One of the reasons I sat back from social media was because if something can manifest so physically that you're having a fucking 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, as my happiness. Grace Matherley, 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. If you did all of that while studying and graduating from Oxford University, while growing online channels to millions and millions of followers, while writing a book, and while dealing with all of the things that every other gen's end 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 of those things have had on all parts of her life. And it makes you reconsider. Despite all of this, she's persisted. She's stayed true to her value.
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 Barlet and this is the driver's 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, you face the difference set of challenges. Not only have you started your business at an incredibly young age or you got into business at an incredibly young age, you face a set of challenges. They're even alien to me in the sense that you are a woman in business.
You are taking on various industries that don't want to be taken on and 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 that you were created at full 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 at all. And I think that that's what often makes me kind of question, you know, the amount of things I've 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 I've had to go right.
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 doing some, I essentially started monetizing something that should be monetized. So it was content I was giving away for free. And then I was going to do lots more of that and start to monetize it via an ebook. And then, you know, the next year I did more of that.
And then that's, you know, then it started putting up momentum. I started doing different products. And I think that that's, I guess, often not seen in the way that businesses represented. It's kind of seen as like a urecon moment, then you go into it, then you put it into action, then you fail once or twice and then you get it.
And it was far more gradual than that. And I think that probably over the past, you know, so it's probably been five years since that moment. I say four years since the business is ready, but it is now as I guess was founded. And in that time, probably the first two years were incredibly gradual, very much a kind of residual extra income.
Rather than kind of this big, like, these are my goals. This is going to happen within this time. 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 owned and company. Like that was the only reason. So I think it was necessarily a confidence thing.
I think it was more like, what are we going to do in that situation and then putting that together and then being able to, you know, never to 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, you know, kind of I'm going to take on this industry. Sure. Starting, that was, 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, 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 something 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 lost their jobs and so freelance websites and entrepreneurship has now become more and focused 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, you know, you're age 23 years old, right?
24 next week, a week after, sorry? Or who were younger 18, 19 or even older? Everybody seems to have a business idea. I'm sure you're bombarded with DMs like this, right?
Everyone has a business idea. There seems to be this barrier between the idea and taking the first step, like making the Instagram page. And is 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 the time that I could take, I guess, 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 a way that people, a lot of people don't necessarily have the backing to put behind it or it might be the time they can put into it. You know, lots of people are working through jobs just to make ends meet. And therefore, you know, you might have an idea that actually being able to sacrifice the time spent doing that is 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 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, the 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 shredding now? If I tested out, 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 they work and then replicating that.
So I think, I mean, I think we can't necessarily blank it apart. Everyone would be like, it's because of this, but I think that, you know, probably the biggest, the biggest factors will be circumstance confidence. 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, this is this, I'm going to make happen or I'm going to take that leap or I'm going to eat. At least to the background where I could do a survey to see if my product would be like it or whatever it might be.
I think as well, if people looking at you or myself that have achieved things in business, we'll see this very polished product, right?