Here are some of my best tips for scaling a smaller lifestyle business to a more autonomous larger scale business, in the same way Gymshark is.
Hiring staff
It’s very easy to get caught up in your own hype and believe that you can do everything right. After a bit of a reality check, I had to check my ego and leave others to it. Genuinely, if you want to grow your business that is the most important thing you can do.
When you’re hiring people, you have to trust others to do things. Inevitably things will go wrong and it’s incredibly tough to start with, looking back it was difficult for me in the beginning. At the start of building a business, it’s safe to say you go into it with a lot of self-confidence – verging on arrogance. I’m glad to say since then I have managed to control my ego somewhat more, trying to become the best person I can be.
I worked closely in the tech and IT side of the business, as well as the brand and the product. One thing that I did was link Shopify to - at the time, the Royal Mail system. This was very basic and not very good. We then hired Chris Perrins, our talented CTO (Chief technical officer) who controls the tech and ops side of the business. He came in and essentially took our system, recreated it, and made a significantly better version. I remember watching him do that and feeling heartbroken that he had scrapped the system I had personally made. He came in and said “It wasn’t good enough” and built something better. I had to accept reality here and realize that something I thought I had created brilliantly, was not good enough to cope with the extent that we needed to scale to.
Genuinely, if you want to grow your business you need to make yourself redundant in areas you’re not as good at. That is the best thing you can do - hire great people. When I talk about GREAT people, that doesn’t mean the best qualifications. They can come in a variety of abilities, it could be trust, talent, care, or culture. Something that we have learned here at Gymshark is that it’s not that difficult to find talented people. But it is tough to find talented and humble people, who care, and who see a vision for the company.
So, when you’re hiring people you have to make sure that:
They have to be better than you in their respective areas.
They have to be culturally right for the business.
They have to be humble.
They have to be buying into the long-term vision of the business.
One ‘bad apple’ can genuinely damage a team, we’ve had that in the past and had to deal with it very quickly. Here at Gymshark, we tend to hire slow and fire fast. Although our staff turnover may be low if someone does something against our values, we have to say goodbye in the most amicable way possible.
You need to make sure that the team that you’re working with is completely aligned and that they fit all four of those tick boxes. It’s a snowball effect, once you hire a good member of the team it grows from there and just gets better and you will then see the benefits.
Building teams
If you don’t build your team and hire people who are better than you, you will inevitably either fail or will be limited by your own time or skillset. Meaningless growth, quickly.
One way we split our teams at Gymshark is the front end and the back end of the business.
Front End:
Sponsorship
Marketing
Branding
Product
Back End:
Finance
Operations
Logistics
Design and Buying
This is important, that you understand the structure of your business. I’m frequently asked questions about the USP of Gymshark and what makes it special. They tend to look at sponsorship, marketing, branding, and events – but not many ask questions about the hierarchy, structure, and in particular our direct-to-consumer model. These factors are essential for our company, in the way that we built the business. I won’t be publicizing the hierarchy in our business but it’s vital to understand the fluidity in our structure.
We have an incredible method of making decisions streamlined, taking action, implementing, and seeing the rewards of our decisions very quickly. This is done by getting information through and around the business rapidly, allowing us to action, implement, and see the rewards of those decisions quickly.
You need to very carefully consider as you’re building your teams, how these teams work, understand each area, and make sure the leaders understand where they sit within the business. Keep in mind the structure is always adapting and changing as the team continues to grow. As long as you’re transparent, honest, and communicate with your team you should have a fluid working structure throughout.
Becoming a larger business
Transitioning from a lifestyle business to a larger business, with lots of staff, teams, and offices comes with positives but it can come with a lot more risks, stress, and longer hours. You will find that your profits will decrease because you’ve got a higher cost base within the business. It’s a transition you will need to think long and hard about. Assuming you want to take that leap into becoming a larger business you need to be aware that as you’re bringing in systems, offices, people – things will go wrong. Inevitably it will be tough and will be a long process. What I've learned is that you have to trust the people to do things and leave them to do a good job, and overlook them when you can.
From my point of view, I brought in 2 people- Steve and Paul. Steve is the CEO and Paul the Chairman. Leading me to understand the
way to run a larger-scale company and teaching me to trust others. It’s very difficult as a person that hadn’t done this before but gaining knowledge from others who have experience in a sizable business will help with the process. I was fortunate when it came to Gymshark, I had incredible support and had a team that I could go to for advice. As I’ve said before, it felt like the stars aligned for Gymshark, meeting Paul at my local gym who happened to introduce me to Steve.
However, I had to be there for the opportunity for them to present themselves to me. If you’re making this decision find people who can help you, and make your vision a reality.
Be prepared to take that risk, for me, it has been stressful and a long process but has gone incredibly well and I'm super happy with where we are as a business. There is nothing wrong with having a great lifestyle business. It can be brilliant and 99% of the time it makes the most sense but equally, I understand that people will want to take the leap as we did at Gymshark. it has been one of the most i
ncredible, fulfilling things I have ever done in my life.
Becoming a larger scale business has pushed me to my absolute limit but I wouldn’t have It any other way. I have learned so much! I’m very lucky to be surrounded by incredibly talented people every day, helping me to constantly improve myself.
For a more in-depth explanation, I covered this topic on my YouTube channel here: