Success and More Interesting Stuff

Meet legendary stockbroker Brent Potts

Brent Potts is a legend of the Australian stockbroking industry and after 55 years he is still going strong. Potts has seen just about everything in the Australian market and has some colourful stories to tell. The full interview with Brent Potts goes live on Tuesday 20th December.

How Domino’s boss Don Meij built a $5.7bn global pizza powerhouse from the suburbs of Brisbane

None of it really makes sense. A young man from Queensland teaching the world about Pizzas.

Don Meij was born in Rockhampton, Queensland, moving around as a child before landing at Redcliff in North Brisbane. He trained to be a teacher but somehow got hooked on being the best Pizza delivery person in the district. 

The next step was to become a franchised shop owner of a small chain called Silvio’s-dial-a pizza. Silvios merged with Domino’s Pizza within a few years, and Meij was at the helm in Australia. A meteoric rise from a delivery boy.

Don, though, was just getting started. Domino's was cooking its competitors; in 2005, the company was listed on the ASX. Meij and his ambitious team, with the support of its major shareholder, fast food king Jack Cowin, were preparing to take on the world.

Today, Domino's Pizza (ASX:DMP) is an ASX 100 company valued at more than $5.7 billion and has a growing global footprint. While it has been a whirlwind ride, there has also been some indigestion. Battles with disgruntled franchisees and the emergence of multiple food delivery companies have tested the leadership of Meij. Now he has global inflation to contend with. 

Never to shy away from a challenge, Meij seems as energetic as ever.

Trailer: Meet Don Meij, the delivery driver behind Domino’s rise to the top

The full interview with the Don Meij the founder and Managing Director of Domino’s Pizzas goes live on the 13th of December 2022. Here’s a taste of what is coming up.

Introducing Season 3 of Success and More Interesting Stuff!

Success and More Interesting Stuff is back for its third and best season ever. Kicking off on December 13 and running through to January 24 the series talks to 7 of the most successful professional investors and business operators in Australia.

Each guest has a superbly colourful story to tell. Each one took risks that the rest of us would find to daunting to seriously contemplate. Once the decision was made each one threw everything, they could muster to make the journey a success. Driven by a competitive spirit to win the ultimate prize, each one encountered setbacks but pushed through.

 

Morgan: History is rhyming (and it could be bad for stocks)

In this final episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, we turn back the clock and talk to legendary fund manager Peter Morgan.

Peter was a 'master of the market' in the 1990s at the helm of Perpetual Investments. When he left in 2002, the group was managing about $12 billion and was outperforming the market year after year, notching up returns of more than 14% per annum.

Peter and Warwick Negus went on to turn heads with their boutique venture 452 Capital. But about a decade ago, doctors diagnosed brain cancer and gave Peter less than a year to live.

Although this diagnosis eventually proved incorrect (though not before an intensive round of chemo), his time as a professional money manager was over. He still avidly watches global markets, but with only his own funds on the line. Nonetheless, he thinks experience has made him an even better investor these days.

In this episode Peter talks about learning from the 1987 sharemarket crash and the dotcom bubble. He looks with the discipline of an ex-auditor at modern reporting metrics and shares his conviction that Australia's culture of regular dividends might be holding us back, closing with a timely challenge for domestic enterprises.

Jun Bei Liu’s extraordinary journey

Jun Bei Liu landed in Australia as a 16-year-old without a social or business network and very little English. From this humble beginning she has worked her way through the ranks and today is managing close to $1 billion for well-known fund manager Tribeca.

Jun Bei is tireless and an inspiration for both women and those from outside the establishment.

Here she recalls her earliest exposure to share market investing as a child in Shanghai, and relates the path she has taken to lead Tribeca's Alpha Plus long-short fund.

Jun Bei's energy, humour and sheer enjoyment of a career in investing have brought her a long way, and she's certain there are bigger and better things to come.

Chris Judd’s lonely pursuit of market beating returns

In this episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, we speak to AFL legend Chris Judd, a former star of the midfield for West Coast Eagles and Carlton Football Club.

His career on the field netted him a premiership, two Brownlow Medals and acclaim as one of the best players of the modern era.

Since retiring from the game in 2015, Chris has turned his attention to trading financial markets. He thinks hard about the macro-economic picture and how to make money from his findings.

He describes his competitive edge as a non-institutional investor, and how determined he is to make the most of it.

The harsh realities of elite sport have taught Chris things other people might not grasp until much later in life, when it is too late to benefit from the lesson.

Along the way he expounds the ingredients of success, the prospects for gold and crypto currencies.

An overnight success (38 years in the making)

In this episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, we introduce the good doctor Sam Hupert, founder and major shareholder of radiology imaging group Pro Medicus.

Sam has been talking business for as long as he can remember, thanks to his entrepreneurial parents. Even as a medical student he was exercising his commercial skills with a successful photography enterprise.

Once computers began to take off outside academia, Sam saw the possibilities for medicine. Over the years, he and the Pro Medicus team have exploited each advance in computing technology to build up a formidable lead over their rivals.

Asked to explain their success, Sam says, "I think we had a vision. I know a lot of people say that, but we did. And it was to build a better mouse trap in an area where we genuinely do good. We aid the clinical process, there's no question."

Out of a modest building in Richmond, Melbourne, Sam and his collaborators have grown Pro Medicus into a $6 billion global group.

Along the way he and business partner Anthony Hall have amassed fortunes of over $1.5 billion each. Despite the outrageous success, Sam thinks there is a long way to go.

Rob Millner‘s simple rule for investing success

Episode three of Success and More Interesting Stuff features Rob Millner, the patriarch of Washington H Soul Pattinson.

Soul Patts is the closest investment vehicle that Australia has to Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway.

And like Berkshire Hathaway, Soul Patts has been an outstanding success. Rob is only the fourth Millner to run the company over 100 years and to date he has managed to multiply the share price 11 times and increase the dividend every year.

Rob — and Soul Patts — take the long view, with disciplined focus on fundamentals and proud attention to corporate governance.

"I've always had it at the back of my mind that I don't want to be the one that blows the place up," he says.

In this episode, Rob describes what it was like to take on great responsibility as a young man and how he thinks about succession planning these days.

He also shares his simple rule for buying cheap stocks, and explains why so many investors fail to follow it. 

From IVF pioneer to Afterpay investor: John McBain‘s incredible journey

Small-cap specialist Dr John McBain likes to joke that he's still in Australia because he lost his return ticket to Scotland in the 1970s.

In this episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, John describes how his career in obstetrics and gynaecology took off on his arrival in Melbourne in 1976 and took him in directions no one could have predicted.

From early entrepreneurial success delivering newspapers as a Glasgow schoolboy, this canny Scot surmounted his humble beginnings to become a pioneer in the development of IVF.

From this he profited enough to turn his hand to full-time investing when others might choose to retire. Instead he chooses to engage with entrepreneurs innovating in sectors as diverse as biotechnology, digital agriculture and fintech.

A string of brilliant stock selections, including a major foray into Afterpay before it listed, has made John a prominent figure in Australia's small company environment.