Now at age 29 she’s the co-founder of one of Australia’s fastest-growing supplements companies, co-owns a burgeoning skincare brand, runs business and life coaching with a hugely popular podcast, and is a multi-millionaire with four houses and an electric Porsche Taycan.

While her rise to success may seem as fast as her 460kW sports car, for this bold Gold Coast businesswoman it comes down to simply having the courage to believe in yourself and chase your dreams … plus, of course, some damn hard work and “a lot of therapy”.

Stevenson’s journey began as an 18-year-old who, like most Aussie 18-year-olds, left school and started drinking and partying.

Having always played a lot of sports as a kid, she’d suddenly put on weight and was feeling sluggish and lethargic from the change in lifestyle. Wanting to feel better, she embarked on a fitness journey, exercising, eating better and quitting booze.

The changes led to a dramatic physical transformation, which she posted as a “before and after” on her Instagram.

The post went viral and within 48 hours she had 20,000 new followers.

“Instagram was very new and back then when I was only a small account, I was like, ‘Oh my god, what’s happening?’ And then from there it just kept growing,” she says.

She soon found herself sharing more of her fitness regimen, from what she ate to healthy recipes, to her daily life.

As her Instagram followers grew to the almost 400,000 she has today, brands such as global activewear behemoth Gymshark approached her for partnership and sponsorship deals, bringing with them money and more exposure.

But becoming an influencer was no more than a side hustle for the driven Stevenson, who always dreamt of being a lawyer. That was until she finished her law degree and began having second thoughts about her career choice.

To determine what she wanted to do with her future, she decided to take a year off and focus on influencing as she was making the same $60,000 salary through social media as she was in her law clerk job.

“I was like, this is actually the time where I get to take the risks … and I was like, well, if this whole thing doesn’t work out, I can just go be a lawyer, which doesn’t sound that bad,” she says with a laugh.

But rather than play it safe, the then 23-year-old decided to almost risk it all, spending $40,000 on a business coach in the fitness industry to help her launch a healthy recipe e-book she had been working on.

“I was like, I’m going to give myself 12 months to make this other thing work and if it doesn’t, I’m going to go back to law, so I had this sense of urgency, and I’m a big believer that if you don’t know how to do something you go to someone who has done the thing,” she says, with her coach having created a business and brand out of her own social media influencing.

“I think the best thing about hiring that coach and spending that sort of money was betting on myself, and it almost lights a fire under your bum, because you’re like, ‘Shit, I’ve got to make this work, I’ve got to make this money back.’

“I think if you do want to do something big in life, you do have to take big risks. You have to do things that other people wouldn’t do.”

While the e-book sold more than 5000 copies, it was her next big risk led by her older brother Coopa, 31, that would really change the game for Stevenson – the creation of her own supplements company.

After working as an influencer with a supplements brand that claimed to be all-vegan and preservative-free, she one day found out it wasn’t.

Outraged that she had been unwittingly misleading her followers, she quit working with the company, told her fans of the deceit and vented about the situation to her brother, who suffers from gluten and dairy intolerances.

The next day Coopa called her with the idea to establish an all-natural, nothing-artificial supplements brand that was free from fillers but, most importantly, tasted delicious. And they would use Stevenson’s ever-expanding Instagram following to market and sell it.

A week later, using $80,000 of their savings to work with a Brisbane manufacturer, the pair created Naked Harvest, which five years on has become one of Australia’s fastest growing supplements businesses, with a focus on women.

“Naked Harvest has really disrupted the industry,” Stevenson says, with the brand now producing everything from protein powders and meal replacements to pre-workouts and sleep aids available online and through more than 550 Terry White pharmacies nationally.

“When we first launched, you would go into a supplements store and it was all focused towards males,” she says.

With the products boasting masculine branding and a focus on bulking and shredding, Stevenson says it’s overwhelming for a consumer, and “as a female going into a store like that it’s not a great experience”.

“So being in the fitness industry and feeling not welcomed was a huge part of wanting to start Naked Harvest, so I feel like we came in and created a product that was really female friendly, and wasn’t obsessive. It was like you can actually just take a supplement so you can feel good and you can feel healthy.”

The female skew led to more feminine packaging and a greater focus on flavour, which Stevenson says has been the key to the brand’s boom, boasting more than 500,000 customers.

That and the siblings’ innovative approach to navigating Covid-19, which saw them focus on their community and run online workouts for people stuck at home and unable to go to the gym.

“A lot of people were really focusing on their health, and that was really important during that time,” she says, revealing the brand had its largest growth through the pandemic.

In the business, Stevenson takes care of the marketing, branding and product development, while her brother looks after logistics, product inventory and their Burleigh Heads warehouse, which the operation has already outgrown in just a few years.

“We really have a lot of trust with each other and it’s honestly been the most amazing thing and we’ve never been so close,” Stevenson says.

Alongside running Naked Harvest with Coopa, she also operates her successful Rise & Conquer brand – an inspirational podcast that turned into a self-development app, series of business and life coaching courses, journals and products.

The courses focus on positive habits and manifesting, things Stevenson believes have been the key to much of her success both professionally and personally, with 8000 students completing the seven-week online program.

“I have seen such a transformation with my life and my thoughts and, you know, those sorts of things, so I just feel so compelled and so excited to tell people about it and to tell them you can live life a different way and you don’t have to be stuck in what you think you should do or you should be,” she says, revealing she has completed a wide range of training herself from neuro-linguistic programming to her current pursuit of rapid resolution therapy.

But where does a 20-something find the confidence to become a life or mindset coach?

“I still honestly think what are people doing taking advice from me,” she says with a laugh.

“But, you know, everyone starts somewhere and I truly believe that someone only has to be two steps behind you for you to help them. I find that someone who’s only a couple of steps behind you, you have a lot more language to talk to them. You can resonate a lot more than with someone who’s 10 steps ahead. So I feel the podcast picked up traction because I was a 25-year-old girl, so females who were younger or around that age could resonate because we were going through the same things.”

However, she also has to remind herself that her podcast and her advice isn’t for everyone and that is OK. It’s a mature response learnt through years of seeing a psychologist – something she insists everyone should do and that has helped her deal with any social media trolling.

“I definitely have my moments when it’s hard to not take things personally, but I truly look at my life now and I wouldn’t be able to have the businesses, have the life I have if I didn’t have a thick skin and I wasn’t able to deal with people’s projections and thoughts and feelings,” she says.

But if two businesses and working as an influencer isn’t enough, the entrepreneur has also recently invested in burgeoning Aussie skincare company, Summer Skin, becoming a shareholder alongside her brother Coopa in the business founded by Lil McAvaney.

McAvaney had completed one of Stevenson’s Rise & Conquer courses before approaching the Naked Harvest siblings to become investors. With the skin brand all-natural and Australia-made, Stevenson says coming on board felt right. “It was very compelling and it just excited me,” she says.

“Just Lil’s energy reminded me of how I was when I first started Naked Harvest and it was also a brand set up with such similar values to Naked Harvest – all natural, staple skincare that’s actually going to work and I just resonated with it.”

Stevenson says she and Coopa mentor McAvaney, helping with systems, processes, connections and e-commerce to guide the business to thrive.

“Lil’s a mum with two kids … and I really wanted to help her on her journey,” she says.

All this is juggled around Stevenson’s own 2½-year-old daughter Ivy and husband Tim, 33, with the couple having been together since Stevenson was 17.

The success of Stevenson’s businesses, along with her influencing, has enabled Tim to give up his job as a carpenter and take on the role of stay-at-home dad, something Stevenson says she is eternally grateful for.

“I always knew I was going to be a career woman. I knew I wasn’t going to be a stay-at-home mum, and I come from a family of four kids with a stay-at-home mum and had that beautiful, incredible life,” she says.

“He truly has the hardest job and sometimes I feel really bad because Ivy’s tantruming or something, and I’m like, ‘Bye, I’ll see you this afternoon’, and I’m like, ‘Thank god I’m going to work.’”

Also enabling Tim to stay at home is their growing property portfolio including two rentals, an Airbnb in Beechmont in the Gold Coast hinterland, and their luxury six-level home on the southern Gold Coast with breathtaking views across the Glitter Strip.

The pair bought their first house in their early 20s on the advice of Stevenson’s father, who insisted property was a smart investment.

But the entrepreneur says it’s through positive affirmations, manifestation and finding something she truly loves to do that has seen her reach financial success, as well as achieve her dream life where she wakes up each morning excited to go to work.

“We don’t realise how powerful we are internally,” she says. “You actually have everything you need inside you right now to create your dream life, most of us just don’t trust ourselves.

“We have all these blocks, we have pressures from society, from our family and our friends that stick to you like armour and when you’re taking that off and you’re really coming back to yourself or your intuition, while also listening to the intuitive steps, that’s when life gets really, really amazing.”

She hopes she can inspire more women to follow in her footsteps as a female entrepreneur and says it’s about normalising women in positions of power, as well as calling out misogynistic attitudes towards females in business that will help make the path easier.

“It’s about deciding that that behaviour is not appropriate and speaking up, and obviously supporting female-led businesses and female-based businesses and helping other females in the space,” she says.

With a daughter to raise, Stevenson is even more determined to make sure the world is a place that supports women and empowers them to follow their dreams.

“I just really want her to know that she can do absolutely anything she wants to do,” she says. “Anything she’s interested in, I’m going to be like, ‘Yes, do it.’ I’m going to really teach her to follow her intuition. You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing, you don’t have to fit inside the box.”

It’s advice we could all follow.