Ben Francis, CEO of Gymshark: “We made more money in half an hour than we had done in the entire history of the business…”

The Gentleman‘s Journal Podcast

Ben Francis is the founder and CEO of GymShark, a fitness company he started with some school friends back in 2012, drop-shipping supplements to their pals in the bodybuilding community. The first thing Ben sold was a £52 pound tub of USN Hyperbolic Mass protein powder — an order that earned ben a whopping £2 profit, but which left him, in his own words, dancing around his bedroom. A few years later, a single event caused one of Gymshark's tracksuits to go viral, and the young company went from selling £300 of clothes a day, to making £30,000 of revenue in just half a single hour. But it wasn’t until last year, perhaps, that the company became a true household name, and the 29-year-old Ben became a poster boy for modern British entrepreneurship — after General Atlantic invested more than $260 million in the business, valuing it at over a billion pounds.

In a highly enjoyable episode of the podcast, we sat down with Ben up at company's Solihull campus to discuss why humility is the best trait of all; the time Ben suffered a total ‘ego death,’ and how we should always feel like we’re winging it, all of the time. Enjoy.