Expand Your Fempire Podcast #125 Transcript

Transform Your Relationship with Money & Live Out Loud with Angela Wilson

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

[00:00:00] Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire Podcast. I’m your host, Caterina Rando, and I am blissing to be with you today because we have one of my favorite gals on the planet, Angela Wilson, and we are talking about one of my favorite topics, women and money. Bing, bing, Bing.

[00:00:50] Angela lives in Canada. She’s the author of Living Out Loud. She is a phenomenal speaker, and I am blissing that she’s with us today. Now, Angela, the first thing I always like to ask is, how did you get into your own business? My understanding is you were not always an entrepreneur. Is that right?

[00:01:15] Angela Wilson: Yeah. That that is correct. I was, I was in the corporate world for the first part of my career, and then I got to a point where it was, I just wanted something else and I wanted to have some control over my, over my schedule, over my time and what I was actually doing.

[00:01:35] So I left being a corporate controller and started out on my own and built my own accounting practice. And over the years, that accounting practice, it narrowed to deal with just violence against women and children, youth sector in the not-for-profit sector.

[00:01:51] And then from there I branched out with t he company that I’m working through now, that I founded and it was Angela Unlimited and took me in a whole different direction and I’m just, I love being an entrepreneur.

[00:02:06] Caterina Rando: I’m so glad. I know you love being an entrepreneur. I love being an entrepreneur. Angela, I wanna dive into women and money. Before we do that though, I wanna hear, because it sounds very interesting when you say Angela Unlimited. Now, I know that’s partially talking about you, but what does Angela Unlimited do?

[00:02:27] Angela Wilson: So Angela Unlimited really assists women to go beyond the blocks that they found themselves, you know, where they limit themselves through things that they’ve taken on over their, over their life. And a lot of this becomes symptoms in our, in our money. And so we’re playing small in our life. We’re playing small in our money. We feel we don’t have our life handled, we don’t have our money handled.

[00:02:50] And from my journey, I came to a spot where I just knew I wanted to help women start living the life that they deserve and stop hiding in their own life. Because that’s what I had done for many years, so I really wanted to pay my life forward to other women so they could just bounce further faster than I did.

[00:03:16] Caterina Rando: Love it. Love it. I love it. I love this topic because as you know, as a business coach for many years, I see that women start businesses cuz they wanna be of service. And that if they feel like they can’t sell because they don’t wanna be salesy, then they have no clients. Not that selling has to be salesy. That’s, we have several podcasts on that, but that’s a different episode for another day.

[00:03:44] The thing is though, that if we don’t feel that we have massive value to bring, if we are uncomfortable asking about money, if we’re uncomfortable having a lot of money, all of these things impact our ability to live our best life and to be of service.

[00:04:01] Let’s tell the ladies, let’s start. What’s the first thing or the most important thing that you recommend in your book Live Out Loud, that we wanna shine the spotlight on?

[00:04:14] Angela Wilson: So Live Out Loud really is about using our voices. Because what happens lots of times, and this happened to me, is that we, we dim who we are and we stop using our voice and being who we are because of things that we’ve heard, things that we’ve taken on. And what ends up happening is we dim our lights and we’re not showing up as all of us, and we’re not showing up as the best version of us.

[00:04:40] And that’s what we’re here to do. We were never put here to be small. We were put here to live out and to really enjoy life. That’s what it’s about.

[00:04:51] Caterina Rando: Absolutely. And you know me, Angela, I like to say, “don’t just wear your heart on your sleeve, wear it all over your business.” And a lot of women were, were brought up career wise in corporations or institutions that didn’t value authenticity, that didn’t value wearing your heart all over, that didn’t value genuinely caring about our clients, and we have to relearn when we’re in business, we’ll first get clear, how do we wanna do it? And then relearn to be our authentic self and bring our hearts forward. And part of that is using our voice.

[00:05:34] Now, I love what you said. “Hey, it’s about, you know, using your voice in your life.” Let’s tell the ladies, what do you suggest that they do if they wanna be more loud or living loud in their life with their voice?

[00:05:53] Angela Wilson: So for me, it’s really about being, as you said, your authentic self and stepping into that and committing to that every single day and tap into your knowing. And stop living life by everybody else’s stories. We’re here to live life by our own story, not the ones that we’ve taken on, but our own story, and to really dive into that life that you deserve to live.

[00:06:21] So often we take on all of this other stuff and we stop living the dreams that we have and what have you because we take on everybody else’s stuff.

[00:06:35] And I’m all about, “no, start living your dreams. Figure out what your dreams are.”

[00:06:43] This client, and she’s a fantastic, fantastic artist, but she’s been not living her dream because what her dream was, is to really have her artwork out there that she’s, you know, selling it around the world and being in art shows. She’s beautiful painter and a sculptor at both things.

[00:07:07] And when I was working with her and started getting her to really dream intentionally. So when I say dream intentionally, what I mean is it’s one thing to, to dream what you would like. But then it’s what, how does that feel? How does that look to you? Putting in smells and colors and every sound, everything that you can to make it as real as possible.

[00:07:36] And when I had her do that, and then we started talking about it because it’s, it wants to be part of the conversation. Dreams always wanna be part of the conversation. And you’ll hear me lots of times when I talk about dreams and money, always in the conversation.

[00:07:52] So when her and I were doing this, she started to take steps and really stepping into being that artist out into the world.

[00:08:06] With working with me she’s also found that she can use her voice and really talk about what she wants in life. And I’m so excited because she’s actually going after those dreams now. I was talking to her just the other day and she’s actually sold two of her paintings so far this year, which is awesome.

[00:08:27] Caterina Rando: That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. She’s on her way. Okay, so someone’s listening to our time together, Angela, and they’re saying, “Hey, I wanna make my dreams come true. Hey, I wanna lead my dream life, but I’ve got this challenge and this challenge.” And sometimes it’s no time, no money, whatever it is. Those are the big two big ones. Yep. How do you recommend somebody gets their party started?

[00:08:54] Angela Wilson: To get your party started, the first piece of it is awareness. Awareness is so, so key when we’re dealing with money, when we’re dealing, honestly, with anything.

[00:09:05] And you know what, Caterina, we all have barriers in our lives. So we all have things, situations that come up that we think we can’t get beyond. Here’s the thing, we can, if we have awareness, And determination because we, we want to get somewhere else. We really want to shift to a new way of living. That’s when we then can make choices to be able to do that.

[00:09:30] And when you can make choices, then all of a sudden everything opens up and you can see the possibilities are around you. Will it happen overnight? It depends on the dream. It might take a few years, but if you don’t start now, it’s gonna be a lot further out.

[00:09:46] Caterina Rando: Absolutely. Now, Angela, one of the things that I know you do is that you have a monthly gathering for women where you talk about money and I love this because I feel like some of us were raised in households where we were taught, you know, don’t talk about sex, don’t talk about politics, don’t talk about religion, and don’t talk about money.

[00:10:09] And I wanna ask you, what’s your experience in talking with women? I mean, cuz you know what? I love to talk about money and I’m very open about my money, I’m open about my money story because I feel like it’s inspiring to other women when women tell the truth about money. What has been your experience in gathering women together to talk about money?

[00:10:34] Angela Wilson: It’s so fascinating that you asked that because what happens at first is nobody wants to talk about money. It’s like, “oh, no. Okay, well let’s, you know, shift the conversation to something else.” And I always bring it back to, to that conversation. What ends up happening though, is they start realizing that by not talking about it gives it power over them. And then when they start talking about it, it starts to become a tool in their lives and it starts to be something instead of like going after money and working really hard and all of that, it becomes about money working for you and the reciprocal energy of money and, you know, the give and the take.

[00:11:19] And so what ends up happening is they start to really open up and realize that money isn’t this big scary thing that so many people make it out to be.

[00:11:34] And you’re right. You know, “I heard when I was growing up, oh my gosh, you never talk about money that is like, that is so taboo. It’s awful.” And you know, the other thing about that I heard growing up that I took into my story previously was you never owed money to anyone. Cuz if you didn’t have the money you did without.

[00:11:56] And so I bring those kind of things into the conversation. And what that does is, what I found, when you’re willing to be open and vulnerable and authentic with the women that you’re talking with it allows them to open up . And be part of the conversation and know that it’s safe, that they can talk about these things. And they’re not gonna be judged for it.

[00:12:19] Caterina Rando: That’s wonderful and so important. And you know, I think just like we build confidence with our speaking, our writing, or our selling, that we have to build confidence around earning money, managing money, talking about money. And that comes from doing it. The more we do it, the more comfortable and confident we get.

[00:12:42] Now the other reason, Angela, why I love that you get the ladies together every month to talk about money is because, you know, I love the power of community, and I’m gonna ask you, in terms of living out loud, what part does community play in all that?

[00:13:00] Angela Wilson: Community plays an absolute huge role in that. I’m all about community too, Caterina. It really comes from… when you’re living out loud, you really want to have those amazing people in your life that you can have those, what I call yummy, juicy conversations. Instead of, you know, getting together with the girlfriends and having that fluffy conversation, right. That nobody really wants to say what’s really going on in their lives.

[00:13:31] You know, they stay at a really high level and it’s, to me, Let’s just be in community, You know?

[00:13:41] Caterina Rando: I love that you said that because it sounds like what you’re doing is you’re having like really uplifting, really insightful conversations that are having women have “ahas.” And I remember one night I was at a gathering of women.

[00:13:57] There was just a few ladies, but the conversation consisted of makeup and plastic surgery and diet solutions. And I thought, “oh my God, this is not the types of conversations I wanna be having with women, right?” And, that was, that was many years ago, Angela, today, I might be a little more interested in those topics, but, but I was talking about, I love to talk about making money.

[00:14:23] I love to talk about saving money. I love to talk about how to use money. And of course you also know that I love to talk about giving and using our money for good.

[00:14:34] And I wanna ask you, because I know that you’ve done a lot of work, as you mentioned, to make a difference in the lives of women that have had hardships. What part does giving play in all this living out loud?

[00:14:48] Angela Wilson: Giving, again, it’s, it’s a huge part of it because I really believe giving people a hand up. We’re all here. There’s more than enough for all of us, so let’s make everyone have the most amazing life they can. And you know, at different times in your life, everyone needs a hand up somewhere.

[00:15:13] So my community, what we do is we decide on the charity that we’re gonna support and our fees from one month, typically December, we give all the fees to the charity.

[00:15:28] Caterina Rando: Wow.

[00:15:28] Angela Wilson: So that’s one, that’s one way that, that we do that. And then in my own business, it’s really important to me to give it back. And I set part of my profits aside every year and make sure that a certain dollar amount goes to the charities that really sing to my heart.

[00:15:47] And typically for me it’s a lot of girls’ education because I have the mission of my business and then I have the big vision of my life. And that’s really making sure that every little girl on this planet gets to go to school, that they can be a hundred percent who they are their entire lives, not you know, wait until they’re 40 or 50 or whatever, but their entire lives and they never have to go through that playing small, dimming who they are. They can just be the authentic selves, themselves. Wow. Um, that’s what I’m here for.

[00:16:23] Caterina Rando: That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Angela, and I love that you have incorporated giving in your business and that you’re incorporating it in your conversations about money. And you know, I like to say that we don’t have to wait till we’re retired or have gray hair, although I don’t think I’m ever gonna have gray hair I’ve decided. Until we start to be givers and embrace philanthropy in our business and our life.

[00:16:49] Now one of the things that I’m asking myself in my head, Angela, should I go here? Should I not go here? But you know what, we’re gonna go here. Because you and I are friends, so I know your story. You know my story about men and money and interfering with our, not only our massive monetization, but our massive confidence.

[00:17:14] And I’d like to ask you as women are listening to this episode. Maybe they, they have a big dream, but they have a spouse or a father or another, or could be a, a woman too, that’s telling them, that they can’t do it. That they’re, you know, who do they think they are? And all of that.

[00:17:35] And you know, it’s tough to make your dreams come true when nobody’s believing in them but you. And I’m not saying it’s not doable, but it’s a little tougher. So what are your thoughts about women that are really not having the support in their life that you and I today enjoy?

[00:17:55] Angela Wilson: It is a real barrier when you don’t have the support in your life. And that was, that was me. I did not have the support in my life back in the day. I do now. Thank goodness.

[00:18:09] It really comes down to you have to believe in yourself and you have to tap into your inner courage and really believe in who you are, where you wanna go, and that you can do it.

[00:18:26] What it comes to, it’s so funny cause it ties back into community. If you don’t have that support in your home, then find community with others that brings that support in. Others that can actually see who you are so that that reflects back so that you can really tap into how valuable you truly are.

[00:18:51] I’ve spent many, many, many years feeling worth less than everyone around me and here’s what I have to say. We are all worthy. We were worthy when we got here. We’re worthy of our entire lives. The unfortunate part is sometimes we forget that, and it’s really about finding the community to allow yourself to sit in your worthiness and your authenticity and go for what you really want.

[00:19:24] Here’s, here’s a little secret. I was told my entire life that I could not write. And yet here I am, a published author, an international bestseller, and ta-da. I don’t think I’m any different than I was back then. Have I gone through a number of things from then till now? Yes. Have I learned a lot of things along the road? Yes. I believe everybody can do that.

[00:19:54] It’s about tapping into who you are and your courage. Without that support in your home, there is support out there.

[00:20:04] Caterina Rando: That’s true. There’s a lot of support out there. You know, that’s one of the things that women definitely are good at. One of our superpowers is being in community. There’s lifetime supply of groups, virtual, live, and in person. Really, we encourage all of you to find yours, and if you don’t have one that you’re vibing with, start your own cuz there’s room for more.

[00:20:29] Angela, I love that. I, I love what you’re doing with your women on the ground. I love what you’re doing with your courses and your workshops, and I know that you often do workshops that anyone can come to.

[00:20:43] Let’s tell our fabulous listeners how they can get in touch with you, because I’m sure they’re gonna wanna connect with you.

[00:20:51] Angela Wilson: Fantastic. They can go to my website, which is www.angelaunlimited.com, and you can connect through me that way, or you can connect directly with my email, which is angela@angelaunlimited.com. I would love to hear from you.

[00:21:08] Great. And also, they can find out about your workshops there. Yes.

[00:21:11] Caterina Rando: They can find out about your book. They can find out other, if they’re, if you’re in Canada, my friends, you can go and hang out with Angela every month with her ladies, which is wonderful because, because the more we women gather, the more we get to uplift each other.

[00:21:28] And Angela, I like to say a rising woman lifts all the women around her, and you definitely are a rising woman.

[00:21:36] Everyone who’s listening, my friend, you are a rising woman too. Please connect with Angela. Connect with thriving women in business if you have not already, we have a Facebook group.

[00:21:49] Please reach out to me, Caterina Rando, at caterinarando.com. We have other episodes in this fabulous podcast around money, and we wanna support you to earn it, keep it, feel good about it, and of course, embrace giving in your business and your life. Angela, before we wrap up, any final thoughts for our listeners?

[00:22:17] Angela Wilson: Final thought is this: You truly deserve to live the life that you are here to live. Start embracing that. The time is now, time is precious. Jump into your courage and go for it.

[00:22:34] Bing, bing, bing. Thank you Angela Wilson. My friends, go for it, go live out loud. This is Caterina Rando. We’ll be with you again soon on another episode of the Expand Your Fempire Podcast.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.