And one of my friends, he said, let's get a fly out to LA. He's like, there's a conference I want you to come to he's like you work way too hard. You got to work smarter, not harder. So I hopped on a plane, it was like, Okay, I learned about Infusionsoft and sales funnels and automation. And what set me apart from a lot of this was that I had the background in psychology, being a psychologist and working in mental health. And I had the baseline of a psychology methodology that I wrote a book about. So I left that conference, I wrote a book, we called it a lead magnet. And it was all about true colors. And they tried to sue me for copyright infringement. But they can't, I didn't know any better, right? So to get an attorney, and they said, if you you can keep your book, if you pay for the certification. I was like five grand or something. I was so mad. I had to take my youtube channel down which I was actually monetizing at the time, over weddings, beautiful, beautiful places, we were traveling all over the world. So so mad. But it all worked out in kinda because actually went, I think is Atlanta. And there were like, 20 of us going through it. And I met some amazing people like amazing fun people. And it just it took it to a whole different level. It went like way, way, way deep. It was so awesome. And I learned so much more. And then I could like be come a facilitator. So I started also teaching and traveling and doing these workshops, and all these different companies and all these different industries, but are primarily focused in healthcare and hospitality, because that's what I know. And it just gave me the opportunity to meet just incredible people like all over the world, especially in the south. So that was one thing I focused on again, we're still doing events, still doing weddings, but then the productivity after the flood. It really woke up a lot of people's businesses in Nashville. And so I started to host workshops on how to go paperless and how to use the cloud and how to get all your notebooks from a notebook and how to create a digital notebook like in Dropbox, Google Drive. box.com was an hour back then. And I was just doing it for fun on the weekends. And then I had hired a part time business manager and an accountant and they started to have me track my time. And this is where my life really changed. And they started to have me track my time and I have so many stories of excuses of things that I resisted. I had every story in the book. I'm like, No, you don't understand, like these broads, these people, these clients like they need me and I want to be there and you know, my mentor Andy Bailey from Petra here, founder Petter. He's like, No, you don't understand, like, you got to focus and you have way too much stuff here and you're never gonna get any of this done. And he and I had a pet product company at the time that I had started with the guy that I was dating at the time, who was in video production, which got me into YouTube. There's so much happening during this time. But the biggest things for me also to that that really catapulted was I've done a podcast with Dave Ramsey this money guy, they didn't even air it because I went off on tangents so bad. Because I wasn't a trained speaker at the time, I didn't even our YouTube channel, like YouTube just came out. And a year or two went by, and this guy contacted me. And he's like, Hey, I'm starting an agency. I'm leaving Dave Ramsey, and you just have a fascinating story. Like, your stories are crazy. And I didn't know that on the side, he was a wedding DJ. So he wanted some help on the wedding DJ side, and like getting his name and his brand out there. And he's like, I want to do I want to help you grow your brand. And he's like, let's do a podcast. Let's do a YouTube channel. And let's do a book next year, and it's called Wash, rinse, repeat your content. So it's like I learned sales funnels, I learned how to do copy. I'm not a good copywriter, y'all, I can do videos and tell stories all day. And listen, I've been through a lot of training, and I've invested a lot 100 plus k, right to get educated on how to be a trained speaker, and how to do specific things. So it benefits the audience the most that it can. And the number one thing that I'll say is I vomit too much information. Because like, we're so excited, right? But like, that's like the worst thing you can do. And you gotta have a framework, and there is an art to it. So even during those years, I started to coach people on on speaking, which, you know, it's like, once you do something and you do it, well, you know, then you want to share it. So it's focusing on that we also got hooked into affiliate marketing with software products and tangible products, like with clothing brands, and just every day, shit that everybody uses beauty products. Luggage, because it travels so much. So really shifting over from software focus, because I've learned through COVID that not everybody is excited, as excited about technology, as I am. And something really important happened where someone in a group somewhere said that I got on their nerves, which I'm not for everybody. I know, I probably get on a lot of people's nerves, but like keep scrolling, right? I'm not for you, that's fine. But he said, I don't love what I'm doing. I don't want to be more productive, doing shit that I don't like doing. And I'm like, oh, Mike drop, like, rewind. If you don't love what you're doing, you definitely don't want to GSC doing shit that you don't love doing. So I get it. But you don't need to come over to GSD productivity land, you got to go through another course first more of like a self development figure out what you want to do. And you got to try different things, right to really find your passion. So I don't know, like so much happen. And I really just started traveling all over the place and really splitting my time. And then I really had to start to focus in on how I wanted to spend my time. And we brought on more team members. And we have onboard and more team members, we've off boarded team members. And really started to put a framework for the brand around the four P's people processes productivity and profitability. That's the other thing I would say is I really understood numbers. It's not fun, it's not sexy. But if you don't understand your numbers, can't run a business. You can't hire people. And you can't give new opportunities to people if you if you don't know your numbers. And sometimes it's scary. And sometimes it sucks. And sometimes it's not fun. But don't don't trust. Don't Don't trust. You always need to have a second set of eyes looking at things for you. People make mistakes all the time. They don't mean to do it. And that's a whole nother story of a nightmare that I could tell you with Rs But you know, you've got to be accountable a little bit in your business to know like, what the hell's going on, so that you don't get taken advantage of. I've had consultants steal from me, I've had all kinds of crazy shit, but that's not the point of this podcast. Okay, so now 35 to 40. The whole point of this though, is so that people understand how and why we do everything that we do. So there's just so much in between 35 and 40. Or I can just accelerate it to 43 today but I talked about 2013 Like sales funnels and automation and Infusionsoft and the flood and if affiliate marketing and consulting and speaking workshops. I mean, I would just say 35 Did now like I just continue to stay in eo is the only thing that I'm a part of that I give time to because I give value and I get value. And there's just been a lot of opportunity with that
we really started to us, I started to personally pivot out of doing any a lot of things and events. And I really had to decide how I wanted to spend my time and make sure that we have the right people in place. And then it had open learning communication with our team so that if they were feeling overwhelmed, or if it got to be too much, too much like, you have to have empathy, and you have to have a good relationship with your people. And if you when you have a small company, like I feel that it's a luxury that I get to have a great close relationship with our team members. And I realize not everybody can do that, because the capacity, but whoever your managers or your directors are the people, the leadership team, cultivating that company culture of, of understanding, not manipulation, but just understanding like having each other's backs. That's the most important thing. Because without your people, you're nothing. You are a person with some cool fucking ideas. And I love automation, and I love technology. But it will never be able to have feelings. And without people, you don't have a business, you always have to have people and rely on people and people skills is it's, it's very difficult. But thankfully, I've learned not to take things personal. And to put my therapy cap on a lot and take a step back and reframe. And it helps me grow as a person as a leader. Who would say, I don't know, since COVID, we started a social media company where we were just going to be teaching strategy for 90 days. And then somehow we ended up implementing because a lot of people furloughed got rid of their team or they were forced to. And I mean, we were set to build a really, really solid rapidly growing company with nine to 10 figures in a year if we would have kept going. But at the end of the year, when the world started opening back up and the conferences started to come in, come back into my travel schedule started to get booked up, it was just very apparent that like, that's just wasn't going to happen anymore. And a couple of things happen. Post COVID, almost died of COVID in February 2021. And it gave me a reset, it gave me an opportunity to focus more on my health, my allergies, my weight, and really get my health back under control with moving and exercising and eating the right things. And I do at 28% of the time, but the 20% of the time that I cheat, I feel like shit. And your food is medicine and you are what you eat. That's gonna be a different podcast later. But I got a treadmill desk after I didn't. And I made one goal that I'm going to walk or move, dance, walk whatever, 10,000 steps a day. And I did. And then this lady wanted me to murder my company to market this health care thing for men who don't have cancer anymore. Because of the food they ate. They didn't go through chemo or anything like that. I'm like, This is bullshit. There's so many hokey things in the medical industry. But they're like, Okay, well, we're doing a 90 day challenge. We meet on zoom on Thursdays and we're going to do a women's cohort. We've never done it before if you just want to come in and observe. So I started to learn I didn't I didn't even turn my camera on a lot because I would just walk on my treadmill and listen. But I started to do the homework. The first thing was to watch Game Changers on Netflix, I didn't even have Netflix, I still don't have Netflix, I use somebody's account and it was shocking what the food does to your body. These athletes you just have to watch it and then I just started studying and just listening observing. And then I told one of the leaders Tony I said I want to do this but I don't cook and I don't know what half of this shit is on here. And I'm not going to and I travel my travel season and like I'm going to be traveling even more and like I want to do this but like I just is there like someone who can cook? He's like, Oh yeah, there's a lady that owns the veggie chef, like, perfect. So she started making food for a lot of the people in the group, and I'm very picky, I'm allergic to a lot of shit. And then there's just things I don't like. And do Juana makes an effort every time she's always texting me and asking me like, can she do better? Just the food has been such such an important part. And just having that delivered fresh twice a week, I know where it's grown. I know where it's fed. I know that it's local, I know that she's taking care of it. And I feel great. And I take food with me when I travel, and I take a lunchbox and the people at TSA know me. Not every time but I do like, well, I'll take oatmeal and like Apple supreme and like a few things that I can eat on for the first few days. And then I just really try to eat vegetables. But you know, I still cheap. I don't even like to call it cheap. Because it's just the lifestyle. It's like, I'll have bytes of sugar sometimes. But then it's like, you know, you just you feel like, like shit. So when you focus on being healthy, naturally, you're gonna lose weight. And people start asking DMA, and I think a lot of people during COVID, after COVID, they just kind of woke up and realized, like, okay, my health is my wealth, a lot of people got really, really healthy during COVID, because they were at home, when they had the time they could like work out. And you just have to remember, you can always work and make more money, but you can never buy your time back. And that's still my motto. That to be present and to Tom blop. And if you have shit on your calendar that makes you miserable, quit doing it. What are you trying to prove? to yourself or to somebody else, you don't have anything to prove. So just be yourself. And it's okay to reevaluate and have goals every single year, just one personal goal, one professional goal. If you're married, or you have a partner, a couple goal or family goal, just one, just one, one, a quarter, one a year, whatever. But don't don't hurt, don't try to do too much. Because that's when you end up shutting down and then you do nothing. I'm trying to think of like, were there like big significant things over the past five years? Yeah, one thing led to another right. So it's like, the older you get, the more life experience you gain. Somehow I then it's like with with collective 615. It's an all women's co working space. The founder and owner hired me to coach her on speaking and then she didn't seem happy or excited. And she's like, what I really want to do is open up this space, I'm like, then why don't you and you know, like every woman who she's like, I'm scared. I don't know, like, I ran Louie Vuitton for 10 years, I was someone else's money, but when it's your own money, and I'm like, I will help you like I will help you. And then there were several huge venue projects that were going up. And we started to really get into like design and, and processes and productivity and like doing full service for some of these venues, which has just been so fun, because it's like birthing a child. And all that experience and all those crazy stories, which at the time are horror stories are now experiences that just you see things totally different. And you just know things like how many times can you flush the toilet before the septic take tank is gonna blow up? You know, I mean, there's just so many things that you can't read it in a book, you have to experience it on your own. We have a lot of experience and a lot of things to share. And so we were working on, you know, the workshops that we're doing for next year and the GSD workshops, where it's all about time blocking time management, get your time back
processes, how to be paperless how to use apps, like the basic stuff, again, most people aren't that fucking excited about it. But it really helps you become much more free with your time when you do that. And you're able to hire the right people based on the way their brains wired things they naturally love. But it frees up your time, and then you can go out and grow. And so we really worked hard over the past several years to do that. And when all the girls were like, We're just not happy. It's not about the money. It's about quality of life. And we can focus on our own stuff internally and then grow. I mean, it kind of happened organically where just people started asking about how much weight have you lost? What are you doing? What pill Are you taking? Have you had bariatric surgery, which this will be another podcast but no, none of that. It's just setting a goal and and fucking doing it. And yes, it's hard in the beginning but you know, it's that's why we want to create this community especially for hospitality and healthcare because We got to take care of yourself before you take care of other people. And I had to learn that the hard way. So we put together this whole program called Walk and work. And it's going to be a whole community. And we're so excited. And that's where we're ending today on 2023. We're about to launch it. And that's really what we're going to focus on that creating content around that. And just creating healthy habits. It's not about losing weight. It's not about counting your calories. It's not about any of that. It's a whole formula and a program just to have the knowledge to know. Because you don't you don't know what you don't know. And even though I came from health care, a lot of the new information I didn't know what I didn't know. And I'm still learning, we're still learning every day. So stay tuned for more of what is to come and what is to come next. The other big thing I will say that has led to a lot of trouble with opportunities outside of eo is a certification program that I'm part of in Europe. I've spoken an event, or lady this relates to technology, we instantly clicked and she created this certification program. So I'm part of that I'm one of the reps in the US, there's only three of us. And so that's something else that I'm really focused on. And last but not least, there's two other apps because I'm so into technology and productivity in the hospitality industry. One of our old interns has a tech company called fitfully that I sit on their advisory board. There's a few other tech companies that sit on their advisory boards as well. And these things just come over time and with relationships. And an app called our bar, which has pivoted over the last few years we started in events, the way I met the owner and how we we clicked one of his old college roommates used to work with me executing events. And that's the only reason I met the guy is all about relationships otherwise. I mean, we get people all the time saying can you test our app? Can you give us feedback? Can you do this beta he does, and you start to realize like shit, using beta software can become like a freaking full time job. Okay, so, but this is different. And it's so amazing what it's going to do for the hospitality industry for hotels, resorts, cruise ships, golf courses, and the automation that it provides that ties in with an app or with the website. There's so much opportunity for guest experience to improve. And it's, it's an amazing software. And so that's the other thing that we're really focused on growing, in addition to some strategic partnerships for walk and work, to just get the word out mainly to women. And then hopefully, usually when the women are getting healthy the men want to follow. And so we've got a lot of exciting things coming up. Stay tuned for our next episode of business unveiled.
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