Not for Profit

Self-esteem champion Vie is on a mission to make everyone feel better about themselves

Vie Portland, Author, Public Speaker, Self-Esteem & Confidence Coach, and Founder of VieNess CIC

By Sam Pither [email protected]

Published: July 20, 2023 | Updated: 20th July 2023

Vie Portland, the Southampton-based Founder of VieNess Discover You Love You CIC, is on a mission to make people feel better about themselves.

“When I’m working with younger children I tell them: ‘I’ve got the best job in the world, I get to tell people how brilliant they are!” she explained.

Vie does a variety of different things, all geared towards helping people realise their own value.

Her journey to where she is today started at a very low point in her life.

“Many years ago I had no confidence or self-esteem, I hated who I was.

Vie Portland, Author, Public Speaker, Self-Esteem & Confidence Coach, and Founder of VieNess CIC

“I got very low, and I reached a point where I realised I had to change things, so I decided to challenge myself to do things I’d normally tell myself I couldn’t.

“My mentality was ‘If it’s not going to kill me, I’ll give it a go!”

Vie was watching Singing In The Rain one day, when the word ‘Burlesque’ flashed up on the screen.

“Within ten minutes I’d found someone locally doing classes, I had to do it straight away otherwise I might have backed out.”

While doing burlesque classes, one of the other people there asked her to help put on a show, which Vie said she would, on the condition she didn’t have to perform.

“Eventually she whittled me down however, so I ended up doing it, supposedly as a one-off.

“Well, that one-off went on, and I became an international performer.”

Eventually Vie began teaching others, starting with burlesque but continuing on to a range of different dance styles.

“People started seeing the results I was getting with the people I was working with and said they wanted to feel like that, but didn’t want to dance.

“So I started teaching confidence workshops, and it became more and more apparent that I wasn’t the only one whose self-esteem issues started in childhood.”

Meanwhile, Vie was helping as a Volunteer Coordinator for the Red Box Project, which aimed to eradicate period poverty in schools.

It was in this role that she came to realise the strong need for confidence and self-esteem workshops in schools.

Vie speaking to children in a library

Vie speaking to children in a library

“I knew that schools often didn’t have the money to pay external facilitators, so I spent some time learning how to set up a community interest company, and in 2019 I set up VieNess.

“There are resources out there from organisations like the YMCA and Dove which teachers can download to teach this, but teachers are already overworked, so when do they have the time?

“Plus, you have to feel great about yourself to be able to help others feel great about themselves.”

Vie had just set up her CIC to be able to go into schools when the pandemic hit, and schools stopped asking external facilitators to come in.

“Just before the pandemic I met a writing coach, who told me I should really write a book to establish my expertise.

“So, me being me, I wrote that book, but also two more inclusive children’s picture books. I’ve also created decks of cards which offer a one step at a time approach to feeling good about yourself.

“I created a little box full of happiness and a little box full of confidence, and then a little box full of family fun, which was particularly important at that time because more and more children were becoming school avoidant. My boxes help parents to have conversations with their children.”

Vie also started doing public speaking, first online and then in person.

Now, she does school assemblies, and was recently involved in writing a book which went to the top of the bestsellers charts in five different categories called ‘Letters to my Teenage Self’.

“My big aim is to create a generation of children that don’t grow up worrying about the size of their bum when they enter a room.

“I want them to realise that people will like them because they’re likeable.

“If we were all just happier about who we are not only would we be less stressed, but we’d be able to take more in from, and better support, the people around us.”

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