We recently connected with Val Lonergan and have shared our conversation below.
Val, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I’d mostly been a behind-the-scenes person in my career — it’s way more comfortable there, and you can enjoy other people’s successes vicariously when you’re part of a team, or a good idea of yours gets greenlit. Now, while I’d always found comfort in being a hard worker behind the curtain, I’d also been creatively frustrated for most of my adult life! So a few years ago, I decided I’d had enough of pouring my best work into other people’s visions, and it was high time to start pouring maximum effort into my own vision.
I’m a communicator with a long history in marketing — I hail from the movie business – but in all my jobs I also looked after websites, and was the go-to person to get things written or improved upon. “Give it to Val,” they’d say. “She’ll fix it.”
I figured these could be handy skills to capitalize on while I worked toward my ultimate vision: an entire ecosystem that helps develop and propel fellow female entrepreneurs forward.
The growth of this idea was organic. At the same time as I was learning much more about myself and my unique gifts, I was offering marketing consulting to small businesses. That lead to working one-on-one with women who have an idea for a business, but feel they’re lacking in the areas of personal branding, marketing know-how, website building. They were looking for clarity and guidance on how to get started. It was so fulfilling and exciting. That’s when I knew we were onto something.
Some were quite nervous around the tech, (‘I’m really not techy!’ they’d tell me) and I completely get how that part can be intimidating because most of our generation never learned to use online tools beyond the user end (like using email or having Facebook or Instagram accounts). So I take the time to teach them some basics. They’re always pretty impressed by what they can do after all’s said and done — not only has the tech itself become much more accessible, but I get to see their confidence grow as well. That empowering bit has been an awesome and unexpected bonus to my work!
But my favorite part of the journey is probably the very beginning — because the women who gravitate toward me are quite creative and purpose-driven — being asked to help them develop and refine their vision has been such an honor. So before we get to creating any digital materials, we really deep-dive into what they feel called to do — and how it will translate into the real world. I’m able to connect the dots in areas where people have sometimes struggled for years. Really, we’re talking about life coaching as it pertains to work and purpose, and so I’m working on my certification in that area to better serve my clients.
On this journey, I’ve learned so much about how common it is for women to yearn to reinvent themselves at midlife. How many of us have interrupted careers, and big dreams, and ambitions that can sometimes lose their way. Many of us started down a given career path, perhaps paused or pivoted during motherhood, and now find ourselves reevaluating everything from work-life balance, to how much money we want to make, to the need for much more flexibility, to seeking more meaning and fulfillment in our work.
There was already a huge wave of online entrepreneurs underway; add to that numerous pandemic-era tectonic shifts in the workplace (including a mass exodus dubbed The Great Resignation) as well as massive growth in the coaching industry and new opportunities for revenue by selling our knowledge… there’s just so much game-changing stuff going on in this space.
My approach is uniquely me — it blends a bit of know-how, strategy, personal development, humour, spirituality, empowerment — I like to laugh and have fun while we accomplish great things. That feels like a cheat code for a good life.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My work goes beyond the traditional boundaries of a digital media consultant or business coach. I help women — usually poised to start their second act – make their projects and businesses the truest expression of themselves. As an entrepreneurship catalyst, my mission is all about empowering and guiding.
I’m a massive champion of women pursuing their dreams. Some need more help developing their authentic-to-them business idea, with branding, a marketing plan, designing and launching a website. Some struggle in the day-to-day of their work: perhaps looking for ways to streamline or cut out services they no longer enjoy offering, needing more efficient ways to conduct business, wanting to create digital products, or looking to expand their reach.
I’ve designed specific services for different stages of the journey available on my website, where I blog to share insights on various aspects of entrepreneurship and have recently started a tiny digital shop featuring downloadable tools that I personally use in my work, with many more to come.
My approach is unconventional and unique in that it can involve soul searching, offering clarity to creative multipassionates, aiding to discover a business’s true purpose and impact, and/or helping my clients navigate the journey from confusion to clarity using clear sequential steps (this part lends itself nicely to a self-serve online course format, which will be available soon). I encourage discussion about the important questions: What are we building? Who does it serve? How does it make a positive impact on the world? Does it reflect the very best of who you are?
Currently, I’m in the beginning stages of building a Speaker Series of impactful and inspiring women, while assembling a hub for women to network, inspire each other, and achieve new goals together.
At the end of the day, I’m a firm believer in the pursuit of dreams. I’m a cheerleader/strategist, hype woman/idea developer and – my favorite thing to have been called – a co-conspirator of joy. The people who connect with my energy know it right away. If you are one of them, please reach out, don’t waste another minute!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I was 18, I took a gap year from school and got a chance to work on a movie set. After the shoot wrapped, everyone I knew was in school so I took my earnings and set off to travel around Australia and New Zealand by myself, for six months. That was an awesomely fun adventure (I did all the thrilling backpacker things, like skydiving and bungee jumping and tubing down whitewater rivers – you can see the photo here of a friend and I climbing Franz Josef Glacier in NZ). In addition to all that fun, it was a time of tremendous personal growth as I experienced challenge after challenge (be they logistical, financial, medical, personal, etc) and had to learn to rely on myself to figure things out.
I began to trust myself for the first time, actual trust, and understood what it means to have your own back.
My father had often told me, growing up, that whatever happens, I’ll always land on my feet. This was living out what that meant. And it was only the beginning. I developed a pattern of betting on myself and following my intuition, always assuming that whatever happened, I’d figure out the right way forward.
Over the years, I started numerous business ventures that failed for various reasons, and for years I carried shame and humiliation about them. But now, I see them as a pattern of resilience, of belief in self, of being courageous enough to pursue good ideas. I’ve made my peace with failure, and understand its role as a master teacher on the journey.
I’d like to mention that it takes resilience and persistence not only to become an entrepreneur, but to stay one, too. In the rough patches, I’ve battled the old ‘wouldn’t be easier to go get a real job?’, and scoured the job boards, perhaps have had an existential panic or two, and finally, I always come back to… me. Eventually, I made the decision to stop putting myself through that exercise, and fully embrace the path I’ve chosen and the life I’m actively building.
I’m so grateful for the deep knowing inside of me that says, ‘no matter what happens, you’ll land on your feet’.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
My earliest jobs were in retail and the restaurant biz (which I believe everyone should experience, by the way). In those environments, my managers had taught me never to say “I don’t know” when a customer asks a question I didn’t have the answer to, but rather, “let me find out and get right back to you”. In my first grown-up office job as a receptionist, same rule.
So for a while there, I thought this was the norm: that admitting I didn’t know something must somehow be bad.
It took me way too long to realize that these are courteous customer service rules. They’re not blanket rules for life.
As a (former) chronic people-pleaser, as my career advanced I often took on people’s questions, dilemmas, and problems as my own, believing that’s what a good team player does. Always over-deliver. Work begat more work as people started to rely on me to do things (and I willingly did them). At the time, I couldn’t quite see the forest for the trees as to why this was happening, and I didn’t know healthy boundaries, I just knew I was drowning.
Of course you can admit when you don’t know something! In life, that’s actually healthy. My lesson? Stay in your lane. It’s not your capital-J-Job to take on another person’s issue as your own and solve it for them. It’s your Job to stay focused on your goals and carry out your vision to the very best of your abilities.
Contact Info:
- Website: vallonergan.com
- Instagram: @iamvallonergan
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vallonergan/
- Other: https://www.pinterest.ca/iamvallonergan/
Image Credits
Annabelle Agnew