Moment 5 - Ben Francis On How To Respond When Things Go Wrong

00:04Along, I was reading about your story online before I came here and I've watched a couple of videos and stuff, and I remember a day on this point of like resilience which you've touched on. I remember a day early on where I thought we had, we were done because um, some shit had happened, some, we'd been hacked, all of our clients had been emailed this abusive, horrible specific email and I thought we're fucking done and it was the day when we' were on our way to our team building day, so everyone's on their way to like fucking paint balling or something. Six am in the morning, all of our clients like emailing me like abuse, like cancel everything and having to turn the team around on a day which was meant to be happy and bring them all back to the office and say listen, all your clients are gone maybe we're all gone was a tough day and there was dark days in your story? Yeah.

00:44we I mean we had a few yeah, I mean I don't find it the end of the world like I said everyone's pretty understanding that we're going to take big, big risks that I mean we've had like lots of issues, so when we were a small business someone tried to steal our trademark and we had to spend every Penny to get that back. We spent a. Again, every Penny we had to get the domain name, um, there was a point where we genuinely couldn't afford stock, so I was like begging suppliers to get a stock in and we'll pay you once we'd sold it sort of thing, but to me that was sort of, I, I wasn't, that wasn't a huge ass issue. I, I found that pretty fun actually. the first issue, the first time you had something big happen like that.

01:19Did it feel, I guess I know the answer to the question, but did it feel different when those issues happen today? And I'm trying to like, I'm trying to understand how resilience is created and from my perspective it's like you get past that first piece of bullshit and then bullshit piece number two, you've got the hindsight of yeah. you there is that that thing when you first start out and you think everyone's a really good person and everything's gonna to go okay. And then by the time you sort of, I guess while you're a few years in, you realize that nothing ever goes okay, and there's always going to be people that want to knock you down a peg or two so you just have to sort of be aware of that, and you know and just make sure that you're sort of bulletproof and everything that you're doing is for the right reasons.

01:54What was the day where you thought you thought fuck we're fucked was there a day. I read about a story on Black Friday where oh. god that was a fucking nightmare that was yeah magento messed up absolutely the whole website crashed. on Black Friday.

02:06On Black Friday we were down for hours, literally completely messed up everything orders were coming in and the system was just like vomiting nothing out um orders were delayed and the whole yeah, that was an absolute nightmare but um and to me that genuinely there was no issues with me personally I had no problems like with me dealing with that. The frustrating thing for me was that customers had come on and obviously Black Friday there's tons of new people coming on, and they wanted the kit and they couldn't get it and they were being messed around and for me I thought every single thing that I took really personally, um, and it, it did really upset me but.

02:39We from that next Black Friday was the best Black Friday that we could ever imagine. Like we because of that and so well versed with making sure that nothing goes wrong going forward and again, you know, touch wood, hopefully nothing does go wrong and at some point things probably will but every time we do something big, every time we do a launch, a sale or Black Friday we've got plan a, Plan B, Plan C, plan d, like we're making sure that you know, all possible issues are covered way before and then I think that was just naivety. I think going into that Black Friday we were very naive. We' were a very young business and we just sort of assumed everything would be OK. and in hindsight I imagine that's been because it's the same as when we got hot, like we didn't think about fucking cybersecurity until that day, and now we're like, and it's a shame.

03:18but you do have to think about those things. in a weird way. Although it might't be the best use of word, has that been a bit of a blessing? Yeah. Oh there's tons of things like that. Blessings in disguise like you say it's um because how how however else would you learn? You just you just wouldn't learn those things. So I think everyone has to sort of encounter some sort of issues like that before they learn. and I read that you um, you sent out like thousands of handwritten letters. Oh.

03:42my god MY had and then I was writing every single person that had an issue. I made sure I wrote them all birthday cards. So every every week at the start of the week, I'd have to sit there and write for hours like I'm talking like all day birthday cards to every single person with a discount to make sure that you know, we we're sorry because again I take it really personally my hand would kill by the end of those days. isn't that part of the reason though, why you've going back to the start point about like authenticity and having these values and stuff like that. Isn't that the on that day a lot of people would have been like oh fuck you you literally. So you on Black Friday, just to be clear.

04:14Problem with your website. The website was down for eight hours, people tried to order, they got messed around a little bit after following that, you spent days writing thousands of handwritten letters to those people apologizing. all the stuff here is it was a much moreer team, more working, like it was one guy that did a 38 hour shift or something like that like they were the work ethic I saw of everyone here was absolutely incredible, but it was genuinely brilliant. That's part of your values though that design like most people wouldn't write fucking 2000 handwritten letters so that's. For me, that's also part of the reason you're here and why you're staying where you are is because you care, like a lot of people see it, will see it as a business or like the numbers etctera, but you're looking at it from a standpoint of what Gymshark's values are, right?

04:56I, I really care't, again, like if I get a DM on mystra, which I will, you know, inevitably we be shipping thousands and thousands of waters a day now, inevitably something will go wrong somewhere and someone will message me saying I've got an issue.

05:09That really hurts me. I go absolutely mental and the first thing I'm doing is I'm running up to customer experience and saying how the hell can we fix this? You know, how can we make this better because to me, and again the thing and the problem with online is it's all numbers on a screen. It's very easy to get lost in those numbers and it's very easy to become desensitized, desensitized to the fact that each one of those numbers is a human being somewhere in the world. So to me it's really important to make sure that everyone has a brilliant experience, even you know even if the other thing I'll say to everyone is even if no one ever buys a Gymshark product, I want to put on Gymshark events so that these people can go and be inspired and motivated and you know in some way hopefully improve their lives. So if no one ever buys a Gymshark product, to me that's not the end of the world, because I want people to be inspired and sort of be affected positively by what we do in some way.

05:49and what I take from that is that that authenticity and that really fucking caring over time will send your business in a completely different direction, because if you if you. Imagine that care and that authenticity applied 10 times a day for five years on little touch points that' will like in my mind that can. Completely changes the trajectory of your business so in the moment it might those letters might not have moved the bottom line at all but. Long term would make Gymshark who like who you are today, um which is really inspiring to me actually because I think customer experience is something that's often the first thing that's easy to forget. If anyone gives me a bad a Christmas experience I'll just straight up don't ever order them again because I think it's just carelessness.