BILLIONAIRE MINDSET: The Gymshark Story | Ben Francis

[Music] [Music] [Music] he who has a y can bear any how 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 when i was young my thing was just i just loved sport right i just wanted i wanted to be a footballer i wanted to play for villa so dad granddad great granddad and beyond all supported villa 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 it was at that point where it was my first sort of sort of my first exposure to business and that business was my granddad's business 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 eight nine ten hours of do as you told sort of thing but it was really cool for me and what was particularly interesting 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 the lessons that i learned from just chatting to him over those long days of graft were absolutely brilliant i think i asked him what was his biggest job that he ever did and he told me about a furnace that he i think he had to build for a company in germany and he explained to me that basically to fund that project he had to remortgage the house at that time he had 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 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 news 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 joined the gym for the first first time when i was 16. 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 free 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 at that time i was not very good at school 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 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 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 my grades just started to rise rapidly and it yeah the gym completely changed my life during sick form i picked up an it class and that was the class that changed my life 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 taught myself how to develop apps from books and youtube videos and whatnot and develop four iphone apps and then i think it was six or seven websites prior to jim shark 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 it was just a combination of me creating using the new tools that i had creating for my passion that was fitness so then talk us through starter gym shark um clothing number three all right that's the car is actually packaged and as you can see i can't actually move my chair back anymore this one is just the whole car basically is just absolutely rand 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 the reason that i actually made the gymshark website was because i'd sort of done everything else 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 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 8 000 pound a month minimum order and like i mean i've never seen eight thousand pound in my life let alone eight 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 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 it was the best two pound i'd ever made in my life like it was just the most amazing feeling ever and i was literally like running around my bedroom just buzzing and that was that and jim sharp 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 i just thought why don't we similar to websites and apps why don'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 even in that moment it wasn't a case of let's make it to sell it it just came from a place form no one's making it so let's just make it for ourselves 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 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 and i was messaging a guy and chatting to a guy in pakistan called tanvir 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 but he was like yeah cool let's do it and he sent sent me the product we put it on the website and again it just flew out 48 hours i sent in the money for the full order that was when we'd sort of both started producing clothes externally with manufacturers but also internally as well with the sewing machine the screen printer there was about two years of hand making product from my nan taught me to sew 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 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 10 10 o'clock it was coming up to i don't know 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 i should 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 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 [Music] right out flat face down pull the one side over pull the other side over and then simply fold it over twice more like that and then you've got a perfectly folded t-shirt another happy gym shark to it after customer and that will literally come off his machine and this is great because it's not massively labor intensive so we've programmed over here you'll literally get a usb stick it in here and then that will just run 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 [Music] all the different things that i've did all the seven thousand 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 codes all those things led to jim sharp this has been france's handmade this will go out today as well so another happy customer for jim shout the stock room it's got a little bit of packaging here so yeah this is um the headquarters if you will i'd wake up in the morning i'd go to university in the day get on the train get into aston normally finish uni i don't know say four go into pizza and do my working day five 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 um 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 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 he who has a why can bear anyhow fitness was my why fitness completely changed my life going to the gym shifted everything it shifted my physical health my mental health it completely shifted my academic life so fitness for me 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 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 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 it was not something 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 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 incredible speed of production look at the thickness of the ink yeah it's looking good nice and shiny so much more is in the control of the individual than what people think 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 dealt with a hand and ultimately that's the hand that you've got to play 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 was there a low moment that sort of took you took you by spiderman 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 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 foundation to the business 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 when i say every single human being that works at the gym shop was just trying to fix the problem that we created during black friday i ended up hand writing 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 we just dedicated ourselves to solving the problem and doing our best the best that we could by the customer and fortunately now 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 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 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 gymshark when things go wrong everyone feels it i think that's really important to mention it is incredibly incredibly tough and i've had to sort of learn to be resilient every extra bit of responsibility that i've 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 he hasn't why can 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 i love failure 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 yeah i've always enjoyed and embraced failure i think that's important too here we are just at fibo setting up this is going to be insane it's midnight stan's almost ready and tomorrow's d-day we've reinvested everything that we possibly could into the business to grow it to where it was and i knew the day that the business started that there wasn't going to be a penny taken out of it for several years i 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 start-up phase i met two guys one called paul one called steve made 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 bromsgrove or do 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 want it to be a truly global brand and that was powerful as well because again when you've got the opportunity to create a global brand in 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 again having my eyes locked in that vision i think really helped as well factually so numbers say that most businesses will fail in the first couple of years and i never i never had a fear of failing 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 i think that really helped because there might have been other companies that were in the same position as us that i mean 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 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 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 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 what's that saying is it hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard i think i think steve our achieve exec talks about that 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 get to where you want to be it doesn't take up any room simple quick effective so at least we're actually starting to get in order 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 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 my entire life what drives you now just having as big an impact as possible 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 you know grow myself and be as brilliant as i can be but equally i want gymshark to inspire as many people as possible 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 benefit 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 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 is 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 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 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 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 i just think of all the mental times i've 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 [Music] you

Channel: MulliganBrothers

Views: 472,555

Rating: 4.9664707 out of 5

Keywords: motivation, motivational video, mulliganbrothers, mulligan brothers, motivational speech, gymshark, gym, ben francis

Id: 9ymzRRbu0vM

Length: 26min 21sec (1581 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021