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

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.