An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
I would love to share some strategies that helped me and hopefully they can help others. The first strategy, and I feel the biggest separator, was a sense of self-belief. I knew I could win. I believed in my ability to conquer whatever I set my mind to. I remember when I made my first paycheck for $350, and I knew I could make a million. That is self-belief.
As a part of our series about “dreamers who ignored the naysayers and did what others said was impossible”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Angela Bradford.
Angela is a Senior Marketing Director with World Financial Group. Within just over six years of transitioning from the blue collar world of trucking and training horses, to the white collar world of finances and training people, she has opened multiple offices and started expansion into two countries. She has an amazing team working with her and has the goal of having a licensed agent in every state and province in North America in the next 5 years.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know you’ a bit better. Can you tell us your ‘backstory’?
Thank you for having me! I came from a great family who homeschooled me and for that I am very grateful. We were also a very strict family. I grew up with lots of rules which I didn’t like. I left home therefore as soon as I turned 18 and ventured out on my own.
Horses and driving quickly became my passion and they took me to different continents, states and provinces, over the course of the next 14–15 years. From there I was introduced to the financial industry and felt led to follow that change in career path. I have been running my own brokerage for over 6 years now.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I sure am! I am working to help others create new mindsets and legacies for their families. I love helping build generational wealth and complete freedom for others.
In your opinion, what do you think makes your company or organization stand out from the crowd?
I believe our company stands out because we are a brokerage. What that means is we aren’t restricted to one company or product, but instead can shop the market for the best option for our client. I’ve had clients come in that have been declined proper protection for their families from various other institutions, and I’ve been able to get them covered because I can find companies that will work with them.
It’s a fulfilling feeling to find the best option for people when they think they have no options.
Ok, thank you for that. I’d like to jump to the main focus of this interview. Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us? What was your idea? What was the reaction of the naysayers? And how did you overcome that?
I love these questions! When I went to transition from truck driving to financial services, I had a lot of people ask me what I was doing. Even once I started in the financial industry, I had a lot of naysayers saying that I had picked a silly company, or that they didn’t know why I had quit a good job, or all kinds of things like that. I understand that they were people that cared about me and just had my best interests at heart.
Here’s the thing though, most people that try to stop you from fulfilling your dreams don’t give you a better dream to fulfill. No one offered to pay for my retirement. No one offered to give me freedom of time. They just wanted to take away my dream because they were scared to try their own.
How did I overcome it? I just went to work and did it anyway. Success is the best way to quiet the negative people in our lives.
In the end, how were all the naysayers proven wrong? 🙂
Great question! I went out and built and continue to build a business and life that most of them said I couldn’t do. I proved my supporters right and my naysayers wrong by my results.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are so many people who have helped shape my life. The couple that introduced me to my business stand out right now. Adam and Savannah Dawe are two of the most genuine and hardworking people I know. They care immensely for their agency and their family.
They took me in as a truck driver who didn’t show a lot of promise and were definitely instrumental in transforming me into the person I am today. Not everyone would have the patience or understanding to work with someone like I was when I started in the financial industry.
I am very grateful for their leadership and also for so many others who have helped me along the journey.
It must not have been easy to ignore all the naysayers. Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share the story with us?
This is very true. It is not easy to ignore the naysayers, especially when there are people that are close to you. I remember one friend, who sent me a message after I’d been in the business a couple years, warning me of all the pitfalls of working with the company I was with, listing all the reasons why I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing, and even including web pages to back up her point.
It was tough to read, however, I realized that she was a very negative person about a lot of things. It wasn’t about me and my business, rather it was a reflection of how she felt about life. The concept of taking a risk scared her, and so my endeavors were a mirror of the things she wished she could try.
One of the things I discovered was that those who try stop you from doing new things are really just scared of doing new things themselves. Look for the people that support you, and normally you’ll find that they are very successful people in their own right.
Based on your experience, can you share 5 strategies that people can use to harness the sense of tenacity and do what naysayers think is impossible? (Please share a story or an example for each)
I would love to share some strategies that helped me and hopefully they can help others. The first strategy, and I feel the biggest separator, was a sense of self-belief. I knew I could win. I believed in my ability to conquer whatever I set my mind to. I remember when I made my first paycheck for $350, and I knew I could make a million. That is self-belief.
The second strategy piggybacks on the first one. One way to build self-belief is self-talk. Drown out the words of the naysayers, with your own words of self-affirmation. I remember telling myself in the mirror over and over again, “You got this.” I said the words until I believed them.
The third strategy that comes to mind, is the ability to focus on your goals and ignore the present while staying focused on the future. An example of this would be when people would point out how I WASN’T making much money, I chose to focus on how much I WOULD be making soon!
The fourth thing that helped me was realizing who was doing the naysaying. Normally, if not always, it was someone that wasn’t as successful as I wanted to be. Normally it was someone that didn’t have the relationships I wanted. In other words, usually it was someone that didn’t have the life I wanted.
The 5th and final strategy that comes to mind, is associations. I made sure that I was surrounded by people who did believe in me. People who stretched me to reach higher. People who are better than me at so many things. Associations are very important to success, and they can empower you when you feel knocked down.
What is your favorite quote or personal philosophy that relates to the concept of resilience?
My favorite quote is “things happen for us not to us.” Everything that happens in our life is for a reason, it’s up to us to figure out what it is. When we think this way, when something “bad” happens, we can realize that it happened for a reason. We can then find the reason, grow, and move on.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
The movement I am working toward is empowering women to become their true amazing selves and help change the world. I want to encourage and inspire women to rise up and use their voices to make the impact in the world for good that I know we can make together
Can our readers follow you on social media?
The easiest place to find me is Instagram at @realangelabradford as well as I also have a podcast called “One Starfish with Angela Bradford”. I look forward to connecting!
Thank you for these great stories. We wish you only continued success!
Angela Bradford of World Financial Group: They Told Me It Was Impossible And I Did It Anyway was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.