Angelina's Backstory
Hi I'm Angelina Musik, founder of Wellness by Choice. Below is my backstory as a person and entrepreneur which I hope will provide the logical context behind why I'm producing Wellness by Choice in the multifaceted manner in which I am.
I immigrated to the U.S., (Ft. Sam Houston, San Antonio, TX) at fourteen from Germany via my military stepdad from Guam. He married my mom when I was three. He worked at the U.S. military hospital in Germany and ran the local move theatre on base while she worked at the German Patent Office. We moved from Germany to San Antonio, Texas in 1978.
After graduating from high school in 1983, though accepted into A&M's Veterinary School program, I stayed in San Antonio to major in Business Administration, Broadcast and Media Communications, and the Creative Arts.
I started micro-enterprises at the age of 16. So, as much as I loved animals, I wanted to impact even greater the lives of others in ways inventors, entrepreneurs, teachers, and leaders had impacted me. Discover and purpose my passion for health, wellness, athletics and aesthetics, music and my love for math.
My first licensed company, at twenty-three years old, was a Texas state registered home child care, 'Angelina's House'. Here, I could raise my kids while being financially fruitful. Then, I founded MOMtrepreneurs to teach enterprising moms how to do the same while helping them with personal makeovers! Current day, it's the 'Enterprising Women's Project' being converged with my 2023 fall launch of the 'Business Women News' network.
Since the late 80's, I've been producing events around personal and business development, communication and media training, fashion shows, and hospitality events at hotels I managed while I went to college, and then concerts.
In the early 90's, while living in Houston, I was a praise and worship leader, and had a Christian pop band. I funded my first album production from the profits of my concierge home and business organizing firm. I tell those who wish to promote their new albums to send them overseas as it's the fastest route to get airplay, sales and be designated as an international recording artist.
To learn how to update my own band website I started teaching myself computer programming. My senior programming high school teacher, Mr. Lewis, would be proud if only he knew how his impact would play out in my life decades later. Same with Joslyn Crews, who was my theatre teacher.
An unexpected shift in my journey ...
In 1999, at thirty-three years, I fled a domestic violent marriage with my two kids up to WA state. While in hiding (for safety), I converged my business, media, and communications background with my new programing skills. Cofounded a business development, media, marketing, and web tech company with my current husband Daniel Comp.
We ARE that odd couple who came together under 'starting over' circumstances. We lived and worked in a warehouse and slept on a floor mattress. A small ice cooler was our refrigerator, and we showered with a hose between the Pacific NW Wrestling Team's training schedule.
My two kids, twelve and ten, were safe with me. The WA State WorkFirst program I persuaded to fund me for nine months to launch and reboot forward in web tech instead of getting vocational training for a traditional job while on welfare.
Little did I realize back then, at thirty-three years old, how the accumulation of my life experiences and tenacity would prepare me for what I can do today to impact many people's lives, and how I can help those whom I've come to know, like and trust do the same.
About my husband Daniel Comp. He’s a former Navy Veteran, was the right-hand guy to celebrity British Chef Graham Kerr, and before we met, he had retired his boutique design build firm for luxury and waterfront luxury home and business remodels in the Pacific Northwest. A couple years earlier to meeting me, he had also started teaching himself programming!
He is also a 3x TransAmerica Cyclist and the author and creator of the Scotomaville Trilogy, a personal development series for men. You will see him at the Wellness by Choice events teaching on what a Scotoma in front of our 30' Airstream as his backdrop and booth.
When we came together in 1999, when our company name was clickLOCAL.
After a couple of years of being hired as the 'street smart programming outsiders' for corporate companies, we switched to offer our BATs (browser administrable tools) solely to the benefit of small business, wellness, and medical practice owners. BATs empowered them to update their website on the fly without a web master. This is what I had wanted for myself when I had my band website. We educated and equipped our clients with web tech tools to change their websites on the fly while saving them money. And helped fill in the media, marketing, and PR gaps of what they were missing to ensure their success.
In the early 2000's we moved back to Texas, and eventually rebranded our company to Intelligent Netware, as we built ‘intelligent software for the internet’.
I put our tech to work in my laboratory of projects which allowed me to learn what did or didn’t work so could fail often fast through our iterations.
Applied to my MOMtrepreneurs project, it grew. Then, I launched my radio show on AM 630 KSLR in San Antonio and first TV show on KHCE-TV 23 San Antonio at the studio managed by the TBN Network.
As a supplement to traditional local business events, I started producing my own monthly business events at the Quarry Golf Course near Alamo Heights and downtown Plaza Club, semi-annual expos at Hotels, the Alzafar Shrine off 1604, to the largest expo I produced at the AT&T Center, and during Spurs Game.
At each of these events I filmed vendors sharing about their companies to later air on my radio, TV, in the local magazine in print, San Antonio Women Magazine to INSIDE Magazine, and on my local websites which I had built. This multifaceted and omnimedia combination worked so well that in 2004, through the UTSA SBDC and local San Antonio SBA office, I awarded twice by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Two weeks later, I received a call from Mark Burnett Productions to be an Apprentice Season 3, 'Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts' contestant. Five days before filming I was hit by a truck from behind and sustained a traumatic brain injury. This opportunity would no longer be realized.
Before fading out of the public eye to heal my brain, my largest event to date then was at the AT&T Center in San Antonio with an attendee count of 17,000. My entrepreneurial TV show, which aired on the San Antonio's Channel 2 PAX TV Network, 'The Angelina Show', would end on a 4.1 Nielson rating.
During this time, Daniel had done three TransAmerica rides across the U.S., and we started working on rural town economic development projects in Texas and Oregon.
In 2009, Daniel and I moved up to the Pacific Northwest to cooler temps so I could continue to heal around the work we were doing. I'd live in Texas and there for the next several years while continuing to work with my concierge clients. In 2010, I'd be nominated for the Texas Women's Hall of Fame for the work I'd done helping enterprising women greater succeed.
AND THEN, around 2011, I started receiving an increase of emails, text messages and calls for help by individuals in Texas who had been scammed or traumatized by fake or untrustworthy companies, products, and practitioners in Texas.
In response to understanding what was going on, I launched an experiment called Beautiful Intelligence to gather insight and data to better understand why so many online users were being scammed by companies they 'thought' they could trust.
After a few months of testing this experiment in San Antonio, Dallas, Miami, Denver, Los Angeles and NYC, the insights of what I witnessed is was led to the development of Wellness by Choice: as an authentication handshake between trustworthy companies and those seeking for help curated by a human not an algorithm, by me, Angelina.
In 2012, Wellness by Choice was officially born, being built, and would be rebuilt many times to achieve what we have in place today, and in 2018, Daniel and I started to Airstream so I could start meeting experts face to face and hold zooms with those I wanted to get to like, know and trust them so that others may too!
I hope my backstory provides insight on why this is a multifaceted project designed to increases our impact opportunities around the change in media and technology which sometimes are out of our control. And why, every Wellness by Choice participant has been researched, vetted, and met with.
Every Wellness by Choice participant understand the value of building a trustworthy collective while helping reduce the footprint of scammers and the licensed incompetent who may trick and hurt consumers, and costing authentic companies revenue.
Wellness by Choice will remain education based human content generated with the help of experts who are passionate about teaching and demonstrating their expertise we've come to know, like and trust so that others may too!
If being part of this journey resonates with you, especially in light of the rise of AI and chatGPT, then reach out to me.
Connect on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelinamusik/
Angelina
Text me 480-440-4740