E69 - Ben Francis: How to step back to take a leap forward
The High Performance Podcast
High Performance
4.6 • 4.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2021
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben Francis is the founder and ambitious entrepreneur behind leading UK fitness brand, Gymshark.
Ben founded Gymshark when he was 19, while still a student at Aston University. In addition to his full-time commitment to his studies, Ben juggled working as a pizza delivery man to fund his Gymshark venture. In August 2020, Gymshark became the first DTC brand in the UK to achieve Unicorn status (valuation over $1 billion) with no external capital funding.
Ben recently announced he is returning to the helm of the company as CEO as the brand looks to expand in the US and Asia.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Another week, another high performance podcast. |
| 0:04.8 | Hi there, it's Jake here. |
| 0:06.1 | Welcome along to a conversation that I really hope you're going to get a lot from because |
| 0:10.3 | you're about to hear from one of the most, if not the most, successful, young, British |
| 0:16.9 | businessman ever. |
| 0:19.0 | Today, lessons from the founder of Jim Shark, Ben Francis. |
| 0:26.6 | That was a moment where it almost felt like everything around me just stopped, time just |
| 0:30.1 | stopped and it was almost like an ego death and I thought, right, whatever is in that 360 |
| 0:34.2 | feedback, I am going to list down and I, by any means necessary, I'm going to improve |
| 0:39.5 | that. |
| 0:40.5 | And that was a moment when I had to reinvent myself. |
| 0:42.6 | So this is a really interesting time, actually, for us to hear from Ben because it was only |
| 0:46.3 | announced a few days ago that he's stepped back into the CEO role at Jim Shark. |
| 0:50.9 | And this is the first interview that he's agreed to do to talk about that change in his career. |
| 0:55.4 | So first of all, massive thanks to Jim Shark, huge thanks to Ben as well for coming on and |
| 0:59.8 | sharing so much. |
| 1:00.8 | And no matter what your career is, your job, your business, what point you're at in your |
| 1:05.8 | life, I promise you will get so much from what you're about to hear from Ben. |
| 1:09.6 | So grab a pen, grab some paper and get ready for a conversation with him. |
| 1:14.1 | Can I please just really quickly remind you that it's getting to an exciting stage for |
| 1:19.2 | Damien and I without high performance book, which I think we're nothing, we're about |
| 1:23.8 | 29% of the way there. The book is out in December. |
... |
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