37 – Angela Proffitt: How To Get Things Done

 

How do you accomplish your goals without dying before your 40s? It may sound satirical but it’s not, considering how so many people are practically killing themselves every day just to get things done. In this episode, Brian Covey’s guest will show you a better way to do it. Angela Proffitt does not play small. She runs an eight-figure business, hosts a podcast, and does productivity consulting on top of that. How she does all of these is pretty impressive, but she’s here to tell us that it doesn’t have to be as hard as it looks. Listen in as Angela shares how you can get things done, waste less time, and become more profitable in your business.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE AND SUBSCRIBE!!

www.briancovey.com

Pickup Brian’s new book, “Conversations with Covey:11 Powerful, Inspirational, and Hope-Filled Lessons from Today’s Biggest Leaders”

Connect with Angela:

Website: www.gsdsecrets.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelaproffitt/

—

Listen to the podcast here:

Angela Proffitt: How To Get Things Done

I am fired up because our guest is Angela Proffitt. If you don’t know who she is, after this, you’re going to be as impressed as I was because I don’t know how she gets done what she gets done. Not only running an eight-figure business, but she also has a podcast, productivity, life coach, consulting, and all these things here. One thing I love and, in our family, we talk about this GSD. Some people may say you’re getting stuff and crap done. We’re going to talk about how you can get more stuff done and the right stuff done so you’re accomplishing your goals, not wasting time, and not playing small. I talk about this a lot. Let’s get you off the sideline. Where nothing’s happening on the sideline, you’re warming up, let’s get you in the game. This episode is going to be exciting. I can’t wait to share some of Angela’s story but also some of her tips that she teaches people who paid a lot of money to have her train them and work with them directly and you’re going to get insights into that.

—

Angela, welcome.

What’s up? I’m so excited to be here.

I love your energy. On our show, we always try to bring people who are going to add value. You live what you tell people to do, which is unique in our day and age. You don’t say, “This is something you should do,” but you live it. For those that don’t know you, let’s go through a little bit of your story and who you are. I know we’re both here in Nashville, which is super cool. Let’s get a little background on Angela that they may not be as familiar with.

How I’ve even got here is it started out as an accident because I didn’t know what an entrepreneur was. I couldn’t even spell it. I’m not a good speller. You can’t be good at everything. I grew up in a normal household where my dad worked and my mom stayed home with the three kids. I was the oldest and I only knew what my parents did. You keep hearing people say, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” which is so true. Growing up average, I was a competitive gymnast. My parents had us in all kinds of sports. It’s time to go to college. What do you want to be when you grow up? I’m like, “I like people and I love helping people, so nursing sounds good.” I go in to give a shot and I’m like, “I don’t like inflicting pain on people,” so I quickly switched to psychology that didn’t involve blood and needles.

I was fascinated by the way the brain worked. I was fascinated by learning how people reacted and adapted to different types of situations. That was the foundation for me at a young age to learn about people and we had all different types of people coming into the mental hospital. We had a partial unit, locked down unit, and an adolescence unit. At a young age, I learned a lot but what I quickly learned was I cannot do this thing for the rest of my life because I am not that important. I cannot change these people’s lives. I cannot make an impact. They have to take their medicine, you have to have family support, and I felt a failure.

Every day, I would call my parents because I lived in Florida on the beach when I thought it was so cool, and it wasn’t. There was sand in my bed and it wasn’t that great. I moved back to Nashville because I miss my family and I got back into healthcare here. Where my entrepreneurial spirit came from, my family had a wedding venue for more than 35 years on the Gulf Coast. In the summers, I would go down there with my sister. We would decorate and help our uncle and our whole family but I didn’t know I had a knack for it. You have a natural knack for things. My parents were involved in the Catholic Diocese and their friends’ kids started to get married. They knew that me and my sister knew how to decorate. Pinterest was not a thing. Social media didn’t exist back then. This was a long time ago.

We did it for fun for a couple of years and that turned into, “I’m not getting married. I’m not Catholic but can you come here?” That turned into, “I’m not getting married in Nashville. Can you come here?” That turned into, “We own a private island. Can you come to these islands?” I’m like, “What’s a private island?” I didn’t grow up like that. Over the years, I was building this event business and I got an opportunity in 2010 before our town flooded, if you remember that, Brian.

I started to film a TV show with a country artist and Kellie Pickler. She comes off of American Idol. I’ll never forget, I was sitting on the bathroom floor of the Corvette Museum in Kentucky with about 800 Indians because I was doing a wedding and she’s like, “We want you to go on the road with us and plan our wedding but you’ve got to sign all this confidentiality paperwork and we leave next week.” In my head, I’m like, “I have this full-time job and it was flexible.” At that time, for about five years, I worked my way into doing physician recruitment. Even though it was flexible, I could not disappear for six weeks. I sat there and I’m like, “If I don’t pursue this,” which at that time, it was a hobby. It was happiness. I don’t know anything about running a business. I’m like, “I’m going to jump. I’m going to take this risk.” If God doesn’t send me enough business to keep this wedding and event thing going, I can always go back to health care.

If you have a burning desire in you for something more, you owe it to yourself to take the risk. Click To Tweet

I was married at that time. I didn’t talk to my husband and my parents because I knew they would try to talk me out of it. I went in and I resigned on Monday. The doctor I reported to thought I was kidding. He’s like, “You’re our highest earner. Do you need more money?” I’m like, “It’s not about the money. It’s not even about security. I want to try this thing.” My parents thought I was on drugs but I wasn’t. They did not understand what an entrepreneur was and I didn’t either. After the money started to run out really quick, and I’m like, “I have a lot of people to pay.” I joined this organization, SCORE and had an 83-year-old mentor, who’s in heaven now.

I’m like, “What is this man who runs a nursing home is going to teach me?” I didn’t understand. I joined a group called EO, Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a couple of years later. It was like getting an MBA and my friend wouldn’t leave me alone. He’s like, “You’ve got to do this.” I will say my whole perspective of life shifted because I started to become surrounded by my people and my tribe because I didn’t grow up like that. With the right people in place, you start listening to your audience and that’s how all these things have built with a lot of strategies, focus, and help. It’s where I’ve got to where I am now.

I love as you talk about that story. I saw the gymnast part and I’m following your trajectory. For most of us, it doesn’t line up this perfect line of like, “You started here. You went to school for this. You did this. You did that.” For many of us, we’ve been exposed to all these different arenas but it makes you who you are. I love how you talked about that because so many people want to be entrepreneurs. I love to unpack this with you. You’re talking about how hard it is. I had a conversation with somebody and they’re like, “It’s hard. I’m not making any money. I’m following my passion. I’m not figuring it out.” You thought it was going to happen in a year, you had the wrong expectations. As you went through that, what was some of that journey like? When you started, it was hard. What was the timeline to where you started to experience a little bit of success? You talked about the association matters, which I believe in that. When did that start to look like for you on your entrepreneur journey early on?

The real kick in the butt for me was finding out in doing my homework, going through and doing some of these exercises that my catalyst teacher was telling me. I’m like, “I don’t have an accountant. I do my taxes at the library.” The things that they were talking about, we have the revenue but I didn’t understand what revenue, profit, and all these big words. I would go Google them. We didn’t even have internet at home back then. I was in the library. I’m not a good reader. I don’t even read books but I went there to get the internet to start to understand what some of this stuff was.

When people tell me, “You don’t understand because you don’t have kids. You don’t do this and you don’t do that.” I was like, “No, you don’t understand. I had a full-time job. I taught gymnastics at night and I did my passion on the side. I had that extra fun money but what I never got schooled on was how to make sure that fun money was profitable.” The thing is, I was so busy working in the business, I didn’t know how to build a business and the word scale.

I’m like, “What? Fish scaling?” I remember the things I would think in my head. I’m like, “That is not what they mean at all. I’m so stupid.” You’ve got to quit telling yourself that because you can learn and adapt to all of these things. The turning point for me was when I hired a real accountant and I got a business manager, someone through EO. They sat down with me and they ripped my numbers apart. I had QuickBooks but I didn’t know how to work it, which was a big problem.

We went through all this stuff. That year, we did 273 events. It was over 250 events and they did all the numbers. They were like, “Angela, how are you not profitable? What are you doing?” I’m like, “I don’t know what you mean. There’s always money in the bank.” They’re like, “You’re not making a profit. In fact, 30 something of these events, not only did you do them for free, you paid them to do their event because you weren’t tracking your overhead, your labor, and your expenses.” These were all terms that I didn’t understand but I did understand one thing.

The one thing I understood was I worked my heinie off, I was hardly sleeping, I would stay up day in and day out because I cared more about taking care of the client and their event than they cared, which is a problem. I was saying yes to everything. They ripped me apart and said, “We’re going to change your business model. You’re only going to do full service because you want to control the customer service experience.” I’m like, “I’m not a control freak.” They’re like, “You’re good at it, so step up and be the mom of communication.”

I have ADHD but I know what I need to focus that we GSD. I don’t mind being the mommy, not that I want to be, but somebody’s got to do it. It took us two years, but they were on me and I followed everything. They said to track your time and keep up with your time. Time block. I’m like, “You don’t understand. I have to answer the phone and answer the text because that’s how my clients hire me.” They’re like, “No, you have a job. Your job and your clients, they’re running you.”

One of them would come, shadow me, listen to what I was saying, and after the meeting, he said, “Why are you saying ‘Contact me 365 anytime you need anything?’ You don’t mean that but you’re saying it out loud, which is making it okay. You’ve got to set boundaries.” As a woman, it feels good to be needed but I had to get away from that and get control of what I want because no one ever asked me that until I had a business manager. Over those two years, it drastically changed my lifestyle.

 

From a health perspective, I probably would be dead before 40 and I’m not being funny. Stroking out. You’ve got to take care of yourself before you take care of other people. That was a big a-ha turning moment. I’m like, “That sucks. I’ve worked ten years and I wasn’t making money,” but what I was doing was building a reputation. I wouldn’t so much say an online brand because social media didn’t exist but when it started to come out, there were some good things from it. It allowed me to start traveling the world, getting me speaking opportunities, and teaching other people how to do what I did. I’m like, “It’s not easy, but I wanted it bad enough to show that I could make a profit and I could run a company, not only be working in it.”

I love that too because that’s where most entrepreneurs typically will fail in those first couple years, especially. They want to be all things and they think by saving a few dollars over here with an accountant, a business manager, and someone that knows what they’re doing. That’s their specialization and you’re thinking, “I cannot do this.” The reality is, how many businesses end up failing because they didn’t invest in those areas. They look up and in ten years, they go, “I have nothing to show for it.” Their expertise is not running the business. It might be that client experience, which they’re phenomenal at and many people have a great product or service but if you watch them, they don’t grow.

I’m listening to your story and watching as you’ve gone along. What happened after those first couple of years because I love this journey? You’ve got support building your team and the word scale came up. I love that because I’m seeing now that the people that build the best teams are the ones truly winning at a higher level. They’re getting out of the 6, 7, 8, and 9 figures. They start building massive businesses. What was that step for you? What actions did you take to then go, “I’ve got a business and we figured out how to make money now. We know what we do.” How did you build and grow that?

It’s funny because if you ask my mom, she would say, “Out of tragedy,” because my understanding of scaling was when our town flooded and a lot of our creative businesses, partners, and vendors lost everything because it all flooded away. We had this thing called the cloud and all of our stuff was in the cloud. I learned at a young age from healthcare what EMR, electronic medical records, are. I was the EMR cheerleader. I was like, “We’re going to get rid of this paper and scan all these charts. You hit a button in your prescription that goes to CVS or Walgreens.”

A lot of people hated me the first few weeks but then after they saw the power of it, they were like, “This is much more productive.” Every business I’ve ever been a part of, every single thing has been in the cloud. It’s backed up multiple times. I’ve had a computer crash, car broken into, and cute little monogram planner that my Southern parents got me was all stolen but those things, I’m glad it happened to me early on. God was gearing me up. I didn’t know it was going to be managing millions and millions of dollars of people’s money for years to come. Those things, I never wanted to fill that empty again.

What I learned is all my business friends that I’m like, “What do you do with your notebook, pen, and paper? That is not productive. It’s not efficient. You can use the cloud.” I was in the beta group when Dropbox was coming out and with Google Drive when it was coming out, none of that stuff existed. When it started to come out, I used to carry around a little thumb drive and it was a jump drive. I can’t remember what the things are called anymore. We don’t use them anymore because things have happened and technology has progressed amazingly.

What I learned is some people have to suffer a tragedy before they change. When that flood happened in 2010, my friend started to come through. They’re like, “What’s this cloud thing?” On Sunday, I would come in the station at one of my friends’ places Music City, Joe, he’s in EO and he’s like, “Do you want to teach people how to sync all their Apple stuff?” We’re big Apple users. Every Sunday, I would go for fun and teach these business owners how to use the cloud. I started to study from the psychology piece of how can I be more impactful and help these people do this? When I was traveling and still doing weddings, I would work at these different resorts and they’re like, “How is this going to work? You’re across the world.” I was like, “We’ll use Dropbox and Google Drive. We have templates and we’re going to set this up.”

I started to see another need in the hospitality industry if they don’t have their process set up either. When people are giving you millions of dollars, you should better be perfect because you’re selling perfection. I started to do consulting for a lot of the resorts and the big brands to make sure that their process had no gaps in it and no blind spots. What came down to that was hiring people based on the way their brain was wired and put them in the places that they naturally thrive at.

Once you get your people and process straight, and somebody from EO, they’re like, “You have the four P’s.” My last name is Proffitt. That’s my real last name. That was my ex-husband’s last name and that’s not why I married him. I was way too young. They’re like, “You have this four P thing. You teach people how to hire the right people. The processes need to be in the cloud. The productivity piece comes in with automation and software,” which back then there wasn’t a lot. There were a few things now. There are too many that people get overwhelmed. They start nowhere and they give up.

Profitability because I talk so much about making sure you know your numbers. Track your time. I’m psycho about it because it changed my life. When people kept asking me about these Ps. I’m like, “We need to write a book.” That’s how I learned to scale that whole process and put it into a course and teaching people because not everybody can invest the time or the money to do one-on-one. Frankly, this is not a good use of my time. I’m one person and I have a great team but they’re not passionate about teaching and they don’t love being on video all the time. I’m like, “I’ll talk to the wall if you’ll listen to me. It can change your life.”

If you want to learn how to make money online, surround yourself with people who are already doing it. Click To Tweet

The whole point is, what are you good at? What are you passionate about? How can you get the message out to the most people? Who’s the right audience that will listen? That’s when we came up with this four P process. What I realized about the wedding business is that I grew this monster. To me, when you join a group like EO or a CEO Roundtable, they teach you to start a business to sell it. Scale and sell it. I’m like, “I don’t have anything to sell because if I’m not there, nobody else is selling these visions, designs, and dreams.”

I tried to get the process out there in the wedding industry but what I learned the hard way, because I didn’t do my data research first is, 85% of the wedding businesses start as a hobby because they’re passionate about it. They don’t care anything about making money and scaling. They’re not business people, they have enough, and they’re happy the way they are but I wasn’t. I’m like, “We’re going to change the world.” That’s when I had to get out of that little niche of B2B weddings and open it up to anybody who’s an entrepreneur who needs a team, who needs processes, who needs to use the cloud, and they need to make sure they’re making a profit. Anybody can use this whole process that we’ve come up with. That’s how I learned to scale it.

I love that too because the four P’s and we’ve heard that but the way you define that and you go through each of them, anybody like intrapreneur, entrepreneur, wherever you work within the team whether you’re the owner or you’re a teammate, those are the secret ingredients to success. Have you ever followed The Profit? Do you watch that show with Marcus Lemonis?

I love Marcus.

My wife will make fun of me for this. I’m thinking through that show, I will tune into it, I record, I watch it, and I study it. Someone produced it on TV. I love following that around, watching business owners, and listening. What does he see? What do I see? What’s happening? That’s your niche as I’ve got to know you and seeing what you do. Now that you’ve done it yourself, you can go out to other people and say, “Let’s do a quick autopsy on your business and where you’re winning and where you’re not.” In too many businesses, it’s almost like, if they think if they work hard enough, “I’ll put in more hours. I’m going to get there. It’s going to all come together.” That isn’t true.

I know you’ve seen that. I wrote this down and this was what you share on your website. I’d love for you to unpack it because it ties into this and for people that need to make the shift, you talked about this, “Your entire life, you’ve been programmed to believe that normalcy is waking up, going to work, providing for your family and being the person everybody can rely on.” You’re going to help out on the weekends and nights and all this stuff.

I thought about how many people were going through the motions. You’re showing up. Maybe you’re still on the sideline warming up and you might not be in the game all the way. How would you advise people if they are in that circle? They’re showing up doing the same thing over and over. What are some ways they can start to step out? They may not have this massive transformation on day one but how can they start to be on this journey. They’re waiting for something to happen. Nobody’s coming to save you. I hate to tell you. Nobody’s going to come to do it. You’re going to have to have to reach out like you did and you got help. Where do they start?

The first thing is to even notice it. I did all the things my parents told me to do and I did. I had a great job. My dad worked for the same company for over 30 years and that’s what I knew. You know that there’s something more. I was happy in healthcare and I was good at it but that’s not what made me happy. I learned a lot but you have this burning desire in you that there is something more. If you have that feeling of, “I’m happy. I’m going through the motions. It’s okay,” but you know there’s something more you owe it to yourself because if you don’t take a risk, how the hell are you ever going to know? You’re always going to have it in the back of your head of, “What if I would have done that or tried this.” That’s the first thing if you feel it.

There were months where when I went to my parents, I got married, and I was 21 years old. He was in the military. He was at the National Guard. He was a chef for the Titans when the Titans first came here. We were both in events. He was so fun, kind but I didn’t know who I was when I was 21 years old and he was a little bit older than I was. When we went to war, he went off to Iraq. I’m like, “I didn’t sign up for this.” There was no Facetime and texting. Technology’s come a long way. I’m like, “I’m a communication girl. If I can’t communicate with you, there’s a problem.” That didn’t last.

Instead of me sticking with it because my mama and daddy said I should and the Catholic Church is going to look down on you if you get a divorce, because when you say “until death to as part.” I’m like, “Screw that.” I’m not going to live in this shell of being a pretend military wife when that is not who I am and that’s not what makes me happy. That’s not fair to him either. I did go through the whole get a divorce thing and my parents were so mad. They cared what everyone else thought. I don’t care what other people think about me. I’m a good person. I do the right thing.

 

When I put my head down at night on my pillow and say my prayers, now it’s on a note on my iPhone, but I know that I tried my best. I was going to show up and I knew that there was something more. What I had to do was start seeking out, as you said, get help. The thing is, don’t ask for people to help you or give you advice when they’ve never done it. My parents are awesome people. They’ve never been an entrepreneur. They don’t know. My uncle was, but they have no flipping clue.

Nowadays, there are so many amazing resources. You’ve got podcasts, all these self-help books, consultants, mastermind groups, conferences, Facebook groups, and LinkedIn groups. None of that existed whenever I started. I’m like, “I’ve got to find some people.” Little-by-little, you start meeting one person here, another person here, and it starts to become your extended family and they care about you being successful because if you’re successful, they’re already successful. If you’re successful, it even brings more happiness to the whole circle, which sounds so cheesy, but it’s true and you can still have your family.

Let me tell you, I’ve lost all my friends that were my friends. First off, they came and worked with me, which don’t do that. We call it Potty Train the Brain to be funny. All the EO members and people who are entrepreneurs, we’re all potty trained in the same way. The cool thing I love about entrepreneurs is I can go to any Global Leadership Conference in the world. I might not even speak the same language, but we throw on the headphones now we use our Google Translate app. We all drink from the same firehose in terms of blocking our time, requesting time with the right people and we know how to delegate. We know how to hire the right people. We know how to build a team. We have a framework so we’re all speaking the same language.

When it comes time to be present, we know that we are respecting each other’s time. We put the phone down, we turn all the notifications off, the distractions, and we are present. That’s when you learn and transformation happens when you start to focus. Surround yourself with the right people. Social media and the internet make it so easy but you have to get started. Even if you are listening to a podcast, take action on it. Reach out to people and ask questions. Don’t be intimidated by some of these people. Gary Vee came on and did a Zoom with our EO Chapter. He’s like, “Some people are so ruthless. They reach out to me. I try to get back personally to every single person because they have the guts and the balls to do it.” That’s how he talks.

Don’t be intimidated. Reach out. It’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to not have it all figured out. We don’t have it figured out. We are learning but that’s the thing. You have to continue to learn. The other way I will say is to show up. Go to some of these conferences. That’s what I did back in 2013 with ClickFunnels and Infusionsoft. A friend of mine was a mixed martial arts guy. He was an investor. He hired me to open his venue to do consulting.

He saw my calendar and he’s like, “You work way too much and you work way too hard. You know there are other ways to make money other than you showing up.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “There’s this affiliate marketing thing. There are the sales funnels. There’s this thing called eCommerce.” I’m like, am I reading an ICD-9 book for medical because I don’t know what any of that stuff means? It takes me to multi-level marketing which again, some of it was a little slimy. That also drove me even further to want to learn it myself so I could work with other people and show them how to do it and not be slimy.

You can be honest. People, anybody reading, own your pixel codes and own audience. Get the phone numbers and the emails. Don’t rely on social media. I’ve seen it happen way too much but I learned the basic understanding of online courses, affiliate marketing, then Amazon came out. There are big companies like that are paving the way for us who want to do more, but you’ve got to put the time in. You’ve got to focus a little bit and say no to the things that are not in alignment with where you’re going.

If you want to learn how to make money online, surround yourself with people who are already doing it. You don’t have to recreate the wheel. That’s what has helped me get to where I am. It’s you, you have to do the work and you have to implement, execute, you can outsource, and hire people. The one thing that I will never do is not have a basic understanding of what we’re doing or what we’re selling because people have embezzled money for me. That’s a whole other podcast. I can be your consultant, I worked with you, and built my sales funnels.

Unless you’re willing to change and put in the work for yourself, no one else can help you. Click To Tweet

After the six consultants funneling money to their bank account by accident, you might think I’m a dumb blonde, but I’m not a dumb blonde. I’m glad these things have happened to me because I’ve learned it the hard way and I’ve learned how to help other people recognize it as well, so they’re not being taken advantage of by these huge agencies. It’s all about who you surround yourself with, who you let in into your brain and into your time, and give your time to in your life.

I know the truth and so often, I have conversations with people and they’re frustrated or they’re looking for advice and things. I’m always interested in who you are around. What content are you consuming? Where do you spend your time? We’re drowning in this information but as that quote goes, “You’re starving for actual wisdom.” Putting yourself in big rooms with people that have done what you want to do that have the true expertise, not those you see on social media with their Lambo or some fancy house that isn’t theirs. If they’ve done this, can they teach you, which is another skillset, I believe that you’ve mastered.

It’s one thing to be able to do it, but then to be able to teach other people, and the encouragement, as you talked about, and heard you say several times, get around people thinking bigger than you that have done what you want to do and put yourself in those rooms. Even here in Nashville and probably across the country. There are people holding masterminds whether it’s via Zoom or in a room, I love the energy in a room, it’s a little more dynamic there, show up.

Spend a little bit of money, $100, $500, or whatever it is. If you’re committed, you will show up and learn. That’s where the differentiator is. I’m going to ask a different question. These are all the things that you’ve learned and you’re going through, what frustrates you the most about the entrepreneur game and where you are? I know some of it are the things that are going there but what does that look like for you where you might still be, as you’re growing and learning, that is still a little bit of a frustrating point.

The number one thing that frustrates me so much is when people invest in a mastermind group or a course. They’re paying good hard-earned money and they either don’t finish it or they flat out don’t implement it. It would bother me because when I first started doing online courses, we don’t get a lot of complaints. I’ll never forget that I got this mean email and we’ve been using Zoom for many years when it first came out. I told my assistant, “Ask her to set up a Zoom with me and I want to talk to her. Why is she frustrated? What’s upsetting her?”

She wanted her money back. It wasn’t even anything. I’m like, “What is she talking about?” There’s so much information in there. The reason I know that I give too much is because we had a beta group. We redo stuff and we relaunch things. That is one thing I learned. This is a tangent but when I first joined our first mastermind and all these people doing sales funnels, I’ll never forget my first meeting, they’re talking about one funnel. I’m like, “We have eight. Are you guys lazy?”

They started showing their numbers and I’m like, “I’m the idiot.” They’re focusing on one funnel to get it to a $1 million funnel. They test, perfect, and they’ve been doing it for years. I came out of that meeting, my team is there. They are like, “When Angela goes to these meetings, she’s going to come back and change everything.” You’ve got to learn to pivot and change. They were the smart ones, I was the idiot. That’s how we learned that. That was not the whole point.

That’s gold right there, I would say. How many of us were trying? You can take it off a sales funnel, we’re trying to do 5 or 8 things and yet, there’s a core business in there that we need to nurture and continue to make sure it’s healthy. It’s our like baby.

Again, I’m ADHD. I’m like, “Shiny penny. Squirrel, squirrel,” but when I need to focus, I can focus. When you talk about that one thing that you’re good at, you’re an expert at, you love, and you have that burning passion, that’s your one thing that all these other little shiny penny things if it doesn’t funnel into that one thing the answer is, “No. Not right now.” I hate to say, “No, not right now. Maybe never.” About the whole frustrating thing, I got on the Zoom with this young lady and in module one, what you need to know is I can see everything on the back end. If you don’t finish a module, you don’t watch a video, and you don’t download the templates, I can see that. FYI and most course creators can. I hadn’t even logged in to look. My first question to her was, “In module one, we go through and talk about the psychology of what your brain makeup is.” I said, “What are your four colors?” I’m not talking about the color of your skin. There’s a whole psychology methodology all about colors. There’s Enneagram, DISC, 16Personalities, and Culture Index, but I got certified in a specific one, and she’s like, “What do you mean?”

First off, I knew she hadn’t even started the course. I said, “If you had gone through module one, you would have known what your colors were. What are your four numbers and what are your colors?” Because there’s a number game. She’s like, “I don’t know.” I hate using the word problem but this is the first challenge. I said, “This is the first challenge. By talking to you, I’m assuming you’re a gold. Golds have the hardest time implementing change. You have said to me that I’m the fifteen course that you’ve bought in the last two years and none of them work. Did you ever take a step back and think that maybe it’s you?” In the ten minutes that I’ve been on and again, you got to learn to be a good listener and mirror people.

 

We were silent. It’s hard for me to be silent. She started crying. I’m like, “I’m not here to make you cry but I’m not also here to be your friend. I’m here to make an impact and a difference in your life. If you don’t even start the course, I’m not giving you your money back. That’s your fault. You’ve got to take accountability.” She started the excuses, “I’ve got two young kids and my husband broke his leg.” I’m like, “We all have problems in life.” She’s like, “You don’t understand.”

People will watch me on social media. This is before I let people into my life a little bit. She’s like, “You don’t understand you don’t have kids.” I’m like, “If one more woman says that, that’s me. My sister has ALS. She’s been in a wheelchair for years. I help her raise four kids. One of her kids lives with me. I homeschooled her for two years. My dad has cancer. He’s been fighting it for five years. He’s on his deathbed. I help to take care of my mother.” There are all these things that I don’t talk about because it’s not important. At least I didn’t think it was important but I learned the hard way that it is important to let people know a little bit about your life so you’re relatable.

Once I said that to her, she’s like, “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.” I’m like, “Don’t be sorry. I don’t need an I’m sorry handout card. This is exactly why I don’t talk about it but don’t sit here and give me excuses and ask for your money back when you’ve never even given these courses a chance. Am I the fifteenth person that would not give you your money back?” She’s like, “You’re the first person that wouldn’t give me my money back.”

I said, “Let me help you hold you accountable.” Once a week, I’ll Zoom with you an hour for free. I’m not going to charge you any more money but I want you to do the work. I want you to block it on your calendar, and I want you to have an impact because based on your personality, you are your biggest rock. You’ve got to scoot yourself out of the way, otherwise, you’re never going to grow. If you do the same thing, you get the same results. Somebody famous said that. You’ve got to get out of the way. That’s the number one frustrating thing.

The second thing and I know you didn’t ask for two, but I’m going to give you two, is when people hire a consultant to come into their company and obviously there is a problem that needs change. We have all the data, we have all the processes, we know what we do works, and they still want to do what they want to do their way, which isn’t working because the turnover is high. We had a client like that and I worked with him for months. I do short-term things. I don’t have long-term commitments. That’s probably why I’m not married anymore.

I’m like, “I want it to work for you and I don’t want your money if it’s not going to work. You’re wasting my time because there’s somebody else that can pay me and my time will be well spent and valued. You’re telling me that you want to do it your way when you have no data, it’s not working, your turnover is ridiculously bad, but you don’t want to change.” I had to tell him, “You’re fired. This isn’t going anywhere. You’re not getting any results and you’re wasting my time and your money. I can’t help you anymore. You need a therapist.”

He’s like, “I didn’t hire you to tell me what I need.” I’m like, “It’s you. Until you’re willing to change and you’re willing to put the work in for you, I can’t help you and I don’t think anybody else can.” There’s not a lot of people that will stand up for themselves and say that. My mom is like, “You fire them.” I’m like, “They’re not implementing. They’re not doing any of the things. It’s a waste of my time and it’s pissing me off.” It still happens.

As you see all these people, I’m always curious, do you think there’s a population of people that are not going to implement it? It could be the best course in the world for $1. It could be $10,000 or whatever it is. Do you think there are some people that they’re wired and they can’t get out of their own way that are not going to implement this stuff?

They’re not. If you know that you’re that way but you want it bad enough, you will get an accountability partner, accountability coach, or somebody that is going to rip you apart because that’s what it had to be for me. I had to have people rip my processes apart and say, “This isn’t working. This will kill you before you’re 40 if you keep doing the same thing. You think you’re doing good but how tired are you?” Your hairs are falling out and you’re not healthy. You’ve got to take care of you first.

If those people had not put it to me like that, I might not be here now to help all these other people. It’s important that if you have goals, you don’t have the discipline, and your brain is not wired but you know you have a good idea or you have something that can change other people’s lives and help other people, get yourself an accountability coach. There’s plenty out there that will rip you a new one and hold you accountable.

Money isn’t really bad; it’s a tool. The more you have, the more you can help and the more you can impact. Click To Tweet

That’s what most people don’t talk about and I love you shared that. I won’t go into the number of times it’s happened to me, but we’ve all had those people. Sometimes, they’re invited in because we know we need that kick in the butt. Sometimes, they were not invited in but they come at the right time. I’ve been telling my readers, don’t think that you see someone that successful now that they haven’t been much course-corrected, told their problems and challenges, and called out on things. They probably knew but they needed somebody to come alongside and almost validate like, “I’m not playing up to my potential.” We’ve all got those seasons in life.

Angela, you shared that we don’t need to play small in this life. You only get one life and you only get one shot at this. Playing small does not help you nor does it help your circle. You might be the one person in your family or with your friends that if you were to step out, get out of your own way, and live a bigger life, you might inspire and impact people directly around you. If nothing else, go help those people and be the inspiration of them. Don’t sit back and play small. It does no one good. I’ve got a final question. I always love this because we all run in a lot of fast paces. You and I like to do a lot of things and we’d like to be involved in things. How do you make sure you’re taking care of yourself?

Even before I tell you that, I have one more thing to close the loop on what you said. I had an intern a few years ago. You only know how you grow up. In her upbringing, her mom always said to her, “If you have a lot of money, money is bad and money is evil. Money can destroy things.” We’ve worked with a lot of people with a lot of money. It doesn’t buy you happiness but it changes your mindset. Something that I will never forget. One of the biggest things is when we do an offboarding from an intern, she’s like, “The biggest thing you taught me was that money isn’t bad. It’s a tool. The more you have, the more you can help, the more you can do, and the more you can impact.” That’s important for the people who want to play small either they’re scared of it or they’ve been raised a certain way and told something. Again, don’t listen to people who’ve never done it before. Use that as a tool to get you to where you want to go and help other people. That’s important.

How do you take care of yourself? I’m always curious, how do you stay on track?

Going back to one of my coaches. The first thing was to time block. I like to look at my week-in-week view. Every January, the last week of December, I usually sit down, time-block out my entire year, and everything is color-coded. You hear work-life balance and it’s like, “When you love what you do, it’s not work.” You do have to have a balance. I can look at my week view and based on the different colors that we have like red as meetings I have to attend that my team cannot attend like this show. I have to be here. I have to show up.

Blue are things that I need to do for the business to work on the business not in the business so doing it for the business and doing strategy for future growth. We try to sit down once a month and talk about it for the next 90 days. Even though things are changing, we’re still talking about it. We also tried to sit down at the end of the year and say, “Next year, let’s do a whole year review. What do we want to do next year?” Don’t over-commit. That was my problem for a long time. I would be like, “Let’s do a book and let’s do a podcast.” Don’t do that.

If you’re going to still serve as clients, you got to treat yourself like a client, and you would not show up for a client, so why would you do it for yourself? I’ve learned to color code out my calendar. My stuff is in orange, so I see a trainer almost five days a week. Every once in a while, I can’t get there, but he knows way ahead of time. I do try to plan out my family time. It does get on some of my family’s nerves. Sometimes, they’re like, “Quit GSD into us because we’re not on the calendar.” They don’t understand how efficient we are.

Life happens. I got COVID back in January 2021 and I thought I was going to die. I was in bed for three weeks and things had to be moved. There are some weekends that I still have been catching up but that’s okay because you can always move it on your calendar. What COVID did for me and sometimes, God has to hit me in the face to remind me, what are things on my calendar that shouldn’t be there in the first place. Who am I having dinner with? What am I saying yes to that, I don’t want to be there anyway?

The busier you get and the more you start to be intentional about saying yes to the things and even saying yes to the right clients, that was a kick in the butt for me of like, “We need to offboard some of this stuff because I don’t want to be doing it.” If people aren’t getting results from it, that was the whole thing of like, “What’s working? Who’s doing well? What’s not doing well?” We’re constantly reassessing that. You’ve got to block the time for yourself and treat yourself like a client. Over the last few years, I’m psycho about time blocking. I can be flexible when I knew you’ll be flexible.

In my personal life, I’m so not like that. In dating, it’s like, “Text me five minutes before we’re supposed to meet. I don’t care where we go.” I’m like, “Whatever.” When it comes to business, I know that I can’t run profitable companies unless we have a process and we stick to it. Otherwise, it’s not going to work and you’re not going to be profitable. You’re just wasting your time because you’re not able to get the results and the impact that you know that you can achieve. Time blocking is how I make sure to have that time, me time, family time, and all that fun stuff.

 

I’m sure you get asked the question like I do a lot of times, “How do you do this? You’re there at your daughter’s soccer and you’re doing these things and all that.” It’s like, “I learned a long time ago that we all have the same number of hours and days in the week.” I could figure out how to maximize those. I could be efficient in the hours that I’m here and then be fully present in the other moments. I’m not multitasking through my days, how much I enjoyed the days, and how much I was able to give of myself fully. I read a book years ago by Rory Vaden here in Nashville. It was right around that of Learning To Say No and Take the Stairs, one of his books.

When I started reading that, I remember that same a-ha moment. Go back and read that. That was a life-changing moment for me realizing, “I said yes to just about everything.” Once you take back control, it’s amazing how much more time started to show up. I started to do things I enjoyed, which then allowed me to show up as the best version of myself that I could be present with people. I love what you’ve shared. Where can people follow along because you have dropped some incredible value? I also know you’ve got some resources for people and on social, you’re active. Where can they hook up with you there and follow along?

The best place to start is GSDSecrets.com. You can get some free videos there. We have a podcast and we have a YouTube channel. My favorite social is Tiktok. I’ve got into TikTok since the pandemic. We did have fun but I also give productivity tips at the same time. Instagram is my jam but we’re on all the social channels under @AngelaProffitt.

I was checking out stuff. This was a fun one to prepare for because I always love coming into this. One, selfishly, I’m going to learn some things, and then two, I get to connect up with great people and we’re both here in Nashville. Three, I love that there will be people that read this and do take action or maybe they want to connect up with you or connect up with me and they go, “I need a little help. I love what you’re talking about. I’m going to raise my hand and say I need help.” Wherever you fall in that, make sure you take at least some action.

This is why we created the podcast. We believe in always learning and growing. People like Angela, you can see her journey. It’s not always the straight trajectory that we see people winning, but you can see behind the scenes. I would encourage you, if you resonate with the message, to follow along with her and make sure you check out some of our other episodes. I want to give a shout-out to all of our followers and everybody that follows along. You guys crushed it. We released a book, Conversations With Covey.

It was wild. I decided to do that during the quarantine. It motivated me and you guys showed up, so thank you. I love seeing the pictures. If you bought the book, take a picture with it, and post it out there. Let’s get it to more people. That’s going to change some lives. It’s going to impact people wherever they are and teach them how to win at this game of life. We only have this one chance. We might as well show up as our best versions and quit playing small. Angela, thank you. Any parting words before we wrap up?

You can’t buy back your time. Don’t wait for a tragedy. Learn how to be present.

This has been an amazing episode of The Brian Covey Show. I love to have Angela on. Thank you for reading. Make sure you like, subscribe, and leave some reviews. Tell us some other guests that you want to have on and we’ll make sure to continue to bring value every time we show up. See you.

Important Links:

• GSD
• Angela Proffitt
• SCORE
• Entrepreneurs’ Organization
• CEO Roundtable
• Learning To Say No
• GSDSecrets.com
• Podcast – Business Unveiled: Expert Tips and Secrets from Top Creative Industry Professionals
• YouTube – Angela Proffitt LLC
• TikTok – Angela Proffitt
• @AngelaProffitt – Instagram
• Conversations With Covey

About Angela Proffitt

Productivity Consultant | Digital Marketer | Podcast Host | Speaker | Author | Event Planner | Luxury Designer