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

The host starts the conversation about resilience with a crisis from their own company. Early on, the business was hacked and all of its clients were sent an "abusive, horrible specific email." It happened on the morning of a team-building day. At 6 a.m., with staff already heading to an outing (the host guesses "paint balling or something"), clients were emailing to cancel everything. The host had to turn the team around, bring everyone back to the office and tell them their clients might be gone, and "maybe we're all gone." The host then asks Ben Francis whether his own story had similar dark days.

Francis says Gymshark had "a few" such moments, but he plays down how heavy they felt, saying he doesn't "find it the end of the world" because people understand the business takes "big, big risks." He lists three early problems. Someone tried to steal the company's trademark, and the business spent every penny getting it back. It again spent everything it had to secure the domain name. And at one point it genuinely couldn't afford stock, so Francis was begging suppliers to send it and accept payment once it had sold. He did not treat these as major crises.

I found that pretty fun actually