How to Make a Living Doing What You Love with Angela Argentina

Transcription

How would you like to build a business doing what you love? To not just make living, but make an amazing living doing what you love? Well, that’s what we talk about in this podcast.

In today’s episode, we are speaking with Angela Argentina, who has mastered how to do this. It’s special what she’s been able to do after leaving a career in advertising once she realized that it was not her true calling.

She traveled around the world, had some cool insights and epiphanies, and transformed her approach to living and doing what she loves to do. Now, she’s a creative entrepreneur, an alternative healer, and she’s the founder of Kindred Kitchens and Kindred Spirits, which she’ll tell us a little bit more about in this interview.

What you’ll enjoy about her interview today is that she comes from a very intuitive place of growing her business and doing what it is that she feels that she’s here to do. And I think a lot of times, intuition is our best coach. You know, that gut feeling that tells you to do this, or not do that.

100% of the time, if we actually listen to it, it is the right guidance. Whether you consider that guidance from your higher self, or from guides that are invisible that are helping you along this journey, that intuition is going to always give you the exact right answer. It’s just a matter of listening to it.

Angela’s going to help us tap into that a little bit in this interview. She’s also going to share what she has learned from advertising and how she now applies it to her business in terms of messaging in her Facebook posts and writing copy that connects with people.

No matter what business you’re in, being able to communicate in an effective way is very important. She’s going to share a framework that she never even thought of until I asked her the question in this interview about how she breaks down that process. If you write that stuff down and work through it, your communication will be a lot more effective.

With that said, let’s bring Angela onto the show and dig into it. Angela, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast.

 

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Angela:                       Thank you for having me.

Yuri:                How’s it going? How’s life?

Angela:                       Things are good. Busy as usual, but I guess that’s not something to complain about as an entrepreneur.

Yuri:                It’s good, as long as you’re busy with stuff you want to be doing.

Angela:                       Exactly.

Yuri:                For our listeners who don’t know much about you, how do you describe what and why you do what you do?

Angela:                       I am a creative entrepreneur. I am an artist: a performing artist, a healing artist, and food to me is also an art. I do a lot of work with food, which is my newest business venture: Kindred Kitchens. I’ll tell you a little bit about that after, but I also teach yoga and meditations, and I’m an alternative healer and Reiki master.

Yuri:                Nice. Is most your work offline and in-person? Do you compliment that with stuff you’re doing online as well?

Angela:                       It depends on what you consider work. I do a lot on social media, which I guess constitutes as work in that it does get me business. But a lot of my work is meeting up with the community and working with people one-on-one. But sometimes, even with Reiki, it doesn’t have to be in physical contact with the person, so it is a bit of a mix-and-match. But yes.

Yuri:                It’s funny, because people ask, “Do you have an online business?” Well, it doesn’t matter. If you use the internet to grow your business, whether it’s online or offline, you’re still using the internet because that’s probably the most effective platform to be using.

What have you found to be the most effective way for you to use social media, or even your blog, to generate buzz and get people interested in working with you in-person?

 

Leveraging social media and attracting clients through your passion

Angela:                       To be honest, it’s more about what I do passionately than how I promote my business that gets me clients. I am active with yoga online, and I’ve got a big yoga following. I also post a lot of my food recipes and have three meet-up groups here in Toronto, so that also helps generate buzz and get people out. But people just generally see what I do and they’re inspired by it.

Yuri:                That’s the best way to attract people, because you’re just being yourself and attracting the right people because of that.

Angela:                       Yes, and word-of-mouth, but I do get random people messaging me a lot on either Instagram or Facebook, just because they see my posts through friends and stuff. It’s through the grapevine.

Yuri:                Very nice. That’s good. How did you get started in this space?

 

The transition out of advertising and into the healing space

Angela:                       About 10 years ago I was working in advertising, which was not aligned with who I am or what I want to do. I worked in another ad agency in Northern Ireland, and realized it really wasn’t what I wanted to do.

Then I started traveling, and I’ve been traveling non-stop. Well, I stop. I ground myself for a little bit and then I travel again. But it was during my travels that I started exploring more of what I wanted to do and not what I was expected to do. And it eventually led me to all these different opportunities, like the performing and stuff, which I probably would never have gotten into if I had done it here.

And my mother passed away about four years ago.

Yuri:                Sorry to hear that.

Angela:                       That was a big shift for me. I didn’t know anything about Reiki at that time, but even before I had discovered it, I had this ability to help heal people with my hands. When she was unconscious, I came down from Panama and worked on her to the best of my ability.

It brought her back to consciousness for a few days. I didn’t like the way that the hospital was treating her with medicine and not with love. That shifted me into a holistic mindset. The more I got into integrative nutrition and started going down that path, all these opportunities and people appeared and led me to where I am today.

Yuri:                Awesome. Everything happens for us, right?

Angela:                       Exactly.

Yuri:                We just make the most of it all. What are some of the big lessons life-wise or business-wise that you’ve learned from traveling to more than 30 countries?

 

Doing what you love, alignment, high vibrations, and positivity

Angela:                       To do what you love, because if you don’t do what you love, you’re just wasting your time and your energy. The more I align with what I’m doing, the higher my vibration is, and the more I attract success. I’m big on vibrations, personal frequencies, and chakras.

 Yuri:                Abraham-Hicks?

Angela:                       Yes, Abraham-Hicks, but I think it’s almost general knowledge now – the chakras and everything.

But just being positive. And how can you be positive if you’re going to work every single day and hating your job? You’re not going to be attracting all these wonderful things into your life. And while I was traveling, my first trip to Thailand was when I was working in advertising. I was trying to escape, and I first experienced all these serendipitous events, or synchronicities, which I thought was magic.

I had some life-changing experiences there, like having my passport, money belt, and everything returned to me. That opened my eyes to the magic of the world, you could say. The more aligned I am, and by doing what I love, these synchronicities happen to me so much that it doesn’t even surprise me anymore.

When you start noticing these things, that means that you’re aligned and you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

 Yuri:                That’s awesome. What advice to you give to someone who’s trying to figure this out? They’re not sure if they’re doing what they love, or maybe there’s a gnawing feeling inside of them. How do you guide them?

Angela:                       To get out of the situation they’re in. It’s so hard when you’re inside of whatever it is that is making you feel trapped. Maybe you don’t even realize that you feel trapped. But if something’s eating away at you, it’s because something’s not right.

A lot of us haven’t tuned into listening to our inner voice, or our subconscious, or even our gut. But when you’re out of that context, and just free, then you open yourself up to, “What do I want to do with my time right now?” Until you remove yourself from what’s expected, what’s normal, or your habits, I don’t think you’ll be able to find that. You’re just acting on what you think you’re supposed to do.

Yuri:                It’s true. You’re too close to the bark of the tree, so you can’t even see the forest. You need to step back a bit and take that time.

Angela:                       It’s like meditation. The art of meditation can be different for everybody, but it’s removing yourself from here and now and being objective. How can you be objective when you’re amidst it all? Even just going out and walking is enough to clear your mind and realize, “Wow, this is what’s bothering me.”

 

Angela’s advertising background and framework for communication

Yuri:                Totally. Were there lessons during your time in advertising that you brought to what you’re doing now and have served you well?

Angela:                       Yes. I’m totally immune to advertising now, which is awesome.

Yuri:                What does that mean?

Angela:                       It means that advertising doesn’t work on me. I can see an ad and it doesn’t affect me the way that it affects most people, because I’m so used to dissecting them. I know who they’re talking to and what they’re trying to say.

It also has helped me promote my business better.

Because I worked as an art director and a copy writer, and in that, we did multimedia campaigns and stuff, I’m very diverse in how I can communicate my message. I can do it verbally, but also visually. I have graphics skills, but also writing skills and the gift of gab.

Mainly, as an entrepreneur, the most important thing is to be yourself. At least for me. I don’t know the nature of everybody’s business. Mine is not super-formal, so I have the privilege of being myself, but I think that’s usually what people are attracted to. If you’re trying to find your niche, the best thing to do is just be true.

Yuri:                Well, it’s human to human, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re B to C or B to B anymore. People want to do business with humans, and you must be yourself. Otherwise, you’re just going to attract the wrong people, and it’s not going to be good.

Angela:                       Exactly.

Yuri:                So with your understanding of advertising and the creative process, when you have a message you want to communicate, what’s the framework that you go through?

It’s probably so natural to you now, but if you were to teach this to someone, or look at someone’s Facebook or Instagram post and dissect it, what are some of the elements that people should be considering with their messaging to be more effective?

Angela:                       It is very natural for me, so I don’t go through these steps anymore. But first you’d want to outline the key point and the message you’re trying to convey.

Then how you’re going to convey it. You must know who you’re talking to, because that’s going to determine your tone of voice and how you approach it. Know who your audience is and what they currently think and feel.

What do you want them to think and feel by receiving this message? And what do you want them to do? So, what’s the outcome?

As naturally as you can, form that up into one little message with some sort of call to action, and you have yourself a nice little ad. Put it on a pretty picture and slap on a logo or a website, and bam, there you go. Sold.

Yuri:                Awesome. With social, what do you find when you look at some of the posts that have been better received or successful than others? What are some commonalities?

Are there certain images that you use that are more native to the platform? Is there anything that you can, based on experience, forecast? Like, “Hey, I this I think will do better than something else?”

Angela:                       I find that the posts with the most engagement or reactions have me in them. So, people like me. It’s usually when I’m doing something like yoga, or when I was doing my fitness competition and constantly posting my progress. Things like that inspire people.

I have been told by many people that I have great energy, and people just like my positive outlook on stuff. There’s always some sort of positive spin to everything.

Yesterday, I made a post about how I’ve been flying at 100 miles per hour because I’m leaving for Bali next week. It was a post of me standing on my hands in a yoga studio. I said something like, “It’s really important to take some time to breathe, especially when you feel that you have no time to breathe. And this is what I do. I like to find my balance by standing on my head.”

Then I ask a little question as to what they like to do to find their balance. That was a good one.

Yuri:                That’s very cool. As you’ve moved from advertising to your current line of work, what has been one of the biggest challenges that you’ve had to overcome during the process, and what has that taught you?

 

The “security” of a steady paycheck, promoting yourself, and constant growth 

Angela:                       Well, the hardest thing in the beginning was dropping that security, which I don’t think that there was a security anyways. That whole security blanket thing is just an illusion that people have because somebody’s giving them a paycheck.

Yuri:                Which can easily be taken away, just like that.

Angela:                       Just run.

Just not having the security of a solid paycheck coming in was initially the scariest thing. I think you must be able to go out there and promote yourself, or have somebody do it for you. I’m good at that. I had a part-time job bartending when I first started doing it, and I got a lot of my clients who are still with me today from working in a bar.

I worked the day shift because that’s when all the business people would go in, and I’d have my business cards. There are always opportunities. You can go to different meetups or networking events. There are so many ways to get yourself out there, but you must do it. You can’t just sit at home and expect things to come to you.

Yuri:                No. In which case, you would just be working for somebody else.

Angela:                       Exactly.

Yuri:                That’s why we entrepreneurs are very different. We’re a different breed.

Angela:                       We are.

Yuri:                Have you felt this entrepreneurial spirit since you were young?

Angela:                       Yes. I always wanted to work. My first real job was when I was 16 and still in high school because I wanted to work. It was in a kitchen. It’s funny, because now I’m going back to that whole food aspect.

I learned early on that being a chef or working in a restaurant was not the career I wanted. But I didn’t know that you could do all this different stuff with food, which is what I’m doing now.

My longest job working for a company has been about a year and three months. I always take what I can. I grow. I move up in the company, go somewhere else, and learn more. That’s just my nature.

I’m always trying to improve my skills and upgrade. If you’re not an entrepreneur, that works against you, because then you become over-qualified. I think that I’m a forever student. I’m an entrepreneur, but I’m always going to be learning.

Yuri:                That’s great.

I don’t know many entrepreneurs that have done well for themselves that don’t have growth as one of their biggest values.

It’s one thing to rely on someone else to just give you paycheck to do the minimum every day. But like you said, as an entrepreneur you must grow, build your skill set, move on to bigger things, and add more value.

I think entrepreneurship is the ultimate spiritual journey. You learn so much about yourself and you grow. It’s awesome.

Angela:                       Yes. And it opens so many doors.

 

Time management, ambition, loving what you do, and hiring out for the rest

Yuri:                Yup. Absolutely. What do you think is the number one skill entrepreneurs must have for lasting success?

Angela:                       Time management and ambition. You must be self-motivated to get stuff done. It’s not just going to happen because you can talk to people or whatever. You have to be driven to go out and do something because you want to make it happen, not because you think that there’s some monetary reward.

A lot of the opportunities I’ve had have come from doing something else for something unrelated, and then that opened doors. You have to be, like you said, driven to better yourself. Along that journey is when all these opportunities will come and cross your path.

Yuri:                So let me ask you a question that I haven’t asked anyone, because I think you’re in a unique space to answer it. How do you balance the ambition to work hard with allowing the universe to provide what you want?

Talking about vibration and alignment, if you’re in alignment and high-vibration, things just happen, right?

Angela:                       Yes.

Yuri:                So how do you balance sitting around all day and doing nothing, waiting for that to happen, with the ambition to work hard?

The people that I know who are into the spiritual vibration stuff have this weird thing with hard work. I’m not saying hard work in a grind and hustle way, but I’m just saying that they feel they can just do whatever they want, without structure or anything, and stuff is just going to come to them.

From your perspective, how do you balance that “allowingness” to come into your life while still being ambitious and working hard towards what it is you want?

Angela:                       My answer for that is quite easy. I love what I do. So I’m doing it, I get excited about the end result, and that raises my vibration. And then I’m going out and doing these things. I don’t know anybody who leads their life in the way that I do.

I’m literally led by intuition; it helps me save so much money. It’s hard for me to even do colds for people, like in terms of food stuff, because I’ll go out and I’ll know to go somewhere, and then I go there, and everything that I need is on sale. It’s bizarre, but that’s just because I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s just become really strong.

When I get really excited about something, things literally just appear. And it’s because I’m aligned with what I want to do. The hard work is invoicing. I am so creative.

Yuri:                You don’t love invoicing?

Angela:                       I hate that.

Yuri:                It’s the best.

Angela:                       The little bits that slow me down actually cause a block in my flow because I hate doing it. And it’s not even hard. It’s just so tedious to me that I don’t want to do it.

I hired an assistant to do those tasks. She’s a virtual assistant, I found her on Upwork, in case anybody wants to find a personal assistant. She’s lovely. She sets her rate and stuff like that, but it has saved me.

She also helps with my social media. When I lost my phone, was traveling, and was posting a yoga challenge, I still had my computer so I could send her stuff and she totally saved my ass.

That’s how you can still do what you want to do, keep your vibration up, and just delegate.

 

The Rapid Five

Yuri:                Delegate and elevate. That’s what it’s all about.

This has been fun. I want to jump into the Rapid Five. So five rapid fire questions. You have no idea what they are, but our listeners might. They’re the insiders.

Whatever comes top of mind is probably the right answer, since your very intuitive anyway. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

 Angela:                       My biggest weakness is that I try to do too much. I’m having to set my boundaries and be a little firmer about them because as an energy worker and an empath, and just humanitarian, I always want to help people. I will sometimes spread myself too thin.

And when I am spread too thin, I’m not at my best to be helping other people. It is completely necessary, especially as an energy worker or anybody that works helping other people, that you be firm and not take on too much. Love yourself first.

Yuri:                Totally. What’s your biggest strength?

Angela:                       I would say my positive outlook on life and creativity.

Yuri:                Very nice. Number three, what’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at to grow your business?

Angela:                       Let’s see. I don’t know. I have a few businesses on the go. But right now, I am focused a lot on my food. And I’m posting. I’ve got so many food things coming up. I’m hosting events and people are asking me for meal plans, so it’s kind of growing on its own. And I’m going to Bali to do raw vegan chef training.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. You’re learning or you’re teaching?

Angela:                       I’m learning to bring that skill set up. I was a line cook and I am just a very creative cook in general. But I haven’t mastered the raw things yet, and I just feel like that there’s a lot of potential there.

Yuri:                I was big into raw for a while 12 years ago.

Angela:                       Wow.

Yuri:                And the desserts especially, man, so good.

Angela:                       Yes.

Yuri:                So good. There’s a lot of good stuff. I’m sure you’ll enjoy that. Number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Angela:                       First thing in the morning I drink a glass of water with apple cider vinegar in it. Some people do lemon. I like apple cider vinegar. Before I go on the internet, I give myself a little bit of down time, plan my day, or just listen to some binaural beats to get myself grounded and channeled.

I also have an amazing view. I live in a penthouse, and I overlook the entire skyline of Toronto. I don’t know anybody with a nicer view than me. Bragging a little bit. But I usually wake up right before the sun rises. I’m a product of the sun. I wake up and do a time lapse of the sun rise every morning.

Yuri:                Like on your phone?

Angela:                       Not every morning. Sometimes. Yes, or on my iPad. It’s easy. I just set time lapse and then I post it to Facebook. And it’s like, “While you were sleeping.”

Yuri:                That’s awesome.

Angela:                       It’s a beautiful start to the day to just appreciate everything that’s around you.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. Number five, complete this sentence, I know I’m being successful when…

Angela:                       When others are inspired to work with me.

Yuri:                Very nice. There we go guys. Angela Argentina, thanks so much for joining us on the Healthpreneur podcast.

Angela:                      My pleasure. Thank you.

Yuri:                Yeah, for sure. Where is the best place for people to follow you online and inquire about your services?

Angela:                       My blog is AngelaArgentina.com, and my Instagram handle is Angela_Argentina. And if anybody’s interested in awesome plant-based nutrition, workshops, catering, and all that fun stuff, KindredKitchens.ca is where it’s at.

Yuri:                Wicked. Angela, thanks again for taking the time to join us and bringing your awesome spirit and energy to this interview. It’s been a lot of fun.

Angela:                       Awesome, thank you. Have a great one.

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Yuri’s Take

I hope you enjoyed that interview. I know I did. I don’t know if you recognize this, but I’m a very spiritual person. I’m a big believer in vibration and energy. It helps that my wife is very much into that as well.

We’re always talking about this stuff. I believe that if you are doing things that are sucking the life out of you and your energy is low, you can’t attract good things into your life. More money, more success, more fulfillment, more joy, more happiness – those are all high vibration manifestations.

You need to raise your energy to raise your vibration. And one of the best ways of doing so is doing what you love. This is the balance of the modern human experience; how you balance doing what you love with what you need to do.

For instance, I’ve got three young boys. I don’t always want to do what they want to do. My higher self says, “Hey, this is what we want to do.” If you’re a parent, you can probably recognize that sometimes there’s a bit of compromise. But you want to get yourself into a state where you’re feeling upbeat, happy, optimistic, and joyful as much as possible.

When you feel that way, good things come to your life. And as Angela talked about in this interview, there are so many cool synchronicities that happen in her life now that they’re not even a surprise anymore. They’re just expected.

That’s what happens when you’re in that zone. You don’t have to follow the same beliefs that I have in respect to this, but that’s just the way the world works. That’s the way the universe works. Like brings upon like. The things that we focus on, we attract to us.

And if we’re happy, or joyful, if we’re doing something we love, then we bring more of that stuff into our life.

My challenge for you today is to, on a day to day basis, check in with yourself. Ask yourself, “Am I happy? Am I joyful? Am I procrastinating on things because maybe they aren’t the right things for me to be doing?”

That’s a sign that maybe somebody else should be doing it for you, or you shouldn’t be doing it at all. Do your best to follow your guidance, your internal compass, your intuition, to move you down that path of, “Yes, this is what I should be doing. This is what I love to be doing.”

For me, I segued from just doing the health and fitness stuff into Healthpreneur because I knew that’s where my evolution was going. I had to follow that, because I knew that there were only so many more times I could talk about the same health and fitness stuff.

I still create content for our business on the health and fitness side. But I also knew that at a deeper level, I was called to help other business owners in our space elevate themselves so that, collectively, we could help more people.

If I can help you become more impactful and build a better business, that helps more people.

If my selfish goal is to help a billion people transform their lives; whether it’s health, their life in general, or their business, I can’t do that alone. And that’s why I started Healthpreneur. To share what I know and coach the right people to a higher level, so they can impact more people and live the life they deserve in the process.

There’s no point of being a martyr. There’s no point in sacrificing your happiness or your life in the service of others.

You need to shine your lights. Don’t surround yourself with people who want you to dim it. You need to show up every single day, to the best of your ability, as the bright light that you are. When people around you are more dim and doom and gloom, continue shining bright because maybe that’ll rub off on them. And if it doesn’t, who cares?

Just kep doing you and that’s all you got to do. So that’s why I do what I do. I hope why you do what you do is because you love doing it, and because it makes a difference in people’s lives.

That’s what I’m going to leave you with today.

Two final things:

Subscribe to the Healthpreneur Podcast if you haven’t already. Click on the subscribe button on iTunes. And remember to grab a copy of Health Profit Secrets over at HealthpreneurBook.com. It’s the Bible, if you will.

Think of it as the short, condensed, one hour – not even one hour – read that will give you the fundamental principles, the secrets, that you need to know to grow a successful health and fitness business, especially in the modern day and age. Grab that for free, and just cover cost of shipping.

In our next episode on Friday, I’ve got my good buddy, Ben Greenfield, on the show. We’re going to have a lot of fun. It’s going to be a great interview. Ben’s an amazing guy.

If you’ve never met him, I think our conversation will bring that through. Next week, we’ve got a couple great guests, including Lori Kennedy, who is another amazing Torontonian doing some great stuff in the wellness business space.

Lots of great stuff coming your way. Don’t miss a beat. But for now, go out there, continue to be great, do great, and I will see you in our next episode on Friday.

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Follow Angela Argentina At:

https://angelaargentina.com/
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