#619 - Ben Francis - Gymshark CEO Explains His Strategy For Global Success

25:23Those would be the main ones. Again, this is going to sound really bad, but the financial risks never really frightened me too much. And the reason for that is when I was a young kid I did the first ever, I guess, experience of work for me was working on work experience for my granddad. My granddad lines furnaces in the middle and so brick ceramic fiber, laboring job. I basically just did laboring for him. And he would tell me, and he's a one man band, it's not by no means a huge business. But 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.

26:05And 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 mum worked nights in the NHS and my dad would often work away and things like that. The risk that I then take on that big.

26:40So, take a million quid at 22 years old on events. When worst case, I can go back to university that you can get another job at pizza. 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 level of risk tolerance. I think 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, taking risks. And my disposition is very, very conservative, iterate very slowly. 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.

27:25That's something, again, British culture. I think I would say very much discourages risk. Overall, very, very just softly, softly, slowly, slowly, limit your potential upside, but also massively limit your downside as much as you can. We've spoken a lot about sort of business, the operations of business, but fundamentally what you are doing is encouraging fitness in the world, right? Like it's facilitating people feeling better about their bodies, thinking about the way that they trained, 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 compared to when started.

28:12Very, so I think, and I'm speaking about the content I can tune right, so it was a kid I was skinny and I just wanted to build muscle. That was it. Like I'm not gonna 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 during that era. I was inspired by Greg Plitt, I was inspired by Ziz. That was my, like Rob Rich's 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 was very much, definitely the bodybuilding industry was definitely around that because even if you think, if I think back to when I first got into fitness, the big bodybuilders didn't really get into social media, they almost looked down their nose a little bit at that new era of people that were coming up.

29:00So when I think back to that era and then you had the Matt Ogas is in the Crystal of Ido, this is where Jim Shutter 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. When I talk about the mental element, I felt like people talk about mental health all the time and I do think it's important, but it's so much more about it's almost like like maximizing your potential holistically rather than having a good mental health and good physical health. I would say it feels slightly harder now and more direct than what it was.

29:39It 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. I don't know how to put this in a more masculine way. How'd you mean?

29:59I 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 one where I think I think that's 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 don't know that, if you're a young 16 year old kid joining the gym, you'll work that out within a week on YouTube.

30:38So then people are now going a lot deeper in this in terms of like, okay, so, 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, I think that's a really nice way to frame it that previously, you know, when we were starting training, it was the MISK forum on Bodybuilding .com. It's been a lot of time there. I've used on there as well. I bet you did. Like Christian Tibado, T Nation, like all of this, like that kind of world, no one knew what Macros were, no one knew with Blueberry Extract was actually going to be the secret to your muscle gains.

31:16then it was very bro -sciencey and it was like if you don't have a protein shape within 30 minutes to finish the regime you will lose all of your gains and you need to have your creativity in every 30 minutes and you've got your pre -workout, your intro workout, and it was just like to the point where I remember shoving hyperbolic mass down my throat in a bit to somehow gain weight whereas now that whole world just seems to have it just completely as changed and and weirdly enough I mean certainly in the areas that I spend time 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 white training but also incorporates a level of cardio and it feels like a more balanced approach to fitness now.

32:04I would agree. So when we're talking about integrating men, masculinity 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'm very passionate about mental health, suffered with bouts of depression throughout all of my 20s. was the person that needed to be spoken to by this.

32:43And yet it takes a Canadian psychologist or a Stanford professor or a bald 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, whatever I've reflected on, the reason I didn't like it's okay to talk is well, fucking 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.

33:24And 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 Nal talk about this quite a lot as well. In the sense that if I think of growing up, so I had a great upbringing, right? I remember there was a few years ago, someone stuck a camera in front of me on gym shots, come up and say, tell me about your terrible upbringing and how difficult it had been and everyone that said no. And I was like, I'm not doing this because I had a brilliant upbringing. I've got great parents, great grandparents.

33:52parents and when I think to the way my mum 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 and it's 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 apologise and it was very much tough love. And that for me was the male role model. It was tough, be strong, be respectful. And there was another one. And I remember when I was, I'd done something wrong, and I was really, I'd completely fucked up, and I was so upset.

34:31And 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 gonna be all right. And he just sat there and he went, what are you gonna do about it? And that feeling of, then you have to be strong, you have to take control of the situations and 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.

35:01I 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, 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 to put someone just to sit there and strengthen where you go 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.

35:31Certainly 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 which every time that they offer up a potential solution infuriates the conversation more. 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?

36:05And there is a large chunk of girls who want to be heard. Just look here, the things that I'm saying. Maybe we can talk about 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 understand and you hear what I'm saying. 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 like you know Male development which maybe came about perhaps due to men starting to feel like they Were less required, you know 2000 and like six to 2012 You are more visible online Just generally as a man people are starting to scrutinize the way that you look you're able to compare yourself to people But wasn't this the point where obesity became a thing in the early 2000s where everyone sort of said, I think it was at the point where the US became, it was something like 40 or 50 % obese.

37:08And 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 a 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 Jamie Oliver era and I remember being really annoyed because they got rid of the dairy milk to our school. Fuck Jamie Oliver. I can't believe it. But you know, it, I think that's where it started for me. Health definitely became a thing. And I think you're right.

37:34All of a sudden, postings, pictures on social media, comparing yourself to people that a thousand miles away. Yeah. All of these things definitely would apply it into that. So we rolled the clock forward. And people have integrated the fact that 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 audience, Jim Shark especially is particularly unique in that it's split. It kind of came up focused very heavily on male influences and now I would guess you probably sell more women's work.

38:10Women's work, right? So you have this kind of odd flip but you have been on the front lines of observing male identity, masculinity and its challenges. What do you think about masculinity in 2023 and the challenges that young manifesting? God.

38:30I definitely think that the coddle culture certainly isn't helping from a male perspective. I think 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 saw something that you said previously around, 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 helpful. And if I think to male role models previously, especially for me growing up, other than footballers, as a Brit, I genuinely can't think of any.

39:17What does it say that men need those 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 with different things. I don't think there's one archetypical male that exists somewhere that does everything that has great muscle mass. Full package. Intelligent, yeah, all these sorts of things. And that's what personally I'll do. Like, are people that inspire me from a fitness perspective, from an intellectual perspective and so on. So I think having that helps. 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.

39:57Like a put a blog in front of me who's a billionaire, it's cool and everything. But you'd rather have one percent 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 just a numerical financial figure. But I think that maybe I think men might also skew that way the older they get and as their life 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 it every time.

40:34So many of the 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 were 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 I'm Definitely that because I think you and I grew up in different parts of the UK and have been on very different journeys But I think if we were to write down every year since 2006, I'm sure we probably have had similar views and experiences Correct, we tracked a lot of it.

41:16We looked up to the same people. We read the same stuff. We got exposed to the same stuff Followed each other on Facebook So we have this sort of bubble that's going on and then a particular Trend a particular influence occurs that group 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. He has a particular cohort of young guys that look up to him, 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.

41:58But 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 Guzman and Matt Ogus 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 and maybe we'd got really good at focusing skin deep and We're in really good condition, we're wearing loads of cool clothes or whatever. But there was, it was a little hollow, perhaps, inside of that.

42:34And that we needed something else. It's like, okay, I've developed the fitness side of me. Yeah, now what? Yeah, give me some fucking 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 the like the mis -body building forums, that would have come out of like gym culture and bro culture thinking this is if only I had the six pack of Greg Plitt that will fix all of my problems. I've got myself to a stage where I'm happy with my body and shit I still have problems.

43:12It's the gym carry quote that goes in and like I hope you all get to achieve your dreams so that you can realize that maybe it's not so great or it's worse with that effect isn't it? But I feel like it's very similar from for seepers, becvers, maybe is a financial perspective. I think people are willing 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?

43:42Do you know what you're worth? I try to think, I don't know. I do not want to know nor think. And I think the other thing is 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 shop, which has a fluctuating value that change on the day. If I was to assign any form of self worth or spend too much time considering it, then my mood would fluctuate more than the weather. And I think that, that's something for me that I would, I'd never ever think about that. And I swear to God, that is the last thing I think about at all.

44:16But again, I think maybe that is an age thing, a situation thing being and 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 as being the body positivity movement, when Jim Shock first came around, those leggings that had the line under the ass crack at the bottom that like accentuated bombs and so on and so forth.

44:53Women and their 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. We're talking a lot about sort of masculinity and men's problems. I flew 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 five years time is going to become from the new existential crisis, I think it's girls. I think that we have insane rates. What we do, we know that we do, the Pew Research just came out about this unbelievable rate. It's like one in two to like 60 % of girls in their teens have serious depression on mental health problems.

45:30One 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 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? So I think the interesting thing with that is, and I think it was a point where conversations with Noel, I think we pushed it to Vara points. This is the thing with Ronin Accompanie.

46:09you'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 were definitely points where we strayed I think too far towards that body positivity conversation because I think you 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 Shart don't believe that a skinny male in the UK that wants to build muscle. We don't believe that his ambition and his desire to go to the gym is any better than an American girl that wants to lose weight.

46:45You'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 three hundred kilos, you want to lose I don't know 30 pounds of fat, 50 pounds of fat, whatever it is, 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 six 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's where I think the message needs to be.

47:16The bit where I start to get concerned is when people start to promote unhealthy for ziques. And that's not to say that different for ziques shouldn't be shown, but to promote an unhealthy for zik and for me to suggest that that unhealthy for zik 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 at 5 % body fat and say that this is a well -balanced way. Meanwhile, testosterone's in the toilet hasn't had a direction in six months irritable. Some of the people that I know who have some of the most incredible physics you've ever seen have the worst relationship with their body mentally.

48:00And you all know that as well as I do. People don't step on stage in some of these huge competitions 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 time before the risk becomes too high. So it's not just people that are overweight. It's people that are literally bulking up beyond all doubt and then die in themselves on the verge of starvation in order to win a competition. And there's extremes at both ends, but 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.

48:43I think there are certain elements where you can understand, admire whatever you want to call it, the extremes. I'm massively inspired by if I see a picture of Dorian Yates, another guy from Birmingham, Phil Heath. It's just because of the accent. It's not the photo, it's the accent. But even closer to home, like Ryan Terry, seeing him in pictures is cool. Seeing him in real life, it is insane. I look at him in my heart. Such a big boy. It's crazy. 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.

49:17I think that has to be of concern. Just in the same way that if a friend or family memory of mine was to get quite overweight. I wouldn't sit there and say that that's okay. And that doesn't mean I wouldn't care for them or love them any less. But I would say listen, 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 six pack abs. Everyone doesn't need to be able to do that if 300 kilos. But moving being in the gym and having a certain level of fitness, I think he's only helpful for everyone. You have recently had twins.

49:50Yes. How old are they now? They are 14 weeks to their... Right, 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 and she said something to the effect of, you're not going to be able to do this when you have kids. And you said, yeah, manana, manana, I'll do it when it's in front of me. You don't need to worry about that. Given that you are now at the cold face, what have been the lessons, introspection, changes that you've noticed over the last 14 weeks? Well, first and foremost, I was wrong.

50:32So Zoe was right. She was saying that you can't continue to work. I think it was in this way or in this way. I think it was more in this way when you have kids. And the reason was is very obviously my life and Jim Shultt just blended into one. It was a seven day a week job. I'd sit there and I'd work on a saturday, on a sunday, on a monday, it'd be fairly loose and free and open. I'd just work all the time. Cool. And I loved my job and I continue to do so. So I wasn't sat there thinking, oh God, I'm annoyed that I'm working on a sunday. I thoroughly enjoyed it. In the fact that I would travel a lot and I'd be away for lots of weekends and things like this.

51:04Whereas now, when I was sort of having kids, I wanna 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. We did a trip to Colorado a few months ago and what we'd normally do is fly out on the Saturday, look around on the Sunday, maybe go out to recommend you or somewhere like that, relax, work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, fly home Friday, make a leisurely journey back from Heathrow 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 thrown at me sort of thing.

51:40So it's very, very different. And like, I would say I've become significantly more purposeful in my time 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 to like, turn my phone off on Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to try and do that potentially for a whole day on Sunday, just so that I'm present and with them. The travel, more present when I'm at home 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.

52:22There's an interesting insight that I learned there again from Adam Lane Smith which is a lot of the time parents are considered in becoming increasingly more aware of their kids using devices right do you want your child to have to be only distracted by a YouTube for kids or whatever. One of the things that 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, 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 again, don't have kids, can't wait to be a dad, but when I do my grand idea of how I'm going to have a relationship with technology, may get thrown out of the fucking window.

53:06However, 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 fun shouldn't be in there as well. 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 to something 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 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 hope and life.

53:49And just little things like that and it's so different to the way that I grew up. And it might be a combination of me getting older, being in the position I'm in. I think it's a position that we are in the world as well. I think with everything that's gone on politically, globally, with COVID and everything, I think the amount of people that have just gone thought this, I just want to be self -sufficient and do my own thing to a degree. I think is increased dramatically. So yeah, I think it's definitely changed my perspective on lots of things. And a lot of people were saying, I don't know, I was asking me this.

54:23He was interested to watch how my relationship with work changed and I'm arguably even more hell -bent 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. Right Terry said the same thing. I know I want to work hard, I want to be successful, I want them to see that and I want to do it in the right way.

54:54Whereas I I don't have to work. I could retire and live on that farm and... Mr. Sir, people say they're 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 get what you want from life. And I think it's the right thing 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 seeing their dad doing something he looks, but also having good time with them, I think he's really exciting to me, and that's what I want them to do as they grow up.

55:34You have the opportunity to give your kids materially opportunities that you didn't have as a kid. The lack of opportunities that you had, the exposure to your uncle or granddad that was making stoves and risking it all on a hundred grand stove, or whatever that was shipping to Germany 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?

56:11Again, 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, then if they go to, I don't want you to 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 not quite on that boat. Yeah, I'd happy just... I think that's an American Canadian influence heavily.

56:42It's very rare over here in the UK. Yeah. America Canada a little less. It tells me that that movement is growing rapidly, but I haven't looked into that yet. Yeah. 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 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 and the way that my parents did, in the way that my grandparents did. It was really important to me that they were born and they would have the opportunity to spend time with my grandparents.

57:13They're 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 all of my great grandparents on the male side all fall in the wall right my grandparents I spent a lot of time with growing up will tell me stories about what it was like growing up when they grew up my name 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 they were rationing my other grandfather who I'll work closely with Tommy 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.

57:55And 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 makes a difference. That makes a difference. 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 kid is really, really important to me.

58:28How I do that, I don't know, because some things you just have to learn yourself. And one of the things that I learnt myself 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 the UK. I can't wait to get out of England. I want to go somewhere. 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 get every imagined I've spent lots and lots of time across loads of different states in the United, 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.

59:16And if you'd have said that to 16, 17, 18 year old Ben, he would have not believed you in a million years. But again, we had the opportunity to raise our kid 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 in negatives. The media can be a bit of a pain in the ass. And we've had more prime ministers in the last six months than probably most have had in the last six years. All of these different things. But when I look at it, the net positives are being here are so great.

59:54What are they? Net positives have been in the UK. People forget that if you want to start a business in the UK, especially in e -commerce business, one we speaking, which is great, helpful for communicating with the Western world. Two, you can ship things to Europe in 24 hours, pretty much 70 million people in the UK within 24 hours. So you've got the whole of Europe and the UK and your doorstep. A lot of that is down to the fact that there's so many countries in Europe, each one has its own sort of operational set, whether it's DVD or Royal Mail or these different companies. So the operational supply chain of Europe is incredible.

1:00:29You can ship to the east coast to the United States in 24, 4 year 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 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. And they were shipping from places like Melbourne that it was taking them three weeks to get to the US and your own places like that. Beyond the advantages specifically in the UK of e -commerce companies.

1:01:05Cultural advantages. Culturally we punch way above our way. The amount of British actors, presenters and things like that that you see in the US, in the UK, in the Australia and places like that. It's incredible.

1:01:20I think we've got an amazing education system. I think all be it, we've got a turbulent and mental government. It's way better than 99 % of other countries. And I know people moan and I know they're a mistake. And this is the other thing as well. And 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? Reese's Jr. has made the stupid mistake. And I'm like, if anyone that's worked in any business or in any large scale organization has made a million mistakes, it's really fucking hard.

1:01:59You couldn't do a better job. And I think we just need to take stock of the fact that 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 does? And I think your alternative is if you were to go purely on competent, and competence. You'd probably end up significantly closer to a China, or somewhere like that. That's 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 the benefits from an economic perspective of the UK and a country that punches above its weight that has great connections into the entire of the West that has great social influence across the world.

1:02:45What are you saying, country? Are you, yeah, that's not nothing as well. A lot of the concerns at the moment do come in America, a lot of my friends, the reason that you've got walled off schools, have you heard of those? Okay, so there's a bunch of alternative, semi -alternative schooling systems, very based around being outdoors, teaching kids like to 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 one hundredth of the amount of psychological contagion, a memetic horse shittery that goes on in the US.

1:03:40It's frightening. Is that something that you have highly considered? 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, again, this is where my optimism comes out. If you zoom out, what generally happens, it'll be like this, but it would generate the S &P, it would 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 next 50 years that I'm going to be on this planet, how much of that do I want to take?

1:04:16Whereas 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 local village where they get to grow their own food. They learn 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 that, listen, there's so many things that are exciting about the UK. And I think we've got it really, really good. I really don't. 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.

1:04:50And like I said, I'm more of an optimist and I think that the long term effect will be a net positive as well. I think so too. But you're right, I do have concerns over those exact things and I do think about them. And maybe it's different for me because 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, maybe my opinion will be slightly different. That's a concern for a lot of people. that they can't rip their kids out of a situation where they don't agree with the particular ideology, the particular cultural milieu that's going on.

1:05:34But I mean, you've said that you've done a lot of the research. I was talking to Ryan about this yesterday and he's, I think, his two -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 in Bentley's. And, you know, he's, I think, even more working class. as working class. Correct. Yeah, he's gone. He's absolutely gone. Ryan Terry, by the way, tells everybody it was a plumber. I think the lads were out shooting an Airbnb 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 in to understand how good a plumber is.

1:06:10Oh, 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 it was a ship 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 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, especially given that you've got twins which is pretty interesting. Are they identical twins? Wow, Mono's I got it twins. I need to introduce you to Robert Plomans so it's the number one behavioral geneticist on the planet.

1:06:41Every 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 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 edge of my competency, but they've shown in different ways, don't I'm interested to know how that works.

1:07:14So the epigenetic changes, how does the environment influence the genes? To be honest, plomin' doesn't really get into that much. And for me, epigenetics, vibrational frequencies, quantum astral route, 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 wedge in which they can drive basically wishful thinking and desire. So when it comes to kids and schools overall, when you account for everything, genetics, socioeconomic status, 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.

1:08:03The biggest influence it seems like that you have in the nurture side of nature and nurture is not you, 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 Coaches the schoolteachers 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 postcard that you grow up in why what's because who you exposed to? Who are the people that you take your values and your virtues from?

1:08:40Now, again, this is on average. If you had a family which was incredibly insular, you know, yours, multi -generational, four generations 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? 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.

1:09:22That is some of the longest leverage that you can find. If you want to have kids that hold those sorts of values 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. Robyn will see that and she'll think, I definitely want to homeschool the boys now. Well, homeschooling is not nothing as well. I'm speaking as an only child here that under socializing kids puts them in advantages in some regards because you have massive amounts of self -sufficiency, total comfort with working in isolation, with being in isolation, with taking risks.

1:10:02could say is 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 lack of ability in terms of socialization that we 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?

1:10:44It's a, what's the concept one? It's kind of a coddling 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 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000 ,000, families of my rich friends will find a hundred 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 but it's not far off just a school now right it's just you would have put your friends and I wonder you know how do you blend the two could you offset homeschooling with a different sports club every single night to try and get that degree of socialization, exposure to different cultures, different people, different situations.

1:11:34Very difficult. I mean, you know, Ryan Terry, his kid sounds like, he's basically on a pro -athlete's training schedule, like five or six days a week, gymnastics, swimming, karate, da -da -da -da -da, like each different night. Yeah. But I don't know, man. This is a whole unsharted territory at the moment and the fact that you've got twins is just gonna be such a fascinating. experiment for you to watch and we're going to hopefully touch wood. I have a lot more kids as well. We all have a big family and again that's important to me and certainly to Robin as well. Having a big family would be nice.

1:12:08You mentioned that your misses might want a slightly bigger family than you'd anticipate. I thought three weeks after the birth when chaos was at its all -time high that she would have tapered her ambitions but she's still definitely wants four or five kids so. Apparently it is that people have a genetic predisposition to having twins as well. 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?

1:12:44We not have a third and then his misses, it's like I really want to have one. And he realized up until they had the scan, he's like, fuck, we could go from two to before here. And he wasn't ready for, he would have to have changed the car. He would have, they would have had to have immediately bought a new house or all hell would have broken loose. So just, you know, think, think carefully, moving forward. And 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?

1:13:19Do you think over the next for years. 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 sell globally but we're not a true global business so we're trying to really develop that and we've just hired in and built like a new leadership team that I think the last person joined in January So fairly fresh new teams, so that's important to me, like bedding that in and making sure the business is ready for the next phase of growth.

1:13:55Personally, I just want to get settled in a forever home and get that finished and nice and done. That will take a year or two. Hopefully not two, sort of 12, 18 months. I think as well, 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, especially not American politics because I am not an American and I know that a Brit talking about American politics generally doesn't end particularly positively. But I guess more around the way that the UK is shaping up, especially from a commercial perspective, so I think I've got value to add there.

1:14:37So 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, 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 would be the government's business of my advisory board. The only area that I would take time to contribute would be to 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.

1:15:09I'd be contributing to the system 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? YouTube search Ben Francis on YouTube Instagram all the usual social media Ben. I appreciate you. Thank you, mate. Thank you very much