Episode 154 - The Auntie Anne’s Story with Anne Beiler
We can confidently say that this is the first podcast where a Mennonite chicken farmer capable of writing million dollar checks has played a key supporting role. Sure, you know of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels—you’ve seen them in malls and probably tasted their incredible treats. But the story behind the business is one you’ll just have to hear to believe.
So many entrepreneurs build out of a place of grief or loss and Anne Beiler is just one example of someone who took the trials in her life and turned them into something wonderful. After the untimely death of a child and the uncovering of a long-term affair, God took Anne through a healing process that started with the building of a new business.
Since then, she’s created a product that is served in 1,800 worldwide locations, all with one simple goal—being Pretzel Perfect.
Episode Transcript
Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The Faith Driven Movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Anne Beiler: But that morning, we had our little mini meeting in the store and he said, Hon, you need to be the boss. I said, honey, I don't want to be the boss. I mean, I literally I don't want to be the boss. I just want to make pretzels. You'd be the boss. He said, no, the name is Auntie Anne's Soft Pretzels. And we cannot both be the boss because employees are coming to me and they're asking me something and they'll come and ask you something and we give them different answers. And they're a be confused from here on. When somebody comes to me and asked me what to do, I'm going to tell them to go to the boss.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, I'm here with William and Rusty guys. Good morning.
Rusty Rueff: Good morning. How are you? Good to be
Henry Kaestner: here. Well, thank you. It is one of the best kept secrets, I think, of the game show industry is that a lot of the game shows are recorded in the same day. They'll do eight or nine segments the same day. And Pat Sajak Ravana, they'll change their costumes in between. And yet they go ahead and they do them from morning till night. And they are an extension of that is that we do the same here. Sometimes we'll record multiple podcasts every day. Of course, when I coming to you live right now. But today is a day that I'm just gaining weight just by just by showing up. We had to the Donut King from Cambodia earlier this morning. And now we've got Auntie Anne's the best pretzels ever. Ever.
Rusty Rueff: How many how many times, Henry, have we gone into a podcast where actually the aroma you can almost you know, I mean, how many times have I got past an Auntie Anne's where I can smell it? I mean, I just can't wait. I can't wait. Yeah.
William Norvell: And you know what? Listen, Henry, I think this is your best costume of the day. I think your changes are going really well.
Henry Kaestner: Thank you.
William Norvell: Thank you. I think this is the best sweater you put on today.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, I think that it likely is. And I think that this is more proof that not only do I have a face made for radio, but I've got a voice made for print journalism. There's a reason why this isn't a TV show because I don't have a good wardrobe. But I'll tell you that Anne Beiler is with us in the virtual studio, looks phenomenal and makes me think that we should have a TV show at some point. Anne welcome to the program.
Anne Beiler: Well, it is my great, great pleasure to be with you all. And I've been looking forward to this.
Henry Kaestner: Well, thank you. Thank you for being with us. And, you know, we've hinted, of course, at what has made you famous and what has made you somebody that we wanted to interview. So people don't expect that you're going to talk to us about private equity or law or CPA. You have been able to make a phenomenal product, scale it and bring a lot of joy to a lot of people's hearts all around the country. Tell us, though, the beginning of your story. Where do you come from? Who are you? And just a little bit about your growing up. And then, of course, we're going to get into this story of the first store and progressed from there.
Anne Beiler: Well, let me just start by saying God gave me a pretzel and then he gave me a platform. And that's why I'm here today because of Auntie Anne's Pretzel that's just not amazing. Or what I mean, I could not have planned that. It's not that I was looking for a platform, but it was his plan is amazing when hindsight is 20/20. When you look back and you see all the ways in which God led you like you talked you down this path that had so many twists and turns, I could almost just cry about thinking about the faith that God has just taken me from a little Amish girl with an 8th grade education,
Henry Kaestner: literally an Amish girl. Were you like an Amish Amish girl?
Anne Beiler: I grew up in Amish culture. My mom and dad had a horse and buggy electricity until I was three. And when I was three, then my dad did not want to farm with the horses. He wanted tractors and he left the Amish church. And we went to the black car Amish, which is called Amish Mennonite. And so from that point on, we were in the Amish Mennonite church, which looking on back in the day when I was a little girl, I looked very Amish. So the cultures are similar, but there are some major differences when it comes to, you know, the electricity, the telephone, the car, the the tractors. But we still looked very we were still in the Amish Mennonite. Sure.
Henry Kaestner: Sure. I know exactly. We're talking about I grew up in northern Baltimore County, and so we'd go up to the Lancaster and Intercourse in Paradise, in BlueBell and Gap and all that area.
Anne Beiler: And and that's where I lived right there.
Henry Kaestner: Some of the best ice cream in the world I remember from growing up, beautiful country. So tell us about growing up in the Amish Mennonite community. You about being a teenager and that, you know, there have been documentaries about what it's like growing up Amish. But what was your you know, as you have this very significant faith community, but as you started to develop your own faith, walk us through what it was like being a teenager and just kind of coming out and seeing that there's a bigger world out there. Was your experience with that?
Anne Beiler: Well, you know, you don't know what you don't know and you don't know what you have not experienced. And so growing up in that very simple, I want to say, almost idyllic, it looks like, to the outside world. You know, it's very simple. And the words to describe my upbringing would have been secure, simple. And my mom and dad taught us about God. They took us to church every Sunday. It was like, if you feel like going to church, you'll go or if you have a headache, you can't go. There were no excuses. We went to church every Sunday and in that there was this I'm going to say what they taught us was strong discipline. And we ended up doing a lot of things that you don't feel like doing, you know, and growing up in a family of eight kids, mom and dad, and with the parents being real parents like they actually were the parents. The kids really. Followed the role of the parents and mom and dad would tell us to do something or they would teach her something and we would never argue, never question, that was unacceptable. And so we learned to do a lot of things that we did not feel like doing. And I I think that one of the keys to a successful entrepreneur today is there's many people want to be entrepreneurs, but there's only a few that actually become successful. And the ones that are successful are the ones that do what they don't feel like doing. You keep pushing through. I mean, how many obstacles do we face? You know, so on the farm, I learned that you just you do what you don't feel like doing. And as a kid at the age of 11, 12 years old, I became very responsible. And there's three girls and five boys. And I was the only one of eight kids that my mom and dad, they would leave a note on the kitchen table every Thursday evening for a couple of years. I would come home from school. I would see the note and the note, said Annabeth, my name was Anna and I changed my name to Anne when I went to school. But my mom always called me out of this and she would write the note and she would say, I want you to make 20 pies, 10 chocolate cakes, five custard pies, 15 other fruit pies, whatever those. So total maybe 60, 70 or 80 pies. In case I would go down to the basement. And there was one little light bulb. It was a very dark place, but but it's one little light bulb. And we had my dad had gotten me a huge, huge pizza oven so that I can bake maybe 60 pies at one time. But I would do all this by myself as a 12 year old kid. So when I say that I learned and we've sold them at market the next day, so I remember the feeling of responsibility. No. 1, I can feel that feeling right now doing what I don't want to do. I remember crying, going down the steps. My mom was up market that night. That was the only time that my mom was not at home for a couple of years and I did not want to do this. OK, so what? Honestly, guys, I believe that's one of the greatest lessons that I learned as a kid. I could not have learned that in high school. I could not have learned in college. I could not have learned that by reading books about it. That was my experience. And that's what I took into Auntie Anne's as an entrepreneur. I would do what I didn't feel like doing. OK, let me just tell you a little bit about my faith as an adolescent. Man, I'd heard about God Job 42:5 says in my pleasure, my ears heard of him as a kid. I heard about God, I heard about all of his stories. And I mean, I read the Bible stories and I knew all the hymns. I mean, today it's 72 years old. I still remember all of the hymns and all the Bible stories. A great, great start, you know. But as I experience life, as Job said in my pleasure, my ears heard of you, but in my pain, my eyes have seen you. And I'm so grateful for the pleasure that I experienced as a kid Bible stories, finding out about who God is and my strong, strong belief as a teenager, I question God in many ways. And I tested my culture, my upbringing, put you through it all. I never lost my faith. I have always wanted to believe God. I always want to trust him. I always wanted to please my parents as well. At the age of 19, I got married to my husband, who today we're still married. And our greatest, I think, experience in life to really experience the pain of life and the troubles of life happened after we were married about seven years. And so I don't know what I took away from my growing up years, my adolescence of 18 years was the message was this: Life is good. God is harsh. I thought that life should be good as the followers of Christ. I mean, you know, are we like they love us and bless us if we keep all the Ten Commandments. Life is good and God is harsh. I knew as a little girl that if I just please God or I was, you know, whatever, I believed he would be angry with me. Today, my theology is completely different. I know that life is hard. And God is good, yeah, all the time, no matter what happens to me today, I know that is a fact that is my center and I learned that through my own life experiences and my theology was so bad that when things went bad in my life, yeah, I wanted to be a good girl now. I became, in my opinion, a bad girl. And I'll talk about that later if we have time for it. So but to be honest, I just want you all to know that life is hard. Expect it. Yeah, but God is good. And that will give you some sense of when you're not confused about that, you will stay centered on who God really is.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. My show notes indicate that I'm supposed to ask you what the secret ingredients are to your pretzels to make them so good. I'll leave that to Rusty or William. I actually don't want you to go there. I want you to go in, because I've been with you at different conferences in the past and I've heard some aspects of this story. Please take us through some of that because it's formed you and it helps you to understand with this passion about how good God is. You get married young and you had an unspeakable tragedy. Can you just walk us through how that shaped you and your faith, your marriage, your career, to the extent you feel comfortable and talking about it?
Anne Beiler: Yeah, well, my life is an open book, and I love sharing my story because I know there's many people out there that have experienced similar things. And I want them to know you can't get through anything you really can. And that with God and with faith and hard work, all things truly are possible. And so after seven years, I was a good girl. I was a good wife, I was a decent mom, you know, doing the best I could with two little girls. And we were in the midst of a very exciting church that we'd actually built on my dad's farm. We grew up in the Amish Mennonite culture, but we just simply got hungry for God and Holy Spirit and God's word. And out of that, we birthed a church. There was about eleven of us. And we we built a beautiful church in Pennsylvania and it's seeded about maybe three or four hundred people. And the charismatic movement back in the early seventies was strong. And we got involved in that. It it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. And then suddenly, I mean, I really feel like, God, I'm living my dream. I'm serving God. I have a family. I mean, I told my husband many times during that time I couldn't get any better than this. You know, that's your dream. That's when you're living your dream, when you actually think I. Can it get any better than this, you know? Yeah. And in the midst of all that, our 19 month old daughter, Sweet Angie, Angela Joy, we live right next to my mom and dad. And there was between our homes, there was a barn and my dad had a stone siding business and my sister worked for him driving a bobcat every morning. She would load and unload sand. And that particular morning there was my two daughters and my brother's four kids. We all lived in the same area, in the same little format, and we were all within a few hundred feet of each other. And it was idyllic and it was perfect. Life couldn't be any better. Right. But my little Angie, she would walk up to my mom's house almost every morning for her second breakfast. And my sister always looked for her. She would always pick her up and take her ride on the bobcat with her. And that particular morning, it was a little earlier than usual. And my sister was packing up for the sand. And when she moved the bobcat forward, she saw Angie's body laying in front of the bobcat. And my sister knew immediately that she had driven over her and that she was dead. And you know what I know today is that trauma changes, you know, and it's impossible to live life the way it was. So, you know, growing up in my idyllic world and believing that life is good and God is harsh, my theology kicked in gear and immediately as Angie made her, as she ascended into heaven, I began my gradual descent into a world of spiritual confusion and emotional pain like I. I didn't even know that existed, you know, but it put me into a whole other world and all along, guys. It's really hard to understand this, it it's hard to explain it, but all along that God had a plan. And that plan unfolded after years of pain and suffering. And grieving, and after Angie was gone, we continued going to church and. We were youth pastors at that time and we lived life as if nothing happened. I didn't talk about Angie to people, if they asked me how we were, I would always respond with I'm fine, hallelujah, praise the Lord. I thought that was the proper way to live and just accept it as God's will and go on. I know that sounds silly, and if you want to, you know. Laugh at me about that. It's ridiculous to really believe that, but that's the way we live their life. So Jonas and I, because we didn't we would talk about Angie and how we missed her and those things, but we've never, ever talked about how we were feeling. So in time, there was this great wall of emotional China wall between us. There was no connection. And I despaired and I went into isolation. But I continue to live. I continue to live my life as if nothing happened. Five months after Angie's death, I went to my pastor. When I could bear it no longer, I could I didn't know what to do because God was not answering my prayer. He wasn't helping me. He wasn't healing me. He wasn't taking away the grief, the pain. So what am I going to do, turn my back on God believe he doesn't exist. You know, I love God, but by now I don't trust him. He's not answering my prayers, so I knew that if I went to my pastor, he would help me. And I spent an hour talking to him before we left his office. He took advantage of me emotionally and physically, and I knew what happened there was not OK. But I didn't know what happened, I didn't understand abuse of power, I didn't understand sexual abuse, that was another world I knew I knew nothing about, but I knew something wasn't right. And I left his office and I determined that I would never tell anyone in the church because he was loved by everyone in the church. And so. I decided I would keep that my secret and I would never tell anyone, but little did I know that secret kept me enslaved for seven years of abuse with him, six years of actual physical abuse and and then many, many more years emotional abuse that I didn't know what to do with. I was broken. At the end of those seven years, I weighed 90 pounds. I hated who I was. I knew three things. I was unlovable, I was unchangeable, and I was unforgivable. And I had lived in the seven darkest years of my life that I thought. I would never be able to I would never get away from that, so I went from a spiritual high to the pit of hell, literally. And I knew that any minute that God would forsake me completely. And the despair of that was. Was more than I could bear, so but what I know today is the good news is that every time you talk to God. And I worked my way through seven years every day asking God to deliver me, and once again, God did not answer my prayer. So how did I get from there to where I am today? Well, well, that's the best part of my story, but I have to tell that part of my story so that people understand. That there's hope for them, no matter where they're at, it doesn't matter how low you are today, it doesn't matter. I mean, it does matter. It grieves my heart. I feel the pain of people who are stuck in a place where they feel like they're prisoners to that, because this what you feel like there is no way out, you have got you don't trust him and you don't know how he's going to come to your aid, how he's going to rescue you from whatever it is that you're struggling with. It could be a divorce. It could be the death of a child. It could be abuse. It could be a financial. It's not all about just my story. There's many things that put us into a place of deep suffering. And as I prayed about this for seven years, I decided one day, I mean, I was on my knees and God just was very clear with me. And he said, Get up off your knees. And tell your husband what's going on in your heart. And I argued with God, I really wanted to stay on my knees for the rest of my life. I was safe there. I didn't know there was another life, I honestly by then I didn't know and I argued with God, I can't do that. But courage rose up within me and my palms sweat in my heart, just racing. I jumped into my little blue Toyota truck and I drove to Jonás to shop. And in two sentences I told him. And the look on his face was so blank and distraught and his eyes were completely lost. There was there was no hug, that there was no forgiveness. I just told him what I had to say, and I said the very last thing was, I'm sorry. And I'm a sorry person, and I turned and walked away. And for six hours, I knew that Jonas was either never coming back or if he came back, that he would say that that we're going to get a divorce, because that was the lie that I believe for seven years. I knew without a shadow of a doubt, if he finds out, then he'll divorce me. And I told you earlier that we're married 52 years, so
Henry Kaestner: that's beautiful and tragic and beautiful because I know how this story ends and and you just alluded to it. You've been married for 52 years.
Anne Beiler: Yeah, amazing. It's an amazing story. And everything I tell the story, I'm still I'm amazed all over again. I don't want to I do not know what I did now know. It's really about what helped me to do and what he created. It's unbelievable. Miraculous.
Rusty Rueff: Thank you so much for sharing. You know, it takes a lot of courage to be that vulnerable to share a story like that and know. I think that's one of the things that we really try to get at here on the podcast is that, you know, behind great entrepreneurs are real people and that real people go through real challenges and real struggles. And we may not always hear those stories. Right. We hear the top of the mountain stories, but we don't hear the valleys. And I think, you know, we all have them. And I'd like to just Segway from the valley to what was the scaling of a mountain. Right. That you created a bit of an empire, an empire that we all, you know, know and recognize. So take us on the story of Auntie Anne's.
Anne Beiler: So in nineteen eighty seven, Jonas and I, we move, we were in Texas for ten years of those seven years that we experience the darkness and we decided to move back to Pennsylvania. And when we left Texas to go home, we had twenty five dollars cash after we paid our movers and we had no CDs, no IRAs, knew nothing about 401k. We knew nothing about business. My husband had a really good job as a body man working for some first time in her life. We had actually had security as far as financial security and we had a nice home and but the move, we lost her home and the banks took it back. And so we had nothing. When I say we had nothing, we had a little brown. I don't know what year was Toyota station wagon. And we had a little truck that my husband called Barnabus, which was an ugly red truck kind of thing that he used to go to work. And that's what we went home with. And we moved back to Lancaster County. And on the way back, I told Jonas, you know, wonder what God has for us. You know, we knew that God just really put it in our heart. It's time to go home. We didn't want to go home, but we went home. And on the way back, we discussed what are we going to do? And our marriage had come together enough to where we began helping other couples as a husband or wife to bring people into our home and encourage them with their marriages and just begin to study psychology out of Akron, Ohio, emerge ministries. And he was doing a correspondence course and began to understand human behavior and couple that with the word of God and just begin to understand what happened to us as a couple. And by the way, that my two sisters were also involved with this pastor and they tell their stories. So I can tell that right now. And so the three of us couples moved back to Pennsylvania together. And miraculously, all of us are still together today. But my husband started studying human behavior, and we our desire was to help the Amish Mennonite people. When we get back to Pennsylvania, maybe we could just share our story and help them. And so we ended up really filfeelingling the call to that get back to Pennsylvania and. We didn't rent a home, we didn't know exactly where we're going to put our belongings, and we went to my mom's house and she had a basement and a little extra room and we thought we may leave our things there. And as we were unloading my onesies for some goods, my brother came to me, said, do you have a place to stay? I said, no, we don't. And he said, well, he said, hey, listen, I just want to tell people God provides when you're following God's will, he he will provide he'll take you to the maybe to the very last moment. And you're like, I don't know what I'm going to do. But he will provide if you're faithful to him. And we always one thing that we did well through all of those years was tithe. We believe in tithing, 10 percent of everything we made it was meager. Let me tell you. But we always tithe and we knew that God would take care of us. And so when my brother said, I'll have a trailer in the back of my house if you want to move into the trailer and you can stay there free rent, Jonás, if you will fix up the trailer. So we lived in a small trailer and repaired it as we went. In the meantime, one month later, somebody came to me and asked me if I wanted to work for them and a farmers market in Maryland. And I said, sure, I have nothing better to do. So within a month of us getting there, we had our trailer and I got a little job making 200 dollars a week. And he asked me if I wanted to manage his store. By the way, they were making soft pretzels, which I had never made a soft pretzel in my entire life until I was 40. And so I did that. And seven months later, somebody came to me and said, there's a van for sale at another farmer's market. Are you interested? I said, no, I'm not interested. I'm happy. Make it 200 bucks a month. I mean, Jonas is doing counseling free of charge. We're living meager, but we're doing great. And this person wouldn't stop. Funny. I said, well, OK, I'll call the people. I call them. We bought our own farmers market for six thousand dollars, borrowed the money from Jones's father, who was a very wealthy Amish man. And we opened up our own. So we bought to store sight unseen, took the check to the people, went to see what we bought and voila. Six weeks later, we dubbed our store Auntie Anne's soft pretzels. We gave ourselves a name and I ordered a little business cards and made some Auntie Anne mugs. And we're in business and that's as far as we thought we would ever go. Wow is a modern day business miracle. That's all I can say.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, yeah. I want our listeners also to hear restate. You were 40 years old when you did that, right? So everybody lots of entrepreneurs think, hey, I got to be young out of school. Now we can recreate ourselves. You know, it's part of what God does for us. It's you know, you can recreate ourselves. All right. So I want you to go back in time. And I want you to think about that morning when the first store of yours was going to open and take us through that feeling of walking over there and turn in that sign from closed to open. What was that all about? How did you feel that day?
Anne Beiler: I'm feeling I felt what I'm feeling right now. I was scared to death. Hey, listen, I went for making two hundred dollars a week, it was secure, I had my own minivan that my boss provided for us and I gave the minivan back to him and went back to my little brown station wagon Datsun. And I drove to market that morning. And I'm setting up. I'm opening up. I'm cleaning and doing pretzel dough. And we also had pizza, ice cream and lemonade and some drinks. And so I'm setting it all up there by myself. And there's a man comes to me, comes walking in the door and he's carrying flowers. I thought, oh, that's nice someone's getting flowers. I was so I truly I was crying at the time because I just felt overwhelmed, like, why did I do this? And so the flowers came to me and he brought them to my store and I opened the note. It was from Jonás. And he said. The note said, you can do this hon, I believe in you. And listen to those couples out there who are going out together, you're you're doing a business together. Let me tell you what my husband did for me that day. He believed in me. And spouses, husband or wife, it's important that you believe in each other and don't cut each other down and pick on each other and criticize each other and blame each other. That never happened between Jonas and I. So fast forward about four weeks or so, he would come with me some mornings every now and again when he wasn't counseling, he would come with me to the store and one morning. He said to me, so now by then it was maybe five weeks later, six weeks, and he said to me, you know, we really need to stabilize the fact that you're the boss. Because by then we had about maybe five employees and we were doing about a thousand dollars in two days, which was we were very happy with, but we didn't have the Auntie Anne pretzel recipe at that time yet. So we were selling more pizza and more ice cream and lemonade that we were pretzels because the pretzels were terrible. But that morning we had our little mini meeting in the store and he said, you need to be the boss. I said, Honey, I don't want to be the boss. I mean, I literally cried. I said, I don't want to be the boss. I just want to make pretzels. You'd be the boss. He said, no, the name is Auntie Anne's soft pretzels. And we cannot both be the boss because employees are coming to me and they're asking me something and they'll come and ask you something and we give them different answers. And there will be confused from here on. When somebody comes to me and asked me what to do, I'm going to tell them to go to the boss. And he has told many men that take your thumb, off of your wife's gifts and talents let her flourish. Let her be who God wants her to be, because that's what God told him to do. Just take your thumb off of your wife, let her open up like a rose, a letter bloom where she is. I have given her gifts and talents and you stand beside her and support her and be her cheerleader. And that's exactly what he's done. And throughout the growth from that moment on, he's the one that encouraged me to week number seven or eight. We were going to take pretzels off of the menu because the pretzels were terrible. He happened to be there that morning and I was going to take the pretzels off of a menu board. It was a dumb little menu board that we had created. It was very simple, but I was just going to cross soft pretzels. And he said, Honey, before you do that, let me try something with our recipe. And so I said, well, whatever. I was very frustrated. I just said, well, whatever you want to do, I'm fine. Whatever, I don't care. So I'm going to go to the store and I want to do something that I feel like might help. And I said, OK, so he comes back about 30 minutes later and we added a couple of ingredients to the existing recipe. And as he and I were sitting there waiting for the pretzels to bake, we brought them and put them in the oven. We began to smell something and we opened up the door, the oven door. And we're like, oh, my goodness. They're like completely different. They looked totally different. We were getting so excited. So we pulled the pretzels out and he and I stood there and tore apart and ate it. And we looked at each other and we're like. Wow, this is unbelievable. And so my husband said, honey, let's not say anything to anyone, to our employees or customers or anyone and just see what they say. So we did. So we're all exciting and we're anticipating the excitement of customers and our employees. And sure enough, our very first customer bought a pretzel. We proudly gave him this new product and we watched him. And he walks away about 15 feet from our store, took a bite of the pretzel. He had his back toward us. He had turned around and walked away. So he looked at this pretzel and he turned around and looked at the store and it came back to me and he said, What is this? And I said it's an Auntie Anne's soft pretzel. And he said, well, this is nothing like any soft pretzel that I have ever tasted. This is the best pretzel I have ever had. That has been our experience from nineteen eighty eight all the way up to 2021 now.
Henry Kaestner: So somewhere there is a customer, No one, an anonymous guy. He's out in America. He was customer number one and he was transfixed. We all have been. But who's that guy. Who's that story. We need to just go find that story for us.
Anne Beiler: You know, I've often wish there was a couple of things. I wish I would have had a video of that or even know who the guy is or even all of the agreements that we wrote on a napkin or my things that we did, you know, on paper that. So that's another point, I think, for entrepreneurs that are starting in business, you know, really pay attention to the details of things that are really, really important to the startup of your company, because one day, you know, I remember all those things, but I don't have the pictures or the written papers, you know, to show people this is what we did.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, but the secret ingredients were not illegal, highly addictive, but wondered,
Anne Beiler: you know, no, they are highly addictive.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. But not illegal. They are highly addictive.
Rusty Rueff: I guess I'm guessing that if we put this on pause, you couldn't tell us what that recipe was.
Anne Beiler: Your guest is correct, because if I'd be in so much trouble legally that I'm sure.
Rusty Rueff: So this is this is right up. This is right up here with the 11 original herbs and, you know, the recipe of the kernel. So this is good. This is good. This is good. OK, so just fast forward us to the business scale. And you got to a point where, you know, other people came along and said, wow, we are interested in this business and you had the opportunity to exit. Can you take us through just that moment in time?
Anne Beiler: While so let me just say that when I started the Auntie Anne's and there were three things I did not have, I did not have formal education. I had no business plan and I had no capital. But I began to focus on the three things that I did have, and that was I had a great purpose. We had a great product and we had great people. And those are the three things that every entrepreneur needs. Great purpose, great product and great people. And with that in my world, with those three components and understanding that God gave me the verse in psalm 32:8, I will instruct you and I will teach you in the way that you should go and I will counsel you with my eye. And I took that promise literally, and I depended on God and the people that God brought to me. And I prayed and asked the Lord to direct us every step of the way. We owned Auntie Anne's for almost 18 years and by then we had around 900 locations. And I cannot remember the actual number, the annual sales that we had at that time. Honestly, I don't remember any more. But today, Auntie Anne's their annual sales before covid or right at eight hundred million annual sales and they were really shooting for their first one billion. But then covid hit and things really got off track. But 18 years later, we just felt I knew that franchising was the gift that God gave us. It was the vehicle that he gave us so that we could be able to give. That was our whole purpose was to be able to give money to through counseling. Jonas gave his time and services for ten years, every person for by the thousands that came to see him and his five employees that were counseling. It was a free service to anyone that came for ten years. So we were living her dream and things had been way beyond anything we have ever imagined. And I want to tell you, I don't have to interject this. If I would never have made that confession to Jonas like ten years earlier, none of this would have ever happened. And I want people to pick up my book, The Secret Lives Within. It will tell you how to live the ongoing lifestyle of the new view of confession found in James five sixteen, which transformed my life. So April 15th of 2005, we handed over the keys to Auntie Anne's, to the new president, the new owner, and he bought Auntie Anne's. He and the banks bought it. It stayed a private company for another six years, and then he sold it to a company out of Atlanta, Georgia, called Focus Brands. And today, Focus Brands is the owner of Auntie Anne's. And so the journey to sell is a whole other story. But let me tell you, the day I signed the documents and I knew it was God's directing us, but I went home and it was one of the hardest things that we had ever done because I really kind of secretly I wanted to be Auntie Anne I want to be really important at Auntie Anne's until the day I die. But I was smart enough to know that the older I get and the younger the workforce gets, the new ideas, it was going to have to go in a different direction. Keep the same values, keep the morals, keep the culture. But I just knew I was finished. And when I went home, after we made the final sign on the dotted line, I was Dentler on the board. We did not plan. I wasn't chairman of there was no continuing royalties. We sold the company and I knew I was done. And I get home and I'm sitting in my chair bawling my eyes out. And God spoke to me at that moment and he said, Anne you can't go back there. It was two minutes from my house. And I dried my tears and I stopped and I said, wow, why can I not go back there? But that was a whole journey, a whole revelation as well, I realized if I was so ingrained, I was all about the people. I loved these people so much. That I knew if I go back and do my morning rounds, which I did every Monday morning, that I would still be in their eyes the boss, I would still be the one they can come to. And I knew that I would never be able to give the opportunity that the new owner needed to show the employees that he's now the new owner and the boss. That could never happen if I interfered. And I took a deep breath and I promised God I would never go back unless I'm invited and I didn't.
William Norvell: That's very interesting. I think we might have you back some time to talk about that moment and processing through. I mean, so many of entrepreneurs go through that, right? You know, should I sell? Should I not? God gave me this call to start this company. Am I supposed to run it forever? Am I not just feels like that's a one size fits one category that God walks through with each entrepreneur. But there's also great wisdom in hearing from someone who's walked in those shoes and
Anne Beiler: and it is different for different people. Sorry to interject
William Norvell: there. No, no, you're good. Unfortunately, we do have to come to a close with this specific segment. And the way we love to close is seeing how God's word is working in our guest life these days and how that transcends to our audience. And so if you wouldn't mind, we'd love to invite you to share with us maybe a either a scripture, God's laid on your heart lately or a story from the Bible that he's been using in your life or this morning or this season or throughout your life. But just how is this word impacting you today?
Anne Beiler: Well, so God's word has always been alive and well in my heart and has really guided me in every step of the way. And I would say the latest revelation, I guess the latest one that currently even to this day happened seven years ago when we sold Auntie Anne's. We then took all the money and put it into the development of a family community center. We bought one hundred twenty five acre farm, spent millions of dollars, put it in the ground, four streets and all that. So 10 years after that, once again, God asked us to surrender everything. And surrender meant sell out and wow, OK, that's a whole big struggle, but he took us to the story of Abraham and Isaac. Well, let me tell you, seven years later, I'm still trying to understand and I'm marinating in that thought of surrender every day. And in that journey, I have learned so much about me. And how much my identity was in other things, my company, my family, my as so many things. But I'm challenged today with the thought that God wants me to give him everything, why? Because he wants to be the Lord of all. And as believers, we sing it, we say it, we believe we have given him all, but this has been a journey that has been probably the most challenging part of my entire life. But I'm finding in this place joy unspeakable. Full of glory. And a place of great contentment and peace that I have never experienced in my life. And that's where it's a really great place to be. Let me tell you, it's a great place to live. Everybody's on their journey. There's not tiers in God's family. It's just a different places on our journey, on the same level or just had different places. I may be at mile marker ninety nine and maybe you're at mile marker thirty three and maybe someone's at mile marker 200, you know where different places in the journey. Why. To bring each other along, to encourage one another and to speak to each other's life openly, transparently stop hiding and pretending. I mean that is the biggest lie of the enemy, is to pretend that you're somebody you're not, you know, be real open, vulnerable to struggles you're facing as an entrepreneur, as a mom, as a dad, as a business owner. Just be real. You know, go to people when you need help, ask questions. Tell them when you're struggling. That's the motto found in James 5:16 Confess your sins to one another talk to each other about what's going on in your life. And that will keep you in a place of freedom. That will take you somewhere that you cannot even imagine. Right now, I'm living in a place of freedom that is undescribable. And the longer I live in this place, the bigger the freedom gets and the brighter the light becomes. Don't ask me to explain it. I can only tell you that's the way it is.
Henry Kaestner: That's an awesome word. And thank you very much for your story. I'm grateful for the way that you've encouraged us. And it's amazing as you've brought us along to mile marker ninety nine and look forward to take him back in and here more. You've been a great encouragement to our audience, to me personally and thank you. God bless you.
Anne Beiler: Thank you so much.