She's the Business: Grace Beverley

During the final part of the event, a discussion with one of Instagram's favourite influencer Grace Beverley took to the panel, talking to us about how her business came about, the ethics and consideration she takes into account when promoting her company, followed by some Q&A's.

Grace Beverley, AKA Grace fit, is a 22-year-old entrepreneur, that initially started her business whilst at uni. Grace explained to us that because she went to Oxford, students were told they couldn't not have apart time job in term time due to the highly-demanding courses they have there. But grace needed money. She began uploading gym-fitness videos on her Instagram and YouTube as "Grace fit" and became hugely popular; her followers begged for fitness routines, tricks and tips and wanted to see more of her. So, over the Christmas period, Grace began selling workout guides, equipment and healthy food recipes on the side of uni. This became a huge success, and long story short grace became a household name in the world of fitness. Now, not only does Grace share her fitness routines, she also has numerous active-wear and fitness equipment businesses such as Tala, Shreddy and B_ND.

Part of Grace's business ethic is that she always strives in making all of her products sustainable not just for the environment but also utilising the materials she uses and the workers within the factories that would make the equipment and clothing were paid and treated well. Grace admitted she turned down potential factories in the past due to their worker ethics into meeting her standards. She taught us that you should never sell yourself short or be to greedy to go against your beliefs and know that what you are striving for it more worth it than jumping at the first opportunity of business. Grace's morals and ethics were more important to her and in the long run helped he significantly, as this is one of her selling points now. People actively look for sustainable and ethically friendly products and its becoming more of a profound selling point for business, and Grace's promise to providing that very service is extremely important to not just her but her clientele.

Despite Grace's huge success however, she still feels as though she is an impostor within the entrepreneurial realm. She described her process of becoming a business woman backwards, she got to a point where she would find huge success in something without really realising, and then found herself having to go backwards in order to find the right mentors to help her, marketing and design teams to promote the brand properly, and figure out how she was going to make business work. She is a proven case that you can work on your experience on the job, and not come into a business with all the knowledge and more about it, because its simply impossible to do. She is always learning, both from her teams and her target audiences, what they want and don't want, and that will help her strive to even more success in the future. Despite Grace's huge success however, she still feels as though she is an impostor within the entrepreneurial realm. She would often attend workshops and feel as though she didn't belong there.

"Me admitting I don't know something doesn't make me a less legitimate entrepreneur"

Q&A's*

Q. Do you ever feel underestimated as a woman in business, and if so how do you ignore it and go after your goals?

A. Our teams are predominantly made up on women, so we are very much a take it or leave it environment. But, way more often than I'd like to, I'll be sat in meetings and questioned will be address to the man in a suit to the right of me,and I'm like that's great, but they will often have to then pass the conversation onto me and that just continually happens, and I;m like, are we not allowed to address each other because this is weird!

One of the things I like to do is play to the stereotype, I wear fashionable clothes and wear the make up I want. I've often wondered would they take me more seriously if I wore an M&S pant suit for example, but I tend to wear what I want more because I want to look and feel good, I feel more confident. Whatever you're going to do, you know, you're going to prove them wrong. Its not your duty to personally prove them wrong but the more you make yourself happy the more comfortable you are, people will automatically listen anyway.

Q. How did you go about building up your follewer/following base in order to grow your business?

A. Initially I got followers through the Grace Fit page, people find a lot of inspiration from fitness pages. You can utilise social media to make yourself feel good about yourself, so now for instance I only follow fitness pages, inspirational and mindful pages, interior design, things I wouldn't have followed three years ago but now I don't feel sad looking at these stereotypical, perfect Instagram models. But what was really interesting... on my fitness page if I posted something different to the content I was posting, people wouldn't respond as well as they had if I posted something to do with fitness. So really playing with your niche people became really invested in it. Also, if I posted something personal to me, either making a joke about studying all day or how my business was getting along, people could relate to it a lot more. Posting about you and your niche would engage people far more than just random content, and that's far more valuable for you and your business. You might be a micro influencer, and you only have 1,000/2,000 followers, but if all of your followers are invested in you and your niche, then that is your macro- far more than any macro-influencer that doesn't engage with their followers on a personal level. Play to what you enjoy because not only will you have invested people and wont have to pretend to be anything else, which means your audience are also being true to themselves and you by following you.

Q. as your businesses grow, do you see your marketing strategies change or do you just see social media as the main platform?

I think one of the main reasons we did so well, so quickly, was because we were in the right place at the right time, any business could do well with social media now. Its been a huge multiplier in terms of business sales. We always want to explore different avenues and social media isn't the sole marketing platform people have to use. For example because we are a sustainable brand some people might not be on Instagram or YouTube, so as a business no matter how successful you are you will never fully hit all of your target audience, but you cant please everyone. You are better off targeting and producing products that will interests the majority of people rather than a minority that will never be happy with it. People will be invested in you brand for numerous reasons, and you can only market it as much as you can. At the moment we have low profit margins because we are sustainably ethical we concentrate on social media so that we can get orders in and make them as and when, and when each and every penny is going into the stock in order to fulfil the demand people have given us. Down the line I'd like to look into traditional PR and traditional marketing and there so much space for us to do that but at the same time we don't want to try too hard to try to cater to everyone especially due to the amount of time it takes to produce sustainably ethical things. Its harder as slow fashion because its, well literally slow, but there's so many different avenues we want to explore and we absolutely will explore them, given the chance!

Grace's determination and love for her work was what made her a success, but she still struggles today. Her positive attitude encouraged me to be true to what I'm promoting and posting, and to never sell myself short for a job in the future. Her work ethic taught me that by being true to your company and what you are promoting this is the most rewarding part of the job, and you will be a credible marketer if you target your audiences with sincerity and genuine interest in the brand.

* paraphrasing