CEO With A Six-Figure Business Explains How She Responds To Applications From Girls Who Bullied Her In High School
She refuses to let people who ridiculed her in high school have a place in her company.
fizkes / Shutterstock If there's something that can stick with you during some of the most formative years of your adolescence and even adulthood, it is facing the relentless and cruel reality of being bullied. Many people internalize a lot of those experiences, carrying the weight of those memories long after the incidents themselves have passed.
Maybe that's why, when the opportunity to show those who once belittled and hurt you just how successful and strong you've become, people take it. Such was the case for Vicky Owens, a 23-year-old UK-based content creator and CEO of a media company.
She explained how she responds to applications from girls who once bullied her in high school.
In Owens' video, the CEO and founder of Socially Speaking Media, a Manchester-based social media agency that works with businesses to improve their brand awareness, claimed that since her company has continued to grow since first being founded in 2021, she's begun receiving applications from girls who bullied her in school.
Photo: @vicky.owens / TikTok
Deciding to take the high road, though, Owens explained that when she received these email applications from her former bullies, she simply ignored them.
Her response is no response at all. While she doesn't hold grudges and has essentially moved on from that point in her life, she doesn't want to give those bullies the satisfaction of working for her when they spent years taunting and ridiculing her.
"I have the right to decide that I don't want the girls who made my life absolute hell at school to be at my place of work," she insisted. "I wish them all the best but I only want people with the best energy on my team."
Photo: @vicky.owens / TikTok
Many people argued that high school was years ago, and this behavior from Owens is just petty. However, being the victim of bullying can leave a myriad of emotional scars that take years upon years to heal. That trauma often stays with people long after they've experienced it. As the CEO and founder of her own six-figure business, she has the right to refuse to hire those people, and to her, high school honestly wasn't that long ago either.
Owens admitted that she was extremely shy in high school and often got picked on for that and her appearance.
"The girls that used to bully me at school are now applying to work for me. Let's let that sink in," Owens declared. "I thought I would speak a bit about how I went from rock bottom at high school to owning a six-figure business at the age of 23."
Owens recalled that not only was she incredibly shy in school, but she was also much taller than a lot of the other girls and had quite bushy eyebrows that were the cause of teasing and bullying. She also explained that she wasn't all that good at school either and didn't do very well on her exams, making her an even easier target for bullying.
"I had ketchup put on my head. I had yogurt dumped on my head," she continued.
After finishing high school, she developed incredibly bad anxiety and debilitating panic attacks that left her bedridden because she often had no energy to go outside and socialize or just be around people. The only comfort she had was being able to just be alone.
Because of her anxiety and panic attacks, she ended up losing a lot of her friends and wasn't employed, so she began reaching out to local businesses to see if they needed help with someone running their social media. From there, she began getting involved in the social media world and started making her content. It wasn't long before her social media company came to fruition, and now, Owens has made quite a name for herself in the media field.
"You are not who you were in high school. Girls at high school who used to bully me, who used to pour various food on my head are literally nowhere in life."
Owens' story, and the company she now runs, are all about fostering a positive environment instead of a negative one.
That type of dedication and willingness to acknowledge that, while she hopes her former bullies have grown and improved, she would rather that growth happen anywhere except her workplace, are what make her a leader with integrity. It might not be something everyone else agrees with, but you can forgive someone but not forget, and you don't have to give absolution to those who once caused you pain.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.