Ben Francis - Full Interview with the Mulligan Brothers

the gym completely changed my life everything that could have gone wrong went wrong that's the reason that jim shark is allowed to exist today that's the reason that i and we are where we are today i remember being at the first body power event that we ever did seeing the first ever string of s that i'd seen in real life are you more about the vision and the business or are you more about yourself and fortunately i managed to set my ego aside and say i'm gonna prioritize the business and its vision over my ego so for people who don't know just introduce yourself what you do my name is ben francis i'm the founder of gymshark jim shark is a fitness apparel brand um and i started it by hand making the product eight years ago we're about to grow up i grew up just south of birmingham in a town called bromsgrove um so for the american audience what's what's it what was it like growing up what sort of house was you growing up here's area so i grew up in a i mean for me obviously it's a i'd call it a fairly normal upbringing a normal house in a town called bromsgrove in just south of birmingham in the west midlands so it's right in the middle of the uk um we're probably about two hours outside of london so super just chill i mean there's not it's not like a particularly well-known area i'd say lately the most well-known thing to come out of the west midlands will be peaky blinders out of birmingham which is all over netflix and everything now but yeah it's a fairly normal normal suburban sort of upbringing so as a kid what was your mindset like around i mean people probably expect you that you was a businessman straight away off the get-go what was your mindset like as a kid no so when i was when i was young my thing was just i just loved sport right i just wanted to i wanted to be a footballer i wanted to play for villa so dad grandad great granddad and beyond all supported villa so you sort of you know inherit that don't you as a i guess being born into more of a football family um so i just loved football i think it was when i was like sort of 15 16 realized i was never going to be a professional i think you know by that point right because not in any academy or anything like that and it was at that point where it was my first sort of um sort of my first exposure to business and that business was my granddad's business um again i come from quite an entrepreneurial family as well uh and he had a company that would line furnaces with either brick or ceramic fiber furnaces if you don't know is just a massive massive oven that heats things up and yeah essentially just worked with him and that was my first exposure i guess to to business what was a grafton like for on that honestly it was really fun it was really cool it was more like manual labor so i didn't have any knowledge right so i was either helping him with cement over the drum or helping him lay bricks or bolting in ceramic fiber into the into the furnace itself so it was more just a i don't know eight nine ten hours of do as you told sort of thing but it was really cool for me and what was particularly interesting um and now looking back as i know has helped me quite a lot was the fact that he would tell me some of his sort of stories and starting his business now he was only a small business right he was a bit of a one-man band or he's a bit of a one-man band um but the lessons that i learned from just chatting to him over those long days of graft were absolutely brilliant well what go on give us a story so when i so when i first first went and worked with him i don't know how old you are but is it 14 when you do work experience is something whatever that first exposure is probably it might be younger than that um we were we were working in a place called droit which was quite um in the countryside sort of thing and we were working in essentially a big factory that um basically manufactured manufactured air parts for airplanes um and he told me the story about i think i asked him what was his biggest job that he ever did and he told me about a furnace that i think he had to build for a company in germany um and he explained to me that basically to fund that project because obviously they don't pay him until the work was done he had to remortgage the house um so he basically at that time he had uh obviously my nan and my mom and her sister young kids growing up and he remortgaged his house he basically managed to finish the project and then he was shipping it off to germany and basically on the last sort of week something went wrong to the point where he had to basically ship the stuff off to germany and i think there was something missing there was something that just wasn't quite working for uh for it um and he basically had to rely on this other company to say you know what yes this is good enough and and paying the money and if he didn't if he if that company would have said no then he could well have lost the house so for me to hear that story of his sort of entrepreneurial journey and how he risked everything from you know his house to my nan's house to you know the house that my mum grew up in that young age i think it really sort of helped me understand the risk that entrepreneurs take but also i guess desensitised me to risk in some respects because then when a few years later on i was giving up all of my my life savings at the time to invest into gymshark my risk in comparison to his is like my newt you know i mean like i'm just risking the money i own from pizza he was risking potentially the house that my mom grew up in so i think that made a real lasting impact on me i really want to touch on the risk aspect of it and how he was willing to take the risk and definitely going to touch on that um when when when abouts did you start getting into the gym so i i joined the gym for the first first time when i was 16. it took me a while to get into it to be honest because i i mean anyone i mean you guys right you lift um when you first go to the gym you've got no clue what you're doing so i went to the local gym got into weightlifting didn't really do free weights because the three weights was full of i guess huge blokes and i just didn't feel like i fit in there because as a kid i was very skinny and the reason i joined the gym was to build muscle and get a bit bigger and eventually build confidence um so yeah got into the gym at 16 and started lifting weights there i had no idea what i was doing and it wasn't until a few years later i actually realized that you know everyone else had their own sort of insecurities individually as well so whereas i was going into the gym thinking oh god everyone's looking at me i don't know what i'm doing funnily enough the other sort of lads at the same age that joined the gym none of which i was speaking to whether to each other or i wasn't speaking to them we're all having the same sort of insecurities um but yeah to be honest i joined the gym at 16 and since then i've never looked back did he develop some sort of discipline going to the gym and outside stuff yeah so at that time i was not very good at school so not as in misbehaved i was i think i was quite well behaved but i just it just didn't resonate with me i didn't enjoy it and i basically wasn't getting the grades that i should have got and then when i went to the gym and i realized that if i turn up five days a week and i do the routine that i downloaded from you know online then within a year i would be in a better position than when i left off and that was the first real structure that i'd sort of self-imposed on myself and then all of a sudden about six twelve months later once i truly understood the gym and loved the gym i then applied that to my school life and you know my academic life and and to learning and all of a sudden after applying that to the other side of my life all of a sudden my grades just started to rise rapidly and it yeah the gym completely changed my life so correct me if i'm wrong with the timings but then you go to uni and you whilst you're at uni you start developing apps websites is that the right time is it yes yeah so i went to uni is it 17 18. um went to uni at aston in birmingham um which was great for me because it wasn't far from home and it's a very entrepreneurial uni but um yeah at that point so going back to when i was at school during my gcse so up to the age of 16 wasn't very good at school i was really really fortunate where despite not getting brilliant grades the school allowed me to stay on through sixth form which is from 17 to 18 to 18 i think and then during sixth form i picked up an it class and that was the class that changed my life because all of a sudden i learned how to use photoshop illustrator dreamweaver build websites and that's where i really got the bug for it and tech it was then after that when i joined university i wanted to essentially develop iphone apps just because i was fascinated by them i thought they were called and to be honest there was no one else that was doing it in in that in my area at the time so yeah taught myself how to develop apps from books and youtube videos and whatnot and develop four iphone apps um two of which got into the top charts in the uk they were both uh fitness apps probably weren't in the charts because they were good but probably more in the charts because no one else was really doing them um but yeah for me that was again an amazing learning curve and i think some people think that you just you stumbled across gym shop but you was having to go out like other businesses as well so yeah i developed four iphone apps and then i think it was six or seven websites prior to jim shark so yeah i just i mean i think inherently i'm quite a creative person like even now outside of work i love just messing around with you know with different things um and at the time it was just a case of i'm gonna make this happen then this happened then this happened then this website and i just really enjoyed making them and because i was so into the gym my i guess i just wanted to be involved in the fitness industry however however that made sense so when i was making apps rather than just making any old app i'd combine that with my passion for fitness and make fitness apps and then try and make fitness websites and i was messing around trying to make like a fitness social media platform a fitness sort of forum similar to like bodybuilding.com at the time uh like a fitness article page and a blog it was just a combination of me creating using the new i guess tools that i had web development and app development and creating for my passion that was fitness so then talk us through starter jim shark um so i wish i could say that i had this incredible strategic plan as to how it was all going to build up but it was nothing like that um the reason that i actually made the jim sharp website was because i'd sort of done everything else not not that i'd actually succeeded in it because to be honest i think everything else failed i i just wanted to make a fitness website that would transact so it was a case of i wanted to sell something so everything i mentioned before was either an app or a blog or a forum or a social network or whatever it was none of those would transact so i thought how cool would it be to have a fitness website that would sell things um the only problem was i couldn't afford any stock to sell i went to actually one of my friends that lived locally at the time he worked for a company called usn so a big south african supplement brand and i said to him like right what's the cheapest supplements i can buy of you so that i can sell them online trying to buy stock for the website and he said it was eight thousand pound a month minimum order and like i mean i'd never seen eight thousand 000 in my life let alone 8 thousand pound a month so that was just a complete no-go so i sort of hit this brick wall and then i thought well i could drop ship and drop shipping was brilliant for me because it meant i could load up the website with thousands and thousands of different supplements so the website was massive and it looked really professional and brilliant um but i didn't have to buy any of the stock so yes i got to transact which was brilliant but it wasn't in the way that i wanted to i wasn't holding stock at the time but it was still an amazing experience and built the website um using shopify at the time which again was brilliant for me because it didn't meant that it was actually quite easy to build the website um and yeah it took a few months it took quite quite a while launched the website and absolutely nothing happened then a few months later we had our first sale and it was just absolutely incredible it was it was 52 pounds of which about two pounds of that was profit and by the time we'd shipped the supplement and everything but it was the best two pound i'd ever made in my life and it was just so cool like it was just the most amazing feeling ever i was literally like running around my bedroom just buzzing and um yeah then went on to the obviously the website and shipped out the product it all went great and that was that and to be honest that did okay like you it was never going to do particularly brilliantly from a commercial perspective because the margins were so small but for me it was more of a like an academic test that it could be done um gymshark really didn't do a lot for the next few months and then i remember being at the gym and just thinking like no one makes the clothes that we want to wear at the time there was other brands of american brands that would make big sort of baggy clothes um there wasn't any of the european brands really doing what we want no one was speaking to the lifters that we were um so i just thought why don't we similar to websites and apps why didn't we just make them so bought a screen printer and a sewing machine and started to hand make the clothes that we wanted to wear to the gym and even that even in that moment it wasn't a case of there to make it to sell it it just came from a place for them no one's making it so let's just make it for ourselves and there was at the time a group of there must have been at least 10 of us that would all go to the gym together and we just started wearing it um after a while decided to put things onto the website and you know the margins were much better on clothing it just seemed to pick up traction so much more quickly than supplements and people just started to fall in love with the product um i'll never forget actually at that point we were making our own clothes and there wasn't this period of own clothes and then produced elsewhere but there was a pair of shorts that i really wanted to produce um and i was messaging a guy and chatting to a guy quite quite regularly actually a guy in pakistan called tanvir and we were just chatting away and we were sort of sampling these shorts we basically completed this short we had a finished product that i absolutely loved and he'd done all the sampling for free just as a favor and we finished it and i said to him this is absolutely brilliant but the only problem is i can't afford to buy any of them so can you do me a massive favor and produce i think it was 250 pairs of these shorts and send them over to me in the uk and i promise you tanveer i will pay you the money and i thought there's no chance he's going to say yes to this there is not a chance in hell um but he was like yeah cool let's do it and he sent sent me the the product uh we put it on the website and again it just flew out um within i think 48 hours i sent in the money for the full order um and then we just that was when we sort of both started producing clothes externally with manufacturers but also internally as well with the sewing machine the screen printer so yeah at the start i think it took there was about two years of hand making product from my nan taught me just so my mom taught me to sew i'd never forget actually there was a particular product that i was really struggling on with the sewing machine um and i just couldn't i just couldn't solve this problem i just couldn't do it and i had my shifted pizza would always be from five o'clock to ten o'clock uh at night and it was coming up to i think it was been like half or whatever and i just couldn't do this thing so i said to my mom i was like can you please do me a massive favor and just try and like solve this for me and video sort of an instruction for me so that when i come back from work because she'd have been in bed i can then just go and do it so there was this video that she recorded of basically how to sort the sewing machine out and how to do what i wanted to do and then i could come home and i guess carry on sewing through the night and yeah it was um it was an amazing time although i um it's an amazing time looking back now but obviously at the time i had no idea that this would be anything for me that was just a bit of fun of an evening so yeah it's quite weird to look back now what was a typical day like right at the start like what was that like so the typical day actually it's quite quite easy to explain so i'd wake up in the morning i'd go to university in the day so get on the train get into aston do the do the um do the day normally finish uni i don't know say four go into pizza and do my working day 5 till 10 and then 10 p.m onwards i would essentially be working on gymshark after about a year i was still working at pizza at the time the job as a delivery driver at pizza was quite useful because in between deliveries i could jump on my phone and do sort of customer service responses so it was great because i was obviously being paid to work there i'd get a free pizza at the end of every shift and i could also work on gymshark so it was like the perfect job in many respects for me and growing up being a very very introverted person it was it was very useful for me to be in front of people and having that sort of customer service like response so i learned a lot doing the job as well and then at this time what sort of business experience did you have um the only business experience i had was the work with my grandad um and to be honest that is pretty much it so for people just for people like when you're starting out you don't need to be an expert in business or anything like that you can just get started off no you so i would say you don't need to be an expert and i'd also say that there's definitely a i think people underestimate the opportunity to take risk that you have when you're young so going back to what i said right at the start i managed to save i think it was 2 000 pounds or whatever it was maybe probably less than that actually and for me that was my life savings and i risked everything so that thing of i i risked my life savings to do this but it's just nothing in comparison to the risks that you know my grandparents and even my parents have taken so um yeah i think the opportunity to take risk as a young person is something that's definitely underestimated and just isn't being spoken about enough i think it's admirable that you say like it's it's nothing but to a to a young guy two thousand pound that's your new car you know i mean that's like a big it's a big deal to drop that much money on something that who knows what's gonna happen oh yeah but there's a saying that i've heard um i think jordan peterson says it and he says uh he who he who has a y can bear any how and i think that's really important because like fitness was my why like you've got to remember that fitness completely changed my life going to the gym shifted everything it shifted my my physical health my mental health it completely shifted my academic life it got me into sort of a university that i thought i would never be able to get near um and it gave me the opportunity to learn things such as photoshop dreamweaver and all the other stuff through the skills that i learned in the gym so fitness for me was like it was like my why it was like i want other people to have that experience so for me to to risk what the time was my life savings was honestly there was not a moment where i thought should i or shouldn't i do this it was just straight up i know this is the right thing to do um just just before we move on the the idea of you learning how to sew to make product is kind is crazy um just explain it talk us through that sort of getting those lessons and making that decision to take that on for yourself so i mean i talk a lot actually the stars had to align for gym chart to get to where it is and there's literally about 15 different unique things that just happened to happen at the time now so my mom could sew and my nan just randomly was doing a course in curtin's at the time when i was looking at making this sort of stuff so it was just the perfect time for me to learn to sew to be honest and yeah i mean even looking back i don't know why because sewing is not anything that it has ever been and probably it's just it was never of any interest to me to be honest it was not something that i ever wanted to do or saw myself doing but it was a means to get to where where i wanted us to be and where i wanted the product to be um so yeah i mean i went to hobbycraft i bought the sewing machine um and just you know called up my nan asked my mom and just they taught me to sew essentially literally just sat over the sewing machine at um 19 years old and it's only now i say this that i realized that probably most 19 year olds weren't asking their mom and their nan to teach them to sew probably doing things that were a lot more exciting but yeah honestly i absolutely loved it it was brilliant and just again completely different but that opportunity to create something is so important to me whether it's an app or a website or a a stringer vest or a tank top or printing the logo onto a hoodie whatever it is i love that feeling of making things um will you listen anymore to anyone in particular at the time sort of for guidance or following online at all um at that time period not really to be honest um youtube was a completely different place back then um i mean i was massively into the fitness scene um i don't know if anyone remembers the the old school fitness youtubers of i mean lex griffin in the uk scott herman in the us there's a guy called scooby over in the u.s as well just those og fitness people greg people like that so i was massively into those guys um but there wasn't really any businessy people on youtube certainly not that i followed anyway um and to be honest at that point i hadn't realized i guess the power of reading and education sort of self-education so i i was heavily heavily led by gut instinct and i think that's probably one of the the things that i did really well which i'm most proud of is the fact that on every opportunity every single 50 50 i always sort of trusted my gut i think that's been really important as well yeah what's so like when when you've just said about the investment of the money when people think about maybe doing taking up the sew in to to do that side of things for your business i think people overthink that situation it takes them a long time to make it probably miss the opportunity how much of the business was built on i'm gonna do it oh so much like there are so many occasions where where there is that that moment where it could go by the way and you just have to trust your gut from buying the screen print in the sewing machine so that was a huge decision from even deciding to make the website in the first place um risking life savings on those two things but then risked life savings again on going to the body power expo which was the first event we did that was everything that we had at the time as well um the first stock order of the gymshark lux track suit was the original tracksuit which blew up that was all all of our live savings as well so there was two or three times where again and again and again you roll the dice and it could have gone either way and this is what i mean when i say the stars had to align on so many different occasions for jim shot to get to where we are today um yeah i mean looking back it's just crazy to think we've gotten to where we have early years hardest day that you experienced the hardest day i don't know to be honest because to be honest there was there was obviously a lot of difficult days but i just absolutely loved what i did even waking up uh you know early in the morning and stamping the ice out of the hose to go and spray down the screen and clean it off it was just cool it was good fun because it was like we were doing something that no one else was doing so all of my friends were either at uni or at work i just thought it was really cool and just fun and i absolutely loved every second of it i would say um i was trying to think of anything that was particularly particularly difficult um was there a low moment that sort of took you took you by surprise made you think i don't want to do this anymore at all um didn't want to do this anymore i don't know to be honest because even this is going to sound mental but even the really crap things they've all been part of the journey that led us to where we are today and there haven't been i would say the one that really hit me like a bit of a a steam train was so jim shark was doing incredibly incredibly well so probably about four years into the journey i think it was it felt like everything we touched turned to gold right it was like i said three different occasions we spent all of our live savings on something and it came off and then we went and did the first expo it came off we went from doing one expo to about seven expos in a year and it just came off everything went incredibly well we were traveling the world and it was incredible but what we didn't do is we didn't invest properly enough in the foundations of the business and to be honest again going back to sort of education because there wasn't an education i didn't realize the importance of building a business with strong foundations and then black friday came and basically the website just completely crashed and everything that could have gone wrong went wrong to the point where orders were going out without being paid for um people were paying for orders and stuff wasn't going out there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people affected and at this point social media had been very with us and i'll never forget walking into the office and just seeing everyone's faces just knowing that we had royally royally this up um and everyone and i mean everyone our head of social now a guy called elf who joined to help build the social media he didn't do his job for the first four months of joining jim sharp because everyone in the business was on customer support when i say every single human being that works at the gym shop was just trying to fix the problem that black that we created during black friday um i ended up hand writing sort of apology letters to it must have been over a thousand people like so many different people and we just had months and months and months just trying to fix it and there was there was a moment there because it was a case of i knew we'd up everyone in the building knew that we up and rightly so we were being told every day that we'd up by obviously the the community and the customers um so yeah just for months and months and months we just dedicated ourselves to solving the problem and doing our best the best that we could by the customer and fortunately now um i guess it's worked out for the best i would say because we've managed to build a company with ridiculously robust and strong foundations and i think maybe if we hadn't had that baptism by fire then maybe we wouldn't have built the business that we built today yeah i mean it's all it's all positive for you being the front of it when it's going good but when that comes down that comes crashing down what's that like dealing with that pressure um so that's really really difficult the one thing i would say it's now having done this for a long time i think you do sort of learn sort of coping mechanisms and there's always something that's going to go wrong right and there is always something that's going to come back on you and and i definitely do feel it and i think maybe this is one of the negatives of being so involved in and passionate about the community is to your point it's so good when it's going well but when it's going bad then the community and the thing that i really care about is obviously negatively affected so i think i feel it quite a lot it is incredibly tough i won't lie um but again i'm i'm really lucky to have an amazing group of people around me both professionally and personally that can help support me and we all support one another because everyone at gym shop when things go wrong everyone feels it i think that's really important to mention um but yeah it is incredibly incredibly tough and i've had to sort of learn to be resilient and learn how to manage the level of responsibility that i and we have over the last few years so in those early days as well um a lot of businesses fail it's like this chaotic period yeah any advice for people who are sort of in that sort of stage um i think you're right and i do think a lot of well yeah i mean factually so numbers say that most businesses will fail in the first couple of years and i never i never had a feel fear of failing and i think that's really important to mention and i think that massively massively worked to our advantage because we were so happy and so comfortable taking that good lead decision so quickly and instinctively i think that really helped because there might have been other companies that were in the same position as us that i mean and are in as to whether or not they should do certain things and we just did it and i think that's so powerful because i think you can spend so much time worrying about failure or this that and the other and before you know it it's you know it's too late whereas i think we were just incredibly incredibly brave and tenacious in our you know in our pursuit of where we wanted to get to and i think that's i think genuinely that made a huge difference to how quickly we've managed to grow the business and i think the other thing we've been able to do is really grab ourselves around the scruff of the neck and just fix up so going back to that black friday example there was never a moment where we just moped and wallowed in self-pity we were like right we have we have this up terribly first and foremost we're going to fix it and then we're going to make sure it never happens again and i think that's really important as well it's good that you took ownership of it as well yeah it's really good um early on you're taking i think i heard you say a number 200 500 000 first two years is that about right was that yeah it was something that was like quarter of a million revenue in the first year and i think it went up to about half a million and you're still working at pizza for a large portion of that like what i think a lot of your success for gymshark is or the success of gymshock is the fact that you just carried on reinvesting that money where does the temptation come in or like i mean how important is it as well to not give into that temptation to go right i could have a beamer i could have a nice car i could get a nice house how did you resist that um again like i just absolutely loved what i did i know what you're saying is like there is this temptation of so i worked at pizza well beyond that it was it was when we did our first event so we were in the year between a quarter of a million to half a million revenue so um in japanese i kept it quite quiet like it was at the stage where i don't think people would have believed me if i told them anyway so there's no i mean there's no point in really going on about it um yeah to be honest i didn't feel that temptation massively um we've reinvested everything that we possibly could into the business to grow it to where it was and i knew the day that the business started that there wasn't going to be a penny taken out of it for several years um i think it goes back to that that why oh why like i just loved it and i wanted to create the best brand i possibly could and that was a genuine genuine ambition of mine which is why i think i was there was no desire of me to sort of rinse the business for for money the other thing i would say is after a few years i had managed through fortune and probably the odd great decision along the way to build an incredible team around me so as the business got up to the stage where it could start it genuinely had an opportunity to be a large scale business so i think we were doing maybe four million in revenue which at the time seemed massive compared to where we are now today you know it was it's very much the startup phase and um i met two guys one called paul one called steve met them in the gym funnily enough um and then there was this this bit where they sort of sat me down and they said do you want to be the biggest brand in braum's grove would you want to try and make this into a global brand obviously i've taken every risk possible to get it to that point so i wasn't at that point going to go right i'm going to settle down here i said i want it to be the biggest i wanted to be a truly global brand um and that was powerful as well because again when you've got the opportunity to create a global brand and a global community i'm not going to take an extra few hundred quid here and there just so that i can have a slightly nicer car i my ambition is to make this into a truly truly global brand so um again having my eyes locked on that vision i think really helped as well that's what i want i want to speak about the steps of growth in terms of the revenue um just what you think the was required at the time and sort of and tell me if the the things are the same like so the first one would be zero to a hundred thousand pounds like what sort of what you have to do what's going for your head at that point what's different about that so so as an entrepreneur the i think it's so entrepreneurs start businesses right and it's very important for people to realize that what is required of someone that starts a business on day one is very different to year one year two year three and year four and i've experienced this first hand where the first couple of years were so so tough and gritty and it required you know courage and charisma and a willingness just to ask for what no one else would ask for and just go the extra mile and quite frankly for that first couple of years my role was to grab the business by the scruff and the neck and drag it to where i think it should go to by any means necessary and if that meant that someone said no you can't do this then my job for the first few years was to say i don't care i'm going to get it to where i think it should be by hook or by crook then after a while when the business grows you start bringing in people and creating a team around you now if you've done that right those people should be better than you in in different areas in which case you then need to realize that what the way that you were for the first couple of years the way that i acted for the first couple of years has now expired and i need to essentially evolve into a the next level of entrepreneur or leader so dragging the business to where i want it to go regardless of what people say when you've got great people around you is completely and utterly the wrong thing to do so i had this sort of very introspective moment of oh my god everything i've been so far and everything i've done now no longer works or is valid so i had to recreate myself and start to educate myself and learn how i can truly develop the business so during that period it was a bit of okay you know there was sort of a halfway house there was certain bits where i would have to you know sort of push my my opinion or authority more than well significantly more than what i ever would today to try and really embed the gymshark brand the culture where we wanted to go and really just imprint on people where i think this brand will go but equally listening to those guys and the team around me when they knew better than me and then in that third phase as the business gets to where we are today now i then go from that to being much more around thinking outside of the box thinking far ahead and ultimately having to be as articulate as i can in the vision because i'm now not communicating it to just myself or i'm not communicating it to five or six people around me i'm i'm communicating it to hundreds if not thousands or hundreds of thousands of people around the world so now my role has changed massively if i look from day one drag the business to where i think it should go by hook or by crook to now articulate the vision and work together in building an incredible team that is you know self-reinforcing and takes the business to where we all think it should go together so i think it's so important as an entrepreneur and as a founder to be flexible and be comfortable in reinventing yourself and educating yourself in things that you're not good at because if you do just stay the same then i think you'll become very one-dimensional and i just don't think the business will be built in the right way for the long term is is there a defining sort of um maybe not revenue but like thing that highlights when you need to make that change yeah so i mean the black friday example so just failure certainly helps so that was an incredible moment of oh my god there are no foundations in this business and the reason there's no foundations in this business is because i haven't been smart enough to put them in and that is completely my fault and no one else is sometimes people will come up with incredible ideas and you'll probably think that they're wrong and then you'll realize that you were wrong and then it's sort of sometimes you'll say it sometimes you won't and then you'll sort of gradually realize that people are the people around you are brilliant in ways that you aren't and i think that's important um but yeah there is the odd occasion but ultimately i think it really is down to just being as self-aware as you possibly can be and understanding what you are good at and not so the other thing i would say is for the first few years my thing was i don't care about my weaknesses i'm only going to focus on my strengths and i'm going to bring people around me to essentially fill in those gaps and those weaknesses and now the team around me is just as talented as what they are i've got the luxury of being able to not only focus on my strengths but then when i want it as well work on my weaknesses and develop as well so i think that's been really powerful for me as well the quote you said um hire people who are better than you i think a lot of people especially in business and the entrepreneurial world have that ego where that's very difficult thing to do and it restricts them from being successful i'll i'll never forget so the first the i've been often this so many times there's been so many moments where i've just been um i guess fed humble pie but i remember bringing in our someone into the ops team essentially and i built this link between shopify and raw mail and i thought it was the best thing ever because i had a little bit of developer development experience but in real reality it was terrible and this person came in i remember hearing them talk about how terrible this integration was that i'd built and it needed to go and we needed to replace it immediately and it was this horrible moment of i hate you because you're rinsing the work that i've done but i hate you even more because i know that you're right and the work that i did was crap and it does feel like your heart's being ripped out because especially i mean even today it feels like this way but even more so when the business was smaller was it is and it was my baby so to hear other people talking about aspects of it in that way was definitely difficult and to be honest it's probably not anything that you could ever really get used to but i think once you've had the positive reinforcement of bringing in brilliant brilliant people that can advance the business and you know i can grow from and learn from as well i think once you have that constant reinforcement it definitely helps in making those decisions now is it difficult to drop that ego because it is like when you like you say when it's your baby this is your thing to let go of that it's very like i could imagine it to be very difficult yeah yeah it's it's incredibly difficult it's incredibly emotional because brand's great brands have people pour that pour their heart into them right they pour their passion and their heart and their soul and i did exactly that so you're right to then have someone come in and criticize that um is very difficult to take and it does hurt but ultimately that's just one of many tests of are you more about the vision and the business or are you more about yourself and fortunately i managed to set my ego aside and say i'm gonna prioritize the business and its vision over my ego so we're reaching this the later stages sort of almost present day what would your daily routine look like today oh today well it looks very different now um i i would say i'm very very very regimented and that suits me down to the ground actually because i would say i wouldn't say i would say i'm mildly autistic in many ways in the sense that and i've managed to sort of learn and control those tendencies massively well i think over the last few years but i love routine i love consistency to the to the to the gram right so it would be half five every single day i'm up on the minute and i go down and i'll have 70 grams of granola and a protein shake in a water and then i mean my lunch and breakfast and tea is generally very very consistent i'll lift five days a week i will run and i know this probably isn't the best thing to do but i'll run the same program five days a week for years and years and years on end because that routine is so so important to me usually start work around seven ish finish work to be honest not massively late on average i'd say seven finish at six ish obviously some days i'd start earlier and finish later some days i'd start later and finish earlier um and when i'm with so outside of that routine my work life will change massively so outside of covid i would travel a lot inside of kovid i could be working on product one day with brand on another day on the overarching board and business direction another day um but having those guard rails is really important to me and then in my own personal life as well i have a brilliant brilliant support system which really helps me as well um we came to this building today uh we were super excited about coming here because um for us like we have a vision for mulligan brothers to have this this studio that is similar to this building so it was like it was really amazing for us to come in here and it was a lot grander than i thought it was going to be like this space is amazing have you sat here by yourself on a night and thought back to the room where you were sewing you know and there's probably cupboards bigger than that the room you were sewing in oh yeah there is definitely cupboards here bigger than that room um honestly no not here it feels like my entire life is on a treadmill or on a conveyor belt whatever you want to call it and i love it that way i love progress and constant um growth but i can't say i've sat in here and had that sort of moment i remember though the day we opened up this office in fact there's two moments actually so the day we opened this office and had a similar moment and also the day that we signed on on the deal that we recently did and the deal that we recently did valued at the business it was 1.45 billion dollars which is like just mental right absolutely mental and had the same thing we did that we did the opening day here we did the signing both of those days and it was more driving home and it was more like everything so crazy everything's so crazy everything's so crazy and then you get in the car shut the door it's like you're on your own for the first time in what feels like forever and it's only in that moment when i'm like that's when i think wow and to be honest i've never thought wow how far have we come because it's not just that because i'm always i'm the sort of person that's always thinking about what's next i always want to know what's next it's less almost like what happens 10 minutes ago is almost irrelevant to me what's next it's more about wow look how far we've come yet the excitement of knowing how much further we've got to go and i think that's so so exciting to me what have you sacrificed to sit here today what have i sacrificed oh wow to be honest to me it doesn't feel like i've sacrificed a lot so hardly ever drink never really went out as a kid never did a lot of the i don't know normal stuff that people would do between the age of 18 and how old am i now 28. um so there's certain things that i feel like i've missed out on but equally i've had experiences that i know that few people may ever have like i'm 28 years old and i've traveled the world and i can probably tell you a story from 50 different countries and that's just crazy you know what i mean and the opportunity to meet so many brilliant people has been really really powerful for me um there was definitely a period at the start where i sacrificed spending time with family but now i just try and pay that back in an abundance if that makes sense or i'll spend pretty much every weekend i will see family now which is i think probably contrary to what most entrepreneurs will tell you where it's like graph graph graph seven days a week twelve hours a day if it's saturday or sunday nine times out of ten i'm gonna go and see my family and i really really enjoy that and that's really important to me um i'm trying to think what else have i sacrificed i don't know to be honest i think i've sacrificed a lot but it's probably small things just along the way um you say about hiring people i think that's one quality that a lot of people have credited you for like hiring the right people is there a particular quality of the person like that a person would have that you're looking for so it depends on what role they're going for so if i'm looking for anyone that's creative then nine times out of ten i would love them to have a creative hobby if someone tells me they're a through-and-through creator but they only are in a creative role professionally but there's nothing outside of work that they do that's creative then for me to be honest that's a bit of a sort of a red flag in terms of joining the business there's a bunch of different things that we look for we want everyone to be truly humble so work hard stay humble is something we talk a lot about here and we are a massively massively culture first business we don't want people with an ego we don't want people that are sort of self-centered but i think that's a fairly consistent thing that many businesses all look for and to be honest we want people that are just excited to contribute to the greater vision and that's really important to me and that doesn't by the way mean that they need to be heavily involved in fitness or not i think everyone's got their own reason as to why they join gymshark but for me i just think if you are humble if you are smart and you know you want to contribute then i think that's brilliant you spoke about like people in i would say in our sort of world like gary vee and jordan peterson and people like that um jordan peterson's one that really sticks out to me i've read this book a couple of times the 12 rules have you read it yourself yeah is it all right to read a couple of the rules and just get your thoughts on it it's uh so the first one would be stand up straight um with your shoulders back well this is great because jordan peterson's my idol like he's like to me the one of the most influential people on my life that i've never met he is an utter genius and pretty much i haven't read the book in a while now but i hold myself heavily accountable to each one of those rules stand up straight with your shoulder back that to me is all about and that's important to me one because i naturally don't have a great posture which is useful um but two um i do hold myself accountable in the sense that and even i say even me even in my position i will have that moment of should i be here should i be talking here should i be doing this should i i don't know not not in posture syndromes i don't think it is that i don't think it's that bad but i was sort of question i even i'll question myself in my in my head and i do think no just stand up straight put your shoulders back and sort of speak and that's why it's important to me um and to be honest even just doing that i think i say i say as i slouch in this chair now um it does just change you mentally doesn't it so yeah i think it's huge treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping that so that is my favorite rule and that is the one that i applied to myself more than more than anything and i always think whether it's something i do want to do or don't want to do if i was looking after and i spent my life i feel like and he talks a lot about you have to sort of zoom out and sort of watch yourself in many respects and i do that all the time and i listen to every word i say and i'm constantly trying to think is there a better way i could have done that or said that or approached that problem but i think that's so so important as well what was it there was um i used to have i used to have trouble sleeping a lot i would always be that person that would be up to like three a.m and then get up in the morning and whatever i remember thinking to myself like what what was your problem and then and then i'd sort of had this conversation in my head that said well i can't get to sleep at night and i said well and again i treat myself like i'm someone i care like i was caring for well i'll tell you what why don't you start waking up early in the morning if you keep doing that for long enough then you'll get tired at night you're the who's going to bed at 3am and getting up at 10. and then i just thought right and at the time i think it was six o'clock right i'm gonna get up at six o'clock every morning and funnily enough all of a sudden my sleeping pattern just falls into place and i'm not staying up till three am because i'm getting tired by eight nine ten o'clock at night um and that's just one example of when i've just sort of had to grab myself around the scruff of the neck because i think i'm quite a tough love person so when i'm working with people i think i absolutely love the people i work with but i'm going to be very honest and direct with them and ever since reading jordan peterson's book i try and hold myself to the same standard i think i hold other people by so yeah there's countless occasions where i'll just sort of again treat myself like someone that i'm caring for and i think that's just a brilliant role make friends with people who you want who want the best for you yes that's important and i must admit to be honest i haven't made a lot of new friends lately which is not by design to be honest it's just i mean i spend my life working and i'm introverted and i spend time with family when i'm not working and close friends but that is true um not for a long long time but there were definitely people that i would tell things to and i would be really proud and happy and it they just it would you almost like that a balloon deflating would feel like they weren't truly happy for you and i mean it takes a bit of courage but i think you just need to understand that again both inside of working outside of work just surround yourself with great people that do want the best for you and it makes such an incredible difference set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world yes albeit um i so since reading that previously i would i feel like i'd always have an opinion on on something and i wouldn't always say it but in my head i would be quite judgmental so i think why don't why doesn't this person do this why don't they do this um but that's so true and there's so many things that i'm just crap at that need to sort out so um yeah i just need to sort of sort myself out and it um yeah i think that's um very important let me just think what i want to say about that yeah i think there's so many things that i am not very good at why would i waste time criticizing others but again every single one of these rules i think is just genius uh a great one for jim sharp pursue what is meaningful yes and i think jordan peterson talks about responsibility giving meaning and that's so true and every extra bit of responsibility that i have shouldered over the last few years has just improved me as a person but also made me feel so much more fulfilled in life and at gymshark again going back to that um he who has a why can't bear anyhow that's so important to me because there are so many speed bumps along the way from the little ones that happen every single day to that huge one that blindsides you on a random tuesday afternoon that just feels like it knocks you for six but when i'm thinking about that 10 50 100 year vision they just all of a sudden become so small and easy to deal with tell the truth or at least don't lie yes that's so good i am although i must admit when i when i did read that i went through a period of right i'm just going to tell everyone the truth and it was that was i think my ego speaking because i would just sort of be too i guess obtuse with the way that i would just be like i think this and it so i definitely have changed the way that i have taken that so i'm always i hold myself to being as honest as i possibly can be i don't lie at all which in the short term can definitely lead to difficulties but i think in the long term is the right thing to do um and yeah again i just hold myself as accountable as possible to that as well i've heard you say quite a few times about jim sharp pure transparency like having that this open transparency so is that something that you've followed through yourself yeah i mean i really do try and in again every aspect of of life both professional and personal um it is important it does you know it means a hell of a lot to me to be just as open and transparent as open and transparent as i guess we possibly can be assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't yeah that's again massive so something i always think when i'm meeting new people slightly different always try and learn something from them so i think maybe i'm a bit more overt with that but i'll always try and dig into i guess why people do what they do and just understand and learn from them because so i talk about the group around me who are brilliant sort of brilliant high achievers super smart but you can learn so much from the random person that you chat to on the street funnily enough and this is this is going back to commercial so it's slightly different but um i was in canada a few years ago and um there was some there was a guy there and i was just chatting to him i go to all the events and we're just chatting away and then we ended up talking about sort of camo gear so again closed with sort of a camo pattern on i don't know how we got onto it we were just chatting away about it um and then i went home from that and we added camo into the range just because we'd been speaking about it we've never had camera in the range previously this going back a few years and that camo then just went off and sold millions and millions of units it was incredibly commercially successful to us and that's one just conversation that i had with the bloke and we were just again chatting about nothing just sort of chewing the fat and then that had a huge impact on the business and there's been so many occasions like that where i've just been speaking to people trying to learn about them that's given me that sort of golden nugget that i can then apply to my life and you know hopefully i've taught a few people a few things as well so yeah the last one are we just on the rules it's not all of the rules but the last one is be precise in your speech yeah so i'm still working on that and i think i've got i've got a lot of work to do on that but um there's two things that that that led me to um one i read a brilliant book that was called what was it called um i can't remember what it's called but basically it was a book around sort of articulation and speech which is really really important because going back to those different stages of an entrepreneur one of the most powerful things for me now is being truly articulate that's really really important especially because i'm you know explaining my vision and goals and the way that the business is running to so many people so that led me to that and that's been really powerful for me and applying that to me has probably been one of the easiest and efficient ways of me improving myself has been just becoming more articulate and then separately which it feels like i'm going off and i've been a tan a bit of a tangent i'm sure everyone's had this when kovid went down everyone downloaded duolingo i started learning spanish for like two weeks which is really cool right yeah it's great to learn a second language it's something i've always wanted to do and then randomly i fell on a youtube video of um i think it was the darkest hour so winston churchill speech and i listened to this speech and i thought christ he speaks so utterly brilliantly my level of english compared to his level of english are just incomparable so whilst i'm off thinking i speak english i'm going to go and learn spanish i instantly deleted duolingo and i've gone right i am going to learn the english language the best of my ability and become the most articulate brilliant speaker that my genetic makeup will possibly allow me to be because i think the payback for that is just so so brilliant i think the fulfillment that you can get from me is brilliant too so yeah that really resonated with me as well i think that's one i need to work on um just speaking of jordan peterson um just for the people out there because i know for young men especially like his book i think is absolutely golden for them what's your take away and what what would you like urge people to do um so my my ultimate overarching takeaway from jordan peterson from jordan peterson's book is that i think so much more is in the control of the individual than what people think um and that's quite easy for me to say right sat in the in the position that i'm in but the only reason that i or jim shark has gotten to where we are today is because we took control of the situation that i was in i followed my passion and there was never a point where we've gone the world has dealt us a bad hand so we're just gonna mope and i think that's so important that whatever happens and it's not everyone is dealt the same hand some people have a better hand than others and some people have more opportunities than others and unfortunately i think that's part of life and it's a shame and hopefully over our lifetimes we can try and level that playing field as best we can however you're dealt with a hand and ultimately that's the hand that you've got to play and i think people have more control than what they think and i think if you really take time to focus on self-development and improvement i think you'd be very surprised as to the incredible gains that you can make just to gauge um a scale here as well it's like for some people who don't know what is the current size of jim sharp like employees property like everything so jim shark as of i don't know six months ago whatever it was was valued at a 1.45 billion dollar business we are the second business as far as i'm aware in the history of the uk to become a unicorn so we're one plus billion pound um valued business with no inter and no funding so we've had no funding prior to this um we've got about 550 employees spread over um uh we've got three buildings in birmingham where we sat today we've got an office in hong kong in mauritius in london and in denver colorado revenues last year were over a quarter of a billion pounds and next year there you know the the growth is still just absolutely rapid uk's fastest growing business a couple of years ago the fastest growing business of all time in the midlands and the year after that we were the fastest growing profits in the united kingdom as well so um yeah it's a it's a it's a rapidly growing commercial business it's it's incredible to be a part of but ultimately and i keep going back to it there are tens and tens and tens of millions of people that follow jim shark on social media there are millions of people that have had their lives positively affected by what we do including me like i was the first person that was positively affected by gymshark and i want to try and spread that as far and wide as i possibly can and there are countless people that i've met face to face at the events that we do all over the world that have told me about how jim shark or jimsha's wider athlete team have changed their lives and and to me that's the most important and incredible thing that we've achieved here in terms of i definitely want to touch on that again just i've got a couple of the athletes that you guys are working with at the moment um in terms of like the business side of things and i guess it is something we just spoke about just then what is the vision for jim shot right now in your head like how how far are you looking ahead and so what is that vision now so so my my vision long term is so i would love so people in the know will get this right you've got power lifters and crossfitters and runners and then bodybuilders and all these different sort of facets of fitness and ultimately i would love to for gymshark to be the uniting of those so i would love this brand to unite the conditioning community and be the brand that is the i guess the the gym brand and the self-improvement brand and the physical improvement brand and the mental improvement brand so aside from that sort of community focused vision i also think that because of the unique time we're in where social media has changed everything right companies like shopify and this online e-commerce revolution has changed everything everything that's going on outside us and around us now when we've covered in the sort of new normal that we're going to find ourselves in an offline retail i think gymshark can be one of the first brands that's truly built in the new way so the old model of basically build as much product as you can to put into as many stores as you can to please as many people as you can leading to big slow clunky businesses with products in every store you can possibly imagine now i think those days are definitely dying quickly i think the future of brands are truly agile brands that are community-led like we are and purpose-led because people really want to wear a brand that truly resonates with their core values so i think aside from uniting the conditioning community i think gymshark can represent the future of brands and can be one of the first brands that's built in a truly modern way i know you don't tend to look at other companies and i've heard you say that in the past um i've read i don't know if you've read the book yourself shoe dog no i haven't spent everyone everyone tells me to read it though and i think what's really crazy to see is i read that book and you've achieved what is in that book that whole book within like say like a short period of time like this new this new era of company do you see yourself taking over the likes of those companies is that something that's in your mind at all no and i'll tell you why because so i think a very simplistic way to look at it is jim shark is against some of those bigger brands but i think there's a huge difference between a sportswear brand than a fitness wear brand like if fitness was a sport i'd have no doubt it would be one of if not the biggest sport in the world it's huge and that we're trying to cater for the accountant that goes to the gym once a week to the elite athlete that like ryan garcia who wants to be in the most incredible condition possible for his profession which is boxing and we want to cater for those people we're not interested in putting football boots on football players or you know cleats on american footballers or you know supporting a basketballer on the court we're all around condition and fitness and everything that happens before and essentially everything that you do today to prepare for tomorrow is what we want to be um we want to be working on this this last weekend we spoke to rob kearney the world's strongest guy who you guys have now take on as an athlete um his story is amazing like what how important is it for you to sort of sponsor athletes like that who are bigger than the sport as well and it's like they're doing stuff outside of the sport so rob is amazing because again he's a great he's a great person anyway he's a great human being which is powerful and he's going back to that cultural element for us that's really important um but yeah i mean i mean i don't i'm not sure about individuals being bigger than the sport i mean maybe some people are i'm not really sure but for me the way that we want to align we want to align ourselves with others that have the same core values and call vision and essentially want to do the same thing right and i think rob's a great example of someone that is inspiring people in so many ways to improve themselves um again physically and mentally i think that's so so powerful but so do a lot of the other gymshark athletes so do all the other gymshark athletes and i think that's the other reason why there are athletes that jim shark has worked with since day one for eight years there are very very few brands that of that can confidently and comfortably say that they have athletes they have worked with for a hundred percent of their lifetime and there are very few people that will join under gymshark and then move on and that's because we we hire really slowly we're really careful about the people that we bring onto the brand and ultimately because we have the same core vision and ethos i think um the partnerships work incredibly well what drives you now what drives me now to be honest again it's just having as big an impact as possible like being completely going back to transparency being completely transparent and candid i i'm financially i'm i'm you know i'm set i'm fine i'm doing i'm beyond my wildest dreams as a kid growing up in the west midlands like this doesn't happen to people like me so for me now i'm really focused on one being the most the best that i can possibly be going back to jordan peterson i want to you know grow myself and be as brilliant as i can be but equally i want gymshark to inspire as many people as possible um that's really really important to me and that's about improvement both physically and mentally as well because if you go back to my initial day one transformation that was both mental and physical i think people underestimate the mental benefits of going to the gym life business what is the biggest lesson you've learned so far um i don't know if it's a lesson but there's always one word that always sticks with me and has throughout and that word is is courage is that little things take courage but also big leaps take courage and i think that's something that needs to be spoken about a little bit more because if i even go back to jim shark's journey as a company or on my own every decision that we've made we've made with courage and we've backed ourselves and i think that's really really important looking back for the whole journey taking a step back what's the sort of things that run for your mind so this is funny so after we signed the deal saying driving home i had that moment where it was like in a flash i remember walking home from the train station after a day at uni coming up with the idea to to buy the gymshark domain and come up with the jim sharp uh open the gym chart website i remember it was quite a long walk i remember then later on walking thinking okay there's no money that's gonna be taken out this business because we're gonna do it for this i remember being at the first body power event that we ever did seeing the first ever string invest that i've seen in real life i remember going off and buying a cheaper five pound 99 version off amazon because it was the cheapest way i could get my hand on a stringer i don't know it's like this huge flash of i remember doing our first events the doors opening and that's been flooded i remember getting back to the unit after that and seeing my dad and brother because they were packaging up the orders whilst we were at the event um opening up this hq for the first time and seeing i think it was 100 100 or 150 people walking for the first time and seeing the the buzz on their faces the gymshark events and all the amazing people that i've met it's like this huge flash of everything that's happened in eight years in like a split second um so yeah it's just crazy to look back for from when you were sort of getting into it the young kid growing up where you were what's your advice to that guy now what would my advice be to me if i was as a kid to be honest it would be just what so pursue whatever you find interesting at the time so again all the different things that i've did all the seven failures previously that's the reason that jim shark is allowed to exist today that's the reason that i and we are where we are today is because of the app that failed or the website that crashed or the social network that had an error in the code so it was just from day one sort of thing all those things led to jim sharp so i really think um if yeah i would just say to myself as a kid just whatever you're passionate about just create and just go because you know one day down that meandering path you'll end up finding something special that just happened to be the thing that everyone wanted in that moment that just happened to be perfectly suited to the skill set that you have so yeah just keep trying was it worth it the pizza was it was all worth it oh 100 it was so worth it and by the way like this is the thing i i enjoyed working at pizza it was cool i met great people i got to eat a free pizza every day there is that was so cool there was never a point where i was like oh i hate this like i enjoyed it and i love what i do now and i feel like i've got the best job in the world now um i honestly i've loved every second of it the good times and the bad times it's easy for me to say now but i don't think the good times are as good if you don't have the crap times as well so yeah it's brilliant got the best job in the world um lastly it's just some words um it's not quick fire it's just whatever whatever comes to your mind when you say it just expand on it um just six or seven words um purpose meaning that's the first word i thought then um yeah for me purpose gives meaning and i love having a purpose a a wider overarching purpose that does make any of those small robumps seem insignificant sacrifice i don't know that's a funny one because to me i feel like when you do make sacrifice 99 of the sacrifices that you make are for almost like ex expedient things things that are short term over long term i've never worked towards something that's a true true long-term goal and felt i'm making so many sacrifices here because the benefit is so the pros outweigh the cons um yeah i love what you say about sacrifice that it didn't feel like sacrifice because it was it was working towards something yeah i think i think that's right and that's not to say right like there was obviously times i hated it so like i said freezing cold cleaning off screens in that moment didn't want to be there no but i knew that it was working towards something greater mindset mindset um so mine said the funny one because so as a kid so my dad worked away a lot like there were certain years he'd be away for like six months of the year right um but like i said i would play sport and he would take me to to sport a lot and he would never really talk to me about like fitness or speed or running but the thing he would always always drill into me for as long as i can remember was mindset and he would always talk about you have to be strong mentally almost before you're strong physically so mindset's a funny one it's something that i felt i feel like has been a part of my life for forever i think in many ways mindset can solve everything right even the most terrible of problems with the right mindset can be dealt with well but yeah mindset has been something that i've been very consciously aware of in my entire life do you remember any of those sort of moments like in particular where we chat to you yeah yeah i remember um i think i was playing football and um i kind of basically i was playing football did something wrong and then some guy came up to me a coach and sort of gave me some advice and then i went and told him and i was like i don't really agree with this advice that i've been given and he said listen to the advice you know take it on board but ultimately it's up to you as to what you do you know apply to your game and what you don't get advice listen to it be polite absorb it but ultimately it's up to you what you apply and i think that's really important because i mean i get tons of advice and not all of it's good um much of it is good but not all of it's good so yeah i think it's important that you can just apply what makes sense to you i think one thing that everyone is like talking about at the moment you're a billionaire that's what everyone's saying billionaire billionaire billionaire um entrepreneur plastered all over the place so i think if for me it'd be really interesting to hear your opinion on the word entrepreneur oh god i'll admit up until about a year ago i hated that word i absolutely hate even to this day i i do cringe albeit i do think it's become a bigger thing and i would never really again up until very lately describe myself in any way as an entrepreneur if anyone did it it would it would pain me to hear it'd be awkward but now i understand having watched probably more videos like garyvee and things like that and even jordan peters and jordan peterson there was a video i watched a while ago where he'd sort of talk about the mindset or the mentality of an entrepreneur and how it's similar to i think he said like an artist um which was fascinating to me so now i think the term has more validity um but yeah i don't really know to be honest what turns you off about the word i feel like you i used to always think about those proper just entrepreneurs who would be like a the ceo of i don't know a business that has no employees i mean it's like i think for me a ceo is a a prestigious title that you have to earn right i mean i'm not a ceo i'm hopefully i'd love one day to be a ceo i'm not a chief exec and i just felt like it would always have connotations to those um people that would be more around being seen as an entrepreneur than being an entrepreneur entrepreneur which i think led to a lot of probably legitimate entrepreneurs almost not calling themselves that so yeah i don't know albeit i do think it's getting it's it's getting better now and i think there's more validity in it now failure i love failure so that's probably another thing that i haven't spoken about in this i um i'm very and i think we at gymshark are actually getting really good at failing like we are really good and there's definitely not a feeling of negativity around failure because again it's an opportunity to learn and i think we embrace failure um and i think even in my career going back to those seven failures prior to gymshark shark yeah i've always enjoyed and embraced failure i think that's important too hard work what's that saying is it hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard i think i think steve i achieve exec talks about that um yeah i mean i think you have to work hard right to in whatever that you do and if you don't then i just don't think you'll you'll get to where you want to be um again i hold myself incredibly accountable i think everyone here works ridiculously hard it's massive the last one jim shark i wow well obviously when you say gymshark that's a i didn't expect that um i just think of all the mental times of well we've had and all the incredible opportunities that we've got in the future um yeah i think of all the events that we've done i think of all the incredible people that i've met and just the amazing journey that we've been on you

Channel: MULLIGAN BROTHERS INTERVIEWS

Views: 22,850

Rating: 4.9308853 out of 5

Keywords: Mulliganbrothers, mulligan brothers, motivational videos, motivation, motivational speech, the mulligan brothers, ben francis, the gymshark story | ben francis, stoltman brothers, billionaire mindset: the gymshark story | ben francis, stoltman brothers full, the, brothers, mulligan, star brothers, mulliganbrothers, billionaire mindset: the gymshark story, learn while on the move, gym, gym motivation, gymshark

Id: K59q0SlqU4c

Length: 73min 8sec (4388 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021