Building Your Core Strengths: Matt Hunt, The Protein Ball Company

While competitors race to scale by loading their products with emulsifiers, humectants and sweeteners - and call it health food - The Protein Ball Company has stayed stubbornly natural, and accepted slower but more sustainable growth. This is an episode about the hard yards of business: logistics, cash flow, risk, scaling production, export paperwork, and the instincts no degree or accelerator will teach you.

The Protein Ball Company was born eleven years ago after Matt Hunt spotted the rise of protein snacking at an LA trade show. What began in a small unit with a single machine is now exporting to 14 countries, with listings in Caffe Nero, Black Sheep Coffee and Flying Coffee Bean, and a major UK supermarket listing in the pipeline.

In this episode of Curious Business, Matt talks candidly about how Covid tanked their revenue from £4m to £1m overnight. He explains what kept the business alive, and why they’re committed to natural ingredients in a category dominated by the chemistry set - even when everyone told him they'd never scale if they didn't follow suit. 

Listen to this episode for some hard lessons about cashflow, hedging your bets, trusting your gut, and the fine margins of business:

• Why private label manufacturing isn't a compromise, and why having the right private label customers could be what saves your business
• How Matt sizes a new market without paying for expensive data, and the tests he runs to check his intuition
• What a branding agency's "graveyard exercise" revealed about decisions they should have made years earlier - and how to apply it to your own business
• The state of the protein market and why he thinks the ultra-processed food reckoning will eventually prove him right
• How a business exporting to fourteen countries manages cash flow, liquidity and growth

 

Links from the episode

The Protein Ball Company:
https://theproteinballco.com

The Protein Ball Company on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/TheProteinBallCo/page/70CB4F6A-D02B-4652-9F25-4931F0329B0B

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthunt001/

Robot Foods and the rebrand:
https://www.robot-food.com/work/the-protein-ball-co/

 

Books mentioned

Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill (affiliate link)
https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15792/9781785042416

How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie (affiliate link)
https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15792/9781785042409

 

Other episodes mentioned:

Curious Business #12 with Ella McKay of Fatso:
https://podcast.curiousbusiness.co.uk/e/ella-mckay-fatso-rebellious-branding/

 

Chapters

0:00:45 - Elevator pitch

0:01:09 - Why he started the business

0:02:06 - Why balls, not bars

0:03:44 - The main phases of growth over 11 years

0:05:32 - What does success actually look like?

0:07:10 - How the Caffe Nero listing came about

0:09:35 - Matt's background - the market, the olives, the degree

0:11:43 - Cash flow, hedging and keeping the business alive

0:12:37 - Why everything is in-house

0:13:41 - What Matt spends his time on

0:17:38 - Throwing some shade on the protein sector

0:20:42 - Trade shows as the engine of growth

0:22:45 - Why brand was deprioritised - and why it was time to rebrand

0:27:55 - New product development - certainty, failure and the kids' range

0:29:55 - Analytics vs. intuition

0:31:11 - Books, podcasts and the "turning the dials" idea

0:33:40 - Goals for the year ahead

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Thanks for listening.

Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

My name is Stephen Morris and I help start-ups and scale-ups get momentum in their marketing and pipeline.

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