In this interview excerpt, the Gymshark CEO explains how his approach to time management evolved after becoming a parent. He emphasizes the importance of keeping weekends free for family, deliberately avoiding any work during that time. During weekdays, he concentrates his efforts on product development and directly collaborating with his core team. He also shares a habit of visiting various gyms while traveling, using informal conversations with gym‑goers as a source of unexpected learning and networking. Overall, he stresses a conscious balance between family‑first values and professional impact, choosing to protect personal time rather than sacrificing one for the other.
What's your approach to managing your time so that you get the most out of your professional and personal life?
So this has changed a lot since we had kids. So before, I would just work all the time and fly whenever, go anywhere at a moment's notice. My wife said to me, since we had kids, she was like, I want you home on the weekends. And it's really important to me that I am because I just love being at home with the family. And again, that's important for me to protect. In the week, I generally really try and focus my time around product and essentially the direct sort of team that I work with. I also just love going to loads of different gyms. So if I'm in New York, I'll just try different gyms because you end up just chatting to people all the time and you end up learning something that you would never, ever normally pick up. And again, quite fortunate now doing the job I do because sort of people come up to me as often as I'll come up to them. But I absolutely love that.
And when you're home on the weekends, you're not at home just working. You're at home with the family.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will avoid work at all costs on the weekend if I can.
Love. You have on the wall family first as one of the values. How do you strike that balance? Because at some point one of those things has to get sacrificed. Yeah, right. People who make an impact, as you said, aren't necessarily at home all the time. Yeah. Do you have to pick one?
I think the thing I've noticed, and this is both with myself, also with friends and colleagues, is if you do a job that you really, really enjoy, you genuinely enjoy, I think you'll often be better at it. And then I think you'll be happier, happier in your general life. There's periods, I think, where you have to work more. There's periods where you can probably get away with working a little bit less. We have had some highs at this business that are incredible, being the fastest growing company in the UK, some of the global events that we've done, some of the incredible things that we've done out in the US. They're genuinely incredible achievements that I'm so proud of. But then when you get home and one of your kids runs up to you and gives you a massive hug and is happy that you're home, it trumps all of them. Mm-hmm. So I think it's also worth remembering that as well.
