Preview of the next podcast episode where I speak with Nick Stone, the founder and CEO of the Bluestone Lane coffee empire in North America.

The Richards Report

Preview: Nick Stone Founder of Bluestone Lane Coffee

Nick grew up in Melbourne and was recruited to play Australian football at Collingwood at the end of 1999 when he was in year 12. He also had time at Hawthorn and the St Kilda which culminated in a 6 year AFL career. This is an incredible achievement in itself, and Nick says during those years he learned a lot.

He mentions that as there’s no segmentation in AFL like there is in a lot of American sports (where it’s common to have separate offensive and defensive teams) you have to get used to working and communicating with different people. It also taught him about dealing with pressure and scrutiny and the importance of self belief and hard work.
 
As he studied whilst he played AFL, it gave him the opportunity to move straight into his next career, investment banking. After a period of working in Australia Nick moved to New York with his partner Alexandra (now wife) to finish his MBA at Fordham Business School. It was during this time that he first identified the opportunity in New York to provide an improved coffee experience than what cafes currently provided.

He studied Starbucks and was fascinated with the brand that they had built. Whether you like their coffee or not I think it’s still an incredible business. However, he had noticed that their average customer was getting older and the Starbucks brand wasn’t resonating with younger customers. Nick identified the gap in the market he wanted to serve… he wanted to have a coffee brand that resonated with younger customers.

Nick was working full time in investment banking so this cafe venture would be managed on the side as a kind of side hustle. He and his partners put up $170,000 and he opened up his first cafe in 2013, a small location that was cheap as it was hidden underground so people could only really find it through word of mouth. The location of this first cafe was quite strategic though with Australian banks NAB, ANZ and Westpac New York offices all nearby. At the time most Americans didn’t really know what a ‘flat white’ coffee was so on the first day sold $1 flat whites. They sold over 1000 that day. Not long after, he opened up another cafe that was equally popular. However, when they opened up their third cafe (which had a food menu) it was that Nick really knew he was onto something.

Over the years Nick continued to work full time in banking and be CEO of the growing Bluestone Lane business. However, in mid 2016 when he had 14 cafes (12 in New York and 2 in Philadelphia) he made the call to go all in with Bluestone Lane and step away from banking.

Bluestone Lane has now been going for 6 years and now up to 44 stores. In the next six months they’re opening up a further 13 stores which will take them to 57.

Nick always focused on the power of branding with Bluestone and took the coffee culture from Australia to the US, with uniformity and consistency. The name Bluestone is in fact an honour of the cobbled bluestone laneways of Melbourne which are littered with great cafes.

Nick takes us through some of the stories that have happened over the six years, including the times when Taylor Swift and Victoria's Secret models put them on the map when they’d come in for their coffees.

Nick has steered the business through different stages of a startup and transitioning it to the growth stage it’s now in. He currently employs 700 staff which comes with stress, and as hard as the process has been but he says that football gave him an introduction to opening yourself up to pressure and mass scrutiny.

This episode is brought to you by Six Park, Australia's leading robo-adviser. www.sixpark.com.au

Nick Stone from Bluestone Lane

Good to Great by Jim Collins

This book changed my football career, well even more than that, it’s so special it pretty much changed my life. I read it for the first time back in 2010. At the time my football career wasn’t panning out the way I had hoped. That’s saying it lightly, to be honest I thought I was just about to be sacked. I discuss the ways this book helped me get my career back on track.
 
The book is all about why some companies make the leap to become great companies, and why others don’t. However, I’m going to kind of review the book by touching on the real life examples of how these lessons helped me. Hopefully this is a bit more of an interesting way to do it as opposed to simply going through the book chapter by chapter.

This episode is bought to you by Six Park, Australia's leading online investment manager www.sixpark.com.au

The RIchards Report

How this book changed my life: Good to Great by Jim Collins

Nick is a partner at Blackbird Ventures. A venture capital fund that seeks to invest in world-class founders who are setting out to make a difference in the world. Investors in Blackbird’s fund include the Australian Government Future Fund, Host Plus, and Mike Cannon Brookes.

Nick originally studied law and political science at UQ. After a short period of time working in the legal world he pivoted across into the world of startups. He co-founded, and was CEO of, Sessions (which used technology to help people stay healthy, and Sessions was later acquired by MyFitnessPal in December, 2013). Nick also co-founded We Are Hunted which was acquired by Twitter.

Nick said he would come into contact with approximately 1000 companies a year, of which he meets face to face with around 100. He would probably consider around 10 but ultimately invests in around 2 or 3 a year. However, at the time of recording in late September he still had not made an investment this year.

One thing which I wasn’t aware is that he measures every minute of his day and he takes us through how he does this. As on average as he invests in 1 in every 500 companies he comes across he knows how important time management is.

We discuss valuation which is always difficult, let alone investing in a startup company that’s probably loss making at the time with not many true comparable comapnies.

Nick describes how important a well articulated mission and vision are. However, so often they’re nothing more than buzzwords which are often stuck on the wall and then forgotten about. It’s important though, the mission and vision reverberates throughout the company as it attracts the best talent, which can attract investors, which can help in the process to attract customers.

This episode is brought to you by Six Park - Australia's leading online investment manager www.sixpark.com.au

Nick Crocker (Blackbird Ventures) discusses investing in start ups and early stage investments

This episode I'm speaking with returning guest, friend of the show, co-CEO and co-founder of Six Park, Pat Garrett.
We discuss;
- The levels of noise in the market right now
- Points in history with heightened negativity can sometimes lead to the best buying opportunities
- What it was like to be working in New York on Wall St in the lead up to the tech crash of early 2000s.
- Similarities between picking stocks and picking new recruits for sporting teams

This episode is brought to you by Six Park, Australia's leading online investment service www.sixpark.com.au

Discussing noise in the market with Pat Garrett (Six Park co-CEO)

Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business. He’s also a public speaker and co-host of the popular podcast Pivot.

In this podcast episode Scott and Ted discuss;
- Lessons learned from the failed WeWork IPO
- His new best selling book The Algebra of Happiness
- Why Scott thinks he was blessed to not be a professional athlete 
- The benefits of taking a certain level of risk in life as to achieve a return
- How billionairs and other people of note often incorrectly tell students to follow their passions
- How there’s an inverse relationship between the sex appeal of a business and the level of return
- It’s not about what you earn, it’s what you spend. The benefits of passive income.
- Big tech getting into the business of content on tv
- The failed WeWork IPO
- Comparing WeWork to Uber

This episode is brought to you by Six Park. Australia's leading online investment service www.sixpark.com.au

Scott Galloway discussing WeWork, The Algebra of Happiness and Investing

*** Finalist at The Australian Podcast Awards 2019 ***
Do you want to learn more about investing? How to improve decision making and time management from business leaders around the world?
The Richards Report speaks with experts from the world of finance to explore and learn ways you can make smarter decisions when it comes to investing money and time. Join Ted Richards when he speaks with talented investors, athletes and professors about ways to improve your own performance. Guests include Scott Galloway, Harvard/Wharton Professors, Fund Managers and former professional athletes.

Ted is a former AFL premiership player who completed his Bachelor of Commerce and Masters of Applied Finance over a 16 year AFL career. He is now Director of Business Development at Six Park, an automated investment service based in Melbourne.
The Richards Report was a finalist at the Australian Podcast Awards in the category of Business and Marketing.