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if we go right back to the start i had a vision i had an idea and i was so passionate about it i just want jim
00:00:06
sharp to be a truly iconic great brand a leader in culture and helps inspire
00:00:11
people around the world that was a period of great self-reflection for me what am i bad at what am i good at and i decided to lean
00:00:17
into my strengths in the early days i'd have gone i'm introverted shy you know and i'm not good at people management
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but i didn't want to identify with those things you should be able to look at those things and try and solve them everything came crashing down around me
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because because there was nowhere to hide like that definitely hit me and it definitely hurt me and i really felt
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like i was carrying that burden honestly just keep trying and keep trying and don't be afraid to fail i
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think that's so so so important i've never met anyone who was genuinely successful that wasn't
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hard working [Music]
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ben francis the guest that you requested again and again and again he is the founder and
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now the ceo of gymshark the global gym brand worth billions and billions and
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billions that started right here in the uk founded by ben who was in his early 20s
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and who is still in his 20s now as he's leading the global brand all around the world with 900 employees
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this is a conversation i have honestly looked forward to for a long long time because there is nobody else in the uk like ben that has built such an iconic
00:01:27
company that you see everywhere that has maintained its integrity while they're still in their 20s
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ben's net worth is probably pretty close to or over a billion
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dollars and remarkably he's one of the most humble individuals one of the most introspective self-aware
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people i have ever met a really good guy and if you're someone that someday might
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want to follow in his footsteps or you want to build a business or just pursue the thing that matters to you the most
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then this is the conversation for you i can't wait for you to hear this so without further ado i'm stephen
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bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are
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then please keep this to yourself [Music]
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ben when i look back on my life i only in hindsight have managed to start piecing
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together some pieces that have enlightened me to why i became the person i went on to
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become and why i had the interests and skills and all those things and also like the insecurities um when i look at
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your early years back in bromsgrove at school i started to like connect a few
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dots but i wanted to know in your own sort of self-assessment whether you you can now see any patterns from your
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early years that you would consider an anomaly that caused you to become the anomaly you are today
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um so so i i think i had two
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sort of really lucky moments so the first one was at about 14 years old i
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think it's about 14. you know when you do work experience yeah so everyone just sort of work experience at school um and the work experience that i did at
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that age was basically with my granddad and what my granddad would do is he would travel around the midlands um and
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he would lie in furnaces so furnaces big ovens basically where you would stick airplane parts in it would heat them up
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loosely speaking and then what he would do was go around and fill them with either ceramic fiber or brick so i basically did work
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experience with him did a bit of labouring and i would be sort of on the sort of uh cement mix of the drum and i would
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basically pass him cement or um he would teach me to like push in uh ceramic fiber or labrix or whatever
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now it wasn't actually the work that was important as such other than the fact that it did teach me hard work but it
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was more the fact that they were they were long days and through those days we would have conversations that like to be
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honest in hindsight probably not too many younger kids would have been exposed to um because it was it was all
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about like the risk that he took in the business and the intricacies and so on he would just talk to me about that and i'd ask him questions and stuff and
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that there was one particular job that he did that he told me about and it was it was building a furnace to be shipped
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off to germany and he'd basically risked pretty much everything he had on this one particular
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job and he told me about all the worries the concerns the you know the worries that he had in terms of you know keeping you
00:04:25
know the house for my nan my mom her sister um and at the time it didn't really i don't
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to me it was just a story that my granddad was telling me but then as i grew up and then i started taking business risks of my own i do
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remember thinking oh yeah but my risks are nothing compared to his so i think that certainly helped and like i said
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just learning that hard work i think watching my mom's worked in the nhs my entire life she was incredibly incredibly hard working i also got
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fortunate at school because i did so i did my gcses and i wasn't i didn't do particularly
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well i was sort of like a d is student sort of like pretty average i ended up getting into sixth form i was
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super lucky and one of the classes that i took then was a b tech and i t and that i don't know if you remember the b
00:05:08
text you had a levels or b text i'm not sure if it's still like that in the day and loosely speaking then a levels were
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you'd study you do an exam and b techs were course work or practical work to do it or tech in a practical way from
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for a btec for me was amazing and that was a huge moment because through that btec i learned how to use photoshop
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dreamweaver illustrator all of the like the nuts and bolts that actually i
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ended up using to build gymshark so the combination of learning those bits of software alongside the fact that
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watching my grandparents and my parents work incredibly hard the risks that my granddad took to build his business all
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of those things i think certainly helped me when it came to starting up the businesses that i started what does that say to you about the type of learner you
00:05:52
are though that it was the practically practical yeah yeah and that's been evident even today right because i
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remember you saying in a conversation you had that um one of the real privileges of your job is you get to go and learn from the
00:06:03
experts in your inside of your business so jim sharp was started in 2012
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and for the first few years it was sort of like i mean it was me and a bunch of mates basically and my brother came on
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and we sort of started to build the business and everything revolved in many ways around around myself
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and then as the business started to grow it became clear to me there was a genuine
00:06:28
opportunity right and listen we were doing well we could do decent revenues and so on but there's a difference
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between doing well and doing i don't know a few thousand pounds in revenue to oh wow this this could go into the hundreds of
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thousands or the millions and as the business grew i then started to realize that i needed to surround myself with great people um
00:06:48
so that that really helped and i think i got lucky at the start as well because the people that i then surrounded myself with helped the business grow so i was
00:06:54
sort of positively reinforced as well from an early age doing that where did those people where do those people come
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from i've always wondered this because you yeah last time we spoke and in subsequent interviews you've always
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cited those people like steven who was the ceo of jim shark and others as being really really
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instrumental and they almost felt like they were like mentors yes they were yeah so
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how did you join them so i'll tell you what happened right so and this is this is interesting as well
00:07:23
so maybe i don't think this is probably spoken about enough as an entrepreneur particularly of a growing business you'll know this as
00:07:29
well as me not only do you have to wear loads of different hats on on a daily basis but people don't talk enough about the
00:07:35
fact that during the growth of the business you have to completely change who you are as a person
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not only because you're developing and you're trying to improve but because the business is a separate entity from
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yourself and the business requires different things of its founder or chief exec depending on the size of the
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business so in the early days and i don't know how to put this in the
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nicest way possible but i think i was a bit arrogant right it was a bit like this is my baby i know where i want to
00:08:03
take it and i'm going to drag it there and i don't i don't really care what you say because this is my vision
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and that worked to a point right i had i had a vision i had an idea and i was so and i still am so passionate about it
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and then all of a sudden i don't know how this happened i think it was just it naturally happened through just asking questions i've
00:08:23
always been quite inquisitive then sort of you start surrounding yourself with you know with great people and um i
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would i would go to the gym right and i would find like a guy called paul who's like the business guy and i go and ask
00:08:34
him questions and stuff and all of a sudden when you surround yourself with those people you realize this whole thing of i don't care what you say i'm
00:08:40
going to do what i want anyway that doesn't work or it works for a period and then they disappear so then i
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realized that i then can't be arrogant single-minded moving where i want to go
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i need to retain a bit of that right but what i need to do is one learn to work
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with people and more importantly learn to work with great people so that happened and i met paul at the gym
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um and that was just for asking questions paul introduced me to steve because steve had previously worked at reebok um and that sort of fitness
00:09:08
sports where sort of thing um made sense i ended up meeting a guy called niren
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who worked in uh like a local company and funnily enough actually on that oh um
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i hadn't so i'd met anyone when i was a kid i don't know i was like 13 14 years old or something and then we
00:09:25
just sort of never kept in touch we went to uni and whatever and there was a point where i was really
00:09:30
struggling with something i can't remember what it was it was something to do with like selling things online and i knew that he worked in another
00:09:36
e-commerce company so i sort of messaged him i think was on facebook at the time high near and long time no speech you might have picked your brain on a new on
00:09:42
a few things he ended up coming in advising us greatly and then he ended up joining the business so i think
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looking back i think one i think i managed to learn the ability to really sell the vision of jim
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shark but secondly i think the single thing was just asking questions like i would always just ask
00:10:01
questions of anyone whether they're in the gym and i know there's people right there in the gym that i've asked questions too that probably rolled their
00:10:06
eyes and thought oh god here he is again but i just want to get on with my workout but i was i was that person just
00:10:12
asking questions i think that's really unappreciated about you it's because because when i was looking through as i
00:10:18
was saying like when i was doing the research and you're trying to find these threads throughout your story this one thread kept coming up in my mind which
00:10:24
was like ben is really like an insatiable learner he's always trying to learn even in that you did the
00:10:30
conversation with uh jake humphries on a high performance and at the end of it when he asks you know
00:10:36
you know about the worst things about your role you basically flip it and say i'm like the luckiest person on earth because i get to learn from the best
00:10:42
people in the world a lot of people like if we think about the impact that being like a really keen learner has on
00:10:49
someone over 10 years it's just like an unfair advantage if you and then i i reflect on the
00:10:55
world of warcraft thing as well and i'm like connecting these dots i'm like a lot of people don't get obsessive about
00:11:01
world of warcraft where you're building and you're learning and you're competing tell me about this world of warcraft
00:11:06
thing because i only saw a couple of lines how old i was then i was at school i just listened i just loved it i
00:11:11
thought it was great i loved so the three games i loved i loved world of warcraft i loved call of duty modern warfare and um gears of war and those
00:11:18
are like the games world of warcraft was the one that i think i played for the longest period and the thing i loved
00:11:23
about it was it was open world for one it had like its own economy in it so you could like
00:11:28
learn a trade and like you know do things sell things on the auction house but you were working with people from all you were playing with people from
00:11:34
all over the world you had to learn sort of teamwork the other thing that was cool about it was there wasn't really one so you had like
00:11:41
different like classes of character right so one was like a like a warlock and one was like a warrior one was like
00:11:47
strong i had loads of health and could protect one would inflict loads of damage on the enemy the thing there was with teams was there
00:11:55
wasn't one person or one individual that could do everything there was it was the group that could do everything but you
00:12:00
needed like all these different like facets it's like the avengers right the avengers assemble into this great group
00:12:06
individually they're not as strong and again all these lessons i think definitely helped because even when we talk about today jim sharp sort of
00:12:13
leadership team that's the exact analogy we use avengers assemble like i don't i don't want a you know a chief of product
00:12:21
who is the most wildly intelligent financier or whatever or commercial person but knows brand
00:12:27
like it's useful that they have an understanding and respect of those things but we want a chief of product who's
00:12:33
really good at cheap of product right and then we want a chief of brand who's really good at brand and a chief of
00:12:39
finance who's incredibly good at finance and then all those people come together to create a team do you notice that like
00:12:45
at the start of the company like you're talking about the requirement of specialists there at the start of the
00:12:50
company was that very different at the start no to the start if we go right back to the
00:12:56
start it is literally a case of we need a group of ambitious individuals that
00:13:02
truly believe in the vision and will essentially do what it takes to achieve that and
00:13:08
there are so many corners that are cut along the way because you just have to do what you
00:13:13
can to sort of get by and i think the other thing as well as in the early days more often than not especially if you're sort of they call
00:13:20
it bootstrapping isn't it when you're not sort of borrowing money as such you you need to find a way around it
00:13:26
like if you have 50 quid to do advertising you work out how to advertise with 50 quid there's no
00:13:32
like oh never mind let's go home you just you have to have great problem solvers in the business at that stage
00:13:37
um and to be honest the one of the things that as we move through the sort of nine year
00:13:43
history of jim shark one of the things that i'm what i'm proud of myself for doing is being able
00:13:48
to adapt from that point of view but some of the most difficult times have been that inevitably there are some people who
00:13:56
can't maybe make that switch from what was to the future so that's an incredibly
00:14:02
difficult thing to manage as well and that's the sort of thing that like you know what you don't go to business school or whatever and get and get
00:14:08
taught how to understand where the level of an individual is or how to have a certain conversation or
00:14:15
how to be self-aware enough to know what you sh i shouldn't shouldn't be doing yeah or where my level is so
00:14:21
yeah there's a hell of a lot of challenges along the way i can agree more i always say i've said this on this podcast before but i ended up hiring
00:14:26
like just really ambitious people that would like sleep on the floor with me that had no experience and then
00:14:32
obviously as the business scales and as you said there like the the challenges of the business become different and you
00:14:37
really are looking for experienced specialists especially to lead the key departments and uh
00:14:42
i remember that challenge in like year three of now looking at the people that have been so loyal to me and thinking i
00:14:47
don't know where you fit yeah anymore because we need you know and it's heartbreaking but that's where
00:14:54
you need self-awareness in both camps where you can sort of have the conversation that says
00:15:00
like our relationship is our relationship and i love you to bits however i need to take a step back and i need to build this business in a way
00:15:06
that's best for everyone that is going to help grow it so those are the sorts of things that i think you can never
00:15:11
truly be prepared for and it's always hard um and yeah it was difficult i started
00:15:18
social team with a co-founder you did too as well from what i understand lewis yeah um there's very little written
00:15:23
about why why he's no longer with you i'm guessing i'm guessing from what i've read that there was just a
00:15:29
difference in opinion about the future and you decided to go your separate ways yeah and i think to be fair i think
00:15:36
lewis was lewis was great right in the early days we would we were literally inseparable and i think there came a
00:15:41
point where you're right i had my vision and i think he had his vision and i just want to be
00:15:46
clear he's like i don't think one is better than the other it was just a difference of opinion and to be fair to
00:15:51
him he had so many other interests in terms of investment and property and all these different things so lewis
00:15:57
essentially left in [Music] i'm gonna say 2014. i could be wrong
00:16:04
maybe 2015. the business was found in 2012 i think he left the business in 2015 um and then he basically retained
00:16:11
20 of his shareholding and then in the deal that was last year he then sold out the rest of that and now he's uh
00:16:17
investing and doing other things and were you friends before we yeah we were yeah well so we met in that it class that i spoke about so we
00:16:24
met in it when we were 16 17 whatever the first year of sort of post school is college sussex form we
00:16:31
met then and then we just went to the gym together and then there was a group of like six seven eight of us that would
00:16:37
all go to the gym sort of every day together and had you decided who did what so were you the ceo and are you
00:16:42
both ceos was it just no that so in the early days that never really happened it was just a bit like
00:16:49
it was a bit like right this is a list of things that we need to do let's just tackle them as we go there was no
00:16:54
organization in those days and i think as the business then got more organized
00:16:59
that's when i think that's when our vision started to maybe move in separate directions could that have been
00:17:05
why then because there wasn't clear like structure at the start that could well have been to be fair yeah because that's
00:17:11
what you need right you need clear roles and responsibilities um and listen regardless if you don't have
00:17:16
that it just it just muddies the water doesn't it what do you think of of having the importance of having a
00:17:21
co-founder in the role it plays in those early stages in the early stages i think
00:17:27
listen i think it's important i don't know the stats on how many businesses do founded by individuals and not i know i
00:17:33
know when lewis left in 2014 2015 the the six months after that was
00:17:39
difficult not too bad it's not in terms of the fact that he wasn't doing x y and z
00:17:44
it was just more the fact that like it's just different isn't it and it's this whole new world and it's a bit like like i then naturally well i i then naturally
00:17:52
sort of i didn't lean into this as such until later on sort of 2018-ish
00:17:57
i then very much became the face of the business in many ways and then it was like if people wanted to talk talk about
00:18:03
the business or to the business then they were coming to myself so um yeah i definitely noticed that and um
00:18:09
listen and then i chose to obviously start pushing that on youtube and stuff and then that happened more and more going forward
00:18:15
so talk to me about that so first time we met i it was actually on a different series i was running at the time called like everyday entrepreneurs or something
00:18:21
and when i met you at jim shark's office i did notice that you were very nervous very different from home that was about
00:18:26
2015 wasn't it that was in the early days yeah so hopefully you can see the change that's happened in me from then
00:18:32
yeah 20 times differently and that so that was the period that was a period of great self-reflection for me and that was when i was literally going right
00:18:39
what am i bad at what am i good at and what's my choice so actually around that point i'd split the
00:18:44
two out good bad and i decided to lean into my strengths i did that for
00:18:50
about three or four years and then i was like right now i'm really comfortable with my strengths i know what i'm good at now i'm going to lean into my
00:18:56
weaknesses and i'm going to become good at public speaking i don't know people management all these other things so the
00:19:01
yeah when we met i was definitely a lot more nervous um i i it's so fun because i i literally
00:19:08
remember meeting you and i obviously had this this idea of meeting you this young guy has made this killer business whatever whatever whatever i was my
00:19:14
anticipation was that you were going to be like loud and like really whatever and you were so quiet and i could tell you when
00:19:20
you were nervous about the conversation um and i would never have guessed that you're totally different now yeah and
00:19:26
which i think is incredible because it's just like two for me it's like very very different people and it's a testament to your growth yeah but i was i was really
00:19:33
really surprised and i want to share that because um it i think there is a lot of people
00:19:40
listening young entrepreneurs or people that want to that think you know how you are now is how you will be and there's
00:19:45
no there's no development or no and this is the thing where i think what what you need to do again even more
00:19:52
i think i think everyone should do this whatever field of work they're in or whatever but particularly as an entrepreneur because i feel like as an
00:19:57
entrepreneur everything's just amplified right your your wins are bigger your losses are larger again um your
00:20:04
weaknesses are you know are exposed because you are exposed to the business and the world in many respects
00:20:10
but what you need to do is you need to write down like your character traits the best example would be and this is one that i'm currently working on right
00:20:16
is people would be like i thought i'm messy or i'm always like oh i'm always late i'm messy what am i like and it's a the conversation for me
00:20:23
is a bit like okay you're messing you're always late but those things should be up for grabs right you should be able to look at those things and go don't roll
00:20:29
your eyes and say that's just me because it's not or it doesn't have to be because if i'd have done that in the early days i'd have gone i'm introverted
00:20:37
shy not good in front of cameras terrible at public speaking and i'm not good at people management but i didn't want to identify with those
00:20:44
things i didn't want to say ben is that because i didn't want to be that and i think everyone if you can somehow i i
00:20:50
don't i think i was lucky because i was surrounded by great people right so
00:20:55
it's definitely easier said than done but if you can try and not identify with those things those parts of yourself that aren't maybe ideal
00:21:03
and you can again look at them in a logical manner as you would any other problem in life and try and solve them
00:21:09
so i'm not good at people management fine who's the best person i know that is i'm going to go and chat to them i'm
00:21:14
going to pick their brains or even better i'm just gonna watch them because some people learn from just
00:21:19
watching some people learn just by watching and so steve for example who's the who was the ceo at jim sharp
00:21:24
previously we didn't have that many steve teach me how to people manage
00:21:30
steve teach me how to public speak like we didn't really do that but by him doing it i just watched him and i
00:21:36
understood the traits or the things that he would do that helped him be great at that and then i just basically learned them and
00:21:42
tried them and tried them and tried them and eventually got reasonably good at doing those things one of the things linked to that that i
00:21:48
always say is um there's no self-development without self-awareness and like i i still to this day i've
00:21:53
spoken to a lot of people on this podcast i have no idea how you make someone genuinely self-aware and when i
00:21:59
was and when you're talking there about sitting down and writing a list of my goods and bads how do we know that our own like
00:22:05
delusion and our ego isn't writing that list on our behalf i mean you could ask someone else to do it the the first
00:22:11
really the time it hit home for me and it was like a ton of bricks on the top of my head was
00:22:17
i did a 360 feedback so anyone that doesn't know what a 360 feedback is you
00:22:23
this i could i'm sure you can find it online if you google it but basically you ask the people around you to
00:22:28
describe you and it like prompts you as it goes so ben is i don't know x y and z those people fill it in anonymously then
00:22:35
it comes back to you and you have this like thick bot of paper that basically fully describes yourself
00:22:40
and i actually did this in it was around when we met so around 2015 and i had it and i printed it off and i read it and i
00:22:46
was so upset and annoyed and i remember thinking this is not me
00:22:52
and i took it home that night and i it was just um erratic hot-headed arrogant
00:22:59
um poor manager all these things from your employees yeah and it's one of them like the so the
00:23:04
first thing and completely natural is who said that i'm gonna find him right that's the first thing now fortunately
00:23:10
it's anonymous you can't do that and that would be terrible anyway but then i read it i took it home um left it on the side and i think i
00:23:16
don't know what i've done i've gone to the gym or whatever else now my other half who's now my wife ended up reading
00:23:22
it and i'd come home and i'd seen her literally just finishing it on like the last couple of pages and i was so angry
00:23:28
right i literally grabbed it off and i said mine don't read it like it's not even me anyway is it like left her alone
00:23:33
and we carried on with that day and then like later on she was i said um i said the same i said
00:23:39
that was a load of rubbish wasn't it that's nothing like me and then she said she said that's the most
00:23:46
you thing i have ever read and then it was like that was it it was like i i didn't
00:23:52
even say anything i just i remember like everything came crashing down around me because because there was nowhere to hide like she knows me more than anyone
00:24:00
and like i can kick and i can scream and i can say no it's not true but in my heart of hearts i knew it was true and
00:24:06
that was the moment i realized i have to change i have to improve i have to develop and if you're talking about
00:24:11
becoming self-aware i think that was my moment so incredibly true how our partners know
00:24:17
us yeah and they they can be the most hurtful but as you said completely accurately
00:24:23
said they're like my girlfriend said something to me i might on the surface be like oh yeah but then i go back to my
00:24:28
room and i'm like oh my god like once your egos had like a couple of seconds to chill so
00:24:33
you get this list of feedback i remember doing the 360 thing with my team as well um and i remember the same feeling like
00:24:40
who the [ __ ] said that like and trying to work it out like looking over looking at everybody like i know it was you yeah
00:24:46
it's my assistant um so you get that list of things back and you can see areas where you need to improve and you agree you say okay right i'm going to
00:24:52
start listening what happens like how do you go about improving on those things because a lot of them are so like deeply ingrained in you from
00:24:58
decades of your childhood or whatever and especially when you're a winner when you've been successful in
00:25:04
one thing it validates you it almost appears to be like validation of everything so what do you do then what
00:25:10
do you do next yeah you're right so that's the dangerous thing and i think that's why i was so fortunate because
00:25:15
jim shark for the most part not entirely had been very successful until that point so it was difficult for me to go
00:25:23
well wait a minute i can't be that bad right but yeah i think the the thing with robin where she literally put it on
00:25:28
me that that was the moment um so what i did then and i was actually watching it was a garyvee video that i was watching
00:25:34
actually so what i did was i had the weaknesses which were both self-defined but defined by
00:25:39
other people i also have my strengths because by the way that com your strengths come back with a 316. no one reads them you only
00:25:45
look at the weaknesses right but there is a list of strengths in there somewhere um and i realized that my strengths
00:25:51
particularly at the time were around creativity around product around brand around marketing around
00:25:56
understanding the industry the customer and so on so i was you know i was mulling the idea
00:26:02
do i work on my weaknesses do i focus on my strengths and to be honest i don't really know the answer to what the best way of doing
00:26:08
this is but i decided through i think it was a gary video to focus on my strengths and i said right you know what
00:26:14
i'm going to do i'm 20 whatever it is 3 24. i'm purely going to focus on my strengths
00:26:20
now and that's when i went into a brand role a product role a marketing role everything that was front end and
00:26:27
creative at gymshark i completely lent into that was when steve came into the business steve became the ceo so i was
00:26:33
sort of like the responsibility of maybe some of the week the areas i was weaker at finance ops management that was then
00:26:39
like moved away from me and i purely completely innocently focused on that that was your decision yeah it's a
00:26:44
pretty amazing decision it was heartbreaking as well because again it's one thing moving yourself out
00:26:52
of a role it's another thing moving someone then into that role who does it really good um and like i'm looking at
00:26:57
them i'm like you're way better than me and i just have to like know that and make honestly i think i use that as
00:27:03
motivation to one day be as good as that that was the that was the inspiration i think maybe because
00:27:08
i was young i knew i had time and i think that helped um but it was heartbreaking because the other thing as
00:27:14
well is that doesn't mean to say exclusively everything steve did for example i thought was right it just
00:27:20
there was things that he did well i thought maybe i wouldn't do that or i would think differently and sometimes he would
00:27:26
be right and sometimes he would be wrong but what i can't do and this is the weird balance right because i'm founder
00:27:32
and i am like a majority shareholder of the business so ultimately i have control of the business
00:27:38
there's no point in me putting him a ceo and then just overall in what he says he's in the ceo because he's the best person for the job and i have to trust
00:27:44
his judgment and opinion and and it's that weird balance of that and i never and i never have to this day
00:27:50
played what we'd call like the shareholder card i've never come in and gone this is the way it's going to be just
00:27:55
because so yeah then i was fortunate enough to watch steve learn from steve and and
00:28:00
that really helped him and this was the beginning i think of the period where i was sort of becoming
00:28:06
a ceo because i i started off as the chief of brand right so the business was smaller at
00:28:12
this stage i can't remember the the exact size or say 20 30 million in revenue maybe
00:28:17
and i managed the creative the imagery the videography the athletes and sponsorships and all these
00:28:24
different things the events and that was cool because i just i got a real detailed understanding of
00:28:29
all those things like really detailed i was in the nuts and bolts of everything um funnily enough it then happened again
00:28:35
a guy called noel came in who was way better than me and he came in as the chief of brand so
00:28:40
again i'm sort of left a little bit high and dry i was ceo now i'm not chief of brand now i'm not um you brought him in
00:28:46
as well yeah so he actually came in and reported into me but it was clear within uh i don't know a year or so that he was
00:28:52
better so i vacate the seat he comes in and he's done a great job since then i think after that i did i think it
00:28:59
was product for a little bit which was great fun oh sorry i did marketing which was great for the marketing is all that's what it says in
00:29:05
the tin right all the marketing all the ads you see online everything that comes with that and that was great fun and i learned a lot there i traveled the world
00:29:12
i spent time with facebook google's all the partners like that and i learned a hell of a lot there did you feel a bit
00:29:17
lost at this point um because having gone from ceo to brand to marketing typically when an employee
00:29:24
in my company does that i i tend to get the impression that they kind of know that me being moved around a little bit like a chess piece and it's like they
00:29:30
don't feel like they ever fully own something or that yeah so i've had that but i've had i had that for five or six
00:29:36
years because then then it was it was brand into marketing into product there was tech for a little bit um
00:29:42
i've moved around a lot so this this ceo role is it's the first genuine home i've
00:29:49
found since sort of running the business back in 2013 2014 and and why why why
00:29:55
did you so you've recently announced that you're now the ceo i think it's been roughly about four months yeah since you uh
00:30:00
you kicked steve out and evaded evaded the office and slammed the
00:30:05
shareholder card on his desk and told him to do one i'm joking um but since you've sort of regained your
00:30:11
position and made the decision with steve um that you wanted to do the role again
00:30:16
yeah what was the thinking behind that because a lot of founders when they own the business it's doing really well it's
00:30:22
flying they know that they're in terms of the financial ins incentives they're going to do just fine and they can have
00:30:27
a really easy life and i've seen it happen they just step back yeah they just tiptoe out the door and let other
00:30:32
people do the hard graft why did you want to step back into the hardest role of all so first and foremost
00:30:38
i think like i said i've done all these roles and i've built up to a point where i sort of thought i won't be able to do it
00:30:43
and i think the fact that so steve came to me two years prior to coming to the job and he said if you almost like i
00:30:49
think you can do this so that was a huge vote of confidence because we'd had this wasn't like an overnight thing right this was a two-year build up from the
00:30:55
first conversation steve had to me that's and his conversation was i think i've taken the business to a point
00:31:01
where i can which is which was great uh that he would be so honest and open about that and then we had a two-year
00:31:07
period of okay like are we gonna bring someone in from the outside or ben are you gonna be able to
00:31:13
do this role and you know again similar to what i did in 2015 is these are the things that i now need to do to be good
00:31:18
enough to do in that role um so there was a long almost warm-up handover whatever you want to call it to that
00:31:24
now the other thing i would say is the business today is a very different place to where it was like i don't know what
00:31:31
the numbers are but prior to steve we were maybe 30 30 employees now we're 900. we were one office in the midlands
00:31:39
now we're several offices around the world so it's a very very different place but
00:31:44
doing the chief of brand when the business was this big and then product at this big they're markets in it this big and tech and so on
00:31:50
having the intricate understanding of those areas not every area of the business but many of the areas has
00:31:56
really helped as well one of the things you said is that your link to that is i'm scared of being someone that can only just start the business and not run
00:32:02
it yeah what do you mean by that i so i i'm this i'm so proud of the fact
00:32:08
that i've found a gymshark i am it's it's it's so great
00:32:14
but i don't want i don't want it to be a bit like ben founder of the business and that's all he did like i want to do way more than
00:32:21
that and for me with my personality and the way i'm built it's i think it's a
00:32:26
it's a bit it's a far bigger challenge for me to run jim shark at the scale it is now as a chief exec than it is to
00:32:33
start the business right like there are so many business that businesses that are started that die
00:32:38
after year one after year two after year three after year four and five for me i'm proud of the fact that i founded the
00:32:44
business i'm proud of the fact that i've worked in the chiefs roles but to be
00:32:49
in the front seat in the ceo role a business like jim sharp moving forward is one is the most exciting
00:32:55
thing in the world for me it's the biggest challenge that i could possibly like go for
00:33:01
and like for me that's exciting like i want to aim high both for the business but also
00:33:06
personally for myself as well and like you said at the start i love learning that doesn't mean i sit there reading
00:33:11
books 24 7 but i love learning and being amongst it and there's no better role for that but the
00:33:17
apparent downside to that role is that you then the box stops with you yeah which means when there's problems when
00:33:22
there's crises they stop with you and you could sail off into the distance you'd get a really big boat with your
00:33:28
shareholding uh in the company and you could just relax and just maybe you know chill out maybe even invest in
00:33:33
some stuff and you know you and robin can have a great life yeah why not because it's like you're choosing
00:33:40
stress and long hours and busyness over um
00:33:45
i think robin probably asked me the same question regularly if i'm honest um i genuinely love it i love the people
00:33:51
that i work with and you're right there i i do not have to do this job there are there is no two ways about it
00:33:57
i do it purely because i absolutely adore it and i want to challenge myself and i want to be the best version of myself possible
00:34:03
when i have genuine ambitions to be a great chief exec of this business one
00:34:09
day i don't think i'm anywhere near there now and it's a bit like you know someone has to be a great ceo in five 10 20 years
00:34:16
time so why not me and i'm always ambitious on behalf of the business more than i am myself right so
00:34:22
i'll always put the business first because it is my baby and i've been there from so in the close in the early days going
00:34:29
to the first events like looking at having no money in the bank because of the risk that we've taken so the business for me always comes first and
00:34:34
the people within the business always come first but personally i'm also ambitious for myself as well
00:34:40
who is um hurricane ben hurricane ben that would have been the the ben that would have been described
00:34:47
prior to my 360 feedback so that i'll give an example right so there would be a
00:34:52
particular product that i didn't like and my opinion would be just direct brutal and probably not take into
00:34:59
account other people's feelings or thoughts and that's not to say that everything that you should do in
00:35:04
business should always be you know stepping around people's feelings because i definitely don't think that's the way but equally like
00:35:10
don't be a dick and there was definitely times in the early days when i was a bit of a dick and you and so what happens now in terms
00:35:17
of how have you learned not to be a dick uh learn to give feedback examples with feedback empathy
00:35:24
understanding why people do certain things like understanding the fact that like you know no one is perfect certainly not
00:35:30
me nor anyone and pretty much never have i seen someone
00:35:38
go out of their way to like damage the brand like people are doing things for good intentions no one's designed a product in a particular way because
00:35:44
they you know they want to see the brand negative negatively affected no one's posted on social or done something in
00:35:50
particular because they want to see the brand negatively effective it's essentially a difference of opinion so i think
00:35:55
like understanding that and being aware of it whilst i'm giving feedback i think it's important what i'm in your because
00:36:01
i have this a lot as well what are the some of the character traits you see in people that work with you in in your organization that you
00:36:07
you don't like so don't lie you don't like so if you because because if if i asked my team if i said to them what are
00:36:13
some of the things that steve doesn't like from in terms of character perspective okay they would they would know i feel like
00:36:19
they would know because and so to be fair i don't get too much of this but i just don't want people to
00:36:24
agree with me because like i want to be challenged all the time like for me we want the best outcome i don't care if
00:36:31
it's my opinion or your opinion i want the best outcome and if my idea is crap tell me it's cool it's fine i will not
00:36:37
take it personally so i don't want people i don't want like you know the whole thing of a yes man yes person whatever you want to call it i think
00:36:46
it's not to say that i don't like it but i know that individuals that really struggle with change don't tend to do well at companies like jim shark if you
00:36:53
just want a nine to five that is going to be consistent and stay the same then it's definitely not the right place for you
00:36:58
because it's so rapidly changing not only because of the business itself but because of the world that we're in like
00:37:04
10 years ago facebook was only small snapchat didn't really exist instagram barely existed
00:37:10
um shopify was very small like the ecosystem in the world that we play in was completely different so change as
00:37:17
well i think is important yeah i can completely agree and uh i've i've heard a few of your friends and
00:37:23
people within your team describe you as being a bit of a perfectionist as well in terms of having a high sort of
00:37:28
attention of detail is that do you consider yourself to have to be a perfectionist
00:37:35
i don't know i don't think so i definitely don't have a massive attention to detail i've got
00:37:40
the attention span of a nat really um i try if if it's something that's really
00:37:46
i don't know something that just like aligns with me then i'll i can obsess over it for months on end um
00:37:52
if it's something i don't find particularly interesting i have to use every ounce of strength of every cell in my body to remain focused on it like i
00:37:59
find that really difficult i don't know if i'm a perfectionist i'm probably not the best person to comment on that i wouldn't say so i don't i
00:38:05
don't look like a perfectionist i'm a bit scruffy and i you know i sort of that's interesting meander
00:38:10
for those that can't see ben now he's wearing his um it's all jim shark right other than the shoes right yeah exactly
00:38:16
that um and you wear this outfit a lot yeah you pretty much look pretty the same every day yeah why
00:38:22
because speed efficiency just simple no messing around i don't have to sit and think about i don't know what am i going
00:38:28
to wear today or i don't know anything like that it literally just goes if it's simple comfortable and i like it one of
00:38:34
the things you've started recently as well as your vlog online um and if we go back to when i that day that i first met you and i i could tell
00:38:41
that you you know you were nervous in that context and the guy you are today two questions for you yeah um
00:38:46
did you did you do some sort of um did you have professional support in developing your ability to speak so
00:38:53
fluently and articulate your ideas so well um and then we'll move on to chatting about why you're doing the vlog so i so
00:38:59
there's two things so public speaking one in front of a camera two in front of an audience or whatever you want to call
00:39:05
it to uh to a group i found those as two very different things
00:39:11
and it's weird right because if i so steve would be great in front of an audience or struggle in front of a camera
00:39:17
i was fortunate my other half robin was a youtuber so she's brilliant in front of a camera and she taught me how to
00:39:22
work in front of a camera basically not through uh i don't know i don't know it was just
00:39:27
through brute just keep going keep going stick it for a camera in front of me the first vlog she recorded and edited the
00:39:32
whole thing um so she taught me how to sort of work in front of a camera i did have public speaking lessons
00:39:40
and that was massively life-changing for me and the um going back to that list of of things by the way when i said about
00:39:47
these are the things i'm good at these are things i'm bad at one of those things was public speaking um and this is why i'm such a massive
00:39:53
advocate of making a list right because public speaking was one of the many things on my list which was a weakness but i didn't then immediately go and
00:39:59
draw out a plan i just had that list and i said i know i think i had it as my wallpaper on my phone public speaking is
00:40:05
something i'm bad at and then i was at an event or something i remember what it was i think there was an event at gymshark
00:40:11
and i'm chatting away to people chatting away chatting away and said hello i'm ben how are you have a great day you know what do you do
00:40:17
and someone said i'm a public speaking coach and then all of a sudden i've gone boom light bulb i'm terrible at public
00:40:23
speaking you're a public speaking coach i was like can you teach me and and that's literally how it happened but if i hadn't have sat there done that
00:40:29
work and written it down it probably would have gone gone on right i probably would have said okay enjoy your day i'll see you soon it's
00:40:35
lovely to meet you and then i had public speaking lessons i did i did actually um
00:40:41
shopify actually put me on a public speaking sort of camera thing which was cool then i did some here back in the uk
00:40:46
and just slowly worked it and and then the thing that really helped me was just
00:40:52
and i wouldn't probably do this now due to time but he was just saying yes to things just saying yep i'm gonna do it
00:40:57
and you know what i'm gonna make a fall on myself i'm sure there's some footage somewhere of me sweating and shuffling around a stage
00:41:04
somewhere like falling over my words and being terrible at it but you know that's just a necessary evil to
00:41:09
get get good at anything really what did the public speaking lessons was there like key principles or key exercises that that
00:41:17
you felt actually moved the needle for you was there anything there that maybe someone listening to this that's a really bad speaker might
00:41:22
be able to steal there's a um there's a few bits so there's one that that they told me and
00:41:29
there's a there's a quote i've said online i think it's a winston church or quote whether it is true you know you see all these quotes and whether or not they're true or not there's one where he
00:41:36
it says um i'm just preparing my impromptu remarks which is like obviously impromptu remark is a quick
00:41:42
sort of like thing that you've sort of made up on the spot and that really stuck with me because then i know a lot of other people do
00:41:48
this as well is when we're talking about a particular subject now i'm fortunate because i've i've done so much of this i've got like all these different
00:41:54
sentences and phrases and things that i can draw on but in the early days it's like so ben you're going to talk about
00:42:00
you're going to publicly talk about the jim sharp story now historically even though i knew the gym shot story inside out because i was
00:42:05
there um i'd struggle with that so what i do is i prepare phrases sentences words reminders in my head so if someone
00:42:12
said i don't know talk to me about the first event it would just sort of roll off the tongue and granted i probably wouldn't do that any anymore
00:42:19
but in the early days that got me over that hump of that nervousness that frog in my throat i don't know where to start
00:42:25
because that's the main thing is once you've started it's fine right it just goes but even just having that first sentence of oh the first event was body
00:42:31
power and we did this and this and this and then it yeah that that really helped me that's so funny because that's exactly what happens from practice isn't
00:42:37
it you'll know that now just go back to it exactly i you know when i i do a lot of interviewing interviews and stuff too
00:42:43
and there's like keywords trigger story so if you said to me um rejection i'd be like oh yeah you know
00:42:50
and then it's just the same old and that and that's so funny because that's ultimately what you're saying you're yeah and coaching so yeah so first and
00:42:55
foremost preparing impromptu remarks whatever you want to call it prepare stories prepare things like make sure you're well prepared and generally you
00:43:02
want to if you're not very good at it like for me i had to over prepare i had to prepare you know this many things for a
00:43:08
conversation that was this long um and then the aim of that is to become
00:43:14
comfortable that's the main thing and that was really that was the biggest difficulty for me become comfortable so now i'm super fortunate you could put me
00:43:21
on a stage in front of a thousand people and i would i mean it'd be a bit peculiar if i wasn't prepared but you know i'd be fine i'd be comfortable
00:43:27
because then once you're comfortable what you do is you buy yourself time so then if we're on stage and you asked me a question five years ago i'd probably
00:43:33
like panic and answer as quickly as i can with whatever whereas now i'm gonna process it think about it and
00:43:41
then come back with a response because i'm comfortable and like i think the stages to all different types of
00:43:46
learning and that was it for me one preparation once i'd done that i'd learnt to be comfortable and then i
00:43:51
learned about you know different things as i go on and you know so this has led you to now because you know what you're
00:43:58
i watched your videos back then and maybe this is why i was surprised when i met you because you're on your videos i
00:44:03
genuinely thought you were amazing you could take ten thousand hundred and twenty three that's why yeah i watched
00:44:09
your videos on youtube i was like this guy's an unbelievable speaker oh no and then i met you in person and it wasn't that you're about like he's a shuffling
00:44:14
mess no it was so the crazy thing is you weren't a bad speaker and your stories were amazing but it was i could just tell you were nervous yeah and that was
00:44:21
and that's what you were speaking today about being comfortable some people are just naturally comfortable and that's and that's cool
00:44:27
and i think that but that's the main thing and i do think for whatever reason i think it's probably maybe we're not taught it maybe it just doesn't feel
00:44:33
natural if you can and by the way if you can speak publicly if you can speak to cameron if you can speak to groups
00:44:40
that is so powerful so powerful it's untrue why should you drink fuel we're going
00:44:46
into the fourth quarter of the year diets are dropping off we're becoming lazier and lazier and what tends to happen when when our diets dip and we we
00:44:54
start to become less um compelled to go to the gym is yeah we get out of shape we start to
00:45:00
feel low energy we start to binge eat bad things and fuel is the antidote it's
00:45:05
nutritionally complete so you get everything you need for your diet in a drink you get your 20 grams of proteins
00:45:10
you're going to get your 26 vitamins and vitamins and minerals it's low sugar high in fiber it really
00:45:16
is the cure to a lot of the health issues that we see in our personal lives but in wider society if you've never
00:45:22
tried it all i'll ask you to do is give it a try and if you like me then you
00:45:28
will like the world berry ready to drink you'll like the mac and cheese which is just selling like absolutely crazy
00:45:35
unsurprisingly um you like the cinnamon and you like the banana flavor those are
00:45:40
my recommendations i know a lot of people love the chocolate flavor let me know try it get yourself healthy
00:45:47
and send me a message on instagram tag me on instagram as well on your stories if you do try it out because i i
00:45:52
sometimes upload those tags and let me know which is your favorite flavor can't wait from you
00:45:57
you now run what was voted i think 2016 2017 one the fastest growing company in this country
00:46:03
it's still one of the fastest growing companies in this country it's worth billions and billions and billions um and you've decided that you're going
00:46:10
to vlog inside the company this is not what ceos do ben they don't you don't see them you never
00:46:16
get to you know like think about all the big companies it's very controlled pr yeah why why do you think that matters
00:46:23
because if we go back to me on the inside working with my grandad
00:46:29
and being able to learn about those stories that eventually
00:46:34
led to in many ways the gym shot we see today i think
00:46:40
i would love to be able to provide that to other people around the world particularly here first and foremost it
00:46:46
can be done right so you can start a business in the uk whatever in in this world
00:46:52
online and it can become a unicorn in under 10 years and if you don't want to you don't have to go and borrow a load
00:46:59
of money you don't have to highly leverage yourself if you're a problem solver you're open-minded and you're
00:47:05
self-aware it can be done and i think one that i think that's the first sort
00:47:10
of like step for me let me come at that one then because i know because i i know what people are saying they're saying
00:47:16
ben no that's you know it's called good or well and good you saying that because you've done it but i can't i can't do it i'm i don't know
00:47:23
what you know and i'm uh i don't you know i don't know anything about computers and
00:47:28
it's all well and good you saying that but you were this is what people say because they said to me well you were lucky you know you're timing and
00:47:34
by the way i was incredibly lucky massively lucky you're good and that would be completely right
00:47:39
um and listen i would completely understand that but for the for some that want to
00:47:46
then that to me is is a proof of when it can be done now i am very well aware of the fact that i was
00:47:53
very lucky one in the people i've met two in terms of timing so fitness was on
00:47:59
the up right in the early 2000s all over the news was obesity right to rise in so fitness was on the up because people
00:48:04
were encouraging people into the gym and fitness um direct to consumer came out of nowhere people were more comfortable in the sort
00:48:11
of 2010s than ever buying things online right in the early 2000s people were weren't that comfortable
00:48:17
buying online from a company they had never heard of let alone one from right another country abroad but number three
00:48:22
we had social media those three forces converging at the point where jim sharp
00:48:28
was founded is completely and utterly look and i do understand that but i'm also aware of
00:48:34
the fact that there's loads of those things happening elsewhere in the world right now that you know probably aren't being completely taken advantage of
00:48:41
so i am aware of the fact that it's luck but i also think as well in me doing this i'd like to think that regardless
00:48:47
even if you don't want to start your own business which by the way is completely cool like and i'd probably say in many respects that's probably a good idea
00:48:53
because it is very difficult to do this um i still think there's lessons that can
00:48:58
be learnt and i love the thought of people being able to take something away from the gymshark story and create
00:49:04
something called of their own it also gives you this weird type of defense because you can see that so many ceos
00:49:11
have been attacked because they are in essence i think what we're talking about here is being like a glass box ceo or
00:49:17
the old model of being like a black box ceo yeah where your image is painted on the outside by your marketing or pr
00:49:22
people and no one ever gets to really know you'll see inside you've taken this really glass box approach where if
00:49:28
someone writes something bad about you ben i can like well i've seen 65 interviews of him and i've seen his vlog
00:49:34
so i have my own reference point to know that that's actually not him and some ceos out there like elon and these
00:49:40
really public ones have that and then zuckerberg hidden a k for the last 10 years and in 2019 he announced that he
00:49:46
was finally going to start doing interviews because of how everyone just thought he was this emotionless robot because that's what the press said yeah
00:49:52
um and it is this this incredible defense mechanism that i don't think people really appreciate
00:49:57
yeah and i think i can also empathize i mean listen what zuckerberg has done is like on a completely other world to what
00:50:04
any pretty much anyone else has done certainly myself um but in the early days of gymshark i didn't want to be
00:50:10
clustering myself on social media by the way i didn't want to be on youtube i wanted to just knuckle down and focus on
00:50:16
building the business because remember i didn't know what it would be at that point it was only when
00:50:22
people started asking for that that i then decided to do it so i do also understand the idea of just knuckling
00:50:28
down and focusing on what you're good at but you're right the problem that comes with is other people get to control
00:50:34
the rhetoric or the language or the description of yourself and we're seeing that in the uk a lot of big companies in
00:50:40
the uk that are being attacked at the moment you don't know whether the articles are true because you don't know the person
00:50:46
they're talking about and um that's why i literally have a picture in my office over there reveal on smoking's uh joint
00:50:52
on the joe rogan podcast because for me and this is going to sound like [ __ ] bonkers like that's the ceo i would want
00:50:58
to be is where i cry on jurgen's podcast smoking a joint and for everyone to know
00:51:03
that that's how open i am and yeah much the reason why i started this so the pandemic comes around
00:51:09
um talk me through how it was being a ceo throughout that because one of the really remarkable things is you didn't
00:51:14
follow anybody you didn't no we didn't so i wasn't ceo at the start of covid i came in in august but the so that was
00:51:21
interesting so we we were lucky again because we were completely set up the zoom everyone has laptops we're you know
00:51:27
we're a digital business so working from home thanks to our tech team and in the investments they made
00:51:32
from a systems perspective it wasn't like tough i know there are other companies that not everyone had a laptop
00:51:38
and so on so that i couldn't imagine where to start there um and we had that moment where
00:51:43
so what we have is because we have we have an office in hong kong we have offices in the uk we have offices in the us and we literally saw because kovid
00:51:50
sort of came from the east to the west didn't it and we saw hong kong
00:51:56
closed right everyone went into lockdown and there was this bit where i know i was thinking never happened here never
00:52:02
happened here until it did right and then boom locked down everyone working from
00:52:07
home and um i was in what was i doing at that point i think i was just finished
00:52:13
opening marketing and i think i was moving into product at that point and the moment that caught me which was
00:52:20
within like 24 hours of being locked down i was lucky i have an office at home i shut the door i've got a desk and i can
00:52:26
just work through that and when i'm finished i can close the door at the end of the day i was chatting to someone and they were like they were in a studio
00:52:33
apartment in birmingham city center and their partner was making their breakfast behind them and they were sort of like like balancing their laptop on the work
00:52:38
surface and it was all just i remember chatting to her and thinking okay this is going to be really just really tough for some
00:52:46
people from a professional perspective and then i'm chatting to my mom who worked at the qe in birmingham city center uh hospital
00:52:52
in selly oak she was telling me about what was going on there and i was like it was very i became very aware very quickly that
00:52:58
this was a big thing or it was going to be a big thing um so yeah managing through that was was really really
00:53:04
really tough um listen commercially the business did okay like people were shopping online
00:53:10
and it you know there were more people working out from home they were cycling they were running that side of the business did well
00:53:17
but managing hundreds of staff around the world working from home mental health making sure that we're
00:53:22
supporting them through complete uncertainty was definitely difficult and where did you learn then
00:53:29
so having seen that member of your team on that ironing board in that studio apartment where did you land on this whole remote working debate um
00:53:36
what is jim shark what's that what's your injury so we we i mean listen there are people at jim sharp that work remotely and it works for them and
00:53:42
that's fine personally i'm a little bit old-schooling i'm in the office pretty much every day unless i'm you know out
00:53:49
at meetings i just love to be in the office um that doesn't mean it's right or wrong i'm sure i would probably do a
00:53:56
a day maybe a month or a quarter working from home if i need to like work through things because when we did work from home i found that i finally got to my
00:54:03
to-do list which was useful and i'd never really got to that previously we're sort of open-minded there are some
00:54:09
people that remote work it makes sense for them um as long as it makes sense for the business as well as them that's cool personally i like to be in the
00:54:15
office you you have this big amazing office in the uk especially i mean you have a few but the one in
00:54:20
birmingham yes sully hall is a tremendous new like newly built campus almost that he's built um
00:54:28
what role does that play because i'm i'm in the camp of i love the office as well and i think it's i think it's more than
00:54:34
just a place where you come to do your work i think it's community i think it's culture i think it gives especially
00:54:39
younger generations who haven't figured out their lives you have an opportunity to learn meet people
00:54:44
get married um so what like how do you see the office and and have you set parameters
00:54:50
for your employees as to we're working on it now that's what we're trying to work through um there are some people that are on remote
00:54:56
contracts so they choose to work remote there are many the vast majority are on contracts which which means they're based in hq
00:55:02
um personally you're right the whole thing about like i said earlier being able to watch steve right was massive for my
00:55:09
development so if i'm a youngster that's coming in to work at gymshark i want to be in the office i want to learn and i
00:55:15
want to grow and i want to be around people because that's not to say you can't learn on zoom i think you can and
00:55:20
i think there's great utility for zoom and i think there's areas where it's really helpful and useful but if i'm a young product designer i
00:55:27
want to be around designers and i want to be able to be inspired and i want to have that conversation i want to be able to share ideas in the moment rather than
00:55:34
having to jump on slack forward slash resume jump on a call and so on hopefully they're free
00:55:39
so yeah for me i like i said i like to be in the office i think it's it's a great place to learn and and the office
00:55:45
for us and which is why we're investing in this campus and this larger office is it is it's a hub of jim shark when
00:55:51
you're there you're in it we we work together we eat together in refuel many of us go and lift in the gym after
00:55:57
together and it builds that genuine community in the build in the uh in the business one of the things you you know
00:56:03
when i hear your story um no matter where i look it it does feel like you're just
00:56:09
incredibly good at dealing with [ __ ] like it it appears on the surface that
00:56:14
you're just incredibly good at dealing with the hard times um and it also kind of appears that other than the one
00:56:21
moment you told me about where you the website went down and you had to write out the apology notes and stuff but
00:56:27
there's really not been a lot of like chaos and i'm like every every day is chaos
00:56:33
that's why tell me about that part of it i don't know where to begin like in terms of like starting the business
00:56:39
we there were several times we invested everything we had on a particular event or a particular product line
00:56:45
um covid was tough it's like what
00:56:50
when the business the business is growing at the rate that we're growing even just making sure that we've got
00:56:55
enough stock to fulfill the forecast for the following year is it's tough to manage and work out moving from you know
00:57:02
zero to 900 staff in nine years that's so hard and it's like every day hard
00:57:07
because in many respects when a big problem comes in and it just hits you in out of nowhere
00:57:14
you look at that problem and you try and solve it whereas people forget about the everyday nagging problems of making sure
00:57:19
that like the majority of the people that currently exist in gymshark weren't in jim sharp 12 months ago so the
00:57:26
majority of people in jim sharp maybe aren't as aware of the story or the way that the business works or or haven't
00:57:32
been truly immersed in the culture both because they haven't been here for a long time but also because we have been
00:57:37
working remote for so long so those problems in terms of making sure that everyone is truly bought into
00:57:42
the brand are really important because when you've got a team that big we want to make sure that they're working efficiently as well
00:57:48
steve said that um the former ceo said that pressure is a privilege to you so i think it's true
00:57:55
do you think it's a privilege for you as ben or do you think it's a privilege for everybody i think it depends on what the
00:58:00
pressure is right right i'm sure there are people in this world that are under a lot of pressure that certainly doesn't feel like a privilege but in the context
00:58:08
of jim shark is a privilege like we all choose to be there we're all a part of
00:58:13
something really special something that i really believe this i think
00:58:18
i do think books will be written on this story and i think maybe if we do what we think we can maybe like there'll be
00:58:23
programs and movies too because it is so unique and so special so within the context of gymshark i do think pressure
00:58:30
is well and truly a privilege for us when i when i reflect on early days of starting my business there was a lot of
00:58:36
unknown unknowns a lot of things i wish someone had just told me sooner or a lesson that it took me three or four years to learn
00:58:42
when you look back at some of the things you wish you knew sooner that would have maybe even put what is a phenomenal business even
00:58:48
further ahead what are those things that come to mind i'm interested in interested to hear what you think but
00:58:54
for me given my skill set we didn't invest in the foundations of the business early enough i
00:59:00
i was going back to being arrogant at the start i didn't really respect what maybe
00:59:05
the ops or finance people of this world did i the the foundation elements of the
00:59:11
business to me were nowhere near as exciting or fun as the front end element of the business the product the brand
00:59:17
and the marketing so i think if we'd have better prepared ourselves for that from a like i said data ops finance all
00:59:23
these things i think dream shop would have grown far quicker and i mean in terms of especially with what you guys did particularly social
00:59:29
change you were ahead of your time in that in terms of bringing all these pages and channels together and almost
00:59:35
packaging them up for different businesses and brands so you must have struggled with that as
00:59:40
well oh my god my answer is the exact same as yours it's just i was exact i was exactly the same guy i
00:59:46
thought that the thing that would move the needle most was what i did and what i knew and then it wasn't until you hire
00:59:51
one really great person and you go [ __ ] oh that's that's what good look and look at all the things i don't know
00:59:58
and i i think it took me two maybe three years to realize the importance of really great talent yeah and that my
01:00:05
skills and my talents weren't actually going to matter that much especially at 700 800 people business yeah the um i
01:00:12
think great people are amazing we did a trip uh to fiji years and years ago and
01:00:17
it was the first time i got to spend time with harley uh shopify holly finkelstein and
01:00:23
uh toby wow at shopify so like these are like some top top entrepreneurs and there was there was a load of other
01:00:29
people there i remember sat i didn't even barely say anything i remember listening to them
01:00:34
and i was thinking to myself jim sharks like uh or the people or the certainly even me i
01:00:40
felt like i was like a local football club player these are like premier league international stars they were
01:00:45
like another level compared to what i was and we were in the business so to be able to
01:00:51
see those when you see a great operator like look at zuckerberg people just look at zuckerberg as like a guy or elon or
01:00:58
whatever these people are going to be so efficient and frighteningly intelligent and adaptable and resilient that
01:01:06
you without meeting them i genuinely don't think you'll be able to fathom it i obviously haven't met them having met
01:01:11
people like harley and toby they were on another level to anyone that i'd met before
01:01:16
um and they're like they were just like us at one point right they've had to work they weren't just born hyper resilient
01:01:22
super intelligent open-minded and blah blah blah maybe a little bit in terms of intelligence but a lot of the skills
01:01:28
that we see from them they had to learn and they had to work on that was massively inspiring so i yeah i
01:01:35
think you're right i can't stress enough how important it is to just try and surround yourself with great people but
01:01:40
i was i was lucky right that trip most people don't get to go on trips like that they don't get to have their their eyes opened um but there's still there's
01:01:48
great people in every community every gym every whatever you can you can definitely find them
01:01:53
i completely agree again i i um i came to now learn in the businesses i start and i say this to my teams all the time
01:01:59
in flightster and third web that we are basically a recruitment company we're like never forget that the most important thing here and the thing that
01:02:06
is behind and initiates every decision is a person a talent obviously it's bound together with culture and a vision
01:02:12
but fundamentally um it was actually one day i read on somewhere that the
01:02:17
definition of a company on google and in the oxford dictionary is actually a group of people like that's what they said as a company
01:02:23
that's it means a group of people yeah and i started thinking about that in fact it's like a football team it's where we are starting 11 and in
01:02:30
competitive industries and we're all in competitive industries i start thinking about it like a football team like this
01:02:35
is the guy i've got up in left back or right wing against my competitors guy
01:02:42
or woman and i started thinking [ __ ] hell fundamentally i just need to be the best talent as steve jobs says the best
01:02:49
talent scout in the world and i wasn't until this chapter of my life later on like
01:02:55
it's too late yeah until too late and the for me i think like in terms of getting
01:03:01
so you can talk about getting great people becoming self-aware becoming the best version of it yourself that you possibly can be
01:03:07
and even that all of those things if you did that incredibly well that by no means guarantee success all that does is
01:03:13
increase the likelihood or the probability of success even then you've got a fairly slim chance because like i
01:03:20
said so many small businesses fail and that's the other thing that i think anyone starting out or whatever all
01:03:26
working the business needs to understand is that failure is inevitable don't be defined by your failures it could be an
01:03:32
operation in the business it could be the business itself it's inevitable that it's going to happen all you can do is do everything
01:03:39
within your power to minimize the likelihood of that happening talking about doing that which is within
01:03:44
your power you've managed to seemingly avoid um the the toll of business getting to
01:03:49
you my business partner's been very open on this podcast about how the stress of business made him anxious and then he
01:03:55
suffered with depression and then he became in his own words basically like a functional functional alcoholic
01:04:00
um it doesn't seem to have touched you in the same way i mean have you ever experienced anxiety or yeah i've
01:04:06
listened i've definitely struggled there were points where again when i was first sort of i felt
01:04:12
like i was first going out on my own um in 2015 there have been periods where
01:04:18
uh you know social media maybe has turned on the business and myself
01:04:24
it's definitely been really difficult at times there's been points where social media turned on the business so we there
01:04:30
was a there was something that happened last i think it was last year or the year before where
01:04:35
someone at gymshark on the channel on the on the social channel basically commented back to someone
01:04:41
um i can't remember exactly what we said but basically it was around a blue lives matter you know you had the sort of
01:04:47
black lives matter someone commented uh something on our page saying blue lives matter and
01:04:52
someone at jim sharp basically commented something sarcastic back to them um which to be honest was it it probably
01:04:59
just shouldn't have been posted and then at that point that i think that whole group of people started to converge onto
01:05:04
gymshark um and then before long they then started to converge onto me and i had thousands
01:05:09
of comments thousands of messages death threats everything you can imagine um and that that was in that definitely hit
01:05:16
me and it definitely hurt me and i really felt like i felt carrying that i felt like i was carrying that burden at
01:05:21
that point talk to me about that and so you the world piles on because of something someone else has
01:05:27
done on twitter whatever we won't go into that too much but the world piles on you're going on your
01:05:32
phone that's popping off your people are probably texting you your family this is the worst part you're family checking yeah and it's like
01:05:38
you just don't want to look at your phone yeah and that's that like i said that was really difficult for me really tough
01:05:45
um did you feel anxious you felt that sense of like i felt horrible i felt like you have a lump in your throat you
01:05:51
feel sick you don't look at it yeah then you don't want to look at your phone um i
01:05:56
i struggled with that but i think i had support at work and
01:06:02
there's a quote that i've heard no no was the one that told me about it and the quote goes something like
01:06:08
to whom much is to whom much is given which is tested i think it's roughly like that and i do
01:06:14
think about that a lot i i'm in this role i'm in this job and i'm so privileged and fortunate to be here i've
01:06:20
worked incredibly hard but i am fortunate and inevitably much has been given to me so much will
01:06:26
be tested of me and that to me is one of many and there'll be more in the future that will happen again and i have to be
01:06:31
well aware of it and open to it and understanding of it what did that moment teach you
01:06:37
i think it's it was a so that was a bout of resilience so going back to what i said earlier every day i feel like i have to
01:06:43
be resilient in terms of having hard conversations in terms of challenging people in terms of you know trying to move the business
01:06:49
forward in the right way whereas that was like boom you need to be resilient now because the other thing as well that
01:06:56
again i'm sure you will know this that happens and i'm feeling terrible as it's happening but there's still a business
01:07:01
with hundreds of people that need help support you know all these things so i can't like i can't just shy away and
01:07:08
feel sad for a week or at least it can't appear to be like that i mean i can feel those emotions i
01:07:14
can process them but ultimately the business comes first and i have to support the business and the individuals within it and
01:07:20
that was that was an interesting challenge for me to face because again i can't just mope around
01:07:26
the office i come into the office and i'm it's to me it's like it's like a game of
01:07:31
football i'm there to perform to deliver and i you know we want to win we want to
01:07:36
create great things and i don't want to let this thing rightly or wrongly sort
01:07:43
of drag me down two questions then how do you handle the situation with the employee
01:07:48
that posted that comment which ended up getting you piled on and you know felt at least like you were
01:07:53
being cancelled they had no bad intention so yeah they stayed at the business and now they they
01:07:59
do an incredible job they were a great person so i i really don't believe in cancer culture i think especially when
01:08:06
uh people do things by mistake and this certainly was a mistake and they learned from the mistake and now they're a better stronger more educated and
01:08:13
informed person because of it and i think that's um that's the way it is like i that what
01:08:19
you can't have at gymshark or anywhere you can't have someone that fails particularly with good intentions and
01:08:25
then you just move them out of the business because what we're trying to do is we're trying
01:08:31
to create change we're trying to create progress and a great business and if every time someone failed you just move
01:08:36
them out the business then all you'll be left with is with a group of people that have never failed and that's dangerous
01:08:43
so yeah they're still in the business and they're doing great work and the other question was when you go home that day
01:08:49
and robin's there what's that like uh she's incredibly supportive i think she gets it because
01:08:55
and this is this helps as well because she has had time online she did do the whole youtube thing and the social media
01:09:01
thing so she does understand what it's like so she's um incredibly supportive did you
01:09:07
rant to her did you so that's probably something i'm not very good at i'm not i don't
01:09:13
talk about my feelings massively i'm not that sort of person i don't know why i
01:09:19
don't know it's just if i look at the way my dad is my grandparents are the males that around me growing up they're
01:09:25
very strong individuals they're very like i wouldn't often hear them talk about feelings
01:09:31
which is fine and it's cool i get it it's probably not the most optimal solution and i'm learning to do that but
01:09:37
um it's given me great resilience it's made me strong um
01:09:42
definitely made me mentally strong so yeah i'll i'll chat to robin i think she'll try and pry information from me
01:09:48
and i'll i'll chat to her does she does she succeed i mean my girlfriend does the same my girlfriend is the the
01:09:53
ultimate person in my life of trying to make me express how i'm feeling emotionally and again like you said
01:09:59
naturally it's not my default state especially it almost makes me feel uncomfortable like i'd love to sit here
01:10:04
and talk to you about how i am completely open and in touch with every single feeling that i'm feeling i wish
01:10:11
maybe that's something i need to work on but that certainly isn't true i i do understand and i process those
01:10:17
feelings i'm definitely not as communicative as what i probably should be on those things i like to sort of
01:10:23
internalize them and process them without talking about them too much we
01:10:28
we've seen obviously in headlines and stuff around mental health and men in particular not talking about the feelings the adverse consequences of not
01:10:35
sharing your feelings the other thing which i learned recently is from patrice evra when he came and we talked about toxic masculinity and again his he was
01:10:42
telling me his girlfriend was the one who um helped him open up his feelings because
01:10:47
he was very you know growing up on the streets of france drug dealing trying to survive et cetera um the risk is it
01:10:53
becomes a generational cycle you've pointed to the fact that it probably was a generational cycle for you
01:10:59
um death prob definitely was for me i've never had my dad express a feeling in his life so now you're married and you know
01:11:06
one would assume that there's going to be kids at some point potentially is that something you think about like
01:11:12
the uh
01:11:17
i don't know i mean listen if i had a kid
01:11:22
i would definitely want them to tell me about how they're feeling because i'd rather know what's going on than not so
01:11:28
yeah maybe that is something i would push with them robin certainly will yeah robin will yeah um and the other point
01:11:34
on the kid thing it just triggered something i've been thinking about lately in my life is how present are you gonna be i i'm i'm gonna be honest i'm
01:11:42
scared i'm scared because um if things carry on as they are now i'm like sometimes i
01:11:47
forget to walk my dog and my assistant does it for me and when i when i have kids i don't want to be that business
01:11:53
guy that's never ceased his kids i want to be president in their lives i want to take them to school pick them up again like you know so do you think about that
01:12:00
yeah change you might have to make because we don't have kids i haven't thought about it massively i think um
01:12:05
there was a few things so steve advised me he said be there for the sports days
01:12:11
he doesn't i don't think he means be there for the sports days i think he me it's like a thing like be there be
01:12:16
present and be there when the kid wants you to be so that's something i would definitely like to do i don't know
01:12:22
my dad worked away a lot as a kid and i don't feel like i was adversely
01:12:28
affected by it maybe i'm wrong maybe i have been um but it's not even when i said when i started
01:12:34
traveling and being away for long periods of time there was periods where i'd do 30 40 50 flights a year and i'd be away all the
01:12:40
time and that wasn't like abnormal that was like my mom was like cool with that she gets it's fine my dad would work a
01:12:46
lot in like the states in europe and stuff and then my mom would look after us so i'd go and stay with my grandparents for a while
01:12:52
um again i'm not saying that's optimal but i i was i felt like i was fine growing up
01:12:58
i i actually spoke so i've got uh i'm working with a new ea called zoe who's absolutely been life changing for me
01:13:04
like genuinely life-changing and she has two kids and we were talking about it actually the other day
01:13:10
um and we sort of we do this thing we monday morning first thing we look through the calendar for the week and
01:13:15
then she sort of made a bit of a comment she was like are you still gonna be able to do this if you have kids um and and i was sort of like is that a
01:13:23
loaded question like you asked are you telling me that i won't be able to do this and um
01:13:28
what helps having zoe is i think because she has kids she knows what it's like i think she'll help me manage it as it
01:13:33
comes and then her thing was no you won't be able to work like this but if we plan for it and we work things
01:13:38
out then we can work out a way to make it work which is great i'm sure robin will be happy with that as well
01:13:46
if i'm in the ceo role which i hope i am i'm not going to be at home every single
01:13:51
day at half five monday to friday it's it's it's just one of the things that
01:13:56
comes with the job there's been a lot written about what the future of jim shark looks like a lot of speculating a lot of guessing as to
01:14:02
what route you're going to take a lot of people at this point probably would have already sold the company to a bigger
01:14:07
nike or an adidas or whoever it might be what can you tell me about the future of jim shark
01:14:13
so my ambition is to make so so in canada you've got lulu in the united states you've got um
01:14:20
nike and drama and in germany you've got adi and puma so first and foremost i want jim sharp to be
01:14:25
the british fitness brand right i want you i think it's really cool so growing up i
01:14:31
grew up not far away from the rover mg factories in longbridge um
01:14:36
it was a really cool british brand unfortunately it didn't end or i mean mg still going it didn't end probably as
01:14:42
they would have liked um over in sully hall jaguar land rover uh cool british
01:14:48
but international brands uh burberry aston martin like bentley and rolls
01:14:53
royce like these are so cool and i think i love the thought of a brand that was
01:14:58
grown here he's headquartered here but he's a truly global brand and i think that's really really cool i love the
01:15:04
thought of that um now emphasis on the fact i want jim chart to be a global brand we we sell
01:15:11
into like the entire world at the moment like a lot of the the revenue and the
01:15:16
customers and the community of gymshark are international the uk is a small um area of that now because of the
01:15:23
growth we've seen in north america europe and so on so my ambition is for gymshark to be a truly truly global brand and one of
01:15:29
the most iconic brands in the world i think that's so it's so cool the thought of jim sharp being a truly iconic brand
01:15:35
a brand that's sort of like like genuinely pulls people together and inspires people to be
01:15:40
the best version of themselves both physically and mentally and he's in many ways the like the manifestation of this journey
01:15:47
that i feel like i've gone on from joining the gym and trying to improve myself physically and then mentally through the business and so on i think
01:15:52
that's really cool but ultimately i want it to be one of the most iconic brands in the world and then however you
01:15:58
structure that in the back front whatever you do to make that happen i'm almost like channel agnostic i just want
01:16:04
jim sharp to be a truly iconic great brand that is like a true leader in culture and
01:16:12
helps inspire people around the world 10 years time we wake up jim shark is a truly iconic british
01:16:18
brand globally you've done it now what i'll be really sad i'll have
01:16:23
nothing to do um no i'm not sure at that point i don't know it's so funny because your answer there is exactly what gary
01:16:28
vaynerchuk said he said he was like that would be the worst day of my life oh when he um when he buys the jets
01:16:35
i don't know um isn't that funny the thing you aim for will be the saddest day of your life is
01:16:41
scary isn't it but will you i don't know how you would put a pin in that like if gary bought the jets he owns the jets
01:16:46
yeah how would you put a pin in the fact that jim shark when did gymshark become iconic it's true like when when does that tipping point happen um you'll have
01:16:53
to let me know if that happens i think that's so that's a really interesting point there because what it what it actually says is that all the fun is
01:16:58
actually the journey and if you do want to set yourself up to never have that awful day then create a goal that like
01:17:04
they say the best journeys are the ones with no destination and so you're right this is uh there's
01:17:09
no day there's no measurement of that it's a continual process and also at times you'll get things pop the world
01:17:16
will change and we all might go to the metaverse yeah and that's going to be a whole new challenge for you to maintain
01:17:22
the position so like through the yeah this that is mental we were talking about the other
01:17:27
day about how just how much the world's going to change in the next 10 years and then going back to the start about
01:17:32
someone that's starting up so once he's considering starting a business or or anything like that is like
01:17:39
that becomes easier or it happens with change and like looking forward the amount of change we are about to see is
01:17:45
unfathomable i am convinced of it it is going to be crazy and the opportunities will be huge
01:17:51
you have 900 people roughly now right how do you turn a 900 person company uh
01:17:58
in a new direction really hard what are you doing from like in a very practical sense to set the team up for
01:18:05
so in terms of nuts and bolts we'll have something that we call a brand book which is brand guidelines this is what
01:18:10
we do this is what we don't do we'll have a strategic page which says these are the core things that we want to do
01:18:16
these are force or strategic initiatives that sit outside of the day-to-day outside of what you might see
01:18:22
that jim shark are currently doing and then we'll basically put resource behind those initiatives um
01:18:28
to basically see what happens some of them might fail some of them might win i'm not sure um that's a really boring
01:18:34
way of explaining how we do it and is there like a cultural thing as well around like some you know because so
01:18:40
many companies they get big doing one thing yeah web two let's call it you know social
01:18:45
media whatever it might be and then the world changes and because they are so big as you've said it becomes actually
01:18:51
their biggest weakness yeah especially in advertising like in our industry the reason why social change did so well was
01:18:57
because the incumbents were all into like billboards and tv yeah and radio and it was like a mindset thing they
01:19:03
couldn't change fast enough which gave us this window like you've described macro factors with this surfboard we
01:19:08
surf in and we'd capitalize on them the moment yeah um is there a mindset thing a way that
01:19:14
you speak to your teams to make sure they're like mentally well no but like i said as people are joining the business and coming in we're
01:19:19
super we make them aware that this is a place where change is inevitable and oftentimes you don't even know what that
01:19:24
is right like the biggest problem jim sharp will experience in the next five years we've got no idea what it is and one day whether it's tomorrow or in two
01:19:31
years or in four years it's gonna hit us and blindside us in the head and knock us for six and we'll have to adjust
01:19:37
adapt and change to deal with it um and we've we're aware of that we talk about that a lot we we do talk about change
01:19:43
and we try and like prime everyone to be prepared and ready for the fact that things will change like on a day-to-day
01:19:50
basis things change from structures to the way that we want to you know achieve certain things
01:19:55
and sometimes they can be difficult but ultimately that's a lot easier to deal with but i think those things happening
01:20:01
the constant change of a growing business creates a culture of a culture of change when these things do happen
01:20:08
i'd like to think we're in a reasonable situation to deal with it and we are agile as well with thin we're like
01:20:13
we don't have like 900 people's a lot not compared to some of the larger competitors they have
01:20:18
thousands and thousands and thousands of employees all around the world they have lots of different distributors they have
01:20:24
lots of different stores like hundreds if not thousands of different moving parts all the right all the way around the world today jim shark is in his most
01:20:32
basic form a website one website and that is where you buy jim sharp from
01:20:38
speaking of change then um the high street shut down this year fortunately as you've described you're in a good
01:20:44
position because you are a direct consumer yep um and why have you never opened up a store on
01:20:51
the high street why have you always you know stayed away from that just time resource
01:20:56
there are in a fast-growing business you will you'll you'll have to say no to so many
01:21:03
things because if you said yes to everything you would end up just watering your business down it would end up just being
01:21:09
you know it would be too gary used this term we spoke to him the other day he said you never want jim char to become a vanilla boulder just you don't want to
01:21:16
become vanilla right so it was it's purely down to a down to a resource thing historically so if i
01:21:21
look at what we would coin as offline jim shark's been heavily involved in offline since day one the first ever
01:21:27
blow up of the brand was through an offline event um and then we did expose around the
01:21:33
world and we spent every single penny we had flying around the world now in our early 20s doing these events
01:21:38
then after that we wondered are there people coming to the event because of to see jim shark or our
01:21:45
people happen to be at the event and they come to gymshark so we thought how can we find out how many people really want to come and see gymshark we
01:21:51
actually did a test in covent garden we wanted to do a one-month story in covent garden uh two
01:21:56
weeks in cove it happened and we had to close the whole thing um i'm massively inspired by
01:22:03
different businesses and what they do off in their offline so i think the opportunities on the high
01:22:09
street are massive would you ever well we will at some point um
01:22:15
so touchwood we are i'm hoping in the next sort of few days to be able to sign a lease on a
01:22:22
store um in london our first ever store would be a flagship and it will be a
01:22:27
hopefully a community hub for jim shot our first ever perm permanent offline
01:22:34
store hub whatever you want to call it this is so early in the process like i said we haven't even signed a lease yet so
01:22:39
um fingers crossed that will go through we're just working through that now and again we've got a vision of this being a
01:22:46
a true gymshark community hub that's so interesting because that really does feel like the future of the
01:22:52
high street really experienced base not somewhere you're going to buy and sell things but
01:22:58
truly experienced based and community-centric because as well what we need to think about is what we're trying to build here is a brand
01:23:04
and what we don't want is something that is purely based on utility and what i mean is
01:23:10
i don't want people to buy gymshark because it's quicker cheaper and easier like i think we should try and be those
01:23:17
things to a degree but it's not purely utility thing if you want that go to amazon right amazon will give you
01:23:23
everything that you need rapid cheap and that's cool and i love the business i shop from them all the time
01:23:29
but for me gymshark is a brand and it is a brand and it's a feeling and it's that badge of honor that you wear it's that
01:23:36
that that dedication to self-improvement both physical and mental and to do that we need a community and that's the wider
01:23:42
gymshark community the people that follow us all across instagram snapchat you know ticks off all these different channels
01:23:49
and then the events have always been the culmination of that community when you're there and it's just like everyone's there and they have these
01:23:55
sort of inherent um like similarities and they've got that same mindset and it's such an amazing place to be
01:24:01
so we thought what if we could do that permanently which is what hopefully this store will be when your brand gets bigger and brands
01:24:08
you know many brands have kind of fallen foul of this it's it's really hard to hold on to the brand piece right there
01:24:14
yeah what's your strategy towards as you scale all around the world what's going to happen right is if i
01:24:21
walk into my gym muscle works down the road and everyone is wearing gym shark i might be like [ __ ] that i don't want to
01:24:26
be that guy right like yeah and then your brand is almost doing a lot of work for you on the ground because of the
01:24:31
scale so how do you hold on to that core specialness i think well first and foremost i think so jim
01:24:38
shark it's still quite a niche brand in the sense that we're not doing sportswear right you won't see people on
01:24:44
the football pitch wearing gymshark you won't see people on play like on the basketball court wearing gymshark gymshark is built to be worn in the gym
01:24:52
like granted you know there's odd bits to sort of to and from stuff that i'll wear in the office or and in the gym as
01:24:57
well but i think by staying true to that core by focusing
01:25:02
completely and early on building the best gym product whether it's clothing whether it's accessories whatever it is
01:25:08
we might create down the line i think by doing that i think we can um we shouldn't water our brand down too
01:25:14
much and you know that specialness because you've been there since the start so if i remove ben what happens in
01:25:20
your honest opinion if i was to remove you from your business whereas what happens to your business in 10 years
01:25:26
time i think it will continue i'm not sure who would immediate like being four months in i'm not sure who would immediately step into the role
01:25:33
probably the best argument would be steve but we we've got a proper management team like we've got like our
01:25:38
chief of product is infinitely better than i will ever be at product achieve a brand is infinitely better than i will be the commercial team that we've run
01:25:45
across international and now they're both way better than me but there's a specialness with a founder because they
01:25:50
they can see all of the dots they've been there for 10 years and they can see why this truly from day one why this
01:25:57
brand is special like i genuinely believe no one can even in leaving my business i'm going to be honest
01:26:02
i know the specialness my business has lost it doesn't mean my business isn't going to make great revenues for the
01:26:08
next five ten years but i know that there's going to be a loss in vision and culture and like specialness that um
01:26:16
it's hard to replace yeah and is that this dude maybe i don't know because i know that a lot of people like to work
01:26:23
in the business because they're so close to it like it feels like you're in a movie like it genuinely feels like that because
01:26:29
we'll sit at lunch and we'll talk about like the stories of jim shark like we'll go and lift in the gym after work
01:26:36
with just random people that have just joined the business and maybe maybe that would disappear i don't
01:26:42
know you're right in terms of the commercials of the business wouldn't change the brand is so well run and the
01:26:48
vision the plan is so robust like they'll present brand plans for the next two years to me
01:26:54
and i'll just sit there nodding and that's amazing that's really that's really amazing
01:26:59
that's like a testament again i know you're gonna give give the credit but that's that's what the promised land for all founders
01:27:07
is to be to build such a team that you're effectively redundant right and you've done that i wanna i know that
01:27:13
there's gonna be a lot of young entrepreneurs watching this and i know that they typically ask me the same question so i want to ask you just a couple of them before we wrap one of
01:27:19
them i get a lot is you know there'll be someone listening to this they've not got any money yeah um they want to start
01:27:24
a business they don't have an idea but they want to start a business what would you say to them
01:27:30
they're going to you don't have an or money yeah but they want they want to be an entrepreneur i get this a lot
01:27:37
so the first thing for me would be to find out what you're truly truly passionate about because
01:27:44
for me when i started gymshark i made two fitness apps beforehand i
01:27:50
made two fitness apps both failed miserably i made a little fitness social network failed miserably a little fitness sort of forum that failed
01:27:55
miserably and then jim sharp was it i wanted to be involved in the industry
01:28:01
more than anything i wanted to be involved in fitness because it changed my life it was the thing that got me from being a d student to an a student
01:28:08
literally that was the thing that changed my life the discipline yeah the discipline that i learned the structure the fact that if i was tired on a monday
01:28:15
the gym doesn't care go in and lift it doesn't matter and most importantly that if january 1 i joined the gym and i left
01:28:22
five days a week every single week by december 25 whatever i am better than i
01:28:28
was a year ago that that those lessons to me were massive because previously i didn't really realize that and i do this
01:28:34
thing in school where i would be like i'd work try really hard and i get a bad grade and then there'd be another thing that i wouldn't try out and i'd get a
01:28:40
really good grade and i just it didn't mean it didn't add up to me so for me i was in love with the industry and and fitness was and is my
01:28:47
passion and that carried me through some of the difficult times because i remember the difference it's made to my life and
01:28:53
it's this inherent passion that drives me every day so if you've got no idea or money just
01:28:59
lean into that community whatever it is it might be boxing it might be golf it might be videography it might be
01:29:05
motorcycles or bicycles or whatever lean into it because inevitably there will be an opportunity
01:29:10
especially now because of this new social media world that we live in there's a massive there's so much room
01:29:16
for people to create brands so yeah i would just lean into whatever your passion is it's so true because look you
01:29:21
can waste a ton of time procrastinating and falling into indecision by trying to guess
01:29:27
and as you said there i read that gymshark was actually like the seventh apple website you created so you like
01:29:33
leaned into the industry did this process of like failure and exploration and stumbled across the winner right
01:29:39
like and you have to fail one of the if you're a young entrepreneur just do not be afraid to
01:29:45
fail just all names out of boxes ideas out of boxes aside the likelihood of an
01:29:51
individual starting a business and that one being the one that strikes gold
01:29:56
is ridiculously low what we've got to remember is you could start 30 businesses and you are still more likely
01:30:04
to fail than you are succeed so just honestly just keep trying and keep
01:30:09
trying and don't be afraid to fail i think that's so so so important and everyone i've met by the way from the
01:30:16
people that run businesses that are 10 times bigger than jim shark to every entrepreneur that i've met every
01:30:22
business person every successful person in sport in business whatever where they've started a business or not every
01:30:28
single one of them has failed time and time and time again and i think then people look at the the final product and
01:30:34
just assume that they've just they were either this incredible human who had was born this way or and it is just never
01:30:40
never ever the case more often than not the all the most successful people i've ever met are all winging it they're all
01:30:47
literally just working incredibly hard and they're just giving it their best shot
01:30:52
i'm gonna ask you one more on this point i think that was a superb answer as well because it's just incredibly true i am
01:30:58
the other question i would i'd get a lot from your entrepreneurs is something like you know they're in a job at the moment
01:31:03
and they've got an idea so this is an example where they've got a business idea that they want to pursue um
01:31:09
but they're just you know they've heard you say that they want to pursue it but there's something holding them back
01:31:14
and they're you know i know you get this a lot as well yeah probably most conversations what you say
01:31:19
to those people well i think if if it's your passion then i think you should jump in the the other thing i would say and this is i
01:31:26
think this is this is a dangerous thing i do see people online in quit your job jump in go and do something and it's a bit like personally
01:31:33
i'm thinking no don't don't quit your job it's fine like like i i i worked at pizza hut for whatever i
01:31:40
can't remember what the amount was it was four or five pounds an hour and jim sharp was doing hundreds of thousands in revenue
01:31:46
the utility of having a job whilst running the business is huge
01:31:52
one because you can earn money to survive so you don't need to remove but you know you don't need to remove money
01:31:57
from the business so two you can then reinvest all the profits that you can make in that business if you just and
01:32:03
two by the way if business number one fails you've still got your job you try number two number three number four and
01:32:08
i think whatever it is find your passion i genuinely don't think it's a good idea
01:32:13
just to jump out of your job just on a whim there are some people you'll hear about the one in a million that succeeds and
01:32:20
congratulations more power to you i'm super happy for those people but you don't hear about the 99 that ended up quitting their job and
01:32:27
it didn't go as well as what they would like and then they ended up having to go back and find a new job so use that job
01:32:33
as a superpower as stability and invest the money you earn from that job in the business and just keep trying try and
01:32:39
try them and hard work where does that feel what's the importance of it because there's a there's a narrative i talk
01:32:44
about this podcast that hard work is maybe a little bit the narrative you see online from like the hustle porn stars a little bit toxic
01:32:50
yeah but would you be sat here without hard work oh definitely not no it's that
01:32:56
combination of hard work alone is definitely not enough you have to work hard but you also have to work smart there were periods where
01:33:03
we were finding out ways to manipulate google in a way that got gym chart to the top which gave us huge revenue for
01:33:09
next to no cost right that was smart work but there were days when we would work 12 14 16 hours sewing and printing
01:33:17
t-shirts every single day there are days like that now where i just we just work and work and work to
01:33:22
get the job done so exclusively hard work won't solve your problems you definitely have to work smart
01:33:29
but i've never met anyone who was genuinely successful that wasn't hard working
01:33:34
we have a new tradition on the diary of a ceo i've heard about this oh yeah okay they told you okay so
01:33:40
um the previous guest writes a question for the next guest and this is the first time i've seen the
01:33:45
question i don't know if people believe when i say that but um their question to you is
01:33:52
what is the greatest gift that another human has given you
01:33:58
oh that's intense yeah i didn't see that coming what is the greatest gift that another human has given you
01:34:06
i'd have to i'd really have to think about that the first thing that comes to mind would be time
01:34:12
because i really so there's so many people that have given genuine time to me to like teach me take me under their
01:34:17
wing robin time to support me emotionally my parents time to you know
01:34:22
teach me and bring me up grandparents the people that i work with every day um
01:34:28
so yeah it would definitely be something around time i love that and it speaks to
01:34:34
i think your understanding of the importance of time as well and i think being a ceo you quickly learn oh yeah
01:34:40
very quickly you learn that time is a finite resource and um
01:34:47
every second is planned i'm really careful about how i spend my time and i want to spend it the most effective and
01:34:53
productive way i possibly can yeah well thank you for giving me your time today because you know you're one of the you're really you're a real anomaly as i
01:35:00
said at the start of this conversation in the uk for so many reasons i mean the business you've built as an anomaly as
01:35:05
you've described like to have a brand like that that's reached such scale
01:35:10
from the uk from a from a guy that was 20 and you're still in your 20s now right um is just i mean
01:35:18
there's not another example in the uk right it's just it's staggering and
01:35:23
i think you've done this tremendous service in doing the public speaking training you did and really putting yourself out
01:35:30
there because now everybody gets to see this this person and also you're one of the most relatable people i've ever met
01:35:36
in every way um which means that you're just by doing conversations like this by putting yourself out there you're
01:35:42
empowering 18 year old steve bartlett's or the future you know ben francis to
01:35:47
to that they can too and when it's relatable and when you're a guy like you are and when you're so like
01:35:54
i wouldn't say self-defecating but more like when you're so humble it just feels like um whatever position
01:35:59
the listener is in on this podcast they they have a way out of that potentially unpleasant situation so thank you so
01:36:05
much because it's uh honored to have you back on and to observe your growth over the years it's been super inspiring for
01:36:10
me thank you very much thank you quick one can you do me a favor if you're listening to this and hit the
01:36:15
subscribe button the follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast me and my team use that as an
01:36:20
indication of whether the episode is good or not based on how many new followers and subscribers we get thank
01:36:26
you so much [Music]
