MY BEST ADVICE: HOW YOU CAN GROW YOUR OWN BUSINESS

so today I wanted to do a video that tells you guys want how to start your own business to some of the tools that were charging the absolutely vital and three talked about some of the mistakes that we found during the inception stage of building this incredible brand [Music] [Applause] [Music] on a development that my founded a company called Jim shot seven years ago Jim sharp was the UK's fastest growing business and we've gone from nought to over 300 staff and over 200 million dollars turnover in no time whatsoever and on that journey we have learned so so much so today I wanted to do a video that tells you guys one how to start your own business to some of the tools of which I think itíll not only in start in the business but running a business and three talked about some of the mistakes that we found especially at the start during the inception stage of building this incredible brand this is a really difficult video so this is the most requested video in terms of when you look at all the comments and even like what a lot of people are searching to get to my channel and this is a really weird one because at this point I'm literally almost reverse engineering a lot of the things that just happen when we first started but I found it really a really interesting exercise to try and work out what's worked what hasn't worked and why I'm going to do a bunch of different videos and this one's going to start very much with the inception the creation of the business the tools which will really help you do that and help you prosper in the early stages of starting your own business I'll then make later videos a part of probably this sort of playlist or series that will go into you know maybe the first million turnover building our hiring the first few staff and building the business into more of a lifestyle business and then the next stage in terms of that next step which we found really difficult was that 10 million dollars to a hundred million dollars stage and then we're just go in there fill in to the next stage of that one we're starting to really globalized and internationalize the Jim sharp business and I'm really really excited to show you guys how that works and hopefully you guys can learn from that as well before starting Jim shark I had around seven different websites always running loads of different things and I've tried to work out why it was Jim shark the one that I stuck with because Jim Shaw absolutely did not do well at the start it took us several months ting at the first sale and I think the reason that I stuck with Jim shark and I really fell in love with Jim Shaw what we're waiting for Byford to sort out the bins because of the noise LinkedIn I've been living on LinkedIn lately it's absolutely brilliant especially seeing as this is a more business-related video if you are interested in more of this sort of content check me out on LinkedIn because genuinely I think it's been a naps your mains in social media I've only been using it properly for about a week or so but I'm currently absolutely obsessed with LinkedIn it's not even biffer it's be olya too when you starting your own business the first thing that it needs to have is a clear purpose when I look back to Jim shark and why Jim shark succeeded it was all around the defined purpose the Jim shark had from day one Jim shark has always been around bringing people together and that's why immediately as soon as we could afford to we were doing the event and to this day we still invest so much money into events despite not making any money from them Jim shark is around inspiring people to improve themselves both physically and mentally and that's an area of huge and personal importance to me because I wasn't actually doing that well at school and it was only when I got into the GM and applied a lot of the lessons that I learned in the gym in terms of sticking to a routine you know just turning up day after day and just working hard changing things up when they got stale applying these sort of things into my school life and then my professional life really really helped me to succeed so purpose is single-handedly for me the most important thing and if you don't have a purpose either the business will fizzle out or you'll end up giving up on it so for the rest of this video I want to focus on three main areas that you need to focus on in order to start your own business and then help it to prosper so those three things are the tools the mindsets and the Foundation's that you need so we'll start off by going through some of the tools now this isn't an exhaustive list but these are the first tools that come to mind for me when I'm thinking about the things that are really really important and start in your business and really helping it to run and prosper at the beginning so the main most important tools that you need to know inside out for me our Shopify Photoshop Illustrator Zendesk and social media first time that's quite good with these things if you could know these things inside out if you can really learn to master these tools then believe me it'll feel like you've got a superpower and I think they're absolutely vital to your business succeeding first and foremost Shopify Shopify whether you are a small start in business or you're a huge international business for me Shopify is huge we actually moved away from Shopify at one point in the Jim shark history it didn't go very well for us and we ended up moving back and I think it was through that experience that we really understood the value of Shopify if you're just starting out you can literally make a website in a day you can use some of their core templates that comes with the platform it's super cheap it's simple it's easy to use and there's a small business when you haven't got much money it gives you an opportunity to create a website that historically would cost you you know thousands tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands overnight and I think that's absolutely vital for me in the way that Apple made software on phones and computers super intuitive and simple Shopify have done their with online websites and e-commerce Photoshop probably single-handedly my favorite piece of software my go to wherever I need to try and demonstrate something or explain a concept or an idea or something that I want us to create Photoshop is my go-to for this I think myself and I think a lot of people nowadays are quite visual and I think it's a lot easier to get a message across to people if you can demonstrate an idea of what it would look like and instantly it's way easier to get those concepts and those ideas across to other people and you'll realize by the way that business is all about people getting those ideas to peak across the people is so much easier when you've got Photoshop you've got Photoshop skills and you can create little visual pieces which show the message that you're trying to convey I think genuinely everyone should know how to use Photoshop to a degree like I said whether it's a new idea or hierarchy a product a logo a concept of thumbnail whatever it is for me Photoshop is absolutely vital because it's all around ideas and it's all about evoking emotion and winning over the people and having them buy into your idea and that's so much easier to do in a visual way rather than just through explanation words and numbers in Australia this is something I haven't used as much lately but at the start it was something that was really important to the brand and we use illustrator to make not only our logos but all the initial screen printed designs that we were that we were running so when we first started we were you know so in and screen printing on product and the illustrator was so so so important because it meant that we could make the logos that would then go onto the product now illustrator is really good because on in Australia you can make the vector graphics which are basically it basically means that no matter how big or small that you make them they work distort and they won't pixelate so for me illustrator is the go-to software when you're making goes and graphics and things like that Zendesk from a customer service point of view it's absolutely brilliant back in the day when I was working at PETA and in between deliveries they used to jump on and respond to customers we could do that for his own desk what's great about Zen desk as well as you start to hire staff is that it's a ticketing system so different people can jump in and help customers as they go and again it just means that you can be super super close to your customer then this for me at the moment is you know the market need at all for that especially for small businesses or people that are just starting up super cheap super easy similar to Shopify super intuitive and easy to use and you just want to make sure that you're staying as close to your customers and fans as possible last but definitely not least social media arguably the thing that did blow Jim shark up was social media back in the day it was more Facebook and YouTube Laird hopefully you've got things such as snapchat tik-tok IG TV and all these things blowing up because social media is just it's just incredible and as a company like er it's just invaluable again because you get instant feedback and that is so so valuable whether it's positive or more importantly negative because you need to understand how to improve constantly social media was just brilliant social media for me it comes in two sort of two categories you've got organic social media and paid because a lot of its getting paid now especially on the Facebook owned companies what I say to the team here is that the organic reach that you see today is the best it'll ever be it becomes sort of two very different problems to solve in a sense on organic you want to focus on virality on organic engagement on a VOC in emotion when it gets to paid social media advertising you need to be super targeted you need to be super brief you need to make sure that you get in your message across instantly you only have a split second to capture someone's imagination and I think that's more true now than ever next want to focus a little bit on the mindset because this is so so important and I know that Gary Vee talks a lot about this new focuses a lot on self awareness but I cannot tell you how important mindset is in terms of succeeding in starting your own business and then some of the first people that will join that business as well so what you need and this is not just yourself but the people that is working in the business at the start and helping you well you need to be ambitious you need to be a lateral thinker you need to be self-aware you need to be creative and for me you have to absolutely be what we call a doer so you need to be the sort of person that's going to grab something by the scruff of the neck and just get it done moving forward and constantly constantly progressing you need to hold yourself accountable you need to be self-aware so you need to I think one of the things that I think I sort of certainly import products are doing is our self-aware enough to know the areas which I'm not very good at and the areas which I am good at and it really helped Jim shark to grow faster when I just sort of and it really paying me by the way it broke my heart to do at the start to take a step back from certain areas the business that I loved because I wasn't very good at them and brought in people that are significantly better than I am and I think that's so so so important and for me that all comes down to self-awareness lateral thinking is for me just that it's not talked about enough I think if you can think outside the box and again all the most successful people here at Jim sharp are lateral thinkers if they see a problem they're turning it upside down inside out they're trying to work out different ways of solving this problem ways of doing things that have never been done before and lateral thinking and creativity for me a very very closely linked but it's just so so important that you can think laterally and that you can be a great great problem solver because when you first start in a business there are so many problems whether it's financially or all sorts of issues that will pop up and you're gonna have to think about ways of getting around them ambition you have to be ambitious as well because it is so so tough genuinely running Jim shark especially in the early days was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life it was a mentally so difficult so stressful if you have that ambition if you're pursuing that purpose that you've already defined then believe me you'll get through it and yeah it's absolutely vital and all of these things go for the people around you as well it's so important that you see you surround yourself with a great ambitious creative lateral thinking self-aware team finally last but not least I want to talk about foundations and believe me this is so so so important that you have great foundations in your business and the start so the main things that I wanted to go over here is the finance taxes and hiring these are the things that I just wanted to run over in terms of the foundations of the business so first and foremost you want to start the business properly you want to find a good accountant so if any accountant is coming to you saying that you know they can dodge you this tax the hair or anything like that or they'll be able to do a little thing for you here and help you there believe me just leave them walk away you need a good solid accountant you want to pay your taxes on time the last thing you want to be doing is just trying to get away with anything if you don't pay your taxes you will get found out and when you do it will be an absolute nightmare and all you need to be doing is focusing on the things you're really good at so get a great accountant pay your taxes and have great financial foundations last point on this subject that I want to talk through is hiring and it sort of goes back to the mindset piece that I spoke about a moment ago but in hiring when we first started hiring people for Jim shark we hired purely on gut instinct and that's the other thing that I think you always need to follow it's always follow your gut instinct because generally for me that will always be right and some of the few but only regrets that I do have in life have been from not following my gut instinct you have to be hiring people that are better than you they have to be better than you if they're not then you need to sort of sort of look at your ego you need to look at yourself because that's what's truly going to allow the business to prosper so that was a super top-line overview of some of the things the key areas that I think you need to focus on in starting your own business a few little lessons of the things that we've learnt at Jim sharp this has been a lot more business oriented and this has been something that people have been asking for for a long time so hopefully you enjoy it and as always thank you so much for watching

Channel: Ben Francis

Views: 438,108

Rating: 4.9779468 out of 5

Keywords: Gymshark, ben, Francis, Ben Francis, gym, shark, entrepreneur, young business owner, business owner, gymshark CEO, gary vee, gary vaynerchuk, gymshark owner, uk business, David laid, Nikki Blackketter, robin gallant, Whitney Simmons, christian Guzman, business growth, grow business, how to business, start a business, fastest growing business, business tips

Id: 21KB2lo1JHs

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019