Grace Beverley #15 Rags to riches, shows off her stitches, bestseller on amazon witches

[coffeecupbee]

In the Privilege chapter I had high hopes seeing 'I am from a family....' thinking she was going to finally be honest but nope it's 'I am from a family that never pushed me into a certain lane' also 'I grew up in London'. Way to skirt around the truth lol there's a big difference between where she grew up and some of the rougher parts of London

I think this is likely going to be an unpopular opinion, but I do think she’s written about it quite well. Could she have gone into more detail about her family background? Yes, but also that may have made it seem as though she was bragging and made this section way longer than it needed to be. It’s a bit of a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation IMO, although I do get where everyone else is coming from as well. As someone who always used to compare herself to Grace (we’re the same age), I think it was quite a nice summary.

Again just my opinion though!

 

[Rubysue123]

oof yeah, you could read all of this as 'fairly normal London gal who was lucky enough to get a scholarship and work her way into a top uni with hard work', rather than 1% millionaire family who could easily pay for her education with or without help, and the idea that music scholarships paid 'most of' her tuition is a blatant lie.

Also the bit about pocket money?? like yeah ok most parents won't give their kids tons of cash, just a bit to teach financial responsibility, but that doesn't mean she couldn't ask for things and have them bought for her, not to mention the kinds of gifts she would have got for birthdays and christmas, the multi-thousand pound family holidays several times a year etc...

Also there is a huge difference between not getting much “pocket money” but still knowing the financial support from your family is there if you ever really need it, your parents being able to pay for all the big things like school trips, holidays, first car, clothes when you go shopping and so on. I’m not saying all that applies to grace it’s just my general observation and own experience.

 

[Pineapplekiwi]

"How about putting on an Out-of-Office alert telling people you're focusing on offline work?" The only people I can imagine having the gall to do this are wanky startup founders! I can't ever imagine doing this, if something comes in at work I have to get to it not just ignore it for 'offline' work whatever that means

I know for a fact the reason she added that part is because that’s what people do at IBM but only when they have a serious meeting to do/prepare for, not because they want to focus on work ‘offline’ (source: used to work at ibm)

 

[Macat]

Thank you for sharing these!

The intro

Smallpdf.com

smallpdf.com

Does anyone else find it weird for them to include the Harvard qualification in her intro? Wasn’t it just an online course with no prerequisites that anyone could do as long as they have the money?

 

[Asgc22]

I know for a fact the reason she added that part is because that’s what people do at IBM but only when they have a serious meeting to do/prepare for, not because they want to focus on work ‘offline’ (source: used to work at ibm)

Ah good to know, cheers! Agreed, it's not something the average employee is going to be able to do. I just don't know who she's trying to target, she's living in her own world

 

[Deeznutslol]

The privilege chapter is actually a lot more honest than I thought it would be ngl. She was never going to say ‘Yeah, I’m privileged, I grew up in Kensington with my mllionaire family who inherited loads of shmoney from my wealthy grandad who was margaret thatchers best chum’, as much as it is the truth. However, she has finally admitted to a lot of the things that she has been really sketchy about.
The part I don’t like is the fact she says ‘I prefer to lay it all on the table rather than paint yet another picture of what success should look like at 23 without the necessary context’, as if she has always been open about it? Smh this is literally the first time she’s actually been somewhat honest about how much her background has contributed to her wealth and success
And yeah as someone said before, everytime she talks about privilege there, she goes ‘BUT I DID WORK REALLY HARD TOO, or IT WASN'T HANDED TO ME ON A PLATE’
Kinda defeats the purpose of talking about your privilege if you’re going to follow it up with statements like that.

 

[samanthajoness]

Thank you for these pdfs, I'm going to have a better look later but had a quick look at the productivity tips and my couple thoughts:

- the quadrant thing with dividing your tasks into important urgent etc is the most basic tool ever, absolutely revolutionary from grace
- her example of time blocking showing "most people's schedules" vs time blocking - does she realise people in normal jobs can't just decide they're only going to have meetings at a certain time? BRB telling my boss I'm only taking calls between 2-4pm

This! I will confess I am reading the book and intend to write a detailed review but from what I can see so far it is aimed at other wannabe ceo girl bosses, while also stating in her intro that it’s unrealistic and shouldn’t be expected that you turn your ‘side hustle’ in to income, so it reads as quite hypocritical already. Having said this, 10 pages could have been 2 sentences so it’s quite difficult to decipher what her point actually is.

 

[Pizzaandcats]

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Working_Hard_Hardly_Working.html

there is also a bit you can read here, can’t believe the first part is about poo!

 

[Mamacita]

The story she shared of the girl talking about the book on her insta story "why does it have to be that people dream about going to work and doing 40 hour week" hmm could it be because people need money and have to work to live? Nah surely not
To an extend I could agree with the sentiment, some people do try to make it out as work is so important and the highlight of their life but the bottom line is that most people need to work a 40 hour week to be able to afford to live.

 

[coffeecupbee]

The privilege chapter is actually a lot more honest than I thought it would be ngl. She was never going to say ‘Yeah, I’m privileged, I grew up in Kensington with my mllionaire family who inherited loads of shmoney from my wealthy grandad who was margaret thatchers best chum’, as much as it is the truth. However, she has finally admitted to a lot of the things that she has been really sketchy about.
The part I don’t like is the fact she says ‘I prefer to lay it all on the table rather than paint yet another picture of what success should look like at 23 without the necessary context’, as if she has always been open about it? Smh this is literally the first time she’s actually been somewhat honest about how much her background has contributed to her wealth and success
And yeah as someone said before, everytime she talks about privilege there, she goes ‘BUT I DID WORK REALLY HARD TOO, or IT WASN'T HANDED TO ME ON A PLATE’
Kinda defeats the purpose of talking about your privilege if you’re going to follow it up with statements like that.

This is my opinion exactly! I can commend her for being more open and honest with it, it surprised me in a positive way. I do agree about the follow up statements too though, but then if she didn’t say that then maybe people would just think the book was pointless (which tbf it is)

 

[fwooper]

The privilege section is probably the most lucid thing I've read from her, and thank god she has finally said someone like her can't be self-made, but it still falls a bit short for me. I think she still cannot shake the impulse to qualify statements of her privilege with reasons why she actually didn't benefit from that privilege, e.g. the thing with the pocket money, scholarships, "working" since she was 13. I'm not sure how much of this section was true transparency versus a sneaky way of trying to signal to the reader that while she's privileged, she isn't like "other" privileged kids in her demographic.

And not sure how truthful she is being - "funded largely through scholarships". It's good she admits these scholarships were thanks to years of expensive music tuition, but I still don't believe these scholarships covered most of her tuition. She literally had the scholarships on her LinkedIn and they amounted to about 5% of the fees.

 

[coffeecupbee]

This! I will confess I am reading the book and intend to write a detailed review but from what I can see so far it is aimed at other wannabe ceo girl bosses, while also stating in her intro that it’s unrealistic and shouldn’t be expected that you turn your ‘side hustle’ in to income, so it reads as quite hypocritical already. Having said this, 10 pages could have been 2 sentences so it’s quite difficult to decipher what her point actually is.

I’m definitely interested in hearing your review! I am slightly tempted to give it a read myself and do an unbiased review (while I’m not her biggest fan, I also don’t massively dislike her or anything). Seems like all reviews are from people who haven’t read the book or just want to kiss her arse

 

[Brooke Davis]

This! I will confess I am reading the book and intend to write a detailed review but from what I can see so far it is aimed at other wannabe ceo girl bosses, while also stating in her intro that it’s unrealistic and shouldn’t be expected that you turn your ‘side hustle’ in to income, so it reads as quite hypocritical already. Having said this, 10 pages could have been 2 sentences so it’s quite difficult to decipher what her point actually is.

Can’t wait to hear your review!!

I’m definitely interested in hearing your review! I am slightly tempted to give it a read myself and do an unbiased review (while I’m not her biggest fan, I also don’t massively dislike her or anything). Seems like all reviews are from people who haven’t read the book or just want to kiss her arse

Same but I know I would end up quitting reading it. I can barely get through her lengthy captions without giving up!

 

[klarigold]

Also there is a huge difference between not getting much “pocket money” but still knowing the financial support from your family is there if you ever really need it, your parents being able to pay for all the big things like school trips, holidays, first car, clothes when you go shopping and so on. I’m not saying all that applies to grace it’s just my general observation and own experience.

Yeah, exactly this. The 'pocket money' is trivial if all her big purchases, bills, holidays etc were paid for. Like I don't believe for one minute she paid for her own phone and phone bill, for example. Gym membership alone is over £25/month and there's no way she was paying for that with the occasional babysitting job.

The privilege chapter is actually a lot more honest than I thought it would be ngl. She was never going to say ‘Yeah, I’m privileged, I grew up in Kensington with my mllionaire family who inherited loads of shmoney from my wealthy grandad who was margaret thatchers best chum’, as much as it is the truth. However, she has finally admitted to a lot of the things that she has been really sketchy about.

idk I still feel like it falls super short, there's nothing here she hasn't said before and she's still using the same qualifiers (but I had scholarships, but I worked since I was 13, but I didn't get much pocket money) to excuse he privilege. There was absolutely no need for her to add in all these 'buts' in her privilege section, they just make it seem disingenuous. It's interesting that she's always so pedantic about mentioning all the ways she considers herself 'not that privileged', but has never once been completely transparent about the bigger picture of her family's wealth, influence and connections.

She seems to favour thinking about privilege on a global scale - things like being white and not coming from a war-torn country, yes are privileges, but 86% of the UK (and her readers) are white British, so that's not exactly something that sets her apart. I think it's good to get her readers to think about their own privilege in this way (something we all probably don't do enough), but that also serves to make her seem more like everyone else.

Considering she said she was going to 'lay it all on the table', it was pretty weak I think.

 

[Jlurking]

The funded largely through scholarships bit just proves how much she will continue to bend the truth. We know her scholarships amounted to duck all. She must feel very insecure that she has to constantly truth bend in order to talk about her life.

 

[thisisntreal]

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Working_Hard_Hardly_Working.html

there is also a bit you can read here, can’t believe the first part is about poo!

Oh my god what the hell?! Is that meant to be funny? Relatable? Representative of her Worst Work Experience Ever? My god, what a mess.

Can you imagine an actual grown up editor reading this and thinking, “ah yes, poo stories, everyone is going to love this”? Mind you, this is the girl that finds her dog molesting other dogs and random inanimate objects the height of hilarity…

(Edit for spelling)

 

[FDR97]

Thank you for sharing these!

The intro

Smallpdf.com

smallpdf.com

Does anyone else find it weird for them to include the Harvard qualification in her intro? Wasn’t it just an online course with no prerequisites that anyone could do as long as they have the money?

I’ve done a few online courses over lockdown. You literally pay £50 for the certificate the course is free.

The story she shared of the girl talking about the book on her insta story "why does it have to be that people dream about going to work and doing 40 hour week" hmm could it be because people need money and have to work to live? Nah surely not
To an extend I could agree with the sentiment, some people do try to make it out as work is so important and the highlight of their life but the bottom line is that most people need to work a 40 hour week to be able to afford to live.

That girl was 19 and a student. That’s her audience.

 

[OxfordBoyXOXO]

time blocking in uni by making your professors change the time of your lectures so you can focus on your grind

this book really only works for influencers and some freelancers. what are nurses going to do? a person working in retail? a chef? she tried to acknowledge her privilege but then forgets all about having it when writing these "tips".

You jest but this legitimately happened. I spoke to someone who had to work with her closely & apparently she’d just force tutors to reschedule because she was “at an appointment” (I.e. some crappy business meeting lol).

 

[fwooper]

Good god reading her introduction and I think I've found some of her most incomprehensible writing yet:

"Being labelled entitled, workshy, and the adjective one could only imagine to be 'snowflake-y', is nothing new (she types, through hard-done-by, you-don't-understand-us tears). In a 2016 op-ed in The Australian, 'young people' were generation-splained (mansplaining's wider-reaching sibling), with the assertion that if we all stopped eating avocado toast with 'crumbled feta' and a seemingly insulting 'five-grain toasted bread', we could buy houses instead."

There's just something about her writing that is so exhausting to read, maybe because every sentence is qualified by something in brackets. And sometimes just make zero sense: "the adjective one could only imagine to be 'snowflake-y'" ????

 

[nomaddie]

Good god reading her introduction and I think I've found some of her most incomprehensible writing yet:

"Being labelled entitled, workshy, and the adjective one could only imagine to be 'snowflake-y', is nothing new (she types, through hard-done-by, you-don't-understand-us tears). In a 2016 op-ed in The Australian, 'young people' were generation-splained (mansplaining's wider-reaching sibling), with the assertion that if we all stopped eating avocado toast with 'crumbled feta' and a seemingly insulting 'five-grain toasted bread', we could buy houses instead."

There's just something about her writing that is so exhausting to read, maybe because every sentence is qualified by something in brackets. And sometimes just make zero sense: "the adjective one could only imagine to be 'snowflake-y'" ????

yes exactly — every sentence has to be as complicated as possible to show that she is smart