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Massive thank you to Maggie Patterson at Small Business Boss, Kelly Diels and Alice Benham for modelling good business practice in creating their own versions of these statements. And Polly Lavarello and Laura Husson for focusing my mind on these important aspects of being an ethical business owner and doing things in a way that feels right for me. 





My Values

Being Honest

My goal is to always be transparent with you about what is possible when you build a business. I donā€™t shy away from both the highs and amazing benefits of being your own boss, as well as the hard stuff and lows: the nights youā€™ll cry, the doubts and fears youā€™ll have, the length of time things take to happen and the entrepreneurial emotional rollercoaster that genuinely never ends (it just gets easier to handle). 

If I donā€™t think youā€™re right for what I do, or that I can serve you in the way you need, Iā€™ll tell you. Iā€™m not entering into a financial exchange unless I genuinely believe I can help you get results. 

I will always say it as I see it.


Being Clear

My goal is to bring clarity to everything I do for you. I am obsessed with breaking things down and making them as easy and accessible as possible. 

I will stop at nothing to ensure Iā€™m explaining things in a way that brings you ā€˜ah ha!ā€™ moments of understanding and leaving you with skills and knowledge that you can implement yourself, often immediately after it is imparted. 


Being Empowering

I want to empower you and to enable you to take action. Not leave you feeling muddied and unclear or stupid or less-than. 

I aim to make myself obsolete to you, because youā€™ve gained so much from our time together that you now truly trust and believe in yourself and have the expertise to move forward without me. My clients say theyā€™re left after our work together with ā€œa little Vicky inside their head.ā€ I like that. 

Being Objective

As a coach I am here to help you in a way that is based on real facts and not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings. As a coach I am guided by the principle that my clients always have the best intentions and have everything they need to accomplish their goals. I am simply here to hold up the mirror, ask the right questions and give you guidance based on what you tell me you want and need. Without bringing my own agenda to the party. 

Being an Action Taker

Running through everything I do and create in my business is my total belief that taking action (ā€œjust start nowā€) is the way to achieve your goals. I am not here for pontificating, navel gazing and endless introspection. I love a mindset shift, but it needs to come with action. I am here to demonstrate to you that by showing up, being consistent and using the compound effect of taking lots of small steps, even when youā€™re scared, you can get the results youā€™re looking for. 

These values donā€™t mean Iā€™m perfect and I have no doubt that as a human being I will fall from these standards from time to time. But laying these out gives both me and you something to refer back to when things go wrong or feel out of alignment. I ask that you hold me to these.

Based on my values these are my business commitments:

Hiring + Money

  • I pay everyone who works for me ā€“ from my cleaner to my Virtual Assistants, a minimum of ā‚¬25 p/h

  • I donā€™t ask anyone to supply content for my platform, courses or membership for free. I always ask what I can pay people I engage as a fair reflection for the expertise they bring. I donā€™t expect anyone to create content just for ā€˜exposure.ā€™

  • I hire people from within my own community and book guest speakers and experts from programmes that I am involved with. I donā€™t like things to get ā€˜incestuousā€™ (we all need fresh ideas and angles after all) but I do believe supporting those close to me comes back around.

  • I believe I am very good at my job. With the transformation I can bring and the life-changing nature of what I can do through the skills and mindset shifts I can facilitate, I charge accordingly. I do not apologise for that.

Accessibility


  • I offer payment plans to work with me 1:1; I believe payment plans are a form of financial accessibility. Previously I charged extra to facilitate payment plans based on cost of fees, software and time to set these up. Going forward I will no longer charge any extra fees or interest for accessing payment plans to work with me.

  • In my first profitable year of business I made small contributions to charity. Going forward as my business has now stabilised I intend to donate 2% of my income every month to charity. I am working to make this a regular partnership with an aligned charity that helps disadvantaged people to prosper through education. I will update this statement when this is in place.

  • If / when I run a group coaching programme, I will offer a scholarship place, favouring those from marginalised backgrounds.

Solidarity and Culture-Making

  • Whenever I am asked to speak at an event I always ask to ensure the line-up is culturally diverse and that experts from all ethnicities and backgrounds are included. I do not want to appear at events that are disproportionately white.

  • I am making a commitment to show more diversity on my own platform, most visibly my podcast which to-date has not celebrated enough people from BAME backgrounds, for which I take responsibility for. I will do better.

  • I will research the businesses I pay, collaborate with and promote to understand their ethics as well as their diversity and inclusion practices to ensure they align with my own expectations.

  • Whilst I find it hard to take (Iā€™ve never been good at asking for help or being told what to do!) I do value critique and constructive feedback and will take the time to process it, learn from it, and integrate it.

Selling

  • I will never sell you a tangible result to working with me, joining one of my programmes or downloading one of my trainings. Whilst I believe the tools and techniques I share with you can result in tangible results like quitting your job to start your own business, getting fully booked with clients, your first ā‚¬5k month or a sell-out event, there are lots of other pieces that need to be in place to ensure this happens. If you want a tangible result, Iā€™ll be clear with you what those pieces are. 

  • Whilst I will ā€˜launchā€™ my products and offers from time to time in order to raise awareness and gain new eyes on what I do, I will never use hype or FOMO to sell to you. I want you to make a considered investment and feel positive and empowered when you make your buying decision, not duped or under duress. 

  • All my contracts include a 14 day cancellation clause so if you change your mind, I will give you a 100% refund. I will honour this whether you sign up as an individual or a business. Beyond 14 days my clauses include terms for part refunds based on content and my time already used. I never want you to feel ā€˜locked inā€™ if youā€™re unhappy or feel our work together is a bad fit and is not serving you in the way you expected. My contracts reflect this. 

  • ļ»æI do not use money-shaming as a marketing tactic, nor will I ever ask you to make a payment to me whilst on a call before youā€™ve had a chance to read our contract and assess in your own time your decision to invest. If I believe I can help you through one of my programmes, I will tell you. But again, I want you to make a considered investment and feel positive and empowered when you make your buying decision, not duped or under duress.

People Iā€™ve Learned From

I truly believe in investing in myself and learning as much as I can in order to stay one step ahead of my clients. I want to be able to teach and share with them the best of whatā€™s out there, with the very top level of skill I can bring, in my own unique way. 

I have never and will never disguise the fact that I pay to learn and be supported as a business owner. I think itā€™s imperative I model for you what I encourage you to do: back yourself by making considered investments that will move you forward faster and more effectively than going it alone.  

As with anyone, I have had mixed experiences with my investments and I donā€™t believe any one course or programme ever perfectly fits your needs. But I have learned from each one of them, even if itā€™s how not to do things myself in my own business delivery. 


Coaches/Masterminds

  • The Imperfect Life, Kerry Lyons
  • The Freedom Experience, Suzy Ashworth
  • Unstoppable Mastermind, Julie Creffield
  • Ruth Poundwhite
  • Real You Real Money, Ray Dodd
  • The Well, coaching supervision with Sas Petherick

Programmes and Courses

  • Rave Results, Vix Meldrew
  • Self-Belief Coaching Academy, Sas Petherick
  • Erickson International Coaching, Modules 1 & 2
  • Build Your Online Audience, Janet Murray
  • The Good Gram Activation, Lucy Sheridan
  • Message Mastery, Suzy Ashworth
  • Magic Money, Suzy Ashworth
  • The Gateway, Suzy Ashworth
  • Anti-Racism & White Privilege, Nova Reid
  • Journaling for Business Owners, Ruth Poundwhite
  • The Shift Sessions, Laura Husson
  • Marketing without Social Media, Leonie Dawson 
  • Quiet Ambition, Ruth Poundwhite 

A Disclosure Of My Privileges

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and also falling pregnant in the same year, I have started to look seriously at my privileges. I want to be more aware of how the privileges I live with and that my daughter is being born into impact what I and she can and will achieve in life and business. I never want to take for granted, overlook or ā€˜eraseā€™ their importance when I coach others.

I wish Iā€™d done this sooner, but the point is that Iā€™m starting. And I will continue to learn, accept and acknowledge where what I can do and achieve in my business and life is different from those who donā€™t have the privileges I have.

As Maggie Patterson points out in her own disclosure of privileges, we all too often see coaches with a zero to hero journey: making millions in a matter of months. Yet they donā€™t disclose the bigger picture and the hidden privileges that have helped them achieve their goals. I have been sucked into these stories myself time and time again, comparing my own journey to others and know that my own audience are susceptible too. 

So with that in mind, I think itā€™s important that as a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual woman, that Iā€™m clear and transparent about my privileges. (Thank you Maggie Patterson for showing me how to do this. She in turn thanked Brittany Berger for modelling for her.)

Here are my privileges:

Family and Education

I grew up middle class in a single-parent household, however fully supported by maintenance and never with insecurity about the roof over our heads. I attended a grammar school and I had access to financial support to continue my learning beyond secondary school ā€“ my parents paid my University fees (which were ā€˜lowā€™ back in 2004!) and I had access to student loans to get me through third-level education.

Career

My education and the financial support of my parents to enable me to undertake unpaid internships allowed me to land jobs in the arts and earn my own money straight from graduating. Where I started on lower paid jobs that didnā€™t quite cover the bills living in London, I was supported financially by my parents to plug the gap so I could work up the experience to step into higher paid roles. 

Support

When I moved from London to Dublin I was able to quit my job and take on freelance work whilst I started to explore how I could run my own business. I always had the possibility to go back to my old career and industry, though in a limited way since I had moved from a city with plenty of opportunities in the field, to a city where there were considerably less. However, I had the benefit of having a husband with an established career, his own home and a pension, which allowed me to take on this risk as I pivoted and changed career.

Faith 

Iā€™m agnostic but was brought up, christened and confirmed as a Church of England Christian. 

Body

I am white. Iā€™m a ā€˜normalā€™ BMI and pre-pregnancy and postpartum conformed to the socially acceptable UK size 10-12 average and never experienced weight phobia. I now sit at a UK size 12-14 and whilst I have experienced a small amount of negative comments online about my shape and size, it is not something that has impacted or held me back from being visible.

Mind

Overall, my mental state is solid. I have never been diagnosed with or medicated for mental health problems nor have I ever needed to attend therapy or counselling.

Health

I am healthy and have no underlying health issues that curtail my ability to work. Iā€™m British but live in Ireland. I have access to free public healthcare and also can afford to pay for private cover. 
I will never use my story without highlighting this context so that you always have the full picture when drawing parallels with your own journey.

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