Grace Beverley: How To Build A Multi-Million Pound Empire At 24 | E69

Key Takeaways

one of the reasons i step back from social media was because i if something can manifest so physically that you're having a [ __ ] seizure then you probably need to take this more seriously and that was you know like that was that was tough 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 sustainability and one's a fitness empire comprising a mobile app a supplements business and gym equipment she did all of that while studying and graduating from oxford university while growing her online channels to millions and millions 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 of 23 23 and on the surface it's easy to understand while looking in someone might love to have 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 weight of her workload and the personal cost of her accomplishments and you see the impact that those things have had on 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 that no longer serve her she's learned she's learned lessons that most of us would take a lifetime to learn 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 grace i started my business at 18 years old as well you um you faced a different set of 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 challenges that are even alien to me in the sense that you are a woman in business um you are taking on various industries 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 things i guess my first question is why did you choose business and what gave you the what gave you the confidence to pursue a career that's filled with so much uncertainty at such a 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 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 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 when i was 18 and working doing an internship at ibm that's kind of when i started and i just started doing some i essentially started monetizing something that should be monetized so it's content i was giving away 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 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 that's i guess often not seen in the way that business is represented it's kind of seen as like a 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 and that it was far more gradual than that and i think that probably over the past you know so it's 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 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 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 gradual process i think the confidence has gathered through that and a lot of the time i haven't been confident enough to do that but have i guess just done it anyway so you know when i was when i did kind of my second set of ebooks which was in my first year at university 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 confidence thing i think it was more okay like what are we gonna do in that situation um and then putting that together and then being able to you know leverage a platform to be able to monetize that so and then from then 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 going to take on this industry sure starting tala that that was um but but the rest of it a lot of it has been gradual a lot of it has been this kind of more just a cumulative 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 to be the biggest business in the world it can just be you know something you're just doing in that moment 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 has now become more in focus as people are trying to find ways to give themselves a little bit more stability in their income 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 who are younger 18 19 or even older um everybody seems to have a business idea yeah and i'm sure you're bombarded with dms like this right everyone has a business idea um there seems to be this 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 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 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 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 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 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 working three jobs just to make ends meet and therefore you know you might have an idea but actually being able to sacrifice the 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 confidence out of that circumstance it can be um or outside of that circumstance it can be you know 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 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 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 if i tested that out um you know even more gradually or if it hadn't worked or whatever 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 actually testing things realizing their work and then replicating that so i think 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 the biggest the biggest factors will be circumstance confidence um and yeah i guess there are so many 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 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 whatever it might be i think as well if people looking at you or myself that have achieved things in 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 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 taking one step up a very very thousand stair staircase at a time and and as you say when we look at you 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 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 but i also think that i look back at some not necessarily some products but you know some branding some 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 just scroll right past that or i wouldn't you know and of course things have changed people's like tastes have changed and 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 you know like t-shirts to notebooks to like whatever it would be it's not what the everything that's accumulated now is the good things that have then been replicated it's not everything gets kind of replicated and then you know you see all of the end products there have been some things that never ended up as an end product 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 is this kind of and i i think it's also perpetuated by you know unknowingly often by people 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 it's this or you know if this product worked out well and and subconsciously because there was an 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 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 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 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 about being underestimated not taken seriously before speak to me about some of those challenges that i wouldn't even 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 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 it's you know i won't face half the challenges that a black woman would face in the same 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 know a journey there have been you know people who have wanted to work for the businesses who clearly won't accept the fact that you know this i'm not the face of it like i am acting ceo and you know i do do x y and z and there have also been you know it's been the same with partnerships it's been the same with you know i think people people have a certain perception that's definitely warped and increased and perpetuated by online presence and the fact that i don't just 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 say like it's about a woman who's high up who you hear about and you're like oh god 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 work with or like they're like whatever and we all have these own kind of like our own like internalized 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 either think or maybe one of three things you think wow amazing must be superwoman or you think wow amazing but like oh i've never seen a partner or like children like do you think they're happy in their 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 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 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 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 obviously got better in some ways you know it's got hugely better since probably like the 1950s and whatever 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 the general sentiment around your brand and you've got a huge hugely engaged wonderful community of 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 contextualizing success because i think it's very important especially when you know you're presented three people on your instagram feed with in the same square and one of them you make from school one of them's you like your mum and one of them's beyonce and it's kind of like this democratization of the news feed that makes everything look the same and you don't see the teams you don't see the privilege 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 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 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 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 and that's what i throw myself into and i think that i'd rather that conversation be had and 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 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 what i do is because i know why it is i also know that there have been things that have helped me and then you know i guess that doesn't matter i guess the important thing is that we're able to have the conversations and able to like i'm able to know as well in myself i know that's a very mature 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 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 criticism or you know might be justified it might be unjustified criticism is hard to take i don't i think you can have a mature standpoint towards something and equally you're still going to feel 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 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 in a higher profile position when they're younger um and because i you know i talk about i have this whole chapter in the book which is essentially a i guess probably like the most honest i've been in a long time because 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 year and it's me talking about how actually essentially i feel like a lot of i became known at a time where my self-confidence was at its worst and therefore i was able to i guess rather than feeling that lack of confidence with confidence and self-worth i filled it with validation and therefore when i decided to take a step back from social media because i decided that wasn't what i wanted to do kind of first and foremost as my job that kind of bandage was ripped off because it didn't exist and that's when i realized that you know 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 you know no matter whether this person thinks x y and z about yourself how much does that matter if it does matter and if you do think it's wrong are you going to do something about it and can you still get on with your day essentially and i think that there are people who are amazing who i see on social media who i wouldn't give a single criticism to that i can think of that i'm sure get the exact 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 done you know have lucked out and get the exact same thing and in the grand scheme of things i don't think it necessarily matters i think what matters is that you know in yourself and you also know that if there's something you need to change then you can change that like if you want to if i guess sometimes when 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 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 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 designed to be taking this much feedback and criticism or even if it's not criticism if someone like i say the whole time oh i don't like that color i don't like like clothing or like whatever it might be to the designer that might like rip them to shreds or whatever it's not mean 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 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 yourself from the situation otherwise it's just untenable i guess um you've got you know two businesses 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 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 people as you said earlier get to fully see the full picture of sacrifice and cost um both personal and professional whatever so talk to me about some of the sacrifice that even you didn't expect before you got into business and before your business grew um i think that at the same time as i 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 getting up at x hour working on university stuff because i never ever ever wanted to give them an excuse to think that i wasn't concentrating fully on my university and then working all the way essentially 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 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 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 but at that point you know the the high profileness all of that that came with i guess 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 was kind of i guess you know something that i really did want for myself i didn't get but i also 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 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 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 that and then i think as well i saw the deadline for that as my end of university because if i had to 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 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 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 when it's people who meet you their kind of perception of you or whatever it might be and so i think that was something where it was a choice i'd make again and again but it was i guess a sacrifice that i wasn't expecting to make and i guess that comes with everything that comes with you know relationships with friends 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 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 benefits with those conditions and so i think that you know that's kind of a constant one like you can't 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 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 with you right yeah and and and that's you know it's it's it's an important one do you sometimes i reflect on uh the business journey and just how like obsessive it is and all consuming it is 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 realized that it wasn't about money so like what was it about and i think for me there's the kind of aspect of it's it's for the businesses and i have these really clear dreams for the 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 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 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 doesn't require every inch of your being and i know i'm like that so it's kind of like yeah sure it might be for nothing but it's i'm gonna do it anyway like there doesn't need to 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 that's kind of through like coordinating all the babysitting jobs that you got in one night and allocating them out to your friends and stuff or you know like taking essentially like any job ever that like that i could 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 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 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 pushy people ever i think that actually it all i kind of was discussing this with my 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 it in themselves but you know like they both my parents had careers when i was growing up i lived with my mum just me my mum and we had a tenant who lived in um my mom's house and my mum was working pretty much all the time incredibly like i respect her so much for it because i also never grew up thinking like oh it's weird for a woman to have a career and have four children and like whatever she just you know she worked all the time and um and she loved it she loved it and she gave her like everything to it and so i i think i spent a lot of i spent a lot of time kind of in that situation knowing that i also wanted to love what i do and i 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 but i also think that there is this like it's a flow state isn't it like you have something that matches your challenge and your skill level and you get more fulfillment than you'll get from anything 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 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 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 something that i hate and it was like a constant like and i don't think it's necessarily good i 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 like i didn't get into oxford the first time i applied i i i and i went again like i literally that 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 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 and then applied again the next year and like as in i was i'm very like that it's 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 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 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 career over the last couple of years which was your worst day um i mean or your toughest challenge i think my toughest challenge in general was there was this stupid stupid time that i'm constantly praised for that was the worst decision i've ever made in my life which was that i was 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 and i started i finished my finals on the 6th of june now that meant that 40 000 words were due and five three-hour exams within the space of two weeks and i also wanted to launch my business 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 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 this is so great like how can you do this and i'm like you are like it's not wise 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 time that is like a fast track towards burnout and either something going incredibly wrong 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 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 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 hard worker and i felt like because i was i was in the library at 3am and i was also 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 see it and i was living it i was like hustling the hustle and that was when i was like wow like this is it like i am the hard worker like with capital h w and like this is 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 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 the book because it was kind of like how can that be the epitome of hard work when that is also the epitome of not being productive like that's like completely unproductive um and 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 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 you were broadcasting that and i was broadcasting that and there'll be people i'm sure who see me now who are like she you know did this and that and like yeah sure i work really hard i really do but there are some things that 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 problem here as well i perpetuate this how can i criticize a culture of the hustle culture that i benefit from at the same time how can i do that and i think that i think that that's 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 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 become so unobtainable because it has to be doing this job that job like everything in between also being 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 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 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 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 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 that i attribute much of my health and fitness goals that i've achieved over the last 12 months to heal more recently i've started having the hot and savory bags of fuel and as someone that really 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 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 join me if you want to my favorite flavor is the thai green curry flavor i like to add loads and loads and loads 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 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 mental health generally and how you know you'd reflected that maybe you weren't representing mental health in the right 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 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 everything oh yeah no i appreciate home it everything but talk to me about your mental health and the journey you've been on with your mental health since you were you know 18. um well as i've said i think probably 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 we have mental health days like within our the company like you know you can take days off and you 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 advocate for that and talking about it and everything and then as soon as it came to me no like that was not it's not the same case like i'm not going to talk about it i'm not going to deal with it and it actually got to a point that i was having seizures essentially um from something really horrible that i went to that was through that was essentially ended up giving me ptsd that presented in seizures and obviously i was having symptoms up to the point of the seizures but i only took it seriously when it was a physical symptom like when it came to the point that i was like okay 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 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 like if something can manifest so physically that you're having a [ __ ] seizure 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 that that started and um everything up until then like i've been a i think i have this like really toxic mental health attitude within myself that doesn't prioritize it that isn't kind of that kind of sees it as weakness even though that's the last thing that i'd see you know in any of my friends who suffer from depression or anxiety or like whatever it might be 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 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 evaluate that and be able to look at like why like why is that the case like why do you feel so undeserving of the justification for like you know having bad mental health at one time and i've been lucky that you know apart from this which was a result of specific trauma i've generally been you know i've had generally good mental health and i've you know been able to deal with like i guess you know like i think a lot of the way that mental health is presented is really damaging in that you know people do i've had friends who have kind of said like oh yeah but you know i don't want to take meds from my depression or whatever and 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 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 like a you know what's what's she called like mrs trunchbull you know from matilda that you like have in your brain that's like you do not like get this or like you do not like deserve to have that compassion or whatever it 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 about mental health really openly and i literally had so i thought it was really important for me to 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 it's important for everyone to get therapy because you're not meant to go through that much chaos 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 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 get up again like second nature and then you never deal with things so i kind of 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 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 crier so i'm clearly talking about my mental health as if i'm doing an interview and if i'm like 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 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 to i guess to deal with and i think that the important thing is as an owner of a business that 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 important for me to treat mental health properly both for myself and for other people 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 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 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 we made mental health therapy opt out yeah i saw that yeah so like and it meant that the men who were hiding in 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 week my co-founder dom said he got um something like 11 messages from men in the business that had been suffering 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 what i wanted to go back to on is the point you know you talked about this build up that you had which culminated in you being hospitalized with your mental health um i had i had a guest on the podcast a couple a couple of weeks ago and she was uh she's a kayaker and she something something changed in her life and it 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 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 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 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 it's important to talk about in terms of burnout as a whole so when we i think the same thing 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 fast as you possibly can it's not productivity at all it's working i guess if you look at productivity like the definition is that you get the most amount done in the least amount of time but that has fine like that taken as one 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 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 effective all of these things are important but i think that you know it's also the equivalent of expecting someone like that or a marathon runner ultra marathon runner to sprint for the whole marathon like 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 a mental perspective or from a work perspective and i think that that's why it's so important to talk about especially you and me people who are essentially will be seen in some way as like what hard work looks like that results in success or whatever it might be the acknowledgement that working hard does not mean working all the time and like having it all does not mean like doing it all and all of these various different things that actually are important to look at from ourselves as well because like as i said like i realized that actually probably i was perpetuating a lot more 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 that i was actually working hard which actually all it gave off was this is how what hard work looks like and therefore there's you know it's probably stopping a whole generation of people who actually want to do something but 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 boring like non-fiction book and like but actually being able to acknowledge that and find some middle ground and find some realization that it doesn't all like it's not going to be the same for you as it is for someone else and the same goes for hard work um and i think for for me you know i now and i think largely because of having written this book i now see when i'm lagging i now see 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 do all my work and i'm able to do my own work too that isn't just responsive to other people's work and then i think you know and i'm able to culminate that in a way that is i guess 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 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 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 have to you know like sit back sometimes or your creativity just isn't coming out 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 nuance and balance and sometimes i don't have good days yeah yeah but i don't know anyone that's really successful that doesn't work hard i don't know any athlete 100 percent i think what i even realized that was after i kind of went through all of this like self-discovery and writing the think pieces and all of that and then i sat down to write the productivity method and i was like i feel like gordon ramsay telling someone he's like an idiot sandwich like i literally feel like i'm being that harsh just because i'm telling you 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 you know it's not just because as soon as you're that then you're equally as harmful in the perpetuation of like self-care culture that now has these knee-jerk reactions that's either like 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 ground like that is important for everyone but it doesn't just need to be kind of like you know like face masks 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 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 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 perpetuating the completely the other side you know sometimes self-care is the most productive thing you can do but also sometimes productivity is an act of self-care like 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 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 doesn't need to be compartmentalized into like you know some forms of work or self-care some forms of self-care are 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 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 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 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 but at the same time there is an importance and i do think that people like us also have a duty to be 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 something like you know like you you constantly have these things and it's like and then like so there's just so many different types of i guess there are so many different angles to it and