Ben Francis is in the news today. He is a former Pizza Hut delivery driver who as a student learned the advantages of being disciplined, committed and having a good work ethic as a means to achieve success. He likes IT work and initially made a couple of applications for the iPhone concerning fitness which did well and then moved on to starting Gymshark in his parents’ garage when he was 19. He had to juggle studying at Aston University in Birmingham and evening shifts delivering pizzas. As I said, he has a work ethic.
Gymshark is now one of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses. Ben Francis still owns two thirds of the company which is based in Solihull. He is about to sell a 20 percent stake to General Atlantic, a private equity firm. The deal would value Ben’s stake at more than £650 million!
Mr Francis is a rare British success story because he is also growing the business profitably overseas. There are offices in Denver, Hong Kong and Mauritius. The company has posted profits of 18.6 million on sales of £176.2 million last year.
Now to the point of the article: he has a dog who I believe is called Bilbo and in a Twitter post of August 26, 2018 he says that Bilbo is the cornerstone of his business! At that time Bilbo was a puppy and the picture in The Times newspaper today August 14, 2020 shows Bilbo as a grown-up dog. The picture above shows them both.
I just like the way this guy loves dogs and has applied himself intelligently to creating great wealth some of which he is given away to the NHS already. What can you say? He has some great ideas. If you combine great ideas with hard work, application and persistence you might get to where he’s got. Well done to him and my love to Bilbo.
