Five Habits That Helped Ben Francis Become a Better CEO

According to Ben.

There is no self-development without self-awareness.

Ben Francis is the co-founder, majority shareholder, and current CEO of Gymshark, British fitness apparel and accessories brand, manufacturer, and retailer in England.

It's been almost 10 years since Francis co-founded the brand that is now valued at over £1 billion and recently he shared on his Youtube account the five habits that helped him become a better version of himself.

During an interview with Steven Barlett in December of 2021, he admitted that one of his employees back in 2015 described him as: “erratic, hot-headed, arrogant and a poor manager”.

“I was really pissed and upset but in my heart I knew it was true and that was the moment I realized I needed to change, to improve. I had to develope” Ben says.

And so without further ado, these are the five habits:

1. Waking up early every single day at the same time.

Ben considers himself an early bird so he is always already working before 6 am every single day, Monday through Sunday.

He highlights that he tries to stay consistent day after day with this schedule.

Similar to Ben, Krissy Cela, co-founders of the Tone & Sculpt fitness and wellbeing app also daily wake up really early at 4.30 am to have enough time to exercise at the gym before heading to work.

The takeaway Ben explains is to always intend to be out of bed at the same time every day, it doesn't matter if that is at 5 am or 10 am, but to be consistent with that routine day after day.

Consistency, really really helps.

2. Carving out time every single day to learn something new.

Making constant efforts to learn something new every single day after weeks, months, or years it does app up, it compounds and you can significantly grow in terms that you never imagined.

“I don’t read loads of books, but I talk to and learn a lot from many different people I encounter and that's been completely game-changing.”

“Another thing that has had a big impact on me is always asking questions, I genuinely believe that you can learn something new from every single individual you meet. So if you are inquisitive and ask them why they do certain things if you try to be educated on an area where they are far more knowledgeable than you are that can make a massive massive difference, and overtime again these little gains, little wins will compound and will make a huge huge difference”, Ben says.

3. Exercise.

Exercising means the absolute world to Francis.

He applied the structure that he used at the gym in other areas of his life as his school life and his professional life and it completely changed his existence.

I am a firm believer that physical fitness will help mental fitness and for me, that's always been the way, Ben comments.

The lessons that you can learn in terms of discipline and accountability, quite frankly the fact of showing up by exercising regularly make a massive difference.

In terms of family life, professional life, personal life, everything is better when I am regular in the gym, Ben adds.

4. Consistency.

The other thing that really helps me on a daily basis is consistency, Francis highlights.

“Consistency as explained before, waking up at the same time, consistency in meals, in terms of what I am eating, consistency in the timing of the meals, having breakfast, lunch, and my tea at night at the same time every single day really makes a difference.”

All of this gives me a sense of solid structure in my life. Being the CEO of Gymshark nowadays there is so much that happens on a daily basis and so many new things that I am being exposed to worldwide but knowing that I also have that consistency in my personal and family life makes a massive difference to me, Ben says.

5. Self-development and self-improvement.

This can be completely life-changing. Here’s an example:

“Several years ago I was terrible at public speaking, terrible at speaking in front of a camera and I worked hard on improving that aspect”, Francis admits.

Probably in the past, I would have told you: I am not an outgoing person, I am not the sort of person that likes to speak to crowds or in front of cameras, whereas now I think all of these different areas of yourself or your skills should be completely up for upgrades.

I don’t think you should identify with someone who is bad at public speaking or messy or unorganized or not good at particular things.

I think if you are completely open-minded, then you can think of those things as completely moldable, incredibly manual, probably more than you think so.

The things that should never change though are your values and your morals, they should always be consistent. They should be grounded essentially in goodness.

Everything else has to be up for upgrades, if you can have a mindset around that, around growth, around development, ultimately about change, about you believing you can change yourself and you can improve. You should be in a position where you look back at yourself, 5 or 10 years ago and think:

-Wow how much I have changed! That's a scenario where you want to be in.

So be super self-aware, understand the parts of your personality you think you don’t and you do want to keep, and realize that it can be improved and are manual.

To Conclude

These are little things and if you implement this tomorrow it's not going to change your life overnight but for me personally, these things I’ve implemented over the last five and ten years have completely changed my life, changed me as a person and I guess led me personally to where I am today, Ben explains.

Once more consistency is massively important.

To summarise: be open-minded to changing yourself, be aware, learn new things every single day. If you do those little things over time, over weeks months, and years you will develop, you will grow and you slowly but surely will become the best version of yourself.