Making It – Episode #155
Scared, Still Standing, and Owning the Business (Angie Colee)
Angie Colee: I’m Angie Colee, and you’re listening to Making It. I run a business called Permission to Kick Ass, and I help people who are experts, authors, consultants, creative service providers find their voice and their magic and apply it to their marketing so that they attract the right people.
I grew up in a blended family, and I think that that has a big impact on who I became. I did not have a great relationship with my stepmother, who is where I got a lot of that early messaging of, like, nobody wants this. Why are you trying to seek the spotlight? Why are you trying to be special? And despite that messaging that I got, and I have no ill will toward her, like, I’ve processed all of that stuff and hurt people, hurt people, you know? And sometimes it provides you with the fuel for the fire that. That turned me into a driven, like, you are wrong about me kind of person that is largely responsible for getting me to where I am.
And despite that message that I got, I would keep getting these internal messages or these universal messages of, you need to be on the stage. You need to be on the stage. So one moment that stands out in particular is a 6th grade talent show. I really desperately wanted to sing. I auditioned, I got it. I had high aspirations. I signed up with a Mariah Carey song hero, and I spent weeks practicing this song. I’m amazed that I can even listen to it these days. I was practicing so much; I nailed every run. I was so scared when I got up on that stage that I literally stood very still in my dress and my little butterfly clips, singing into this microphone didn’t give the performance of my dreams that I had visualized where I was just suddenly, magically a master of the stage out there walking despite my upbringing, still got a standing ovation from people.
So I brought the best that I was able to bring in that moment, despite being scared as I’ll get out and I still got this lovely, beautiful, uplifting, supportive response. It was just, it was magical. How I got started at doing copy and marketing and messaging work is kind of an interesting detour. I started out by going to grad school and really thought that I wanted to be Shonda Rhimes, basically. Like, I wanted to have universes and build characters. And Bridgerton is popular right now as we’re recording all this. I wanted that right, only I didn’t make it in the entertainment industry.
I graduated right after the great recession. This is like, 2010. Jobs were hard to come by, especially in a competitive industry like the entertainment industry. And I still don’t understand to this day why my brain just threw out this suggestion, hey, go to Barnes and Noble and spend $20. You don’t have on a book called the Well Fed writer that somebody recommended to you two years ago.
So I went to Barnes and Noble. I bought this book. I read it in an afternoon. The Well Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman.
And it made it make sense in a way that no other book had before. It turns out I had read books about copywriting in the past, but, like, just yeeted that information right out the window. I didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t have enough context. But the Well Fed Writer came around, and I was like, oh, somebody has to write that brochure. Somebody has to write that commercial that’s on drive time radio. I could do that. And then that started me down this path.
I think I’m kind of a restless spirit. I don’t know if this is true for everybody, but I can’t stay still. I’ve been a digital nomad for several years, and I’ve told people before about this conundrum I find myself in. When I’m in a place for a while, I want to be somewhere else. And it has nothing to do with the people around me, like, because often I’ll go to the next place, and then I’ll miss the people that I was just hanging out with and want to go back. I just, I can’t stay in the same place, especially can’t stay there for too long.
And I think that applies to my business journey, my speaker, author journey, everything that I’m trying to build and grow just as much as it does to the physical location, I’m in. I’m in the middle of a transformation right now. So that next milestone for me, I have my sights set on building an agency, but not a conventional agency. I’m not one to do things in a traditional way, in a way that people expect. And I really love showing people how they’re already their own best content producer. They’ve already got all of the assets that they need. They don’t need to hire somebody else to come up with ideas to pitch it back to them. Let’s just extract that and turn it into good marketing.
I’d love to build that into an agency. And if I could indulge my wildest dreams, get out of marketing, and become a speaker and an author, I want to be on stage. I love it. Every time you circle up to the next level, you run into the same core. Three to five problems, right? And mine has always been imposter syndrome. And what is the day that they’re going to figure out that I don’t know what I’m talking about? They’re going to discover that I’m not as good as everybody around me? No. The Pitchfork mob has never come for me and said, clearly, you are an idiot. You have no idea what you’re doing. You have failed us all. Shame, shame, shame.
But that fear is still there. That, like, I’m going to somehow walk out on stage and let everybody down, and they’re going to find out I’m a fake. And I just tell myself, you got to do it anyway you do it scared. The best piece of advice I’ve ever received in business and in life is to be yourself. And that’s such a hard one to embody, especially when the cultural pressure is to be a certain way, look a certain way. And that sounds like such a trite thing. It should be on a magnet. It should be on a t shirt. Be yourself. It’s a little harder to unpack that and to truly know yourself when so much of what we’ve been taught is what society thinks a successful person looks like.
And the funny thing is that there are so many people out there that are posturing based on what success looks like, that we don’t even have a realistic picture anymore of who’s successful and who’s not. The multimillionaires and billionaires out there that are living lives, you know, perfectly ordinary, with their beat-up cars and, you know, their investment accounts don’t ever talk openly about their wealth. Then there are broke people that are flaunting cars that they’ve rented. Like, we have such a warped and distorted picture of what be yourself and be successful looks like that I think that that’s some of the hardest and best work that you can possibly do for yourself, is to be yourself.
Some of the mistakes people make in that upward spiral, that journey to making it, I think one is getting in your head, is always a danger zone. I’ve fallen into this trap many times, too, where I’m doing things to impress people, I’m doing things to posture. And the best way I’ve found to articulate it is when I’m focused on me and what people think of me, my worldview gets hyper distorted. Like, I lose track of everything that matters because the world is focused on me and my problems.
But then when I look at the mission that I’m on and I can decenter myself, it’s much easier for me to find solutions and then I don’t get as stuck on, like, is everybody judging me? Like, I’m not in that reactive place where I can’t get anything done because I’m worried about what other people think. How I show up for myself has changed so much over the last 14 years. One, because I would say at the beginning, I didn’t even show up for myself at all. I don’t think I had much faith in myself. And I had gotten that message for a lot of my life, that, like, you’re nothing special. Nobody wants this. What are you even doing? Just go get a job. Stop trying to be on stage, stop trying to be in the spotlight.
So I would do things kind of halfway and not very seriously, because I didn’t take myself very seriously. And I’ve learned that showing up for myself doesn’t have to be hard. I used to think it was the hardest thing on this earth, but then when I reframed it, my best friend helped me with this. We talked to ourselves like we would talk to each other. My best friend and I, meaning, I love this person. I want a relationship with this person. I want this person to know how much I care to.
There is no way on the face of this earth that the person I want a relationship with because I love them so much, I would walk up to them and say, you piece of trash. What on earth were you thinking when you made that move? What is wrong with you? You are just a failure and a disappointment and a loser. Why do I say that stuff to me? Why is that okay to say that to me and not to another person? I’m finally at a point where I understand the damage that I’ve done in talking to myself like I’m the lowest of the low just because I tried something and didn’t get it right the first time and blow everybody away. No, I talk to myself with love now.
I think it was right after I launched my own podcast. I had this experience of Woohoo. I made it right. And all of the assumptions and the fantasies that we allow ourselves to indulge in, I launched the thing. I got it out there. I got my first few hundred downloads. Woohoo. I’ve made it. This is when I’m going to get to like, instantly Joe Rogan, and we’re going to knock it out of the park. I realized that podcasting is actually a slow burn. It involves a lot of networking, a lot of promotion, a lot of production, and just had to realize, okay, I’m going to focus on putting out really good content, and I’m going to do what I can for the marketing, and I’m going to keep growing my business. I’m going to keep growing the show and see what happens next.
So it’s an evolution. I thought I made it, but launching the thing doesn’t mean that you are an overnight success. It’s going to be a continual journey from there. Every time you think you’ve made it; you have that brief moment of satisfaction. Like party time. Yeah. Hit the goal, had the big launch. Now what? Right? You can’t just coast to the finish line, to the end of your life having done that one thing. And I will do no more. So I think making it is just a constant journey of almost reinventing yourself and resetting your expectations and challenging yourself to new goals that are probably even scarier than the last ones you hit.
If I think about making it in terms of, like, head voice interpretation, as I start breaking it down logically, it means I’ve hit this milestone. I’ve got the bestselling book. I’ve been on this many stages. I’ve got this much money in the bank, maybe even I’ve got some employees helping me run this. It’s all very, like, documentable, hard facts. But then if I sink down into my heart and I ask myself what the next level looks like, it’s asking myself how I feel about all of this. Do I feel good about the work that I’m doing? Do I think this matters? Do I think this is helping people? Am I contributing to the world? Or am I taking something away from it and just focused on what I can get?
I’ve always been the kind of person that is, like, I can’t sell things I don’t believe in. And so I move, I think, a little bit slower than a lot of people in the industry because I put a lot of care and a lot of heart into the things that I build. I want to believe in that. And then if I sink even deeper into the soul, what does that ripple effect look like? Am I helping people live better lives? I said this once at a conference when somebody challenged me, he asked me why I am a writer.
And he was, oh, he was so great. Like, very Socratic method, throwing questions at me, not giving me enough time to think so that I’m just, like, gut reacting. And I threw out this line that has just kind of been burned into my heart ever since. I don’t ever want another creative person to go to their grave thinking they weren’t good enough. I get a little teary eyed when I say that because a lot of how I conducted my business in my early days involved not feeling good enough, not feeling smart enough. What am I even good at?
For anybody that’s on this journey to making it, and no matter where you’re at, whether you’re at the beginning or you are nearing those goals and getting ready to celebrate, I think it’s important to check in with yourself and stay open to possibilities. I don’t think I could have gotten to where I am and this comfort with myself and this passion that I have for helping people if I had stayed married to, I need to be in the entertainment industry and since I can’t be in the entertainment industry, I am a failure. There’s no other option for me.
And that’s not to say that I think that you should give up on something that you’re building, that you’re passionate about. I also think there’s no shame in giving up something if you’ve tried it a bunch of different ways and it’s not working the way you want it to. Like me finding copywriting, finding marketing that wasn’t even something that I knew existed until I was able to let go of this idea of, I need to be a screenwriter. We don’t have to make it hard on ourselves just because it’s not working out the way that we want. The answer is not always work hard harder. Sometimes it’s try a different way.
I’m Angie Colee and you’ve been listening to Making It. You can find me at angiecolee.com A-N-G-I-E-C-O-L-E-E dot com or permissiontokickass.com spelled exactly like it sounds. I also have a book called Permission to Kick Ass and a podcast called Permission to Kick Ass. You can find that wherever you stream your podcasts. You’ll find the links in the show notes.
Danny Iny: Making It is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Just Between Coaches and Once Upon a Business. To catch the great episodes that are coming up on Making It, please follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It’s the best way to help us get these ideas to more people. All thank you and we’ll see you next time.