How I Built GymShark to $1.4 Billion Business | Ben Francis Gymshark CEO

Ali Abdaal 0:00 Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of Deep Dive, the brand new podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people to uncover their journeys towards finding joy and fulfillment at work and in life. My name is Ali, and in each episode, I chat to my guests about the philosophies, strategies, and tools that have helped them along the path to living a life of happiness and meaning. My very first guest on the podcast is Ben Francis, the founder and CEO of billion-dollar fitness brand Gymshark, which is one of my favorite brands in the world. In our conversation, we discuss his humble beginnings, making clothes by hand in a shed with no heating, and founding Gymshark at the age of 19.

Ben Francis 0:33 And this was the moment where it hit home because we went from doing £300 a day as an issue in revenue to £30,000 in the first half an hour of the website being live.

Ali Abdaal 0:42 How he built a viral brand, and tips for getting started with entrepreneurialism. So please feel free to grab a cup of tea and enjoy the conversation. Ben, thank you so much for, for joining [laughs] i- in the apartment. Welcome to the podcast, to the channel, whatever we, we're gonna call this. Um-

Ben Francis 0:56 Yeah, thank you for having me. I've been watching you for a long, long time, so it's a bit surreal to actually be here. But, um, no, thanks for, thanks for having me.

Ali Abdaal 1:02 I mean, that feels very bizarre because I've been [laughs] following you for a long, long time as well. I think Gymshark came on my radar about, like, four years a- four or five years ago, something like that.

Ben Francis 1:10 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:11 Uh, I just fell in love with, with the clothing line.

Ben Francis 1:13 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:14 And then when I saw that, like, Gymshark athletes were a thing-

Ben Francis 1:16 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:16 ... it sort of became a thing in my mind that, "Oh, you know, one day I'd love to be a Gymshark athlete."

Ben Francis 1:20 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:21 Um, just as a sort of something to work towards. Um-

Ben Francis 1:24 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:24 ... so it feels very surreal that, that we're sitting here now having this conversation.

Ben Francis 1:27 Yeah, me too.

Ali Abdaal 1:28 Um, I saw something interesting on your, on your Wikipedia page-

Ben Francis 1:30 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:30 ... when I did a bit of a stalk, which said that your very first business was selling license

Ali Abdaal 1:35 plates.

Ben Francis 1:35 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:36 W- what was the story there?

Ben Francis 1:37 So when, so when I was a kid, [clears throat] um, our next-door neighbor, who's some of my closest friends, basically my best friend and his dad, they were just massively into cars, number plates, all that sort of stuff, for whatever reason. And, um, there was this bit where I think they moved into a new style of number plate, and you could sort of spell names quite easily, and he would basically sell them. He would buy, and he would sell them. Um, and at the time, 'cause I knew how to make websites and stuff, he sort of came to me and he said, "Can you make a website for this?" And long story short, we ended up working together on that and, um, selling plates for a few years, and it, it was, it went quite well, to be fair, and it was quite fun. And it was, it wasn't like a direct passion of mine. It's something I just fell into because he, he couldn't take things online, and it was something that I knew about.

Ali Abdaal 2:21 Nice. Like, how, how did you get started with the website stuff initially?

Ben Francis 2:25 Ooh. So I was really lucky. So when I was, when I was a kid, I was doing my GCSEs, um, and I wasn't particularly great at school. Not that I wasn't... I wasn't, like, a naughty kid or whatever. It just, it just, for whatever reason, I didn't, it didn't identify with me particularly well, and I probably didn't put enough effort in and then as a result didn't get good enough grades. Um, when... I think it's 16 when you finish school.

Ali Abdaal 2:46 Yeah.

Ben Francis 2:46 I think 16-

Ali Abdaal 2:47 Yeah

Ben Francis 2:47 ... finishing school. Um, I, I basically ended up getting into sixth form, but it was under the idea that I did, I had to do English literature as one A level. I, I did business as one A level. Um, and they, they asked me to do English for some reason 'cause I just happened to do well at it. It was the one, it was probably the one subject where I didn't have to apply myself to do well-

Ali Abdaal 3:06 Oh

Ben Francis 3:06 ... which was weird. Um, business studies, and I did a BTEC in IT. Now, the BTEC in IT was life-changing for me because anyone that's, that... I mean, I'm not sure how it works now, but the old sort of rule of thumb was A levels was more test-oriented, BTEC was more coursework-oriented.

Ali Abdaal 3:22 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 3:22 And for me, that was quite cool 'cause it was a, like, it felt to me at the time like a pla- a practical application of, of skill.

Ali Abdaal 3:27 Yeah.

Ben Francis 3:28 Um, so in that, one of the modules, you had, like, y- your standard modules, but one of them was around web development, and it was really cool for me 'cause it was just a case of make a website, and they gave us access to the Adobe Creative Suite, and that was one of the most pivotal and life-changing moments for me because that's when I ended up learning. You, you had, I think you could go down two routes. You either made, or you made a website in FrontPage, and you made a website using DreamWeaver.

Ali Abdaal 3:53 Mm. Yeah.

Ben Francis 3:54 And it just gave me that basic knowledge of web development. But because we got access to the whole Creative Suite, I then learned how to use Photoshop and Illustrator and all these different things-

Ali Abdaal 4:01 Mm-hmm

Ben Francis 4:02 ... which anyone that's made websites or anything on, you know, any sort of digital products will know that you can't just have a website without graphics-

Ali Abdaal 4:09 Yeah

Ben Francis 4:09 ... you know, how to make all these different things. So, um, yeah, it was through IT, the BTEC IT, which I originally learned how to do things like that.

Ali Abdaal 4:17 Oh, okay. That's really interesting. So my, my story is, is kinda similar.

Ben Francis 4:20 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:20 Um, it was, uh, IT classes in year eight-

Ben Francis 4:24 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 4:24 ... when I saw, um, I saw one of the kids in the year above was, was leaving, and I, I saw that he'd, he'd, he'd, he'd gone on the Google homepage and he'd right-clicked View Source-

Ben Francis 4:33 [laughs] Yeah

Ali Abdaal 4:34 ... and there was all this code floating around.

Ben Francis 4:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:35 And I was like, "Oh my God, this is, this guy's a hacker. I need to-

Ben Francis 4:38 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 4:38 ... I need to understand how this code thing works." And then in ICT classes and then at break times and lunch times, 'cause me and a- all my friends were nerds-

Ben Francis 4:45 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 4:45 ... um, we'd go to the computer room, and I started dabbling in, in web design as well.

Ben Francis 4:48 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 4:49 You know, started off in FrontPage-

Ben Francis 4:50 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 4:50 ... pirated DreamWeaver, pirated Photoshop. [laughs]

Ben Francis 4:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:52 Sort of back in the day, Photoshop CS2-

Ben Francis 4:54 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 4:54 ... things like that.

Ben Francis 4:55 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:56 Um, but I think it's so interesting how a lot of people I've spoken to who have ended up doing entrepreneurial things have started from the, "I knew how to make websites" front.

Ben Francis 5:05 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 5:05 Um, is that something that you've seen as well?

Ben Francis 5:06 100%, but it, it's because, and you see this in a lot of areas, right? It's because not that many people were doing it. Because I remember, 'cause then the, the next step for me, which I didn't learn in IT but I ended up learning myself, was, was app development.

Ali Abdaal 5:18 Mm.

Ben Francis 5:19 And I sort of... It was around 17, 18 years old. I wanted to go into app development 'cause no one else was doing app development. So web development was cool, but, like, it got to the point where it's almost like, you know, when you start to learn a new skill, you learn a lot really quickly, then you get to a level, then it starts to slow down. And it felt like I'd sort of... I was at a crossroads. I could either double down on web development and really try and be great at it-

Ali Abdaal 5:38 Yeah

Ben Francis 5:39 ... but it felt like everyone was doing it, or I could try app development. I think it was like the Apple SDK, you paid 20, 30, 40 quid. I can't remember what it was.

Ali Abdaal 5:47 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 5:47 You pay the fee, and it basically gives you access to, like, the SDK basically. So then I moved on to apps. So I think a lot of people did well out of websites sort of in our era because not that many people were doing it, and there was so much opportunity.

Ali Abdaal 5:59 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 6:00 And then I think it went to apps and, you know, now it's sort of beyond that even.

Ali Abdaal 6:03 Yeah. Yeah, I think, like s- es- especially with, like, web- websites and apps, and I think now things like TikTok and stuff are-

Ben Francis 6:10 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 6:10 ... where as an individual, you don't need to ask anyone's permission. You can just make something completely from scratch.

Ben Francis 6:16 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 6:17 So nowadays you build websites, then later on apps.

Ben Francis 6:18 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 6:19 And now these days I feel like the kids are less into websites and apps and just more into content.

Ben Francis 6:24 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 6:24 Once you have that confidence that you can make something from nothing-

Ben Francis 6:27 Mm

Ali Abdaal 6:27 ... then the ideas start to flow, like license plates or, or whatever.

Ben Francis 6:30 Exactly. And the, so the thing that fascinated me about the web, right, was, and to be honest, it's still the case. So I think, I think a lot of people, a lot of young kids now will look at the web, look at apps, look at social, and they'll think, "Well, it's, it's all been done. Everything's been done. No ideas left," whatever.

Ali Abdaal 6:43 Mm.

Ben Francis 6:43 But there's so much opportunity. We'll look back at this period in 10, 20, 30 years' time as, like, the, the moment of opportunity. Um, the thing that I loved about the web, I, I'll never forget this. So when we first started the Gymshark website, we couldn't really get traffic there. Um, but we then found out that we could make thousands of products in the back end and call them all these different things, and Google Shopping would index them right at the p- top of the page for free.

Ali Abdaal 7:07 Oh, yeah.

Ben Francis 7:07 And it's like, almost like you couldn't do it now, but there's, there were so many little opportunities like that, little hacks, probably too, you know, strong a word. But those little tr- hacks and tricks that you could do to sort of get ahead. And I, I still think there's so many opportunities like that on all these different platforms that we're talking about.

Ali Abdaal 7:24 Hmm. Okay, awesome. So you learn how to website, uh, learn how to do websites with the-

Ben Francis 7:29 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 7:30 ... with the ITB Tech.

Ben Francis 7:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:31 Then you started doing the license plate selling.

Ben Francis 7:33 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:33 How, how did that business go? Like-

Ben Francis 7:35 Uh, it was all right. We did it for maybe a year or two. So I did it in that period where I was finishing school and then going into university with the guys. Um, it was fun.

Ali Abdaal 7:45 Yeah.

Ben Francis 7:45 It was a good learning experience. It was like, it was basically your typical website. It was just a, a, a select- selection of pages which showed stock, and then all of the sales would be done on email or on the phone. So again, it gives you that understanding of buying things, selling things, having websites. It wasn't a transactional website.

Ali Abdaal 8:01 Yeah.

Ben Francis 8:02 Um, you know, understanding deals on the phone, that sort of stuff. So it, it was like, it was a great learning curve for me.

Ali Abdaal 8:09 Okay. And then, well, what came n- So, so you said app design came next. How did, how did that happen?

Ben Francis 8:13 Yes. So after that it was just making apps and-

Ali Abdaal 8:16 Yeah

Ben Francis 8:16 ... um, I learned everything I know about app design, or I say I knew about app design, 'cause I wouldn't know where to start now.

Ali Abdaal 8:22 [laughs]

Ben Francis 8:23 Um, everything I knew about app design on YouTube, and I just watched different YouTubers, and they would do, like, tutorials. And the first couple of apps, the easiest thing I think to, to make was, like, a web browser.

Ali Abdaal 8:31 Mm.

Ben Francis 8:31 'Cause it was like, it took, like, 10, 15 minutes to make sort of thing. Um, made a couple of different web browsers, and then this is where I started thinking, I sort of built up my skills and I could do different, different things, and I thought, "Right, how can I, how can I actually make this practical?" And because at, by this point I was really falling in love with the gym and fitness-

Ali Abdaal 8:49 Mm

Ben Francis 8:49 ... that's when I thought, "Right, maybe I could make some fitness apps." And again, very, very basic, like nothing extraordinary in any way, shape, or form. But they were apps where you'd sort of go in and it would have workouts in the app, and then you could go into the calendar section, hit save this five-day split, and it would automatically populate your calendar with, with a, a workout basically and give you a little reminder to do it. And for me, it was less around almost, like, the product, but it was me, my sort of learning curve, and I had this aim of, "Right, I wanna make an app, and I wanna make an app that I can get live on the store."

Ali Abdaal 9:19 Mm.

Ben Francis 9:19 'Cause Apple had albeit fairly low guardrails, but they would definitely, like, double-check that the app was sort of robust enough to go on the store.

Ali Abdaal 9:26 Yeah.

Ben Francis 9:26 So I really wanted to be able to do that, and made two web browsers, which was just basic as anything, two fitness apps, and it was basically just around getting in shape.

Ali Abdaal 9:35 Oh, wow. So w- was, was this while you were at university-

Ben Francis 9:37 Basically

Ali Abdaal 9:37 ... or when you were, like-

Ben Francis 9:38 It was either last year at high school, first year at uni.

Ali Abdaal 9:40 Yeah.

Ben Francis 9:40 I think it was last year at high school.

Ali Abdaal 9:41 Okay. So you were, like, a full-time student doing, like-

Ben Francis 9:44 Yes

Ali Abdaal 9:44 ... studying and stuff, and then on-

Ben Francis 9:45 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 9:45 ... I guess weekends and evenings and school holidays-

Ben Francis 9:48 Messing around on things, yeah

Ali Abdaal 9:48 ... just, like, messing around on a computer making some apps.

Ben Francis 9:50 Whi- which was great fun, 'cause like I said, it just felt like you were doing stuff that no one else was doing.

Ali Abdaal 9:53 Yeah.

Ben Francis 9:53 You were doing something that... And 'cause I, I just love the Apple brand, and I would be that kid that would watch all of the keynotes when Steve Jobs would walk out.

Ali Abdaal 10:01 Mm.

Ben Francis 10:01 And I was just like, I just adored him and the brand so much. Um, for me, it was like that thing of, I just wanna be involved in it any way, shape, or form. And you know, you'll know this as well as I do, then you start learning something and it gets addictive, and then you start going on the forums and you're getting involved in the little communities. And I mean, to this day, I love being involved in all the different communities, like from, I mean, at the time it was app development, web development.

Ali Abdaal 10:23 Yeah.

Ben Francis 10:23 Now it's, like, motorcycles and fitness. But, um, yeah, it sort of gave me a little bit of a home as well.

Ali Abdaal 10:29 Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's really cool. Um, so then you went to uni. W- what did you study at uni?

Ben Francis 10:34 So I went to Aston University and I studied business management.

Ali Abdaal 10:37 Okay. W- so I'm, I'm considering potentially doing a business degree at some point, maybe like an MBA.

Ben Francis 10:43 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 10:43 And a lot of people have s- have said to me that maybe it's not particularly useful 'cause once you've run a business, you learn a lot more about business by running it than by doing a degree. What, what, what are your thoughts on, on that?

Ben Francis 10:54 Um, yeah, I think it depends. So we, basically what we did at Aston is they have, um, a common first year. I dunno how, uh, consistent that is across different universities.

Ali Abdaal 11:02 Mm.

Ben Francis 11:02 And then the, the aim of the common first year for all business students was to give you a solid grounding on everything. So you did a couple of modules on legals, accountancy modules, finance, maths, um, business-

Ali Abdaal 11:13 Mm

Ben Francis 11:13 ... management, um, all these different things. So I actually think that that gave me a great grounding and it, albeit we did make mistakes in the early days, the fact that I knew about trademarks and how important it was-

Ali Abdaal 11:24 Yeah

Ben Francis 11:24 ... intellectual property, and had that basic knowledge, it actually really, really helped me. And I was confident enough and understanding the different sort of classes of trademarks. I was getting trademarks early in, you know, Gymshark.

Ali Abdaal 11:34 Yeah.

Ben Francis 11:34 So it definitely gave me a basic knowledge. But yeah, I do agree. I think if you are gonna run a business, then you are gonna... It, I, I think they're sort of slightly separate. You won't learn the things you would learn starting a business through a degree-

Ali Abdaal 11:46 Yeah

Ben Francis 11:46 ... but equally vice versa. It, because running a business, you learn things as you do them. And the problem is, is you, 'cause you don't know what you don't know.

Ali Abdaal 11:54 Yes.

Ben Francis 11:54 If you don't know that you need trademarks or strong IP, then you'll never think about it.

Ali Abdaal 11:59 Mm.

Ben Francis 11:59 Whereas the business course will actually give you that grounding.

Ali Abdaal 12:01 Yeah. So this is a problem we're having in our business right now whereby- I've sort of been making, making shit up as I went along-

Ben Francis 12:07 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 12:07 ... for the last four years. And, you know, we've, we've now got a team of 12 people and we're trying to hire like five more.

Ben Francis 12:13 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 12:13 And just even thinking, you know, like what is a director of oper- operations? What's a director of marketing?

Ben Francis 12:18 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 12:18 Like that- apparently, that's a thing. And I just don't know what I don't know.

Ben Francis 12:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:22 And it's only when I speak to people who run businesses and I describe my problems, when they say, "Oh yeah, that sounds like you need a, a director of marketing."

Ben Francis 12:29 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 12:29 And I guess that's the sort of stuff that you got a kind of reasonable foundation in before, before starting Gymshark.

Ben Francis 12:34 Yeah, 100%. But I would also say that there's like this weird thing of there are, there is a conventional way of running a business-

Ali Abdaal 12:39 Mm

Ben Francis 12:39 ... and there's a g- there is a way that you'll be taught, and that tends to be based on the old school business models. So yes, having a grasp of what a different, the different areas of a C-suite will do is, is very, very important. But equally, like in your business, you're doing something that really hasn't ever been done-

Ali Abdaal 12:53 Mm

Ben Francis 12:53 ... at a reasonable scale. Like granted there's, there's massive like people, there's huge companies that will do similar sorts of things, but compared to where they'll be in 10, 20 years-

Ali Abdaal 13:02 Mm

Ben Francis 13:02 ... it's, it completely in- incomparable.

Ali Abdaal 13:04 Brilliant ideas. Yeah. So I guess it is reasonable to make it up as we go along.

Ben Francis 13:07 And but the other thing as well, and I speak about this quite a bit, so I've been really lucky to be around some incredibly inspiring, talented, and successful business people, like running businesses far, far larger than Gymshark. And all of them, to a degree, are winging it.

Ali Abdaal 13:21 Mm.

Ben Francis 13:21 Like genuinely all of them. So the... Again, it's like I always think about it, and this is, it, it hit me, it's gonna sound weird, but it hit me when I first walked into the gym, right? I was 15, 16 years old, and I walked into the gym, and I was trying to do a bicep curl, and I didn't know what I was doing. I felt really self-conscious. I, you know, I... It felt like the whole world was looking at me and going, "Who's that kid messing around with, with those weights?" But in reality, everyone was sort of working, like worried about themselves.

Ali Abdaal 13:46 Mm.

Ben Francis 13:46 And they were all thinking the same thing. And they, some of them were probably looking at me thinking, "Oh, he knows what he's doing," when he doesn't. And-

Ali Abdaal 13:51 Yeah

Ben Francis 13:51 ... it's, it's the same in many ways of, of business. Granted there's some incredibly talented people, and they've learnt a lot. But anything that's new-

Ali Abdaal 13:59 Mm

Ben Francis 13:59 ... everyone is winging it and working out as they go along, even up to the multi-billion dollar corporations.

Ali Abdaal 14:05 Yeah. [laughs] Have you got, have you got any examples of like when you, when you realized that that was a thing in, in the world of business?

Ben Francis 14:12 So basically, Gymshark has been built on Shopify since day one pretty much. Like we, we ended up moving off Shopify. It didn't go very well. We moved back, and we've had a, an incredible relationship with them for a long, long time.

Ali Abdaal 14:22 Mm.

Ben Francis 14:23 And I'm really fortunate because Harley, who's now president, and he's been, he was the chief operating officer for a long, long time at, at Shopify. Um, there was a guy who ran Shopify Plus called Lauren. Um, brief conversations with Tobi, who founded the business. And the fact that they sort of took us under their wing in many respects. And sort of I would, I would ask Harley questions, and he would be like, "I, you know, I dunno. We haven't worked it out either."

Ali Abdaal 14:46 Yeah.

Ben Francis 14:46 And this is one of the largest... I think this is Canada's biggest company, or one of Canada's biggest company, like thousands of employees. Such an inspiring group of people.

Ali Abdaal 14:54 Mm.

Ben Francis 14:55 You know, there's other people that I've spoken to as well. There's, um, a good friend of mine called Ajaz, who runs a, runs a company called AKQA. Again, I would ask him questions, and he's just like, "Yeah, you can just work it out sort of thing."

Ali Abdaal 15:05 Yeah.

Ben Francis 15:05 There's not this prescriptive rule book. Like some of the greatest minds in the world might not know the answers to your problems-

Ali Abdaal 15:11 Yeah

Ben Francis 15:11 ... because they're unique, and they need to be solved in a unique way.

Ali Abdaal 15:14 Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I had a similar moment. It was, it was a few weeks ago. So we've got, we've got a guy on our team, uh, Jakob, who helps out with marketing and stuff.

Ben Francis 15:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:22 And I was saying to Jakob, "All right, Jakob, you know, we need this like, you know, dream director of marketing."

Ben Francis 15:26 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 15:26 "I wanna be able to basically say to them that we wanna hit three million YouTube subscribers next year," and they'll be able to come up with a strategy.

Ben Francis 15:33 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:33 And he was like, "Mm, I'm not sure they would."

Ben Francis 15:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:36 Um, because if you imagine a director of marketing, maybe they've got an MBA or something like that, but he w- he was saying that like, you know, you as the YouTuber, you know far more about how to grow on YouTube.

Ben Francis 15:45 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 15:46 And these directors of marketing would be looking to you-

Ben Francis 15:48 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 15:48 ... for how to grow their brands.

Ben Francis 15:50 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:50 And I was like, "Whoa, but I just make it up as I go along." [laughs]

Ben Francis 15:52 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 15:52 And he was like, "Yeah, but you know, people would literally hire you to be a consultant to tell them-

Ben Francis 15:56 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 15:56 ... how to grow on YouTube." Which just again speaks to that thing that everyone's, everyone's just figuring it out.

Ben Francis 16:00 It's true. It's true. And so we have a similar sort of thing, where we were looking at marketing, but marketing is, it's so many different things to different people. We've actually s- moved it in a slightly different angle, where we'll have like a chief of brand-

Ali Abdaal 16:11 Mm

Ben Francis 16:12 ... and then marketing sits elsewhere in the business. Because then we would split our organic approach and our more quantitative approach to marketing-

Ali Abdaal 16:19 Yeah

Ben Francis 16:19 ... or, or like a paid approach.

Ali Abdaal 16:20 Yeah.

Ben Francis 16:20 So listen, everyone does things in different ways. And equally, I know companies that have a more conventional model that are wildly-

Ali Abdaal 16:25 Mm

Ben Francis 16:25 ... successful as well. So I just think it's what works for you.

Ali Abdaal 16:28 Yeah. And I guess part of it is, I suppose part of it is just like the semantics. Like do you call it marketing? Do you call it brand?

Ben Francis 16:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:35 Do you call it strategy? Like for us-

Ben Francis 16:37 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 16:37 ... it's like we call it content because most of our content is m- uh, most of our stuff is content.

Ben Francis 16:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:41 But then do you call it product? Do you call it operations?

Ben Francis 16:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:43 All, all this kind of stuff. And I think the boxes do have their place, but also just that recognition that, okay, does this department belong in operations or belong in marketing? Who cares? Like the point is they're researching content ideas. [laughs]

Ben Francis 16:54 Exactly. Exactly. Like when you get to the nuts and bolts of it, that's what you need to be thinking about rather than just the names.

Ali Abdaal 16:59 One, one thing I'm curious about, I saw your... You did a video about Black Friday, I think it was last year, where there was a lot of references to how you were working very closely with Shopify.

Ben Francis 17:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 17:10 And that seemed really interesting to me because obviously I've been following Shopify for years.

Ben Francis 17:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 17:14 And I know of Shopify as I pay t- $29 a month.

Ben Francis 17:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 17:17 And I, I figure it out and do it myself, and I message their support once in a while.

Ben Francis 17:20 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 17:20 But it seems you guys have a much more like integrated like... Uh, what does that look like at Gymshark scale working with a company-

Ben Francis 17:26 Mm

Ali Abdaal 17:26 ... like Shopify?

Ben Francis 17:27 So the, I think one... So we, we're very culturally aligned with Shopify. The way that Gymshark and Shopify works is very, very similar.

Ali Abdaal 17:34 Mm.

Ben Francis 17:34 Uh, and there's periods in time where there'll be a group of eight people from Shopify will fly over from Canada and spend time working in the Gymshark office, particularly around Black Friday and sort of sales periods.

Ali Abdaal 17:44 Okay.

Ben Francis 17:44 Um, and you wouldn't know. They wouldn't stick out. Do you know what I mean?

Ali Abdaal 17:46 Yeah.

Ben Francis 17:46 It's like everyone's very, very similar. 'Cause Gymshark has very, very high levels of traffic anyway.

Ali Abdaal 17:52 Mm.

Ben Francis 17:52 And we have super high levels of traffic-

Ali Abdaal 17:54 Yeah

Ben Francis 17:54 ... around times like Black Friday. For whatever reason, Gymshark becomes super attractive around those sorts of times.

Ali Abdaal 17:59 Mm.

Ben Francis 17:59 I think it's because we tend not to do too many sales. Now because the spikes are so high, there's been periods in the past where we've broken all of Shopify's records-

Ali Abdaal 18:08 Oh, right

Ben Francis 18:08 ... in terms of people jumping on the website-

Ali Abdaal 18:10 Yeah

Ben Francis 18:10 ... in a, in a, in a moment. So we basically need people on hand to make sure that the website is running in a robust way. 'Cause we've had periods in the past where it has fallen apart and hasn't gone well.

Ali Abdaal 18:19 Okay.

Ben Francis 18:20 So what will tend to happen, so Black Friday that's just gone, Shopify will send a group of individuals over, and we'll be managing the website live in our office. Obviously, they'll be Shopify staff, so they'll have access to all of Shopify's systems. And then you'll have the Gymshark guys sort of next to them-

Ali Abdaal 18:32 Yeah

Ben Francis 18:32 ... managing our side of things as well.

Ali Abdaal 18:34 Ah.

Ben Francis 18:34 It's, it's, it's amazing

Ali Abdaal 18:35 That, that, that'll be quite exciting, like

Ben Francis 18:36 It's like mission control

Ali Abdaal 18:37 Yeah

Ben Francis 18:37 Like, it's incredible just to see it all going on. Because a lot of the sort of extra things and add-ons that we have onto our website-

Ali Abdaal 18:43 Mm

Ben Francis 18:43 ... and a lot of even some of our analytics tools in real time, will break just due to the amount of traffic that we're, that we're receiving in that moment.

Ali Abdaal 18:49 Wow. [laughs] Okay, that's pretty cool. [laughs] I guess when you get to that level of scale, you're starting to solve these sorts of problems that-

Ben Francis 18:55 It, it-

Ali Abdaal 18:56 Yeah

Ben Francis 18:56 ... that's stuff that I never thought we would have to solve for. But, um, yeah, Shopify is such a great platform, and that's why it works for us, is they do really support us and help us during those sort of peak periods.

Ali Abdaal 19:06 Nice. Yeah, I actually, I actually got an email from one of their marketing people the other day being like, "Hey, we wanna work with you about entrepreneurship content." And I was like, "Yes." [laughs]

Ben Francis 19:13 You should. That's cool. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 19:14 Um, sweet. So, um, so if we go back to kind of you were, you were doing the apps around, around fitness.

Ben Francis 19:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 19:21 Um, when did Gymshark become a thing, like relative-

Ben Francis 19:25 Ooh

Ali Abdaal 19:25 ... to the app, app

Ali Abdaal 19:26 design stuff?

Ben Francis 19:26 So it was 2012 when the company was founded.

Ali Abdaal 19:29 Mm.

Ben Francis 19:29 Um, and the reason it was started was, one, I wanted a website with that, with, that would tran- transact.

Ali Abdaal 19:35 Yeah.

Ben Francis 19:35 So before that, I'd made the basic number plate website. I'd done all these different basic apps. I messed around with a few WordPress websites-

Ali Abdaal 19:42 Yeah

Ben Francis 19:42 ... fitness forums, tried to make a little fitness social network.

Ali Abdaal 19:45 Mm.

Ben Francis 19:45 It was all just a bit messy. Um, it wasn't particularly great. And then it was like, right, I've done all these different things-

Ali Abdaal 19:49 Yeah

Ben Francis 19:50 ... let's do a website that tran- that will transact. That's where I stumbled upon Shopify. Um-

Ali Abdaal 19:54 What was Shopify around in 2012? That, uh, that would've been really early days for them.

Ben Francis 19:57 Very, yeah-

Ali Abdaal 19:57 Yeah

Ben Francis 19:57 ... it was early days, very basic. But it was just, again, it was just a simple solution of, of-

Ali Abdaal 20:01 Yeah

Ben Francis 20:02 ... transacting online-

Ali Abdaal 20:02 Yeah

Ben Francis 20:02 ... which was great for us. Now, because essentially there was, the time wasn't taken up with massive hours on development, then we were really thinking carefully about the product. And I really wanted to be involved in fitness by any way that I could. And at the time, I was massively into supplements. I think anyone that first gets into the gym-

Ali Abdaal 20:19 Mm, yeah

Ben Francis 20:19 ... you like look at all the different nutrition. You hear about how important it is. And I went to a, a, a mate of mine worked at a local company. And I said to him, "I wanna stock supplements on the website. What's your minimum order?"

Ali Abdaal 20:29 Mm.

Ben Francis 20:29 And the, the minimum order was 8,000 pound for supplements. Now, I'd never heard of 8,000 pound, let alone seen-

Ali Abdaal 20:35 [laughs]

Ben Francis 20:35 ... 8,000 pound at the time. I was at Pizza Hut on, it was £4 something an hour. It, it was just, I wouldn't have been able to afford that. So I sort of sat down. And now sort of the term dropshipping, you know, it's, it's, I think it's a term that a lot of people will, will understand. And for those of you that don't, it's basically you don't hold stock. Um, someone orders from you, and basically you act as a middleman. Someone else ships it out to the customer. Now, at the time, I'd never heard of dropshipping, but I had this sort of idea of, okay, so I've got limited knowledge of a website, and I know around how Google works. I know that I want a large website. I want it to be broad. I want a vast product array. I want lots of pages. I want it to index well in Google. It's brand new. It's, it's not gonna be seen otherwise. So what I did was I dropshipped loads of supplements from the Gymshark website, filled it up with loads and loads of supplements. Wasn't making great margin, but it was, again, if we're looking back to the bar that was set-

Ali Abdaal 21:26 Mm

Ben Francis 21:26 ... the very low bar of I wanna be involved in fitness, and I want a, I want a website that transacts.

Ali Abdaal 21:31 Yeah.

Ben Francis 21:31 So I'd sort of filled that, right?

Ali Abdaal 21:32 Yeah.

Ben Francis 21:32 Even though we didn't own the stock. Did that for a while and took a few months, got a sale. First sale, I was dancing around my bedroom like it was the best feeling ever.

Ali Abdaal 21:40 First sale as in s- someone bought a supplement?

Ben Francis 21:42 Yeah, someone bought something online.

Ali Abdaal 21:43 Oh, okay. After, after a few months?

Ben Francis 21:44 Took about two months to get the first sale.

Ali Abdaal 21:45 Oh, bloody hell. Okay. That's a long time. [laughs] Yeah.

Ben Francis 21:47 Um, I'd sort of, it's at the point where, like, you almost forget about it.

Ali Abdaal 21:50 Yeah.

Ben Francis 21:50 It's like running in the background. I, I think we were paying Shopify a c- a few quid a month. The domain cost me, domain cost me £3.50.

Ali Abdaal 21:56 [laughs] Yeah.

Ben Francis 21:56 So my sort of, my investment cost would've-

Ali Abdaal 21:59 Yeah

Ben Francis 21:59 ... 20 quid, round numbers-

Ali Abdaal 22:00 Okay

Ben Francis 22:00 ... as a guess. So you sort of forget about it. Got the sale, and I was just buzzing. It was a £50 sale, and we made £2 profit on it, but it was a sale.

Ali Abdaal 22:10 Nice.

Ben Francis 22:10 Um, did that, kept going. Started to get the odd sale, like a sale every week and so on. And, and, um, basically I bought a, a tank because I was obsessed with bodybuilding. I wanted to be... I'd sort of realized I was never gonna be a footballer.

Ali Abdaal 22:23 Mm.

Ben Francis 22:23 I wanted to be a bodybuilder. Um, so I bought this tank online, like an Arnold Schwarzenegger-style stringer tank, and it just completely drowned me. Basically fell through the middle of it because it was built for a big bodybuilder, not sort of someone like me with more of a slender frame. So at that point I thought, right, I would love for us just to make our own clothing 'cause no one makes the clothing that we want. Um, conveniently, my nan was doing a curtains course. My mom knew how to sew. Local lad knew how to screen print. So saved up, bought a screen printer and a sewing machine, uh, and started to hand make the clothes from there.

Ali Abdaal 22:53 So you went from supplements to clothes?

Ben Francis 22:55 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 22:56 Because you saw a problem that you wanted, as clothing that looked a certain way and-

Ben Francis 23:00 It, it was like a selfish problem, right?

Ali Abdaal 23:01 Yeah.

Ben Francis 23:02 I wanted this stringer. I looked terrible in it. I was looking around online.

Ali Abdaal 23:05 Yeah.

Ben Francis 23:05 No one was making the product that we wanted. Um, so we did it. And it was at that weird time, right, where I loved the California bodybuilding aesthetic. A lot of the American product just wasn't really coming over to the UK, and that that was, it didn't fit in the way that we wanted. Things over in Europe and the UK were starting to get a lot more fitted and tapered. It was that, you know, Topman two for £10 era-

Ali Abdaal 23:25 Mm

Ben Francis 23:25 ... when everyone wore skinny jeans and little tight tops. So it was like that weird morphing of, okay, so I wanna be able to look like a bodybuilder-

Ali Abdaal 23:32 Yeah

Ben Francis 23:32 ... but I just haven't got the size. This was like the fashion over here. So all of a sudden the idea came, how great would it be to make fitness wear that would really accentuate your physique and taper, taper yourself in?

Ali Abdaal 23:42 Mm.

Ben Francis 23:43 Um, and that's when we started to hand make the clothes.

Ali Abdaal 23:45 Okay. So what was the trajectory then? So you start hand making the clothes. When, when did things start to really take off?

Ben Francis 23:51 I would guess 2015.

Ali Abdaal 23:54 Okay.

Ben Francis 23:54 About 2015, so about three years in, and that was when we did our first BodyPower, our first event, basically, and that was the trigger point where all of a sudden it went from being this thing that I did from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM-

Ali Abdaal 24:07 Yeah

Ben Francis 24:08 ... to I'm now going all in on this.

Ali Abdaal 24:09 Okay.

Ben Francis 24:10 And it was, it was around that first event that we did.

Ali Abdaal 24:12 And what, what happened at that first event?

Ben Francis 24:14 So, so as a kid, so about 20 minutes from where I grew up, there's the Birmingham NEC, so it's a large event space. And every year they would do an event called BodyPower. So my heroes, these American lifters, bodybuilders, they would all fly in. Everyone have a, have a huge fitness event once a year. So I would go as a kid. Um, and then the one year that we went, which would've been 2014, I believe, 2013, 2014, and I was walking around, and Gymshark existed, and this time it was, it was sort of- ... dropshipping supplements. We're in that bit where I'm about to buy the screen printing and sewing machine

Ali Abdaal 24:46 Yeah

Ben Francis 24:46 Um, and I'm walking around, and I'm just thinking, "Gymshark has to be here."

Ali Abdaal 24:51 Mm.

Ben Francis 24:51 Like, which was mental 'cause we had no stock at the time.

Ali Abdaal 24:53 Yeah. [laughs]

Ben Francis 24:53 There was no physical manifestation of Gymshark-

Ali Abdaal 24:55 Yeah

Ben Francis 24:55 ... and I just had this gut-wrenching feeling that we had to be here by any means necessary. So I'm walking around, and I, I'll never forget it 'cause I'm in a bit of a rush-

Ali Abdaal 25:03 Mm

Ben Francis 25:03 ... 'cause I'm there on the day, and I know I've got my pizza shift at 5:00, and it was coming to, like, 3:00. I'm thinking, "Right, I need to sort of make an action here and do something 'cause I need to get to work." And I've gone to the show office, and funnily enough, the guy that runs it, who's now a friend of mine called Ollie, and then there was Steve as well who were there. And I just said, "Right, I want a stand. Cheapest stand you can get. Give me a stand. I wanna be here next year. What's the price?" And it was 3 grand. Again, 3 grand was a hell of a lot of money-

Ali Abdaal 25:26 Mm

Ben Francis 25:26 ... but now it was more reasonable that within 12 months I could earn £3,000.

Ali Abdaal 25:30 Yeah.

Ben Francis 25:30 'Cause I had the job. Gymshark was starting to get a few sales. Um, it wasn't crazy. So there and then, booked into the stand. Um, followed it up on email, got it going. And over the next year, Gymshark started. We started hand-making the clothes. We started getting regular sales. We actually started to become a profitable business.

Ali Abdaal 25:48 Mm.

Ben Francis 25:48 So upgraded the stand. Started to, um, work more closely with some of my heroes who were YouTubers. Um, and we basically brought those guys to, to this event. So we'd, we'd stumbled upon the marketing mix that many online people use today, right? We'd, we'd had a product that was only available at this event.

Ali Abdaal 26:08 Mm.

Ben Francis 26:09 We'd accidentally built scarcity because we turned the website off while we were there.

Ali Abdaal 26:12 [laughs]

Ben Francis 26:12 Not, not through a strategic decision-

Ali Abdaal 26:14 Yeah

Ben Francis 26:14 ... but because, because we weren't hand-making the clothes. We had to turn the website off-

Ali Abdaal 26:17 Yeah

Ben Francis 26:17 ... 'cause otherwise people might order and not get them sent. Um, we flew these YouTubers in who were, again, not strategic, just our heroes, and I just really wanted to meet them.

Ali Abdaal 26:26 Mm.

Ben Francis 26:26 Um, and then we would go to this event, and we were starting to build a community 'cause at the end of each day, we would just go and lift down the road in Ironworks in Birmingham and, and just get a lift in f- with, you know, me, my friends, um, the athletes, the local fans, and we were building this community. So as we were doing this lifting and whatnot, people were taking pictures. They were putting-

Ali Abdaal 26:46 Mm

Ben Francis 26:46 ... it on Facebook, and the brand started to go viral without us really knowing. So the event went incredibly well. We completely sold out of everything.

Ali Abdaal 26:53 Mm.

Ben Francis 26:53 And then after the event, turned the website back on, and, and, and this was the moment where it hit home because we went from doing £300 a day as an issue in revenue to £30,000 in the first half an hour of the website being live.

Ali Abdaal 27:05 [laughs]

Ben Francis 27:06 And it just went. It was like, boom, overnight.

Ali Abdaal 27:08 Yeah.

Ben Francis 27:08 And going back to that, like the website, everything was set to infinite stock-

Ali Abdaal 27:11 Yeah

Ben Francis 27:11 ... because we would never get enough sales to ever trouble the scoreboard.

Ali Abdaal 27:14 Yeah.

Ben Francis 27:15 So I'm there at 1:00 in the morning, scrambling on my laptop, trying to turn all the stock to zero to cancel everything off-

Ali Abdaal 27:20 Yeah

Ben Francis 27:20 ... because we were just getting so many sales. Um, and there was a point where everything's out of stock on the website. I've closed my laptop. It's 1:00 in the morning.

Ali Abdaal 27:27 Yeah.

Ben Francis 27:28 There's 30 grand's worth of outstanding sales.

Ali Abdaal 27:30 Yeah.

Ben Francis 27:30 Um, and that was a moment where I was like, "Wow, I'm onto something here. Something's, something is really gonna-

Ali Abdaal 27:36 Mm

Ben Francis 27:36 ... like kick off with this company."

Ali Abdaal 27:38 Uh, w- what did that feel like? Like, can you remember, like, kinda your thoughts and feelings at the time-

Ben Francis 27:42 Mm

Ali Abdaal 27:42 ... as, like, this sort of your 100X-ing basically overnight?

Ben Francis 27:46 So that was the period where, um, sort of like I dropped out of uni, like the week before. Um, you know, I was, I was starting to really dig in, so I felt like I was then taking, albeit not massive... It didn't feel like massive financial risk, albeit, you know, the stand cost everything that we had. To fly the YouTubers over, everything we had. We'd, we'd risked everything we had several times. Um, but it was... I think I just felt really excited, to be honest.

Ali Abdaal 28:11 Yeah.

Ben Francis 28:11 And the, the thing that we did well, which I'm really proud of, is we didn't rest at that point. We did one great event, so then the next year we did two. The next y- year we did five, and we just went and went and went, and we kept spending everything we had-

Ali Abdaal 28:24 Mm

Ben Francis 28:24 ... on punts that we thought might come off, but stuff that our gut told us was the right thing to do.

Ali Abdaal 28:30 Nice. So between, let's say, 2013 and 2015, like before this event-

Ben Francis 28:35 Mm

Ali Abdaal 28:35 ... how were people finding the supplements and the clothing? Like-

Ben Francis 28:39 Um

Ali Abdaal 28:40 ... what sort of marketing-

Ben Francis 28:41 [clears throat]

Ali Abdaal 28:41 ... if any, were you guys, you guys doing?

Ben Francis 28:42 So Facebook was massive at the time, YouTube, uh, and Google were the main three things.

Ali Abdaal 28:47 Okay.

Ben Francis 28:47 So it was the whole Google Shopping thing was massive for us. There was a change where all of a sudden you had to pay for your spot on Google Shopping, which sort of affected us, but it's sort of like a bit of an evolve or die moment.

Ali Abdaal 28:58 Yeah.

Ben Francis 28:58 So then that was the point where we actually started getting involved with a little bit of paid advertising.

Ali Abdaal 29:02 Yeah.

Ben Francis 29:02 Facebook. Instagram wasn't really a thing.

Ali Abdaal 29:04 Mm.

Ben Francis 29:04 So yeah, Facebook, YouTube, and Google.

Ali Abdaal 29:06 So Facebook as in Facebook Groups or Facebook Ads? Like w- what was-

Ben Francis 29:09 Facebook Pages was the thing at the time

Ali Abdaal 29:11 ... Facebook Pages. Oh, it was a thing wasn't it?

Ben Francis 29:11 Facebook Pages.

Ali Abdaal 29:11 Yeah.

Ben Francis 29:11 So there was a Gymshark page-

Ali Abdaal 29:13 Yeah

Ben Francis 29:13 ... which everyone would comment on and-

Ali Abdaal 29:15 Yeah

Ben Francis 29:15 ... um, I mean, we ended up building up to well over a million followers, which at, at the time was just huge.

Ali Abdaal 29:19 Yeah. That's insane.

Ben Francis 29:20 Um-

Ali Abdaal 29:21 For the day

Ben Francis 29:21 ... and that was back in 2015, 2016.

Ali Abdaal 29:24 Okay. And then on YouTube, w- okay, what, what was the thing of like-

Ben Francis 29:27 Y-

Ali Abdaal 29:27 ... sending product to people and-

Ben Francis 29:29 Yeah, so-

Ali Abdaal 29:29 What, what was the strategy there?

Ben Francis 29:29 So this sort of thing. So we didn't, we've not really done too much on YouTube.

Ali Abdaal 29:33 Okay.

Ben Francis 29:33 And, and at the time, so it was going back to my heroes. The, it was those guys that were great YouTubers. I say great YouTubers. Matt, who was the biggest at the time-

Ali Abdaal 29:40 Mm

Ben Francis 29:40 ... had 20,000 subs, which-

Ali Abdaal 29:42 Right. [laughs]

Ben Francis 29:42 ... by today's numbers-

Ali Abdaal 29:43 Yeah

Ben Francis 29:43 ... are, are quite small. They're our heroes. They're uploading regularly on YouTube. I would love... I remember thinking, like Lex Griffin, who's one of the first athletes, he lives up in Manchester. I remember thinking, "I'd love Lex to try on our t- our top, try on our tank and give us some feedback."

Ali Abdaal 29:56 Yeah.

Ben Francis 29:57 And then he just happened to wear it on YouTube, and that's where I think YouTube really kicked off for us.

Ali Abdaal 30:01 We're gonna take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor for this episode, and that is Brilliant. I've been using Brilliant for the last two-plus years. They're a fantastic platform for learning maths, science, and computer science with engaging and interactive online courses. And the great thing about Brilliant is that they really teach stuff from a very first principles-based approach. It's almost like the way that we were taught in places like Oxford and Cambridge, where you learn a concept and then you apply the concept to an interesting problem rather than just being spoon-fed stuff like we initially learnt in school. My favorite courses on Brilliant are the computer science ones. Uh, as some of you guys might know, I was torn between applying to medicine and computer science. I went for medicine in the end, but I always had an affinity to computer science. And taking the courses on Brilliant, like their Introduction to Algorithms and their Introduction to Python, really helped me get more of a grasp of computer science than I've ever had before. It's also great for learning how to code, which is an incredibly useful skill to have, especially if you wanna start a business. And I attribute, like, 98% of my business success to the fact that I learnt how to code when I was in secondary school. So if you wanna check out the courses on math, science, and computer science, then head over to brilliant.org/DeepDive, and the first 200 people to sign up with that link will get 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you, Brilliant, for sponsoring this episode. And so while, while all this was happening, you were working at Pizza Hut?

Ben Francis 31:11 Yes. So I ended up quitting pizza around, around the event.

Ali Abdaal 31:14 Around the event-

Ben Francis 31:15 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 31:15 ... when things really started to take off.

Ben Francis 31:16 Yeah. And I quit pizza and university around the same time. So it was-

Ali Abdaal 31:19 Yeah

Ben Francis 31:19 ... a little bit like, I remember my mom, my mom and dad being a little bit like, "Are you sure this-

Ali Abdaal 31:23 Yeah

Ben Francis 31:23 ... is what you wanna do?" And then I was just like, "Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna go and give it a go."

Ali Abdaal 31:27 So one, one of the questions I get all the time, and I know you've, you've recently done a video about this, is-

Ben Francis 31:31 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 31:31 ... like, how, how do you have time to do all these things?

Ben Francis 31:33 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 31:33 So, you know, early days of Gymshark, you're running this business on the side-

Ben Francis 31:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 31:37 ... you're working at Pizza Hut, you're at uni.

Ben Francis 31:38 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 31:38 Like, what was your w- w- or what was your time management looking like at the time?

Ben Francis 31:43 Well, I just wanna say, so my time management then and now are vastly different, just completely different.

Ali Abdaal 31:48 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 31:48 So back then it was university, which I mean, univer- university, it's like, it's not like a solid nine-

Ali Abdaal 31:54 Yeah

Ben Francis 31:54 ... till five, is it? Like, you'll have busier days and quieter days. So basically university in the day, Pizza Hut shifts would always be 10- uh, 5:00 till 10:00.

Ali Abdaal 32:01 Mm.

Ben Francis 32:02 Normally 10:30, latest 11:00 by the time you're sort of washed up, 'cause as a driver you do the pot wash when you're in the, in the building. And then it would be 10:00 or 11:00 onwards I would work on Gymshark. Now, as Gymshark started to grow, we'd have live chats, emails and stuff. So Pizza Hut was great for me because I could do a delivery, then sit in my car, respond to two or three emails-

Ali Abdaal 32:21 Yeah

Ben Francis 32:21 ... and then carry on. So I'm doing two things at the same time.

Ali Abdaal 32:23 Yeah.

Ben Francis 32:24 And that was that period where, I think it was the iPhone 3GS, I think it was my first iPhone, and I, I got my hands on one and I'm like buzzing 'cause I can literally work on the go.

Ali Abdaal 32:34 Yeah.

Ben Francis 32:34 So I was like almost doing two jobs at once whilst I was at Pizza Hut, which was absolutely brilliant for me.

Ali Abdaal 32:39 Nice. And what does your time management look like now [laughs] roughly?

Ben Francis 32:42 Incredibly well, just scheduled, organized, everything down to the second.

Ali Abdaal 32:48 Okay.

Ben Francis 32:48 It's, it's, it's actually really cool. And for me at the start it was really difficult to get used to, 'cause I just loved the whole thing of-

Ali Abdaal 32:54 Mm

Ben Francis 32:54 ... doing whatever the hell I want when I wanted to do it. But now I've learned to be really disciplined. Um, and essentially, 'cause I am horrifically unorganized, essentially outsourcing that to people who are incredibly well-organized and absolutely love doing that sort of stuff, um, it's great for me 'cause I know I, I basically wake up and it's like a set of train tracks, right? Every minute pretty much from 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning tends to be planned till 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening.

Ali Abdaal 33:18 So what does that look like on a standard day? [laughs] Like, what does a day in the life of Ben Francis-

Ben Francis 33:22 It very-

Ali Abdaal 33:22 ... look like?

Ben Francis 33:22 Honestly, it varies so much. It's-

Ali Abdaal 33:23 Yeah

Ben Francis 33:23 ... it's well different now because I'm not traveling.

Ali Abdaal 33:25 Yeah.

Ben Francis 33:25 So it's actually really, it's simple because it's like there's one moving part, whereas before, moving around-

Ali Abdaal 33:30 Yeah

Ben Francis 33:30 ... we've got offices in Hong Kong, Mauritius, Denver, events that we would do all over the world.

Ali Abdaal 33:34 Yeah.

Ben Francis 33:34 It was, it was manic. Now it would be, I'd usually, I usually try and get into the office around 7:00, 10:30, basically just meetings throughout. It could be, there'll be a particular day, for example, with one-on-ones in the team, so people that I work directly with.

Ali Abdaal 33:49 Yeah.

Ben Francis 33:50 Um, there'll be certain projects that I'm working on, and then we may be on- there'll be certain days allocated to those things. Um, once a week or every other week I'll be in London, so they'll sort of batch up the London meetings and do all the London meetings on a particular day. I'll get involved with all sorts of different things, whether it's, uh, you know, content on my YouTube. The only thing I would say is now it's changed because I moved into a CEO role, so I'm now just one step slightly more removed, whereas previously it would be product and, um, or brand, whereas now I'm chatting with the people that are doing those things.

Ali Abdaal 34:19 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 34:20 Which is again, just a slightly different thing to get used to.

Ali Abdaal 34:21 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 34:22 Yeah, we'll come back to the CEO thing in a bit 'cause I really-

Ben Francis 34:24 Mm

Ali Abdaal 34:24 ... want, really, really wanna kind of ex- explore that. Um, so g- you know, going back to sort of l- imagining s- kind of 2014, 2015 before the, the, the NEC show. What did the team look like in Gymshark?

Ben Francis 34:36 Ooh. There was, um, myself and Lewis, who started the business.

Ali Abdaal 34:42 Mm.

Ben Francis 34:42 There was my brother. So in around 2015, I think it was my brother. So ba- my brother was the first employee, and the whole thing of Joe joining the business was we're at the event, we need someone back at the, um-

Ali Abdaal 34:54 Yeah

Ben Francis 34:54 ... back at the, um, the, the ranch to sort of manage the stock. And then that was it really. Like, a few friends ended up joining and doing, you know, bits here and there. Um, but it was just everyone would just get involved in everything.

Ali Abdaal 35:05 Yeah.

Ben Francis 35:05 Like, if there was a busy day, we would jump on customer service. Like, everyone would finish the end of the day, sat in a circle on their laptops, and they would answer customer queries. Um, so it really varied. Just remembered, by the way, it was 2012, not 2015, that we did our first event.

Ali Abdaal 35:20 Oh.

Ben Francis 35:20 2012, 2013.

Ali Abdaal 35:21 Cool.

Ben Francis 35:21 So it was around that sort of ear- era.

Ali Abdaal 35:23 Okay. Fair play. So you have sort of a team of maybe three, four people.

Ben Francis 35:25 Yeah, so it, it was in that first event it was like-

Ali Abdaal 35:27 Yeah

Ben Francis 35:27 ... two or three. And then as it developed, then it was like, okay. And then we'd started to invest more in the warehouse.

Ali Abdaal 35:33 Yeah.

Ben Francis 35:33 'Cause we had our own warehouse and we would ship our own product.

Ali Abdaal 35:35 Okay.

Ben Francis 35:35 Then people would basically manage customer service and deliveries and stuff.

Ali Abdaal 35:39 At what point did you get the warehouse? Like, that must've been a big expense. [laughs]

Ben Francis 35:42 Yeah, so 2012, 2013, just before that first event-

Ali Abdaal 35:45 Yeah

Ben Francis 35:45 ... that was when we got, like, a shed, basically.

Ali Abdaal 35:47 Right. [laughs] Okay.

Ben Francis 35:48 Honestly. And that-

Ali Abdaal 35:49 Yeah

Ben Francis 35:49 ... honestly, it was, it was actually not, not particularly great. It was a, it was a shed on an in- industrial estate. And I didn't realize until about three or four months in, the whole thing was built out of asbestos.

Ali Abdaal 35:59 Oh, no. [laughs]

Ben Francis 35:59 And, like, the bloke next door, like, this lovely lad, like 80 years old he was-

Ali Abdaal 36:03 Yeah

Ben Francis 36:03 ... and he was just, like, drilling through the walls, through the asbestos walls.

Ali Abdaal 36:06 Yeah.

Ben Francis 36:06 And all asbestos was just flaking everywhere, so that's probably not great for my health.

Ali Abdaal 36:11 [laughs]

Ben Francis 36:11 Um, so it was an old asbestos shed in the middle of nowhere on an industrial estate, and it cost us about 300 quid a month, I think.

Ali Abdaal 36:17 Okay.

Ben Francis 36:17 250, 300 quid a month.

Ali Abdaal 36:18 Okay.

Ben Francis 36:18 Then after that, we ended up going into a more professional sort of place. We went from... That was 300 square feet, and then the next one we actually upgraded to three- a 3,000 square foot warehouse. And what was great about that is it had a small room, um, at the front of it with a radiator in.

Ali Abdaal 36:34 Yeah.

Ben Francis 36:34 And if anyone's work- worked in, like, a, a shed through the winter, it was ice cold. To, to have a radiator was amazing.

Ali Abdaal 36:41 [laughs]

Ben Francis 36:41 'Cause what we used to have to do, we'd have the front door of our old shed-

Ali Abdaal 36:45 Yeah

Ben Francis 36:45 ... we'd leave the door open, and we'd stick a diesel se- heater in there. So you'd go over next door, you'd get your diesel from the pump, and you basically, you'd fill it up, and then it would just blast heat in there.

Ali Abdaal 36:54 [laughs]

Ben Francis 36:54 But again, sat in an asbestos shed-

Ali Abdaal 36:57 Yeah

Ben Francis 36:57 ... with a diesel heater blowing at you is not the most exciting-

Ali Abdaal 37:00 Yeah

Ben Francis 37:00 ... way of spending your-

Ali Abdaal 37:01 No. [laughs]

Ben Francis 37:01 ... late teenager years or early 20s. So-

Ali Abdaal 37:04 And-

Ben Francis 37:04 To have a radiator was game changing

Ali Abdaal 37:05 The radiator was game changing.

Ben Francis 37:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 37:06 Right. And I guess, w- was it y- you and your mates m- making the clothes?

Ben Francis 37:10 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 37:11 Like, hand-making the clothes?

Ben Francis 37:12 Yeah, yeah. So the s-

Ali Abdaal 37:13 Like, getting cloth and, like, cutting it up and [laughs]

Ben Francis 37:14 So the... Yeah, yeah. So the sewing would be done at home-

Ali Abdaal 37:16 Yeah

Ben Francis 37:16 ... essentially. And then we would print, uh, generally at the, at the, um, I don't know what you call it, warehouse.

Ali Abdaal 37:22 Wow. Okay. So wh- when you're in those early days and you're investing in things like the radiator, the warehouse and stuff-

Ben Francis 37:29 Yes

Ali Abdaal 37:30 What's going through your mind in terms of like the profitability of this? Like

Ben Francis 37:34 Don't think about anything like that.

Ali Abdaal 37:35 Okay.

Ben Francis 37:36 Didn't think, like I had no idea how to pay taxes. I had no idea about finances. All we knew was more was coming in than was going out.

Ali Abdaal 37:43 Okay

Ben Francis 37:43 And everything beyond that is just, or at the time it was fluff. Clearly now that's not the case.

Ali Abdaal 37:49 Mm.

Ben Francis 37:49 Um, but it was, everything was purely instinctive, everything at the start.

Ali Abdaal 37:54 Okay. So you start off as like a band of, band of brothers, like, you know-

Ben Francis 37:57 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 37:57 ... a hand- hand- handful of people in a shed.

Ben Francis 37:59 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 37:59 A radiator is a game-changing expense-

Ben Francis 38:01 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 38:01 ... or a good game-changing addition to the business. And now Gymshark is a billion plus dollar company.

Ben Francis 38:07 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 38:07 You're the new CEO of it.

Ben Francis 38:08 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 38:09 Like, how, how many employees do you, do you have?

Ben Francis 38:11 Uh, we're just over 700.

Ali Abdaal 38:13 700. And you sell all, all over the world-

Ben Francis 38:15 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 38:15 ... with offices all over, all around the world. That's gotta feel pretty wild, like [laughs]

Ben Francis 38:19 It's cool. It's cool. Honestly, I still walk into the HQ.

Ali Abdaal 38:22 Yeah.

Ben Francis 38:22 So we've got a gorgeous HQ, and there's the sort of the big logo on the front. Over the road we've got our lifting club.

Ali Abdaal 38:27 Yeah.

Ben Francis 38:27 So we've got like a gym, manufacturing facility, studios. I, I do walk in and like I do still get goosebumps 'cause it's, it's such an amazing place. And there's a, there's a buzz. Like you've gotta visit because as soon as you walk in the door, there's a buzz there.

Ali Abdaal 38:40 Yeah.

Ben Francis 38:40 And everyone's lovely. Everyone's pulling in the same direction. Everyone really understands why we do what we do.

Ali Abdaal 38:46 Yeah.

Ben Francis 38:46 Everyone understands the area that they sort of fit in with that sort of wider plan.

Ali Abdaal 38:50 Okay.

Ben Francis 38:51 It's, it's such a lovely place to be.

Ali Abdaal 38:54 So it's interesting you say that like everyone's pulling in the same direction because I think, I feel like this is an issue we're having as we expanded from 3 people to 12 people.

Ben Francis 39:02 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 39:02 Whereby I'm now having, starting to do things like defining our vision and-

Ben Francis 39:07 Yes

Ali Abdaal 39:07 ... where do we wanna be in X number of years, and KPIs and goals and all this stuff that in the past I would've thought this is all just corporate bullshit. Like who cares about any of that?

Ben Francis 39:16 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 39:16 Um, presumably like, like w- w- w- what was your journey through kind of being more businessy about it?

Ben Francis 39:22 So what you're going through, yeah, so we did that. I used to hate the word corporate.

Ali Abdaal 39:25 Yep [laughs]

Ben Francis 39:26 And you're going through, from reading between the lines, what I actually think is the most difficult change, and I think this is one of the most difficult things for any entrepreneurial business person. And by the way, not even owning your own business, if you're running or working in a great business, it's so difficult to sort of distribute that control. And I think those that can do that, then after that, it's not plain sailing. But if you've then done that, it's like, you know, it's like a muscle memory, right? If you continue to do that sc- I think scaling becomes so much easier.

Ali Abdaal 39:52 Okay.

Ben Francis 39:53 Um, I'll give you, so my sort of breakdown, I sort of break it down into three areas, and I think every great business person needs to reinvent themselves over and over again. So you can't become too like tied in or emotionally attached to sort of, I'm gonna say who you are-

Ali Abdaal 40:06 Mm

Ben Francis 40:06 ... in many respects. So at the start I found I had a great creative vision. I had exis- I had a great idea of where, where I wanted us to be, and I, I felt like I dragged the business to where I wanted us to be. And that sounds a bit sort of direct, but you know, it could be having a great creative vision.

Ali Abdaal 40:22 Mm.

Ben Francis 40:22 It could be great at knowing product. It could be great at whatever it is. But you, because you tend to be a one-man band or there's not many people involved-

Ali Abdaal 40:29 Mm-hmm

Ben Francis 40:30 ... you just do what the hell you want-

Ali Abdaal 40:31 Yeah

Ben Francis 40:31 ... when you want, and it's very instinctive.

Ali Abdaal 40:34 Yeah.

Ben Francis 40:34 Now, you'll then get to a stage where you've got people around you. It might be 5 people, it might be 10 people, it might be 30 people, and an instinctive way of running things is still great.

Ali Abdaal 40:45 Mm.

Ben Francis 40:45 But you can't just do things on a whim because you fancy it. You have to then learn to work in a team. And I don't mean, when I say in a team, I mean you are part of the team, and anyone that's managed a team knows that the team doesn't work for you, you work for them. And you need to make sure that you're really understanding how to work with each different type of peoples, uh, person.

Ali Abdaal 41:03 Yeah.

Ben Francis 41:03 So some people will love to be organized, and they will love lots of different catch-ups. And you know, some people will be highly creative, some people will be highly logical. Some people you'll have to spend six weeks trying to buy them into a new de- new idea. Some people you'll have to spend six seconds. And it's about learning how to work with all these different people. So you've gone from dragging the business to where you wanted it to be-

Ali Abdaal 41:23 Yeah

Ben Francis 41:23 ... learning to work with new people, and then that's, it sounds like to a degree what you're going through.

Ali Abdaal 41:28 Mm.

Ben Francis 41:28 Slash the next stage, which is like, okay, you know how to work with people. How do we galvanize them around a vision or a mission? How do we make them understand where they fit in with that? How do we make them understand that, you know, the team that we're working with, touch wood, is greater than the sum of its parts? And really understanding how to articulate yourself and your vision. Um, and essentially learning how to inspire people.

Ali Abdaal 41:51 Mm.

Ben Francis 41:51 And I think that's, again, it's very tough, and I hear people a lot of the time saying like, "Oh, you know," one facet of their personality, "Oh, that's just me. What am I like? I, I'm a bit unorganized."

Ali Abdaal 42:02 Yeah.

Ben Francis 42:02 Well, when you're at that level, there's, there's not an ex- there's no excuse for being unorganized.

Ali Abdaal 42:07 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 42:07 Like, yes, I am unorganized, but you do something about it. You either fix it yourself or you build the team in a way that negates that weakness.

Ali Abdaal 42:16 Mm.

Ben Francis 42:16 Does that make sense?

Ali Abdaal 42:17 Yeah.

Ben Francis 42:17 And it's, it, it's, um, I think it gets a bit more serious at that point.

Ali Abdaal 42:20 Yeah.

Ben Francis 42:20 And, yeah, you have to learn new skills. And to be honest, that's why I love the job so much and feel like I've got the best job in the world because you're constantly learning new things and constantly reinventing yourself.

Ali Abdaal 42:29 Yeah.

Ben Francis 42:29 It sounds like that's what you're going through now a bit.

Ali Abdaal 42:30 Yeah. It seems like a real, a real shift in w- where my default used to be, "I wanna do something. All right, I'll do it."

Ben Francis 42:36 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 42:36 Now it's like, "I wanna do something. Okay, let's figure out why I wanna do this thing."

Ben Francis 42:40 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 42:40 "Let's figure out like what the actual, like what good looks like."

Ben Francis 42:43 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 42:43 "Let's figure out who I can g- give this project to. Let's give them ownership over it in a way that they'll, they'll feel m- more motivated to do it." Let me kind of get out of the way and be there to kind of consult with them if they need it, but not like step on their toes too much.

Ben Francis 42:55 But do you know what-

Ali Abdaal 42:56 Yeah

Ben Francis 42:56 ... do you know what the most exciting thing about that period is, right? You'll have it. There'll be, there'll be a few things that will happen, and it happened to me. Someone will do something. You'll trust them with it, and they'll do it poorly, and it will break your heart.

Ali Abdaal 43:05 Yeah.

Ben Francis 43:05 But someone will do something that you didn't think was the right thing to do, and it'll be infinitely better than any ideas that you would've come up with, and that is one of the most fulfilling and incredible experiences ever 'cause then you're like, "Okay, now we're a team."

Ali Abdaal 43:19 Yes. Yeah, I've had that, I've had that, I've had that a few times. Um, I often describe this feeling when, 'cause I, I, I teach people how to be, how to be, uh, part-time YouTubers.

Ben Francis 43:29 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 43:29 And one of the things I'm very bullish on is to outsource editing-

Ben Francis 43:33 Yes

Ali Abdaal 43:33 ... like ASAP. [laughs]

Ben Francis 43:34 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 43:34 And everyone is very resistant. "Oh, but I like editing. I like doing it myself."

Ben Francis 43:37 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 43:37 "I, I, I enjoy spending 20 hours a week doing my editing." And I'm like, "Look, guys, the moment you outsource editing, like just that feeling when you upload Raw footage of yourself mumbling through a video on Google Drive.

Ben Francis 43:47 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 43:47 And the next day you get back an edited video, and it's actually really good.

Ben Francis 43:51 It's good.

Ali Abdaal 43:51 It just, like, blows your mind. And then you think-

Ben Francis 43:52 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 43:52 ... oh my God, like, I've just, like, my, my, my whole world is now open.

Ben Francis 43:56 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 43:56 And I guess what you're describing is that at scale-

Ben Francis 43:59 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 43:59 ... when you have a team that can execute stuff.

Ben Francis 44:01 Exactly. Like I said, and I, I, I love it. I love working with so many different types of people. And there was a, there was a point, uh, a few years ago, basically, when I, I moved into a role as the chief marketing officer at Gymshark.

Ali Abdaal 44:12 Mm.

Ben Francis 44:12 And chief marketing at the time was all your quantitative marketing, it was all your social media. And it was all data. And I remember going into this role thinking, "Love marketing. Love social media. Not a clue where to start with data."

Ali Abdaal 44:24 Yeah.

Ben Francis 44:24 And to be honest, it sounds a bit boring.

Ali Abdaal 44:25 Mm.

Ben Francis 44:25 But I ended up working with the data team. And that, that ended up being the team I loved working with the most, because they would run rings around me at the start.

Ali Abdaal 44:32 Mm.

Ben Francis 44:32 And, like, I would come in with all my stupid irrational ideas that-

Ali Abdaal 44:36 Mm

Ben Francis 44:36 ... just made no sense and would have flopped instantly. And they would challenge me, and it made me a better person, and in terms of sharpening up my ideas and my concepts. But equally, it meant that I learned the power of what they do and, you know, the validity of it.

Ali Abdaal 44:50 Mm.

Ben Francis 44:50 So it was massively fulfilling to me-

Ali Abdaal 44:51 Yeah

Ben Francis 44:51 ... to work with a team that I didn't expect to enjoy working with or be good at working with, and to be able to do that.

Ali Abdaal 44:57 Nice. So when you're, when you were the kinda found- founder of the business and, like, the owner of the business, how did you kind of get to that point where your role was chief marketing officer rather-

Ben Francis 45:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 45:07 ... than straight to CEO? Like, what was, what was going through your

Ali Abdaal 45:10 mind there?

Ben Francis 45:10 So we, we started to... The, the business grew rapidly, right? We went from, I mean, we've gone from bedroom to half a billion dollar revenue in ei- eight years, I think it was. It was, like, rapid, rapid growth. So during that growth period, it becomes very evident that things start breaking if you don't have great people-

Ali Abdaal 45:30 Yeah

Ben Francis 45:30 ... to manage these things. So we, what we started to do was we built essentially a chief's team-

Ali Abdaal 45:34 Yeah

Ben Francis 45:34 ... of individuals that manage and run the different areas of the business. So a chief products officer, a chief brand officer, you know, uh, people, finance, all these different things. And it, it's, it's just through necessity. It's less of a case of, uh, listen, I think, uh, huge applause to a business that can see ahead and build that team out, uh, in front of themselves. We were just at the point of, we need strength in this business, otherwise things are gonna fail.

Ali Abdaal 45:58 Okay. And so when you were bringing people on, you were bringing on, like, C-level people-

Ben Francis 46:02 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 46:02 ... for, like, executive roles and for the people in HR, and finance, and legal, and-

Ben Francis 46:06 Yes

Ali Abdaal 46:06 ... the whole shebang.

Ben Francis 46:07 And we w- and it was a balance, right?

Ali Abdaal 46:08 Yeah.

Ben Francis 46:09 So some people we were bringing in with brilliant experience, and then we were also identifying great people in the business that were-

Ali Abdaal 46:16 Yeah

Ben Francis 46:16 ... hugely devoted to the business, incredibly intelligent and competent, that would then basically be able to make that leap up to that level as well. So there's a brilliant blend of sort of, um, experience and inexperience in that team as well.

Ali Abdaal 46:27 Okay. How d- how did you... 'Cause I, I guess you were the one doing the hiring initially.

Ben Francis 46:31 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 46:32 How did you get... So, and I, I ask 'cause this is a problem I'm having. Like, how do you hire for a role that you don't have experience in, where you're trying to hire someone who is, like, good-

Ben Francis 46:42 Um

Ali Abdaal 46:42 ... good at that role? [laughs] It, if you get what I mean.

Ben Francis 46:44 Yeah, yeah. So we-

Ali Abdaal 46:45 Yeah

Ben Francis 46:45 ... I was really lucky. So I, so our, our sort of s- current, um, sort of out-moving CEO, Steve, um, he joined the business purely on gut instinct, 'cause it felt like he was the right person to, to be in the business. And conveniently, he was brilliant at all the things that I was bad at.

Ali Abdaal 47:03 Yeah.

Ben Francis 47:03 So that one hire then allowed every other hire in finance, ops, logistics-

Ali Abdaal 47:08 Yeah

Ben Francis 47:08 ... all the back end of the business, then went through him rather than the front end ones-

Ali Abdaal 47:11 Ah

Ben Francis 47:11 ... that went through me. So it was, like, one solve for, um, everything beyond that, which was massive.

Ali Abdaal 47:17 Mm. So were you, like, what were you looking for when you hired Steve? Like, what was his role initially?

Ben Francis 47:24 So what I wanted someone that would basically help, we're gonna say professionalize the business.

Ali Abdaal 47:29 Yeah.

Ben Francis 47:29 'Cause at the time it was just, there was no hierarchy, no structure. A group of people that, you know, went in, did a bit of brand on the morning, a bit of social media.

Ali Abdaal 47:36 Yeah.

Ben Francis 47:37 Event here and there.

Ali Abdaal 47:37 Yeah.

Ben Francis 47:37 Package on the evening, answer your emails, and go to bed. It was, it was literally just-

Ali Abdaal 47:40 Yeah

Ben Francis 47:40 ... carnage and chaos. As I think all businesses are at the, in the early days. And then he came in and he had genuine corporate experience. However, it didn't come across like corporate experience. He wasn't like, you know, your typical corporate guy, suited and booted sort of thing. He'd worked in, in Reebok. Um, but he also, even though he didn't understand social media particularly well, he understand the po- he understood the power of brand and growing a robust business, um, and a great brand. So we sort of got comfortable with him, and he, he ended up doing, I think it was a day a month, then two days a month, then three days a month, and it was a very organic sort of shift into him joining the business full time.

Ali Abdaal 48:18 Oh, so he started off as, like, a coach consultant type person?

Ben Francis 48:20 Yeah, exactly that. So it wasn't like, boom, you're in, in the business every single day.

Ali Abdaal 48:23 Oh, okay. Yeah.

Ben Francis 48:23 And that really, really helped us, 'cause it allowed us to get comfortable with him, him to get comfortable with us. And just to get to one, uh, know one another.

Ali Abdaal 48:30 Oh, interesting. Yeah, 'cause I've got a, a couple of, uh, kind of business coaches type people now-

Ben Francis 48:34 Mm

Ali Abdaal 48:34 ... who are m- mentors, who've been doing this for a few years. And I meet with them maybe once every other week.

Ben Francis 48:39 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 48:39 And every time I talk to them it's like, oh my, my mind gets blown by-

Ben Francis 48:42 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 48:42 ... just the, all of the stuff that, all of the unknown unknowns I just didn't-

Ben Francis 48:45 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 48:46 ... realize. Um, things like, you know, restructuring our organizational chart, and how when you have got... You know, there was, there was a, a, a time, I think it was about two weeks ago-

Ben Francis 48:55 Mm

Ali Abdaal 48:55 ... where I was, I was chatting to this guy, his name's Rohan.

Ben Francis 48:58 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 48:58 And I was like, "Yeah, at the moment, this is what the business looks like. It looks like this," and it just felt, felt a bit, like a bit of chaos.

Ben Francis 49:03 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 49:04 And within about half an hour, he just asked a load of questions, and we kind of, on that whiteboard over there, just like-

Ben Francis 49:10 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 49:10 ... drafted out this structure, which just made so much sense and brought so much clarity.

Ben Francis 49:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 49:15 And I was like, "I can't believe how much clarity I've now got in my mind from just drawing this diagram on a board."

Ben Francis 49:19 So good. It makes such a difference. But you'll find, like, if, when you work with genuinely brilliant people like that, they, they revolutionize, like-

Ali Abdaal 49:27 Mm

Ben Francis 49:28 ... teams, businesses, brands, everything. Like, so many people talk about all the different nuts and bolts of businesses and brands, but ultimately it's literally just people.

Ali Abdaal 49:34 Mm.

Ben Francis 49:34 It comes down to people, and it's so important that you understand how to work with people and, you know, work with great people. I, um, similarly, I was chatting to someone the other week, and I was talking about that he was, he worked with one of the most successful businesspeople of- ... sort of like my parents' generation. And I just said, "Right, what do they do?" Just in a sentence, like cut all the bullshit sort of thing. One sentence, what do they do really well? And they said, "They attracted great people-

Ali Abdaal 50:00 Mm

Ben Francis 50:00 ... and then left them alone."

Ali Abdaal 50:02 Yeah.

Ben Francis 50:02 And I just thought that was so cool. And I think, y- you know, i- in its most simplistic form, that's what any great entrepreneur or business person does.

Ali Abdaal 50:08 Mm.

Ben Francis 50:09 And they do it in different ways. So some people attract through insane levels of competency. Some people do it through charisma. Some people do it through being incredible creative or an incredible organizer or all these different things. But ultimately, it just does come down to that.

Ali Abdaal 50:22 Nice. Okay. So you were chief marketing officer for, for how long at Gymshark?

Ben Francis 50:26 Oh, God, I don't know. I haven't got a clue.

Ali Abdaal 50:28 Okay.

Ben Francis 50:28 A year, two years.

Ali Abdaal 50:29 Okay.

Ben Francis 50:29 Something like that.

Ali Abdaal 50:30 Well, well, what was your role before then?

Ben Francis 50:32 Uh, so I did chief of brand.

Ali Abdaal 50:34 Yeah.

Ben Francis 50:34 Then I came out of brand, a guy called Noel did it.

Ali Abdaal 50:35 Yeah.

Ben Francis 50:36 Then I sort of, I moved around and messed around with product for a little bit.

Ali Abdaal 50:39 Mm.

Ben Francis 50:39 And that was, that was a great period for me because that was where I was, like, really in the nuts and bolts.

Ali Abdaal 50:45 Yeah.

Ben Francis 50:45 And I didn't actually have a job, and I'll never forget this. We wanted to... There was a particular product that we wanted to make, and I was... Typically, I'm, I'm quite impatient. And it was a case of like, you can either wait for these guys for six weeks to make it, or we can jump on a tra- a, a plane, fly over to Istanbul, spend a week in Istanbul-

Ali Abdaal 51:01 [laughs]

Ben Francis 51:01 ... sit in the factories and make it.

Ali Abdaal 51:02 Yeah.

Ben Francis 51:02 And I'm like, [fingers snap] "Too fucking right. I'm doing that."

Ali Abdaal 51:04 Yeah.

Ben Francis 51:04 Do you know what I mean? So it was like that sort of really impulsive role, product, brand, moving around, events. Um, I then went from that into the chief marketing role. Marketing was great 'cause I worked all with social, which I had done anyway. I worked with the data team. I'm really interested in data. Um, and then I went from there into, I did chief product officer for a little bit, little bit of work in tech, and this is

Ben Francis 51:28 where I am today.

Ali Abdaal 51:29 So when you're... Like, this is your company-

Ben Francis 51:32 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 51:32 ... right? So do you, are you applying for the position of CMO, or are you just saying, "Steve, I wanna be CMO"? Like, what, what does that look like? [laughs]

Ben Francis 51:39 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 51:39 So-

Ben Francis 51:39 So it depends. So some of them... So CMO, I was, I was definitely the, the right person for the role.

Ali Abdaal 51:44 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 51:45 Um, I went into product out of necessity. I wasn't... Like, I, I mean, I... In terms of immediately available, basically, we found someone. We did the whole interview process.

Ali Abdaal 51:54 Mm.

Ben Francis 51:54 We found someone who was brilliant, but they had like a really long period of time before they could join the business. So it was, it was like, it was like a 12-month period basically where no one does the role-

Ali Abdaal 52:03 Yeah

Ben Francis 52:03 ... or I do the role. So it was more out of necessity. Marketing and brand, it was like, it was my bag.

Ali Abdaal 52:09 Mm.

Ben Francis 52:09 Product, and then my limited time in tech, it was more out of necessity, if I'm honest.

Ali Abdaal 52:14 Okay. And then so this transition for, for you now being CEO-

Ben Francis 52:18 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 52:18 ... what's, what's the story there? What's, what's that been like so far?

Ben Francis 52:21 Been amazing. So, um, two years ago, Steve mentioned to me that he thought Gymshark needed a different type of CEO to take it to that next level.

Ali Abdaal 52:29 Okay.

Ben Francis 52:30 Um, at the time, I didn't think he was right. Now, I do.

Ali Abdaal 52:33 Mm.

Ben Francis 52:33 Um, so he's got great foresight there. So I then spent two years working as best I could to get into a position where I was the right CEO 'cause-

Ali Abdaal 52:42 Okay

Ben Francis 52:42 ... again, Steve, Steve would basically say like, "You need to be"... He, he genuinely thought I was the right person and, and competent enough to do the role.

Ali Abdaal 52:49 Yeah.

Ben Francis 52:49 But I needed to really prove it.

Ali Abdaal 52:50 Mm.

Ben Francis 52:51 Um, and the alternative was to hire someone else. Now, fortunately, I got to the level of being able to do the role.

Ali Abdaal 52:56 Okay.

Ben Francis 52:56 So two years of making sure I could speak publicly, talk to camera, understand a profit and loss properly, understand, you know, long-term strategic decisions and working with teams and all that-

Ali Abdaal 53:07 Mm

Ben Francis 53:07 ... sort of stuff, which again, going to the different chiefs roles that I've done, it gave me incredible grounding across the business, which really helped. And then more recently, the sort of official transition started May 1st, and it completes August 1st, and we're, we're what? July now.

Ali Abdaal 53:20 Yeah.

Ben Francis 53:21 Middle of July. So I'm about two or three weeks away from, like, officially completing that handover.

Ali Abdaal 53:26 So two years worth of kinda like training to be the CEO.

Ben Francis 53:30 Yes, of like every single day, like writing a list of things I need to do, working towards them. The wallpaper on my phone would talk about the things I need to get better at.

Ali Abdaal 53:40 Yeah.

Ben Francis 53:40 Just every single day working towards that.

Ali Abdaal 53:42 Wow. And I guess like-

Ben Francis 53:43 But weirdly not having, not been able to tell anyone, which is like really weird. So-

Ali Abdaal 53:46 Yeah

Ben Francis 53:47 ... or not really wanting to tell anyone either.

Ali Abdaal 53:48 Yeah. Like, why didn't, why, why didn't you wanna tell anyone? Or-

Ben Francis 53:51 Because it, but... So listen, I'm-

Ali Abdaal 53:53 Yeah

Ben Francis 53:53 ... more than happy to talk about my ambitions usually. But the CEO one, I didn't want people to go, "Oh, Ben's just gonna get it 'cause he wants it" sort of thing.

Ali Abdaal 53:59 Yeah.

Ben Francis 53:59 It was, it was literally a case of s- this is Steve's decision.

Ali Abdaal 54:02 Yes.

Ben Francis 54:02 It is solely Steve's decision. So I didn't want that to be, you know, out there, as it were. I wanted to-

Ali Abdaal 54:07 Okay

Ben Francis 54:07 ... w- almost like work on my craft in silence and, and-

Ali Abdaal 54:10 Yeah

Ben Francis 54:10 ... and then almost people then almost be going, "Ben, you should be doing that role"-

Ali Abdaal 54:14 Mm

Ben Francis 54:14 ... rather than me telling them.

Ali Abdaal 54:16 Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess it... You, you must care about the brand a lot to not put yourself in that position just by default-

Ben Francis 54:25 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 54:25 ... and knowing that you've got all these weaknesses that, weaknesses that you wanna work on.

Ben Francis 54:29 Yes. I, I... Well, clearly-

Ali Abdaal 54:30 Yeah. [laughs]

Ben Francis 54:31 ... it's like my baby, isn't it?

Ali Abdaal 54:31 Yeah.

Ben Francis 54:31 I love it more than anything. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 54:33 Yeah, 'cause that was the thing that I was, I was most intrigued by of when, when I first started stalking you a few years ago. So like, oh-

Ben Francis 54:38 Mm

Ali Abdaal 54:38 ... I, I, I would've just assumed you were the CEO.

Ben Francis 54:40 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 54:40 Um, but now I think that I've got a bit more experience in business, and like I wouldn't want to be a CEO right now 'cause I know that-

Ben Francis 54:46 Yes

Ali Abdaal 54:46 ... it would [laughs] it would just be an absolute shitshow. [laughs]

Ben Francis 54:49 And it's, and it's like... So this is the thing, and I talk about this a lot, right? So Steve came in, and he was the best person to be the CEO. So anyone that has an interest in self-development-

Ali Abdaal 54:58 Mm

Ben Francis 54:58 ... would jump at this chance because usually there's a decision where you focus on your strengths or you work on your weaknesses. And it's, it's very difficult to do both-

Ali Abdaal 55:08 Mm

Ben Francis 55:09 ... in like a, uh, in like an efficient way. Because Steve was so good at all my weaknesses and running the business, I could focus on my strengths and then have a go at my weaknesses when I want, knowing that Steve would basically fix anything that, that I wasn't good enough at. So I could... You know, Steve would do a lot of the, or all of the profit and loss-

Ali Abdaal 55:28 Yeah

Ben Francis 55:28 ... sort of work, but then I could just mess around and ask questions and learn as I go. So the, the best way I liken it to is like I could focus on my strengths.

Ali Abdaal 55:35 Mm.

Ben Francis 55:35 And on my weaknesses, I could just keep taking the same exam again and again and again until I got the grade that I wanted 'cause I could just try again, fail. Try, fail.

Ali Abdaal 55:43 Yeah.

Ben Francis 55:43 Try, fail. Try, fail.

Ali Abdaal 55:44 Yeah, 'cause I think, like right now, one of the things I'm struggling with in the business is this thing of do we hire people with experience? 'Cause right now our team is very young.

Ben Francis 55:52 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 55:53 We're... It's sort of like-

Ben Francis 55:53 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 55:55 I've kind of brought, brought them on for... In, in, in that apart from, I think apart from Christian, our editor-

Ben Francis 56:01 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 56:01 ... like, no one on the team is, like, I think better than me at doing the thing because it's like I've, I was doing the thing initially, and then I delegated to them.

Ben Francis 56:11 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 56:12 And that was sort of out of necessity at the start when we didn't have much money and-

Ben Francis 56:16 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 56:16 ... didn't have much revenue coming in, and so you have to kinda get people on the cheap, as it were-

Ben Francis 56:19 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 56:19 ... like at entry-level positions.

Ben Francis 56:20 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 56:21 But now that we're a bit more profitable, it's a thing of, what my business coach says is you really wanna hire, for example, a managing director or, like, a marketing director or a director of operations-

Ben Francis 56:31 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 56:32 ... who has 5, 10 years experience 'cause you won't know what that is like. But when you have the right person there, it will just be-

Ben Francis 56:38 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 56:38 ... like such a breath of fresh air.

Ben Francis 56:39 Yeah. You want, you want the op- I, I'm a firm believer you want the opposite true. You want everyone in their respective area to be better than you are.

Ali Abdaal 56:45 Mm.

Ben Francis 56:45 And you just amalgamate those people and, you know, look at longer term strategies and visions and, you know, build a cohesive team.

Ali Abdaal 56:53 Okay.

Ben Francis 56:53 But, like, if you're the best editor in the business, then the business is only as scalable as you are.

Ali Abdaal 56:56 Yeah. Okay.

Ben Francis 56:56 If you're the best... Do you know what I mean? You need to be able to really think about that.

Ali Abdaal 57:00 And then when it comes to, like, let's say we were to bring someone in with experience, and they would sort of come in at a level above other people who've been in the business for the last two years.

Ben Francis 57:08 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 57:08 How, how, how do you deal with that? Like, it... Was that, like, weird, weird for you?

Ben Francis 57:12 Very difficult.

Ali Abdaal 57:12 Yeah.

Ben Francis 57:12 Very difficult because what tends to happen as well is, like, people will come in, and they'll be there from the start, and that's an incredible thing to do. And some of them will be able to grow with the business, and some of them won't. And it's not a, y- you know, it, it's not negative or positive on them. It's just the way it is. And, like, reading between the lines, it sounds like your, your business is, it's elevating itself up a level.

Ali Abdaal 57:36 Mm.

Ben Francis 57:36 And anyone that's into football w- will know that teams that get promoted from the Championship to the Premiership generally try and hold onto the spine of the team and the core of the team. But ultimately, there's a lot of changes that have to happen for that team to then succeed in the Cham- in the Premier League. It's very rare a Championship team gets promo- promoted to the Premiership and succeeds by maintaining the same team. So it sounds like you're almost-

Ali Abdaal 57:57 Mm. Yeah [laughs]

Ben Francis 57:57 ... a Championship team getting promoted to the Premier League, and you need to. And by the way, it's not... Experience doesn't necessarily mean competency.

Ali Abdaal 58:03 Yeah.

Ben Francis 58:03 So I wouldn't... Sort of I'd try and separate those two things.

Ali Abdaal 58:06 Okay.

Ben Francis 58:06 And sometimes experience in certain areas can actually be a negative because then if they've done or if someone's done something in a particular way for a prolonged period of time, it can be often very difficult and time-consuming to try and move them out of their set ways. So I would be cautious about that. Um, but ultimately, you need to understand, like, I don't know, pick five key facets of the business, and then you need individuals that are better than you in every single one of those facets.

Ali Abdaal 58:31 Mm.

Ben Francis 58:31 And by the way, it takes a long time.

Ali Abdaal 58:33 Yeah.

Ben Francis 58:33 And it's very difficult. It's heartbreaking.

Ali Abdaal 58:35 Yeah.

Ben Francis 58:35 It's gut-wrenching. It's filled with horrible conversations you will never wanna have.

Ali Abdaal 58:40 Yeah.

Ben Francis 58:40 But if you manage to do it, you as an individual will be incredible-

Ali Abdaal 58:45 Mm

Ben Francis 58:45 ... incredibly competent and brilliant at so many different things. And the business and the team will be greater than the sum of its parts.

Ali Abdaal 58:50 Nice. Okay. Yeah, that's the dream. Um, so one thing I was gonna ask you about, like, you often hear, for example, tennis players that win Wimbledon at the age of 23.

Ben Francis 59:00 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 59:00 And now they've, like, made it, and now there's no... Like, they c- kinda get a, a bit depressed 'cause, you know, that's the pinnacle.

Ben Francis 59:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 59:06 Like, what more do you go for? Do you feel like you're in the position of having won Wimbledon at 23? [laughs]

Ben Francis 59:10 I was really scared of that.

Ali Abdaal 59:11 Yeah.

Ben Francis 59:11 Like, legit, no, no word of lie, I was really scared because what we did is when we, when we, when we did this deal, and General Atlantic came in and helped tidy up the shareholding, I did... I essentially, I earned, you know, I earned good money. I, and I, I've done okay. And I, I earn really good money now. And I was scared that, oh, okay, so there is a point now, I'm at a point now where, I'm gonna be completely candid, I, I don't... Do you know what I mean? I don't need to work.

Ali Abdaal 59:36 Yeah.

Ben Francis 59:36 I could comfortably retire happily. And I was really scared that when that happened, that I would lose the hunger, genuinely. And I was really open-minded with myself that I would react accordingly to however I felt. Um, but I am absolutely buzzing that I'm more hungry now than I've ever been-

Ali Abdaal 59:54 Mm

Ben Francis 59:54 ... to the point where I have to really carefully control the amount of work that I take on, because I'm still prone to, I will just take on the work, take on the work, take on the work. And, like, genuinely, I was, I was worried about that.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:05 Why do you think it is that you're more hungry than you were?

Ben Francis 1:00:07 No idea.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:08 Okay.

Ben Francis 1:00:08 I think, no. So first and foremost, I do think, I, it might not be, but it could be something to do with it being in a... Grandparents ran their own business.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:14 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:00:14 My parents are so ridiculously hardworking. Like, they will, like, I'm... I speak to my grandparents about it. They work, and they work, and they work.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:22 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:00:23 Um, I also think, and I'm really driven by this, I'm driven by the team that I work with, and I wanna do well for them, and I want them to do well, and I want them to succeed. I also think we've got a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:34 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:00:34 So I don't think, certainly in our generation, there's never been a brand that has had the opportunity to go from being, you know, a local brand or a national brand to a truly-

Ali Abdaal 1:00:45 Mm

Ben Francis 1:00:45 ... global brand, um, and one of the greatest brands in the world.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:49 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:00:50 And I think we've got that opportunity, and I'd feel I would kick myself in 30, 40 years, 50 years' time if we didn't do everything within our power to become one of the greatest

Ben Francis 1:01:00 brands on the planet.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:01 Okay. So it sounds like, uh, it's, it sounds like even from the start, like, money wasn't a particular motivator for you.

Ben Francis 1:01:07 No. I mean, listen, it certainly helps-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:09 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:01:09 ... and money gives you choice completely. But the reason that the business was started was I wanted to be involved in fitness.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:15 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:01:16 The reason, or one of the reasons now, it's around, I think we've got the chance to genuinely improve the world, improve people's lives. And I'm fortunate, right? I've traveled the world, and I've met individuals that the brand has impacted.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:28 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:01:28 And it has genuinely brought me to tears at times. It's incredible, that feeling, and I want more of that, and I want it to impact more people. And, and ultimately, 16-year-old Ben walks into the gym, and he didn't know what to do, and he was massively self-conscious and skinny and felt very alone.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:44 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:01:45 And the f- the thought of being able to take that away from other people and give them a community, an area to learn, a product that makes them feel like Superman I think is amazing.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:54 What really strikes me about you and on, like, on, on the, on the, the interviews I've seen and on your YouTube channel and stuff-

Ben Francis 1:01:59 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:01:59 ... is that you seem to, like, genuinely breathe the passion for the business.

Ben Francis 1:02:03 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:05 I guess if I imagine another kind of billion-dollar business, like for example, [laughs] for example, they would have like their vision. They would have like their model for, "Oh, we wanna make the world a better place by doing X."

Ben Francis 1:02:15 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:15 And it can almost feel a bit hollow 'cause it's just like a corporate promise on their website.

Ben Francis 1:02:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:18 But it sounds like you genuinely, like that is the thing in front of you.

Ben Francis 1:02:21 I lo- gen- genuinely love it. Like I said, I've stood in outside... I've been to every event that we've done.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:26 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:02:26 ... like all of the large-scale events. I've traveled the world, and I've met people that have lost weight, built muscle, improved their mental health. And [sighs] I mean, I said at the start, like the product that we built at the start was, it was for a selfish reason. It's 'cause I wanted that product, and-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:40 Mm

Ben Francis 1:02:40 ... I, now it is, it... I don't know, it's, I think because I've had that experience myself of not knowing what to do, not being in a great place, and I've felt the positive effects mentally and physically of fitness, I would love other people to experience it. So yeah-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:53 Brilliant

Ben Francis 1:02:53 ... it, it just, it really resonates with me.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:55 Sick.

Ben Francis 1:02:55 I'm excited to hear more about your business, by the way.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:57 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:02:57 I wanna see the structure you've drawn.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:58 Oh, yeah. I'll show you. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:03:00 I'm fascinated by what it'll look like.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:02 Yeah. It's, uh, [laughs] it's pretty simple, but it's like before it was so like kind of all over the place, and now-

Ben Francis 1:03:09 Ooh

Ali Abdaal 1:03:09 ... it feels a bit more streamlined. Um.

Ben Francis 1:03:12 'Cause your... In many ways your, well, your business model is, or it feels to me, more pioneering than what we're doing because at least we've got, we can lean back on retailers-

Ali Abdaal 1:03:22 Mm

Ben Francis 1:03:23 ... sportswear brands, tech brands, all these different things, and amalgamate it into a structure. I wouldn't know where to start with yours.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:28 Yeah, I mean, the, the, the thing I've, I'm, I'm looking at recently is, uh, like TV and film production companies.

Ben Francis 1:03:35 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:36 'Cause ours is kind of a production company.

Ben Francis 1:03:38 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:38 Um, and like what does it look like? And in fact, the new org chart, like before, the way it was, it was organized was, I was thinking, "All right, well, there's me, and then we've got like Angus, who's in charge of like the YouTube channel. We've got Gareth, who's in charge of like the website."

Ben Francis 1:03:53 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:53 "You have to be in charge of this," uh, sort of splitting things up based on the platform.

Ben Francis 1:03:56 Like, so basically channel split, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:03:58 But yeah, basically channel split.

Ben Francis 1:03:59 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:59 Yeah. Whereas now I think what makes much more sense is splitting it like a production company would in terms of pre-production, [laughs] production, post-production.

Ben Francis 1:04:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:07 So pre-production is all of the idea generation and the writing.

Ben Francis 1:04:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:09 Production is, uh, me and a videographer, which is currently Angus, [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:04:14 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:04:14 ... who's also our director of operations. Um, and then post-production is our editing team.

Ben Francis 1:04:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:18 And just having that structure, it's like, oh, okay, whether it's, it's a YouTube video we make or a tweet thread or a blog post-

Ben Francis 1:04:24 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:04:24 ... or even me writing my book or an online course or anything like that, it all has that pre-production, production, post-production. And therefore, if we've got Angus as director of operations managing that, then theoretically I can give a vision through our marketing team or directly to o- our operations saying, "Hey, I wanna make a course about this thing."

Ben Francis 1:04:44 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:44 "Here is my vision for it. Let's make it happen."

Ben Francis 1:04:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:46 And then it goes through that kind of pipeline of pre-production, production, post-production, in theory.

Ben Francis 1:04:51 And is it all... So none of it's hardware, as it were. It's all software or it's content. It's all online-

Ali Abdaal 1:04:57 Yeah, well-

Ben Francis 1:04:57 ... not sort of tangible

Ali Abdaal 1:04:58 ... we have a new, like we've got our productivity [laughs] planner over there. We're launching a, a line of stationery.

Ben Francis 1:05:04 Go on.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:05 So it's a... You're getting a sneak peek. This is like the proof versions. The, uh, Part-Time Productivity Planner. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:05:11 So, so what, why part-time productivity? What does that mean?

Ali Abdaal 1:05:14 Uh, it w- part-time productivity is that... So I think one of the problem... Again, I'm solving a selfish problem.

Ben Francis 1:05:17 One thing I learned today.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:18 Yeah. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:05:20 That's like, uh, where have I heard that before? Is that like the Benjamin Franklin sort of thing?

Ali Abdaal 1:05:23 Oh, quite, yeah. I think a lot of people-

Ben Francis 1:05:25 That Simmons thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:25 Yeah. Um-

Ben Francis 1:05:26 This is cool

Ali Abdaal 1:05:27 ... like what, one of the issues I have with these sorts of planners is that when they've got dates in them-

Ben Francis 1:05:31 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:31 ... and if I miss a date-

Ben Francis 1:05:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:32 ... then I just c- get so demotivated, and then I will never, ever use the planner again-

Ben Francis 1:05:35 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:35 ... and it's gonna go in the bin.

Ben Francis 1:05:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:37 So this one crucially does not have any dates on it. So you can use it some days. You don't have to use it every day.

Ben Francis 1:05:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:42 But every seven days it gives you a weekly review and says, "All right, just reflect on your week."

Ben Francis 1:05:47 That's a good thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:47 And that might not actually be every seven days 'cause you might not actually fill it in for seven days, but-

Ben Francis 1:05:50 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:50 ... it's, it's better than not doing any kind of reflecting at all.

Ben Francis 1:05:54 And you've got a might-do list as well, which are quite nice.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:57 What?

Ben Francis 1:05:57 I've never seen that before.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:58 Might do, yeah. I don't like to-do lists 'cause it feels like, you know, I'm being a slave to my to-do list.

Ben Francis 1:06:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:02 Whereas if I call it a might-do list, 'cause it's like, oh, I could do this stuff if I wanted to.

Ben Francis 1:06:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:06 And then I feel more optimistic. I'm like, "Yeah, why not? Why not? Why not?" [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:06:09 I like that.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:09 Um.

Ben Francis 1:06:09 That's cool.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:10 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:06:10 Amazing.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:11 So we're doing like a line of, line of stationery, these sort of like daily to-do list pads if-

Ben Francis 1:06:15 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:06:16 ... ideas instead. Oh, I was gonna ask you about this. So, um, th- these are some of my mantras, like journey before destination.

Ben Francis 1:06:21 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:21 It's, [laughs] it's The Climb, Miley Cyrus.

Ben Francis 1:06:23 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:23 Um, and the theme, the k- the kinda theme of the book that I'm writing is that-

Ben Francis 1:06:28 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:06:28 ... um, you know, it's, it's, its core message is that productivity and getting things done is not really about working harder.

Ben Francis 1:06:35 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:35 Um, and like the, the real secret, if there is one, is to learn to enjoy the journey of what you're doing.

Ben Francis 1:06:41 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:41 'Cause when you're having fun, then productivity takes care of itself.

Ben Francis 1:06:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:44 I was gonna ask you, does that

Ali Abdaal 1:06:45 resonate with you? And do you have any examples from your life where-

Ben Francis 1:06:47 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:06:47 ... having fun has led to productivity? [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:06:50 Yes. So what, so for me, it's split into two distinct areas. Things I love doing-

Ali Abdaal 1:06:53 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:06:54 ... and I genuinely like adore. And now by the way, all... So within Gymshark, within the, under the heading of Gymshark, because I love Gymshark so much, I would do anything within Gymshark because I just love it.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:05 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:07:05 And I love the fact that it, it speaks back to the greater sort of mission. Now, within that, spend a day in product, love to.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:11 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:07:11 Fly over to a factory all day, go to an event, love it. Meet pe- do you know what I mean? Meet athletes, all that. Absolutely adore every s- every second of it. Now, would I spend my Sunday afternoons looking at operational strategies, profit and loss thing, do you know what I mean? Accountancy, finance stuff? No, I probably wouldn't. Under the banner of Gymshark, then I again then sort of get extra enjoyment from it. The, the thing that's really helped me massively to motivate me to do the things in that, that second bucket of things I probably wouldn't enjoy as much is having the overarching, an overarching goal.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:43 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:07:44 So again, when I had this s- thing in my, in my sort of sight of I want to be a CEO. Okay, a CEO needs to understand the customer, the product, and the brand. Fine. Got it. Sorted. But also needs to understand finance and logistics, for example.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:00 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:08:00 So because I had this, one, it sat under the banner of Gymshark, and two, I had this w- broader goal of I wanna be a chief exec, it gave me huge motivation to do those things, and all of a sudden it was just so easy for me to spend hours on end learning about them because it spoke back to a goal that I had.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:15 Oh, okay. So like having-

Ben Francis 1:08:16 So I think I have to have an aim. I have to have a reason for doing things.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:18 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:08:18 I'm not just gonna learn about something for the sake of learning about it that I don't enjoy-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:22 Okay

Ben Francis 1:08:22 ... which I would do with other things.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:24 Yeah. Interesting. So like having that kind of purpose, that meaning behind-

Ben Francis 1:08:28 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:08:28 ... the thing that you're doing makes the thing more fun.

Ben Francis 1:08:30 Yeah. And then, so what I did was I said, "I wanna be a CEO. I need to do X, Y, and Z." And then I would... I wouldn't- I've never been good at just like battering something for like 12 hours straight. I would have to do it just a little thing every single day. And then having that, that goal in my head, like the best example I can give was, "I wanna be a CEO. I'm terrible at public speaking, so I need to be, I need to get better at public speaking."

Ali Abdaal 1:08:51 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 1:08:51 It's like one of my things was literally public speaking. And then I would sort of navigate through life, and as I'm at an event, whatever, on the tube, chatting to people as you go, "Oh, what do you do for a living?" Spoke to someone and they're like, "Oh, I, I'm a public speaking coach." And normally I'd be like... Y- you know, if I didn't have the goal, it would be-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:09 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:09:09 ... "Nice. Have a lovely day. See you soon." But because I had this goal and it was in my list, I'm like, "Oh my God, I'd love to be great at public speaking. Can I take your number? Can we chat some more? Can I learn from you?" So this is why I think it's so important to have that goal, because then I think it helps with self-development.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:23 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:09:23 So I think it's like if you don't aim at something, you can't... I, I just don't think you can get there. You can't just meander through life and expect to be something. Like-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:29 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:09:30 ... you can't just, you know, roll around and expect to be a Premier League footballer. Premier League footballer is a Premier League footballer 'cause they've worked every single day and they've dedicated their lives to it. So I think it's the same with-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:39 Mm

Ben Francis 1:09:39 ... any endeavor, and that's how I try to dedicate my learning now.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:43 Have you, have you, have you come across this, the, the law of attraction kind of stuff?

Ben Francis 1:09:46 I, I'm... No, I've heard about it, but I don't really know.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:48 Yeah. So it's, it's the, the... There was this book called The Secret that was published I f- I think a few decades ago that like went viral-

Ben Francis 1:09:54 Ah

Ali Abdaal 1:09:54 ... [laughs] back in the day. And the whole principle behind the law of attraction-

Ben Francis 1:09:57 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:09:57 ... is that, um, it's about like manifestation. That if you, if you really set a goal, if you really believe something-

Ben Francis 1:10:02 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:10:02 ... then the, the, the law of attraction in the universe will like make it happen for you.

Ben Francis 1:10:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:08 Then it kinda goes a bit overboard that, you know, if you've got cancer and you believe you don't have cancer, then it will get cured magically. You know, the only reason you're poor is because you just don't believe enough that you're rich.

Ben Francis 1:10:17 It's a bit wishy-washy then.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:18 It's all... Yeah. It's, it's very, very wishy-washy. [laughs] Um, but I think there is some truth to this stuff in that when you manifest or when you, when, when you have a goal, like I wanna become the CEO-

Ben Francis 1:10:29 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:10:29 ... you start seeing the opportunities-

Ben Francis 1:10:31 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:10:31 ... that you wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Ben Francis 1:10:32 You, you see what you look for, don't you?

Ali Abdaal 1:10:34 Like the public speaking thing-

Ben Francis 1:10:35 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:10:35 ... or, you know, when I decided [laughs] I wanted to buy a Tesla. Suddenly I started seeing Teslas everywhere. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:10:38 Everywhere, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:39 'Cause you just have that thing, and so your brain turns onto the, the, the various options here. So I think that's really cool.

Ben Francis 1:10:44 No, hon- honestly, I'm a massive, massive advocate for that. I think just whatever it is, just set a, set an aim. And, and the thing is that's been really powerful for me, is I haven't gone, "I wanna be a CEO, so I'm gonna do these massive things." Like, set the bar so low. And it's only now looking back I've realized-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:00 Mm

Ben Francis 1:11:00 ... everything I've ever wanted to do, I've set the bar low. So Gymshark was started because I wanted to be involved in fitness. The website was built because I wanted a website that would transact.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:09 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:11:09 I didn't go, "I want a multi-billion dollar business that's one of the greatest brands in the world." It was just those really little things. And s- by setting the bar low, it then, you know, allows you to take those baby steps, because nothing great is achieved in a short, in the short term. It's over prolonged periods of constant progression.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:26 Okay. So what's your, what's your kind of low bar now these days, now that you're, now that you're CEO?

Ben Francis 1:11:31 Honestly, um, consistency.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:33 Okay.

Ben Francis 1:11:34 That's my biggest thing at the moment. I just wanna be consistent. Steve gave me some advice coming into the chief exec role, was he said, "You just have to be consistent." So I was absolutely knackered yesterday. I went and watched the football on Sunday. Traffic coming out of Wembley was an absolute nightmare.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:50 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:11:50 Had about three hours sleep, and I went in and I said, "If I do one thing today, it is I'm gonna be consistent through the day, and I don't want anyone to sort of to notice that Ben is really tired today or whatever."

Ali Abdaal 1:12:01 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:12:01 "I wanna be consistent." So that's my, that's my low bar.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:04 Sick.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:05 Um, all right. A few, a few more kind of random unconnected things-

Ben Francis 1:12:08 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:12:08 ... that I wanna talk to you about. So you're kind of like a celebrity now-

Ben Francis 1:12:12 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:12:12 ... in-

Ben Francis 1:12:13 I wouldn't say that

Ali Abdaal 1:12:14 ... well-

Ben Francis 1:12:14 But I know what you mean

Ali Abdaal 1:12:15 ... you know, you're, like, famous in... Like, what are the perks of that? Like, do you get cool stuff for being you-

Ben Francis 1:12:20 Um

Ali Abdaal 1:12:20 ... and, like... Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:12:21 You get to meet amazing people, like really, really cool people. Like, like this never would've happened. Like, this is, this is, like, a massive pro for me. Meeting, I mentioned a guy called a Jas earlier. Like, I get to meet really, really cool people. And like, so it's... You've got the, the public world. So the thing I love about YouTube and podcasting-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:38 Mm

Ben Francis 1:12:38 ... right, is it gives the mass audience access to conversations that they would never normally have access to. And that's great, but then there's a huge group of people, probably the vast majority of very talented people, that don't really wanna be on camera-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:51 Mm

Ben Francis 1:12:51 ... don't really wanna do the whole YouTube public facing thing, that just are quite happy to do their own thing. I get to speak to a lot of those people as well. That's really cool, because oftentimes that's where you, like, I personally learn so much from.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:04 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:13:04 And like, I'm trying to... I'm, my sort of self-development's at a point where it's very niche, the specific things that I'm trying to learn.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:12 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:13:12 And so again, I'm now coming into this CEO role. I'm trying to find other people that have done a similar scale role, have, have had different prob- or similar problems to me.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:20 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:13:20 So the, the, the amount of people is, is significantly smaller. So I would say access is amazing. Um, and choice. Like you get, you do get a lot of choice within reason-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:31 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:13:31 ... which is great.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:31 So access is then you could just like email like, I don't know-

Ben Francis 1:13:34 Like cool people, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:13:35 ... Phil Knight and be like, "Bro." [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:13:36 Probably not, probably not him. But do you know what I mean?

Ali Abdaal 1:13:38 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:13:38 Like within, within the UK-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:39 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:13:39 ... there's so many amazing people that I've met-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:41 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:13:41 ... and it's, and it's so cool. Like, um, I, I got to, a few years ago, I got to go and spend time on Downing Street.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:48 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:13:48 Like, I never thought that would be possible. It was, it was life-changing for me to walk through the gates and see that, because it was just something

Ben Francis 1:13:55 I never thought was possible. And those sorts of things are, you know, I find them really inspiring.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:58 Nice. That's cool. Um, why did you start the YouTube channel?

Ben Francis 1:14:02 I started the YouTube channel. This is... So basically, I was very happy to not be the public facing f- face of the brand.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:10 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:14:10 Very happy to do that. And anyone that's followed the story will know for the first five or six years, I just wouldn't have really posted anything online. Now, I took loads of content, loads of pictures, loads of videos, and I never posted them. And then all of a sudden, like the core people started to understand and know who I was and what I was doing at the business, and a lot of people would ask, a lot of people would ask, a lot of people would ask. And then I was in Dublin once and a, and a lad came up to me and he said I'm doing a, I'm doing a, something written, a written piece on Gymshark for, I think it was a degree

Ali Abdaal 1:14:37 Mm

Ben Francis 1:14:37 ... it was like a dissertation. And he said, "Can you just give me an overview, a video on how Gymshark started?" Um, I said, "I, I don't really wanna do it. I've been asked before." And he said, "Come on, just one video. That's it."

Ali Abdaal 1:14:50 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:14:50 Like, it's what? A couple of hours of your time sort of thing. Um, and I couldn't really say no. And I, I, I hate, I hate lying. I don't wanna ever sort of make a promise that I can't keep. And I said, "Do you know what? Fine, I will do it." Um, I recorded it two or three times, ended up deleting the footage. And then my, my now fiance, at the time girlfriend, was a YouTuber, so she knew how to do it all. So she was like, "Right, sit there. I'm putting the camera on a tripod. I'm gonna record you talking," and then she would basically edit-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:16 Oh

Ben Francis 1:15:16 ... edit it for me. Um, so we put that live, um, and it just completely blew up.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:22 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:15:22 The reaction was amazing. And it was weird because it was like, it was big on YouTube, which is cool. And it was big on Facebook and Instagram and all the social networks. Then all of a sudden, like, newspapers would start writing about it. And it sort of went into that world as well, and I just kept doing it ever since really.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:36 Okay. 'Cause, yeah, it, it, like, this is an area in w- in which I think, like, there are so many, like, really cool companies and really cool, like, founders and CEOs of those companies.

Ben Francis 1:15:46 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:46 But you never really hear from them unless they're being interviewed on a podcast.

Ben Francis 1:15:50 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:50 And so the fact that you have got your own YouTube channel where you're showing the behind the scenes of, like, just the insane warehouse setup you guys have-

Ben Francis 1:15:58 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:15:58 ... and, like, how Shopify works with you for Black Friday, it's all just so inspiring and so cool to see-

Ben Francis 1:16:02 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:16:02 ... 'cause you never get that behind the scenes look.

Ben Francis 1:16:04 But it's important to me because, uh, so-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:05 Yes

Ben Francis 1:16:05 ... I mean, similar to yourself, right, I, I love the thought of people being better in the business that they're working, in starting new businesses-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:12 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:16:12 ... and being entrepreneurial and creative. I, I love that. I'm really passionate about it. So I th- I, I, I thought, like, no one else shows the in- the inside of a multi-billion dollar brand.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:24 Yeah. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:16:24 So I thought, well, you know, why don't we do that? Why don't we show people? Like, you know, there are things that we will mention, and will it give a competitor an opportunity to do something quickly? Yes, it probably will.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:35 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:16:35 But in the grand scheme of things, for me, the idea of inspiring people-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:39 Mm

Ben Francis 1:16:39 ... to build businesses, start businesses, and be bettering themselves is, is incredibly fulfilling.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:45 Nice. Yeah, that's really cool. Um, yeah, uh, every, every time I see that you've, you put out a new video, I always get excited, like, "Yes." [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:16:51 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:16:52 'Cause I, I f- I find that, like, y- you're operating at a level of scale that I can't even imagine.

Ben Francis 1:16:56 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:56 And the fact that you're making it public means that I can now im- sort of imagine that level of scale.

Ben Francis 1:17:01 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:01 I think it was similar to, um, when I first started listening to podcasts and things like The Tim Ferriss Show and-

Ben Francis 1:17:06 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:17:06 ... and stuff like that, s- see-- hearing people-

Ben Francis 1:17:08 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:17:08 ... like Gary Vaynerchuk.

Ben Francis 1:17:09 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:09 Where these guys are operating at a level that most of us just don't even know exists.

Ben Francis 1:17:13 Oh, it's amazing.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:13 And then-

Ben Francis 1:17:14 And you talk about-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:14 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:17:14 ... productivity. Those guys operate-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:16 Mm

Ben Francis 1:17:16 ... on a level that I didn't even think was possible.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:19 Yeah. Yeah, it's really, really cool. Um, and I'm hoping that with this kinda podcast, I can... It's a pretty good excuse to, like, hang out with someone-

Ben Francis 1:17:26 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:17:26 ... meet someone, have a long conversation. Um, another thing I was gonna ask about is that, and, you know, as, as Gymshark has gotten, has gotten bigger-

Ben Francis 1:17:33 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:17:34 ... you know, as, like, you know, as a YouTube channel gets bigger, you start get-- uh, y- you start to get haters.

Ben Francis 1:17:38 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:38 You start to get negative comments. I guess, you, sort of Buzzfeed has, has had this issue where people working at Buzzfeed or working for Buzzfeed will then make a, a think piece of why I left Buzzfeed.

Ben Francis 1:17:51 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:51 That kind of thing.

Ben Francis 1:17:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:52 How does that stuff make you feel? Like, how do you, how do you deal with the-

Ben Francis 1:17:55 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:17:55 ... you know?

Ben Francis 1:17:56 So there, there's a point where, like, the whole thing of leaving Gymshark-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:59 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:17:59 ... posting it on YouTube, it would like-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:01 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:18:01 ... get massive amounts of views-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:02 Yeah, because everyone's looking at [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:18:02 ... everyone wanted to hear about it. Um, listen, it's gonna happen.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:06 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:18:06 I just think, I think-- So the thing is, especially being in my position-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:11 Mm

Ben Francis 1:18:11 ... I guess I'm public facing. I'm not massively public facing. There are people that are far more so. But just growing a business, it's so incredibly tough. I just feel like I've been beaten with a stick around the head so many times now.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:23 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:18:23 You just sort of get used to it. Um, you know, I've been on the receiving end of, you know, people sending me messages on social media, personally, in person, difficulties in the business, the growth phase. Like-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:37 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:18:37 ... it, it's, it's part and parcel of the job. Um, I also, by the way, think that in the long term, it's a very positive thing because I feel like I'm held to a high level of account. Um, and I think that only makes me and the business better.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:52 Uh, held to a high level of account as in?

Ben Francis 1:18:54 Because on social media, anyone can call anyone out, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:18:56 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:18:56 And if there's validity to the claim, then publicly people are gonna know about it. Whereas maybe in yesteryear, in my parents' generation-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:03 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:19:03 ... you, you would find, or you'd look back and you'd realize companies or individuals would do bad things and sort of get away with them. And I think it's great now that people can hold individuals and businesses to account online.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:13 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:19:14 Um, granted, sometimes it can go too far, and, like, cancel culture, I'm massively against. I think people need to look at things with a logical set of eyes. Um, and like I said, you know, for me, sometimes it is very, very tough. But I think I'm putting myself out there. I'm saying I want to be the CEO of a, of a large business, and a business that's, in many ways, at the center of a culture and a community. And to do that, you have to have a thick skin, and, you know, you have to be doing the right things. And-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:41 Nice

Ben Francis 1:19:41 ... I think I'm, I, I think I will do those.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:44 Hmm. Cool. Um, I guess final, final thing I wanna ask about, like, what is your, what's your workflow for video production [laughs] with-

Ben Francis 1:19:51 Well-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:51 ... with, with, like, the team? [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:19:52 ... it's James more than me.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:53 [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:19:54 Varies, varies, it varies a lot, right? So sometimes-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:57 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:19:57 ... we'll have an idea. Again, so the CEO video, we saw, obviously we saw coming well in advance.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:01 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:20:01 Um, and we said, "We need to do this video, and we want it to be special." We actually recorded it a few times and binned the footage 'cause I was terrible, basically.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:08 [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:20:08 I was not very good on camera. Um, I didn't-- I just-- To be honest, it was quite an emotional subject for me.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:13 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:20:13 And my words just weren't e- I wasn't even speaking in coherent sentences. So, um, that one, we'll all sit in a room and work together. There are certain things which are more, like, pull, i.e. some pe- some people will message us and say, "Can you make this content?" Sometimes I'll jump on Instagram and say, "What would you like to see?" People will message me.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:31 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:20:31 Uh, we've got someone who's brilliant called Lily in the team-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:33 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:20:33 ... who will ... build out a brief. So you'll start with title and thumbnail. Th- that's something I was told actually a, a long time ago-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:40 Mm

Ben Francis 1:20:40 ... by, um, a guy called Jan Olson that we used to work with.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:43 Oh, yeah. Nice.

Ben Francis 1:20:44 And, um, and I, I said, I asked him the same question-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:47 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:20:47 ... and he said, "I always start with title and thumbnail."

Ali Abdaal 1:20:49 Nice. Yeah, that's what we did as well. [laughs] Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:20:50 Because if you don't click on the title of the thumbnail-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:52 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:20:52 ... then you can't... You can make the best video in the world, but no one's gonna watch it.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:55 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:20:56 Um, so we start with the title and the thumbnail, with the, the purpose of the video, what do we wanna get across. And now, just because of how busy the role is, I'll have a, a brief, and I'll sort of read through the brief. Okay, so people wanna see this video. Um, I'll be sat down on a chair, and we'll, we'll record basically.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:12 Okay. And then all of the drone footage, all the time lapses of the warehouses, is that all done by-

Ben Francis 1:21:17 It's this-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:17 ... James? [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:21:17 ... James Perrier, who is an absolute wizard. Absolute wizard. Life changer. Me and James have been working together for what? Two years now? Two, two and a half. Yeah. Two years. And, um, yeah, it's been absolutely brilliant. Absolutely br-... I, listen, I... Early days, I edited my own videos. So Robin did editing. I then learned to edit. She taught me.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:35 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:21:36 Um, it was very time consuming editing. I remember there was videos I'd spend eight, 12, 15 hours editing-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:42 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:21:42 ... and it just wasn't an efficient use of time. And by the way, I wasn't even that good at it.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:46 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:21:47 Then worked with other people and, and James came in and just revolutionized the channel.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:51 So what's it like having someone film everything you do?

Ben Francis 1:21:54 Weird at first-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:54 Yeah. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:21:54 ... but then you get used to it. And like, me and James are mates anyway.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:57 Okay.

Ben Francis 1:21:57 Like, so the biggest thing when I was looking for someone to work with-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:59 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:22:00 ... it's almost like can you, you know, can you edit? Can you work a camera? Great. But like, it needs to be someone that we get along with.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:05 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:22:06 Um, COVID's obviously changed things, but we travel the world together. We've been to the States.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:10 Mm-hmm.

Ben Francis 1:22:10 We've been to Hong Kong. We would, we'd, you know, be around the UK all the time. We spend a lot of time together.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:15 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:22:15 So we have to get on with each other and be comfortable with each other. Um, 'cause if I'm rigid on camera or he doesn't like me-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:21 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:22:21 ... then it, you know, it doesn't work.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:22 Yeah. It's definitely more a problem, isn't it? [laughs] What about, like, do you f- do you film, like, literally everything? Like, what if you're, like, having dinner with friends or, like-

Ben Francis 1:22:30 So we wouldn't film that, would we?

Ali Abdaal 1:22:31 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:22:31 It would be anything sort of extracurricular would, tends to get filmed.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:35 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:22:35 Any trips will all be filmed. Um, we'd normally have a filming slot every week-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:40 Okay

Ben Francis 1:22:40 ... um, where we'll sit down and talk to camera. We'll occasionally... So James was looking at, um, you're gonna record for an entire month, weren't you? Basically completely, which is gonna be really fun for me.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:50 [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:22:50 Um, so we're gonna do an entire month.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:53 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:22:53 What we'll use of that, I'm not sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:54 Okay.

Ben Francis 1:22:55 Um, people love the day in the life. They love-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:57 Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah

Ben Francis 1:22:57 ... and we've, we've, we've done some really cool high, almost high budget professional things, and then we do wander around with a camera for a day, and people just love that.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:06 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:23:07 So we wanna bring people a little bit more sort of in behind the scenes.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:10 Nice. And do you just wear the microphone at all, at all times as well? Just-

Ben Francis 1:23:13 Yeah, tend to. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. You sort of get used to it.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:15 So then James ends up with, like, hundreds of gigabytes of footage every day.

Ben Francis 1:23:18 Yeah, that, that's the problem. That-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:19 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:23:19 ... the Gen-Z. That was another problem, wasn't it, during COVID, because then I would have my camera, and I would film at home, and I didn't realize just how big the footage is nowadays.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:26 Yeah, they're massive.

Ben Francis 1:23:27 When you record it in 4K-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:28 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:23:28 ... you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes. Well, I would have to drive to yours with the hard drive, wouldn't I?

Ali Abdaal 1:23:32 [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:23:33 Like, give you the, give you the hard drive with all the footage on, because it was just too slow on our home internet.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:37 Yeah. So we, we, we did this whole thing where, uh, so w- we've got two editors in Romania-

Ben Francis 1:23:42 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:23:43 ... and Romania has ridiculously fast internet speeds. Everyone's-

Ben Francis 1:23:46 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:23:46 ... on, like, one, like, 1,000 megabytes per second, like-

Ben Francis 1:23:48 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:23:48 ... upload, download. And the inst- internet speed in this place was, like, 20 meg upload, download.

Ben Francis 1:23:53 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:53 And it was just physically impossible to upload files.

Ben Francis 1:23:55 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:55 So I got, like, the most expensive BT Infinity option. I found this guy to kind of wire the, the router from over there, wire it around the house [laughs] -

Ben Francis 1:24:05 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:24:05 ... so it feeds into this laptop over here. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:24:07 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:07 So we use that to upload files now.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:09 But the hard disk-

Ben Francis 1:24:09 So what is your workflows like? So you record your videos-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:12 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:24:12 ... and then you send them out to be edited in Romania, basically.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:15 Basically, yeah. And then-

Ben Francis 1:24:16 And then you'll comment, I'd assume, because it's never gonna be perfect first time, or how does that work?

Ali Abdaal 1:24:20 Yeah. So for the first two years, I was, I would, there was a round of review where I would comment on things. We'd upload it to a website called Frame.io, where you can like... Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:24:27 We know of Frame.io.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:28 Frame.io is great.

Ben Francis 1:24:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:29 Um, affiliate link in the video description if we-

Ben Francis 1:24:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:31 [laughs] Um, um, but now, like recently, Christian, who's my main, main editor and who was-

Ben Francis 1:24:36 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:24:36 ... employee number one, he, he said that, "Hey, you know, me, me reviewing footage is always a bit of a bottleneck."

Ben Francis 1:24:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:41 "'Cause if I'm out, then, you know, whatever." He was like, "Is there any need for you to review it?"

Ben Francis 1:24:46 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:46 I hadn't thought about it. I was like, "No, you're right. There isn't really any need for me to review it."

Ben Francis 1:24:50 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:50 And so now video- videos come out twice a week, and Angus is like, "Oh, yeah, we've got, we, we've got videos come out." I'm like, "Oh, yeah." I can't even remember which one that was, because we filmed it three weeks ago.

Ben Francis 1:24:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:59 And we're getting into this, like, production-

Ben Francis 1:25:01 See, that's cool. That's really, really good to see that

Ali Abdaal 1:25:02 ... production company mindset. Um, and I think one of the things that, that resonated with, with, with what you said is finding, finding people and building systems to combat your own weaknesses.

Ben Francis 1:25:11 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:11 So my weakness, ironically, is that I suck at motivating myself to film videos when I'm on my own.

Ben Francis 1:25:16 Really?

Ali Abdaal 1:25:17 Uh, and it w- it always felt, felt like such a, such a heavy lift.

Ben Francis 1:25:20 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:20 Like, oh, you know, work. I'd give myself, I don't know, five hours to film a video, and I'd procrastinate for four and a half, and then I'd film it right at the end.

Ben Francis 1:25:26 No way.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:27 Um-

Ben Francis 1:25:27 I wouldn't expect that of you.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:28 Yeah, mate. [laughs] It, like... I think when I was working full time, I had to film a video in two hours in the evening.

Ben Francis 1:25:33 Because you-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:34 So, yeah

Ben Francis 1:25:34 ... had to be, like, asleep at one in the morning.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:35 Parkinson's Law. You know, w- wake up early before going on call, that kind of thing.

Ben Francis 1:25:39 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:39 But when I took a break from medicine intending to travel the world-

Ben Francis 1:25:41 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:25:41 ... which then didn't happen because of COVID-

Ben Francis 1:25:43 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:25:43 ... I was like, I've got the whole day to film a video.

Ben Francis 1:25:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:45 And then it takes the whole day to film one video.

Ben Francis 1:25:47 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:47 So now every Thursday, we have a filming day where Angus comes over, is behind the camera, and it's like, "All right, Ali, chop, chop. Come on, let's do another one."

Ben Francis 1:25:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:52 "Let's do another one. Let's do the thumbnails." And that's been really good. It's just so nice working with other people. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:25:58 So how does that work creatively then? Like video ideas, thumbnails, obviously titles. How does that work?

Ali Abdaal 1:26:03 Yeah. So we've got a team. So we have, um, every, every Monday, we have, like, a content editorial meeting-

Ben Francis 1:26:08 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:26:08 ... with me, Angus, our writers, and everyone rocks up to that meeting with three ideas for videos.

Ben Francis 1:26:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:14 Inclus- so titles, thumbnails, and talking points.

Ben Francis 1:26:16 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:16 And then I would look through them with Angus, and we would give them the green light. Be like, "Really like that one. Don't really like this one. Here's some feedback about that one." Then they would work on the video idea, the concept for the next week.

Ben Francis 1:26:26 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:26 And the following Monday, we'd have, like, the full video basically ready.

Ben Francis 1:26:30 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:30 And then I would kind of go through it to be like, okay, if I were actually filming this based on these points, you know, I'd add a story about my life over there, a Harry Potter reference over there. We'll put a story from medicine over there.

Ben Francis 1:26:40 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:41 And then the video's ready to film.

Ben Francis 1:26:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:43 So that when it comes to Thursday, we can bang and bang film four videos in a day-

Ben Francis 1:26:45 So when you say-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:46 ... rather than getting a day

Ben Francis 1:26:46 ... like bang, bang, bang, are you talking- Would they, would-- what would you, what would it look like to you? So someone else has come up with an idea. Are you having a script? Are you having key messages? Are you just having a title? What does that look like?

Ali Abdaal 1:26:55 Yeah, so title, thumbnail, and talking points.

Ben Francis 1:26:57 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:57 So bullet points. I don't like reading from a script.

Ben Francis 1:26:59 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:59 It feels very inauthentic and, uh, uh-

Ben Francis 1:27:02 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:27:02 ... a bit of a nightmare.

Ben Francis 1:27:03 Impossible.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:03 Um, so I just like bullet points, and the team, like over time, like they've, they've seen all my videos, and so they know what examples from my life I could use for different things. Let's say we're talking about imposter syndrome.

Ben Francis 1:27:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:14 Someone-- they will have written, "Oh, you can talk about when you were directing the h- hospital pantomime."

Ben Francis 1:27:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:18 And I was like, "That's a good point. Yeah, I, I can talk about that."

Ben Francis 1:27:21 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:21 And it feels really weird and nice that people know my [chuckles] life so well that they can tell me what examples I'm gonna use and stuff.

Ben Francis 1:27:27 Yeah, that's amazing. 'Cause that's, that's the thing that always fascinates me, so like, is like scalability because ultimately you are one person-

Ali Abdaal 1:27:34 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:27:34 ... and if you're gonna be recording, then they'll always, the guys will always need you.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:37 Yes.

Ben Francis 1:27:37 So I'm really interested to see how that sort of becomes scalable.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:40 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:27:40 Or do you do it through all the different arms of the business and the channels and, you know, the products and things like that?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:45 Yeah. So the thing that the, the, the vision I set for us, and I think it was this time two years ago, I wrote it on, on a page in Notion [chuckles] being like-

Ben Francis 1:27:52 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:27:52 ... basically I want us to get to a point where the only thing I'm having to do is talk to a camera.

Ben Francis 1:27:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:58 Because I think that's the only aspect of the business in which I add unique value in being me.

Ben Francis 1:28:03 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:03 Uh, to an extent in like idea generation, but like even, even that-

Ben Francis 1:28:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:28:07 ... can ease, can be outsourced to someone who's, who's, who's good at it. And so now we're actually pretty close to that point where the only really-- the only thing I really do for the YouTube channel is talk to a camera once a week. Um, what I didn't realize at the time is that being kind of the CEO kind of role is actually mostly about having meetings with people and [laughs] -

Ben Francis 1:28:24 Yeah. It is people

Ali Abdaal 1:28:25 ... organizational clarity and setting vision-

Ben Francis 1:28:27 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:28:27 ... setting goals, and tracking metrics and, and stuff. Hiring, hiring's a big one.

Ben Francis 1:28:31 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:31 Uh, we're looking to hire five more people, and that's been such a bottleneck for me 'cause we have no process for hiring.

Ben Francis 1:28:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:36 We've just been making, making it up as we went along.

Ben Francis 1:28:38 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:39 And now I've discovered there's all these like platforms like Workable and stuff where you can post a job description, and they will do the applicant tracking and stuff-

Ben Francis 1:28:46 Oh yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:28:46 ... rather than a Google, a Google Form-

Ben Francis 1:28:48 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:28:48 ... which is what we used before. And so that's kind of where we ended up, like once a week for the YouTube channel. But the thing I love about your setup, and when you mentioned you were gonna bring the videographer, I was like, "Yes"

Ben Francis 1:28:56 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:28:56 ... because what I'm imagining is I would love to have a James who can like travel with me, especially as I wanna travel around the world and stuff.

Ben Francis 1:29:03 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:04 And often I find that in conversations with the team or in conversations with friends asking for advice about anything-

Ben Francis 1:29:11 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:29:11 ... I often just come out with bangers, and I'm like, "Oh, I, I wish some-

Ben Francis 1:29:13 Yeah. I wish I had that recorded

Ali Abdaal 1:29:14 ... I wish someone were here to film this."

Ben Francis 1:29:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:15 Yeah. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:29:16 That's interesting. That's cool.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:17 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:29:17 That's really cool. But yeah, like I said, for me, um, the fact that we get on is massive. You should-- genuinely, you should come to Gymshark though. You should look around our studios-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:25 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:29:25 ... 'cause granted it's slightly different, but then we'll have the full creative sort of suite and team. Um, I think you'd love it.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:31 Sick. We're actually looking for a studio to film an online course about productivity.

Ben Francis 1:29:35 Come and have a look.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:35 Can we do it at yours?

Ben Francis 1:29:36 Genuinely, come and have a look.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:37 Sick. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:29:37 So we've got like the-- we've got all the e-com studios-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:39 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:29:39 ... and we've got something called Studio X, which is basically an innovation studio.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:42 Okay.

Ben Francis 1:29:42 We would build full gym sets in there.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:45 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:29:45 So there's, um, there's campaigns we've done where you've got like people in the gym-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:49 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:29:49 ... but it wa- they're not actually in a gym. The whole thing's just been built in that studio.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:52 Nice.

Ben Francis 1:29:52 So-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:53 Okay. That's really cool. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:29:53 You should definitely come and have a look.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:55 Yeah, 'cause my personal trainer at the moment, he's got like a home gym in his garage.

Ben Francis 1:29:58 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:59 And so we've sort of been filming a bit of content for the Instagram there. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:30:01 Yeah. Honestly-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:02 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:30:02 ... come and have a look. You'd love it. We've done-- we've got all the studios. We've got the podcast studio.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:06 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:30:06 Um, it's, it's absolutely brilliant because similar to you, to what you do, is like we, we consider content as much of a product as, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:13 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:30:13 ... as this top. It's, it's exactly the same. Um, so content's massive for us.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:18 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think-- I don't, I don't know any other, any other brand in your thing that does content as well as you guys do.

Ben Francis 1:30:23 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:24 Like most of them just don't do content.

Ben Francis 1:30:25 Yeah. Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:25 They do like expensive advertising campaigns that run a single video, and that's it.

Ben Francis 1:30:30 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:30 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:30:31 I know. And like it's-- I think it's just because it's been, it's been the lifeblood of the business since day one, and I think growing up, like yeah, I'd watch TV, I'd watch sort of Match of the Day and stuff, but beyond that, everything was on YouTube-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:42 Mm

Ben Francis 1:30:42 ... and it was all content. And all of a sudden when you realize that you can play your part in that, it just, yeah, you end up building a business around and a brand around that content and community.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:50 Nice. Um, nothing

Ali Abdaal 1:30:53 else. So y- y- who are, who are the kind of mentors through either in real life-

Ben Francis 1:30:58 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:30:58 ... books, podcasts, who have inspired you over the years-

Ben Francis 1:31:01 Um

Ali Abdaal 1:31:02 ... and people should check out?

Ben Francis 1:31:04 So I don't have like a defined group of mentors, and I don't have people that I will regularly check in with as a mentor. I know some people a- at Gymshark will do that, and it seemed to work really well for them. Um, Steve and Paul, who were the, the sort of original people that helped professionalize the business in the early days, um, have been massive to me. I've got a lot of friends. Again, I keep mentioning Ajaz.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:23 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:31:23 One of the most inspiring people I've met and like a very creative CEO. He's not a CEO as you would sort of expect. Um, Harley at Shopify I'll sort of lean on occasionally if I, if I have a problem that I don't know how to solve.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:35 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:31:36 Uh, online, I'll, I'll watch anything and anyone. Like I-- the thing is I'm a, I'm a massive believer that, that you can learn something from every single person that you meet.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:44 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:31:45 And I think I learn more from the amalgamation of meeting a thousand people than sort of one individual, and I'll try and chat to people that are good at specific things. There's not like one human who I think is the-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:57 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:31:57 ... perfect human being. I'll try and pick things from so many different people.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:00 Nice. Um, and are there any kind of books, videos, podcasts that you kind of find yourself commonly recommending-

Ben Francis 1:32:06 Ooh

Ali Abdaal 1:32:06 ... to people if they were to ask you, uh, you know, "Ben, how did, how did you do X or Y?"

Ben Francis 1:32:09 Um, again, it's very similar. So-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:12 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:32:12 ... I read, um, a book ages ago, which I thought I would hate, and I really liked. And I don't actually read that much, and it was called Poor Charlie's Almanack-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:19 Oh. Yes

Ben Francis 1:32:19 ... which is by, uh, Charlie Munger.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:21 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:32:21 Or it's, it's not-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:22 Yeah. Okay

Ben Francis 1:32:22 ... it's not a book. It's like an amalgamation-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:23 Combination of his stuff

Ben Francis 1:32:24 ... of speeches, isn't it?

Ali Abdaal 1:32:24 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:32:25 Um, which I thought was amazing.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:26 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:32:26 And there was one particular page which I can just about remember where I think it was on one-- it was on one, either one or two page where he broke down the entire success of the Coca-Cola brand. I remember thinking, "Wow, this is amazing." And, and I went into this book thinking, "He's an investor, he's a financier."

Ali Abdaal 1:32:42 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:32:42 "We will have nothing in common. He's an old bloke."

Ali Abdaal 1:32:44 He's old. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:32:44 Do you know what I mean? Like, and I ended up thinking, "Wow-"

Ali Abdaal 1:32:47 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:32:47 ... "this is amazing," 'cause he was very brand first. He's talk-- he talks about lots of different sort of psychological models.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:52 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:32:52 And basically, it's almost like imagine you've got like a problem here, and it's about attacking this problem from a load of different angles in a load of different ways, and it's exactly the way that we and I try and solve problems at, at Gymshark and in life. So I found that book massively inspiring. And then, yeah, mulling around YouTube, I love your channel.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:08 Thank you. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:33:08 You introduced me to Notion. Notion, life-- like genuinely life-changing. Um, we- I mean, we run almost everything on Notion now, don't we? From a creative point in the entire, in, in the entire business, by the way, not just as in me-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:19 Oh

Ben Francis 1:33:19 ... personally.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:20 Okay.

Ben Francis 1:33:20 I run, I think you, you coined it, like a life OS.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:23 Yeah. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:33:23 I have my life OS. I have a prof- professional life.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:26 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:33:26 ... the different Gymshark stuff. Everything's run on Notion, so that was life-changing. So thank you for that.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:31 You're very welcome. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:33:33 Um, yeah, um, and that's it. I just mull around the internet.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:35 Nice.

Ben Francis 1:33:36 Jordan Peterson.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:36 Oh, yeah.

Ben Francis 1:33:36 I love Jordan Peterson. I'm a massive, massive fan of him. I think

Ben Francis 1:33:39 he's brilliant. Um, he's really helped me as well. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:42 Sick. Um, I'd love to check out your Notion setup behind the scenes.

Ben Francis 1:33:45 I was gonna say-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:45 Or have a look. Yeah. [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:33:45 ... that's one of the things I thought as, as we were driving down, I thought-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:47 I could exchange Notion setups. Yeah [laughs]

Ben Francis 1:33:48 ... I wanted to see your Notion setup. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:50 That would be, that would be pretty sick. Um, cool. And any sort of... Let's say someone's watching this, and they're thinking they're, they, they wanna get started being an entrepreneur.

Ben Francis 1:33:57 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:58 Maybe they're sort of, uh, late teens, early 20s, haven't really started anything yet-

Ben Francis 1:34:02 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:34:02 ... but are really inspired by you and your journey.

Ben Francis 1:34:04 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:04 Any kind of advice-

Ben Francis 1:34:06 Um

Ali Abdaal 1:34:06 ... that you'd, you'd give?

Ben Francis 1:34:08 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's fairly standard, right? You have to do what you love, 'cause otherwise you'll end up, you'll end up giving up. Um, I, I'm a, I'm a firm believer now that there's no niche too small.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:15 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:34:15 Like, especially with the internet being so vast. I, I always think, and it sounds stupid saying it now, if, if I'd have said as a kid, "I wanna be a professional gamer growing up"-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:24 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:34:24 ... my mom would've been like, "You are nuts." Whereas now, it's like a legitimate-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:28 Mm

Ben Francis 1:34:28 ... sport, career, and everything in between. Like, even I guess with yourself, it would've been so difficult for you to articulate what you do now-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:36 Yeah

Ben Francis 1:34:36 ... as a kid.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:37 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:34:37 Like, I just think there's no niche too small. So I think whatever it is, double down on it, and just genuinely give it a go. Like, Gymshark was the seventh business website product-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:46 Mm

Ben Francis 1:34:46 ... that I've made, and the other six failed miserably.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:48 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:34:48 Now, unfortunately, that's not a sexy story, so no one talks about the failed apps-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:52 Mm

Ben Francis 1:34:52 ... the failed websites. They only talk about the one that did well, and it's a consistent theme on everyone else that's successful that I've met.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:59 Yeah.

Ben Francis 1:34:59 They failed miserably so many times, and they've been endlessly optimistic about it.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:04 Mm.

Ben Francis 1:35:04 And they've just gone again and again and again.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:06 Yeah, I think that's one of the things that, like, I, I see this a lot with people starting YouTube channels-

Ben Francis 1:35:10 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:35:10 ... where there's this sense of, "I have to get it right first time."

Ben Francis 1:35:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:14 And if you look at the stats, like the average YouTube channel takes 152 videos to get to 1,000 subscribers.

Ben Francis 1:35:20 Didn't know that. Wow.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:20 And I get messages from people being like, you know, like I, it, it took my channel 52 videos and six months-

Ben Francis 1:35:24 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:35:24 ... to hit the first thousand subscribers, and that was like a lot faster than the average.

Ben Francis 1:35:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:28 And so I get messages from people like 10 videos in being like, "Oh, this YouTube thing isn't working."

Ben Francis 1:35:32 Keep going.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:32 It's like, you know, keep going. You've just gotta-

Ben Francis 1:35:33 And just try things, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:35:34 Try things, yeah.

Ben Francis 1:35:34 Just keep trying new things. Like, I'm a... Like, incremental improvement I think is so, so, so important as well. But yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:40 Sweet. Well, thank you very much for taking the time. It's been-

Ben Francis 1:35:42 No, thank you for having me

Ali Abdaal 1:35:43 ... a lot of fun.

Ben Francis 1:35:43 Been a good chat.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:44 Good stuff. [laughs]