Grant Mayo, Nutrition Warehouse Interview | Get Fact Up #107
Video Transcript
Chris Hogan - G'day world, Chris Hogan and Grant Mayo from Nutrition Warehouse coming to you from Me Media studio here in Burleigh Heads, for episode 107 of Get Fact Up! Thanks very much for joining me Grant.
Grant Mayo - Chris, it's a pleasure to be here. I know we haven't caught up for a few years, so it's really nice to see your pretty face this morning. And shout me this beautiful coconut coffee. So yeah, I'm real excited to be here, I'm pumped!
- Good, mate, and I wouldn't expect anything less from you. Mate, honestly it's been a journey and I've known you for, must be coming up, what, 15, 16, 17, 18 years, something like that.
Grant Mayo - Absolutely yep.
- And I've seen you on your journey, for all of that, for all of that time and also joined you for part of it. So, 2007 was when Nutrition Warehouse was founded, correct?
Grant Mayo - Nutrition Warehouse was founded in a one bedroom apartment, in Southport in 2007.
- Yes, and I remember sitting there, with you, actually talking about, what are we gonna call this thing?
Grant Mayo - Correct. That was one of my, one of the biggest goals at the time was what will we call this new supplement company,
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - that's gonna take over the world.
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - And, I think for months and months, I really had a lot of variety of different names. I still remember asking all my close family, friends, relatives, anyone that would listen to me. Pick a name, which one would you call it? And I do still remember walking down Wallsend with my mum, and my dad at the time, and we were walking through, and I went, Chemist Warehouse, wow, what about Nutrition Warehouse? And mum went, that sounds like a good name. So, I quickly raced home, checked the domains, and I couldn't bloody believe it.
- [Chris] No.
Grant Mayo - It was still available.
- I got the text message, I remember, and I checked too, and I was just gobsmacked. And part of me, we were no newbies to eCommerce, cause we'd been doing it for years prior. Both of us.
Grant Mayo - Yes, yes correct.
- And so, when we saw that Australia hadn't caught up, and created nutritionwarehouse.com.au, and that it was available, it was almost an element of disappointment in Australians, and their innovativeness, if that's a word. But, lo and behold, you got the name, and you haven't disappointed anybody by what you've done with that brand, so.
Grant Mayo - Ah, I appreciate that.
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Our team has been wonderful along the years, I mean we've, it's been a great journey, you know? But picking that name, I knew the name was really important in the beginning. Obviously, with my previous startup, and selling that, and obviously going in competition with them, I knew that the name was everything and I knew that it couldn't be a silly name like, Grant's supplements, or Mayo supplements or like Big Bob's supplements or, you know? It had to be something strong that would conjure up images of, which we created, which always was a vision and big brands, warehouse prices, all of the greatest brands in Australia and across the world, and the synthesised warehouses that we see today that no one had previously done.
- Hmm, yeah.
Grant Mayo - So I knew the name was paramount to its success.
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - So, and that's why I toiled and sort of had a lot of sleepless nights coming up with that name.
- Yeah, I can see how really important it was to you, yeah.
Grant Mayo - And we actually trademarked it as Worldwide Sports Nutrition, and that's what it's actually trademarked as. Take a look at the trademark now-
- Oh God! Man, I remember. I remember playing with that logo.
Grant Mayo - It was, it was Worldwide Sports Nutrition and I had other various names which were probably just as average as that one realistically, 'cause it's such a long name. Imagine typing worldwidesportsnutrition.com.au falling asleep by the time. So yeah Nutrition Warehouse although it's a little bit shorter, thank God is a much much better name.
- [Chris] Yeah
Grant Mayo - And it's proven itself over the last decade.
- Yeah, yeah far out. So 2007 yeah you're in the 12th year.
Grant Mayo - Well, yeah. We didn't open the first store until April 2008.
- [Chris] There you go.
Grant Mayo - So the first, you know obviously if you remember obviously you know when obviously had Me Media helping me at the time and yourself and you obviously built the first website for Nutrition Warehouse and I still remember being in that one bedroom apartment and entering all the brands and the products myself and I wake up at six in the morning and my partner would go to work and I'd wake up and be at that computer at 6am. I would give myself to about 1pm so about seven hours of just adding brands, products etc and be ringing you every half hour. How do I do this? How do I do that? And really just teaching myself how to obviously you built the skeleton and the look and the feel of the website and I added all the products and I'd done that for weeks if not months.
- [Chris] God!
Grant Mayo - Whilst I looked for you know a viable location
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - To open up the first retail bricks and mortar store.
- And was the first location Underwood?
Grant Mayo - It was Underwood, yeah.
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Still there today, just celebrated its 10th birthday.
- Unreal.
Grant Mayo - Yeah, so same store and I still remember opening that store and look, when I first opened that store back in 2008, it was right next door to a company called The Supplement Inn. Now The Supplement Inn at the time was one of the biggest supplement chains, sorry I shouldn't say chains, supplement store
- Yeah,
Grant Mayo - in Brisbane.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - And I was like, everyone's like, why are you opening right next to the Supplement Inn? That's crazy, and obviously I sold my previous company which I started as a startup and I'm happy to talk about that, obviously for those listening, you know, back in 2002 I was the co-founder of ASN, Australian Sports Nutrition, which is still around today and doing a good job, not as good as us, but a good job. And look, I founded that with a friend at the time, and we started that startup together. Initially I had the idea of being an X world champion body builder, like how can I create a job for myself, what am I gonna do after I've retired from this sport for body building. And I really looked to different avenues, I was doing security, and I was working at a plumbing store, and none of them lit my fires, it's just a job, I can't see myself doing this forever. And when I moved to the Gold Coast in 2000, there was no supplement stores around there. I started working for a supplement company as a sales manager, and at the time I said to the CEO, John, I said where's all the supplement stores on the Gold Coast? And they weren't big back then, we're talking 2000, 2002.
- You were still educating people on what supplements were.
Grant Mayo - Exactly, yeah, people were sort of frowning on supplements or even the gyms back then, don't go to the gym you'll bulk up, and now look at it. So yeah, I was travelling around Queensland, you know, seeing other supplement stores and health food stores. Now just from everyone's memory back in 2000, there wasn't very many supplement stores.
- There wasn't.
Grant Mayo - There was probably two in Brisbane, nothing on the Gold Coast. So I just thought, well, you know that light bulb moment, I went, I reckon I can open a supplements store, and I've always loved helping people train and reach their goals, maybe I can open up a little store that will sell supplements, create a job for myself, people will come and see me and get the advice on how to train, how to look a certain way, and I'll obviously sell them the supplements. So we founded ASN in 2002, and that journey took us to 2007, where we soon realised although we were good friends, my partner and I, we were really bad business partners together. And realistically, I had a vision from the beginning of what I really wanted Nutrition Warehouse to be, and although ASN at the time was the industry leader, and everyone said do not get out of that, you're going places, and everyone was supporting us, and we had five or six stores at this time, plus online, and we were doing really well. I knew that if I stayed at ASN, I would never be happy. And I've never ever done anything for the money, it's always for the goal, you know what I mean? Although, the money is nice. So when I moved on from, when I realised the vision I wanted to trade was never going to happen, because my business partner was probably the alpha, you know what I mean? I decided that for me to be happy, I need to move on. So we spoke and we both agreed that we were clashing, and this was never going to work, so I decided to sell my 50% of the company to my business partner and move on, and basically that's the story
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Of how I got into Nutrition Warehouse.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - I started from scratch again of how to build that oneral vision of how I really wanted to trade that company.
- Mate, yeah, and so many lessons in that whole story. So coming back to the start of Nutrition Warehouse, I think the great lesson for everybody to learn was no-one's coming to save you, it's up to you, and you know, even though you had capital coming your way from your split from ASN, there was no staff to help you, you know you wanted to limit your outgoings with Me Media to make sure that you could use that capital to obviously open a store, buy the supplements, and resell, create accounts with wholesalers and whatnot, and so you actually put in the hard yards and you sat down, and you entered the product, seven hours a day, and that lasted for a bloody long time, until such time that you were able to start hiring people, and to be honest it must have been, how long was it before you actually hired your first person to work on the website?
Grant Mayo - Stupidly, it was six months.
- Oh it was six months, was it?
Grant Mayo - Six months, so, yeah look, from the get-go at Nutrition Warehouse, I was the salesperson, I was the bookkeeper, I taught myself how to do the books, I was the eCommerce manager, I was the web packer, you know back in Underwater, create a little room out the back of the store, I can still see it now with the little curtain, and I'd be behind there and someone would come in to the shop and I'd be like I'll be with you in a minute. And I couldn't get sick, you know what I mean?
- No.
Grant Mayo - It was impossible.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - And I was still living on the Gold Coast so I was commuting to Brisbane
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - And you know, realistically I just had a newborn baby.
- Oh far out.
Grant Mayo - Ruby who's now nine so it was a bit chaotic back then, but like it's, you have to do what you have to do. I had set aside so much cash to obviously make this venture work, and that's why I did not hire anyone until I knew that first store and that model was going to be successful.
- That's right 'cos the person in the first store actually helped with the online stuff didn't they?
Grant Mayo - [Grant] Yeah, Paul.
- Yeah, yes.
Grant Mayo - Paul Edmonton, I love him he only just left recently
- [Chris] Aw!
Grant Mayo - And Paul was with us for nearly a decade.
- Far out, yeah.
Grant Mayo - Yeah.
- Yeah, is he gone to create competition for you or?
Grant Mayo - Paul's out there doing his own thing and he's got a range of strength accessories.
- [Chris] Okay cool.
Grant Mayo - Yeah so he's good and
- Oh he's created his own brand?
Grant Mayo - Yeah he's got his own brand of accessories for the industry.
- [Chris] Awesome.
Grant Mayo - Now they're Australia's leading accessories.
- That's great.
Grant Mayo - So they'll be able to, obviously, Paul came in and saw the value in what we were doing, but still hang on there for a lot of years, and then decided to go out on his own, yeah.
- Yeah good on him.
Grant Mayo - [Grant] Yeah.
- So, bodybuilding. How has that actually set you up to have the correct frame of mind to be, I guess, the business owner that you are today? Because something that you said before we started was you know, people often ask you when are you gonna stop? When are you gonna take a back step, or when are you gonna say that enough's enough? What has the sport of bodybuilding done for your mental state and your drive?
Grant Mayo - Yeah, sure, good question. Look when I started bodybuilding I was around 20, I think it was my 21st birthday I got some dumbbells you know, I mean I was sort of interested in the gym around 21 but if you see photos of me I was like 50 kilo, I'm only short, I'm only 5 foot 7, so I was a really skinny, small kid. And a few friends of mine started going to the gym and like would you wanna come Mayo? And I'm like what would I go to the gym for man? Like back in those days, we're talking the 1990s, I mean early 1990's, you didn't have the privilege of having World Gyms, Anytime Fitness, Snap Fitness.
- Did you wear the leotard?
Grant Mayo - [Grant] I did.
- [Chris] Ha, the uni-tard.
Grant Mayo - I did, the little short ones with the stripes
- [Chris] Beautiful.
Grant Mayo - They were the go-to shorts.
- Aw beautiful.
Grant Mayo - [Grant] Quite embarrassing.
- There's photos out there.
Grant Mayo - I'm quite sure there is, it's quite embarrassing, but that's what everyone wore back then.
- [Chris] I know.
Grant Mayo - But look yeah, I was invited to the gym with a good few mates and I started going to Viking gym in Newcastle, where I originate from, and it's probably as big as this room, the gym, and there was a lot of sweaty guys and heavy weights, and at first I thought what the fuck am I doing in here? Like seriously, but before long, I actually loved how you know, my body started to respond. And before long, people started to say you should compete in bodybuilding and I'm like get the fuck outta here, I'm not getting up there in my little skinny underwear and flexing on stage, like seriously you know? But my body did respond quite quickly, and before long of course I'm on stage, with my little skinny underwear. And in my first comp in Wollongong, cos I wanted to escape and get away from Newcastle and not embarrass myself. I went down with a couple of great friends, and look I won the novice and the under 70's in my first comp, and everyone was like wow, who is this kid, you know what I mean, that's like I think I was 23 at the time, so I'd only been training two or three short years. And yeah that made me feel good about myself, and obviously I kept competing and thought well what else can I do if I can win that novice comp? But to answer your question, what that done for me is in the business is taught me that goal setting is the most important attribute of any business. Obviously you've gotta have a vision, you know what I mean, of what you want to create, you know? But then setting the goals along the way, and then actually actioning them goals, and not just having all those goals and sitting there going who's going to do this? Who's going to do that? So setting those small goals along the way, and my first goal was obviously one retail outlet, an online business, ensure that it is profitable, making money, make sure we're on the right track with the look and feel, the customers love it, and add a value that no one else is doing. Back in those days when we first opened in 2008 in our first store, a lot of supplement stores, including the one I used to own, were doing a pretty average job. To me they were creating, you know, putting up images of the bodybuilders and stereotypes, and really making it hard for mums, dads, and like-minded people to want to come in and even talk to those people. So I had a vision of turning it around. Although I was a bodybuilder and I was heavily muscled at the time, I wanted to create something completely different.
- I remember, I remember that conversation, because we chose the imagery for the front of the store, the front of the website, that reflected the everyday person and that wanted to get fit or look a little bit better or tone up as we used to call it.
Grant Mayo - Yeah, yeah.
- And I remember the imagery that was chosen that was plastered consistently across every store, and that helped invite those people in.
Grant Mayo - Yeah, absolutely. I think we were just trying to turn it on it's head, the whole industry. I think that back then it was really the foundation of the supplement industry growing in Australia, although stores had been around for you know, like Ager Street and so forth for like a decade, no one had really grown a chain of supplement stores, except for ASN with five, six stores.
- Yup.
Grant Mayo - You know so our goal from the beginning was obviously to make sure the business was going to work, y'know what I mean, and put those hard yards in, and that's exactly what we did for the first three or four years, we really kept our costs low, we opened up stores in areas we thought were going to obviously kick straight away. I guess when the business really took off was when we opened the Ashmore store on the Gold Coast, cos the first two stores were pretty much like every other supplement store in terms of size, so like 80 square metres. Now at first I didn't want to spend this huge enormous rent, I wanted to make sure the business was right, all that was called Nutrition Warehouse so my vision was always to have these big box retail, 200 squares minimum, to conjure up that same image, all the biggest brands, the best products, the advice, but we couldn't really do that straight away cos it just wasn't relevant to the money we had in the bank to actually do it. So we started small, like everyone does. And I still remember standing in front of Ashmore, it just celebrated it's ninth birthday last weekend.
- Yeah Right.
Grant Mayo - So we went down there and sort of reminisced about how I stood there and sort of went wow, nine years ago I stood here and looked at this store, and I went this is a big ass store, it was 300 square metres
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - And I'm like, what the hell am I doing? But my vision was to have these big box retail, to have a presence that everybody wanted to come in to look at.
- How risky did it feel making that decision to do Ashmore and warehouse stores?
Grant Mayo - It was life or death, realisitcally, if it didn't work it would have ruined me.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - It would have ruined the brand, it wouldn't work, I put everything into that, the last pennies basically.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - So when
- And that was a huge store, and that's where you transitioned all of your eCommerce, your pick and packing, you obviously had the space and you also have a bit of office space there as well.
Grant Mayo - Yeah so we turned that into head office realistically, and we cut the shop in half, we put a, well probably two-thirds I guess, made the shop like two-thirds and made the warehouse out the back, and we put a deck upstairs and put all the staff upstairs for the accounts and everything, finance. And that store really blossomed.
- It did.
Grant Mayo - And it became our number one store, even probably the number one store in the country within like three months.
- [Chris] Far out.
Grant Mayo - As we were setting up that store people would just, we done more sales in the first month of that store than the other two stores we had at the time combined.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - So we knew we were on a winner, and that might of, was starting to kick goals.
- Was there a sense of relief when that happened?
Grant Mayo - Absolutely, absolutely, every business owner would be like yes. But look you gotta go out there and take those risks if you wanna have great wins, and that's exactly what we did. That gave us the confidence to push forward and go okay this is working, you know, let's reset the goals.
- So how does it feel beyond that? What was the next sort of biggest risk you felt you were taking that maybe gave you that same sort of feeling, was it the warehouse purchase maybe?
Grant Mayo - The warehouse purchase was like five years ago, so we had about 25 stores by then. It was really just going, it was really like, just saying hey, we're gonna open five stores this year. You know, where are we gonna find them? And then the next year we'll open up seven, and the next year we'll open up eight, and last year we opened up 15 in one year.
- Holy cow.
Grant Mayo - Which
- So
Grant Mayo - Phenomenal effort from the whole team.
- What's the number now? What's the total?
Grant Mayo - We're at 66 stores today.
- Holy cow.
Grant Mayo - Yeah so.
- 66 sores, are you across every state now?
Grant Mayo - Yeah, yeah we're national now, so.
- Far out.
Grant Mayo - We're not in Tasmania, but.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Sorry Tasmania.
- Sorry, yeah.
Grant Mayo - One day we'll get there you know.
- Yeah, yeah.
Grant Mayo - Is that a state? Is Tasmania like?
- I think it's considered a territory actually, yeah.
Grant Mayo - So yeah we'll eventually get there, but yeah we're in every state, you know, and have been for quite some time. Again, when we set goals in the beginning it was like hey lets conquer Brisbane first, and the Gold Coast combined and we really didn't skip over to Sydney until about four years in, wanted to make sure the model was going to work in a cluster area rather than going hey let's spread ourselves thin, because the cost of sending someone to Perth, or Darwin or Adelaide etc didn't make sense to me.
- So in essence, starting in the smaller, I guess, suburbs, the suburbs, and being successful there, allowed you to refine your model, allowed you to get better at business, and if you could make it work in those places, then essentially why wouldn't they work in the higher populated areas? Is that kind of the theory?
Grant Mayo - Yeah, absolutely, that's the model we sat down and worked out and said hey, this is what we're going to do. Grow it in Brisbane, refine it, make sure it works, and then obviously when the time's right, roll it out to Sydney and Melbourne.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - And we got really lucky rolling it out to others in the state because we had so many amazing team members that we offered some really good packages to go hey Chris, why don't you move to Sydney and start Nutrition Warehouse in Sydney? Y'know what I mean, and that's what we did, you know.
- That's great.
Grant Mayo - Yeah, like we had some great team members, June McKillet moved to Sydney and start that, now we've got like 14 stores in Sydney. And the same in Melbourne, Rowan Philips went down to Melbourne and started there, and got 14 stores in Melbourne as well, so.
- A good team, you've had a great team then too.
Grant Mayo - Because of those team members, they really helped the brand grow in a state, it's a lot easier than going down and finding a brand new person, getting them to understand the vision, our values, our goals, and a lot harder for us to do that when we're a thousand kilometres away.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - So we got really lucky, or we hired the right people to make that leap of fate and help us grow the brand throughout Australia.
- So many questions came to my mind then, there was a flood of them, I actually didn't know which one to ask first, so you mentioned values, how important have values been in your company growth and culture?
Grant Mayo - Yeah definitely, look, I think values are everything for a company, you've got to have the right values when you're hiring people, they've gotta sit with your values in life, y'know what I mean? And a lot of our values for the company really come from those first initial 12-18 months of starting Nutrition Warehouse, you know, hard work, honesty, reliability, all these values that we have that we're looking for in you know, not just our teams, but our customers, and our brand partners, y'know what I mean? You know, one of our values is doing more with less, cos I grew up not with a silver spoon in my hand but you know obviously started the first company with nothing. I honestly didn't put one cent into that first company, I actually borrowed it from my business partner, cos I had no money, I had the idea but I had no money.
- You had the body though.
Grant Mayo - I had the body, and it's pretty face. So yeah, not grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth, I still today, even though the company's quite successful, still have that mentality to do more with less. Like if you go to our offices they're not shiny, brand new furniture and the warehouse or the support office is not painted with the Nutrition Warehouse or whatever. It's a building, it's functional, it's got desks, and we get in and we add value for the customers.
- So is that almost no ego? How do you
Grant Mayo - Ego's a killer, I mean there's a bit of ego here look at this.
- I know there is, but you've been able to laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously, especially on the Nutrition Warehouse journey. I remember you at ASN and to be honest you were far more, yeah more ego then. Nutrition Warehouse was a different ride for you and so, how has your, how have you kept your ego in check with regards to, is it constantly referring to those values? Is that how you've done that? I've got so many questions sorry.
Grant Mayo - Yeah, I love questions, love 'em, not that one but, look, we always want our team members to align with the values, we want our team members to understand values and know them off by heart. But look, when I was younger, when I think like for me personally, I can't speak for anyone else, bodybuilding had to be a little bit of ego, maniac driven, because bodybuilding is a sport where, it's unlike any other sport where you have to, it's a 365 day a year challenge, where you're waking up in the morning, on all day eating the right foods consistently, 6, 7 meals a day, you're training once a day, cardio once a day, you can't go out drinking, you're really pushing back your lifestyle for many years. So for a decade when I was bodybuilding from 20's to 30's I really, although I had great friends, I still didn't have a great lifestyle theoretically. I was realistically training, eating, sleeping, working, and repeat for a decade. You know I didn't go out, I didn't party, so you get very tunnel visioned, but that's what it takes I think to be a great athlete or a great champion you know, you really have to push forward and know exactly what you're going after and set goals and keep going. Now I wanted to be the best that I could be in bodybuilding and I'm really proud of myself that I achieved more than I ever thought I would so.
- I'll stop you there, that was a fantastic answer, 'cos I want to get on to the goal setting.
Grant Mayo - [Grant] Sure.
- Now goal setting is considered almost the be all and end all for curing depression. Very simple. Putting goals in place and actioning them. So have you ever experienced depression at all?
Grant Mayo - I probably experienced some with the breakup of my relationship with my first fiancee, and obviously happened to lose my daughter, not completely, but sharing my daughter and having limited time, you know, we've got this two year old child now I have to see her two nights a week instead of seven. So yeah I think whether you call it depression or whether it was painful, it's definitely a period of my life there where I was like you know, trying to create this great company and then there was this separation which personally affected me.
- And how did that affect work?
Grant Mayo - If you ask people at work it probably didn't. I was very good at like
- [Chris] Keeping the two separate?
Grant Mayo - Keeping the two separate and going hey, I think my mindset back then was, hey this has happened, it's out of my control, if I let it affect me at work, I could lose this business, and then I'm really back to square one again, you know. But, I think probably about a three or four month period that I was sort of like down and out.
- So did you apply goal setting in that, in your personal life as well around that?
Grant Mayo - That's a good question I mean you're talking seven years ago.
- Sorry, sorry.
Grant Mayo - That's okay, no no.
- It's a hard question to answer.
Grant Mayo - I honestly would be lying if I tried to answer that one,
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Cos I'm not too sure. I know that I came out of it and obviously
- Now you've got a great relationship with your daughter.
Grant Mayo - Yeah.
- And now you have a new relationship.
Grant Mayo - A great, new, beautiful relationship, I've got a one year old little boy named Max.
- 15 months though.
Grant Mayo - 15 months, 14 or 15, I'm gonna get in trouble for that one he's really crazy man, so Max Mayo, yeah.
- And we said earlier if you could have called him Mass Mayo you would've.
Grant Mayo - [Grant] I would've called him Max Mass Mayo. Because my nickname's Mass.
- Mass.
Grant Mayo - Cos I'm only short, you know back in the bodybuilding days my nickname was Mass, and my Instagram is MassMayo, so I've kept that.
- Whoa, whoa, you couldn't give him Mass then mate, you had to call him Max.
Grant Mayo - Well this is true, and a lot of people from the old days still call me Mass, they'll call me, hey Mass what are you doing? Which I still like, I still like that.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - But yeah look, goal setting's very important throughout your life whether it's personal aspirations, business, whatever you want to do in life, you gotta have a plan.
- Is it, what are your goal sets, are they three months, are they seven days?
Grant Mayo - Quarterly.
- Quarterly goals?
Grant Mayo - Yeah we have a yearly one, and then we try hit 'em quarterly.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Y'know what I mean. But normally we sit down and work out how many stores we wanna open and try and push the boundaries. You know, like I have found over the years that you gotta have some audacious goal too, y'know what I mean?
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Like I could sit here today we're gonna open up 30 stores this year, and everyone would go you're crazy.
- I remember you saying 50 stores. I remember you saying 50 stores.
Grant Mayo - [Grant] Correct, yeah.
- And I honestly went whoa, okay if anyone, like I actually believed you, I thought if anyone could do it you can, I just didn't know how long it was going to take.
Grant Mayo - Neither did I. Neither did I. But I think if you want to set a goal like I could say today hey we're gonna open up 30 stores this year and my whole team would go you're fucking crazy, but then you've got to hire the resources to make that happen. Now if I sit here and go ten stores, we can do that quite easily.
- So how does this, how does this sort of quote, I don't know if I'm, I'm definitely not getting this right and I don't even know where it comes from but how does this quite resonate with you? We overestimate what we can get done in a day, but we underestimate what we can get done in a year.
Grant Mayo - Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it needs a long time, you can achieve the luck, but if you don't have the goals and if you're not following the, you know, my role is to make sure to set the goals within certain teams, whether it's eCommerce or chain management, or customer service and make sure that they're getting done.
- And how often are you reviewing those goals?
Grant Mayo - Well it depends, it's different timelines on different goals but.
- Weekly?
Grant Mayo - We have weekly huddles each week. We sit down, refine everything. What are we doing, how are we going? In business, everything seems so beautiful on the top, but underneath, you know it's the old saying with the duck underneath, and that's the same as Nutrition Warehouse, because you know we've got eCommerce for instance, you know like we're trying to achieve these objectives, and then there's server issues. There's been a lot of server issues lately this year.
- Oh far out.
Grant Mayo - And yeah, it can take two weeks out of our time to fix and change servers and that puts everything back and that has to be taken into account you know, I can't go in there going why isn't this done? Oh well, because we've done this.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - You know so you have to obviously change the goals to suit external issues out of your control you know. But yeah we try and push, we wouldn't have got to where we are now in ten years without setting strong goals, we wouldn't have got there without the team, hiring the right people.
- Absolutely.
Grant Mayo - The right team members.
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Because also, although I'm the founder and the CEO, if it's not for the team, we wouldn't be anywhere.
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Now you gotta hire the amazing people.
- [Chris] Yeah.
Grant Mayo - I'm always one of those people like get the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus,
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Which is easier said than done.
- Is that a Jim Collin's book?
Grant Mayo - That is from Good to Great.
- Good to Great, yeah.
Grant Mayo - Yeah, building a world class company.
- Yeah, yeah yeah.
Grant Mayo - And yeah it's a true terminology, because the best people will make the best company, the worst people will make the worst company. So you gotta decide which ones are good and which ones are bad. I've always a saying to my team leaders, if we were closed tomorrow and we opened up a new company, who would you put on the bus, and who would you leave off the bus?
- Right yeah.
Grant Mayo - And the people who you leave off the bus, work out now how we can move them on in a professional manner.
- Free up their future.
Grant Mayo - Yeah, because it's best for them as well.
- Absolutely.
Grant Mayo - If they don't have a long term, if we cant't see them working out in the long term at Nutrition Warehouse, we wanna help them get a new role that suits them.
- That's right.
Grant Mayo - You know we might have hired the wrong person.
- No.
Grant Mayo - Sorry, the wrong person for the role.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - So it could be on us, it may not be their fault.
- No, exactly.
Grant Mayo - And we've done that before.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - So you gotta see both sides of the business.
- It's best for everyone.
Grant Mayo - It's best for everybody.
- Yeah. So one last question, you may not be able to answer this.
Grant Mayo - [Grant] Sure.
- What do you think has been the, maybe the best thing you've done in marketing for your business?
Grant Mayo - Hired Me Media.
- You're a naughty boy.
Grant Mayo - [Grant] Well.
- I know that's not, hasn't been your role for some time because like you said as you've grown you've had to hire people, hired agencies, all the rest of that so.
Grant Mayo - I think, I enjoy the marketing side of it more now than I ever have.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - Because you know, marketing is wonderful where you can actually do something today and see results in minutes.
- Yeah.
Grant Mayo - You know where in traditional marketing, you throw it out there and go, did that work? Oh we can't measure that. So look, I think in Nutrition Warehouse, we've got the brand Nutrition Warehouse, but integrating to that brand we want to create different things to add value for our customers, so we've created the 60 day body challenge, which is a challenge to help anybody that doesn't understand supplements, the mums and dads, you know, anyone, ladies that have been pregnant who want to get their body back, or you've just had a family, you haven't trained for ten years, and you're like, hey now it's my time.
- Is 60 days too short a period for people?
Grant Mayo - Well no, because
- Or is it too long?
Grant Mayo - If you go to 60daybody.com.au, you'll see the before and afters, and there's some amazing ones, like sensational efforts.
- But is that almost expecting results overnight? Like 60 days, that's pretty short a period of time.
Grant Mayo - We've had people lose 20 or 30 kilo, the transformations are amazing, go there and have a look, because we give them everything. We give them the plans, we give them the training, we give them the supplements, and it's free, not the supplements. They can buy the supplements, but everything else is free, everyone else is charging so we decided to give back to the community and offer something to help other people.
- Beautiful.
Grant Mayo - So we have the 60 day body, we have the supplement awards throughout the year which obviously helps people choose the best supplements voted by
- The public.
Grant Mayo - The public, yeah the customers who use those supplements. It's an unbiased marketing.
- Yeah an unbiased review yeah, it's great.
Grant Mayo - Yeah review, you can see that on our website too, and along the way we've created all these different things that add a lot of value for the customer so I think that's probably our best wins, we're not just a supplement company sitting here going hey buy this, you know, we're trying to add value
- Absolutely.
Grant Mayo - To our customers along the way, which we love to do.
- Going above and beyond your actual product, you have to have this service, and you have to have the advice, and the advice has actually been there from day one as part of your biggest brands, warehouse prices and best advice.
Grant Mayo - Our mission is to help others achieve their own individual health and fitness goals, it's that simple. We wanna help others achieve their goal. Whether it's bodybuilding, swimming, karate, UFC fighting, how are you gonna get better at that, and train, recover, or look a certain way? That's really what we're about.
- Yeah
Grant Mayo - And we feel like we've achieved that.
