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Abel Butler from HealthPost | #544

• Nathan Bush

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In this Checkout episode, we go behind the scenes with Abel Butler, CEO of HealthPost, the purpose driven retailer behind Flora & Fauna and Nourished Life. Abel shares a few personal quirks, including his experiments with a vagus nerve-stimulating ear gadget to wind down after late-night AI deep dives, and his go-to tools, like ChatGPT for everything from landscaping advice to debugging tech. 

For the full story on how Abel rebuilt Flora & Fauna and Nourished Life, listen to the main episode of Add To Cart here.

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous Add to Cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a five quick questions to get to know them better. And leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, bushy.

Speaker 1:

Today's Checkout features Abel Butler, ceo of Health Post and the man behind one of the most impressive retail rescue stories that we've covered on Add to Cart. In our main episode, abel shared how he took over two beloved Aussie brands Flora and Fauna and Nourish Life after the collapse of them by BWX. He walked us through the wild ride of acquiring them with no team, no warehouse, no tech stack and a very tight timeline to make a decision, and he told us how, in just six months, he brought them back to life. And it wasn't with a big budget or bold campaign, but with quiet clarity, deep values, resetting the foundations and a laser focus on customer experience. Health Post is a business that Abel grew from his mum's mail order supplement business, and he's grown it into a purpose-driven e-commerce powerhouse. They've not only scaled into Australia, but are also restoring biodiversity locally, literally bringing seabirds back to the coastlines of New Zealand through profits from their retail business. And what's even better is that they've taken their customers on this journey with them. Abel's one of those operators who leads by doing, and in this checkout we get to see the lighter, more personal side of Abel From the weird tech that he's using to relax at 3am in the morning to sustainable pioneers that he admires. Here's what drives Abel Butler behind the scenes. Abel, welcome to the checkout.

Speaker 1:

We had a brilliant conversation a couple of weeks ago where you told us everything that you're doing at Health Post, including flora and fauna and nourished life here in Australia, how you are setting yourself up for sustainable growth in both markets. What I loved was the honest story of what it took to rebuild both of those brands in the Australian market, so thank you for sharing that, and you gave us insight into the amazing projects that you're doing in your local area around the restoration of biodiversity, including bringing some of those seabirds back, which was pretty cool. First time on Add to Cart, we've had someone bring seabirds back. I've got five quick questions for you. Go for it. Number one what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?

Speaker 3:

Sure. So I currently have though I can't really report as to its effectiveness, but a vagus nerve stimulation device. So you hook it up to your ear and it sends little electrical pulses, which is designed to calm one down of an evening. Yeah, so those 3am sort of GPT sessions when you need to clock off. Apparently, this will put me to sleep.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you strike me as a very calm person, do you? But I suppose as a business owner, you just never turn off, do you?

Speaker 3:

no, yeah, I'm glad I come across that way. I do take a lot of supplements which I think help. Yeah, you've got access why not?

Speaker 1:

I sure do. Yeah, number two which retailer has most inspired? You recently?

Speaker 3:

I really like the work that Lottie Delziel is doing with banishcomau. Yeah, amazing work in the recycling space and then selling the products that are being made from the waste and things. So, yeah, she's a bit of a personal hero of mine at the moment.

Speaker 1:

For those who haven't seen it, can you give us a little bit more detail around it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so Lottie's a huge advocate for waste reduction and lower waste living and she's recently written a book which I believe is called 100 Ways to Save the Planet, which I think has been really successful, but has also been running a website called Banish for a while. Banishcomau, and yeah, was originally kind of selling quite a few third party products and things, but her main focus has been on recycling, hard to recycle things and yeah, and so she's got these kind of significant waste streams, I guess, of difficult to recycle items coming in which she is repurposing into, yeah, some really cool things which you can buy through her website. So, yeah, she's solving a very hard to solve problem at scale and it's a lovely person, so, yeah, she's a champion in that space.

Speaker 1:

When you see new initiatives that are claiming to save the planet, do you look at them with optimism or a kind of healthy skepticism at the moment?

Speaker 3:

it's definitely a bit of both. I think it depends where you're looking like. I think that the good news stories in environmentalism at the moment are widely underreported in mainstream media. Yeah, so so that would kind of be my starting point. I think you know thankfully, being in the space somewhat, I'm a bit more exposed to some really incredible stuff that that is happening. But by the same token, I think, yeah, a lot of what's coming out of big companies in terms of claims that they've made, particularly in the, that they're rolling back recently, and stuff like that, that's the opposite end of the spectrum. You know we're also all serious. Were they in the first place? Clearly not very. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a good guide. Number three can you name a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without? Look, it's just such an obvious one, but at the moment we just couldn't live without chat gpt. Yeah, what was the last?

Speaker 3:

problem you solved with gpt that you wouldn't have solved without it. To be honest, I'm using it at home to help with landscaping and which trees to plant where, and that side of things, but you're probably more interested in a business concept. No, no, that's a great, a great one.

Speaker 1:

I I had it the other day and I talked about this with j actually the other day and it was like when you're doing things, it's like why wouldn't I ask GPT to do this? So I cut off Telstra as my home internet and then went to another provider, had to get a new modem, all that sort of stuff, and I just couldn't diagnose this. And I'm pretty good with that stuff. Yeah, I was like, actually I'm going to plug all my specs of my modem, my plan, my address, everything into here and say what the errors are. And it just, step by step, talked me through this little tiny error that I found and I was like that would have been weeks trying to diagnose that in the past yeah, incredible they.

Speaker 3:

I tested a toilet cistern with it recently yeah it's like high tech makes low tech yeah, I love it all.

Speaker 1:

Right, number four can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?

Speaker 3:

yeah, like I I'm enjoying. Um, I've been following him for a while, but peter diamandis, moonshots and and his essential yeah, technology side of things and obviously he's doing quite a lot of interesting coverage on AI at the moment would be one Awesome.

Speaker 1:

And are you following it via podcasts? Socials, yeah, podcasts, yeah, cool. All right, good tip, thank you. And last question I've got for you, abel what is your biggest challenge today?

Speaker 3:

The biggest challenge really is well, I mean I can't say sanity. Yeah, no, it's just that difference between I mean, we touched on it when we spoke earlier around the synthesis so information overload, incredible velocity of change and then, as a leader, having to at least give the appearance of having a clear and coherent response to a very noisy and chaotic world.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well put. I feel a lot of founders are feeling that at the moment You've got to be confident and have a strategic direction on one side, but knowing that it can be bumped off course at any time. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, abel, thank you so much for joining us on the Checkout. Thanks, bushy, my pleasure.

Speaker 3:

Cheers.

Speaker 1:

Want more, Abel, and, quite frankly, why wouldn't you Head back to the full episode, episode 526, link in the show notes, where we unpack how he rebuilt two major e-commerce brands from the ground up in only a few months, why Healthposts Nourish Life and Flora and Fauna manage deep product data without a PIM, how their loyalty program is shifting toward purpose and environmental impact, and what it actually looks like to run an AI-first retail business, with some very clear examples not just hype or fluff. If you're an e-commerce leader looking for calm in the chaos or you're building a values-driven brand in a tough market at the moment, this conversation will hit home. And if you're not already inside the Add to Cart community, now is the time. We've got nearly 300 e-commerce professionals in there sharing insights from episodes like this, asking smart questions and connecting over all the practical stuff. It's free, it's useful and that's where this conversation continues. Join us at adddekartcomau. Thanks again to Abel for joining us and showing us what e-commerce leadership looks like when it's done with humility, focus and impact.