Speaker 1 0:00
Did you really think that you're gonna lose 100 pounds? Or you thought, Okay, let's, let's start and see how much I'm gonna lose. And you suddenly lost 100 pounds. So what was that feeling? I wanna know about that.
Speaker 2 0:10
Yeah, and it wasn't the first time, not that I was like, yo yoing. It was, you know, being a gymnast, you're always in a gym, and you're always moving. And I never really had to pay attention to it, and I really didn't have to pay attention to what I ate.
Speaker 1 0:31
Welcome everybody to another episode of Strugbits Unplugged today. I had the opportunity to talk to Angela Proffitt. She is the visionary behind GST creatives. She has a very rich background in event production and psychology. She has seamlessly transitioned into the world of business consulting and video content. Now she helped different businesses to grow through innovative processes and through video content. Angela expertise doesn't stop there. She brings a deep knowledge of psychology into her approach to business. Her work has been recognized by major networks like TLC and ABC Family, as well as People Magazine and Success Magazine. Doing so much at once is not easy, and due to this, she ended up overworking, and she got health issues, and she had a near-death experience in COVID as well. And fortunately, she improved, she survived, and not just she survived, actually, she came back even stronger. Right now, she is handling multiple ventures without compromising her health and her mental peace. She has her own podcast as well, which is called GST Diaries. We're going to talk about all this in today's podcast. So let's go and talk to Angela. Thanks for joining in. Angela.
Speaker 2 2:07
thank you so much for having me and inviting me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 2:11
Same here, same here. Angela, all right. Angela, we should start with I want to know about GST Creative, how it has evolved into a full-service consulting firm, and can you walk us through the journey from where you started and to where the company is today, and what were the key milestones you guys have achieved up till now?
Speaker 2 2:41
Yeah, that's it's a great question to start and kick-off. I started in 2001 and so depending on when you're listening or watching, this could be over two decades. And you know, it's, it's, it's a journey. Life is a journey for no matter what you're doing in life, but I've always had this burn under me of follow your heart and follow your passion and do what you love and be happy. And my parents were very involved in our church community. And my family had a wedding venue growing up, my uncle had a very successful business, and so just being around that, being around like weddings and decor and happiness, and it's a lot of girls dreams to be a wedding planner, yeah, and that's not what I went to school for. I never thought I would be an entrepreneur. I didn't even know what it was. I didn't know how to spell it. Even though my uncle was an entrepreneur, my my dad worked at the same company for over 30 years, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom with three kids. And so I grew up in a very traditional American family, as you would probably hear and you know, so it was a little bit different, but I did exactly what I was supposed to do, at least what I thought it was supposed to do, right, graduate, go to college, and I worked in a mental hospital and worked in healthcare for years, and I'm very thankful for that experience. But that wasn't my path forever. And on the side, I did this fun thing, this hobby of planning weddings at my local church, where my parents were very involved, and just through word of mouth, people started saying, I'm not Catholic, but can you plan my wedding in another city? And then that turned into another state, and then that turned into another country. And this was all part of social media, so things were very much word of mouth. And you know, my parents taught me, you do what you say you're going to do, and you be a good person, and you always be honest, and you always communicate. And that's what I really learned in psychology and working in the mental hospital. I worked in a morgue, I worked in an AIDS clinic. I did a lot of different things, but I think what I attribute all of that to is just being an athlete and being a gymnast and always being on and always having something to do, and, you know, a lot. Of people say, oh, you know, you guys have ADHD, and you've gotta be doing too many things. And it's like, no, it's just we're searching for something more because we know we can offer more because we have more passion, we have more energy. And you know, so over the years, things happen, right? And the My Favorite word from COVID is pivot. We learn how to pivot, and I've learned how to listen to my audience and what they need and what they want. And I have a rule that if more than 10 people ask me something, I need to create a solution because people are hurting and they need help and they need something. And so in 2010, I had an opportunity to go and plan a wedding for a country music artist that was on tour. And I'm from Nashville, Tennessee, in the US, and so it's country music USA. It's actually just Music City, USA now, but, you know, I had, I had a real job at the hospital. It was flexible, but it wasn't flexible for seven months. And so I had to really make a decision. I didn't talk to anybody. I didn't talk to my parents, my family, my husband at the time, I just said yes, and I'll figure it out, right, like at that. So in the next.
Speaker 1 6:06
working full-time in the hospital as well, and you have this opportunity for the Okay, so, okay, next. What happened? Then, yeah, it
Speaker 2 6:15
was just, you know, again, I was doing weddings on the side, and it really didn't conflict, because it was a weekend thing, and I can meet with My Brides, you know, at night. And so I was able to really hold down both. And then I was teaching gymnastics at the same time too, because my health was still important. Movement was so important. And I don't really know how I did it all back then, I think about it, say it out loud, but what happened was, in, you know, in 2010 i i told my boss at the time. I said I had an opportunity. I can't talk about it, because I had to sign this thing called an NDA non-disclosure agreement. I didn't know what all that meant back then. I just knew I couldn't tell anybody, right? It's like a secret. So, you know, I handed over all my files, and he's like, what's wrong with you? Did you know, you're our highest producer? And I'm like, I can't talk about it. And so, you know, got on the bus, filmed a TV show. It never aired because of the client. It got way too deep in but what ended up happening, and everything happens for a reason, right, is we ended up doing a wedding on a private island. I didn't even know private islands existed because I didn't grow up with wealth. I, you know, I grew up in a middle-class family, and that changed my life. It opened my eyes to so many things. It was this tiny little island called jumbe Bay in Antigua, and the people that I met on that island, and just the entrepreneurship, it just sparked something in me. And so when I came back to the US, our town had flooded, and so a lot of our venues were underwater. Homes were underwater. A lot of my vendors lost everything. It was a really, really sad time. And one thing I learned in the hospital is EMR electronical medical records, and that was where you could push a button and then it goes into this thing called the cloud, and you can get a prescription, and your patient doesn't need to use paper, and then I help the doctors scan all their charts and get their charts in the cloud. So I knew about the cloud, I knew about backing things up, and so I really embraced that. And so when I started the wedding planning company, everything went in the cloud. We never had notebooks, we never used paper, and always try to get my vendors to do it, but they would never do it until they actually suffered a tragedy, and they had to feel that pain. And so I started to learn after that, some of my vendors said, Okay, Angela, what's this drop thing and this Google thing? And it was Dropbox back and, you know, so I would teach free classes on how to have processes and how to have folders in the cloud, rather than like the old manila folders that you would like have in the following systems. And so again, it's just like when people ask for help, you know, I would show up. And so then we turn that into the productivity business. And I started doing business development in 2011 I started speaking and traveling and and launching more of a personal brand, which for me, I really had to make sure I had a solid team in place with processes so that could free me up, so I could go grow and do other things. And so naturally, you know, things just morphed into things. And I feel like about every 10 years, like some shit happens 10 years later, 2020, COVID hit. And, you know, we used to do over 150 events, a lot of weddings, but also conferences and events. A lot of our clients come into us through weddings, and then, you know, they trust us. We have a great relationship. So we end up what we call life cycle clients. So we end up doing all of their events. And there are a lot of them are entrepreneurs too. So we'll do their open houses, their holiday parties, their baby showers, their honeymoon travel, you know, just everything. And got it, yeah, so we just started to really plan experiences. And so when 2020 hit, you know, is a big I saw it as an opportunity for us to grow and to learn. And. Instead of doing live events, I had to figure out a way to redisperse the funds and figure out how we can bring events online for people. And so I sat for nine months about seven days a week, 20 hour days and and you know what happened after that? I got really unhealthy. But you know, I've learned over the years again, you have to pivot. You have to keep up, and you have to listen to people, and some of the things that we were doing in the past, it's just not working for us anymore. And so here we are today and really we're not doing so many events anymore. I do a lot more business development, a lot more consulting and really working on content creation, helping people with their podcast, helping people connect with people between a screen. How do you do that? And so that's where the psychology piece comes in, and that's what I love most. It's not that I don't love events. It's just you can only do it for so long before your body feels like it's just going to break, and you've got to listen to your body, and it's just not healthy to do it the way that we were doing it anymore. And as a leader, if you're unhealthy, you start to you start to pass down bad practices to your family and your team, and because they see you as the leader. And I didn't really wake up and realize that until I actually started to, you know, get better and focus on on my own health. So that's, that's what brings us to today.
Speaker 1 11:31
Basically, I'm gonna touch it later on as well, about you losing, I believe, 100 pounds that are really impressive. Like, a bit about it, like, how you did it, and what, what was that moment when you said, Okay, I'm gonna do it. There's a moment when you decide to do something, and you say, Okay, from now on, I'm gonna do it. So what was that moment when you said, Okay, I'm gonna do it. And did you really think that you're gonna lose 100 pounds? Or you thought, Okay, let's, let's start and see how much I'm gonna lose, and you suddenly lost underground. So what was that feeling? I wanna know about that.
Speaker 2 12:06
Yeah, and it wasn't the first time, not that I was like, Yo yoing. It was, you know, being a gymnast, you're always in a gym, and you're always moving. And I never really had to pay attention to it, and I really didn't have to pay attention to what I ate. But when I started to get into my 30s, I started to experience a lot of allergies, and I started become allergic to seafood and allergic to things, and I didn't really understand why I just took the medicine and prevented myself from actually doing things like I actually could not do outdoor weddings anymore. And so it started way earlier than and it just kind of built up over the years, and I just kind of, you know, kept band aiding things over it. And so what happened was, like, I've broken my foot, I've had surgeries, you know, but it's like, I would go through rehab, and then I would go right back into the gym, okay, well, we couldn't do that with COVID, because we were on lockdown. And so once, and it happened so fast, and I, you know, still to this day, I question sometimes my family. I'm like, Why did you guys not say something to me? Like, gosh, Angie, you know, you're looking kind of swollen there, you know, like, you can say it to people in a way to where it's like, care and concern, not like you're just fat. You know, it's like, you might like, what are you eating? And it's just like, the constant delivery food, right? Because we're all we don't slow down. We're too busy. And so it's crazy, because the first year of COVID, my whole team had it before I did, even though we didn't really see each other, and I was traveling at the beginning of it, I had airplanes to myself, myself, going to Mexico, doing consulting with some of the resorts. It was seen kind of great. And I came back into town, and I had a physical therapy appointment, and my physical therapist was working on me like we still wore masks, and we're doing some one one-on-one stuff, because I need trouble and and back trouble. Because I was sitting, I had so much inflammation, and I was eating so bad, and it was all these things. And, and she texted me the next day and said, My husband got sick, and he has COVID, and I have it too. So I think that you should know that, and you should probably get tested. So, you know, I went and got tested, and I did have it, and, and the next day I started to feel it like instantly. And so for 18 days, I didn't get up, and I had 104 fever for, I mean, we kind of, like brain damage, I would say, like, I still have, like, that mental fog, you know, sometimes I lose my train of thought. I'm like, shit. What was I saying? But it's not from being overwhelmed. It's just it takes longer to process things. And so I really thought I was going to die like laying, you know, in the bed. I mean, I made goodbye videos for my family. I was like, This is it, and I worked so hard for all this stuff, for, for what? And so my primary care doctor, I'm friends with a lot of doctors that I work with, just from working in the hospital, and she's like, You know what? You know? To do. What are you doing? Your priorities are so messed up. Like, you know you need to move, you know you need to do something. And I'm like, You're right. I'm like, Okay, I'm going to get a treadmill desk. And then I did my own research, and it's science says if you move 10,000 steps every single day, because that's what somebody told me recently. They're like, that's BS. That's what, whatever, when you take on a goal for yourself and you make it happen, you do what works for you. It worked for me, and it works for lots of other people now, because, you know, that was nearly three years ago, and I told myself for 365 days a year, I'm going to move 10,000 steps a day on my treadmill desk. I will, I will stand and work. I'm not going to sit anymore. And for the first 90 days, I lost 32 pounds just from walking. I didn't do anything to my food or my sleep. And the thing is, how many days in first how many days could she repeat 90 so in 90 days, 3290 days, 32 pounds. Okay,
Speaker 1 16:00
that's amazing. That's just for moving. There was a dieting as well. Are you just not yet focused on the not
Speaker 2 16:06
yet you're just walking, just walking well. And I danced a little bit. I have a dancer, and I helped my nieces through COVID and their dancers. And so I'm like, if you guys be quiet, oh, you know, then we can do dances. And I knew what they were thinking, you're fat. How can you dance? You know you're unhealthy, you're out of breath, but I still got up and I still did it. You don't forget how to do it, just when you're unhealthy. And so you know that would get me, that would get me steps too. And I really started to track it, and I really use what I call a SMART goal. And so you know, if you're not familiar with it, Google it, but it's basically a SMART goal is making sure it's a framework to use to make sure that you're specific and you're measuring things. So I got an Apple watch that I wear every single day, and I don't move. You see on the front of my face right here? You know, if it doesn't I only have 580 steps today because it's early morning my time, but, but I'll get on my treadmill desk in a little bit, and it's just, it's a way of life. And even when I'm not working, because I travel a lot, I get up and I walk around the cities and I make sure, and it starts to open your eyes in a whole different way, that I feel like I've had my head down for 20 years in the sand and that's what America does. It wants to keep us busy and keep us distracted and sell us this marketing machine that the more you work, the more reward you get, and then the food, it just keeps you sick. And that's really what was making me sick, was the food and not moving enough. And it's really basic. I understand it so much more now, and that's why now I'm so I'm such an advocate of wellness, and now we plan wellness retreats naturally, just because, personally, I've realized that, you know, as you get older and as you gain more experience, if you don't take care of your health and you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody
Speaker 17:56
exactly. I have one
Speaker 1 17:58
question for you that is, how can we ensure that team members take ownership of the projects? This is a personal thing I wanted to ask.
Speaker 2 18:08
to me, it's pretty simple. Is just asking their perspective and asking what they think and what are their ideas, and asking why. And in the beginning, some people may seem a little defensive, and you know, you again, it's like working through things. There's a program called Arbinger that I went through years ago, and it teaches you it's it does this thing where it's like two chairs back to back, and the people are looking at opposite directions, and then when the first person turns their chair just a little bit, it means they're they're changing, and they're open to listening and then getting that other person to turn the chair to where eventually the chairs are turned towards each other, and you're looking each other face to face in the eyes, and typically this is done in person, But to empower team members and not to interrupt them, just listen and be quiet and and give them an opportunity to talk the other thing like, I'm I'm the time keeper sometimes, because I'm the worst one to not follow my time. And, you know, I could talk to people all day. I just love it. And so especially, let's talk about wellness and food. I'll talk here all day long. And, um, so having alarms set and having a timekeeper and being aware now Tom actually, is like, like, I my like, right now. It's like, I know at my next meeting starts soon. So it's like, you know, my armpits start to sweat, and it's like, I gotta wrap up. It's like an anxiety thing, right? But it's like, all good things must come to an end, and then there's all there can there can be more later. But how I really connect with team members is, is that is Ask, ask their point of view, ask their opinion, ask how they are and, and lead with the 8020 of understanding. How is. Are brain wired and what makes them happiest, and if I have them doing something, or ask them to do something, or need them to do something that's not in their wheelhouse, like I know one of my girls, she doesn't love social media, she's had a really bad experience, but every once in a while, somebody else is out of the office, or if I'm traveling, I'm gonna be like, Hey, I know you don't love to do this, but I really need your help, and I know you know how to do it, you just don't like to do it. So can you please help me out for a week, you know, and ask permission, and they have the right to say, no, they do. And you can't get mad, you know, as the leader, but just changing the perception of like you have all the answers, because, you know, two, two heads are better than one, a team is better than one. When you have all four colors at the table, you likely don't have too many blind spots. When, how is the person, you know, bringing on a new product? How much is it going to cost? What's the project timeline? How's it going to make the consumer feel? And how are we going to execute these things? You know, it's the orange that comes with the ideas. The green is looking at the budget. The gold is looking at how much time, and looking at the the timeline of how many other things we have going on. And then the blue is really asking, like, is the messaging right? Is this? Is this going to offend people? I never want to offend people or hurt their feelings, and sometimes I do. That's never the purpose. It's passion. I care.
Speaker 21:22
Amazing. Amazing answer. Angela, we are running out of time.
Speaker 1 21:26
Angela, yeah, I want to jump into my favorite part. That's the game segment. This one is my favorite one. I have my game in my hand already. I noticed one thing, actually, you smile all the time. I feel like when you are angry, you smile when you're happy, you smile when you're nervous, you smile. You all the time, smile
Speaker 2 21:45
always, well now, I mean, again, you have a near-death experience. You're just happy to be alive. I'm just happy my legs work. You know, seriously, it's like, when I'm I'm trying to get back into running, and when I want to stop, you know, I think of my sister, and I'm like, Thank you, God, that my legs actually can work and you can keep going,
Speaker 1 22:01
actually, like four to five weeks ago, my mom dad were going somewhere. Actually, they were going to on the funeral of my grandfather. The car fell down off the mountain, and it went down around 150 feet, and my father's shoulder was broken. My mother's shoulder was broken and they were seriously injured, but they were not injured in a way that it was a long term, you know, injury. They got fine now they are with me at home, and my father says, I look my life in a different way now, because I feel like I have been, you know, I don't know why God let me live now, but all I know is I need to live in the moments now. I would not say things that I'm gonna do this tomorrow. I'm gonna go I'm gonna do that tomorrow, because there is no tomorrow, because my father said at that moment, I was gone, and nothing was more important for me at that moment than my life. So since then, he stopped becoming angry. He stopped he's like, just enjoy. Just enjoy. Live in the moment. You're you're alive. We are alive. We all are alive. Just go with the flow.
Speaker 2 23:04
My prerequisite question this is in like, dating life, is like asking people, like, the first thing is, like, have you had a near-death experience? Like, tell me more about that. And if they haven't, it's like, you just can't go deep with people because they don't understand the true meaning of life. Anyway, the sidebar,
Speaker 1 23:20
actually, I have a near death experience as well. When I was in second standard, there was an earthquake in Pakistan in 2025 and our home fell down over me completely. And I don't know how I was saved, because I was fainted, and when I woke up, I was out of the home, and the whole house was gone. So I consider myself that I consider it spiritually, that the angels came and took me out of that house. Because I don't remember. All I remember is I remember I saw the bricks coming down on me. I saw everything was just, you know, being destroyed. I still remember that inside my mind, I was in second standard. And if you search on Google, you will find it. It was, I guess, world's first or second highest earthquake in the world. It's something a lot of people died in that.
Speaker 24:10
So you get it, you get it, yeah,
Speaker 1 24:13
okay, so let's come into the game. It's a fun part. So basically, we have three rounds over here, and we have three scenarios in each round, but we will play only one scenario. You have to choose one scenario. I will not tell you what is that scenario. I will just say A, B, C, and you have to choose one and I'm gonna tell you that scenario. And the scenario would be, it could be anything. It could be related to a company which is falling apart, and you have to save it. But you would have only two minutes to give the strategy. I will have my timer on. You will have in two minutes. And once the there might be a sudden development as well, which I will tell you that there's a sudden development and this has happened, or there might not be a sudden development. So if a sudden development came, you might need. Need to change your strategy or something. So, yeah, I hope you understand the game. You have to choose one scenario, A, B or C. Which one you would like to go with,
Speaker 25:07
A, B or C?
Speaker 2 25:09
Let's go with A, because my name starts with an A, and we like to make good grades, right?
Speaker 1 25:14
Literally, I knew you're gonna see that.
Speaker 25:17
Okay, okay, so
Speaker 1 25:21
I'm gonna tell you the scenario, and then I'm gonna start the timer. Angela, you are tasked with revitalizing a YouTube channel that has experienced a significant drop in views and engagement. The channel's content has become stale and subscriber growth has stalled. You must devise a strategy to revive the channel and attract a larger audience, and your time
Speaker 25:49
starts now. Oh,
Speaker 2 25:52
well, this is easy. It's not a game. This is real life, because this happens all the time. So the first thing that I would do is I would go and pulse-check the current audience as to what's going on and what's happening. Because when you talk to your audience, and you interview people, and you find out what's going on, and I would do client testimonials with those the current community and audience, the people that are most engaged in it, and find out where are the missing gaps. And then I would train and thread and chat GPT based off of all the things that the people said. And then for the new audience, I would come up with what has worked and what has not worked. But we would go through probably a half day strategy of going through the four different colors and talking about the client persona. And likely, when this stuff happens, it's because people are not staying relevant, and they're talking about old material because they're working in their business too much. They're not working on the business from a bird's eye view. And so oftentimes, for this and growing a YouTube channel, and it's a full time job, and so I would say I would also look at the infrastructure of the team and who is doing what, because oftentimes I find, in my experience, that there's two or three people working on it, but really, you don't have all four colors at the table, and so you have blind spots, and you're you're missing out on creating content that it's going to resonate with, either your client, your current target audience, or your future audience, that you're going to bring in. And there's a, there's a formula for it that most people forget to follow. Is they forget to follow the entertainment. They're in the entertainment. And so the formula is, Who are you talking to? What are you going to teach me? How are you going to entertain me? And what's my one call to action? And usually, at the end of a video, people are not asking, or they don't know how to ask based on their their target audience and the color they are, or they don't know, or they ask them to do, to do too much, like, follow, subscribe, no, and then, and oftentimes, the channels aren't optimized correctly. And so doing a digital discovery and an audit on that,
Speaker 1 27:52
there's a development, there's a development, there's a development, a major algorithm change on YouTube suddenly and now your channels visibility. It reduces the channels visibility. Now you must quickly adjust the strategy to adapt to this new challenge while still aiming to improve the channels performance. Okay, wait, what was the challenge? Again? The development is a major algorithm change on YouTube. YouTube has changed its algorithm suddenly. So whatever you were doing, it just gone in a way,
Speaker 2 28:20
yep. So do you have two minutes or one minute? Yeah,
Speaker 28:24
two minutes. You just have two minutes
Speaker 2 28:28
again. So basically, what I just came up with has crashed, is that what you're saying is, like, what would I do next? Yes, well, lucky for me, this is where community comes in, and I'm in a different a different content creator community, and there's specific YouTube communities out there, and so when you when you spend time with your community, and you help add value, there's other people within that community who usually are privy to things that are coming down the pike with YouTube changes, like the Monet monetization, for example. I mean, we used to monetize stuff, and then they changed the rules and it's like, Oh, your videos have to be 10 minutes. Well, what I would do, I would say, if we're monetizing that we need to go back and look at the analytics and See what videos have performed the best. Let's redo or update the ones that have already done. Well, if we need to keep monetizing, and so there's always a way to again, wash and repeat what you've got, even when a platform changes. I mean, this is real life. This stuff happens all the time to us, and sometimes we end up working. We end up taking people off the platform, and we actually come up with other solutions, like we took a client off of YouTube altogether and put them on mighty networks and or Patreon. So there's other ways. And actually, I love it when those things happen, because it pushes us to look into other solutions, of which we we never would have gone searching for if we didn't have these problems, and then you come out way better in the end.
Speaker 1 29:56
Okay, so before we just go, I would like you to advise any. Any you know, final advice for entrepreneurs and business leaders, particularly in prioritizing wellness and leveraging tech, final advice from you.
Speaker 2 30:00
my final and there's something called Gestalt, where it's like you don't give advice you speak from experience. Because when you give advice, if you've never done it, people don't always really take that to heart. And so, just in my experience, like the final takeaway that I would say is just have a mentor. Every year I get a mentor, a new mentor. Every year find someone that is doing something that you want. People buy what they want, not what they need. And you have to remember that. And so, but you do want a mentor, and you do need a mentor, and changing it up every single year and having a schedule so that you know where your gaps are and how they can help you. But don't learn from people who haven't done what you need to do or what you want to do. Only learn from people who've done what you want to do.
Speaker 1 31:00
Okay, amazing. I won't take your time much. Thank you so much for joining in with me.
Speaker 2 31:09
This is awesome!
Speaker 1 31:11
amazing. I won't take your time much. Thank you so much for joining in with me. I'm gonna record the end again, in which I'm gonna tell that what we discuss. And thank you very much. Thank you very much. So thank you very much for your time. Angela.
