Were you forwarded this email? Sign up here to get the next edition.
I don't get to do in-person interviews that often. But I had the privilege of doing this one at the Workit Spaces in Sydney - a really cool shared workspace for ecommerce brands who want to be around other people building things… and doggos, lots of doggos. It's also the home of SKUTOPIA (watch this space for that interview coming soon).
While I was there, I sat down with Justin Babet from Chief Nutrition. One thing I'll say about doing interviews in person is that you pick up things you'd never get on a screen. Mainly free product.
Justin talked a lot about the quality and the uncompromising nature of their ingredients, and I actually got to experience it. He loaded me up with a bag full of Chief Nutrition products that got me through the rest of the trip. Beef bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Great for the expense account and I was really happy (and relieved) to experience the high quality that Justin talks about in this interview.
Justin brings a genuinely wide array of skills to Chief, three business exits before he ever touched a food product, and he's now applying all of it to building one of Australia's most interesting ecommerce brands.
Cheers,
Bushy
EPISODE CHEAT SHEET
Inside Chief Nutrition’s $1M/Month Ecommerce Engine Without Cutting Corners (Ep #615)
⏭️ Skip To The Good Bits
Scaling Up: From Side Hustle to Ecom Success (8:26)
Balancing Brand and Performance Marketing (12:18)
Navigating Consumer Perceptions of Meat (16:23)
The Challenge of Cost-Effective Clean Eating (21:51)
Staying True to Product Ideals (24:26)
Bringing Performance Marketing In-House (27:08)
Building A Content System With Collabs (28:47)
Fixing Plateaus Through New Customers (31:38)
Subscription Bundles And Predictable Revenue (34:00)
The Role of AI in Business Operations (39:43)
Future Growth Strategies and Marketing Expansion (43:43)
💬 Quote of the Day
"It's like an airplane. Most of your fuel is spent getting off the ground. When you get to cruising altitude, things do tend to get a bit easier.”
Add To Cart is brought to you by
🧠 The Big Lesson
Don’t be Meta precious. Let the data decide.
Most brands treat creative like a campaign. Something to get right before you launch. A photo shoot, a hero video, a brand film. One big swing every quarter. Justin treats it like a factory that never closes for the night.
Fractional creative strategist doing the scripting. Content team producing it or working with creators. Editors are turning it around. Hundreds of creators in the system. The machine runs continuously, and the algorithm decides what wins.
A great example is the apology letter. Justin hated them (and I still do). You've seen them everywhere. We're sorry for charging you too much, for making you feel bad, for existing. They are easy to dislike. His creative director pushed for it anyway. Justin's instinct was to say no. His principle was stronger: don't be precious about performance marketing. They ran it. It performed brilliantly.
"I just try not to be precious when it comes to performance marketing." Justin Babet, Chief Nutrition (14:50)
Chief is one of the most uncompromising brands in Australia when it comes to product quality. They will not cut corners on ingredients, even when it costs them shelf price parity. But in creative, they will run anything the data tells them to run.
The brand lens is about what's on-brand or off-brand. The performance lens is about what converts. Justin keeps those two things deliberately separate, and it's why they went from a four-month plateau to doubling new customer acquisition in three months.
Volume finds the winners. Gut feel picks favourites. The brands winning on Meta right now are the ones producing enough creative for the algorithm to do its job.
✏️ Ecommerce action tips from this episode
When you hit a growth plateau, focus on new customer acquisition before touching anything else. Chief spent four months going backwards before they diagnosed the real problem. The funnel was starving at the top, not leaking at the bottom.
Paid collaborations with creators give you three outputs from one investment: an organic post to their audience, content for your own feed, and a boosted ad that converts because it doesn't look like one.
Negotiate unlimited usage rights upfront with every creator you work with. If you can't recycle your best ads freely, you're leaving money on the table every time a winner goes dark due to an expired window.
Make your loyalty points visible in your site header, not just at checkout. If logged-in customers can see their balance every time they visit, redemption rates and engagement go up without you doing anything else.
For subscriptions, let customers build their own bundles and subscribe to them, rather than locking them to preset bundles. Chief uses this to drive up to a 25% discount on volume plus subscription, giving customers a genuine reason to commit.
🎧 If you liked this episode, you might also like…
Mike Halligan (Scratch) | Why He Was Wrong About Meta: How He Built a Smarter Growth Engine | #607 Mike resisted Meta for years and then had to eat humble pie when he finally committed. What changed his mind was building a creative system grounded in deep customer understanding rather than media buying tactics. His use of AI as a junior creative to analyse reviews and generate ad concepts is worth stealing.
Emilio Murphy (Muscle Nation) | Mastering Paid Media with Muscle Nation | #345 Muscle Nation built one of Australia's most aggressive paid media operations and Emilio knows exactly what it takes to win on Meta at scale. If Justin's episode gave you the mindset shift, this one gives you the paid media mechanics behind it.
Dave Hack & George Brown (Creator Flow) | How to Create Social Video Without Influencers | #364 Dave and George built an entire framework for producing high-volume social video without relying on traditional influencers. If Justin's episode made you think about your content system, this one gives you an operational blueprint for building it.
💡 Work with Nathan
Need help making a big call or sense-checking your strategy? You can book a consultation session to tackle challenges, test assumptions or connect with the right people in ecommerce.
I also partner directly with retailers and tech providers on team coaching, transformation strategy and advisory roles. If that sounds like what you need, get in touch, and we’ll take it from there.
