The Bold and Brilliant Podcast with guest Angela Wilson

In this inspiring episode, Tracie chats with Angela Wilson, who helps women tap into their inner courage and create the life they deserve. Angela shares her personal story of transformation, resilience, and how she made the bold decision to leave her corporate job and start her own business. This episode is packed with insights on overcoming self-doubt, embracing authenticity, and stepping into a life of passion and purpose.

✨ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Angela’s journey from a toxic work environment to entrepreneurship
• How she learned to trust her own voice and stop dimming her light
• The importance of collaboration over competition
• How small, intentional steps can lead to exponential growth
• The impact of choosing yourself and showing up authentically
• The ripple effect of empowering others to do the same

🛠️ Actionable Tips from Angela Wilson:

• Start small: Don’t wait for the perfect moment to make a big leap. Take small, intentional steps towards your dreams.
• Choose yourself: It’s not selfish to prioritize your needs and desires. Your brilliance is needed in the world.
• Embrace collaboration: There's enough space for everyone to succeed. Collaborate and lift others up along the way.
• Redecorate your life: Sometimes a small change in your environment can ignite bigger transformations in your business and personal life.
• Keep the vision alive: Visualize where you want to be in the next 1, 5, or 10 years and take action every day to get there.

🎤 Memorable Quote:
“We are not here to play small. We are here to live completely authentically as us and shine our light so brilliantly.” – Angela Wilson

🔥 Bold Moment of the Episode:
Angela shares the moment she had while sitting in a plaza in Spain, where she realized her true calling was to step out of the background and into the forefront, helping women live their authentic, limitless lives.

📱 Connect with Angela Wilson:

Angela Wilson is a Champion for Women’s Courage, international best selling author, and international speaker. She is the Founder of Angela Unlimited, an organization that assists women to transform to a life of whole wealth, and to discover and step toward living their unlimited life. Angela uses her personal experience, where she learned to listen to the little voice that kept asking, “Isn’t there more to life than this?”. She found the courage to say “yes, there is”. And so can you.

Find Angela at https://www.thegather.community/AngelaWilson or follow her on social media for more inspiration and resources.

🚀 Join the Bold and Brilliant Podcast Community:
Become part of our community of women taking bold action! Join the conversation in our Gather Community Facebook group

🌟 Rate & Review:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave a review and rate the Bold and Brilliant Podcast on your favorite platform. Your feedback helps us reach more women who are ready to step into their brilliance!

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Your host,
Tracie Root

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:01

Are you ready to take bold action and live a life of brilliance? Welcome to the Bold and Brilliant Podcast where women leaders share inspiring stories about daring decisions that shape their businesses, their lives, and their careers. Today I'm with the fabulous and amazing Angela Wilson. Angela assists women to tap into their inner courage. She empowers them to start living by their own story. and the life they deserve and have the money become a tool in that life. As we talk, you'll hear Angela share one bold decision that has created her path. Of what was next, her story of resilience, risk taking and transformation will inspire, encourage and support your personal and professional growth and peace. Welcome Angela to the Bold and Brilliant Podcast. Thanks Tracie. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're here too. We have been doing this talking on camera, working together for Two years now, if you could believe that was how long ago we were on a cruise ship together and decided to cement this relationship and take it to the next level, which is really supporting each other in business. You've helped me a ton. You've been in The Gather Community as a creator for a long time. And I'm really thrilled that you can be one of our early episodes here on the Bold and Brilliant Podcast. So thank you so much for being here. My pleasure, my friend. My pleasure. tell the listeners who haven't had a chance to know you yet, or maybe just don't know some of the origin story. Tell us a little bit about how you became who you are. That's, it's big story. I know we only have, a few minutes. We don't have three hours, but I know, so we'll do the short little snippet version. I grew up in a small town in cottage country in Ontario, Canada. And what does that mean when you say cottage country? What does that mean? So cottage country. So we have areas that on weekends people go to the cottage. Okay. Yeah. So it's, and it's a well known area. Muskoka. It's beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking. And that's where I grew up. And, it's interesting because as a little kid, I was chatty. I was really chatty, but I grew up in that time where little girls were supposed to be seen and not heard. So I got in trouble a lot for talking. And so what that actually did, though, is as I went through school and heard more messages about It's not okay to be me that I had to tamp myself down. I had to make myself smaller all of those things and I really took that on throughout my life. I lost who I was and had myself thinking that I wasn't as smart as everybody else and I wasn't as worthy as everybody else and That I you know, I should just completely morph myself into what everybody wanted me to be Because me was not okay. Which is completely wrong. But that's the societal constructs that I was in at that time. I did go through a very toxic long term relationship that ended abruptly and I didn't know who I was. At that age, I was in my mid forties and went, really, what do I do now? I started figuring out who I was and really dove into, you know what? I do matter. I have a voice. So let's be out there. And that's what brought me to assisting the women that I'm here to assist. It's so interesting that I think every single one of us in this Gen X generation, we all have that same story that ingrained people pleasing that listen to your parents do what they say. There was something about the generational. Construct of how they were raised and then therefore how we were raised. I think we're the first generation to really rebel that old messaging, and the folks that are younger than us, they've got the same thing, but little less than us, if you study, The differences between boomer gen X, millennials, it's really interesting to see the evolution of each generation and how it's changed. Now we wouldn't think of telling someone that they have to be, something other than themselves. For me, everything is collaboration because I don't believe in competition at all. There's more than enough for all of us. And that's the way I live my life. Yeah, especially in business, there's obviously we think competition. A lot of people think of sports and think of, things like that. And of course, that's. Necessary in a game. Not everyone can always win. Competition itself isn't inherently bad, but the way that we were taught to compete for attention to compete for love to compete for now as entrepreneurs. That we have to compete for clients or connections or collaboration partners. It's so false, competition has its place, but not in our world of business for sure. So I love this. And I also agree, of course, about the there's no competition. There's plenty enough as Katerina, our favorite gal would say, there's enough pie for everyone. And as you, I know that I know some of your business story and you're working for someone else, and then you became working for yourself. Was that something that you had to overcome? At that time, or had you already begun that journey of I don't need to worry about competition like what tell us about the transformation from working from someone else to working for yourself and what you had to do differently, right? When I was in corporate, I was a controller at a manufacturing organization. And because I am a CPA as well. I found I was just so unhappy all the time because it was the same thing over and over again. Unfortunately, that was a toxic spot. Until you realize that you're putting yourself in these places, you don't know to keep yourself out of those places, right? Exactly. So it makes sense that personal relationship, business relationship, that it would all line up until you change it. Oh, absolutely. And I went from there and it was really, so I, I left that job going to more of a not for profit type of a situation. I just started thinking, I want to do something different. I don't want to do the same thing. And it just happened at that time, a friend of mine reached out to me and said, I just started as a COO at a manufacturing company, and I really need your help. I don't know what I'm doing. I really need your help. And I said, okay, that's fine. That's awesome. So I started helping him in the evenings. I said, can you give me these many hours and he said, absolutely. I can. That's how I started my first business, which was my accounting practice. I really wanted to niche down to being the finance director at not for profit organizations in the violence against women and children youth sector. And so I did that and then, went through that life changing moment that I mentioned before. And went, is this still really what I want to do? At that point, I needed to soldier on because I needed to get myself in the right spot. Then I went, this is not feeding my soul anymore. I really want to be out there helping women to really live. Their unlimited life, the life they desire, the life they deserve, and to just be in that life and taking advantage of all of the passion that they have. And not staying where they think they should stay. Yeah. Obviously one of my big questions that I ask everyone is tell us about one bold decision that you made that changed everything, it sounds like, you were working in a business sector that supported women, through structured, programs and then you decided to head out on your own instead of just helping the programs exist, you wanted to help those women directly. Am I right? Is this right? Yeah, basically. So tell us about like you said, you have to get bills to pay. We've got a life, to fund, but you saw the opportunity and maybe the desire inside you to move into a more direct. So tell us a little bit about how did that start? What was the first thing that you decided to do when you were on that fence between working with the nonprofit and leaving it? So really when I decided to scale back my accounting business and really go into Angela Unlimited. It really came about because it just kept coming to the forefront that, I'm sitting in a back office somewhere. I was doing great work. I was making sure that, all the funds got out onto the front line so that the front line workers could do the work and the women could get the assistance that they needed. But I kept going, you know what, I think my voice needs to come out. In those days. I would have never been doing this. That's for sure. Because I didn't talk unless I was really talked to. And then I just went, you know what? No, just a second. Actually the seed for where I am now came from a conversation in a beautiful little plaza in Spain. Where I said to my husband, I said, this thought keeps coming to me. And he said, tell me about it. And that's where it got hatched because I was like, you know what? No, this is what I'm here to do. And really my overarching goal for all of this and this touches on what you were talking about before about the generations, is I want to make sure That every little girl is educated, and every little girl doesn't have to go through any of the stuff that we went through. It's just, I want them to be 100 percent their authentic selves their whole lives, never morphing, never doubting, but we've got to start somewhere. And so I start here for the change. Oh, I love that. Okay. First of all, I can just imagine you and Gord sitting in a plaza in Spain. A lot of us who've had that kind of, aha, it's time to do something that I really care about, that I'm really excited about when we have that minute. I can imagine it because for me, gather was a big one for that I know how excited I was to talk about it. I know how obsessed I became about doing that work. And I can hear that in your voice and picture him saying, tell me all about it. And you're just going and being really excited and passionate about it. I think that's one of the things that happens to us when we make this transition from where we were to this, bold new path. We get so excited about it because we know that the time is right. The idea matters to us. We spend so much time in our early years doing things that don't really matter that much personally. They matter in you have to have a job and we need to pay the rent. And like you said, you were doing great work. You were making the organization be able to do what they were doing. But you wanted to be doing it, too. Absolutely. And I think that is so important, Tracie, it's about coming from that passion. And it's about not squelching that passion anymore. And really going after it and bringing it out to the world. Because that's what we're here to do. We're not here to play small. We're not here to dim our light. We're not here for any of that. We're here to live completely authentically as us. And shine our light so brilliantly. And you know what? Right now, my gosh. We are all such unique, beautiful individuals the world just needs our brilliance. So let's just shine our lights and be all that we're here to be. And forget about judgment, forget about fear, and just really live from this beautiful space inside you, where you're choosing you and choosing who you want to be every single minute of every day. So as you were saying that I was thinking about how it is like all of us, we go through all of this. And I'm wondering about the potential of people who don't spend 40 years not doing it or 50 years not doing it or 60 years not doing it and how things can be different on the planet when the young adults, the 30 year olds really know who they are and why they're doing what they're doing. I just got goosebumps with that because can you imagine obviously we can only know the people that we know and see what we see on media, but the few people who are out there who are young and standing up for what they believe and moving their. Passion forward, whatever industry they may be in that we see them for those people are the people that we admire the most because they're not allowing judgment to get the better of them. I think that's what's going to happen is that year over year, those numbers will start to grow. I've got teenagers, my oldest is a freshman in college and I see it in that kid. To just know what I know, believe what I believe, not that they're not open to learning new things, but like this matters, these issues are what matter to me and I'm not going to squelch my values in fear of someone thinking less of me because of it. And I'm really excited for the younger generation to be able to grow that and for us to be able to be the mentors for that. Because that's our role at this point to help them recognize that they're doing it. Keep going. Absolutely. And I think it has so much power behind it. And, a lot of people don't realize we impact people every single day in our lives, you just may not see it or you may not recognize it. But I find it such a rewarding unique thing when I talk to somebody, that I haven't talked to in maybe a couple of months and they go, Oh my gosh, remember when you said such and such? And I was like, huh. No, I don't always remember, but it's like that impact, right? And you're going, wow, I didn't realize. And they're like, yeah, I've been thinking about that every conversation, this conversation that you and I are having right now, this is going to ripple out into the world and it will have an impact. Each person that can hear the message and that want to take it in, right? Because we all have a choice and it's that ripple effect. It's beautiful. It really is beautiful. It's so good. And it's interesting because, as you were saying, people will hear this and it will ripple out. And of course we won't have any idea. What potential that has. And that's one of the interesting things about podcasting. I'm brand new. You're my seventh episode, Lou, right? I haven't even gotten to the point where people don't get past 10. I'm going to get past 10. This is a mission. But the idea of reaching people that you've never met across the entire planet, imagine how many people are on the planet and how many women and girls. Especially, we're here in the States and Canada, imagine places elsewhere on the planet where they need it even more imagine what it's like there. I can't even imagine. And for someone whose entire culture is around them, not ever even talking out loud in public to then decide to say something like that. It's just it's beyond is what I say. Absolutely. So we were talking about affecting young people. But really, we're working with people who are often our peers, right? Yes, we want the young people to grow into this amazing community of older people, as we get older, they'll get older and then there'll be us and we'll be, really old, but right now we're working on our peers. We'll be the elders at that point. Yes, we'll be the elders. But, really, we're working with our peers, right? I'm 56. I'm not working with 20 year olds. That's just not my field. We're talking about those ripples, that trickle down, we're trickling across to our peers and then hoping that they will then trickle down. Even though it's not our designed intent, we're going to teach you so you can teach your Younger generation, it just happens automatically. So tell me like the things that your clients and your community are the ways that they're changing. Tell me a little bit about what's happened for them that you can see how that's going to start to change their communities around them it's like we said, those ripples I like to say that each 1 of us is 1 of the pebbles and we throw them in the pond. And we all make circles and all those circles overlap. So tell me about some of your pebbles that are out there making their own ripples. I love the way that you've said that because it really is. I work with mature women typically over 45 we've gotten to a point where. We've stayed in places that we shouldn't necessarily have stayed in or, we've done the job, we've done this, we've done that. And now all of a sudden we're like, Oh, what's next? I think I'm meant for more than this. And so that's the ladies that I work with and I just love it. So a great client of mine she just called me the other day and she goes, Oh my gosh, Angela. She said, you remember when we worked together and we did this and I said, yeah. And so what it was for her was she was so busy working in our business. She wasn't living your life. It was nowhere in her life. She was business. That was it. And so we started playing around with, okay, what could things look like differently? The biggest thing was, is I love the women that I work, it's about opening their minds to something more, right? Because we get in there, get in our box. Yep. And it's okay. Even though we may have other thoughts, it's like that just doesn't fit right now. And so with this particular woman the way we started with her was her house. She had completely let it go. And she goes, I haven't done anything to this house and I don't know how long she completely redecorated her house to make it a space that she wanted to live in. That was her choice. There wasn't any more hand me downs. It was all her. And then we transformed. She had so much fun and realized that she loved beautiful things. So from that, we then transform that into our business as well. How could you have this much fun in your business? Her business has grown significantly since working together. She just got nominated for Women Changing the World. Which is awesome. One of her dreams was to be traveling more with work, but also personal. When I talked to her last week, she's Oh my gosh, Angela, I have five trips booked between now and the end of April. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. And it came from the fact that she opened up. She opened that there could be something more. How can I do things differently? And, that's one of these things for me, for 2025, it's about how can I do things differently? I don't want to have the same results by the end of 2025 that I had at the end of 2024. And it's all about doing things differently and opening up to, you know what, there's so much more out there and we're capable of so much more. We just need someone to walk beside us. So let's pause on the, what are we imagining by the end of this year? Because I think many people we are very much in, we're doing our day to day. We've got the list of things that need to be done today. We've got the list of things that need to be done next week. I have a kid who's in high school and what spring breaks coming up the end of the year, we've got these plans. What are we doing this summer? It's all very narrow in related to what we have in our life today. So the opportunity for people to stop and imagine further out what do you want for next year? What do you want for two years from now? Five years from now, 10 years from now, it's really hard. It is. Probably 10 years ago I finally woke up in someone's workshop that they were doing make your 5 year plan kind of a workshop. And I was just like, I can't even imagine it. And I realized 5 years from them, both my kids would be out of high school and I was like, okay this is something I can imagine right there. There's enough of a milestone. Them both being gone out of this house. Okay, what does that life look like? But I think generally, it's really hard for people to imagine that clearly to then say, okay if that's true. When that becomes true, what do I want to do with that have those imagining moments and those dreaming sessions I know that you do that, because I've done that with you and it was really great. And that was, 2 years ago and everything's moving in that path still when you have a vision for what it is, you're really excited about you actually want to do the work to go after it instead of being afraid or thinking that you can't or deciding that you have to be what they want instead. Absolutely. And it really is, it's not about taking giant massive steps because when we do that, what ends up happening is our ego gets involved and all of a sudden it protects us. Instead of our comfort zone being like this wide, now it goes this wide because we're like, Ooh, and we shrink back in. But when we start taking small intentional steps, our comfort zone that started here. Now gets bigger and bigger because our steps are not linear, they're exponential. That's exactly what I was going to say, that as you did this, I was thinking to myself, and it's not linear. So it might actually be three this direction before you do this direction, or whatever. Absolutely. It's so important to remember, we're still gonna have messy days because we're humans and mess happens. I love this analogy and I came up with one when I was talking with a client. And it's because we were talking along and I went, picture it like this. I said, it's you're in a riverbed and you've got all the big rocks. And so the riverbed is like your journey and the rocks, you're like jumping from rock to rock and you're having fun and you're playing around. And then you jump to a rock and your foot falls in the water. There you go. In the water. That's the messy bit. But here's the thing. You have a choice when you get to the messy. You can either leave your foot in the water and continually let it be messy, or you can pull it out, shake it off and go dang, I don't want that to happen again. Let's move on to the next rock. We have a choice here and we get to choose how we want to show up in our lives. We get to choose how we want to live our lives. We get to choose how to actually create our lives because we are creating our own lives. Absolutely. A hundred percent. You can tell I'm a little passionate. That's why we're here because two years ago, the dream that I, Talked about doing a podcast is part of that progress and if it weren't a place for people to bring their passionate excitement to more people, then it wouldn't be a step in the right direction toward the dream I had imagined two years ago. Yeah, I'm thrilled that you're passionate because that's what's exciting and in fact, as you were saying all those things, I'm like, oh, this is going to be the perfect soundbite to promote the episode, it was very exciting. Okay I think it's time that we start to wrap things up. I do want to ask. So in the show notes, we're going to have your links and all those things. Tell people a little bit about how you specifically work with clients. I know I've mentioned that you have clients that you've done workshops that I've been at, that you have community. So tell us some of the kind of structured ways that you work with people. Absolutely. We offer group programs and we also offer one on one coaching, coaching, and we do some in person retreats, which is always fun. I love those. I love getting time to spend, and I love all the programs because I just, I love being able to really have women come in and have that transformation. We also do free workshops. So definitely look us up and make sure that you're checking those out because those are awesome. I just did one the other day and I had a lady that was like, I never thought of it that way. And she's that was an amazing breakthrough. And I was like, awesome. Yay. Cause I get so much out of working with the women that I work with. So yeah, reach out and let's have a conversation. Love it. And you're in the Toronto, Canada area. So for people who want to go to one of those in person things. That's your zone. Although retreats, people are more than welcome to travel. And and one of the things about what's fun about our business, of course, is that because we get to travel for different things, sometimes we end up coming closer to you. So even if Angela is very far away from you, connect anyway, because you never know when she might be traveling toward you magic happens. You never know. It sure does. Never say never. Alright, my friend. Do you have a wrap up point that you want people to take with them? I think the biggest thing that I would say is, you don't have to do any of this alone. And that's what we're here to help with. It really is about choosing yourself. Deciding that you're important. It's not selfish to choose yourself. That's what we're here to do is shine your light out because you know what? You are magnificent and the world really needs you. The world needs you so much. They need your voice so Get it out there. Get it out. Yes. I love it. Angela, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. I'm all amped up and excited to keep going towards my dreams. And I know that our listeners are going to be feeling the same way. So thank you again for being a part of the podcast. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It has been an absolute delight and I always love spending time with you. All right. We'll see you soon.