Mending Operational Gaps to Position a Protein Bar Brand for Scalable Growth

The impact that Neil has had on our business so far is that he's taken us from that position where we were a little unsure of where we were going and what we were doing and just solidified what our strategy should be. to get us where we want to go. Hi, I'm Tony Leonardi. I'm one of the co-founders of Muscle Up Protein Bars, and this is... And I'm Lori Aleks, and I'm the co-founder of Muscle Up Protein Bars. And we're out of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Well, we were trying to grow these direct-to-consumer protein bar brands on our own, and we had never done this before. So there were a lot of challenges, a lot of unknowns. ⁓ We just felt like maybe we were missing a few things. So we were looking for someone who could help guide us on this journey, make sure we were doing things properly, and make sure we weren't. ⁓ wasting money, wasting time. We needed someone like Neil to try to guide us on this journey and figure out what we were missing, what the missing pieces were. Well, Neil was recommended to us. ⁓ It came with a very strong recommendation from a couple that we have a lot of faith in. sometimes you feel like you're on an island out here trying to grow this business. And he was just so positive about everything we were doing and the direction we were headed in. It was just, to me, it was infectious and I said this is someone I really want to work with. What Neil ⁓ helped us understand is that he uses a fishing analogy and he says, you're fishing, but you have holes in your fishing net. And before we go anywhere, we need to mend these holes in your fishing net. So for the past six months or so, we've been mending our fishing net. And I think we're getting to the point now where ⁓ We've closed all those holes. We mended that net. I think we're in a very good position to scale our business going forward, knowing that we're not letting a lot of effort, time and money fall through the cracks. When Tony mentioned the holes in the net, it was things that seemed maybe very simple to other people. You know, the Google Analytics, you know, landing pages, so people just click and buy, things like that, ⁓ which seems so simple, we thought. We were doing some of these things correctly and we were not. So, ⁓ you know, to have someone say, if you do this and this and this, then you actually can see these numbers. ⁓ So that's been really good. I would say have that first meeting with Neil just to get to know who the person is. Right. Because I like to work with good, positive people who can have a positive influence on us and our business. Neil's that guy for us. Not only that, but it's very refreshing to know that someone who has experience in lots of other industries with lots of other companies, bigger companies, different industries, can bring that to the table for us where we wouldn't have access to a lot of that information, a lot of that knowledge or expertise without someone like Neil who's in the weeds with other companies on a daily basis.