uh it's a blast. I have a lot of fun playing soccer. I have no foot skills, so I just play defense because I'm quick enough to knock the ball out. And so then if it's a Saturday afternoon, a typical Saturday afternoon, I would say I'm probably hanging out with my kids on the side of a soccer field uh or doing something like that. And so I obviously have a great time with my children and love them very much and enjoy it. It's a different form of fun than uh than the leisure that we sometimes think of, though.
SPEAKER_00Definitely. What else um do you like to do for health? So if you look at some of the stuff that you've talked about just then, but what else? And uh, you know, health for me, yes, you got the physical, you know, the running and soccer, etc. You know, there's mental health, there's nutrition, asleep. What what else do you look at when you look at health?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. A lot of folks are familiar with uh a program that's makes its way around the internet called 75 Hard. And um, back in December of 2020, I had come across 75 Hard and was starting to think about doing 75 Hard or Hard 75, whichever way it goes. And for those of you who are not familiar with it, it's really hard. You go no alcohol for 75 days. You have to and you have to, by the way, do 75 consecutive days. That's the whole point of the program. If you miss day 32, you go back to day zero, and the goal is to go 75 days. Um, so you're like no alcohol. I think you read 15 pages of a book, you drink a gallon of water, you take a progress picture of yourself with your shirt off every single day in the mirror. Uh, I think they want you to meditate maybe for 10 minutes, you have to follow some kind of um a diet program as well, eating program. The highlight of this thing is that you have to do two 45-minute workouts every single day, one of which has to be outdoors. So I was thinking about doing this. I'm like, this two 45-minute workouts, this is gonna be a lot. Simultaneously, a friend of mine was thinking about doing some kind of like online Facebook community group type of thing, a cohort model where it's kind of Renaissance, man. Do some mental stuff, do some physical stuff, learn a new skill. So he and I kind of combined these two ideas. And then my wife was making fun of us, saying that we didn't have the courage to do 75 hard. So she started calling it soft 60. And so we put together this like 60-day program, which included some of these elements. And so that has kind of laid the foundation of my health for the past four years. So most days uh I drink a gallon of water. Before we hopped on here, Leo, you and I were talking about um how I'm eating Lara bars because they don't include sugar. Prior to me doing soft 60 for the first time, I would consume enormous amounts of sugar on a daily basis. Um, I did not care how much sugar I consumed, and if it was food and it was tasty to me, I would eat it. And so I have not completely, but I've largely eliminated uh sugar from my diet. As part of the program, I also went gluten-free, not because I have a gluten allergy. It's just most foods that have gluten in them are probably also not healthy for me. My wife's gluten-free and I have a gluten-free daughter, so it's pretty easy to do that in my house. And so um, I made an effort to largely eliminate gluten from my diet. I found that when I would drink a gallon of water, be alcohol-free, gluten-free, and sugar-free, my energy levels just spiked. I would love to get eight hours of sleep every day. I think on my watch, it tells me most nights I get around six hours and 15 minutes. I really need about seven hours and 15 minutes to operate without brain fog. And so I was finding that I could get six hours of sleep every night as long as I was eating in these ways. Um, I was also simultaneously exercising for 45 minutes every single day. And um, you put this whole package of stuff together and I had a ton more energy. I was a lot more alert. My lethargy, which has kind of been a constant battle for me, uh largely went away. So um I've spiked, I think I've done the soft 60 program, which is 60 days long. I think I've done it probably now like seven or eight times um since uh just January of 2021. I did it three times last year. Um, in the calendar year 2025, I did it three times. And the goal of last year was how do I just make this now like my regular life? And not like this 60-day blitz, but just like my regular life. And so that's helped me to establish a lot more healthy eating and drinking and exercise habits. Long-winded answer to your question, but a lot of it for me is this soft sixty thing.
SPEAKER_00That's great. I think it's uh finding what works for you. I've never tried any of those. I know both of my kids have done uh 75 Hard. And they both got benefit out of it, and they both have kept parts of it long term. So, long term being my son did it a year ago, my daughter did it probably three or four years ago.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's great.
SPEAKER_00And I think it it's great to working out what you can still keep and and becomes a long-term part of your daily habits.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Last week a friend of mine sent me an Instagram post and it was a guy uh talking about infinity medium, and it was him basically saying, Hey, I did 75 hard. It was kind of insane. And so now I'm gonna go forever on medium, you know. So it's like, I'm not gonna never drink, but I'm only gonna drink socially, and I'm never gonna get drunk, right? Um, and so you know, I'm not gonna work out every single day twice for 45 minutes, and one of them has to be outside, but I'm gonna make fitness a daily part of my schedule. So it's interesting to hear him talk about infinity medium. And I was like, ah, soft 60, infinity medium, but we figured it out.
SPEAKER_00Maybe I should join one of your programs. I'm already doing all of that anyway.
SPEAKER_01There you go. One trick on this thing, well, and this was a spin that we did, and I think, by the way, the 75 Hard program, what you're doing by yourself, it's really stinking hard. And by the way, the guy calls it, he's like, it's not a fitness program, it's not a health program, it's not a diet program. He says this is a mental toughness program because it's hard. It really is hard. So one of the spins that we put on Soft60, and I've done it every time that I've done Soft60, I've done it with an accountability partner. And if either one of us screws up one activity one time, we both go back to day zero. And so on a lot of those days when I would otherwise want to quit, it's knowing that I'm not just sending myself back to day zero, I'm sending my accountability partner back to day zero. That's the deal breaker on it. And we just use an Apple node and you just kind of check the boxes as you go through.
SPEAKER_00I love that. Um, my son's when he did it, he did it with two mates. I don't know if one of them had failed if they'd have all gone back to zero, but they were accountability for each other. They did, you know, and and there's that peer pressure of I'm not going to be the guy who fails when my mates are able to do it. Yeah. Yeah. To your point on the first. By the way, he's in Boston, so it was in the winter. That is not a fun 45-minute outdoors in the winter.
SPEAKER_01No, they took the wrong time of the year to do that. The very first time that I did it, it said I was doing it with my friend who we kind of combined these two programs together. And we, he's one of my college roommates, and every year we do our roommate reunion weekend. There's nine of us who live together. And we were like, I think we're probably learning like day 12, and the roommate reunion weekend is kicking off. And he's like, uh, and for some reason I wasn't gonna be able to make it that year. But he was like, like, I want to drink bourbon on our reunion weekend. Can I drink bourbon? Can I get an exception? It was like, his name's Brad also. It's like, no, Brad, like you can't get an exception, but you can just send us both back to day zero. Like, I I won't stop you from drinking, but we will go back to day zero. So if it's worth it for you, we'll just go back to day zero. Or you can just not drink, like your call. Um, but it's like, no, you you don't get an exception. We just go back to day zero. And what did he decide?
SPEAKER_00She did not drink. Nice. And so tell me, how does it for you a balanced life look? And and I often talk about balance as that center line because none of us are always in balance. Yeah, you're nonstop working, you're with the kids, you're whatever it is. But but overall, how does a balanced life look for you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I had a mentor of mine say to me when I was like probably 24, 25, he was like, Your problem, Brad, is that you want to have it all. And so these words have been kind of echoing in my brain for the last 15, 16 years, whatever it is, since he said it to me. And so as I look at the primary roles in my life, right? I have roles of husband, father, those are two of the really big ones, friend, you know, uh employee, worker, boss, you know, CRO. I have like an administrative job in my own household to make sure we pay the bills on time. And when the, you know, we got a water leak, somebody takes care of that and all that kind of stuff. And so um, a lot of how I think about it is a little bit of like a GPA concept, like what's my report card? And it's gonna be really hard if you have any kind of high standards for yourself, which I imagine most of your listeners have high standards. That's why they're listening to this podcast. It's really hard to get straight A's. And so I'm a little bit like, can I get an A in the subject that matters for this period of time? And maybe I'll allow myself to get a C in this other subject, but overall, my total GPA is gonna be pretty good. Um, and so maybe I'm kind of doing B pluses everywhere. And so, you know, for me with young children, they are incredibly hands-on. And you got to be really present. And we're always addicted to our phones. It's just like how can I get rid of a phone and just be really truly engaged with quantity of time, not just quality time, with my kids. And that season, you know, my oldest is 16, my youngest is 11. So I've basically been in this season now for like 16 years because it it my youngest is still 11. My 16-year-old barely cares that I exist anymore, but my 11-year-old still very much cares. So it's a very long season. And so uh, I think what I what I try to do is be really present where I am in the thing that I'm supposed to be doing while simultaneously making mental peace with the fact that I literally cannot get to everything. I am gonna disappoint somebody, I'm gonna drop the ball on some project. And so, can I prioritize my time so that when I get to the end of the day, I know that today was a good day and I was present doing the things that I needed to be doing to the best of my ability for that one thing for today. And if you can stack that on top of each other, you know, most days of the week, you'll you'll probably get to a pretty good place. And so, you know, there there's the balance. And like I my the other soccer players' parents, like all the other parents on the sidelines, they always make fun of me because during soccer practice, like they just sit around and talk to each other the whole time. I got an hour and a half on the side of the soccer field. I'm exercising or I'm working. I'm not just hanging out with the other parents, but like, I got stuff I gotta do. So, how can I make that time as productive as possible? Um, because you just can't fit it all into the end of the uh So it, as you said, it is a balance, there is a bit of a center line. Um, I try to be thoughtful about where do I need to get an A, you know, this week, this month, this quarter. Where can I afford to get a C right now? So like my yard is awful, much to my wife's dismay. But it'll still be here in 10 years when my kids are gone and I'll deal with the yard then.
SPEAKER_00And you could uh pay someone to do the yard if you want, because you decide that your time it's more valuable to spend the time with your kids than you know. That's the other option. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So that's I I I love the way you look at it. Um my report card. And life probably wouldn't be too bad. In school, it was uh terrible. Def definitely not a definitely Yeah, education was never a strong point for me. And what has been a pivotal moment in your life?
SPEAKER_01Mm. That was a good question. So I think that I think there's probably kind of two really pivotal moments for me. So one would be as a sophomore in high school, or the summer right before sophomore year, my parents came to my sister and I and said, Hey, we're getting a divorce. And I was living in Baltimore, Maryland as a kid. And I'd had a a very picturesque, wonderful childhood. You know, we were the happiest family on the block and present and engaged parents and a wonderful little childhood that all of a sudden came just crashing down. A few months after that, my dad told us that he was moving to Houston, Texas, halfway across the country. And so coming out of that experience, I became extremely, extremely, extremely committed to the ideas of like, I am never getting a divorce, and I'm gonna do everything I can to make my family's life and my marriage thrive if I get married one day. And I know that for a lot of people, you know, especially in the modern age, they're like, uh, you know, we can move in and out of marriage. And if the, you know, the the partner's not helping you become a better version of yourself, then you should move on from them and all that kind of stuff. I I kind of get it, kind of don't. But for me personally, it's like, no, no, we're we're doing this. This is a lifelong covenant that we have made to one another. And so if we're here, we better be committed to making this relationship the best we can possibly make it because neither one of us is going anywhere. So do you want to be miserable for the rest of our lives or thriving together for the rest of our lives? And so for my wife and I, I think that has, and she also comes out of divorced parents uh or divorced family. And so for the for the two of us together, I think that has been a really critical, pivotal, foundational place of alignment that we work out of together that has set the foundation for our relationship and for my children's home that that they're growing up in. Another one is the the startup that I worked for that I that I helped co-found. So I guess I worked at several startups, but then I helped co-found. And we were paying ourselves way under market. We were, you know, we're venture-backed companies, so we're spending more than we're making. And there was a few times throughout that journey when we were like, you know, a month away from running out of cash. And at that point, I had two kids. My wife was working, but money was really tight. Um, kind of living like mostly paycheck to paycheck. And the belief in myself, the belief in my team and what we were doing to kind of stare down, like not being unemployed, going the company going bankrupt, like running out of money, all that kind of stuff. And knowing that like, like we're gonna figure this out. Like my family will be okay. I will be okay. And so that has given that experience when I was, you know, in my late 20s, early 30s, we went through it a couple different times. I think that that has given me a lot of kind of confidence and freedom later in my career to say that, like, hey, if this stuff happens at work, it's not gonna be the end of the world.
SPEAKER_00We're gonna be fine. That's great. It makes a lot of sense. And if you're gonna give one piece of advice to an inspiring entrepreneur, what would that be? Ooh, to inspire an entrepreneur.
SPEAKER_01There's a lot of cliche advice out there. And so I think I would offer two things, one of which will be a cliche, and maybe one's not as much of a cliche. So the first one is, you know, everybody's gonna think you're nuts, nobody's gonna understand what you're doing. You won't be able to explain why you're doing this thing to your mom who thinks that you need a dependable paycheck. And like, let it all go. Do it anyway. Like, do it anyway. And by the way, don't do it because you think there's gonna be a great exit one day and you're gonna be retired for the rest of your life in five to ten years. That may happen, and I hope that happens for you, but don't do it because of that. Don't do it for the money. Do it because you love it and because the journey's worth it, even if you don't reach the destination that you may have been hoping for. The second one, I'm one of these personalities. I enjoy exercise, but life is super busy, and so I don't always make time for it. And so what's made the difference for my life when it comes to exercising is I don't try to exercise four days a week or five days a week. I exercise literally every single day for at least 30 minutes. And that could just be as simple as going for a walk. But every single day I'm going to exercise. And so when I wake up in the morning, the question is not will I exercise today or will I not exercise today? The question is when am I going to exercise today? When am I going to fit this in my schedule? So I got a stationary bike that I set up at a computer. I've got a walking mat that I set up at a computer. I do a lot of meetings with AirPods in while I'm running. And so as an entrepreneur, taking care of your health is so important. You will remember more things, you'll have better mental clarity, you'll have more energy, you'll sleep better. There's so many benefits that come to your work because of exercise. And so you have to make that commitment to exercise. And so if you make the decision to say, I'm going to exercise every single day, no matter what, it'll change the decision that you're making, which is not if I do it today, but rather when do I fit this into my life? And I would encourage you to do that.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely love that. I'm I'm also someone who works out every day and often multiple times. And uh, you know, I love the uh, you know, going to exercise every day. And I also I I think, you know, that whole walking pad, I used to have one at my desk when I had a desk, no matter now, but I had a standing desk and I could pop it on, especially if I was doing meetings that didn't need me to talk and it was more listening. I'd, you know, pop up the desk, hop on the standing treadmill. And I actually bought one that also could handle running. So if I didn't have time to get outside for a run, I could get in, even I wouldn't do like a half an hour plus run because they're not running machines, not great for your body, but I'd do like a 10-15 minute run between like a little quick sprint between meetings, and it just felt better. And I think, you know, I also believe all of what you're talking about leads into health span. So not living longer, but being healthy until we die. So not only will it help you focus more when you're as an entrepreneur, once you've retired and you're uh, you know, sitting there in into the sunset or whatever, you want to keep your your mind and um body healthy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. It's crazy. The research is like minimum, go walk for 10 minutes after a meal. That's all it takes, like minimum. Um, which probably isn't uh easy to do in Manhattan, but I live in the suburbs. Like it's it's easy to do. And as you said, like get a walking mat, do it, do it in a meeting. It's fine. We won't care. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And um, how can people find you?
SPEAKER_01Yes, um, easiest is LinkedIn slash McGinnity, M-C-G-I-N-I-T-Y. Picked up that handle back in 06 when LinkedIn was real small. So that's the easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn at Brad McGinnity with the backslash McGinnity.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Well, thank you for joining us today.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Appreciate it uh very much, Leah. This was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00And thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the channel, tell your friends, and please leave a review.