Having successfully navigated all sides of the corporate buying table for two decades, Angelique and her team have taught thousands of small businesses, including mine, across 72 countries worldwide how to secure 5, 6, and 7-figure corporate contracts. Angelique has been featured by Huffington Post, Forbes, Inc., Lucky, Washington Post, Entrepreneur, CBS, and more.

In this episode, Angelique talks about why people feel compelled to listen to her even when they don’t really care about her message, the bullying Angelique faced both as a child and as an adult that she’s had to overcome, how she’s transformed over the past few years to get to a place where she’s not concerned about what others think of her, the importance of realizing that we always have a choice and control over our actions, why business is going to save the world, the importance of fitting your message into a keyhole in the beginning, the advice she has for those wanting to have a voice of influence, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Corporate Agent
• The Real Deal Conference
• Virgin Unite
• The Elders
• The World Health Organization
• Marianne Williamson

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, Hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  I am so thrilled to have with us today Angelique Rewers.  She is the CEO of The Corporate Agent.  She is “the undisputed champion at helping small businesses land big clients” according to Inc. Magazine.  Having successfully navigated all sides of the corporate buying table for two decades, Angelique and her team have taught thousands of small businesses, including me, across 72 countries worldwide how to secure 5-, 6- and 7- figure corporate contracts.  Angelique has been featured by Huffington Post, Forbes, Inc., Lucky, Washington Post, Entrepreneur, CBS, and more.

Andrea:  Angelique, it is so fun to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Angelique Rewers:  It’s fun to be here.  I know so much about the amazing work that you do in the world, Andrea, and so, it’s genuinely an honor.

Andrea:  Well, let me just start by setting it up that I am one of your clients and the reason that is the case is because when I was at a speaking conference, you happened to be there.  I had no idea who you were.  I didn’t really have any idea of what was going on in the corporate space for speaking.  But when I saw you up on stage, I saw somebody that was really powerful, confident, ambitious, and I thought, “I want to hear what she has to say.”  So, when you had a breakout session, I went to your breakout session.  No interest in your topic whatsoever.  It was you that I was drawn to.  And I think that that is really significant for our listeners today because I do think that it is like people sort of draw people to themselves.

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah.

Andrea:  What is your take on that?

Angelique Rewers:  You know, we actually hear that all the time. People, at conferences, will say “I had no interest in working with corporate clients.  I didn’t think that that was something that I wanted to do.  But you maybe had three minutes, Angelique, on the main stage before your session, or you were on a panel before your session and I was going to skip your session and go check email back in my room.  But after hearing a few minutes, I had a sit in on your session.”

And so I think there are two lessons in that.  I think the first; I mean, this podcast is about the voice of influence. If you want to influence others, you need to have conviction and energy in your message.  It’s electric.  It’s magnetic.  And so people, all the time, they say that they want to hear what I have to say, even if they don’t really give a crap about my topic, because, “You believe in it so much, and there’s just something about it that is inspiring, and I want to be a part of it.”

So, I think if you’re looking to gain influence in the world, you need to not be a wet dishrag.  You need to have conviction.  You need to have energy.  You need to care.  There needs to be a fire in your eyes.  When people look in your eyes, they need to see that something is going on in there because then they want to be a part of it.  Even if they don’t want to be a part of it, they just want to be around you.  That’s number one.

The second lesson for me that’s in it is that when you are out, whether you’re on a podcast or you are speaking in an event or you’re writing articles, if what you’re teaching, Andrea, has integrity and truth in it, it can be infinitely applicable to other fields and industries.  And so people will come to our session, even if they don’t necessarily want to work with corporate, but they’re like “Angelique, the stuff you’re teaching, I can use it in my business anyway because it makes sense.”

There is a degree of, “Oh my gosh, what this woman is saying is legitimate and it is like a breath of fresh air.  So even though I’m not going to sell to corporate, I’m still gonna use what she’s saying in whatever marketing field I’m in.” So, I think if you can make your strategies universal in some ways and then have that fire in you when you’re communicating it, you’re going to gain a lot more influence in your message.

Andrea:  All right.  So where did that come from for you?  What is the fire?  What do you really care about?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, people actually ask me this all the time, and in fact, you and I have both been on podcasts on Mindset and you’ve had Mindset guests on and so this comes up a lot.  I think that it’s twofold for me.  I do think that people are born with a degree of fire in their belly.  So, you know, I was kind of a spitfire at five years, four years old, or three years old.  You know, I’ve been a spitfire since I landed on this earth.

Andrea:  I could totally believe all this.

Angelique Rewers:  So, in kindergarten there was a school play.  Now this was when you could still call them Christmas plays.  They didn’t have to be sort of like generic, so it was the Christmas play.  And so they were having these different parts, and they wanted a few kids from each of the grades.  And I went up to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Persigan-Risick, and I said, “I want to be the narrator.”  And she looked at me and she said, “But Angel, you don’t know how to read.”  And I said, “Well, I’ll just learn tonight.”  And she was just like, “Uhm.”  And so, I’m like, “I want to be the narrator.”

And so she gave me the script for the entire school play and I took it home.  And the next morning I came in, and I went to the audition, and I knew how to read the whole damn thing, and I got the part of narrator at five years old of my school play.  And I thought I was the shit narrating the school play.  Like, I even remember my outfit down to my red velvet skirt, you know. And so there is a part of it that I think you’re born with.  But the other part of it comes from finding something that you care about that isn’t manufactured, that you genuinely care about it.  And I think for me it’s a confluence of caring about business owners.

I care about people in that I don’t like to see people holding back.  I pushed people really to the edge, edge, edge of even beyond their comfort zone because we have one life, so we know.  The clock is ticking.  It’s almost to me like a football match or something where it’s a game, and the clock is ticking, and it’s like, “Well, you better leave it on the field because that’s it.”

So, I care about just getting people out there and doing something with their life. And the place that I’ve chosen as my inflection point of that is by taking these people who are woke and pushing them kind of to really get out of their comfort zone, go into companies, change companies from the inside out because companies change the world.  Not government, not nonprofits, really business is the language of this planet.

So, if I can sort of take this conscious, woke group of people, get them inside these companies, we can really make a difference in this world.  And it’s the place that I think my gifts best serve.  And that’s I guess the last piece of it.  It should be something you care about, but your gifts should align with it.  So it’s somewhere you can really make a difference.  And for me, I speak the language of sales.  I speak the language of marketing, so it’s where I think I can make the biggest difference.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Okay, I’m going to come back to why you think that companies change the world.  But first, let’s stick with the girl that, you know, just learned how to read overnight or memorized or whatever you did to make it happen.  As somebody with that kind of ambition that you always had, that’s like a really bright fire.  Has it ever been dimmed? I mean, have you ever gone through a point where “Gosh, it was smothered” or you know, you felt like you couldn’t be that person?

Angelique Rewers:  Oh, yeah.

Andrea:  Okay.

Angelique Rewers:  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.  I mean, I’m in middle school, so that was kind of who I was all the way up until the seventh grade.  And I know we all kind of have the seventh-grade story.  You know, for me in the seventh grade, things were kind of tough at home.  My mom and I were living with my grandparents. My mom was trying to save up to be able to buy a home, and so we were living in this really tiny little house.  I was sharing a bedroom with my mom.  You know, here I am at twelve, I guess, twelve or thirteen, and I’m sharing a bedroom with my mom.  Can you imagine like, just remember your twelve-year-old self.  We have one bathroom in the house.  I mean this is a teeny, teeny, tiny little house.

And I went to a very, very rough middle school, and I was there because, ironically, they had the program for the gifted and talented kids in this particular school, which was one of like the roughest middle schools that there were in the area.  So, but I had to go there to be part of the gifted and talented program.  So, it was sort of a trade-off.  At any rate, the other girls really did not like that bright fire so much.  As the expression goes, the tallest nail gets the hammer, and so they actually formed a club called Kids against Angelique Rewers, KAAR.

They had a logo. They had buttons. They had what’s called a slambook, which is where they write horrible things about you.  They had meetings.  They had a schedule of who would bully me in between each and every class because we would change periods, you know, from science to math. And they would knock me down, they would punch me, they would push me in the lockers, they’d tear up my homework, they would threaten me.  At one point, the worst was when I was dragged by my hair in the hallway.  I mean, really, really brutal stuff.

And so this went on and on and on and on, and it was really almost a two year kind of situation.  It finally came to an end when I finally spoke up for myself, but I was embarrassed to go to the teachers.  I was embarrassed to go to the guidance counselors.  I hid it from my family.  It finally got addressed, but, boy, it stayed with me for a really long time.  And it probably took until… it was really in 2009 that I had an adult bullying experience, which by the way, I think adults today are almost worse than middle schoolers.

We have just gotten ourselves into a situation in this world where we just tolerate so much bullying online that it’s just unbelievable.  So, anyways, so I had an adult bullying experience, and then I realized I had come full circle.  And so in 2010, I decided to kind of step back into the light.  So that means that from thirteen until twenty-seven, so fourteen years, I sort of hid, and then you know, around twenty-seven, twenty-eight, I started to come back out again.  And then it’s been every year since then, it’s been another step into the light, another step into the light.  And in the last couple of years, I really did kind of go through a transformation of “The hell with it, here I am, World.”  So, but yeah, it really lasts a long time, Andrea.

Andrea:  You know, I have seen that transformation in you in the last couple of years because that’s how long I’ve been around you and your programs.  And I was wondering if you would want to tell us a little bit about that.  It seems like there’s been this fire that’s been lit under you, that’s even greater and you were already doing so much.  You already had such big vision and then something happened or some sort of transformation.  Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, I think it was definitely the sort of perfect storm of a few things coming together.  You know, one is age, right?  So, I’m in my forties now and so you become, I think, just increasingly aware of the speed of time as you get older and you’re watching your kids grow up so fast before your eyes.  My twins now are ten.  I’m like, “How did this happen?”  So there’s definitely the age-time thing.  Another piece of it is a couple of years ago, I did do some work, which I recommend that people do, on their shadow side from a mindset perspective.  And I did some shadow side work and that was really liberating to just accept all of who you are.

When you really get to the point that you genuinely accept 100 percent of who you are and you connect in with spirit and really everything you do is between you and spirit, whether you want to call it source, God, you know, universe, whatever works for you.  When you accept all of yourself, and then you connect into your mission and your purpose, if you believe in that.  You know, for me, I do, you’d go “Well, it really doesn’t matter what other humans think about me so much.  This is really between me, my soul and God and you know, what I’m doing on that front.”  And then the other piece of it is I started to put myself in rooms with people like Richard Branson.

So, I’ve been part of the Virgin Unite efforts.  I went to South Africa with Virgin Unite.  I went to Sir Richard Branson’s wildlife reserve in South Africa and spent four days with him, you know, on game drives. And then went to Necker Island and heard from people all around the world who are changing the world.  We’re not often allowed to mention who was there, but these are world leaders who’ve brought wars to an end.  I mean, people literally who’ve brought wars to an end.

And so you put yourself in rooms like that, and you just realize that there’s no difference per se between, I mean, sure everybody has a different talent or a different IQ and et cetera, but at the end of the day, we’re all the same.  We all have the same immense, infinite potential. I think that those things all come together and you just, you know, you make a decision of “Am I gonna let the genie out of the bottle or am I not?”  And I think that the saddest thing is how many people go to their grave really never even coming close to their potential.

Andrea:  Hmm.  What do you suppose is that factor that helped you to see that you really wanted, first of all, that there was a genie in the bottle and then second of all, that you were going to release it?

Angelique Rewers:  I mean, I have to say, I’m very fortunate because even though I grew up in a very low-income household in a blue-collar town, where most people don’t go anywhere, I had the most loving family, I really did.  And my great grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, very matriarchal family and I’m an only child and an only grandchild.  And so there was definitely a lot of support for me as a kid to really go for it.  My grandmother always said, “Go, go do it.  Whatever you want to do, go.”  You know, that was always my word, “Go.”  And she also really understood some universal laws, even though she didn’t know that they were universal laws.

So, she would say things to me like, “Be very careful what you wish for because in this family we create it overnight.”  And so she really understood the power of manifesting and how when we got really clear as women in our family, things would happen.  So, I had some of that going on.  And I think the other thing, Andrea, is just I think everybody has the ability to make the choice.  I mean, I think anybody listening to your podcast right now can go look in the mirror and say, “Am I happy with what I’ve accomplished in my life?  Where am I holding back and do I want more?”  And that’s really it.  I mean, at the end of the day, you just have to kind of go literally have a conversation with yourself and choose.

Andrea:  It seems to me that it’s a choice that almost has to be made more than once.  Maybe there’s like this really big moment where you choose, but maybe there are successions of choices too.  Do you see that for yourself?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, well, I think what it is, I think, one, there’s the choice.  I think, one, there’s a choice of how you just want to show up in life in general.  Like, there’s that moment that you make that choice in your life of “I’m going to show up a certain way in life.”  But then there are daily choices that we have to make as to whether or not, you know, we’re really going to do it.  So, I think there is that sort of like universal undercurrent that’s going on in our life, but then everyday we’re given a choice.

And just in the last week, I’ve had probably four of those choices in just the last week.  So, I was in Prague, I was speaking at an international conference.  It was a conference that was really five years in the making for us to land one of those speaking opportunities because it’s that competitive to get there.  So, we kept applying and kept applying and kept applying.

And so this year it was in Prague.  I was thrilled to go and as I was rushing over to the conference center for my session, I wanted to get there for like an hour before, but I was walking over and I could feel like natural nerves.  Anytime we speak, we all get, you know, our adrenaline kind of goes… when we are in a heightened state of stress though, we can’t do our best work, you know.

So, I was walking over, and I stopped and I went to the bridge, which overlooked, you know, downtown Prague and there’s those historic buildings, that beautiful scenery.  And I just took 10 minutes to get present and ask myself what I wanted my session to be like and how I want it to show up in that session.  And I decided I was going to leave it all on the stage, if you will.  That this was going to be a session where I could truly enjoy how far I’ve come, being in Prague, being at this conference. And I was just going to really savor the moment.

And so I had that choice in that moment.  I had another choice when I was at the airport and by 30 flipping seconds…  I mean, I had been traveling for 24 straight hours, it was a nightmare to get back.  And I was in New York City.  I hadn’t had any sleep the night before.  My flight was supposed to leave for San Diego because I was supposed to speak at another conference in San Diego, and by 30 seconds I missed being able to check-in for my flight and checked a bag.  And in that moment, I said to the gate agent, “You know what, just give me a ticket to go home. I’m done.  I’m so tired,  I haven’t slept in 24 hours.  I’m done.”

And so she started looking for a flight for me to come home and then it was like, she found something.  I said, “You know what, that’s not the right choice.  Find me another flight.  It won’t be direct, but you know, find me another first-class seat.  I don’t care what cities you have to put me through.  Get me to San Diego.”  But there was a moment of, “I just want to fucking go home because I’ve been traveling for 24 hours.  I’m dirty. I’m tired.  I’m hungry.  I have a migraine.  I just want to go home.”  And then I was like, “No, I don’t.  I want to go to San Diego and a little bit of sleep will fix this.  And that’s where I’m supposed to be with AT&T and Comcast presenting at this conference with veterans.”

So, we’re presented with these choices all the time every day.  And we’re human, we’re going to have lousy days.  So, you just have to constantly ask yourself, you know, what are you choosing.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Why is business going to change the world?

Angelique Rewers:   Well, we’ve seen it ever since the printing press, right? We actually saw it with the Catholic Church and monks who recreated the Bible, which, you know, church really was kind of like the first business, I mean, in terms of organization and organizational structure and, you know, them creating copies upon copies upon copies.  And we saw it with the printing press.  We saw it with Ford in creating the automobile and how the automobile completely changed our societies, and people moved out of certain areas, and we created suburbs because of that.

We’ve seen it with the internet.  We’ve seen it with mobile communication.  We’re about to see it again with AI and with autonomous vehicles and frankly, even flying vehicles, we’re starting to see it with drones.  You know, business continues to innovate.  Those innovations, despite some of the most repressed societies, you know, really the only country that has completely kept out technology successfully really is North Korea.  I mean, you know, they’ve done the best job of kind of keeping business out, keeping technology out.

But beyond that, technology and innovation and developments constantly cross, you know, any imaginary border we draw on a map. And it creates connectivity, and it creates a shared experience that just like the written word created shared experience.  The automobile created shared experience.  The internet created shared experience.  Technologies like this are changing the world. So, business creates innovations and innovations change society.

We are in a situation right now where we look at the ethical dilemmas that Twitter and Facebook are facing.  We look at the ethical dilemmas that companies like we work are facing.  Even, you know, companies in California who are facing these awful fires and how are they going to respond to that?  We need to get plastics out of the world.  And so how are companies going to respond to that?  So, you know, really companies are what make the world go round.

Every single thing that impacts our daily life, there’s a company behind it, unless we’re in some of the most remote parts of the world.  So, the more we can shift the thought process and the scarcity mindset that drives so many of these poor decisions that companies make, and in addition to that, most people are employed by companies. And so the way that people feel every day, the World Health Organization declared this year that burnout is a global epidemic.  So the world is drowning in burnout, that affects all of us.

So, we have to really make some changes.  And the best way to do that is to take people who are really consciously aware and help guide this.  And so our mission at The Corporate Agent is to really show people how to do that.  But the only way to do it is to actually be able to sell your services, like you have to be able to get into these companies.  You can have the best mission in the world.  You can have the biggest heart and the most brilliant idea.  But if you don’t know how to get to decision makers and get influenced with them and get them to listen to you and buy your products and your services, then you can’t change diddly-squat.

Andrea:  Exactly. Totally.  I think that that is so important, especially, I know that for a long time I felt like I had a message, and then it became evident that I was going to need a way to fund the message.  And that’s what started having me go down the path of business.  And actually, honestly what really has been fascinating for me is seeing myself really be able to start to stretch into other areas of myself that I didn’t know I could do, you know, like to be the CEO of a company, to actually build a business, to have people that are on my team and working with me and coalescing underneath of a mission and a vision and making sure that, you know, all those things, I’m like, “Whoa, wait a second, this stuff is really fun.  This is good.”

Angelique Rewers:  It is fun. It is really fun.  And you know, when we build businesses and we build them from the place that you’re building them, you know, that’s also an impact on the world.  I think one of the things that’s been amazing about you, Andrea, is that you have a message, and then you realize that you have to find a keyhole for your message, and you’ve been really willing to find that keyhole.  You know, there are so many people out there who have a message, but they’re not willing to find a way for that message to fit into the market so that the message can have an impact.

If you’re just shouting out to the world and nobody’s receiving that message, what good is it?  And so you have to shape your key to fit a keyhole and then that unlocks opportunity.  And it’s this strange paradox because people have a big message and one of the things we do at The Corporate Agent, as you know, is we help them take that big message and actually bring it into just one key that they can unlock a door.  Because if you just have this, you know, huge message that nobody knows what to do with, then what good is that?

And you’ve been such an amazing, you know, you really have taken that and run with it.  And as a result, companies are benefiting from your message right now.   People are benefiting from this podcast that you do and you haven’t lost your message. Even though you’ve brought it into a tangible way for companies to implement, you’re still focused on this voice of influence.  And so sometimes when you first, you know, people hear us talk about it, you can even talk to this.  Like sometimes it’s like, “Wait, you want my message to fit into this little box,” but only for a short time, only to get you momentum and then you can let the genie back out of the bottle.

Andrea:  I think that’s really important.  And one of the things that I believe in is that the mission or the purpose that one has is generally something that’s beneath the surface.  So, it’s a concept. Like for me, it’s connecting people’s expertise with the need in the world, “Okay, you could do a lot of different stuff with that.”  And so that frees me up to be able to say “yes” when you tell me to go in a certain direction and say, “Okay, I will try that because I can trust your expertise, and yet still have it fit within the paradigm of my purpose as I see it.”  So, I think that’s really important for your clients because it can easily feel like the purpose has to be a specific thing or a specific teaching, that sort of thing.  Do you see that?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, I do.  And I think people are always afraid of sort of losing their purpose when they start making it tangible in the world.  And the opposite is true.  It’s like when you make your concept of that idea that you’re talking about like, you know, that concept that you have, when you start making it tangible that people can do something with it… it just evolves into something beautiful.  But too many people, we call it sometimes loving the baby.  Like, they just love the baby so much about this idea that they have, but they don’t know how to then bring that out into the world in a way that actually has an impact, or that people know what to do with it.

We can all be Marianne Williamson, you know what I mean?  Most people aren’t just going to be a philosopher, and I think that’s kind of the danger when people have a message, they can fall into the trap of just being a philosopher versus understanding how to actually effect change in the world.

Andrea:  Okay, so I had a question for you that, I don’t want to forget to ask this, because it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, ties into what we’re headed towards.  When one sort of steps into the fullness of who they are… okay, that’s the way I put it, the way you put it, what was that… you know letting the light or the genie out of the bottle, when one does that, I think that it can feel like all of a sudden, even in narrowing down your message, it can feel like you’re cutting things out.  You can feel like you’re cutting people out.

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah.

Andrea:   And that can be really hard for somebody that’s particularly sensitive and empathetic.  Has it felt like that to you ever, and I mean, does it ever feel lonely?

Angelique Rewers:  Well, I think those are probably two different questions.  So I’ll take them, you know, maybe one at a time.  The first is that when you’re clarifying your message, assuming you want to be a business owner, you want to be an entrepreneur or you’re working in a company that, you know, trying to make headway somewhere. You can certainly try to empty the ocean with a soup spoon but you’re not going to get very far.  So, I’m just very pragmatic about the whole thing.

If you look at anybody who’s had a world changing mission, they didn’t start with a world changing mission.  Sir Richard Branson is great example.  You know, he just decided in the beginning just to change the record industry, right?  That’s all he wanted to do was change the record label industry with Virgin Records. And then he was like, you know what, he sold that so he could change the airline industry all because he had a bad day not being able to get a flight somewhere.  And so that’s where he started.  And now he’s at a point that he can pick up a phone and talk to almost any world leader.  He did just pick one inflection point.

Oprah started on the radio in Baltimore where I grew up.  She was on the local news WJZ-13.  You know, I remember watching her on like 5 o’clock news.  That’s where she started.  So, you know, I think that we all see these sort of finished products today of these people who are just out there, just so huge, big followings and people aren’t willing to realize that people judge us based on what we’ve accomplished, not on what we dreamed up in our head.

And so you have to have to do stuff, you have to actually make something happen and then you make something else happen and then make something else happen.  I’m not very empathetic around this idea of, “Well, I don’t want to cut anybody yet.”  I’m like, “Well, do you want your mission out there or not?”  Because it’s like, “Do you want to be right about this or do you want to be rich?”  And rich in impact, not necessarily rich in money, but do you want to be right or rich?  And most people want to be rich with impact, rich with significance, rich with, you know, really having a legacy.

So to do that, you’d have to just be practical about it.  It’s like, “Well, get over it,” you know, like, this is what it takes.  This is how it works for almost everybody.  And then in terms of does it ever feel lonely?  I mean, I personally don’t ever feel that my business is lonely or that, you know, I do think that one of the things that people don’t understand about having a successful business, and I can only imagine as you get more and more successful, like I can only imagine… I mean, I’ve spent time with Richard Branson.  I’ve seen the people that he puts around him.  He certainly doesn’t ever seem lonely.

I think the man probably would love to absolutely have maybe a little bit more alone time than he does.  But you know, even he’s part of the Elders and if you don’t know about the Elders, you should look that up.  It’s an amazing thing that he put together with some just amazing people on this earth, people like Desmond Tutu and others.  But I don’t find it lonely, Andrea, because number one, I have an amazing family.  I just have just the most amazing, supportive husband who is my high school sweetheart. We’ve been together more years than we’ve been alive, if that makes sense.

So, you know, over twenty-seven years we’ve been together now.  I have two amazing twin boys who are ten.  I have a really supportive mom.  I have close friends, and I have the most, and I really do believe this, like I have the most amazing community of clients that I think any person out there who’s in the small business space, who has a community of small business owners that they serve, without question.  I think I have the most loving, high integrity, heart-centered… I don’t want to use the word loyal but like just the love in our community, the respect in our community.

I think if, there was some tragedy that happened and you know, I lost my home or whatever, I would have hundreds of clients who would be like, “Angelique, come stay on my sofa.”  Like, “The door is open,” and I think because they feel the love that we pour into them and how transparent we are with them.  And so there’s just like, “I don’t feel lonely at all.”  I mean, Andrea, if I felt like I didn’t have somebody to call, you know, I could pick up the phone and you would talk to me. I just feel just constantly, just a bubble of love around me all the time, even if I’m having a bad day.  I just have this incredible vortex of love.

Andrea:  I can attest to that.  I put something in our Facebook group this week.  Every once in a while I feel the need to reach out and say, “Oh, hey, does anybody else ever feel like this?”  And I had maybe four people reach out to say, “Do you want to talk?”  People that really know what they’re talking about and so it’s absolutely true.  I think though, at some point, did you ever have to recognize that you are going to be spending more time with this kind of person than people that you were with?

Angelique Rewers:  Oh yeah.  Yeah.

Andrea:  That’s a hard thing for people to kind of move through, I think.

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, you know, I think it is for some people, I’m kind of a loner.  I’m an only child and I think that probably contributes to it. And there were no cousins.  You know, my mom was an only child, so I was an only child.  There weren’t a lot of others around.  And I’ve always been kind of a loner in a way, even though I always have like these amazing people around me.  So, I’m also a very independent person.  I think probably two of my greatest values are independence and intelligence.  Like those are two things I value greatly.  So for me, I empathize with those who feel that way.  I personally didn’t experience it, because I’m actually an introvert, I think.

So, I can imagine that for some folks when they start to change their life, there are people in your life, you really have to, you either distance yourself from where you are or sometimes it’s not even like this conscious uncoupling.  It’s just you don’t have as much in common with them anymore.  And that’s just a natural part of transition.  I mean, we do that our whole life, though.  You know, as we grew up, you know, as soon as we get to high school and we look back and the kids we were friends with when we were in elementary school, they’re in the same school, but we don’t talk to them anymore.  You know, we change and we evolve.

I think it’s a good thing and I think, as we get older, we get to make decisions about people who are toxic or who are sort of energy vampires and we have to make decisions about that.  It can actually be very freeing, like, “Oh my gosh, this is great.  I get a choice in this.  I don’t have to spend so much time with this person who’s really draining and doesn’t respect, you know, my choices.”   So, I think it can actually be really empowering if you choose.  Let me say this and then you can ask me another question, but I think that people forget that we have a choice, the emotions that we assign to something that’s happening in our life.

So we can assign that it feels bad to let go of a relationship or we can assign that it feels good and empowering and you know, exhilarating to let go of a relationship.  We’re constantly making those choices.  We think that we’re just a victim of emotion and that’s not the case.  We actually can make choices about what we’re feeling.

Andrea:  Hmm.  And I think when people have somebody like you to look to who say, “You’re gonna survive, it’s okay.  Keep moving.  This is sort of the light that you’re moving towards.”  I think it’s easier for people to be able to do that.

Angelique Rewers: Yeah, it is.  Well, and you know, it’s interesting that you use the word survive because I think that there’s a moment where people who are in business, there’s actually a shift that happens in entrepreneurial maturity where what feels like a survival energy gets replaced by a “Isn’t this journey amazing?”  Like, “Isn’t this fascinating what’s happening right now?”  And there’s a moment where there’s, sort of, instead of feeling like “I have to survive this,” there’s a new wave that washes over you of, “Oh, I don’t actually have to attach a survival energy to this.  I can actually choose that this is exhilarating; strap on my seatbelt, this roller coaster is fun!”

And you’ve seen that picture that I actually show of me on the roller coaster, the ten different times, and how I was on that roller coaster and I was screaming bloody murder and I was having this miserable experience.  And then I got off and I saw that picture, and I saw everybody else on the same exact roller coaster having a good time.  And I realized in that moment that I decided that I had to survive that roller coaster with my kids.  Everyone else chose to strap in and laugh their way through the roller coaster.  It was the exact same roller coaster, but I was in survival mode and everyone else was in this sort of exhilarated, “Oh my gosh, the wind is whipping through my hair” mode.

And so really what I would say to people, Andrea, so, I do encourage people that “You are going to make it through,” but more importantly what I want them to hear is that, “Choose it to be a different experience.”  You know, choose it not to be survival.  Choose it to be like, “I signed up to be an entrepreneur, and I am doing it, and this is amazing.  And anybody else would be so scared about this and I am badass, and I’m going to just do it.”  And, like, choose that experience.  And we get to choose that every day.  That goes back to what we started with, which is, you know, it’s constantly that choice of the life experience that we’re going to have.  And what I want more than anything I think is for people to be conscious of what they’re choosing.

Andrea:  Hmm.  I love that.  I love it so much.  I know exactly what you’re talking about, and I think it’s a hard choice for me personally, I am more empathetic.  I do struggle with all these things a little bit more maybe, but I have found the same thing to be true.  Okay, so for the listener, you need to know that Angelique, as much as we talked about mindset and experience and influence and that sort of thing, Angelique is really truly an expert in influencing when it comes to sales conversations and business ownership as a small business owner and all those things.

So, Angelique, I know that you have a conference coming up.  Every once in a while you do webinars.  And if anybody really wants to hear your expertise and see that in play and your strategic mindset play, that is a really great place to see that happen.  Can you tell us a little bit about what’s coming up?

Angelique Rewers:  Yeah, absolutely.  So, our website is thecorporateagent.com and as Andrea said, you know, we’ve been talking in this podcast today about the idea that you can have a big mission and a big message, but there has to be a way that you make it tangible and bring it into the world.  And the way that we bring it into the world is by teaching small business owners how to win big clients.  And sometimes those are the really big brands like Starbucks, Facebook, GE, Delta, and Bank of America and all of those.  And sometimes it’s colleges and universities, or government agencies, or mid-market companies, or even a big small enterprise in your backyard.

And so we teach small business owners how to get in front of those organizations, where to start, what to deliver, and how to close those sales, and how to keep those clients for the long term so that they keep buying from you.  So that’s really the tangible way that I bring my message into the world.  And so we do, we have some great trainings coming up in early December.  We’re going to be doing some complimentary trainings via Zoom online.  So, if you go to our website, thecorporateagent.com, if you download one of our resources on there, there some free swipe copy and things like that, then you’ll get on our list and you’ll know about it.

The other thing you need to know about is once a year we do a conference called the Real Deal.  It’s three days of us teaching business owners really how to be empowered in their marketing and their sales in the B2B space.  If they’re marketing to those B2B clients, those corporate clients.  It’s an unbelievable three days, it’s just so full of energy.  People leave walking on air because it’s a combination of just so much content.  They’re always just like, “This is incredible, this doesn’t feel like a conference; this is like a master’s degree in three days.”  But also it’s fun, it’s on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, and the community is unbelievable, and people just feel like “Where is this community been my whole entrepreneurial life?”

So, the event is called the Real Deal and the website is realdealevent.com.  You can also get to it through thecorporateagent.com; it says at the top of the page Real Deal. We would love to see you there.  People have literally come into that event thinking that they were going to go back and get a job because it just got too hard for them trying to figure out how to make their business work.  And they have walked out of there three days later already winning new clients because they knew what they were doing and they were sending emails and getting their business going again.

So it has literally saved people.  One person, and I hope to interview him soon, came to me and said, “Angelique, you literally saved my life because I was about to go get a job and I knew that if I got a job…” and he wasn’t being facetious, he said “It was going to kill me.  I would have had a heart attack.  I was going to have to be on antidepressants.  It literally was like going to just ruin my body because that’s how badly I didn’t want to do it.  I was getting so overwhelmed with depression, stress and you taught me how to fix it in three days.”

So it’s an amazing event, so if you do sell to corporate clients and you’re tired of trying to figure out these content strategies that were never designed for corporate clients to begin with, come spend three days with us and it’ll change your life.  It’ll be the best three days you’ve ever spent at a business conference.

Andrea:  I would agree with that.  We went to the Real Deal in 2018 and it was electric.  It really was.  There was, like you said, so much content, but then at the same time being around the people, meeting people and finding out what they’re doing.  And so if you are in the space, it’s where you need to be.  No doubt about it.

Angelique Rewers:  Well, thank you for that.  It’s so much fun too, it’s really great.  And this year, we’re on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, literally on the beach.  So, in June in Fort Lauderdale, it’s absolutely beautiful, and I’m all about energy and environment.  Like I have to be in beautiful space, like I’m just so impacted by that.  So for us to just find a venue that was so bright and airy, overlooking the ocean, which just felt really good and expansive and, you know, we use the ocean as a metaphor all the time because there is such an ocean of opportunity for people out there.  So it just felt very much in alignment.

Andrea:  Angelique, what tip or a piece of advice would you like to leave with the listener about, you know, the listener who wants to have a voice of influence?

Angelique Rewers:  Say yes, say yes.  People say “no” way too often and I know we’re told to say “no” to, you know… and you should say, you know, we all have to set boundaries.  You know, don’t take on yet another volunteer project at the school when you’re the only person volunteering for the third grade.  But say “yes” to your dream.  Say “yes” to your purpose.  Say “yes” to the experiences that are aligned with your vision.  Don’t say “I’m not ready for that yet.”  Take that out of your vocabulary.  Never again say, “I’m not ready.”  That’s ridiculous.  You were literally born ready.

So just say “yes” to things that are aligned with your vision.  At the end of the day, that’s the secret of people who are successful.  They say “no” to the stuff that is not in alignment and they say “yes” to all the things that are in alignment.  And they don’t give themselves these interdependencies, or “I’m not ready” crap and they don’t say, “Well, I can’t do that because…”  They say, “How can I make this work?”  And they say, “Yes,” that’s what they do.  And so that would really be, you know, my final words of advice, start saying “yes” to your vision and show up every day saying, “yes.”

Andrea:  Hmm.  Let that genie out of the bottle.

Angelique Rewers:  Let that genie out of the bottle.

Andrea:  I love it.  Thank you so much for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners.  Thank you for your impact on my life, on my business.  I’m truly grateful!

Angelique Rewers: Thank you!