About Be Freaking Awesome
Real Tools for Leaders Who Want to Be Wholehearted
Be Freaking Awesome is a leadership and communication platform for people who care about doing their work well, but face obstacles that keep them from their goals. Sound familiar?
Through our podcast, coaching, and workshops, you’ll build the skills nobody taught you: how to lead with clarity, communicate under pressure, and stay steady when things get hard.
This isn’t hype. It isn’t a pep talk. It’s the actual skill-building that changes how you show up, at work and everywhere else.
How Be Freaking Awesome Began
In the summer of 2016, Angela Belford was leading a workshop for direct sales leaders when she said something she hadn’t planned: “If you want to be successful in this business, it’s simple. You have to Be Freaking Awesome.” The room felt it. One attendee wrote the line straight into her notes: “Be Freaking Awesome – by Angela Belford.” Angela had been stuck on a book manuscript for two years. That moment gave her a new push to finish.
The book, Be Freaking Awesome, came out not long after. Angela toured it as a keynote for about a year, until renewed panic attacks pulled her off the stage. In the spring of 2018, she asked her daughter, Sami Kinnison, to give the talk in her place, using Angela’s slides and Sami’s own stories. It was the moment the message stopped being just Angela’s. Angela spent the next few years working through her own healing, work that became her second book, Traveling Light.
The team launched the Be Freaking Awesome podcast on November 23, 2021, to build an audience ahead of the second book’s launch. Sami joined as co-host in November 2022, and the show is still going, now past 230 episodes. What started as one line in a workshop is now a podcast, a series of books, a coaching practice, team trainings, and a formal company: Be Freaking Awesome, LLC.
Who We Serve
Most of our clients are:
- Leaders in small businesses or nonprofits who need someone who “gets it” to turn to when challenges get tough
- Those who started a business or their work for the love of their work, and then found themselves leading people and they want to make sure they do right by their teams
- Professionals navigating complex workplace dynamics, who need an advocate in their corner to not just tell them what they want to hear, but to push, challenge, encourage, and strategize with them
- High-capacity people who care deeply about their work and their people but may struggle with boundaries, conflict, or confidence
Overwhelmed. Under-supported. Unsure how to advocate for themselves without blowing things up accidentally.
If that’s you: you’re not behind. Nobody taught you this stuff. That’s the whole reason we exist. To lift you up as you move to your next level.
Meet Angela Belford
Angela is a strategist and co-founder of The Belford Group and Be Freaking Awesome.
With decades of experience in marketing strategy and business development, she loves to come alongside leaders and support them to think clearly about growth, positioning, and long-term vision.
Angela brings expertise in:
Strategic decision-making – how to make the right decision at the right time for your business
Messaging and marketing clarity – learning how to tell your story in a way that resonates with others
AI tools for business – figuring out how to use the latest tools to work smarter and let the tools work harder for you
Scaling without chaos – figuring out how to build your business to meet your needs, dreams, and desires
She uses internal growth with external strategy, so you can embrace freedom in your life (however you define that). For Angela, freedom is what it’s all about.
Meet Sami Kinnison
Sami is a Communication Coach and co-founder of Be Freaking Awesome.
As someone who loves to get really nerdy about communication, she loves to work alongside teams and individuals to teach them how to say what they want to say in a way that feels good, to both the person saying it and the person hearing it.
She works with professionals who want to:
Speak up without second-guessing themselves – so you stop rerunning the conversation over and over in your head
Handle conflict without avoiding it – maintaining great relationships because of the conflict, not in spite of it
Regulate stress in high-stakes conversations – especially in way that feels authentic and true to you
Lead teams without burning out – we spend so much of our lives at work, it shouldn’t suck so much
Her approach blends emotional intelligence, nervous system awareness, and direct communication tools. Sami teaches how to communicate from the heart effectively because it is one of the most important skills to experience belonging.
The Podcast
We started this podcast because a book needed a shove out the door. Four years and 230-plus episodes later, it’s turned into something bigger than either of us expected: the place where we think out loud about the stuff most leadership advice skips, like how to have the hard conversation instead of avoiding it, how to stop being everyone’s emotional shock absorber, and how to actually trust your team instead of micromanaging them into the ground.
It’s not scripted and it’s not polished. It’s a mom and her daughter, who also happen to co-run a company, figuring this out in real time and out loud, so you don’t feel like you’re the only one who hasn’t figured it out yet.
You do not have to figure this out alone.
Whether you are navigating leadership for the first time, preparing for a transition, or trying to communicate more clearly under pressure, we would love to support you.
Let’s start with a conversation.