“We weren’t planning on making a salary, so I sold my car.”

Grace Beverly, 28, is one of the UK’s “Gen Z” entrepreneurs. She is the founder of the Womenswear brands Tala and Fitness Platform Shreddy. She is also the co-founder of the recently released retrograde – “AI Talent Agency.” Entrepreneurship, originally a lifestyle YouTube Vlogger, began nearly a decade ago after his student digging at Oxford University.

Beverly has proven to be skilled at building a direct business for consumers and charting twists and turns for over a million followers and podcast listeners. She says her business is now worth £700 million and remains a stakeholder for each of its majority. “It was very important to me,” she says.

Though plans for Tara’s expansion in the US are pending due to Donald Trump’s tariffs, the brand opened its first store in London in May. Her business employs more than 85 people, and last year she says she has a high turnover rate of tens of millions of pounds.

You began your life as a university entrepreneur. How did it unfold?
During the Christmas holiday in 2016, I received an email saying that first-year student finances were not coming due to tuition fees. I was in panic.

Last year I published some recipe e-books for £5 to sell to the thousands of followers I had. I was an intern at IBM for a gap year and spent every weekend cooking recipe on content. It took a lot of time. I thought, “We need to monetize this.” I banked those books (from £500 to £1,000 from a book called Eat My Instagram).

So I thought, “I’ll try the ebook again.” By then, I was focused on training, so that’s what I did. I stayed until 5am, wrote a workout plan, paid a friend about £50 designs, and sold for £35 each on boxing day. Within the first hour, we sold about £1,000. It’s snowballed. Within two weeks, they earned £80,000. It was pure profit – there were no operating expenses. My tuition fees were more than covering. I remember being gobsmacked and thinking, “God, I have a real knack here!”

But it was drib and drib for the first few years. I have been the only trader for a long time, selling guides and later sold fitness resistance bands. I didn’t hire for the first time until the beginning of my third year. A waitress I met at a vegan restaurant became my assistant. It took me a while to transform into the current Shreddy (a fitness brand launched in 2020).

“What’s going to turn this into a career? What’s going to turn this into respect?” I wanted to create something longevity and sustainable. I had this subtle feeling, “It’s great, but nothing lasts forever.” I didn’t want to be a full-time influencer – I didn’t think it was fulfilling enough.

So I started cod in 2019 during the finals. A month before the release, we hired two people we found on Instagram to get an Airbnb in Oxford, where we all got our work and planned a clothes photo shoot. Go to class and then go back to Airbnb. That was insane. I was filled with this infinite energy.

What did you feel was generating that money early in your career change?
It was strange because I was a student, but suddenly this wind blew. I felt like I had won the lottery. The guide was a gold mine. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t tell people. I was almost embarrassed. I had this little “£1 million” plaque by my second year, but I looked back and couldn’t see anyone.

I really lived as if that early success had not existed – still buying a £1 shot on a student night. I threw a lovely 22nd birthday party but didn’t get designer clothes or private jets.

I was so scared that everything would disappear so I left it parked and didn’t think about it. I still pretend to be my assistant and email the brand about my partnership. Please give us a free juice bottle in exchange for 30 Instagram posts. I finally got a talent manager in my second year. However, I also applied for a full-time job and business master before the final exam, just to be safe.

By the time I graduated, I sold around 200,000 e-book copies. You can do math. My most specific purchase after that was my home in London. It felt huge – I was 22 years old. I got a mortgage to renovate it and I was able to self-fund my business. I felt it was wise to buy real estate – and there was this old dict about it being the best investment.

Tara is riding a roller coaster. He eventually raised £9 million from breaking up with his former license partner. what happened?
Tara was quickly popular and generated more than £5 million in sales in its first year without marketing spending.

I had to start it in a way that could feed the amount of customers waiting. I used licensing and manufacturing partners, as influencers often do. If you have a brand owned by an influencer, you will not only get the benefits of immediate recognition, but also the downfall of having to act as a big brand right away when you can’t. In effect, I outsourced too much.

It wasn’t working the way I wanted it to. In 2021, I decided to rebuild everything in-house and bring it to life. It’s a very long and expensive process. I cut off connections with my former partner and forked independently. We reacquired the Tara assets using the new holding company. Tala’s Journey began technically in 2019, but today’s Tala began in 2021. In fact, I started again from scratch.

We were all going on in conjunction with Covid, Factory Shutdowns and iOS updates that impact our marketing. Every week I was thinking about how we would make a salary. This lasted for about six months.

At one point, I realized that we definitely didn’t intend to make a salary. I went to the website and sold my car the next day and put the money into the business to cover my wages. We swung it very close to the line. However, the impact on my health was horrifying. There were days when I couldn’t speak physically and I sat with a jigsaw all day without checking my phone.

Tara has come a long way since then, opening her first physics store in May. It was very special to meet customers in person and see actual cod shopping bags.

How do you divide your time into different businesses?
There are no fixed departments. It changes weekly. I have a Tala CEO, but I am still the Chief Executive Officer of Shreddy. I know I’m really strong in the process and what I’m good at. It was never “start, go ahead, something new shiny.”

My two businesses – Tala and Retrograde, are supported by venture capital. This is a completely different ball game from the other two, which are essentially lifestyle business.

Honestly, I had to be good at managing my time while I was in college. So I’m planning my days to T. I also have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, so I don’t like having dead space.

Being passionate about your work is a great privilege. However, I had no passion when I was younger. I didn’t feel like I was being called to anything I wanted to do or anything. I just wanted to go the right path, get good grades and get on all the sports teams.

How do you manage your finances now?
I’m still eating a microwave meal and bring dinner in Tupperware. My CEO at Tara was joking that he couldn’t even convince me to upgrade my laptop. She says I’m “just the simplest person.” I think I’m smart about the drawbacks. I’m definitely a friend of Mom.

He also spoke openly about the importance of financial planning in romantic relationships. I’m married this year and I think pre-lunch is a good idea. You’ve signed a contract to get married anyway, so why not design your own? I’ve built these businesses with a lot of support, but they’re my assets. It seems strange that my future husband is entitled to 50% of my shareholding if something happens. Investors wouldn’t like it. The former marriage can be looked down on as a bit pessimistic, and I think it’s scary to talk about. But if you have to use it, you’re happy what you did.

I also like to vote for my own money. I know so much that only 2% of venture capital investments go to a business set up on women, so I would like to help change that. I have invested in several women-led startups and consumer businesses. I already had an outlet at Wild, a deodorant company. That was my first angel investment. In total, I boosted about 12. You can deliver the best you can, including social media and digital marketing strategies.

But the majority of my investments go to index funds, stocks and stocks. We also invest in 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 luxury to do a fulfilling job. American businessman Ben Horowitz writes that building a business means you are either in happiness or terrorism. That’s true. But I’m trying to live more now.