E3: No Degree, No Plan, No Clients - How Grace Hardy Built Seven Businesses Anyway

Grace Hardy’s story is anything but traditional. Diagnosed with dyslexia young and dismissed by an education system that didn’t know what to do with her, she found her entrepreneurial spark early — selling American sweets from her school locker at 12. By 21, she’d quit her corporate accounting job with no clients, no plan, and three months of savings, giving herself a deadline to make it work. As she told us, she downloaded a business plan, posted on LinkedIn, and started talking about money in a way people actually understood — and within three months, she’d matched her salary.Today, Grace runs seven businesses, reaches over four million people, and has been recognised as Forbes 30 Under 30, Accountancy Personality of the Year, and more. Her journey spans Hardy Accounting, a cross‑border e‑commerce consultancy, a financial education arm delivering free talks in London schools, and even a student banking app in development. She’s spoken at the House of Commons and the House of Lords, met the Royal Family, and is lobbying for better financial education nationwide — all while making accounting feel human, accessible, and stigma‑free.In this episode, Grace opens up about dyslexia as her superpower, the Morocco trip where she wrote every SOP in her business, the burnout that forced her to learn delegation, and the realities of being a young female founder in rooms not built for her. Her advice to her younger self — and to every woman listening — is simple: care less about what others think, start before you feel ready, and back yourself, because you are the USP.