Meet Victoria
Dr Victoria Stakelum is an executive coach, psychologist, Master NLP practitioner, and founder of The Success Smith. Based in Leitrim, Ireland, she works globally with ambitious leaders, founders, and coaches, helping them navigate the relationship between achievement, identity, wellbeing, and sustainable success.
Learning to See What Lies Beneath
Victoria’s professional path was anything but accidental. Her early career began in consumer insight, market development, and brand strategy before expanding into customer experience, commercial leadership, and executive management. Throughout those years she developed a reputation as a capable and respected leader.
As a relatively young woman sitting in boardrooms often occupied by men many years her senior, she learned how to navigate complex environments while carrying significant responsibility. Yet alongside the visible progression of her corporate career, another journey was unfolding.
Early in her career, she trained in neuro linguistic programming. At the time, it was simply one element of her professional development. Years later, when she returned to complete further certifications, she experienced a profound realization.
“I had an epiphany that the skills I learned in that early training underpinned much of my leadership success.”
That realization sparked a deeper exploration into human behaviour, psychology, coaching, and personal transformation. She trained as a psychologist, built upon her coaching qualifications, and continued what she describes as a lifelong commitment to learning and understanding people.
What fascinated her most was not simply performance or productivity. It was understanding why capable people often remained stuck despite having knowledge, talent, and opportunity. Again and again, she found herself drawn toward the unseen forces shaping behaviour beneath the surface.
Like many women she would later work with, Victoria understood what it meant to succeed outwardly while carrying internal pressures that few people could see.
Leaving Behind the Badge
The turning point arrived during the Covid period.
Victoria and her husband made the decision to relocate from the United Kingdom to rural Ireland with their three children. The move represented far more than a change of scenery. It marked the end of a chapter that had defined much of her adult life.
The practical reality of continuing her previous corporate path no longer made sense. Rather than searching for another executive leadership position, she decided to create something entirely new.
Drawing together her experience in psychology, coaching, leadership, and neuro linguistic programming, she launched a business dedicated to supporting ambitious women seeking greater success and fulfilment in their professional lives.
Yet the transition proved more emotionally complex than she expected.
For more than twenty five years, her identity had been closely connected to leadership. She had become accustomed to being sought out for guidance, decision making, and expertise. Her role carried visibility, influence, and recognition.
Then suddenly it was gone.
The shift was not merely professional. It challenged her understanding of who she was.
She recalls moving from being the person whose office door people knocked on to becoming the person knocking on doors herself. Without the authority of a major organization behind her, she encountered an entirely different reality.
Her confidence wavered. Questions emerged that had never previously demanded answers.
Who was she without the title?
Who was she when nobody needed her to lead them?
What remained when external recognition disappeared?
These questions led her into a period of deep reflection. Rather than immediately rebuilding another version of her former identity, she began examining the assumptions and attachments that had shaped her understanding of success.
The process was uncomfortable, but it ultimately became transformative.
Through mindfulness, self reflection, and inner exploration, she found herself letting go of layers of ego and external validation. What emerged was a deeper sense of self that was not dependent upon status or achievement.
The experience fundamentally changed how she viewed leadership, work, and fulfilment.
Today, she speaks openly about the ways professional success can sometimes become a limitation rather than a liberation. The very accomplishments people work hardest to achieve can become what she describes as golden cages, identities that become difficult to separate from even when they no longer serve us.
The Fellowship That Changed Everything
Although Victoria had already left corporate life behind, another important shift was still waiting for her.
After relocating to Ireland and building her coaching business, she noticed something surprising. Despite seeking greater freedom and flexibility, she had unconsciously recreated many of the same working patterns she had carried from corporate leadership.
The environment had changed, but the habits had not.
She was still working long hours. She was still operating at an intense pace. The freedom she had hoped to create remained elusive.
Then, in 2023, she received an EU fellowship that allowed her to spend a month living and working abroad alongside a community of female entrepreneurs.
The experience became a pivotal moment.
Removed from her usual routines and responsibilities, she was able to observe her relationship with work from a completely different perspective. The distance allowed her nervous system to settle and gave her the space to rethink what sustainable success could actually look like.
When she returned home, she made significant changes.
Today, she works during school hours and intentionally structures her business around the life she wants to live rather than allowing work to dominate everything else.
The transformation was not simply about time management. It was about identity.
For the first time in decades, she gave herself permission to define success on entirely different terms.
The result was a business that continues to thrive while allowing space for family, wellbeing, and the simple pleasures of everyday life.
Healing the Patterns That Hold People Back
As her business evolved, Victoria noticed that the most meaningful breakthroughs rarely came from strategy alone.
Many of her clients were already highly capable individuals. They had attended workshops, read books, worked with coaches, and developed professional expertise. Yet something continued to hold them back.
The deeper she explored these patterns, the clearer it became that many limitations originated below conscious awareness.
“Many people spend years trying to change their circumstances, improve their performance, or achieve the next goal, yet they carry old fears, beliefs, and emotional patterns that quietly shape their decisions every day.”
This insight now sits at the heart of her work.
Rather than focusing solely on external performance, she helps clients examine the internal beliefs and emotional patterns influencing their choices. The goal is not simply greater achievement but greater alignment.
Over the years she has witnessed extraordinary transformations.
Clients have repaired family relationships that seemed beyond healing. Others have found the confidence to pursue creative ambitions that had long remained dormant. Some have achieved professional advancement, while others have transformed their relationship with themselves entirely.
For Victoria, the most meaningful outcomes are not measured by titles or income. They are reflected in the lives people create when fear, self doubt, and old conditioning no longer dictate their choices.
Her work extends beyond individual transformation. She believes that when leaders heal and grow, the impact naturally ripples outward into families, workplaces, teams, and communities.
The way people lead changes.
The way they communicate changes.
The way they show up for those around them changes.
In that sense, every transformation reaches far beyond the individual client.
Building a Business That Reflects Her Values
At the centre of Victoria’s work are four guiding principles: integrity, peace, authenticity, and alignment.
These values are not simply concepts she teaches. They shape how she operates her business and lives her life.
Integrity means being honest, transparent, and genuinely focused on what is best for the people she serves.
Authenticity means showing up fully as herself without performing a role or hiding behind an image.
Alignment means making decisions that feel true to who she is rather than chasing goals that no longer resonate.
Together, these values create what she describes as peace.
It is a peace that comes from knowing she is living and working in a way that reflects her deepest priorities.
That same philosophy now informs the programs she creates for heart led coaches, consultants, and service providers. Beyond helping them build sustainable businesses, she supports them in creating models that offer freedom, flexibility, and genuine fulfilment rather than constant pressure and exhaustion.
Choosing Depth Over Scale
Many entrepreneurs spend years pursuing bigger goals, larger audiences, and greater expansion.
Victoria has consciously chosen a different path.
Approaching six years in business, she feels that many of the things she once envisioned have already been created. While she continues to refine and develop her offerings, she is not interested in pursuing growth simply for the sake of growth.
Instead, her focus remains on protecting the balance she has worked hard to build.
There are new programs she plans to develop and opportunities to support clients at different stages of their journeys. Yet her vision is grounded in sustainability rather than endless expansion.
She has built a business that reflects the life she wants to live, and she has little interest in sacrificing that for larger ambitions.
For someone who once operated at the highest levels of corporate leadership, this perspective represents a profound evolution.
Success is no longer something waiting in the future.
It is something she experiences in the present.
The Quiet Freedom of Becoming Yourself
When Victoria reflects on success today, her definition is remarkably simple.
It is doing work she loves.
It is having enough abundance to sustain that work.
It is being healthy.
It is having a happy and secure family.
Most importantly, it is living in alignment with who she truly is.
The woman who once measured success through leadership titles and organizational influence has discovered a different form of achievement. One rooted not in recognition but in authenticity.
Her journey serves as a reminder that growth is not always about adding more. Sometimes it requires letting go. Letting go of expectations, identities, and definitions that no longer fit.
In doing so, she found something far more valuable than professional status.
She found peace.
And in helping others uncover the beliefs and patterns shaping their own lives, she continues to guide people toward that same possibility, one transformation at a time.
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