Angies World Blog – News and Events

On a recent call, I mentioned that I had my own skin care product line and exercise DVDs. I had a few people ask me how I did this. So, I figured I would spill it all out in this post.

First, you have to be passionate about what you do. When I graduated from college with my bachelor’s in science, I was desperate to jump into the work force and pay off my college debts. I found a job doing R&D (research and development) with Nutro Products (a dog and cat food company). The job paid extremely well and had plush benefits. I could have worked here my whole life – it was comfortable. But, several things happened to me that changed that course of action. I started to gain weight from sitting long hours testing products. I started to have health problems – at times I had difficulty forming a sentence. I thought I had a brain tumor or something. After seeing a doctor, I found out I was suffering from hypoglycemia – low blood sugar. He told me that I needed to lose weight and to start exercising or that I would be a diabetic with in 5 years. This scared the heck out of me.

I hired a personal trainer and started to eat better. I knew I needed to be motivated to change so I joined a competition I read about in a magazine. It was a three month transformation competition. To make a long story short, I lost the weight, started to feel great, and I won the competition!

With my new energy for life, I no longer felt satisfied testing dog and cat food. I knew there was more out there than that. I left my job and started working at a local nutrition store. They paid substantially less (with no benefits) but they offered to pay for me to take classes in nutrition.

As I learned about nutrition, herbs, and supplements, I felt this passion inside me to get the word out to others about being healthy. I decided to get my personal training degree so that I could teach others how to exercise correctly. I later went back to school to get my nutrition degree and license.

Let me tell you though. This was a scary time for me – though I was excited about it. I had those questions in the back of my mind “How can I make a living doing this?” “How could I possibly be successful at this when there were so many others doing this line of work?” I even thought at first that being a personal trainer seemed like such an elementary job – how could I do this for a living after all the schooling I had paid for?

But that’s when it hit me. People need to know how to exercise properly. Most of the trainers, at that time, where kids in high school looking for something to do part time. They had no passion for what they were doing, they had no real knowledge of how the body worked, they were just putting people on machine after machine for 30 minutes – 1 hour, and then sending them home.

That’s when I realized I had a mission – to educate others. So my first product I produced was an exercise video – Abs by Angie. I asked my current clients if they knew of a video company and was told of a local one down the street from my work. I scripted my video and set a date to film. The whole video was filmed in one day – starting at 8 am and finishing at 9 pm! With only quick bathroom breaks, make-up touches, and protein drink/water chugging. But how accomplished I felt afterwards!

Withing 2 years of the first video, I decided to make my 2nd video – Shoulders & Back by Angie. Now with experience, this video had better lighting and music and a much more comfortable Angie behind the camera. -I think this was a big breakthrough for me. I think sometimes we get stuck not doing something because we think it won’t be good enough. But if we just do it once, we only get better from there. It’s just like Nike said, “just do it!” So, my word of advice to you, if you are thinking about making something (writing a book, making a video, singing a song), – just do it. That’s what revisions are for! But you can’t revise something you never have done once!

My next product I developed was my fat burning gel. This idea came when my favorite product for ridding my body of subcutaneous water was no longer being imported from France. (I use this one to two weeks before a photo shoot or bodybuilding show) I think this had to do with the war and we started boycotting/banning(?) products from France. So this product was no longer available…for whatever reason. Companies started making this product locally but they were 4 times as expensive. At the time, I was training a pharmacist that had a skin care company. I asked him if he could make it for me. He said, “sure what’s in it?” After researching it, I gave him the ingredient list. He then said, “Well, what other products do you like?” I then gave him a list of other products I also liked. He then took that information and made a new formulation based on the current research. And that’s how angioblasty gel was born! At first, I made it just for me, and then my clients starting asking about it. I soon started selling it to my friends, clients, and family. It became so popular that the local pharmacist couldn’t keep up with demand. I then found a company in New Mexico that could produce a larger volume. At that time, they reworked the formula to make my product even better.

Once I started working with this bigger company, we came up with two new products: angiosoothe – topical cream for muscle soreness, and angiosoak – mineral soak for the bathtub for sore muscles.

I am always open to new ideas and new products that will help my clients. I am now thinking about making another video – legs by Angie.

So, I hope this answers all the questions you may have had. Feel free to reply/post questions.

Be passionate in whatever you do.