1 00:00:22,320 --> 00:00:26,520 It's getting official. We added that in the last 2 00:00:26,520 --> 00:00:28,320 episode. And I was like, oh, OK, all 3 00:00:28,320 --> 00:00:30,600 right, cool. It's a weird idea. 4 00:00:30,600 --> 00:00:34,880 There's a great creative exercise, which is effectively, 5 00:00:34,880 --> 00:00:37,000 because we're talking about the theory of constraints, it's 6 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:39,960 worth knowing this, where you have a business and you 7 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:44,760 artificially impose a constraint on yourself to effectively spur 8 00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:47,480 creativity. And so the the typical idea 9 00:00:47,480 --> 00:00:50,360 given is you've got an airline and you have to make money from 10 00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:53,520 your airline assets, but the planes aren't allowed to leave 11 00:00:53,520 --> 00:00:54,720 the ground. OK. 12 00:00:55,320 --> 00:00:59,360 And one of the ideas I had just riding here was there should be 13 00:00:59,360 --> 00:01:02,320 a way to make money for London taxi drivers when they're not 14 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:04,760 moving, which is to rent the space. 15 00:01:04,800 --> 00:01:08,520 OK, If every London taxi just have a small table and you could 16 00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:11,480 call down a taxi and say, I basically want your cab for a 17 00:01:11,480 --> 00:01:13,960 Zoom call for an hour. I wanna work in it. 18 00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:15,920 You go off and have a meal, right? 19 00:01:16,120 --> 00:01:18,760 I'll pay you a reasonable rate for the rent of your cab as 20 00:01:18,760 --> 00:01:20,880 effectively stationary office space. 21 00:01:21,520 --> 00:01:23,160 Or actually if you wanted to snooze. 22 00:01:23,640 --> 00:01:25,320 Yeah. I mean, you've gotta, you've 23 00:01:25,320 --> 00:01:27,320 gotta have some rules. Because there's a problem with 24 00:01:27,320 --> 00:01:29,760 Waymo with people having sex in the cars. 25 00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:32,640 Oh, Which is when you have driverless taxis, it doesn't 26 00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:35,320 take long for people suddenly to get quite amorous. 27 00:01:36,080 --> 00:01:39,960 So there is a Waymo problem with that which they have to address. 28 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:43,920 It's a really interesting There have to be other things you 29 00:01:43,920 --> 00:01:47,520 could use taxis for other than just as a mode of transport. 30 00:01:47,680 --> 00:01:49,560 Because the big problem in London is if you're out and 31 00:01:49,560 --> 00:01:53,000 about in London and you've got a Zoom call 1:00, you've got to do 32 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:56,480 something dumb like go to a cafe and then order 3 coffees and 33 00:01:56,720 --> 00:01:58,280 find a stupid corner. Yeah. 34 00:01:58,520 --> 00:02:01,600 Which is generally a pain, Yeah. And actually every taxi is 35 00:02:01,600 --> 00:02:03,120 potentially an office. Yeah. 36 00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:05,480 And then have you been in a way more before? 37 00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:07,640 Yes, once in Austin. How do you find it? 38 00:02:08,440 --> 00:02:11,800 I agree with my colleague who said it's totally chill at 39 00:02:11,800 --> 00:02:16,240 speeds OF203040 miles an hour. Yeah, but on the open freeway at 40 00:02:16,240 --> 00:02:18,360 60 or 70, you'd get a bit spooked. 41 00:02:18,360 --> 00:02:20,320 Why is it? So basically when you go to San 42 00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:24,720 Francisco or Austin or LA, it's basically like driverless cars 43 00:02:25,120 --> 00:02:27,800 and you can order it on an app, it comes. 44 00:02:27,800 --> 00:02:31,400 It's a Jaguar I pace with loads of lidar and rotating things on 45 00:02:31,400 --> 00:02:32,080 top. Yeah. 46 00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:36,240 And The funny thing is it's not like just like drives like like 47 00:02:36,240 --> 00:02:38,680 a normal driver. Like it drives actually like a 48 00:02:38,680 --> 00:02:39,880 normal driver. So there's no one there. 49 00:02:40,160 --> 00:02:43,000 So basically you can go to a game and you're drinking 50 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:44,800 alcohol, that's why. And there's no. 51 00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:47,760 And it can basically like measure the weight of the people 52 00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:49,440 that are on there. So if you leave something in the 53 00:02:49,440 --> 00:02:51,120 car, it will alert you, et cetera, et cetera. 54 00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:54,040 But The funny thing is about it is if it's stuck in traffic and 55 00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:56,280 he knows there's a quick way to, like, overtake and go, it does 56 00:02:56,280 --> 00:02:57,840 it. You just see the steering wheel, 57 00:02:57,840 --> 00:02:59,680 like, spinning and you're like, where you going? 58 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:05,000 So I decided to go there after like, going to a WNBA game 59 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:07,560 because there was like nobody there and it was insane. 60 00:03:07,920 --> 00:03:14,040 But apparently the witch game. So it was the the Golden State, 61 00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:15,960 like the Golden State. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 62 00:03:16,040 --> 00:03:18,440 So that was great. But then I really wanted to do 63 00:03:18,440 --> 00:03:20,480 this experiment without going to driverless car, but it was 64 00:03:20,480 --> 00:03:22,840 actually pretty good. Actually pretty good, yeah. 65 00:03:22,840 --> 00:03:24,480 It's the sort of thing that I guess the first time you do it 66 00:03:24,480 --> 00:03:26,320 feels really weird. Yeah, you probably get used to. 67 00:03:26,520 --> 00:03:29,200 It there is a potential thing with driverless cars, which I 68 00:03:29,200 --> 00:03:32,520 don't think humans will ever cope with, which is 69 00:03:32,520 --> 00:03:36,040 theoretically you don't need traffic lights because with 70 00:03:36,040 --> 00:03:39,640 enough precision, literally cars could crisscross at 70 miles an 71 00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:42,640 hour just judging the gap perfectly, you see. 72 00:03:42,880 --> 00:03:44,960 So you can literally get rid of a set of traffic lights and you 73 00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:47,840 could have cars rumbling through alternately in different 74 00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:51,320 directions sort of three feet apart, and it would hugely 75 00:03:51,320 --> 00:03:53,760 increase the efficiency of the road network. 76 00:03:54,200 --> 00:03:56,920 The theory is that people would just find it too terrifying, 77 00:03:57,080 --> 00:03:58,720 basically. And people mess with it. 78 00:03:58,720 --> 00:04:01,600 So there's there's like this whole like Instagram about like 79 00:04:01,600 --> 00:04:04,760 way more fails, right? Apparently one like went to the 80 00:04:04,760 --> 00:04:07,200 high speed Rd. on the opposite side. 81 00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:12,200 There was another one that because they all go to this like 82 00:04:12,200 --> 00:04:15,600 parking lot to park themselves. It's like way more on Waymo 83 00:04:15,880 --> 00:04:18,560 trying to like beep at each other to like act. 84 00:04:18,880 --> 00:04:21,000 So there's little things like that that it needs to get better 85 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:21,560 at. But. 86 00:04:22,320 --> 00:04:25,400 You can also hack them, which I predicted, which is one of the 87 00:04:25,400 --> 00:04:29,680 famous San Francisco ones, is the if you put a traffic cone on 88 00:04:29,680 --> 00:04:33,880 the bonnet or hood of a Waymo, it basically gets completely 89 00:04:33,880 --> 00:04:37,640 confused and can't proceed. So there is a potential risk, 90 00:04:37,640 --> 00:04:41,960 which is things like, for example, carjackings, you see, 91 00:04:42,600 --> 00:04:45,440 because because the thing can't run anybody over. 92 00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:48,360 You could literally, you know, stand in front of, get one 93 00:04:48,360 --> 00:04:50,760 person to stand in front of a Waymo, demand that the people 94 00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:53,160 get out. So there are all load of risks 95 00:04:53,400 --> 00:04:57,280 where if you think about it, you know, every car, potentially 96 00:04:57,280 --> 00:05:01,080 every motorist has the threat of I'm going to drive at your legs. 97 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:04,800 But the way MO obviously is heavily programmed not to do 98 00:05:04,800 --> 00:05:06,800 that. So it's rather like, you know, 99 00:05:07,080 --> 00:05:09,800 people will eventually exploit the weak spots. 100 00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:13,600 You know, if and there's a famous one, which is there are 101 00:05:13,600 --> 00:05:17,800 people in residential streets who don't like cars going down 102 00:05:17,800 --> 00:05:23,240 them so they will report them as closed off on ways and other 103 00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:26,440 apps just to discourage drivers from going down. 104 00:05:27,440 --> 00:05:29,840 And then there's this wonderful guy who did a hack, I think, in 105 00:05:29,840 --> 00:05:34,280 Chicago, which was walking around with a hand drawn trolley 106 00:05:34,720 --> 00:05:39,040 at about four miles an hour with 50 mobile phones on it, you see, 107 00:05:39,200 --> 00:05:41,520 which gave Google Maps the impression that there was 108 00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:45,040 massive traffic congestion because you had literally 50 109 00:05:45,040 --> 00:05:47,320 people with phones travelling at a really low speed. 110 00:05:47,320 --> 00:05:50,680 Yeah, So Google Maps infers from that that, OK, this road is 111 00:05:50,680 --> 00:05:54,360 unbelievably slow, OK. And so this guy was literally 112 00:05:54,360 --> 00:05:58,400 going around and screwing up the algorithm with his 50 mobile 113 00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:02,440 phones in a little trolley. And it always occurs to me that, 114 00:06:02,480 --> 00:06:07,280 you know, we, we, we tend to optimize for a perfect world 115 00:06:07,520 --> 00:06:09,240 because that's what engineers tend to do. 116 00:06:09,240 --> 00:06:11,360 They tend to have an optimizing mentality. 117 00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:15,240 And actually, what we're not very good at is spotting the 118 00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:17,640 weak spots. But it only takes one out of 6 119 00:06:17,640 --> 00:06:19,920 billion people to find a weak spot. 120 00:06:20,640 --> 00:06:24,000 So Ben Waymo, you guys do it? Oh, do it, yeah. 121 00:06:24,720 --> 00:06:26,640 What Game One, Yeah. No, no, that's fantastic. 122 00:06:26,640 --> 00:06:29,560 Give it a go. But now I just think it's weird. 123 00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:31,680 It's hard, isn't it? I mean, I'm sure I'll get on 124 00:06:31,680 --> 00:06:34,600 board eventually. But yeah, on English lanes, that 125 00:06:34,600 --> 00:06:36,720 can be on English lanes, single track lanes. 126 00:06:39,320 --> 00:06:40,840 That yeah, they'd be OK, I think. 127 00:06:41,040 --> 00:06:43,400 But you're right, that is an interesting issue, which is 128 00:06:43,400 --> 00:06:46,480 obviously, you know, the software corrects for left hand 129 00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:50,480 drive, not right hand drive. But there are probably nuances 130 00:06:50,480 --> 00:06:53,560 in British driving, particularly roundabouts, which Americans 131 00:06:53,560 --> 00:06:57,120 don't know much about, which will probably take time to, 132 00:06:58,120 --> 00:07:00,600 it'll take time to adapt to. I mean, there are probably 133 00:07:00,600 --> 00:07:03,640 social conventions. I heard the sweetest thing, by 134 00:07:03,680 --> 00:07:08,560 the way, last night at a dinner, which is Japan is this is just a 135 00:07:08,560 --> 00:07:11,160 driving convention. The driving convention that you 136 00:07:11,280 --> 00:07:14,680 you flash your hazard lights to say thank you originated in 137 00:07:14,680 --> 00:07:17,320 Japan because it's a hyper polite culture. 138 00:07:17,640 --> 00:07:19,720 This is even sweeter still. OK. 139 00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:24,720 The people who arrive first at work in Japan in the company car 140 00:07:24,720 --> 00:07:30,440 park, park further away from the door, OK, Because they figure 141 00:07:30,440 --> 00:07:34,200 that people arriving later might be in more of a hurry, so need 142 00:07:34,200 --> 00:07:37,680 to park closer to the door. So people will arrive really 143 00:07:37,680 --> 00:07:40,280 early at their Japanese place of work and deliberately park 100 144 00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:43,400 yards away from the door to leave space for people arriving 145 00:07:43,400 --> 00:07:45,320 after them. That is the sweetest thing I've 146 00:07:45,320 --> 00:07:46,600 ever heard. I think it's absolutely 147 00:07:46,600 --> 00:07:48,320 delightful. It's amazing. 148 00:07:48,320 --> 00:07:53,360 I I need to go to Tokyo, but so we've got one of my upcoming 149 00:07:53,360 --> 00:07:55,800 favorite episodes because I was really looking forward to 150 00:07:55,800 --> 00:07:58,080 getting Ben down here. So obviously, Ben, we know each 151 00:07:58,080 --> 00:08:02,080 other and obviously you know Rory, but I I wanted to make 152 00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:04,480 sure that we brought you in and we saw a side of you that 153 00:08:04,600 --> 00:08:06,760 probably not a lot of people get to see from an interview 154 00:08:06,760 --> 00:08:08,960 perspective. How I know you is as somebody 155 00:08:08,960 --> 00:08:13,120 that's an inventor, creative, a rational doer and very, very 156 00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:15,440 self aware, right? But I think that a lot of the 157 00:08:15,440 --> 00:08:18,400 times and we will talk about the gym Shark story, people get too 158 00:08:18,400 --> 00:08:20,000 caught up in just the story element of it. 159 00:08:20,440 --> 00:08:23,800 And I want to make sure that they see the operational side of 160 00:08:24,040 --> 00:08:26,600 the now CEO of the brand, what's been three years now. 161 00:08:27,240 --> 00:08:30,640 But so, but before we get into all of that, for those that have 162 00:08:30,640 --> 00:08:33,240 been living under a rock and don't know the Gym Shark story, 163 00:08:33,240 --> 00:08:36,280 it'd be great for you to tell a little bit about the origin, how 164 00:08:36,280 --> 00:08:38,480 the brand started, and where we're at today. 165 00:08:38,760 --> 00:08:42,120 Yeah. So start the brand in 2012 and 166 00:08:43,039 --> 00:08:45,560 it, it was funny really because it was never really, I never 167 00:08:45,560 --> 00:08:46,800 really thought it would be a big business. 168 00:08:46,800 --> 00:08:48,920 So before Gym Shark has started lots of different things and 169 00:08:48,920 --> 00:08:51,240 they're all very small. So iPhone apps, websites, things 170 00:08:51,240 --> 00:08:54,080 like that. And having done lots of 171 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:58,120 different types of businesses, the ambition for Gym Shark, 172 00:08:58,120 --> 00:09:00,320 which is going to sound really boring, was just to sell one 173 00:09:00,320 --> 00:09:01,640 thing online. That was it. 174 00:09:01,640 --> 00:09:03,520 So the original ambition was because I've never made a 175 00:09:03,520 --> 00:09:06,040 website that had transacted. It would always be in either an 176 00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:07,680 app or it was something that would run ads. 177 00:09:07,680 --> 00:09:11,600 So the initial goal was let's make a website that would sell 178 00:09:11,600 --> 00:09:15,440 something. So, and it was really actually 179 00:09:15,440 --> 00:09:17,280 was perfect timing, right? Because found out that Shopify 180 00:09:17,280 --> 00:09:20,040 existed and that just made making that ecommerce website 181 00:09:20,040 --> 00:09:23,720 infinitely easier than it ever would have been and made the 182 00:09:23,720 --> 00:09:25,640 website was like, right now we need some product. 183 00:09:26,120 --> 00:09:28,520 And then very quickly realized that that's actually really hard 184 00:09:28,520 --> 00:09:30,520 to do. And I knew directionally that we 185 00:09:30,520 --> 00:09:32,560 really wanted to be in fitness and bodybuilding because that 186 00:09:32,560 --> 00:09:34,040 was the thing that we really loved growing up. 187 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:38,640 And I remember really vividly, actually, I remember thinking 188 00:09:38,640 --> 00:09:40,440 about supplements is the obvious thing thing for us. 189 00:09:40,440 --> 00:09:42,560 We all, we all take protein, creatine, things like that. 190 00:09:42,560 --> 00:09:44,840 Let's let's sell supplements. And it's a big online 191 00:09:44,840 --> 00:09:46,680 marketplace already. It was, it was huge. 192 00:09:46,680 --> 00:09:49,120 And I actually called a friend of mine at the time, a guy 193 00:09:49,120 --> 00:09:51,680 called Dan and he worked at a company called USM, which was in 194 00:09:51,680 --> 00:09:53,000 Long. They were officers was in Long 195 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:55,880 Bridge and sort of the southern edge of Birmingham and I said to 196 00:09:55,880 --> 00:09:57,400 him, right, we need some products, I need some products 197 00:09:57,400 --> 00:09:59,280 to put on this website just because I want to sell things 198 00:09:59,280 --> 00:10:01,320 online. He said fine, I'll do your deal. 199 00:10:01,320 --> 00:10:02,400 He went away and he came back in, right. 200 00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:05,640 Ben, I can get you a deal, I can get you a load of supplements, 201 00:10:05,640 --> 00:10:09,480 but the minimum order is £8000. Now I've, I've never heard of 202 00:10:09,480 --> 00:10:12,640 £8000, let alone seen 8000 lbs. I was doing like a Pizza Hut 203 00:10:12,640 --> 00:10:15,840 delivery driving at the time. So at that point I said, listen, 204 00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:18,640 I love you, but I just, we cannot afford that, that level 205 00:10:18,640 --> 00:10:19,920 of investment and that level of risk. 206 00:10:21,040 --> 00:10:23,320 So then came up with the idea of just drop shipping because if 207 00:10:23,320 --> 00:10:25,160 you remember, the goal wasn't, it wasn't big. 208 00:10:25,160 --> 00:10:26,800 It was literally just to transact online. 209 00:10:26,800 --> 00:10:27,960 So then we went into drop shipping. 210 00:10:27,960 --> 00:10:30,960 So loaded up the the website with probably more product than 211 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:34,440 it actually has today, 1213 years on and put all the 212 00:10:34,440 --> 00:10:35,840 supplements that you could ever imagine. 213 00:10:35,840 --> 00:10:37,760 And then when someone would order off gym shark, it would 214 00:10:37,760 --> 00:10:39,840 basically trigger someone else to ship the order out. 215 00:10:39,960 --> 00:10:43,360 We would make a very small margin loaded up this the 216 00:10:43,360 --> 00:10:45,680 website with supplements. Nothing happened. 217 00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:48,960 Literally nothing happened. And I think at that point, I was 218 00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:51,640 about 18. And you sort of assume that when 219 00:10:51,640 --> 00:10:54,800 you put something online, put a website live, Yeah, it's like 220 00:10:54,800 --> 00:10:55,760 having a shop on the High Street. 221 00:10:55,760 --> 00:10:57,720 You sort of assume that people will just find their way there. 222 00:10:57,720 --> 00:11:00,840 And no one did. Kept posted on Facebook, kept 223 00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:02,880 doing those social media in the early days. 224 00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:04,520 That was the weirdest Internet phrase. 225 00:11:04,560 --> 00:11:08,520 If you build it, they will come. Yeah, because you forget about 226 00:11:08,520 --> 00:11:09,840 that. There is no way of people 227 00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:11,640 finding it. And then it was actually through 228 00:11:11,640 --> 00:11:13,080 Facebook. We started posting and after a 229 00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:16,120 couple of months, finally we had a first order and I remember it 230 00:11:16,120 --> 00:11:19,160 vividly. It was a tub of USN hyperbolic 231 00:11:19,160 --> 00:11:24,000 mass 5 kilos. It sold for 52 pounds, 2 lbs of 232 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:26,400 the £52 was our profit, bearing in mind. 233 00:11:26,480 --> 00:11:28,760 But now at the time we had to pay for the domain and the host 234 00:11:28,760 --> 00:11:30,440 and all that sort of stuff. So it wasn't really a profit. 235 00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:33,600 It was just like too little bit of margin or something to go 236 00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:37,560 towards the domain now, But it didn't matter because if you 237 00:11:37,560 --> 00:11:39,200 think the goal was just to sell something online. 238 00:11:39,200 --> 00:11:41,480 And I remember literally dancing around my bedroom at my mom and 239 00:11:41,480 --> 00:11:43,520 dad's house because it was like we'd done the thing that we 240 00:11:43,520 --> 00:11:46,720 wanted to do. And that was where Neono and me 241 00:11:46,720 --> 00:11:48,320 and that. But that was when it was like 242 00:11:48,320 --> 00:11:52,920 the, I guess the, the, the book sort of started and the, the 243 00:11:52,920 --> 00:11:55,920 passion because it was such an exciting moment and then kept 244 00:11:55,920 --> 00:11:57,480 posting online, kept selling supplements. 245 00:11:57,480 --> 00:12:00,880 But it became very clear that because of the margin on the 246 00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:03,760 supplements, we would never be able to build a business and 247 00:12:03,760 --> 00:12:06,240 we'd never be able to afford to order inventory. 248 00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:08,160 How does Shopify charge you by the way? 249 00:12:08,160 --> 00:12:11,000 Does it charge you a percentage of sales or does it charge you? 250 00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:14,960 Back then, back then, this is going about 2012, back then it 251 00:12:14,960 --> 00:12:18,480 was I think it was free for like the first period, it got free 252 00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:20,000 for like the first three months or something. 253 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:22,440 So it was, it was obviously they were very much in their start up 254 00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:25,880 phase. So yeah, I, I and then I think 255 00:12:25,880 --> 00:12:28,760 they ended up starting a chart, a percentage of fees on checkout 256 00:12:28,760 --> 00:12:30,960 or something. But but yeah, basically got to 257 00:12:30,960 --> 00:12:32,720 the point where we realized supplements wouldn't work. 258 00:12:33,280 --> 00:12:36,080 I remember being at my Nan's and she had a a Brother sewing 259 00:12:36,080 --> 00:12:38,480 machine on her dining table because she was doing like a 260 00:12:38,560 --> 00:12:41,680 curtain making course or something and it sort of got all 261 00:12:41,680 --> 00:12:43,480 that sort. Of I can't believe this, Yeah. 262 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:46,640 And then it was all that that made us think, well, maybe we 263 00:12:46,640 --> 00:12:48,360 can make clothes. No one was making the clothes 264 00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:50,120 that we wanted to wear. The only the only tops that we 265 00:12:50,120 --> 00:12:52,800 would buy back in the day was sort of top man 2 for 10 lbs. 266 00:12:52,800 --> 00:12:55,120 So it was like, do you remember the top man 2 for £10? 267 00:12:55,120 --> 00:12:56,160 I. Remember they had the Yeah. 268 00:12:57,800 --> 00:12:59,400 Yeah, because that's all that anyone was buying. 269 00:12:59,400 --> 00:13:00,680 So it was like a. Kind of night out there. 270 00:13:00,680 --> 00:13:02,520 And they were, and they were fitted, weren't they all? 271 00:13:02,520 --> 00:13:04,600 All of the bodybuilding clothes was American. 272 00:13:04,600 --> 00:13:07,480 So it was big, baggy, oversize. So we sort of went. 273 00:13:07,560 --> 00:13:09,280 And top man skinny jeans. Yeah, exactly. 274 00:13:09,280 --> 00:13:12,920 We wanted American and bodybuilding wear that fitted 275 00:13:12,920 --> 00:13:15,640 like European, British top man clothing. 276 00:13:15,720 --> 00:13:18,920 More of the two started making the clothes and they just 277 00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:20,520 basically just slowly built the business from there. 278 00:13:21,080 --> 00:13:23,680 And you came up with a name early on, did you, Jim Shock. 279 00:13:23,680 --> 00:13:26,640 Yeah, and the name inspired, He was such a boring name. 280 00:13:26,640 --> 00:13:31,080 So because because I'd made so many websites before, I assumed 281 00:13:31,080 --> 00:13:33,720 that this one would fail. So for me it was sure it was 282 00:13:33,720 --> 00:13:36,080 interesting and it was cheap. It was £3.50 off GoDaddy and it 283 00:13:36,080 --> 00:13:38,640 was a.co.uk domain. There was no further thought 284 00:13:38,640 --> 00:13:39,960 into it than that. Good grief. 285 00:13:40,240 --> 00:13:42,840 It was literally just easy. And it actually was funny 286 00:13:42,840 --> 00:13:45,760 because I didn't buythe.com. I didn't buythe.com because it 287 00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:48,320 was about £20. Someone else bought it and a few 288 00:13:48,320 --> 00:13:50,280 years later we ended up paying 3 grand for it. 289 00:13:50,440 --> 00:13:52,560 We had to empty our bank account at one point to 290 00:13:52,560 --> 00:13:55,120 literallypayforthe.com domain because I didn't buy it. 291 00:13:55,160 --> 00:13:57,080 The zoom. Has a similar story where there 292 00:13:57,080 --> 00:14:00,640 was zoom dot US because in the early days they were too stingy 293 00:14:00,640 --> 00:14:02,520 to pay for zoom.com. Exactly the same thing. 294 00:14:03,040 --> 00:14:04,760 Exactly the same thing so. This happened with us in 295 00:14:04,760 --> 00:14:07,680 Butterfly Effect, so we couldn't pay for Butterfly Effects. 296 00:14:07,680 --> 00:14:10,880 We got butterfly three Effect and I renamed the company that 297 00:14:11,080 --> 00:14:13,840 and I tried to get a creative spin on it because when you put 298 00:14:13,840 --> 00:14:15,520 AB and a three together, it looks like a butterfly. 299 00:14:15,520 --> 00:14:18,480 Yeah, such how to put. Very nice. 300 00:14:18,480 --> 00:14:21,480 But then Michael, my Co founder, was like, no, we need to do it 301 00:14:21,480 --> 00:14:22,280 properly. Yeah. 302 00:14:22,280 --> 00:14:24,120 And that's why we made the the change there. 303 00:14:24,120 --> 00:14:28,120 We ran coming what we ran on, I think it was jimshot.co.co. 304 00:14:28,240 --> 00:14:31,120 Yeah, for a few years until we could eventually getthe.com, 305 00:14:31,120 --> 00:14:35,560 gotthe.com and yeah, I mean. So so the the first clothes you 306 00:14:35,560 --> 00:14:38,600 made, were they literally homemade or were they? 307 00:14:38,600 --> 00:14:41,400 Yeah, so the third. So the first ones were almost 308 00:14:41,400 --> 00:14:43,640 like blank T-shirts printed. So we sort of bought a sewing 309 00:14:43,640 --> 00:14:45,040 machine, bought a screen print and we printed. 310 00:14:45,040 --> 00:14:47,080 And that was really important because you could have blanks, 311 00:14:47,080 --> 00:14:48,640 but you could do lots of different prints. 312 00:14:48,640 --> 00:14:51,480 So you could sort of wait until the order came in to then make 313 00:14:51,480 --> 00:14:53,200 the product. So if you think at that point 314 00:14:53,200 --> 00:14:56,720 when you've got no money, you're literally, you know, scrounging 315 00:14:56,720 --> 00:15:00,920 for any way to build leverage or, you know, to not have cash 316 00:15:00,920 --> 00:15:02,440 tied up because you just don't have the cash. 317 00:15:02,440 --> 00:15:04,880 So we, you start off with blanks and then what I would do with 318 00:15:04,880 --> 00:15:06,720 the blanks is I would then relabel them. 319 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:08,360 So the back neck label we would change. 320 00:15:08,680 --> 00:15:10,440 And it's really interesting. Actually, this is going to sound 321 00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:12,600 really bad because I did, I did do English at school. 322 00:15:13,680 --> 00:15:16,920 You can tell if you own the first ever Gym Shark batch of 323 00:15:16,920 --> 00:15:20,000 product because in the labels I spelt official wrong. 324 00:15:20,720 --> 00:15:22,880 So it says a thicky old Gym Shark product. 325 00:15:23,160 --> 00:15:25,240 So if you've got it's a thin label, it's got the shark and it 326 00:15:25,240 --> 00:15:26,480 says the thicky old gym Shark product. 327 00:15:26,760 --> 00:15:28,720 But we'd imported the labels and again, we couldn't afford to 328 00:15:28,720 --> 00:15:30,360 then swap the labels. So we were like, well, I'd 329 00:15:30,360 --> 00:15:33,040 rather have a yeah, yeah, dodgy custom, one that most people 330 00:15:33,040 --> 00:15:36,040 would notice than just like AI don't know, a Fruit of the Loom 331 00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:37,480 or Stars and Stripes or something like that. 332 00:15:37,560 --> 00:15:39,640 Everyone's going to like, run to the old gym shark stuff. 333 00:15:39,680 --> 00:15:42,520 It's got the limited audition. About spelling mistakes, there 334 00:15:42,520 --> 00:15:47,160 was an American, American genius who in the time when you made 335 00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:49,360 reverse charges calls in the States and they were very 336 00:15:49,360 --> 00:15:53,040 lucrative. AT&T did heavy advertising to 337 00:15:53,040 --> 00:15:58,640 promote 1800 operator. OK, and this guy figured 20% of 338 00:15:58,640 --> 00:16:01,680 Americans don't know how to spell operator, so he bought 339 00:16:01,680 --> 00:16:05,240 1800 operator spelled ER, not OR. 340 00:16:05,560 --> 00:16:07,680 The last letter's irrelevant actually, because they're only 7 341 00:16:07,680 --> 00:16:11,920 digits, OK, and a 1800 number. It's like 1800 mattress. 342 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:16,320 OK, I'll go into that data and literally every time AT&T did 343 00:16:16,320 --> 00:16:18,840 $1,000,000, you know, multi $1,000,000 advertising campaign 344 00:16:18,840 --> 00:16:22,800 promoting 1800 operator, he picked up for free 20% of the 345 00:16:22,800 --> 00:16:25,120 call, OK. Legend. 346 00:16:25,840 --> 00:16:29,720 Legendary stuff, I think. But this is, I mean, presumably, 347 00:16:29,720 --> 00:16:32,720 I suppose, was Gold's Gym a bit of an inspiration because that 348 00:16:32,720 --> 00:16:36,640 was the one big brand in the US which captured that particular 349 00:16:36,640 --> 00:16:38,640 target audience. Particularly the gym in Venice. 350 00:16:38,640 --> 00:16:40,360 I mean we've been there together, particularly the gym 351 00:16:40,360 --> 00:16:43,240 in Venice. That was the the Mecca, a 352 00:16:43,240 --> 00:16:44,560 bodybuilding. That's where your Arnold 353 00:16:44,560 --> 00:16:46,880 Schwarzenegger would go. You'd see all the old photos, 354 00:16:46,880 --> 00:16:49,040 black and white of him on Muscle Beach or in the gym. 355 00:16:49,040 --> 00:16:51,800 And that whole thing of, and this was a funny thing. 356 00:16:51,800 --> 00:16:53,440 So you'd see all the lifters wearing stringers. 357 00:16:53,440 --> 00:16:55,800 No one sold stringers in the UK. No one. 358 00:16:55,800 --> 00:16:57,880 So that was a big thing for us to sell stringers. 359 00:16:57,880 --> 00:16:59,960 And that was one of the first product that we customized 360 00:16:59,960 --> 00:17:03,960 ourselves, printed stringers in the UK, which again, now you can 361 00:17:03,960 --> 00:17:06,280 get them everywhere. But at the time it was very, 362 00:17:06,280 --> 00:17:07,319 very unique. And it was, again, it was 363 00:17:07,319 --> 00:17:09,880 bringing that American bodybuilding influence into the 364 00:17:09,880 --> 00:17:10,800 UK. Got it. 365 00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:13,040 Brilliant. And honestly, something that's 366 00:17:13,040 --> 00:17:15,599 really interesting that you said was the fact that you didn't 367 00:17:15,599 --> 00:17:17,680 know what you were going to sell, but you knew the audience 368 00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:21,160 that you wanted to serve. And the industry that we want to 369 00:17:21,160 --> 00:17:22,839 work in and that was the really important thing. 370 00:17:22,839 --> 00:17:24,680 I knew that we loved the gym and lifting. 371 00:17:25,040 --> 00:17:27,160 Then it was just finding out where we fit into that. 372 00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:30,400 You think that more like business leaders should think 373 00:17:30,400 --> 00:17:32,240 about that or not looking to find a business? 374 00:17:32,240 --> 00:17:35,280 The thing that I, I think about when, if I was to start again 375 00:17:35,280 --> 00:17:38,680 today or if I'm talking to anyone that's starting, I, I 376 00:17:38,680 --> 00:17:41,760 think it's really important to know and I still think it's very 377 00:17:41,760 --> 00:17:44,880 much true to this day in, in a way is having really low 378 00:17:44,880 --> 00:17:46,680 expectations makes a massive difference. 379 00:17:46,680 --> 00:17:49,360 Because if they won, we'd have opened up the website with an 380 00:17:49,360 --> 00:17:51,120 intention to be a multibillion dollar brand. 381 00:17:51,120 --> 00:17:52,240 You would have given up. Yeah, yeah. 382 00:17:52,240 --> 00:17:54,640 Or the first, the first order would have been either expected 383 00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:57,280 or not as exciting and everything would have been a 384 00:17:57,280 --> 00:17:59,480 drag. Whereas because the first aim 385 00:17:59,480 --> 00:18:03,360 was the first aim was to have an online transaction, then it was 386 00:18:03,360 --> 00:18:05,440 to have another one, then it was to have regular online 387 00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:07,920 transactions, then it was to make apparel, then it was to 388 00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:10,320 make a profit, then it was to make a regular profit and then 389 00:18:10,320 --> 00:18:12,480 it was to do an event and then it was to do another event and 390 00:18:12,480 --> 00:18:15,240 then it was to do multiple events a year whilst also being 391 00:18:15,240 --> 00:18:17,520 able to sell online. The first event we did, we 392 00:18:17,520 --> 00:18:19,880 closed the website down when we were at the event because we 393 00:18:19,880 --> 00:18:21,840 weren't also at the warehouse so we couldn't ship out orders. 394 00:18:22,760 --> 00:18:24,480 So what's? Very interesting about this, of 395 00:18:24,480 --> 00:18:26,800 course, is that in in terms, because this is called the 396 00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:32,160 bottleneck podcast where your bottleneck is moves OK according 397 00:18:32,160 --> 00:18:34,000 to what stage of maturity you're in. 398 00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:37,320 So the story from Eli Goldratt who wrote the goal. 399 00:18:37,480 --> 00:18:40,240 Now, I may be getting this wrong, so put in the comments if 400 00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:41,840 you know the really accurate story. 401 00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:45,240 Yeah, but that his father, he was a physicist and he was a 402 00:18:45,440 --> 00:18:47,720 really sophisticated high end physicist. 403 00:18:47,960 --> 00:18:50,960 His dad had some sort of business that made chicken cages 404 00:18:51,320 --> 00:18:53,360 and he looked at the manufacturing of the chicken 405 00:18:53,360 --> 00:18:56,320 cages and said you've got an artificial constraint here in 406 00:18:56,320 --> 00:18:59,640 how many you produce because of some part of the manufacturing 407 00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:02,320 process. If you replace this process with 408 00:19:02,320 --> 00:19:05,760 another process, you can speed up production and make three 409 00:19:05,760 --> 00:19:08,120 times as many cages, which sure enough, they did. 410 00:19:08,640 --> 00:19:11,040 Then they came up across a completely separate problem, 411 00:19:11,040 --> 00:19:14,640 which is not enough people kept chickens to sell all the cages 412 00:19:14,640 --> 00:19:17,040 they could make. So the bottleneck went from 413 00:19:17,040 --> 00:19:20,520 being a production bottleneck to a marketing and, and actually 414 00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:23,040 possibly a definitional bottleneck, which is maybe you 415 00:19:23,040 --> 00:19:25,320 need to sell people with hamsters or something, right? 416 00:19:25,880 --> 00:19:27,920 And so it's very interesting because what you had was a 417 00:19:27,920 --> 00:19:31,280 really sensible stage because what companies tend to have is 418 00:19:31,280 --> 00:19:35,040 they have this strategy which they try and implement in 419 00:19:35,040 --> 00:19:38,400 parallel. But actually what you need to do 420 00:19:38,400 --> 00:19:41,760 if you want to grow organically is start it. 421 00:19:41,840 --> 00:19:45,640 You know, quote, Chairman Mao, a journey of 1000 mile starts with 422 00:19:45,640 --> 00:19:48,200 a single step. Yeah, get to stage 1, then get 423 00:19:48,200 --> 00:19:50,280 to stage 2, then get to stage. Three, yeah. 424 00:19:50,280 --> 00:19:53,640 And it wasn't, it wasn't till many years later probably I 425 00:19:53,640 --> 00:19:55,880 guess sort of when you were at the business that we actually 426 00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:58,080 started to think about a genuine longer term vision. 427 00:19:58,080 --> 00:20:00,320 It was genuinely everything was the next day, the next week, the 428 00:20:00,360 --> 00:20:02,600 next month. I mean, the week you, I'm sure 429 00:20:02,600 --> 00:20:03,760 we'll talk about this, the week you joined. 430 00:20:03,760 --> 00:20:06,600 You didn't do your job for months when you joined because. 431 00:20:07,040 --> 00:20:08,680 Because we would just, again, we had to look at something 432 00:20:08,680 --> 00:20:11,920 completely different. And I think for me, low 433 00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:14,680 expectations and that you're right, that single step sort of 434 00:20:14,800 --> 00:20:17,960 ambition I think is really, really important because I think 435 00:20:17,960 --> 00:20:20,640 there's so many kids nowadays that go, I want to run a billion 436 00:20:20,640 --> 00:20:22,400 dollar business or I want to be or I want to be that. 437 00:20:22,400 --> 00:20:25,000 And I think that ambition is really, really powerful. 438 00:20:25,520 --> 00:20:29,600 But it is a marathon upon marathon upon marathons to do. 439 00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:31,720 I've, I've done this job every day since I was 18. 440 00:20:32,040 --> 00:20:34,400 And I think, and by the way, I absolutely love it. 441 00:20:34,400 --> 00:20:39,000 I love the job I do, but I think there's so much, there are so 442 00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:41,560 many brands and businesses that have exploded for six weeks or 443 00:20:41,560 --> 00:20:43,480 six months or six years. There are very few that have 444 00:20:43,480 --> 00:20:46,120 stood the test of time for 20-30, fifty, 100 years. 445 00:20:46,480 --> 00:20:48,920 Our ambition is to stand the test of time and that requires 446 00:20:49,320 --> 00:20:54,720 such consistency and diligence and like, you know, not veering 447 00:20:54,720 --> 00:20:57,760 too far off the path, always protecting your model, making 448 00:20:57,760 --> 00:20:59,640 sure that you're to your point, always focused on the 449 00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:01,640 bottleneck, that it's in front of you, not the one that might 450 00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:04,000 be there in six months time. I think good. 451 00:21:04,000 --> 00:21:07,320 Tip by the way, the companies that do survive 100 years, this 452 00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:11,000 is a John Kay observation, A marketing LED companies, Procter 453 00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:13,480 and Gamble, Unilever, Nestle, OK. 454 00:21:13,800 --> 00:21:16,160 Companies that are really focused on the customer. 455 00:21:16,160 --> 00:21:19,280 Yeah, not on optimizing their existing product line for your, 456 00:21:19,280 --> 00:21:21,600 their or or manufacturing cost cutting. 457 00:21:22,200 --> 00:21:25,840 Those companies that are heavily customer focused tend to be 100. 458 00:21:25,840 --> 00:21:28,720 They've been in the sort of Fortune 500 or the FTSE or 459 00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:30,640 whatever for 100 years. Yeah. 460 00:21:30,720 --> 00:21:33,880 And actually, you know, John Kay predicts that, you know, 461 00:21:33,880 --> 00:21:38,040 companies like Google won't be that impressive in 1520 years 462 00:21:38,040 --> 00:21:43,600 time because but that the fundamentally the customer mean 463 00:21:43,600 --> 00:21:45,960 if you're focused on the customer, you're focused on the 464 00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:47,360 real world. Yeah. 465 00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:50,240 Whereas if you're focused on the shareholder, you're focused on 466 00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:52,840 meeting some arbitrary metrics to please some. 467 00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:55,360 It's not even the share owner you're trying to please. 468 00:21:55,360 --> 00:21:59,560 It's some institution that wants to justify its own existence to 469 00:21:59,560 --> 00:22:01,960 the, you know, the ultimate share owner. 470 00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:03,480 Yeah. And I was going to say that 471 00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:06,240 going back to the whole thing about being customer centric, 472 00:22:06,240 --> 00:22:08,800 the amount of people that come to me that say, oh, I want to 473 00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:10,920 build a Unicorn or I want to be a speaker. 474 00:22:10,920 --> 00:22:12,640 And then I ask them, So what do you want to speak about? 475 00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:15,680 Or I ask them, who do you want to serve like as an 476 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:17,640 organization? And you can already tell the 477 00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:21,160 trajectory of somebody's almost like potential success based on 478 00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:24,560 how they answer that question. So if you think about the output 479 00:22:24,560 --> 00:22:26,760 of what you're going to do and not the input and there's not a 480 00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:29,600 forever plan, right? Which is why even though when we 481 00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:31,920 talk about this whole concept of building in chapters, which is I 482 00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:34,400 like to call right, you build in chapters and supposed to like 483 00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:36,040 just like going to the end of the story. 484 00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:40,200 What about the the role of business plans? 485 00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:42,680 Has that changed because so many people before they started, they 486 00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:44,640 build this business plan with this five year plan. 487 00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:46,840 Did Jim Shark ever have a business plan at the start? 488 00:22:46,840 --> 00:22:49,600 No, not in the early days. Now we, I wouldn't call it a 489 00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:52,640 business plan. I would call it a broad strategy 490 00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:54,680 and direction. And I think that's more out of 491 00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:59,160 necessity than anything else just because where we are now, 492 00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:03,160 we we've got a really considered sort of strategy where I think 493 00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:05,400 you're right, like with if you have a broad shareholder base, 494 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:07,280 then what people will do is they'll focus on the short term. 495 00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:09,480 And generally in business like ours, what they'll say is, OK, 496 00:23:10,000 --> 00:23:12,640 make more product to serve more people. 497 00:23:12,640 --> 00:23:14,840 Because if you've got a larger total addressable market, you 498 00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:15,880 must be able to make more revenue. 499 00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:17,920 If you can make more profit revenue, you must be able to 500 00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:19,480 make more profit. That's the general. 501 00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:20,800 That's a really real generalized. 502 00:23:20,880 --> 00:23:24,600 Every few years Apple is bullied into producing a lower cost 503 00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:27,800 product and every few you know, and every few years it fails. 504 00:23:27,800 --> 00:23:29,800 Yeah, yeah. And I think that so that's 505 00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:33,720 that's the natural, like that's the gravitational pull of a 506 00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:37,920 business that runs like ours. What we've said is we want to be 507 00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:40,680 really narrow and we don't want to expand our product. 508 00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:42,600 We want to make the best gym wear in the world. 509 00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:44,360 And the obvious thing for us is, well, why don't you make 510 00:23:44,520 --> 00:23:47,480 football, basketball, hunting, whatever else is what you do a 511 00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:49,120 bit more like fashion. Why don't you do all these 512 00:23:49,120 --> 00:23:51,000 things? Whereas what we've said is no, 513 00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:53,040 we want to focus on building the best gym wear in the world. 514 00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:55,320 One, because we genuinely think we could be the best in the 515 00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:57,920 world. No one else is focused solely on 516 00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:00,680 that in the way that we are. No one else, I think, has the 517 00:24:01,360 --> 00:24:03,280 authenticity. We were founded on these 518 00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:04,400 principles. And I think that's really, 519 00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:05,800 really. Also a growing market, which. 520 00:24:05,880 --> 00:24:07,560 Also, yeah, which really, really helps. 521 00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:11,520 And I think so when you blinking that back to a business plan, 522 00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:13,360 because before it was just, we were just doing stuff. 523 00:24:13,360 --> 00:24:15,160 It was just right, let's do an event, let's do this now because 524 00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:18,440 it's more complicated. We do have to think about how we 525 00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:21,640 approach those things and how we manage our cash and inventory 526 00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:23,200 and opening shops and all that sort of stuff. 527 00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:26,920 But I would say it's a strategic direction, but we're always 528 00:24:26,920 --> 00:24:29,640 ready to pivot and adjust to what the customer wants or how 529 00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:30,960 the, I guess, how the market looks. 530 00:24:30,960 --> 00:24:34,040 Like it gives you a like a North Star and a red line, right? 531 00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,240 It's almost like the business plan is there to keep things 532 00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:40,200 simple and keep us like, almost like committed to the mission. 533 00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:43,640 Environment, it's more that feeling of again, because we're 534 00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:45,840 most of our businesses in the US, so there's always one of the 535 00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:48,480 team travelling. It's that thing of if no one's 536 00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:51,000 in New York, he's completely aligned with the direction in 537 00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,080 the same way that I am as it shines in again in London or 538 00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:57,000 whatever, or Carly somewhere. It's making sure that everyone 539 00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,400 knows as a particularly as a leadership team, then as a 540 00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:01,840 broader business, where are we going and why are we going 541 00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:03,240 there. Incidentally, you've probably 542 00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:05,840 resisted over premiumising, haven't you? 543 00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:08,720 Because there must be a lot of encouragement for you to kind of 544 00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:12,720 and. The, the, it's really important 545 00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:15,320 to me that is the, one of the things that the business was 546 00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:18,480 founded on going back to top line 2 for 10 to 10 LB T-shirts 547 00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:21,240 was affordability for kids getting into the gym. 548 00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:24,200 If we walk away from that, then we're not the brand that, that's 549 00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:26,960 one of the founding principles. Like if you think again, £5 an 550 00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:29,960 hour at Pizza Hut, you can't afford to go and spend £120 on 551 00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,560 AT shirt. And it's really important to me 552 00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:35,000 that that 16 year old kid that's just getting into the gym for 553 00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,920 the first time, probably doing a part time job, can go and buy 554 00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:40,760 gym shark, particularly at the entry level, because those are 555 00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:44,040 the kids that are into the lift and those are the the younger 556 00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:46,320 demographic that we're. It's important to me that we're. 557 00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:49,600 Also, they're probably the most authentic in terms of user 558 00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:50,760 imagery. Yeah, yeah. 559 00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:52,800 And that there, that's when people get into the gym. 560 00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:55,840 It's when people form a lot of their lifelong habits. 561 00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,600 And hopefully in the same way, again, the same way that we did, 562 00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:00,880 it's just get into the gym and then it becomes a part of your 563 00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:02,960 life. Yeah, which is really important 564 00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:05,600 to us. And that again that I think, and 565 00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:08,280 again, these are things that you look back retrospectively, this 566 00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:10,360 wasn't a strategy at the start. We didn't sit there and go, no, 567 00:26:10,360 --> 00:26:12,520 let's make it affordable. It's let's make what we could 568 00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:13,200 afford. Yeah. 569 00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:16,440 And then you then look back and you go, oh, that was a found in 570 00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:18,280 principle. That's one of the reasons that 571 00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:20,720 people really like our brand. So let's protect that. 572 00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:23,120 I think that a lot of the times when people start to like 573 00:26:23,120 --> 00:26:25,880 professionalize and think about things like values, etcetera, 574 00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,560 etcetera, there was like look at what other brands values are for 575 00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:31,600 inspiration, but really your values and your pillars always 576 00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:33,160 existed, you just haven't taken the time to. 577 00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:34,960 Step back and covering them, isn't it? 578 00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:37,680 In a way, yeah. And again, like, I still think 579 00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,160 Jim Shark to me is still really a startup. 580 00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:42,840 It feels like a startup. And that's really important for 581 00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:44,520 us to protect. And I think again, like you say, 582 00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:47,080 it's protecting that for as long as we can. 583 00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:48,880 Yeah. And what are some of the changes 584 00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,920 that you've seen in the industry today versus how it used to be 585 00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:54,960 in? But in fitness or broader retail 586 00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:58,080 ecommerce, both. Well, I'll tell you what, when 587 00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:00,840 we first opened up our website, people still thought it was a 588 00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:03,160 bit weird to buy things online. I mean, we weren't. 589 00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,240 So what year was that? The website was first built 590 00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:08,800 2011, 2012. Yeah, yeah, it was early, but 591 00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:10,680 not so early. So early, yeah, but. 592 00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:13,240 To buy clothes. And then people weren't totally 593 00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:16,200 sure on the returns policies like how does all that work and 594 00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:17,560 all that. So that was early. 595 00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:21,000 I I mean, I remember there wasn't an integration between 596 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:24,000 Shopify and Royal Mail. So I manually created like a 597 00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:27,600 integration where it would drag a CSV out of Shopify, then 598 00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:30,520 automatically upload it into the Royal Mail system in order to 599 00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:34,000 then print the label so that we could manually post the orders. 600 00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:38,440 So if you think it was early but you could hack your way away 601 00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:40,400 around. So Shopify was what, a couple of 602 00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:42,280 years old they. Must have been very, very young 603 00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:43,720 at that, yeah. I think that company is a 604 00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:45,640 sleeping giant and I. Think it's incredible. 605 00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:47,640 I'm such a fan. Yeah, I'm such a fan. 606 00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:51,080 And and for many, many reasons, purely from a selfish 607 00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:53,720 perspective, it allows businesses like ours completely 608 00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:57,120 to invest our resources on what we can be the best in the world 609 00:27:57,120 --> 00:27:59,080 at. Yeah, not on thousands of 610 00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:01,080 developers. Replicating a lot of crap like 611 00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:03,800 everybody else's, yeah. Let them do what they're the 612 00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:06,200 best in the world at, and then they allow us to do what we're 613 00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:07,960 best in the world at. And that's why I really like 614 00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:09,640 them I've. Always wondered why they never 615 00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:11,920 put a a front end search engine on it. 616 00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:15,200 Apparently there's some ethical dilemma that they can't choose 617 00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:17,680 between different customers, but if you think about it, it 618 00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:19,320 becomes the alternative. Amazon. 619 00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:22,800 Yeah, all Shopify because I don't they they they make up 620 00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:26,560 like a massive proportion of American ecommerce. 621 00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:27,440 Yeah. Yeah. 622 00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:29,840 That that's their interesting idea where they haven't, I 623 00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:31,000 haven't thought about that before. 624 00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:33,520 It's an amazing business. Yeah, like why don't, why don't 625 00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:35,600 you? Why can't you search for brands 626 00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:37,800 on Amazon? Because actually a lot. 627 00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:40,440 By the way, do you still deliver using Royal Mail? 628 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:42,720 Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, very interesting thing. 629 00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:47,160 I'm fairly convinced that a large number of consumers prefer 630 00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:49,880 things delivered by Royal Mail because you have a relationship 631 00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:53,120 with the postman that you don't have with a standard Courier. 632 00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:55,920 OK. But the decision as to who 633 00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:59,480 delivers is usually made by procurement, not by marketing. 634 00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,040 Now procurement are purely incentivised on cost reduction, 635 00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:05,640 in other words, securing the biggest possible rebate by 636 00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:07,760 putting everything through one provider. 637 00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:10,800 OK. And of course procurement don't 638 00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:14,320 get any credit for incremental sales, they only get credit for 639 00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:16,720 reduced cost. And I've always wondered about 640 00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:19,240 this because I when every time I speak to an e-commerce company, 641 00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:23,120 I go at the very least offer people even if they have to pay 642 00:29:23,360 --> 00:29:27,320 a choice of who delivers because a lot of people have an aversion 643 00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:29,960 to one or other Courier because they've had a bad experience or 644 00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:31,680 whatever. And it's very interesting that 645 00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:34,720 because so you actually created now presumably Shopify does have 646 00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,000 integration with Royal Mail. Completely done now, but again 647 00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,240 it was so we were early but not so early where people would 648 00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:42,920 order online, it was just a bit. Weird, yeah, than what it was. 649 00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:45,360 Now, some of the integrations weren't there. 650 00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:47,920 If you were in America, you'd have to go on a completely 651 00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:50,080 different website and it wouldn't really function 652 00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:52,640 particularly well, whereas now it's just it's far more smooth. 653 00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:58,320 Yeah, another word community. So obviously when I came into 654 00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,160 the the the marketing world now everybody's talking about this 655 00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:02,960 word community. And for us it just came like 656 00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:04,280 natively, right? Yeah. 657 00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:07,000 A lot of the times people feel like how Jim Shark built his 658 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,520 community was digitally, but I always tell them no, Jim Shark 659 00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,000 was a brand in real life. They went to the Expos, they 660 00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:14,040 earned their right. They almost like went to the 661 00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:16,400 Expo and earned the right to be the name that everybody 662 00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:18,440 remembered when they went. To the, That for me would be one 663 00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:23,200 of the biggest misconceptions of Jim shark would be we built our 664 00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,280 online community offline. And it's really interesting 665 00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:28,960 actually, because we, what we would do is we would go to 666 00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,520 events and we obviously people would come to the event. 667 00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:33,680 They would follow us to see where we're going to be, where 668 00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:35,320 the stand is, what product they could get. 669 00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:37,720 And we did the event in Birmingham, in Cologne, in 670 00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:42,880 Germany, Ohio, LA and Melbourne. And we would go around the world 671 00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:45,000 doing these events constantly. And that's where we would build 672 00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:47,120 the community because we would finish the event and anyone that 673 00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:48,680 was around, we'd say, right, we're all going to go to the 674 00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:51,640 local gym who wants to come live with us and people and left. 675 00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:53,360 And again, you would build up that following. 676 00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,760 And it's really, really interesting because I think it's 677 00:30:56,760 --> 00:30:58,160 still true. I haven't looked in a while, but 678 00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,480 I remember a few years later, I then looked across all of our 679 00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:03,040 socials at where the hotspots were. 680 00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:08,040 And weirdly, all the hotspots was that Cologne, Dusseldorf 681 00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:10,800 area of Germany, Obviously the UK, particularly in the 682 00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:14,520 Midlands, which is where we were founded, Ohio in the States, 683 00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,560 obviously the West Coast, LA and then Melbourne, Australia. 684 00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:20,360 And I think it's that sort of it's almost like that domino 685 00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:22,520 effect of that's where it started. 686 00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:25,240 It started through the events. Then people would go on Facebook 687 00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:27,160 at the time and then later Instagram and so on. 688 00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:28,440 And it just built out like that you. 689 00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:31,520 Also have one lucky feature which some clothing brands 690 00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:35,320 don't, which is the brand is incredibly visible on the 691 00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:37,200 clothing and it's completely normal. 692 00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:39,880 So you get that. You effectively get that sort of 693 00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:43,000 effectively unspoken word of mouth, yeah, which is people see 694 00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:45,640 who's wearing your clothes and copy it. 695 00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:46,560 But. It's funny you say that as well, 696 00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:50,260 because when we did those first events, we gave away free 697 00:31:50,260 --> 00:31:51,680 T-shirts to everyone that would come to the stand. 698 00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:54,480 I remember every single person, I mean, we over ordered them 699 00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:57,280 massively, but we had free T-shirts to everyone that would 700 00:31:57,280 --> 00:31:58,720 come to our stand. And you're right. 701 00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:00,680 And they would love polo. And it wasn't, it was a pilot 702 00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:02,880 and it wasn't cheap. It was a really, really well 703 00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:05,640 made product. It was the perfect Gym Shark fit 704 00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:08,720 and it hurts your boy Gym Shark completely across the chest so 705 00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:10,200 people are buzzing. So they get a really high 706 00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:12,960 quality product. It costs us a lot of money, but 707 00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:15,680 then they go and wear that in the gym every week for the next 708 00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:18,040 few years and it's literally that's where it really helps 709 00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:20,320 push the the brand to grow. So, so one thing just to double 710 00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:23,760 down on that, I think a lot of people over underestimate the 711 00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:27,080 power of turning your audience into billboards or your biggest 712 00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:29,440 advocates, right? And what happened during that 713 00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:31,240 period? Because I remember I was one of 714 00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,520 the fans that actually that's when I found and doubt about 715 00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:37,200 yeah, I got one one I have a picture somewhere on Instagram. 716 00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:40,720 Maybe I archived it. But so because there was a time 717 00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:43,640 when like Jim Shark saw the story because I remember the 718 00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,680 Hodge twins at the time were there and then I went to go meet 719 00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:49,480 the Hodge twins and I see this brand called Jim Shark that has 720 00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:51,680 like 4 people queuing up for four hours, right? 721 00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:55,520 But then everyone was walking around the whole body power with 722 00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,760 the Apollo T-shirt. So I did a bit of a so I looked 723 00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:02,720 at the following that before the the actual event and because 724 00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:05,800 everybody was wearing Gym Shark and tagging over the weekend, 725 00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:08,920 the following went up by like 150,000 people because you 726 00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,640 turned the audience into billboards, right? 727 00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:15,800 So actually just focusing on your 1% and giving them a crazy 728 00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:18,280 experience where they advocate and tell everybody else about 729 00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:21,520 you is a way better partying approach that one. 730 00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:25,440 Of my mattress is the real world is a medium too yeah. 731 00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:28,960 It's very easy in advertising to get absolutely fixated on what's 732 00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:32,320 appearing on a screen yeah. Or on print yeah. 733 00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:35,600 Completely forgetting the fact that people spend a large part 734 00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:39,040 of their lives actually in the real world, seeing what they 735 00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:41,480 see, drawing inferences from it. But. 736 00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:44,160 They'd be, you're right, but from a marketing perspective and 737 00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:46,480 from a brand perspective and a creative perspective, it, it 738 00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:49,560 feels really intuitive that, but I remember when we really 739 00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:52,120 started to invest into digital advertising and it was really, 740 00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:53,520 it's been really successful for for us. 741 00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:56,920 But I remember being so amused at the race to who could create 742 00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,320 the best analytics. And obviously these digital 743 00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:01,880 platforms knew that if they could create the best analytics 744 00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:05,240 that would show the best ROI in the best detail, the individual 745 00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:07,360 running those ads could show their boss and they'd probably 746 00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:09,639 get more signed off to then go and spend more on the channel. 747 00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:13,000 So you're right, it was they were sort of taken advantage of 748 00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,040 something that you just would wouldn't get in the real world. 749 00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:19,760 Two things so so. The first one being that aha 750 00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:23,800 moment for me was when I was, I kept asking myself why is the 751 00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:26,400 price of billboards in Times Square so much? 752 00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:28,800 Because I remember one who did an exercise or they actually 753 00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:30,760 gave us a discount and we did something really great for that. 754 00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:33,960 But I was like, why is it so much when everybody is like 755 00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:35,600 online? Then it occurred to me that 756 00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:38,880 actually everyone takes a picture on Times Square and that 757 00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:40,920 lives online. So actually what you're paying 758 00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:43,440 for is not necessarily because people get to see it in Times 759 00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:46,600 Square, is because in the hashtag of New York. 760 00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:48,480 And actually, you appear in the film. 761 00:34:48,880 --> 00:34:50,520 Yeah. Piccadilly Circus charges a 762 00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:54,040 premium partly because there is a chance that you'll be featured 763 00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:57,040 on television coverage, films, et cetera, because if anybody 764 00:34:57,040 --> 00:35:00,960 says London in the US, they have a shot or something like that. 765 00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:03,920 Yeah. Now there's also a very funny 766 00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:07,800 series of poster sites, which used to be probably less so. 767 00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,000 Yeah. But the Cromwell Road was 768 00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:11,800 disproportionately expensive. Yeah. 769 00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:17,480 Because if you're a Japanese brand, OK, your CEO would fly to 770 00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,880 Heathrow and take a taxi into London. 771 00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:23,720 And the principal target audience of some of those ads on 772 00:35:23,720 --> 00:35:26,640 the Cromwell Road was the chief executive driving in. 773 00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:30,280 So the marketing director would know that he'd seen a couple of 774 00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:35,040 ads for that brand on his trip to the office and would think 775 00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:37,840 you were doing a good job. So that there are all manner of 776 00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:40,760 kind of weird sort of subterfuge reasons why people sometimes 777 00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:42,880 choose choose the advertising media they do. 778 00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:46,720 And I remember, so there was one time and I didn't get it at the 779 00:35:46,720 --> 00:35:49,880 time, which is why I always say that I don't think that people 780 00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:53,800 understand how ahead of. And it wasn't necessarily 781 00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:55,920 because you're trying to be very tactical. 782 00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:58,000 It's just like, you're like, well, let's test it, right? 783 00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:00,520 You're not scared to test. I remember there's a time when 784 00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:02,800 we're doing paid ads and it was doing really, really well. 785 00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:08,240 And you wanted to see how strong the Gym Shark brand was if we 786 00:36:08,240 --> 00:36:12,440 turned off all the ads, right. And to see whether yeah, yeah. 787 00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:14,240 Didn't e-mail to the whole company saying we're going to 788 00:36:14,240 --> 00:36:16,280 switch off all the ads. I was the one that's brave 789 00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:19,080 enough to say, Ben, why, right? And why are we doing this, 790 00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:21,360 right? And then one thing I realized, 791 00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:23,760 because Knowles says a thing, Knowles, the CBO at Gym Shark, 792 00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:26,840 he says the reason why Gym Shark is big is because more people 793 00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:29,400 hear about Gym Shark, not from Gym Shark itself, right? 794 00:36:29,560 --> 00:36:31,240 So Gym Shark's not the one that's going around telling 795 00:36:31,240 --> 00:36:33,800 everybody we're great. You have obviously the athlete 796 00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:36,560 roster, you have the fans. I think there's like nearly 20 797 00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:38,960 million hashtags on Gym Shark. People are advocating for the 798 00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:42,080 brand because of the experience. So I always say to brands right 799 00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:46,200 now, don't, don't get so caught up in the almost like the, the, 800 00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:48,800 the drug of certainty that comes with paid of putting 1 LB and 801 00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:50,240 getting £10. You don't actually have a brand. 802 00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:52,840 Because what happens is when you look at your share of voice, if 803 00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:55,520 you're just switch those things off, if they were to disappear 804 00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:57,400 overnight, yeah, what have you actually got? 805 00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:00,920 And I think that the gap of like revenue, day-to-day traction 806 00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:03,240 once you switch that off tells you how strong the brand is. 807 00:37:03,240 --> 00:37:06,040 And then this again, this might be too much detail, but we've we 808 00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:08,160 see our brand investment purely as a fixed cost. 809 00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,600 Yeah, it is we. So there's no obviously you can 810 00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:13,240 fluctuate your market in depending on like you know how 811 00:37:13,240 --> 00:37:16,240 the business is going, where is it for us brand investment is 812 00:37:16,240 --> 00:37:17,560 it's. A cost of doing business, end 813 00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:18,960 of. It's not so. 814 00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:20,720 What happened when you turned it off, by the way? 815 00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:23,440 At the time, I mean, well, the problem is nothing happens 816 00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:25,200 immediately because you've still got that flow. 817 00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:28,640 There was actually, there was a reduction, but it, it definitely 818 00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:30,960 wasn't as big as what you would have expected it to be. 819 00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:33,240 And, and because you're living in at that point, and this is 820 00:37:33,240 --> 00:37:36,000 going back to several years, you're living in the nuanced 821 00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,360 world of cookie windows and everything else where you've got 822 00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:42,280 double counts of revenue and Google and Facebook and everyone 823 00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:45,000 else is sort of like, you know, chipping into the sale, but they 824 00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:47,600 all almost take equal credit for it, so. 825 00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:50,360 But what was happening is so so for Gym Shark, it didn't drop 826 00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:53,640 off so much because a lot of the people were posting about the 827 00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:55,320 brand. Probably people ordered that 828 00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:58,480 week posted about that order. So the brand strength and the 829 00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:01,800 the branch of voice was very like LED towards the audience. 830 00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:05,440 Whereas there was this period in like the pandemic when a lot of 831 00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:08,160 people started startups, right? So a lot of the business crops 832 00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:09,480 have business that you see coming right now. 833 00:38:09,840 --> 00:38:13,440 They're so so almost like reliant on paid media that 834 00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:16,320 actually that was the starting strategy from the jump, right? 835 00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:18,760 That now that is becoming more and more expensive. 836 00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:20,920 You're seeing like that growth rate slowing down because they 837 00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:23,680 didn't think about the idea of investing that fixed cost into 838 00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:26,240 Brent, right? And I always say that if you 839 00:38:26,240 --> 00:38:29,320 just think about it in human terms, it seems like paid media 840 00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:32,120 is like a salary, right? Like everybody knows that it's 841 00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:33,600 like consistent. They're not, they're going to 842 00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:35,200 get it. And they're almost like very 843 00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:36,880 scared to get out of that routine. 844 00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,160 Community is almost like your savings, right? 845 00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:41,760 It gets you out of jail, especially when times get hard 846 00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:43,960 or even brand makes a mistake, et cetera, et cetera. 847 00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:47,240 But Brand is almost like a pension or even a trust, right 848 00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:50,000 that pays dividends all the time if you play it right and you're 849 00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:51,720 very intentional about it. No, I agree. 850 00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:54,160 I think the other thing with this is and for us, when it 851 00:38:54,160 --> 00:38:56,960 comes to brand, it always comes back to the customer. 852 00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:00,320 And I think the really important thing for us is to this day, I 853 00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:02,360 still think this is true. We've been, we've been speaking 854 00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:03,800 to a really underserved audience. 855 00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:07,480 So you've got all of the big sports where so Nike to me is 856 00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:09,880 one of probably the, the best sportswear brand of all time, 857 00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:11,280 right? And that was founded on the 858 00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:14,120 running shoe for me. And that's where for me, if, if 859 00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:16,480 I need a running show, I'm going to Nike just because I have that 860 00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:19,080 sort of nostalgic view of that's where their brand was built. 861 00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:20,320 And then they've built so much off it. 862 00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:22,240 Under Armour made the best layer. 863 00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:25,160 Under Armour best built the best base layer that has ever been 864 00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:26,920 built. And I know their business has 865 00:39:26,920 --> 00:39:29,240 sort of stretched as well, but that that was the best product 866 00:39:29,240 --> 00:39:30,960 ever that was American. Football. 867 00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:33,400 Was it under? Armour yeah, Lululemon built the 868 00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:36,600 best ever yoga legging. And again, like I think they 869 00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:39,000 still build the best, specifically yoga legging. 870 00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:42,120 Jim Sharp was built in the gym and that's really, really 871 00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:44,000 important to us. And continuing to speak to that 872 00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:46,400 audience is really, really important because that's really 873 00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:48,080 foundational. That's where the community comes 874 00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:50,480 from, which is why we can then invest in Brown, which is why we 875 00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,160 can then invest in that sort of more variable paid marketing. 876 00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:55,960 We always talk about the, the, the beauty of niches, right? 877 00:39:56,120 --> 00:39:59,800 And I always tell people that if your addressable market was only 878 00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:02,560 1% of the global population, that's 80 million customers. 879 00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:06,120 If you can get them to spend £10, that's 808 hundred million, 880 00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:08,160 right? And a lot of people don't think 881 00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:09,440 about that. They don't think about getting 882 00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:13,000 that real depth and meaning something to a, a direct 883 00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:13,920 audience. They're trying to. 884 00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:17,120 Mean something to everybody, which I think is the reason why 885 00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:20,320 a lot of people get caught out. Well, I think the most, I mean, 886 00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:25,040 Google and Meta have tried to sell this idea that targeting is 887 00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:28,840 something that happens in an algorithm or in a computer. 888 00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:32,040 The most effective form of targeting is actually in the 889 00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:36,000 consumer's mind, which is they recognize themselves in the ad. 890 00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:37,920 So actually it's an act of someone. 891 00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:41,760 Instead of saying this is for you, it's actually someone 892 00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,720 going, this is for me. That's how target thing really 893 00:40:44,720 --> 00:40:45,520 works. Yeah. 894 00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:47,640 You know, I, you know, I identify with this. 895 00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,640 It's probably why, by the way, your focus on one core audience. 896 00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:53,520 First of all, you don't have a competitor. 897 00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:57,360 Well, actually there are a few, but you know, effectively, you 898 00:40:57,360 --> 00:41:00,840 know, once you start going general, you are competing with 899 00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:04,680 absolutely everybody, whereas you have that moment of complete 900 00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:06,480 self recognition. Yeah, yeah. 901 00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:09,560 In in your target audience, which is that's what I'm about. 902 00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:12,520 This is for me. You just get so much more 903 00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:14,760 leverage as well from the investment that you making 904 00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:16,880 because what we're not doing is in round numbers, we're not 905 00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:18,960 spending £100 to appeal to all these people. 906 00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:21,720 We're spending £100 to appeal to this really, really narrow 907 00:41:21,720 --> 00:41:22,840 audience. And then it goes through 908 00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:24,360 everything. It goes through the, the 909 00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:26,920 overarching brand strategy, all the digital ads that you'd see, 910 00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:30,320 the product strategy. Like we, we've, we narrowed our 911 00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:32,800 product range dramatically over the last couple of years because 912 00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:34,800 we just saw a product that we didn't necessarily need and 913 00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:37,480 wasn't serving that customer. So we said let's make a narrower 914 00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:40,120 range that's higher quality and it's it's served us really well. 915 00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:43,400 Now I've got to ask this, which is, you know, along with Led 916 00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:46,720 Zeppelin, you're a Birmingham brand that broke the United 917 00:41:46,720 --> 00:41:48,840 States, you know, broke the United States. 918 00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:53,400 Yeah. And how do you do that? 919 00:41:54,360 --> 00:41:56,000 When when did you decide to do it? 920 00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:57,840 Because it's an extraordinary thing to do. 921 00:41:57,840 --> 00:41:59,560 It's like. Honestly, it was a combination 922 00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:02,560 of social media and events. I think because we were, because 923 00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:04,160 we did the events and we grew on social media. 924 00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:05,960 Some of the the first event we did was Birmingham. 925 00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:08,560 The second one was Cologne and then we did Birmingham Cologne 926 00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:11,600 and then we did Ohio and LA. And I actually remember the, I 927 00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:14,160 remember landing into Ohio. It was December for the Arnold, 928 00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:16,320 though. I mean, we, I hadn't even 929 00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:18,280 checked the weather forecast. I literally didn't even take a 930 00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:20,680 jumper. I landed into Ohio and as we're 931 00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:23,040 coming down, I remember looking out the window and seeing snow 932 00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:26,520 and then the the guy on the plane thing, it was in 933 00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:27,760 Fahrenheit. I come in what he said, but I 934 00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:29,600 remember. Saying 83 Fahrenheit. 935 00:42:29,720 --> 00:42:32,120 I was like, Oh my God, I couldn't believe. 936 00:42:32,160 --> 00:42:33,920 I'm like, they're finding out what how cold it is. 937 00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:35,240 It was the coldest I'd ever been. 938 00:42:35,240 --> 00:42:37,760 I had no idea. I'm used to temperate relatively 939 00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:40,600 cold English winters anyway, this. 940 00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:43,200 And we just went and we just did the events and I think doing the 941 00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:46,080 events and building the social media media there because it's 942 00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:49,160 all English speaking anyway, you get this natural just growth 943 00:42:49,160 --> 00:42:51,720 over there. And then I think over, yeah, 944 00:42:51,720 --> 00:42:52,680 it's been over the last few years. 945 00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:53,920 It's now the majority of our business. 946 00:42:53,920 --> 00:42:56,720 And I remember there was this crop of influencers from 947 00:42:56,720 --> 00:43:01,240 Houston, so. The first influencers, so we the 948 00:43:01,240 --> 00:43:04,160 first influencers that we had or the first Youtubers, there was 949 00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:07,480 Matt and Chris from California, they were from Sacramento. 950 00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:11,000 There was Alan from Germany, Jeff was from Washington State 951 00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:13,360 and a lecture from Manchester. So three of them. 952 00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:15,520 Five or six were in all American as well. 953 00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:17,880 Yeah. And The funny thing is, so going 954 00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:21,400 back to that point, I, I seem to have this really crazy theory 955 00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:25,200 that especially in the UK, the brands or the BDC brands that 956 00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:28,520 tend to scale the furthest are those that are not from London, 957 00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:31,400 because they almost come from as an outsider perspective. 958 00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:35,040 So you what happens is a lot of people think first you break the 959 00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:38,800 UK and then you break the US. But a lot of these guys or or 960 00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:41,680 girls that they can't get into London because they're not the 961 00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,200 cool kids of London. So they actually find more 962 00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:47,440 correlation with brands outside of the country they build there 963 00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:49,320 and then they come back to London. 964 00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:51,920 Because I also heard from a Scandinavian that they always 965 00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:54,920 said that the great advantage of a Scandinavian business was that 966 00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:58,320 you realise that the, you know, the Swedish market alone would 967 00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:01,560 never make you rich. So you have to think outside it. 968 00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,800 Whereas in some, in a country like Britain, Germany, France, 969 00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:07,840 you know, you can make quite a lot of money just being a local 970 00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:09,720 brand. So you don't have to think in 971 00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:12,160 quite the same way. Yeah, see, I, yeah, yeah. 972 00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:13,800 You're sort of in uncanny valley, aren't you? 973 00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:16,160 In the UK it's a bit of a Which. Is you're halfway between the 974 00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:20,080 US, which is where you can become inordinately rich just 975 00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:21,840 serving your home. Market it's interesting 'cause I 976 00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:24,840 found the you I, I still think to this day Jim Shark couldn't 977 00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:26,480 have been started in anywhere else. 978 00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:28,560 And and when I say anywhere else, I include Birmingham 979 00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:30,760 because there was a few things that had to happen. 980 00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:33,280 One, I mean, more people get into the gym and fitness than 981 00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:35,280 ever, particularly women. That was a huge shift. 982 00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:38,280 Social media was on the on the like was grow, growing and 983 00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:39,920 people were becoming more comfortable buying things 984 00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:41,200 online. That was really important. 985 00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,720 But the best Expo for lifting in Europe was in Birmingham. 986 00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:48,560 So we then were massively inspired by that. 987 00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:50,480 A lot of the big American bodybuilders would come over to 988 00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:52,480 Birmingham. That was really important. 989 00:44:52,600 --> 00:44:55,960 And then because of EU KS sort of digital penetration, being 990 00:44:55,960 --> 00:44:58,760 able to make an online website that can ship to 70 million 991 00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:02,840 people in 24 hours is really, really, really powerful in an 992 00:45:02,840 --> 00:45:05,480 English speaking country. So you've got, and you've got, 993 00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:07,880 you can ship to the US in 24 hours, particularly the East 994 00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:09,120 Coast. You can ship to all of Europe in 995 00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:11,360 24 hours. There's not I there were 996 00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:15,440 competitors that were started in other parts of the world that I 997 00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:17,800 genuinely think we're at a disadvantage because of that, 998 00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:21,080 where they were located. That, by the way, I mean, Jeff 999 00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:24,800 Bezos when he first came to the UK and discovered that next day 1000 00:45:24,800 --> 00:45:28,360 delivery was a standard Royal Mail service, not a premium 1001 00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:30,640 service. Yeah, was totally freaked out by 1002 00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:31,320 that. Yeah, it's. 1003 00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:32,840 Huge. So I, I genuinely think there's 1004 00:45:32,840 --> 00:45:36,800 something in that a combination of the timing, the, the, you 1005 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:39,840 know, the, the, the Courier network, the e-commerce 1006 00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:43,440 penetration in the UK, the Expo, I think that was massive for. 1007 00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:46,480 Us and The thing is as well so I did some research on the founder 1008 00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:49,680 of Red Bull and what he did is he took the company away from 1009 00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:53,840 the noise right and they created their own almost like space 1010 00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:56,560 right when nobody else can kind of like infiltrate and I kind of 1011 00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:58,840 think that if you think about like Blythe Valley and if you 1012 00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:01,480 think about like Reddish in Solihull by the Solihull by the 1013 00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:06,120 way OK 121. Is no one from the Birmingham 1014 00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:10,560 actually lives in Birmingham? Coalfield, actually. 1015 00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:15,480 That's very posh up there. Yeah, yeah. 1016 00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:19,240 So, so, so when you think about where Gem Shark is and I 1017 00:46:19,240 --> 00:46:23,240 remember the times when I would see like the numbers go up and 1018 00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:25,880 the numbers on shopper fly and the numbers of the following and 1019 00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:27,960 you forget that it's real people because you don't feel it. 1020 00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:30,720 You're in a, you're literally in A and there's nothing else like 1021 00:46:30,720 --> 00:46:32,520 you don't like in London. You don't finish work and then 1022 00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:34,760 go to the pub. You just. 1023 00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:36,320 I mean, we was in Redditch at the time, wasn't we? 1024 00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:38,320 If you get to like 20 million. To McDonald's and. 1025 00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:40,240 We the golden arches. No, Yeah, yeah. 1026 00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:44,840 Shout out to Pepe's but so so So what would happen is if you get 1027 00:46:44,840 --> 00:46:47,480 to about 20 million 30 million in London everybody knows who 1028 00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:51,000 you are because it's really sexy and everybody speaks we. 1029 00:46:51,040 --> 00:46:53,040 Never go to London. Yeah, we're like, go to London, 1030 00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:54,640 get the train to London was like a big thing, wasn't it? 1031 00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:56,720 We'd go and do a meeting with the developer and it was like 1032 00:46:56,760 --> 00:46:59,080 really cool and. I remember the first time when 1033 00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:02,040 we had this tool called, I think it was simply measured with 1034 00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:05,120 Affinio and, and we went down to London because they're trying to 1035 00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:08,080 quote like 4 grand or something for the year and we had to go 1036 00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:10,560 and see this. Place they charge isn't this 1037 00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:12,640 much money for this thing yes see. 1038 00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:14,920 You took him to Nando? Yeah, which is hilarious. 1039 00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:17,680 That people from Birmingham don't leave that I mean, you'll 1040 00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:21,440 meet far more Manx or whatever in London than you do people 1041 00:47:21,560 --> 00:47:22,240 from Birmingham. It's. 1042 00:47:22,240 --> 00:47:25,520 So good, I love it. It was so hard working, so down 1043 00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:27,480 to earth, so genuine, so helpful. 1044 00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:28,560 It's so nice. Yeah. 1045 00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:32,800 And then so obviously then we'll go into like the word 1046 00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:35,600 self-awareness, which is why, but I think is your genius level 1047 00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:37,960 skill, right? And one thing that as soon as I 1048 00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:40,400 said that I'm going to go on the journey myself, I had to kind of 1049 00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:42,880 like break myself down and say, what would Ben do, right? 1050 00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:46,040 It's like, and he would say, what's the best team I can build 1051 00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:48,080 or what ingredients do I need to win the game? 1052 00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:51,120 Not how do I be seen to be winning the game, right? 1053 00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:53,760 And I think that what you did very early on is you said, you 1054 00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:57,240 recognize that steering the ship at this stage of the business 1055 00:47:57,240 --> 00:48:00,280 was not where you need to put your focus on and you got like 1056 00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:03,000 other people on board, like was that intentional? 1057 00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:05,960 Did you read a book that I. I didn't read a book. 1058 00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:10,240 Not, not my early 20s, no. So So what happened was I can't 1059 00:48:10,240 --> 00:48:14,400 remember how old I was, but it would have been early 20s and it 1060 00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:16,760 was very obvious to me that I was deaf. 1061 00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:19,840 I wasn't the gym chart CEO, but what I really loved was products 1062 00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:21,560 and brand. I loved being involved in 1063 00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:24,000 products and brands. So a guy called Steve came in 1064 00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:28,880 and was CEO for five years. I can't remember, did a really 1065 00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:31,320 good, really good job and it allowed me to then go in and I 1066 00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:33,680 ran brand for a Brit bit, product tech. 1067 00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:35,480 I sort of did all the jobs in the business. 1068 00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:38,400 And you got chim cooking, as it were, to use the actual analogy. 1069 00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:41,280 It was amazing because then I, I, I would travel around 1070 00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:44,000 factories, I'd literally be making product. 1071 00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:47,600 I'd be, you know, working on brand stuff, partnerships, every 1072 00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:50,520 single event I could go to. It completely freed me up. 1073 00:48:50,520 --> 00:48:53,760 And what it did is it allowed me to simultaneously focus on my 1074 00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:55,800 strengths in brand and product and be really close to the 1075 00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:59,200 customer and the community. But then I could dabble in 1076 00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:01,760 operations and finance and fail without consequence because I 1077 00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:04,640 could go in, I could completely break it knowing that Steve or 1078 00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:06,400 the other people again, like people like Phil, would come in 1079 00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:08,680 and tidy up after me. So it's the way I like. 1080 00:49:08,720 --> 00:49:10,800 It's almost like being able to do your GCSEs. 1081 00:49:11,080 --> 00:49:12,440 You get AD. Oh, that's right. 1082 00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:14,480 I'll just go and do the same exam again and I'll get AC, then 1083 00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:16,440 I'll do it again and get AB and then I'll do it again and get an 1084 00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:18,840 A because I could just fail within reason without 1085 00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:22,400 consequence. And had A rapid expedited sort 1086 00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:24,280 of learning being able to do both. 1087 00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:27,000 Whereas I think a lot of people often have to choose now I was 1088 00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:28,960 really lucky because at that point we had the resource to 1089 00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:32,600 employ CEO, C-Suite, all that sort of stuff and allow me to 1090 00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:34,120 then go deeper into the business. 1091 00:49:34,360 --> 00:49:36,960 And I think now it's, it's really great for me doing the 1092 00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:40,280 job I do now as CEO because I've not to the degree that a lot of 1093 00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:42,240 people now are doing the Business Today, but I've sort of 1094 00:49:42,240 --> 00:49:44,600 done every job. And I, I know enough to, to 1095 00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:47,680 remember back to the days where I'd, you know, sat in the 1096 00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:50,560 factory and walked the line and sort of being really involved in 1097 00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:52,880 everything and, you know, original partnership contracts. 1098 00:49:52,880 --> 00:49:55,400 Also a very interesting thing, which is we've created sort of 1099 00:49:55,400 --> 00:49:59,720 management as this weird separate skill, and it's assumed 1100 00:49:59,720 --> 00:50:02,080 that you can be the marketing director or the manager of 1101 00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:04,520 something and just go from Everest double glazing to 1102 00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:07,800 something completely different. No, no, I I'm such a massive 1103 00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:09,320 advocate. I think you have to be able you, 1104 00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:11,360 you have to know what you're talking about. 1105 00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:13,680 You have to be able to see, touch and feel it and know, I 1106 00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:17,320 mean, we literally this week we've been doing a like a, we're 1107 00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:18,880 doing some sort of like product work. 1108 00:50:19,240 --> 00:50:21,000 And there was someone that we were working with who's 1109 00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:23,080 relatively new to the business, who's really talented, but 1110 00:50:23,080 --> 00:50:25,280 hadn't really done it before. And I was like, we need to get 1111 00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:26,840 product in the room. You need your hands on the 1112 00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:28,280 product. You need to be out of factory. 1113 00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:31,120 You need to know exactly how this works because you won't 1114 00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,360 really be able to do the job unless you really know it in 1115 00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:35,680 that level of detail and that that takes time, right? 1116 00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:37,640 What you can't do is you can't have someone join the business 1117 00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:39,560 and they basically do a six month training camp. 1118 00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:42,640 So it's this weird thing of sort of like building the plane 1119 00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:45,480 whilst you fly in it. But for me that especially 1120 00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:48,000 again, doing what I did from making the product, making the 1121 00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:50,360 website and literally being in the nuts and bolts of it, it's 1122 00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:53,920 so important for you to really understand the products of the 1123 00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:55,920 community, the customer. I mean, coming to an event that 1124 00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:58,680 I always say you don't know the gym shop brand until you've been 1125 00:50:58,680 --> 00:51:01,080 to an event. The guy who founded Brompton 1126 00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:05,200 Bicycles makes a really good observation here. 1127 00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:08,360 He says if you understand the business, you can learn a lot 1128 00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:11,040 from a spreadsheet. If you don't understand the 1129 00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:13,960 business and you look at a spreadsheet, basically it's 1130 00:51:13,960 --> 00:51:15,800 worthless. You don't you? 1131 00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:18,560 You know some top line numbers, but you don't actually know 1132 00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:20,440 what's leading to them or what's driving. 1133 00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:23,160 Them at all trend line through. Yeah, it might look OK, but it 1134 00:51:23,160 --> 00:51:24,360 doesn't. You don't know the context. 1135 00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:26,280 You don't know the context. Context is so important. 1136 00:51:26,320 --> 00:51:27,520 You see there with venture capital. 1137 00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:30,400 So, so when you think about somebody like Warren Buffett, 1138 00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:33,640 right, I seem to think that he knows something that other 1139 00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:35,240 people in Wall Street don't, right? 1140 00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:38,360 He lives like in a little town. So he's away from Wall Street. 1141 00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:41,200 So the same Omaha. Omaha. 1142 00:51:41,240 --> 00:51:42,560 Yeah, right. Like he does the same thing all 1143 00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:45,560 the time. Yeah, he's in his Solihull 1144 00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:47,760 boring town. He does his thing. 1145 00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:50,480 And I think that what everybody does is looks at like growth 1146 00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:52,640 projections, the Excel spreadsheet and all that kind of 1147 00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:55,560 stuff. I'm convinced that he has people 1148 00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:57,480 that go into the business and understand the culture. 1149 00:51:57,800 --> 00:51:59,760 Because if you understand the culture of the business and 1150 00:51:59,960 --> 00:52:03,480 whether the numbers actually match up to the ambition, the 1151 00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:07,720 connection, the almost like trust in leadership, et cetera, 1152 00:52:07,720 --> 00:52:10,120 et cetera. That may not necessarily tell 1153 00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:12,440 you like or influence of the business is going to be today, 1154 00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:14,920 but it tells you the longevity of where this is going to go. 1155 00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,120 Do people have a growth atmosphere there? 1156 00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:20,760 Do people feel inspired by the long term journey because now 1157 00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:23,120 people can cook the numbers to make it look like a business is? 1158 00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:24,560 Growing how they respond to challenge. 1159 00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:26,720 How they respond to challenge. Your first day in the office. 1160 00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:28,800 Hey, so you know we're not going to talk about that. 1161 00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:31,840 I have PTSD from that day. But going back to what you said 1162 00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:36,000 about you don't know about Gym Shark until you've seen an 1163 00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:37,440 event. I think that what comes to that 1164 00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:40,600 is until you see the audience in in real life and my experience. 1165 00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:44,080 So for those that don't know 2015, I've obviously had a lot 1166 00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:47,400 of traffic going to the gym shop website and I ended up spending 1167 00:52:47,400 --> 00:52:50,320 a lot of my time in customer service speaking to people. 1168 00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:53,080 But the thing that that taught me was that this is a brand that 1169 00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:55,800 people actually care about. Because although people were 1170 00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,800 maybe complaining about the experience, then when I respond 1171 00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:00,880 to them say, I know that you guys are working really hard. 1172 00:53:01,080 --> 00:53:02,760 I just want my staff. You guys are doing the best that 1173 00:53:02,760 --> 00:53:03,960 you can. I hope that you guys are all OK. 1174 00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:07,040 And I never saw that before. And that's because I remember 1175 00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:10,680 during that period when everybody was like drain of 1176 00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:13,600 energy and Steve says something like, we need to look after our 1177 00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:15,880 legacy before our currency, right? 1178 00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:18,680 And if you do something that is right for the consumer, they'll 1179 00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:20,800 be with you forever. And that's stuck by me to the 1180 00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:23,240 point where I almost like played that role as the bridge between 1181 00:53:23,240 --> 00:53:24,760 the business and the community, right? 1182 00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:26,840 Making sure that the business didn't get too much of its way 1183 00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:29,200 and the community didn't get too much of its way to ensure that 1184 00:53:29,200 --> 00:53:32,240 we really made sure that we never lost sight of why we're 1185 00:53:32,240 --> 00:53:35,040 here in the 1st place. They feel like in terms of like, 1186 00:53:35,240 --> 00:53:37,840 and I think that you still play that role today, like you were 1187 00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:40,400 still there meeting people, connecting with people. 1188 00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:43,200 You're one of those people that are shouldn't be accessible, but 1189 00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:46,560 you're actually very. For me, so you learn so much. 1190 00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:49,760 I always tell this the same story about we did our first 1191 00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:52,920 event in Toronto, Canada. I remember getting there and a 1192 00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:54,480 guy said to me, it was such an odd question. 1193 00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:56,040 He said why don't you do any camo? 1194 00:53:56,040 --> 00:53:58,720 And I was like, we don't do camo product because who cares about 1195 00:53:58,720 --> 00:54:00,760 camo products. No one in England wears camo. 1196 00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:03,320 And he went, yeah, but in Canada and the US, people love camo. 1197 00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:08,400 I'm using camo. I literally called the product 1198 00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:09,320 team. I was like, guys, can we stick 1199 00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:11,760 some camo in like this bloke's convinced it's gonna be a great 1200 00:54:11,760 --> 00:54:13,240 idea. Let's stick some camo into the 1201 00:54:13,240 --> 00:54:14,360 next range. Let's come on. 1202 00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:15,760 Yeah. And next thing it was, it was 1203 00:54:15,760 --> 00:54:18,920 the IT was the top selling and. Bricks do wear camo there. 1204 00:54:18,920 --> 00:54:21,600 And this was the thing and that was literally a random 1205 00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:25,000 conversation with a bloke in Toronto in -10 stood outside our 1206 00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,880 warehouse for the event. And, and I know that's a really 1207 00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:31,000 specific example, but I think it's so important to constantly 1208 00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:33,880 be having conversations with the people that you're again, I 1209 00:54:33,920 --> 00:54:36,080 guess, I guess the community. Never ever been a part of a 1210 00:54:36,080 --> 00:54:39,280 business where what people say in the comment section makes it 1211 00:54:39,280 --> 00:54:43,000 to the board level decision making where if we can be 1212 00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:46,400 winning, but if the customers are not happy, we are not happy. 1213 00:54:46,680 --> 00:54:48,600 Which is, I think, one of the things that sets Jim Shocker 1214 00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:50,680 pause. And that starts from the the 1215 00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:52,040 founder and the leadership, I think. 1216 00:54:52,040 --> 00:54:54,880 Noel's really good at that as well. 100 Noel is obsessed with 1217 00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:58,400 every gym chart, Instagram page and YouTube video and everything 1218 00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:00,280 that comes with it. Well, how's the question? 1219 00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:02,080 You've got a call centre presumably. 1220 00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:04,480 Is it like inbound for? Inbound service, yeah. 1221 00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:06,480 Are they allowed to call out? There no. 1222 00:55:06,520 --> 00:55:09,640 So we don't do calls, we only do messages and stuff. 1223 00:55:09,640 --> 00:55:11,880 You do messages. OK, So it works by text. 1224 00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:15,160 Yeah, yeah, No, that's interesting because one of the 1225 00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:18,120 real really telling things with a business is how they treat 1226 00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:20,880 their call centre staff, whether they see it as a cost to be 1227 00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:24,760 minimized or an opportunity for brand building and relationship 1228 00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,680 building to be maximized. There's a lovely story about 1229 00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:31,040 James Dyson where he was being shown a load of call centre 1230 00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:34,600 statistics about the Dyson call centre, which is the usual kind 1231 00:55:34,600 --> 00:55:38,320 of average wait time, da, da, da, cost to handle, time to 1232 00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:40,280 handle call. And he goes, I'm not interested 1233 00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:41,400 in any of this, basically he said. 1234 00:55:41,720 --> 00:55:45,200 Is it, as far as I'm concerned, if one of our customers chooses 1235 00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:48,560 to contact us, we should treat it as an honour and respond 1236 00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:49,560 accordingly. Yeah. 1237 00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:53,440 And I've always said that's why my dad had three Dyson vacuum 1238 00:55:53,440 --> 00:55:55,400 cleaners, even though he's quite stingy actually. 1239 00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:58,760 And the reason was he bought his first Dyson. 1240 00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:01,400 There was some missing part or faulty part. 1241 00:56:01,680 --> 00:56:03,480 Rings up. Fantastic experience. 1242 00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:05,920 They send the part out for free the next day. 1243 00:56:06,280 --> 00:56:09,080 From then on, he wasn't really contemplating any other brand. 1244 00:56:09,600 --> 00:56:12,600 And you can have those brand quakes, which I think, you know, 1245 00:56:12,680 --> 00:56:15,440 I, I'm, I'm going to spend part of my time between now and 1246 00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:19,840 retirement creating a kind of RSPCA for call centres because I 1247 00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:25,160 think they're the most abused and undervalued medium because 1248 00:56:25,160 --> 00:56:29,320 the potential there to create, you know, lifetime value and 1249 00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:31,560 actually and conversational value. 1250 00:56:32,400 --> 00:56:35,160 Now it's not measured. Now, I think a really good call 1251 00:56:35,160 --> 00:56:38,440 centre person, if they could capture the value they created, 1252 00:56:38,720 --> 00:56:42,560 could actually earn 6 figures. OK, now sales people can earn 6 1253 00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:47,040 figures because they can point exactly to every penny of value 1254 00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:50,360 they've generated. Whereas with repeat custom and a 1255 00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:54,320 call centre you know or or rescuing A defector for example, 1256 00:56:54,560 --> 00:56:57,280 the value is just as great, but they can't actually they 1257 00:56:57,280 --> 00:56:59,560 quantify it. So, so, so one thing that's 1258 00:56:59,560 --> 00:57:03,280 really interesting about that is that a gym shark, a lot of the 1259 00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:06,160 people at the early days that started off in the customer 1260 00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:08,440 experience team ended up working in other areas of the business 1261 00:57:08,720 --> 00:57:10,440 and brought the voice of the customer there. 1262 00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:11,880 But. Interesting. 1263 00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:14,160 I think because I went to university before I actually 1264 00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:16,120 like started working in marketing and everybody talks 1265 00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:18,560 about the four PS and they get marketing really complicated. 1266 00:57:19,080 --> 00:57:23,560 And then I recently spoke to to to Ellie from Formula E and she 1267 00:57:23,560 --> 00:57:25,720 basically rewired my thinking of marketing. 1268 00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:27,000 Oh, she's. Fabulous, by the way. 1269 00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:29,160 She's amazing, absolutely amazing, and we're gonna get you 1270 00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:31,720 on here. Yeah, but she basically this is 1271 00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:33,000 Ellie Norman, by the way. He's Martin. 1272 00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:35,360 She was Manchester United. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. 1273 00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:36,760 Now Formula E. Yeah. 1274 00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:41,080 Terrible tracing team, but we'll skip past that, so shout out to 1275 00:57:41,080 --> 00:57:43,080 the Arsenal 14 nil last night. All right, cool. 1276 00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:45,760 So she basically says that she only asked herself three 1277 00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:47,360 questions. How do we become famous? 1278 00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:49,920 How do we become easy to find? And how do we become hard to 1279 00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:52,600 leave, right? And if you look at those three 1280 00:57:52,600 --> 00:57:55,640 different buckets, right? Fame, social storytelling, 1281 00:57:55,640 --> 00:57:58,360 etcetera, etcetera, easy to find is where's the customer? 1282 00:57:58,360 --> 00:57:59,920 And let's make sure that we're there, right? 1283 00:57:59,920 --> 00:58:02,320 And then hard to leave is how do we make sure that when people 1284 00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:03,880 come in, there's no leaky bucket, right? 1285 00:58:04,320 --> 00:58:06,480 And I think that when you start to look at it in that way, you 1286 00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:09,160 see the balance, right? You can be fame and driving all 1287 00:58:09,160 --> 00:58:11,880 this stuff, but if people are leaking, then there's a cost to 1288 00:58:11,880 --> 00:58:12,720 that. And that's the thing that 1289 00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:14,760 compounds, right? And I think that a lot of the 1290 00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:18,440 times people forget that community is a Moat that 1291 00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:21,320 prevents people from leaving. And if you treat your customers 1292 00:58:21,320 --> 00:58:23,080 and actually, I don't know whether they remember this 1293 00:58:23,600 --> 00:58:27,600 during that Black Friday week, one thing that was done was not 1294 00:58:27,600 --> 00:58:31,000 scalable was the fact that Ben wrote letters to everybody. 1295 00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:34,560 Like, like he actually wrote letters, actually handwritten 1296 00:58:34,560 --> 00:58:37,800 letters to the people that were the most effective. 1297 00:58:37,800 --> 00:58:41,320 And actually I hit a commercials called people during that 1298 00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:43,760 period, not because it was a business strategy, just because 1299 00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:46,120 it was the right thing to do. And Ben actually spent the whole 1300 00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:48,880 day doing that and actually mailed it to people. 1301 00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:51,480 No one in the business did anything for weeks, did they? 1302 00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:54,320 And that was the whole joke. Is Elf as hard as to run social? 1303 00:58:54,600 --> 00:58:56,000 He didn't do any social for months. 1304 00:58:56,000 --> 00:58:58,080 And that was the whole thing. We just everyone dropped tools 1305 00:58:58,080 --> 00:59:00,080 to. Yeah, to focus on the customer 1306 00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:00,680 support. Yeah. 1307 00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:01,600 Yeah. Good grief. 1308 00:59:01,600 --> 00:59:02,280 Yeah. Yeah. 1309 00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:04,960 And The thing is, that's the thing that compounded over time. 1310 00:59:04,960 --> 00:59:07,680 And then when people try to figure out what made Gym Shark 1311 00:59:07,680 --> 00:59:11,080 different, because I realized when I stepped out of Gym Shark 1312 00:59:11,080 --> 00:59:12,800 and now that I'm going to have the opportunity to work with 1313 00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:14,640 brands with bigger badges, etcetera, etcetera. 1314 00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:18,040 The difference was what they prioritize them, what they cared 1315 00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:19,360 about. And that's all. 1316 00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:22,360 And the fact that I felt that Jim Shark was an optimistic 1317 00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:25,360 brand in a very pessimistic like country. 1318 00:59:25,360 --> 00:59:27,400 Sometimes when it comes to business, right? 1319 00:59:27,400 --> 00:59:30,160 Everyone's a scale of risk, just having a different mindset of 1320 00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:34,880 let's try or we're not scared of failure or at the end of the 1321 00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:37,480 day, as long as the customer's happy, this is the right 1322 00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:39,480 decision. The critical thing is they're 1323 00:59:39,480 --> 00:59:42,240 basically businesses with an opportunity mindset and they're 1324 00:59:42,240 --> 00:59:45,800 businesses with a risk minimization or efficiency 1325 00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:48,440 mindset. And it's very interesting 1326 00:59:48,440 --> 00:59:52,200 because I think the shareholder value movement, I, I'm not sure 1327 00:59:52,200 --> 00:59:55,120 that many publicly limited companies can build a brand 1328 00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:58,360 anymore because if you look at who builds brands, it's founder 1329 00:59:58,360 --> 01:00:01,880 LED businesses. Typically while the founder or 1330 01:00:01,880 --> 01:00:05,480 the culture of the founder is still alive and then they're 1331 01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:08,880 family owned businesses, which all which also do because they 1332 01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:11,920 can think of different time scales and they can and they can 1333 01:00:11,920 --> 01:00:16,160 fail in a different way, which is what happens if APLC fails. 1334 01:00:16,160 --> 01:00:20,280 Is it turns into a kind of, you know, either a blame game or a 1335 01:00:20,280 --> 01:00:24,000 kind of cover up game or a post ration, you know, whereas 1336 01:00:24,200 --> 01:00:27,440 actually the the mentality you can adopt in A and of course 1337 01:00:27,440 --> 01:00:30,640 family owned business, if you don't have shareholders, you 1338 01:00:30,640 --> 01:00:33,320 focus on the customers or the OR the employees, which is by the 1339 01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:35,560 way, almost as important, I would argue, yeah. 1340 01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:37,920 Some of that's really interesting is obviously Gem 1341 01:00:37,920 --> 01:00:40,120 Shark started with creators, right? 1342 01:00:40,160 --> 01:00:43,000 Because at the time no one actually knew who ran Gem Shark. 1343 01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:44,240 Obviously we lived in Birmingham. 1344 01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:46,720 So yeah, about you guys. So there was actually no face of 1345 01:00:46,720 --> 01:00:48,680 Gem Shark. And then I remember when Ben 1346 01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:50,880 said that he was going to start doing YouTube right, 1347 01:00:51,640 --> 01:00:54,600 reluctantly, he's going to do YouTube and he was going to 1348 01:00:54,600 --> 01:00:56,560 learn. I remember you sending me one, 1349 01:00:56,560 --> 01:00:59,560 the first video that you shot, which is now like the one that's 1350 01:00:59,600 --> 01:01:01,360 blown up. And Robin helped you with the 1351 01:01:01,360 --> 01:01:02,880 editing and he made everything happen. 1352 01:01:03,320 --> 01:01:06,000 And, and I remember even when he asked me for feedback and I was 1353 01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:08,080 like, you almost had loads of cuts because you have to keep 1354 01:01:08,080 --> 01:01:11,040 doing the scenes and the rest of the business didn't understand 1355 01:01:11,040 --> 01:01:13,720 it, right. But now when you think about 1356 01:01:14,120 --> 01:01:16,200 everybody, everyone almost thinks about starting the 1357 01:01:16,200 --> 01:01:17,200 personal brand first. But. 1358 01:01:17,520 --> 01:01:19,600 You're right, the only reason I did that video was because a 1359 01:01:19,600 --> 01:01:22,760 bloke in Dublin asked me to. Because we did what we did is we 1360 01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:25,800 did all these events right? And then we ended up doing so 1361 01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:27,880 many events. The queues were so long that 1362 01:01:27,880 --> 01:01:31,200 people would complain that they paid the entry price to the 1363 01:01:31,200 --> 01:01:34,160 event to then spend all day queuing to get to the gym chart 1364 01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:35,720 stand. So they were like, why am I 1365 01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:38,120 paying to stand in a line all day now? 1366 01:01:38,120 --> 01:01:40,160 So then we said right, let's go and do a world tour. 1367 01:01:40,160 --> 01:01:42,120 So we just did a world tour. We literally decided in a week 1368 01:01:42,120 --> 01:01:43,680 and we just picked these up random cities. 1369 01:01:43,680 --> 01:01:45,960 It was we picked through the West Coast, 3 on the East Coast. 1370 01:01:45,960 --> 01:01:49,280 We have World Tour 3 in the UK and by the way, we're in. 1371 01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:51,760 Ben, we'll be like, let's post about it on social and put some 1372 01:01:51,760 --> 01:01:54,360 ads out and we're going to be in Times Square, by the way, that. 1373 01:01:54,360 --> 01:01:56,680 Was it? Yeah, that was it, Time Square. 1374 01:01:56,840 --> 01:01:59,640 That was 12. And and then so we did this 1375 01:01:59,640 --> 01:02:01,880 world tour and we were in Dublin and I was chatting to it aloud 1376 01:02:01,880 --> 01:02:04,720 and he went listen, I'm doing my dissertation on Gym Shark but I 1377 01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:09,800 can't find any accurate story. So would you be able to do just 1378 01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:12,320 a YouTube video to explain everything that happened? 1379 01:02:12,920 --> 01:02:14,920 I remember thinking, oh God, that's the last thing I'm 1380 01:02:15,000 --> 01:02:16,920 looking. I don't want to talk to a camera 1381 01:02:16,920 --> 01:02:18,520 and I just don't. I just don't want to do it. 1382 01:02:18,520 --> 01:02:21,600 But reluctantly, again, in the moment, I just said to you, 1383 01:02:21,600 --> 01:02:24,160 John, I will do it. Then a few weeks later, I went 1384 01:02:24,160 --> 01:02:27,480 home, recorded this video, and then that's when I guess the 1385 01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:29,960 personal brand started. I never had any intention when 1386 01:02:29,960 --> 01:02:32,880 the business was being built to be posted online personally. 1387 01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:35,760 And you'll even see now if anything that goes online, I 1388 01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:37,240 would, I don't really post my personal life. 1389 01:02:37,240 --> 01:02:39,880 It is literally about my Jim shark life. 1390 01:02:39,920 --> 01:02:42,120 So yeah, it was reluctantly, but even that was a customer LED 1391 01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:43,120 decision. Yeah. 1392 01:02:43,440 --> 01:02:47,360 That is, by the way, I mean, there's some recent IPA data on 1393 01:02:47,360 --> 01:02:49,960 this, on the power of influence and marketing. 1394 01:02:50,680 --> 01:02:52,800 And I would argue, by the way, that influence and marketing is 1395 01:02:52,800 --> 01:02:57,160 partly powerful because it's the first digital form of proper 1396 01:02:57,160 --> 01:03:00,120 advertising, as opposed to performance marketing, which is, 1397 01:03:00,480 --> 01:03:03,560 which is valuable and important, but it's not advertising in the 1398 01:03:03,560 --> 01:03:06,280 full sense of the word. OK, it, it, there are a lot of 1399 01:03:06,280 --> 01:03:09,400 things it doesn't do. And I think that, you know, the 1400 01:03:09,400 --> 01:03:14,120 genius of Meta and, and Alphabet is convincing marketers that the 1401 01:03:14,120 --> 01:03:17,120 things that they sell are the most important thing in 1402 01:03:17,120 --> 01:03:22,440 marketing, not memorability, creativity, you know, you know, 1403 01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:26,880 but all those other variables have been sort of shrunk to 0. 1404 01:03:27,200 --> 01:03:31,040 But what's really interesting is that it appears that influencer 1405 01:03:31,040 --> 01:03:34,960 marketing works pretty well. It works like TV level well 1406 01:03:36,360 --> 01:03:39,080 initially. What's astonishing is the long 1407 01:03:39,080 --> 01:03:40,400 term effects. Oh yeah, and. 1408 01:03:40,800 --> 01:03:42,880 Of course, it occurs to me because the material's still 1409 01:03:42,880 --> 01:03:45,760 there, you know. I mean, you know, a banner ad is 1410 01:03:45,760 --> 01:03:48,680 gone in an instant and you're probably on the next page before 1411 01:03:48,680 --> 01:03:50,720 you realise it was something that interested you. 1412 01:03:52,120 --> 01:03:55,040 Whereas by contrast, by the way, I've got a tip for you coming 1413 01:03:55,040 --> 01:03:59,880 up. Whereas actually any material 1414 01:03:59,880 --> 01:04:04,000 you produce that's there in eternity and sometimes you get 1415 01:04:04,000 --> 01:04:06,040 sleeper hits, don't you? I've never, I've never thought 1416 01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:08,480 about it like that, but yeah. But there's a great company 1417 01:04:08,480 --> 01:04:12,160 called Tickle, which really appeals to me where it does 1418 01:04:12,160 --> 01:04:16,040 banner advertising, but the call to action is not click here by 1419 01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:20,640 now, it's save to wallet. And so if you've got an offer, 1420 01:04:20,640 --> 01:04:22,880 you can go, well, interest me, I'm not actually going to I'm 1421 01:04:22,880 --> 01:04:25,960 not going to interrupt paying my parking fine to suddenly go 1422 01:04:25,960 --> 01:04:28,840 shopping. OK, but I wouldn't mind X 1423 01:04:28,840 --> 01:04:31,880 percent off for a free so and so I might look at that later. 1424 01:04:32,120 --> 01:04:36,200 And that means that so everybody looks at impressions, but 1425 01:04:36,200 --> 01:04:39,200 they're not measuring for what you might call the time scale in 1426 01:04:39,200 --> 01:04:41,560 which you can act on the impression. 1427 01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:45,000 And also just to add to that, so I think a lot of people are 1428 01:04:45,000 --> 01:04:47,640 trying to use influencer marketing like paid media. 1429 01:04:47,640 --> 01:04:50,560 And I think it's going to get even worse now that Meta have 1430 01:04:50,560 --> 01:04:52,280 announced that they're going to allow people to pay. 1431 01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:56,120 I think they're like £2.99 or £3.99 to be able to actually not 1432 01:04:56,120 --> 01:04:58,360 see any ads, right? So what you're going to get is 1433 01:04:58,360 --> 01:05:00,360 all these people that were obsessed with paid media that 1434 01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:03,240 are going to say, OK, what's the best way for us to get traction 1435 01:05:03,240 --> 01:05:04,760 online is to work with influencers. 1436 01:05:04,760 --> 01:05:06,960 And then what you're going to do is everybody's going to start to 1437 01:05:06,960 --> 01:05:09,080 like increase their prices, etcetera, etcetera. 1438 01:05:09,520 --> 01:05:12,000 But I think that the one thing that Gym Shark does better than 1439 01:05:12,000 --> 01:05:14,680 anybody else, and I think they will continue to do better than 1440 01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:17,080 anybody else because you're at the helm and you'll always make 1441 01:05:17,080 --> 01:05:19,480 sure that you understand the quality of working with the 1442 01:05:19,480 --> 01:05:23,160 great humans that are great representations of the brand, is 1443 01:05:23,160 --> 01:05:25,160 that Jim Shark always thought about let's work with somebody 1444 01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:28,040 for the long term. You became an athlete, you 1445 01:05:28,040 --> 01:05:31,200 became a part of the business and you were part of the team. 1446 01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:32,840 You're not an individual on your own. 1447 01:05:33,200 --> 01:05:36,480 I think a lot of people, if the first post doesn't go viral or 1448 01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:39,520 the 1st post doesn't drive this product almost like sale, 1449 01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:41,600 they're just going to stop it and see that it doesn't work. 1450 01:05:41,720 --> 01:05:43,600 But but then also the value there is. 1451 01:05:43,880 --> 01:05:45,640 Yes, you're getting the traction, but you're also 1452 01:05:45,640 --> 01:05:46,680 getting feedback. Yeah. 1453 01:05:47,320 --> 01:05:48,680 Right. So you're getting feedback, 1454 01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:51,920 getting trust and right now as more people are investing in 1455 01:05:51,920 --> 01:05:54,360 inference and marketing, people are very discerning of the 1456 01:05:54,800 --> 01:05:56,640 authenticity of those partnerships, right? 1457 01:05:56,840 --> 01:05:59,640 Whereas if you work with a brand like Jim Sharp, people believe 1458 01:05:59,640 --> 01:06:01,920 that the partnership is very authentic because it's the long 1459 01:06:01,920 --> 01:06:03,160 term commitment. Yeah, yeah. 1460 01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:05,280 And we get that athlete feedback through the product process, 1461 01:06:05,280 --> 01:06:07,760 which we've literally had since day one, going back to Skype 1462 01:06:07,760 --> 01:06:10,640 calls with Chris Lovato and Matt Ogus getting feedback on the 1463 01:06:10,640 --> 01:06:11,920 product. But you're right, it's not just 1464 01:06:12,000 --> 01:06:14,520 a transactional relationship. And you're right, it tends to be 1465 01:06:14,520 --> 01:06:16,800 longer term as well. Yeah, and people fly in, they 1466 01:06:16,800 --> 01:06:19,680 come to the office, they meet the team to become part of it. 1467 01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:21,920 If anything, the amount of times that everyone's like, well, how 1468 01:06:21,920 --> 01:06:24,440 are you always camera ready? I'm like, because you'll walk 1469 01:06:24,440 --> 01:06:27,240 into the office and there's influencer with like a million 1470 01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:28,720 followers will put a camera in your face. 1471 01:06:28,720 --> 01:06:30,800 And I don't want to like say the wrong thing. 1472 01:06:30,800 --> 01:06:33,080 I don't want to be ready for that moment. 1473 01:06:33,520 --> 01:06:35,960 But there's one thing that you always used to say, because 1474 01:06:35,960 --> 01:06:38,000 obviously we've been talking about gym shock from your 1475 01:06:38,000 --> 01:06:39,760 perspective. But now obviously when you start 1476 01:06:39,760 --> 01:06:42,920 to go into a scale up and the brand starts to grow, you have 1477 01:06:42,920 --> 01:06:45,920 to make sure that energy of continually learning almost like 1478 01:06:45,920 --> 01:06:47,040 gets through to the rest of the team. 1479 01:06:47,040 --> 01:06:49,640 And there's one thing that you said about the like that being 1480 01:06:49,640 --> 01:06:53,240 in a scale up or being in a, in a rocket ship is almost like 1481 01:06:53,240 --> 01:06:56,360 inflation. You have to become 10% better 1482 01:06:56,360 --> 01:06:57,840 every single year. You can't be at the same. 1483 01:06:57,840 --> 01:07:00,960 Spot, we always say like people in the business need to like 1484 01:07:00,960 --> 01:07:03,240 their individual growth needs to be at least the rate of the 1485 01:07:03,240 --> 01:07:04,880 business. As in, you need to constantly be 1486 01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:07,040 changing and adapting and growing because if you're not, 1487 01:07:07,040 --> 01:07:08,640 if the business is growing quicker than you as an 1488 01:07:08,640 --> 01:07:11,080 individual, by definition you're going to be left. 1489 01:07:11,080 --> 01:07:12,040 Behind. You're left behind. 1490 01:07:12,080 --> 01:07:12,800 Yeah. Interesting. 1491 01:07:13,000 --> 01:07:14,680 So that's really important to us particularly. 1492 01:07:14,680 --> 01:07:16,600 And again, that's one of the things I really try and hold 1493 01:07:16,600 --> 01:07:19,400 myself accountable to, is constantly trying to learn as 1494 01:07:19,400 --> 01:07:21,440 much as possible. You interestingly said that the 1495 01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:24,720 first few months you worked there you didn't do anything 1496 01:07:25,160 --> 01:07:28,760 roughly even, you know, corresponding to your job 1497 01:07:28,760 --> 01:07:31,320 description. I mean, it's a very interesting 1498 01:07:31,320 --> 01:07:34,440 question, which is at the moment it's considered absolutely 1499 01:07:34,440 --> 01:07:36,440 standard that you hire for a role. 1500 01:07:37,320 --> 01:07:40,240 There's an interesting book called Counterintelligence, 1501 01:07:40,240 --> 01:07:43,920 actually written by a guy who headed up GCHQ, which is all 1502 01:07:44,120 --> 01:07:48,640 partly about the culture and the hiring practices they had going 1503 01:07:48,640 --> 01:07:52,760 back to like Bletchley Park and British intelligence and code 1504 01:07:52,760 --> 01:07:54,840 breaking. They didn't do that at all. 1505 01:07:54,840 --> 01:07:57,240 They hired talent and then they found a role for them 1506 01:07:57,240 --> 01:07:59,760 subsequently. And it occurs to me that the 1507 01:07:59,760 --> 01:08:03,200 very business of, you know, it's there's an American football 1508 01:08:03,200 --> 01:08:06,760 phrase, which is Vince Lombardi, which is hire the best athletes. 1509 01:08:07,360 --> 01:08:09,520 So Vince Lombardi didn't go out looking. 1510 01:08:09,520 --> 01:08:11,000 I'm going to get my terminology wrong. 1511 01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:13,640 But you know what? Is it a tight end or a 1512 01:08:13,640 --> 01:08:15,080 quarterback? Am I getting that right? 1513 01:08:15,120 --> 01:08:17,319 Am I right? There is something called a 1514 01:08:17,319 --> 01:08:19,000 tight end, believe it or not, I think. 1515 01:08:19,279 --> 01:08:20,880 OK. And he he wouldn't go out 1516 01:08:20,920 --> 01:08:24,600 looking for a specific person. He'd just hire the best people 1517 01:08:24,600 --> 01:08:26,200 and then effectively take it from there. 1518 01:08:26,800 --> 01:08:30,040 And actually, I think there's an artificial bottleneck we've 1519 01:08:30,040 --> 01:08:34,279 created in recruitment whereby defining what we want in 1520 01:08:34,279 --> 01:08:37,160 advance, we're massively limiting the talent pool from 1521 01:08:37,160 --> 01:08:38,680 which we can draw. Yeah. 1522 01:08:38,760 --> 01:08:41,720 So one thing that I'm starting to do right now is is in testing 1523 01:08:41,920 --> 01:08:46,720 like phase, we're now being very visual and very almost like 1524 01:08:47,960 --> 01:08:50,760 honest about what our long term goal is, right? 1525 01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:52,880 So we tell people this is what we're looking to achieve. 1526 01:08:52,920 --> 01:08:55,120 This is the the value we're looking to add. 1527 01:08:55,520 --> 01:08:57,200 How can you help us get there faster? 1528 01:08:57,200 --> 01:08:58,640 And what role do you think that you can play? 1529 01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:01,640 So you're almost like coming to us with this is how I can 1530 01:09:01,640 --> 01:09:04,200 support this is what good looks like. 1531 01:09:04,520 --> 01:09:06,479 Give me the opportunity to make that happen, right. 1532 01:09:06,760 --> 01:09:10,479 And the because what happens is you're most put yourself the 1533 01:09:10,479 --> 01:09:13,319 pressure of expecting to be the expert of how to solve the 1534 01:09:13,319 --> 01:09:16,120 problem by telling people what you want them to do. 1535 01:09:16,439 --> 01:09:19,000 But really, if you say we've got a people problem, want to get 1536 01:09:19,000 --> 01:09:21,600 people to do this, how can you help us with solving that 1537 01:09:21,600 --> 01:09:23,840 problem? Then actually you almost like 1538 01:09:23,840 --> 01:09:26,479 manage the person because they kind of like created the 1539 01:09:26,479 --> 01:09:28,600 direction for them. But then obviously you have to 1540 01:09:28,600 --> 01:09:30,640 make sure that the brilliant basics are where they need to be 1541 01:09:30,760 --> 01:09:33,240 and you have to be very good at describing the problem. 1542 01:09:33,439 --> 01:09:36,399 But effectively, if you do get to that stage, people can 1543 01:09:36,399 --> 01:09:39,399 actually like come in with a sense of ownership of a problem 1544 01:09:39,399 --> 01:09:41,960 that they can so for the business forever, not just 1545 01:09:41,960 --> 01:09:43,640 during that period of time, which I think is really 1546 01:09:43,640 --> 01:09:45,399 interesting. Yeah, no, I agree. 1547 01:09:45,399 --> 01:09:47,560 If you set the direction then let people try and work out how 1548 01:09:47,560 --> 01:09:49,640 you get that I. I think that's actually spot on 1549 01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:52,160 rather than rather than micromanaging everything. 1550 01:09:52,399 --> 01:09:54,200 And the other thing that always happens with very large 1551 01:09:54,200 --> 01:09:58,200 organisations is they create silos and then silos have their 1552 01:09:58,200 --> 01:10:01,600 own narrow metrics. So you end up with people 1553 01:10:01,600 --> 01:10:05,040 pursuing something which is perfectly rational within the 1554 01:10:05,040 --> 01:10:08,720 narrow part of their business remit, but is actually not 1555 01:10:08,720 --> 01:10:11,480 helpful to the organization. I mean, there are literally 1556 01:10:11,480 --> 01:10:14,040 cases in procurement. There's a famous case I heard 1557 01:10:14,280 --> 01:10:17,880 where the person was told, go out and negotiate them down to 1558 01:10:17,880 --> 01:10:19,920 the supplies down by 3% every year. 1559 01:10:20,280 --> 01:10:22,320 And he comes back and goes, oh, great, day-to-day, I'm 1560 01:10:22,320 --> 01:10:26,120 negotiating them down by 9%. And the boss goes, you totally 1561 01:10:26,120 --> 01:10:28,560 idiot, what's wrong with that? He said, what are we going to do 1562 01:10:28,560 --> 01:10:30,600 next year? And so the person was 1563 01:10:30,600 --> 01:10:33,640 deliberately maintaining their own employability. 1564 01:10:33,680 --> 01:10:37,920 Yeah, by just gradually kind of salami slicing the suppliers. 1565 01:10:38,240 --> 01:10:41,000 And it was completely and completely wrong headed 1566 01:10:41,000 --> 01:10:43,080 behaviour. But within their own narrow 1567 01:10:43,080 --> 01:10:45,840 sphere, that's perfectly economically rational. 1568 01:10:46,000 --> 01:10:50,200 So, so a good friend of mine, Timo, who was on the the podcast 1569 01:10:50,200 --> 01:10:51,320 and you've met him before, right? 1570 01:10:51,840 --> 01:10:54,760 Whenever people ask him, what does he wish? 1571 01:10:54,760 --> 01:10:57,200 What did he wish he did when he was younger? 1572 01:10:57,200 --> 01:11:00,160 Or what advice he has for younger people that want to 1573 01:11:00,440 --> 01:11:02,840 start their own business. He says he wish he had worked 1574 01:11:02,840 --> 01:11:05,800 for somebody, right? Because there's so many mistakes 1575 01:11:05,800 --> 01:11:08,320 that he learned first time being a founder of a business. 1576 01:11:08,320 --> 01:11:12,120 Now you did that, but you worked for yourself effectively. 1577 01:11:12,160 --> 01:11:14,920 You went into the business and you kind of like worked in the 1578 01:11:14,920 --> 01:11:18,040 different roles before you ended up like what's, what's your 1579 01:11:18,040 --> 01:11:20,160 thoughts on that? I think, well, there's two 1580 01:11:20,160 --> 01:11:21,480 things. So the first thing I did have a 1581 01:11:21,480 --> 01:11:23,480 the first job I ever did, which you'll know there. 1582 01:11:23,480 --> 01:11:25,760 So the first job I ever did, which was actually started at 1583 01:11:25,760 --> 01:11:28,040 work experience was with my granddad and we would line 1584 01:11:28,040 --> 01:11:31,920 furnaces in the Midlands, which was wonderful for for many, many 1585 01:11:31,920 --> 01:11:34,960 different reasons. But the the top 2 was 1 teaches 1586 01:11:34,960 --> 01:11:37,360 your work ethic when you're working in a factory, you work. 1587 01:11:37,920 --> 01:11:40,880 And the second one was he and he was a one man band. 1588 01:11:40,880 --> 01:11:43,240 He's he would go. He still does it to this day. 1589 01:11:43,240 --> 01:11:45,680 And she sent me a picture of the other week of a furnace we lined 1590 01:11:46,400 --> 01:11:51,800 15 years ago, whatever it was. But when we were there, he would 1591 01:11:51,800 --> 01:11:54,400 tell me about how he started his business and he risked 1592 01:11:54,400 --> 01:11:57,280 everything right, Like he risked the house, everything on his 1593 01:11:57,280 --> 01:11:59,720 business. So then for me, Fast forward 1594 01:11:59,720 --> 01:12:02,680 into starting gym shark. I was risking whatever cash I'd 1595 01:12:02,680 --> 01:12:05,040 earned from Pizza Hut. The risk was 0. 1596 01:12:05,040 --> 01:12:08,640 So I felt a complete freedom, which I've still been honest to 1597 01:12:08,640 --> 01:12:13,240 this day sort of feel to take a, a large amount of risk and 1598 01:12:13,240 --> 01:12:15,520 speculation in building our business because I always think 1599 01:12:15,760 --> 01:12:18,440 I'm not risking the house like he had to with my mum, her 1600 01:12:18,440 --> 01:12:20,000 sister, my nanny and that sort of thing. 1601 01:12:20,320 --> 01:12:22,760 So that's that. Even though it's not a direct 1602 01:12:22,760 --> 01:12:25,640 operational lesson, it's a more of a philosophical lesson. 1603 01:12:25,640 --> 01:12:28,400 And there's many more I learned from him by the way, through 1604 01:12:28,400 --> 01:12:31,400 that first ever period of work. But you're right then when it 1605 01:12:31,400 --> 01:12:35,160 came to Gym Shark, being able to go into each function and know 1606 01:12:35,560 --> 01:12:39,440 how supply chain works, how like product design and development 1607 01:12:39,440 --> 01:12:42,920 works, how branding works, sponsorship events, everything, 1608 01:12:43,680 --> 01:12:47,160 rather than just being a helicopter that that was I think 1609 01:12:47,160 --> 01:12:47,880 was really. Powerful. 1610 01:12:47,880 --> 01:12:50,680 You've heard my theory, which is that if you grow up, if your 1611 01:12:50,680 --> 01:12:53,600 parents run a shop or a cafe or a restaurant, it's like a free 1612 01:12:53,600 --> 01:12:56,880 MBA Oh yeah, yeah. Because also you get to see the 1613 01:12:56,880 --> 01:13:00,360 whole business in the around and you know, then you, you know, 1614 01:13:00,480 --> 01:13:02,680 someone who goes to Harvard Business School is taught 1615 01:13:02,680 --> 01:13:05,000 there's a marketing course, there's an accounting course 1616 01:13:05,000 --> 01:13:07,800 that you know, and actually they're all interconnected in 1617 01:13:07,800 --> 01:13:10,040 reality where. Were we we were we were on a 1618 01:13:10,040 --> 01:13:14,280 trip in, I'm going to say Vietnam and we had like a 1619 01:13:14,280 --> 01:13:17,040 minibus going to the factory and I remember I had to load up my 1620 01:13:17,040 --> 01:13:20,040 laptop so I had to run payroll. I remember I was running payroll 1621 01:13:20,040 --> 01:13:22,440 and you know, Lois Logan over and was like, what you doing? 1622 01:13:22,440 --> 01:13:25,840 I was like, I'm running payroll. And she went, what someone does 1623 01:13:25,840 --> 01:13:29,800 that wait, it doesn't just happen by magic. 1624 01:13:30,080 --> 01:13:32,640 And you're right, because like what people forget is there's so 1625 01:13:32,640 --> 01:13:35,080 many things that happen. Like all these things happen in 1626 01:13:35,080 --> 01:13:37,600 the business constantly. And I think you're right. 1627 01:13:37,600 --> 01:13:39,600 When you just come into a business, you just assume that 1628 01:13:39,600 --> 01:13:41,760 it that it just happened. And we actually have people that 1629 01:13:41,760 --> 01:13:45,040 come from far bigger businesses than ours into our business and 1630 01:13:45,040 --> 01:13:48,480 they're used to a complete other level of infrastructure that we 1631 01:13:48,480 --> 01:13:49,800 do not provide. Yeah. 1632 01:13:49,800 --> 01:13:51,360 And we've had people that they're looking left and right 1633 01:13:51,360 --> 01:13:53,000 and they're going, where's my person to do X? 1634 01:13:53,000 --> 01:13:55,480 Where's my person to do Y? We're like, well, that's you. 1635 01:13:56,080 --> 01:13:57,600 You have, you have to do it. And it's a. 1636 01:13:57,880 --> 01:14:00,440 So, yeah, I think for me, working in the business was 1637 01:14:00,440 --> 01:14:05,080 really powerful because I could hone my craft and really 1638 01:14:05,080 --> 01:14:07,280 understand that business in a way that I wouldn't have been 1639 01:14:07,280 --> 01:14:10,440 able to otherwise. Because when you are the CEO or 1640 01:14:10,440 --> 01:14:12,360 when you are running the business, you there's so many 1641 01:14:12,360 --> 01:14:14,320 other things that just come up on a on an average day. 1642 01:14:14,320 --> 01:14:17,000 I think that's why so many CEO's work so many hours because I 1643 01:14:17,000 --> 01:14:19,680 think half the time it's just things that you get dragged into 1644 01:14:19,680 --> 01:14:22,200 and there's this thing where. Well, you're the only person who 1645 01:14:22,200 --> 01:14:25,760 can resolve a conflict between exactly and there's there's an 1646 01:14:25,800 --> 01:14:28,800 interesting philosophical question there, which is do we 1647 01:14:28,800 --> 01:14:31,120 need to look at how businesses are structured? 1648 01:14:31,120 --> 01:14:34,920 So there there are other the people who can effectively 1649 01:14:34,960 --> 01:14:37,920 adjudicate when there's a disagreement between marketing 1650 01:14:37,920 --> 01:14:39,280 and securement. I will, yeah. 1651 01:14:39,280 --> 01:14:42,360 I will pay you a lot of money because yeah, you have solves 1652 01:14:42,360 --> 01:14:44,320 that part of the job. Because it is a ridiculous 1653 01:14:44,320 --> 01:14:46,000 crunch punch, isn't it? Yeah, you're right. 1654 01:14:46,000 --> 01:14:48,200 All the problems will always come up because you're right, 1655 01:14:48,200 --> 01:14:49,800 problems happen and people try and solve them. 1656 01:14:49,800 --> 01:14:51,480 But all the worst, biggest problems. 1657 01:14:51,480 --> 01:14:52,720 Are bucket stops here? Yeah. 1658 01:14:52,960 --> 01:14:55,600 Elon always talks about the fact that when you're a CEO, you're a 1659 01:14:55,600 --> 01:14:57,760 fan of an organization. You just dealt with all the shit 1660 01:14:58,000 --> 01:15:00,400 that other people can't, can't solve, right? 1661 01:15:00,680 --> 01:15:03,440 So you're basically they're in service of all the ship 1662 01:15:03,440 --> 01:15:06,400 basically and when and because you're the only person that can 1663 01:15:06,400 --> 01:15:09,200 actually solve that problem and often they're not the new things 1664 01:15:09,680 --> 01:15:12,000 that other people have in. I mean, this is an interesting 1665 01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:14,840 bottleneck question, isn't it? Which is the the the the 1666 01:15:14,840 --> 01:15:18,720 conventional sort of military structure of business hierarchy 1667 01:15:20,280 --> 01:15:23,880 ridiculously constantly. In other words, the only person 1668 01:15:23,880 --> 01:15:29,160 with the power to effectively decide in a, in a trade off 1669 01:15:29,600 --> 01:15:34,240 between two business functions is one person, which is, and 1670 01:15:34,240 --> 01:15:36,280 there are probably really important trade-offs which 1671 01:15:36,280 --> 01:15:39,040 people don't take to the CEO out of sheer embarrassment. 1672 01:15:39,080 --> 01:15:42,920 OK. And you know, there are people 1673 01:15:42,920 --> 01:15:46,640 who, as I said, are engaged in behaviours they know are absurd. 1674 01:15:47,320 --> 01:15:51,760 But again, you know, they're bonused on, you know, bad proxy 1675 01:15:51,760 --> 01:15:53,320 metric or something of that kind. 1676 01:15:53,760 --> 01:15:55,720 Yeah. And again, the only person who 1677 01:15:55,720 --> 01:15:58,160 could, who could change that because it's probably enshrined 1678 01:15:58,160 --> 01:16:02,200 in your bonus structure, is, again, one person. 1679 01:16:02,240 --> 01:16:03,920 Yeah. And actually this is, this is 1680 01:16:03,920 --> 01:16:06,440 quite interesting because I think there's a, if we looked at 1681 01:16:06,440 --> 01:16:09,120 it from a cybernetic point of view in terms of information 1682 01:16:09,120 --> 01:16:12,000 flows, we'd say this is massively flawed. 1683 01:16:12,440 --> 01:16:14,320 And inefficient because you what you'd want is. 1684 01:16:14,320 --> 01:16:16,640 You'd want that top point being someone that could connect the 1685 01:16:16,640 --> 01:16:20,280 dots and see the opportunities rather than try and I guess. 1686 01:16:20,640 --> 01:16:21,480 Yeah, nice. The. 1687 01:16:21,480 --> 01:16:25,160 Issues, yeah. And so, so one of my the final 1688 01:16:25,160 --> 01:16:30,160 questions here is that one of the key core, almost like values 1689 01:16:30,160 --> 01:16:33,880 a gym shark at the time when we first set up what our values are 1690 01:16:33,880 --> 01:16:36,680 going to be, right? I think I remember Noel put a 1691 01:16:36,680 --> 01:16:38,720 couple of us in the room and we actually tried to figure out 1692 01:16:38,720 --> 01:16:41,680 like, what is gym shark, right? And one of the key ones was all 1693 01:16:41,680 --> 01:16:44,080 about thinking like 19 year old Ben, right? 1694 01:16:44,560 --> 01:16:47,000 And I think the the idea behind that is that the person that's 1695 01:16:47,000 --> 01:16:48,920 going to take us out of business is not the people that we know 1696 01:16:48,920 --> 01:16:52,160 today is going to be a 19 year old in the mum's garage. 1697 01:16:52,160 --> 01:16:54,280 That's about the holes that we have, right? 1698 01:16:54,720 --> 01:16:57,720 That will figure out the areas that we're missing and they will 1699 01:16:57,720 --> 01:16:59,480 come and challenge us from that perspective. 1700 01:16:59,480 --> 01:17:01,520 So you're better off taking yourself out of business and 1701 01:17:01,520 --> 01:17:03,720 letting somebody else do that for you is basically what Gary 1702 01:17:03,720 --> 01:17:07,160 Vee talks about now when you think about 19 year old. 1703 01:17:07,560 --> 01:17:09,360 What what what she talks about he did the. 1704 01:17:09,560 --> 01:17:11,560 You're better off taking yourself out of business than 1705 01:17:11,560 --> 01:17:14,120 somebody else. By you out innovating got like 1706 01:17:14,120 --> 01:17:15,360 yourself. Got it. 1707 01:17:15,520 --> 01:17:18,160 Innovators dilemma thing, which is you eat your own children to 1708 01:17:18,160 --> 01:17:19,480 an extent. Yeah, yeah. 1709 01:17:19,480 --> 01:17:20,760 Crazy, but yeah. Yeah. 1710 01:17:20,880 --> 01:17:25,520 But going back to the question, what is it about 19 year old Ben 1711 01:17:25,840 --> 01:17:30,840 in terms of like ideology, characteristics, behaviours that 1712 01:17:30,840 --> 01:17:32,960 you think that it's vital to keep, but then what are the 1713 01:17:32,960 --> 01:17:35,360 things that you have to unlearn to become who you are today? 1714 01:17:36,000 --> 01:17:39,040 Well, keep would be close to the customer, close to the product, 1715 01:17:40,240 --> 01:17:42,840 you know, proactive risk taking, willing to think outside the 1716 01:17:42,840 --> 01:17:43,760 box. The typical sort of 1717 01:17:43,760 --> 01:17:46,920 entrepreneurial things, the things that you then have to try 1718 01:17:46,920 --> 01:17:51,360 and walk away from is you, you need to work out how you can in 1719 01:17:51,360 --> 01:17:54,040 an entrepreneurial way build leverage in a business like now, 1720 01:17:54,040 --> 01:17:57,760 we could never simultate like we, we, we've got a shop in the 1721 01:17:57,760 --> 01:18:00,520 Dubai Mall now we've got like one in New York, one in London. 1722 01:18:00,520 --> 01:18:01,720 We've got the ecommerce business. 1723 01:18:01,720 --> 01:18:03,160 We've got all these other things going on. 1724 01:18:03,400 --> 01:18:04,760 There's loads of things that we're trying to do. 1725 01:18:04,760 --> 01:18:07,360 We're building all this different product obviously at 1726 01:18:07,360 --> 01:18:09,480 the start, at the start of the. London Shop, if I'm right, is 1727 01:18:09,480 --> 01:18:12,400 only partly a shop. The in the sense that. 1728 01:18:12,440 --> 01:18:15,400 It's as much as space. Yeah, it's a flexible gym space. 1729 01:18:15,400 --> 01:18:18,400 It was so funny because when we 1st and I was being a bit, I was 1730 01:18:18,400 --> 01:18:19,760 pushing the envelope a little bit. 1731 01:18:19,760 --> 01:18:22,320 When we signed the lease, I said to Noel and Mitch, you were sort 1732 01:18:22,320 --> 01:18:23,800 of designing it. I said, right, you're now 1733 01:18:23,800 --> 01:18:25,640 building a gym that sells a bit of stuff. 1734 01:18:25,640 --> 01:18:29,280 Whereas obviously we sort of like mixed it almost like in a 1735 01:18:29,280 --> 01:18:32,200 negotiate negotiation if I over index then we can always 1736 01:18:32,200 --> 01:18:33,560 backtrack and bring in more product. 1737 01:18:33,560 --> 01:18:35,440 That's where, yeah. But you're right, you walk in 1738 01:18:35,440 --> 01:18:37,280 and you'll see there's a running track back, you'll see the 1739 01:18:37,280 --> 01:18:39,640 floors soft when you actually look at the product that hangs 1740 01:18:39,640 --> 01:18:42,080 there, you look up to the ceiling, there's a button where 1741 01:18:42,080 --> 01:18:44,040 you can press that button and all the product raises up into 1742 01:18:44,040 --> 01:18:45,320 the ceiling. We run classes there. 1743 01:18:45,320 --> 01:18:47,280 There is a class at the back, there's changing rooms, 1744 01:18:47,800 --> 01:18:50,080 everything's all there. So it is a completely flexible 1745 01:18:50,080 --> 01:18:53,120 space. And, and for us it's, it's more, 1746 01:18:53,520 --> 01:18:55,480 it's more a cathedral for the brand. 1747 01:18:55,480 --> 01:18:57,040 Lovely. Because interestingly, when we 1748 01:18:57,040 --> 01:18:59,440 opened it and it's been, it's been very successful since we 1749 01:18:59,440 --> 01:19:02,120 opened it. But all the surrounding London 1750 01:19:02,120 --> 01:19:05,920 post codes increased in e-commerce revenue and I guess 1751 01:19:05,920 --> 01:19:07,800 if you add up all that, that probably adds up to more than 1752 01:19:07,800 --> 01:19:09,600 the increase in the in the stores revenue. 1753 01:19:09,600 --> 01:19:12,640 So the sort of Halo effect of that store has been really 1754 01:19:12,640 --> 01:19:14,920 beneficial. Do you, do you work with Herdify 1755 01:19:14,920 --> 01:19:16,440 to do that? I was just wondering a company 1756 01:19:16,440 --> 01:19:20,120 called Herdify which massively concentrates on what you might 1757 01:19:20,120 --> 01:19:23,520 call geographical hotspots. And it, it's mostly used to 1758 01:19:23,520 --> 01:19:28,040 inform sort of media investment, but they argue effectively that 1759 01:19:28,040 --> 01:19:30,200 there are these huge network effects and you, you actually 1760 01:19:30,200 --> 01:19:33,040 look at the, you effectively look at the post codes and you 1761 01:19:33,040 --> 01:19:36,120 notice effectively the. Effect an uplifting website 1762 01:19:36,120 --> 01:19:38,320 sessions and revenue since the opening of that store. 1763 01:19:38,880 --> 01:19:40,520 Yeah, that's proper measurement. That's good. 1764 01:19:40,720 --> 01:19:41,400 Excellent. We like. 1765 01:19:41,400 --> 01:19:44,240 This so it's basically a Community Center, this disguise 1766 01:19:44,240 --> 01:19:45,160 the store. Yeah. 1767 01:19:45,400 --> 01:19:48,320 And we were talking about the fact that actually with where 1768 01:19:48,320 --> 01:19:50,360 the world is right now and obviously the fact that we all 1769 01:19:50,360 --> 01:19:54,240 live online, brands now play a different role where they're 1770 01:19:54,240 --> 01:19:56,280 actually. And brands like Jim Shark has 1771 01:19:56,280 --> 01:19:58,480 taken it upon themselves to actually bring people together 1772 01:19:58,480 --> 01:20:00,360 because nobody else is doing that. 1773 01:20:00,880 --> 01:20:04,000 And you talk about it like it was just like a matter of fact. 1774 01:20:04,000 --> 01:20:06,600 And obviously I know that you're not looking at all these 1775 01:20:06,600 --> 01:20:08,720 different like articles saying, oh, we need to do more 1776 01:20:08,720 --> 01:20:11,200 community. Why did you feel that that was a 1777 01:20:11,200 --> 01:20:12,760 priority and why that was important? 1778 01:20:13,000 --> 01:20:16,320 I think it was just instinctive. So joining the gym at 16, I 1779 01:20:16,320 --> 01:20:19,880 learn everything from YouTube. So, and again, it's, it's 1780 01:20:19,960 --> 01:20:21,800 interesting because you'll know. And I, I, I do see them 1781 01:20:21,800 --> 01:20:24,200 occasionally and people will say, Oh, the gym shark strategy 1782 01:20:24,200 --> 01:20:25,320 is this. And I look at that. 1783 01:20:25,400 --> 01:20:28,080 I think you're giving us far too much credit like this. 1784 01:20:28,080 --> 01:20:28,840 It wasn't. This was the. 1785 01:20:28,880 --> 01:20:32,080 University of YouTube shits on the Ivy League, doesn't it? 1786 01:20:32,080 --> 01:20:35,040 It's absolutely incredible. We learn everything from YouTube 1787 01:20:35,040 --> 01:20:36,800 and yeah. And I think, but going back to 1788 01:20:36,800 --> 01:20:39,320 that strategy point, it's just just, there's so many things 1789 01:20:39,320 --> 01:20:42,760 that we, I think one of the consequences or the benefits of 1790 01:20:42,760 --> 01:20:45,200 being close to the consumer and close to the product is you will 1791 01:20:45,200 --> 01:20:48,840 notice opportunities that ordinarily you might need 1792 01:20:49,200 --> 01:20:52,080 consultants and loads of people around the table to maybe figure 1793 01:20:52,080 --> 01:20:54,560 out and spend a load of money. But it's just intuitive and it 1794 01:20:54,560 --> 01:20:56,760 just comes to me. And then then if you feed that 1795 01:20:56,760 --> 01:20:58,720 into an entrepreneurial founder LED business, then you're 1796 01:20:58,720 --> 01:21:00,240 probably more likely to benefit from it. 1797 01:21:00,600 --> 01:21:03,600 And I think you're right about the public, public business 1798 01:21:03,600 --> 01:21:08,520 brand building structurally, there are so many I guess speed 1799 01:21:08,520 --> 01:21:12,120 bumps for a business like that to get over from finding the 1800 01:21:12,120 --> 01:21:16,120 idea, funding the idea, informing the market and so on 1801 01:21:16,120 --> 01:21:17,760 and so on. Whereas as a business like ours, 1802 01:21:17,760 --> 01:21:19,840 we don't have to. And I think pretty go back to 1803 01:21:19,840 --> 01:21:22,400 your founder question or deal your 19 year old Ben question, 1804 01:21:22,800 --> 01:21:26,680 protecting that sort of intuition in a business I think 1805 01:21:26,680 --> 01:21:29,880 is vital. Ben, you've been incredible. 1806 01:21:30,120 --> 01:21:31,600 Absolutely sensational. Thank you for that. 1807 01:21:31,600 --> 01:21:32,560 Thank you lads, that was fun.