Image Text:

LITTLE WITH A LARGE HEART: Inspiring Vanessa has already released two books at the age of just 12

BY HER own admission, Inspiring Vanessa talks a lot. But even she was surprised at how comfortable it was the first time she ever stepped on stage to speak at a chance event which would be the spark for her ‘career’.

In a time when young adults, let alone pre-teens, are struggling to identify what it is they what to do with their lives, Vanessa, 12, is forging a genuine reputation as a kid-preneur.

MOTIVATIONAL
Already an international multi award-winning motivational speaker, successful YouTuber, artist and author of two books – The 5 Secrets to Public Speaking Success, Vanessa’s Book of Quotes – Inspiration On The Go! and an audio book, The 12 Keys to Success, the young lady is on a mission to inspire children and adults around the world to believe in themselves and have the courage to be whoever they want to be.

If you’ve come across her, you will already be familiar with her work, but how does a girl foster such a clear view of what she wants to do at such a young age?

“I started my motivational speaking career at a Parent Talk, which I went to with my mum – one of the parents told me to come on stage and speak with them. I pushed myself to do it and I was completely comfortable which I didn’t expect from myself,” Vanessa tells Life & Style.

She adds: “I’ve been doing motivational speaking for three years since then, I’m 13 this year. I’m excited about that, becoming a teenager is a big deal for me.

ON STAGE: Vanessa is a confident public speaker

“I also have a YouTube channel which I have been doing for around the same length of time that I have been doing motivational speaking. I’ve had the chance to visit different countries like Slovakia, Kenya, Malaysia, Bali and even New York City to do speaking.

“I’ve also been speaking at some schools lately and it’s really nice to feel the atmosphere of speaking front of the youth as I speak in front of adults usually but I am trying to focus on going into schools and branching out, talking to the youth about how we become adults. Once we can focus on the youth we can start to talk about how we act in the future.” Vanessa’s mother Veronika Sam explained that she didn’t take the decision to allow her daughter to set up her online activities lightly and oversees everything her daughter does. Immensely proud of Vanessa’s achievements to date, she never envisaged so much success so soon.

“At nine years old when your child approaches you and says all of the things Vanessa said to me about wanting to start her own YouTube channel, I think a lot of parents would shut their child down by telling them they are too young and to wait a few years. But everything is done with me – she’s never online alone. I also spoke with a lot of the other parents of YouTube kids on how they approached it and I was open to the idea.

“I didn’t want to shut down her dream and three years later, we’ve travelled the world and the message she gets on how much she inspires people is wonderful. It could be a 13-year-old, a 30-year-old or a 60-year-old, the messages we get are positive.”

Vanessa admits that it took a while to get her head around the concept of being paid to go on stage and speak but once she understood the marketplace, her passion for talking about all things inspirational was born.

“At nine years old what do I know about anything, really? But when I started looking into it and saw people spoke about finance and business, people did coaching, I was like, ‘Right, I am going to talk about inspiration’ because that’s something everyone can talk about, it was the main thing I was comfortable with and once I started to get into it, everything flowed from there.”

SPREADING POSITIVITY: Vanessa wants to do her bit to combat the negativity in the world by helping people

Vanessa has been trained and mentored by several top international speakers and has shared the stage with the likes of Jairek Robbins, Eric Thomas, Eric Ho, Caleb Maddix and may more. Last year she hosted the London’s Kids Fashion Show and attended Screen Nation Awards as guest presenter.

Like any aspiring talent though, she likes to surround herself with the best in the industry. Her dream is to be on Ellen DeGeneres’ show and also help homeless people by creating a ‘hotel for the homeless’.

There is one other motivational person who tops her bucket list of people she’d like to have a conversation with, however. She enthused: “I love Les Brown, he is absolutely amazing. He is such a legend in the speaking industry. I haven’t had the honour of meeting him yet but that’s one of my biggest dreams to meet him. He shares so much wisdom and he cares so much about the people he shares his information with.

“There’s so much negativity in the world and I really wanted to start doing what Les Brown does and start helping more people.”

Being so young it hasn’t always be easy to convey to her peers exactly what she does. Reading Robert Kiyosaki when everyone else is reading Roald Dahl can be a bit of a leap to explain and Vanessa says it hasn’t always been easy to balance her world at school and outside of it.

Looking forward Vanessa says she wants to become an even more sought after speaker. Her strategy? Do more speaking. She said: “I just want to get more experience. If you have more experience then you become more viable to any person that might want to book you at an event in the future. It’s a big learning curve.”

Find Inspiring Vanessa at inspiringvanessa.com, youtube.com/inspiringvanessa, facebook.com/inspiringvanessa and instagram.com/inspiring vanessa

Read every story in our hardcopy newspaper for free by downloading the app.