IAM2871 – Entrepreneur and Productivity Consultant Exceeds Her Clients Expectations

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Transcription:

Gresham Harkness 00:00
I didn't build my business looking at what everybody else was doing, because I don't care. I know what we can provide. It's a. It's called Blue Ocean strategy. You create something different. It's a. That's a book. You create something different and unique and people will come. And if you service them and communicate with them and have really great customer service and just great morals and values and be upfront with people, we tell the truth.

Gresham Harkness 00:52
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Angela Profitt of GSD Creative. Angela, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Angela Profitt 01:01
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to chat.

Gresham Harkness 01:04
Me too. Excited to have you on. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Angela so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing and. Angela is an entrepreneur, productivity and wedding event planning and designer with nearly two decades of experience within the creative industry. As the industry's leading creative disruptor, she has become a trusted resource and ally because of her commitment to exceeding the expectations of her clients and. And her passion for educating professionals. Her mantra, you don't know what you don't know fuels her books, online classes, live events, and consulting. This has allowed her to help thousands of wedding and event clients and hundreds of small businesses achieve success, grow steadily, and wow, consistently. She calls it GSD or get shit done. Angela, are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

Angela Profitt 01:46
I am. Let me know what I can do to help.

Gresham Harkness 01:49
Absolutely. Let's do it. So I wanted to kick everything off with what I call your CEO story and hear a little bit more about your businesses and how you got started with everything.

Angela Profitt 01:56
Probably. Like a lot of creatives, I never set out to become an entrepreneur. I didn't even know how to spell the word. I still kind of don't.

Gresham Harkness 02:02
Me too.

Angela Profitt 02:03
Juggle, right? But I. I did the thing that I guess every mom and dad thinks that you should do. Go to college, get a degree. I. I knew that I loved people. And growing up, my family had a wedding venue on the Gulf Coast. And so in the summers, me, my brother and sister would spend time putting flowers together and pouring sweet tea and cutting pie. But I never thought in a million years I would end up owning a business and being an entrepreneur. And after graduating from college and working in the healthcare field for about 10 years, I worked in a mental hospital, in a morgue and an AIDS clinic. So some really, it seems like sad, morbid things, but it really set the foundation for helping me understand people and how I could best serve, serve them. And so about 10 years into living a double life, I was really given an opportunity to choose. Do you want to jump and take a risk and go film a TV show to do a wedding with someone that was on American Idol, or do you want to live that Corporate America job 9 to 5? Because I would work my job and then I would work on the weekends and I had to make a really quick decision. I didn't talk to anybody about it. I just thought, you know what, I'm going to go in, I'm going to resign on Monday, get on a bus on Tuesday. And that was over 10 years ago and I've never looked back. So it's just kind of all about following your gut.

Gresham Harkness 03:31
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so hard sometimes. And I know people that might be listening, that might be thinking about something that they want to do or they've been thinking about it and they hear about it in the shower and so many times. But what made you have the ability to be able to make that change was it just kind of just having in that quiet space where you knew that this is the way I should go, not this way.

Angela Profitt 03:49
Honestly, I didn't put too much thought and effort into it because I would, I would have that fear, too much fear. I knew that I was good at taking care of people. I knew that I loved doing events. We had so many events on the books that I knew in my head, even though I'm not a numbers girl, that I had enough money to live without having a steady paycheck 9 to 5. And I always knew that if this whole event thing didn't work out, I could always go back to the healthcare industry with something great to fall back on. So honestly, I was at the Corvette Museum doing an event for 800 Indians when I got the call and got the opportunity to go on the road and start planning a wedding. And I thought to myself, you know what, I'm just, I'm going to do this. I'm going to sign the paperwork and all the confidentiality. Stuff I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Sometimes I still don't know what I'm doing.

Gresham Harkness 04:43
Building the airplane on the way down, some way up, I should say. Sometimes there's a lot of times what we have to do. But I think you're absolutely right. I think sometimes even we do our businesses on the side while we're doing our full time job. But you still have to kind of deal with that fear of being able to take that step because you can have all the business, all the clients, but if you don't actually take that step, then it's hard to kind of take that next level without letting go of that one thing.

Angela Profitt 05:08
You got to focus and you got to be hungry or you're never going to grow. And if you have something steady to fall back on, then you've got something steady and it doesn't force you to work hard and to hustle.

Gresham Harkness 05:19
Exactly. Yeah. Sometimes we need to have that parachute removed for us to really like see how great we can, we can definitely be. So I know we touched on a little bit, I know you touched on it as well about GSD Creative. You take us through a little bit more about what you're doing for your clients.

Angela Profitt 05:33
Yeah, so we have been doing. And I know one of the things that I was listening to some of the other people, something that makes us different is because my background in psychology and because I've worked hands on with people and it takes a lot of patience to work in the emotional money spending business. And so when I worked in healthcare, not only did I have the opportunity to really learn about healthy brain activity, but also about emr, which is electronical medical records. And so at a very young age I was helping doctors offices go paperless. And so when I started my company, the event company, I knew that I would only be paperless. And so we invested in software and did a lot of just from the ground up, which I. That's one of the main things that we do is we go into companies and we help them become more productive. And the first thing is we do a psychology methodology called True Colors. It's a really fun team building activity. I learned it in healthcare. It's really needed in the creative industry so that people can first understand how people perceive them as a person and a leader and then next how to customize the message the way that your team members need to hear it or your clients need to hear it. And so we've really mastered the psychology of that. And then on top of that, making sure that Our clients and our vendors know that we are paperless. Everything's backed up in the cloud. It's like a security blanket. And that's how we've gotten clients all over the world, because we're able to use technology such as we're doing today using Zoom and Google Drive and all the great software. And so that's what we really do for our clients. We sell a very, very specific experience based on psychology, and we have a process and we follow it. And that's one nugget I would say is get a process, get your shit together, and don't veer from it. Because every time we veer from it, it's never a good thing, and it doesn't end up good for you and your team or the client. And we've had to learn that the hard way. But yeah, that's. That's the main thing is the psychology piece of it customizing everything that we do and the experience, but having that process and then making sure that all of our clients data and information is backed up. So from a security standpoint, everything is safe. So that's really, when you get down to the core of it. Like GSD is, you know, you gotta be fun to sell stuff. But really, if I tell people, hey, I'm gonna come in and take away your pen and paper, and we're gonna learn how to be more productive through psychology. They just like, look at me with deer and headlights. So we've learned how to make it fun.

Gresham Harkness 08:04
Yeah, absolutely. And I imagine you're probably, you know, getting into people's comfort zones as well, too, especially if you have that pen in the pad. You're used to. You're used to using that. But I. I love the fact that, you know, a lot of the solutions that you talked about are based in that psychology, because I think so many times we. We see things and kind of that shiny object syndrome where we see something somebody's doing, X, Y and Z is like, oh, we should be doing that. But really, this sounds like the solutions. Definitely. Correct me if I'm wrong. The solutions you provide are based on that psychology, based on who you are, who the team is, what they do best, things like that, the true colors that you spoke to and spoke on it, and rather than those outside. This is the newest thing you have to try, whether or not it works for your team or not.

Angela Profitt 08:41
Amen. I didn't build my business looking at what everybody else was doing, because I don't care. I know what we can provide. It's a. It's called Blue Ocean Strategy. You create something different. It's a. That's a book. You create something different and unique, and people will come. And if you service them and communicate with them and have really great customer service and just great morals and values and be upfront with people, we tell the truth. Sometimes I don't tell them everything because they don't need to know everything. But that's our job, is to protect our clients.

Gresham Harkness 09:10
So I appreciate you for focusing on that and appreciate you for sharing your secret sauce as well. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Angela Profitt 09:24
Oh, my gosh. So I actually have a book on that. Entrepreneurs must have apps. It's one of the most probably, like, most frequent questions I get asked. But I will say our favorite app that we use internally is called Marco Polo. It's a free video texting app, and we have put a process in place. It's not meant for a to do list. It's meant for clarification. So each of our team members, we use a free app called Wunderlist. And each person has their own wunder list. And within each list, there's projects and clients and to do list. But we always set a deadline.

Gresham Harkness 09:58
Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. And sometimes I'll say, if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your younger businesses?

Angela Profitt 10:07
So I would tell my younger business self not to hire my friends because I grew up around a family business. A lot of my. My family, we all still work together and we all still love each other and get along, but I have a really close family. But as a young entrepreneur, I didn't really understand about, like, running a business yet. And so I just knew I needed hands. And people kept asking me to do things. Like, what happened was like, June is a really busy wedding month. And so I would be booked every Saturday in June. And then I would keep getting more questions of, well, can you do this date? And I'm like, well, I can't because I'm booked. But I don't want to say no because I want to help these people. And so I just started getting my friends to help me. But as I grew over time, they don't know what it takes to run a business. And so there was a lot of rudeness and jealousy and hate and demand that I don't pay you, don't pay me in it. I'm like, I hand you a freaking iPad, you work 12 hours and run an event. When I spend 200 hours in the background for a year planning this shit. And, and I, you know, you, you make an out. It's, it's, it's money on the side. And so at that time, this is a long time ago, but I had a good business manager, still the same person today, I had a good accountant. And they gave me some great advice. They're like, Angela, you're going to have to start over with new people who can meet you where you are and you can lead them and become a better leader.

Gresham Harkness 11:31
I appreciate those nuggets. And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on this show. So Angela, what does being a CEO means? You?

Angela Profitt 11:43
It's an honor to be able to be a leader that is trying new things, taking risk and having people actually trust me and follow me.

Gresham Harkness 11:55
Absolutely. I appreciate your time even more. And what I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to say if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get a hold of you, find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Angela Profitt 12:07
Absolutely. So I would say you mentioned the word goals. And for a long time I never sat down and whiteboarded out. Even though I hate paper. I do love the huge note papers.

Gresham Harkness 12:19
I have them right in the corner.

Angela Profitt 12:21
I see that and I love it. I love idea paint where you can just write all over the wall. But I will say that about 10 years into owning my business, every single year through EO, they have us get a new coach, a new mentor every single year. And about 10 years ago I had a mentor and a coach who at the time I'm like, damn, you're hard on me. But I'm a hard headed girl. So I just kind of needed to hear it that way. And he, he's like, what are your goals? What do you want? What's your, what's your end goal? I'm like, I don't know, I've never really thought about it. I'm like, I just take however many events come to me and how many weddings and how many this and how many that and he's like, no, but what are your goals? And I'm like, I don't know, like there's always money in the bank and I work and I like what I do. And he's like, what are your goals? And I really didn't understand what that meant until he took me through the actual exercises of writing it down. And so, I mean, he kind of had to like come up with it. It's like, okay, in January you don't want to do a bunch of weddings. You want to go to three Caribbean islands and do five destination weddings because you hate the cold. Okay, that's a goal. And in February, it's Valentine's Day. So you're going to have a ton of couples reaching out to you because it's number one holiday that people get engaged. So depending on the month that these people are getting married, do you want to do two weddings a month and maybe nine months out of the year? And how much do you want to make from each of those events? And let's break out the planning and the design and the services. So the reason I say this is because having someone who not necessarily is older in age, but I mean he was like a dad figure, but having someone who understands strategy and listening to them, I was so hard headed. I was like, no, you don't understand, I can't do that. I don't, I don't know how many people are going to like call me and you know again, you're afraid, you're like, shit, I've got 30 to $50,000 a month that has to be paid going out. And he's like, no, the money will come. Be passionate, be a good leader. We're going to whiteboard out your entire year and then it gives you the opportunity to say no or I'll pass one. So that year that he helped me, we did over 250 events. And believe it or not, they I wasn't that profitable that year. But the next year we completely changed our business model. We went from doing about 30 and being way more profitable because we only took the really large events that we did full service. So just if you can get a strategist or a mentor or someone that can challenge you to whiteboard out your life. And it's uncomfortable, but we do it every year. Every December, my team and I go the first week. Every week is my birthday week. And so we go to the beach and we call it GSD retreat. And we get shit done and we map the year out. And sure, stuff changes, but at least you have a little bit of a road and a little bit of a path that you want to stay on. So that's what I'll leave you with is to have a strategy, look at your analytics and how people can find me. My website is Angela profit.com 2F's and 2T's. We also have GSD creative.com which is solely for people who want to get shit done and to be be productive with their time.

Gresham Harkness 15:43
There you go. And that should be everybody. Listen to this podcast. If you listen to this podcast, you definitely want to get shit done. So we will have those links and information in the show notes. But thank you so much for reminding us of that because I think so often we sometimes forget that. We forget that we can chart our lives, we can chart our goals, we can say we want this this month or that month. And by writing it out, putting it on a whiteboard, putting it on, you know, it's big old post it notes, a lot of times that helps to ensure that that will happen because it makes it something real, intangible. So I appreciate you so much again, Angela and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Angela Profitt 16:15
You too. Thanks so much for the opportunity. Have a great day guys.