The Making of a CEO
It would be easy to brand London native — Grace Beverley — as just a modern day social media star with great style and an undeniable charm, but that would be doing the author, businesswoman and CEO a great disservice. From sustainable style brand to fitness tech and productivity blue print holder, Beverley shares with us how she grew her many brands while working hard and hardly working.
With Grace Beverley
Grace Beverley is a twenty four year old CEO, and that is the least impressive fact about her. The brainy blonde from across the pond has a curriculum vitae that would make some of your most successful peers question if they really are doing enough. A graduate of Oxford University, Beverley manages to somehow balance running two successful companies, curating the most enviable Instagram feed and being a New York Times best-selling author. For those readers who want to bend it like Beverley, all they need to do is literally take a page — or two — from her debut book.
Titled Working Hard, Hardly Working: How to achieve more, stress less and feel fulfilled, this carefully curated collection of words provides tips and tricks that Beverley uses every day to achieve her nothing short of notable goals. All in an effort to spark conversation about the modern work environment, the reality of burnout, what being “productive” really means and to provide a blueprint for how individuals can achieve a work life balance. Most importantly, the young entrepreneur aspires for her book to allow her audience to feel accomplished across many areas of their lives. “I hope it will help people to start thinking more critically about what purpose, fulfillment, and balance looks like for each of us, independently of what we see online,” shares Beverley. “The book explores my thoughts and my die-hard methods for getting to know yourself.” The goal? To help her readers learn to work smart and to create a positive path for navigating through their own journey. In an effort to shine a light on the illusive balance between grinding (success) and dedicated self-care (sanity), “I think now more than ever this is an important area to discuss,” states Beverley. “Particularly with lockdown and the increased number of people working from home-office hybrids, the boundaries between working and not working are almost non-existent. We are in a time where we are constantly connected and often fall victim to expecting ourselves to work and be able to monetize everything. We’ve almost internalized this idea that we need to be working ALL the time.”
Beverley’s entrepreneurial spirit was not satiated with just SHREDDY. The small, but mighty CEO also noticed a gap in the market for high performance, sustainable and affordable clothing. An endeavor more intentional in pursuit, Beverley created TALA out of a personal desire to transition out of the world of fast fashion. However, she too ran into the all-to-common problem that “sustainable” and “affordable” are typically mutually exclusive. So she set out to create a fashion line to narrow that gap. “We started looking into the manufacturing of sustainable high-performance clothing,” begins Beverley, “and in the year before launch we worked out that if we took the recycled content from 100% to 92% we could sell the leggings [at a more competitive price]. Which allows a huge proportion of people to make more sustainable purchasing options.” Running a sustainable fashion label comes with its fair share of difficulties, from the production process to accreditations, but the purpose of her brand continues to drive Beverley’s insane work ethic.
“We are in a time where we are constantly connected and often fall victim to expecting ourselves to work and be able to monetize everything. We’ve almost internalized this idea that we need to be working ALL the time.”
Beverley is particularly situated to pen that prose because she is one of the few people who are able to find that equilibrium. For this working woman, that balancing act has been the magic tool in her kit from an early age. Launching her first brand in 2017 while attending Oxford, whenever she was not in class, Beverley was soaking up the knowledge from those hallowed halls and working on her passion project, B_ND — a fitness equipment business. B_ND is the predecessor to SHREDDY, her internationally revered fitness app. SHREDDY makes fitness approachable by delivering a wide range of on-demand classes to your phone. It also demystifies other areas of the fitness journey by offering functional and adorable fitness products and supplements. “I wanted to help simplify people’s fitness journeys and create products that can help make what may be a daunting and confusing process easier,” shares Beverley. SHEDDY is that dream actualized by a community of individuals who share the goal of striving to achieve a healthy life.
From fashion to fitness and university to understanding social media, Beverley’s list of achievements know no bounds. Next steps include continuing to develop her platforms and a few new surprise projects. “It’s been a whirlwind of a year so far,” beams the entrepreneur, “and I am so thrilled seeing my book at number one on The Sunday Times Bestsellers List. [It] was completely surreal. [Next] we are currently undergoing some exciting developments within both of the businesses, as well as some other personal projects which I cannot wait to reveal!”
