Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19! Ben Francis

Key Takeaways

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 sharp to be a truly iconic great brand a leader in culture and helps inspire 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 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 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 because because there was nowhere to hide like that definitely hit me and it definitely hurt me and i really felt like i was carrying that burden honestly just keep trying and keep trying and don't be afraid to fail i think that's so so so important i've never met anyone who was genuinely successful that wasn't hard working [Music] ben francis the guest that you requested again and again and again he is the founder and now the ceo of gymshark the global gym brand worth billions and billions and billions that started right here in the uk founded by ben who was in his early 20s and who is still in his 20s now as he's leading the global brand all around the world with 900 employees 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 company that you see everywhere that has maintained its integrity while they're still in their 20s ben's net worth is probably pretty close to or over a billion dollars and remarkably he's one of the most humble individuals one of the most introspective self-aware people i have ever met a really good guy and if you're someone that someday might want to follow in his footsteps or you want to build a business or just pursue the thing that matters to you the most then this is the conversation for you i can't wait for you to hear this so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] ben when i look back on my life i only in hindsight have managed to start piecing together some pieces that have enlightened me to why i became the person i went on to become and why i had the interests and skills and all those things and also like the insecurities um when i look at your early years back in bromsgrove at school i started to like connect a few dots but i wanted to know in your own sort of self-assessment whether you you can now see any patterns from your early years that you would consider an anomaly that caused you to become the anomaly you are today um so so i i think i had two sort of really lucky moments so the first one was at about 14 years old i 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 that age was basically with my granddad and what my granddad would do is he would travel around the midlands um and he would lie in furnaces so furnaces big ovens basically where you would stick airplane parts in it would heat them up 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 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 basically pass him cement or um he would teach me to like push in uh ceramic fiber or labrix or whatever 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 was more the fact that they were they were long days and through those days we would have conversations that like to be honest in hindsight probably not too many younger kids would have been exposed to um because it was it was all 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 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 off to germany and he'd basically risked pretty much everything he had on this one particular 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 know the house for my nan my mom her sister um and at the time it didn't really i don't 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 remember thinking oh yeah but my risks are nothing compared to his so i think that certainly helped and like i said 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 fortunate at school because i did so i did my gcses and i wasn't i didn't do particularly well i was sort of like a d is student sort of like pretty average i ended up getting into sixth form i was 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 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 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 for a btec for me was amazing and that was a huge moment because through that btec i learned how to use photoshop dreamweaver illustrator all of the like the nuts and bolts that actually i ended up using to build gymshark so the combination of learning those bits of software alongside the fact that watching my grandparents and my parents work incredibly hard the risks that my granddad took to build his business all 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 are though that it was the practically practical yeah yeah and that's been evident even today right because i 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 experts in your inside of your business so jim sharp was started in 2012 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 and we sort of started to build the business and everything revolved in many ways around around myself and then as the business started to grow it became clear to me there was a genuine opportunity right and listen we were doing well we could do decent revenues and so on but there's a difference 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 thousands or the millions and as the business grew i then started to realize that i needed to surround myself with great people um 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 sort of positively reinforced as well from an early age doing that where did those people where do those people come from i've always wondered this because you yeah last time we spoke and in subsequent interviews you've always cited those people like steven who was the ceo of jim shark and others as being really really instrumental and they almost felt like they were like mentors yes they were yeah so how did you join them so i'll tell you what happened right so and this is this is interesting as well 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 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 fact that during the growth of the business you have to completely change who you are as a person not only because you're developing and you're trying to improve but because the business is a separate entity from yourself and the business requires different things of its founder or chief exec depending on the size of the business so in the early days and i don't know how to put this in the 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 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 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 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 always been quite inquisitive then sort of you start surrounding yourself with you know with great people and um i 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 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 going to do what i want anyway that doesn't work or it works for a period and then they disappear so then i realized that i then can't be arrogant single-minded moving where i want to go i need to retain a bit of that right but what i need to do is one learn to work with people and more importantly learn to work with great people so that happened and i met paul at the gym 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 sports where sort of thing um made sense i ended up meeting a guy called niren who worked in uh like a local company and funnily enough actually on that oh um 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 just sort of never kept in touch we went to uni and whatever and there was a point where i was really 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 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 a few things he ended up coming in advising us greatly and then he ended up joining the business so i think looking back i think one i think i managed to learn the ability to really sell the vision of jim shark but secondly i think the single thing was just asking questions like i would always just ask 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 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 asking questions i think that's really unappreciated about you it's because because when i was looking through as i 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 was like ben is really like an insatiable learner he's always trying to learn even in that you did the conversation with uh jake humphries on a high performance and at the end of it when he asks you know 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 people in the world a lot of people like if we think about the impact that being like a really keen learner has on someone over 10 years it's just like an unfair advantage if you and then i i reflect on the 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 world of warcraft where you're building and you're learning and you're competing tell me about this world of warcraft 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 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 are like the games world of warcraft was the one that i think i played for the longest period and the thing i loved about it was it was open world for one it had like its own economy in it so you could like 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 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 different like classes of character right so one was like a like a warlock and one was like a warrior one was like 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 wasn't one person or one individual that could do everything there was it was the group that could do everything but you needed like all these different like facets it's like the avengers right the avengers assemble into this great group 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 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 who is the most wildly intelligent financier or whatever or commercial person but knows brand like it's useful that they have an understanding and respect of those things but we want a chief of product who's 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 finance who's incredibly good at finance and then all those people come together to create a team do you notice that like at the start of the company like you're talking about the requirement of specialists there at the start of the company was that very different at the start no to the start if we go right back to the start it is literally a case of we need a group of ambitious individuals that truly believe in the vision and will essentially do what it takes to achieve that and there are so many corners that are cut along the way because you just have to do what you 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 it bootstrapping isn't it when you're not sort of borrowing money as such you you need to find a way around it like if you have 50 quid to do advertising you work out how to advertise with 50 quid there's no like oh never mind let's go home you just you have to have great problem solvers in the business at that stage um and to be honest the one of the things that as we move through the sort of nine year history of jim shark one of the things that i'm what i'm proud of myself for doing is being able to adapt from that point of view but some of the most difficult times have been that inevitably there are some people who can't maybe make that switch from what was to the future so that's an incredibly 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 taught how to understand where the level of an individual is or how to have a certain conversation or 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 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 like just really ambitious people that would like sleep on the floor with me that had no experience and then obviously as the business scales and as you said there like the the challenges of the business become different and you really are looking for experienced specialists especially to lead the key departments and uh i remember that challenge in like year three of now looking at the people that have been so loyal to me and thinking i don't know where you fit yeah anymore because we need you know and it's heartbreaking but that's where you need self-awareness in both camps where you can sort of have the conversation that says 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 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 truly be prepared for and it's always hard um and yeah it was difficult i started social team with a co-founder you did too as well from what i understand lewis yeah um there's very little written 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 difference in opinion about the future and you decided to go your separate ways yeah and i think to be fair i think lewis was lewis was great right in the early days we would we were literally inseparable and i think there came a point where you're right i had my vision and i think he had his vision and i just want to be 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 him he had so many other interests in terms of investment and property and all these different things so lewis essentially left in [Music] i'm gonna say 2014. i could be wrong maybe 2015. the business was found in 2012 i think he left the business in 2015 um and then he basically retained 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 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 met in it when we were 16 17 whatever the first year of sort of post school is college sussex form we 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 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 both ceos was it just no that so in the early days that never really happened it was just a bit like 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 organization in those days and i think as the business then got more organized that's when i think that's when our vision started to maybe move in separate directions could that have been why then because there wasn't clear like structure at the start that could well have been to be fair yeah because that's what you need right you need clear roles and responsibilities um and listen regardless if you don't have that it just it just muddies the water doesn't it what do you think of of having the importance of having a co-founder in the role it plays in those early stages in the early stages i think 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 know when lewis left in 2014 2015 the the six months after that was difficult not too bad it's not in terms of the fact that he wasn't doing x y and z 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 sort of i didn't lean into this as such until later on sort of 2018-ish 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 the business or to the business then they were coming to myself so um yeah i definitely noticed that and um listen and then i chose to obviously start pushing that on youtube and stuff and then that happened more and more going forward 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 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 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 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 what am i bad at what am i good at and what's my choice so actually around that point i'd split the two out good bad and i decided to lean into my strengths i did that for 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 weaknesses and i'm going to become good at public speaking i don't know people management all these other things so the yeah when we met i was definitely a lot more nervous um i i it's so fun because i i literally 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 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 you were nervous about the conversation um and i would never have guessed that you're totally different now yeah and 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 really surprised and i want to share that because um it i think there is a lot of people listening young entrepreneurs or people that want to that think you know how you are now is how you will be and there's no there's no development or no and this is the thing where i think what what you need to do again even more 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 entrepreneur everything's just amplified right your your wins are bigger your losses are larger again um your weaknesses are you know are exposed because you are exposed to the business and the world in many respects 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 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 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 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 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 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 don't i think i was lucky because i was surrounded by great people right so 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 and you can again look at them in a logical manner as you would any other problem in life and try and solve them 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 going to pick their brains or even better i'm just gonna watch them because some people learn from just watching some people learn just by watching and so steve for example who's the who was the ceo at jim sharp previously we didn't have that many steve teach me how to people manage 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 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 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 always say is um there's no self-development without self-awareness and like i i still to this day i've spoken to a lot of people on this podcast i have no idea how you make someone genuinely self-aware and when i 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 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 really the time it hit home for me and it was like a ton of bricks on the top of my head was i did a 360 feedback so anyone that doesn't know what a 360 feedback is you this i could i'm sure you can find it online if you google it but basically you ask the people around you to 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 it comes back to you and you have this like thick bot of paper that basically fully describes yourself 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 was so upset and annoyed and i remember thinking this is not me and i took it home that night and i it was just um erratic hot-headed arrogant um poor manager all these things from your employees yeah and it's one of them like the so the first thing and completely natural is who said that i'm gonna find him right that's the first thing now fortunately 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 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 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 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 and we carried on with that day and then like later on she was i said um i said the same i said that was a load of rubbish wasn't it that's nothing like me and then she said she said that's the most you thing i have ever read and then it was like that was it it was like i i didn't 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 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 that was the moment i realized i have to change i have to improve i have to develop and if you're talking about becoming self-aware i think that was my moment so incredibly true how our partners know us yeah and they they can be the most hurtful but as you said completely accurately 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 room and i'm like oh my god like once your egos had like a couple of seconds to chill so 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 who the [ __ ] said that like and trying to work it out like looking over looking at everybody like i know it was you yeah 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 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 decades of your childhood or whatever and especially when you're a winner when you've been successful in one thing it validates you it almost appears to be like validation of everything so what do you do then what 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 jim shark for the most part not entirely had been very successful until that point so it was difficult for me to go 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 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 actually so what i did was i had the weaknesses which were both self-defined but defined by 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 look at the weaknesses right but there is a list of strengths in there somewhere um and i realized that my strengths particularly at the time were around creativity around product around brand around marketing around understanding the industry the customer and so on so i was you know i was mulling the idea 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 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 i'm going to do i'm 20 whatever it is 3 24. i'm purely going to focus on my strengths now and that's when i went into a brand role a product role a marketing role everything that was front end and creative at gymshark i completely lent into that was when steve came into the business steve became the ceo so i was sort of like the responsibility of maybe some of the week the areas i was weaker at finance ops management that was then like moved away from me and i purely completely innocently focused on that that was your decision yeah it's a pretty amazing decision it was heartbreaking as well because again it's one thing moving yourself out 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 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 motivation to one day be as good as that that was the that was the inspiration i think maybe because i was young i knew i had time and i think that helped um but it was heartbreaking because the other thing as well is that doesn't mean to say exclusively everything steve did for example i thought was right it just there was things that he did well i thought maybe i wouldn't do that or i would think differently and sometimes he would 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 and i am like a majority shareholder of the business so ultimately i have control of the business 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 his judgment and opinion and and it's that weird balance of that and i never and i never have to this day 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 because so yeah then i was fortunate enough to watch steve learn from steve and and that really helped him and this was the beginning i think of the period where i was sort of becoming a ceo because i i started off as the chief of brand right so the business was smaller at this stage i can't remember the the exact size or say 20 30 million in revenue maybe and i managed the creative the imagery the videography the athletes and sponsorships and all these different things the events and that was cool because i just i got a real detailed understanding of all those things like really detailed i was in the nuts and bolts of everything um funnily enough it then happened again a guy called noel came in who was way better than me and he came in as the chief of brand so 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 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 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 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 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 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 lost at this point um because having gone from ceo to brand to marketing typically when an employee 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 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 years because then then it was it was brand into marketing into product there was tech for a little bit um i've moved around a lot so this this ceo role is it's the first genuine home i've found since sort of running the business back in 2013 2014 and and why why why 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 you kicked steve out and evaded evaded the office and slammed the shareholder card on his desk and told him to do one i'm joking um but since you've sort of regained your position and made the decision with steve um that you wanted to do the role again yeah what was the thinking behind that because a lot of founders when they own the business it's doing really well it's flying they know that they're in terms of the financial ins incentives they're going to do just fine and they can have a really easy life and i've seen it happen they just step back yeah they just tiptoe out the door and let other people do the hard graft why did you want to step back into the hardest role of all so first and foremost 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 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 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 first conversation steve had to me that's and his conversation was i think i've taken the business to a point 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 period of okay like are we gonna bring someone in from the outside or ben are you gonna be able to 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 enough to do in that role um so there was a long almost warm-up handover whatever you want to call it to that 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 the numbers are but prior to steve we were maybe 30 30 employees now we're 900. we were one office in the midlands now we're several offices around the world so it's a very very different place but 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 having the intricate understanding of those areas not every area of the business but many of the areas has 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 it yeah what do you mean by that i so i i'm this i'm so proud of the fact that i've found a gymshark i am it's it's it's so great 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 that and for me with my personality and the way i'm built it's i think it's a 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 start the business right like there are so many business that businesses that are started that die 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 business i'm proud of the fact that i've worked in the chiefs roles but to be in the front seat in the ceo role a business like jim sharp moving forward is one is the most exciting thing in the world for me it's the biggest challenge that i could possibly like go for and like for me that's exciting like i want to aim high both for the business but also personally for myself as well and like you said at the start i love learning that doesn't mean i sit there reading books 24 7 but i love learning and being amongst it and there's no better role for that but the apparent downside to that role is that you then the box stops with you yeah which means when there's problems when there's crises they stop with you and you could sail off into the distance you'd get a really big boat with your shareholding uh in the company and you could just relax and just maybe you know chill out maybe even invest in some stuff and you know you and robin can have a great life yeah why not because it's like you're choosing stress and long hours and busyness over um i think robin probably asked me the same question regularly if i'm honest um i genuinely love it i love the people 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 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 when i have genuine ambitions to be a great chief exec of this business one 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 time so why not me and i'm always ambitious on behalf of the business more than i am myself right so 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 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 the people within the business always come first but personally i'm also ambitious for myself as well who is um hurricane ben hurricane ben that would have been the the ben that would have been described prior to my 360 feedback so that i'll give an example right so there would be a particular product that i didn't like and my opinion would be just direct brutal and probably not take into account other people's feelings or thoughts and that's not to say that everything that you should do in business should always be you know stepping around people's feelings because i definitely don't think that's the way but equally like 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 of how have you learned not to be a dick uh learn to give feedback examples with feedback empathy understanding why people do certain things like understanding the fact that like you know no one is perfect certainly not me nor anyone and pretty much never have i seen someone 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 they you know they want to see the brand negative negatively affected no one's posted on social or done something in particular because they want to see the brand negatively effective it's essentially a difference of opinion so i think like understanding that and being aware of it whilst i'm giving feedback i think it's important what i'm in your because 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 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 some of the things that steve doesn't like from in terms of character perspective okay they would they would know i feel like 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 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 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 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 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 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 because it's so rapidly changing not only because of the business itself but because of the world that we're in like 10 years ago facebook was only small snapchat didn't really exist instagram barely existed um shopify was very small like the ecosystem in the world that we play in was completely different so change as well i think is important yeah i can completely agree and uh i've i've heard a few of your friends and people within your team describe you as being a bit of a perfectionist as well in terms of having a high sort of attention of detail is that do you consider yourself to have to be a perfectionist i don't know i don't think so i definitely don't have a massive attention to detail i've got the attention span of a nat really um i try if if it's something that's really i don't know something that just like aligns with me then i'll i can obsess over it for months on end um 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 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 don't look like a perfectionist i'm a bit scruffy and i you know i sort of that's interesting meander 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 that um and you wear this outfit a lot yeah you pretty much look pretty the same every day yeah why 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 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 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 that you you know you were nervous in that context and the guy you are today two questions for you yeah um did you did you do some sort of um did you have professional support in developing your ability to speak so 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 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 it to uh to a group i found those as two very different things 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 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 work in front of a camera basically not through uh i don't know i don't know it was just through brute just keep going keep going stick it for a camera in front of me the first vlog she recorded and edited the whole thing um so she taught me how to sort of work in front of a camera i did have public speaking lessons 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 lovely to meet you and then i had public speaking lessons i did i did actually um shopify actually put me on a public speaking sort of camera thing which was cool then i did some here back in the uk and just slowly worked it and and then the thing that really helped me was just 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 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 somewhere like falling over my words and being terrible at it but you know that's just a necessary evil to get get good at anything really what did the public speaking lessons was there like key principles or key exercises that that 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 be able to steal there's a um there's a few bits so there's one that that they told me and 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 it says um i'm just preparing my impromptu remarks which is like obviously impromptu remark is a quick 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 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 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 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 there um i'd struggle with that so what i do is i prepare phrases sentences words reminders in my head so if someone 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 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 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 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 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 and there's like keywords trigger story so if you said to me um rejection i'd be like oh yeah you know 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 foremost preparing impromptu remarks whatever you want to call it prepare stories prepare things like make sure you're well prepared and generally you 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 conversation that was this long um and then the aim of that is to become 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 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 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 like panic and answer as quickly as i can with whatever whereas now i'm gonna process it think about it and then come back with a response because i'm comfortable and like i think the stages to all different types of learning and that was it for me one preparation once i'd done that i'd learnt to be comfortable and then i 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 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 genuinely thought you were amazing you could take ten thousand hundred and twenty three that's why yeah i watched 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 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 and tha