Angi Fletcher: Why Raw Communication Trumps Business Models When Building An Online Community

At times it feels like wellness or elevating one’s wellbeing, is diametrically opposed to high achievement and high performance in one’s career. The stress, mental energy, long hours, lack of restful sleep and preoccupation that result from a high-achievement life seem to directly inhibit wellness. And yet, in order to sustain the creativity, flexibility, mental acuity and resilience that are necessary for high performance, wellness and wellbeing of the mind, body, and soul are also mandatory. So how do we achieve both? This is the question I’m hoping to answer through conversations with high-achieving leaders and influencers who are practicing their own philosophies about how to maintain their wellbeing.

As a part of our series about “Social Media Influencers Share Their Top Self Care, Wellness, and Beauty Tips, I had the pleasure of interviewing Angi Fletcher, a holistic fitness trainer and educator with 40+ years of experience that depression and anxiety are symptoms, not a disease. She has turned her mess into a message through her courageous vulnerability in sharing on Instagram her journey through divorce, depression, and the death of her parents. In partnership with her husband, she continues to share their daily family life in an effort to inspire others to take their health into their own hands. She works tirelessly to engage and include her audience in all of her regular habits to support her families mental and physical health — time in nature, sunlight or rain, movement, nourishing foods and supplements, and their favorite detox therapies.

Angi lives in southern California with her husband, teenage son, and two toddlers.”

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory of how you came upon this career path and to where you are today?

I started sharing photos and my thoughts on Instagram 7 years ago as a sort of therapy. I was a model and an actress for 20 years and disliked how my image was shared without having my “voice” attached to it. I was always telling someone else story (the company who employed me). So the natural progression from Facebook to Instagram was seamless as it became a place for me to interact with people and share my own personal victories and share about my loss as well. I have found a great engagement through my openness surrounding my experience with death, divorce and depression (not your average “influencer page” :) but that’s how I came to have the audience I have today…through raw communication and authentic relatability.

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?

I have had many people help me get out of the holes I have fallen into. One man in particular. A friend named Tim. 10 years ago when I was broke, divorced, depressed, a single mother, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and sharing custody, he came over one night when I didn’t have my son. He took the cigarette out of my hand and physically placed me on a bike. We went for my first “night ride”. I didn’t have the energy or the mindset to exercise outside during the day because i was too depressed to feel the sun. The darkness felt safer. He was an angel. He got me on my bike and I rode with him for a few weeks only at night when I didn’t have my son.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

Hmmmm I have made MANY mistakes…but to be honest none of them are funny :/

As an influencer, you have been blessed with great success in a career path that many have attempted, but eventually gave up on. In fact perhaps most people who tried to follow a career path like yours did not succeed. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path but know that their dreams might be dashed?

I did not choose to be an influencer as a career path…I have always loved what I do for a “living” (as a fitness trainer, model, and actress) and loved sharing which is what led me to this platform. I believe success is doing what you love and being able to pay your bills when it doesn’t seem like work. Success doesn’t come in numbers…because everyone's measure of success is different and everyone lives within different means.

Can you share with our readers some of the strategies you’ve used to build an engaged, loyal, and large online community?

I have never had a strategy or business model for this platform…I built an engaged online audience through raw communication and sharing my hard times as well as my good times. I think people are looking for connections more than ever in this high tech world and if you can be relatable and give someone else tools through your experience to make someone else's life better…then you will build an engaged community.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of our interview. In my work, I focus on how one can thrive and care for oneself in three areas: body, mind, and heart. You are a busy person with a demanding schedule, can you share with our readers two self-care routines, practices or treatments that help your body thrive? (Kindly share a story or an example for each.)

2 self-care routines that I practice daily are movement and nutrition. I make sure I move my body every day in whatever season I’m in. Some days I’m able to take an ice plunge and then train hard and heavy and some days I can go for a walk with my kids but whatever I can do I make sure I MOVE MY BODY and let life-giving oxygen flow through my veins.

I also make sure I take care of my nutrition ( as silly as that may seem) I learned this self-care practice from an ancient Chinese ritual of “taking care of the mother” during postpartum. I believe after we give birth as women we are forever “post”partum and we sacrifice a LOT for our kids putting their needs before ours. But when it comes to nutrition and supplementation (i take a ton of vitamins) if I don’t put my mask on first I won’t have the energy to take care of my kids.

Can you share with us two routines that you use to help your mind or heart to thrive? (Kindly share a story or example for each.)

I shared in the last answer some of my routines. I believe the mind, body, and spirit are all connected. When we take care of our bodies we also take care of our mind and heart. I have dealt with symptoms of depression and anxiety since I was a child and never knew I was able to practice the tools to work through these dis-eases and lessen the symptoms. I work out for my mental health. I eat whole healthy life-giving food that is alive and that makes my body and brain thrive. I cry and laugh and play and pray and that makes my heart thrive.

Can you share 3 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.)

I talk about this a lot on my Instagram how beauty looks different for everybody…but I believe a workout where you sweat and then take a shower and put on clothes that aren't PJs and some makeup and do your hair…..you will feel accomplished and ready to take on the day. Beauty can be mental. I was seen as being “beautiful” my entire 20’s as an international model but I had the lowest self-esteem ever because in my mind I was never good enough…I wasn’t pretty enough or skinny enough, I had really bad skin (acne) and frizzy unmanageable hair so the people on set were always annoyed with me. There were between 10–20 people on set on any given day staring at me and their jobs depended on how “good” i looked and the pressure was nerve-racking, to say the least

That said…it wasn’t until I actually started feeling accomplished on my own without having to have outside validation that I feel the most beautiful. I help people who can’t help themselves and that goes far deeper than beauty. I have confidence now that I never had in my 20’s or 30’s because I know that if I was to be hit by a truck or burned beyond recognition…I would still have value…and that is worth more than a feeling.

Is there a particular resource, a practitioner, expert, book, or podcast that made a significant impact on you and helped you to thrive? Can you share a story about that with us?

My husband (who was a friend at the time) helped me thrive and still does to this day by challenging me to do things myself and taking responsibility for my actions in spite of the circumstances. We cannot control what happens to us…but we can control how we react to it. I have all of my tools and podcasts on my website under “tools”. They are too many to mention here…but yes, I needed a voice that was louder than my own trained negative voice to coach me.

Do you have a story about the strangest, most bizarre or funniest wellness treatment that you’ve ever experienced?

I have done everything from ice plunging to coffee enemas to vaginal insufflations….and all of them included emotional releases in more ways than one ;)

As an influencer, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I would love to keep inspiring people to do hard things. Whatever that may be because it looks different for everybody. I want people to not be afraid to FEEL and feel deeply. I want people to stop numbing themselves because when you numb pain you also numb joy. I believe MOVEMENT brings life and freedom to your mind and body. Tears bring healing and sunshine is highly underrated. My movement would sound a bit hippyish…cause it would include walking barefoot in the grass or on the beach with the sun on your face and breathing deeply through your nose and out your mouth…but my husband would give you the quantum mechanics behind it so its not all unicorns and rainbows :)

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you’d like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this. :-)

I would have breakfast or lunch with anyone who has something meaningful to offer the world including the janitor who cleans the CEO's office space.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

@angigreene on Instagram @angigreenetri on Facebook or my website www.angi5.com