Grace Beverley - Working Hard, Hardly Working: How to achieve more, stress less and feel fulfilled: THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Londons Young Entrepreneur of the Year (NatWest GBEA) and founder of sustainable style brand TALA and fitness tech brand Shreddy, Grace Beverley is a successful female entrepreneur shaking up the business world, with a global digital reach of over 1.5 million. By the age of just twenty-three, Grace had been named first in Forbes 30-under-30 retail and e-commerce list, graduated from Oxford University, and attained a Sustainable Business accreditation from Harvard Business School. Graces inspiring drive to accelerate the slow-fashion space and provide the blueprint for aspiring entrepreneurs has led to features in Drapers, Forbes, CEO Today, VOGUE Business and Business Insider.

To the future you

Like most people, I have worked here and there since being a teenager. And again like most people, Im sure, work has come with the occasional surprise and unexpected challenge. I spent my school years competing for local babysitting rights and convincing determined middle-class parents that paying someone to supervise their childs music practice was the best way to get the most out of their already expensive lessons. The babysitting was as cushty as could be if I was lucky, Id arrive and the children would need minimal supervision watching cartoons or making a geography poster, then theyd get straight into bed and Id revel in the luxury of their parents Sky box.

The worst babysitting experience I had involved a new client. Upon arrival, the familys dog somehow slipped out the front door without any of us noticing. I was being introduced to the two boys (aged two and four) when the parents yelped in horror at the realisation of their dogs immaculate Houdini impression, and darted out the door, leaving me with their seemingly harmless children. The younger boy requested a story about a dinosaur, so I settled into the playroom to read about Darren the Diplodocus, hoping the parents would find the dog both for its own good and for my selfish desire that theyd go out and I could babysit as planned.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed child number one waddling round the corner into the kitchen, so I paused Steven the Stegosaurus and went to retrieve him. By the time I got to him, and Im not exaggerating at all, this daredevil child had prised open a child-locked door and was holding an enormous kitchen knife. In that moment, I was certain this angel-faced demon would either stab me or fall over and impale himself, framing me for his murder.

After a lucky escape for both of us, I sat the children down and mustered up my most authoritative voice, explaining just how dangerous knife-gate could have been, and that it was neither funny nor clever. (Bar, of course, the fact that Im using it as the opening anecdote of my book.) In response to this monologue, terrible toddler two opened his tiny mouth. I awaited my apology. Instead, the words I need poo came out. Jumping into action, I swiftly demanded directions to the nearest toilet, while scooping up team double-trouble under my arms. After following the infant sat-nav, I found myself at our destination: the master bedroom toilet, which, via some strange, masochistic interior design decision, was carpeted. Were talking wall to wall. I immediately saw where these children inherited their propensity for danger from.

At that moment, I need poo made an unfortunate transition to I done poo, to which I responded, ever hopeful, You need poo? As the child enthusiastically expressed verbal confirmation of their already existing defecation, I placed the other on the floor and began to remove poo boys trousers. I hoped and prayed that the youth had just not yet perfected his tenses, but alas. A pungent smell wafted out of his tiny trousers, followed by a huge poo. Which fell onto the carpeted floor. As I racked my brains for recent wrongdoings that could have warranted such a drastic influx of bad karma, the older boy let out a cackle that could only be associated with impending doom, and reached, both hands outstretched, for the stool.

Youll be surprised to hear that this was, in fact, only part one of A Babysitting Night from Hell (sequel to this book?); Im sparing you the rest of the details, which involved rollerblades, stairs, wall poo, a lot of Dettol, and the parents returning with canine Houdini and paying just 6 for my troubles as theyd missed their reservation and no longer needed my supervision. Instead, as this is not a book about a babys capacity to act as the most powerful form of birth control, nor one titled Why You Should Never Let Me Babysit Your Children, Ill move swiftly on to how symbolic this is of our current relationship to our working lives.

While poo-gate serves as great comic relief, it was also an important milestone for me: the first inkling that the reality of working life was going to be different to what Id imagined in my hazy dreams of adulthood. And, while a particularly extreme representation, this is not unique to me; it seems to be the entire storyline of just about everyones new working life. Expectation Reality, as the Instagram world would put it (directly under a collage of someone posed and perfect on the left, and the same person looking perfectly socially acceptable, but this time contorted into a shape that could only resemble a banana to demonstrate the reality of their stomach rolls on the right). In most cases, our working lives take a very different form to our glossy expectations, and Im certainly not the only person who had corporate dreams of resembling a Suits cast member.

The idealisation of the working world is something that Ive come face to face with time and time again. When I was seventeen, I remember seeing an ad in my school bulletin for a social media coordinator for a students mothers business, and I jumped at the chance for that bit of income over the summer. I happily invoiced for every hour I spent trialling different techniques that had been developed from my experience posting strategically posed photos with strategically chosen acquaintances to my few hundred followers (friends of friends). This experience set the standard for what I imagined working in social media might look like. My next foray into this brave new world starred my current Instagram account, which I started in the final year of sixth form, just after Id turned eighteen. It was only intended to keep myself accountable while trying to get into fitness, so the account was kept private the two friends who knew about it werent allowed to like or follow in case of algorithm-fuelled discovery by others, and I fell out with a number of other friends who started taking the piss out of my embarrassing posts (they hit me where it hurt). It turned out that posting photos of yourself in sports bras on the internet hadnt yet caught on. At this point, this wasnt a job in any sense. I didnt post my face until I had 10,000 followers, and I didnt manage to monetise any aspect of the account until over a year and a half later.

So, a month before I started my anonymous account, I made my first few applications for real jobs, opting for a fairly traditional, corporate career path. I sat verbal reasoning and critical thinking tests, attended assessment centres and interviews, and enjoyed an equal number of rejections, spots already filled, and acceptances (a roaring one of each). My sole acceptance was as a New Client Acquisition Analyst at IBM as part of their Futures gap year scheme, and my thirteen-month placement would take place in a year between A-Levels and university. It would allow me to retake an A-Level, gain some experience and some much-needed savings for university, and would set me up to study something completely unrelated and, in theory, still have a head start into the corporate world. Dreamy.