Welcome, I'm Angela Bryant, and you're listening to The Angel Rated Show, where we have inspiring conversations with the people behind the products and services most often used by online business owners. On the show, you'll hear how their personal beliefs and values have influenced their businesses. If you're an online entrepreneur who wants to know about the integrity and impact of the businesses you're buying from, then this is the show for you. So Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Angel Rated Show. With me today, I have Viv Guy. So Viv is a born entrepreneur, which I love the sound of that. And she set up her first award winning business from scratch at the age of 22. And grew it to a turnover of one and a half million. So Viv has really learned what it takes to grow a successful and profitable business from scratch not once but three times. So we need to hear about this to start with Viv tell us. Tell us about yourself, your business and the business you're doing now and what this first business was that you grew at the age of 22.

sure thing Angela thank you very much for having me here today. Gosh, 22 seems like forever ago. Well, it was forever ago. Yeah. You know, it's like when you're in your early 20s. And you're so self assured and confident and absolutely clueless really. So you go into something and not really know what to expect. So yeah, I decided at the age of 22, I'd finished uni I was working I'd studied drama and English, was working with a touring Theatre Company, and they sat down to do their business plan. They're like, we want everyone to be involved and have their input. And they were like, what's everyone want to do. And I was like, I really want to work with young people who were like, really disengaged for life, from mainstream education, you know, really sort of suffering with social emotional difficulties, because my mom and dad have fostered This is where this came from. I've seen a lot of young people come through struggling with mainstream education. But but great human beings, you know, but just couldn't kind of focus and concentrate. And they were like, Oh, no, no, no, no, we don't want to do that at all. It's not was not for us. Okay, and that was it, I was like, I'm gonna go out and do something, because there's nobody doing this up in the north, you know, way back when, and, and so I approached a couple of pupil referral units for young people excluded from mainstream education, started going in and delivering alternative education classes, sort of really creative based classes, and getting amazing results. And so you know, referrals, word of mouth, within that education networks spread. And lo and behold, my first business was born. And then it grew and grew. And so the referrals, and then I started doing a lot of work with young people with additional needs, and complex health needs, you know, disabilities, so on so forth, and doing sort of creative schemes for those young people, and then ended up becoming a specialist college for young adults 19 to 25, who Yeah, so evolved and evolved to a very creative base. Again, there was nothing for these these young people, they were kind of finishing education at 19. And that was it going into this like black hole. So it was whenever anyone said, there's nothing, you know, there's a need, and there's nothing I feel like I can fill that I can help, you know, and so it's always this evolution of helping young people to, to fulfill their potential, you know, and that's very much what's led me, you know, and what I do today, which is not obviously at the same same line of work, not with young people, no, no, I work with grownups now. And entrepreneurs, but allowing people to really find and fulfill their potential. And that's been the driver throughout everything I do. And I guess the passion that sits behind it all is you know, helping people unlock what maybe, you know, is inside or find the way you to kind of get unstuck, to reach that that place they want to get to

So tell us a bit more then about what that looks like now what that what that work is at the moment.

So that work now is coaching. So I do a lot of one to one coaching. I've got a great program coming out in in October time. Very much around helping people who are entrepreneurs, and many, many, many of them being corporate escapees who have kind of gone I ready to have more freedom and you know, high achieving corporate escapees who've gone Yep, I need to stop working 60 to 80 hours a week. I want to work for myself, I want to do this thing that I'm passionate about. You know, I work with a lot of coaches with a lot of therapists and people like that. And they've kind of gone so they've got this vision of this amazing life as an entrepreneur, leave corporate come into entrepreneurship and go, Oh, it's not quite working as I'd hoped. I love the bit I do. You know, I love my coaching and my therapy, whatever it might be, but the rest of it is hard and I don't know what's broken and I don't know how to fix it and I don't know how to make this thing work. You know, and I don't have departments, I can now offload all these tasks to you as I did you know, when I was a senior manager in corporate, so it's not so I very much work with and get dubbed a lot, the clarity coach, I'm a high performance business, a business coach. But, you know, fundamentally people call me the clarity coach, because I am that person that can kind of look at what's going on and help you identify what's not working, and maybe why it's not working. And what's working really well, you know how to do more of that, because sometimes it is so close, it's like, you're on that hamster wheel, you just going round and round and round, and you just don't know can't get off. And that kind of stop to step back and really kind of take that sort of bigger view of why it's not working. So really help people figure out how to make it work, and then how to do it in a way that would like feels really good, because so often, again, we kind of come into, into sort of, you know, the entrepreneurial online world, we'd look around, and we are so influenced by, you know, by by people, you know, multi 678 figure business coaches that are out there, you know, and a lot of these entrepreneurs have very cookie cutter approaches, you know, courses, because that's how you do things, the scaling, but you know, what, so many people coming into the online world and go down, I have to do business in this way I have to market in this way, because that's the only way. And actually, you know, we're very blinkered that, that, that we have to do things in a certain way. So I help people realise there are a multitude of ways to do things, you know, and, you know, to actually just take elements of what you like, and find what works for you and what feels aligned to you. Because only when people work in a fully aligned way that they actually are going to achieve the results they want. Because the energy's in the right place, they are more productive, and it's the way to actually start working a lot less hours.

That sounds like the Holy Grail. It sounds fantastic.

You just don't see it. Sometimes when you're so close to things, you know, you just can't sometimes see it. And it's often and why do coaches have coaches? Because we need that, you know, we all need that outside perspective sometimes, to see and you know, and sometimes, you know, there's different things, sometimes people need permission. So sometimes it is just like being able to reframe things in a different way that you maybe you don't think of in your own way. So, you know, I think it's so important to have that.

Absolutely, and as a corporate escapee that just that myself, that idea of Yeah, coming out, and just suddenly being the person that does everything, and just doing all on your own and not having anyone around you and no one's bounce ideas off, and no team and no other support it Yeah, it's, it can be a really lonely place, and getting any outside help for that is really, really useful. So tell us what you really want to be sort of what legacy you want to create from your business or what you want to be known for in your lifetime, what what's motivating you to keep going.

The big thing for me is I'm very, very passionate the thing, the legacy actually is to to enable, and, I guess, help entrepreneurs to realise that they can build a business without working crazy long hours. And that's what I want people to work less hours because I think as a society, you know, we work, you know, whether you're employed or self employed, we work too many hours, you know, we don't have enough downtime. And there are so many pressures on us, you know, it now in the 21st century, to just be doing doing doing all the time. And actually, you know, which is fantastic in some ways, but I think there needs to be a lot more time to be with loved ones to do recreational activities. And there's just more and more demands of work. And because of smartphones, you know, we're on our phones, when we're when we're home from work, we're still working, we're still picking up our emails, still checking in still the office, they're still on call, you know, so my passion is to actually help you know, is to create a society where we work a lot less hours, and we, you know, we actually enjoy living our lives and we're not sort of beholden to, to work and, you know, I'm not saying you shouldn't love what you do, and that you're not driven to want to work a lot of hours as entrepreneurs, I love what I do. But actually, you know, we become better entrepreneurs when we work less because it's actually our creativity, you know, creative juices can flow, you know, we become more productive when we have time away from work and we have like relationships and recreation and that time to kind of recover and have that respite and rejuvenate. So, yeah, so that is a big that is my like driving forces to kind of educate people but it's possible because, you know, those that the beliefs within our, our society and culture around, you know, work hours versus earning potential are so, so misaligned in and yeah, there's a lot of education to be done there around that and that comes from you know, from from the start of our, our careers. If not before that, you know into I sort of school and education system backfilling the time that we were there. So yeah, so very, very sort of swift beliefs that need to be, you know, changed for many of us. And I was a person, no first business 60 to 80 hour weeks, and did it and it's, you know, it's not healthy.

No, and when there's an awful lot, as you say, we need to unlearn there. Because we have probably Industrial Revolution onwards, in the UK, especially, we've been in that mindset of exchanging our Yeah, our lives for a paycheck, and just doing it based on the number of hours we can force ourselves to do and keep pushing forwards, which is not a good way to be living our lives to so that they can, you know, we need them full of beauty and fun and relationships and all the other good things that are out there. So when you were talking about that very first business that you created, obviously, there's a real passion, they're around people not in mainstream education, people don't have some of those educational advantages that others have. What other causes or things are you passionate about? Are there particular charities that you support? Or give to tell us about what sort of lights you up on that side of things?

Well, if anyone ever tunes into my social media, you will see that I absolutely a bit chicken crazy. I'm like the chicken lady. I rescue chickens. So chickens ex battery hens come and live at my house. So I have my girls. But my two daughters have named after Disney characters, this this latest brood of them. So yeah, they're getting they're getting fun names. They've got amazing personalities. And yeah, you'll often find if I'm appearing on videos and things outside the chickens are in there featuring and yeah, become a big talking point, I often get people messaging me said we loved the chickens. So rescue rescue in hens is a big, big thing of mine, you know, and I'm very sort of against anti anti sort of battery hens, and very much around sort of free range. And yeah, really kind of thinking about where our food comes from you, then you'll find that I've got my veggie patch at home, I'm not saying I can't sustain this for the whole year, you know, I don't have to buy veggies, but you know, very much sort of education around where foods coming from for my own children as well. You know, understanding about, you know, where our food comes from, in terms of sort of our meat produce, and how that happens. You know, my kids are really like, well, self self aware, you know, around, like how that that process happens. And I think, you know, that's really important, but to understand that actually, you know, if not that we eat our chickens for eggs, for eggs, but you know, that if you, you know, you need to treat things well. And we, you know, we have to kind of nurture things for them to actually grow. And we, you know, we shouldn't put sort of animals, certainly animals in positions of, you know, lives, lives of suffering. And I guess that, again, relates back to sort of my whole passion around business, you know, don't suffer, you know, this life is now sort of live it now and embrace it. So maybe that's where the whole link comes, you know, the love of hens and sort of really rescuing them and giving them a quality of life that they truly deserve. You know,

I love it. That was not I have not seen your social media, probably bad on my part. But I was not expecting that answer. I absolutely love it. That's, I just think that idea of raising people to be aware of their food provenance and just yeah, where everything comes from is incredibly important in Yeah, where we are today with our food production systems. Yeah, really, really important. I love that. So tell me something about Have you got sort of a biggest failure or worse moment in your career that you would like to share?

Oh, biggest failure? or worst moment? Oh, I say one of my biggest failure I'm sure there's millions you're kind of blind to the back of your mind there. You know what I think I just don't look at things as failures. I see them as learnings. I think that's the big thing. That's probably why nothing leaps out. I think the sort of the biggest, biggest moment for me was was was when I had my my kids and I'd gone from a business that was very much my first business referral base to an online business with with my second business, which was brand photography. And, and I remember like listening to all of that noise in the online world, you must do this. You have to do that. And so I was totally sucked into you know, it's got to be on line. I've got to have my phone literally attached is like my third limb. And I'm not that person. You know, I think my first mobile phone was like 20 you know, the for me like phones are kind of functional things. I don't want to be on social media all the time. It's not my jam. But you know, I felt like I had to be in a member, you know, my oldest daughter was was saying to me she was she was performing for us go and trying to dress up as a princess and go Mommy, mommy Look at me or a princess. And I was sat there and I was on my phone. Going. Yeah, yeah. Lovely. hadn't even looked up to mommy, mommy. No, look at me. Yeah, yeah, you look great, darling. And then I looked. And then she said, Mommy, Mommy, look at me. And she pushed my mobile phone down and lifted my chin up. So please look at me, Mommy, I'm a princess. I was like, Well, now that was my biggest moment, like turning point in my life where it was like that, you know, boundaries, balance, things have got to change. And that was so that was the big moment of actually, you know, you there has there's there's more to life than just being on call all the time, which I'd spent my entire, like, first business doing, and then was carrying those same habits and the same beliefs into my second business. So yeah, that was like a big, you know, I say, you could say, a mum failing. But again, it was a sort of a mon learning and a massive sort of pivotal moment in my life really into very much changed the way I do business.

Completely great. And all of these things. It's always about what is the learning that comes out of the back of that. And how can you pivot your business or change something about how you work and what you do to make the most of what you've what you've learned from there? Yeah. So I'm interested if you weren't doing what you're doing now, if you've got another career that you would have pursued, it sounds like you've already done quite a few different things. But do you think is there anything else out there that you haven't tried that you have always wanted to try?

Oh, I always joke that I'd love to be an estate agent, but like, a high end estate agent, just because I love going and having a nose round really, really? Like I'm talking like amazing, multimillion pound and dollar homes. Yeah. So I say I probably be bored after a week, but I just loved the idea of going and having a really good nose around other people's houses. You know, that those kind of dream Dream homes, that kind of fantasy homes. So possibly an estate agent. But if not, you know, I always I always had a part of me that fancied medicine, but I sucked at maths. So I was never going down the medicine route. Which is interesting, because both of my sisters are nurses, actually. So you know, there's obviously that that that streak is in the family that But yeah, I did fancy sort of being a doctor at one point. But I said, I'm not sure. Again, that would be really my true calling.

I don't think they get to choose short hours. And

yeah, probably my accountant, my accountability buddy is, actually, a doctor, who's now an entrepreneur with our own business, in sort of occupational health and wellbeing for doctors, because of the stress and the hours that they work, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, absolutely not short working hours.

No. So we've talked a bit about some of the sort of causes and beliefs that you have, are there any other sort of principles or values or ways you'd live your life that you, you know, that are really important to you?

And, yeah, I really believe that, you know, we living in alignment, and this is a massive focu in my business, but you know, living in alignment and integrity. So, you know, we're so used to, you know, and you'll know this Angela coming from corporate, you know, when we set goals, various sort of metric, monetary base, like goals, you know, within our society, and people look around, and I was coaching one of my clients recently, and she was like, because, you know, she's talking about this next step, and that she felt she had to do this, because that's what was expected of her. And I was like, but are you happy? where you are, yes, I'm happy, I'm really happy doing what I do now. But I feel that like, I'm seen as some sort of failure by not taking another sort of career progression, or step, I think, you know, we're afraid to, to lean in and listen to, to our instincts, our intuition, you know, about what feels good and what feels right, because we're so driven to have have possessions or to be perceived in certain way. We're so influenced by that, you know, society and our our, you know, our community's impression of us. And I think for me, like really kind of saying, I am who I am, you know, and accept me for who I am, you know, or don't, you know, that's absolutely fine. It's something that you know, more more of us need to embrace and it's a hard thing, you know, I've been there and I've done it and, and actually, you know, life becomes a whole lot more Fulfilling, when you stop trying to please everybody else, and you actually start pleasing yourself, you know, by really tapping into and listening into, you know, what's going on inside. And I sound very woowoo and I'm not I'm a very strategic, very, very practical person, but I, you know, absolutely 100% believe that, you know, to be productive to, you know, to, to achieve and to succeed, we have to really follow, you know, our instincts and our intuition, because that's, as I said, where when our energies align, and we're productive, and we're in flow, because there's only so long that you can, you know, go at, you know, corporate careers, for example, how many of my clients come to me having totally burnt out and have like, major health issues as a result of kind of pushing and pushing and doing and doing and be very good at what they do. But it's really not aligned with them, you know, in the way they want to live their lives in the long run. So yeah, so I think that's the big, the biggie for me is, you know, listen, listen to you, you know, listen to your heart, put it in that kind of way.

It's interesting how especially people have come from corporate this sort of that. People always say, sort of, like, Oh, I'm really, you know, practical and strategic and non oo, and then talk about loads of really, we all do it. And we're sort of merging them all and sort of bringing some of the woo into the more practical mainstream, which I think is exactly what's needed. So. So tell me, Is there one thing you wish you'd known when you were first starting out in what you're doing? And one thing that you want other people to know?

One thing I'd love people to know, yeah, I think very much is, do you know what? reverse engineer everything like reverse engineer your your life, and put in the things that are important first, you know, don't try and fit them around everything else? Because that's what we do. We kind of, you know, get everything we kind of put the, the careers first and then trying to fit our family and our hobbies and things around that. And actually, what is important what, what's going to bring you joy today, you know, it's a journal prompt, I found what you know, what would bring me joy today. And sometimes I like, hell, what would bring me joy today, you know, when I know that I've got x, y, and Zed on my plate, and actually, you know, what, just think about, what what could you build in, and it doesn't have to be like, I'm going to go for a four hour, you know, dog walk or anything like that, it could just be okay to spend five minutes, you know, on the phone to a friend haven't spoken to for ages, I'm gonna spend five minutes painting my toenails, because it's gonna make me feel good, you know, or whatever it might be. But you know, really sort of design and build that into your life, give yourself and design your business, and build your careers around that and have those those non negotiables. Because, again, you know, we form habits, don't we, and if we get into these, these routines of kind of going, I'll do it when I'll do it in five years, 10 years, or when I've made X amount of money or reach this, you know, go once you're stuck in those habits of not prioritizing those important elements of life, it's really hard to then start prioritizing them.

I absolutely love that. It's so interesting. We were talking before we turned the camera, the recording on about the fact that I was just fresh out the shower with wet hair. And that is exactly because of what you've just said. So I mean, one of my passions is wild, outdoor swimming. And I try and swim as much as I can. And I always put all the work stuff in my diary first, and then just try and squeeze that little bit of time in between things were I can rush down to the river and go for a swim and get back in time for the next thing. Obviously, I didn't time it very well today. But yeah, it's absolutely right. I mean, if I reverse engineered that and put in, you know, clear times to do that first off and then built the work around that then it would work just as well. And it would be less stressful and more enjoyable. So absolutely true. So before we wrap up, is there anything else that you'd like to share with listeners anything else about your business or Yeah, what you're up to? Do share?

Yeah, so in September, if you catch this before the 15th of September, I have something going out called the business boost bundle to get you sort of back up energized, raring to go in your business after summer break, if you're off for summer, or taking some some time off, which many people are after a year of or more of a lockdown. And this is an amazing sort of partnership approach of some of the most amazing entrepreneurs I know from across the globe who have all contributed free resources, trainings, workshops, courses, and so on so forth into this this amazing bundle, it's worth 1000s of dollars. And it's there for you up for grabs for free just to sort of have all of those kind of how do I kind of questions How do I do this? How do I you know, manage my sleep? How do I sell you know, with ease All those kinds of things are in in this bundle for you to grab and get hold of kind of find some amazing people out there. So that's, that's coming up in September. I've got capacity for some more one to one clients late September opening up so if you're interested in one to ones please do get in touch, drop me an email and then in late October I have got my new group program coming up called focus to 5k although I might call it practical woo or strategic woo after speaking today.

Love that. I love that and where can people find you?

You can find me at Vivguy.com on my website or over on social media Facebook Instagram, just look up Viv Guy, Instagram's Viv dot Guy, but Viv Guy just look up Viv Guy and I'll pop up somewhere.

fantastic and we'll make sure obviously that we put all those links into the show notes. So thank you ever so much for joining us Viv it's been a real actually blast of energy to talking to you today. I've loved it Thanks for having me. know You're very welcome. And we've had slight sort of Yeah, in and out with some of the audio and hopefully will be sound great anyway and you will get the the energy and the ideas behind it even if the audio isn't fantastic. So to read the show notes from this episode, you can go to Angel rated.com forward slash podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, obviously I would love you to subscribe to the show, and to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform and share this episode with anyone who you think might benefit from Viv's fantastic knowledge and experience. The Angel Rated Show is brought to you by Angel Rated independent directory and review site for all the products courses and services used by online business owners. It's the best place to find the perfect product for the next stage of your business or personal growth. Learn more and list your business free of charge at Angel rated.com