Okay, five tips. Hands. So I grew up in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Southern. Yes. And we went to church was a Presbyterian Church. And I had a very happy childhood. My dad is a touring musician. So a lot of time with my mom growing up my dad too, but he was gone a lot on tour. And my mom worked. She worked for a Christian record label. And, and they're not like into colors. My mom is very orange, and my dad is very blue. So I think that that and other life experience have made me be very structured. Because I like to I wanted structure growing up, like my mom never had to tell me to clean my room. Like, she's the things that I wanted. Yes. And so when I turned nine, or I was nine, and my sister was 11, she got diagnosed with childhood cancer, called rhabdomyosarcoma, which is a muscular cancer, and it's just in pediatric patients. And so, for about, I want to say it was like 10 months. We, that was our life. We live that during the belt, Children's Hospital, always very thankful to them, and their staff and all their wonderful nurses and doctors. But we basically lived there. I also because my dad was touring. And you know, when your child is like, you still have to work. Yeah. And so my dad was touring, my mom was still working, but my dad would be gone, my mom would be working. And I was just kind of everywhere. We had lots of family, friends and church friends that just took me out and kind of passed me around. And I lived here and there. And I was nine years old. And you know, when you're nine, you're starting to establish responsibilities and everything, and people don't have to tell you what to do. And I kind of like took it upon myself to become very responsible and establish responsibilities for myself. It's
extremely responsible. And this is one of the main reasons. Yeah, I love her because she's responsible. I am not.
So when I when I was 10. So I turned 10 in January of 2004. And my sister, you know, we thought that by June, July, we thought that she was pretty much cancer free. She has gone through several rounds of chemo, several rounds of radiation. And we weren't expecting her to wrap up four rounds of chemo and be done and be cancer free and go home and go home. And, you know, life didn't work that way. And had other plans. Yeah. So this is
a lot of why you are we We're so mature. And you're so it shapes who you are. And that's why it's so important.
So after about a month in ICU, my sister was put on a ventilator. And another month later, she was taken off and she went home to God. And yeah, it was a lot to take in as a 10 year old kid. Yeah, it's still a lot to take in at 28. Her birthday just passed and she would have been 30. And my sister and I were very close growing up. She was like my whole world. I wanted to do everything like her. Like I walked very early. Like I worked at like eight or nine months, because I wanted to like I wanted to get up and go like I wanted to do. So like she was just like the best role model. She was such a sweet soul and like I it was it was really hard. But I definitely know that I experienced a personality and like mindset change after the fact. Yeah, like I became very kind of just introverted, whereas I wasn't before I was like your typical second child. Like, jumping off, like carrying my mom. When I went to kindergarten. My mom thought it was going to punch the teachers like I was very much like you. Yes, and she was shocked. They're like, Oh, she's so sweet. She's like you're talking about my child. Right? What So I was very stubborn and very hard headed. And like it was my way or the highway when I was a little kid. But like, my, just my world totally shifted. And I became such a different person from that experience that I realized young that like, bad things can happen. And you just have to get through them, you can either. I will say one of the most beautiful things that my dad ever said to me, and I'll never forget, is after the funeral and everything, we were going to have dinner with our family, and I really hadn't had a quiet moment with my parents by myself, like in that whole process. And, and I like snapped up my cousin or something. And he was like, You know what we're gonna go, we're going to, like, we left the restaurant, everybody else went and sat down. And we came back. And we went to my sister's gravesite and my dad, you know, there's lots of flowers and stuff. And he told me, What flower do you want, you can take whatever flower you want. So it took a flower, and he stood there, and I held it. And he looked at me, and he said, there's going to be a lot of things in life that you're going to think aren't fair. And he said, that's your perspective. But the one life one thing in life, and you have to work through everything else, but you can say, it's not fair that your sisters are longer here. Everything else, you're gonna work through it. Yeah. And it's all gonna work out. You can't sit on your butt and say that things aren't fair, and not deal with them.
And this makes me
and I've carried that all through my life. Like, I remember that moment, my dad saying that, and that is like, you know, I know so many people. And, you know, mental health is such an important thing. This is gonna be controversial. But I think a lot of times, it's used as an excuse, because people don't want to make change for themselves. And they don't want to make their lives better for themselves. We don't want to deal with it. And I have never, because of those words that he said to me, I have never used my sister not being here as an excuse, like I easily could
have. I have always you never talk.
I've always pushed myself to be better, because that's what she would have wanted for me. So that's my little five to 10 story.
But it makes you so mature, because you've experienced like, hardships. Yeah.
And I've very wise parents, it was very special that he said that
you don't grow when life is easy, like, and it all comes at the worst time. Like you know, when it rains, it pours like that's what people say. And that can be your perspective. But parents
are smart. They are. Listen to your parents. They know what they're talking about.
But I will say for those of you who don't, because I was a very stubborn person too. Sometimes you have to experience the pain yourself before you're actually going to go back and be like, Oh, now I understand what they were talking. Yeah,
a lot of times, you can't learn by someone saying this could happen, or this happened to me. So don't let that happen. Sometimes you have to experience yourself. And we even see that with clients like yep, we can share our stories all day long. But until they really experienced, they feel the pain in a change isn't going to be made.
Yeah. It's and when people are like, what do you do? It's like, at the end of the day, we take care of people. Yeah, we do. We take care of people that are experiencing really exciting things in their life, whether it be a wedding, a bar mitzvah, an anniversary, an executive retreat for their team for growth, if it is an adoption, anything that is celebrating and then also like with the marketing and stuff that comes into that, it's like people are celebrating their business and opening and celebrating their business because their business provides a service that helps other people solve a problem. Yeah. And so that's like very personal to us as well. So at the end of the day, it's like you know, we just we take care
of people. Angela years five to 10
So your thought to 10 first we're gonna get off this fucking float because I'm gonna bomb. Yeah, so Okay, five to 10 So this is about the time I went to kindergarten and my kindergarten teacher was Miss Graham and I came home on day one and I was like Mama Mama, my teacher is 100 years old. And this is a child. No, it wasn't real but she was like in her 70s She was very experienced she's very experienced kindergarten teacher and then she soon retired but anyway, she the wide significant right now is like she wrote these sweet letters and like she wrote my mom letters about like me and my personality and like things that I do
and to think that she took the time and probably did that for all the kids on paper so dedicated as a teacher this beautiful
a full sheet of paper, like notebook paper. It wasn't just like four or five lines. It was like a full freaking thing. And you remember my mom remember the day I was in an airplane up in the air going somewhere and basketball players playing crash. And my mom couldn't get a hold of me. It was a for flight, so I didn't know Wi Fi and she was freaking out. And so she went and pulled out all these things from this trunk. And one of them was a letter and a bell for Miss Graham and she
like gave them to you. And you did like a little story.
Yeah, she's like, do you want to do content on this my mother's like, so well conditioned. Now. It's so sweet. But everything that letter said, except one thing was 100% accurate of how I am and who I am today. So the reason I say this is like, pay attention. Because really, when your kids get around five, even when I couldn't walk yet, like I would make a lot of things. They knew I was OCD. I was like a strong willed child, which is like 3% of the world at the time. My parents, I go to therapy, they never thought they have any more kids. Apparently, I was just a fucking nightmare. So what much like you said earlier, you just want things to be your way. And it's like a strong willed thing.
Like when I had friends come over, I would get so frustrated when they would like mess up my room.
Yeah. I don't think a lot of kids are like, I would get upset like don't touch that kind of thing. Yeah, like I would tell them. I don't want them to come over anymore. Yeah, I was. I was like OCD neat freak. But anyway, I got into other things between five and 10. So that's when I started to twirl the baton. I started Can you show us
actually we you did that in Virginia. I thought it was gonna get smacked in the hand. A table
pole. Yeah, I was at the time. And I was just recently at the Taj Mahal and it was raining and I had this really nice umbrella and I told my tour guide, I was like, Okay, you're gonna record me. I'm gonna go do something special with the umbrella and I think he thought it was going to open and twirl around like a cute little American blonde that called that I was Yes. She's like Mary Poppins. And my niece was in Mary Poppins and is so cute. But anyway, um, and then I got a twirl, twirl. And then all the security guards start blowing the whistles and I got in trouble and he likes to, I'm not trying to call attention to my son. Never know what I'm gonna do. So anyway, so I told the baton and then I got into like, dance and like tap and ballet and hip hop didn't exist back then. I still can't believe my mother, like, let me do the things that she did when hip hop was born like thank God anyway, that's later in the lifeline. I think I took dance too.
And like, yeah, I took mostly ballet and tap and jazz. Hip hop was very foreign to me. Like when you start like most little kids, like they start with like, tap and ballet. Yeah. Well, you start with that. It's
a jazz. Yeah, it was called Jazz.
I don't take jazz until it's in like fifth grade, is when you get to hip hop. You just kind of like, oh, I don't have to be striction
Yeah, it's just different. And there's different types. Right? So that wasn't born yet. We'll say that this is all this lifeline thing helps you keep focused. So then, I'm trying to think so those five years I was really like, I can't believe the things my parents did for me like I was on this like travel team. And we traveled all over the place and I like competed in batons and then that got me into pageants. And then I became like, this pageant kid and my uncle made every outfit, like, I mean, all my leotards like, and they were all one of the con he made all the way down to the socks and picked my shoes. Like it was so freakin detailed. Like they did. Uncle Charles, my dad and his brother, who had a wedding menu for like, 30 something years, and he's the one that like, you know, you just grew grew up in the summers around that. And I was like, that's more like, I would say, 10, to 15, and my lifeline, where that started to understand like what that was, but I was really those five years, I was really my parents were very focused on keeping the kids like in activities. And now as an adult, it was a strategy to keep us very focused and to teach us discipline that if you work hard, then you know, you get rewarded. It was like an extracurricular activity. It was kind of a luxury back then. And I mean, we weren't I didn't grow up with a lot of, you know, we were a middle class family. I didn't really even understand what wealth was until I became a wedding planner. And I started traveling, which
is fine. Like, if there was something that you really wanted, like, yeah, you saved your birthday money. Yeah, Christmas money, or you're like, you didn't really get an allowance or like, we didn't get coins for doing chores or anything. So like your tooth fairy money or something. And then yeah, their mindset, which I appreciate it so much is that when you're able to purchase something with your own money, you're gonna take care of it and appreciate it so much more home
much more. So much more. So really, I would just say up until 10, because I didn't really start gymnastics until later. And like cheering and things like that being was like 13 So that's like in the next lifetime, but it's like those five years. We were always doing something and then I was playing they had me in like a softball team. Not for the school was not good. Okay, I did cartwheels in McCain springs in the hour. I played outfield.
Me too. I made necklaces in the outfield grass, not focused. on baseball, a very soft target. It is not focused.
And then they had me on the church basketball team and I was the shortest one and like a soccer basketball, right? I love to see do your lap. Oh, that doesn't happen. I do not I know how to like throw the ball like there's a square, right? And if you throw the ball at the backboard, yeah, if that in the ball hits it, and that x, it will go in the basket. And that's about all I know, I never made a basket the entire every summer
actually really good at making mascot really. But I never played basketball. Like when I was a kid, my dad and I used to play like backyard basketball, and he broke my finger one time, not on purpose. But he's trying to keep the ball for me. And I took my hand and I slammed it so hard, it broke my fingers. I had to hurt my mom was
bad. Or he didn't do it on purpose. It was my fault on purpose. But I was just in like my brother was in a lot of like, actually, he was just what maybe No, he wasn't even one my brother was vicious breastfeeding. And so was my sister at the time. And so my mother, like the fact that she my dad traveled and and like, I mean, she was a stay at home mom. I'm just like, Wow, you did all this for me. And like a really so selfless it is in but really my mom always says like your best investment is not real estate, unless you don't have kids. Your best investment is your kids. And if your legacy Yeah, I mean, if you invest in your kids and, and teach them and guide them and just just think about it, if you put half the effort. It's just like business owners, if you put this change my mindset and got us out of a very different got us into like a very different place, which is what I personally wanted to do. I didn't want to continue to do 250 events a year, it was too much. I had no life. Like, there's too much pressure, it was just, it was so much. And then if somebody got sick or dropped there, I mean, there's just too much it was insane. And so you but you build a life around what you actually want. And that changes it changes every year. And or you grow. I always say every five years, because it takes a while to really think about something and then say I want to do it. I mean, we talked about doing a traveling podcast in 2018 or 19. And then 2020 We were going to travel and stuff and now Olan Mills, this pandemic thing, you know, but it gave us an opportunity to step back, do some rebranding stuff help a lot of companies with their social media, their strategy, their rebranding game? I mean, a lot of businesses did a lot of baseless, so like a lot of great opportunities came out of that that's a different lifeline. I'm going off on a tangent. Okay,
that's it for this week's episode of business unveiled. Now that you have all the tools that you need to conquer the world and GSD get shit done. Would you share this with your friends and fellow business leaders? One thing that would really really help us and help new listeners is for you to rate the show, and leave a comment and Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you tune in and listen to business unveiled. You can check out the show notes at Angela proffitt.com/podcast and link up with us on social media so you can share your biggest insights and I want to know your aha moments. Until next week, remember, the profitable shifts and structures you're creating and your business help you be more present in your life. So get out there and GSD