YouSaid · the spoken record

Ben Francis

lines on the record: 120
first: 2021-12-27
most recent: 2021-12-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, and I think, to be fair, I think Lewis was great in the early days, 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 is like, I don't think one is better than the other. Was just a different sort 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... I'm going to say 2014. I could be wrong. Maybe 2015. The business was found in 2012. I think he left the business in 2015. And then he basically retained 20% of your shareholding, and then in the deal that was last year, he then sold out the rest of that, and now he's investing and doing other things.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. And yeah, it was difficult.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where the level of an individual is or how to have a certain conversation or how to be self aware enough to know what I should and shouldn't be doing. Or where my level is. So, yeah, there's a hell of a lot of challenges along the way.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. And to be honest, one of the things that as we move through the sort of nine-year history of Gymshark, one of the things that one I'm proud of myself for doing is being able to adapt from that point of view. But some of the most difficult times of being that inevitably there are some people who can't maybe make that switch from what was to... To the future. So that's an incredibly difficult thing to manage as well. And that's the sort of thing that no one, you don't go to business school or whatever and get taught how to understand.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very different at the start, no. So at 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 is 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 or such.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And again, all these lessons, I think, definitely helped because even when we talk about today, Gymshark sort of leadership team, that's the exact analogy we use, Avengers Assemble. Like, I don't want a chief of product who is the most wildly intelligent financier or whatever or commercial person but knows brand. It's useful that they have an understanding and a respect of those things. But we want a chief of product who's really good at 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.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other thing that was cool about it was there wasn't really one, so you had like different classes of character, right? So one was like a warlock and one was like a warrior, one was like strong that had loads of health and could protect, one would inflict loads of damage on the enemy. The thing there was with Teams there wasn't one person or one individual that could do everything. It was the group that could do everything, but you needed like all these different facets. It's like the Avengers, right? The Avengers assemble into this great group individually. They're not as strong.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How old I was then? I was at school. Listen, 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 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... Was open world for one. It had like its own economy in it. So you could learn a trade and like, you know, do things, sell things on the auction house. But you were working with people from all, or you were playing with people from all over the world. You had to learn sort of teamwork.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, that are in the gym that I've asked questions to that probably rolled their eyes and thought, oh God, it rears again. Like, I just want to get on with my workout. But I was that person just asking questions.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'd met in the room 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 selling things online. And I knew that he worked in another e-commerce company. So I sort of messaged him. I think it was on Facebook at the time. Hi, Nira, and long time no speak. Do you mind if I pick your brain 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 I managed to learn the ability to really sell the vision of Gymshark.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, and that was just for asking questions. Paul introduced me to Steve because Steve had previously worked at Reebok and that sort of fitness sportswear sort of thing made sense. I ended up meeting a guy called Niran who worked in like a local company. Funny enough actually on that.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 really care what you say because this is my vision. And that worked to a point, right? 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 I would go to the gym, right? And I would find like a guy called Paul who was like the business guy and I'd 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.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'll tell you what happened, right? And this is interesting as well. So maybe I don't think this is probably spoken about enough. As an entrepreneur, particularly of a grown business, you'll know this as well as me. Not only do you have to wear loads of different hats 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”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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. So 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.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gymsharp 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 a business and everything revolved in many ways around myself.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I ended up getting into sick form. I was super lucky. And one of the classes that I took then was a BTEC in IT. And I don't know if you remember the BTech. You had A-levels or BTEC. 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 coursework or practical work to do IT or tech in a practical way for a B-tech 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 gymsharks. 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.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And stuff, and there was one particular job that he did that he told me about, and 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 worries that he had in terms of, you know, keeping the house for my nan, my mom, her sister. And at the time, it didn't really, I don't know, 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 risk 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 work 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-ish student, sort of like pretty average.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 and he would line furnaces. So furnaces, big ovens basically where we 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 laboring and I would be sort of on the sort of cement mix of the drum and I would basically pass him cement or he would teach me to like push in ceramic fiber or labricks 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 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 because 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.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think I had two sort of really lucky moments. So the first one was about 14 years old, I think it was about 14. You know, when you do work experience. So everyone does sort of work experience at school.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Gymshark 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. And 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 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 hardworking.”
2021-12-27 · The Diary of a CEO · Gymshark CEO: How I Built A $1.5 Billion Business At 19: Ben Francis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT