Business Fit Magazine Special Editions Mother & Daughter Special Edition | Page 6
Welcome
Welcome again to this Business Fit. Special Edition.
It’s very exciting to showcase people from England,
Wales, UAE, Sweden, USA and St Lucia and I
urge anyone reading this to please circulate this
magazine whether online or in print to get the
ladies stories out there to inspire as many people
as we can.
on mothers and daughters
So, who I am? I wasn’t going to talk about me
in here as I wanted this to be dedicated to the
contributors but Claire, the editor made me.
I come from a disfunctional family and I had no
real parenting from the age of 12. By that I mean
I mostly fended for myself. I could go into many
finer details of the violence, alcoholism, living in a
house with no electricity or gas and only candles
and a camp stove with baked beans for food
much of the time. However, the past is the past
and has shaped me, I am grateful for being me.
What I feel is more important to share is how I
dealt with the situation and how now I deal with
it, without negativities against my family or what
happened.
I started working in a restaurant at the age of
14 to earn enough money to get the deposit
to rent my own bedsit at 16. I loved work and I
loved being with people. This love led me into bar
work and starting a three-year college course to
become a Master Chef, which I completed with
flying colours.
Due to the unsocial hours I wanted to change
career and started applying for jobs I thought
were out of my league. I landed an Operations
Manager position at a contract cleaning company
managing a 500+ workforce, again I loved it,
worked very hard and within a year I was General
Manager on £21,000 a year, company car, mobile
phone, you name it. This was over 20 years ago!
I was bloody good at what I did. I was good with
people. I cared.
I met my husband when I was 21 and by 25 we
were married. I was told that I was unable to have
children, which was devastating as all I wanted to
be was a mum. We were just going to try for IVF
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when we found out I was four months pregnant
with my first child, James who was born in 2001.
Then in 2003, Alisha (Ali as I have to call her!)
came along without planning. Wow, amazing,
thank you universe for these amazing children
and husband which I still have today.
I decided before having Alisha to leave my
position as a General Manager (which is another
long story for another day!) to look after my
own future with my husband and start property
development and investment. That is where my
career went for many years and we still owned
the portfolio until last year. I trained to become
a Commercial Chartered Surveyor (which I still
am) and worked in corporate in Birmingham,
UK. All of this is a story for another day as these
years were some of the most challenging in my
life especially with my husband in the military
and not at home. But again, it has made me the
person I am now today.
Then, oh my gosh I hear you say! I got into
personal development, international speaking
and business coaching. I have spoken in over 34
countries and again have loved it.
I started an immigration company, bought a
café restaurant and ran that and supported my
husband in his Cyber Security Business.
Are you getting the gist here?
I never really knew what I wanted. I was always
striving to be the best, pushing to have everything,
be everything and boy wasn’t it hard work,
everything had to be my way! How my husband
put up with me, I don’t know!
I never knew who I was. Who Vikki Thomas
REALLY was as a being.
Then I started my journey to self-discovery and
many other exciting things. I have invested
over £400,000 in my education in the last three
years and have become more spiritual. I started
in secret at first as I was a powerful business
woman, a powerful speaker and being spiritual
doesn’t fit into that mould (so I was led to believe!)
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