Inside Chief Nutrition’s $1M/Month Ecommerce Engine Without Cutting Corners | #615

Justin Babet, co-founder of Chief Nutrition, didn’t set out to build a $1M/month ecommerce brand. What started as a side hustle selling beef bars in a gym has evolved into one of Australia’s fastest-growing health food brands, now stocked in Woolworths, Coles, and scaling globally.

With a background in tech startups (including selling JobAdvisor), Justin brought a “build, measure, learn” mindset into a category known for over-processing and shortcuts. The result? A brand built on trust, premium positioning, and a relentless focus on clean ingredients.

Today, we’re discussing:

• How Chief Nutrition scaled from a side hustle to $1M/month ecommerce
• Why creative volume beats “perfect ads”
• Performance vs brand: when to focus on each
• Building a premium product in a price-sensitive market
• The power of subscriptions and loyalty programs
• How UGC and influencer collabs drive new customer growth
• Why “real food” is winning in modern ecommerce

Connect with Justin
Explore Chief 

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_05 0:01

The one thing that's critical to get right is just really good creative. I always say, you know, if we're investing in brand that gives us a return after six, twelve, eighteen months or beyond, we'd be dead. We would have run out of money. The only way to do it is to cut corners. And I think if we'd cut those corners, we wouldn't have the brand. Hi, it's Justin Babet from Chief of Nutrition. In this episode of Add to Cart, Nathan and I talk about how we scaled our online business from nothing to over a million dollars per month. We talk about ad creative, storytelling, branding, product development, and more. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hello everyone, Bushy here, joining you from the land of the terrible people in lovely Brisbane, Australia. Welcome to Ad to Cart for another week. I've got a soft spot for founders who walk into an established category, maybe even a tad late, and they find a way to cement their place anyway. This is especially true when the incumbents are big, well-funded, and usually international. It takes a certain kind of stubbornness, maybe a little bit of naivety, and a very clear differential in market. Justin Babbitt is the co-founder of Chief Nutrition, a Sydney-based healthy snacking and supplement brand that's gone from a beef aside bar hustle to over a million dollars a month online and is now stocked in woolies, coals, 7-Eleven, and even shipping into the US. And before any of this, Justin had already built and sold three businesses in tech and recruitment. He walked into food with zero category experience. And that might be exactly how why it worked. In this episode, we get into how Chief Nutrition grew to 200K per month through an agency and then made the call to bring performance marketing back in-house. We uncover how a 90% loyalty participation rate is actually achievable and what equity crowdfunding does to the relationship between you and your customers when those customers literally own a piece of your company. Thanks again to Shopify and Clavio for supporting to add Descartes. We genuinely appreciate them helping us bring you interviews like this for free. We recorded this episode in Chief's Offices in Sydney. A bit of an in-person one. We thought we'd mix it up a bit. And luckily, it was a great one because I did a little bit of product sampling afterwards. Lived up to the hype, I can tell you that much. Here's Justin Babbitt, co-founder of Chief Nutrition. Justin, welcome to Add to Cart. Thanks for having me. Oh, so good. Uh how good to be here in person. I know, right? I felt like the biggest podcast fraud because I came in here into your work at spaces and I'm setting up, and you're like, you need some lighting.

SPEAKER_05 2:50

I'm like, have you got some? Let me bring it up. Lessons from lots of mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Absolutely. Well, thank you for being here. So nice to do it in person. Thanks for having me. Tell me about Chief. I've had a lot of fun researching what you're doing at Chief, and I'm really keen to hear your background before Chief. But first, why don't we kick off with what Chief is and how it works in e-commerce?

SPEAKER_05 3:09

Yeah, sure. So we're a healthy snacking and supplement brand. We started in snacks. We actually started um in 2015, we launched our first two products. We did a beef bar. Well, actually, we did a beef bar and a lamb bar.

SPEAKER_03 3:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:21

And I guess the origin story is my two co-founders, well, there's three co-founders, but two of my co-founders are health and wellness experts. One of them is my wife Libby, and the other one is nutritionist and excise physiologist Veronica. Okay. And uh, or V as we call her. And V was V used to work as our nutritionist in a gym that Libby and I used to own. Right. Called the Gojia on Bondo Road, which is still around. G'day John, who now owns a Gojia and does a great job. I trained there most mornings. And V was taking a whole bunch of our Gojia customers to do the Kokoda Trail. And she's a stickler for what she eats and won't eat. Yeah. And, you know, she had to they had to take a lot of their food with them.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:57

And it forced her to start to look at things in a packet.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:01

And she didn't really like what she found. And she ended up taking the cleanest jerky she could find, some fruit and nuts. Okay. And she came back saying, I reckon we should make a bar out of dried meat, fruit, and nuts. That's an interesting idea. A bit weird. Are you in this food space at all at this time? No, no, we just we had the gym. I was doing tech startup stuff. It wasn't my gym. It was Libby's really Libby's business. The more we thought about it, we thought, that's actually a really bloody good idea. You know, for a bit of background, Libs and V would get asked all the time by customers what do we snack on? And their standard default answer was nothing, nothing in a packet, because most things in a packet are pretty crappy and you know ultra-processed. And so then, you know, chop up some apple or some carrot. And of course, that's not what people wanted to hear. They they wanted to know what's convenient that you know they can kind of keep on them in their handbag or glove box or whatever it is. And you know, they probably wanted something a little bit naughty. Yes, yeah. But they wanted permission to eat something that kind of gave them that experience. And so when we had heard B's idea, we're like, that's that's really interesting because particularly for savory snacks, yeah. It's really hard to find clean savory snacks. True. And if you have a look at a lot of the jerky and built on products out there, still today, there's some great brands out there, don't get me wrong, but a lot of them use pretty nasty preservatives that aren't particularly good for your gut health, and it makes sense, right? You're trying to kill bacteria in a product and can kill the good bacteria in your gut as well. So anyway, we just couldn't stop thinking about it. And randomly one day I went onto LinkedIn and found a food scientist and I messaged him, he's the only guy I found, and I said, This is this weird idea we've got. Do you think you can help us? And he said, Yeah, I reckon I can do that. We paid him, paid him some money, and I didn't hear from him for three months. And I thought, geez, he's just stolen our cash. What a jerk. That's all. Then he came back and said, I found your manufacturer, I've done some samples, I found your packaging supplier. I'm like, wow, that was the easiest process I've ever found. It never got any easier, it got a lot harder, obviously. But so why did you go down that route?

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Because obviously, every market that you go to, there's always a couple of old guys selling beef jerky of some sort. Like it seems one of those cottage industries, and obviously your vision wasn't to have it as a cottage industry.

SPEAKER_05 6:07

But we didn't have a vision at that stage. We just thought it was a cool idea and we could sell it in the gym, and we're in the we're in a you know, got a little product business and we'll, you know, kind of run that on the side. But do it properly first. Yeah. I mean, obviously we want to have a really good quality product, but we weren't thinking about scaling. We were just thinking about getting something out into market. You know, I guess my my background is which we'll get into maybe later, but I've done a lot of work in tech startup. And in tech startup, you know, it's build, measure, learn, you know, like you fail fast, all that kind of stuff. And what was a tech startup? Where are we talking last year? Oh, I I did uh a website called Job Advisor, which is kind of like Glassdoor.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

Yeah, yeah.

Scaling Up: From Side Hustle to Ecom Success

SPEAKER_05 6:42

In the Australian version of that, we sold that in um 2017 or something like that. So Chief and the other stuff I was doing overlapped. It was always just meant to be a little side hustle. But yeah, in in tech, it's you don't want to over-engineer things. You just want to kind of get something out, you know, minimum viable product, get it out, test, see, learn, you know, learn and iterate. You know, that's that's what we did. But you know, fast forward, so it was very much a side hustle till kind of 2018. It sold out of job advisor that I mentioned. We had another product, Job Vibe, which we sold. And then I just really wanted to give Chief a red hot a shot. And so Brock, who's our CEO today, he was our first distributor and he'd helped us kind of get it commercialised and off the ground and been very heavily involved. And he's got some great, had some great and does have some great, even more now, uh, food experience. And he'd kind of helped get Newsest, which is the New Zealand brand, off the ground. Okay. And you know, he'd seen uh AG1, you know, Athletic Greens kind of incubated in New Zealand and then became a global brand, you know, in in UCRIS and you know, had a lot of experience. And I was like, I I've got no experience in food. I have no idea what I'm talking about. I mean, not just food, it's like meat. Like Well, meat, and I'd none never done a product business before. You know, I'd done service businesses, you know, done recruitment and IT, you know, software as a service stuff, helped Libby with her gyms and that kind of stuff. But I knew I needed someone with that experience. And so basically we merged his distribution business and chief with the idea that we would distribute other health food products just for cash flow, and then when Chief was big enough, we'd just do Chief. Sure. As it panned out, we managed to sell the distribution side of the business in basically end of 2019, and then we went full-time on Chief in 2020, just before we all got locked down. Good timing. Yeah, good timing. But it was actually really complicated. All our retailers stopped ordering. So we had to crack online, and you know, we I think we started January that year doing like five grand a month or something online and um ended the year, you know, over 90 grand a month. And felt like I think back then and I think, oh, we we felt like we cracked it. We had no idea what we're doing, but we certainly got better, you know, compared to where we are now. Um and I'm happy to share because I think it's interesting for for context. You know, we do we do over a million bucks a month now. Oh wow just on online. And that's a little bit less than half of our business. We do quite a bit more on our bricks and mortar side of things through woolies and coals and that kind of stuff. So 7-Eleven amp-hole. But yeah, it was really that scale online helped us get the scale that we needed to start to reduce our cost of goods to we uh brought on Jack, who's our basically head of growth, who's done a brilliant job in building out our bricks and mortar business. And yeah, online kind of fed all of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

And that first stage of getting to what'd you say, 90,000,000 a month a month? Yeah. How did you grow to that stage? Because I'm keen to know the explosion after that, but getting off the ground is is really hard.

SPEAKER_05 9:25

Honestly, it's always the hardest thing. It's it's it's like an aeroplane, right? Okay, yeah. Most of your fuel is spent getting off the ground. And when you get to cruising altitude, things do tend to get a bit easier.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

It gives a lot of founders hope there.

SPEAKER_05 9:36

Yeah, look, easy is probably the wrong word. Your challenges change, but definitely it's you you're pushing the proverbial up the hill with a stick when you're trying to get off the ground. And I think what worked. Well, we found a great agency. Okay. So Data Source, a mate of mine, Shy, owns that agency down in Melbourne, they did a great job and kind of getting us off the ground. You know, I remember Shy said to me, you know, what would your dream outcome be? And I th I'd be like, 30 grand a month, that'd be amazing. Then we blitzed through that. He's like, What's the you know, nine, 100 grand a month? That'd be amazing, you know. So I kind of look back now and think it's a bit of a pinch-me moment to kind of see how we've we've grown. So we had a good agency. If I was to boil it down to one thing, the one thing that's critical to get right is just really good creative. And I think, you know, everyone's talking about how meta's changed and you need variety and diversity and all that kind of stuff, and that's probably more true than ever before, but it was never not true. You know, you need I I've always found You need a lot of creative volume to be able to pick, you know, find the winners. Yeah, sure. And trying lots of different headlines, dot lots of different angles, lots of different formats, you know, us versus them, testimonials, you know, UGC, you know, featured benefit, like you name it, we've tried it. And so yeah, getting that creative right was was really important. I think once we kind of uh we're no longer with data source, they did a great job getting us to you know a couple of hundred grand a month. And you're still mates. We're still mates, yeah. Look, it was always it was always the plan. But I think the key driver since then and while we've been able to go from 200k to 500k to a million bucks a month has been continuing to invest in that creative. And so now we have, you know, a fractional creative strategy guy who will do a lot of our scripting. Okay. And, you know, our content team will go and either produce it or work with content creators to produce it. Gets edited up and again, it's a machine. We've created a system. Yeah, a m a content machine, basically.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

I want to come back to that system because I think everyone's struggling with that at the moment. One of the things that is hard to do, especially in the early stages, is to build a brand and pump out creative at the same time. So you've built a beautiful brand, it's really distinctive and you've made it really consistent across your packaging, across your branding. You've got the shirt on right now. Like when you see chief, you know chief, right? Like it is what it is. But then to take that in creative, especially in those early stages when your brand isn't as well known. How do you balance that when you've got to kind of be out there with influencers and content creators and hand your brand over? But at the same time, you're trying to build.

Balancing Brand and Performance Marketing

SPEAKER_05 11:57

Look, honestly, honestly, I appreciate you saying that. We don't feel like that. We feel like a lot of our imagery and and video it's not necessarily coherent. Okay. So we're trying to fix that literally now. Just bringing a bit of a consistent style to it. And I think where my mind's at at the moment, I'm not saying I'm right, but where my mind's at right now, and it's a useful frame, I think, for right now, is broadly speaking, splitting the thinking into performance marketing and brand marketing. Okay. And so, you know, I think it's right when you're starting out to focus on performance marketing. Right? So we put a dollar in, we want X dollars back, and we want it today.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Get the sales to keep the cash flow flow going. Right.

SPEAKER_05 12:36

And I I always say, you know, if we're investing in brand that gives us a return after six, twelve, eighteen months or beyond, we'd be dead. We would have run out of money by the time we get that return. So it's it's not a priority.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

I suppose especially with what, four co-founders as well.

SPEAKER_05 12:49

Yeah, well, yeah, look, they're not all on payroll. Libby's not on payroll. Veronica's part-time. You know, we've got a a a pretty big, you know, decent-sized team now. There's about 18 people. A lot of them are part-time, but yeah, there's certainly a lot of mouths to feed. But from a performance marketing perspective, I think, you know, really we have a brand lens that we apply and say, is this on brand or not on brand? Because I think you can, it is easy to do things that are detrimental to the brand. Yep. But a lot of the time, if it's kind of neutral, it may not necessarily be additive to the brand, but it's neutral, and we'll still run it and test it. You know, it's the old, you know, build, measure, learn kind of minimum viable product.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

I mean, that's an interesting concept of not being on brand or off-brand. You could just be neutral to brand.

SPEAKER_05 13:30

Yeah, right. So it's at the end of the day, it's what works. Maybe a recent example is it was a big trend for everyone to do these apology letters. You know, we're sorry for I hated them, right? Me too. Anyway, our creative director's like, look, I think we should give it a try. I'm like, oh yeah. I really didn't feel right. But I'm like, look, let's just throw it out and see what happens. And it's performing super well. Yeah. So from that perspective, I just think, well, performance marketing wins there, right? Like we've got to be able to scale our performance marketing in order to win the right to um start to talk about our brand at scale.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

I saw Julie Mathers talk about that after Black Friday, and she was like, Yeah, they're not great. Like, no one likes doing them. We did them. Yeah. But they bloody kicked ass. Like they they perform their butts out. Yeah. If you want to blame anyone, don't blame the founders for doing these letters. Blame Meta because it's rewarding this content.

SPEAKER_05 14:18

Yeah, it's exactly it, right? So I don't know, I just try not to be precious when it comes to performance marketing. But we're definitely now starting to think about okay, how do we be coherent with our brand messaging? How do we simplify it? You know, something that took us a good nine years to figure out using so many different words. You know, I don't know who said it, but I think it's a really good quote and I'm gonna butcher it. But it's basically like to be able to simplify something, you need to know it really, really well. Right. And so I think it kind of took us nine years to know the business so well that we could summarize it down to a couple of phrases. Yeah. So now our our tagline is feed your extraordinary and what we exist to help people stop eating junk. That's cool. Right? So, and those two play together. Now, feed your extraordinary is the positive version of stop eating junk. Right. So, what does it mean? Well, if you want to live an extraordinary life, a great life, a chief life as we'll sometimes refer to it, you need to eat well. Like your health is fundamental to that. If you're, you know, proverb, if a a sick man only thinks about one thing, right? Like so, you know, their health. And so, and it all kind of really starts with what you want. That's kind of cool. So, if you want to live a great life, you've got to eat well. And we're really passionate about obviously helping people live a great life, but it kind of goes back to the original problem that we identified is that most things in a packet are just ultra-processed crap. And so, you know, we wanted to give people something in a packet that's convenient, that solves that, you know, what they were really asking for, which is not, you know, chopped up carrot and an apple, you know, something that's really tasty that they look forward to just like they would a crappy snack, but that is actually good for them. And uh and uh being able to summarise all of that down into feeds you're extraordinary and stop eating junk, I think, has taken a long time. I think it's been really important to be able to get clear on that what that brand message is. Now we're much clearer on okay, well, how do we communicate that? What does it need to look like?

Navigating Consumer Perceptions of Meat

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Is there an inherent challenge there? Because obviously we've had all the news at the moment around carcinogenics in processed meat. Yep. And we've been brought up to say hot dogs are bad and the sticks, the handsticks are really bad for you. Obviously, you've attacked it from a different lens, but do you have to kind of get over that hurdle to re-educate people?

SPEAKER_05 16:23

We did we did originally when we first launched our beef butters was kind of peak veganism.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:28

And we got a lot of hate on our comments on our ads. That's kind of good. It's disappeared. It was great. I I loved I had a whole 10-page document on on templated replies to our vegan friends. And may have gone on down a few rabbit holes having you know, having arguments online, but it ultimately was good for engagement. People are like, Why you why do you bother? Like it's good for engagement. Yeah. And it really did work. But to your point, it's not the meat, it's all of the crap that goes with the meat.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:55

So the preservatives that are used, or the things that are used to preserve the meat, they're proven carcinogens. Right? So it's the same across everything. Yeah. If it's not that there's any single ingredient, like I remember we do a collagen protein powder, which is our top seller, because we didn't have whey at the time, we'd sell against whey, we'd say, hey, look, you want to choose a really clean product, you know, no additives. A lot of whey protein will have additives. And people, and when we launched our whey protein, like, you've been crapping on whey for a long time. We're like, no, we would we never had an issue with the whey protein. It was all the junk that you normally find in those protein powders. So it's not, it's not the ingredient, it's the crap that goes with it. And it's all of the shortcuts that the industry takes to extend shelf life, save money. You know, if you can put more cheap stuff in there, you have to put less expensive stuff in there and and it will increase your your margin. And what is that great quote? It's like, don't ask why your health food is so expensive, ask why uh regular food is so cheap. I'm sure at the moment a lot of people don't think that food is cheap, and which is which is absolutely true. But there's real wheat reasons why. And and so yeah, it has been a bit of a journey. I mean, the whole meat thing has been interesting. I think the whole zeitgeist and I kind of don't really like that word, but it's a good good word in its own way, has changed. You know, I think protein's become flavourable probably on the way out now. We were on saying fibre's the next thing. Yeah, I think protein's here to stay, but I think people are starting to talk about fibre in a big way. But yeah, I mean, it's it's kind of like for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, right? So there was big action towards veganism and there's been a reaction towards carnivore. Um and we've just tried to kind of stay in the sensible middle, really. Yeah, carnivore is uh certainly a great option for some people. You know, it's essentially an elimination diet, right? And it's has great therapeutic use. We're not necessarily convinced it's a you know, forever diet for everyone can be for some people. And look, same on the other side of things, you know. It's certainly a vegan diet can be a good elimination diet, but we're not necessarily convinced it's a forever diet for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

So in those early days, it'd be really easy to know who your audience isn't via the comment section. Yeah. How did you find who your core customers are? Like, did it match your initial hypothesis on who's going to be really passionate around?

SPEAKER_05 19:05

We always found it really hard to identify. Yeah, we're just a little bit confused. You know, I think as we started to develop a vision, the vision was we want to be a global brand. We want to help, you know, we want to impact as many people as possible. Who's your customer? Well, everyone. Stupid answer. So we're kind of really struggled with that, I'd say. Where we landed is we refer to our customers a pack flipper. Okay. So they flip the pack, they look at the back, they look at ingredients, they're looking at macros, and and generally they know what they're looking for. Or at least aspirational pack flippers or people that are trying to be healthy. And, you know, we have avatars and all that kind of stuff, and there's certain segments where you know we do particularly well, and obviously that will form an avatar. But you look at our customer base, it's kids to, you know, the elderly. I had a I was emailing with a 80-something-year-old woman the other day who was asking questions for her 90-something husband. And you know it was great, right? So it is a very broad segment. I think the other lens that we applied was we thought we were competing with the sports and diet supplement companies when we first started. You know, we were thinking, oh, we're gonna have athletes as our ambassadors and that kind of stuff. And we I guess we realized maybe even more recently that we we're not really in that space. That doesn't I think that's a very crowded space. I think where the market is going is that what traditionally was sports and diet is now becoming mainstream, like protein, yeah, like creatine.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Anyone who wants to perform at a high level, whether they're at an office where they're in the gym.

SPEAKER_05 20:32

Well if they're a mum that's had enough sleep and they want some support and creatine's great for that. Yeah. Or they're a mum and they know they're not getting enough protein in their diet, or perhaps they're going through menopause and they know they need more protein in their diet, and adding collagen to their coffee in the morning is a great way to hack to be able to do that, right? So it's kind of the mainstreaming of sports and diet that we're really focused on. We we're we're kind of the brand that people will go to if they're in that category. And I think that's that's the biggest opportunity, really. Do you see meat as the product always being the lead in to chief? It's a really good question. I think it'll always be a part of it. Yeah. So I I referred before to different diets, like vegan on one end and carnivore on the other, and everything in the middle, including keto and paleo. We've always tried to be agnostic to the diet and just stay true to our ethos, which is real whole food. Yeah. Right. Yeah. No ultra-processed junk. Yeah. And meat can sit in that category. Yep. Right. And, you know, I think lots of different people will demonise lots of different things. But if you come back to it, at the end of the day, like our bodies are designed for real food. Yeah. And sure, in the modern in a modern society, modern life, you want something that's convenient in a packet.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:41

And it doesn't have to be junk.

The Challenge of Cost-Effective Clean Eating

SPEAKER_01 21:44

So the question has to be then is how have you managed to do it in a cost effective way when no one else has been able to crack it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:51

I don't know if we necessarily have done it in a cost effective way. We're we're premium priced. Yeah, exactly. You know, like a beef bar is gonna retail at$6.95. Yep. And it'll be on Shelf against a four dollar protein bar. Sure. You know, for the educated consumer, they'll realize, oh, okay, it's meat, it's dried meat, which means all the water weight's taken out. Yeah. And there's 80 grams of steak in that 40 gram bar that's really nutrient dense and it's not just protein, there's iron and B12 and zinc and all this kind of stuff, right? But it's not been easy to educate consumers on that. The price almost tells part of the story, doesn't it? Yeah, that's right. So we moved into supplements, but purely because there's much better margin in supplements, you know, opportunistically, and that's now probably about half of our our business. Wow. We're just trying to stay true to that real food ethos or at least clean ingredients. Now the same issue in supplements exists in food, but it's the same as was in food. So, you know, in supplements, there's a lot of occipions, they'd be called. So basically, you know, if you've got a tablet, there's lots of junk that goes into I mean it will stay as a tablet. And so there are things that can inhibit the absorption of the thing of the vitamin or mineral you're trying to take. In a lot of cases, the kind of not really great for your health. What is it, multitole, for example, in a in a lot of powdered supplements as well. It's not just tablets. So I think there's the same opportunity in that supplement space. And and just like with I guess in the snacking space, we're like ultimately a consumer probably shouldn't be snacking. I know I shouldn't be snacking. I should be just having You can't stop me snacking. But there's real life kind of gets in the way. Sometimes you need something. This morning I had to run out of the house. You know, I've got the kids' breakfast. It was one of those mornings. I just didn't have time. So I had something that was really clean and healthy. I had a beef bar for breakfast. Feel completely full, I'll be fine till lunch. And I know I haven't kind of cut any corners in a negative way. It's the same with supplements. You know, you don't really need a like a collagen powder or a whey protein powder or a liver capsule supplement. But, you know, we don't eat as many organ meats as we used to, so that can be useful with liver supplements for B12 and iron and those sorts of things. Like this morning, I didn't I don't always have the opportunity to get enough protein in my diet. So a protein powder can be super useful. So we're just trying to live in that segment where we solve problems for you know for busy people.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Sounds like trust is a big piece there. That if you get known as the the clean food brand, that anywhere that you go, whether it is a snack or a supplement or a powder.

Staying True to Product Ideals

SPEAKER_05 24:08

Well, I think that's I think that's one thing we've done really well. And I you know, brand is obviously more than just marketing, right? You know, a brand is is all parts of the business and the perception people have as a result of that. But I I'd say we've built a really good level of trust. I think that's the most valuable thing about the brand or any brand. And it's because we really held true to our product ideals. There's been a lot of times where we've gone, oh geez, it'd be great just to be, you know, like our our collagen protein bars, retail$5.95.

SPEAKER_03 24:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:38

Again, up against$4 bars. And they're smaller. They taste much better, they're much cleaner, they're really actually really good for you, not crappy for you. You know, and you look at the back of the pack, a pack flipper will go, yeah, I'm going to choose that. And that extra dollar doesn't, or two dollars doesn't really bother me. But we were like, geez, it'd be great to be at four bucks. How would we do that? Well, we can't. The only way to do it is to cut corners. And I think if we'd cut those corners, we wouldn't have the brand. Yeah. You know, our products perform really well, and maybe this is encouraging for those who are earlier in their journey. The flip side to being premium priced is that our products perform really well in a woolies environment because they cost more. So our revenue, even if we sell a little under on units per store per week, our revenue per slot on the shelf is actually really good. And dumb question. What would woolies prefer? To shift more low-cost goods or to shift It's all about margin. Yeah. How do they make the most money? They'll look at everything. Yeah. You know, they're they're smart people. They're not they're not dummies.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

They're very rich smart people.

SPEAKER_05 25:34

Yeah. But at the end of the day, what do they want? They want to get the best return on that spot.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:38

And so if you're delivering higher revenue at a comparable margin, you're going to be delivering more margin.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:44

And so that's the silver lining on that. I think it's I think it's fine to play at that premium into the market.

Bringing Performance Marketing In House

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Any fashionista knows that if you want to make smart wardrobe choices, everything needs to live in the same wardrobe. Not half your clothes in the spare room, shoes in the garage, accessories in the car. Princess Polly realized the same thing was true for their marketing. As they scaled globally and opened physical stores, their email, SMS, app, and in-store data were all living in different platforms, which makes it pretty hard to scale a great customer experience at scale. So they pulled everything into one place, Clavio. By consolidating their channels and customer data, Princess Polly unlocked a clearer view of the customer journey, smarter automations, and faster global scale. In Q3, last year alone, they drove 2.8 times year-on-year global revenue growth, with over 60% of that Clavio revenue coming from automated flows. Even better. Flow revenue grew more than four times year on year. Turns out when everything's in one wardrobe, picking the winning outfit gets a lot clearer. If you want your marketing to scale with style, head to clavio.com forward slash AU and see how brands like Princess Polly are doing it. I want to come back to the growth story because I think that's really fascinating, especially around e-commerce. You mentioned there around you had the agency, good mate of yours, got to 90k per month, and then you had that realization that you need to go to that next level of growth. I understand that you brought performance marketing in-house. What were the key considerations that you had before bringing it back in-house? Especially when you've got someone who's taking care of it that you trust and you know you've got a relationship with. It's a big move to go. Actually, we're going to take care of this.

SPEAKER_05 27:37

Look, I'll talk probably probably more generally, but by the way, we got to 200k a month and a little bit beyond before we we kind of went down that path. Okay. The key driver for it was actually doubling down on creative. And I really wanted a creative input to be able to make sure that we're really good at that. And so, you know, our our strategy, by the way, we we want to run lean. We don't want to bring everything in-house. We try and outsource as much as we possibly can. We still outsource a lot of stuff. Yep. Right? We still get a lot of external advice. You know, we've got a fractional CMO, uh, Mal, shout out to Mel. Mel Chair. Yep. Yeah, nice. Uh Mal's great. You know, we have email agencies that help us. We usually do project-based stuff. It's like come in, get a whole bunch of work done, and then we'll we'll, you know, we try and avoid always-on stuff. We do have always-on agencies. You know, SEO, we outsource. So, you know, we're really trying to keep a very lean, flexible team. We've gone through some very rapid growth, you know, we'd more than doubled every year for the last four years, and that the business changes very regularly. And so I we just tried to avoid being locked into a particular path. That said, the team has grown significantly over that time. The major investment has just been in content production, really. Yeah.

Building A Content System With Collabs

SPEAKER_01 28:44

And then you said that you've systemized a lot of that. How are you producing so much content? Uh are you doing a lot of it in-house? Are you using influencers, UGC? Everything.

SPEAKER_05 28:53

Yeah. Everything. Yeah, I think the right mindset is to systematize it. Because I think when you when I look at things that we say we want to do and we don't do it, there's no system. There's a blocker somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:05

Uh somewhere along, you know, whether it's right at the front end with the ideas, production, editing, distribution, like there's a there's a blockage somewhere. So you've got to think of the o the whole system. I'd say the shortcut, again, perhaps for those earlier in the journey, is paid collaborations are working really well for us at the moment. So for the uninitiated, just think of it as you know you work with an influencer, they'll produce a bit of content that kind of probably doesn't really look like an ad, but is a good ad. And it'll be a collab sort of show up in your ad account and you and you boost it as an ad.

SPEAKER_04 29:36

Yeah, nice.

SPEAKER_05 29:36

And we're finding that's getting much better ROAS. And we're just doubling down on that. We get a multiple win there, right? So we get traditional influencer sharing it to their audience. Yep. It sits on our feed, so it's good organic content and brand association, and then we're boosting it so we get ten times the eyeballs on that content, and it converts really well. So we just get, you know, so it's a lot to like about that model.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Yeah, that's a great model. And in terms of the commercial arrangements around that, is it usually that you typically you'll pay an influencer and you'll have usage rights over that? You'll pay depends if they've got an audience and you're pay to access their audience, you'll have usage rights over that, whether that's 90 days, six months, whatever it is. And then when you're boosting it as well, is there a limit on how much money you can put behind that, or is it just within that usage rights window you can go?

SPEAKER_05 30:22

Yeah, but from a contractual perspective, yeah, it is within that window. We have this kind of debate all the time. Try and avoid windows of content and any sort of royalty kind of place. So content- That's kind of where I was getting to. Yeah, content creators, it's like, okay, we we will have an agreement up front to say, look, it's unlimited use and royalty-free, you know, if we could use it for years and there's no limitation. Why? Well, we're kind of paying you for the content. We're not trading off your personal brand. Yeah. Right? Your face could be anyone it could be switched for any other face, and yeah, that tends to work for people. I think that's that's fair and that's fine. But it's out of necessity. Like we have hundreds of content creators. It'd be impossible. We're we're constantly recycling ads too. So we'll turn them off and we'll turn them on maybe a year later, and it's just impossible to be able to track oh, we can't use that person because of this. So we really limit it to our the influencers that we're working with, and that's fair. I think that's totally fair because we're trading off their personal brand. Yeah. And people recognise their face, their audience recognize, you know, recognize them, and they've got their own following and that has authority, and totally fair. So yeah, we generally split them into two.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

And are you driving towards for for your influencer and UGC, are you driving towards new customers? Is that mainly the goal? That's the go that's the key. Yeah. Okay.

Fixing Plateaus Through New Customers

SPEAKER_05 31:36

And I kind of figured this out more recently. It's like, why aren't we growing? We're kind of stuck. And we had a four-month plateau last year where we're just stuck. In fact, we went backwards. We had a massive march, and then it was just a little bit less and a little bit less and a little bit less. It's like this is not good. And it was new customers.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_05 31:50

So we just weren't filling the top of that funnel. So there were some structural changes to the account that we made. We just basically simplified it a lot and put a lot more diversity in, and that created a big unlock, um, was was number one. And with Mael's advice, we we really started to focus on more, I guess you call them reach campaigns, lead generation. Think of it as filling the top of the funnel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's an argument to say, well, you know, just push your brand awareness campaigns out for reach, a very broad brand messaging, and then that gets them in the funnel. And if they engage with that brand, then you can do product specific stuff. And we're we're certainly trialing that. I think what's working best is actually pushing our product-specific ads out to a much wider audience for reach and see if we can get conversion off that anyway. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? So if we get a return on that, if we get a decent row as on a new customer, surely that's better. Maybe this is just performance marketing thinking, and maybe it's wrong. But my current thinking is that if we can get a conversion on that reach campaign, that's better than brand impression that doesn't get conversion on that reach campaign. Because we're win we're definitely winning that customer. Yeah. And that's definitely paying for itself.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

So we can do more of it. I think that's actually changing too, in what I'm saying, at least, is that Meta is kind of saying, actually, if you want conversions at the end of it, yes, we get this idea about a funnel and you've got to fill the funnel. Yeah. But let us take care of it. So just tell us what you want.

SPEAKER_04 33:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Do you want awareness and that's where you want it to stop? Because you might be driving sales in-store or whatever it is, that's fine. Do you want traffic to your site? Because then you can get them to sign up, do whatever you want. Well, at the end of the day, do you want conversion? Yeah. And we'll think about the window based on your product and we'll take them through that funnel. Yeah. But just tell us what you want.

SPEAKER_05 33:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

And I think it's so easy to overcomplicate it sometimes.

SPEAKER_05 33:29

Look, I'm not doing the ad buying, but my understanding is what we're doing is taking a product-specific, like problem solution kind of ad, not a brand ad. And we're pushing it out. We're using exclusion on our existing audience to push it out to new people. So we're going for reach, but I believe the optimization is towards conversion.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Yeah, nice.

Subscription Bundles And Predictable Revenue

SPEAKER_05 33:48

Yeah. And that's working. So we're in, you know, the last three months we've doubled our new customer acquisition and our revenues just take it's gone from that plateau to, you know, the the steep cliff again. It's a steep um. Let's hope it's not a steep cliff. The other way.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Steep trajectory.

SPEAKER_05 34:04

Trajectory.

Loyalty Visibility Drives 90% Participation

SPEAKER_01 34:05

What I love in in the reading that I did is that it's not just about acquiring customers, it's about having that relationship with them. And tell me if I've got the stats wrong. But I saw that your loyalty program has a 90% participation.

SPEAKER_05 34:19

I should have 90%, yeah. Is that right? That's huge. Yeah, it's massive.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

What are you running there in central loyalty?

SPEAKER_05 34:24

We run Bubble House. Okay. I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm looking at other options.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Um get smashed by loyalty providers now.

SPEAKER_05 34:32

No, I've got it's it's between Bubble House and one another for a very specific reason, so don't don't uh don't bother. Look, I think it's kind of a happy mistake and and a bit of a mix of Bubble House doing a good job and a happy mistake. So we had another loyalty program. Uh I think out like 20% of people would use it. And basically no one knew about it. So I think with Bubble House, a couple of things happened. When we transferred over, we took our time to really build out our Clavio flows. So now we didn't have before, but now it's like a monthly email, hey, you've got this many points. Don't forget to use them. And hey, your points are expiring. You know, that kind of stuff. That's working a lot better. It's very clear in the header of our website. So right next to the account icon, you'll see reward points. And if you're logged in, you'll see how many points you've got. It was always there on checkout, but if you weren't logged in, you wouldn't see an option to redeem your points. So it just made everything a bit clearer. But I think what really helped was when we moved over from the other system, a lot of people didn't know they had points. And then everyone started realizing they had points and they had a lot of points. Right. So you know, people were getting, you know, two, three hundred dollar orders for free, which is kind of fair and really, because they just had points that didn't know about it for a long time. But I think they just took engagement on that program through the roof, which sucked. Yeah, I was about to say. In terms of our discounting. But I think ultimately, A, it's fair for the customer. And B, you know, we want to look after our good customers who've spent a lot of money, and and B, everyone knows about it.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Yeah. And I guess because you're a repeat purchase, you've got to actually play the game of loyalty, don't you? Otherwise they'll find something else if they're already buying.

SPEAKER_05 36:02

So I just think we had just had such a positive reaction to loyalty. You know, and we're a premium price product, we're not really going after a a value shopper, but there's plenty of value shoppers out there, and quite rightly, you know, things are expensive and you know, generally in in the economy, and a lot of people are struggling, and that's that's fair enough. Yeah. So I would really encourage loyalty. I just think it's a really good way to build better community engagement.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Is there a strong tie between loyalty and subscriptions? 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:28

Which is why I'm looking at a different option on the subscription front. How are you doing subscriptions at the moment? We use loop. We do a lot of revenue through subscription. I think the other day, just for context again, I don't want to sound like I'm bragging and for a lot of you listening to the number. They're probably like, uh, whatever, Rocky. But we do, you know, over like I think 450 grand a month in subscription, something like that. Yeah. So it is a significant part of our revenue. And it's nice. You know, the subscriptions run kind of at 9 a.m. every morning. It's nice to be you know at 10 grand before the day starts. Better than coffee in the morning, isn't it? Yeah, it's a nice way to start the day. So it's it's really critical. It's good for our customers too. They get a better deal. We pay for shipping. Yep. And you know, for a lot of our products, you want to be like the whole point of taking them is to be consistent. So, you know, get a delivery every month. It's better for staying consistent, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Are they customized packages or is it kind of like you limit the options on what you can do to keep it simple?

SPEAKER_05 37:21

The way we do it at the moment is any product, well, not every any product, but most products you can subscribe to. And then we have bundles which you can't subscribe to, but we say if you want to subscribe to it, go and build your own bundle. The reason we do that is there's a little bit of complexity around one-time items in a bundle. Like we might give them a free water bottle in a bundle, but they don't want them to get a free water bottle every month. Yeah, and they probably wouldn't want that either. My cupboard's full of full of old water bottles. Yeah. And I've spent half my life throwing them out. So that's why we do that. So with Loop, there's a bundle builder, and they can, you know, they get a discount the more they add. So they get a discount for volume and they get a discount for subscription, and that can be up to 25% off. So um, there's a pretty decent incentive to build bundles and subscribe to them. So that works really well.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah. Ever dreamed of turning a weekend passion into a thriving business? Girls with gems did exactly that. What started as a mother-daughter duo hosting jewelry parties at home is now a bustling boutique and a booming online store. They've helped hundreds of women feel confident, stylish, and part of the sisterhood to become, as they like to say, one of the girls. And with Shopify, things are moving faster than ever. In 2024, their online sales revenue grew by jaw dropping 107%. But it's not just about the sales. Things feel smoother behind the scenes too. Efficiencies have soared. Huge sales events are now prepped and scheduled ahead of time, and integrated automations mean that VIP customers are spotted instantly, triggering exclusive offers without anyone lifting a finger. Just smart tools, stylish growth, and one sparkling success story. To read more case studies like this, visit Shopify Case Studies online.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

I saw that you mentioned previously that uh that you are investing in GEO, AI-driven search. Early days, obviously. Are you bullish on it? Are you are you thinking that it's gonna be? That's definitely the way it's gonna go.

SPEAKER_05 39:18

It's unclear who if there's gonna be a dominant Google type player. It's shifting again now, isn't it? Yeah, like I was all on Team Chat GPT and now, oh no, I'm using Grok, Claud, and even Google searching again, because there's there's Gemini and so I'm got in my car last night and I'm Joe Tesla, some wank.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Got Grok. Yeah. Got Grok downline, oh I don't want Grok in my car. Go away.

The Role of AI in Business Operations

SPEAKER_05 39:42

Unhinged mode. Yeah, that's right. So look, who who knows where it will go? All I know is it's here to stay, right? So and for a certain type of search, it's extremely helpful. And obviously, I I think probably the first cave off the rank that we're interested in would would be ChatGPT integration, like with the shopping integration, Shopify. So that's gonna be interesting to watch. But no, I've been chatting with our SEO guy about it a lot. And I'm I guess where our heads are at the moment is that good AI SEO is good SEO. Really. So sure there's some focuses within that and some tweaks to how we can do things, but it's not really a complete change on how we do that. So yeah, I think it's worth investing in your organic discovery and you know, obviously it's high and high intent.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:23

So it's a really high conversion type of audience. So it's definitely, definitely worth looking at that at that space.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

You mentioned before that you're trying to keep the team really lean. Are you looking at AI in terms of agentic AI to help you run through processes, speed up reporting, do all that sort of stuff?

SPEAKER_05 40:39

Yeah, for sure. We're taking baby steps. We're probably like a lot of people, you know, a bit of chat GPT for some assistance on ideas. And for most of the team, that's probably where it where it stops. But we are kind of experimenting with um certainly for data analysis. So the other day I I plugged in our Clabio, so I can now query Clabio data with um chat GPT, so that's been that's been quite handy. Sidekick and Shopify is pretty handy. It's so powerful now.

SPEAKER_04 41:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:05

I mean, even building widgets for product pages and that kind of stuff is pretty, pretty cool. But definitely querying the data, if I just need a quick answer and I couldn't be bothered to go and look at a report. And then comparing reporting on other platforms, because they don't they never bloody agree. So you know, trying to get an average answer and some a sense of things somewhere in the middle is It's a smart use.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

That's a smart use, taking different reports from all the different platforms and asking for an opinion.

SPEAKER_05 41:31

Yeah, that's that's a good point. Definitely on the finance side of things, we're starting to use AI a lot more and trying to automate reporting. And our CFO uh started using Claude for Excel, which apparently is just mind-blowing in terms of modeling and that kind of stuff. So yeah, we're we're keen observers, light engagers, and definitely trying to make sure we we we're on that wave. I guess the way that we're viewing it is I don't think it'll necessarily replace anyone in the team in the foreseeable future. And that the perceivable future is probably quite a short period. It's not years, you know, it's not decades out anymore. But really, you know, we've had this chat with the team, we want them to be ten times more effective. Yeah. And so we can kind of rein in our continuous scale-up headcount as the business continues to be able to do.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Stop doing boring stuff too. Yeah. It's gonna be really interesting. Like even we had a Claude demonstration in our community the other day, and it wasn't even so much what Claude can do. And I think who knows if Claude will even come out on top. Yeah, but it's the changing in thinking that's constantly happening. So Roy was talking about actually don't think about it doing tasks, think about it setting it up to do different tasks and changing it on the little things that you do, but then combining it into a process. So taking this task, this task, this task from end to end, delivering something new. So as the capabilities are improving, what we know today, exactly what you said, in 12 months' time, it'll be totally different again. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_05 42:54

Well, this is the my fear in over investing into one particular and all these kinds of things to hook all these different processes up and then suddenly oh, they've solved it all in the one system, you know. And so it is moving very, very fast. I think, you know, obviously a agency stuff is is pretty interesting. I think, you know, to the point on Groc, they're starting to think about now a digital Optimus robot, right? Like, you know, someone that can act as an employee. I think that's major unlock time.

SPEAKER_03 43:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:22

You know, I think Cord's kind of uh cowork. I haven't I haven't really played around too much with cowork. I've seen a lot of stuff, but I think that's probably first iteration of that. I've seen it go wild for a lot of people and start deleting emails and that kind of stuff. And perhaps there's some security issues but yeah, it's definitely it's definitely a space to watch closely.

Future Growth Strategies and Marketing Expansion

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Yeah. Now, Justin, in terms of your growth, Chief's growth, what's the next twelve months look like for you? Well, our goal is to double again. I just thought I walked past the team before they were just cruising.

SPEAKER_05 43:50

They were like, it's it's uh ducks on top of the water and peddling like crazy on the neck. Yeah, we wanna we wanna continue to double. That's the goal. I I think law of big numbers is gonna get harder and harder.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:00

But we know the path, we know we we can see what happened there. But I think for us it's a mixture of new markets, new products. And then you know we've got really good distribution here. We've land landed in a lot of bigger environments and now it's about expanding in those bigger environments. Woolies a good example.

SPEAKER_04 44:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:15

And we started with four products, went to seven, and it's just gone to ten. So obviously the scale of that has gone up a lot. You know, Coles, we just won with three products. Hopefully we can do the same there. So you like you like the supermarkets? Look, I think I don't want to lose you any contract. No, not at all. Woolies have been great to work with. Um, Coles is new, so I don't have any any experience to talk of it. More from a commercial perspective. Yeah, look, uh at the end of the day, I've got plenty of mates who uh well other mates who have you know bigger brands, eighty percent of their revenue comes from the majors. Yeah. And so I just kind of think if you want to be if you want to be anywhere, you've got to be in the majors and you've got to figure it out. That's not to say you can't succeed without the majors. I mean more than ever before you can have a huge online business. That's our strategy in the US. We're now in the US. Okay. Shipping out of a three PL in LA. When did you start that? Uh about a year ago. Okay. Just kind of testing, learning, good major learn.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Good year to learn in the US. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 45:10

And so yeah, our strategy in the US is just pure play D2C. We don't really want to want to think about bricks and water. And I think we could be three times the size there as we are here, but just pure play D2C or beyond. Right. So I think there's plenty of opportunity indirect to consumer. But yeah, I just think if you want to be a mature business in it in the Australian market, certainly, it's just a much smaller market. Yes, you're kind of gonna play with the majors.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

We've tested it and it's obviously working. So congratulations on on where Chief's at so far. Love what you're doing, love the mission that you're on. Thank you, mate. And brilliant to be able to do this in person. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna get on the flight home. And I am going to go back to my kids. I've written it down here. I'm gonna say every time that they go for those snack packets, I'm going, feed your extraordinary. That's why that's gonna be my new tagline. They're gonna be sick of it.

SPEAKER_05 45:51

You'd be just as cheesy as me.

Bushy's Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Justin, thank you so much for joining us on Ad Descartes. Appreciate it. What I took from that conversation is how much of Chief's success comes down to Justin being genuinely unsentimental. He's not precious about categories, about agencies, about channels. He just follows what's actually working. Three things I'd take away from this one. First, split your marketing thinking early. Justin's framing here was really useful. Performance marketing is about putting a dollar in and getting dollars back. Today, brand marketing is about return in 12 to 18 months. When you're early and cash is tight, that second one is usually a luxury. Get the cash flowing first and then earn the right to do brand later. Secondly, know when to cut the cord on your agency. Chief stayed with their growth agency until they hit 200k a month. Then they brought it in-house, not to save money, but to get tighter control over their creative. The relationship did its job. Knowing when that moment has arrived and then actually acting on it, it's usually harder than it sounds, but they set themselves up for success from the start. Thirdly, loyalty is often a visibility problem before it's anything else. Chief went from roughly 20% participation to 90% without overhauling their rewards or their tech. They just made the points impossible to miss. Header placement on the site, clavio reminders, expiry nudges. The program was always there. The customers just didn't know about it. So if your loyalty is struggling, maybe ask, is it visible? Now, if anything there has sparked something that you want to dig into further, come and join us over on adducart.com.au. Come and join our free AdDic community. There are over 600 e-commerce operators in the community, and this is exactly the kind of conversations that keeps going on in there. Thank you so much to Justin for making the time and letting me invade the chief officers. I might be back for some more snacks soon. If you haven't already subscribed, hit follow wherever you're listening. I'll see you on the next one.