Valuetainment - 28 Year Old Billionaire Reveals How He Built Gymshark

00:00:01.000 A lot of people start off and they do well for themselves.

00:00:05.000 Very few get valued at one and a half billion dollars.

00:00:09.000 We're eight years old. We're, like I said, half a billion dollars in revenue.

00:00:14.000 So Gymshark was just a cool domain that I found online.

00:00:17.000 I bought it off GoDaddy. It was about £3.50.

00:00:20.000 It was, you know, the whole startup cost £20, £30.

00:00:24.000 Gymshark's story, people assume that it was like this one thing that I tried and it went incredibly well.

00:00:29.000 13, 14 years old and starting Gymshark at 19.

00:00:32.000 I started like six or seven, maybe even more than that, different businesses and websites.

00:00:36.000 All of which failed miserably.

00:00:39.000 When was it when you said, I think this could really have some legs and turn into a real business?

00:00:44.000 The Body Power Expert. Now, before the event, we were selling on average £200 to £300 a day worth of product.

00:00:50.000 We turned all the website off and we thought, right, we'll kick it back off Monday when the event's finished.

00:00:55.000 The first half an hour after we turned the website back on, we sold £30,000 of product.

00:01:01.000 Now we're onto something special.

00:01:03.000 If we know anything about the younger generation, right, they want to buy a brand that really resonates with their core values.

00:01:07.000 And I think Gymshark does that. 0.99

00:01:09.000 To all the young entrepreneurs out there, if you need an inspiration, today's story is going to do it for you.

00:01:17.000 My guest today, Ben Francis, the founder of Gymshark, which you probably heard of Gymshark.

00:01:21.000 It's a brand predominantly big in Europe, but he's bringing it to North America.

00:01:25.000 And if you go to the gym nowadays, you'll see the brand.

00:01:28.000 I think in August, the company was valued around $1.45 billion.

00:01:33.000 And he is the 70% owner of the company, making him in a billion-dollar mark at 28 years old.

00:01:40.000 And he started it at 19 years old.

00:01:42.000 With that being said, Ben Francis, thank you so much for being a guest on Vietainment.

00:01:45.000 Thanks, Patrick. Thanks for having me.

00:01:47.000 I'm looking forward to talking to you today.

00:01:49.000 What a great story you got, by the way.

00:01:51.000 So going back, take me back to the people that don't know the story.

00:01:54.000 Obviously, I've watched it.

00:01:56.000 I know your story.

00:01:57.000 Many know your story.

00:01:58.000 But think about the story, people that don't know your story.

00:02:00.000 How did you go from who you were at in high school?

00:02:03.000 What things you witnessed with your parents' business when he, you know, risked his mom's house

00:02:09.000 to eventually you, you know, messing around with different things and then eventually starting Gymshark?

00:02:14.000 Yeah, so to be honest, so back in high school, in fact, I'll tell you what,

00:02:18.000 I'll go back before even there.

00:02:19.000 So my grandfather ran his own business.

00:02:23.000 And I think this is where, and by the way, both of my grandparents ran their own business.

00:02:26.000 I think this is where I got my sort of inspiration for business and entrepreneurship came from

00:02:31.000 because I did work experience.

00:02:33.000 I'm sure you do something similar over in the States.

00:02:35.000 I think it's like 13, 14 years old.

00:02:38.000 And he would essentially tell me stories about how he'd started the business and sort of risked everything to make it work.

00:02:44.000 So I think, I think I was sort of like exposed to that idea of risk, particularly financial risk from a young age.

00:02:50.000 So to be honest, that's where I really got the inspiration to be involved in business.

00:02:54.000 I feel like as well with the sort of Gymshark story, people assume that it was like this one thing that I tried and it went incredibly well.

00:03:03.000 Between that work experience at 13, 14 years old and starting Gymshark at 19, I started like six or seven, maybe even more than that, different businesses and websites.

00:03:12.000 All of which, which failed miserably before Gymshark was the one that, you know, essentially blew up.

00:03:20.000 Now, let me ask you, when I, when I watch you speak, I feel fire in your spirit, your eyes, your energy.

00:03:28.000 Have you always been a pretty serious guy?

00:03:31.000 I mean, listen, we all have a, you know, softer side where we're around our family members.

00:03:34.000 We're comfortable, we're loose, we're can just kind of be ourselves.

00:03:38.000 But are you generally a pretty serious guy yourself?

00:03:43.000 I guess so.

00:03:44.000 I mean, you're right.

00:03:45.000 Like obviously around friends and family, I think you're right.

00:03:47.000 Everyone chills out.

00:03:48.000 I think when it comes to like this, like I love, I just love making things.

00:03:52.000 And I've spoken about this previously.

00:03:54.000 And with Gymshark, it's like my life's work.

00:03:56.000 I feel like I've got the best job in the world.

00:03:58.000 I get to create all the things that I love, which are centered around my passion with a bunch of amazing people.

00:04:03.000 So I guess it is quite serious to me because again, it's my life's work.

00:04:08.000 And it's something that's really, really important to me.

00:04:10.000 If I was in high school with you, you and I were friends at 14, 15 years old, who was Ben?

00:04:15.000 Very different to what I am now.

00:04:17.000 Very, very, very different.

00:04:19.000 I think at high school, I thought I was, I was laughing with one of my mates the other day.

00:04:23.000 Like at that age, you think that you're like grown up.

00:04:25.000 You think that you can go on and take the take on the world.

00:04:28.000 But I was very quiet, to be honest, very chill, very relaxed.

00:04:32.000 Certainly wasn't like the most popular kid in school, but wasn't massively fussed about that.

00:04:36.000 I was massively into sport, gaming.

00:04:39.000 And I was just fascinated with computers, websites, programming and everything that came with it, really.

00:04:46.000 Interesting.

00:04:47.000 Was your relationship with your parents a good relationship, easygoing relationship?

00:04:51.000 Not a lot of fights, not a lot of trying to do your own thing.

00:04:55.000 Was it a supportive environment?

00:04:57.000 Yes.

00:04:58.000 So very, very supportive.

00:05:00.000 So that my parents were very opinionated.

00:05:03.000 So I remember when I, so I worked incredibly hard to get into university, right?

00:05:07.000 I was the first person in my family to ever get into university.

00:05:10.000 It was an amazing opportunity for me and I was so incredibly proud.

00:05:14.000 And my mom sort of had to really, really sort of sit me down and talk to me about concentrating in school to essentially get into university. 0.64

00:05:22.000 So like I said, when I got in, they were so proud.

00:05:25.000 So for 18 months later for me to call them and say, hey, I'm going to drop out of university.

00:05:30.000 They were a little bit concerned at that point, albeit Gymshark at that point was doing quite well.

00:05:36.000 But as soon as I'd made the decision and I said, right, that is it.

00:05:39.000 That's a decision.

00:05:40.000 That's my mind made.

00:05:41.000 They 100% supported me.

00:05:42.000 And there was never a point where they sort of said, should you have really dropped out of university?

00:05:47.000 Maybe when things were a bit more difficult later on.

00:05:49.000 So they were incredibly supportive.

00:05:51.000 Interesting.

00:05:52.000 That's great to hear.

00:05:53.000 In high school, was math your favorite subject?

00:05:56.000 Like did math come easy to you?

00:05:57.000 Was it writing?

00:05:58.000 Was it science?

00:05:59.000 What came easy to you?

00:06:00.000 This is the thing, right?

00:06:01.000 So when I was at school in the UK, we do sort of a certain set of exams up to the age of 16.

00:06:07.000 And then you had the option to leave school or go back into sort of like what we call college.

00:06:12.000 I didn't actually do that well up until the age of 16.

00:06:16.000 And the school didn't actually want me to stay on through 17 and 18.

00:06:20.000 Now, I was really lucky.

00:06:21.000 Someone dropped out and they ended up taking me back in on the basis that I did English literature.

00:06:27.000 So I never enjoyed it.

00:06:29.000 I didn't think I was good at it.

00:06:31.000 But for whatever reason, I was really good with writing, you know, and I guess English lit basically.

00:06:37.000 So I did English, business and IT.

00:06:40.000 I adored IT, to be honest.

00:06:42.000 You adored IT.

00:06:43.000 Okay.

00:06:44.000 It's funny though, because business, I didn't, I liked it, but I didn't love it.

00:06:48.000 I found myself frustrated by it in a lot of ways.

00:06:50.000 I learned a lot of quite, you know, great basics, building and starting a limited company and things like that.

00:06:57.000 But I think I was always frustrated because I wanted to do it rather than write about it.

00:07:01.000 That makes a lot of sense.

00:07:03.000 And you definitely ended up doing it.

00:07:05.000 So walk me through now your, the moment where you and your buddy Lewis are sitting there and you're saying, what if we start our own company called, you know, Gymshark.

00:07:16.000 And, you know, how that led to you meeting Steve in 2015, kind of give me the history of how that takes place.

00:07:23.000 So I said, I loved IT and I was really, really lucky actually, because in, in growing up, I, so I grew up in, I still live here.

00:07:33.000 I grew up in a part of the UK called the West Midland.

00:07:35.000 So we're right in the middle.

00:07:36.000 It's, it's basically the industrial powerhouse of, of the UK.

00:07:40.000 It's, it's, you know, nowhere near as wealthy as London.

00:07:42.000 It's just sort of a very, it's a very, I love it here, but it's not the wealthiest part of the UK.

00:07:47.000 So we didn't have massive access to some of the amazing software that's more readily available today.

00:07:53.000 Now, when I took this IT class, I didn't know what it was at the time, but it gave me access to the Adobe Creative Suite.

00:08:00.000 And that's where you had Dreamweaver.

00:08:02.000 So you can make websites, Illustrator for graphics, Photoshop.

00:08:05.000 And I didn't realize at the time how lucky I was to have access to this, these products, but they literally completely changed my life.

00:08:11.000 Because as, as a young creative, all of a sudden I could create the things that I was imagining in my head.

00:08:16.000 So started making all these different websites and iPhone apps just because it was something that I thought was cool.

00:08:22.000 And then after a while, I wanted to make a website that would transact because everything else I've made didn't actually sell anything.

00:08:30.000 So I, I had a friend who worked at a supplement company at the time.

00:08:36.000 And I said to him, listen, I want to make a website that's going to transact.

00:08:39.000 I need to know how much it's going to cost me to buy some supplements off you.

00:08:42.000 Because at the time I was massively into the gym.

00:08:44.000 I was massively into fitness.

00:08:45.000 My dream was to be like a, a bodybuilder.

00:08:47.000 And, and he said to me, it's going to cost, I think it was 8,000 pounds for a purchase of supplements to sell on the website.

00:08:55.000 Now I'd never even heard of 8,000 pound, let alone seen 8,000 pound at that point.

00:09:00.000 I was working.

00:09:01.000 I think it was like four pound eight and out 80 an hour at pizza.

00:09:04.000 So it was like, it just was unfathomable for me to be able to have that.

00:09:09.000 So what we thought we would do is just make a website that would transact and then drop ship supplements.

00:09:15.000 So for anyone that's watching that doesn't know what drop shipping is, it's basically you load the website up with a load of product that you don't actually own.

00:09:22.000 Someone comes onto your website and buys it and you basically ship it from another vendor and it goes straight to the consumer and you make a small margin.

00:09:28.000 Now, the margin was tiny.

00:09:30.000 So I'll never actually forget this.

00:09:32.000 We had our first sale.

00:09:33.000 It took three months, I think, to get the first sale.

00:09:36.000 And it was a 50 pound supplement of which two pounds was profit.

00:09:40.000 Now to any commercial business person, two pound profit on a 50 quid sale is is not particularly great.

00:09:46.000 And you have to do ridiculous scale for for that to be worth anything.

00:09:51.000 But the aim of the game was just to be involved in fitness any way that I could and also build a website that would transact.

00:09:57.000 And, you know, this did it.

00:09:58.000 So I was like literally running around my bedroom buzzing with the fact that we'd actually made a website that transacted.

00:10:04.000 So and that was how it started, really.

00:10:07.000 And it was it was super organic.

00:10:09.000 Right. The name Gymshark, because at the time I've made so many websites previously, to me, this was another one.

00:10:14.000 I didn't know it would be anything great.

00:10:16.000 So Gymshark was just a cool domain I found online.

00:10:18.000 It was short.

00:10:19.000 I bought it off GoDaddy.

00:10:20.000 It was about £3.50.

00:10:22.000 It was, you know, the whole startup cost.

00:10:24.000 Bear in mind, everything was drop shipped and our startup cost must have been £20, $30.

00:10:32.000 You know, it's it's it's like nothing.

00:10:35.000 So, yeah, that's essentially how the business started.

00:10:39.000 What was your role and what did Lewis do?

00:10:42.000 Was it was Lewis CMO, COO, CEO?

00:10:45.000 You were CEO, CFO.

00:10:47.000 Who handled what?

00:10:48.000 Whose strengths were what?

00:10:49.000 So at the time, because it was just it wasn't really it wasn't like a business as such.

00:10:54.000 It was just a case of let's go off and make this.

00:10:56.000 So we didn't really have roles.

00:10:57.000 Now, as we fast forward, that's when the business developed and roles sort of occurred.

00:11:01.000 So, like I said, we were drop shipping and supplements and it was it was going OK.

00:11:05.000 There'd be a sale every few days or so.

00:11:07.000 But because the margins were so small, you'd be making like, you know, four or five pounds a week, maybe in terms of profits.

00:11:14.000 So after a while and going back to sort of look, there was there was this, I guess, something that was so fortunate and lucky that just the stars had to align.

00:11:24.000 So in Birmingham, there's a place called the NEC, which is the National Exhibition Centre.

00:11:29.000 Now, every year they would have one of the best fitness events in the world called Body Power.

00:11:34.000 And for me and all my friends that wanted to be bodybuilders and basically fitness people who just follow that YouTube scene massively and the bodybuilding scene, we check in with Olympia every year.

00:11:44.000 That was like our one opportunity to see these amazing people from around the world, normally from, you know, the US and places like that.

00:11:50.000 So every year we would go to Body Power just to be amongst the fitness champions of the world.

00:11:56.000 And we were all walking around, me and my mates.

00:11:59.000 And I'll never forget this because I had to sort of run off to Pizza Hook because my shifts would normally start at five.

00:12:03.000 So we got there Saturday morning, spent the day there.

00:12:06.000 And you're looking at all these people in all the fitness clothes and the stringer vest and the more the old school bodybuilding stuff.

00:12:12.000 And then we try it on. But because we were more, you know, slender in our physique than the huge bodybuilders,

00:12:17.000 it would like drown us because they would be so massive.

00:12:20.000 So we just thought to ourselves, why don't we just try and make our own?

00:12:24.000 Now, conveniently at the time, my nan was basically doing a curtain making course. 1.00

00:12:30.000 So I thought to myself, why don't we buy a sewing machine?

00:12:33.000 We bought a screen printer essentially with all of our savings.

00:12:37.000 And we started to basically hand make clothes, to be honest, more for ourselves than anything else.

00:12:42.000 And then happened to put them on the website.

00:12:44.000 And I think that coincided with the fact that we love YouTube still do.

00:12:49.000 Right. So I haven't watched telly since I was very, very young and it would always be around football or soccer in the States.

00:12:56.000 And I literally just thought, right, let's let's send this product to that we love to some of our heroes on YouTube and see what they think.

00:13:05.000 And those guys started to wear it more and more, you know, built up, I guess, a bit of a brand and people started buying our clothes online.

00:13:12.000 So so was there a strength that Lewis played versus you?

00:13:15.000 Because the reason why I asked this question is a lot of times there's other friends where, you know, they're in college together.

00:13:22.000 They're thinking about doing something together.

00:13:24.000 And they're, you know, when I go and speak at universities, I'll typically say rather than thinking about, you know, find your passion on what you want to do, but also recruit a good group of people that have opposing strengths to build your business with.

00:13:38.000 Was there a strength he had that was different than yours? And what was your strength versus his?

00:13:42.000 Yeah. So I think so at this point, I don't think we'd really work that out.

00:13:47.000 I think we just had. And the thing that I think the thing that really worked with us is we were just almost ferociously passionate about what we were doing, both of us.

00:13:55.000 So to be fair as well, just for context, we're 18, 19, 20 years old at this point.

00:14:01.000 All of our friends would often go out and they'd be at university.

00:14:04.000 We were the two that decided to go to university, but stay at home.

00:14:07.000 So so we were the two, I think, in that area who were quite happy to sort of sacrifice everything else for this dream.

00:14:15.000 Now, as it started to develop over the years and we started to have revenue and build our business, we definitely found sort of I guess our different strengths.

00:14:25.000 But listen, Lewis ended up moving on from the business a few years later.

00:14:29.000 So I don't think the cohesion was maybe as good as what it should have been, whereas later on when Steve joined the business about three years after we started, I think that's where we really found cohesion,

00:14:38.000 because mine and Steve's strengths are completely opposite in terms of he's very much your more, I guess, how you'd see more of a typical business person in terms of very organized,

00:14:48.000 a great people person, a manager experienced where I was a lot more around creative product and so on.

00:14:55.000 And I really had to learn the other skills. So I think that's where that cohesion started to begin.

00:15:00.000 Ben, are you today the CEO or today you're the chairman of the board and Steve's the CEO?

00:15:05.000 Yeah, so Steve's the CEO today. And that was a decision that we made a few years ago.

00:15:10.000 And I'm sat as sort of a chief product officer role, but I tend to jump around different areas of the business.

00:15:15.000 Even though you're a 70 percent majority shareholder, you're the chief product officer.

00:15:18.000 I applaud you for doing that. By the way, the first sale that was made after putting up the three months of the website,

00:15:24.000 where you made $2 of profits. Did you ever track the customer down to see how they find you and what they bought and why they bought it on your site?

00:15:32.000 I did. Because it's funny enough, because they were from the local area, so they'd heard of us.

00:15:37.000 I mean, they'd live, you know, 10, 20 minutes. I sort of know of them. We're not sort of friends as such.

00:15:42.000 But I think they just found out about it in the gym, in the local gyms.

00:15:47.000 Very cool. At what point did you kind of have an idea that you're up to something big?

00:15:52.000 Like when was it when you said, you know, I think this could really have some legs and turn into a real business?

00:15:59.000 So to be honest, it happened quite quickly. So we I mentioned the Body Power Expo.

00:16:06.000 We I was at that expo and this is when the business was very, very small.

00:16:10.000 And I had a it was like a gut, a proper, proper innate gut feeling that we had to be there the following year.

00:16:18.000 Bear in mind at this point, we had no product to be there. I just thought we have to be here.

00:16:21.000 Now, when I think it was May 2011, we were walking around as customers and I just thought, right, we've got to be here.

00:16:28.000 I went straight to the organizers stand and I said, I want to stand here next year.

00:16:32.000 What does it cost? I think it was three thousand pounds for the entry level stand.

00:16:36.000 And I just again, more money than we'd ever seen. But I thought, right, fine.

00:16:39.000 We've got 12 months to pay for it. We'll find out a way of doing it.

00:16:43.000 So we booked into that. And over the year, that's where we handmade a lot of these clothes and we built up the brand.

00:16:48.000 Now, about two or three months before that event, the people, the YouTubers that we've been sending product to,

00:16:54.000 who had over time become friends that we've been chatting to over Skype, we invited them to come to the event with us.

00:16:59.000 So they were all buzzing. Some of them were from the States and hadn't been to the UK before.

00:17:03.000 Some of them were from the UK. And we did this event.

00:17:07.000 And I'm not saying it was a corporate event because it wasn't.

00:17:11.000 But we were just like, listen, there's we're here. We want to chat with the community.

00:17:14.000 We would just love the community more than anything anyway. And almost like, by the way, if you want to buy some product, then that's great.

00:17:20.000 But after the show, we're going to go to the gym and we can all lift together.

00:17:23.000 And we sort of started to started to build this community. The show went really, really well.

00:17:27.000 I was really happy with how it went. We sold out of a lot of the stuff.

00:17:30.000 But over that weekend, because there was only a small handful of us in the business, we turned all the website off.

00:17:35.000 We thought, right, we'll kick it back off Monday when the event's finished.

00:17:39.000 Now, what I didn't realize is we'd stumbled upon, I guess, the sort of marketing mix, as you call it, of today.

00:17:46.000 So we did an in real life event where we launched new products and no one could get their hands on it.

00:17:51.000 We had all these YouTubers and what are now called social media influencers there that were posting on Facebook and YouTube and so on and built up this huge, crazy demand and hype that everyone was looking at.

00:18:01.000 And then, like I said, because we were going and lifting with everyone after the event, all of those guys were following us on social and sort of falling in love with the brand and the community that we were all building together.

00:18:10.000 Now, after the event, I went home and I was sat at my parents' house one evening and I just sort of turned the website on, thinking nothing would happen, posted on Facebook just to let everyone know that it's back.

00:18:20.000 And we're launching the product that we'd sold at the event.

00:18:23.000 Now, before the event, for context, we were selling on average two to three hundred pound a day worth of product.

00:18:29.000 Again, very, very proud of where we'd built up to. We were doing really well.

00:18:33.000 The first half an hour after we turned the website back on, we sold thirty thousand pounds of product, sold out of everything.

00:18:41.000 And I was literally because the stock was set to infinite. I was having to go through each product and turn it off because we had to go and make the product.

00:18:49.000 And I'll never forget it. Right. It was about one o'clock in the morning. The website was turned off.

00:18:53.000 We have thirty thousand pound worth of revenue, more revenue than we'd ever thought was possible in a 30 minute period.

00:18:59.000 And I was literally sat there on my own. I was thinking, OK, now now we're on to some special.

00:19:04.000 And that's when I left Pizza Hut. That's when I left university.

00:19:07.000 And that's when everything was just all focused on Gymsha.

00:19:10.000 Wow. Thirty thousand dollars in first 30 minutes.

00:19:13.000 And you're used to doing three hundred, two hundred to three hundred a day.

00:19:17.000 And that takes off to thirty thousand. You turn off all the products. OK, so when that happens, by the way, Ben, how many shirts have you personally sewn?

00:19:25.000 If you were to say I've sewn that, you know, so many shirts, how many have you personally sewn?

00:19:30.000 I could probably work it out. It would it would I would say I would guess between five hundred and a thousand.

00:19:38.000 It wouldn't be massive amounts, but at the time it felt like a lot.

00:19:41.000 Five hundred to a thousand. And so people still have them.

00:19:45.000 And now when we go to events prior to COVID, people would come in some of the original ones.

00:19:49.000 And because there was always slight imperfections in the print or something.

00:19:54.000 And I would sort of instantly know or remember it would come back to me as to that's one of the handmade products.

00:19:58.000 Wow. I bet. I mean, it's a form of art when you're designing those because it's it's limited edition.

00:20:04.000 It's it's not necessarily something that's it's a one off because it's being handmade.

00:20:09.000 OK, so that thirty thousand dollar event takes place in 30 minutes.

00:20:15.000 Products done. You turn everything off. What are you doing next?

00:20:18.000 Well, this is where it became what I would call like a real business, because this is where we had to sort of hire people.

00:20:25.000 We were starting to buy stock and take more and more risks.

00:20:28.000 We got our first sort of unit slash small warehouse.

00:20:32.000 I think it was about 300 square feet.

00:20:35.000 This is where it became a real business.

00:20:37.000 And this is where I think I sort of really had to learn, because up until that point, it was just entrepreneurial.

00:20:42.000 It was like there was there was no responsibility for lack of a better term.

00:20:47.000 It would just go where you want, do what you want.

00:20:49.000 And it's just grow, grow, grow and just go off and enjoy yourself.

00:20:52.000 Now, at this point, we had to hire people and responsibility was happening.

00:20:56.000 We were taking on leases. So that was a real sort of learning curve for me.

00:21:00.000 And like I said, because I dropped out of university and my job, it was literally a case of I'm all in on this.

00:21:07.000 So 24 seven, I was just all on all on Gymshark and essentially getting it to grow as quickly as possible.

00:21:13.000 And I think what we did after that, and this is this is something that at the time came very natural and it didn't feel like a risk.

00:21:20.000 But looking back, I think it was a bit of a risk that one event did well.

00:21:24.000 So then we were like, right, let's sign up to every event that we possibly can.

00:21:28.000 So we signed up to Body Power in Birmingham.

00:21:30.000 We signed up to an event called FIBO in Germany, the LA Fit Expo in Los Angeles, the Arnold in Columbus, Ohio, Melbourne.

00:21:39.000 And we literally just flew around the entire world going to all these events.

00:21:43.000 We spent every penny we had and just did event after event after event,

00:21:47.000 whilst the guys were working back home in that new warehouse that we got to ship out the orders.

00:21:52.000 How did that which one would out of all the events you went to?

00:21:54.000 I mean, you know, the Arnold Expo quarter million people show up.

00:21:58.000 Was there one where you said I was another one that was a big success?

00:22:02.000 To be honest, they were all really unique.

00:22:05.000 So I'll always remember every single one of them, to be honest.

00:22:08.000 So Columbus, Ohio was crazy because I didn't realize anywhere got that cold.

00:22:12.000 So English winters aren't that cold.

00:22:14.000 We went to Columbus, Ohio, and I think it was December.

00:22:17.000 It was freezing, but it was the thing that shocked me about that event was the scale.

00:22:22.000 It was I don't know if you've been. It is huge.

00:22:25.000 And the actual event is massive.

00:22:27.000 And they do so much right all the way from bodybuilding to there was sort of like people to talk to around sort of joining the military.

00:22:34.000 I think there was all these different sports, even having Arnold Schwarzenegger there was just an amazing thing to see.

00:22:41.000 Whereas the European Expos tend to be quite you have a bodybuilding expo and then you have maybe a slightly different expo for different things.

00:22:47.000 So that was amazing.

00:22:49.000 But the thing that really hit me, especially going to places like Germany and the States, was it's almost hit you even harder doing it in the international stage because you just assume that no one has heard of the brand.

00:23:01.000 And it was on that. That was the moment when I'm starting to realize that, wow, this social media thing, this website online direct to consumer e-commerce thing is it's a global thing now.

00:23:11.000 Whereas when you're at home, it just feels like a little bit of a thing that happens around where you are.

00:23:15.000 And a lot of people do drop shipping, a lot of people create sites, a lot of people sell shirts, a lot of people do not necessarily what you guys are doing at this scale, but a lot of people start off and they do well for themselves.

00:23:28.000 Very few get valued at one and a half billion dollars of a business where people around the world are talking and they have millions of loyal followers.

00:23:38.000 What would you say was the biggest differentiator between you guys and everybody else?

00:23:42.000 So I think there was a few, I think.

00:23:44.000 Now, as the business grew, I think we built an amazing culture.

00:23:47.000 So internally, we've got a brilliant culture and a great balance of people that are really trying to create, you know, the next big thing and the next special thing.

00:23:54.000 Especially those who are building a really robust business, because you'll know, right, when you get to scale, it's all well and good.

00:23:59.000 But if you're not built on solid foundations, it's sort of irrelevant.

00:24:03.000 And to be honest, I had a fair few learning curves myself.

00:24:06.000 So I mentioned the entrepreneurial phase.

00:24:09.000 During the entrepreneurial phase, which I think is the more quintessential view of what an entrepreneur is, it's like you have your vision and you move towards it.

00:24:17.000 And regardless of what anyone says around you, that's irrelevant, right?

00:24:22.000 You move forward to where you think it should be. And for me, it was about grabbing the business by the scruff of the neck to where I thought it should be no matter what.

00:24:29.000 Then all of a sudden, almost overnight, you build a team and you can't just grab the business around the scruff of the neck to where you want to go when you've got a team, because you'll start to alienate those individuals.

00:24:39.000 So I had a few sort of wake up moments, which was like, oh, God, now I need to shift my life.

00:24:44.000 I need to change for the business to become someone that's more of a, you know, a team player and a leader in that respect.

00:24:50.000 And to be fair, I learned a lot of that from Steve. And then the business grows and grows and grows.

00:24:54.000 And now the business is at a stage where, I mean, last calendar year, we did over half a billion dollars in revenue.

00:25:00.000 We've got offices in Colorado and UK and Mauritius and Hong Kong. All of a sudden now for me, it's all about, right, what's the long term vision?

00:25:07.000 I'm a lot more strategic. I need to think outside the box. I need to try and really think about what's next and be one step ahead all the time.

00:25:13.000 So I think me adapting and everyone in the company adapting, I think it's powerful.

00:25:18.000 I think we've got an incredible culture, which, again, is incredibly powerful.

00:25:22.000 I also think that we took risks where other people wouldn't.

00:25:27.000 So I go back to those events we'd saved over time up to having.

00:25:32.000 I think we had about a million pounds in the bank, which that was at twenty one, twenty two years old.

00:25:37.000 And we spent every single penny on it, on growth, every single penny on the community,

00:25:42.000 every single penny on meeting as many people as possible.

00:25:44.000 And and that's all the athletes and the staff and myself.

00:25:47.000 And I would always meet as many people as we can.

00:25:49.000 So I think the business model helped as well. I think the culture helped.

00:25:53.000 And ultimately, I think we have a really great product.

00:25:56.000 And I think that's we can invest even further into our product because we're built in a way that I think the future of brands will be built.

00:26:02.000 So you'll know that during yesteryear, some of the larger brands would be built in a way where they would build as much product as they can to put into as many stores as they can to please.

00:26:11.000 as many people as they can. And that was sort of the the route to success during the high street era.

00:26:17.000 Whereas now this entirely new landscape that we're all a part of, you can create a genuine purposeful product that's built for a specific community and you can reach them across the world.

00:26:27.000 And if we know anything about the younger generation, right, they want to buy a brand that really resonates with their core values.

00:26:33.000 And I think Gymshark does that. Ben, how hard were you?

00:26:37.000 Did you were you and Lewis or any of your friends in the partying scene or no?

00:26:41.000 No, not really. Listen, I think there's the odd thing that you'll go out here and there, but particularly when we were younger,

00:26:47.000 we were absolutely dead sure on this is where we wanted to spend our time and this is where we wanted to be.

00:26:51.000 What kind of what kind of schedule did you have? What kind of work schedule did you have?

00:26:55.000 So again, to be honest, Patrick, this is something I'm only just learning now. So it varies massively, but it would be it would be a typical sort of entrepreneurial thing.

00:27:03.000 Right. You would wake up and you would just work and you would work and work and work.

00:27:07.000 And then I would gym and I would go to bed. And then as the business starts to scale,

00:27:11.000 it's brilliant because you can literally outsource your weaknesses. So one of my weaknesses is like I'm not very organized.

00:27:18.000 So all of a sudden now I wake up and I have like a set of train tracks through the day which I can work through, which is sort of provided for me.

00:27:24.000 But during the startup phase, it genuinely is a case of being dead set on your vision, working incredibly hard, sometimes through the night if you need to.

00:27:33.000 And just moving forward no matter what. You said your parents, whether it was your dad or your parents, they were big on mindset.

00:27:40.000 What were some of the mindset they were telling you about? You constantly talk about mindset.

00:27:44.000 Yeah. So so my so my mom is incredibly hard working. So she works in the NHS here and she has done since I was born and obviously before that. 0.79

00:27:55.000 So I think from from my mom, I learned just work incredibly hard. So as a kid, she would work nights. 0.95

00:28:00.000 She would work all night. She'd come home, take me to school, sleep whilst we were at school and then pick us up after school. 0.91

00:28:07.000 My dad's incredibly hard working as well. And you're right. He would always talk about mindset.

00:28:12.000 We I love sport growing up. I loved football. I love soccer. And he would always say it's all about sort of mental strength.

00:28:19.000 It's all about your mind. You know, listen to the advice that people give you.

00:28:23.000 You can learn something from everyone that you meet. And he would always sort of put a little asterisk next to that and say, but remember, you choose which advice you apply to yourself.

00:28:31.000 It's almost like thinking of your mind is like a computer and you choose the sort of updates that you wish to patch into your mind.

00:28:38.000 And I think that's been really powerful because I've had a lot of brilliant advice.

00:28:42.000 I've also had a fair bit of bad advice, too. So you sort of choose what you take on and, you know, develop yourself into and into who you want to be.

00:28:50.000 You said your mom talked to you about concentration because you said up until 16 years old, you know, you didn't have good grades and you learn how to get good grades.

00:29:00.000 How did your mom work with you? It's very hard to be concentrating at that age, especially when you're saying you're not a organized person and a lot of entrepreneurs type A personalities.

00:29:12.000 I mean, you're an introvert yourself. You've talked about it openly. But how did your mom work with you on concentration?

00:29:18.000 I think she always had. I think she still does. Like I said, she doesn't understand the ins and outs of Gymshark and what I do and maybe what I did when I was younger.

00:29:28.000 But I think she she she knew that I could do like great things.

00:29:33.000 But I think her confidence in me sort of helped give me confidence. So when she sort of said to me, listen, you can do really well at school if you put your mind to it.

00:29:40.000 Then all of a sudden I'm like, well, do you know what? I'm going to give it a go then. And I think that confidence really helped.

00:29:46.000 Got it. Last but not least, your vision. You said the vision is to compete with a Nike or an Adidas or Under Armour.

00:29:55.000 Where are you at now with the vision of Gymshark?

00:29:58.000 Listen, I think maybe I'm less about scale, because if we want scale, I think we could get it in terms of we could sell Gymshark into many high street stores and we could double, triple, quadruple the business in a very, very quick timeframe.

00:30:15.000 For me, it's about building what I think the future of brands will be. And as I mentioned before, it's a community focused brand that has, you know, you know, a distinct value behind it.

00:30:26.000 And I think that's where I want to go. So it's less about scale, but it's about creating the best fitness brand in the world.

00:30:32.000 And I think that comes with being a direct to consumer brand, a brand that is agile and lean so we can invest into the community and in the product rather than in, you know, thousands of shops around the world.

00:30:43.040 So we're doing incredibly well. Listen, we're eight years old. We're, like I said, half a billion dollars in revenue.

00:30:50.140 We've been the UK's fastest growing business from a top line perspective, but we also had, we have won the award a couple of years ago for one of the UK's fastest growing businesses from a profit perspective as well.

00:30:59.620 So many businesses scale the top line, but often not the bottom line. So for us to do both, I think is really powerful.

00:31:06.300 And it means that we can invest in the long term of this brand and the long term of this business. And we're really focused on those long term decisions.

00:31:13.040 Yeah, it's pretty exciting what you've done, man. You know, kudos to you for building a story like the one you have.

00:31:19.260 Kai Loda is the one that recommended you to have you on Valuetainment. And Kai's from Norway. And he says, Pat, Ben is everywhere in Norway, everywhere in Europe, everywhere we go.

00:31:31.320 We hear about Gymshark. And I looked up your story. I said, that's a fantastic story. Let's have him on Valuetainment.

00:31:37.120 So with that being said, Ben, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.

00:31:40.440 Thank you for having me, Patrick. Thank you. I appreciate it.

00:31:42.880 You got it, buddy.

00:31:43.480 You know, what's crazy is somewhere in the world, some 17-year-old kid is going to be watching this video, being inspired by Ben Francis to start the next Gymshark that will find out about 10 years from now, if you watch it accordingly.

00:31:55.340 So if you are somebody that's watching this and you were inspired by Ben, make sure to share this with others that you may know who may be a teenager and say, listen, son, brother, nephew, niece, watch this video.

00:32:07.020 This kid could inspire you because what Ben has done, the world needs to know about his story.

00:32:12.040 Having said that, if you enjoyed this interview with Ben, I'm curious to know what you took away from it.

00:32:15.620 Comment below.

00:32:16.240 I think you would also enjoy the interview I did with Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon, how he went from zero to building nearly a $15 billion company with a net worth of $4 billion plus.

00:32:27.420 Take care, everybody.

00:32:28.020 Take care, everybody.

Valuetainment - April 02, 2021

28 Year Old Billionaire Reveals How He Built Gymshark

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