Working Hard with Grace Beverley

Latest Episodes:

Ep.32 So You Want To Start a Business? Listen To This First. Will Stirrup: Founder of Maeving Mar 13, 2023

Show notes

Will Stirrup is the Co-Founder of Maeving, the UK’s first electric motorcycle manufacturer, but after going totally bankrupt in his first year as an entrepreneur, Will’s journey is one of honesty, realism and business burnout. Raised in South Africa, Will came to the UK for university and quickly found himself on a career trajectory to working in finance. After becoming the youngest person ever to become double ACA CFA qualified, and securing a role within the M&A team of a top tier investment bank, Will packed it all in and chose his dream of being an entrepreneur. He didn’t have a business idea, only the knowledge that whatever it was had to have a positive impact on the climate crisis. Fast forward 4 years, and his business Maeving have developed an affordable, lightweight urban motorcycle with removable batteries you can charge at a standard plug socket, selling out their first production run almost immediately. Will’s story is one of toxic work cultures, intense burnout and of someone who is still looking for the right way to do it all - if such a thing exists.

- Trailer

- introduction into having an honest conversation about entrepreneurship

- a brief overview into the start of Will's career

- what Will learnt from his career in finance

- Will's experience with burning out and feeling out of his depth

- going from corporate careers to starting a business

- how to handle financially starting a business

- the side hustles that you can do whilst beginning a business

- why his business felt like passion project

- the 1st year of Maeving

- getting to the point of 'can we keep doing this?'

- what would Will do if his business fails now?

- how has Will become so resilient?

- how the pandemic nearly bankrupted Maeving

- how Will has hired well

- who is entrepreneurship for?

- what is this Entrepreneur's biggest mistake?

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Ep.31 Do We Share Too Much Online? Influencer Sarah's Day Reveals The Dark Side Of Being A Social Media Star Mar 06, 2023

Show notes

Sarah Tilse, more commonly known as ‘Sarah’s Day’ is an Australian fitness influencer and YouTuber best known for her fitness, diet and wellness content. Whilst studying to become a teacher, Sarah began her online journey by posting about her hormonal acne online as a way to source advice but also to help others who were struggling with it as well. This expanded into fitness, wellness and lifestyle content, and on the date of this recording Sarah has over 3 million followers across her Instagram and YouTube channels, and is the founder of multiple companies including Sarah’s Day, her personal brand, fitness ebooks and app, Sunee App - her recipe app, The Healthcode Podcast and The House of Groms, a creative strategy and production company. Sarah has also created products with several global brands including multiple drops on her own activewear line with White Fox, and her own protein and supplement powders with Tropeaka.

Having shared her life online for over 10 years including the birth of her two sons, Sarah has grown up in the digital space, and has had a lot of learnings along the way. Going from 5am wake ups and spending hours in the gym each day adhering to an incredibly strict diet, to juggling several businesses and two children, Sarah has seen incredible success from her work online but of course there have been some sticky moments too.

- brief overview of Sarah's backstory

- how Sarah blew up on social media

- Sarah's health and fitness journey

- how Sarah met her husband

.- the creation of her first e-book and how it caused a viral event

- the financial success of the ebook and paying off $40k in debt

- dealing with cancel culture and being part of toxic Fitspo culture

- losing her period due to weight-loss

- should we platform 20 year olds?

- moving from fitness content to family vlogging

- the concept of context collapse

- would Sarah's Day do anything differently?

- Sarah on becoming a Mother

- do we really want children? Sarah on questioning having children

- dealing with Mum advice online

- mum guilt and being a working Mother

- how Sarah dealt with the tough news about her second pregnancy

- why Sarah doesn't speak about her son's condition

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Ep.30 A Masterclass on Climbing the Corporate Ladder with Shopify MD Shimona Mehta Feb 27, 2023

Show notes

Shimona Mehta is an acclaimed tech pioneer with extensive experience in retail, technology, food and beverage. Awarded for being one of the UK’s most influential retail leaders, Shimona is best known for being the Managing Director of EMEA for Shopify - the leading e-commerce hub for independent brands. Designed to make buying and selling easy, Shopify offers businesses a range of tools to design, manage and grow an online store, hosting numerous high-growth brands including Deliveroo, Lindt, and Heinz.

Delving deeper, Shimona and I get real on female leadership in the tech industry touching on the uphill battle for women to reach the top and also so they feel like they belong there. We have a Q&A on side hustles, we answer all your questions on Instagram on when you should know you need to leave your job, how you should build your business and how you should overcome failure.

- The career path that took Shimona Mehta to become MD

- Making the move from consumer goods to tech

- How Shimona built career progression

- The journey of setting up Shopify in London

- What Shimona looks for when she hires

- Shimona's experience with imposter syndrome

- How Shimona became a good leader

- The barriers Shimona has come across

- The importance of managerial training

- Why we need women in tech

- Diversity and recruitment

- How to start your side hustle

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Ep.29 Love It Or Lose It: Managing A Startup With Founder Josephine Philips Feb 20, 2023

Show notes

Josephine Phillips is the 24 year old visionary behind the Sojo app, the online platform on a mission to make clothing alterations and repairs mainstream. Founded to shape a more sustainable fashion future and dubbed by Vogue as the ‘deliveroo of clothing repairs’, Sojo connects buyers of pre-loved clothes with local seamstresses who can tailor the garments to fit. The app not only extends the lifespan of our clothes but allows us to fall in love with them all over again and has already been integrated by several brands including Ganni and Hurr.

Sitting within the Gen Z category herself, Josephine is startlingly aware of her eco-conscious yet convenience-obsessed generation and her aim is to shift the mindset within this space, making sustainable choices more accessible for the masses. Having recently raised over $2.4 million in pre-seed funding invested by the likes of the Founder of Depop, Pangaia’s former COO, the president of menswear at Tom Ford and myself, this is just the beginning for Sojo, and the start of Josephine Phillips becoming a force of her generation within the sustainable fashion space.

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Ep.28 Toxic Pressures & Dark Secrets: How Original Fitspo Steph Claire Smith Took On The Modelling Industry Feb 13, 2023

Show notes

Stephanie Miller, known online as Steph Claire Smith, is the COO and co-founder of Australian health and wellness app, Keep It Cleaner (KIC).

From Melbourne Australia, Steph started her career modelling at aged 7. After moving to America to pursue modelling as a career, Steph was exposed to the extremely toxic side of the industry, which led to disordered eating, negative body image and an unhealthy relationship with exercise. She was told to start smoking as it’s a good suppressant for feeling hungry, the best fruit to eat were apples as they fill you up the most, and if you need energy have a black coffee or a diet coke. Realising that living like this was massively impacting both her physical and mental health, Steph moved back to Australia, where she met her business partner Laura.

In 2015, Steph and Laura launched their first E-book ‘Keep It Cleaner’. They saw a gap in the market that was filled with a lot of fad diets, quick fixes and guilt around food. They wanted to take it back to basics and create a programme that makes you feel good and celebrate how a healthy lifestyle can be varied for everyone. Fast forward several years, and they’ve launched a KIC subscription platform filled with recipes and workouts, and have their own line of over 80 health food products stocked in supermarkets across Australia. Alongside her businesses, Steph also co-hosts the KIC podcast and in May 2021 gave birth to her beautiful son, Harvey.

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Ep.27 “An Hour Before We Served Him Papers, He Served Us Papers” Nearly Losing It All With Entrepreneur Hannah Bronfman Feb 06, 2023

Show notes

Hannah Bronfman is an entrepreneur, angel investor, DJ, activist and author. She is among New York's most renowned health and well-being professionals, responsible for building the popular online portal HBFIT. Before this, Hannah built a reputation as a celebrity and influencer through her work as a set DJ, playing at events for high-profile brands including Gucci. Hannah’s first book “Do What Feels Good” was published in January 2019.

Having spent most of her career balancing multiple streams of work, Hannah is no stranger to the hectic New Yorker lifestyle. As a DJ, Hannah's early twenties were particularly manic, the late nights and junk food leading to eventual burnout. As a result, Hannah pivoted and took measures to prioritise her health, documenting her recipes and workouts on Instagram along the way. Now, with fans located globally, HBFIT stands as a bible to anyone looking to put their well-being first, whether this is adding to your unique skincare routine or gaining access to productivity and business advice.

Over the years, Hannah has established herself as an angel investor across multiple industries. Her investment ethos and strategic involvement is to help minority founders who make ‘better for you’ and ‘better for the planet’ products and platforms. Alongside this, Hannah talks about entering motherhood, after sharing her incredible journey with IVF online. Hannah is also a vocal advocate for social and racial justice and is dedicated to using her platform to increase her followers’ awareness of Black History and the challenges the world faces when it comes to diversity and racism.

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Ep.26 "I Would Rather Die Than Put My Children Through What I Went Through” - Mez's Refuge-Seeking Journey Jan 30, 2023

Show notes

Today I introduce to you Mez, a young, courageous refugee with an extraordinary story. When he was just 13 years old, Mez fled his home in Eritrea to escape some of the worst human rights conditions in the world, including forced military conscription and widespread persecution, starting a perilous journey as a child refugee across the world. For an entire year, Mez experienced the chaos and terror of refugee camps, experiencing extreme and treacherous conditions that would leave him scared and struggling to get enough to eat. The physical environment was equally as dangerous, almost killing him on multiple occasions; from almost starving while travelling across the Sahara desert, to surviving a boat capsize in the Mediterranean sea, to hiding underneath a Eurotunnel train to get to the UK.

Since arriving safely in the UK with just the clothes on his back, Mez’s life has completely transformed for the better. Fostered by the family of Jaz O’Hara, who has also featured on my podcast, Mez has gone on to remarkably learn English, pass his GCSEs and inspire others with his truly humbling story. Now Mez aspires to follow his dreams of becoming a mechanic while still continuing to raise awareness of the ‘life, death and limbo’ of the refugee crisis.

Find out more about Mez and other stories like his: https://open.spotify.com/show/6xqOyOQIfQzF7NRkEaLTRN?si=ba373a23fd5242aa

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Ep.25 Girls Gotta Eat Reveal All: Dating, Friendships And The Power Of Saying Yes Jan 23, 2023

Show notes

Rayna Greenberg and Ashley Hesseltine are the hilarious hosts behind Girls Gotta Eat, one of the biggest US comedy podcast’s all about dating, sex and relationships. With over 200 episodes and 2.5 million downloads per month, Girls Gotta Eat has been educating and entertaining listeners on all things sexual fetishes to finances, bringing in special guests including therapists, comedians and authors to offer expert advice. Dating, break-ups, sex fails, getting rejected and being ghosted have happened to everyone, and this podcast explores it all; featuring honest and hilarious conversation along the way.

Earlier this year Ashley and Rayna also launched their own brand ‘Good Vibes Only’, a first-of-its-kind sex toy company that connects to an audio-erotica app, with an aim to make porn more accesible to women. With one of the vibrators in their collection having sold out twice, with a perpetual waitlist, Ashley and Rayna are killing the game and I’m so excited to be sitting down with them today to hear all about how they got to where they are today.

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Ep.24 Here’s What The Government Doesn’t Want You To Know: Kwajo Tweneboa On The Social Housing Crisis Jan 16, 2023

Show notes

Kwajo Tweneboa, known as the hero of social housing, is a remarkable 23-year-old campaigner demanding urgent reform in public-sector housing. Amid the housing crisis, Kwajo has emerged as an influential voice online for social housing tenants, known best for naming and shaming some of the largest accommodation associations in the UK.

Haunted by memories of his own housing hell, Kwajo joined the fight to improve conditions after his father, a care worker, died in their family home among a sea of cockroaches, mould and vermin. To make matters worse, just a week after his death Kwajo and his siblings were informed their tenancy contract had been evicted and therefore they must leave, in essence making them homeless. By some miracle, Kwajo and his family were allowed to stay, but for Kwajo this was understandably still not good enough - the conditions were still terrible.

Astounded by how he had been treated, Kwajo channelled his anguish and publicly exposed his landlord for breaching housing standards, ignoring calls and allowing his family to live in unimaginable filth. His first post went viral, reaching the attention of mainstream news and his housing association who eventually came to fix the problems. Kwajo now uses his online presence to help others share their housing horrors, becoming an active proponent for change in the UK - his campaign backed by nearly 62,000 followers on Twitter.

While a picture-perfect image for social housing still seems a world away, Kwajo's work on behalf of other tortured tenants has begun to make a real difference, his work sparking the conversation among significant journalists and MPs.

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Ep.23 ‘If Things Aren't Going To Plan, You Need To Question The Plan’ The Power Of Failing With Elizabeth Day Jan 09, 2023

Show notes

Elizabeth Day is an award-winning British author, broadcaster, and influential host of the hugely successful How to Fail podcast. A podcast that celebrates failure and lessons learned, every week How to Fail invites a new influential guest to open and talk honestly about challenges and vulnerabilities in their personal life, in a bid to show listeners that perfection doesn't exist.

Elizabeth was inspired to start the podcast following a particularly challenging period in her own life - a time when nothing went according to plan. Approaching her forties, Elizabeth found herself single, divorced, and struggling to conceive the children she’d always dreamed of having. Accepting that life is full of failure, Elizabeth launched the podcast to show people how to turn failings into something more positive, and how it’s never too late to change your life. With influential people from a range of backgrounds desperate to talk about failure, the podcast virtually took off overnight, attracting A-list celebrities including Mel C and Alexandra Burke to come on and share their story.

As well as being podcast host Elizabeth is also the best-selling author of several books, her newest called ‘Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict’ which comes out this April. Alongside this, Elizabeth has a long-standing career in print journalism and has won various awards of recognition, her writing featured in huge publication companies such as Vogue, Elle and Grazia.

Today’s episode is for anyone who needs to celebrate the myriad of things that may be going wrong. In the episode Elizabeth shares her honest, uplifting story of her own experience of failure, as well as the insights gained doing interviews with people from all walks of life. The message of today’s episode is vitally important - things in life WILL go wrong, but failure and what we can learn from it, can inform a future of success.

- Elizabeth's earlier years and time at Cambridge

- Writing for her local newspaper at the age of 12

- Elizabeth's life-changing work experience at The Evening Standard

- The start of Elizabeth's novel-writing career

- Elizabeth and I discuss the side effects of people pleasing

- Elizabeth opens up about the divorce as one of her failures

- The beginnings of the How to Fail podcast

- Confirmation bias between men and women on perceptions of failure

- Elizabeth's biggest failures

- Elizabeth asks me my tips for creating a safe space when having an online presence

- The biggest things Elizabeth's learned from the guests on her podcast

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