Gymshark: Ben Francis. From pizza delivery to billion-dollar fitness brand.

[Music] So you get to this conference, this body power conference. How, or what happened there? I mean, was there, where people curious, like, what is this gym shark thing? Like, what, how do people respond? Well, that, that was probably the most surreal weekend of my life, because prior to the event, we were selling around 200 to 250 pounds a day in revenue. But I just remember spending the whole time just grabbing products, selling products. And in the event, we completely sold out of everything that we took. And after the event, I remember we were so tired, we just, we all just lay down on the floor in the stand. And there was a guy who had worked at a different stand, and he walked over to us. And he said, "How did you do that?" And I remember looking at him and saying, "I've got no idea." [Music] Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. [Music] I'm Guy Raaz, and on the show today, how an online shop selling t-shirts took Ben Francis from college dropout to being the youngest billionaire in the UK. [Music] There's a moment in the early 2010s when something subtle starts to shift in fitness. People start filming their workouts and posting their progress, and crafting a bodybuilding identity online. Workouts effectively become public. And right in the middle of that shift was a teenager named Ben Francis. Now, at the time, Ben wasn't a founder. He was still in college. He was delivering pizza at night, going to the gym in the afternoon, and tinkering on websites in this bedroom. But Ben saw what was changing. He saw that gym culture was becoming a community you could join from anywhere. And he wanted to build a uniform for that community. So he and a few friends started making clothing, specifically for weightlifters. They didn't know a peril, but they knew how the clothes should feel, how they should move, how they should make you look when you loaded the barn and stepped up to lift. And then, there was the second insight, maybe the bigger one. If you want to build a brand, don't buy ads, build relationships. Ben reached out directly to the powerlifters and bodybuilders who were shaping this new online culture on YouTube. Not celebrities, not athletes with agents, real people with small audiences who trusted them. And when those lifters started wearing Ben's new brand, Gymshark, it didn't grow, it exploded. But here's what's unusual. As the company scaled, Ben didn't pretend to know everything. He learned leadership from the more experienced people he hired. He effectively built an apprenticeship inside his own company. He studied logistics, design, marketing, supply chain, tech, until he could eventually step into the role of CEO with total confidence. Today, Gymshark is one of the most influential fitness brands in the world with nearly a billion dollars in revenue and a global community of fans, lifters, and creators. But to understand how Ben built all of this, you have to go back to where it started. He grew up in the 1990s in early 2000s near Birmingham and England's Midlands. As a teenager, there were two things he loved. Going to the gym and at school, studying IT. It changed my life to be frank, because it's where I learned how to learn. We were so fortunate. The school that I went to was for whatever reason that obviously accelerated tech. I had access to the creative suite. I remember Dreamweaver, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop. I can't remember what else was in there. But then, being 18, knowing how to use that software, it was like, you know, knowing how to use magic. He was like absolutely brilliant. Yeah, it's like a language. And when you're that young, like your brain is just absorbing all this stuff. And if you love it, you can figure it out. So you were trying to do this, meantime getting ready for university. And by the time you got to university, you went to school called Aston University. You learned these skills of school and I read that, okay, building a website, I can understand. And you started to build sort of small businesses, right? Like I read for example that you tried building a website that sold personalized car license plates. Yes, yeah, so that was the first thing. That was actually when I was at school. So I would have been, I don't know, 17 maybe at the oldest. By the way, how did you, because personalized license plates in the UK are, I think, are very expensive. It's not like in the US where you just get good at the DMV and register. Like sometimes people pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars for personalized license. How are you able to sell those on a website at 17? Oh, well, we just saw cheap ones. So that was a, you would buy exist. We would buy them. So it wasn't particularly sophisticated. They would come through and you could buy them for 300 pounds or something. But you could sell them for two or three thousand. So what we do is we'd sort of see what was coming up for release by the ones that look like they could be valuable. Put them on the website and then sell them. So you'd have to sort of hold stock or inventory, I guess. Does a couple of people flip on basically? Basically, yeah, yeah. And he's just sort of that early day sort of thing. And so that was the first thing. And then my first iPhone I think I got when I was about, it must have been 18. So I remember I was at school when I first got it at university sort of time. And it was having that, I'll see in that first iPhone that then made me really interested in the idea of not just web development but app development. I remember having that first iPhone and thinking, I would love to learn how to do this. So the leap from building websites to developing apps like it wasn't, it wasn't an insurmountable leap. You could basically buy the off the shelf software you needed to start building the apps and you could figure out how to build an app on your own. Yeah, just through YouTube and for me, those apps were were in fitness. So it was, I don't know how to get in shape. And you know, it was like different areas where you'd look at different exercises, learn how to do them. It would all just be text imagery and video. Okay, right. And they were fitness apps. So let's dive into that for a moment. You got into, to go into the gym at what age? About 16, 17 and yeah, and that the gym was really important to me because it was that first time in my life where I realized that I'll get out of it what I put in. Yeah. So if I go to the gym five days a week for a year, I will be in a better position at the end of that year than I was at the start of it. And that, that was a fundamental and really important lesson for me. You could literally see the changes. Exactly. Yeah. And so how did you, when you started to go to the gym, I mean, going at 16, you know, you're younger than most people in there and can be intimidating and, you know, like, did you? How did you just like get into the habit of going every day? You find the local gym. You sort of go with friends. I think at that age when you're a teenager, go after school, you sort of travel in a pack of, of, of lads basically. Yeah. When you do the same workout, Chessman Day, Back Tuesday, Shoulders Wednesday, Legs Thursday, Arms Friday sort of thing. But you're right, it was, because I would go into the gym and you'd see all these big ass dudes. Great. Yeah, especially when you're a young teenager and you're a very thin, you'd assume that they all, you think that they're all looking at you. You think you're doing everything wrong in reality. They're probably more interested in themselves and they are you and, you know, no one really cares that much about what other people are doing. But it was intimidating. So I'd just go with friends and we'd lift weights and we'd have fun and we'd go after school. Alright, so that's a, that's becoming an increasingly important part of your life. But also on the side, like you're trying out these businesses and websites. And did you ever make any money doing these businesses? Like personalized car license plays or no. No, they all fail. They all fail. None of them made any money. Most of the apps were free. The ones that weren't, you know, the downloads were so tiny. It was like a few quid. So it was nothing made any money at that point. But it seems like already you were, I mean, you were generating these ideas in your head about businesses like things you can do and ways you could make money, you know, digitally. Is that right? I mean, was your sort of head moving in that direction already at that age? The thing for me was when things quote failed, it never felt like a failure. So when I was, when I was about 14, everyone here does work experience. So you go away. You do work experience for a little bit and you know, you find out what it's like to actually go into an office or a factory or something like that. So when I was 14, I went and did work experience with, with my granddad. He basically had his own business. No, he has his own business. So he'd line furnaces. So we'd go into factories around the Midlands and we'd literally go into the furnaces and the job would be you either line them with brick or ceramic fiber. So it's basically like an insulation around the inside. And there was a lot of things I learned there. So what I learned hard work. But the thing that really stuck with me was he told me about all the risks he had to take when he started his business. He had two kids. He had a mortgage, he had a wife and when he was building his business, he had to take massive financial risks that risked the house and you know, the roof over the head of his kids. So fast forward four years later, I'm 17, 18 and I'm trying to start my own business. I genuinely felt like I had no risk. I was at the time I was working at Pizza Hut. I was earning £4, £5 an hour. I could buy the main names for £3.50 at the time. My risk was zero and I'd always been brought up to know that there was genuine risk in starting a business and that allowed me to recognise it at the time. I didn't really have any risk compared to what he had. So you get to university and you're working at Pizza Hut as you mentioned. When you got to university, had you already started to think about a new business idea? So it wasn't actually an idea necessarily for a business. Going back to the whole thing was I loved doing new things and I loved learning new things. At that point, the aim was simply to sell one thing online. I remember we opened up Shopify website. It was all there. We bought the domain name and then it was a bit like, okay, we haven't got anything to sell. Now at this point, we hadn't thought to sell a power-on. At this point, we really wanted to sell supplements because we'd get into the gym, taking your protein shakes and all that sort of stuff. There was a friend of mine who worked at a local supplement shop and I remember calling him up, his name was down and I said, "Listen, Dan, I've got this website. I want to sell supplements online. Can you do me a deal? I want to buy some supplements off you and I'll sell them." He went, "Yeah, I can do you a deal. I'll do you a deal." He came back to me the next day and he said, "Right. I've got rid of all of our minimum order quantities but the lowest I can go is I think it was £10,000. At this point, I'd never heard of £10,000, let alone seen £10,000. That would have been years worth of income for me at Pizza Hut. So that was obviously a door close. You wouldn't have to be able to buy stock. You wouldn't be able to buy a bunch of supplement in a holden. No exactly. At that point, it was almost like a good problem because then we started thinking, "Well, how can we, because remember, the aim was literally to sell something." That's when we found out about drop shipping where we could literally load at the website with hundreds of supplements, have them slightly more expensive than what the drop shipper would obviously sell them to us for and then when people order them, it would then ship through the drop shipper to the customer. And you called it Jim Shark from the beginning? Yeah, it was run on JimShark.co.uk. And Jim Shark was the name that you came up with. I mean, you got the domain, but it was, tell me about that name. Yeah, I just wanted to say, because I'd never thought it would be anything big, it was a real arbitrary decision to the point where I can hardly remember why we called it Jim Shark. I know the domain was cheap, I know it was about £3.50, I know it was available. So no, I don't, it was just, it was just like a guess an instinctive decision at the time. But can I be wine first set just because I want to go up slightly back a little bit, which is first of all, you're talking about we and I want to kind of dig it this because I guess at University, you met a guy named Lewis Morgan. And he would eventually work with you on Jim Shark. Who is Lewis? How do you meet him? What's the story? I knew Lewis from school. We weren't friends, but we knew off each other. We became friends through the gym. So it was a case of like, I think we were racing, who could have the biggest arms, the quickest or something like that. And then it was through the gym that we would then beat bounce and all these ideas off each other. So that's obviously where then we found Shopify and drop shipping and built from there. All right. There's one other bit of context that I want to, I'm curious about, which is Birmingham, I think, and maybe I'm right, it's sort of, it's sort of like the center of bodybuilding culture in the UK a little bit. Like I guess there are like bodybuilding conferences and conventions in Birmingham. Is that, is that right? Yeah. So there's a couple of things. So one, Dorian Yates, one of the best bodybuilders of all time is from Birmingham, but you're right. The biggest and the best bodybuilding and lifting event as far as I was aware, certainly in the UK possibly Europe was actually run out of Birmingham. And it was called the body power event. And we'd all go there just as as fans. And it was, it was really cool because all of the biggest and the best bodybuilders were always from the US. So to be able to go and see them, see the brands, see the big bodybuilders in Birmingham was just an amazing thing as I, 16, 17, 18 year old. And when you, when you first decided to start this sort of drop ship Shopify website, it was, it was you and Lewis or, or, it was literally just me and Lewis for at least 18 months, probably even the first two years. Right. You largest state and had to do. Well we had the Shopify website. It looked amazing. It was full of supplements. It looked incredibly professional. We sent it live and absolutely nothing happened for weeks. Nothing died. I sort of didn't realise that because the website was like, I assume that people would just come across it and find it. No one found the website. We completely had to try and work out how to get traffic there. And it was actually Facebook. We started Facebook pages. Obviously there was a gym chart, Facebook page and lifting pages. And this is just pages that you were starting. You wouldn't have cash to, to, to put ads out. No, we had, we had no money, no ads, no nothing. It was literally just organic Facebook pages with pictures of lifters and bodybuilding news and things like that. And I think it probably took a couple of months. And eventually we had our first sale. It was 52 pounds. The cost to us was 50 to the drop ship. So we had a two pound profit. It took us about, I don't know, two months. So we were earning a profit of a pound a month. But it didn't matter because if you think about that two months prior, the whole ambition was just to sell something online. And that feeling of selling something online was just absolutely brilliant. And I was, I honestly, I was just absolutely blown away. I was danced around my bedroom at like 19 years old, whatever it was, 18, 19 years old, just so pleased that we'd sold something. So getting an order is exciting, but you mentioned your margins were like one to two pounds per older. Yeah. So how long did you keep it as a supplement business before you start to think, you know, maybe we should look around for a different product. Yeah, it would be somewhere between six to 12 months, maybe something like that. And we did sell and we managed to build up maybe we'd get an sale or two a week, but because the margin was so low. There was a point where we would genuinely debate and as to whether or not this is even worth carrying on. And then my, so my nan had done a curtain making course, the Greta's a grammar. Yeah, yeah, she, and she had a sewing machine on the dining table in her, in her house. And it sort of maybe think, well, I'm wondering if we could actually make our own clothing at this point. And now at that point, we then bought a sewing machine. We brought a screen printer. We saved the money for it and we started to basically to, to try to hand make hand print our own clothing, basically. And that, that, that was where it all really started to kick off. But again, this was like, let's just try selling clothing on the site. Yeah, exactly that. And it was, there was definitely a thing of no one made clothing specific to bodybuilders and lifters. And it's less even, it was more around the brand in no one sold product that was dedicated to that sort of that group that we were very much a part of. So we ended up at that point. We sort of bought a load of blanks and again, it's a fairly standard thing that I guess a lot of people do today. We started screen printing and in some areas as well, sewing our own product. All right. So let's kind of break this down. You buy a sewing machine and a screen printer. And what, and how much does that stuff cost? The screen print was about a thousand pounds. So the sewing machine would have been a few hundred quid. So at that point, it would have been all in just over a thousand pounds. But we could make lots of different product, different logos, all on the same blanks. And blanks are just blank t-shirts. Yeah, blank t-shirts, blank tanks, hoodies. And you get them in white, black, gray, almost like a similar sort of thing to like a fruit of the loom, standard t-shirt with logos on. And it was on me to order. Like if somebody ordered a shirt, then you would, you would screen print it basically. Yeah, literally. It was a, we wake up, we'd see if there was an order, screen print it, take it to the post office, send it, and then that was it. And this, presumably this didn't really cost you that much money because you could just go to like a, I mean, were you literally like just going to, we would call it like, Ross or, you know, or TJ Maxx type stores and just buying bulk t-shirts? Like a, we bought them from a UK wholesaler. So you could buy, again, the minimums were low, like the minimums might have been ten per size or something. So, and then going back to the, the verses of the supplements, because we still had supplements on the website at this point as well. We could sell, I make 50 pounds worth of supplements, make two pounds in margin. Or we could sell 30 pounds worth of clothing and make 15 pounds. So it was, that, that to us completely changed the game because all of a sudden we were sort of starting to build a model where we could reinvest in our own business and, and that's when we could really start to grow it. But initially it was, it was just t-shirts, tanks and hoodies and hoodies, okay. And I mean, was there in your mind at least like a big vision at that point or was it just, let's just do this and see what happens? No, it was really gradual. So the first moment was, let's make a website that sells something online. Then it was, we got the first sale. Then it was, let's get our second sale. And it was, let's try and get a sale a week and a sale a month. And then the bar was always incredibly low. There wasn't, it wasn't for many, many years until we really started to think ahead. You almost just think about the next thing and dedicate, we found out that I've dedicated ourselves wholeheartedly to just what that next thing was. So again, like, With the supplements you were thinking maybe people would stumble on in order supplements like I can't imagine all of a sudden the floodgates open and people are like oh they have t-shirts and hoodies now. I mean was it still like cricket? No it was exactly that and it was all done through Facebook pages but the big moment for us was then the next year where we went to that body power event and we visited as customers as we always did and we went up to the show office where you can book for the next year they were generally book a year in advance and we went up there and I remember saying them to them please can we ever stand we want to book a stand for next year and I think it was a minimum of £3,000 so again it was a lot of money to us but at that point we'd sort of started to sell enough to give us the confidence that between the sales on the website plus the jobs that we had we could probably we're in 12 months we could get the money together. You could make you have £3,000. Yeah and you decide that you're going to go to this conference and what were you going to do there? I mean how were just t-shirts and hoodies and tank tops going to be enough to generate excitement? So we booked the space the year before and then that whole year it sort of gave us something really big towards we were then like right let's build our business to this event so it was free the event was in May and we at the time all of our fitness information going back to sort of that web development era all of the information that we learnt was through YouTube so it was just through watching YouTubers and all our favourite fitness people were on YouTube so we ended up just sort of building relationships with a handful of YouTubers and I actually remember Matt Ogis and Chris Lovardo they're they're living California at the time remember jumping on Skype to them and just talking about the products that we were making they gave us feedback we'd send them the product they would put them in their YouTube videos and then the product it was it was something beyond t-shirts. No no it was just the t-shirts and tanks and because this is kind of early issue YouTube it wasn't that hard to just connect with them and say hey I watch your YouTube videos can I send you some stuff? Yeah and they were really just excited they I don't think they'd probably spoke to anyone from the UK before and we through that year we then not only built one of sales to cover the £3000 for the stand I think we actually upgraded the size of the stand I think it probably cost us another £3000 but we even had enough money by the the following may before the event to fly those YouTubers out to the UK to come to the event and we I remember we called them when we asked them if they wanted to come and they were just over the moon they obviously they just immediately said yes so they flew out to the event and that that was a we didn't realize it at the time that was a game changer for us and the idea was like what did you propose to them just wear gym shark stuff and and beat our booth? Yeah literally come to the event we'll fly you out obviously put you up in a hotel come to the booth we'll go to the gym and we'll just I guess chill together and have a good time at the event. Alright so you so you're getting close to this conference and tell me a little bit about how you start to think about what you were going to feature there. Honestly we didn't be on the having the YouTube like being there with the YouTubers and having the product we didn't think too much about it we the big thing for us it was the launch of our first ever track suit so we had the event our first ever track suit which we built up to on on our Facebook page at the time and obviously the YouTube YouTubers were there as well that was everything and we we just sort of go in excited to be there. Alright let's talk about the track suit how did you design it I mean you obviously knew how to design a website and but did you know how to design clothing? Oh no no we we we just had to learn as we went really we we we just just searching around online we found manufacturers it wasn't a particularly sophisticated process but it was just us trying to build the track suit that at the time no one else was making and that we really wanted and I'm assuming you went to like to China right because that's where all the manufacturing happened and still happens to some extent. Yeah yeah so the first track suit was made in China and I can't remember how we found them and it would have been on you know on Ali Barbar or something like that I think it was I think that's where we found them and it was all around the fit it was very tapered at the waist the the trousers were tapered it was very much around that tapered fit at the time and the taper fit presumably you you know you look better in it right especially if you're because it it shows off your muscles or whatever I mean even even for sort of skinnier guys right if it's more fitted it you can it can sort of enhance your the way your body looks. Yeah and that that's where it was really born and that that's what we tried to do today right we've tried to build some really physique accentuating clothing that's where that all that began through that first track suit and through that that that early product. Even before that just buying all the inventory how how much do you estimate you had to spend just to order the inventory to hold it. It would have been less than 10,000 pounds but it would have been in the thousands and how did you have that that cash that was through a combination of pizza her building the business and just basically reinvesting every single penny that we had because we had no cost every single pound of profit would literally just go into that order. All right so you get to this conference this party power conference and you have like a bunch of big guys at the booth and and what I mean you've got a track suit there. Yeah and I'm trying to imagine like what I mean how or what happened there I mean was there what people curious like what is this gym shark thing like what how do people respond. Well that that was probably the most surreal weekend of my life because we we hadn't even finished setting up the stand I remember I was still running from the van to bring the product in in the days before this the you know all the youtubers have been posted on Facebook on YouTube let everyone know that they would be there and we didn't really know how I guess how big or how famous they were but they'd let everyone know that they were being there and as soon as they opened the doors to that event it just felt like people flooded to the stand and people were there to see you know their heroes basically they because they'd never seen them before so it's it's actually because most of these guys would walk down the streets of Birmingham or wherever and nobody would have any idea who they were but I think in high-franc these guys were rock stars in in the world of lifting they were huge the younger sort of late teens early 20s audience knew them but then the older people maybe at the time in their threes or the 40s just had no idea because YouTube was very much a it was just so new at the time but then the people that visited our stand also ended up buying products and from whatever it opened on that Saturday morning all the way through to close on Sunday night I just remember spending the whole time just grabbing products selling products and in the event we we completely sold out of everything that we took and I'm trying to figure out why like again as you describe it it's a really basic tracksuit right it's not I mean it's tapered so it's it's probably differentiated but yeah um Jim sharkus was an unknown brand but there was excitement people were like kind of coming to your booth and checking it out what do you think explains it do you think it was the fit yeah I think the fit of the tracksuit it was definitely a fairly unique design but to your point it wasn't revolutionary I think the fact that the the heroes on YouTube were wearing it so this was most of the people at the stand were young kids it was it was it was us basically it was teenage guys and what was the retail price of the of the jim suit I think we had to do everything cash that weekend so we literally just had sort of bags around our waist and we were literally just just selling everything I think it was round numbers I think it was 30 pounds and we were just selling it all for cash and after the event I remember we were so tired we just we all just lay down on the floor in the stand and there was a guy who would work to stand a different stand and he walked over to us he was a bit older and he hadn't even heard of the YouTubers and he said well he said how did you do that I remember looking at him and saying I've got no idea what we come back in just a moment jim shark breaks into the us market and bandlands in Ohio in December without checking the weather first stay with us I'm Guy Ross and you're listening to how I built this Hey welcome back to how I built this I'm Guy Ross so it's 2013 and with the help of some YouTube influencers jim shark sells a ton of tracksuits and t-shirts at the annual body power expo prior to the event we were selling around 200 to 250 pounds a day in revenue because we couldn't because we were at the event and we couldn't ship from the website we turned the website off the weekend that's how small the business was going back to it being a project and we the following week when we turned the website back on and we posted online that we were back live we did 30 thousand pounds in revenue in 30 minutes sold out of everything and that weekend was really important because it was the weekend I both quit university and peaked to her to pursue jim shark so I was so happy because going into it I was so nervous because I mean I was the first person in my family to go to university and I remember calling my mom and dad and saying I'm going to drop out because they were so proud of the fact that I'd worked I've worked so hard to get into university that was not a given for me whatsoever and I called them and I said I'm going to leave university and you know when you sort of expect you like a kid you sort of expect to get told off And they were so supportive. They just said, listen, if this is what you want to do, then go for it. So now you've got a real business and These influencers at that time were they getting paid or were they were just happy to get free stuff and to be no? No, this is before that that era where you have to pay like a million dollars for a post or whatever. Yeah, exactly But also the advantage back then was if you had 20,000 followers in 2013 The algorithm was different like those 20,000 followers were literally watch the videos was today if you have two million Maybe only one percent of those people are even gonna be aware that you have a new video out. Yeah, yeah I wish I could say it was some wonderful strategy that we do it Literally wasn't we made a website because it felt it was interesting We made the product that we wanted to wear we went to the event we wanted to go to and we sent clothes to the people that we Love to follow it was it was literally to your point a really natural Process and there was in no way a strategy. We didn't think too far ahead. We just did what felt right an instinctive But you knew that once that you sold thirty thousand dollars and a half hour of tracksuits and your website You knew that this was did you had something here that this could actually have legs. Yeah, I remember being sat there It was the middle of the night My mom and dad's house The website I had to literally go through every single because all the stock was set to it like infinite inventory So you would just say there was no stock levels But I knew we'd sold out so I had to go through every products and zero the the inventory so everything was sold out Sort of chlorine across my laptop to get it all sorted and sat there when once that was done just thinking wow we We've got something special here and that again. That's just where it all began and at that point We were signing up to the next event the next body power. We were signing up to another event We obviously just bought more inventory and we doubled down and everything that had worked for us Particularly in that sort of couple of months. We just doubled down on it and you were living with your mom and dad You were twenty twenty one or whatever. Yeah, I mean you're a young guy so and In the inventory, where are you keeping it? So at the time it was just in my mom and dad's Basically like in their house and they were it was just too much to keep in there But in the run-up to the event we thought we have to find a unit so we found it was a local unit in the country side It was a place called droid which which you won't have heard of and it was an old Shed on a canal and it was made out of a spestos and it cost just three hundred pounds a month But it was out of space and that's where we stored everything and but still in those first like 2013 2014 2015 it was still track suits and t-shirts tanks Sweat shirts that that was it. That was that was you were selling yeah, and it was in that period then so the following year We then started to do the events we did our first event abroad in Germany That's when we brought brought in our first essentially the first gym chart staff so the first person that joined Was actually my brother and he joined to Package the orders whilst we were away at the event So that's when we sort of started to build out the team, but it was literally like in order to come in He would package it up walk to the post office with a bunch of boxes and mail them out or or DHL or you a UPS or whatever you were using yeah exactly that and then at the end of the day The last thing we would always do is set on our laptops and we would go through all of the customer queries And we wouldn't leave until everything was sent out every query was responded to and then obviously we go to the gym All right, so I read that in 2014 you're you in the end of that year with about 250,000 pounds in sales So great Amazing, but still tiny right and in around this time I Guess you meet two guys two businessmen who who will eventually play a pivotal role in helping gym chart grow One is a guy named Steve Hewitt who I I guess had some experience in the apparel industry and the other was a guy named Paul Paul Richardson So how did these guys start to help you and by the way? How did you meet them? So we'd go to the gym and there'd be local, you know business people that had run businesses and you sort of knew who they were Because when you go to the gym all the time you sort of end up knowing who's who and chatting to people so again We sort of befriended Paul Paul gave us some advice on a few I guess a few bits and Paul then connected us with Steve and it and at that point that's when we sort of arranged the meeting and I remember we sat down with Steve and Put Paul was there and we just said this and we want to make We I think it's at the time we actually wanted to make some t-shirts and We didn't know any European suppliers and Steve did know Europeans to supply it so that was then I guess that was the the relationship was we went we worked through the business that Steve worked for or to get some product made in in Europe And then because Steve in his previous job before that he'd actually worked for Reebok And again, he would just talk in a language we didn't understand like margin for us We just put stuff and then we sold stuff and that was it We didn't know what what a margin was and I mean being honest we didn't we I mean I think they put us in touch with an accountant because we didn't know Really about how to file accounts bookkeeping Tax rates all of these different things we no one teaches you any of this we so we were just sort of picking it up as we went so I'm sure every entrepreneur has had this but I remember the day Before the clothes of our financial year or when the accounts were due the account and email the list and they were like right We need all of these things. I mean we had none of them So we had an old table tennis table with all of our receipts for the year and we're trying to organize everything It was every again you just don't you're not taught these things so for us working with those two and their experience was incredibly helpful I imagine that they were they were looking at you and like how old was Paul and Steve at that time How old was this guy's probably would have been in his light 50s Steve would have been in his foes Okay, so these guys way older than you could be older old enough to be your parents That I'm thinking they probably looked at you guys at you and Lewis is like oh these are really cool young guys I want to help them out like this is a cool little business that they're starting I I have to imagine that they never imagined it could be something huge they were probably just wanted to be Helpful because you guys were young and enthusiastic. Yeah, and at the time they were doing their own things But there was a point where I Remember Steve talking to Steve and the thing is that that Steve was really good at that we had no experience of He was very good with people so he understood how to run businesses He he understood about how to structure businesses and He he came in and he did I think he did a day a month and again I'd never known about this we were paying him a day right you know It went again. You don't know how these people basically hired him as a consultant We hired him as a consultant. He did one day a month for us and I think we up to it to a day a week and then there was a point where I remember saying to him I asked him to come on as like an MD so not quite a CEO But just someone to could support the day that over in the other business. Imagine director Yeah, that's when he then came on full-time and what we essentially did was he ran what we called the back end of the business So operations, logistics, you know the rising everything that wasn't brand or product or marketing I'm sure I mean I have to ask Steve this question I guess but from your perspective what would make a guy in his Late 40s or maybe early 50s. I don't how old it ever old he was at the time Stop doing what he was doing and join you guys full-time. I mean that's kind of risky, right? I mean it you must have seen potential for this to be bigger, right? Mm-hmm. How did you make it interesting for him like he he of course he was gonna get equity in the business and How did you figure out how to make that work and what did you even know about like equity splits at the and by the way I'm asking you all this not to say oh my gosh how you know you were so naive It's more like I the people listening to this episode because a lot of them are in their 20s and Early 30s maybe even teenagers listening right now they're asking this question like wow How did he know what to do at that time because I don't know what to do? Yeah, I think we were we were definitely lucky so with that when Steve came on full-time we did we did give him equity So I think that that was important to him and I think that probably gave him that that level of comfort that you wouldn't get if you didn't have Any equity whatsoever The day rate would have been whatever whatever it was but then obviously he moved on to a salary I remember this I won't share what the salary was but I remember he was by far the most well-paid person not only in the business But I'd ever heard of Because I had to be yeah like we'd never I'd never heard of people that were earning that sort of money But he you know he deserved it right the the the value he brought to our business was absolutely worth it So it was funny for me to go from this perspective of oh wow I didn't realize people earned that month at that much money to oh Wow he can earn that much money because he's gonna really help grow our business You know way that he's far more valuable than than the cost that he will incur and you were the still the CEO basically Yeah, so I was the CEO but then at that point it was very much just me and Lewis doing Everything so yeah, so it I wouldn't really call it a CEO job It was just we were just running the business basically But it sounds like I mean it sounds like by hiring Steve You were essentially hiring a mentor. It's it's almost like you I mean you kind of hired your own bought you hired your boss You basically said okay, I'm it's my business, but I want to hire I need somebody to kind of showing the ropes here I need you to help me figure this out as much as he told us I think he showed us so much more because I found that it's one thing having someone sit down and go, Ben, you need to think about this like this. Watching someone work for me is really, even to this day it's really valuable. I genuinely think I learn more from watching than I do from people telling because it was the way interacted with people the way that he thought about things and that as a young 20 something was zero experience was huge for us. What were some of the first things that Steve did when he joined I mean because at this point you still have a very limited line of products given that he had come from re-buck in a peril was he saying okay guys we have to hire now we have to hire a designer and we have to think about. A whole line of a pair we want to sell. Yeah so exactly that so the first thing that we did was we split the business straight down the middle and we had front end and back end so it was brand of market on the one end and then call it. Like a very early build of a product or a supply chain team maybe now. This was the period where we we double down and events even more so we then we traveled a lot we did events in Ohio California, Colone, Melbourne, the UK at that point we probably had at least. Probably like 10 employees so there was a group of us that would go and just basically sell the product in person to in the same way that we did that first body par event. You know when Steve joined I would think given his experience I would think one of the things you would have said is alright guys let's get serious now let's go and just go and just raise a bunch of money and just scale quickly. Because what happens is a business does very well but they can't keep up with orders they can't scale because in the cash and that's a huge problem when you don't have the cash when you've got lots of orders. You can also tank a business so how did it happen that you didn't actually need outside cash? Well I guess because we were we were we are a cash generator business we sell products at a high margin and we have the cash come in before we distribute it and we certainly did then. We didn't need the cash and being honest again I didn't know that raising money was a thing I'd never heard of known anyone that had raised money until probably my well into my early if not mid 20s. We're from a very industrial part of the West Midlands it's not London or New York we never we just didn't know that that was a thing beyond I don't even think we had an overdraft on the bank maybe for many years into building the business. Now obviously no I now know that there are many incredibly smart people that can build businesses in different ways but that that was the only way that we knew how at the time. You got to make a profit from the start. Mhm. Yeah and reinvest everything don't take any money out and just really focus on growing the business and again just I guess to show an eye even to weed the first trip we ever did to the US with Jim Sharp we flew to the Arnold event in Columbus Ohio I think it was December. We I'd never been to you know Columbus Ohio before let alone in the winter we didn't even check the weather so I just went with a t-shirt and track suit sort of thing. I remember landing looking at the window and seeing all the snow. I remember they said on the plane that the on the tan or the temperature I remember I just I had no idea what I was in Celsius but I knew it was freezing we didn't have any clothes that were good enough for me. I remember I know higher winter. But we just had a great time selling the product and and being with the community being with the going into the gyms. We would just have in the time of our life. So when you started to go to these treacherous in the US for example. I mean you were small potatoes going tiny compared to to the brands that were probably at some of these shows but was it how did people respond I mean we're people like oh you're from the UK like what are you or because these youtubers already had let's say a global appeal. Or did people know who you were when you that was the most surprising thing we landed in Ohio and again you think no one would know but I think the thing to remember is these trade shows are and were filled with real fans of the industry so it was like we were like people who were star trekking like every character. Yeah sorry so we we landed into Ohio and you sort of think when anyone know and you're right I think it was the it was a combination of because we were big on social media at that point through the youtubers and the youtubers were there with us and then again three of the I think three of the five were from the states anyway. They had big America like big US following it gave us a legitimacy very very quickly which I think was great. And again because no one else at that point was doing what we were doing all be it wasn't massively technically advanced but we were speaking to an audience that no one else was speaking to I think we then had that legitimacy quite quickly in the US. So all right let's talk about about products because you know one of the things and you may you may be familiar with the story but years ago we had Chip Wilson who started a little lemon on the show and he really he kind of was a pioneer of this fabric that they ended up using this like stretchy fabric that you know worked really well many women felt like it made them look more flattering. At that point you know you were still it was like mainly cotton that you were using and you know just the tracksuits and the t-shirts when did you start to have conversations internally like hey let's think about like performance material and let's think about. You know sort of doing something a little bit more innovative I think one of the things that I really admire about what chip did it Lulu was. I think you I could probably close my eyes and you can hand me a product and I could tell you that it was a product of theirs I think that's so impressive and inspiring yeah yeah. I would say the first piece of sort of performance apparel that we made would have been our first seamless product and we we were trying to work out how could we make the best physique accentuate in t-shirt so it was all about making your shoulders look bigger and your waist look narrower. And seamless means it's it's made with synthetic mainly synthetic materials. Yeah yeah so but it and then it's knitted in a tube so rather than having flat I guess flat fabric that you then so together it's knitted into a tube as well so it creates a really I guess physique hugging fit but you can also knit designs into the products itself and that was a big moment for us when we found out about that because we could knit in. Almost like a darker color over the chest over the shoulders for a man and then we've realized that it makes essentially make your shoulders look wider and you're waist look narrower and that's. I think that's where some of the early product principles for Jim Sharp really were born about building the best gym where that we can but ultimately a really physique accentuating fit. And did you have I mean at that point and on staff in like a staff position who somebody who was a designer or not not yet or were you still mainly basically working with the designers that the manufacturers had on their staff. No not really the point where we made we brought in a design team it's actually quite funny it looks bad on me but we the point that we we built a design team was it was a few years in we. We thought we wanted to sell we wanted to expand and we wanted to sell women's product as well as men because again that the company in the early days was literally built in our image it was lifting where for young men to make a physique look better basically. And we wanted to make women's wear and I thought I'll give it a go how hard can it be we did our first women range women's range and it was terrible it was absolutely terrible no one wanted it it looked terrible it fitted terrible. It just didn't work and it was at that point where we realize that if we're going to build if we're going to do this properly we needed a design team and we need genuine designers who will you know think about how a women's range should look. So by the end of 2016 you guys had done almost 13 million dollars in sales you've got a little over 50 employees you're a real now you know still a small business right but still like you're starting to get attention at that point like there's media attention. There's interest like what is this UK brand that you know started Birmingham who who is his kid who started it tell me a little about like the attention that you started to get around this because you know all of a sudden one day your student at Austin University and then you know a year later there's like an article on in the Sunday times about you. Jim shark had a lot of attention because of it being a very public brand I personally didn't really get too much attention which was really helpful to me and I could literally focus my all my energy on on running the business that that only really changed probably five years ago. Um that year a couple things happened. Lewis left your co founder he left and went and started on clothing company and and was that it was he just burned out was there a split was there. Tension or friction or was he just kind of like I did this I'm done I want to go do my own thing. Yes so Lewis actually left the business in terms of his active involvement in the business is around 2015 we were doing it was somewhere between 10 and 20 million in revenue so Lewis actually left the day today the business then and. Yeah I must admit that I found that really hard I don't know he found it hard to but that that was tough because it felt like at that point we were what. for call it four, five years. and really taking off. Yeah, and we'd travel the world, we'd work together every minute of every day. So that was tough for me. But what was the reason he gave you? I mean, did you say, "Hey, why are you leaving?" - Oh yeah, I mean, we had plenty of conversations around it. Essentially, I think we just had different visions for where the business, the way that we were running the business and we had a disagreement. And again, it was, I think it was a tough period for both of us, I was really disappointed. And I think the thing that a lot of people forget about is when things like this happen, the business still has to carry on. So you sort of, you go in through this difficult period, but you still have to run the business. You still have to, at that point, we, again, we've probably had 20 or 30 staff. You have to look after them, you have to do what's right for the business. And that was a really tough time for, I think, for both of us. And again, at that point, the business, we were growing during that period. So we were having to, it's hard enough to run a business that's growing that quickly, but to have that going on at the same time is, again, it's really tough. When we come back in just a moment, how Ben becomes a better leader by building his own apprenticeship program. But why he still earns the nickname Hurricane Ben. Stay with us. I'm Guy Ross, and you're listening to How I Built This. (bell ringing) Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Ross. So it's 2015, and even though Jim Shark is now a multi-million dollar business, there's trouble at the top. Ben and his partner, Lewis, are not getting along. Yeah, there's definitely tension, absolutely. And at that point, and, yeah, I guess the only thing for us to do is go our separate ways. I mean, the only thing I could like in it too would probably be some sort of, it's like a business divorce, isn't it? And it went on for a while. It took a long time for us to sort of iron out all the details and work out what it looks like in this sort of new chapter. Yeah, and obviously Lewis is not here. This is not a documentary show. It's a one-person interview, and it's not, in no way does this meant to reflect badly on him or on you. I'm sure both of you guys have perspectives on what happened, but I'm just curious. Can you kind of give me a basic outline of which direction you kind of wanted ahead in and which direction he wanted ahead in? Because again, probably both equally valid, right? So what was the differences, the broad differences vision? There was definitely a point of, I think, and you're right, I don't think one was necessarily right or one was necessarily wrong. I think they were just different. There was, my perspective was very much like, I was really happy to roll the dice time and time again and just keep growing and growing and growing the business and to bring in more people, more management types at the time and build the business from that perspective. Whereas I think Lewis was a lot more, he really wanted it to be centered around us and the business act in a slightly different way. And then I think that was the early tension and then again, without going too much into the detail, then there was a series of disagreements between us and there was one of us that I think had to move on in order to put the business first and I think we then had to do that. Did you guys, are you in touch today or was that sort of also the end of your personal relationship? No, no, that was the end of our personal relationship there. Which I think is a shame, but it is what it is ultimately. - So, all right. So now you'd mentioned earlier like when you feel little lemon or other brands, you could just know what they are without even opening your eyes. Did you start to think about, hey, I want, this is what I want, Jim Shark to be. I want us to be there too. - We didn't consciously think about it, but I think it naturally started to build and I think again, for us, what we've done is we've really tried to focus on building the best Jim where in the world, it's all around Jim where so we're not trying to make product for, again, at this point for basketball or running or yeah. It was all around the Jim because that was and is our passion. So, and we'd always found that the product that performed the best was that physique accentuating product, both for men and women at this point. And that was our real sort of bullseye and that's what we just continued to double down them. - Right, 'cause Jim, I guess, like if you went to the gym in the US, right, I'm thinking most guys would be wearing Nike or Adidas, right? Maybe under armor, but also like people playing basketball or tennis or running would also wear those. And in your mind, we could, you're thinking like we're the brand for that Jim. Like if people want to run and wear it great, but like Lou Leman became a yoga brand or alo, we wanna be the Jim brand. - Exactly that. We wanna be the brand that people wear when they're in the gym. - And this is like in direct consumer, I mean, you just like hit that wave, right? Because direct to consumerism was a model that all of a sudden, you know, in around 2012, just begins to explode at least in the US and then probably in the UK to some extent as well, the advantage is if you have high volume, your profit margins are much higher than if you've got a bunch of brick and mortar stores 'cause you don't have those expenses. - Yeah, and we could take that profit and reinvest it heavily both into the product but also into brand of market as well. - So you go from like 12 and a half million, $13 million pounds in sales in 2016 to 100 million in 2018. And which is an amazing leap, right? I mean, the year over your growth is just, it's meteoric and Steve, by this point, Steve, you it is fully the CEO. But I'm curious how did your, you were, and I think still are the majority shareholder, majority owner. So all those young people who started with you, they knew that you had started the company but there was a CEO and so how did that work? I mean, did people come to you with questions and things that they wanted to do or would everybody go to Steve and say, hey, this is what we wanna do and what do you think? - Yeah, well, they do both. And I think that was the point where it was really clear to me how important mine and Steve's relationship was and how aligned we were. 'Cause if people didn't get the answer, they wanted from Steve and they would come to me or the opposite way around. So they'd sort of try and play almost like "Mum off dad" sort of thing. So our relationship was really important. Obviously we'd speak every day and I, when Steve was CEO, it was a great period for me because I had that period, I think he was there for probably about five years, maybe even longer. And I had a period of accelerated learning in departments in our business, knowing that I could basically fail and I'd had a team around me that could help clean up after me and it sort of felt like being able to do an exam, not get the result that you wanted and then just do the exam again because I could literally just try fail, try fail, try fail, knowing that this team, I'd built this team around me to support me. - So interesting, I mean, when Steve becomes, when you hire Steve and he kind of eventually runs the business, you become head of brand. You do that for a while and then there's somebody who's better at it and so you bring that person on to run it and then you jump into what's the next thing you jump into? - I think I did product. So it was all product design, development, all that sort of stuff and then it was more on the market inside of things, all that sort of stuff. So more the quantifiable side of marketing for a bit and then after that it was in sort of tech development website. - So you really kind of built your own apprenticeship model, like you would jump from one thing to the next and stay there for a year, six months or nine months and kind of learn on the job how to do all those different jobs. - Yeah, and it was amazing because I would, you know, I'd be in factories with the development of the product and I'd be designing with the design or spending time with the designers. I'd be obviously at every event still working with developers on how to improve our website and email partners for CRM and things like that. I just had, yeah, exactly that. And like a turbocharged apprenticeship at a high level in the business. - Tell me a little bit about, again, you still are super young and now you're very experienced, which is awesome. But as you're sort of building the brand, right? And building a company just inadvertently by accident, you have to also become a leader of people. Did you always feel like you have those qualities as a kid or is it something you had to learn how to develop as you got older? - No, no, for me, I definitely had to learn. As a kid, always very shy, very introverted. I learned a lot of that through watching Steve. And to be honest, through feedback, through feedback, through the business, I've had to completely change the way I work now from 10 years ago when I was in my, you know, early 20s. I've had to completely change. And I remember we did, I'd never heard of it before. We'd moved into our third, our first proper office. We built a team at this point. We probably had, I don't know. We'd call it 30, maybe, maybe 40. People working out of the office. And we did a 360 feedback, which, I mean, I'm sure you know what it is, but for those that don't, it's basically where you have feedback from a group of people that you work closely with. And I had this feedback and I read it and I could not believe how bad it was. The bottom line, I think someone described me as Hurricane Ben, because it was, I would come in, I'd see a design, I wouldn't like it, and then I'd basically just say, that's terrible, start again sort of thing. And people, you know, it was basically, I could be rude to people, I was very abrupt, and just frankly not very good at working in groups that had a real big impact on me. Now I didn't actually, I would have been about 24, 25, so this is, I guess, a good 5 or six years into the business. And that was a big moment for me, because I realized I really had to change if I was going to work well in, in gym chat. How did you cope with being so young and meeting with older people and did you ever feel intimidated or have a sense of like imposter syndrome? I don't think I ever did. That's not to say that I wasn't nervous, but I'd never had a feeling of imposter syndrome, because I mean there was a point where I'd basically done every job, whether it's packing orders or customer support or product design, or I'd sort of done everything. So I think when I was working with other people, I always felt really comfortable, not necessarily because they knew more than I did, they were more experienced, and smarter in many ways. But I am, I always just saw it as an opportunity to learn. So all right, you guys are, you know, he hit a funding like 170 million pounds in sales by, you know, 2019. And 2020, you get to the pandemic. And we'll talk about what happens during the pandemic, because in virtually every case that we've studied, apparel brands did really well, right? People were at home, they weren't wearing office clothing, they were wearing, you know, it was known as "ethleisure wear." That year you also had a private equity firm acquire a 21% stake in the brand, general Atlantic. The deal valued the brand at this point at $1.3 billion. And I imagine it was payday basically for shareholders, people who had shares in the company could liquidate at that point and make some money, significant money. Yeah. And for me, it was that closing of a chapter from B&A, from almost like that, that start-up period. And then really now, how do we become a true serious business at that point? And you retained, or I guess you even increased your shares at that point, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that was my point for really, I guess, committing to our business. You didn't take anything off the table for you at that point? No. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I increased my share holding through that event. All my focus was on how can I work, I guess, with general Atlantic as our new partner, as, you know, in terms of building Jim Sharkin to a really globally iconic brand. And I think everything up until that point for me was very instinctive and opportunistic. And it was just living in almost each week and each month as it came. That was the moment where I genuinely thought, "I really want to build this into something big." And I mean, they're obviously, it's a very huge private equity for a massive. And they bring experience. And did you have a board at that point, by the way? No. No, so the board, we actually agreed to build a board after that deal. So before that, we hadn't had a board. It was just essentially me, Paul, Steve, running the business together. You come back to become the CEO in 2021. I say, "Come back." Because you had done it when you were a much smaller business, right? It kept a tiny business. Steve transitions to executive chair at that point. And 2021, now, you know, you are, you know, nine years into this business, basically. I mean, it's really kind of started in 2012 as a supplement site. So you had the experience. You were ready to go. I mean, is that how you felt? Like, "Okay, I can do this now." No, no, so I didn't really feel ready. So when Steve came on, Steve always said to me that it wasn't, we always knew it wasn't a forever thing for Steve. We were actually working in Hong Kong at the time. And we sort of come to the end of the trip. And he sort of turns, I mean, he said to him, "Ben, I think I've taken this as far as I can." And, you know, I'm sort of ready to step down. He then went on and he said, "I think we need a new CEO." And I remember thinking, "God, this is, this is going to be hard work. I don't know who I'm going to find. I need to obviously find someone that I trust. I don't even know how to do this." And then he went on and he said, "And I think the next CEO should be you." And I didn't say anything at that point. I actually didn't really, I just said, "Well, I just said what I'll think about it." You didn't want this? You weren't trying to pursue this? No, not at that point. Absolutely not. It wasn't important to you to be the CEO. I just said it wasn't something I was thinking about at all. I mean, I thought about it the whole flight home, but it wasn't immediate. It certainly wasn't the second he told me. I grabbed it and thought, "This is for me. I took a while to really get comfortable with it." Then there was, you know, a transition sort of handover period of probably the best part of six months. Something else happens, which is in the pandemic, right? Everyone was assuming that that brick and mortar retail retail was really going to be dead. And then e-commerce, there was going to be the only channel. Of course, that's not what happened. And you also or you guys also thought, "Hey, we actually, 'cause you would only "done direct to consumer at that point." She get into retail. You should be in retail shops. You should own your own stores and then do wholesale as well. I mean, the biggest sales channel was the direct to consumer channels. Still, I still is today, I think, right? Yeah, absolutely. By far, yeah. But how many brick and mortar stores do you have today? We have, we've got three in a Manchester, I think we're at five. So we've got Amsterdam, three in London, and one in Manchester. And we're just in the process of opening two in New York. So we're growing a considered rate in terms of stores. What I don't want to do is I don't just want to open thousands overnight. I want to do it in a really thoughtful way. Well, here's what's interesting to me. There has been a little bit of a correction in direct to consumer, right? In recent years, because what people assumed was the future has become much, much harder, right? The just getting people's attention is harder. Like when you started out with YouTubers in 2012, 2013, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, right? It was like, you had this amazing, it was an amazing time period to capture people's attention. Today, there are tens, hundreds of thousands of influencers, micro influencers. It's really challenging to get eyeballs, right? And so it's hard. You've got to keep it fresh and keep it active. How do you guys maintain that energy when there's so much competition, so much more competition out there? Yeah, so the way that the certainly that we see it is what we don't want to do is we don't want to become overly broad and then essentially almost bland in a way. It's really important to me that we retain a really narrow focus. So the easiest thing for us to do would be to double or triple the size of our range and start selling basketball, wear and fashion wear and soccer and everything. That's not interesting to us. What we want to do is retain a really considered position in the gym. Like, great brands are built around great products and a great product positioning. So that's what we're really focused on. So build it the best gym wearing the water. And then by doing that, it allows us to work with the best lifters, whether it's Samson, I mean Chris Bumstead, Ryan Terry, all the best lifters wear gym shark. And that's really, really important to me. And it's really funny. I was working in Denver about 12 months ago. And I sort of finished work. I just went to a local gym. I think it was in any time fitness. And I went to the back. I went by the dumbbells. And there was three girls that were in the squat rack. And they were all like hats on headphones on. They had notepads. They were writing down there. I think they were deadlifting. They were writing down their lifts. And they were the people in the gym that knew what they were doing. And every single one of them was in gym shark. You know, I mean, it's amazing, right? It's you think about starting out in 2012, selling, dropship supplements. And then, you know, by 2015, hitting 12 million sales. And today, you know, exceeding 650 million, 700 million sales. And most of your sales today come from, still come from the UK. I know the US. So the US now, the US is now the majority of the business. And also where the most growth potential is. Absolutely. Yeah. And here, I mean, here you are now, you know, overseeing a multi-billion dollar brand. I think you've got over 900 employees now. And you're, are you 32 now? 33. 33. Although I feel a bit older, given how many 10 years have been. No, I mean, for sure. You've tons of experience, right? So you have the experience of people 20 years older than you just because you started so young and didn't know what you were doing and learned it. And so I imagine you're in this for a long time. I mean, do you imagine running this business in 10 years in 20 years from now? I feel like I've got the best job in the world. I absolutely love what I do. I love the job. And all the brands I had. I have really stood the test of time there. They're not five years old, they're 50 years old, or they're 70 years old. And so for me, the focus is on essentially running the business as long as it makes sense for me to do so. When you think about everything that's happened to you, I mean, you didn't, or the course of conversation mentioned like that, you know, you, it was Steve and Paul who you met at the gym and that they actually were the right people at the right time, the right place. How much of where you got to? How much of this business, how much of everything that's happened, do you, do you attribute to just luck and chance and fortune? Good, you know, good fortune. And how much do you think had to do with the grind that you put into it? Yeah, there's definitely a lot of its look. And a lot of its time and it's like we said, social media, Shopify, fitness, uptrend, bodybuilding, uptrending, more people going to the gym than ever. So there was an element of time in there. With that said, as we've built the business, lots of other people have recognised the same opportunities and maybe not had immediately the same outcome. So I think there's also an element of we took the risk, we took lots of risk to this day, we still take risks. And I think the commitment to the long term of our business and the ability and appetite to make those decisions has made a big difference as well. So I mean, I wouldn't want to put a percentage on it, but it would be, there would definitely be a good chunk of look and time in. But then with that, I think you have to take advantage of that as well. That's Ben Francis, co-founder of Jim Shark. Is your grandfather still around the grandfather's start of the furnace business? Yes he is. He is and he's still working, funnily enough. He's literally working that's where he can send me a picture of a furnace that we actually worked on together when I was 20 years ago and I was 14. What does he think about this? I mean, he was an entrepreneur, he is and here you are. He loves it. He absolutely loves it. I mean, I still see him a fair bit. We'll go out on bikes together, we'll go to car shows once a year and things like that. So no, he absolutely loves it. He's blown away. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And please sign up for my newsletter at gyros.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with Music Composed by Rumpteen or Bluey. It was edited by Niva Grant with Research Help from Alex Chung. Our audio engineers, Rappatchek Murray and Robert Rodriguez, our production staff also includes Catherine Cipher, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Chris Messini, Kerry Thompson, Andrea Bruce, Ramel Wood, Andaline Coats. I'm Guy Ross and you've been listening to How I Built This and Don't Stop the Podcast Just Yet. Because right now, you're about to hear an amazing small business story that you don't want to miss. This segment is presented by American Express with a business platinum membership, the best just got even better. And this week's story begins in 2015 when Lauren Dudley-Stevens and her sister joined their parents for a freezing cold adventure. Our parents had just picked up the hobby of boating and they would go out in long-hound sound and it was always cold no matter what time of year out on the water. Back then, Lauren worked in fashion PR. She flew around the world and dressed celebrities in red carpet looks from luxury designers like Gucci. But she dreamed of going into business for herself, ideally with her mom and her sister, Kaki. They just hadn't landed on the right idea yet. Until that day on the boat, when her mom happened to think out loud. My mom said, "You know, I just wish that I could have a cute fleece that I could wear out on the boat and then go to dinner and." And that moment for all of us was, "Oh, wait, that is a good idea. How many women would actually love this product?" They knew that young moms would. At the time, Lauren was expecting her first baby and Kaki had just had one of her own. It bothered them how hard it was to find washable, durable clothes that fit into their full lives. "I just want to feel put together every day, even though I also want to be comfortable in my my momhood but also going to work every day." Lauren started to take the idea seriously. She looked into sourcing material and found a company that makes fleece from plastic bottles that wash on the beaches. When we knew we could get a recycled fabric and make it stylish, we just thought, "Okay, this has to happen." So Lauren and her sister drew up a business plan for a direct-to-consumer fleece clothing line called Dudley Stevens, a combination of Lauren's maiden name, man, her married name. And they pitched it to a successful businessman. Someone they knew and admired. They're dad. We did not go to large investors and have millions of dollars invested. It was a very small family investment at the outset. We put a number together and he agreed and then we just dove in, full steam ahead. They chose a manufacturer in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, built a website and launched the business out of Lauren's basement. It turned out to be a pretty good bet. Within six months, they made their initial investment back. Not that success came easy. In the early years, Lauren and Kackie did everything themselves, printing the shipping labels, running the website, answering emails, all while juggling child care. I'm not sure how we did all that. I think as any mom listening would relate to, there's nothing like having a child that makes you efficient. The turning point came when the company brought in a hundred thousand dollars in a single day. Then it was actually on my birthday. So I met my husband for dinner and I just was on a total cloud nine. Like, so excited, scared because we had to figure out how to fulfill all of those orders. It was like, oh, we're a legit company now. Today, Dudley Stevens is closing in on $50 million in sales. They just celebrated 10 years in business and they're close to another milestone they're proud of. Recycling their 10 million plastic bottle. It's funny that we're like nearing in on 10 million plastic bottle and returning 10 years old. I was like, can we hit it by the end of the year? I don't know if we will, but we're close to it. And that's our small business spotlight presented by American Express. To build a business like no other, you need a card like no other. There's nothing like business platinum.