Modern Wisdom - #619 - Ben Francis - Gymshark CEO Explains His Strategy For Global Success

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

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 - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Ben Francis, the CEO and founder of Jim Shark. Bootstrapping a company from nothing to a multi-billion dollar valuation at a young age isn't easy, starting a family with twins while navigating a changing political landscape and supply attentions from the east makes it even harder. But there are some principles Ben has developed to survive this chaos. Expect to learn what three traits Ben has observed in all of the high-performance 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 in a business, what founders don't know about the challenges of being a CEO and much more. I've been talking about this live show thing for a little while now and we have got dates and locations. Dublin Thursday the 16th of November, Manchester Friday the 17th of November and London Saturday the 18th of November. I will be there.

Go to Chris Williamson.live right now to sign up for tickets. They're going on sale this Thursday and if you sign up you will get first access. Those are the only dates that we are adding for now. There will be lots more coming next year, but for now it is Dublin, Manchester, or London. So if you fancy coming to see me, head to Chris Williamson.live. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ben Francis. 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 performance that you've spoken to? I feel like there's the obvious one, 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 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 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 who know that Jim Shark House had a great relationship with Shopify for a long, long time. And Toby and particularly Harley 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 that's really interesting to me. It's been massively inspiring. What's an example of Harley's work and home life showing up in a way that you found inspirational? Well, that was a few. I mean, there's many. But the first and foremost, I think, then 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, which is really cool, right? Anyway, 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. I think there was something particularly he had to do was like say nine p.m. 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 9 o'clock. And he was actually a really good conversation, it was a really good chat. I think everyone was really interested in him because there was a lot of shop-of-vise 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 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 you wanted to do, by the way, is you wanted to get off, because you wanted to speak to his family, and you 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. Listen, it's similar with other people, there's a guy who's based in London that runs, I

think it might be the world's biggest digital market in agency, a company called AKQA, a guy called a Jars, who is just like a really, really good human being. And he just, he seems to maintain relationships with people over 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 We were talking about this before we started this conversation. I had with Homozi where he said that Ego will keep you poor rather than make you rich and And in no 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. Yeah. I really believe that. And I think there's this other thing as well.

And again, just to put into context is shop of eyes a business that I don't know, it must be 40 times, 50 times bigger than gym shop. Do you know what it's revenues up to you? I don't know, it must be 40 times, 50 times bigger than Jim Sharp. I mean, I don't know what it's revenues are for you. I don't know what it's revenues are, but I know it's just vastly, vastly bigger than Jim Sharp. And we might never, ever be at 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. Remembering that Harley and Toby's company

is the company that facilitates your company. Right, yeah, exactly. You're like the grandchild of the shop of I business. And I'm, they might, I don't know that. If they're not, then they're one of the biggest employees 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, I, here he is, he's small fry, I know everything. 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 you see and what you interested in, what excite 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. Talk to me about the problems that you have of being a person with opinions who has a private life, who has a misses, who now has a pair of twins, congratulations. a pair of twins, congratulations. 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. You have a fine conflict between those two things? Yeah, absolutely. And I try to manage it in the right way, because you're right. I've got very specific opinion 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 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'll put my opinion forward in the right way in the right place and there are certain things that I would like to talk about publicly

because of, you know, where it's the content I consume, the things that I read and I guess my viewpoints on certain things. But then again, I also see other people, again, without name and names, that come from a completely different industry and then start 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 bulletproof. I completely believe in it and back, you know and back what I'm talking about. But you're right, being a CEO of a consumer focus business, we want our product to be

available to everyone and we want lots of different types of people to buy a 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 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 higher likelihood you have of alienating certain people at some point. I guess for me it's just at what point do I make that decision?

What do you bothered? Could you go the rest of your life having private opinions that it kept private? Or do you feel a bit of discomfort about the fact that you don't get to maybe proselytise about stuff that you do personally genuinely care about, but maybe the sort of thing that... And we're not talking about, like're not gonna 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, it's for instance, right? So the Rogan N word compilation video from a year ago, a couple of years ago, 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 500,000, even a normal fan. We'll have listened to hundreds 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, etc. There is more of a risk there. 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 mega-Marcle and print area 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 waiting for him to say anything. Yeah, yeah, we we want Jeremy Clark. We want to take Jeremy Clarkson down for him to say anything. Yeah, we want Jeremy Clark, we want to take Jeremy Clarks and down. And ironically, if that show is cancelled, he's probably affected the least out of everyone.

It's the 100 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 I'm definitely wrong. I don't lie there at night, I think, 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 you previously I My intention when starting gym chart was never to be on social media it it I'm not massively first I think the point at which I would get involved Is if things either got significantly worse than what they are now or or a genuinely felt I could move the needle. 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 and 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. Just generally, personally, what is it that founders don't know about the challenges of being a CEO? Because this is a journey that I know that you've been on, you've flipped in and out of. So the thing, so the thing is we've been a founder is the job, which I've never known in any of the job, the job literally flips on its head depending on the scale of the business and the time.

So it's almost like this piece time, there's war time and then the scale. And 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 gonna 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. Why? Why do you need to be dictatorial? You have no time. You take high level of risk. There is 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 think in. You need to grow quick. Okay. I like this and 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 in the and grant the numbers 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 I'm hopefully getting to 1 million what was some of those inflection points

so for me it was the first events that we did so we did one event 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 did do five more. It's like no, like in the early days, in that one to ten, that purely entrepreneurial phase, that good instinct phase, you have no time to do any of those. So we did our first event, it went well, we then signed up to loads of events, and then we went from just doing Birmingham to Birmingham, Germany, Australia, two in the US. Was this when you exited Body Power? Yes, no, this wasn't when we exited Body Power,

we did Body Power and it went really well, so we re-signed it for the internet. Rolled it out, and then we kept going, and got you. And then 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 like, you know, being in the West Midlands and having to come up with a million pounds in the banks, that, you've never heard of anything like it, it was the most insane

thing ever, in our early 20s. 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, you know, in Mom and Dad's more, we just paid, I could live happily. Yeah, maybe not now, but it feels like you could live happily ever after. And then we bet the entire house ongoing again and stock on events and you do that again and again and again. And then, and this is what I mean, from 0 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 it was nothing to lose. 10 to 50 in revenue there was certainly something to lose but you filled with this adrenaline, this excitement and this momentum that you just do it and you just go and at that point you really start to hire people. So 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'd probably have a handful of staff that help and you manage that. If you just ignore what they say and do what you want anyway, then go back to what we said earlier, 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 less that you're in the detail, and then the more that going off and doing becomes either more explaining and inspiring as the business grows. So 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 my big challenge now, right, trying to scale a gym shark into a truly iconic British brand and a global brand, is how do I inspire people to create product

that fits in with our overarching strategy that I'm really proud of and pleased about, that also excites the customer, and he's of a high quality, and it's all of these things in trying to get the right people in the right roles, and there's always so many emotions involved in conversations,

because other people have different 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 a'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r cymryd i'r now competing with some of the biggest brands in the world that have bank balances that are 10 hundred 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 sort of adrenaline filled thing. Hmm.

Do you miss that? 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 hose parts frozen over and you're trying to clean off the screen, it's easy to say, oh, and romanticize those times and say, oh, I 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 on a 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, it's easy to forget about how hard those times were and forget about the fact that there was once a point when I was studying L.A. 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 romanticise the early days and it's easy to think, oh my job now is hard and it's cumbersome 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. There will be a lot of people listening that are side hustling building a business from that 0 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 can't be the person that does everything. You can be a 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 have the faith that they're going to do it? Well, I think the first thing I would say is, I think you need to really understand yourself.

Because for me, 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 the very early days of Jim Shark, I was well aware that I didn't really understand

operations, logistics, finance, and quite frankly, people anyway near as well as I needed to. So brought in a great CEO, and he was chief executive, I think five or six years, I think six years Steve was, and he managed all of those things for me. So your incompetence was a competitive advantage in that regard because you felt like you didn't have any ownership, you already knew where your weakness is, 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. Which is easy to do if your ambitions for the business are larger than your ambitions for yourself. Because the risk... What do you mean? 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 reason that having Steve Cam 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 take everything then.

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 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've got to do all of these things, which are very, very few people get the experience and the opportunity to do. But then I could also sit with our CFO and our CEO and learn about finance and ops and go to distribution centers and warehouses and things like that. And I could sit with our CFO and I could say stupid things that made completely no sense. 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 to improve rapidly, it's a bit like, if someone gave you a test, if you do in your A levels now, and you can do the test once, you'd probably do relatively well. You give the test to go, you get a C. But then you get the test again, and you get a C plus, and then I'll give you the same test again, 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 me I had five years of failure without consequence and that is if you could if you had a magic one and you could draw the Perfect environment for learning it would be failure without consequence because you can literally just throw yourself at anything that you want at any given moment

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? As an owner or I think I think it works in any role right. So if for example, you have a, you have an overarching role that, let's say, for example, requires 50% creativity and 50% organization,

and I'm just making up a job here. And let's say you're the opposite of me. You're a highly conscientious, organized 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 the next thing is. Then what I would employ 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 to become organized, than it is someone that's conscientious to become creative don't know if it's easier for a creative to become organized than it is someone that's conscientious

to become creative. I would say it's easier for a creative to become organized. I would say so too. 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, organized, bold, good at taking risks. That's because if you had a business filled with you, you would have fantastic ideas, but nothing would get done. Correct. Correct. I look at video guidance,

being 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, girlfriend and artist, etc, etc. And you can see a physical manifestation of our two personalities when you walk into each of our studios that back into each other. So you're going to mine and everything is neat and tidy. I press three buttons and all of the lights come on. It's very,

very dialed. I walk into his, there's been a sock sell it 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 play. It's like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. So I would probably be closer to that. I think so. Orbit, I've had to try myself to be more organized 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 organize myself. What's the biggest risk that you've taken with Gymshark over its entire lifespan? Do you think? I think it all varies, isn't it? The first event that we ever did, because we risked everything on the event to be unsuccessful, and if the event weren't successful successful then we would have run out of money so that's without a doubt one. I mean personally leaving, like I was the

first person in my family to wherever go to university, I didn't finish university but that whole thing, calling it my mom 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. And we've had plenty of financial risks. They tended to be earlier on in the process. Those will be the main ones. Again, this is going to sound really bad, but the financial risks never really frighten me too much. And the reason for that is when I was a young kid, I did the first ever, I guess, experience of work for me was working on work experience for my granddad.

My granddad lines furnaces in the Midlands, so brick, ceramic fiber, labour in job. I basically just did labour for him. And he would tell me, and he's a one man band, it's not by no means a huge business, but 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 in the process

where it could have gone horrifically wrong. And he would tell me from the age of, don't know 12, 13, 14 very young anyway about he would sit there and think am I going to have a roof to put over the my mom 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. The risk that I then take on that big.

So take a million quit at 22 years old on events. When worst case I can go back to university and get another job at pizza. It never felt frightening in a way. It was more exciting. Do you think that that's because of your optimistic mindset? Yes, and high level of risk tolerance. I think I get, I really enjoy things like that. Risks like that really excite me. That's something that I'm trying to get better at taking risks. My disposition is very, very conservative, iterate, very slowly.

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. That's something, again, British culture, I think I would say very much discourages risk. Overall, very, very just softly, softly, slowly, slowly, limit your potential upside, but also massively limit your downside as much as you can. We've spoken a lot about business, the operations of business, but fundamentally what you are doing is encouraging fitness in the world, right? Like it's facilitating people feeling better about their bodies,

thinking about the way that they trained, 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. Very, so I think, and I'm speaking about the content I can choose, right? So it was a kid I was skinny and I just wanted to build muscle. That was it. Like I'm not going to 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 18-year-old guy that was probably around during that era. I was inspired by Greg Plitt, I was inspired by Ziz. That was my, like Rob Rich's people like that, not necessarily the

big bodybuilders, but the people that were ripped and shredded and that was my personal ambition. And it felt like that was very much, definitely the bodybuilding industry was definitely around that, because even if you think, if I think back to when I first got into fitness, the big bodybuilders didn't really get into social media. 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 Matogasis and the Crystal of Ardo, this is where Jim Shart started to come along a few years later, when I think of that era of people versus now, started to come along a few years later. When I think of that era of people versus now, 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 so much more about, it's almost like maximizing your potential holistically, rather than having a good mental health and good physical health. I would say it feels slightly harder now and more direct than what it was.

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. I don't know how to put this in a more masculine way. seems to be being talked about a hell of a lot more than what it was previously. And I don't know how to put this in a more masculine way. How do you mean? 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 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 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. So then people are now going a lot deeper in this,

in terms of like, okay, so how do I become a better man in general rather than just, how do I have bigger muscles? How do I show up in the world? 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. I spent a lot of time there. I've used on there as well. I bet you did.

Like Christian Tibado, T Nation, like all of this, like that kind of world, no one knew what macros were, no one knew with blueberry extract was actually going to be the secret to your muscle gains. Then... It was very bro-sciencey. And it was like, if you don't have a protein shake within 30 minutes of finishing the gym,

you will lose all of your gains and you need to have your creativity in every 30 minutes and you've got your pre-workout, your intro workout, and it was just like to the point where, I remember shoving hyperbolic mass down my throat in a bit to somehow gain weight, whereas now that whole world just seems to have... It just completely has changed, isn't it? Correct.

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 white training, but also in corporate level, incorporates a level of cardio. And it feels like a more balanced approach to fitness now. 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.

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, and this was trying to encourage men to open up about mental health. 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 20s, was the person that needed to be spoken to by this.

And yet, it takes, you know, like a Canadian psychologist or a 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 I've reflected on, the reason I didn't like its 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 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 Mm-hmm. And the problem that we had there was that you were treating male depression and male mental health like female depression Yeah that we had there was that you were treating male depression and male mental health like female depression. Yeah. It's interesting as well. Me and me, and I'll 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 that there was a few years ago, someone stuck a camera in front of me on gym shots, come up and say, tell me about your terrible upbringing and how difficult it had been and everyone that said no. 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, it's going to sound really basic. Once I rode my bike over my neighbor's lawn, and he grabbed me around the screw for the neck,

and he said, you respect other people's property, you never do that again, you go and apologize, and it was very much tough love. And that for me was the male role model, was to be tough, be strong, be respectful. And there was another one, and I remember when I was, I'd done something wrong and I was really, I'd completely fucked up and I was so upset, 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, you know, everything's going to be all right and he just sat there and he went, well, what are you going to do about it? And that feeling of, then you have to be strong, you have to take control of the situations and you have to take control. And he always told me, he said, you know, you have to be mentally strong, you have to be mentally strong, it 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 want to know what I've got to do. I work out on my own head how I get there, but I just, and that, I think that speaks back to that thing that you've just said of, it feels like it's, 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 straight away you go 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. 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 misses 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 here, the things that I'm saying. Maybe we can talk about 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. 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, like, you know, male development, which maybe came about perhaps due to men starting to feel like they were less required, you know, 2006 to 2012, you are more visible online, just generally as a man, people are starting to scrutinise the way that you look, you're able to compare yourself to people. But wasn't this the point where obesity became a thing in the early 2000s, where everyone

sort of said, I think it was at the point where the US became, it was something like 40 or 50% obese. And then I'd never heard the term obese until the early 2000s And it might just be an age thing then all of a sudden obesity became a thing and that's where I remember it Being the 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 don't remember being really annoyed because they got rid of the dairy milk to our school Fuck Jamie Oliver can't believe it, but you it, I think that's where it started for me.

Health definitely became a thing. And I think you've right, all of a sudden posting pictures on social media, comparing yourself to people that a thousand miles away. Yeah. All of these things definitely would have applied into that. So we rolled the clock forward. And people have integrated the fact

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, Jim Shock especially is particularly unique in that it's split. It kind of came up, focused very heavily on male influences, and now I would guess you probably sell more women's work. Women's work. So you have this kind of odd flip but you have been on the front lines of observing male identity masculinity and its challenges. What do you think about

masculinity in 2023 and the challenges that young men are facing? God. I definitely think that coddle, 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. Like recently it feels like there's more great male role models that have popped up, which I think is helpful. I think I saw something that you said previously around point-to-me to point-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. What does it say that men need those role models though? I 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, the whole package, intelligent, yeah, all these sorts of things. And that's what personally I'll do. Like are 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. Like, put a blog in front of me who's a billionaire, it's cool and everything, but you'd rather have one percent of their wealth with a wonderful family life and you have 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, give me the billions. Oh yeah, I think I would have taken it every time. So many of the trends that we're seeing, I think, at the moment, can just be explained by cohorts of guys and girls arriving and then phasing out into new areas of their life. So you could say that so many people, 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. And then there is another bubble behind. Can you imagine why? I'm 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.

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. Followed each other on Facebook. So we have this sort of bubble that's going on and then a particular trend, a particular influencer curves, 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 focused,

very much about how lean you were, how big you were, it was that Christian Guzman and Matt Ogos and like Jeff 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 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. Yeah, give me some fucking substance. And I think that that cohort, if you were to pick the archetypal like Peterson, Rogan, Harris, Shapiro, a lander boton, fanboy. There is a huge cohort that would have come out of like the Misk bodybuilding forums, 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. It's, is it, is it the gym carry quote that goes in and like, I hope you will get to achieve your dream so that you can realize that maybe it's not so great or it's worse with that effect, isn't it? But I feel like it's very similar from a 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, the pursuit of financial gains. What are you worth? Do you know what you're worth? I try to think, I don't know. I do not want to know nor think. Why? Why don't you want to know? Because it's just all numbers on a screen it doesn't it doesn't So much of my wealth is tied up in gym shop, 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 that 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 that's something for me that I would, I'd never ever think about that. And I swear to God that is the last thing I think about at all. 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. One of the other things that has happened over the last 10 years, particularly as being the body positivity movement, when Jim Shock first came around, those leggings that had the line

under the ass crack at the bottom that like accentuated bombs and so on and so forth, the line under the ass crack at the bottom that like accentuated bombs and so on and so forth. 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 sort of masculinity and men's problems, I fill out to Qatar to have a debate about this only two weeks ago. If I was to like 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. What we do, we know that we do, the Pew Research just came out about this unbelievable rate. It's like one in two to like 60% of girls in their teens have serious depression on 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 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 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 so I think the interesting thing with that is, and I think there's points where

a conversation is with Noel, I think we pushed it to Vara 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 you got hijacked and went too far. Now the one thing I would say is I was a skinny kid who wanted to build muscle and we at gym shop 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 three hundred kilos, you want to lose I don't know 30 pounds of fat, 50 pounds of fat, whatever it is, we don't tear 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 what I, where I think the message needs to be. The bit where I start to get concerned is when people start to promote unhealthy for ziques. And that's not to say that different for ziques shouldn't be shown, but to promote an unhealthy for zik and for me to suggest that that unhealthy for unhealthy physique is somewhat right, beneficial for an individual, that's what concerns

me slightly. 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 way. Meanwhile, testosterone's in the toilet hasn't had a direction in six months irritable. Some of the people that I know who have some of the most incredible physics you've ever seen have the worst relationship with their body mentally. And you all know that as well as I do. People don't step on stage in some of these huge competitions 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 time 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 or 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 think the thing that concerns me is just the fact that I don't think we should be 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 extreme. So if I'm massively inspired

by, if I see a picture of Dorian Yates, another guy from Birmingham, Phil, he's just because of the accent. It's not the photo, it's the accent. But even closer to home, like Ryan Terry, seeing him in pictures is cool. Seeing him in real life, it is insane. I look at him in my generation. Such a big boy. It's crazy. 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 remain there for a prolonged period of time.

Like I think 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 wouldn't mean I wouldn't care for them or love them any less, but I would say listen, 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 do that if 300 kilos. But moving being in the gym and having a certain level of fitness, I think he's only helpful for everyone. You have recently had twins. Yes.

How old are they now? They are 14 weeks to their right, their fresh, their 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 said something to the effective, you're not going to be able to do this when you have kids. and she said something to the effect of, you're not gonna be able to do this when you have kids. And you'd said, manana, manana, I'll do it when it's in front of me,

don't need to worry me about that. Given that you are now at the call face, what have been the lessons, introspection, changes that you've noticed over the last 14 weeks? 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 rate or in this way.

I think it was more in this way when you have kids. And the reason was is very obviously my life and gym show 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'd be fairly loose and free and open, I'd just work all the time. Cool. And I love my job and I'd work on a Saturday, on a Sunday, on a Monday, it'd 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. In the fact that I would travel a lot and I'd be away for lots of weekends and things like this, whereas now, when I'm sort of 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 Brecommeridge or somewhere like that, 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 Home Friday, make a leisurely journey back from Heathrow on a Saturday. Whereas now it's Fly Up Monday, work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Fly Home Thursday, lunch time, 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 afternoon, so I'm going to try and do that potentially for a whole day on Sunday, just so that I'm present and with them. The travel, more present when I'm at home, I end up working. I think things like that, it certainly made me think, and 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 there's an interesting insight that I learned there, again, from Adam Lane Smith, which is a lot of the time parents are considered in becoming increasingly more

aware of their kids using devices. Do you want your child to have to be only distracted by YouTube for kids or whatever? One of the things that a lot of parents don't consider is the fact that if they hear that ding and the ding causes mom 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 again, don't have kids, can't wait to be a dad, but when I do my grand idea of how I'm going to have a relationship with technology, you may get thrown out of the fucking window. However, 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. 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. 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 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 hope of life. And just little things like that. And it's so different to the way that I grew up. And 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 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, thought this, I just want to be self-sufficient and do my own thing to a degree. I think is 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 increased dramatically. So yeah, I think it's definitely changed my perspective on lots of things. And a lot of people were saying, I don't know, I was asking me this, he was interested to watch how my relationship with work changed. my relationship with work changed. And I'm arguably even more hell-bent on making this

as 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. Right, Terry said the same thing. And I want to work hard. I don't 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... Mr. Soap people? ...have to. ...over after. 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 looks but also having good time with them I think he's really exciting to, and that's what I want them to do as they grow up. 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. Again, that's what I'm thinking about a lot and to 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 then if they go to private school, then 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 Robin, she wants to homeschool them. I'm not quite on that boat, yeah, I'd happy just I think that's an American Canadian influence heavily. It's very rare over here in the UK. America canada a little bit less. It's telling me that that movement is growing rapidly, but I haven't looked into that yet. For me, I think it's important to go to a normal school. I think, listen, they're gonna grow up in a nice house with nice things, and they're gonna be able to have connections to call people and great people in a way. But I think, for me, it's about just bringing them up

in the right way, and the way that my parents did, and the way that my grandparents did. It was really important to me that they were born and they would have the opportunity to spend time with my grandparents. They're 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 fall in the war, right?

My grandparents, 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 name would talk to me about how in her guard, and 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 they were rationing. My other grandfather, who I worked closely with,

told 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 1992 I had this weird mix of someone that was born in 1992, but then also in 1960s style upbringing because I spent so much time with my grandparents as well.

That makes for me to account for the tradition. 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 kid is really, really important to me. 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 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 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 traveled into more countries than I get every imagine I've spent lots and lots of time across loads of different states in the United 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 16, 17, 18 year old

Ben, he would have not believed you in a million years. But I'm so again, we had the opportunity to raise a kid 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. They're in negatives, the media can be a bit of a pain in the arse,

and we've had more prime ministers in the last six months than probably most of other than the last six years. All of these different things. But when I look at it, the net positives are being here are so great. What are they? Net positives have been in the UK.

People forget that if you want to start a business in the UK, especially in e-commerce business, one, we speak in English, which is great, it's helpful for communicating with the Western world. Two, you can ship things to Europe in 24 hours, pretty much 70 million people in the UK within 24 hours. So you've got the whole of Europe and the UK

and your doorstep. A lot of that is down to the fact that there's so many countries in Europe, each one has its own sort of operational set, whether it's DVD or Royal Mail or these different companies. So the operational supply chain of Europe is incredible. You can ship to the East Coast of the United States in 24 40 hours I know people that started very similar businesses to Jim Shark a very similar time in Australia

And I think they were incredibly talented and I think some part of the reason that we We grew significantly more quickly than they did Not completely down to this is because we were in the UK and we could ship to all of these different countries significantly more quickly. And they were shipping from Blazys like Melbourne, and it was taking them three weeks to get to the US and your own places like that. Beyond the advantages specifically in the UK of e-commerce companies. Cultural advantages. Culturally we punch wire above our way. 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 all be it, we've got a turbulent and mental government. It's way better than 99% of other countries. turbulent and mental government, it's way better than 99% of other countries. 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 the stupid mistake. Surprise, surprise, he's an old bloke, right?

Reese you soon, I've made the stupid mistake. And I'm like, you've got anyone that's worked in any business or in any large scale organization 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 that 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 where does? Where does? And I think your alternative is, if you were to go purely incompetent, you'd probably end up significantly closer to a

China or somewhere like that. Correct. Correct. 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 the benefits from an economic perspective of the UK and a country that punches above its weight that has great connections into the work to the entire of the West, that has great social influence across the world. What are you in a safe country?

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 schooling systems very based around being outdoors, teaching kids like hunt and dress, animals and stuff. Very much back to basics there, but 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. Correct. That, for me, looking at the UK for all that the US coughs and we catch a cold, it is one hundredth of the amount of psychological contagion, mimetic horse shittery that goes on in the US. Is that something that you have highly considered? 100%. And 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 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 happen It'll be like this, but it would like the S&P it would tend 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, 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 the little place in the local village where they get to grow their own food. They learn good skills, they'll 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 that, listen, there's so many things that are exciting 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. I think so too. But all right, I do have concerns over those exact things and I do think about them. 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

I may be my opinion would be slightly different 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 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 Bentley's. And, you know, And he's, I think even more working class.

He has working class. Correct. Yeah, yeah, he's gone. He's absolutely gone. And he... Ryan Terry, by the way, tells everybody it was a plumber. I think the lads were out shooting an 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 Oh, you think that this is 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 it was a ship plumber. So I think, 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. He's got this problem at the moment.

And I mentioned it to me yesterday and I may as well tell it to you to Especially given that you've got twins which is pretty interesting. Are they identical twins? Yeah Wow, one as I got it twins need to introduce you to Robert Plomans So it'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 Yeah, of twins. And he has teased apart the differences between nature and nurture more than anybody, right? I'd be interested in that because I haven't got into the detail of it, but there's, there's it, 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've shown in different ways, don't they? And I'm interested to know what you want to call it. This is where you sort of get to the edge of my competency, but they've shown in different ways, don't they? And I'm interested to know how that works. So the epigenetic changes, how does the environment influence the genes? To be honest, plomin doesn't really get into that much. And for me, like epigenetics,

vibrational frequencies, quantum, astral, all that stuff, it 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 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 school teachers, 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 postcard that you grow up in. Why? Because who are you exposed to? Who are the people that you take your values and your virtues from? 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 spend 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 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. I have no idea. Really important, man. Really, really important. Robyn will see that, and she'll think, I definitely want to homeschool the boys now. Well, homeschooling is not nothing as well. I'm speaking as an only child here that under socializing 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 risk, it says the guy that moved out to America at 33 to 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 some all of those different iterations. 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, what's the consequence? 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 10 families of my rich friends will find 100 acres somewhere near Austin, set up with a bunch of kids. So you'll maybe have 10, 15 kids, and they'll homeschool, but 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 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 or six days a week. Gymnastic, swimming, karate, da-da-da-da-da-da, like each different night. Yeah. But I don't know, man. This is a whole unsharted 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. And we're going to hopefully touch wood,

have a lot more kids as well. We all have a big family and again that's important to me and certainly to Robin as well, having a big family would be nice. You mentioned that your misses might want a slightly bigger family than you'd anticipated. I thought three weeks after the birth when chaos was at its all time high that she would have tapered her ambitions, but she's still definitely wants four or five kids. Apparently, it is that people have a genetic predisposition to having twins as well. Matt Walsh, who 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, we not have a third, and then his misses, it's said like I really want to have one. And he realized up until they had the scan, he's like, fuck, we could go from two to four here. And he wasn't ready for four, he would have to have changed the car, they would have to have immediately bought a new house, all hell would have broken loose. So just 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? Clearly, my professional focus is solely on Jim Sharkin building, Jim Sharkin, 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 sell globally but we're not a true global business so we're trying to really develop that and we've just hired in and built like a new leadership team that I think the last person joined in January so fairly fresh new team so that's important

to me like bed in that and making sure the business is ready for the next phase of growth. Personally, I just want to get settled in a forever home and get that finished and nice and done. That would take a year or two. Hopefully not two, sort of 12, 18 months. I think as well, I know we've spoken about this previously, but I would be interested in I think as well, 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 an American and I know that a brick 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, so I think I've got value to add there. So I would definitely consider how I can talk more openly about those things. Have you ever been offered, you've spoken on boards and stuff, would you ever take a more formal role? 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 yesterday would be

the government's business advice reward. 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 history as a whole. Yeah, which I think is beneficial regardless of who's there. Ben Francis, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do, where should they go? YouTube search Ben Francis on YouTube, Instagram, all the usual social medias. Ben, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate. Thank you very much.