Ben Francis: There's always one word that always sticks with me and has throughout and
that word is courage. Is that little things take courage but also big leaps take courage and
I think that's something that needs to be spoken about a little bit more.
At 29, Ben Francis is the major shareholder of the billionaire company, Gymshark.
Getting to that level of success as quickly as he did required a lot of effort from him.
He was a man with a big dream,
and he was able to turn it into reality because he had a very important quality.
Discipline.
He was disciplined enough to go to college,
work as a pizza delivery guy, and found a company, all at the same time.
He was disciplined enough to work late at night on his dream when everyone else was sleeping.
He was disciplined enough to not spend the money he got from the business
and instead use it to make it bigger, stronger, and more powerful.
He showed the world that you can come from nothing and still get everything.
His lessons can make you a millionaire.
Listen closely and learn how to make your dreams into reality.
Interviewer: I think a lot of your success for Gymshark is, the success of Gymshark
is the fact that you just carried on reinvesting that money. Where does the temptation come in
or like, I mean, how important is it as well to not give in to that temptation to go right
I could have a beamer, I could have a nice car, I could get a nice house? How did you resist that?
Ben Francis: To be honest I didn't feel that temptation massively.
We've reinvested everything that we possibly could into the business to grow it to where it was and I
knew the day that the business started that there wasn't going to be a penny taken out
of it for several years. I think it goes back to that why. Like I just loved it and I wanted
to create the best brand I possibly could and that was a genuine, genuine
ambition of mine which is why I think it was no desire of me to sort of rinse the business for
money. The other thing I would say is after a few years I had managed through fortune and probably
the odd great decision along the way to build an incredible team around me. So as the business got
up to the stage where it could start it genuinely had an opportunity to be a large-scale business.
So I think we were doing maybe four million in revenue, which at the time seemed massive.
Compared to where we are now today, you know, it was, it's very much the startup phase.
And I met two guys, one called Paul, one called Steve, met them in the gym funnily enough.
And then there was this bit where they sort of sat me down and they said “Do you want
to be the biggest brand in Bomsgrove? Would you want to try and make this into a global brand?”
Obviously, I’d taken every risk possible to get it to that point. So I wasn't at that
point going to go right I’m going to settle down here. I said I want it to be the biggest.
I wanted to be a truly global brand. And that was powerful as well because again when
you've got the opportunity to create a global brand and a global community I’m not going to
take an extra few hundred quid here and there just so that I can have a slightly nicer car.
Have the discipline no one else has.
Have the confidence in yourself to know that you can gan further.
Be patient.
The money you spend with luxury and material things now could be
the money to turn your business into a powerhouse.
Choose wisely.
Will you give in to temptation?
Or will you invest in yourself?
Invest in your vision!
People may think you are a fool to be working late at night.
They may laugh at you.
They may tell you to relax.
You will just say, see you in ten years.
Because after that time the amount of work you put into your endeavors
will be the reason you accomplish so much down the line.
Ben Francis: I love failure. So that's probably another thing that I haven't spoken about in this.
I’m very and I think we at Gymshark are actually getting really good at failing. Like we are really
good. And there's definitely not a feeling of negativity around failure because again
it's an opportunity to learn and I think we embrace failure.
And I think even in my career going back to those seven failures prior to Gymshark
I’ve always enjoyed and embraced failure. I think that's important too.
Failure is not the end.
It is just the beginning.
The beginning of a new story with more strength, more knowledge, more experience.
Failure is a chance to become better.
To transform your weaknesses into your strengths.
The only real failure is giving up.
The rest are just challenges for you to become better,
grow, and accomplish everything you’ve ever wanted.
Embrace the challenges life presents to you.
Run toward them. And you will see something incredible happen.
You will see that you are bigger than them.
You can overcome anything.
You just got to believe and take action.
Ben Francis: When the business grows you start bringing in people and creating a team
around you. Now if you've done that right those people should be better than you in
different areas, in which case you then need to realize that the way that you were
for the first couple of years, the way that I acted for the first couple of years has
now expired and I need to essentially evolve into the next level of entrepreneur or leader.
So dragging the business to where I want it to go, regardless of what people
say when you've got great people around you, is completely and utterly the
wrong thing to do. So I had this sort of very introspective moment of oh my God,
everything I’ve been so far and everything I’ve done now no longer works or is valid. So I had
to recreate myself and start to educate myself and learn how I can truly develop the business.
So during that period, it was a bit of okay you know there was sort of a halfway house, there were
certain bits where I would have to, you know, sort of push my opinion or authority more than well,
significantly more than what I ever would today, to try and really embed the Gymshark brand the
culture where we wanted to go and really just imprint on people where I think this brand
will go. But equally listening to those guys and the team around me when they knew better than me.
And then in that third phase as the business gets to where we are today now
I then go from that to being much more around thinking outside of the box, thinking far ahead,
and ultimately having to be as articulate as I can in the vision because I’m now not communicating it
to just myself or I’m not communicating it to five or six people around me. I’m
communicating it to hundreds, if not thousands or hundreds of thousands of
people around the world so now my role has changed massively.
Ben Francis: So much more is in the control of the individual than what people think.
And that's quite easy for me to say, right, sat in the in the position that I’m in. But
the only reason that I or Gymshark has gotten to where we are today is because we took control
of the situation that I was in. I followed my passion and there was never a point where we've
gone the world has dealt us a bad hand so we're just gonna mope. And I think that's
so important that whatever happens and it's not everyone is dealt the same hand. Some
people have a better hand than others and some people have more opportunities than others and
unfortunately, I think that's part of life and it's a shame. And hopefully, over our lifetimes,
we can try and level that playing field as best we can. However, you're dealt with a hand and
ultimately that's the hand that you've got to play. And I think people have more control than
what they think. And I think if you really take time to focus on self-development and improvement
I think you'd be very surprised as to the incredible gains that you can make.
So much more is in your hands.
So much more depends on you.
Outside consequences are nothing if you have the will to rise above them.
If you have the determination to discover how to succeed no matter what.
Self-improvement is the key.
It is the secret.
You already have everything you need to become the person you’ve always wanted to become.
Become aware of your greatness.
Take responsibility for your destiny and run toward it.
You are the only one that can change your life.
Ben Francis: Pursue whatever you find interesting at the time. So again, all the different
things that I’ve did, all the seven failures previously, that's the reason that Gymshark is
allowed to exist today. That's the reason that I and we are where we are today, is because
of the app that failed or the website that crashed, or the social network that had an
error in the code. So it was just from day one sort of thing all those things led to Gymshark. So
I really think I would just say to myself as a kid, just whatever you're passionate about just
create and just go because, you know, one day down that meandering path you'll end up
finding something special that just happened to be the thing that everyone wanted in that moment
that just happened to be perfectly suited to the skillset that you have. So yeah, just keep trying.