E220: Nick Preston

Richard Hill [00:00:51]:
Hi, I'm Richard Hill. We welcome Back to the Ecommerc1 podcast. Today I'm joined by Nick Preston, the man behind one of the most recognizable brands in the UK online nutrition market, Muscle food. This episode isn't a surface level growth story. It's a raw, honest account of what really happens when a fast scaling e commerce business breaks, gets mismanaged, is then brought back from the brink, literally days from collapse. Nick takes us on the inside. Full journey from building category defining products like protein pizza, to being forced out of the business, to getting a phone call that gave him less than 20, 24 hours to decide whether muscle Food lived or died. We talk about leadership under pressure, making brutal decisions at speed, rebuilding trust with teams and suppliers and why.

Richard Hill [00:01:35]:
Sometimes growth means throwing caution to the wind and knowing exactly why you're doing it. This is a masterclass in resilience, e commerce leadership and making calls when there's no safety net. Stick around. This one goes deep. Now let's get into it. Hi, Nick and welcome to the Ecom at One podcast. How you doing?

Nick Preston [00:01:55]:
Very good, Richard, thank you. Thanks for having me along.

Richard Hill [00:01:58]:
No problem. No problem at all. I think before we get into the nitty gritty of all things muscle food, I think it'd be great for you to introduce yourself to our listeners and how you got into the world of e commerce and selling via muscle food online.

Nick Preston [00:02:09]:
Still working it out myself, Richard. So I've been involved on and off with muscle food since 2014, since the brand started, really. It was founded by who I consider to be an incredibly talented Marketeer, a gentleman called Darren Beale, who we our paths crossed by a mutual friend. I had a business which was creating products for the sports nutrition industry, predominantly private label products. And I'd seen this business emerging called Muscle Feedback. And I saw it on social media at the time, on Facebook, and I wanted to reach out to them. So I was talking to another business at the time called Doctor's Axe, a guy called Ray Brillis. And Ray said that the products we were offering were exactly for Ray and Dr.

Nick Preston [00:02:58]:
Zach's the brand, but they'd be perfect for this company called Muscle Food, which carried on getting mentioned. So we got introduced into Must Food. Darren Beal came in to the office, looked at his products, pretty much said yes to every product we had at the time. And the products were ranging from, you know, protein bars to protein crisps, etc. And within 48 hours we'd received a significant order from Muscle Food. And I felt this is a business moving at pace. I thought the marketing at the time was disruptive. It was light years ahead of what anybody else was doing.

Nick Preston [00:03:31]:
They were pushing boundaries beyond boundaries. They were just making anything happen what they wanted to. So conversations progressed with Darren and through the course of back end of 2014 through 2015, you could say kept us busy. We created, developed and rolled out over 130 products for muscle Food. The business was going through a phenomenal growth phase, faster than any ecom business I'd seen at the time. And I wanted to be part of that more and more. So we pretty much assigned our business Brand Nutrition to be Muscle Foods. Creator of products.

Nick Preston [00:04:05]:
Yeah. So with that came some pretty juicy products. What I'm now we're going to talk about. I was trying to diet back in 2015. Like most people, I ordered a Domino's pizza, I tried to strip it back as much as I could and got a Frisbee delivered to the door. So I thought, this is no good. So I just sat there and thought, how do I create a protein pizza? You know, we, we were pushing boundaries and I had a. I had a customer there in Muscle Food and Darren, who could give it the audience it warranted.

Nick Preston [00:04:32]:
Um, so we created a pizza. We created two pizzas and all of a sudden it just blew up. Yeah. In excess 700,000 pizza sold online alone in the first year. We copied the whole Domino's range and we were just doing, we did whatever we wanted. And we both realized very early on that the future of nutrition was more than just powders and bars. Yeah, I mean, they create A great space and there's businesses which specialize in that. But Must Food wanted to do things different.

Nick Preston [00:05:03]:
So the perception was born and the image was born early on. Let's take dirty foods and let's make them clean. That gave us license to cause carnage. So it was just brilliant.

Richard Hill [00:05:12]:
Wow.

Nick Preston [00:05:13]:
So. So 10, 11, 12 years on now, you know, I've become a part of Muscle Food over the last 10 years permanently. So I moved in in 2016 as commercial director and progressed from there. Really.

Richard Hill [00:05:26]:
So you literally met your partner then and you were creating. You were the brat, you were the brand behind Muscle Food that were creating the group that was creating the products for them and then obviously merged with them.

Nick Preston [00:05:38]:
Yeah. When. When you had a team, what Must Food ad, whether it were trading, whether it marketing, whether it was how they were portraying the products which we were bringing to life, they. They just took it to a different level. Yeah, it was perfect. Match made in heaven to this day. And, you know, I'm sure Darren will watch this podcast shortly, but he's by far the best marketeer I've ever, ever come across. Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:06:00]:
So some.

Richard Hill [00:06:01]:
So quite a journey then. A good. A good. A good decade plus at the sort of forefront of innovative products.

Nick Preston [00:06:08]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:06:09]:
The protein pizza sort of says it all, really. We'll dive into some of the products. Yeah. But obviously you. You left the company, I believe, in 2024, before then.

Nick Preston [00:06:18]:
I left in 2021, December, the first time around.

Richard Hill [00:06:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. So you left, came back, sold and then. And then bought the company back in 2025.

Nick Preston [00:06:29]:
Yeah, I. I was never the owner of Muscle Food. I have to make this clear because people give me so much credit thinking I created Muscle Food. So I worked my way through Muscle Food, I said, as part of the leadership team, along alongside Darren and when. Yeah. If we have a look at. Let's work backwards. So in 2024, I think it's been well documented that I left Muscle Food.

Nick Preston [00:06:51]:
It doesn't sit well with me. So being a typical Yorkshire lad, I like to be honest, direct and yeah, I. I never quit on the business. And I feel it's important to get that message out there that I didn't quit on the business, I didn't quit on my team, I didn't need it to step away. The shareholders got rid of me. So simple as that. They wanted to take the business in a different direction. I felt at the time they made some cock and bull story up together.

Richard Hill [00:07:16]:
So this wasn't. This was at the time, new leadership.

Nick Preston [00:07:18]:
That had been brought in so, yeah, so in September 2024, the last time I left the business, I was literally pulled into a meeting. I had some accusations labeled against me, which was comical and farcical. And yeah, I left that day on the 23rd of September without being able to say, you know, so long to. To the team. It was announcement to the next day to say that I'd stepped aside for family reasons. I don't I behind things like that. No. So, yeah, for, for the story and to get the story straight, I was moved out.

Nick Preston [00:07:52]:
I believe the reasons were that they wanted to shrink the business into profit. A business such as muscle foods and nature with the fixed costs in the business, the direction it was moving, moving in the momentum we were gaining, there was no need to do that. And I think, you know, karma's got a place and coming back in July, think karma was served.

Richard Hill [00:08:12]:
So the true story then, in reality, of you getting exited from the business? Yeah, yeah, that's right. And then not so long after you then going back and tell us the story.

Nick Preston [00:08:28]:
Well, I was having a sabbatical, so my daughter's got to know my name. Wanted to do this strange bloat was knocking around. Oh, it's your dad. So we had a couple of holidays when I left in September 2024, really enjoyed it. I had so many years going on holiday and working and working the time zones, which I've said many a time, but to go away and actually kick back and relax and take stock of what's happened, take stock of what we've done, what we've achieved, what we could have done better. And I came back in January 2025 and I wanted to understand what I could do and I felt, given my experience, whether it be commercial E commerce, I felt then that maybe I can have a look at consulting and supporting growing and emerging businesses. I take a lot of satisfaction I've had been in businesses which have seen rapid growth businesses what I've seen challenges. So I felt, you know, perhaps as a position, dropped a little post on LinkedIn, got a lot of, like a lot of people reaching out to me and went from thinking this would be nice two or three, three days a week to right, I need a team.

Nick Preston [00:09:35]:
So very quickly we picked up some consulting contracts that was running through until May, June. And then the driving passion was to move back in sports nutrition and I started looking at what we could do in terms of the GLP1 space. I've lost significant weight myself whilst maintaining a fitness regime, going to the gym, eating healthy. So I wanted to look at what the opportunities were in that market space. I didn't think it was a passing trend. I could see as we sit here today, how the emerging products are coming, coming to fruition, the retailers now on it and everybody. So I started creating products around that. Then on the 17th of July, I was driving to Hull to pick a car up for my wife and I received a phone call from one of the shareholders, the former owners, who.

Richard Hill [00:10:31]:
So at the time were owners at.

Nick Preston [00:10:33]:
That point, the owners phoned me up on 12 o' clock or 11, half past 11am so you saw the number.

Richard Hill [00:10:39]:
Coming through and you're like, what's going on here?

Nick Preston [00:10:41]:
I'd actually, I'd reached out to him a couple of weeks before because I was looking at potentially taking their ready meal business off them. Prep pots. Yeah. And I felt, to be honest, I could do a better job than the people who I'd left behind. The subscription channel had half since I'd gone. Yeah. So I felt it'd be a shame if something of that, that nature, which had grown so quick, we took it from 0 to 10 million. The first year was just to vanish.

Nick Preston [00:11:07]:
So I reached out. I. I know quite a few ready meal suppliers. I wanted to integrate the GLP1 market into that, into that business and really grow the subscription side. So a couple of weeks have passed and I received a phone call from one of the shareholders who said, good to talk to you, Nick. I thought, this is positive, very amicable. We're not going to offer you prep pots, but would you like to take muscle food on? So the wife gave, you know, sometimes.

Richard Hill [00:11:34]:
Did you pull over at that point?

Nick Preston [00:11:36]:
Oh, no, I was still driving. But, you know, sometimes when you feel this burning sensation on your head, and that was the wife looking at me. You know, we've been together 20 years, so she doesn't have to say anything. I can just look at her eyes and I think she knew what I was going to say. So I went through the formal, bearing in mind this is half past 11am, driving to Hull and the questions just being asked, do you want muscle food? Now I'm working out in my head how much. So I went through the usual things, as you would when you're looking at the business. I thanked the director for the phone call, suggested that I get my finance guys to nip down. We'll do some due diligence.

Nick Preston [00:12:13]:
I knew it would be a time constraint given the phone call, so I said, I need a couple of weeks due dil. In any business, you can go 6, 8, 12 weeks. But I know the business, so I thought, let's kick for touch, let's look for two weeks and then I'll carry out appropriate due diligence. The response was no, we need to know immediately from you and if you don't take muscle food on, it will close at 4 o' clock on the 18th of July. So I know we talked about that. I'd concluded a deal in three days. I just wanted it believable for people, the actual deal, you know, that day transpired that I drove through to Hull, picked a car up, drove by, jumped on a phone call, worked until midnight, one o' clock in the morning, set off half past four the following morning to drive down south, you know, on the borders of London, sign a deal for four hours, negotiating a deal from half seven in the morning till just before lunchtime, shook hands, drove back up the A1 and was getting asked if I'd signed the contract before I got there.

Richard Hill [00:13:18]:
They were pretty keen.

Nick Preston [00:13:19]:
Pretty keen, yeah. So we signed the deal at 5:00 on. On the 18th of July. So less than 24 hours. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:13:27]:
Can you share the sort of. Obviously, I think a lot of people were listening, you know, where they're looking at maybe acquiring, adding businesses to their portfolio or starting from an acquisition.

Nick Preston [00:13:36]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard Hill [00:13:37]:
You know, obviously without sharing what you, you know, share what you can, but obviously they rang you. You know, it's basically, we're going to be, you know, four o' clock tomorrow, you know, we're going to be shutting the doors.

Nick Preston [00:13:46]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:13:47]:
You know, you know, no doubt there's a lot of people there that, you know, you probably spent 10 years with, you know, so there's that ringing in your ears trying to say, or can I save this business? I want. It's. It's sort of part of me, I guess, you know, 10 plus years. But at the same respect, there's this commercial. So there's a balance there. Your heart's saying, yes, I want this, but then commercially, you've got to get the right deal.

Nick Preston [00:14:07]:
So everything told me. So there'd been talks. So I have a close group of people I've worked with over many years, some incredibly talented people, whether it be commercial, whether it be E Commerce, whether it be operational. So them, including my family, when it had been mooted before, when I left, I always said that, you know, the owners, the, you know, could have the keys, but it always be my house. Yeah. And I said that toy in cheek. Yeah. When, when the reality smacks you in the face of what do you do, do you like this business? What you care so much about and has given you so much in life, do you simply let that go or do you literally put everything on the line when you don't have to? You don't owe anybody anything out of the business.

Nick Preston [00:14:57]:
I'd given my Ultimate Food multiple times. You just let a business what so many. And I don't just talk about people who's worked there, who's built the reputations and gone on to amazing things. I talk about the consumers, I talk about the people who's supported Mustafa Food, stood by Muscle Food for years now. For an E commerce brand to say that we've got people who shop with us for 10 years plus, that's insane. That's loyalty. So you can, you can consider if anybody else is looking at doing it, just don't do it. So do, do, just don't.

Richard Hill [00:15:29]:
So don't do what Nick says.

Nick Preston [00:15:31]:
Do it proper. Yeah. Don't do what I did, for God's sake. But do it proper. Yeah. So if anybody's looking at scaling through growth, do your due diligence. Yeah. Know your market, know your sector.

Nick Preston [00:15:42]:
I was at a advantage because I know most food inside out. Yeah. And when I'd left Muscle Food in September 2024, I probably knew more than the board I'd left behind about how the business was functioning and running, operating. I could see it. I could see the adverts vanishing from social media.

Richard Hill [00:15:57]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:15:58]:
I already knew that the agenda was to try and shrink the business back into growth.

Richard Hill [00:16:01]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:16:02]:
And I already knew the plans that part of that would be, they'd see as cutting marketing budget. Well, you might as well shut the doors. Yeah. Because it was a plan which I said at the time when I was in the business, it wouldn't work. It was a plan which didn't work. And I think the results of that is that I'm now back in Muscle Food.

Richard Hill [00:16:18]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:16:19]:
So everything I said was accurate. Yeah. I think, you know, Muscle Food was so close to making it. When I. When I came back in 2022, the business was losing just under £700,000amonth. So. And that's another story of what happened as to why I came back that time. But the business was on its knees, it was broken.

Nick Preston [00:16:39]:
We had 215 staff. They tried to scale it way too fast. They had plans of grandeur which Muscle Food never needed. Yeah. And then we took a significant amount of cost out of the business. And when I left in September 20, September 24, I thought we'd done a good job.

Richard Hill [00:16:57]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:16:57]:
We've gone from 654 losses per month down to sub 100,000. The, the business plan, the trajectory, everything we'd set up was going to put the business back into profit for January 2025.

Richard Hill [00:17:09]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:17:11]:
I knew what would happen if they were taking me out. A perception of a high cost. If they're taking some incredibly talented people out of that business who were also moving in the right direction and they replace it with people who really don't understand E Commerce division.

Richard Hill [00:17:24]:
They don't have their direction. The drive experience.

Nick Preston [00:17:26]:
You might. Yeah, it's crazy. It's like, no disrespect to Milkman, you ask a Milton to build an house, you're about as good as that. Yeah, yeah. The team what took over, just like I've said, they tried to shrink it. It failed.

Richard Hill [00:17:38]:
So you've taken a lot of advice at this point. I mean, obviously it's going back to the, the car moment. 24 hours. You basically got these trusted advisors that you have, that you've, that you've drawn on and work with over the building up these contacts, whether it's in marketing, operations, finance, pretty much the old muscle.

Nick Preston [00:17:54]:
Food board, to be honest. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:17:56]:
Getting the band back together, Literally.

Nick Preston [00:17:58]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:17:58]:
And they've all sort of said, basically, short version, do it.

Nick Preston [00:18:01]:
No, they actually said, don't do it. So they do it. They said, what are you doing it for? So why? Yeah, well, the I, I always, whether it's a meeting, whether it's a challenge, I always ask the question and it's good for anybody in business or if you're building a business, leading a business, you've always got to be able to answer the why.

Richard Hill [00:18:18]:
I think that is the one, isn't it? I have a lot of conversations with business owners, say similar age to us, where they could, could and have exited.

Nick Preston [00:18:25]:
Yep.

Richard Hill [00:18:25]:
But then they think, okay, I've exited. We've got the boat, we've got the holidays. We talked about boats, or boats, maybe we didn't talk about boats, but boats, holidays, family year down the line, there's that itch that needs a little scratch. You enjoy what you do. It's like, what are you gonna do?

Nick Preston [00:18:45]:
I, I, it's personal.

Richard Hill [00:18:49]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:18:49]:
I want to prove people wrong. So if it's personal towards me, I've been written off that many times. So everything I've got in life, I've had to fight for. Yeah. Hard. Yeah. I've worked for PE who's like, put me to one side. I've worked for private investors who lost faith.

Nick Preston [00:19:09]:
People have lost faith in this business. People have lost face in the people in the business. And when you break it down, a lot of it it's their own fault.

Richard Hill [00:19:18]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:19:19]:
So enforcing and reinforcing the wrong plans time and time again. Well, yeah, I, I say when you sit as not so much an owner of a business, but when you say a CEO within a business, you're akin to a football manager. Right. And if you produce those results, then you're okay. But you forever buying time and it's like a merry go round. Yeah. Right. Nothing's forever, but you just like to think that you get up in the morning, you give it your best and it'll be recognized.

Nick Preston [00:19:44]:
But equally for a football manager to get a long, long time and to persevere and to build something, they've got to be listened to.

Richard Hill [00:19:54]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:19:55]:
So. And they've got to be trusted. So I've had it where I've not been listened to originally when I took over muscle food in 2019 and left in 2021. And I've had it where I think the last owners lost trust in me. Yeah. So, and so it's. I, I use sports analogies all the time. So.

Richard Hill [00:20:13]:
So you're back, you're back at the helm. You know, step me through that first week or two and some of the changes you made to sort of turn, start to turn things around, it was carnage.

Nick Preston [00:20:23]:
So absolute carnage. So we signed the deal, bearing in mind what a time to sign a deal on a Friday. That's what you can do over the weekend. Right. What are you going to do? I had a bottle of wine, but we signed the deal. It closed the play on the Friday, on the 18th. I'd already, if you think from the previous afternoon and evening, I'd already start talking to people. My team.

Nick Preston [00:20:47]:
Yeah. And.

Richard Hill [00:20:49]:
But some of these people within Muscle Food and some of them are not, I guess a bit of a mixture or most of them have been exited maybe. Or not part of the group at the moment.

Nick Preston [00:20:57]:
Yeah. So they were, they were out. Yeah. But obviously the minute that we were agreeing the deal, we could get access in certain things, the financial performance of the business. So while we're waiting to sign Rahul, who's an incredibly talented cfo. Yeah. He, he gets my brain when we're making plans. He moves at pace we call fag packet planning.

Nick Preston [00:21:19]:
You know, when you've got sub 24 hours.

Richard Hill [00:21:21]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:21:21]:
You have to go on gut feeling experience. And we, he, he moved incredibly quickly to get an understanding of where the business was, where we were financially. Because what could I do over the course of the weekend? Yeah. So the guys who live all over the country traveled up to Nottingham on the Sunday. We encamped in the Hilton Hotel just around the corner from the office on this Sunday evening. We put together a plan and then suddenly I've got my CFO back. I've got Eddie O'Reilly who's worked with me 15 years in various businesses, also my father in law. So makes in conversations interesting sometime.

Nick Preston [00:21:57]:
Right. But Eddie looks after Christmas dinner's fun.

Richard Hill [00:22:00]:
At your house then.

Nick Preston [00:22:01]:
Oh, Sunday dinner's fun. We don't, we never usually get to Christmas, so. But we look, we looked at, you know, Eddie on the commercial and operational side, a guy called Dominic Farrelly who, who was in Muscle Food before me. He was their day dot. Yeah. I call him the Oracle because he knows every skew for buying. So Don came in as buying. Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:22:20]:
And then a lady who I've got with me who's worked on and off with us over the years, Kim a lot. She was again one of the traders and one of the, the guys who was in Muscle Food through its explosive growth. So we'd all been working on different projects. Yeah. So when the conversation came it was like, guys, are we, are we doing it? And they said no. And then I think Kim was incredibly encouraging about it. My father in law was laid on a beach on holiday and I didn't tell him until afterwards that we'd bought Muscle Foodie's holiday.

Richard Hill [00:22:49]:
Yeah, it's crazy.

Nick Preston [00:22:52]:
So it literally happened like that. So we encamped into the hotel on the Sunday tea time, put a plan in place, we had an understanding where the cash was and we walked in on Monday morning. It was pre arranged that the previous managing director and you go and have trust as well, you know, the previous managing director did a stand up to the business. He left and then I walked in.

Richard Hill [00:23:15]:
So stand up to the team.

Nick Preston [00:23:16]:
Yeah, stand up to the team. Yeah. Whether it be on teams, whether whoever was in the office, he asked for every in the office. He went out one door, I came bounding up the stairs. In the other door you could hear a pin drop.

Richard Hill [00:23:27]:
So the majority of those people weren't expecting you to come up the stairs or.

Nick Preston [00:23:31]:
It was fearful. Yeah, it was fearful. Don't forget some of those guys who were still there when I left had been told I'd left for family reasons. They thought I'd quit on the business.

Richard Hill [00:23:39]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:23:39]:
So quickly unraveled that that was the first Thing I told you addressed that.

Richard Hill [00:23:43]:
Straight out of the game, guys.

Nick Preston [00:23:45]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:23:45]:
This is what happened.

Nick Preston [00:23:46]:
Yeah. Yeah, I told them. I was honest with them, you know, never quit on you. So I'm expecting now it's a new start.

Richard Hill [00:23:52]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:23:53]:
Give me a chance. Don't quit on me.

Richard Hill [00:23:55]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:23:56]:
And I think it was. It was a difficult first 72 hours. You know, it was. Everybody was quiet. They were fearful that, you know, they didn't know what direction. No, they didn't know. They didn't know.

Richard Hill [00:24:10]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:24:10]:
If you've never walked into that situation. Yeah, it's a horrible situation. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:24:15]:
So obviously they could be thinking all sorts of. Is their job stafe as much as my face not fit? You know, some of them would have worked with you, some of them haven't worked with you.

Nick Preston [00:24:22]:
What have I said about Nick?

Richard Hill [00:24:23]:
He's a nightmare.

Nick Preston [00:24:24]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:24:25]:
This Nick guy, everyone's been slagging off for the last two years. Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:24:27]:
My glass door is amazing. So. Yeah. Unbelievable. No, don't. So, but yeah, people who didn't know me, they would be as fearful as the guys who were still there. So we had to win trust, you know, number one point.

Richard Hill [00:24:41]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:24:41]:
Trust.

Richard Hill [00:24:42]:
So trust a couple of others.

Nick Preston [00:24:44]:
I. I knew obviously in the short time I had and I'd seen things and heard things from in the business building up, I knew that customer service was carnage. Yeah. I knew that for some reason that shrunk the CS team down to two people. Tickets were like five and six days before a first response. So. Talk about reputational damage. I'd actually been doing some consultancy work for a call center called Contact Web down in Banbury.

Nick Preston [00:25:11]:
It was a new business just starting up and they felt that my experience could help them. So Tom Horn became. It was already close, but it came even closer. So he dropped everything. He sent a team up of people on the Monday. So I took over on the Monday morning. By Monday lunchtime, we had a team of people coming in from Contact Web who were CS specialists. Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:25:32]:
And we had bums on seats for Tuesday morning. They didn't know our systems. So we use people within our business who knew the systems.

Richard Hill [00:25:39]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:25:40]:
And they just dropped in. And within. Within seven days, we were just making progress. We got first ticket response time down to sub 30 minutes. Yeah. So that was the number one thing. Yeah. The second thing I did was looking at the trading patterns of the business and moving into marketing, moving into e commerce.

Nick Preston [00:26:00]:
I could see the business was dying and it died from January 2025. And when you look one glaring thing Stood out to me. If you think sports nutrition, when's the busiest time of your year? Or January, we call it fishing season. January, February, March. Right. That is when you can really make a difference. So I looked at the new customer numbers and I thought I was looking at August, which is our quietest time. Did not brought in hardly any new customers.

Nick Preston [00:26:26]:
And therefore if you don't get your new customers in January, what's gonna happen? February, March, April. By the time you get to July, when I took the business on, you've choked your business.

Richard Hill [00:26:34]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:26:35]:
So I, I looked, I spoke to the marketing guys who we had and the paid social guys who we had in the business and apparently they'd not been targeting new customers through the filters on Meta. Yeah. So we had to get that moving. So I opened the budgets up, I went aggressive, rightly or wrongly, I threw caution to the wind on CPAs. I had to get pulse back into the business. So I went very aggressive. We opened the filters up, we opened the jets up on marketing spend and we start to acquire new customers. I knew that that wasn't most sensible thing to do in terms of, from a finance perspective because we're going to impact pnl.

Richard Hill [00:27:10]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:27:11]:
But I knew without it the longer term we'd suffer. So we started acquiring new customers. We then had to look at the content. I wasn't happy with the marketing content.

Richard Hill [00:27:20]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:27:21]:
The business had been pretty much turned into an online butcher. I didn't like the products, I didn't like the content, I didn't like how we were being portrayed across social media. If we were called Bob's Butchers, it had been awesome. But with muscle food.

Richard Hill [00:27:34]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:27:35]:
Right. So I had to get rid of the stigma of we're an online butcher.

Richard Hill [00:27:39]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:27:39]:
We're proud of the meat we sell, we're proud of the, the meat hampers we do. It's a vast amount of our business. But what we wanted to do is to say, look, we want healthier living for all. That's what, that's the mantra of the business. That's what we hide behind. So you can buy incredibly good quality, reasonably priced lean meat hampers.

Richard Hill [00:27:57]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:27:58]:
Also buy your bars, buy your ready meals from us. Yeah. I was starting to see, honestly some of the stuff I saw, it was just insane. So we did a D list. We got some new creative and new marketing spun up.

Richard Hill [00:28:11]:
Did you drop quite a few products at that point then as well?

Nick Preston [00:28:13]:
Oh, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, yeah. So it was just, you know, we, we delisted a hell of a lot of products Some of the products were just a joke.

Richard Hill [00:28:21]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:28:21]:
You know, just so if you think about it, we've opened the marketing up, we're creating new content, we're repositioning the messaging.

Richard Hill [00:28:28]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:28:29]:
We're getting visual again onto social media. Yeah. And then we sat and waited, but, you know, only me. Buy a business in our industry sector, in the worst month of the year, everyone's on holiday. Who wants to diet in August?

Richard Hill [00:28:41]:
Right, so let's rewind a second then. So you've gone in there, you've sort of stood there and gone, hey guys, I'm back. Sort of thing. It's like, oh my God.

Nick Preston [00:28:49]:
Like you standard.

Richard Hill [00:28:49]:
It's like, oh, yeah, Phil Mitchell's back. Or maybe not film it.

Nick Preston [00:28:54]:
Chill.

Richard Hill [00:28:54]:
B. I'm trying to think. I don't watch it so I can't. But you're back. And obviously like, but the, the key message there, I'm back, this is the facts and I want to build trust review. And we're going to, we're going to go again and we're going to build and I'm bringing in some of the old team, the old crew. That was a trusted formula back in the day sort of thing, obviously. And, but the business and the, the market isn't what it was.

Richard Hill [00:29:15]:
You know, the business, the, the industry is very different to, you know, even 12 months ago. But definitely over the, the journey I've. You've had there obviously a lot of change, a lot of new players, perception and everything very, very different. So you've had a few challenges to sort out straight away. So customer service been the, been the.

Nick Preston [00:29:32]:
Big one, customer service, massive marketing, the.

Richard Hill [00:29:34]:
Other one and then really dial up the acquisition, knowing there's a cost, it's going to hit the balance sheet in the short term, but knowing that we're building a customer base and then with the, with the better customer service, the better reputation, the better visual on socials, knowing. And this is what we'll come to, the bet, I guess, is that then that acquisition will turn into lifetime value and you know, and repeat business subscription. So now sort of fast forward to today.

Nick Preston [00:30:00]:
How is that attention? So look, there's no quick way of doing this. You have to go through a bit of pain. Yeah. So the way where the business was to where we're taking it and I don't look at what we're doing tomorrow. So there's people, the trade in the finance, the commercial guys, they look at what's happening tomorrow. That gives me the ability to look at it, holistic view from above. Yeah. And see where I'm at.

Nick Preston [00:30:21]:
Three and six months is important to me. So working the numbers, getting the data. The data. The data we relying on in the business, say we had some experienced data, people was abysmal. So we didn't know lifetime values. We didn't understand what the term was. Yeah. So it made it very hard.

Nick Preston [00:30:38]:
Well, it made it very obvious to me why the subscription side of the business was failing. It made it very easy to look at what does the short, mid and long term plan look like for the business. So look, we've invested heavily in. Into the marketing side, particularly into the paid social side. I've made some changes, brought a couple of agencies in or experts in this particular field. August was a tough month. I wasn't expecting growth versus July. You just hang on in there.

Nick Preston [00:31:05]:
In August in our industry, then September, October, November, December, January. We've just punched out five consecutive months on growth. Yeah. Customer numbers. We've acquired 54,000 new customers in five months. Yeah. The vast majority of those. So our subscription channel, prep pots.com.

Nick Preston [00:31:23]:
the subscription channel.

Richard Hill [00:31:25]:
Is that for the.

Nick Preston [00:31:26]:
Yeah, that's for the Ready Meals on subscription. That's when. When we started in 2022, we took it 0 to 10 million in the first 12 months. Incredible. Because your margins are good.

Richard Hill [00:31:36]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:31:36]:
And that mitigates the risk of. If you're just selling meat online, then the margins are tight because supermarkets can bash you and people always don't. They don't always care about the lean claims you're making.

Richard Hill [00:31:47]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:31:47]:
So you need something to support you on that journey. You need a sort of a spread.

Richard Hill [00:31:51]:
On the product so there's a bit more margin.

Nick Preston [00:31:52]:
We sell incredible products on me. Tens of thousands of hampers a month. Yeah. But to really make money, you need something to support that.

Richard Hill [00:32:00]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:32:00]:
The other guys overlooked it. They also got a double whammy where inflation meat went up 40 last year. So they created a perfect storm for themselves. But that's because they didn't have the talent or the ability to grow subscription. So, yeah, if you look at our subscription model now, between Prep Pots in December to Prep pots January, it's grown 78 in revenue, orders are up 68% and sessions are up 240.

Richard Hill [00:32:26]:
What would you say to somebody that's listening now that, you know, we speak to a lot of subscription businesses, obviously you're getting those initial subscriptions because maybe, you know, but your short version, we're dialing in and spending the acquisition costs, you know, you're happy to invest to get that initial order. What are you maybe doing that's maybe a little bit smart, a little bit clever to build that retention so they do reorder and they stick and they stick around.

Nick Preston [00:32:51]:
My advice is again, I sound like I don't know what I'm doing because I'm going to say don't do what I've done. I'd put a plan in place where I knew intentionally I was going to over invest in marketing. I wasn't going to be too careful over my CPAs because I've got to move at pace. Yeah. And I've got to recover this business and get moving in the right direction. That comes at a cost. If anybody's building a plan today, I would say don't follow what everybody else is doing and you know, make sure that your data is good. Make sure that you know what your lifetime value is.

Nick Preston [00:33:22]:
Yeah. What your churn rate is and make sure that your content is relevant to the offer, what you're putting out there. So yeah, something, what's important to me is you can look at any of the major subscription brands in food and it's discount driven to acquire those customers. Yeah. So we're creating something which is slightly different. I'm not going to sell the soul to the devil. I'm not going to rely on, you know, if you look at any subscription offers now which relies heavily on a 50, 40, 31st box, a lot of.

Richard Hill [00:33:51]:
Them do it, don't they?

Nick Preston [00:33:51]:
And then. Well, they're all doing it now. But if you have a look at consumers getting more savvy.

Richard Hill [00:33:55]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:33:56]:
So what does good look like for a consumer? Well, having your price double on your second one. That's going to be the biggest thing in. You've got to be a, you've got to offer a good product and a good proposition not to lose it on the second order. So you know, know your market, know your facts, make sure that you manage your budget budgets and make sure you look after those customers. Yeah. So we're developing something, we're pushing customer service even further to hopefully encourage better retention stats.

Richard Hill [00:34:24]:
Yeah. No, so fascinating story. I think we could go on for two or three hours today.

Nick Preston [00:34:31]:
Let's do three or four chapters.

Richard Hill [00:34:33]:
We'll get you back, we'll get you back on. And so I think, you know, you've touched on it. But innovation obviously having obviously, you know, more than ever, I'm guessing because you know, maybe, you know, 10 years ago when you were, you know, on the, flying through this journey, obviously nowhere near the amount of Contenders and brands out there, you know, and as you said, you know, it just made me think, you know, you, you get these flies in the door, 30 off your first box, you know, and that's just insert 20 brands that are doing something to do with meal subscriptions and obviously there's a lot of variants to that. But obviously innovation. You talked about, you know, the Pete, the protein pizza sort of a few years ago. But you know, how key has that been to sort of really, really grow and what are you got any plans at the moment that are really going to help you think in the next year on the innovation what I could talk about.

Nick Preston [00:35:20]:
So I think, I think I've given enough way over the years to people developing and creating products. So you know, it's quite interesting. The protein pizza. When we created a protein pizza in 2015, nobody was doing it, nobody had done it.

Richard Hill [00:35:35]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:35:35]:
So you'd seen in America that they're doing a like a chicken based pizza or a collie based pizza. That's not pizza, is it? So you know, we were, and I'm proud to say we were the first and I checked things, we verified things and it's not only the pizza we did, we carried on. I think I've said on one of my videos, did a protein beer because my protein had done April Fools. And then that was April, obviously April 1. That was April 1, 2015. I got a phone call on April 2 from Darren saying I want a protein beer. Yeah, I saw my proteins and I was laughing about it. He went, no, no, get me a protein beer.

Nick Preston [00:36:12]:
So we did um, and it, it certainly had a rose bouquet about. It was, it was shocking. I've said it were diabolical, I could say a lot worse. It was terrible. But the PR from that, this is what you need if, yeah. If you want to get ahead and you want to start getting your followers, your viewers, you want to drive people to your website. PR products were, they were incredibly important to must food.

Richard Hill [00:36:32]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:36:33]:
I mean we did high protein cereal while surreal were probably still at school, right? Yeah. But we did so many great things. We were bringing those in from Los Angeles. So I found myself flying out to LA for 24 hour, 36 hours to do a cereal deal. Fat free cheese. Yeah. There was a, a brand called Lifetime Cheese and Darren was obsessed. I want to create me a fat free cheese neck.

Nick Preston [00:36:55]:
I'm like what do I know about cheese? So anyway, I found this business and Lifetime cheese was based in San Francisco. So I jumped on a plane, emailed the guy saying I'm coming to see you. And I got European distribution rights for Lifetime cheese. Went back to Darren, I said, I can't create it, but I've got your distribution rights for this cheese. So that there was things like that where we just thought of it and made it happen. Innovation, you have to move at pace. Muscle Food has got some very good things in the pipeline, which I'm sure, you know, I always quit. What makes us different? We can move at pace.

Nick Preston [00:37:32]:
I. I can sit in a meeting with my team and within three or four weeks we can have the product ordered.

Richard Hill [00:37:38]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:37:38]:
So that gives us the advantage over a lot of people. There is no red tape. A lot of the ideas come out of my head. My team said, do you find that.

Richard Hill [00:37:44]:
As a, you know, as a. Probably the. The person that the team are looking at for the innovation, Obviously you've got other people there as well. Do you ever. You know, we've talked about, you know, you've had some good, good holidays last year and you like to spend time on your boat and. Yeah. You know, is there. Do you have, like.

Richard Hill [00:37:58]:
Do you find that, you know, is it. I need a bit of time just sort of on your own to think or. How do you. Is it like a space that you've created?

Nick Preston [00:38:07]:
Usually the boozer is having a chat with your mates. The ideas get wilder. So. So the idea is, because, you know, some of the things we come up with, you've got to think, is this feasible? Is it a reality? Has it been done before? Can we actually do it? Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:38:20]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:38:21]:
And you have to be in a relaxed environment. Right.

Richard Hill [00:38:22]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:38:23]:
But I. There's no set place where I could be. If I. If I think of a product, you know, when I was looking at what I was going to do last year, when I was doing the consulting, I invested one old pence on the domain glp1food out uk. Then we got JLP1support and then. Then we start creating a range of products which I. I keep looking at the market now we've brought them out yet. Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:38:47]:
So I. I see now brands selling in retail, which. So see the supermarkets just jumping on a bandwagon, to be honest. Yeah. You know, they had the protein come along and it was like, protein this, protein that. Now it's like for their own extension, you've got all the retailers going, protein, it's great for GLP1. So, you know, it's not.

Richard Hill [00:39:07]:
They're not leading with it, it's just an afterthought.

Nick Preston [00:39:09]:
Well, now they've done these, they've done these GLP1 specific ranges of products. Is it really? Come on, have you not shrunk something? Have you not just relabeled a protein product? What makes it unique? Get real. So we, we are doing something different. So much more than just protein. What you need in that particular diet. So yeah, watch this space. I can't give too much away.

Richard Hill [00:39:29]:
So products wise now then you've obviously got, you know, maybe step us through it. You've got the meals, you've got the, you know as you referred to it, the sort of obviously where you started but you know back in the day or traditional your meat hampers.

Nick Preston [00:39:41]:
What we've got is. So we've got the lean meat ampers which always been the cornerstone in muscle food. We've got the ready meals a channel which is growing back for us.

Richard Hill [00:39:48]:
Yeah, that's a very important channel already.

Nick Preston [00:39:50]:
Yeah. We're holding around 300, 350 SKUs at this moment.

Richard Hill [00:39:55]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:39:55]:
But because we're dealing fresh. You know something I'm incredibly proud of about must food is our wastages 0.001% because of the technology. What, what the guys when they set utmost food recognize what they needed. Yeah. So to have a fresh meat business, how many other people can turn around say they have no waste.

Richard Hill [00:40:14]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:40:15]:
So I think it's testament to, to the people what came up with the idea. Must view, you know Darren, Phil Bridge and Amy Kershaw, people like that to what they created. And it makes us proud that 12 years later we're still pushing the boundaries when it comes to zero food waste in our business. Yeah. So. And I think you know if we compare ourselves to other businesses it's quite a unique proposition I think.

Richard Hill [00:40:37]:
Yeah. I would say it's quite a. You know, you've got very specific challenges I think with your type of business.

Nick Preston [00:40:43]:
Supply chain's robust operational.

Richard Hill [00:40:44]:
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Preston [00:40:45]:
Supply chain's incredibly robust. Very fortunate that we've. We've got some incredibly committed partners. Partners who I've built close relationships with over the years. I think that that made it easier coming back in as well.

Richard Hill [00:40:58]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:40:58]:
You walk through there was a few.

Richard Hill [00:41:00]:
Sort of phone calls. Was it? So I can imagine, you know, you've done the deal and then you're ringing up hey John. Or whatever it's called.

Nick Preston [00:41:07]:
Yeah, the.

Richard Hill [00:41:08]:
The chicken guy or whatever. Hi John.

Nick Preston [00:41:11]:
Well, to be honest, sorry I couldn't tell you the. The most interesting thing was what I think the first thing I did was start phoning people saying have I still got credit yeah. Because obviously you're no longer part of a group. Yeah. So there's no guarantees what can be put.

Richard Hill [00:41:27]:
I was curious about that because obviously, you know, you've got this, obviously these, you know, the company that acquired the business and so forth. Obviously they've got this credit limit based on that. You coming, that you're coming in and obviously is maybe a bit of a reset.

Nick Preston [00:41:39]:
Yep.

Richard Hill [00:41:39]:
It's a new entity. You know, how did. Is there anything you want to share there in terms of navigating? Probably quite a challenging financial sort of.

Nick Preston [00:41:49]:
I was, I think, I think that's why Raul said to me, don't do it.

Richard Hill [00:41:52]:
Did you really have to sell the boat?

Nick Preston [00:41:56]:
You know, I think when I have a look we did some PR when I came back in and it was quite interesting and I think you always, you always make an inroads if you get a troll. So I was fortunate enough to pick up a troll on the, on the grocer's press release about me saying, you know, quite some derogatory things. And I don't mind anybody can say what they want about me if it's accurate and true, but don't make stuff up about me or if you want to make stuff up about me, at least, you know, pick the phone up and talk to me about it. But some of the stuff always said was highly inaccurate apart from, you know, I hope Nick Preston puts his hand in his pocket this time instead of spending shareholder money and stuff like that. Well, yeah, well, you know, you can get a business for the price I paid, which was one whole pound. Yeah. What people don't realize is when you're burning 3.40amonth when I walk back in.

Richard Hill [00:42:42]:
You might bought it for a pound but you've got a 350 grand to find that every month.

Nick Preston [00:42:46]:
Well, yeah, you need a couple of million pound and I don't have a couple million pound in the bank. I've done very well. Yeah. But then you have to look at what you could do. So fundraising for anybody who's looking to grow a business, make sure that you're locked in. Yeah. I took the opportunity and I knew this was coming at the time when the deal was done on the business I had to create some headroom and I knew that funding for Must food to be Tier 4 funding, high interest short term, it was going to cost us money, so. But what I did realize was if, if I extended the year and by Muscle Food by one month, I'd capture the credit write offs by the previous owners and that springboard must food into profit for the previous year when you put that into Companies House.

Nick Preston [00:43:31]:
So I brought forward the audit. We didn't have to submit our accounts FY25 until this April, but we submitted them in January. So we brought the auditors in, we got the audit done. We worked incredibly hard, not just with our suppliers, because some suppliers have removed credit, quite rightly. I'm sat here without the backing of shareholders, which I talk about, those who I've known over a long term back me and kept credit going, which was phenomenal. It meant so much to me.

Richard Hill [00:44:00]:
So we submitted our end of year early there with a positive, which gave.

Nick Preston [00:44:04]:
Us a credit, which gave you then.

Richard Hill [00:44:05]:
A maintained or maybe increased the credit limit that you would have had without that.

Nick Preston [00:44:10]:
Yeah, correct. So it made the business viable, it allowed us to bring in working capital and it gave us the opportunity to build a Runway for the business, which we did. And as we progress, when we move forward now, we've got 90% of our suppliers now give us credit back. The 10% just happens to be the biggest one, though. We sell about 120,000 kg of fresh chicken a month. We pay for that not only, not even on delivery, we pay for that in advance, eight days in advance.

Richard Hill [00:44:46]:
120,000.

Nick Preston [00:44:47]:
20,000 kilograms of chicken paid for one week in advance. So that ties up, chews up around half a million pound a month for us in working capital. We're continuing to work hard. We pay these suppliers. We've never missed a payment. Building the reputation back's important to us. So, you know, when we think about where the growth's going to come from, the business, that working capital to reinvest into marketing. Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:45:11]:
Invest into the trading functions of the business. Yeah, that's, that's, I'm looking forward to that day. But, you know, we're making, we're making headway every day.

Richard Hill [00:45:20]:
So some smart moves from the outset. And by the sound of the message, I think one of the messages there is, obviously, you've got these relationships from, you know, more than a decade that you've, you know, basically, you know, you've, you've gone back to some of these people and said, hey, you know, and they think, well, actually, Nick was a good guy back in the day. He didn't, he didn't, you know, he didn't shaft us, you know, you know, said, you know what? Let's, let's, you know, he's got, you know, he's got investment, you know, and he's heading up this group and some Guys are working with him. So let's not, let's, let's jump on the, on the, on the train with him and you know to some people back here. So I think, you know, I always think you know, you sort of, you know we come across a lot of people in business. You know I've been doing this probably a similar time, similar age should we say very similar age. We weren't really the Sprite, we're a very similar age. You know.

Richard Hill [00:46:07]:
Do you obviously deal with a lot of people? You know running a business for 20 odd years and it's just been right with people of course sometimes are tough but you still can be right with people where you can, you know, you.

Nick Preston [00:46:18]:
Have to be you.

Richard Hill [00:46:19]:
Totally. So I think just that you know that stood you in amazing good stead over the last decade or so to now where right you're going again with muscle food, you know. So you know, hats off to you.

Nick Preston [00:46:30]:
It's. Yeah. Look, you don't burn your bridges.

Richard Hill [00:46:33]:
No.

Nick Preston [00:46:34]:
I think the relationships are built with some of our suppliers long standing ones. The phenomenal. I was just in Ireland last week with the guy who created the pizza for us. He came on my stag do, he came to my wedding. Seven or eight years since we're personal friends. Yeah. His business is doing phenomenally well. He's probably one of the major suppliers of pizza tour retailers in the UK and we chatted like old friends.

Nick Preston [00:47:00]:
We, we laid some foundations and plans. We've got some exciting new products in development. So yeah I, although it's needed to draw a reference to what's happened in the past and where I feel people could have done better and if I'm being critical where I could have done things differently, I'm fully thinking forward now. You know we've just, we've just invested a significant amount of money in a new website for Mustard. We've got three platforms at the minute. We consolidate in that down into one platform. We're not rushing, we rush to the last platforms. Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:47:34]:
I don't think they're very good. They're functional. But if it fits my vision for muscle food the we're going to become destination health. A one stop solution for everything. Everybody needs to lead a healthier life. Not just the meat hampers, not just ready meals.

Richard Hill [00:47:49]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:47:49]:
I'm talking about thousands and thousands of products accessible to people and education. Education. The whole shebang that will be launched by I think calendar Q4 this year.

Richard Hill [00:48:00]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:48:01]:
So we're mapping out a vision. We're mapping out what good Looks like it keeps us focused, it keeps us determined and what's important to me, the team are buying into that now.

Richard Hill [00:48:11]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:48:11]:
So when I talked about skepticism or people's perception of me or the people coming into the business last July, I. I think nobody's thinking that now. I think there's a relief at first and then an understanding that I'm not some big bad guy. Yeah. I work incredibly hard on culture and giving people access. I'm a massive believer in. Yeah. Certainly women in business backing them.

Nick Preston [00:48:38]:
Something I forgot to say, I brought back my paternity and maternity policy. I. I wanted to do something different to show that everybody's important to us in the business in Mossfield. So in January 2024, with no consideration to my shareholders and without discussing it through which. Which was my bad when I was in mustard, maybe I should have mentioned it. I changed the paternity and maternity policy from which I thought was shocking and not sufficient enough and so improved it. Improved it significantly. So any female member of staff or anybody adopting, whether that's same sex couples or anybody who's going to go off on maternity leave, I'd give them 12 months full pay.

Nick Preston [00:49:21]:
You can imagine shareholders quite pissed off with me. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:49:24]:
Staff are happy. You'll get fired.

Nick Preston [00:49:27]:
They've got a group. And then paternity, I think I'd increased it to a month. And then as I left in September 23rd, I think on September 24th, it got cancelled.

Richard Hill [00:49:36]:
Really?

Nick Preston [00:49:37]:
Which. Yeah, it left me smarting. So when I came back in, guess what? I didn't just bring it back, but I made it better. Yeah. So we did 12 months full paid for female members of staff. I protected the positions while they're on maternity leave. So they're still open for promotion? Yeah, yeah.

Richard Hill [00:49:53]:
They don't get left behind.

Nick Preston [00:49:53]:
They have that job security, then paternity pay. I wanted to be the best and I wanted to punch brothers wakes. Hopefully others would follow. I know my struggles I had when we had kids, I wasn't at muscle food and I know the challenges and the fears it brought. Then paternity, we brought in a six month full pay on paternity as well, which was three months full pay, then three months like working remotely. Not even working remotely. Enjoying. Enjoying the kid.

Nick Preston [00:50:20]:
And then three months integration back into the business on full pay. So working two days a week for one month, three days a week for another month, four days a week for another month. So it was something I'm incredibly proud of. Yeah. The first time I launched it, I remember one of the shareholders phone him up. And he went, what have you done? I says, well, listen, this is trailblazing. This is booking the trend. I want to, I want, I want to drive change, you know.

Nick Preston [00:50:45]:
You bet, you bet. I've just seen it on LinkedIn. You better take it off. I went, it's been on three hours and got half a million views. Do you want me to pull it? So, so, yeah, so. So obviously the late ride, we. It got 2 million views the first time. 25,000 responses, thousands comments.

Richard Hill [00:51:00]:
So a lot of DMS. Is there any jobs? Probably as well.

Nick Preston [00:51:05]:
Hell of a lot of them. Yeah. But I mean, you know, my vision is certainly for the women who we've got in the business now and the females is, yeah, I want a 50% board within 18 months. Yeah. So male and female, there's no changes on, on salary, what we do. So you talk about recovery in a business, you've got to give people hope. Right. To get them moving and thinking and believing the direction we're going to.

Richard Hill [00:51:27]:
So you've gone in there.

Nick Preston [00:51:27]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:51:28]:
You know, and like we said, you know, you've gone in there always back sort of thing. Yeah. You basically, you know, gone in there with this vision and they can see the change you're making and you're sort of a man of your word, doing the things you said you're going to do, making positive change. I think. Hang on a minute. This is way better than it was before. That's, in theory, that's got me on.

Nick Preston [00:51:45]:
Here and I'm now on social media, so I keep.

Richard Hill [00:51:47]:
They've got you doing podcasts?

Nick Preston [00:51:48]:
Christ, I'll be on Tick Tock next. But they've got me doing podcasts and look, I want to be an open book. Yeah. I believe that people, including our consumers, deserve people to be honest with them. So, you know, and certainly the staff, the team. Yeah, we're colleagues. It's an open door policy at work. Nobody closes the door, so they have access to us 24 7.

Nick Preston [00:52:11]:
And I'd like to think that hopefully in the not too distant future, we can all go on an amazing journey.

Richard Hill [00:52:19]:
So you're building it your way now?

Nick Preston [00:52:21]:
I'm building it my way, yeah. Like Frank Sinatra said. So, yeah, he did say you wanted.

Richard Hill [00:52:26]:
To do as a tune, but.

Nick Preston [00:52:30]:
Yeah, I'm building it my way. But equally, I'm not as arrogant as to think everything I say or do is correct. So I rely heavily on feedback. I do listen to people.

Richard Hill [00:52:40]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:52:41]:
I even listen to my kids. So in terms of their critique When I'm on these videos or doing these things. But I. It's incredibly important that I listen to the team, what we're building because I've got an incredibly talented team and the song that they're a young team. Yeah. So sometimes a father figure, you sometimes, you know, people look up to us and we have to conduct ourselves in a way which is befitting to that so we can help support them and grow them.

Richard Hill [00:53:06]:
Yeah. So a lot of. A lot of lessons that you've learned yourself about yourself over the last, you know, 20 years plus years.

Nick Preston [00:53:13]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:53:13]:
It's interesting, isn't when we step back and think about, you know, maybe those leadership lessons that the way we used to do things, maybe. And then you try and make. Implement things, people push against it. But then I think going back to what you're saying, just imparting that vision and sort of been a man of your word and being right with people and then like, actually, you know, he said that six months ago and things are getting better and actually he's implemented this and we are actually. If you're seeing the socials there are a lot better.

Nick Preston [00:53:40]:
You've got to be able this underlying.

Richard Hill [00:53:42]:
Do, do well, do good, do right by people.

Nick Preston [00:53:45]:
You've got to be open with people. Honesty, it means so much to people. Especially like say, the journey, what the guys have had. Yeah. So timelines might change. So, you know, the guys were on about something else. I brought in literally the week before I left in a week, before I kicked out the door in September 24, I brought in giving people the right to work from home one day a week. And I felt that I was building a position in the business where I could trust them.

Nick Preston [00:54:15]:
Because when I came back in, in 2022, I wanted everybody back in the office because I had to move at such a pace that I couldn't be waiting for emails, I couldn't be waiting for calls. I needed the team together, I needed to unite them. So I brought everybody back into the office. You know, that's a business losing 700k a month. I wanted the war room. I wanted everybody to see the work, what was going on. So. And very.

Nick Preston [00:54:36]:
A lot of that team, especially Nottingham, was the team where in September 2024, when I could see that the business was on the cusp of recovering and turning round, I wanted to reward them and show that I trust them. So I'd said to the guys, literally the week. This is crazy. I think it was on the Thursday before I got shown the door on the Monday I'd said, right, you can work from home, work it amongst yourselves one day a week. Work from home. This is a thank you. And everybody buzzed. I got cancelled.

Nick Preston [00:55:04]:
So that got canceled the same time as paternity and maternity.

Richard Hill [00:55:08]:
That was a bad week for him.

Nick Preston [00:55:09]:
Yeah. When you left, I think on the former managing director referred to me as a regime or a dictator. And I thought, well, hang on a second, let's have a look. A bit hypocritical, shall we?

Richard Hill [00:55:18]:
It just sounds like a catalog of poor decisions from the previous.

Nick Preston [00:55:23]:
You put somebody with no experience in charge of an E commerce business, a 30 million pound e commerce business, what do you think's gonna happen?

Richard Hill [00:55:29]:
And then the, just the lack of trust by the sound of it, to the team.

Nick Preston [00:55:33]:
Yeah, they were, it's just I, I think the biggest.

Richard Hill [00:55:36]:
No, no.

Nick Preston [00:55:36]:
Was don't shrink Muscle Food into profit. It doesn't work. I think it's worked with a small number of E commerce brands. Yeah, but the fixed cost loan in Muscle Food told you it wasn't possible. So. And I think now look, I've said it recently, we're not out the woods yet. We've got a lot of hard work to do. We've got a committed team.

Nick Preston [00:55:54]:
We've got a hard working team. We've got some incredibly talented individuals in the business. Yeah. Who will all believe and I think belief can be worth that extra 20% sometimes.

Richard Hill [00:56:03]:
Yeah, totally.

Nick Preston [00:56:05]:
And the guys are moving in the right direction. It's good.

Richard Hill [00:56:08]:
Well Nick, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Nick Preston [00:56:10]:
I'm gonna end with a Richard, a.

Richard Hill [00:56:14]:
Couple of final questions. So I believe you've been working alongside the Good Food Group. Know how those synergies with those other brands been sort of working for Muscle Food.

Nick Preston [00:56:27]:
It's quite interesting because Google says the same thing about this. So just to, just to rewrite or retell the story on this particular question. So when I was doing the consulting work, a guy I've known for many years, Ross Carlin, who owns and founded the Gruffu Group, approached me and it was just over at Burton Waters in Lincoln where I had a meeting with Ross and he asked me whether I'd be interested in coming on board with the Good Food Group as managing director with the directive of growing the business. Obviously he felt that I know brands. I'd worked with Ross, he'd done a great job getting must food into retail over many years and I'd known Ross 10 year, incredibly talented guy, very busy. So I could see the logic and sense in bring old timer in like me to be managing director and let him focus on some of these other business interests. So I actually started that in around March time and I went into the Good Food Group along with a few other projects I had. And Ross wanted me to grow the business, so I thought, what a great way of growing the business.

Nick Preston [00:57:28]:
I'll just buy Muscle Food and then we'll put it together as a Good Food Group. Right. I've done my job, I've grown, you know, as a manager going into a founder. Yeah. I've taken your business and we've turned into a 30 million pound business. And I think the elation at first and the jubilation was, you know, we've done something nobody expected us to do and then the dust has to settle and you start looking at the Good Food Group, which is building in a particular direction, and then you've got this monolithic mess which is Muscle food version 6, and you look very quickly and you go, how are we going to make this work? And I think Ross has got business interests away from just the Good Food Group. I know that it was probably my drive to Ross saying, we've got this, we've got this, we've got this, that he got caught and we got carried away with the emotions and, you know, we went into Moss Food on the first week. I wanted to move at pace.

Nick Preston [00:58:26]:
Ross was methodical in his planning and I think, you know, it was like when Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin went through their divorce. It was. It was a situation where you'd shake hands and you'd look after your best, best interests. And we, we decided that given Ross's interests and given the focus, what was needed in Muscle Food, I could commit all my time to it again. I knew what was required because I know how much I had put into it last time. We decided that we'd go his own ways, but incredibly amicable. I've got so much respect for Ross, so much respect for the Good Food Group.

Richard Hill [00:59:00]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [00:59:00]:
You know any E commerce brands out there who are looking to create a brand gate into retail, you'd speak to those guys. I can't speak highly enough. And I think it was a very mature thing for both of us to do and I think if anything, it protect both businesses. So we went to separate ways about three weeks after we'd come into. So. Which was. It was rapid, to be honest, so. But we went his own way, so.

Richard Hill [00:59:23]:
Yeah, but we. But you, you came together for a short period, you know, to try 100% and then it was like, you know what, let's do our thing and we'll still, we still compete him at tennis or whatever.

Nick Preston [00:59:35]:
I think that's, I think that's for the benefit of everybody in both business or so I think it was required and you know, there was no animal, no animosity, there's no stories. What's going to come out about this big fallout? Yeah, I, I've, I, I think it was a, an incredibly considered thing to do.

Richard Hill [00:59:52]:
It was the right, right decision.

Nick Preston [00:59:54]:
Right, right time. Right. Right place. Right time. Right.

Richard Hill [00:59:56]:
Fabulous. Right. Well, thank you for coming on the show.

Nick Preston [00:59:59]:
That's okay.

Richard Hill [00:59:59]:
Now, last couple of questions.

Nick Preston [01:00:01]:
Yep.

Richard Hill [01:00:02]:
We're sat here in a couple of years time.

Nick Preston [01:00:04]:
Yep.

Richard Hill [01:00:04]:
What's the sort of vision for muscle food? What's how and how maybe do you see sort of AI layering into some of the plans for the future?

Nick Preston [01:00:13]:
It's a good question. So if you think about AI layering in. Christ, when, when I first moved into the airs of the areas of this industry, we still had telephones with cords on his desk and yellow pages and stuff. So I feel I've been around business that long, AI is going to change. I think it can do a lot of good. I think it can also do a lot of bad. Where it comes as muscle food, we're already using it in, in lighter touch areas within the business. I think it can make us more informed on the decisions we make.

Nick Preston [01:00:43]:
I think it can make us more informed when we're doing our. Certainly when we have a look at the retentions, the lifetime values, customer behaviors.

Richard Hill [01:00:50]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [01:00:51]:
Whole aspects of the product development journey. I see that becoming bigger. One thing I don't want AI to do, certainly from me and my personal perspective, I won't be putting people out work for AI. Yeah, I'll get the people to work with AI.

Richard Hill [01:01:03]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [01:01:04]:
I think, you know, having that personal touch within the business is incredibly important, that it fits the vision for Must Food. You know, we want to evolve the brand for too many years to summarize on it. Everybody came into Must Food and treated it as a broken business. Everybody thought muscle food needed fixing. When the reality is muscle food just needed to evolve. It didn't need so many staff to be got rid of. It didn't need the logo turning black. It didn't need posh offices in Manchester.

Nick Preston [01:01:35]:
It didn't need 35 developers costing 3 million pound a year. Just needed to evolve with the times. Yeah. Just needed somebody to get hold of it and be sensible. So we're going to take his time with Muscle food. I don't care. If muscle food becomes a family business of mine for 20, 30, 40 years, so be it. But we're going to have some fun with it.

Nick Preston [01:01:54]:
We're going to push the boundaries when it comes to innovation again. We're not going to rush things. We're not going to make the mistakes. What happened before, I, I just, you know, hope that this next 24 months brings the stability for the team what they haven't had for so long. Yeah. So. And I think, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Really looking forward to it.

Richard Hill [01:02:13]:
Well, I'm looking forward to watching from the sidelines and I'll get. We'll get you back on in 12 months. We'll do a 12 month update.

Nick Preston [01:02:19]:
There we go. The hair will still be the same.

Richard Hill [01:02:23]:
Well, I like to end every episode with a book recommendation. Have you got a book to recommend? Yeah.

Nick Preston [01:02:28]:
Can I go on author instead?

Richard Hill [01:02:29]:
You can do what you like.

Nick Preston [01:02:30]:
So it's not a business book though.

Richard Hill [01:02:31]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [01:02:31]:
So what I tend to find is everybody's got every opinion on how every business should be run.

Richard Hill [01:02:36]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [01:02:37]:
So when I'm out of work, I like to be able to drift off, so. And I like to be able to take myself out there. So. As an author for many years, I've always leaned towards John Grisham. Yeah. I find that his lead roles, whether it's Rudy Baylor or one of his main characters, you can drift off into that. Yeah. And I think it takes me so far away from work.

Nick Preston [01:02:55]:
Yeah. The. I find it great relaxation. So John Grisham, certainly on his fiction ones.

Richard Hill [01:03:00]:
So quite a disconnect from the business books. Yeah. Good for you.

Nick Preston [01:03:04]:
We spend enough time at work, so. Yeah. I like. Not many things can switch your brain off.

Richard Hill [01:03:09]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [01:03:09]:
But I find a good book to actually give you the opportunity. Those. That hour, that two hours, it's final. So do you read quite a bit, are you. No, not as much.

Richard Hill [01:03:18]:
Not now. Constantly. Maybe last year.

Nick Preston [01:03:21]:
Constantly on Shopify or. Yeah, no, I, I don't fresh. But yeah, just refresh all the time. My thumb.

Richard Hill [01:03:28]:
Yeah.

Nick Preston [01:03:29]:
My fingers are getting sore from it. But no, it is refreshing all the time.

Richard Hill [01:03:32]:
Well, Nick, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming on the show.

Nick Preston [01:03:34]:
It's been great. It's been absolutely great.

Richard Hill [01:03:41]:
If you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button. Wherever you are listening to this podcast, you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day and I'll see you on the next one.