Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Cut the Tie podcast. I'm your host, thomas Helfrich, and I'm on a mission to help you cut the tie to whatever it is holding you back from success. And today we're joined by Angela Belford. Angela, how are you today? Fantastic, how are you? I am delightful, borderline delicious, we don't know. Take a moment and introduce yourself, and what it is you do a moment and introduce yourself and what it is you do.

Speaker 2: 0:31

I'm Angela Belford. I embrace and I enjoy every moment of my ADD self and so I do a lot of things and people are like, oh my goodness, you do so many things and I'm like, no, I'm just old, you guys. So I have owned my own business with my business partner and husband for 26 years next month. That's also a big deal because I was 26 when I bought that company. So it's kind of feeling very, you know, half of my life. So I own a marketing agency, communication agency. It is now second generation. My daughter is also working in the company and helps do communication coaching. I do a lot of executive coaching for people that second generation moving up in their business, people wanting to start businesses.

Speaker 2: 1:12

I'm an author, I'm a speaker and probably my favorite title is Lala. So I have two grandchildren, two grandsons right now, peter and Henry and I had a friend long time ago that called me Angelala, and so that's my grandma name is Lala. So my youngest daughter. I have three, three adult children, and my youngest says if you actually want her to answer, you don't call her Angela, don't call her mom, call her Lala and she will answer literally every single time, so that's neat.

Speaker 1: 1:43

You know you get called a lot of names in your life. My favorite name I've ever been called is Daddy, so I think that's kind of the thing. Yeah, you get it. I definitely appreciate that. We'll talk about your journey a little bit and on that journey I'm sure you've had a few ties to cut to get to the success level you're at. Tell me what the biggest one was.

Speaker 2: 2:03

Tell me what the biggest one was. Well, so my journey is. The bullet points are that I grew up in four different families. I was a client of Salvation Army, so experienced homelessness, experienced hunger, lots of different insecurities, lots of different childhood traumas. And when you ask what's the moment that you cut the tie, there's so many different ones because I think I just I've imagined my life as like I was running on a beach and there were different ropes that were holding onto me and I would run and I would stop and I would have to cut one and then I would run some more and I would cut the next one.

Speaker 2: 2:41

So when I turned 18, I decided that my life had sucked and now that I was an adult, I was not going to let it suck anymore. I was 26 when I decided that I knew the only person in my family that was successful and not living in poverty and not on welfare was my uncle, who had a business. So when I was 26, I had the opportunity to buy a business. I did that, but the one that I really want to talk about is over the last several years I recognized that, running and trying to outrun my life, I had really embedded a lot of beliefs that I had learned and I had tried so hard. I'd been on a professional development, personal development journey for, I mean, 20 years and I came to realize that the drive that I had, the insatiable energy that I had, was actually from trying to outrun the belief. I'm not enough. No matter how hard I try, it's never good enough. To outrun the belief. I'm not enough. No matter how hard I try, it's never good enough.

Speaker 2: 3:48

And when I began to recognize how insidious that belief was and I had worked on it and I'd gone to counseling and I'd gone to all of these things, but I began to see that it was everywhere in my life, it was when you live with that belief. It's how you see the whole world. So then, my, you own a marketing agency. It's never enough. Like your staff, like, come on, you guys, we get to be better, we can be better, we can be better, which is good. And until it's not right, I had, I would pursue of excellence and and struggled with perfectionism. But as I watched my children become adults and struggled perfection, perfectionism, because they could never live up to my expectations, I realized I had to stop and I had to really unpack that and figure out what, why and how do I solve this? I'm not enough, and so that was a how did you solve it though?

Speaker 1: 4:44

Yeah, so great question. I, so that is a yeah. How did you solve it though?

Speaker 2: 4:46

Yeah, so great question. I wrote a whole book about that, so I'll try to summarize it down. This will be good practice. I'm giving this kind of talk a couple of times the next couple of weeks and I would say that the first thing I had to do is I had to stop running right and recognize that that was the belief that was driving me, and I had to.

Speaker 2: 5:08

I had always thought, oh, positive thinking, like we should just think our way out of it, we should just improve our mindset, and what I had to actually do is stop and like feel what was happening in my body with that, and I you know, my therapist would try to explain I need to feel my feelings. I didn't know what the crap that try to explain. I need to feel my feelings. I didn't know what the crap that meant. Like, of course I feel my feelings. Why do you think I'm yelling at you and now I want whiskey and I want to eat another brownie? Of course I feel my feelings. And she's like you're trying to outrun your feelings and so learning how to just sit with myself and like let everything come up and like that meant that there were a couple of days that I like cried a lot. There were some days that I was like I cried for 12 minutes and then I was fine, right, and I just I went through just a phase and it was probably six or eight months where I had to like, every time it came up that emotion, I would have to like pause and step out. Sometimes I did have to like hold it down for a minute because I had to finish the meeting I was in, right, and then I would step out and take lunch and really let all of those feelings come up, let all of that bubble up and stop pushing it down anymore. And as those bubbled up and I began to see where they were planted, in the lies that I had believed about myself, and so then I could begin to go like, ok, I believed that I was flaky. Well, it turned out, no, I was just undiagnosed ADHD for most of my half my life, right.

Speaker 2: 6:27

And then I figured out I literally had to write evidence. Okay, I'm going to be the defense attorney and I'm going to prove that I'm flaky. And now I'm going to be the prosecutor and I'm going to prove that you're not flaky. I flipped that, but anyway. And so anything that like that would come up. I would like go okay, maybe I am. That was the biggest strategy, that and it freaks out my clients when I take them through this then I really had to just be okay, like I could literally go okay, so what if you're flaky? Now what? Now, what does that mean? Is that bad? Is that a problem? Why is that a problem? Like, maybe it's not true, I've got the evidence. But then if it is true, who cares, who cares? And so then that was just such a deep acceptance of who I actually am and really like. Then I had to feel that deep, deep man, that's making my gut like whoo.

Speaker 1: 7:35

That's a better joke. If you cry, you get more air time. It's easy. You touched on something important there and I say it in my book a bunch is you know, that might explain it why you're flaky or whatever else, or ADHD, but it doesn't excuse it. It just gives you the place to start from and we use that a lot, like you know.

Speaker 1: 7:54

It's one of those things where I this year, my big tie to cut is adult ADHD. So I went and did the forward formal diagnosis. I'm starting with just supplements and then I'm going to move into whatever's next for that. I mean, I have a very specific use case around what I want to do with that. But the point being is I've made it an excuse forever of of it. But I'm starting to realize that us ADHDers we can run a marathon as fast as anyone and you get cheered the whole way because you're going so fast and it's amazing, how does he do that? Then you see the finish line and you can in like you hit a force field and you can't freaking get across it and it's like you know what, screw it. I'm gonna go run another marathon 25 miles because everyone cheered me there. No one's cheering me to go to that last mile and that's how I feel like it's like oh my god, there's the finish line. Yeah, I'm.

Speaker 2: 8:41

Well, and I will say that the idea of what the sorry, the I'm not good enough, what it caused me to look like was a workaholic, and in American society, and especially entrepreneurship culture, like that looks good. There's a whole lot of rewards Like you're providing for your family, ooh, you're in me and marketing agency I'm helping other people. There's so many rewards for doing this thing. And when you are recognizing that like the burnout is coming and there are days where I don't care, I know what I need to do and I cannot get it over the line, and those are when you really have to have the reckoning and this and you have to almost disconnect even the positive rewards that you get for being a workaholic, a perfectionism, all of those things, and you have to go like no, no, no, I'm still going to love myself and I'm still going to like accept who I am. Then when you do, then your brain like calms down and goes oh well, okay, if you're still gonna like be nice to me, because I would have clients. They were like no, no, angela, there's no way love is going to be the answer. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 2: 10:06

You're a business person, you have two degrees in business and you think love is the answer, and I'm like, I'm telling you will be so much more motivated, it will be so much deeper and so much real, because the person that yells at you the most, that's the harshest on you, is that voice in your head, right, and if you can get it to calm down, then you are. It's so much less draining and therefore you do have more energy and you can say, okay, well, what would happen if I step up to that, that finish line? What if I step over? What if I walk that last mile? Right, you still got the last mile done, right, even if you didn't race that last mile, if you just walked that last mile.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Agreed and that's where I like you know, as an author, you know 95% of it is procrastination. So that's like the process of writing, but at least for me. But as I'm finishing this book right and it's like I'm'm done, it was literally with the publisher. My wife read it and I'm, and she's like hey, I, I think you should do, and I take her input incredibly seriously because it's the most honest and it's polar opposite of me. And she's like you gotta, you gotta shorten it. Um, you gotta portray these things differently. People are gonna read this and not get. That's not true.

Speaker 1: 11:13

And I was like all right, so I pulled it back from the publisher. I'm like I need to fix things and so now I think it's going to come out of work product. But now I'm looking, I'm like I was at the finish line, I was about to get author's copy and now I'm back a mile again. I'm gonna have to go walk that last mile. But I'm like you know what I have to? Because it wasn't complete, it wasn't. So I was like, oh, it's hard, because I'm like I want to get up.

Speaker 2: 11:37

Yeah, well, I've worked with a couple of authors and one of them I literally said do you just want to get this over the line or do you want somebody to tell you what actually needs to be improved on it? And you really have to. You have to know yourself and trust yourself to be able to know do I really need to pull this back, or is this procrastination? In that case, what I love, the tip and tool I hope people hear is that you actually let somebody else check you, because if it was your own procrastination like I read it and it's still not right, it's still not right. It's still not right.

Speaker 2: 12:11

Man, that is hard, like sometimes. That is our procrastination, like perfectionism. We're going to risk, you know, rejection, all of that. But I think there's wisdom in then, surrounding yourself as somebody you can trust, to say, okay, I, I, you are going to be more proud of it now that you pulled it back. You know, and you probably learned a lot about yourself in that process. I would bet of that like no, look, I can pull it back, make it better, and look, I'm still going to finish. I think you're probably going to like trust yourself at such a deeper level.

Speaker 1: 12:42

No, no question. And the whole point of the book is is this move from fear, excuse black hole to this more big bang of vulnerability, gratefulness, and I'm like I'm not vulnerable enough in the in the story, I'm not taking enough accountability and and and that, and I was like I'm portraying her slightly incorrect where she's really kind of the driver of a lot of the things that you know, stuff that I miss. So the point being is incorporating some of those ideas in has been so valuable. Now I did share it to a dozen people who gave me some really good feedback. The one thing that they said, nicely, that I didn't get to my wife's like, hey, it's too long. I didn't occur until I started rewriting the first half of the ends because I was like, oh, my God, I want to be done with this. Reading this, it's too much. I'm like, oh, it's too fucking long, yeah, and so I'm like I'm going to go through and it might be a good GPT exercise of I want to shorten this to 40% of what's there.

Speaker 2: 13:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:30

What are the most impactful stories I have in here? And and just in like, without being repetitive, and I think it'll come out way better. It's like anything else, the more tight your content is. Anyway, it's the point with your, with your current, you just have this conversation, but is that you? You had this need that you're not enough and you can. You got to do more and be more, and it's mixed with ADHD and this procrastination piece which is just. If you don't have this out there, you can, you can check out, it's fine If you're an ADHD or you're understanding you probably are in relationship with somebody that has ADD, so keep listening, because they probably hear this.

Speaker 1: 14:04

If you don't have it understand what this is, what it is for the ADHD, or who takes all the information in at once and cannot organize it very well. Opposite of the other person, the procrastination piece, or the feeling that you're not enough, is very prevalent, and it's incredibly maddening for that person to feel like they can never, ever get off that hamster wheel themselves.

Speaker 2: 14:25

I remember I read this book and golly, it's been 15 years ago. But it was women with ADHD. And the one of the stories was about this woman and she's like I have I don't know. It was like a PhD in physics or something. I mean, it was a really impressive this bachelor's, master's, and then a PhD. And she was like I stand in front of my closet in tears because I cannot figure out how to organize my clothes. So how is it that I can solve these crazy hard problems? But things like getting a closet organized will just bring you to tears. And I started sobbing and I call mine and my friends and I'm just sobbing and she's like are you okay? Did you have a car accident? I don't know why I picked her. I still to this day do not know why it was her that I called her. But I'm like I just didn't even know it was.

Speaker 2: 15:16

I say I enjoy every minute of my ADHD until I don't realize there's a bug. I just think it's just a feature. You know, like it's a feature, not a. And then you go, oh, it's a bug. And then when it, when it erodes our self-confidence and when it, and when it just exacerbates our self-doubt then. Then you go okay. Well, I don't love that part.

Speaker 1: 15:38

You're, oh my gosh, like we were describing there. Like I do all our home repair and I get to the end of it and I see all the mess and the cleanup and I literally want to cry because I'm like it's overwhelming and I've gotten better about. I'm just going to start with just this one, five, four. I'm going to clean. I have to like every little bit, 1%, and my wife will come down and organize or we'll be building something that's organization driven, and I'll start to challenge her. I'm like you know what? No, just tell me what you need to build, don't explain why. And she's like well, I don't, I don't care why, cause I already know it's right. And I was like just tell me what to go do next, right now, cause that then I can execute and it's unbelievable. But if I'm left to it, holy cow, it's the most stressful thing in the world. Is the my closet? I would never show someone my closet. It's because I it is pure ADHD played out in front of me yes, I have.

Speaker 2: 16:26

I will tell you, the trick that I have learned is I will do things.

Speaker 2: 16:32

I have to. I have to put walls around it. So by that I mean like I'll have a box, or I will like I've cleaned out closets by being able to go, I'm just going to do one box, I'm just going to do one box, and then I make sure I celebrate that one box. And if I don't have a box, then what I'll do? I used to put a basket in. If I was in this room, I would put a basket at every door and anything that didn't go in this room I just put it in that basket. That way I couldn't walk to another room and I would just put it. And then I was like, okay, well, at least this room, everything that is in this room, belongs in this room. And then a different day I will work on that basket.

Speaker 2: 17:09

And there's people that have to finish. They have this insatiable need to finish, which I don't even understand how your brain works. I wish it did. But they're like how could you even start if you don't know that you can finish? And I'm like I don't know, this is what worked. And I, for a while I would have like well, you won't see me, I will not show the rest of my camera because I have boxes of like I need to get to that box. I don't have really a place for that box. Now my husband, I both have ADHD and so well, and I just saw this morning something that said we are attention deficit different. We don't have a disorder, which I have always thought, and I don't. Even people are like how do you people even function? I'm like pretty great actually.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Yeah, we just I don't like the word disorder, because the world was set up by people who didn't have it, because they were organized enough to do it. I'll leave you with this. The video cameras for any ADHD years are like the beach. So we go like the Caribbean beach you look out, it's gorgeous. You look back and it looks like terrible, like there's shanties, and that's that's the ADHD camera view. And then I won't move mine either, cause it could be better.

Speaker 2: 18:09

All right, tell me about some grace, grace for me, grace for the people around me. I have friends or clients that'll that'll like call me and talk about their husband like, oh I go.

Speaker 1: 18:28

Oh my gosh, it sucks that you have to be married to a human right and and the fact that they called you well, just as an adhd or we do not like the phone. We don't want to be on that phone.

Speaker 2: 18:38

I'm not that way, oh and.

Speaker 2: 18:40

I don't have that, that's. The other thing is that ADHD is not just one citizen Like. There is like a whole range, and I think we'll eventually figure out that everybody is on the spectrum at some level. And so it's just like because even people that claim to not have any kind of ADHD or anything, they can be like OCD and like, oh, I have to have my desk perfectly clean, we all got something, anyway, all that, so I have grace for myself, I have grace for the people around me.

Speaker 2: 19:06

When my daughter came to me and said was telling a story about figuring out at work that she felt like she wasn't lovable if she wasn't perfect, and she got pressed on this and, like mom, I think it's because you need to be perfect, pressed on this, and, like mom, I think it's because you need to be perfect.

Speaker 2: 19:24

And I could, in my own settledness, say to her yes, that's true, and I've apologized and I'll apologize again and I'll walk with you through this, because I didn't have to make it about me, because I already had grace for myself, because younger me didn't know what the crap she was doing, like she was doing the best she could. And now my daughter, I could walk with it, with her, and I could. I could demonstrate this to other people and I can teach them how to have grace by having grace for myself. Do I get it right every single day? No, no, no, no, I still, and I noticed that when I'm around other people that are fighting that this is my newest thing I've realized is that people that haven't gone through the healing and they're still driven by that need. I'm easily triggered by them and I like fall into their trap for a minute and then I go, oh wait a minute, hang on a minute, let's stop that. So I'm still on the journey.

Speaker 1: 20:12

It's amazing. What advice would you give to the listener?

Speaker 2: 20:24

stop and get to know yourself, like I think we are. You know, my book has a little blurb on it that says the guide for people who were told quit crying or I'll give you something to cry about. I think there's a whole population of people that were raised with that and then we all raised those kids. So there's a whole lot of our society that thinks that's a thing and it's not a thing. I think if you're the opposite and you're like a toxic positivity person, like no, no, just it's mindset, it's all that mindset, you have to first acknowledge that sometimes things do suck and so it's okay to say man, this sucks. Man, this is hard. I'm gonna be sad for a minute or an hour or a day if you need to, but just like be okay with, like getting to know yourself, allowing yourself to have some feelings, and then have a lot of grace and compassion. Man, you're still up on this world. We're not visiting you in the cemetery, so you still got time.

Speaker 1: 21:12

Right, that's a good point. All right, so rapid fire here. Who gives you inspiration?

Speaker 2: 21:18

My children, my grandchildren.

Speaker 1: 21:22

They are Almost the children, better than grandchildren.

Speaker 2: 21:25

Well, it's funny because there are so many things like with my children that I wanted them to be perfect because I made it me about me right. And so with my grandchildren I actually go like, oh, like I'm not going to let my like it's mind blowing to me. I can remember needing my two-year-old daughter to be perfect because that meant something about me, and that is laughable when I look at my two-year-old grandson. And so they do inspire me because I think and I've had a couple of people that have used this and I say, if I wouldn't say it to Peter and Henry, I'm not going to say it to myself so they do inspire me in that how I treat them is more. I've learned to treat myself gentle, and I think when you're raising kids, you're still on your journey. You make it all about you, which we need to stop.

Speaker 2: 22:20

You're a first time parent, like they're a first-time child, so the best business advice you've ever gotten- man I would love to say it's hire fast or hire slow, fire fast, and that is good advice, and I'm not very good at taking it. I take it super duper seriously. I would say that the best advice is to, if you're going to be in business, do what you can to reduce the amount of monthly spend that you need. So really curb your lifestyle and make sure you're not running out of debt, because I've had to make bad decisions on business because I had a car payment and a credit card payment and all these things and I had to take the client and so getting out of debt and living a lifestyle that makes sense. That said, anybody that knows me knows I travel like a crazy person, so I also believe in multiple streams of income. I'm not just putting all my eggs in one basket, so one stream of income pays for all my play. So, yeah, I guess that's two.

Speaker 1: 23:22

Like that Reduce the debt and then create one stream and then another. So if anyone goes down, you got savings and I love that. What's that must read book?

Speaker 2: 23:35

Interesting. I have always said Think and Grow rich. And then about two years ago I read it with a group of female life coaches and I didn't realize how misogynistic it was. So I still think it's got a lot of great wisdom. So I will say Traveling Light, free Yourself from the Crap in your Head. By Angela Delbert.

Speaker 1: 23:59

So, listen, it's shame versus emotion. This is the one time you can make it all about you. That's fine, I'm okay with it. Yeah, I think through this book and here's why if there was a time in your life you could go back to and you can change, when would you do that and what would you change or do?

Speaker 2: 24:16

It would only be the times that I was a jerk to people so like I.

Speaker 2: 24:24

There's a story that comes up and I share it in my book about how there was a very trusted member of my staff, and this is when I I've wandered off a couple of times and ran other companies while somebody else ran my company times and ran other companies while somebody else ran my company, and so I was running a different company and there was somebody that was trusted and I was disrespectful to them in front of everybody and luckily one of their team members called me out on it and I was able to apologize to them in person.

Speaker 2: 24:50

But I think in my drive to I'm not enough. I treated people badly and so anything it would be, it would be like I would go back and just fix how I treated them. And yet also, as soon as I say that, my brain's like yeah, but you wouldn't have gotten to demonstrate that incredible vulnerable leadership and I earned so many more points by having to stand there and like in tears, go like I can't believe I did this and I'm very sorry and I've apologized for it privately, and now I'm apologizing, so maybe I wouldn't change anything, maybe I'm all part of the journey.

Speaker 1: 25:25

Things happen for you, not to you, right, that's right. If there was a question I should have asked you today and I didn't, what would that question have been and how would you answer it?

Speaker 2: 25:37

So I'll do it like this. I ask this question a lot is, I say what is something that you're grateful to 18 year old you? What decision they made or something they did? And I'm very happy with the choice I made in Life Partner and the choice to invest in my education, even though it didn't make a lot of sense. I'm very happy with 18 year old me for that. And my follow up to that is let's think about 10 years from now, that version of you. What are they grateful for? And I promise they're going to be grateful for the how seriously I take my health. Like I, I make regular like adjustments to supplements and exercise and and. And exercise to me is not going to the gym, so it's walking, it's biking, it's biking, it's finding ways to be active. And next I want to find ways to. Weightlifting is supposed to be a thing with women over 40 and I hate it so much. So I'm trying to find a way. But that's what 60 year old me will be. I'm thankful that I really took my health seriously.

Speaker 1: 26:37

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining today.

Speaker 2: 26:39

Absolutely. How do people get ahold of you and who should get a hold of you? I love, love, love working with second generation business owners as an executive coach. It is so much fun for me and I'm everywhere at Angela Belford, so AngelaBelfordcom and all the socials you can always find me. I have a very fun podcast called Be Freaking Awesome that I co-host with my daughter, sammy, so there are some really fun, really vulnerable. We do messy middle a lot, so it's not polished and pretty always. It's sometimes we're in the middle of learning and growing. So but Angela Belford, all the places- Awesome, thank you.

Speaker 1: 27:21

I Awesome Thank you. I appreciate you.

Speaker 2: 27:23

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 27:25

And for anyone still listening I appreciate you Listen, get out there, go follow the podcast on Apple and Spotify and go out there and cut a tie to something holding you back and unleash the best version of yourself. Thanks,