Gymshark CEO Explains His Strategy For Global Success - Ben Francis

Ben Francis is the CEO & founder of Gymshark. Bootstrapping a company from nothing to a multi-billion-dollar valuation at a young age is not easy. Starting a family, with twins, whilst navigating the changing political landscape and supplier tensions from the East makes this even harder. But there are some principles Ben has developed to survive this chaos. Expect to learn what 3 traits Ben has observed in all the high performers he's met, how his upbringing helped shape him into a successful CEO, Ben’s thoughts on modern masculinity, how what the world needs from fitness culture has changed, the biggest red flags to watch out for when recruiting new talent, what founders don't know about the challenges of being a CEO and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get £150 discount on Eight Sleep products at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Follow Ben on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/benfrancis/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #business #mindset #fitness - 00:00 Intro 00:32 Common Traits of the Highest Performers 05:36 Can You Be Outspoken as a Public Figure? 11:30 The Hidden Challenges of Being a CEO 18:03 How to Delegate Effectively 24:33 The Biggest Risks Ben Has Taken 27:55 Today’s Need for Fitness Content 32:10 How Development Impacts Male Mental Health 37:55 The Challenges Facing Men in 2023 44:36 Is the Body Positivity Movement Good or Bad for Women? 49:52 How Ben Has Adjusted to Having Kids 55:36 Helping Children Learn to Overcome Difficulty 1:13:10 Ben’s Goals for the Next Few Years 1:15:19 Where to Find Ben - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I remember when I was, I'd done something wrong and I was really, I'd completely up and I was so upset and I was expecting my dad to sort of come and go, you know, Ben, everything's going to be all right. And he just sat there and he went, what are you going to do about it? I don't want someone just to sit there and straighten my ego and tell me that everything's going to be okay. And I'm okay the way I am, because I think that over a prolonged period of time can definitely lead to entitlement. I think it can lead to softness and weakness, and I don't think it's the right thing in the long term.

• 0:28Chris Williamson?

  Ben Francis, welcome to the show.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 0:31Chris Williamson?

  You have had the fortune of speaking to some of the best operators on the planet. What are the common threads, the most common traits that you found between all of the high performers that you've spoken to?

• 0:42Speaker 00

  I feel like there's the obvious ones. So they're very organized. I feel like there's the basics, right? Organized, articulate, intelligent, the things that you'd expect of anyone who's a great operator. I also think that they tend to be better people than what you think for the most part. I feel like there's this, there's this view that there's this evil group of people that sit and control the world in a way. And I'm, you know, that might well be true for all, for all I know. But certainly in the people that have run some of the really successful businesses, they tend to be really, really great people and great individuals and really, really helpful. And a lot of those people have really helped me. And there's, I mean, people will know that Jim Shark has had a great relationship with Shopify for a long, long time. And Toby and particularly Harley,

• 1:24Speaker 00

  who run that business have been endlessly helpful to both me as an individual, I mean, even other people that work in the business, but our business as well. And I think Harley really resonated with me and he continues to resonate with me because he is such a good human being. And the fact that he has such a well-balanced work life, but also home life, I think is, that's really interesting to me. It's been massively inspiring.

• 1:48Chris Williamson?

  What's an example of Harley's work and home life showing up in a way that you found inspirational?

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Well, there was a few, I mean, there's many, but the first and foremost, I think this is going to sound so basic and some of these are going to sound so trivial, but he's always happy to see you, like, which is, which is really cool, right? And I think he remembers people's names and there's those sorts of common traits and he will not remember this by any stretch of the imagination, but we were working in Germany a few years ago, a few years ago, this was pre-COVID now. And I think there was something particularly he had to do, it was like, say 9pm or something like that, we'd been working through the day, we'd like the talks and the events and all that. And then everyone went for food after, there was probably a table of 12 or so people. But I knew that he had to get off by, let's say, nine o'clock. And it was actually, it was a really good conversation, it was a really good chat. I think everyone was really interested in him

• 2:37Speaker 00

  because there was a lot of Shopify's largest merchants there. And literally like clockwork, at 8.59, he stands up, shakes everyone's hand, he knows everyone's name, and he heads off and he goes to bed and just sort of carries on with his day. And that level of efficiency, albeit to him, was just probably just something that was so basic and normal. To me, that was, that was really, that was really interesting, because it would have been so easy to stay another 30 minutes, another 45 minutes, and another hour. And I know the things that he wanted to do, by the way, he wanted to get off because he wanted to speak to his family, and he wanted to prepare for the next day. And I think those little things over a prolonged period of time really add up. And being able to watch him and observe him do that, I think was interesting. And listen, it's similar of other people, there's, there's a guy who's based in London that runs, I think

• 3:20Speaker 00

  it might be the world's biggest digital marketing agency, a company called AKQA, a guy called Jarz, who is just like a really, really good human being. And he just, he seems to maintain relationships with people over a really, really long period of time. And that doesn't happen on accident. And by the way, bad people, in my experience, aren't able to maintain relationships with people for really prolonged periods of time. So having met lots of different people, I would say I've definitely been pleasantly surprised with the fact that they generally tend to be good people rather than bad people.

• 3:52Chris Williamson?

  We were talking about this before we started this conversation I had with Hormozzi, where he said that ego will keep you poor rather than make you rich. And I don't know, man, you know, a lot of the people that I spend time with, the operators that are slick, and that are able to do it over a long enough period of time, by design, if you're a prick to everyone, you'll get found out.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  I really believe that. And I think there's, there's, there's, there's this other thing as well. And again, just to put into context is Shopify is a business that, I don't know, it must be forty times, fifty times bigger than Jim Shark.

• 4:30Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what its revenues are?

• 4:31Speaker 00

  I, I don't know what its revenues are, but it's, I know it's, it's just vastly, vastly bigger than Jim Shark. And, you know, we might never, ever be at the si- the size or scale that they are. And I'm sure I've got a very limited amount of information that I can give to someone like Harley that he hasn't already heard from people that are far more intelligent, articulate.

• 4:48Chris Williamson?

  Remembering that Harley, Harley and Toby's company is the company that facilitates your company.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Correct. Yeah, exactly.

• 4:55Chris Williamson?

  You're like the, the grandchild of.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  Of, of the Shopify business.

• 4:59Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  They might, I don't, I don't know that. If they're not, then they're one of the biggest employers in Canada. But I feel like every time that we're talking, he is trying to learn something from me and I'm trying to learn something from you. There's not this whole thing of, oh, here he is, here's small fry, I know everything. It, it's that mentality of always being open to learning, I thought, and it always surprises me. It's the same with the jars as well. It's always like, what are you seeing? What are you interested in? What excites you? What mistakes have you made? And then I'll obviously talk them through that and they'll sort of help me out and give me feedback. But this consistent way of being open minded as well, I think that's really fascinating.

• 5:37Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about the problems that you have of being a person with opinions. Who has a private life, who has a missus, who now has a pair of twins, congratulations. Uh, and, and you have insights and views around the world. And yet, as a young guy, you also have to play the role of being a very sanitized, very public facing, acceptable, don't rock the boat CEO. Do you ever find conflict between those two things?

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And I try to manage it in, in the right way. Cause you're right, I've got very specific opinions on things. And for example, my opinion on the Lord Hill review, I don't feel the need to run off on YouTube and scream about it. We write a very logical, very formulated letter to the government. And to be fair to them, they respond, right? And we have a, we have an ongoing dialogue. I'm not going to move the needle. I'm not going to change anything. They probably don't care what I've got to say, but at least I've done my bit, right? So I, I'll put my opinion forward in, in the right way, in the right place. And there are certain things that I would like to talk about publicly because. You know, whereas the content I consume, the things that I read and I guess my viewpoints on the uncertain things. But then again, I also see other people, again, without naming names, that come from

• 6:54Speaker 00

  a completely different industry and then started talking about politics. And I think just stay in your lane, like you don't know what you're talking about. So I want to make sure that if I ever do talk about certain things, I want to make sure that it's a really well thought out opinion. I'm completely, completely bulletproof. I completely believe in it and back, you know, back what I'm talking about. But you're right, being a CEO of a of a consumer focused business, you know, we wanna, we want our product to be available to everyone and we want lots of different types of people to buy our product. And I don't want to alienate anyone because of my personal views and rightly or wrongly, I am intrinsically linked to the company I founded when I was a teenager. And I think that's just, I think I don't see how that would ever change. And I would love to talk

• 7:37Speaker 00

  more publicly about certain things. But as I'm sure you're aware of, the more you speak, the higher the level of risk and ultimately the, the higher likelihood you have of alienating certain people at some point. I guess for me, it's just the, at what point do I make that decision?

• 7:51Chris Williamson?

  Well, do you, are you bothered? You know, could you go the rest of your life having private opinions that you kept private? Or do you feel a bit of discomfort about the fact that you don't get to maybe proselytize about stuff that you do personally genuinely care about, but maybe the sort of thing that, and we're not, you know, we're not talking about like, you're not going to go full Kanye here. Like, the point is just that you have viewpoints personally, and the world has lost the ability to take someone's viewpoint in good faith, a lot of the time, and would read into it. For instance, right? So the Rogan N word compilation video from a year ago, a couple of years ago.

• 8:32Chris Williamson?

  What the world attempted to do there was say, see, here is the tip of the iceberg that proves that Joe is the unspeakable, bigoted, racist, misogynistic heathen that we've always said he was. The way that this usually works is that there are vacuums in terms of what you know about a person. There is a small incident that occurs that the press and people that don't like them take as being representative of the entirety of their being. They say, this is the tip of the iceberg. Below it is this sort of murky cesspool of terrible things that they believe. The reason that Joe particularly was protected was that most people have seen the entire iceberg. I've listened to casually, you know, 500, 1,000, even a normal fan will have listened to hundreds

• 9:15Chris Williamson?

  of hours of this guy. And they go, look, you're telling me that there's something lurking down there. I've been down there. I know that there's nothing lurking. However, when you have perhaps not thousands and thousands of hours of content on the internet, when you have more vectors of potential attack, which is a 900,000 person company, shareholders, stakeholders, et cetera, et cetera. There is more of a risk there.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, rather than being an individual. And I think, I mean, the best example that I think I would use that I know we spoke about earlier would be Jeremy Clarkson. Whether you like him or not, he made some comments about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry a few weeks ago. And there was a lot of conversation about whether or not his farm show is going to be cancelled. Now, I think the people that wanted the farm show cancelled were probably staring at Jeremy Clarkson. We don't like this.

• 10:05Chris Williamson?

  Waiting for him to say anything.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, we want Jeremy Clark, we want to take Jeremy Clarkson down.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  And ironically, if that show is cancelled, he's probably affected the least out of everyone. It's the hundred people that edit, produce, develop, farm. It's the people that all contribute to the show that are actually genuinely hurt. And that's the interesting balance of being a public individual that has an opinion, but also wanting to protect the wide group of individuals that you work alongside. So it is definitely a difficult line to balance. So I'd love to see, I'm interested if you know anyone that does it particularly well, because. And don't get me wrong, I don't lie there at night thinking, oh god, I wish I could tell everyone about my political views. It's not that big of a deal to me. Like, I think I said to you previously, I, my intention when starting Jim Chart was never to be on social media.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  It, it, I'm not massively fussed. I think the point at which I would get involved is if things either got significantly worse than what they are now, or I genuinely felt I could move the needle. Like, I made a passing comment a moment ago of, I'll send a letter to the government with my opinion, realistically it won't move the needle. If you said to me, a YouTube video could move the needle on something that's particularly important to you, you're passionate about, you think would help people. Now, I think that would probably change my opinion at the moment. I just don't think I've gotten to that point.

• 11:28Chris Williamson?

  Just generally, personally, what is it that founders don't know about the challenges of being a CEO? Because this is

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Where do I begin?

• 11:40Chris Williamson?

  A journey that I know that you've been on, you've flip flopped in and out of.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  So the thing, so the thing is with being a founder is it, it, the job, which I've never known in any other job, the job literally flips on its head depending on the scale of the business and the time. So it's almost like there's peace time, there's war time, and then there's scale. And the, your approach has to be completely different. And to get a business from zero to 10 million, you essentially have to be very, very dictatorial. You tell people what you want. People will tell you this isn't going to work. You ignore comments, you ignore feedback, and you do what the hell you want, and you force your business into success. This is my experience, right? I'm sure there are other people that have had different experiences, but that was my personal experience.

• 12:21Chris Williamson?

  Why? Why do you need to be dictatorial?

• 12:23Speaker 00

  You have no time, you take high level of risk, there is no, there's no time for discussion. Generally, what you're trying to do hasn't been done before. There's no data to back up what you're thinking.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  You need to grow quick.

• 12:36Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  And like, listen, we In that period, there were several times that we risked everything we had to get to that next level. And oftentimes, the risks make no sense because, again, in the, and granted, the numbers are, the numbers are smaller, right? But it's a case of we're doing 250,000 in revenue, our ambition one day is to do 4 million in revenue, you need to risk the entire house on hopefully getting to 1 million.

• 13:04Chris Williamson?

  What was some of those inflection points?

• 13:06Speaker 00

  So for me, it was the first events that we did. So we did one event, it did well. And what you'd normally do in a larger business is you do an event, it does well, you sit there, you analyze the data, you understand what the ROI would be if you were to do five more. It's like, no, like, in the early days, in that one to 10, that purely entrepreneurial phase, that gut instinct phase is you do have, you have no time to do any of those. So we did our first event, it went well. We then sign up to loads of events. And then we went from just doing Birmingham to Birmingham, Germany, Australia, two in the US.

• 13:36Chris Williamson?

  Was this when you exited Body Power?

• 13:38Speaker 00

  Yes. No, this wasn't, this wasn't when we exited Body Power. We did Body Power and it went really well. So we re-signed up for

• 13:43Chris Williamson?

  Rolled it out.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  And then we kept going. And

• 13:45Chris Williamson?

  Got you.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  And there was a point, I think it was about two years after that, where we'd managed, we'd basically managed to get about a million pounds in the bank. And I, you know, being in the West Midlands and having a company with a million pound in the banks, that you'd never heard of anything like it. It was the most insane thing ever in our early twenties.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  And at that point, you've sort of got something to lose. I'm like, oh, well, like, you know, if we, if we just gave up now and we just split the money,

• 14:08Chris Williamson?

  A million pounds.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  You know, mum and dad's mortgage is paid, I could live happily.

• 14:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  Maybe not now, but it feels like you could live happily ever after. And then we bet the entire house on going again, on stock, on events. And you do that again, and again, and again. And then, and this is what I mean. So from naught to 10, you essentially do what the hell you want. 10 to 50 is that bit where you have an understanding of the fact that you've actually got something to lose. Because for me, between one and 10, there was nothing to lose. 10 to 50 in revenue, there was certainly something to lose. But you're filled with this adrenaline, this excitement and this, and this momentum that you just do it and you just go. And at that point, you're really starting to hire people. So the, the whole thing of ignoring what everyone says, it just starts to go away. Because if you're doing 50 million in revenue, you're doing a million a week, the likelihood is you probably

• 14:56Speaker 00

  have a handful of staff that are helping you manage that. If you just ignore what they say and do what you want anyway. Then going back to what we said earlier, that has, that only has a certain period of time that that can work for. And then what you find is the larger the business gets, the more that you rely on other people, the more or the less that you're in the detail. And then the more the going off and doing becomes either more explaining and inspiring as the business grows. So it's, I don't, I mean, very occasionally, but I don't really, I would never sit in front of a sewing machine anymore. But, and I don't sit down and sketch out products and try and work out exactly what I want, but I need to work out, and this is, this is my big challenge now, right? Trying to scale Jim Shark into a truly iconic British

• 15:38Speaker 00

  brand and a global brand, is how do I inspire people to create products that fits in with our overarching strategy that I'm really proud of and pleased about, that also excites the customer and is of a high quality. And it's all of these things and trying to get the right people in the right roles. And there's always so many emotions involved and conversations because other people have differing views. And what I can't do again is just go, it's my way or the highway, because that only has a certain lifespan to it. So the development of being a small entrepreneurial business, which is a lot of telling to a large scale business that worked with people from all around the world, deals with tens and tens of millions of units of stock, has relatively large financial risk compared to where we

• 16:21Speaker 00

  were previously. And is trying to become an iconic brand that is now competing with some of the biggest brands in the world that have bank balances that are 10, 100 times larger than ours. That's where it becomes a fascinating thing, because it's more about, it becomes significantly more of an intellectual and social challenge than it does this just sort of adrenaline filled thing.

• 16:40Chris Williamson?

  Do you miss that?

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Not really. There's times I do, but when I actually sit down and think about it logically, I get to sit in an air conditioned office and travel the world now. Whereas before, when you're screen printing and it's November and it's minus three and the hosepipe's frozen over and you're trying to clean off the screen, it's easy to say, oh, and romanticise those times and say, oh, I love those times. They were so exciting, which they were. Like my first time going out to Ohio. I've never been to Ohio in my life and didn't bring any coats or warm weather and I land in December and it is freezing and I've never seen snow like it. And those are cool, romantic memories of the growth. And whilst I do enjoy it.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  It's easy to forget about how hard those times were and forget about the fact that there was once a point when I stood in LA, just about to get on a flight home and I thought that when I landed home, there wouldn't be a business to go to. And I was trying to work out, do I go back to uni? Do I go and get another job? Do I go and try and start again? All of these different things. So it's easy to romanticize the early days and it's easy to think, oh, my job now is hard and it's cumbersome and it's slower than what it used to be. But I'm an eternal optimist. So I would say, I would like to think that it's the best now it's ever been.

• 18:00Chris Williamson?

  There will be a lot of people listening that are side hustling, building a business from that naught to 10 million stage during that time, for businesses that are maybe less consumer focused than yours, but for many, they'll need to relinquish control. They will start being the person that does everything. And even if you're at one mill or two mill, like you, you can't be the person that does everything. You can be hard charging, telling everyone to do it. What is your advice to people that struggle to delegate, that struggle to relinquish control, that struggle to bring people in underneath them and, and have the faith that they're going to do it?

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Well, I think the first thing I would say is, I think you need to really understand yourself. Because for me, I, I, I was fortunate in the sense that I managed to work out what I'm good at fairly quickly. And then literally, it's quite simple. These are the things I'm good at. These are the things I'm bad at. Draw a line between the two. Outsource the things that you're bad at. And I also think that you don't want, don't be precious about those things. Those things could be simple. They could be complex, but go off and find people that can do it and get the best people that you can afford. I think in the early days, I think that's really, really important. So in, in the very early days of Jim Shark, I was well aware that I didn't really understand operations, logistics, finance, and quite frankly, people anywhere near as well as I needed to. So brought in a great CEO and

• 19:23Speaker 00

  he was chief exec for, I think, five or six years. I think six years Steve was. And he managed all of those things for me.

• 19:30Chris Williamson?

  So your incompetence was a competitive advantage in that regard, because you felt like you, you didn't have any ownership. You already knew where your weaknesses lay. They were staring you in the face. So there was no problem with relinquishing that control to someone that was evidently much better than you at it?

• 19:44Speaker 00

  Which is easy to do if your ambitions for the business are larger than your, than your ambitions for yourself. Because the risk-

• 19:49Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean?

• 19:50Speaker 00

  If your ambitions for your business are larger than your personal ambitions, then you will put yourself into any role necessary for the business to succeed. If your ambitions are larger for yourself than your business, then you will ensure that you're at the top of the business at all costs because your personal ambition is to be top dog. The thing, the reason that having Steve come in as CEO was particularly helpful for me was it almost had a bit of a flywheel effect because Steve came in and covered my weaknesses instantly. So from a business perspective, you get a huge tick because Ben's now not doing things he's not very good at. Ben's only doing things that he's good at and we've got someone who's very good, Steve, at doing the things that Ben's not very good at. So almost like in the list of things to do, you can almost tick everything then.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  The next thing that that had is it meant I could not only double down on my strength, so I would move deeper into the business and I actually ended up doing a chief of brand job, a marketing job, a tech job and a product job. So I got C-suite experience across four different parts of the business and I have sat in factories, I've, you know, sat across the table from people like Google and Facebook and Shopify, worked with athletes, been to pretty much every event that we ever ran. I got to do all of these things, which very, very few people get the experience and the, you know, the opportunity to do. Then I could also sit with our CFO and our CEO and learn about finance and ops and go to distribution centres and warehouses and things like that. And I could sit with our CFO and I could say stupid things that made completely no sense.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  I could ask stupid questions, knowing that if anything went wrong, there was essentially this safety net beneath me of both the CFO and the CEO. Someone who's less incompetent. Which is perfect, right? Because what you want, if you want, if you want to improve rapidly, it's a bit like if someone gave you a test, if you're doing your A-levels now and you can do the test once, you'd probably do relatively well. You give the test a go, you get a C, but then you get the test again and you get a C+ and then I'll give you the same test again and you get a B. And then slowly but surely you get better and better and then we'll try another test. And that's what it felt like to me. I had five years of failure without consequence. And that is if you could, if you had a magic wand and you could draw the perfect environment

• 21:59Speaker 00

  for learning, it would be failure without consequence because you can literally just throw yourself at anything that you want at any given moment.

• 22:06Chris Williamson?

  How could, have you got any advice for, that sounds fantastic. Failure without consequences is amazing for a learning and iterating process. Is there any advice that you would have for how somebody could integrate this either into personal, professional, business life so that they could do this more and iterate on that learning process?

• 22:24Speaker 00

  As an owner or, I think, and I think it's worked in any role, right? So if, for example, you have a, you have a, an overarching role that, let's say, for example, requires 50% creativity and 50% organisation, I'm just making up a job here. And let's say you're the opposite of me. You're a highly conscientious, organised individual that gets everything done that you need to do, but then you're not maybe creative and you haven't got the ability to think about what's new and what's, what the next thing is. Then what I would implore you to do is to find that individual and partner yourself very closely with that individual, not only so that you can learn from them, but also so that they're filling your gaps and your weaknesses. And I also think, and I don't know how this works, I don't know if it's easier for a creative

• 23:09Speaker 00

  to become organised than it is someone that's conscientious to become creative. I don't, I would say it's easier for a creator to become organised.

• 23:16Chris Williamson?

  I would say so too.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  The other way around. So maybe I'm quite lucky from that perspective. But equally, some of the best business people I've met are the opposite of me. They're not that creative. They're just highly driven, organised, bold, good at taking risks.

• 23:29Chris Williamson?

  That's because if you had a business filled with you, you would have fantastic ideas, but nothing would get done.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Correct, correct.

• 23:35Chris Williamson?

  I look at, Video Guy Dean's been to my house in Austin and I live with Zach and he couldn't be more different to me in terms of his sort of psychological personality makeup. He plays five different instruments. He's like super, super creative, girlfriends and artists, et cetera, et cetera. And you can see a physical manifestation of our two personalities when you walk into each of our studios, the back into each other. So you go into mine and everything is neat and tidy. I press three buttons and all of the lights come on. It's, it's very, very dialled. I walk into his, there's been a sock sellotape to his wall from the first day that he moved in. I have no idea why it's there, neither does he. There'll be like banana peels around the place. It's like a, like a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  So I would probably be closer to that.

• 24:20Chris Williamson?

  I think so.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Albeit, I've had to try myself to. Be more organised through, whether it's working with great people, whether it's as stupid as using the right applications and things like that and trying to organ- organise myself.

• 24:33Chris Williamson?

  What's the biggest risk that you've taken with Gymshark over its entire lifespan, do you think?

• 24:41Speaker 00

  Um, I think, I think it all varies, doesn't it? So the, the first events that we ever did, because we risked everything on the event being successful. And if the events weren't successful, then we would have run out of money. So that, that's without a doubt one. I mean, personally, leaving, like, I was the first person in my family to ever go to university. I didn't finish university, but that whole thing of calling, calling up my mum and dad and going, you know, this thing I've worked really, really hard for, I'm now gonna leave it. That, that was a personal risk, albeit not a financial risk. Um, and we've done, we've had plenty of financial risks. Ten, they tended to be earlier on in the process. Um.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  Those would be the main ones. Again, this is gonna sound really bad, but the financial risks never really frightened me too much. And the reason for that is, is when I was, when I was a young kid, I did, um, the first ever, I guess, experience of work for me was working on work experience for my grandad. My grandad lines furnaces in the Midlands, so brick, ceramic fibre, labouring job. I basically just did labour, labour for him. And he would tell me, and he's a one man band, it's, it's not by no means a huge business. Um, but he lov- he loves what he does, right? And he would tell me about how he risked everything he had on a job, where he was basically building a furnace that was due to be sent out to Germany. And for whatever reason, there was this point

• 26:07Speaker 00

  in the process where it could have gone horrifically wrong. And he would tell me from the age of, I don't know, 12, 13, 14, very young anyway, about he would sit there and think, am I gonna have a roof to put over the, my mum, her sister, my nan's head? And when you've been, when that's been drilled into you from a young child, that my family have taken those risks and that level of risk. And I spent a lot of time with my grandparents growing up because my mum worked nights in the NHS and my dad would often work away and things like that.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  The, the, the risks that I then take aren't, aren't that big. So the, take a million quid at 22 years old on events, when worst case, I can go back to university and get another job at Pizza Hut. It, it never felt.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  Frightening in a way, it was more exciting.

• 26:55Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that that's because of your optimistic mindset?

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Yes, and high, high level for risk tolerance. I think I get, I get, I really enjoy things like that, like risks like that really excite me.

• 27:06Chris Williamson?

  That's something that I'm trying to get better at, um, taking risks. Um, my disposition is very, very, uh, conservative, iterate very slowly. Uh, it's meant that I've basically made zero mistakes ever when it comes to business. But the fact that I've made zero mistakes is probably an indication that I should have taken more risk on.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:26Chris Williamson?

  That's something, again, British culture, I think I would say very much discourages risk.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:32Chris Williamson?

  Overall, very, very just softly, softly, slowly, slowly, like, you know, limit, limit your, uh, potential upside, but also massively limit your downside.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:41Chris Williamson?

  As much as you can.

• 27:44Chris Williamson?

  We've spoken a lot about sort of business, the operations of business, but fundamentally what you are doing is encouraging fitness in the world, right? Like it's facilitating people, uh, feeling better about their bodies, thinking about the way that they train, the way that they show up, not only just the physical, but now moving into the mental as well. What is different about what the world needs from fitness content now compared to when you started?

• 28:12Speaker 00

  So I think, and I'm speaking about the content I consumed, right? So as a kid, I was skinny and I just wanted to build muscle. That was it. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and go on like I had some greater goals around fitness personally. I wanted to be ripped muscular, pretty much like every other eighteen year old guy that was probably around during that era. I was inspired by Greg Plitt, I was inspired by Ziz. That, that, that was my, like Rob Riches, people like that, like, not necessarily the big bodybuilders, but the people that were ripped and shredded and that, that was my personal ambition. And it felt like that, that was very much, definitely the bodybuilding industry was definitely around that. Because even if you think, if we think, if I think back to when I first got into fitness, the big bodybuilders didn't really get into social media.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  They were almost like, they almost looked down their nose a little bit at that new era of people that were coming up. So when I think back to that era, and then you have the Matt Ogasas and the Chris Lovado, this is where Jim Shaw started to come along a few years later. When I think of that era of people versus now.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  It's interesting because it feels like the mental element has come a lot more into it. And when I talk about the mental element, I feel like people talk about mental health all the time and I do think it's important, but it's, it's so much more about, it's almost like maximizing your potential holistically rather than, you know, having a good mental health and good physical health. I would say it's like, it feels slightly harder now and more direct than what it was. And it also feels a little bit to me like male mental health seems to be being talked about a hell of a lot more than what it was previously. Um, and I don't know how to put this in a more masculine way.

• 29:55Chris Williamson?

  How do you mean?

• 29:59Speaker 00

  I think when you think about people like Andrew Huberman and the things that he talks about, and the way that it feels a bit like people are, men are being encouraged to be more manly, for lack of a better term. And I don't see that as a negative, by the way. I think, I think that's a massive, massive positive. Whereas I'm not saying that there was an opposite before, but I just felt like that thing didn't exist. And I think that it's interesting because over the years, before it was, how many bicep curls do I need to do a week to have big arms? It's almost like everyone knows that now. And if you want, if you, if you don't know that, if you're a young 16 year old kid joining the gym, you'll work that out within a week on YouTube.

• 30:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  So then people are now going a lot deeper in this in, in terms of like, okay, so

• 30:44Speaker 00

  how, how do I become a better man in general, rather than just how do I have bigger muscles?

• 30:49Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. How do I show up in the world?

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think that's a really nice way to frame it. That previously, you know, when we were starting training, it was the Misk forum on bodybuilding.com.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Spent a lot of time there. Abused on there as well.

• 31:03Chris Williamson?

  I bet you did. Uh, like Christian Tebedo, T Nation, like all of this, like that kind of world. No one knew what macros were. No one knew if blueberry extract was actually going to be the secret to your muscle gains. Then.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  It was very bro-sciencey and it was like, if you don't have a protein shake within thirty minutes of finishing the gym, you will lose all of your gains and you need to have your creatine every thirty minutes and you've got your pre-workout, your intra-workout, your pro- and it was just like to the point where I remember shoving hyperbolic mass down my throat in a bid to somehow gain weight, whereas now that whole world just seems to have, it just completely has changed.

• 31:40Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  And weirdly enough, I mean certainly in the areas that I spend time on, on social media now, it's far more around a genuinely good diet, a good organic diet that is balanced with a balanced level of fitness that probably incorporates some weight training, but also incorporates a level of, incorporates a level of cardio.

• 32:01Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  And it feels like a more balanced approach to fitness now.

• 32:04Chris Williamson?

  I would agree. So when we're talking about integrating men masculinity and how it's not just about turning up and looking good, it's not just about talking about mental health. And I had a problem for ages, for the people that are listening from the US, there was a campaign in the UK called It's Okay to Talk, right? And this was trying to encourage men to open up about mental health. And I always felt icky about it. I always just, it didn't resonate with me. I thought, I'm very passionate about mental health, suffered with bouts of depression throughout all of my twenties, was the person that needed to be spoken to by this. And yet it takes, you know, like a Canadian psychologist, or a

• 32:47Chris Williamson?

  Stanford professor, or like a bald MMA commentator, or a neuroscientist that's into meditation to start talking to me in a way that made me genuinely consider my mental health, whatever reflected on. The reason I didn't like It's Okay to Talk is, well, fucking no surprise. Like, obviously it's okay to talk. Like, what's the next step? Like, give me something that I can actually use here. And the other side of it, and this I learned from Adam Lane Smith, great psychotherapist, he said that male depression gets treated like female depression. Men are made to feel loved and accepted when they want to feel capable and powerful. And the problem that we had there was that you were treating male depression and male mental health like female depression.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's interesting as well, me and Noel talk about this quite a lot as well, in the sense that if I think of growing up, so I had a great upbringing, right? I remember there was a few years ago, someone stuck a camera in front of me on Jim Charles, come up and said, "Tell me about your terrible upbringing and how difficult it had been", and everyone that said no, and I was like, "I'm not doing this because I had a brilliant upbringing, I've got great parents, great grandparents." And when I think to the way my mum raised me in a very caring, loving, thoughtful way, and then I think about the lessons that my dad taught me, there's two things that really stand out, this is gonna sound really basic. Once, I rode my bike over my neighbour's lawn and he grabbed me around the scruff of the neck and he said, "You respect other people's property, you never do that again,

• 34:15Speaker 00

  you go and apologise." And it was very much tough love, and that for me was the male role model, was be tough, be strong, be respectful. And there's another one, and I remember when I'd done something wrong and I was really, I'd completely fucked up and I was so upset, and my mum wasn't there for whatever reason, and I was expecting my dad to sort of come and go, "You know, Ben, everything's gonna be alright", and he just sat there and he went, "What are you gonna do about it?" And that feeling of, "Ben, you have to be strong, you have to take control of the situations, you have to take control", and he always told me, he said, "You have to be mentally strong, you have to be mentally strong", it was something that was drilled into me from a young age. But that thing of, "I don't want to be coddled, I want, I just want the truth and I wanna

• 35:00Speaker 00

  know what I've got to do, I work it out in my own head how I get there", but I just, I think that speaks back to that thing that you've just said of, it feels like things have to be much more tangible, what are you gonna do about it, rather than, I don't want someone, personally, and maybe I'm different to others, I don't want someone just to sit there and stroke my ego and tell me that everything's gonna be okay, and I'm okay the way I am. Because I think that over a prolonged period of time can definitely lead to entitlement, I think it can lead to softness and weakness, and I don't think it's the right thing in the long term, certainly not for me.

• 35:32Chris Williamson?

  It's one of the problems that you have between male and female communication. All of the guys that are in relationships will know that sometimes they're having a conversation with their missus and they are trying to offer up solutions, which every time that they offer up a potential solution infuriates the conversation more. And this is because men are speaking to women in the way that they would want to be spoken to, which is, "Find me a solution." On average, there are feminine men and there are masculine women. But on average, it's what's the solution? How can we move forward about this? And there is a large chunk of girls who want to be heard. Just look, hear the things that I'm saying.

• 36:14Chris Williamson?

  Maybe we can talk about the the solutions a little bit further down the line. But for now, I just want to be able to like, make me feel like you you understand and you hear what I'm saying.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:24Chris Williamson?

  And you're there laying out a tactical operational plan of what it is. So I think that that's an interesting arc that we're talking about here, going from what's the first level of of like, you know, male development, which maybe came about perhaps due to men starting to feel like they were less required, you know, two thousand and like six to two thousand and twelve. You are more visible online. Just generally as a man, people are starting to scrutinize the way that you look. You're able to compare yourself to people.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  But wasn't this the point where obesity obesity became a thing in the early two thousands, where everyone sort of said, I think it was it was at the point where the US became, it was something like forty or fifty percent obese. And then I'd never heard the term obese until the early two thousands, and it might just be an age thing. Then all of a sudden, obesity became a thing. And that's when I remember it being at school, they took all the chocolate bars away and then started putting in, I don't know, broccoli or something else. So all of a sudden, health became, it was the Jamie Oliver era. I remember really being really annoyed because they got rid of the dairy milks at our school.

• 37:27Chris Williamson?

  Fuck Jamie Oliver.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  I can't believe it. But do you know, it it, I think that's where it started for me. Health definitely became a thing. And I think you're right. All of a sudden, posting pictures on social media, comparing yourself to people that a thousand miles away.

• 37:38Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  All of these things definitely would have played into that.

• 37:43Chris Williamson?

  So we rolled the clock forward and people have integrated the fact that physical fitness is something that's important. Mental health, everybody always knew was in there, but we then needed strategies to be able to move forward. A lot of your audience, Gymshark especially, is particularly unique in that it's split. It it kind of came up, focused very heavily on male influencers. And now I would guess you probably sell more.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  Women's wear.

• 38:10Chris Williamson?

  Women's wear.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:10Chris Williamson?

  Right? So you have this kind of odd flip, but you have been on the front lines of observing male identity, masculinity and its challenges.

• 38:22Chris Williamson?

  What do you think about masculinity in twenty twenty three and the challenges that young men are facing?

• 38:26Speaker 00

  God.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  I definitely think that the coddle culture certainly isn't helping from a male perspective. I think we're starting to see more good male role models in what feels like the last three or four months. Recently, it feels like there's more great male role models that have popped up, which I think is helpful.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  I think I saw something that you said previously around point me towards a great male role model, whereas now I can think of at least three or four, whereas previously I definitely couldn't. I think that's helpful. And if I think to male role models previously, especially for me growing up, other than footballers as a Brit, I genuinely can't think of any.

• 39:18Chris Williamson?

  What does it say that men need those role models now?

• 39:21Speaker 00

  I don't think everyone needs a role model. I think it's important to have role models. And I think you pick different people for different things. I don't think there's one archetypical male that exists somewhere that does everything, that has great muscle mass, is highly intelligent, all these sorts of things. And that's what personally I'll do. I'll have people that inspire me from a fitness perspective, from an intellectual perspective, and so on. So I think having that helps. I think it's tough. I think because personally for me, I'm as inspired by someone's personal life, particularly now, as their professional life. Put a bloke in front of me who's a billionaire, it's cool and everything. But

• 40:03Speaker 00

  you'd rather have 1% of their wealth with a wonderful family life and you have a great time with your family, you love your job, you challenge yourself intellectually. That full package to me is significantly more important than just a numerical financial figure. But I think that may be, I think men might also skew that way the older they get and as their life circumstances change in the same way that mine have. Because if you said that to 18-year-old Ben...

• 40:32Chris Williamson?

  Give me the billions.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I think I would have taken that every time.

• 40:34Chris Williamson?

  So many of the trends that we're seeing, I think, at the moment can just be explained by cohorts of...

• 40:43Chris Williamson?

  Guys and girls arriving and then phasing out into new areas of their life. So you could say that so many people were, and this is stupid, right? Because everybody is born each day, there is someone born, but they congeal together into a culture that moves as a group.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:01Chris Williamson?

  And then there is another bubble behind. Can you imagine what?

• 41:03Speaker 00

  It's definitely that, because I think you and I grew up in different parts of the UK and have been on very different journeys. But I think if we were to write down every year since 2006, I'm sure we probably have had similar views and experiences.

• 41:15Chris Williamson?

  Correct. We've tracked a lot of it. We looked up to the same people. We read the same stuff. We got exposed to the same stuff.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:20Chris Williamson?

  Um, followed each other on Facebook. Um, so we have this sort of bubble that's going on and then a particular trend, a particular influence occurs. That group finds identity with it and then phases out of it and that falls away and evaporates. So, you know, Andrew Tate just got out of prison yesterday or this morning or whatever. He has a particular cohort of young guys that look up to him. But that cohort over time is going to fall away. They will, maybe he'll grow with them. Maybe they'll find that he's even more compelling as they grow up or maybe not. But for us and our age and who it was that we grew up with, it very much was very physique

• 42:04Chris Williamson?

  focused, very much about how lean you were, how big you were. It was that Christian Guzman and Matt Ogus and like Jeff's side and all that. And then that fell away. And for us, what we needed, I think, and for a lot of the guys that are listening, because they're all the same age, we realized that we'd focused skin deep for so long. And maybe we'd got really good at focusing skin deep and we're in really good condition and we're wearing loads of like cool clothes or whatever. But that there was, it was a little hollow perhaps inside of that and that we needed something else. It's like, okay, I've developed the fitness side of me.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, now what?

• 42:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, give me some fucking substance. And I think that that cohort, if you were to pick the archetypal, like Peterson, Rogan, Harris, Shapiro, Alain de Botton fanboy.

• 42:51Chris Williamson?

  There is a huge cohort that would have come out of like the Misk bodybuilding forums.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:57Chris Williamson?

  That would have come out of like gym culture and bro culture, thinking this is if only I had the six pack of Greg Plitt. That will fix all of my problems. I've got myself to a stage where I'm happy with my body and shit, I still have problems.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  It's, is it, was it the Jim Carrey quote that goes something like, I hope you will get to achieve your dreams so that you can realise that maybe it's not so great. It was worse for that effect, isn't it?

• 43:21Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  But I feel like it's very similar from a facet perspective as maybe it is a financial perspective. I think people are willing to snap their back to get to a certain financial figure in search of happiness. I feel like I can speak from personal experience that whilst it does help in many, many different ways, you will not find happiness purely through financial, you know, the pursuit of financial gains.

• 43:41Chris Williamson?

  What are you worth? Do you know what you're worth?

• 43:43Speaker 00

  I try to think. I don't know. I do not want to know nor think. And I think the other.

• 43:47Chris Williamson?

  Why? Why don't you want to know?

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Because it's just all numbers on a screen. It doesn't, it doesn't, so much of my wealth is tied up in Jim Shark, which has a fluctuating value that change on the day. If I was to assign any form of self-worth or spend too much time considering it, then my mood would fluctuate more than the weather. And I think that that's something for me that I, I would, I'd never ever think about that. And I swear to God, that is the last thing I think about at all.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  But again, I think maybe that is an age thing, a situation thing, being married, kids, all these sorts of things. I've got great ambitions for the business and I want the business to be at a certain level, you know, and that a spit out of that is to be worth a certain level and that excites me, but it's certainly not why I go to work every day.

• 44:35Chris Williamson?

  One of the other things that has happened over the last 10 years particularly has been the body positivity movement. When Jim Shock first came around, those leggings that had the line under the ass crack.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:47Chris Williamson?

  Uh, at the bottom that like accentuated bums and so on and so forth.

• 44:53Chris Williamson?

  Women and their challenges in terms of roles, I think, I'm terminally online, I spend all of my time thinking about human nature and how it relates to the world around us. We're talking a lot about masculinity and men's problems. I flew out to Qatar to have a debate about this only two weeks ago. If I was to pick a trend at the moment that I think in five years' time is going to become the new existential crisis, I think it's girls. I think that we have insane rates. Well, we do, we know that we do, the peer research just came out about this, unbelievable rates. It's like one in two to like 60% of girls in their teens have serious depression or mental health problems. One in two, right? It's unbelievable. So I think that that's coming down the pike. I think that it's

• 45:35Chris Williamson?

  something that we need to be concerned about. But given the fact that you've seen a lot of changes, and one of them has been the body positivity movement, you have a wife that was involved heavily in the fitness world and was doing the influence stuff. Have you got a viewpoint on that? Have you got a viewpoint on the challenges that women have faced and?

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think the interesting thing with that is, and to be honest, I think there's points where conversations with Noel, I think we pushed it too far at points. This is the thing with running a company. You're running a company here, there's this thread of trend of conversation, and you need to straddle the line between the trend and the conversation, and then the consistency of where you want the company to go. And there were definitely points where we strayed, I think, too far towards that body positivity conversation, because I think it got hijacked and went too far.

• 46:28Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Now, the one thing I would say is I was a skinny kid who wanted to build muscle, and we at GymShark don't believe that a skinny male in the UK that wants to build muscle, we don't believe that his ambition and his desire to go to the gym is any better than an American girl that wants to lose weight, right? You're in the gym because you want to improve, and everyone wants to develop, whether it is muscle building, you want to run a faster 5K, you want to deadlift 300 kilos, you want to lose, I don't know, 30 pounds of fat, 50 pounds of fat, whatever it is. We don't tier goals. We say that everyone's goal is equal. And again, I think that's become more relevant to me, because I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago. It was six-pack abs or bust was the ambition for me, whereas now it's very, very different. So I think that, from that point of view, that's where

• 47:13Speaker 00

  I think the message needs to be. The bit where I start to get concerned is when people start to promote unhealthy physiques. And that's not to say that different physiques shouldn't be shown, but to promote an unhealthy physique and for me to suggest that that unhealthy physique is somewhat right, beneficial for an individual, that's what concerns me slightly.

• 47:37Chris Williamson?

  And this is on both sides of the fence, right? You can look at the guy that walks around, you can look at the guy that walks around at 5% body fat and say that this is a well-balanced weight. Meanwhile, testosterone's in the toilet, hasn't had an erection in six months, irritable.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Some of the people that I know who have some of the most incredible physiques you've ever seen have the worst relationship with their body mentally. And you'll know that as well as I do. People don't step on stage in some of these huge competitions and, and some of them are absolutely fine. Some of them have deep rooted mental issues, which is why they're putting their body through such trauma. And I think most of those people that are smart realise that they can only do that a certain amount of times before the risk becomes too high. So you're right, it's not just people that are overweight, it's people that are literally bulking up beyond all doubt and then dieting themselves on the verge of starvation in order to win a competition. And there's, you're right, there's extremes at both ends. But I, I think the, the thing that concerns me is just the fact that I don't think we should be

• 48:39Speaker 00

  promoting the extremes in a way that suggests that they're healthy. I think there are certain elements where you can understand, admire, whatever you want to call it, the extremes. So if I, I'm massively inspired by, if I see a picture of Dorian Yates, another guy from Birmingham, Phil Heath.

• 48:55Chris Williamson?

  It's just because of the accent, it's not the photo, it's the accent.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  But even closer to home, like Ryan Terry.

• 49:00Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Seeing him in pictures is cool, seeing him in real life is insane. Like I look at him and my admiration for his mental fortitude to get himself into that position is absolutely incredible. Where I'd start to worry is if he got himself into that condition and remained there for a prolonged period of time. Like I think that, that has to be of concern, just in the same way that if a friend or family member of mine was to get quite overweight, I wouldn't sit there and say that that's okay. And that doesn't mean I wouldn't care for them or love them any, any less, but I would say, listen, I, I would say it's beneficial for your long-term health if you were to get into decent physical condition. I don't think everyone needs six-pack abs. Everyone doesn't need to be able to deadlift 300 kilos.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  But moving, being in the gym and having a certain level of fitness, I think is only helpful for everyone.

• 49:47Chris Williamson?

  You have recently had twins.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 49:50Chris Williamson?

  How old are they now?

• 49:51Speaker 00

  They are fourteen weeks today.

• 49:55Chris Williamson?

  Right, right, they're fresh, they're fresh out of the oven. I remember listening to a podcast that you did a little while ago where you were reflecting on a conversation that you had with your EA. And she'd said something to the effect of, you're not going to be able to do this when you have kids. And you'd said, manana, manana, I'll deal with it when it's in front of me, you don't need to worry me about that. Given that you are now at the coalface,

• 50:21Chris Williamson?

  what have been the lessons, introspections, changes that you've noticed over the last fourteen weeks?

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Well, first and foremost, I was wrong. So Zoe was right, she was saying that you can't continue to work. I don't know if it was in this way or in this way, I think it was more in this way when you have kids. And the reason was is,

• 50:42Speaker 00

  very obviously, my life and Jim's just blended into one. It was a seven day a week job. I'd sit there and I'd work on a Saturday, on a Sunday, on a Monday, it would be fairly loose and free and open, I'd just work all the time. Cool, and I love my job and I continue to do so. So I wasn't sat there thinking, oh god, I'm annoyed that I'm working on a Sunday, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And the fact that I would travel a lot and I'd be away for lots of weekends and things like this. Whereas now, all of a sudden, having kids, I want to be at home on the weekends, but the work is still there. So it's gotten a lot more intense for me in the sense that, again, we just did a trip out. We did a trip to Colorado a few months ago and what we'd normally do is fly out on the Saturday, look around on the Sunday, maybe go out to Breckenridge or somewhere like that,

• 51:23Speaker 00

  relax, work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, fly home Friday, make a leisurely journey back from Heathrow on a Saturday. Whereas now it's fly out Monday, work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, fly home Thursday, lunchtime, land home Friday, walk through the front door and have a child thrown at me sort of thing. So it's very, very different. And like, I would say I've become significantly more purposeful in my time and that's in every facet of my life, right? So if I'm at work, I'm at Work and if I'm at home, I'm at home. And previously I'd be tapping away a lot more on my phone. I've started to like turn my phone off on Sunday afternoons. I'm going to try and do that potentially for a whole day on Sunday, just so that I'm present and with them.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  Um, the travel, more present when I'm at home and at work. And I think things like that, it certainly made me think, and they're, they're still very young, right? They're newborn at the moment, so they're not. Necessarily noticing if I'm on my phone, but I'm very aware of the fact that within a few months. I don't want my kids to have a dad that was just messing around on his phone all the time and.

• 52:22Chris Williamson?

  There's an interesting insight that I learned there, uh, again, from Adam Lane Smith, which is. A lot of the time, parents are considerate and becoming increasingly more aware of their kids using devices, right? Do you want your child to have to be only distracted by YouTube for kids or whatever? One of the things a lot of parents don't consider is the fact that if they hear that ding. And the ding causes mum or dad to look at the phone. The child's relationship to the phone and the relative amount of attention that the parents have with them. Is something that is very, very quickly forgotten. I think, and you know, again, don't have kids, can't wait to be a dad, but when I do. My, uh, grand idea of how I'm going to have a relationship with technology may get thrown out of the fucking window. However.

• 53:07Chris Williamson?

  I think that there is like a really, really good argument to be made that if you're in the room with your kid, the phone shouldn't be in there as well. That if you want to use a device, step outside of the room because we just do not know. What second order consequences that are of your child playing second or third string to something that's in your hand.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And these are all the things that I've now started to think about that I would previously never have thought about. And even stupid things like, uh, the job is still busy. My travel is certainly reduced. We're like renovating a farm in the middle of nowhere where we want to be able to have the kids grow up. Want to be able to grow all our own food and like live a proper like.

• 53:48Chris Williamson?

  Ranch life.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  And, and, and just little things like that. And it's, it's so different to the way that I grew up. And it, it might be a combination of me getting older, being in the position I'm in. I think it's just a position that we are in, in the world as well. I think with everything that's gone on politically globally with COVID and everything. I think the amount of people that have just gone, fuck this, I just want to be self-sufficient and do my own thing to a degree, I think is. I think has increased dramatically. So, yeah, I think it's definitely changed my perspective on lots of things. And a lot of people were saying. I know Noel was asking me this. He was, he was interested to watch how my relationship with work changed.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  And I'm arguably even more hell bent on making this a success and working incredibly hard at work because I want my kids to look at me and think that's, I want to be the role model, I want to be a true role model.

• 54:44Chris Williamson?

  Ryan Terry said the same thing.

• 54:45Speaker 00

  And I want to work hard and I want to be successful and I want them to see that. And I want to do it in the right way. Whereas I think some people thought, oh, it's been just, being honest, I don't have to work. I could retire and live on that farm and happily ever after.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  But is that the sort of dad that I want my kids to see? Because that's not real life. And I want them to see that you have to work hard in order to, you know, in order to get what you want from life. And I think it's the right thing that for me, and that's what I want them to do. And I want them to find a job that they love. They don't need to be millionaires. They don't need to earn loads of money. That in no way bothers me in the slightest, but for them to grow up seeing their dad doing something he loves, but also having a good time with them, I think is really exciting to me. And that's what I want them to do as they grow up.

• 55:34Chris Williamson?

  You have the opportunity to give your kids materially opportunities that you didn't have as a kid. The lack of opportunities that you had, the exposure to your uncle or granddad that was making stoves and risking it all on a hundred grand stove or whatever that was shipping to Germany. Has formed you into a person, not only that you're proud of, but one that has objectively been able to become quite successful. How do you consider marrying the difference between giving your kids the opportunity that you have materially, whilst putting them through the challenges that you know were formative and important for you to get to where you are now?

• 56:11Speaker 00

  Again, that's what I'm thinking about a lot. And so me and Robin have spoken. So they're definitely not going to private school. So that's something that's important to me. And I'm the sort of person that reads into this, right? I read all the papers. There is a dramatically higher likelihood they will be quote unquote successful if they go to private school than if they go to, I don't know what you call it, a normal school. They're not going to go to private school. I mean, if you speak to Robyn, she wants to homeschool them. I'm I'm not quite on that boat yet. I'm happy just.

• 56:39Chris Williamson?

  I think that's an American, an American Canadian influence heavily. It's very rare over here in the UK.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:44Chris Williamson?

  America, Canada, a little bit less.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  She tells me that that movement is growing rapidly, but I haven't looked into that yet.

• 56:49Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  Um, for me, I think it's important to go to a normal school. I think, listen, they're going to grow up in a nice house with nice things and they're going to be able to have connections to cool people and great people in a way. But I think for me, it's about just bringing them up in the right way, in the way that my parents did, in the way that my grandparents did. It it was really important to me that they were born and they would have the opportunity to spend time with my grandparents, their their great grandparents, which, you know, touch wood, at the moment, they can. That's really important to me because they have a completely different viewpoint on life. So similar to pretty much, I guess, every kid in the UK. Both of my, all of my great grandparents on the male side all fought in the war, right?

• 57:31Speaker 00

  My grandparents, who I spent a lot of time with growing up, would tell me stories about what it was like growing up when they grew up. My nan would talk to me about how in her garden, they would grow one vegetable, next door, they would grow another, and they would all share at the end of the week because that was the way that it worked when when they were rationing. My other grandfather, who I work closely with, tell me about when his dad came back from war and the difficulties in the family and the family split up because of different issues he came back with. And I felt fortunate to spend so much time with my grandparents growing up because I didn't, I don't think I had a conventional upbringing of someone that was born in nineteen ninety two. I had this weird mix of someone that was born in nineteen ninety two, but then also a nineteen sixties style upbringing because I spent so much time with my grandparents as well and they.

• 58:13Chris Williamson?

  That might account for the tradition.

• 58:15Speaker 00

  Yes, which I think it does. They taught me so much and because of the amount of time that I spent with them. So I think for me to somehow instill those values and beliefs in my kids is really, really important to me. Um, how I do that, I don't know because some things you just have to learn yourself. And one of the things that I learnt myself that I, that other people couldn't for whatever reason, teach me was I had this feeling of, I just can't wait to get out of, get out of the UK. I can't wait to get out of England. I want to go somewhere. I want to be in Australia. I want to be in the US. I want to see the world and everywhere is going to be so much better than this because England is this and it's that and it's all these things and. I'm really lucky, right? I've travelled into more countries than I could ever imagine.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  I've spent lots and lots of time across loads of different states in the United, uh, in the US, in Canada, across Asia, all these different places. And I can't help but feel, the more I travel, I feel more and more lucky to have been born in the UK. And if you'd have said that to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old Ben, he would have not believed you in a million years. But I'm s- and we, again, we had the opportunity to raise our kids anywhere in the world. And I chose here because I think it's such an amazingly brilliant place to raise a kid. And you're right, there's this, what you want to call it, crabs in a bucket syndrome. There are negatives, the media can be a bit of a pain in the arse, and we've had more prime ministers in the last six

• 59:43Speaker 00

  months than probably most have had in the last six years. All of these different things. But when I look at it, the net positives of being here are so great. What are they? Net positives of being in the UK. People forget that if you want to start a business, business in the UK, especially an ecommerce business, one, we speak English, which is great, it's helpful for communicating with the, the western world. Two, you can ship things to Europe in twenty-four hours, pretty much seventy million people in the UK within twenty, uh, like within twenty-four hours. So you've got the whole of Europe and the UK on your doorstep. A lot of that is down to the fact that there's so many countries in Europe, each one have, has its own sort of operational set, whether it's DBD, Royal Mail, or these different companies. Um, so the operational supply chain of Europe is

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  incredible. You can ship to the east coast of the United States in twenty-four, forty-eight hours. I know people that started very similar businesses to Jim Shark at a very similar time in Australia, and I think they were incredibly talented. And I think some part of the reason that we

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  We grew significantly more quickly than they did, not completely down to this. It's because we were in the UK and we could ship to all of these different countries significantly more quickly and they were shipping from places like Melbourne. It was taking them three weeks to get to the US and Europe and places like that.

• 1:01:00Chris Williamson?

  Beyond the advantages specifically in the UK of e-commerce companies.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  Cultural advantages. Culturally, we punch way above our weight. The amount of British actors, presenters and things like that that you see in the US, in the UK, in the Australia and places like that, it's incredible. I think we've got an amazing education system. I think, albeit we've got a turbulent and mental government, it's way better than 99% of other countries.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  And I know people moan and I know they're a mistake. And this is the other thing as well, and this is what frustrates me with a lot of people is you meet so many people, especially in the UK and the US that go, I don't think he's great, right? Biden made this stupid mistake. Surprise, surprise, he's an old bloke, right? Reece Sunak made this stupid mistake. And I'm like, yeah, but anyone that's worked in any business or in any large scale organisation has made a million mistakes. It's really fucking hard. You couldn't do a better job. And I think, I think we just need to take stock of the fact, for the most part, we have it really, really, really good. And do we have the most competent people in our government that we could possibly have? No, but.

• 1:02:13Chris Williamson?

  Where does?

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Where does? And I think your alternative is if you would go, if you were to go purely on competency, you'd probably end up significantly closer to a China or somewhere like that.

• 1:02:23Chris Williamson?

  Correct, correct.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  And I always say to people, you could go and live in China. And I've never met anyone that says, yes, I'd love to do that. So I think, I think the benefits from an economic perspective of the UK and a country that punches above its weight, that has great connections into the West, to the entirety of the West, that has great social influence across the world, we live in a safe country.

• 1:02:46Chris Williamson?

  Are you, yeah, that's not nothing as well. A lot of the concerns at the moment do come in America, a lot of my friends, the reason that you've got Waldorf schools, have you heard of those? Okay, so there's a bunch of alternative, semi-alternative.

• 1:03:04Chris Williamson?

  Schooling systems are very based around being outdoors, teaching kids to hunt and dress animals and stuff, very much back to basics there. But like, let's be real, one of the reasons is that they're very concerned about some of the ideologies that are being pushed to kids in schools.

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  Correct, yes.

• 1:03:24Chris Williamson?

  That, for me, looking at the UK, for all that the US coughs and we catch a cold, it is 100 of the amount of psychological contagion, memetic horse shittery that goes on in the US.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  It's frightening.

• 1:03:41Chris Williamson?

  Is that something that you have highly considered?

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  100%. And I think, I think maybe you see this more being in the US and for you living in the US and for me spending a decent amount of time in the US, I think you see more of that. Now, if you were to, again, this is where my, I guess my optimism comes out. If you zoom out, what generally happens, it will be like this, but it will, like the S and P, it will generally trend up and the US will get better and better. And I'm a massive long-term believer in the United States. I think it is an amazing place, full of amazing people. I'm just thinking for the next 50 years that I'm going to be on this planet, how much of that do I want to take? Whereas in the UK, they go to a local school, it's not hunting, but they'll do forestry, they have a little place in the local village where they get to grow their own food, they learn good skills, they'll

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  do well enough and they'll have decent enough education on English and maths and things like that. They can pursue what they want to creatively. I think it's great. And I think, I think, listen, there's so many things that excite me about the UK. And I think we've got it really, really good. I really do. And I think there's so many people in the UK and in the US for that matter, that just constantly focus on the negatives. And like I said, I'm more of an optimist and I think that the long-term effect will be a net positive as well.

• 1:04:58Chris Williamson?

  I think so too.

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  But you're right, I do have concerns over those exact things and I do think about them.

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  And maybe it's different for me because I'm in a privileged position where I can just choose to not allow my child to be involved in certain things that I don't want them to. If you live in a place and that school provides that and you're not happy with it and you're stuck with it, maybe my opinion would be slightly different.

• 1:05:21Chris Williamson?

  That's a concern for a lot of people, that they can't rip their kids out of a situation where they don't agree with the particular ideology, the particular cultural milieu that's going on. But I mean, you've said that you've done a lot of the research. I was talking to Ryan about this yesterday and he's, I think his two-year-old is at private school at the moment and at this school, there's kids turning up in helicopters, there's kids turning up on, in Bentleys. And, you know, he's, I think even more working class.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  As working class.

• 1:05:53Chris Williamson?

  Correct. Yeah, yeah, he's scum. He's absolute scum. And he-

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  Ryan Terry, by the way, tells everybody he was a plumber. I think the lads were out at a shoot at Airbnb in LA and the toilet broke. And he didn't know how to fix it. So I think we should also at some point dig in to understand how good a plumber he was.

• 1:06:11Chris Williamson?

  Oh, you think that this is-

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  I think even though he was, I'm not debating whether or not he was a plumber. I just think you're right. I think he was a shit plumber. So I think-

• 1:06:16Chris Williamson?

  Ryan, I'm afraid that you need to come through and fix some pipes for us in order to prove that your backstory is not completely just fab- confabulated.

• 1:06:26Chris Williamson?

  He's got this problem at the moment and I mentioned it to him yesterday and I may as well tell it to you too.

• 1:06:31Chris Williamson?

  Especially given that you've got twins, which is pretty interesting. Are they identical twins?

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Chris Williamson?

  Wow, monosygotic twins. Need to introduce you to Robert Ploman. So he's the number one behavioral geneticist on the planet. Every pair of twins born in the UK between 1991 and 1994 were enrolled into this study. And they ended up holding on to, I think around about 50 to 60,000 pairs

• 1:06:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:50Chris Williamson?

  of twins. And he has teased apart the differences between nature and nurture more than anybody, right?

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  I'd be interested in that because I haven't got into the detail of it, but there's there's, even though you've got the same DNA, there's environmental factors that cause the DNA to basically, I don't know what you want to call it. This is where you sort of get to the edge of my competency, but they show in different ways, don't they? And I'm interested to know what, how that works.

• 1:07:14Chris Williamson?

  So the epigenetic changes, how does the environment influence the genes? To be honest, Ploman doesn't really get into that much. And for me- Like epigenetics, vibrational frequencies, quantum astral route, all that stuff is a little bit like the god of the gaps argument to me. It's like a place where we don't quite understand, as far as I can tell, just what's going on. And people use it as a wedge in which they can drive basically wishful thinking and desire. So when it comes to kids and schools overall, when you account for everything, genetics, socioeconomic status, all the rest

• 1:07:56Chris Williamson?

  of it, taking a kid out of one school and putting them into another has less than 5% of a difference in their academic outcomes. The biggest influence, it seems like that you have in the nurture side of nature and nurture is not you, it's not your wife, it's the parents of the kids that your kids hang around with, it's the kids that your kids hang around with, and it's the coaches, the schoolteachers, which is ruthless for parents to find out that they are not the biggest influence on their child's life. Like, the biggest determinant of your future wealth level is not that of your parents, it's the average of the postcode that you grow up in. Why? Well, it's because who are you exposed to? Who are the people that you take your values and your virtues from?

• 1:08:40Chris Williamson?

  Now, again, this is on average. If you had a family which was incredibly insular, you know, yours multi-generational, four generations of people interacting with each other, you spent a lot of time with that, you're going to supplement what typically would have happened socially outside of the home, like, still outside of the home but within one family structure, right? But my point being that the number one piece of advice that I would give to parents that want to raise kids with values, work ethic, all the rest of it, that they want to have, carefully vet the kids that your kids spend time with, carefully vet the parents of the kids that your kids spend time with, carefully vet the coaches of the sports teams, the teachers at the schools. That is some of the longest leverage

• 1:09:25Chris Williamson?

  that you can find. If you want to have kids that hold those sorts of values, that have the upbringing and the principles that you want them to have, those are the real long levers, I think.

• 1:09:37Speaker 00

  I have no idea.

• 1:09:38Chris Williamson?

  Really important, man. Really, really important.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  Robin will see that and she'll think, I definitely want to homeschool the boys now.

• 1:09:44Chris Williamson?

  Well, homeschooling's not nothing as well. Like, you know, I'm speaking as an only child here that...

• 1:09:50Chris Williamson?

  Undersocializing kids puts them in advantages in some regards because you have massive amounts of self-sufficiency, total comfort with working in isolation, with being in isolation, with taking risks, says the guy that moved out to America at thirty-three to like just try and speak to people on the internet. But the problem is that you need to really work hard to offset the lack of ability in terms of socialization that we'd accumulate over six hours a day in school around other kids, being exposed to other cultures. Here is someone from a Muslim background. Here is someone that's Jewish. Here is someone that's from a wealthy family. Here is someone that's from a poor family. Here's somebody that's misbehaved. Here's somebody that's a bully. Here's all of those different iterations.

• 1:10:33Chris Williamson?

  I think my concern, I love the idea of homeschooling, but my concern is how less worldly and street-smart do you make your kids? It's a

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  What's the consequence?

• 1:10:45Chris Williamson?

  It's kind of a coddling again, in a regard. Now, a solution for this, another thing which is happening a lot in LA, in America at the moment, but especially in Austin, people are making homesteads where ten families of my rich friends will find a hundred acres somewhere near Austin, set up with a bunch of kids. So you'll maybe have, you know, ten, fifteen kids and they'll homeschool. It's not far off just a school now, right? Like if it's just you and a bunch of friends. And I wonder, you know, how do you blend the two? Could you offset homeschooling with a different sports club every single night to try and

• 1:11:29Chris Williamson?

  get that degree of socialization, exposure to different cultures, different people, different situations? Very difficult. I mean, you know, Ryan Terry, his kid sounds like he's basically on a pro athlete's training schedule, like five, six days a week, gymnastics, swimming, karate, da-da-da-da-da, like each different night.

• 1:11:48Chris Williamson?

  But I don't know, man, this is a whole uncharted territory at the moment. And the fact that you've got twins is just going to be such a fascinating experiment for you to watch.

• 1:12:00Speaker 00

  And we're going to hopefully, touch wood, have a lot more kids as well. We want to have a big family. And again, that's important to me and certainly to Robin as well. Having a big family would be nice.

• 1:12:08Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned that your misses might want a slightly bigger family than you'd anticipated.

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  I thought three weeks after the birth, when chaos was at its all time high, that she would have tapered her ambitions. But she still definitely wants four or five kids, so.

• 1:12:21Chris Williamson?

  Apparently it is, the people have a genetic predisposition to having twins as well.

• 1:12:28Chris Williamson?

  Matt Walsh, guy that works for the Daily Wire, I think he's six kids deep, but that's only been four births. He's had like two pairs of twins in that. So you could be, also my business partner, Darren, he'd had two and he wasn't sure. They were like talking, should we have a third, should we not have a third? And then his misses had said, like, I really want to have one.

• 1:12:50Chris Williamson?

  And he realised, up until they had the scan, he's like, fuck, we could go from two to four here.

• 1:12:56Chris Williamson?

  And he wasn't ready for, he would have to have changed the car. He would have, they would have had to have immediately bought a new house. All hell would have broken loose. So just, you know, think, think carefully moving forward. What are you looking to do over the next few years? Like personally, in terms of the things that you want to develop, the ways that you want to learn about yourself, about the world, impact that you want to have, what's your focus going to be, do you think, over the next few years?

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  Clearly my professional focus is solely on Jim Shark and building Jim Shark out into a great business. We're at this peculiar point now where we're trying to transition into a really global business where, like at the moment, we, I mean, we sell globally, but we're not a true global business. So we're trying to really develop that. And we've just, just hired in and built like a new leadership team that, I think the last person joined in January, so a fairly fresh new team. So that's important to me, like bedding that in and making sure the business is ready for the next phase of growth. Personally, I just want to get settled in our forever home and get that finished and nice and done. That will take a year or two, well, hopefully not, not two, sort of 12, 18 months.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  I think as well, I, I know we've spoken about this previously, but I would be interested in. How and whether my content develops into speaking more openly about maybe some of the things that we've spoken about today without being overly involved in politics and especially not American politics because I am not, I'm not an American and I know that a Brit talking about American politics generally doesn't end particularly positively. So, but I guess more around the way that the UK is shaping up, especially from a commercial perspective, because I think I've got value to add there. So I would definitely consider how I can talk more openly about those things.

• 1:14:41Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever been offered, you've spoken on boards and stuff, would you ever take a more formal role?

• 1:14:47Speaker 00

  No, no, I wouldn't have time now. I've been offered lots of board seats and involvement into lots of things. The only thing I've ever said yes to would be the government's Business Advisory Board. The only area that I would take time to contribute would be to the UK government, whoever it is. And to be honest, I'm sort of agnostic as to who it is because I don't feel as though I would be contributing to them as individuals, I'd be contributing to the system as a whole, yeah, which I think is beneficial regardless of who's there.

• 1:15:14Chris Williamson?

  Ben Francis, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do, where should they go?

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  YouTube, search Ben Francis on YouTube, Instagram, all the usual social medias.

• 1:15:24Chris Williamson?

  Ben, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.

• 1:15:25Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.