We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angel Phoenix a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Angel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
Just a little over a year ago, I viscerally remember sitting on the cusp of ‘should I stay or should I go’, with the rabid taste of f*ck entrepreneurship forever, floating like spoiled creme on the roof my mouth. I was probably on my period or getting close it, because this is typically the time I can’t lie to myself (even when I try). No matter the reason rage sets in, entrepreneurship can’t possibly be sunshine and daisies every single day. It is a beautiful, remarkable and rewarding pursuit but it also pushes us to the brinks of our limits in the process. So even though entrepreneurship has provided me with some of the most formative years of my life, the shaping of my identity has come at the cost of me being relentlessly burned alive – or what sick optimists like me will say, ‘being forged in flames’. ☻ And boy oh boy, has that heat tested me time and time again. Anytime I am feeling a lil worse for wear, I entertain the thought of getting a ‘regular job’ and feel instantaneously nauseous…affirming I would rather drive myself crazy for the sake of my dreams, than burn myself out to fulfil someone else’s craving.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hiya! My name is Angel Phoenix and I am the motherload of all things multi passionate. If you look creative maniac up in the dictionary, you’ll find my face blazed across the page like the poster child for all things *possibility*. I have been making and shaking it up since 16 when I started my first business and realised the future of the internet was where it was at. Since that fateful fist’s worth of years where the entrepreneurial bug bit HARD, I’ve done a lot. These days, my main gig is Social Media Slay, an international social media school I founded and facilitate, plus a full scale creative agency for weirdos with big dreams, Aquarian Anarchy Creative Business. A few years in lockdown only reinforced just how crucial social media marketing and content creation are to general business, but it was the dramatic change in the science of attention that prompted me to dig deeper into how I could support people and professionals to be more intentional, experimental and experiential with their work. These days, you’re not just fighting the realities of content saturation in a flooded market with the focus capacity of a goldfish: you’re simultaneously stuck mitigating the individual identity crisis each social media app is living out loud. Things are messy in the digital world, and I decided to get more aggressive with my learning and more ninja with my application. I rewrote the entire social media course to meet the paradigms of today, went ham on refining technical and creative skills, plus … decided to pour myself into philanthropy. Fast forward to right meow, I built an animal rescue in Bali and at the time of publication I will have had around 200 dogs and cats come through our doors – all self funded BTW. I secured a sprawling property in Ubud, where I am building a major facility for animals to be rescued, rehabilitated and rehomed. In addition to that, I’ve attached myself to might collaborative efforts plus invested in some super cool female fronted projects in the female body literacy and female financial literacy spaces. Next month, my page goes live on the PornHub Sexual Wellness Centre where they’ve made me their resident maternal sexual health educator. Did I mention multipassionate?
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Never NOT plan for a pandemic. I thought I had the ‘expected the unexpected’ thing down pat, but never ever ever did I think to include contingency plans for a global pandemic. And I had to close one of my businesses in response to that! Devastating was an understatement. I’m like a doomsday prepper for business now!
How’d you meet your business partner?
A few years ago, I walked into a personal development retreat on the east coast of Australia. Little did I know I would be walking into meeting one of the most important cosmic collisions of my lifetime. We had a bit of sharing circle, and couldn’t peel my eyes away from this one woman – what seemed to be fragile bird energy – wrapped under a blanket where she seemed to be hiding 1000 juicy secrets. I wanted to badly to sit her down and ask her a million questions! The little she shared fascinated and hooked me in like a hungry fish. Coraline (also known as Coco Dee) became one of my closest friends and confidantes, before booking into one of my highest paying offerings under my mentorship opportunities. Coco showed me that failing forward is a super power and that absolutely anything is possible with the right network. Since then, we’ve not only watched each other birth babies and supported each other in raising children, but she has proven to be my biggest inspiration, my safe space, my crazy partner in crime and my co-visionary for everything we’re cooking up. Just goes to show you that luck in business isn’t just timing, but the serendipitous and synchronistic dance of stars meeting to form a constellations.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/angelinbali
Image Credits
Stepha Doyle https://www.stephadoyle.com