Success and More Interesting Stuff is back in 2025 with new episodes being released on the first Tuesday of each month. We're excited for the year ahead and would love for you to subscribe to the podcast.

Welcome to the final episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff for 2024. In this episode, we’re closing out the year with a guest who knows how to deliver a knockout punch.

Joe Aston spent 12 years as co-writer of the AFR’s Rear Window column, transforming it from a finance industry gossip page into a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred must-read. With a sharp wit and a fearless approach, Aston took on everyone from prime ministers and billionaires to untouchable institutions.

In October 2023, Aston signed off from Rear Window with a bang, exposing Qantas and its CEO Alan Joyce for their conduct during the COVID pandemic. But Aston didn’t stop there. Instead of taking a break, he penned the bestseller The Chairman’s Lounge, a deep dive into how Qantas fell from national sweetheart to corporate villain.

Before journalism, Aston cut his teeth in politics, working with Joe Hockey and Liberal Party icon Bruce Baird. He also spent time inside the walls of Qantas, gaining firsthand insights that would shape his future career.

It’s a conversation you won’t want to miss as we wrap up an incredible year. I hope you enjoy this podcast and I look forward to bringing you more episodes of Success and More Interesting Stuff in 2025.

Bega Cheese turned 125 this year. It started as the Bega Co-operative Creamery Company in 1999, and for over a century, things were pretty quiet. That all changed in 2000 when a young dairy farmer, Barry Irvin, took the reins as chairman. From then on, it’s been a whirlwind of growth and transformation.

In 2011, Irvin took Bega to the Australian stock market, and under his leadership, the company made several key acquisitions. Today, Bega isn’t just a dairy business. It’s a major player in Australian food, owning brands like Vegemite, Peanut Butter, Dare Milk, and Yo Plait. Now, Bega has a market cap of around $1.6 billion.

But Barry Irvin’s story is about more than business success. He’s faced significant personal challenges too. His son, Matthew, was born with profound autism. Irvin became a key figure in Giant Steps, a nonprofit supporting children with autism. In 2019, Irvin faced his own health battle, being diagnosed with bowel cancer. Despite a tough fight, he beat the disease and returned to lead Bega once again.

In this episode of the Success and More Interesting Stuff podcast, I chat with Barry Irvin about his journey, both personal and professional. It’s a story of resilience, leadership, and the determination to succeed.

David Lyons has travelled around the world chasing a rugby ball. From the time he started to take the game seriously as a 15-year-old he was earmarked for success. Twice he toured Europe with the Australian schoolboys, opening his eyes to a world significantly larger than the one he experienced growing up in the NSW country town of Molong.

Lyons played 46 tests for the Wallabies over 8 years including two World Cups and a British Lions tour. At just 28 years he picked up his ball and moved to Wales for a few seasons before settling in France for a longer stint.

It was in Europe that he started to plan for his future. He studied at Oxford and in Monaco. This set him up for a career in finance.

Heading back to Australia, Lyons picked up a role at KPMG before eventually deciding to pitch his own tent. In 2021 he joined with some other like-minded professionals and launched AAG Partners. The group specialises in the agriculture sector.

Acutely aware from his farming days in Molong of the financial volatility in the agricultural industry, he has deliberately sought out ways to deliver higher returns with less risk.

In this podcast, Lyons talks about the journey from rural NSW to representing Australia at an elite level on the global stage. He also shares his passion for continuous learning and how this is helping to uncover new opportunities through his agriculture investment firm AAG Partners.

• 0:00 - Introduction
• 1:30 - Growing up in Molong
• 7:00 - A passion for agriculture and entrepreneurship
• 9:15 - Building a career in Rugby
• 16:02 - What it takes to be truly great in any field
• 21:52 - Going global and moving to Europe
• 26:13 - Continuous learning and development
• 28:29 - Returning to Australia
• 29:30 - Starting AAG Partners
• 34:45 - A formula for higher returns for less risk in agriculture
• 39:45 - A revolution in cotton farming

Sometimes, misfortune can lead to opportunity.

Wes Maas was an aspiring young rugby league player trying to establish himself in the NRL. The kid from Dubbo had boundless energy and in his spare time, he worked in an equipment hire business. A football injury not only meant he was out of action on the field, but it also took him out of the hire yard and into head office. It was here that his world opened up.

The family-run business was successful. It concentrated heavily on return on total assets. Wes was quick to catch on. It wasn't long before he threw in his NRL dream and headed back to Dubbo for a fresh start.

Still in his early 20s, Wes spent his savings on a bobcat and borrowed twice that amount to buy a tipper. Suddenly, he was running his own business. Never happy to rest on his laurels, Wes expanded his fleet of equipment. He was keen to diversify and soon started an equipment hire business, leaning on his knowledge from his time in Sydney.

While Dubbo may seem to some to be a remote place to build an empire, Wes saw its potential. He was able to buy a quarry under the nose of an international giant. Then, his world expanded.

Property development and civil works followed in 2020. Wes looked to float the business on the share market, in the hope that a capital raise would help it grow even further. Maas Group (ASX: MGH) listed and started to expand.

Today, this former rugby league player runs a $1.5 billion business and he has amassed a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The group has assets throughout regional New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland, with Dubbo right in the middle. Still, only in his 40s, Wes' journey has a long way to go.

In this podcast, Wes takes investors through his early days as an aspiring rugby league player and the early days of running his own business - back when his family referred to him as "Neville No-Trade".

He also shares some of the plans the Maas Group team has for the future, and some of the greatest moments in the journey so far.

https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/the-former-rugby-league-player-who-now-runs-a-1-5-billion-business

Timecodes:

• 0:00 - Intro
• 1:54 - Early rugby days
• 4:18 - Major lessons Wes took away from this time
• 5:12 - Overcoming injury and why everything happens for a reason
• 7:17 - Learning the equipment hire game on the job
• 9:49 - Moving home to Dubbo
• 11:12 - Starting his own business
• 17:02 - Building an achievable long-term business plan
• 20:27 - Scaling the business
• 24:09 - Expanding into building materials
• 29:12 - Listing on the ASX and COVID experience
• 34:32 - Rising rate environment and impact on Maas Group
• 36:34 - Importance of "steady" not "rapid" growth
• 38:20 - Growth plans for the future
• 39:16 - What happens when an acquisition doesn't work
• 40:12 - Importance of good people
• 41:17 - Areas that are exciting over the next five years
• 43:46 - How Wes defines success

It is rare for a person to spend the first half of their working life in the public service and then pivot to build a multi-billion dollar financial business. Making the story even more remarkable is that this person grew up in regional Queensland - where financial products are hardly the main course of the local economy.

Ian Macoun, the Managing Director and Founder of Pinnacle Investment Management (ASX: PNI) was born in Rockhampton - a city best known for its cattle production. He left town to work for the Queensland Treasury before being poached as a 33-year-old to run the newly constructed Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC).

It was here that he was introduced to the world of investing. With QIC up and running, Macoun headed to Sydney, joining the private sector. A stint at Westpac opened his eyes to the opportunity in funds management and in 2000, he struck out with Mike Crivelli forming Perennial Funds Management.

It wasn't long though, and Macoun was thinking of an alternative funds management model. Taking minority ownerships in multiple managers, providing the onerous back office functions and accessing the key ingredient for any fund manager - funds.

He discovered this opportunity at stockbroker Wilsons Advisory. Macoun teamed up with Steve Wilson to change his fledgling Hyperion Funds Management arm into a multi-manager model. This was the birth of Pinnacle Investment Management.

Today, Pinnacle has been spun out of Wilson's and has 16 affiliates with a staggering $110 billion of total funds under management. It is growing rapidly and Macoun believes $200 billion is not out of the question.

In this episode of Sucess and More Interesting Stuff, Macoun opens up about his early years and upbringing, shares how he came up with the Pinnacle model and outlines his plans for the future.

Note: For disclosure purposes, the funds associated with Matthew Kidman own shares in Pinnacle Investment Management.

https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/no-shortcuts-how-ian-macoun-built-a-100-billion-funds-management-behemoth/

Traditionally, on the show, we talk to people involved in some shape or form with the share market. Today, we are excitedly going off-piste and delving into the unlisted world in one of Australia's outstanding success stories.

In 2008, Lina Calabria and two partners decided to start nine separate businesses as consultants. They had plenty of bright ideas and thought that creating a portfolio of companies, while unorthodox, was a low-risk path to success.

Within a few years, they selected Bellroy, an accessories business that specialises in male wallets, as the pick of the bunch. From humble beginnings, Bellroy, named after combining Bell's Beach and Fitzroy, has grown into a global brand with more than $130 million in sales.

Bellroy sells in dozens of countries and has created its own category called Carry. In other words, they design products you carry around, such as slim wallets, backpacks, work bags, duffel bags, totes, passport holders, and phone cases. It's niche but nicely profitable.

Today, Calabria sees a great opportunity to expand Bellroy in both products and countries, and she believes doubling and possibly tripling the business is a realistic goal.

Click on the player below to hear how Calabria and the team at Bellroy created their own category and navigated the trails of COVID-19 to build a business making a name on the global stage.

Stockbroking is a dangerous game. Investors depend on your advice, but the smallest slip-up can see the relationship turn nasty. As a result, most brokers tend to be as conservative as possible; not Hugh Robertson.

Robertson a 40-year veteran of the stockbroking scene in Melbourne, thrives at the risk end of the curve, specialising in micro and small cap stocks. He works like a gold prospector out in the field with his metal detector looking for the next big discovery.

His list of wins includes Monadelphous (ASX: MND), Service Stream (ASX: SSM), Bellamy’s (ASX: BAL), Hub24 (ASX: HUB), Afterpay and PSC Insurance (ASX: PSIN). He found most of those companies well before they'd been researched by the investment community and, in some cases, even before they listed on the share market.

Robertson has a unique style. He does not rely on numbers to make his decisions. To make matters harder, he has always found reading difficult. Instead, following his natural instincts, he garners information by getting to know people.

His conversations are endless and his intuition for what might work is uncanny. Most investors would've run into Robertson on Collins Street, with a cigarette in one hand and his mobile phone in the other, on the scent of the next big thing.

That doesn't mean he gets all his stock calls right – far from it. Like anyone dealing in small companies, there are always disappointments. His troubled children include Envirosuite (ASX: EVS) and Maggie Beer (ASX: MBH), but the ledger sits firmly in the positive.

Interestingly, Robertson is comfortable sitting on the boards of the companies he backs. Some people in the investment community would describe this as unorthodox, but Robertson likes to make sure he knows the people running the companies he's recommending to his clients. And if the company heads down the wrong path, he's prepared to make the changes required to right the ship.

His other great love is the land. Like most Collins Street farmers, it has been a rocky road. Early setbacks, though, have subsequently led to some prize properties in rural Victoria and probably the best garden in the state.

In this episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, I speak with Hugh about his path to stockbroking, his passion for prospecting and some of the incredible stories he has brought to the market. Hugh also shares a few of the emerging companies catching his eye right now.