Grace Beverley: Entrepreneurs, productivity, and gussets

0:00Hello and welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and this is the show that questions what success really looks like. Today, I'm meeting Grace Beverley. Self-care is a form of productivity and you cannot have productivity without self-care, but also you cannot have self-care without being productive. Like sometimes self-care is about reaching that deadline that you said you would reach three times and now you're letting it not happen again. Like I think boundaries are a huge, huge part. So for example, I have some really hard and fast rules around like how I spend my week. So on weeknights, I will only do things two days.

0:33And like if it looks like I'm free on those extra days, I'm not free. Like that's time for myself. And I know the second I go over that threshold is the second that everything will be affected. Grace is an absolute powerhouse in the business world. She's a serial entrepreneur. She's founder and CEO of activewear brand Tala, fitness tech company, Shreddy and personal organisation business, The Productivity Method. As well as writing a Sunday Times bestselling book and hosting an incredibly successful podcast, both called Working Hard Hardly Working, she's a real leading voice on female funding, representation of women in media and barriers to entering entrepreneurship.

1:14That's where we start this chat, with Grace talking through the absolutely appalling situation we're currently in when it comes to female-founded businesses getting funding. There are some really brilliant nuggets of advice in here about the practicalities of getting your business ideas off the ground too. Of course, running a business is bloody exhausting. No matter how much you love it, it's going to take up a lot of your time and energy. So we also talk about burnout, that weird thing we've got going on at the moment where we feel both burnt out and like we're not achieving enough at the same time.

1:52Hell on earth. As well as boundaries and productivity. I think you're going to love it.

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3:35And through it all, I wear figs. They're comfortable when it counts and functional when I need them the most. So where do you wear your figs? On shift, on call, on the couch in the break room, listening to this podcast, wherever it is, they fit right in. And now listeners of this podcast can get 15 % off their first order. Just head to wearfigs.com and use code FIGSRX at checkout. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. I promise we'll get to Grace in just a moment. But first, have you got your tickets for the Happy Place Festival yet? If not, why? Why? I want to see you there. I'm honestly so bloody excited about another year of incredible guest speakers, immersive workshops, gorgeous food, shopping and loads loads more.

4:19The Chiswick House Festival is less than three weeks away, bloomin' heck. It's so soon. On Saturday the 13th of July we've got Lisa Snowden there, the delightful Paul Brunson, Rhiannon Lambert will be doing some brilliant talks about nutrition and Denise Van Alten will be doing a DJ set that you will not want to miss. She was so good last year. Then on Sunday the 14th, there were talks from Gabby Bernstein coming all the way from America, for goodness sake. Roxy Nafusi. We've got light. It's basically a day of manifestation that day. We've got live music from the Overtones. And listen to this.

4:54I'm going to record a live podcast with the one and only Jason Donovan. And he's got some stories. Get your tickets now at happyplaceofficial.co.uk. All right, let's do it. Here's the show.

5:28Hello, Grace. Hello. So nice to meet you. Lovely to meet you too. Thank you for having me. Absolute pleasure. Now, here we are sitting, talking, hopefully, a lot today about business and the inspiration behind your businesses. Let's look back to it could be 50 years ago, probably actually could be 40, 30, maybe 20. This wouldn't be happening. Me sitting here talking to someone about business who is extremely young and a female. They're the sad truths. And actually, I probably wouldn't be presenting it because it would have been a bloke as well. I mean, I think that you don't necessarily even need to look back 20 years.

6:08I mean, even just say topic of podcast talking about business. If you have a little look at the business podcast charts worldwide, not necessarily just UK. If you look at the funding stats in terms of women in business, 2 % of VC funding going to women. um yeah it's it's not it's not like a far flung I often I spent so much time thinking and don't get me wrong we've come so far and we really have but I spent so much time thinking kind of you know oh back then this wouldn't have happened back then this wouldn't have happened the more I progress now and I feel like this is kind of a universal experience like the older you get the more fierce you get about things like actually where we are now and it not being anywhere near good enough yeah um but yeah just get more and more kind of angry about the state of things really which is you know it's worth saying as well that I as part of this I'm one of the like hugely hugely privileged women in business when it comes to VC funding when it comes to the stats around white women in comparison to black women for funding for example when it comes to the fact that you know I had a really relatively quick trajectory in terms of you know social media or whatever it might be.

7:22But yeah, already off on a rant. Good. That's what we want. We want ranting, especially about equality. It's super important. And I think actually that frustration, anger, you know, I've certainly got those kinds of emotions around lots of sort of, lots of different subjects, you know, whether it's mental health or people getting access to decent mental health care, whatever it might be. And I think actually if you can take that horrible feeling of anger and frustration and channel it into something good the momentum is huge and you can do really good things with it and it feels like that's what you're doing with your voice and your platform is that you want to help other women get into business but again looking at the cold hard facts certainly if you're starting up a new business it's incredibly hard for women to do so just tell us why that is so there's a lot to it and it's worth saying that I'm by no means an expert in terms of the you know the state of play and how it is at the moment and where it needs to get to I was saying the other day like what we really need is a piece of research in terms of what would happen if we actually did invest in these women which I'm not equipped to do I'm not smart enough to do at the time I'm not in the like right space but actually you know that's what we need to do to be able to actually get to the next level but in terms of like this what what the situation I guess is at the moment is the fact that yes we've come forward hugely in terms of getting women into entrepreneurship in terms of you'll see more and more women going freelance, being their own boss, a number of these different things.

8:52When it comes to entrepreneurship specifically, and this is a specific area that I spend a lot of time talking about, thinking about in, because this is specifically my area, basically what you often need to do to be able to grow a business. So different from being if you're self-employed, if you've started a business and you want to get it from A to B, you want to either exit it or you want to grow it to IPO, so go public, or you want to grow it in general, whatever it might be, the majority of the time you need funding. If you don't need funding, it's likely because you either have financial backing of your own or your families or network as a whole, although that's probably a little bit more angel investing, but you're usually in an incredibly privileged position or you're doing something that doesn't need funding from the beginning so for example I started my first ever business was selling pdfs so it didn't need funding because there was no cost that went into creating those pdfs other than 50 pounds I've paid my friend who was a graphic design student in order to be able to make them look pretty and these were your pdfs that were giving out workouts yes so this was like and even before that there was um a pdf I made of like recipes and it was just instagram content I was doing and I was turning it into pdfs and selling them um but that obviously doesn't need funding because you know You don't need to pay to create a product to be able to get your first bit of cash in the bank for the business.

10:14The majority of the time, though, if you're creating anything where you need to buy the product itself or you need to do any research and development into it, you'll hear about people talking about getting funding to start their business or getting funding to take their business to the next level if they've been able to scale it a little bit already. There's a few different things you can rely on in terms of going for funding. But a lot of the time, there's generally kind of two main different routes. You can go for institutional funding. So that's like going to a venture capital or private equity, which is probably a little bit later, or just generally like funds that are put in place.

10:47Their job is to deploy capital to put into people's businesses. Just to keep that simple. On the other side, you can have angel investing. So that is when someone would go to a either friends and family, if they're lucky enough to have friends and family that would happily put a bit of money into their business. more often it's probably going to be this thing called angel investing which is high net worth individuals or you know it's it's slightly lower than considered high net worth individuals you don't necessarily have to be um in the uk you actually have to earn a hundred thousand in order to be able to angel invest it's back down to a hundred thousand because we overturned the legislation last week that made it go up to 170 000 wow yes um which meant that in some areas of the UK zero women could be angel investors.

11:34Wow. Yes so that was overturned literally. And you helped with that campaign? Yes. That's incredible. Thank you. We just got really really angry and this is why it is important to get really angry and not to see anything as like that feels like quite small in comparison to especially what's going on in the world at the moment like it feels like a tiny thing to be getting angry about but also when you're creating an environment in which in some place in the UK literally zero women can invest in a world where we're making women rely on angel investing anyway, it's just completely dire. So that's now changed, which is fantastic.

12:03That's so good. But it still seems, you know, thank you for so clearly laying that out for us because you can see instantly how tricky it is, especially for women, to start a business. So what do you do? You've got a great idea. You know that there's an audience waiting for whatever it is, whether it's a product or a service. Where do you go? Literally, and what we're doing by not, So the institutional area of that where we're talking about VC funding, as I said, 2 % of that goes to women in the UK. 2%. Why is that? So there's a number of different reasons. But I do want to say that like a 98 % gender disparity is like fucking shocking.

12:46Like that is so dire. And we see it as an entrepreneurship issue. so we see it as like you know equivalent to why women don't get into certain roles or whatever it might be but it's not an entrepreneurship issue because we also know that women hire more women they pay women more they put women in leadership positions even when they might god forbid have a child so we know that it basically exacerbates every other issue so we're making women rely on this angel investing which is essentially just saying okay you either need to be rich or you need to have a network filled with rich people or you're not going to be able to fund your business like that's literally what we're saying all people right exactly like the large majority of people are not able to go to their family and friends and be like you got you got 10 grand you wouldn't mind putting into this business that I haven't proven to work yet and there are whole things in place to mean that you have funding to be able to do things that haven't worked yet because that's how businesses start there's so many different routes to it and what makes me it makes me so incredibly frustrated because I you know have been one of the lucky ones who has got VC funding and there will be a number of reasons for that we were two and a half years old and had already proven the business so that was one of them I also probably felt like one of the quote-unquote like more accessible like less scary female investments because you know I'm from a very privileged background and went to Oxford and like all of these things that they were probably like, oh, a little bit less spicy.

14:11Yeah, yeah. Like, which is terrible in itself. I love your honesty around that. Like, let's talk about all of this stuff and look at the reasons why it's not happening for women. Right, but the reason why, and it's so funny because every time I've gone on the news to talk about like how dire it is, because when people hear that 2 % stat, they're like, oh, wow, that is terrible. And there's so much around kind of like, well, if you built a successful business, you'd get the funding. And it's like, bro, I've got the funding. The point is that we as women cannot get funding. And you hear it as well.

14:41You hear in the way that like people talk about female owned businesses in the way that, you know, it's often it's very it's lovely businesses, but they're very like they're home centric businesses. they are candle centric businesses they are artisanal centric businesses they are like where are the tech businesses where are the basically stem-based businesses where are the science-based businesses like all of these things that are not getting funding because we are literally not investing in women and we make them rely on angel investing which we know goes a lot slower which we know is a lot harder if you don't have a great network and then we raise the thresholds like we did last what do we what the fuck do we do i mean i know obviously this is you take great time and care to work out how we're going to make this an easier route for young female entrepreneurs but what what can we do about it how will it change so what I really would love is for there to be a piece of research into it in order to be able to be like how could we change this we know that at the moment you can you know the women who are getting investing are hugely outperforming in terms of their returns and everything so it's not you know yes it's a smaller sample size but give us the bigger sample size and we'll show you how that can improve elsewhere um but you know there's a huge amount of data to say that it's not a research-backed decision at all that would mean that we wouldn't want to invest in women not least because also women make products for women which is a grossly underserved area if you've read the book like invisible women you'll know that like so much of the world is built based on products for the norm which was men and actually there's like so much here that we can invest more into and those products are likely going to be you know businesses are generally started by their target customer so I started Tala because I wanted what Tala produces now you know it's that's the case a lot of the time basically so there's so much we can get out of it in terms of what we can do I do think getting angry is a big part of it and it feels like quite a yelling into the abyss and like sometimes it is but we saw last week overturning that legislation for example like it's it does have a positive effect yeah you know I think we need to make this two percent statistic well known I think that's a big part of it because you know we've we've seen in so many other gender gap issues now the need to report on those types of things so public companies need to report on their diversity statistics in terms of you know gender pay gaps for the same job are illegal like all of these different things I don't know what the best solution would be all I know is that the current situation is dire and until we make it very very obvious that the current situation is dire and until we like shout about it from the rooftops and basically make all VCs incredibly embarrassed if they don't have a more evenly allocated fund and I think that the best way to do that is just to like really really raise awareness at this stage as I said it feels like pretty shit being like all we can do is raise awareness because that's not all we can do I do think though that the onus cannot only be on women in order to fix it because you know it's it's not a women's issue it's an investment issue and therefore it needs to be fixed by the people who are sitting in the investment committees and in the rooms of which I am not one.

17:41Like I can invest as much as I can into female-owned businesses, but at the same time, I have nowhere near as much to deploy as these funds, whereas their job deployed millions and millions every year to make businesses grow. So my current route is just like literally shouting as much as physically possible and getting it known because I do think that the second people hear that 2 % statistic, they're like oh wow that's crazy that's like actually insane it's horrifying how much um how much does all of this drive what you're doing with your own businesses because i know you don't want to sit there going i have to prove to the world that women can run successful businesses but there must be a bit of that fire in your belly that makes you get out of bed in the morning and go i'm gonna do my absolute best to make this out of the companies you've got the best and the biggest they can be?

18:32A hundred percent. I mean, there's a, there is a significant part of it. I mean, I believe hugely in the businesses and their, their routes to success as it is. And so I'm not like, it's, I don't get up in the morning wanting to prove people wrong. I get up in the morning wanting to make the businesses the best they can be. As I've said, I'm the target customer as well. So I literally want these businesses, like I want them to make what they're making and I want them to grow and I want them to do what they're doing better than what I feel like is currently out there I do think there's a part of it in a way that you know with Tala for example with clothing I do find it incredible in not necessarily the greatest way how many women's clothing companies are owned and run by men like that just that seems like a disconnect it's not it's not even like it it just seems like it just seems like a disconnect well if you bring it the other way around if you say oh if you were to say all men's shaving razor companies are female owned you'd go but also like how do they know what we want from this like they don't but also when you're talking about clothing you're literally talking about like how my boobs sit how my crotch feels in this legging like how thick the gusset is like whether it's a very important gusset like all of these various different things and it's like the gusset is a real point isn't it and like we sit there at tala for out we will debate a gusset for hours right and like to i agree too right and i think that's how women's clothing should be made but it won't be right exactly and i do feel like that's a you know we were preparing our stats for international women's day because at tala every day is international women's day and we were you know going through the fact that like our board is 100 % women like when we're sitting there designing the clothes it is by women for women like it's very much in a like why we're you know we're about to come out with this shirt for example And like at the moment I'd be like, I just hate the fact that like it was originally a product made for men.

20:23We've got it as part of like this androgynous look. We've changed it into a blouse. I want to wear a white shirt to do like I want to dress up. I want to throw it over active wear to like dress it down and just go to the shops. I want to do all of these things. Why does a shirt not do all of those different things? It does like I know a white shirt is super versatile, but I have to have a different white shirt for if I want to dress it up, dress it down, whatever it might be. so we sit there and we go okay well my most annoying thing is x my most annoying thing is the fact that i want to tuck it in at the front and not tuck it in at the back and then we make the side slits so that you can do that by the way i know completely agree and i'm like why is it so low at the side so i can't actually do that tuck i want to like i if i'm wearing a shirt i like to roll my sleeves up but i want them to stay up so we've added an extra button so that it actually stays up like all of these things i cannot imagine the company working in the same way in the design room with that being like we make products exclusively for women like we are and there are so many companies that do that and they are exclusively owned and run by men especially within like the activewear industry that gets even more up close and personal yes it does and that's how tala started and we were in that industry and we're like looking at every single one of our competitors and it is all male owned and run and like to me there's an element of that that not even on the point of like funding but like hey i trust my friend to design a bodysuit that's going to work well for me yeah over it's making me think like around the road wait who's designing tampons i want to know who's designing those those guys because that's really up close and personal do you know i mean like who's designing that stuff right i'd like to know that it was someone that actually has to insert one right agree and I also think that as part of this there's it feels I don't know I feel like a misery even like talking about it like it feels like one of those things where you're like oh I said I wouldn't grow up to be like that but I also feel like life yeah but also like if we're okay if we're in a world where like consumption is a significant part of it and you know we generally believe that you know if we wear something we want it to do x y and z or if we're using something we want it to do x y and z when i'm wearing clothes there is an inherent part of that that i want to have been designed by someone who also experiences the same things as me like that's why representation in general not just in this sense is so important yeah and so it kind of the more you think about it the more i think throughout the this wasn't even one of the like reasons for being at the beginning and then i think just like more and more if we've done this we've kind of been like oh this actually doesn't make sense at all i mean we've i've you know you speak about things like even tech that's made so like period tracking for example like those types of apps like there was one of the biggest ones in the u.s sold the data and it wasn't owned and run by women and then you just start thinking actually this isn't just a like preferences thing this is like that's dangerous when you look at roe v wade and you look at what's happened with roe v wade this is now a that's dangerous yeah because if someone's got their period tracking and they're putting in that data that is very dystopian isn't it feel squeamish in all areas yeah so there's different levels to it and like by no means do I think that we're like saving the world by making you're doing something really positive but I do I do think there's an element and you know probably a bit cliche but being the change you want to see and like of course very much just Like, I want a pair of leggings where the person who was designing them has also worn pairs of leggings that they felt all of these three problems with.

23:57But also to see young women out there today or even kids at school at my daughter's age to know that they have that they will have an even playing field when it comes to having ideas and seeing them come to fruition, which is not to say that it's necessarily extremely easy for men. it's hard to start a business anyway but two versus 98 % disparity means that you feel hopeless but to know that young women down the line hopefully because you're shouting about it alongside other people to give that equilibrium and that necessary equality that's that's huge we need that yeah and you don't just feel hopeless you feel like it's not a viable route and like I think that there's an element of it as well that like it was a viable route for me because of number of reasons that probably make me the exception in this scenario like as I've said like I probably was the less scary option and therefore like it's you know I am able to be invested in for like these specific reasons and like god forbid that's not the case for someone else and they have like this amazing idea and like everyone should be pro amazing businesses being started full stop it's not about men and women like it's not about like everyone should be pro great businesses being started whether they have a not-for-profit angle whether they have a purpose angle whether they have a tech angle whether they make things easier for us like whether they're just clothes like whatever it might be better businesses should always be welcome and what we're currently doing it's not about backing poor businesses it's about the fact that like think how many people will not get into entrepreneurship because they know this stat and there's an element of me where I'm like maybe I should shout about it less because it's going to put people off and it's like no we need to shout about it we need to change it and then we need to make people think do you know what I want to leave school and I want to do three years in this and then I want to become an entrepreneur and well it's never been seen as an option for women it was definitely never spoken about as an option no in any scenario well even if I look back at my nans they didn't even work they right kind of you can own a house if you weren't married like literally less than 40 years ago.

26:04Yeah, that's not long ago. So we're really in the depths of it still and trying to unpick it and work out how to see this positive change.

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28:21For any listeners that don't know your route to where you're at today, so you were, I've heard you described as one of the OG influencers. Well, thank you so much. I mean, this is such an interesting topic for me because I'm obviously a hell of a lot older than you. And when social media came about, I was kind of slow on the uptake. Like, what is this? And I think my brother-in-law said to me, oh, you should try Instagram. I'm thinking, what the hell is all of this? So I was really behind and I've sort of had to catch up because whether we like it or not, so much of what many of us do for a living, you know, transpires online and we're communicating with people online.

28:57So you caught on to this seemingly early. So what was the thinking behind becoming an, I suppose you didn't know you were going to become an influencer, but what made you start putting yourself out there on social media? What was the impetus? So I started on social media in 2015. It was literally a week after my 18th birthday and I wanted to get into fitness. So I was the type of person who would constantly go to the gym for two weeks, fall off again, get really annoyed at myself, try again a month later, the cycle repeats. And I thought if I basically could keep myself accountable, then I would be more likely to be more likely to stick to it.

29:38So I started my Instagram as a faceless, nameless account. And I just posted every day whether I went to the gym or not, what I had cooked. I was just sharing my journey it was an accountability diary essentially I didn't show my face until I had 10 ,000 followers or my name so that was like the so definitely the beginning was obviously very different from how it was now. But for you to even get from like no followers to 10 ,000 is quite something what do you think gave you that momentum? So I've thought about it a lot and I think that especially at the time because like I thought I I probably was like yeah it's because I know it really well, being 18.

30:16But actually, you know, it was probably blind luck and being in a situation where actually at the time, the influencers were people who were known for something already. So actors, models, musicians, etc. Those were the people with big followings on social media. And we were very much at the beginning of starting to see people pop up for whether it was Vine, whether it was generally through social media, whatever it might be. It wasn't a kind of common occurrence. so I didn't see that as like an end goal because it wasn't a thing at the time I think what happened though was because do you remember that Instagram like at the very beginning was very polished it was very almost like magaziney it was you know wasn't something that we perceived at the time to be normal to I don't know put up whether it was like a no makeup selfie or even just showing what you were doing in your day so I think there was an element of that that like Because I didn't have my name on my face, it was so shamelessly like, I fucked it again today.

31:13I didn't go to the gym. Went to my friend's house instead and going to get back on it tomorrow and all of this. It was a very open and just completely transparent journal, I guess. I'm also doing the maths in my head and going, 2015. I think I was 34. That's fucking depressing. Anyway, you were literally a teenager. Anyway, I was really old and you were not. because I talk to everyone just thinking we're all the same age and then it's stark facts like that where I go, no, I was a grown-ass adult with children. No, I didn't have the same age as everyone as well. Literally no matter what I mean.

31:45Oh, mighty. So you're building up this following. At what point do you go, business? This is now a monetized thing. We're in business, guys. So I actually monetized it before I even thought it was a business, for sure. I monetized it about, I'd say, three months after I hit 10K. but at the time I'd been posting what I would do every single weekend once it started to take off so once I'd got past that 10 ,000 follower mark I thought I was the hottest shit in the world and therefore I was like I'm really going to lean into this I'm going to see however far I can get all of this and what I was spending a lot of time doing at that time was like showing what recipes I was cooking so every single weekend I was doing in so I left school I then went to I started an internship at IBM that I did for a year before I went to university and I started that in the July and so what I would be doing is I was obviously working a corporate job in the week I was never home when it was daylight because unfortunately we live in the UK and so I would be like making these meals and they would literally look like slop like they'd look so disgusting and so what I'd do at the weekend is I'd like bulk eight hours a day I'd just like cook recipe after recipe after recipe so that I would have things to post during the week so where does that come from because that's you know certainly at that age if I think of myself at that age I was working but I certainly didn't have that mindset to be like I'm going to use every minute to ensure that I'm boosting this side hustle let's call it I know you talked about side hustling a lot where does that drive come from is that something you learned growing up or is that just you turned up like this this is your nature I think it's very much in my nature I'm very much like a strength and your strengths person um I believe very strongly in riding the wave and the wave was being ridden.

33:30I love it. I was very much like I don't think because that's what's funny is that like I don't look back and think I was like I'm gonna get to 100k I'm gonna get to like it was very much like this is working therefore do more of this like just you're showing me green light I will do more of that yeah and so I was doing that but then I was completely burning myself out because I was getting up at like 5am because I was wanted to go to the gym before work and be able to actually keep up with this fitness journey that I'd like stuck to and then I wanted to you know I wanted to post content I was working obviously at IBM during the day and that often went on quite late so I was just like really burning the candle at both ends so I remember thinking like I can't continue to do this when I was also on an intern salary and I was like I have no I have no time at the weekend to you know earn anything extra I have no like essentially I need to monetize this somehow and also people were consuming it and so I was like well it makes sense if people want it people want it if they don't they don't so I literally put every single recipe I'd ever created at this point into two different ebooks one a sweet ebook and one a savory ebook as I said paid 50 quid to my friend to mock it up into a pdf make it look nice made myself a Shopify site and literally sold them five pounds so genius I literally just put them up there you can put like a digital plugin so that anytime anyone comes and checks out it just goes straight to their email so it was just automated and I thought it was a really great idea because I was just like this stuff is already on my Instagram but I know I would pay five pounds if I found an Instagram I liked and I wanted all of their recipes in one so that rather than scrolling through their Instagram I could actually flick through and I could see it in order and I could see the full method and all of that yeah and so it was basically just like a slightly monetized pdf blog basically I didn't think of it as a business at all like at all but you but you had that like business in your bones you knew that you could you know condense what you're doing to still it down, put a book online, you know, that's, you were thinking outside the box from a young age, I would say.

35:24I, yeah, I'd say that's probably fair. And I'd say that it was, you know, as I said, it was this kind of like, strengthen your strengths, what can you get more out of? Like, if you're putting in eight hours a day every weekend, and you're also getting up at five and doing this job, and then commuting for an hour and a half home and like all of this, like, how can you get more out of what you're already doing? I think that's very ingrained in my mindset. Yeah, I've got that too. And I think I've always been aware that I'm not the best at anything, but I will really work at the things I know I'm capable of.

35:59So there'll be people out there who are better than me at all sorts of things, but I will work as hard as I can. And not in a, in sort of a martyrdom way. I genuinely enjoy really pushing myself and seeing what my boundaries are, like what my capabilities are and how I can push myself. And I think that always feels really exciting that you're not just flying on like, I'm never like, yeah, I'm just flying on this talent that I was born with, not at all. I think I have to work so hard to do particularly well at any of the things that I'm doing. Well, it's so funny that you say that because I particularly think that like, like I know for sure that I have definite strength.

36:40So I know I'm particularly good at marketing. I know that I'm particularly good when it comes to like product for a specific audience like I know that there are certain strengths that I have that I do think like are my particular strengths but I would say actually what my career has been like at least started off in terms of things like social media and content creation all of these things I would categorically say that I have never been good at those things and it was more being able to like lean into what did work that fit my skill set so for example I've never created pretty content like if you go down my feed at any stage there's gonna be like nothing that was ever like visually appealing in any way and like I used to get so like at myself about it kind of just being like oh like look at all these beautiful like pieces of content that people are putting out it's boring I don't like beautiful content so boring but like I completely agree in the way that like I know I will like I know I can outwork Like there's one thing I know I can do and like I will put in the I will put in the sheer effort and hours 10 times over, whether that is, you know, on whatever direction that might be in.

37:54And I think that's a really valuable lesson. I mean, you're now running extremely successful businesses. And I mean, I'm using the word successful in a very full bodied way. They're absolutely nailing it. And they're all doing brilliantly. coming from that influencer territory and knowing how powerful social media is and being you know because that was established prior to your businesses you are the face of these brands whether you like it or not and there are loads of brands out there that are completely faceless and you don't know who owns them what's going on with them you can't ever pin one person down to be accountable for decisions made how do you juggle that pressure because social media is an absolute like it's the wild west it still is it's still pretty ungoverned there are some rules but not necessarily abided by it's really full-on and if so much of where you've come from and how you translate what your businesses are online how do you navigate that how do you switch off from that yeah I think it's I mean I think it's a really good question I think it's something that I like very much had to put in place boundaries wise in order to be able to kind of move forwards and not completely burn the candle at two ends and like ruin my mental health I think that you know there's an element of the fact that like I don't believe social media is a good place for people pleasers and I'm like very much a people pleaser and then throw a business in there as well that you cannot have control over like all of the different elements like it's an absolute nightmare and you're always going to be unhappy if that's like what you're kind of aiming for I think one of the like key decisions in protecting or setting those boundaries in order that yes as you say to a certain amount of people I will be the face of these businesses like whether I like it or not I think that a big decision that made that better is that when I came out of university I basically felt like I decided my career without even really meaning to and you know more based on this kind of concept of just working at what worked and just like keeping on pushing at what worked and felt like I'd become a social media influencer which I have nothing against at all but I as I said I don't feel like it fit within my skill set and more so to that I think that it fit directly in my like violation of boundaries when it comes to like being a people pleaser and if I'm constantly relying on like having to be liked in order to make a living that was never going to be good for me and so like at that point I did make a decision to like Like I deleted all of my videos on YouTube.

40:24I moved back from posting at all. There was a good two years where I did not give anyone what they wanted in terms of like, like I was just terrible in terms of content and all of that. And that was like a very conscious decision. And what I did at that point is I restructured the businesses as well. Because I think what happens is if you start a business with a social media following, you get a huge advantage in so many ways. you get a the following themselves they're you know they they're there they're waiting there you know I would I would always recommend to if you're starting a business without a face of it for example I'd always recommend to do some you know lead generation and really get that audience before you've even announced the product and all of this and like when you're an influencer you have that but you also have to launch at scale having never made a sale before you have to fulfill all of those things without ever having practiced from the point that you launch and I also think there's like a laziness to it in the way you set up the business in that it can rely on this lack of needing to establish itself in any other way and I was really worried that the businesses would just become synonymous with myself when I thought that they had so much more headroom to them I think that these businesses are amazing and I think that they should be able to disrupt industries and go far far beyond me and at a point that I made a decision that I didn't necessarily want to grow on social media and would move away from ever intentionally doing content to that direction, I needed to give the businesses a platform in which they could grow.

41:58So I restructured the businesses entirely at that point. And kind of essentially the whole idea was to mean that they would have a springboard to be able to actually build themselves almost from scratch in terms of everything internally in order to be able to be great businesses, whether people knew it as me or not. So of course, if you come via my page, you'll absolutely see the direct association. But even when we look at Tala's following, for example, there's like maximum 30 % crossover in terms of like the people who even know me and all of that, which was like a huge part of the intention behind this.

42:31And it had a huge negative effect on the businesses at the time. but I just knew that at that point I was like I will never be happy if I am running these businesses based on whether people like me or not like that is completely incompatible with how I want to live my life yeah it's completely incompatible with my personality type I would rather I don't think it's compatible for any human and I think it's really really really like don't get me wrong like it's obviously an amazing job to have in so many ways and sometimes I'll be like sitting there in like a terrible board meeting I'll be like why like you could be on a beach yeah yeah yeah with some gifted but I want to talk about this because you you wrote a book working hard hardly working which totally um dives into this subject matter of being successful yet not burning yourself out and knowing what your strengths are and putting boundaries in place that you don't completely crumble and burn out you're running three successful businesses the onus is on you if They're not doing well.

43:30You can't run and hide. They're your babies. You want them to succeed. Yet you don't want to hit burnout. And I think also it's a very Western, but also very British thing for us to boast about how busy we are. Some people do that, not everybody. Or just be absolutely drowning in tiredness because you're pushing yourself. And you say in the book, we are at this sort of strange point where you're either or you're not sure if you're completely burnt out or by social media standards, not quite productive enough. Right. Some of us are just like, I don't know which one I am. I'm sort of burnt out. But also, am I doing enough?

44:07I'm not achieving enough. And we're all a bit sort of lost in that. maybe yeah yeah no absolutely and I think it's a hugely important topic when it comes to actually like diving into where you sit within that and what our own boundaries are and like understanding that self-care is a form of productivity and you cannot have productivity without self-care but also you cannot have self-care without being productive like sometimes self-care is about reaching that deadline that you said you would reach three times and now you know you're you're letting it not happen again like there are two sides of this and it's really hard to know on social media I think one of the biggest issues is the fact that you're talking to so many people and you don't know if that person needs a little push at that moment or if they do need to sit back or whatever it might be I think in terms of what I've done to be able to get to a point where I at the moment and like you know comes in waves but at the moment feel like I've got a good balance of you know what I'm happy with it's a number of different things it's understanding that balance is not a 50 50 at all I've understood that I'm quite the type of person who like if my work is a type of thing that I've if I've set up my work in the right way then I really love what what I'm doing and like that doesn't need to be the same for everyone and some people can think that going home at seven from the office is like terrible but actually like I I love work in lots of ways and I'm really really fortunate to be in the position I'm in working on something so amazing and like why why shouldn't I love it and actually knowing that actually that doesn't need to be my mum said something the other day that like really resonated with me someone had said to her like you're never happy you're always wanting to go to the like next thing and you just finish this one and now you want to do this one and like you just need to like you just need to and she was like no you don't understand I'm happy because I'm doing all of these things all the time and I was like oh my god that's me and I've always like ingrained it in the way where I think that like there's something wrong with me because I'm wanting to do the next thing and go on to the next thing and aim for whatever it might be and I like scold myself constantly like you should just do this you should just do this and actually we are all different types of people and actually if that's what's making me feel energized at the moment like that's absolutely fine and that's a hugely fortunate position to be in and like great if that if the thing that you enjoy can also be the thing that makes you money and like all of these things don't get me wrong you're not going to enjoy every day of it but it is you know it's a great position to be in I think boundaries are a huge huge part how are you with those i have got better and better and i think that running a company you can't have a certain amount of boundaries because if it needs you it needs you but i also think that you can have the rest of the you can't use that there's an excuse to not set any boundaries the rest of the time so for example i have some really hard and fast rules around like how i spend my week so i on weeknights i will only do things two days like i will not go any further than that and like if it looks like I'm free on those extra days it's I'm not free like that's time for myself and I know the second I go over that threshold is the second that everything will be effective yeah work home life personal tasks like whatever it might be I know that I cannot go over that threshold so it's a one-in-one-out process it's understanding like how I recharge as a whole it's understanding how to say no to things even if they sound like great things because you've got too many things in that week or whatever it might be a huge part of it as well as an entrepreneur has been hiring people that are better than me at what they do like your team and your business is only ever as good as the people within it and like learning to hire really fantastic people and relinquish control and delegate effectively has been without a doubt the best thing for my mental health but also for the business I think that there is you know even at a managerial level so not even looking at like the entrepreneurship kind of angle we're ingrained with this kind of fear that makes us hire people that are not as good as us like it's seen as this it's like a protection mechanism because you don't want to feel worse about yourself and you don't want to feel replaceable but actually I think that there's a huge amount of value in always always always hiring the best person that you could possibly hire and like if that means that they can take over like all of this and they can make you be able to do something else or whatever it might be fantastic I just think that like that shift in my mindset in order to be able to hire the best people we can possibly afford at any stage has been so so so important because the business is only as good as those people and actually I am by no means and have never considered myself an expert in anything other than being the target customer and knowing how to talk to myself then and make products for myself then but other than that I'm not an expert on international expansion I'm not an expert on website I'm not an expert on finance like any of these things and like the business isn't going to be an expert on these things until it has an expert in place and like that's been a very gradual journey we're about to turn five at Tala for example and like there are still roles that I would wish we could have and we're just not there yet and like of course that's gradual and of course five years ago we would not have been able to afford those people but actually being able to delegate and relinquish control has been so so so important in order to mean that the business is not me yeah when it goes back to looking at your strengths again and knowing that you can play to them i'm the same with you know like anushka who edits the podcast i can't edit a podcast i haven't got a fucking clue but i i if i then work with someone who's brilliant at what they do i've got more time and energy to go right how am i going going to research this podcast as well as I can how am I going to create a new idea for something it's about really playing to your strengths rather than trying to be everything for everybody which is ultimately going to lead you to burnout yeah exactly so a couple of things I want to ask you one is about because obviously you're big on productivity the productivity method and using a pen and paper which as you can see by my little notepad is a huge deal for me if there's someone listening to this right now who feels apathetic unmotivated just meh like we've all been through it when you just feel like I don't care I don't know I don't want to get out of bed what would your first step be to motivating yourself and getting into a productive mindset so I always talk about the fact that motivation purely comes down to habits like habits are the backstop for all motivation.

50:27You cannot, like no one wakes up and feels motivated first thing in the morning, or some people do. I personally do not at all. It all comes down to habits. Like even just you getting out of bed and brushing your teeth and washing your face, like those are habits. So the more things that put you in a productive mindset that become habits, the better. So the productivity method itself is based on a few very simple kind of methodologies. so the first one is to make sure that every single day you are writing down your to-do list but it's not going to be a to-do list it's not going to be a list of an endless list of things and you've got kind of like washing your hair and sending a really important email on the same list weighted to the same importance when you know that if you just washed your hair today it probably wouldn't actually be a successful day um you're going to split that to-do list into quick ticks tasks and projects love do you know how much i love lists you are speaking like i'm almost salivating lists to me are the cornerstone to sanity but they are the cornerstone and there is also there are scientific reasons behind why they are the cornerstone because when you go about your day and you race into your day and you're starting something straight away without having done this before you are depriving your body of the dopamine hit it needs by defining what success is so yeah i need to send this email and then ticking that off oh that without that that tick what dreams i can't it's i do a full line through and a tick done dead to me heaven is there a better feeling no i don't think there is but it's also like when you start to realize that it's like your body actually needs it like you need that dopamine hit of being like i have done that task and if you race into your day feeling like a headless chicken without having got through all of these things then you are literally depriving yourself of the dopamine hit that you need by defining what success is aka writing out your to-do list and ticking it off achieving success like are you the sort of person that you've got to do the worst thing first like One of my friends said her husband, I'm going to give him a shout out, Liz and Al.

52:39Al said to Liz, his saying is, eat your frogs. Eat the frog. Eat the frog first. I don't really get the analogy, but I understand the sentiment. Do the worst thing first. Is that a good idea? I think you'll know if it's a good idea for you. Some people do need a warm up. And I think that we shouldn't like shame people for not all productivity methods working for them. But the point behind it is the fact that like you gather proof that you can also do today. yeah so like first of all you've got the worst task done that's amazing by like 9 15 you're already feeling pretty good about yourself but you've also proven to yourself that today is going to be a good day so there's like two different sides there's a psychological side and also the fact that you've ticked it off and literally got it done but the the way i do things with this kind of split up to-do list is that these quick ticks are under five minutes the tasks are five to 30 minutes and the projects are 30 minutes plus right and like you can kid yourself that it's going to to take longer than a to-do list but it like it's categorically not you're still just writing things down you're just putting them into their pre-aligned place and then what you're going to do is you're going to choose out of those so it can be from any category you're going to choose three non-negotiables and the reason for this again is it's the dopamine thing but it's also that it's so easy to look at a huge list whether it's split up into categories or not and feel completely overwhelmed and feel like oh my god i can't get this done today and the whole point is is that actually probably if you chose three things on that list and you got them done and they weren't all quick ticks that would be a successful day oh hugely but what so many people do is they get this kind of fear and you end up procrastinating by either doing less important tasks or by just looking at it and being like oh my god there's so much to do and it's like take it three ticks at a time like honestly just three ticks at a time but work out by the end of this day which are the three things in that to do table which is what we call it what are those three things in that to do table that you absolutely need to have got done heaven you prove to yourself again and again and again that today doesn't need to be big it doesn't need to be getting everything done what it cannot be is you spending day after day after day getting overwhelmed at how many things there are that need to be done rather than like breaking that down and feeling worse because you haven't done them there's nothing worse like i've got one thing on my list that i keep thinking oh god and it's just it's still on the it's still same bloody post-it and it hasn't gone and I know that if I just do it tomorrow yeah which I can I'll feel so much lighter and better we underestimate that amazing feeling and we yeah we underestimate as well proving to ourself on like a micro level that like we can do it and like it sounds so childish and it sounds so like but we do like you you have a really hard day you finish the day you feel drained you get home you're dreading the next day already The market's uncertain.

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56:12Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program. There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zinn. Check out Zinn.com slash find to find Zinn at a store near you. warning this product contains nicotine nicotine is an addictive chemical are you ready to change your mind about your body we are flipping the script on fitness making movement that feels good and fits your life i'm megan roop celebrity trainer and founder of the sculpt society i created this online fitness platform to be uplifting and flexible with sculpt strength and dance cardio classes from a 10 minute quickie to a 50 minute sweat you will find programs for every stage of a woman's life including prenatal postpartum bridal and more start your two-week free trial at the sculpt society.com slash podcast you get up in the morning you need to prove to yourself that you can do today before you start proving to yourself that you can't yeah and that's what writing down this to-do table and those three non-negotiables do like that's literally all it is yeah and if you need if you're the type of person that needs to eat the frog as well and you need to like do the worst task first like you know how good you'll feel tomorrow if you do that task first thing yeah i love it i mean you're totally speaking my language and here here it's a pen and paper because it is yeah the absolute bees yeah and you feel it as well like i'm a pen and paper person through and through i use the planners literally every day of my life i actually left it at the office on thursday night and i literally had to find an old one yeah i want to be able to trace over the top i left this notepad with all my things in at the o2 after i've done a talk and I was like I can't I must go back room I'm in who am I how do I work like it was horrendous one final point for because there will be people who will have specifically listened to this episode who are startups who want their business to thrive who want to see progress and growth and don't know where to start is there this is a frustrating question one I'm sure you've been asked a million but is there one piece of practical advice you would suggest to people who feel a bit lost in the enormity of starting a business and wanting to grow it?

58:20Yes, absolutely. I think that you've kind of already said it in the way that like so many people feel so terrified to start and I look back at every single early product or website or whatever and I am deeply deeply embarrassed if that was our thing now I would I would fire myself babe but have you got YouTube videos of you presenting at the age of 16 on the internet I can't delete those so don't be cringing at your gorgeous little pdfs don't even be cringing at that stuff but that's the exact point is you need to just start. Like you need to just start. And I know that that's like the most infuriating piece of advice ever, but like I'll make it a bit more practical.

59:10I don't think so. I think that you need to prove to yourself you can start first of all, and you won't do that until you've actually done it. But also I think that so many businesses never start because they have this like end goal product where they're like, I want to change this entire industry. And like, unless you've had a previous exit or you're really rich or whatever it might be you're probably not going to get the funding to be able to actually start with what your end product is and like to use shreddy my other business as an example we started with pdfs three years in we became an app because and the app is always what i wanted to do i wanted to do an app that would mean that you could put in your preferences around working out and it would give you your perfect workout plan that's what i always wanted to do but we couldn't afford to do it we needed to do those pdfs to get enough money to make the app and actually the thing is is that the second you release something you're going to realize everything that was wrong with it anyway so if you've spent all of that money to develop that product you're not collecting information until it's actually out there so why i say just start is not just to prove to yourself and not just to get something out there but because it will probably disprove what you think the next step is or what you think the end goal is and you cannot know that until you've actually put it out to a real life audience.

1:00:28So yes, like spend as much time as you need, like gathering information, tell everyone your idea, see what they think of it. The criticisms that come up again and again, they're a blessing, refine and hone your concept, move on, bring the better version to the next person you talk to, literally talk to people as much as possible. That's the first stage of starting. Because once you've told people you're doing something as well, you're going to feel like you really need to do it. But then also, whether it is literally just getting a survey out to your target customers like it doesn't need to be placing an order with the supplier it can just be like start get some information by your target customers yes you can do that by getting the product to them and getting the information back on their feedback but you don't even need to do that you can set up a survey you know your target customer you know who you're selling to go into a facebook group of that target customer with a survey about the product that you want to create and specific issues they're having around similar products and why they would buy it and if they wouldn't buy it and what price range they would do and what color they would like and all of these different things that is starting starting does not need to be complex but it just needs to be movement it needs to be movement in the right direction and I think so many people and actually I did a survey of my audience because I wanted to see like what people were what stage people were on the journey whether they were employed or self-employed or entrepreneurs or whatever it might be there was such a huge amount of people who had an idea but didn't know how to start and I want to do stuff with that like and I want to make that better but the first thing I can say to everyone is like get something material and get some feedback yeah like that is the best thing you can do it doesn't need to be anything more any more complicated than that and the best thing about that is that you can find out it doesn't work before you've spent tens of thousands on it potentially and then you can move on to the next one yeah but you cannot get that until you start just start and move in any direction it's better than being static and get a pen and paper and get those lists written because lists are everything they're everything grace i mean i could literally talk to you about a week because i've got so many things i'm just personally interested in sort of being moving into the business thing with the happy place and everything it's all very interesting to me so it's been great talking to I really hope that we see positive movement in terms of that awful disparity we talked about at the top of the conversation.

1:02:47It's brilliant that you're shouting about it and helping the momentum and moving us in the right direction with it all. And I wish you all the luck with it. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I tell you what, I'm so pleased to know that our gussets are so well taken care of at Tala. They are amazing, by the way. The way your leggings sit around there is genuinely going to make a difference to your day. It's heaven. Grace, a massive thank you for that incredibly insightful chat and for all the groundbreaking work that you're doing to help more women get into business. Are you a fellow list nerd?

1:03:24Oh, I love a list. Maybe you want to become one now. Come and join us in the pen and paper crew. Either way, say hello on Instagram. We're at happyplaceofficial. the other place to head on instagram is at happy place book club each month we read a book together chat about it online and hear from the authors on book club episodes of happy place 2 july's book is will i ever have sex again author sophie hagan is a comedian and she hasn't had sex for 3 000 days and counting in an attempt to find out why we're not having the sex we want sophie asks a number of questions. Can we blame a lacking sex education?

1:04:04Where's the radical sexual liberation we were promised? Should she have slept with that guy in that bush that one time? This is part memoir, part conversations with therapists, sex workers and comedians. And if you want to read along with me, all you need to do is head to at happyplacebookclub on Instagram. That's where we can all chat about the book and I hope that I'll catch you there. It's a blimmin' good one, this one. All right, for now, it's a huge thank you again to Grace, to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Play Studios, and to you, you very gorgeous lot.

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