‘We weren’t going to make payroll — so I sold my car’

Grace Beverley, 28, is one of the UK’s most high-profile “Gen Z” entrepreneurs. She is the founder of womenswear brand TALA and fitness platform Shreddy. She is also co-founder of recently launched Retrograde — an “AI talent agency”. Originally a lifestyle YouTube vlogger, her entry into entrepreneurship began nearly a decade ago from her student digs at Oxford university, when she began leveraging her online cult following.

Beverley has proved adept at building direct-to-consumer businesses, charting the twists and turns for her more than 1mn followers and podcast listeners. She says her businesses are now collectively worth £70mn, and she remains the majority stakeholder in each of them. “That’s been very important to me.”

Although plans for TALA to expand in the US have been put on hold because of Donald Trump’s tariffs, the brand opened its first store in London in May. Her businesses employ more than 85 people, with turnover last year in the tens of millions of pounds, she says.

You started life as an entrepreneur at university. How did that play out?
I got an email during the 2016 Christmas holidays saying my first-year student finance hadn’t come through for tuition, and that I couldn’t return to campus until it was paid. I panicked. 

The previous year, I’d published a couple of recipe ebooks for £5 to sell to the few thousand followers I had. I’d been interning at IBM on my gap year, spending every weekend cooking recipes for content. It was so time-consuming. I just thought: “I need to monetise this”. I’d banked between £500 and £1,000 from those books — called Eat My Instagram — overall.

So I thought, “I’ll try ebooks again”. By then, I was focused on workouts, so that’s what I did. I stayed up until 5am writing workout plans, paid my friend about £50 to design them, and put them on sale for £35 each on Boxing Day. Within the first hour, I’d sold about £1,000. It snowballed. Within two weeks, they’d made £80,000 in revenue. It was pure profit — there were no operating expenses. My tuition fees were more than covered. I remember being gobsmacked and thinking: “God, I’ve got a real knack here!” 

But it was dribs and drabs for the first few years. I was a sole trader for a long time, selling guides and later some fitness resistance bands. I didn’t make my first hire until the beginning of third year — a waitress I’d met at a vegan restaurant became my personal assistant. It took time to morph into what is now Shreddy (the fitness brand launched in 2020).

I was starting to think, “What turns this into a career? What turns this into respect?” I was wanting to make something sustainable, with longevity. I had this niggling feeling of “this is great but nothing lasts long”. I never wanted to be a full-time influencer — I just didn’t find it fulfilling enough.

So I started TALA in 2019 during my finals. A month before launch, I hired two people I found on Instagram and got an Airbnb in Oxford for us all to work from and plan the photoshoots for the clothes. I’d go to my classes and then return to the Airbnb. It was insane. I was just filled with this boundless energy.

What did generating that money so early in your career change feel like?
It was weird because I was a student, and suddenly I had this windfall. It felt like I’d won the lottery; the guides were a gold mine. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t tell people. I was almost embarrassed. I had this little “£1mn in sales” plaque by second year, which I turned around so nobody could see. 

I really lived as if that early success didn’t exist — still buying £1 shots on student nights out. I threw myself a nice 22nd birthday party, but I wasn’t getting designer clothes or private jets — I still have never been on one!

I was so scared it was all going to disappear that I just kept it parked, and didn’t think about it. I would still email brands about partnerships, pretending to be my own assistant. I’d ask for free juice bottles in exchange for 30 Instagram posts. I eventually got a talent manager in my second year. But I was also still applying for full-time jobs and business masters ahead of my final exams, just in case. 

By graduation, I’d sold around 200,000 ebook copies. You can do the maths. My most tangible purchase from that was my house in London. That felt huge — I was 22. I got a mortgage to renovate it, and I could self-fund my businesses. Buying property felt sensible — and there was this age-old dictum about it being the best investment, which I don’t necessarily buy into now. 

TALA has been on a rollercoaster — going from breaking up with the original licensing partner, eventually raising £9mn. What happened?
TALA was immediately popular, generating more than £5mn in sales in our first year, without any marketing spend.

I’d had to start it in a way that could feed the amount of customers waiting. I used a licensing and manufacturing partner, as influencers often do. When you have an influencer-owned brand, you get the benefits of immediate recognition but also the downfalls of needing to function as a big brand immediately, when you probably can’t. In effect, I’d outsourced too much. 

It wasn’t working the way I wanted it to. In 2021, I decided to restructure and bring everything in-house — a very long and costly process. I cut ties with my original partner and branched out independently. I reacquired the TALA assets using a new holding company. TALA’s journey technically began in 2019, but today’s TALA started in 2021. In effect we started again from scratch. 

We had all that going on combined with Covid, factory shutdowns and iOS updates that affected our marketing. Each week I was working out how we were going to make payroll. This went on for about six months.

One time, I realised we definitely weren’t going to make payroll. I got on a website and sold my car the next day, then put that money into the business to cover the wages. We turned it around very close to the line. But the effect on my health was horrific. I had one day where I physically couldn’t speak and just sat doing a jigsaw all day without checking my phone.

TALA has since come a long way, opening its first physical store in May. It was so special to meet customers in person and to see actual TALA shopping bags.

How do you split your time across your various businesses?
There’s no fixed division. It varies week to week. I have a chief executive at TALA, but I’m still the chief executive of Shreddy. I know what I’m really strong on in the process and what I’m good at. It’s never been “start, move on, new shiny thing”.

Two of my businesses — TALA and Retrograde — are backed by venture capital, which is a completely different ball game from the other two, which are essentially lifestyle businesses. 

Honestly, I had to get good at managing my time while I was at university — work on the side wasn’t strictly allowed. So I’d plan my days to a T. I also have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, so I don’t like having dead space.

It’s a huge privilege to be passionate about your work. But I didn’t have a passion when I was younger. I didn’t have something that I particularly wanted to do, or feel called by anything. I just wanted to be on the right path, getting good grades, being on all the sports teams.

How do you manage your finances now?
I still eat microwave meals and I bring my dinner in Tupperware. My chief executive at TALA used to joke that she couldn’t even convince me to upgrade my laptop. She tells me I’m “just the most simple person”. I think I’m sensible to a fault. I’m definitely the “mum” friend. 

I’ve also talked openly about the importance of financial planning in romantic relationships. I’m getting married this year, and think pre-nups are a good idea. You’re signing a contract anyway to get married, so why not design your own? I’ve built these businesses with lots of support, but they’re my assets. If something happened, it seems crazy that my future husband would be entitled to 50 per cent of my shareholding. Investors wouldn’t like it. I think that pre-nuptials can be looked down upon as a bit pessimistic and they’re horrible to talk about. But if you ever have to use it, you’ll be glad you did.

I also like to vote with my money. I’m very aware that only 2 per cent of venture capital investment goes to female-founded businesses, so I want to help change that. I’ve invested in several women-led start-ups, as well as consumer businesses. I’ve already had an exit in Wild, a deodorant company. That was my first angel investment. In total, I’ve backed around a dozen. I can offer what I’m best at — social media and digital marketing strategy.

But the bulk of my investment goes into index funds and stocks and shares. I also invest in some venture capital trust funds.

I’ve always associated money with the freedom to do what you want, at work. And now I do — it’s a luxury to do fulfilling work. US businessman Ben Horowitz wrote that building a business means you’re either in a state of euphoria or terror. It’s true. But I’m trying to live more now in the in between.