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one of the reasons i step back from social media was because i if something can manifest so physically that you're having a [ __ ]
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seizure then you probably need to take this more seriously and that was you know like that was that was tough
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and that for me is my happiness grace beverly ceo founder of two multi-million dollar companies one's a fashion empire that's focused on
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sustainability and one's a fitness empire comprising a mobile app a supplements business and gym equipment
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she did all of that while studying and graduating from oxford university while growing her online channels to millions and millions
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of followers while writing a book and while dealing with all of the things that every other gen z person has to deal with at the age
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of 23 23 and on the surface it's easy to understand while looking in someone might love to have
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grace's life but as you start to peel back the layers as we do in this conversation you begin to understand her obsessive attention to detail the
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weight of her workload and the personal cost of her accomplishments and you see the impact that those things have had on
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all parts of her life and it makes you reconsider despite all of this she's persisted she stayed true to her values she's doubled down on the things she loves the most and she's cut out some of the things
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that no longer serve her she's learned she's learned lessons that most of us would take a lifetime to learn
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and she's 23. it blows my mind without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the driver ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this yourself
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grace i started my business at 18 years old as well you um you faced a different set of
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challenges not only have you started your business at an incredibly young age or at least you got into business at an incredibly young age you face a set of
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challenges that are even alien to me in the sense that you are a woman in business um you are taking on various industries
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that don't want to be taken on and that really are sort of incumbent monopolies in the space of fast fashion and fitness and those
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things i guess my first question is why did you choose business and what gave you the
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what gave you the confidence to pursue a career that's filled with so much uncertainty at such a
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young age i think i think people often assume that the first part of it always has to be a kind of i'm going to start this i'm going to do this and i think that mine absolutely wasn't that at all and i
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think that that's what often makes me kind of question you know the amount of things that have had to fall into place for this to
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happen and of course you know there's hard work in that but there's also so many other things that have had to go right um so for me you know as i kind of said
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when i was 18 and working doing an internship at ibm that's kind of when i started and
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i just started doing some i essentially started monetizing something that should be monetized so it's content i was giving away
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for free and then i was going to do lots more of that and so i decided to monetize it via an ebook um and then you know the
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next year i did more of that and then that's you know then it started picking up momentum i started doing different products and i think that
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that's i guess often not seen in the way that business is represented it's kind of seen as like a
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eureka moment then you go and do it then you put it into action then you fail once or twice and then you get it
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and that it was far more gradual than that and i think that probably over the past you know so it's
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probably been so it's been five years since that moment i'd say four years since the business it's ready that it is
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now has um i guess was founded um and in that time probably the first two years were incredibly gradual very much a kind of residual extra
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income um rather than kind of this big like these are my goals this is gonna happen within this time um so i guess in that it's been a
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gradual process i think the confidence has gathered through that and a lot of the time i
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haven't been confident enough to do that but have i guess just done it anyway so
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you know when i was when i did kind of my second set of ebooks which was in my first year at university
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that was literally because my student loan didn't come through like that was that was the only reason so as in i don't think it was necessarily a
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confidence thing i think it was more okay like what are we gonna do in that situation um and then putting that together and
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then being able to you know leverage a platform to be able to monetize that so and then from then
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onwards obviously it's been very mindful it's been very kind of strategic and that's how it's happened but i guess i guess the answer is that the confidence hasn't always been there and it hasn't always been a kind of i'm
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going to take on this industry sure starting tala that that was um but but the rest of it
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a lot of it has been gradual a lot of it has been this kind of more just a cumulative
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making one decision at a time um which is i guess what i kind of try and show as well so that people can know that it doesn't always need to be this one big decision and this one big business that's going
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to be the biggest business in the world it can just be you know something you're just doing in that moment
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the world has changed recently over the last 12 months because of the pandemic a lot of people have lost their jobs and so freelance websites and entrepreneurship
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has now become more in focus as people are trying to find ways to give themselves a little bit more stability in their income
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and when i speak to my friends that are you know your age 23 years old right 24 next week a week after sorry um or
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who are younger 18 19 or even older um everybody seems to have a business idea yeah and i'm sure you're
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bombarded with dms like this right everyone has a business idea um there seems to be this
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barrier between the idea and taking the first step like making uh the instagram page and is the the barrier between that is it confidence in your view what is it i think
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it's probably specific to the situation the person the circumstance so you know i was when i was at university if you know i think that there was
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something that came together to make me do that but i was also at university in a place and in a time that i could
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take i guess a a risky decision in terms of how i spend my time in terms of what i'm putting together i wasn't
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i guess i wasn't doing a part-time job at the time that i could have put into that and so you know part of it is
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circumstance in the way that people a lot of people don't necessarily have the the backing to put behind it or it might be the the time they can put into it you know lots of people are
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working three jobs just to make ends meet and therefore you know you might have an idea but actually being able to sacrifice the
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time spent doing that isn't an option and i think but then i think a lot of the time as well i think it can be
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confidence out of that circumstance it can be um or outside of that circumstance it can be you know
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should i be doing this why should i be doing this and i think that a lot of the ideas that i've had you
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know i'm sure you'll have the same like there'll be ideas that you have kind of the whole time and it's choosing the right ones and it's
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choosing and it's being able to test it i think i'm sure if i tested out my first i guess what has turned into shreddy now
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if i tested that out um you know even more gradually or if it hadn't worked or whatever
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i don't know how tenacious i would have been in terms of actually making that happen and as i say it's been like an accumulation of that confidence and
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actually testing things realizing their work and then replicating that so i think
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i mean i think we can't necessarily blanket apply it to everyone and be like it's because of this it's because of this but i think that you know probably
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the biggest the biggest factors will be circumstance confidence um and yeah i guess there are so many
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things that can stop you but there are also so many things that can enable you to say okay well this is this is this i'm gonna i'm
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gonna make it happen or i'm gonna take that leap or i'm gonna at least do the background work we'll do a survey to see if my product would be liked or
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whatever it might be i think as well if people looking at you or myself that have achieved things in
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business will see this very polished product right and they'll think well i'm so far from that so i'm i'm so far from being
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capable of what that person has achieved but as you've described that which i think is so powerful and important for you it was
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taking one step up a very very thousand stair staircase at a time and and as you say when we look at you
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now on step 934 we think oh my god like you know you must you probably get this comment a lot right she's like you must be so proud of
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yourself yeah which is like well it's been one step at a time so yeah you know and i think you can be proud of the steps along the way
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but i also think that i look back at some not necessarily some products but you know some branding some
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content some all of that and i look at it and i'm like it was crap like that is awful like as in i would
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just scroll right past that or i wouldn't you know and of course things have changed people's like tastes have changed and
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all of that that kind of goes into branding and product and all of that but there was something you know i've sold everything from
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you know like t-shirts to notebooks to like whatever it would be it's not what the everything that's
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accumulated now is the good things that have then been replicated it's not everything gets kind of replicated and
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then you know you see all of the end products there have been some things that never ended up as an end product
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because they were so [ __ ] in the first place that they were never you know they didn't deserve that extra time on them so i think you're completely right there
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is this kind of and i i think it's also perpetuated by you know unknowingly often by people
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like ourselves so you know like i i think i look at the stuff i share and i look at it and my god i'm so much more likely to share if
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it's this or you know if this product worked out well and and subconsciously because there was an
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end of that journey we don't necessarily say like oh this was the thing that actually went really wrong because you know it's embarrassing like
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you don't want to share that you don't or you don't kind of think too because you don't think of the kind of like pride in the journey that's got to that
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point um and so it i guess it all does you know you will just see the the good things or you might see the bad things that are positioned in an inspirational way but it's still curated
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but it's still what i guess is want to be seen and to to my other point about being uh a woman in business that comes with a whole unique set of challenges you know i've heard you talk
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about being underestimated not taken seriously before speak to me about some of those challenges that i wouldn't even
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you know know about so i think first i always also think it is important to preface this with the fact that yes i'm a woman in business i'm also white able-bodied i was privately educated i went dogs but
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a kind of huge list of things that need to be i guess contextualized which i've always thought is important and i think that i think that
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it's you know i won't face half the challenges that a black woman would face in the same
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position i think the challenges i do face are you know they are kind of often and they have to be they have to be worked um through i guess and and that's been you
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know a journey there have been you know people who have wanted to work for the businesses
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who clearly won't accept the fact that you know this i'm not the face of it like i am
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acting ceo and you know i do do x y and z and there have also been you know it's
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been the same with partnerships it's been the same with you know i think people people have a certain perception that's definitely
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warped and increased and perpetuated by online presence and the fact that i don't just
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share my work and um and i think that you know it does come down to it does come down to these preconceptions and i know as well since i've started realizing this i have preconceptions as well you know we'll
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say like it's about a woman who's high up who you hear about and you're like oh god
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they're doing really well like why don't i have that and i think you know i often think like oh well you know apparently they're really hard to
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work with or like they're like whatever and we all have these own kind of like our own like internalized
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sexist whatever it might be preconceptions in terms of these things as well and i think that it often comes for women who are successful you look at them you either think you probably think one of two things you
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either think or maybe one of three things you think wow amazing must be superwoman or you think wow
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amazing but like oh i've never seen a partner or like children like do you think they're happy in their
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personal lives or you think wow but they're kind of like either they haven't actually done it they've just been put at the front of it or they're like a [ __ ] or really you
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know really [ __ ] or like a tyrant or whatever it is and like that is and i think that when i look at that i'm
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like actually that's probably the way i see some people you know that's probably the way that is in some ways for you know for
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for me and my conceptions and i think that it's it's just it's it's what it's it's what it's become and it's actually
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obviously got better in some ways you know it's got hugely better since probably like the 1950s and whatever
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but there's still a long way to go in that respect when i knew that we were going to be having this conversation i i looked into
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the general sentiment around your brand and you've got a huge hugely engaged wonderful community of
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people um you've got this you know this true like i'd call it a fan base or supporters that understand you and they
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get you probably because they followed you for a long time and they followed your vlogs and they like know who you are right and then
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as is the case with pretty much every um successful person i've seen there's also the antithesis of that there's the opposite there's people who as you said we will try and highlight reasons why
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you maybe don't deserve to be where you are you don't deserve credit this is something that pretty most of the guests i face um i've sat
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with have faced to some degree it's it's not easy to take right because um i know right i come from a slightly different background but i know that irrespective of background
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you have to work hard really really [ __ ] hard be honest with me how does that feel i think that i think it's an important discussion to have first and foremost i
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think that and i think i'll be the first to say that and i think a lot of you know i spend a lot of time in the book for example
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contextualizing success because i think it's very important especially when you know
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you're presented three people on your instagram feed with in the same square and one of them you
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make from school one of them's you like your mum and one of them's beyonce and it's kind of like this
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democratization of the news feed that makes everything look the same and you don't see the teams you don't see the privilege
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you don't see all of the above and i think that it's a very important conversation to have so to be perfectly honest i'd be rather
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people have that conversation and maybe write off my success based on that i think that i think also aside from that i do think that you know a lot of the people who the people who do follow me and have
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followed me for a long time know my work ethic and they know that i work hard and they know that you know often that's been an unhealthy amount you know
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i use work as a coping mechanism so it's been through the worst times of my life that's what i know i can do
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and that's what i throw myself into and i think that i'd rather that conversation be had and
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me be able to know in myself why i've been successful and how i've worked and i think that i think that that's
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you know i guess first and foremost that's important and that's how i'm able to i guess push through and be able to do
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what i do is because i know why it is i also know that there have been things that have helped me
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and then you know i guess that doesn't matter i guess the important thing is that we're able to
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have the conversations and able to like i'm able to know as well in myself i know that's a very mature
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position to take i've got to be honest it's a very mature position to take but i i'm skeptical as to whether it's always
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been as easy to take as that and you've you know so talk to me about the process yeah i mean i think that any justified
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criticism or you know might be justified it might be unjustified criticism is hard to take
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i don't i think you can have a mature standpoint towards something and equally you're still going to feel
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like a punch in the stomach of course and that's and that's fine and i think that one of the things that i wouldn't wish
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you know when i think for my children that i wouldn't necessarily want them to be in is i wouldn't want them to be
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in a higher profile position when they're younger um and because i you know i talk about i have this whole chapter in
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the book which is essentially a i guess probably like the most honest i've been in a long time because
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it's you know as i've said it's a there's no instant feedback loop there's i can write this and not hear about back from it for you know like a
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year and it's me talking about how actually essentially i feel like a lot of i became known at a time where
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my self-confidence was at its worst and therefore i was able to i guess rather than feeling that lack of
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confidence with confidence and self-worth i filled it with validation and therefore when i decided to take a step
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back from social media because i decided that wasn't what i wanted to do kind of first and foremost as my job
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that kind of bandage was ripped off because it didn't exist and that's when i realized that you know
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these things are the things that we need to be able to deal with and we need to be able to i guess cobble together to be able to
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you know no matter whether this person thinks x y and z about yourself how much does that matter if it does
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matter and if you do think it's wrong are you going to do something about it and can you still get on with
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your day essentially and i think that there are people who are amazing who i see on social media
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who i wouldn't give a single criticism to that i can think of that i'm sure get the exact
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same thing and there are people who have been to hell and back and get the exact same thing and there are people who actually have
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done you know have lucked out and get the exact same thing and in the grand scheme of things i don't think it
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necessarily matters i think what matters is that you know in yourself and you also know that if there's
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something you need to change then you can change that like if you want to if i guess sometimes when
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something like other things you know like hit a nerve or whatever like do you need to change that do you need to address that do you need to do better um so i
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think that that's that's kind of how i tackle it but of course no there's not like a something in me where i you know get a
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message that says you look ugly and i'm like thank you that's not an initial reaction but i think that you have to be you have to be rational when we're not
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designed to be taking this much feedback and criticism or even if it's not criticism if someone
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like i say the whole time oh i don't like that color i don't like like clothing or like
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whatever it might be to the designer that might like rip them to shreds or whatever it's not mean
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it's an opinion and we're not designed to be able to take that in so i think that there has to be a sort of rationalization on a human
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part or on your like if you are in that position you have a duty to yourself to learn how to deal with that or to remove
00:19:03
yourself from the situation otherwise it's just untenable i guess um you've got you know two businesses
00:19:10
two key businesses and um when you run a business when you're young irrespective of age you undergo a couple of things real like
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unexpected chaos at any given moment then also a tremendous amount of sacrifice i actually want to start on the sacrifice piece because i don't think
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people as you said earlier get to fully see the full picture of sacrifice and cost um both personal
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and professional whatever so talk to me about some of the sacrifice that even you didn't expect
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before you got into business and before your business grew um i think that at the same time as i
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kind of benefited hugely from the you know having money at university for example i also went to university expecting one thing and then actually spent it essentially
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getting up at x hour working on university stuff because i never ever ever wanted to give them an excuse to
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think that i wasn't concentrating fully on my university and then working all the way essentially
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way into the night to get the other stuff done and i also you know that comes with being high profile that comes with all
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of these things so i guess one of those things was very much like there was the time and the life experience and all of that
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that because things took off quickly at one stage even if it wasn't like it wasn't that the businesses took off you know the businesses have done much more over the past year and a half or whatever when i haven't been at uni
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but at that point you know the the high profileness all of that that came with i guess
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different to what i was expecting um and um or not what i was expecting i wasn't expecting it at all and therefore there
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was kind of i guess you know something that i really did want for myself i didn't get but i also
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got um you know a lot more in another way for yourself well i just wanted the university experience really and i think that i was so once this took off i'm a very determined person and i
00:21:05
i get i get a vision and i'll work for it day and night and i think that i actually got to i think in that instance you it's kind of like a fork in the road and
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you decide okay well i'm taking this one and i'm going to concentrate on this i'm going to grow the businesses and all of
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that and then i think as well i saw the deadline for that as my end of university because if i had to
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if it wasn't as big as i wanted it to be by that time or if it wasn't you know whatever it might be i was
00:21:33
gonna choose i was gonna go into a normal career um and i think that um so i was so dedicated to making that happen rather than you know i wanted to grow up too quickly essentially i'm
00:21:46
23 like i you know i'm and i think that a lot of that has been i guess in terms of people's whether
00:21:53
when it's people who meet you their kind of perception of you or whatever it might be and so i think that was
00:21:59
something where it was a choice i'd make again and again but it was i guess a sacrifice that i wasn't
00:22:04
expecting to make and i guess that comes with everything that comes with you know relationships with friends
00:22:09
with time in general with you know time to yourself time to whatever i think having a business in a way and i'm sure some people will disagree but i'm having a business in a way is like
00:22:21
having a baby and you can't just you can't just like up and do whatever you can't you can't say no when a crisis comes in at 1am you can't like that is what it is you get all the other
00:22:33
benefits with those conditions and so i think that you know that's kind of a constant one like you can't
00:22:40
you can't say oh i'm gonna quit this and go and do this for two years because especially when you've got x amount of
00:22:46
people working for you you've got all of their salaries you've got all of their pensions you've got you know like it's it's a huge responsibility stops
00:22:53
with you right yeah and and and that's you know it's it's it's an important one do you sometimes i
00:23:00
reflect on uh the business journey and just how like obsessive it is and all consuming it is
00:23:06
and i think it's a bit of a disease i'm like why did i choose this to like it's almost like masochistic
00:23:12
yeah like obviously it's got the most amazing benefits but it is also like i remember what i remember my friend i can't remember
00:23:20
i think i really we'd agreed to just just lock down things we'd agreed to watch a movie on a sunday night and then the sink came up and i was just like you know what i'm gonna like i'm gonna
00:23:31
do this i'm just gonna work harder so it's just gonna be easier for this week and it was like tiny sacrifice and my housemate turned
00:23:37
around to me and she was like what is the point of were you working this hard for this many years if you can't watch a movie on a sunday night
00:23:43
and i was like yeah like as in like you're not wrong like i'm still gonna do it but like you know you're not wrong like it's what is the answer to that question though so say
00:23:54
because i've muddled over this as well if i'm working obsessively every day at what point does is enough yeah i think that it all comes
00:24:02
with what you want and i think that you know i've i've listened to you before and i've listened to you kind of saying that you know there came a point that you
00:24:07
realized that it wasn't about money so like what was it about and i think for me there's the kind of
00:24:13
aspect of it's it's for the businesses and i have these really clear dreams for the
00:24:18
businesses that result in dreams for me as well sure but i think that that is i think i'll come to a you know if i decide to sell a business or whatever i'll come to that road there where i'm
00:24:30
like okay what is it for now and i think that knowing myself anyway i know pre-business post-business i'm sure i am like that so
00:24:42
whether it's this or whether it's something else or you know and i hope i can channel that into something else at some point that
00:24:48
doesn't require every inch of your being and i know i'm like that so it's kind of
00:24:53
like yeah sure it might be for nothing but it's i'm gonna do it anyway like there doesn't need to
00:24:58
be reasoning behind the fact that this is how i am i have always been i've always yeah i've always been like this i've always been kind of like i'm gonna make this happen like whether
00:25:10
that's kind of through like coordinating all the babysitting jobs that you got in one night and allocating them out to your friends
00:25:16
and stuff or you know like taking essentially like any job ever that like that i could
00:25:23
then you know that's all that's what i'm like so i kind of know that where did that come from though i
00:25:31
i think probably a few things i know that everyone in my family is a very hard worker and that is very it's kind of almost like an like an
00:25:44
anxiety to do well even though like my parents were not pushy at all i think people assume you know especially if you go to oxford or like whatever but the least
00:25:56
pushy people ever i think that actually it all i kind of was discussing this with my
00:26:01
sister the other day was like where does it come from it doesn't come from our parents like it comes from them clearly because they had
00:26:06
it in themselves but you know like they both my parents had careers when i was growing up i
00:26:14
lived with my mum just me my mum and we had a tenant who lived in um my mom's house
00:26:21
and my mum was working pretty much all the time incredibly like i respect her so much for it
00:26:27
because i also never grew up thinking like oh it's weird for a woman to have a career and have four
00:26:33
children and like whatever she just you know she worked all the time and um and she loved it she
00:26:38
loved it and she gave her like everything to it and so i i think i spent a lot of i spent a lot
00:26:44
of time kind of in that situation knowing that i also wanted to love what i do and i
00:26:51
think there is this mislead like perception that you know like if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life blah blah blah
00:26:57
but i also think that there is this like it's a flow state isn't it like you have something that matches your
00:27:03
challenge and your skill level and you get more fulfillment than you'll get from anything
00:27:08
and i think i was so i used to say i remember saying like i i think it was like when i was like 15
00:27:15
16 and i would take like work experience from anyone every single holiday and every single school holiday and i remember my teachers saying that you should probably choose one of the avenues and
00:27:26
then you can do like more within that or something and i remember just saying to them like i'm so terrified that i'll be stuck in
00:27:32
something that i hate and it was like a constant like and i don't think it's necessarily good i
00:27:37
don't think it was necessarily healthy i was constantly so terrified that you know the same was for university the same was for whatever
00:27:43
like i didn't get into oxford the first time i applied i i i and i went again like i literally that
00:27:50
same day i went online and i found out what i could do for a year that would earn myself some money to be able to not be
00:27:56
i guess studying that year and went to um and applied for the ibm future scheme which is the one they do for gap year students that that literal same day
00:28:07
and then applied again the next year and like as in i was i'm very like that it's
00:28:13
very set on kind of one thing and if that thing then doesn't work i either want to do it again like it's
00:28:21
really clear to me i either want to do it again or i'm like that wasn't right and then i move on but i know that i'm
00:28:26
very straight out and very like i will not stop until like yeah you get it right what's the uh actual the business and the chaos in the segment can is there one day in your business
00:28:38
career over the last couple of years which was your worst day um i mean or your toughest challenge
00:28:46
i think my toughest challenge in general was there was this stupid stupid time that
00:28:52
i'm constantly praised for that was the worst decision i've ever made in my life which was that i was
00:28:57
coming up to my university finals i was launching a business to i think it was a month before my university finals yeah i was launching a business beginning of may the 7th may if i'm right um
00:29:10
and i started i finished my finals on the 6th of june now that meant that 40 000 words were
00:29:16
due and five three-hour exams within the space of two weeks and i also wanted to launch my business
00:29:23
and i also wanted to do well at university i'd been working with that for three years um but i'd persuaded people as well i'd
00:29:30
be persuaded people to spend money on this launch i'd persuaded people to you know so i was going to do it right people were like you're amazing like
00:29:36
this is so great like how can you do this and i'm like you are like it's not wise
00:29:42
it's not smart like it's not like this isn't a competition for how many boxes you can take within a small space of
00:29:47
time that is like a fast track towards burnout and either something going incredibly wrong
00:29:53
or whatever and i think that that you know like as i've said work was always a coping mechanism for me so it's always kind of like well if when if we
00:30:00
have to do it now or we like run out of money before launch and we're doing it now and i don't care like i can work x y and z and i actually have like
00:30:06
a whole like chapter in a book where i'm essentially talking about like that was the time that i felt most validated in being a
00:30:13
hard worker and i felt like because i was i was in the library at 3am and i was also
00:30:18
on the phone with the suppliers at you know 7 a.m the next morning and all of x y and z and people could
00:30:23
see it and i was living it i was like hustling the hustle and that was when i was like wow
00:30:28
like this is it like i am the hard worker like with capital h w and like this is
00:30:35
me and i think that that is like that kind of like sums it all up in the way that that was a huge challenge also an incredibly unwise challenge at the time
00:30:45
and yet why did that feel like the time i was doing it right so that's actually that's a lot of what spurred on essentially why i was writing
00:30:52
the book because it was kind of like how can that be the epitome of hard work when that is
00:30:57
also the epitome of not being productive like that's like completely unproductive um and
00:31:05
not useful for anyone you're not gonna be nice with the people you deal with at the time you have a higher chance of actually
00:31:11
like messing things up and all of that and yet why was that the one time that i felt like truly validated for what i was doing and
00:31:17
you were broadcasting that and i was broadcasting that and there'll be people i'm sure who see me now who are like
00:31:22
she you know did this and that and like yeah sure i work really hard i really do but there are some things that
00:31:28
it's kind of like i addressed that and like as i said to you while i was writing the book there were so many things that i noticed i was like i'm the
00:31:34
problem here as well i perpetuate this how can i criticize a culture of the hustle culture that i
00:31:43
benefit from at the same time how can i do that and i think that i think that that's
00:31:49
what made me you know that's why i say that this book was such like a soul-searching process for me because i was like
00:31:54
you know what is that why is that like is that because i need the validation is that because we all need the validation now because hard work has
00:32:00
become so unobtainable because it has to be doing this job that job like everything in between also being
00:32:06
amazing at self-care also doing like x y and z and i think that that's when i was kind of like okay this is a challenge
00:32:13
but it's not only a challenge it was a silly thing to do so it's not even like a you know there are things you have to do
00:32:18
there are crises you have to deal with and all of that that will be a challenge and will also be incredibly rewarding and all of that and
00:32:24
most of them are but i think there are other things that you look at and you're like yep this was a challenge and it also didn't have to happen let's not do that
00:32:31
again as you guys know i'm a massive fan of hill i've been consuming the products for about four years now and you know
00:32:36
that i attribute much of my health and fitness goals that i've achieved over the last 12 months to
00:32:41
heal more recently i've started having the hot and savory bags of fuel and as someone that really
00:32:47
loves to have the ready to drink cure it's actually been really nice to find a product that is a meal but still gives me all of the protein
00:32:52
and the nutrients and the minerals and the fibers that i need for my diet so i'm now on the hot and savory journey
00:32:59
join me if you want to my favorite flavor is the thai green curry flavor i like to add loads and loads and loads
00:33:06
loads of cake and pepper to it because i really i'm from africa and i really like spice so give it a shot you mentioned burnout
00:33:11
yeah um and i remember reading a quote in a in a piece that you know an interview that you did where you talked about
00:33:18
mental health generally and how you know you'd reflected that maybe you weren't representing mental health in the right
00:33:24
way i think you said um you were giving advice but it didn't apply to yourself in terms of like talking and being open about it
00:33:30
i want to know long way back i've just been digging through every two and a half years yeah i just wanted to get a flavor for
00:33:35
everything oh yeah no i appreciate home it everything but talk to me about your mental health and the journey
00:33:40
you've been on with your mental health since you were you know 18. um well as i've said i think probably
00:33:46
a one of the reasons that i think i you know in that in that pose to give context i guess i said that i am one of the biggest advocates for people talking about their mental health
00:33:58
we have mental health days like within our the company like you know you can take days off and you
00:34:03
can literally just take a duba day and it could be you know because of your mental health whatever it might be and i'm the biggest
00:34:08
advocate for that and talking about it and everything and then as soon as it came to me no
00:34:14
like that was not it's not the same case like i'm not going to talk about it i'm not going to
00:34:19
deal with it and it actually got to a point that i was having seizures essentially um from
00:34:25
something really horrible that i went to that was through that was essentially ended up giving me ptsd
00:34:32
that presented in seizures and obviously i was having symptoms up to the point of the seizures but i only took it
00:34:38
seriously when it was a physical symptom like when it came to the point that i was like okay
00:34:43
like i'm being hospitalized now like this is not ideal at all and that was the thing that made me slow down and that was the thing that
00:34:49
maybe or not even slowed down i didn't even think i necessarily hugely so down after that but it was kind of like okay this is real and this is just as
00:34:56
like if something can manifest so physically that you're having a [ __ ] seizure
00:35:02
then you probably need to take this more seriously and that was you know like that was that was tough that was right before my third year at university
00:35:09
that that started and um everything up until then like i've been a i think i have this like really
00:35:15
toxic mental health attitude within myself that doesn't prioritize it that isn't
00:35:22
kind of that kind of sees it as weakness even though that's the last thing that i'd
00:35:28
see you know in any of my friends who suffer from depression or anxiety or like whatever it might be
00:35:33
and it's completely different it's like we don't get the same treatment like i'll give you no i'll understand that and i'll see that and i won't do that and i'm sure there are lots of people who are the exact same
00:35:44
you're not being compassionate to yourself exactly and i think that that's another reason why i really needed to like look inside myself and be able to
00:35:50
evaluate that and be able to look at like why like why is that the case like why do you feel so
00:35:55
undeserving of the justification for like you know having bad mental health at one
00:36:01
time and i've been lucky that you know apart from this which was a result of specific trauma
00:36:06
i've generally been you know i've had generally good mental health and i've you know been
00:36:12
able to deal with like i guess you know like i think a lot of the way that mental
00:36:17
health is presented is really damaging in that you know people do i've had friends who have kind of said like
00:36:23
oh yeah but you know i don't want to take meds from my depression or whatever and
00:36:29
everyone has different views on it but it's kind of being like well any other chemical imbalance in your brain you would because you'd say
00:36:35
like hey i need this to offset this or i need insulin to offset this or whatever and yet it's like a it's a thing it's
00:36:41
like a you know what's what's she called like mrs trunchbull you know from matilda that you like have in your
00:36:47
brain that's like you do not like get this or like you do not like deserve to have that compassion or whatever it
00:36:53
might be so i think like i've had a and i think i'm what's so strange is that i don't know about you but i'm able to talk
00:36:59
about mental health really openly and i literally had so i thought it was really important for me to
00:37:05
um i think as a business owner i think it's probably important for all i mean i think it's important for everyone but for business owners i think
00:37:12
it's important for everyone to get therapy because you're not meant to go through that much chaos
00:37:17
all the time like you're not meant to have three messages a day that could kill your business and yet you do and you're like and then
00:37:22
you're like the next like 15 minutes later you're like so what's that like your fight you get you get like programmed to
00:37:29
get up again like second nature and then you never deal with things so i kind of
00:37:34
i kind of decided i was like i'm gonna get like i'm just gonna have it once a week and it's just gonna be literally like an offload
00:37:40
and i sat in it for kind of like two months and i was like i'm like i haven't cried yet and i'm a
00:37:46
crier so i'm clearly talking about my mental health as if i'm doing an interview and if i'm like
00:37:51
you know just able to talk about it like yeah like i think it's important and like this is and it's like this is everything that's
00:37:57
okay to talk about this is everything that's not and i won't address that and i think that that's something for me
00:38:02
to i guess to deal with and i think that the important thing is as an owner of a business that
00:38:09
has people within it and then you know and as someone with a platform and all of that all of those things make it really
00:38:15
important for me to treat mental health properly both for myself and for other people
00:38:20
but i don't think i do but you are setting a really remark you know what you said there about being a business owner and it's important for
00:38:26
you to get therapy one of the other points that i think of good that you'll be doing by doing that is you're setting a precedence for all of your employees
00:38:32
that even me as the boss you know and that creates a safe space for other people in my business it was the same so we met
00:38:38
we made mental health therapy opt out yeah i saw that yeah so like and it meant that the men who were hiding in
00:38:43
the back that didn't wanted to be tough guys whatever you know i was going and i told the doctors the business my fat co-founder to go as well and that
00:38:50
week my co-founder dom said he got um something like 11 messages from men in the business that had been suffering
00:38:55
from mental health but just had never spoken about it and he became like the de facto male therapist in our company for that reason
00:39:01
what i wanted to go back to on is the point you know you talked about this build up that you had which
00:39:06
culminated in you being hospitalized with your mental health um i had i had a guest on the podcast a
00:39:12
couple a couple of weeks ago and she was uh she's a kayaker and she something something changed in her life and it
00:39:19
meant and she wasn't listening to her body and ultimately she ended up getting chronic fatigue syndrome where she went from being a kayaker that could kayak for two hours to not being able to lift up her hands
00:39:30
and she said there were these warning signs in my life that i just ignored until my body went listen if you're not gonna
00:39:35
listen to me then we're shutting down and it sounded very similar to what you were saying so my question is what are those what were those warning signs that
00:39:42
you were in some respects by the sounds of it ignoring yeah i won't talk about specifically from from that perspective i do think
00:39:49
it's important to talk about in terms of burnout as a whole so when we i think the same thing
00:39:55
applies to kind of like the way that this kind of productivity like rat race comes across now is that you essentially need to be working as
00:40:05
fast as you possibly can it's not productivity at all it's working i guess if you look at productivity like the definition
00:40:12
is that you get the most amount done in the least amount of time but that has fine like that taken as one
00:40:19
and then that's multiplied so you're getting the most amount done in the least amount of time so that you can do the most amount in the least amount of time
00:40:25
again rather than being able to just you know do that and move on and find that's good like we should be you know we should be efficient we should be
00:40:31
effective all of these things are important but i think that you know it's also the equivalent of
00:40:37
expecting someone like that or a marathon runner ultra marathon runner to sprint for the whole marathon like
00:40:44
it's ineffective they're not gonna win they're also probably gonna get injured you know there's nothing beneficial about it and we see it from a physical perspective and we completely ignore it from
00:40:55
a mental perspective or from a work perspective and i think that that's why it's so
00:41:00
important to talk about especially you and me people who are essentially will be seen in some way
00:41:06
as like what hard work looks like that results in success or whatever it might be the
00:41:13
acknowledgement that working hard does not mean working all the time and like having it all does not mean
00:41:19
like doing it all and all of these various different things that actually are important to
00:41:24
look at from ourselves as well because like as i said like i realized that actually probably i was perpetuating a lot more
00:41:31
than i meant to and that was why i then ended up needing to perpetuate things because you know i constantly wanted to show people
00:41:36
that i was actually working hard which actually all it gave off was this is how what hard work looks like and
00:41:43
therefore there's you know it's probably stopping a whole generation of people who actually want to do something but
00:41:48
see something you know i'm not that type of person i actually don't get up in the morning and want to read like some disgustingly
00:41:54
boring like non-fiction book and like but actually being able to acknowledge that and find
00:42:00
some middle ground and find some realization that it doesn't all like it's not going to be the same for
00:42:05
you as it is for someone else and the same goes for hard work um and i think for for me you know
00:42:11
i now and i think largely because of having written this book i now see when i'm lagging i now see
00:42:18
when i need a rest i now see you know i'm able to construct a working week that essentially you know is able i'm able to be ceo at both companies and i'm able to
00:42:30
do all my work and i'm able to do my own work too that isn't just responsive to other people's work
00:42:36
and then i think you know and i'm able to culminate that in a way that is i guess
00:42:42
a livable way of me working and there have been times where it's not that there's been times where it's you know like hell to leather and doing
00:42:48
everything possible but that's a needs must amount of time that is not representative of what hard work looks like and then being able to recognize that
00:42:54
within myself and say like that's okay like you're not weak because you have to sleep like you're not weak because you
00:43:00
have to you know like sit back sometimes or your creativity just isn't coming out
00:43:05
you're just like a human or not even like even machines can't do that like if you had a machine like working like it
00:43:12
would go into override or if it was set on the wrong thing or if it was you know like doing too many things at once it would go into override so like we
00:43:18
don't it's not even that we don't realize we're humans we don't realize like limits at all we just have no boundaries yeah and i think that's
00:43:25
that's what's important there's been a there's been a big shift i think over the last i'd say two years
00:43:31
there's been a huge conversation around burnout right and it's gotten to the point i did a post about the day but it's gotten to a point where
00:43:37
it i actually feel bad talking about working hard and i played around with that idea because um on one hand you can be deceitful in the sense that you say like i i work 24 hours a day and i never sleep
00:43:49
and on the other hand you can be really deceitful and saying listen uh hard work doesn't matter self-care and like yeah yeah yeah
00:43:54
sit back and put on a face mask yeah like i don't want to lie to you i still work really hard but obviously there's
00:44:00
nuance and balance and sometimes i don't have good days yeah yeah but i don't know anyone that's
00:44:06
really successful that doesn't work hard i don't know any athlete 100 percent i think what i even realized
00:44:11
that was after i kind of went through all of this like self-discovery and writing the think pieces and all of that
00:44:16
and then i sat down to write the productivity method and i was like i feel like gordon ramsay telling someone he's like
00:44:22
an idiot sandwich like i literally feel like i'm being that harsh just because i'm telling you
00:44:27
that actually if you want to get that done you've got to get it done and like i think that's why the whole reason i repositioned it rather than
00:44:34
you know it's not just because as soon as you're that then you're equally as harmful in the perpetuation
00:44:40
of like self-care culture that now has these knee-jerk reactions that's either like
00:44:45
it's like a cult and it's like this wellness thing or it's like a waste of time there's like a middle
00:44:51
ground like that is important for everyone but it doesn't just need to be kind of like you know like face masks
00:44:58
and everything it can be it it has to be like part of all of it so yeah you might work till 3am from 6am every night for a month
00:45:10
i would argue that that's not that possible beyond that point like it might be and you might be an incredibly hard worker and you know like
00:45:17
and i perceive myself to be but you still at the end of it all you still need rest and yes you're completely right there's no glory and no kind of benefit in also
00:45:29
perpetuating the completely the other side you know sometimes self-care is the most
00:45:34
productive thing you can do but also sometimes productivity is an act of self-care like
00:45:39
you need to it's self-care to look at that project that you've been putting off for three weeks for the 50th time and
00:45:47
actually get it done that's self-care like that isn't it doesn't have to be you know this that or the other it
00:45:52
doesn't need to be compartmentalized into like you know some forms of work or self-care some forms of self-care are
00:45:58
like what you know like it goes both ways and i think that that's what's important i think it's rather than choosing one or the other
00:46:05
it's just real it's like being realistic and being you know you don't always need to be like disarmingly like i've had a bad day
00:46:11
today because i also feel in the same way like i can't be asked to do that the whole time like i don't like when i've had a bad day i
00:46:16
don't instantly think like ah i will get the reward from being vulnerable by sharing this on social media like that's not my instant reaction
00:46:23
but at the same time there is an importance and i do think that people like us also have a duty to be
00:46:29
able to share both sides even if it's that being like you know like i was up till 11 last night writing a crisis plan for
00:46:36
something like you know like you you constantly have these things and it's like and then like so there's just so many
00:46:43
different types of i guess there are so many different angles to it and as long as there's kind of a more
00:46:48
realistic thing as long as you don't feel weak to say that you sleep or whatever and you also don't feel
00:46:54
like you're being like really mean to say like you have to work hard to do well both of those things are wrong so like there must be a middle ground and that the the left side you speak you
00:47:05
speak so i'm just calling it the left just because it was the left i raised my left hand when i described it i'm not saying it's the left
00:47:11
but it is it's like um i've always considered myself to be more left than i am anything else but um i felt somewhat alienated by this kind
00:47:21
of lack of personal responsibility blame someone else um pessimism culture that's
00:47:27
emerging from that side and i in some respects it's someone that's been a social media for about almost 10 years i understand the
00:47:33
algorithms will create echo chambers and they'll reinforce things and you'll and they're actually polarizing us to be the right and more
00:47:38
on the right and the left on the left and my point here is that um i like to be a bit more nuanced so i
00:47:44
don't think binary solutions to complex um problems ever make sense left you know rich poor black white
00:47:50
um left right whatever it is and i post posted something about um personal responsibility and being grateful and things you can do if you're feeling bad and there was a lot of people that said
00:48:02
i was and i actually take this to compliment they said i was toxic positive and there's this whole new this whole phrase not being too positive
00:48:09
being so positive that it makes people feel bad and i don't give a [ __ ] right like if we
00:48:14
also think we have toxic things within ourselves and that's like it's toxic but also like you can tell me i'm
00:48:20
toxically positive and i like if so for example like i might be the same in that i know that you know
00:48:26
i'm not i would consider myself probably like a realist like i wouldn't consider myself like a constant optimist but i also know that
00:48:33
like my coping mechanism for anything going wrong is to make something else go right so if that needs me to work hard if that
00:48:39
needs me to push completely into work for 40 days and 40 nights but like i'll do it
00:48:45
but i think that you know i think cor you know being able to label something as something doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad i think sure if
00:48:56
someone thinks that toxic positivity then fine a i don't think that necessarily needs to
00:49:03
be kind of you know like nothing is going to be nuanced enough on social media for you to understand unless it's like a 2000 word
00:49:09
think piece but i also think that like these things exist like we all know some of these like i know that i have
00:49:15
bad coping mechanisms in some way i know that i don't need anyone else to tell me or if they do like it's fine but it doesn't
00:49:21
like there's no benefit here like you're still gonna think that way and therefore if you're sharing more of your thoughts
00:49:27
it's still gonna be like that you might be toxically positive but it's that's you know that's you and that's what you're also gonna
00:49:33
say and like that would also be you would also be lying to then say okay well i'm gonna make this more realist
00:49:39
and so i'm gonna do x y and z and i'm gonna put that out there and then there are going to be more people who say the other side so it's
00:49:46
like you can either spend your life like swinging back and forth between like what people perceive to be right and
00:49:51
you're never going to get everyone because obviously as you say it's completely polarized but or you can
00:49:56
it kind of be like yeah you might not like this i just my whole stance is like i've read a lot of stuff about
00:50:02
psychology studied psychology for a little while i i've had my life experience and if you follow me you're here to get that stuff
00:50:07
and you don't have to agree you don't even have to like it and there's loads of other and i think i just really destroyer today there's loads of places you can get like fluffy you know face masks so the answer
00:50:15
to everything stuff it's just not here because of my lived experience and i understand i have a you know a bias
00:50:20
because i'm an individual that's had an individual experience when i was stalking you online grace i found it really hard to find a boyfriend
00:50:27
i was i was looking a lot like i was like i was i found like i was like [ __ ] we'll try google images google images
00:50:33
like these are just friends and then i was like yeah i mean i don't think anyone will find a boyfriend probably until i'm maybe
00:50:39
married with kids but i mean as in there's not good there won't be one yeah yeah i'm not looking for it's not
00:50:44
there's a boyfriend there because i read some stuff about you meeting this guy when you're like 15 and then you oh no no there's not a boyfriend there oh there's
00:50:49
not a boyfriend there's not a boyfriend but there's never going to be a boy from
00:50:54
yeah being young being successful being a woman i know where this is going yeah so maybe i don't have to ask the question i'm just saying like i asked this question a lot of guests because
00:51:05
probably because i've struggled myself right so being young you're a successful woman in business
00:51:11
a lot of guys quite just going to be honest would be quite intimidated right you don't have to answer that but
00:51:17
they would i'm one of them i'll tell you i'm not speaking for myself i'm speaking from some insecure friends that i have
00:51:22
that would feel intimidated by their their their partner who is a woman being successful that's just
00:51:29
some men are insecure enough to find that emasculating yeah talk to me about the difficulties of
00:51:35
having romantic relationships when you are young you are successful you are a woman um
00:51:43
i'd say it's not necessarily what i'm concentrated on first and foremost and just just from like you know i want to do lots of things before i concentrate on
00:51:55
that um i also think that one of the things that i i guess i found because like what you're saying is
00:52:01
true um but i think what i find comforting in that is also the fact that like i don't
00:52:06
want to be with someone who finds that masculinity so i think it's quite a good um it's quite a good kind of whittle
00:52:12
down yeah because yeah if you find it emasculated like that you don't any other thing that people might not like about someone you don't want to be with someone who doesn't you know like my work is the biggest
00:52:25
part of me and that's really sad it's not but like it's a huge part of my life and
00:52:30
it will be and i would never want to be with someone who thought that was any sort of like great um and so
00:52:37
it doesn't necessarily i mean maybe it will trouble me down the line but currently it's kind of like yes i
00:52:44
completely agree i think people do find it intimidating and emasculating i also think that that's kind of you know as i say that doesn't necessarily change anything
00:52:56
because it's actually not you know i would have no interest in being with someone who
00:53:02
can be emasculated by that so and at this point in your life do you foresee in the future at some point you wanting
00:53:08
to be with a partner yes yeah yeah i mean i think i think naturally i think a lot a lot of people
00:53:14
talk i'd say probably the large yeah yeah and i think that it's important especially with women not to presume
00:53:19
because i've made that mistake you know yeah no i mean i've i you know i couldn't have like one friend who i think of her
00:53:24
i know she she knows that she doesn't want to like ever have like a life partner like she doesn't it doesn't make sense to her
00:53:30
which i think is completely i i think makes sense you know like but i think that absolutely at some point
00:53:39
and um but i'm in no rush i mean i'm very young when that day comes yes um what are the
00:53:47
the difficulties you see in the current way that you live your life and forming a relationship with whoever
00:53:53
this person this lucky person might be um i say the first problem is probably going to be closet space
00:54:01
i think no i think in general why is grace difficult today and why probably yes you should probably ask a few people um no i mean i think that i'm an incredibly
00:54:14
loving person and i'm incredibly dedicated to the people i love and that currently is filled by amazing friends and family and people i'm lucky to have
00:54:28
in my life and i think that that will you know at some point as i say like that will
00:54:35
absolutely hopefully be filled by you know that type of position but i i think that the difficulties would
00:54:41
probably just you know be about around understanding that work is as important as it is to me and i think that you know like i've had relationships in the past and that is
00:54:52
you know like that does it does become a problem and i also think that you know then you can't necessarily combat that by having someone who's the same otherwise you're never gonna see each other like i think
00:55:03
i probably you know would want someone who has the same values in that way but there has to be like a kind of middle ground or there has to be then
00:55:10
you know some sort of way in which you will see each other once every 15 years or something um but no i think i think the troubles
00:55:17
will be around work and they won't be around emasculation because as i say that wouldn't be
00:55:23
you know then there's no space for that um but i think you know in the same way as i'm able to be
00:55:28
a great friend and family member and you know all of that now it's to me it's an extension of that to me it won't be you know any different i know in my qualities you know i probably
00:55:42
probably the part of the reason why that's not what i want now is because i also know that i care a lot about that so you know if i
00:55:49
am in that situation i will give a lot to that and currently i don't have a lot to give to that so you know i think it's a
00:55:55
prioritization for me and currently that's not a priority yeah how has running business
00:56:00
and the way that people have treated you in business especially being a young entrepreneur i reflect on this in my own life
00:56:06
changed you as a friend as a person you know your patience your snappiness your tolerance i think i'm a lot more
00:56:18
i think there's a part of it that's actually quite interesting that i've been thinking more about recently where if you're in business and you call the
00:56:24
shots how does that develop in friendship so i i've actually talked about that recently i don't think i've you know i've had to grow in confidence to say especially to
00:56:35
for example men who have far more experience than me and are technically you know working for me like there's
00:56:42
been a point where it's kind of like can i say like that this is not right or like whatever and i've developed that but i think you
00:56:48
know i think i've now developed that well and i don't think i have a problem with that now and therefore i think that you know
00:56:53
there's going to be part of that where you then like how does that switch off automatically the second you step
00:56:59
through your door and you're with your family or your friends or your housemates or whatever and i think that that's probably
00:57:05
something that i'll you know i'm very grateful that i think someone once asked me like how do you stay like
00:57:12
grounded and down to earth and i think that that i don't go for the types of friends
00:57:17
that obviously my friends like bring me up and they're my biggest fans but there is no smoke being blown anywhere
00:57:24
they will be the first person to also say you know and that's what i value like i don't want to be
00:57:30
in a superior position in friendship in family relations in whatever it is i will never be with the friends and family that i have and i think that that's so important and i think that that can absolutely
00:57:44
affect people and i think that you know i've seen people then surround themselves only with people in their position or only
00:57:49
with whatever and i think that you know one of the most valuable things i have is that a lot of my friends are
00:57:54
in entry-level jobs and i'm able to see from their point of view what's the most frustrating thing about their workplace
00:58:00
and not feeling valued or whatever and i'm allowed i can make sure that i try like my best to make sure that never
00:58:06
happens for people within mine and i think that so you can get those you know you get so many benefits from having
00:58:12
different people around you primarily like no one is kind of there yeah as we say what about when the
00:58:19
bill comes oh well first of all i'll be pleased to hear that my friends like to go to a
00:58:25
very cheap place okay which i also like i'm i i love a you know nice dinner and a nice like whatever but
00:58:32
you will not i mean you you'll find me buying a bottle in the club if it's one of my friend's birthdays or like whatever you know like
00:58:37
i love treating my friends i love taking them on holiday like i love you know but it's you can tell when that's
00:58:45
someone who's there for that i also have the large majority of my friends have been around me for a long time and um i think
00:58:52
i i generally trust myself to be a good judge of character i've got it wrong before um you know i've had things where i've
00:58:58
kind of like taken people on trips left right and center and then you can tell that like that was the aim
00:59:04
um but like in general actually you know i have amazing people around me and like i think we i'm
00:59:12
i like to consider myself a generous person and i want to you know do things like like yeah sometimes i will just be like
00:59:18
i'll just get this or like whatever it might be and and i'm in a position to do that and i think especially if
00:59:23
you know there'll be a friend who's been asking for a workplace for a raise for three years and it hasn't
00:59:28
even gone up with inflation and that's kind of like oh and it's not the it's not compensating
00:59:35
for that but it's being like you need to be able to be grounded enough and like whatever to be able to still be a friend to people who are in you know either a very different situation or like whatever it might be
00:59:48
and i think that i never want to lose that so yeah i'll buy nice things for people and i'll do that just
00:59:53
as i would for any like anyone like my sisters or whatever if they need something but it's
00:59:59
not i think i'll tell instantly and maybe not maybe i'm being walked all over by everyone but i'm happy so
01:00:05
no i mean we find ourselves in the same position largely right and i think the interesting point is you've been successful and the people
01:00:11
that you love you want to share that you know you want to have good times and good experiences with but being realistic mathematically they won't be able to
01:00:18
have those experiences unless you create them right and so that creates a bit of an issue for you
01:00:23
because you want to you know have good times with your friends but you know that you know that you're you're gonna you're
01:00:28
gonna have to create that situation whether it's a holiday and it's not a problem for you because you love these people and
01:00:33
they're good people but it can sometimes create yeah of course and there's a i think also like the important thing from
01:00:39
because i know people who talk about that problem but also they love the flex so it's like okay if
01:00:45
you're complaining that you're always the one paying for the bill and you're also the same person saying for three weekends in a row let's go to nobu or
01:00:50
even one weekend like it's [ __ ] expensive like you know like you're gonna like that generates a certain type of thing
01:00:57
and i think that you know that's not necessarily their fault then but i also think that there's
01:01:03
a you know if you want to be doing that all the time and you're the only person person in that position in your friend
01:01:09
group then you're you know there's a certain thing that's demanded of you but i think like at the same time that you can be a good friend and be like
01:01:16
very generous and like like i understand that i'm incredibly fortunate to be in my position and i want to get
01:01:21
them nice christmas presents like whatever it might be and take people on holiday like if you know i want to go or whatever it
01:01:28
might be but um i think yeah largely yeah it's a difficult it's not a difficult position to be in like an incredibly fortunate position to be in but there are there are things that come with it and i think
01:01:39
that you know thankfully i haven't been i guess like harmed by that too much and i you know
01:01:46
intend to i don't want that to make me a bad person and i don't know it sounds like you're keeping the right people around you that's probably the
01:01:52
most important thing right people that will tell you when you're stepping out of line oh trust me yeah exactly tell me the first person to be like this comes
01:01:58
across awfully crazy thank you so much you guys will hear me mention a service called fiverr quite a lot especially if you follow me on linkedin and instagram and this has been another week where
01:02:14
i've really relied on fiverr to help me and to help our business extend our capacity this week we're having a newsletter
01:02:20
website launching called mentalwealth.com which is being developed on fiverr we're also using a freelancer we found on fiverr to
01:02:27
cut the edits for this podcast promo that will go on my social channels and this is really the beauty of fiverr
01:02:33
even when i was a ceo of a company with 700 employees or even now when i don't have a company and we have a much
01:02:38
smaller team there are still moments where we need to extend our capacity usually because of you know we've got a
01:02:43
sprint or a project to do in a cost-effective way thank you to them for sponsoring my podcast and if you want to check out
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fiverr there's a link in the description below that's fiverrwith2rs.com ceo we've talked a little bit before we go on on we started recording about working culture and how working culture has
01:03:02
changed and how the pandemic has shifted things to being you know um working from home what do you what's your take on working culture
01:03:08
and how teams should operate and how your teams operate and stuff so i've been reading a lot about this recently actually um general things you
01:03:14
know like rework work rules like all of those types of books talking about working culture and
01:03:19
i think that the main point of interest for me that i've kind of been exploring obviously
01:03:25
has been the idea of working culture but how we internalize it and how our lack of boundaries within this generation has
01:03:31
meant that we're have no boundaries between work or not work so it's kind of you can be working anywhere and everywhere so when you're
01:03:37
not you've kind of internalized this idea that when you're not working everywhere and anywhere it's the equivalent of like being in an office and taking a nap like
01:03:44
just because you're living your life and i think that that to me is the most that stands out as the most problematic
01:03:52
kind of side of working culture within our generation i also think that that is that is coupled with you know like
01:04:00
companies like google for example who are seen to have really good working culture because they
01:04:06
support their employees they you know unlimited holiday all of that some of that is also a thinly veiled way of making people work more because they
01:04:12
don't have to do their laundry they don't have to cook their lunch they don't have to um you know they're not going to take any of that holiday if they're given
01:04:18
unlimited but they do feel valued so they work harder you know and i think that it's really complex and i think that it's not
01:04:24
necessarily like i definitely couldn't deconstruct it as a whole and i probably perpetuate it in some ways but i think that
01:04:30
it's important that we look at it more and more now these boundaries are absolutely gone especially you know i started
01:04:35
having some of these thoughts and feelings when i started working from home before we progressed to having an office
01:04:41
um and i kind of was thinking like why am i working more than i ever have and producing
01:04:46
less than i ever have and also my mental health is on the floor yeah yeah and i think that then when kind of there was the office exodus
01:04:54
going at the kind of pandemic um and then people kind of saying the same thing and all of that and i was like oh good
01:05:00
and i'm like why am i feeling happy you know the fact that everyone else is struggling too and it was you know it's a lack of
01:05:06
boundaries we have awful boundaries surrounding work surrounding success surrounding all of this
01:05:12
and it's part of a generation that i guess bulldozes boundaries in a kind of progressive sense but it
01:05:18
ends up meaning that we actually don't know where we stand we don't know what is good for us and i guess we
01:05:23
are constantly on the hustle train being told to like do more think more achieve
01:05:28
more like xyz without ever questioning whether it serves us because that's what we've been put on like if you're a hard worker you have to go in that like kind of way and i talk a lot in the book
01:05:38
as well about like the i guess the kind of contradiction between the progressing values of like a four-day work week and you know amazing you know places
01:05:50
like um nordic countries that have amazing work rules and all of that and at the same time like at literally
01:05:57
the exact same time and often by the same you know people the same kind of um examination of it
01:06:03
we also have this idea that you kind of need to work all the time it's like how are we progressing in these two completely
01:06:09
different directions and we don't necessarily know which one is right and then if we're going down to the full day work week is that because
01:06:14
it makes us more productive so technically it's actually to make us like work more or produce more or whatever it might be and so
01:06:20
i guess it's it's all just very complex and i think that there's not enough examination around it
01:06:27
in the mainstream i guess like you should be able to if you're in the financial position too and you want to and everything like you
01:06:33
should technically be able to take your work down to four days a week or whatever and that
01:06:38
seems like the most ludicrous suggestion ever because you know you could always be producing more you could always be doing
01:06:44
this you could always well then you should side hustle and that three day weekend you get and like x y and z and so i think it is i think
01:06:50
it's damaging and i think that yeah as i said and there's something funny here well you know because we're talking about
01:06:57
ideas that we would probably never live ourselves yeah like you're not gonna oh no three days off for a [ __ ] weekend and
01:07:03
i'd love to yeah would you because you're gonna go insane but yeah um but i but yeah no i think it's completely true and i think that part of this has been
01:07:15
me being like okay this is really unhealthy this is actually problematic this is xyz and yet and you are the embodiment
01:07:23
of all of this trying to figure out but that's important and i think social media discourages that type of thought because you have to be on the defensive
01:07:29
you have to say like yeah this is a bad idea and this is a bad idea and yet i do both of them you you have to either acknowledge it's
01:07:36
a bad idea or not acknowledge it's a bad idea and just do it you can't have this like cognitive
01:07:41
dissonance of thinking one thing and like doing another because yeah like sure that's a bad thing in some ways but also like
01:07:48
you have to accept the fact that you don't always think what you're doing is a good idea or you don't you know you know something's good in
01:07:54
theory but don't do it or whatever and i think social media completely bulldozes that opportunity because you have to like stand firm you
01:08:01
have to stand your ground you have to and i found myself actually getting quite one of the reasons i stepped back
01:08:06
from social media was because i felt like i was justifying myself constantly not to not outwardly
01:08:11
to myself because i was like i need to you know but like if i agree with this why do i do this and like all of that
01:08:17
and i think that i had to be like this is causing so much like i'm going into overdrive because i don't know how to
01:08:22
deal with the fact that i have multiple thoughts at once because social media makes you linear it makes you yeah it makes that like
01:08:30
lack of nuance like your thing like it's the mo and so i think that the i think that's kind of okay where i realized that like we just can't discuss anything like you have to choose your
01:08:40
camp you have to choose your like whatever you um when i first came across you it was a couple years ago it was actually on twitter and i think
01:08:46
well i don't know i followed you you followed me let's just go with you followed me because it makes me look better um and i went on your profile and i
01:08:52
remember going down and thinking here we have an influencer who actually like stands for something and that was my only like real sort of
01:08:59
uh that was my first sort of take on you another couple years passed by whatever and i i wondered as i was you know going
01:09:05
through some of the tweets more recently that you know people just talking nonsense whatever i i wondered you know there's a cost to that there's
01:09:13
a real cost to standing for something because then it's much easier just to stand for nothing because then
01:09:18
i can't attack you for anything right because you don't you know but when you decide that you want to stand for something whether it's sustainability
01:09:24
or whether it's certain values you then are interrogated for perfection yeah and one human step out of line we've got
01:09:32
you yeah no absolutely i think the same's in everyday life but it's magnified to a point you know in the same way i remember when i i went
01:09:40
vegan like three years ago now and i um my friend said that my friend the reason i went vegan was because my friend was ill at the time and she couldn't eat any dairy products and she was upset about it and we were um we
01:09:54
were actually going traveling together and so i said i would do it with her and we were like let's just try it like it'll be fun and i was like
01:09:59
[ __ ] i really do not want to give this up um but we did it and then we actually stuck to it and i was kind of like i
01:10:04
actually like this it works really well for me um and um i and she was saying how hard her
01:10:11
friends were taking it and how like they were just like you know be like ha you just ate that that actually
01:10:16
apparently has like this and it's like it's the same it's just magnified and i think that i think that part of its projection
01:10:22
we don't like to acknowledge that we think one thing and sometimes do another in ourselves but we love to pick it up
01:10:28
on other people and i think part of it's just as we say it's the binary of social media it's the lack of
01:10:34
kind of you know it's the fact that that is going to happen and i do you know you
01:10:40
find yourself doing things the whole time where you're like oh yeah we shouldn't have done that or like whatever
01:10:45
and i think social media amplifies that to the point that it's so much more of a big deal than it needs
01:10:50
to be sometimes it doesn't need to be a big thing like i'll stand by the fact that you know cancer culture fine like in a lot of
01:10:56
ways not great in some ways like there are some areas yeah really shouldn't be said or whatever um
01:11:02
but i think that there's also like an aspect of that that's kind of you know we live our lives constantly
01:11:11
thinking one thing and doing another like cognitive dissonance like we you know like you know you should be better for
01:11:16
the planet and yet you still buy fast fashion or you still like eat meat every day or like whatever it might be
01:11:22
it's how we operate and i think that that isn't allowed on social media i don't think that's like a then like a
01:11:30
complaint i think it's more like a that's how social media is and therefore if you're using it in that way there
01:11:35
kind of needs to be an acknowledgement of the fact that that's just like i know that and i know where i go
01:11:42
wrong and i know you know like where i'd like to do better and that's for me to deal with so you know and so i think
01:11:50
that that's something that we see across our lives and it's just hugely magnified when you made this decision to step back
01:11:55
from social media i know you hadn't posted on youtube either for about 11 months i have all my dates was there
01:12:01
a part of you that thought you would let this negativity of social media win i don't i think any time i've thought
01:12:13
that i've realized that it's completely untrue because i've realized it later so when i step back from youtube that was
01:12:21
about that was a you know a bit after all the things i've talked about that like i was
01:12:26
going through and it wasn't right for me and i just decided not to do it and i think
01:12:31
that also part of that was a business decision it's a like lost to income in the kind
01:12:37
of short term but everything i've done for the past three years has been towards longevity it hasn't been about the short term
01:12:43
because i've been able you know at the beginning i accumulated enough to be able to make that change and to be able to say okay well i want to
01:12:49
i want in two years time if i want to to be able to disappear so you know that's i think
01:12:55
rather than i don't think anything has to be a defeat like sure it could be some people
01:13:00
couldn't consider it that for themselves like great that's fine then we both win because i realized
01:13:07
and once again i talk about it like i talk about kind of like the thought process behind it
01:13:12
in my book and i realized that kind of that was actually not you know i had this choice to
01:13:20
be full time influence so i guess with my businesses in the background and i also had the choice to lean in and
01:13:27
really make these businesses something and make them you know like much bigger and have the potential of
01:13:32
you know growing them huge maybe selling one one day like whatever it might be and i think that i decided as well but
01:13:39
actually what made me happy in the actual work itself was the head down get it done even like the crisis
01:13:45
management the working with the team until three am the building of brands all of that that like i was so young and
01:13:51
still am that i hadn't even started my career like sure i had but i like everyone i guess anyone at
01:13:58
any time can do three years of something then decide to go to business school then decide to stop and do writing or like whatever it
01:14:04
might be that was my change that was me being like actually what do i like in the day-to-day
01:14:09
it's not you know whatever like there was a lot of stuff that i was doing that i did love
01:14:15
but i a i saw what was happening down the line i saw that it was really hard to maintain that after a certain
01:14:21
amount of time and as i said i've always had this kind of constant anxiety that i'm going to end up doing and something i don't want to do
01:14:26
which has made me be probably quite proactive and actually being like actually no i'm gonna do x y and z to make this
01:14:33
not happen and i think that you know sure like there was part of you know there will be parts of it where it's like oh and also even better than that it means i won't get the negativity but i also
01:14:43
loved the sense of community i loved you know at that time actually i didn't get much negativity at all like
01:14:49
and i don't think you do necessarily when it's kind of like just a sharing of your life like people loved especially the fact that i was at uni for three years so i was
01:14:56
showing a really realistic like i'm still just gonna be in my one room home um like you know doing another
01:15:01
essay like it's not that exciting and people loved that it was i think because you know once the channel grows it often gets unrelatable
01:15:07
which you know people have different arguments about that but like for three years mine had to stay relatable because i was
01:15:12
still within that same room writing more essays and i think that i absolutely loved that
01:15:17
like i loved that and i will cherish that as part of my career that i really did love
01:15:22
i think i know that what i'm doing now is what i'm meant to be doing i also think i'm really good at it
01:15:29
and i think that i feel fulfilled like i i genuinely feel fulfilled um most if not every day what are you so
01:15:38
what are you what are you doing now in terms of your your focus and your um i guess the question that i wanted to ask to that point is what are you as it relates to your
01:15:50
businesses like i think about the same question for myself what is the bit that you're really good at and that you think you know what
01:15:56
that's the piece that where i consider myself to be irreplaceable so i guess the more i you know as a ceo
01:16:03
or a founder who's moving into another or whatever it might be like you you step back to work on the business
01:16:08
rather than in the business right so the more i step back i think the more you then realize what you're really good at because those are the things that you
01:16:14
keep having to jump back into and you keep realizing that like yeah i could get this person to do it and i could delegate it entirely which you
01:16:20
know you try and do and then it keeps coming back and it's not quite right and for me that's marketing and branding
01:16:26
that's like the you know the thing and that is i also think that a lot of successful businesses are you know founder-led businesses
01:16:38
are the ones where i was talking to a friend about it the other day actually are the ones where the um founder is
01:16:45
product and brand and they still have that involvement whether it's just at vision and their briefing at the beginning of a process
01:16:50
or whatever it might be that is where the concentration is because that is what the brand is and we are in a generation where
01:16:57
brand is everything and so the you know the house of cbs the like what you know the yeah they're all they're all their brand and and beyond brand their
01:17:10
brand bleeding through to product and so you know it's good that that's my concentration as well because you know
01:17:16
that's definitely paid off but i also think that that's the things again and again that when i was having
01:17:21
the discipline to step back and to actually you know do what i should be doing which is not being in
01:17:28
the execution all the time being in the lead and being in the vision those were the ones where i realized i
01:17:34
was like okay i have to be in this in some way sure even if that's you know as i say writing a brief at the beginning of the
01:17:40
process or mentoring that person through the first few times or being at the end of the approval process
01:17:46
whatever it might be those are the things that i nothing will go live without that going through
01:17:53
me not at every stage at all but there are stages whether that's the beginning the end both
01:17:59
whatever it might be it sounds remarkably similar to many of the founders especially young
01:18:04
founders that i've spoken to who have that realization like ben who's been on this podcast as well from jim shark um even like huell julian who runs hum
01:18:11
where at some point i'm speaking more about ben here you have and to be fair myself as well because at social change i wasn't doing
01:18:18
process finance yeah legal all that nonsense i was doing brand marketing um we have that realization that um that is your strong point it's also the bit that you love and all the other things
01:18:28
the process the business stuff those were systems that were created long ago and that there are tons of very you know
01:18:35
better people than you to handle those things and it becomes a case of where will my investment of my time um return the most
01:18:43
for the business and i don't think people have that conversation enough because i think young founders sometimes feel like they have to be able to do
01:18:48
everything right i think that is the materialization of this hustle culture i think a lot of that
01:18:54
led it's the kind of like idea of so i talk about this thing called like announcement culture which i thought was
01:19:00
a thing but then i actually looked it up and isn't anywhere so i kind of like defined it within the book about the essentially the idea that
01:19:06
you know success is valued as more within this generation once it's announceable so it's not the
01:19:12
underlying stuff even if that was doing more it is everything that is announceable labelable all of the above so
01:19:17
it also comes on a micro level within our everyday like we like to tick thing we like to see the things ticked off
01:19:22
like we like to you know we'd probably rather see 10 things ticked off our to-do list than have actually made some real
01:19:28
thinking progress in a concept that like whatever because that's the way it's you know you feel more
01:19:33
productive you feel like you've done more and i think that that's also an area where where
01:19:38
founders people on social media who within businesses whatever they need to be seen to be doing everything to be validated and i don't
01:19:44
think that's a personal problem i think i've had it 100 i think i still have it at certain points but you know
01:19:51
it's a validation through being told you're legitimate because you do things and like i'm not
01:19:57
gonna lie i don't know half of the [ __ ] that goes on in our finance meetings and i will sit there and i will look at
01:20:03
it and i look at you know and it's like that's great and i need to be over it and i need to have that understanding and i'll ask the questions
01:20:08
but i also think that the second i let that fear of illegitimacy by not doing everything leave that was the second that i was able to actually be a leader because i was able to realize that
01:20:20
actually what if if i'm better than everyone at their specific things then we've got a
01:20:26
business that is as big as one person like as it goes like you should hire people that are better than you
01:20:32
at their specific disciplines so like even if you're like if you're micromanaging if you're being like a bottleneck if you're like
01:20:39
whatever it might be you are automatically causing a problem or not even necessarily causing a problem it might work that you know like it might go to plan but
01:20:51
you are restricting that growth that potential that magnitude of the business because you are and it's for your ego it is not for anything other than your ego even if that's an innocent thing even
01:21:04
you know as i say i still do it i'm sure at points even if that's you know like you want to be said to be on this project that did
01:21:09
really well and i think that as a founder you have to get to a point where that ego of course it's like a validation thing and it's coping mechanism and you'd like to think that you always do the best for your business
01:21:20
but especially when we're looked at online and when you know we need to be seen that we're involved in this that and the other
01:21:25
because otherwise people think you know like especially someone who i'm sure lots of people think i'm just the face of the business whatever so like maybe i
01:21:32
need to prove that i do x y instead but the second i stopped doing that was the second i
01:21:37
as i say was actually able to do my job remarkable when i was 18 19 20 starting the business because i
01:21:43
was young i'm gonna be honest i definitely feared hiring really experienced people because i thought well how am i gonna manage them
01:21:49
and are they gonna and they're gonna figure out that i'm not that experienced and it's gonna be difficult and so i look at
01:21:54
the first 10 highs i did and they're all like kids yeah i'm like why did i hire 10 kids and then i get to a point where i'm like 21
01:22:00
22 and i start social chain and i hire some really experienced people then they go on to higher loads
01:22:05
of because the person the people because they know yeah they know what their teams need to look like i always say in our companies i'm like the most important people are
01:22:11
the people you have hiring all the other people right absolutely and that my life became 99.9 easier when we got better people in
01:22:19
and i i fell back and stopped letting my ego or my insecurities run the show and the other thing which i wasn't
01:22:26
expecting is it actually makes you look so much better when your business works like i i think the thing is that like you've got to ask yourself yeah would you like the business to have
01:22:37
the glory or would you like you to have the glory and like then realize that if the business has the glory you still have
01:22:42
the glory but you just have to wait a bit like you just have to not need to be validated every day by
01:22:48
the fact that you were involved on that project that did well or the fact that you signed that off i don't need to sign something off if
01:22:54
the team is made of people who are better than me and like fine actually i'm sure there are people who are far better than me within branding but it's my brand
01:23:00
so like you know like still that's going to be that's going to be like put in a certain direction but i think you're completely right i
01:23:06
mean i actually hired you know in my final year of uni i actually had three students
01:23:12
working for me or one student and two fresh grads and they were great like they were fantastic and to like and
01:23:19
i think they're you know amazing one of them still working within tala now and i think that i think that that
01:23:26
actually was my only option at the time like oh i couldn't afford to hire you know like any more than that and it was people who i put them through like so many tasks
01:23:33
and i was like i need you to be the right person because i'm about to launch business and do my finals at the same time so i'm going to
01:23:39
be outsourcing and i always say actually a lot of the reason for my success was also the fact that i was forced to
01:23:44
outsource so early based on the fact that i was at university and oxford had always been my dream as i say i
01:23:50
applied twice like i was not going to let it go i thought i deserved to be there and i proved when i was there that i did
01:23:55
and i think that that i was so committed to getting to the end of that getting what i deserved and you know and
01:24:03
being proud of myself even though that wasn't necessarily my dream anymore that was my like childhood dream i was so convinced
01:24:10
that that was gonna happen that i had to outsource immediately essentially like and who was that first key senior hire
01:24:17
that came into your business and how did it feel when you you know you saw the salary and you thought [ __ ] yeah so
01:24:23
so salary wise those those are more recent those are much more recent those are within the part actually probably right
01:24:30
before i finished uni there was someone who we hired and i was like but i actually
01:24:39
managed to get someone else to hire them so so to work on essentially what would be my
01:24:44
account um so the but even then i was kind of looking at that and i was like you know like that
01:24:49
regardless of who's hiring affects the p l so like you know what and but then more recently there have been
01:24:55
you know we've been hiring ahead of product from sweaty betty you know like all of these like the people
01:25:03
it's but also like those are the ones where i have to like hype myself up during the interview because i'm like you graduated from my university 20
01:25:09
years ago yeah it all ties in as well because as soon as you realize that you don't need to be that person you also realize that they're not
01:25:26
wanting you to be that person they want to come in and do their expertise they don't want you to be like oh i just
01:25:31
want to check over this because i'm the founder or i'm the ceo they yeah they just want to do their job
01:25:40
and the better they do their job the better you do their job the better you do the job the better they do their job it like it's all cyclical but it's like
01:25:46
ego and validation and legitimacy that ties together to make this kind of big old like cauldron
01:25:51
of like this is probably ineffective but i have to be not even validated i don't think it's
01:25:56
vapid like i don't think it's like you know i don't think it's necessarily ego in a bad way i think it comes from
01:26:02
like the fact that all of us have some insecurity that needs to be you know especially if you start a business young and especially if you
01:26:08
feel like oh like wow i'm in this position like you have to be you either you're like incredibly
01:26:15
confident somehow and like completely full of yourself but i genuinely believe that most of us have some insecurities about
01:26:20
yeah and so like it's all tied in i don't necessarily don't think it's bad thing i don't think it makes you a bad person as i said i have a lot
01:26:27
but i think you have to recognize it and i think that's the first thing i'd say to i actually had a fellow founder messaged me like two days
01:26:34
ago and she was like i just wanted to tell you what you told me about a year ago saying um like everything you know she
01:26:40
was at the stage where i was like you need to be hiring people and she's like but it's expensive and i was like i know but they will pay for
01:26:46
themselves because like if you you know like even not even necessarily the right people like even if it's admin even if it's
01:26:52
like whatever you should be doing the things that only you should you can do whether you're self-employed whether you're like
01:26:57
whatever it might be and you know like my my like i grew up like my dad was self-employed like all
01:27:03
of these things and i think you see you're like there are so many different ways of working and i
01:27:11
was thinking because i've seen people do things one way like i need to prove myself and i need to do that
01:27:17
proving myself is more effective if i have a team of amazing people and that's been like one of my biggest
01:27:22
biggest lessons i asked you then what your you know what you were really good at within the business you talked about branding and
01:27:28
marketing so i'm going to ask you the opposite question as the boss as um grace beverly the ceo
01:27:33
um what are you really bad at big silence kevin i think i think there's probably like we're going to bring in her pa now
01:27:52
i think there are probably a lot of things i think i think there's definitely i think one of my things is
01:27:58
the thing we've been talking about getting involved where i don't need to be involved i think that's probably you know and i think i have an anxiety
01:28:04
around that that actually you know there have been times where i haven't got involved where i probably should have because i was getting too confident with
01:28:09
my moving away and then it just wasn't right and the product didn't shift enough or whatever it might have been
01:28:15
and so i think probably what that's one of my main things and also only recently have i realized how much
01:28:22
confidence i have to have in people and i think it was actually based on talking about how shitty some of
01:28:27
google's rules are actually in work rules um the book about google working culture um he says that
01:28:35
like one of the most important things at google is that they encourage and empower everyone to be like their own
01:28:40
founder so like if they're on a project like they should be founder of that project and they should feel empowered to also like look at me and be like no like
01:28:48
this is not how it and like and i think that that stood with me so much because i was like you know what like the next day i emailed someone who
01:28:54
was you know hiring someone within their team and they were like should we get them on this or this and i was like you decide
01:28:59
like you you know you decide we know the end goal any way we get there i'm happy with you
01:29:05
decide instantly so that you know like because people also want to be empowered with that and
01:29:10
also people often you know do much better when they're given their responsibility and so i think that some of that what
01:29:17
we've just been talking about is probably one of my biggest weaknesses because i'm so terrified that
01:29:23
something will go wrong and obviously as the you know success as many fathers and like all of
01:29:29
the you know all of that like you have to take responsibility when it goes wrong it doesn't matter whether it wasn't you whatever it might be
01:29:34
i mean something goes wrong right yeah with your brand mm-hmm grace beverly mm-hmm is the one that
01:29:40
they 100 hold responsible so in turn over but also something goes right for true but in turn over here says
01:29:47
something responds to a dm yeah whatever you've got to almost justify that even if not even
01:29:53
justify it but it apologized and it's happened it's happened multiple times and i think that how do you not then go to
01:30:00
the intern and say because i i i think if it was enough for me to do that i think it'd be much more gracious for me to just probably get rid of them as in essentially to say like
01:30:11
this is not the right place because it also you know there's a par there's an element of that that's not understanding the brand that's not understanding who
01:30:16
we are or ethos or whatever and if it's that far out of line and it's like okay well this is a mismatch here then
01:30:22
but i think that so my two options then e both of them involve like you know being gracious in some way and one of that is fixing it if i genuinely believe that it was an honest mistake
01:30:32
and it came across wrong or like whatever it might be then fine and i will work with them to deal with it and i don't believe
01:30:38
you know maybe someone will disagree but i don't believe i have ever ever ever gone to someone and be like how dare you you've sacrificed this good
01:30:45
like like you know you've done all of that because also they do the work every single day to make the company great and yeah it's
01:30:51
frustrating like trust me like i don't see that and think like it's fine because last week they did a nice post or like whatever
01:30:58
but like there is still an element of it that's like frustrated and that's like feels like you've taken 10 secs back and
01:31:05
is terrified that you're about to be cancelled or like whatever it might be but there's either a decision then to
01:31:11
decide it's a mismatch or to decide it's still a match and it was an honest mistake neither of those involve like ripping
01:31:17
someone to shreds so how do you do sometimes though when you do get like emotion and business
01:31:22
it's your baby it's it's sometimes you know anger or i don't know frustrations they
01:31:29
do manifest themselves in business in some ways like i'd be lying if i said that i didn't have days where i was frustrated and people knew
01:31:35
i try not to be as much as i can i try and remain a little bit calm especially when it's most chaotic yeah especially in offices i think that's
01:31:40
particularly like we have the luxury now i'm like no you can't see me like as in you know i think
01:31:45
i i often like i think probably the near our office the like cafes they know me well because i will go in there i will take myself i will exit
01:31:56
because i don't i think in life and in business i don't believe in i don't think i necessarily
01:32:03
react in that way naturally um and i think to my detriment sometimes because you know sometimes you do need to just
01:32:11
say you know this is absolutely not right or whatever but i think it's the same thing as i kind of talked about before like you
01:32:16
know i'd rather work out the best way to deal with it there have been times where i've picked up the phone and i've been like what the [ __ ] has gone wrong
01:32:21
like why would you do that like this makes absolutely no sense like this is you know you should know better like all of that and
01:32:28
they are first of all they are very few and far between i'm not saying that i don't say that to my housemates i'm like how [ __ ] damn
01:32:34
i don't understand why he would do that like he knows that's not the case but i would i don't i don't i mean you
01:32:41
might disagree i don't think i i don't think i really like i'm not looking at her she also is paid to say no um
01:32:49
but i genuinely i genuinely i'm not a she's the same way as a text i think i'm the same in relationships friendships like everything i am a walk out of the rumor and come
01:33:05
back in half an hour and at that point i'll leave the shout or i'll you know but i'm not instantly kind of in that moment
01:33:12
which is why i sometimes also find social media hard because i don't want to react in the moment and social media warrants an
01:33:18
instant reaction because that's the only way that you're being true to yourself or like whatever it might be like i often will think something you
01:33:24
know when you're angry and you think something you're so angry about it and then half an hour later i won't be or i'll think it's different or i'll
01:33:30
think someone didn't mean that or whatever it might be and so i try and even though social media doesn't necessarily
01:33:36
allow for that amount of kind of like discussion i do try and like you know just yeah and that's kind of in
01:33:42
general how i deal with things i go and spend some time by myself and if anyone talks to me
01:33:47
if you are to become the person you want to become what does that person look like in terms
01:33:54
of values the way they conduct themselves react to things um i think for me it's a lot of
01:34:02
repositioning i as i said like i think that i grew up on social media at a time where i was
01:34:07
particularly low and therefore like a lot of that was made up with validation therefore like i think one of my main aims
01:34:13
and one of my main like work what i've been working towards for the past you know year or so has been that kind of
01:34:21
self-validation and that self-worth and i think that that through and through you know unfaltering
01:34:26
self-worth is i don't know whether it's even like a reality like i think people have faltering views of themselves just like they do every other person you can love someone absolutely unconditionally
01:34:39
you can think in one moment like yeah like you know why did they do that or like i think that's a terrible trait
01:34:45
about them or whatever and i think the important thing is being able to bounce back from that into the original
01:34:50
position or being able to consider that and still have that worth or love or whatever and
01:34:56
i think so i think to become the person who i want to be i think it's you know i'm
01:35:02
quite you know happy with where i am now and i think there are like i know what i need to improve in
01:35:08
terms of like and i think a lot of it comes down to my own confidence and my own um like assurance
01:35:14
in myself in order not to project that elsewhere so yeah like in general i think that's
01:35:20
probably one of my main main things being completely honest i don't think it involves like money or like growth in any other
01:35:27
way i think the first thing that i know that i need to improve on is that how how does one go about improving
01:35:33
their self-validation i would love to know but i think in general it's just like an it's an understanding of yourself it's an understanding that you're going to [ __ ] up it's an understanding that you're going to
01:35:45
think one thing and do another and i think that part of that as i say put that was part
01:35:51
of the reason you know i did move away from social media because it was like i can't have all these people telling me one thing even if it's
01:35:56
a great thing because it doesn't allow you to be like completely in touch with yourself and know those differences
01:36:02
yeah exactly like even if it's the people blowing smoke up your ass like you then can't get that from yourself
01:36:08
because you're constantly like clouded by that if it's people hating it's the same thing so i think that like i'm don't i don't
01:36:14
necessarily know i think all it can be is being in touch with yourself and understanding that you are
01:36:20
going to do things wrong i think i'm very harsh on myself in the way that i don't like doing things wrong and
01:36:27
i work very hard not to do things wrong and so when i do it you know it hits me hard and i think that part of that is learning that does it hit you hard yeah i think i think in general it
01:36:38
really does and i think that i yeah yeah i think that that's kind of one of the things that
01:36:44
you have to then develop that kind of self-love and all of that to be able to say um okay
01:36:50
great well like you know but i'm i'm as i've said got this like miss trunchbull living in my head who
01:36:56
just wants one thing and one thing only and it constantly changes and it's constantly more and
01:37:01
i think that's an important thing to address two things the first one is instagram you kept instagram
01:37:06
yes why i like instagram in general i think that you know i think one of the one of the sad things that i found about kind of
01:37:18
pivoting was that i loved what i got from things like youtube in terms of like the community as i say that like i loved being able to share that and i
01:37:29
was at this really weird point where i loved sharing my life but i also didn't like sharing my life because i like you know
01:37:35
and it was you know there were bad things and good things about everything but it was like the highs were really high and the lows were really low
01:37:40
and so it's kind of like toxic in that way and i think that instagram instagram and twitter probably both can be used in a way where you i try and use it more as like
01:37:53
a you know i post way more than like a regular non instagram non public eye whatever person
01:37:59
would post but i don't use it as a platform for anything other than just social media like if that if that makes any sense at all it's kind of you know it's pretty much
01:38:11
my only platform and i just you know i post as on when i want i don't need to post i don't need to come across a certain
01:38:18
way because i don't need to do stories at all one day you know like whereas yeah and probably the most widely there was a
01:38:25
report out that said instagram is probably the worst platform for mental health well you can see why visuals filtered visuals
01:38:31
unrealistic compounds i think i think i think i also thought that no matter what i didn't like or what i wanted to pivot
01:38:37
to i also owed it to myself to be able to celebrate my success in some ways and i think that you know that however many messages i get from
01:38:45
people saying you know i know you've moved off other platforms but please don't agree delete
01:38:50
instagram because you know xyz like whatever it might be like everyone has their people who really
01:38:56
don't necessarily really need them but really really benefit from them and i think that i also
01:39:02
saw a lack of representation for women in the business space who also shout about it and i think there's a reason for it like i wouldn't encourage a woman to shout about it not from a moral perspective but because you will
01:39:13
be ripped to shreds and because people will have preconceptions that are different from successful men and you know whether
01:39:18
that's showing material things or like whatever it might be it's perceived as differently and therefore like but i did think in
01:39:24
that way that not only do i want to be able to do that i also think that you know i think i'd
01:39:30
like to do it also to make sure you know to be able to be in that landscape and i think that i kind of
01:39:36
owed it to myself also to be able to celebrate that even if i was moving away from that being my job i didn't post in
01:39:41
any way the same as i posted when that was my job um i post very differently but
01:39:47
you know it's i love it you've got any sort of big regrets in your life that you've uh that might help others
01:39:55
avoid making those same mistakes um i think i mean i mean i think my it's it's the kind of same timing thing again it's once again it's just anything to do with allowing other
01:40:07
people's perception allowing focus on other people's perception of you over your focus on
01:40:12
your perception of yourself um but i don't think i'm not really like a as i've said much to my detriment and to my success i've you know i don't necessarily
01:40:22
concentrate on don't maybe it's that toxic positivity thing you said or whatever i don't necessarily concentrate on
01:40:28
those downfalls like i feel like everything that's gone wrong like we're not not getting into oxford
01:40:34
the first time or whatever that led to me having a really great corporate job and i was able to make some money and i was able to you know like work in econ for a
01:40:41
bit you know like all of those things and i think that i'm very like my pick yourself back up attitude is bad in some ways but the way it's good is also allowing
01:40:53
you to not have many regrets because you always make something out of a bad thing and therefore it's really hard to look back and say that was [ __ ] because
01:41:00
fine even if it didn't lead to what you thought it would like i had for example i had my absolute dream job lined up for
01:41:06
april and it got cancelled because of the pandemic and you know i like was very lucky to be in an industry that was largely unaffected in fact in some ways did really well
01:41:17
and i was so devastated about that um and like maybe it will happen maybe it won't but like you know i think that that was something that couldn't be a regret couldn't be whatever
01:41:30
but i also know that at this point i've moved so much away from social media in that time that that
01:41:35
probably would have put me on a like blasted me in a way that actually maybe i wouldn't have been able to deal
01:41:40
with and i think that you know kind of the world works in like mysterious ways and like maybe that wasn't right and maybe i
01:41:46
wouldn't say yes if i got that opportunity again and i think that that actually just
01:41:52
yeah i i guess maybe it is a toxic positivity maybe it is like maybe i should be you know i don't allow myself
01:41:57
to be sad about those things when i maybe should be or i should address them but i think part of that means that when i i'm asked about my
01:42:04
regrets i have kind of very little that's good i mean regrets that come with their their upsides right and the value in the
01:42:10
lessons that they teach you so it's hard and i don't think it's bad to have regrets i think acknowledging your regrets is
01:42:15
really important to be able to move forward um maybe i'd block them out i bet you can't wait for people to to
01:42:21
get your book right yes it's a real labor of love right yeah i mean i'm terrified at the same time
01:42:27
um and i'm sure there will be some people i think i think well i think you it's the same as a business if you pull that much love and your soul into
01:42:33
something if people hate it they essentially hate you like that's never nice it doesn't matter whether you're a bad nurse or whatever like it's not something you want
01:42:39
and i think that i think also as i say there's a lot that i've put in there that i probably wouldn't have talked
01:42:45
about online because it's there's delayed feedback there's you know i don't need to hear what someone said
01:42:51
thinks about that in that moment and so i you know i'm excited i'm terrified um but you know and it's also very different like it's different from what i've been doing it's not entirely about business it's
01:43:03
not entirely about you know xyz it's it's different like it's essentially another pivot in one way
01:43:10
and i think that you know i'm excited and equally like you know i think about it some like some for some reason last night was one of the nights that i had kind of like constantly waking up i was like what if people don't like this bit
01:43:23
and like what are people you know and i think that that's not something you control control and like
01:43:28
i think the only way to guarantee not having that would be to write a blank book which i don't have much interest in and is that those worries because i'm
01:43:36
because i'll be honest i don't have those worries yeah and i've spoken to other authors that you know when i talked about them being
01:43:42
excited about the book coming out they also didn't express those worries so i'm wondering where those have come maybe it's because i'm conditioned to
01:43:49
having a constant feedback loop of you know whether on the businesses whether on my socials whatever it might be
01:43:54
um or maybe it's because i'm more insecure about those feedback things like maybe it is
01:44:00
but i think that it's also i care a lot so you know i care a lot about it i care a lot about my well-being i care a lot about you know i
01:44:12
and i feel like some of that you know is acknowledged that it's not necessarily even the right thing like i want to be able
01:44:17
to write my truth and to write what i genuinely believe in and for someone to say i don't believe in that and it's kind of cool
01:44:24
back to the battle we were just talking about there so yeah you said you wanted to be less sort of connected to people's feedback well i
01:44:29
write in the book i write you know at the same time like there's i don't i don't obviously it's completely irrational to want to be liked by everyone and i don't
01:44:40
want to be liked by everyone but i think in the same way everyone who is in the public eye and sees something [ __ ] or
01:44:45
whatever it might be you know as in it's just you know it's a natural reaction like
01:44:51
you know yeah so i think but i'm very very excited and i think that the reaction so far to you know the
01:44:58
concept to the excerpts to everything has been amazing and so i think that i should
01:45:03
probably just be more excited about it and um yeah you're a you're a very um inspired entrepreneur i noticed this when i was going through your sort of your history over the last
01:45:14
four years you've started several businesses you've had several ideas within those businesses and you seem like a constant stream of
01:45:21
ideas right i imagine that's also a problem yes my early investors told me they said they
01:45:26
kept hitting me with this whip and saying steve stop [ __ ] emailing us with a new idea all the time how have you made how have you been able
01:45:32
to distinguish between what's an idea worth pursuing and what's that because you could you know when you get a little bit of resource and you have
01:45:38
teams of people you could at any time be the ceo that's walking in every day and saying we're gonna do we're gonna do this a new thing
01:45:44
that can be unhelpful i'm still guilty of it yeah no and i'm sure i am um i'm sure i am how do you decide what
01:45:51
to what yeah i think i i think i use our audience a lot i think that one of the real benefits of having a you know i'm gen z so having a gen z led brand for
01:46:02
your gym yeah i'm the first year of gen z um and i think one of the benefits is like everyone's constantly like how do we market to gen z how do we do all of this and i'm definitely not like
01:46:14
gen z like don't ask me to do a tick tock dance but like i um i think that in that way i feed off
01:46:22
our audience a lot like i know i'm not the most experienced at branding that doesn't mean i'm not the best at branding for our brand
01:46:28
that means i'm not the most experienced so how can i use that in experience how can i leverage off people you know how can i can i can just
01:46:34
ask people sometimes like i can just say like would you be interested in this and i like used to be like no because they can only see it the final thing
01:46:40
and then sometimes people have said like yes yeah and then i've been like actually no but i think it's instinct i think some of it's instinct i think the more you
01:46:46
know your brand the more you really like know your brand and i think that lots of the time you
01:46:51
know it's an equal problem when other people have ideas and you're like no but i want you to have more ideas like and i think that you know it's just a constant learning process and i'm sure
01:47:03
i've had i have had ideas that have gone you know that just haven't gone as well as they should have and i think that that's
01:47:08
constant thing i think in in fashion especially like you're going to have like a certain amount of things that
01:47:14
don't sell as well as they should like whatever it might be and that's just a constant reality so i don't think it's necessarily about
01:47:20
always picking out the best ideas i think it's about picking out the right number of ideas usually fewer
01:47:26
and executing them well and as we look forward to your future i'm sure there's plenty more ideas to
01:47:31
come is there anything in the pipeline that one might be able to know about well actually because because i've
01:47:37
started two businesses the one question kind of press everything always asks is like what's
01:47:43
next what's the next business and there just really isn't gonna be one for but i think currently i am so maxed out
01:47:56
i think because i have two businesses here but i also have my personal brand sure so you know the book is a business
01:48:03
you know and that's a lot if you think of the amount of days in the week yeah so you're thinking like
01:48:10
five days i'm really strict on weekends so i hate to tell the hustle culture crew but i take weekends and i'm
01:48:16
strict on them um and so five days a week split between technically three businesses that's already a lot of time blocking to establish what you spend your time on
01:48:26
and where and bearing in mind that about you know fifty percent of this or not 50
01:48:32
40 of the stuff i do will also be unexpected so i think that as i've said the kind of ethos i have about constantly constantly pushing on and doing more more more
01:48:45
is actually detrimental when it comes to doing things well and so i think that you know yeah i
01:48:50
i've had ideas and nearly started multiple businesses and that this time at one point i even wanted to do like a
01:48:56
mini essentially influencer vc of some form and like but actually i want to prove to myself and i think i have and i think i can continue to do so i want to prove that i
01:49:08
can do these well and i can have patience and it's not about more more more because i think some of that comes from the fact that you know when things settle it's really easy to push for more when it's just at a settling
01:49:21
state and i constantly you know why can't i push for more within those businesses like each yeah exactly and growth and wider more
01:49:28
breadth and everything and i think that that's part of my plan so it might not be new businesses but
01:49:33
huge projects sometimes within a business sometimes take just as much as a new business and i think that yeah sure probably if
01:49:40
my businesses were taken away from me tomorrow i'd probably have an excellent you know like another one the next day and that's
01:49:45
how i'm programmed and i'm thankful for that because you know that's definitely part of the reason why i've got to where i am but i also think that
01:49:53
it's been a big lesson for me to learn that more is not always more yes that's the lesson that i also
01:49:59
learned and i then started becoming a bit of a preacher to my friends who would brag about having five businesses
01:50:04
and me saying one good one is much more that's the thing i would almost people as i've said people would say
01:50:10
about the end of uni when i was doing you know like all of these things and i think i recognized
01:50:17
probably too late but at some point i recognized that it wasn't about that and therefore i kind of was almost
01:50:24
embarrassed when people were like she's got 72 businesses yeah because i'd be like yeah you know i'd rather have one that was doing
01:50:30
really well i'm currently concentrating on two doing really well and a third one which is my personal brand which is you just yeah yeah
01:50:37
and then you know and that one will be the key to longevity for the rest of my career but so will
01:50:43
these two if they're done right because you don't need longevity you know if that happens and so i think i'm lucky to be in a position
01:50:50
where i have many different potential paths and the most productive thing i can do in that moment is decide on the path and stick to it and i think it's fickle and i think that i can be fickle
01:51:02
in like a hard work you know like diligent way because i just want to do more and quicker and like all of that but
01:51:09
actually the toughest thing i can do is just stand still and do it right and where where does this end then for
01:51:14
your businesses in your view where do you how because when we're entrepreneurs we kind of forecast you know five years time i'll sell this or i'll do this or whatever
01:51:20
i'll step away what's your thinking with your businesses i think it depends i think that like for example i often
01:51:27
i'll have a view i'll say like okay well i'll maybe aim to sell this one in two years and then this one i'll keep
01:51:32
on like and i'll you know do that forever um and i think that then it changes then
01:51:39
like the other one starts to get really exciting and really profitable and you're like well maybe i'll keep this
01:51:44
one for longer so i think that like i've got used to the fact that that's not you know
01:51:49
there's probably not i've probably got used to the fact that actually there'll be a point where rather than
01:51:56
saying okay in two years i'm going to do this it'll be like [ __ ] i'm done like i'm done and
01:52:01
therefore and that's too late but i know it will be like that because i know i will push it to you know like the end or whatever it might be
01:52:08
but i'm i'm open i'm very open to it i think also i'm very much at the beginning of this
01:52:14
like shreddy four years old tyler not even two years old yet and i think that i'd be doing myself a
01:52:21
disservice to kind of be it's exactly what i would do jump to the next when can i sell it when can i get
01:52:26
all of this but especially because when you have a business you kind of programmed to assume that by the time you've done this
01:52:35
you're officially like you're no longer an entrepreneur you know you like sold a business for x
01:52:41
or whatever and it is a success point it's a huge you know it's a huge accolade and i think that
01:52:47
for me i it's just about constantly keeping in touch with myself and what i want what i want for the businesses as well
01:52:53
because i'm sure there'll be a point where i'm like i can't do that yeah like you know this needs x amount of funding or this actually needs to be
01:52:59
acquired or whatever it will be don't think it'll be soon but there might be a point you know and there probably will be a point that that happens or
01:53:04
where you know we've grown hugely recently i have a terrifying thought of like what if it gets too corporate at
01:53:10
one stage and then you know it's not a joy for me anymore and at that point yeah like i can like very much consider that
01:53:17
um so i think it's very much like an open consideration constantly for me and i think that the best thing i can do again is just
01:53:23
not yeah exactly have you managed to achieve balance in your life well this is the sort of whole point of the book i guess but um
01:53:40
um i think i think i'm doing well at the moment i think i wasn't doing well this time a year ago
01:53:46
i think that i um i'm probably doing well you know because for example like as i've talked about like i'm not in a relationship so maybe like that would throw it all off or whatever it might be i think at the moment i'm doing it well
01:53:59
and probably too much of a focus on work but that's what balance looks like to me at
01:54:05
the moment it's not 50 50 it's not like a tipping set of scales it's like sure this is what's added up oh yeah i'm
01:54:11
definitely happy i think i'm i think i'm particularly happy at the moment because i feel like i'm somehow simultaneously living my
01:54:17
early 20s life whilst also being you know being in this amazing position and that for me that was the main thing
01:54:23
i wanted because i just was you know this more more more thing was like you don't need to be acting like you're
01:54:29
40. like you you know and so i've really tried to maintain that even though it's strange for me to be in my position
01:54:35
and living with three of my friends in my house or whatever it might be like i feel like i'm having that and i feel like that's
01:54:41
that was a real you know that was a big thing for me and i'm you know happy that it doesn't
01:54:47
necessarily have to be that i'm in like some sick high rise apartment by myself with like exposed or whatever
01:54:53
um and that for me is my happiness thank you uh it's been wonderful speaking to you i find you so inspiring and you know people have said to me as i've like gone through my journey that i'm like a wise head on shoulders
01:55:05
whatever but you like really really are oh thank you well you are no but you like really are like you're 20 23 i remember when i was 23 i was still
01:55:11
largely uh an idiot and you you you seem to have figured out no i know but it's like the
01:55:18
level of i'd say self-awareness right and i can see as you're speaking in the way that you answer questions
01:55:24
you're also really you're really trying to appreciate nuance that's something it took me a long time to do right so i thought the world was
01:55:30
the way i saw it if you don't work hard then you are inferior yeah right and then but i can see you're being very considered in how you speak
01:55:36
and appreciating nuance and i think that's the trait of someone that's that's a bit had their life accelerated in the public eye or through you know
01:55:42
pressure of running businesses but just someone that has very wise um head on their shoulders and you're inspiring as hell
01:55:48
thank you and you're a lovely human being so i want to thank you for coming here today and giving me your time and um when when can we buy your
01:55:54
book april i know we can pre-order now 14th 15th thank you lexi yeah i know mine is march so yeah but
01:56:06
you can pre-order now 20 something oh yeah well pre-order pre-orders dom when is my book now
01:56:14
25th of march we'll cut it so it looks like we've got it right first time i'll pull up you can pre-order both now
01:56:21
maybe so many people will pre-order the same ones that you know when amazon assigns like a specific bundle people who yeah yeah exactly they're
01:56:28
like you can get these two together for this i think that's the aim from this do go and check it out because i've
01:56:33
i know how much you put into it personally and sometimes i sit down with people and i know they had some ghosts right i create the whole thing but speaking to
01:56:40
you on and off camera i know how much you've poured into it and when when people do that i think they create really remarkable pieces of work and unique thoughts so
01:56:46
thanks again for coming on you're a really really special person and i'm honored to have you here thanks thank
01:56:54
you [Music] [Music] oh [Music] you