Gymshark CEO Explains His Strategy For Global Success - Ben Francis

I remember when I was re i' done something wrong and I was really completely up and I was so upset and I was expecting my dad to sort of come and go you know Ben everything's going to be all right and he just sat there and he went what are you going to do about it I don't want someone just to sit there and straight my ego and tell me that everything's going to be okay and I'm okay the way I am because I think that over a prolonged period of time can definitely lead to entitlement I think it can lead to softness and weakness and I don't think it's the right thing in the long term Ben Francis welcome to the show thank you for having me you have had the fortune of speaking to some of the best operators on the planet mhm what are the common threads the most common traits that you found between all of the high performers that you've spoken to I feel like this's the obvious on so they're very organized I feel like there's the basics right organized articulate intelligent the things that you wouldd expect of anyone who's a great operator I also think that they tend to be better people than what you think for the most part I feel like there's this there's this view that there's this evil group of people that sit and control the world in a way and you know that might well be true for all for all all I know but certainly in the people that have run some of the really successful businesses they tend to be really really great people and great individuals and really really helpful and a lot of those people have really helped me and there's um I mean people will know that Jim shark has had a great relationship with Shopify for a long long time and Toby in particularly Harley who run that business have been endlessly helpful to both me as an individual I mean even other people that work in the business but our business as well um and I think Harley really resonated with me and he continues to resonate with me because he is such a good human being and the the fact that he has such a well balanced work life but also home life I think is that's really interesting to me and it's been massively inspiring what's an example of Harley's work and home life showing up in a way that you found inspirational well the there's a few I mean there's many but the first and foremost I think this this is going to sound so basic and some of these are going to sound so trivial but he's always happy to see you like which is which is really cool right and I think he remembers people's names and there's those sorts of common traits and he will not remember this by any stretch of the imagination but we were working in Germany a few years ago a few years ago this was pre-co now um and I think there was something particularly he had to do was like say 9:00 p.m. or something like that we've been working through the day with like the talks and the events and all that and then everyone went for food after there was probably a table of 12 or so people um but I knew that he had had to get off by let's say 9:00 and it was actually it was a really good conversation it was a really good chat I think everyone was really interested in him because there was a lot of shop of's largest Merchants there and literally like clockwork at 8:59 he stands up shakes everyone's hand he knows everyone's name he heads off and he goes to bed and just sort of carries on with his day and that level of efficiency albe it to him was just probably just something that was so basic and normal to me that was that was really that was really interesting because it would have been so easy to stay another 30 minutes another 45 minutes and another hour and I know the things that he wanted to do by the way he wanted to get off cuz he wanted to speak to his family and he wanted to prepare for the next day and I think those little things over a long period of time really add up and and being able to watch him and observe him do that I think was interesting um and listen it's it's similar of other people there's um there's a guy who who's based in London that runs I think it might be the world's biggest digital marketing agency a company called akqa a guy called a jaars who is just like a really really good human being and he just he he seems to maintain relationships with people over a really really long period of time and that doesn't happen on accident and by the way bad people in my experience aren't able to maintain relationships with people for really prolonged periods of time so having met lots of different people I would say I've definitely been pleasantly surprised with the fact that they generally tend to be good people rather than bad people we were talking about this before we started this conversation I had with hosi where he said that uh ego will keep you poor rather than make you rich and I don't know man you know a lot of the people that I spend time with the operators that are slick and that are able to do it over a long enough period of time by Design if you're a prick to everyone mhm you'll get found out yeah I really believe that and I think there's there's this there's this other thing as well and again just to put into context is Shopify is a business that's I don't know it must be 40 times 50 times bigger than than gym shk minimum I you know it revenues up I don't know what it revenues are but it's I know it's it's just vastly vastly bigger than gym shark and you know we might never ever be at the the size or scale that they are and I'm sure I've got a very limited amount of information that I can give to someone like Harley that he hasn't already heard from people that are far more intelligent articulate remembering that Harley Harley and Toby's company is the company that facilitates your company correct yeah exactly you're like the the grandchild of of the sh of ey business they might I don't I don't know if they're not then they're one of the biggest employees in Canada but I feel like every time that we're talking he is trying to learn something from me and I'm trying to learn something from you there's not this whole thing of oh here he is here's small fry I know everything it's that mentality of always being open to learning I thought and it always surprises me it's the same with the jars as well it's always like what you seeing what you interested in what excites you what mistakes have you made and then I'll obviously talk them through that and they'll sort of help me out and give me feed back but this consistent way of being open-minded as well I think that's really fascinating talk to me about the problems that you have of being a person with opinions who has a private life who has a misses who now has a pair of twins congratulations uh and and you have insights and Views around the world and yet as a young guy you also have to play the role of being a very sanitized very public facing acceptable Don't Rock the Boat CEO do you ever find conflict between those two things yeah absolutely and I try to manage it in in the right way because you're right I've got very specific opinion on things and for example my opinion on the Lord Hill review I don't feel the need to run off on YouTube and scream about it we write a very logical very formulated letter to the government and to be fair to them they respond right and we have a we have an ongoing dialogue I'm not going to move the needle I'm not going to change anything they probably don't care what I've got to say but at least I've done my bit right so I I'll put my opinion forward in in the right way in the right place and there are certain things that I would like to talk about publicly because of you know where it's the content I consume the things that I read and and the I guess my viewpoints on on certain things but then again I also see other people and again without naming names that come from a completely different industry and then started talking about politics and I think just stay in your lane like you don't know what you're talking talking about so I want to make sure that if I ever do talk about certain things I want to make sure that it's a really well thought out opinion I'm compl completely bulletproof I completely believe in it and back you know back what I'm talking about um but you're right being a CEO of a of a consumer focused business you know we want to we want our product to be available to everyone and we want lots of different types of people to buy our product and I don't want to alienate anyone because of my personal views and rightly or wrongly I am intrinsically linked to the company I found when I was a teenager and I think that's just I think I don't see how that would ever change and I would love to talk more publicly about certain things um but as I'm sure you're aware of the more you speak the higher the level of risk and ultimately the the higher likelihood you have of alienating certain people at some point I guess for me it's just the at what point do I make that decision well do you are you bothered you know could you go the rest of your life having private opinions that are kept private or do you feel uh a bit of discomfort about the fact that you don't get to maybe prati about stuff that you do personally genuinely care about but maybe uh the sort of thing that and we're not you know we're not talking about like you're not going to go full Kanye here like the point is just that you have viewpoints personally and the world has uh lost the ability to take someone's Viewpoint in good faith a lot of the time and would read into it is for instance right so um the Rogan nword compilation video from a a couple of years ago what the world attempted to do there was say see here is the tip of the iceberg that proves that Joe is the Unspeakable bigoted racist misogynistic Heathen that we've always said he was yeah the way that this usually works is that there are vacuums in terms of what you know about a person there is a small incident that occurs that the press and people that don't like them take as being representative of the entirety of their being MH they say this is the tip of the iceberg below it is this sort of murky Cesspool of of terrible things that they believe the reason that Joe particularly was protected was that most people have seen the entire Iceberg I've listened to casually you know 500 a thousand even a normal fan would have listened to hundreds of hours of this guy and they go look you're telling me that there's something lurking down there I've been down there I know that there's nothing lurking MH however when you have perhaps not thousands and thousands of of content on the internet when you have more um vectors of potential attack which is a 900,000 person company shareholders stakeholders etc etc there is more of a risk there yeah rather than being an individual and and I think I mean the the best example that I think I would use that I know we spoke about earlier would be Jeremy Clarkson whether you like him or not he made some comments about Mega marle and Prince Harry a few weeks ago and there was a lot of conversation about whether or not his farm show is going to be cancelled now I think the people that wanted the farm show canceled were probably staring at Jeremy Clarkson we don't like this waiting for him to say anything we we we want Jeremy Clark we want to take Jeremy Clarkson down and ironically if that show is cancelled he's probably affected the least out of everyone it's the 100 people that edit produce develop Farm it's the people that all contribute to the show that are actually genuinely hurt and that's the interes in balance of being a public individual that has an opinion but also wanting to protect the wide group of individuals that you work alongside so it is it is definitely a difficult line to balance I'd love to see I'm interested if you know anyone that does it particularly well because I and don't get me wrong I don't lie there at night thinking oh God I wish I could tell everyone about my political views I'm it's not that big of a deal to me like I think I said to you previously I my intention when starting gym chart was never to be on social media it it it I'm not massively first I think the point at which I would get involved is if things either got significantly worse than what they are now or I genuinely felt I could move the needle like I made a passing comment a moment ago of I'll send a letter to the government with my opinion realistically it won't move the needle if you said to me a YouTube video could move the needle on something that's particularly important to you you're passionate about you think would help people now I think that would probably change my opinion at the moment I just don't think I've gotten to that point just generally personally what is it that Founders don't know about the challenges of being a CEO because this is where do I begin a journey that I know that you've been on you've flip-flopped in and out of so the thing so the thing is with being a Founder is the job which I've never known in any other job the job literally flips on its head depending on the scale of the business and the time so it's almost like there's peace time there's war time and then there's scale and the your approach has to be completely different and to get a business from 0 to 10 million you essentially have to be very very dictatorial you tell people what you want people will tell you this isn't going to work you ignore comments you ignore feedback and you do what the hell you want and you force your business into success this is my experience right I'm sure there are other people that have had different experiences but that was my personal experience why why do you need to be dictatorial you have no time you take high level of risk there is no there's no time for discussion generally what you're trying to do hasn't been done before there's no data to back up what you're thinking you need to grow quick okay and like listen we in that period there were several times that we risked everything we had to get to that next level and often times the risks make no sense because again in in the and grantly the numbers are the numbers are smaller right but it's a case of we're doing 250,000 in Revenue our ambition one day is to do 4 in Revenue you need to risk the entire house on hopefully getting to 1 million what were some of those inflection points so for me it was the first events that we did so we did one event it did well and what you normally do in a larger business is you do an event it does well you sit there you analyze the data you understand what the ROI would be if you were to do five more it's like no like in the early days in that 1 to 10 that purely entrepreneurial phase that good Instinct phase is you do have you have no time to do any of those so we did our first event it went well well we then sign up to loads of events and then we went from just doing Birmingham to Birmingham Germany Australia uh two in the US was this when you exited body power yes uh no this this this wasn't when we exited body power we did body power and it went really well so we resigned up for and then we kept going and got you and there was a point I think it was about two years after that where we'd managed we' basically managed to get about a million pounds in the bank and like you know being in the West Midlands and having a company with a million pound in the banks that youd never heard of anything like it it was the most insane thing ever in our early 20s and at that point you've sort of got something to lose I'm like oh well like you know if we if we just gave up now and we just split the money you know Mom and Dad's mortgages paid I could live happily maybe not now but it feels like you could live happily ever after and then we bet the entire house on going again and stock on events and you do that again and again and again and then and this is what I mean from not to 10 you essentially do what the hell you want 10 to 50 is bit where you have an understanding of the fact that you've actually got something to lose for me between 1 and 10 there was nothing to lose 10 to 50 in Revenue there was certainly something to lose but you're filled with this adrenaline this excitement and this and this momentum that you just do it and you just go and at that point you're really starting to hire people so the the whole thing of ignoring what everyone says it just starts to go away because if you're doing 50 million in Revenue you're doing a million a week the likelihood is you probably have a handful of staff that helping you manage that if you just ignore what they say and do what you want anyway then going back to what we said earlier that has a that only has a certain period of time that that can work for and then what you find is the larger the business gets the more that you rely on other people the more or the less that you're in the detail and then the more the going off and doing becomes either more explaining and inspiring as the business grows so it's I don't I mean very occasionally but I don't really I would never sit in front of a sewing machine anymore but and I don't sit down and sketch out product and try and work out exactly what I want but I need to work out and this is this is my big challenge now right trying to scale gy shark into a truly iconic British brand and a global brand is how do I inspire people to create product that fits in with our overarching strategy that I'm really proud of and pleased about that also excites the customer and is of a high quality and it's all of these things and trying to get the right people in the right roles and there's always so many emotions involved in conversations because other people have different views and what I can't do again is just go it's my way or the highway because that only has a a certain lifespan to it so the development of being a small entrepreneurial business which is a lot of telling to a large scale business that works with people from all around the world deals with tens and tens of millions of units of stock has relatively large Financial Risk compared to where we were previously um and he's trying to become an iconic brand that he's now competing with some of the biggest brands in the world that have Bank balances that are 10 100 times larger than ours that's where it becomes a fascinating thing because it's more about it becomes significantly more of an intellectual and social challenge than it does this just sort of adrenaline field thing do you miss that not really there's times I do but when I actually sit down and think about it logically I get to sit in an air conditioned office and travel the world now whereas before when you're Screen Printing and it's November and it's minus and the hose Pip's frozen over and you're trying to clean off the screen it's easy to say oh and romanticize those times and say oh I love those times they were so exciting which they were like my first time going out out to Ohio I've never been to Ohio in my life and didn't bring any coats or warm weather and I land in December and it is freezing and I've never seen snow like it and those are cool romantic memories of the growth and whilst I do enjoy it it's easy to forget about how hard those times were and forget about the fact that there was once a point when I stood in La just about to get on a flight home and I thought that when I landed home there wouldn't be a business to go to and I was trying to work out do I go back to UNI do I go and get another job do I go and try and start again all of these different things so it's easy to romanticize the early days and it's easy to think oh my job now is hard and it's cumbersome and it's slower than what it used to be um but I'm an eternal optimist so I would say I would like to think that it's the best now it's ever been there will be a lot of people listening that are Sid hustling building a business from that not to 10 million stage during that time for businesses that are maybe uh less consumer focused than yours but for many they'll need to relinquish control they will start being the person that does everything and even if you're at one mil or two mil like you you can't be the person that does everything you can be hard charging telling everyone to do it yeah what is your advice to people that struggle to delegate that struggle to relinquish control that struggle to bring people in underneath them and and have the faith that they're going to do it well I think the first thing I would say is I think you need to really understand yourself because for me I I I was fortunate in the sense that I managed to work out what I'm good at fairly quickly and then literally it's quite simple these are the things I'm good at these are the things I'm bad at draw a line between the two Outsource the things that you're bad at and I also think that you don't want don't be precious about those things those things could be simple they could be complex but go off and find people that can do it and get the best people that you can afford I think in the early days I think that's really really important so in in the very early days of jym shark I was well aware that I didn't really understand Operations Logistics finance and quite frankly people anywhere near as well as I needed to so brought in uh a great CEO and he was Chief exec for I think five or six years I think six years Steve was and he managed all of those things for me so your incompetence was a competitive advantage in that regard because you felt like you you didn't have any ownership you already knew where your weaknesses lay they were staring you in the face so there was no problem with relinquishing that control to someone that was evidently much better than you had it which is easy to do if your Ambitions for the business are larger than than your Ambitions for yourself because the risk what you mean if your Ambitions for your business are larger than your personal Ambitions then you will put yourself into any role necessary for the business to succeed if your Ambitions are larger for yourself than your business then you will ensure that you're at the top of the business at all costs because your personal ambition is to be Top Dog the thing the reason that having Steve come in as CEO was particularly helpful for me was it almost had a bit of a flywheel effect because Steve came in and covered my weaknesses instantly so from a business perspective you get a huge tick because Ben's now not doing things he's not very good at Ben's only doing things that he's good at and we've got someone who's very good Steve at doing the things that Ben's not very good at so almost like in the list of things to do you can almost tick everything then the next thing that that had is it meant I could not only double down on my strength so I would move deeper into the business and I actually ended up doing a chief of brand job a marketing job a tech job and a product job so I got seite experience across four different parts of the business and I have sat in factories I've you know sat across the table from people like Google and Facebook and Shopify worked with athletes been to pretty much every event that we ever ran I got to do all of these things which are very very few people get the experience and and the you know the opportunity to do but then I could also sit with our CFO and our CEO and learn about finance and Ops and go to distribution centers and warehouses and things like that and I could sit with our CFO and I could say stupid things that made completely no sense I could ask stupid questions knowing that if anything went wrong there was essentially this safety net beneath me of both the CFO and the CEO someone who's less incompetent which is perfect right because what you want if you want if you want to improve rapidly it's a bit like if someone gave you a test if you're doing your A Levels now and you can do the test once you'd probably do relatively well you give the test a go you get a c but then you get the test again and you get a C+ and then I'll give you the same test again and you get a b and then slowly but surely you get better and better and then we'll try another test and that's what it felt like to me I had five years of fou without without consequence and that is if you could if you had a magic wand and you could draw the perfect environment for learning it would be failure without consequence because you can literally just throw yourself at anything that you want at any given moment how could have you got any advice for that sounds fantastic failure without consequences is amazing for a learning and iterating process is there any advice that you would have for how somebody could integrate this either into personal professional business life so that they could do this more and iterate on that learning process as an owner or I think and I think it's Works in any role right so if for example you have a you have a an overarching role that let's say for example requires 50% creativity and 50% organization I'm just making up a job here and let's say you're the opposite of me you're a highly conscientious organized individual that gets everything done that you need to do but then you're not maybe creative and you haven't got the ability to think about what's new and what's what what the next thing is then what I would implore you to do is to find that individual and partner yourself very closely with that individual not only so that you can learn from them but also so that they're filling your gaps and your weaknesses and I also think and I don't know how this works I don't know if it's easier for a creative to become organized than it is someone that's conscientious to become creative I don't I would say it's easier for a Creator to become organized I would say so too the other way around so maybe I'm quite lucky from that perspective um but equally some of the best business people I've met are the opposite of me they're not that creative they're just highly driven organized bold good at taking risks that's because if you had a business filled with you you would have fantastic ideas but nothing would get done correct correct I look at um video guid's been to my house in Austin and I live with Zach and he couldn't be more different to me in terms of his sort of psychological personality makeup he plays five different instruments he's like super super creative girlfriend an artist etc etc and you can see a physical manifestation of our two personalities when you walk into each of our Studios that back into each other so you're go into mine and everything is neat and tidy I press three buttons and all of the lights come on it's it's very very dialed I walk into his there's been a sock cellot taped to his wall from the first day that he moved in I have no idea why it's there neither does he they'll be like banana peels around the play It's like a like a Tom and Jerry cartoon so I would probably be closer to that I think so orbe I've had to try myself to be more organized through whether it's working with great people whether it's a he using the right applications and things like that and trying to or organize myself what's the biggest risk that you've taken with gim shark over its entire lifespan do you think um I think it I think it all varies isn't it so the the first events that we ever did because we risked everything on the event being successful and if the events weren't successful then we would have run out of money so that that's without a doubt one I mean personally leaving like I was the first person in my family to ever go to university I didn't finish University but that whole thing of calling calling up my mom and dad and going you know this thing I've worked really really hard for I'm now going to leave it that that was a personal risk albeit not a Financial Risk um so and we've done we've had plenty of financial risks T they tended to be earlier on in the process um those will be the main ones again this is going to sound really bad but the financial risks never really frighten me too much and the reason for that is is when I was when I was a young kid I did um the first ever I guess experience of work for me was working on work experience for my granddad my granddad lines furnaces in the Midland so brick ceramic fiber laboring job I basically just did labor labor for him and he would tell me and he's a oneman band it's it's not by no means a huge business um but he Lo he loves what he does right and he would tell me about how he risked everything he had on a job where he was basically building a furnace that was due to be sent out to Germany and for whatever reason there was this point in the process where it could have gone horrifically wrong and he would tell me from the age of I don't know 12 13 14 very young anyway about he would sit there and think am I going to have a roof to put over the my mom her sister my Nan's head and when you've been when that's been drilled into you from a young child that my family have taken those risks and that level of risk and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents growing up because my mom worked nights in the NHS and my dad would often work away and things like that the the risk that I then take aren't aren't that big so the take a million quid at 22 years old on events when worst case I can go back to University and get another job at Pizza it it never felt frightening in a way it was more exciting do you think that that's because of your optimistic mindset yes and high high level for risk tolerance I think I get I get I really enjoy things like that like risks like that really excite me that's something that I'm trying to get better at um taking risks I'm my disposition is very very uh conservative iterate very slowly uh it's meant that I've basically made zero mistakes ever when it comes to business but the fact that I've made zero mistakes is probably an indication that I should have taken more risk on yeah um that's something again culture I think I would say very much discourages risk yeah overall very very just softly softly slowly slowly like you know limit limit your uh potential upside but also massively limit your downside yeah as much as you can we've spoken a lot about sort of business the operations of business but like fundamentally what you are doing is encouraging Fitness in the world right like it's facilitating people uh feeling better about their bodies thinking about the way that they train the way that they show up not only just the physical but now moving into the mental as well what is different about what the world needs from Fitness content now mhm compared to when you started very so I think and I'm speaking about the content I consumed right so as a kid I was skinny and I just wanted to build muscle that was it like I'm not going to sit here and go on like I had some greater goals around Fitness personally I wanted to be ripped muscular pretty much like every other 18-year-old guy that was probably around you in that era I was inspired by Greg plit I was inspired by ziz that that that was my like Rob Riches people like that like not necessarily the big bodybuilders but the people that were ripped and shredded and that that was my personal ambition and it felt like that that was very much definitely the bodybuilding industry was definitely around that because even if you think if we think if I think back to when I first got into fitness the big bodybuilders didn't really get into social media they were almost like they almost look down their nose a little bit at that new year of people that were coming up um so when I think back to that era and then you had the Matt oases and the Chris ladoo this where gim shot started to come along a few years later when I think of that era of people versus now it's interesting because it feels like the mental element has come a lot more into it and when I talk about the mental element I feel like people talk about mental health all the time and I do think it's important but it's it's so much more about it's almost like maximizing your potential holistically rather than you know having a good mental health and good physical health I would say it's slight it feels slightly harder now and more direct than what it was and it also feels a little bit to me like male mental health seems to be being talked about a hell of a lot more than what it was previously um and I don't know how to put this in a more masculine way um how do you mean I think when you think about people like Andrew huberman and the things that he talks about and the way that it feels a bit like people are men are being encouraged to be more manly for lack of a better term and I don't see that as a negative by the way I think I think that a massive massive positive whereas I'm not saying that there was an opposite before but I just felt like that thing didn't exist and I think that it's interesting because over the years before it was how many bicep curls do I need to do a week to have big arms it's almost like everyone knows that now and if you want if if you don't know that if you're a young 16-year-old kid joining the gym you've work that out within a week on YouTube so then people are now going a lot deeper in this in in terms of like okay so how how do I become a better man in general rather than just how do I have bigger muscles how do I show up in the world yeah yeah I think that's a really nice way to frame it that previously you know when we were starting training it was uh the Mis Forum on bodybuilding.com spent a lot of time there abused on there as well I bet you did uh like Christian t-o T Nation like all of this like that kind of world no one knew what macros were no one knew if blueberry extract was actually going to be the secret to your muscle gains then it was very bro sciencey and it was like if you don't have a protein shake within 30 minutes of finish of the gym you will lose all of your gains and you need to have your creatine every 30 minutes and you've got your pre-workout your int workout your Pro and it was just like to the point where I remember shoving hyperbolic Mass down my throat in a bid to somehow gain weight whereas now that whole world just seems to have it just completely has changed correct and weirdly enough I mean certainly in the areas that I spend time on on social media now it's far more around a genuinely good diet a good organic diet that is balanced with a balanced level of Fitness that probably incorporates some weight training but also incs a level of incorporates a level of cardio and it feels like a more balanced approach to Fitness now I would agree so when we're talking about um integrating men masculinity uh and how it's not just about turning up and looking good it's not just about talking about mental health and I had a problem for ages for the people that are listening from the US there was a campaign in the UK called it's okay to talk right and this was trying to encourage men to open up about Mental Health and I always felt icky about it I always just it didn't resonate with me I thought I I'm very passionate about mental health suffered with bouts of depression throughout all of my 20s um was the person that needed to be spoken to by this MH and yet it takes you know like a Canadian psychologist or a Stanford Professor or like a bold MMA commentator or a neuroscientist that's into meditation to start talking to me in a way that made me genuinely consider my mental health what I've reflected on the reason I didn't like it's okay to talk is well [ __ ] no surprise like obviously it's okay to talk like what's the next step like give me something that I can actually use here and the other side of it and this I learned from Adam Lane Smith great psychotherapist he said that male depression gets treated like female depression men are made to feel loved and accepted when they want to feel capable and Powerful mhm and the problem that we had there was that you were treating male depression and male mental health like female depression yeah it's interesting as well me and me and no talk about this quite a lot as well in the sense that if I think of growing up so I had I had a great upbringing right I remember there was a few years ago someone stuck a camera in front of me on jym shots come up and said tell me about your terrible upbringing and how difficult it had been and everyone that said no and I was like I not doing this because I had a brilliant upbringing I've got great parents great grandparents and when I think to the way my mom raised me in a very caring loving thoughtful way and then I think about the lessons that my dad taught me there's two things that really stand out this is going to sound really basic once I rode my bike over my neighbor's lawn and he grabbed me around the Scruff of the neck and he said you respect other people's property you never do that again you go and apologize and it was very much tough love and that that for me was the the male role model was be tough be strong be respectful and there was there's another one and I remember when I was I'd done something wrong and I was really i' completely [ __ ] up and I was so upset and I my mom wasn't there for whatever reason and I was expecting my dad to sort of come and go you know Ben everything's going to be all right and he just sat there and he went what are you going to do about it and that feeling of Ben you have to be strong you have to take control of the situations you have to take control and he always told me he said you know you have to be mentally strong you have to be mentally strong it was something that was drilled into me from a young age but that thing of I don't want to be coddled I want I just want the truth and I want to know what I've got to do I work out on my own head how I get there but I just and that I think that speaks back to that thing that you've just said of it's it feels like it's things have to be much more tangible what are you going to do about it rather than I don't want someone personally and maybe I'm Different to others I don't want put someone just to sit there and straight my ego and tell me that everything's going to be okay and I'm okay the way I am because I think that over a prolonged period of time can definitely lead to entitlement I think it can lead to softness and weakness and I don't think it's the right thing in the long term certainly not for me it's one of the problems that you have between male and female communication all of the guys that are in relationships will know that sometimes they're having a conversation with their misses and they are trying to offer up Solutions yeah which every time that they offer up a potential solution infuriates the conversation more yeah and this is because men are speaking to women in the way that they would want to be spoken to which is find me a solution on average there are feminine men and there are masculine women but on average it's what's the solution how can we move forward about this and there is a large chunk of girls who want to be heard MH just look hear the things that I'm saying maybe we can talk about the the the solutions a little bit further down the line but for now I just want to be able to like make me feel like you you understand and you hear what I'm saying yeah and you're there laying out a tactical operational plan of what it is so I think that that's an interesting Arc that we're talking about here going from what's the first level of of like you know male development which maybe came about perhaps due to men starting to feel like they uh were less required you know 200 like 6 to 2012 you are more visible online um just generally as a man people are starting to scrutinize the way that you look you're able to compare yourself to people wasn't this the point where obes obesities became a thing in the early 2000s where everyone sort of said I think it was it was at the point where the us became it was something like 40 or 50% obese and then I'd never heard the term obese until the early 2000s and it might just be an age thing then all of a sudden obesity became a thing and that's when I remember it being the school they took all the chocolate bars away and then started putting in I don't know broccoli or something else so all of a sudden Health became it was the jamy Oliver era I remember really being really annoyed because they got rid of the dairy milks our school [ __ ] Jam ol I can't believe it but you know it it I think that's where it started for me Health definitely became a thing and I think you're right all of a sudden posting pictures on social media comparing yourself to people that a thousand miles away all of these things definitely would have pled into that so we roll the clock forward MH and people have integrated the fact physical fitness is something that's important mental health everybody always knew was in there but we then needed strategies to be able to move forward a lot of your AUD Shar especially is particularly unique in that it's split it kind of came up um focused very heavily on male influencers and now I would guess you probably sell more women's wear women's wear yeah right so you have this kind of odd flip but you have been uh on the front lines of observing male identity masculinity and its challenges mhm what do you think about masculinity in 2023 and the challenges that young men are facing God uh um I definitely think that Cod the coddle culture certainly isn't helping from a male perspective I think I think we we're starting to see more good male role models in what feels like the last three or four months like recently it feels like there's more great male role models that have sort of that have popped up which I think is helpful I think I I think I saw something that you said previously around point to me point point me towards a great male role model whereas now I can think of at least three or four whereas previously I definitely couldn't I think that's that's helpful and if I think to male role models previously especially For Me growing up other than other than footballers as a Brit I genuinely can't think of any um what does it say that men need does Role Models though I think everyone needs a role model I think it's important to have role models and I think you pick different people for different things I don't think there's one archetypical male that exists somewhere that does everything that you know has great yeah muscle mass highly intelligent yeah all these sorts of things and and that's what personally I'll do like I'll have people that inspire me from a fitness perspective from an intellectual perspective and and so on so I think having that helps um I think it's tough I think because personally for me I'm as inspired by someone's personal life particularly now as their professional life like a put a bloke in front of me who's a billionaire it's it's cool and everything but you'd rather have 1% of their wealth with a wonderful family life and you you know have great time with your family you love your job you challenge yourself intellectually that full package to me is significantly more important than than just a a numerical Financial figure but I think that may be I think men might also skew that way the older they get and as their lives circumstances change in the same way that mine have because if you said that to 18-year-old Ben give me the billions oh yeah I think I would have taken that every time so many of the um trends that we're seeing I think at the moment can just be explained by cohorts of guys and girls arriving and then phasing out into new areas of their life so you could say that so many people would and this is stupid right because everybody is born each day there is someone born but they congeal together into a culture that moves as a group and then there is another bubble behind can you imagine what definitely that cuz I think you and I grew up in different parts of the UK and have been on very different Journeys but I think if if we were to write down every year since 2006 I'm sure we probably have had similar views and experiences on WE tracked a lot of it we looked up to the same people we read the same stuff we got exposed to the same stuff um followed each other on Facebook um so we have this sort of bubble that's going on and then a particular Trend a particular influence occurs that group uh finds identity with it and then phases out of it and that falls away and evaporates so you know Andrew Tate just got out of prison yesterday or this morning or whatever um he has a particular cohort of young guys that look up to him um but that cohort over time is going to fall away they will maybe he'll grow with them maybe they'll find that he's even more compelling as they grow up or maybe not but for us and our age and who it was that we grew up with it very much was very physique focused very much about how lean you were how big you were it was that Christian Gman and Matt ogus and and like Jeff side and all that and then that fell away and for us what we needed I think and for a lot of the guys that are listening because they're all the same age we realized that we'd focused Skin Deep for so long mhm and maybe we'd got really good at focusing skin deep and we're in really good condition and wearing loads of like cool clothes or whatever but that there was it was a little Hollow perhaps inside of that and that we needed something else it's like okay I've developed the fitness side of me yeah now what yeah give me some [ __ ] substance and I think that that cohort if you were to pick the archetypal like Peterson Rogan Harris Shapiro alander Boton Fanboy there is a huge cohort that would have come out of like the MK bodybuilding forum oh yeah that would have come out of like gym culture and bro culture thinking this is if only I had the sixpack of Greg plit that will fix all of my problems I've got myself to a stage where I'm happy with my body and [ __ ] I still have problems it's is it was is it the Jim kryy quote that goes something like I hope you all get to achieve your dreams so that you can realize that maybe it's not so great it's words for that effect isn't it but I feel like it's very similar from a physique perspective as maybe is a financial perspective I think people are will to snap their back to get to a certain Financial figure in search of happiness I feel like I can speak from personal experience that whilst it does help in many many different ways you will not find happiness purely through financial you know the pursuit of financial gains what are you worth do you know what you're worth God TR to think I don't know I do not want to know nor think and I think the other thing as well why why don't you want to know because it's just all numbers on a screen it doesn't it doesn't so much of my wealth is tied up in gym shark which has a fluctuating value that change on the day if I was to assign any form of selfworth or spend too much time considering it that my mood would fluctuate more than the weather and I think that that's something for me that I I would I never ever think about that and I swear to God that is the last thing I think about at all um but again I think maybe that is an age thing a situation thing being married kids all these sorts of things I've got great Ambitions for the business and I want the business to be at a certain level you know and that a spit out of that is to be worth a certain level and that excites me but it's certainly not why I go to work every day one of the other things that has happened over the last 10 years particularly has been the body positivity movement when Jim Shar first came around those leggings that had the line under the ass crack uh at the bottom that like accentuated bums and so on and so forth um women and their uh challenges in terms of roles I think I'm terminally online I spend all of my time thinking about human nature and how it relates to the world around us yeah we're talking a lot about sort of masculinity and men's problems I F out to Qatar to have a debate about this only two weeks ago if I was to like pick a trend at the moment that I think in 5 years time is going to become the new existential crisis I think it's girls I think that we have insane rates well we do we know that we do the PE research just came out about this unbelievable rate it's like one in two to like 60% of girls in teens have serious depression or mental health problems one in two right it's unbelievable so I think that that's coming down the pike I think that it's something that we need to be concerned about but given the fact that you've seen a lot of changes uh and one of them has been the body positivity movement you have wife that was involved heavily in the fitness world and was doing the influence stuff have you got a viewpoint on that have you got a viewpoint on the challenges that women have faced and and uh yeah the so I think the interesting thing with that is and to hon I think there's points where conversations with n I think we pushed it too far at points and this is the thing with with with running a company you're running a company here there's this thread of trend of conversation and you need to straddle the line between the trend and the conversation and then the consistency of where you want the company to go and there would definitely point to where we straight I think too far towards that body positivity conversation because I think it got hijacked and went too far now the one thing I would say is I was a skinny kid who wanted to build muscle and we at Jim sh don't believe that a skinny male in the UK that wants to build muscle we don't believe that his ambition to and his desire to go to the gym is any better than an American girl that wants to lose weight right you're in the gym because you want to improve and everyone wants to develop whether it is muscle building you want to run a faster 5K you want to deadlift 300 kilos you want to lose I don't know 30 lb of fat 50 lb of fat whatever it is we we don't tear goals we say that everyone's goal is equal and again I think that's become more relevant to me because I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago it was it was six pack six-pack abs or bust was the ambition for me whereas now it's very very different so I think that from that point of view that that's what I where I think the message needs to be the bit where I start to get concerned is when people start to promote unhealthy physiques and that's not to say that different physiques should be shown but to promote an unhealthy physique and for me to suggest that that unhealthy physique is somewhat right beneficial for an individual that's what concerns me slightly and this is on both sides of the fence right you can look at the guy that walks around you can look at the guy that walks around at 5% body fat and say that this is uh a well balanced weight meanwhile testosterone in the toilet hasn't had an erection in 6 months irritable some of the people that I know who have some of the most incredible physiques you've ever seen have the worst relationship with their body mentally and you'll know that as well as I do people don't step on stage in some of these huge competitions and and some of them are absolutely fine some of them have deep rooted mental issues which is why they're putting their body through such trauma and I think most of those people that are smart realize that they can only do that a certain amount of times before the risk becomes too high so you're right it's it's not just people that are overweight it's people that are literally walking up beyond all doubt and then dieting themselves on the verge of starvation in order to win a competition and there you're right there's extremes at both ends but I I think the thing that concerns me is just the fact that I don't think we should be promoting the Extremes in a way that suggests that they're healthy I think there are certain elements where you can understand admire whatever you want to call it the extreme if I'm massively inspired by if I see a picture of Dorian Yates another guy from Birmingham Phil Heath just because of the accent not the photo it's the accent but even closer to home like Ryan Terry yep seeing him in pictures is cool seeing him in real life it is insane like I look at him and my ad for his mental fortitude to get himself into that position is absolutely incredible where I'd start to worry is if he got himself into that condition and remain there for a prolonged period of time like I think that that has to be of concern just in the same way that if a friend or family member of mine was to get quite overweight I wouldn't sit there and say say that that's okay and doesn't mean I wouldn't care for them or love them any any less but I would say listen I I would say it's beneficial for your long-term Health if you were to get into decent physical condition I don't think everyone needs sixpack abs everyone doesn't need to be able to deadli 300 kilos but moving being in the gym and having a certain level of Fitness I think is only helpful for everyone you have recently had twins yes how old are they now they are 14 weeks today right they're fresh they're fresh out of the oven I remember listening to a podcast that you did a little while ago where you were reflecting on a conversation that you had with your EA mhm uh and she'd said something to the effect of you're not going to be able to do this when you have kids yeah uh and you'd said Manana Manana I deal with it when it's in front of me don't need to worry me about that um given that you are now at the coal face what have been the lessons introspections changes that you've no just over the last 14 weeks god well first and foremost I I was wrong so Zoe was right she was saying you not you can't continue to work I don't if it was in this rate or in this way I think it was more in this way when you have kids and the and the reason was is very obviously my life and and gym shot just blended into one it was a 7-Day a week job I'd sit there and I'd work on a Saturday on a Sunday on a Monday it would be fairly loose and free and open I'd just work all the time Co and I love my job and I continue to do so so I I wasn't sat there thinking oh God I'm in that I'm working on a Sunday I thoroughly enjoyed it and the fact that I would travel a lot and I'd be away for lots of weekends and things like this whereas now all of a sudden having kids I want to be at home on the weekends but the work is still there so it's gotten a lot more intense for me in the sense that again we just did a trip out um we did we did a trip to Colorado a few months ago and what we normally do is fly out on the Saturday look around on the Sunday maybe go out to Breen Ridge or somewhere like that relax work Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday fly home Friday Friday make a leisurely Journey back from hether on a Saturday whereas now it's fly out Monday work Tuesday Wednesday Thursday fly home Thursday lunchtime land home Friday walk through the front door and have a child throwing at me sort of thing so it's it's very very different and like it I would say I've become significantly more purposeful in my time and and and that's in every every facet of my life right so if I'm at work I'm at work and if I'm at home I'm at home and previously I'd be tapping away a lot more on my phone I've started just like turn my phone off on Sunday afternoons I'm going to try and do that potentially for a whole day on Sunday just so that I'm present and with them um the travel more present when I'm home and at work and I think things like that it certainly made me think and they're still very young right they're newborn at the moment so they're not necessarily noticing if I'm on my phone but I'm very aware of the fact that within a few months I don't want my kids to have a dad that was just messing around on his phone all the time and there's an interesting Insight that I learned there again from Adam Lane Smith which is is a lot of the time parents are considerate and becoming increasingly more aware of their kids using devices right do you want your child to have to be only distracted by YouTube for kids or whatever one of the things a lot of parents don't consider is the fact that if they hear that Ding and the ding causes Mom or Dad to look at the phone MH the child's relationship to the phone and the relative amount of attention that the parents have with them is something that is very very quickly forgotten I think and you know again don't have kids can't wait to be a dad but when I do my uh Grand idea of how I'm going to have a relationship with technology may get thrown out of the [ __ ] window however I think that there is like a really really good argument to be made that if you're in the room with your kid the phone shouldn't be in there as well that if you want to use a device step outside of the room because we just do not know what second order consequences that are of your child playing second or third string mhm to some that's in your hand yeah and these are all the things that I've now started to think about that I would previously never have thought about and even stupid things like uh the job is still busy my travel is certainly reduced we're like renovating a farm in the middle of nowhere where we want to be able to have the kids grow up want to be able to grow all our own food and like live a proper like home life and and just little things like that and it's it's so different to the way that I grew up and it it might be a combination of me getting older being in the position I'm in I think it's just a position that we are in in the world as well I think with everything that's gone on politically globally with Co and everything I think the amount of people that have just gone [ __ ] this I just want to be self-sufficient and do my own thing to a degree I think is I think has increased dramatically so yeah I think it's definitely changed my perspective on lots of things and a lot of people were saying I know no was asking me this he was he was interested to watch how my relationship with work changed and I'm arguably even more hellbent on making this a success and working incredibly hard at work because I want my kids to look at me and think that's I want to be the role model I want to be a true role model rry said the same thing and I want to work hard and I want to be successful and I want them to see that and I want to do it in the right way whereas I think some people thought oh is been just being honest I don't have to work I could retire and live on that farm and Ever After but is that the sort of dad that I want my kids to see because that's not real life and I want them to see that you have to work hard in order to you know in order to get what you want from life and I think it's the right thing that for me and that's what I want them to do and I want them to find a job that they love they don't need to be millionaires they don't need to earn loads of money that in no way bothers me in the slightest but for them to grow up see seeing their dad doing something he loves but also having good time with them I think is really exciting to me and that's what I want them to do as they grow up you have the opportunity to give your kids materially opportunities that you didn't have as a kid MH the lack of opportunities that you had the exposure to your uncle or Granddad that was making stoves and risking it all on a 100 Grand stove or whatever that was shipping to Germany yeah has formed you into a person not only that you're proud of but one that has objectively been able to become quite successful how do you consider marrying the difference between giving your kids the opportunity that you have materially whilst putting them through the challenges that you know were formative and important for you to get to where you are now again that's what I'm thinking about a lot and so me and Robin have spoken so they're definitely not going to private school so that's something that's important to me and I'm the sort of person that reads into this right I read all the papers there is a dramatically higher likelihood they will be quote unquote successful if they go to private school than if they go to I don't know what you call it a normal school they're not going to go to private school I mean if you speak to Robin she wants to homeschool them I'm I'm not quite on that boat yet I'm happy just I think that's an American an American Canadian influence heavily it's very rout over here in the UK America Canada a little bit tells me that that movement is growing rapidly but I haven't looked into that yet yep um for me I think it's important to go to a normal school I think listen they're going to grow up in a nice house with nice things and they're going to be able to have have connections to cool people and great people in a way but I think for me it's about just bringing them up in the right way in the way that my parents did in the way that my grandparents did it it was really important to me that they were born and they would have the opportunity to spend time with my grandparents that their great grandparents which you know touchwood at the moment they can that's really important to me because they have a completely different viewpoint on life so similar to pretty much I guess every kid in the UK both of my or all of my great-grandparents on the male side all fought in the War right my grandparents who I spent a lot of time with growing up would tell me stories about what it was like growing up when they grew up my n would talk to me about how in her garden they would grow one vegetable next door they would grow another and they would all share at the end of the week because that was the way that it worked when when they were rationing my other grandfather who I worked closely would tell me about when his dad came back from War and the difficulties in the family and the family split up because of different issues he came back with and I felt fortunate to spend so much time with my grandparents growing up because I didn't I don't think I had a conventional upbringing of someone that was born in 1992 I had this weird mix of someone that was born in 1992 but then also a 1960s style upbringing because I spent so much time with my grandparents as well and they that might account for the tradition yes which I think it does they taught me so much and because of the amount of time that I spent with them so I think for me to somehow instill those values and beliefs in my kids is really really important to me um how I do that I don't know because some things you just have to learn yourself and one of the things that I learned myself that I that other people couldn't for whatever reason teach me was I had this feeling of I just can't wait to get out of get out of the UK I can't wait to get out of England I want to go somewhere else I want to be in Australia I want to be in the US I want to see the world and everywhere is going to be so much better than this because England is this and it's that and it's all these things and I'm really lucky right I've traveled into more countries than I could ever imagine I've spent lots and lots of time across loads of different states in the United uh in the US in Canada across Asia all these different places and I can't help but feel the more I travel I feel more and more lucky to have been born in the UK and if You' have said that to 16 17 18 year old Ben he would have not believed you in a million years but I'm so again we had the opportunity to raise that kids anywhere in the world and I chose here because I think it's such an amazingly brilliant place to raise a kid and you're right there's this what you want to call it crabs in a bucket syndrome they're are negatives the media can be a bit of a pain in the ass and we've had more prime ministers in the last 6 months than probably most have had in the last six years all these different things but when I look at it the net positives of being here are so great what are they net positives being in the UK people forget that if you want to start a business business in the UK especially an e-commerce business one we speak English which is great it's helpful for communicating with the the Western world two you can ship things to Europe in 24 hours pretty much 70 million people in the UK within 20 uh like within 24 hours so you've got the whole of Europe and the UK on your doorstep a lot of that is down to the fact that there's so many countries in Europe each one have has its own sort of operational setup whether it's dpd Royal Mail all these different companies um so the operation supply chain of Europe is incredible you can ship to the east coast of the United States in 2448 hours I know people that started very similar businesses to Jim shark at a very similar time in Australia and I think they were incredibly talented and I think some part of the reason that we we grew significantly more quickly than they did not completely down to this is because we were in the UK and we could ship to all of these different countries significantly more quickly they were shipping from places like melbour it was taking them 3 weeks to get to the US and Europe and places like that beyond the advantages specifically in the UK of e-commerce companies cultural advantages culturally we punch way above our weight the amount of British actors uh presenters and things like that that you see in the US in the UK uh in the uh Australia and places like that it's incredible um I think we've got an amazing education system I think albeit we've got a turb ulent and mental government it's way better than 99% of other countries and I know people moan and I know there a mistake and this is the other thing as well and this this this is what frustrates me with a lot of people is you meet so many people especially in the UK and the US that go I don't think he's great right Biden made the stupid mistake surprise surprise he's an old bloke right um reesei sunak made this stupid mistake and I'm like yeah but anyone that's worked in any business or in any large scale organization has made made a million mistakes it's really [ __ ] hard you couldn't do a better job and I think I think we just need to take stock of the fact for the for the most part we have it really really really good and do we have the most competent people in our government that we could possibly have no but where does where where does and I think your alternative is if you would go if you were to go purely on compet competency you'd probably end up significantly closer to a China or somewhere like that correct correct and I always say to people you could go and live in China and I've never met anyone that says yes I'd love to do that so I think I think the benefits from an economic perspective of the UK in a country that punches above its weight that has great connections into the W to the entire of the West that has great social influence across the world we live in a safe country are you yeah that's not nothing as well um a lot of the concerns at the moment do come in America a lot of my friends the reason that you've got Waldorf schools have you heard of those okay so there's a bunch of um alternative semi- alternative schooling systems um very based around being outdoors um teaching teaching kids like to you know like hunt and dress animals and stuff very much Back to Basics there but like let's be real one of the reasons is that they're very concerned about some of the ideologies that are being pushed to kids in schools correct yes that for me looking at the UK for all that the US coughs and we catch a cold it is 100th of the amount of psychological contagion mimetic horse shittery that goes on in the US it's frightening is that something that you have highly considered 100% And I think I think maybe you see this more being in the US and for you living in the US and for me spending a decent amount of time in the US I think you see more of that now if you were to again this is where my I guess my optimism comes out if you zoom out what generally happen it will be like this but it will like the S&P it will T generally Trend up and the US will get better and better and I'm a massive long-term believer in the United States I think it is an amazing Place full of amazing people I'm just thinking for the the next 50 years that I'm going to be on this planet how much of that do I want to take whereas in the UK they go to a local school it's not hunting but they'll do forestry they have the little place in the in the local village where they get to grow their own grow their own food they learn Lear good skills they'll do well enough and they'll have decent enough education on English and maths and things like that they can pursue what they want to creatively I think it's great and I think I think listen there's so many things that excite me about the UK um and I think we've got it really really good I really do and I think there's so many people in the UK and in the US for that matter that just constantly focus on the negatives um and like I said I'm but I'm a I'm more of an optimist and I think that the the long-term effect will be a net positive as well I think so too you're right I do have concerns over those exact things and I do think about them and maybe it's different for me cuz I'm in a privileged position where I can just choose to not allow my child to be involved in certain things that I don't want them to if you live in a place and that school provides that and you're not happy with it and you're stuck with it I maybe my opinion would be slightly different that's a concern for a lot of people that they they can't rip their kids out of uh a situation where they don't agree with the particular uh ideology the particular um cultural millu that's going on but I mean you you've said that you've done a lot of the research I was talking to uh Ryan about this yesterday and he's I think his 2-year-old is at private school at the moment and at this school there's kids turning up in helicopters there's kids turning up on in Bentley's uh and you know he's I think even more working class as working class correct yeah yeah he's AB scum um and he Ryan Terry by the way tells everyone he was a plumber I think the lads were out at a shoot and air being be in LA and the toilet broke and he didn't know how to fix it so I think we should also at some point dig into to understand how good a plumber was you think that this is I think even though he was I'm not debating whether or not he was a plumber I just think you're right I think he was a [ __ ] plumber so I think Ryan I'm afraid that you need to come through and fix some pipes for us in order to prove that your backstory is not completely just fab confabulated he's got this problem at the moment and I mentioned it to him yesterday and I may as well tell it to you too um especially given that you've got twins which is pretty interesting are they identical twins yeah wow monozygotic twins need to introduce you to Robert pman so he's the number one behavioral geneticist on the planet every pair of twins born in the UK between 1991 and 1994 were enrolled into this study and they ended up holding on to I think around about 50 to 60,000 pairs yeah of twins and he has teased apart the differences between nature and nurture more than anybody right I'd be interested in that because I haven't got into the detail of it but there's there's even though you've got the same DNA there's environmental factors that cause the DNA to basically I don't know what you want to call it this is where you sort of get to the age of my competency but they've show in different ways don't they and I'm interested to know what how that works so the epigenetic changes how does the environment influence the genes to be honest pman doesn't really get into that much and for me like EP genetics vibrational frequencies Quantum astral round all that stuff is a little bit like the god of the gaps argument to me it's like a place where we don't quite understand as far as I can tell just what's going on and people use it as a a wedge in which they can drive basically wishful thinking and desires so when it comes to uh kids and um schools overall when you account for everything genetics socioeconomics St all the rest of it taking a kid out of one school and putting them into another has less than 5% of a difference in their academic outcomes the biggest influence it seems like that you have in the nurture side of Nature and nurture is not you and it's not your wife it's the parents of the kids that your kids hang around with it's the kids that your kids hang around with and it's the oh wow coaches the school teachers which is ruthless for parents to find out that they are not the biggest influence on their child's life like the biggest determinant of your future wealth level is not that of your parents it's the average of the postcode that you grow up in why well it's because who are you exposed to who are the people that you take your values and your virtues from now again this is on average if you had a family which was incredibly insular um you know yours multigenerational four generations of of people interacting with each other you spent a lot of time with that you're going to supplement what typically would have happened socially outside of the home like still outside of the home but within one family structure right um but my point being that the number one piece of advice that I would give to parents that want to raise kids with values work ethic all the rest of it that they want to have carefully vet the kids that your kids spend time with carefully vet the parents of the kids that your kids spend time with carefully vet the coaches of the sports teams the teachers at the schools um that is some of the longest leverage that you can find if you want to have kids that hold those sorts of values that that have the upbringing and the principles that you want them to have those are the real long levers I think I have no idea really important man really really important that Robin will see that and she'll think I definitely want to home homeschool the boys now well homeschooling is not nothing as well like I you know I'm speaking as an only child here that um under socializing kids puts them in advantages in some regards because you have massive amounts of self-sufficiency uh Total Comfort with working in isolation with being in isolation with taking risk says the guy that moved out to America at 33 to like just try and speak to people on the internet but the problem is that you need to really work hard to offset the um lack of ability in terms of socialization that we'd accumulate over six hours a day in school around other kids being exposed to other cultures here is someone from a Muslim background here is someone that's Jewish here is someone that's from a wealthy family here is someone that's from a poor family here's somebody that's misbehaved here's somebody that's a bully here's some all of those different iterations I think my concern I love the idea of homeschooling but my concern is how less worldly and Street Smart do you make your kids it's a what's the consequence it's kind of a cuddling again in a regard now a solution for this another thing which is happening a lot in LA in America at the moment but especially in Austin people are making homesteads where 10 families of my rich friends will find 100 acres somewhere near Austin set up with a bunch of kids so you'll maybe have you know 10 15 kids and they'll homeschool it's not far off just a school now right if it's just you and a bunch of friends um and I wonder you know how do you blend the two could you offset homeschooling with uh different sports club every single night um to try and get that degree of socialization exposure to different cultures different people different situations very difficult I mean you know Ryan Terry his kid sounds like he basically on a pro athletes training schedule like five or six days a week gymnastics swimming karate D like each different night yeah but I don't know man this is a whole Uncharted Territory at the moment and um the fact that you've got twins is just going to be such a fascinating experiment for you to watch and we're going to hopefully touchwood have a lot more kids as well we want to have a big family and again that's that's important to me and certainly to Robin as well having a big family would be nice you mentioned that your Ms might want a slightly bigger family than you anticipated I thought 3 weeks after the birth when chaos was at it alltime high that she would have tapered her Ambitions but she's still definitely wants four or five kids so apparently it is the people have a genetic predisposition to having twins as well uh Matt Walsh guy that works for the daily wire I think he's six kids deep but that's only been four births he's had like two pairs of twins in that so you could be also my business partner Darren he'd had two and he wasn't sure they were like talking should we have a third should we not have a third and then his Ms had said like I really want to have one uh and he realized up until they had the scan he's like [ __ ] we could go from 2 to four here M uh and he wasn't ready for he would have to have changed the car he would they would have to have immediately bought a new house all hell would have broken loose so just you know think think carefully moving forward um what are you looking to do over the next few years like personally in terms of the things that you want to develop the ways that you want to learn about yourself about the world impact that you want to have what's your focus going to be do you think over the next few years um clearly my professional focus is solely on Jim shark and building Jim shark out into a great business we're at this peculiar point now where we're trying to transition into a really Global business where like at the moment we I mean we sell globally but we're not a true Global business so we're trying to really develop that and we've just just hired in and built like a new leadership team that uh I think the last person joined in January so fairly fresh new team so that's important to me like betting that in and making sure the business is ready for the next phase of growth uh personally I just want to get settled in our forever home and get that finished and nice and done that will take a year or two hope well hopefully not not two sort of 12 18 months um I think as well I I know we've spoken about this previously but I would be interested in how and whether my content develops into speaking more openly about maybe some of the things that we've spoken about today without being overly involved in politics and especially not American politics because I am not I'm not an American and I know that a Brit talking about American politics generally doesn't end particularly positively so um but I guess more around the way that the UK is shaping up especially from a commercial perspective because I think I've got value to add there so I would definitely consider how I can talk more openly about those things have you ever been offered you've spoken on boards and stuff would you ever take a more formal role no no I I wouldn't have time now I've been offered lots of board seats and involvement into lots of things the only thing I've ever said yes to with would be the the government's business ad Advisory Board the only area that I would take time to contribute would be to uh the UK government whoever it is and to be honest I'm sort of agnostic as to who it is because I don't feel as though I would be contributing to them as individuals I'd be contributing to the as a whole yeah which I think is beneficial regardless of who's there Ben Francis ladies and gentlemen if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do where should they go uh YouTube search Ben Frances on YouTube Instagram all the usual social medias Ben I appre appreciate you thank you mate thank you very much what's happening people thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe peace [Music]