Grace Ellery
I'm a business growth strategist, a systems builder, a work-lover but a burnout-hater.
Grace Ellery
I'm a business growth strategist, a systems builder, a work-lover but a burnout-hater.
A founder once told me
A founder once told me
I handed her back
I handed her back
a business she could see.
a business she could see.
I've not found a better way
I've not found a better way
to explain
what I do.
what I do.
I'm a business growth strategist, a systems builder, a work-lover but a burnout-hater. I don't know whether it's the years spent in beauty operations, being the middle child everyone brings the mess to, or simply liking a spreadsheet more than is strictly normal — but untangling a business has never felt like work to me. I can usually see the shape of a thing before anyone has finished describing it.
I'm a business growth strategist, a systems builder, a work-lover but a burnout-hater. I don't know whether it's the years spent in beauty operations, being the middle child everyone brings the mess to, or simply liking a spreadsheet more than is strictly normal — but untangling a business has never felt like work to me. I can usually see the shape of a thing before anyone has finished describing it.
I now do that day in, day out for my clients: beauty and wellness founders turning over six figures who know something has to change in the business before it changes them.
I now do that day in, day out for my clients: beauty and wellness founders turning over six figures who know something has to change in the business before it changes them.
I genuinely believe we get one go at this, and it shouldn't be spent white-knuckling a business we built on purpose.
I will drive forty minutes for a good bakery and then happily queue. If you cut me open I'd bleed builder's tea. And I have never once left a car boot sale with nothing.
Sundays are long walks with the radio on and no destination agreed in advance. When I'm not halfway through three books at once, I'm repotting something that was doing perfectly well before I interfered, or being politely ignored by my cat.
Grace
My journey
It can look like instinct. It's actually operations, pattern recognition, and a decade of watching what breaks.
2016
2016
I started on a salon floor, then moved into the back office of a skincare brand that grew faster than its systems could hold. I learned the industry from the inventory up: what sells, what stalls, and what quietly costs you a fortune. Everyone assumed I wanted to move into marketing. I wanted to know why the stockroom and the P&L never agreed.
I started on a salon floor, then moved into the back office of a skincare brand that grew faster than its systems could hold. I learned the industry from the inventory up: what sells, what stalls, and what quietly costs you a fortune. Everyone assumed I wanted to move into marketing. I wanted to know why the stockroom and the P&L never agreed.
2018 — 2021
2018 — 2021
So I went into operations properly, and that's when the snowball started. Head of Operations for a wellness group by twenty-nine: three brands, forty staff, and a spreadsheet habit that bordered on a personality trait. I was handed more responsibility every quarter and I took all of it. On paper it made complete sense — the title, the money, the desk by the window. Off paper I was answering emails at eleven at night and calling it ambition. Something was off, and I knew exactly what. I was running somebody else's business beautifully.
So I went into operations properly, and that's when the snowball started. Head of Operations for a wellness group by twenty-nine: three brands, forty staff, and a spreadsheet habit that bordered on a personality trait. I was handed more responsibility every quarter and I took all of it. On paper it made complete sense — the title, the money, the desk by the window. Off paper I was answering emails at eleven at night and calling it ambition. Something was off, and I knew exactly what. I was running somebody else's business beautifully.
2022
2022
So I left, and started consulting. Full double life for a while — client calls from the car park on my lunch break, day job until six, proposals written on the sofa at nine. I told myself it was temporary. It was temporary in the way scaffolding is temporary.
So I left, and started consulting. Full double life for a while — client calls from the car park on my lunch break, day job until six, proposals written on the sofa at nine. I told myself it was temporary. It was temporary in the way scaffolding is temporary.
Within a year I had a waiting list, a retainer book I was genuinely proud of, and a business I had accidentally built to need me in every single room.
Within a year I had a waiting list, a retainer book I was genuinely proud of, and a business I had accidentally built to need me in every single room.
2023
2023
The work was good. The business was a mess. I had taken on too much, priced it too low, and said yes to every project that flattered me. No boundaries, no onboarding, no capacity plan.
The work was good. The business was a mess. I had taken on too much, priced it too low, and said yes to every project that flattered me. No boundaries, no onboarding, no capacity plan.
Every mistake I now stop my clients making, I made first and thoroughly. By the autumn I was doing the exact thing I had left a job to escape.
Every mistake I now stop my clients making, I made first and thoroughly. By the autumn I was doing the exact thing I had left a job to escape.
2024
2024
So I pulled it apart and rebuilt it properly. Three offers instead of eleven. Real onboarding. A calendar with edges. That rebuild became The Scale Up Method, because the thing that saved my business turned out to work on everybody else's too. I haven't gone back.
So I pulled it apart and rebuilt it properly. Three offers instead of eleven. Real onboarding. A calendar with edges. That rebuild became The Scale Up Method, because the thing that saved my business turned out to work on everybody else's too. I haven't gone back.
2026
2026
Now I work with founders who are exactly where I was: a good business with no room in it. From independent studios to brands you would recognise on a shelf, the problem is almost never ambition. It's structure. I get to fix that, and still be home for dinner.
Now I work with founders who are exactly where I was: a good business with no room in it. From independent studios to brands you would recognise on a shelf, the problem is almost never ambition. It's structure. I get to fix that, and still be home for dinner.
Work with me
Grace Ellery Co.
Grace Ellery Co.
Grace Ellery Co.