About Angelique Rewers
I’m Angelique Rewers and, on last check, there’s only one other person on the planet with that name, which is pretty cool. I’m a mother of 12-year-old twin boys, a wife — married to my high school sweetheart and best friend of nearly 30 years, a dog lover, a die-hard Baltimore Ravens fan (our dog’s name is Raven), a wildly driven entrepreneur, a globetrotter, and a fierce champion for small business owners.
You can find me online at BoldHaus.com | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Why Did You Become an Entrepreneur?
A strong inner drive that was turning into frustration. I was working incredibly hard in my corporate role, but the politics, red tape, and all around nonsense were exhausting. And the bottom line was that I wasn’t being fairly compensated for the contributions I was making. So at that point I had to decide, am I going to dial back my efforts? Or am I going to create a situation where I’m in control of my total reward structure? However, I don’t have an “off” switch or even a lower gear. When I’m in, I’m all in. So, the only choice I really had was to create my own company.
How Do You Deal With Fear?
Two ways. The first is that I often tap into things in my life that have caused even more fear than whatever fear I’m facing at that moment.
For example, I’ve had two medical scares in my life that were both terrifying. One was right after the birth of my twins. I was unconscious during the emergency C-section, and woke up more than a full day later. I had yet to see my twins at that point, but my health was failing. The fear that I would never see or hold my boys was way scarier than anything I could possibly face as an entrepreneur. Simply remembering that level of fear puts everything else into perspective in a nanosecond.
Second, I try to remember that the whole point of all of this is for the experience itself, and do my best to stay in that observer role. When it’s all said and done, I genuinely and deeply want the story of this particular lifetime to be rich with anecdotes. When I read my story back from the other side, I want it to be laugh-out-loud funny. And heartwarming. And for there to be twists and turns. If we don’t do anything that scares us or challenges us, that sure makes for an awfully boring story.
How Do You Deal With Rejection?
I was mercilessly bullied in my tween years. So, the fear of rejection kept me playing small and safe for many years. Because when you’re young, rejection wounds, and causes you to change how you show up in the world. That’s very sad, and we need to take that much more seriously as a culture. We need to do more to teach children and young people how to deal with rejection so that it doesn’t cause them to dampen the light and magic that makes them who they are. The whole world suffers exponentially because people aren’t living to their potential.
With that said, at this point in my life, I am very clear on a few things. The most important of which is that rejection is not personal. Rejection is not about you, it’s about what’s being triggered in that other person, and that’s not ever something you can control. What you can control is living your life on purpose. And I’m very clear on my purpose. And on who I am and who I am not.
What’s the Name of Your Company? What Exactly Does Your Company Do, How Do You Help People?
Our company is BoldHaus and we train, mentor and consult with small business owners, self-employed professionals and professional service providers to help them successfully land and work with corporate and other B2B clients, as well as cultivate their social impact.
People often ask what makes us different from other training or consulting companies and I think it’s the intersection of a few different things. First, is our global community, or what we call the BoldHaus Collective. We’re in an era now where high-trust collaborations, the pooling of resources, and the cross-pollination of ideas and best practices, is not only advantageous to our success as entrepreneurs, but it’s also essential for our souls. We’re seeing now, as we’re coming out of the pandemic, there’s this mass exodus from jobs because people are saying, you know what, I’m not going to spend my life doing joyless, thankless work. Who we spend our lives with, including while we’re “at the office” matters.
The other thing that makes us different is our attitude. We’re audacious, unapologetic and fiercely unafraid to speak our mind. We don’t believe in rules, groupthink, or conventional approaches. Certainly not common “wisdom.” We really help our clients to break free of those limiting ideas. And we teach them to avoid the problems that business owners constantly run into versus waiting until they get themselves in the problem and then trying to figure out what to do from there.
Name One of the Biggest Challenges You Have Faced and How Did You Overcome It?
I would say my biggest challenge is continuing to grow and lead a team. There are a few things that make this the biggest challenge. The first is that, unlike a lot of challenges that you face as a business owner, this one never ends. The marketplace is always changing. What you’re doing in the business is always changing. So, every single day you’re looking at what team you need to get you to the next level.
Another reason this is a big challenge is because every person on your team is on their own life’s journey. For a time, that journey crosses over into the one that you are on. But just like cars driving on a highway, where some are accelerating, some decelerating, some changing lanes, some exiting while others are merging on, everyone is ultimately in their own vehicle heading to their own destination. So, on one hand you’re working to keep everyone focused on the vision and goals of your organization, while on the other hand you want to make sure you’re also equipping them for later on down the road. There’s a lot to balance as a leader. I would argue having a team is the greatest personal development experience you can have.
What Piece of Advice Do You Wish Someone Had Given You at the Start of Your Career?
When I was in my mid-twenties, I was invited to my friend’s bachelorette party, where I met one of her college friends. This woman had a job I had never heard of before: she scouted locations for movies. Intrigued, I grilled her for details, and discovered she spent her time flying over cities in helicopters… driving through remote parts of the country finding hidden gems… darting in and out of cafes in Europe. I was enamored. And green with jealousy. And I realized in that moment, that I had never given any thought to how I wanted to actually spend the minutes and hours of my work day.
When I returned to work on Monday, I was no longer the same person. Suddenly as I was acutely aware that my days were spent staring at a computer screen responding to emails and jumping from conference call to conference call — yet I never consciously chose that life. It was a choice made by default because when people asked me what I wanted to “do”, I thought PR and marketing sounded exciting.
At that point I realized I had gone through most of my life on autopilot. I did and got a scholarship to a good college. From there, I chose a major that (a.) I was good at; and (b.) that sounded interesting. I took an internship that sounded good. That led me to my first corporate job and my next. But never did I sit down and think independently about what I *REALLY* wanted from the days of my life.
At one point, I thought about the questions that were asked of me by my high school guidance counselor, and the advisors at college. And I realized that they never asked me the most important questions. So, given that, here’s my advice that I wish someone would have given me…
Instead of thinking about what you want to “do,” think instead about two other things. First, who do you want to impact and how do you want to impact those people, specifically? In other words, how do you want their lives to improve for the better? And second, how do you want to spend the minutes and hours of your days? Do you want to spend your time in front of a computer answering emails and creating work documents or dealing with spreadsheets? Do you want to spend your time researching and writing? Do you want to spend your time on the phone or in the car all day going from appointment to appointment? Do you want to spend your time on a plane, going from stage to stage as a speaker? Or in meetings all day or doing photo shoots, like a lot of influencers? Or seeing patients all day? It’s so common to talk to young people about what they want to “do” but rarely any time is spent looking at what the day in, day out experience of that profession is really like. And yet the average person spends over 1,800 hours a year working. If you don’t want to be staring at a computer screen all day, or you don’t want to be talking to people all day, you need to factor that into your decision.
Who Are Your Biggest Influences and People You Admire and Why?
I admire everyone who makes decisions and takes actions that align with their vision and goals. I purposely surround myself with those kinds of people because that’s one of our greatest influences. Whether or not we are consciously aware of the influence that those around us are having on us, doesn’t matter. What we’re not consciously rejecting, we are unconsciously accepting.
Name a Person Who Helped You Along the Way?
My mom and my grandmother. From a very early age, the environment that was created for me was “Go! Do it!” Whatever it was. My grandmother, in particular, knew all the Universal Laws, even though she didn’t know that terminology. She would tell me things like, “Whenever there’s a will there’s a way,” and “Be careful what you wish for because your intentions will come true.” Hearing these things from a young age created a mindset early on where I understood so much of life’s experience is your own decisions and actions. That understanding, more than anything else, has helped me along the way.
What Do You See as Your Greatest Success in Life, So Far?
Having the courage at 27 to leave my corporate job. It’s not easy to do that, especially when you come from a blue collar family, and you’re told the job you have is something you should be “grateful” for. And certainly I was very appreciative of having gotten to the place I was by such an early age.
However, I knew it was not the path for me. So, just being brave enough to step out on my own when there were really only two people at that point in my life saying, “Do it!” was a big accomplishment. And all the amazing, incredible things that have happened to me since then are all linked back to that one critical decision.
What Book Would You Recommend and Why?
I tend to spend more time reading business news, research and case studies than I do books. I read 50 or more business articles a day, on average because what’s happening in real-time shapes so much of the advice and guidance we give our clients. And yes, it helps that I’m an incredibly fast reader.
With that said, there are many incredible must-read books out there, and I’d like to share. The first book is The Overview Effect, by Frank White, now out in the fourth edition. The term “overview effect” was coined by White, and refers to the profound and lasting cognitive shift that happens for astronauts once they experience viewing Earth as an observer off the planet. He first talked about this 30 plus years ago, but now that we’re so close to commercial space travel, we need to understand how opinions and discourse will quickly be influenced and reshaped as more and more people experience the overview effect for themselves. Especially when you consider the effect it might have on presidents, prime ministers, CEOs and more.
The other book I highly recommend for all business leaders is A Course in Leadership: 21 Spiritual Lessons on Power, Love and Influence by Dr. Maria Church. I was honored to have written the foreword for this book because it’s one of the most important discussions we need to have right now. When you look at the mass exodus of employees from the workforce during the pandemic, combined with the planet’s largest game of workforce musical chairs, as people reevaluate their life’s priorities and what they want their life’s experience to be, it’s undeniable that the world is in need of a complete and urgent paradigm shift. And Dr. Church is a critical voice in that discussion.
I’ll also add that reading these two books in this order is a good idea. When we first gain a better appreciation for just how small we are, and how we are all connected to something so magnificent, it opens up the mental space for us to understand day-to-day leadership on this planet in a new way — and just how love-based leadership is more critical than ever.
What’s a Personal Self-Talk, Mantra, Affirmation or Self-Belief That Contributes to Your Success?
There’s a quote I often cite from playwright Oscar Wilde:
“The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
It helps me to stay fully in the energy of being an observer of my life’s story. Whatever happens, it simply makes the plot all the more interesting. And on my final day, I’ll be thrilled I experienced every single minute of it.
