Moment 44 - Ben Francis: Knowing This Will Accelerate Your Business

00:01I know that there's going to be a lot of young entrepreneurs watching this, and I know that they typically ask me the same questions so I want to ask you just a couple of them before we wrap. One of them I get a lot is, you know, there'll be someone listening to this. They've not got any money. Yeah. um. they want to start a business. They don't have an idea but they want to start a business. What would you say to them? They guys. you don't have an idea or money. Yeah. But they want to, they want to be an entrepreneur, I get this a lot. So the first thing for me would be to find out what you're truly, truly passionate about because for me when I started Gymshark.

00:36I made two fitness Apps beforehand, I I made two fitness Apps, both failed miserably. I made a little fitness social network failed miserably, a little fitness sort of forum that failed miserably and then Gymshark was it I wanted to be involved in the industry. More than anything I wanted to be involved in fitness because it changed my life. It was the thing that got me from being ad student to an a student literally that was the thing that changed my life. The discipline. Yeah. the discipline that I learned, the structure, the fact that if I was tired on a Monday.

01:05The gym doesn't care go in and lift, it doesn't matter and most importantly that if January one I joined the gym and I lift five days a week, every single week by December 25 whatever, I am better than I was a year ago. That that those lessons to me were massive because previously I didn't really realize that and I do this thing in school where I would be like I'd work, try really hard and I get a bad grade, and then there'd be another thing that I wouldn't try out and I' get a really good grade and I just it didn't do I mean it didn't. Add up to me, so for me I was in love with the industry, and and and fitness was and is my passion and that's carried me through some of the difficult times because I remember.

01:41The difference it's made to my life and it's this inherent passion that drives me every day. So if you've got no ideal money just lean into that community whatever it is it might be boxing, it might be golf, it might be videography, it might be motorcycles or bicycles or whatever, lean into it because inevitably there will be an opportunity especially now because of this new social media world that we live in there's a massive, there's so much room for people to create brands so yeah I would just lean into whatever your passion is. It's so true because look, you can waste a ton of time procrastinating. And falling into indecision by trying to guess and in as you said there I read that Gymshark was actually like the seventh apple website you created, so you like leaned into the industry did this process of like failure and exploration and stumbled across the winner, right like.

02:29you have to fail this this is the one of the if you're a young entrepreneur just do not be afraid to fail just. All names out of boxes, ideas out of boxes, aside the likelihood of an individual starting a business and that one being the one that strikes gold. Is. Ridiculously low. What we've got to remember is you could start 30 businesses and you are still more likely to fail than you are succeed. So just.

02:57Honestly just keep trying and keep trying and don't be afraid to fail. I think that's so, so so important and everyone I've met by the way, from the people that run businesses that are 10 times bigger than Gymshark to every entrepreneur that I've met, every business person, every successful person in sport, in business, whatever, whether I've started a business or not, every single one of them has failed time and time and time again and I think then people look at the the final product and just assume that they've just, they were either this incredible human who had was born this way or and it is just never. Never ever the case more often than not. All the most successful people I've ever met are all winging it, they're all literally just working incredibly hard and they're just giving it their best shot.

03:42Can I ask you one more on this point? I think that was a superb answer as well because it's just incredibly true. I, um, the other question I would I'd get a lot from young entrepreneurs is something like, you know, they're in a job at the moment and they've got an idea, so this is an example where they've got a business idea that they want to pursue, um, but they're just, you know, they've heard you say that they want to pursue it but there's something holding them back and they're, you know, I know you get this a lot as well. Yeah. there's. Probably most conversations. What do you say to those people?

04:10Or I think if, if it's your passion then I think you should jump in the, the other thing I would say, and this is, I think this is, this is a dangerous thing. I do see people online going in, quit your job, jump in, go and do something and it's a bit like personally I'm sat there thinking, no, don't, don't quit your job, it's fine like, like III worked at Pizza Hut for whatever, I can't remember what the amount was, it was four or five pounds an hour and Gymshark was doing hundreds of thousands in revenue, the utility of having a job whilst running the business is is huge one because you can earn money to survive. So you don't need to remove you know you don't need to remove money from the business, so two you can then reinvest all the profits that you can make in that business if you just quit and two by the way if business number one fails, you've still got your job you try number two, number three, number four and I think.

04:58Whatever it is, find your passion. I genuinely don't think it's a good idea just to jump out of your job just on a whim. There are some people you'll hear about, the one in a million that succeeds and congratulations, more power to you. I'm super happy for those people. But you don't hear about the 99% that ended up quitting their job and it didn't go as well as what they would like, and then they ended up having to go back and find a new job. So use that job as a superpower, a stability, and invest the money you earn from that job in the business and just keep trying, trying, trying. and hard work, where does that fit. What's the importance of it? Because there's a, there's a narrative I talk about a lot in this podcast that hard work is maybe a little bit, the narrative you see online from the hustle porn star is a little bit toxic yeah, but would you be sat here without hard work.

05:43Oh definitely not. No it' it's that combination of hard work alone is definitely not enough. You have to work hard but you also have to work smart. There were periods where we were finding out ways to manipulate Google in a way that got Gymshark to the top, which gave us huge revenue for next to no cost, right? That was smart work. But there were days when we would work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours sewing and printing t shirts every single day. There are days like that now where I just we just work and work and work to get the job done. So exclusively hard work. Won't solve your problems. You definitely have to work smart, but I've never met anyone who was genuinely successful that wasn't hardworking.