#517 - Nick Stone, Bluestone Lane

It's Daily Talk Show and we're still in Los Angeles. And we're at Bluestone Lane Cafe with the founder, Nicholas Stone. Welcome, boys. Thank you for coming.

Thanks so much. I mean, priorities, I feel like this, doing a podcast with a couple of gronks, low on the priority list, so we appreciate you being here. It's okay, you know, I had three other meetings cancelled. I thought, all right, you know, if it was just one, I wouldn't meet you, but it's three.

That was a pleasure. Thanks for taking the time. And, you know, we've got some fantastic ambience out here, you know, typical LA day, 4,000 cars per minute and a bobcat demolishing a road. Yeah, it looks like they're carving out like some new lines or something like that.

Something's going on. Yeah, that whole arm. We've got a very Melbourne coffee coming our way. What have you got?

I've got an oat milk piccolo, actually. It's a shot. Oat milk's very American. Very, very California.

You know, it's a non-dairy, very health conscious and aesthetic saver tastemaker. I try to wean off any milk or even oat milk or almond milk style coffees coming over here. I thought I could go back and it's all black, which I wanted to do. But then you find places like this, which I'm like, it's the quality of Melbourne coffee in the States.

And so this establishment, we're in California, you started out in NYC. Yes. I think Josh had been a loss of flow. I spent a lot of time, sorry, I think it was like 2013 or 2014.

My girlfriend had this list of places that we had to go. And by the end of it, I reckon we went to more Australian cafes or like the amount of time we spent at Bluestone Lane, it felt like I was in Melbourne the whole time. Is that a common thing? How many Aussies do you reckon come through the door versus Americans?

It would definitely be sizable in locations like West Hollywood and West Village in New York City, without a doubt. In our more business centric locations, not many tourists are sort of wandering up there. But when you're in residential areas or where people want to hang out and spend time on holiday, like we're on the path of travel and we're so fortunate to have so many Australians come to the States and look out for Bluestone Lane and want to go to Bluestone Lane. They're quite parochial and passionate about our coffee culture.

And we've been such beneficiaries of it because the Australians that have lived in the States and Australian tourists have acted as this tastemaker. They've been these organic influencers that have introduced that proposition and told their American friends, hey, you should have something slightly better. Why spend $5 or $4 on a coffee at Starbucks when you can spend the same amount but get the Bluestone Lane experience? And we've got the timing right from that perspective.

The year we opened our first store was in 2013. The dollar was particularly strong. And I think 5% of all Australians visited the US that year. Like 1 million Australians visited the US.

We were saying 2012, 2013 was great. 2012, it felt like Tommy was having the trip of his life. It was pre-marriage and all that sort of thing. Getting loose.

Very far from that. But why the US? Why did you decide to set up shop here? Well, I always wanted to live in the States and I wanted to live in New York in particular.

And I went from football playing AFL for six years. Luckily, I went to university at the same time because I only played for six years, not too many games. And then I went into corporate finance investment banking and I met this beautiful woman at Derby Day, which is obviously one of the major courtship festivals on the Australian calendar. Derby Day and basically, I had this dream of going overseas and I sort of was trying to convince her that it would be a great idea to go and live and work in New York City.

And she went along with the idea. She was studying at university as well but thought, you know, it'd be quite good. She was actually modelling on the side as a part-time job. But she was very focused on a degree which was studying osteopathic medicine.

So she's got a bigger brain than me. And then, long story short, I tried to get transferred and I wasn't able to land a job because of the financial crisis. But at that point in time, I'd already completed a post-graduate degree in Master of Finance. And I was trying to work out ways in which I could get to the States.

And one of them was about studying over here and doing an MBA or doing exchange. And I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to study in New York City. Welcome to LA. Thank you.

It was a lovely Thursday afternoon. And that acted as the catalyst also to provide a job opportunity. And so I ended up moving in 2010, started studying in September 2010. And when I got here, I just couldn't leave out of the coffee culture world.

And also, I just didn't have an appreciation of how successful Starbucks is. I think Australia is quite a myopic, insular view that Starbucks is the Antichrist and terrible and inferior. But the business model itself and the brand they built is absolutely extraordinary in such a small period of time. A period of time of building a $120 billion US brand, $23 billion of revenue a year in four years and introducing espresso coffee to the States.

And so there's got to be an opportunity to be more authentic with Australia and have a better quality product, better quality service, better quality aesthetic, and really make people feel like they're going to their local establishment. And that was basically the catalyst, the business opportunity, the market opportunity. I would be a core customer, but I'd never worked a day in hospitality. So that was the most unique thing I think about Bluestone.

The founder and CEO of probably the largest hospitality Australian export now, never worked a day in hospitality. Horrendous at Undercover Boss. You'd just be dropping the coffees. I'd be so bad.

How do you turn on the coffee machine? Do you think it's an advantage because you're not jaded as someone who has experienced the annoyance of maybe dealing with customers or being on that front line to come in and go, Oh, I see an opportunity. Yeah, I think unbridled, unencumbered from any preconceived notion of like, you've got to do it this way and this steps of service and this is how you treat someone and you can't price it that way. I think you can trial things.

Thanks, Brandon. Well, that's all right. I think you can try things without fear. And I think you probably apply this lesson to so many things in life.

And I guess a lot of people get caught up in this notion of like, they're an entrepreneur and they're creating a startup. Like really, Bluestone is a fast growing small business. That's the underbelly of all economies globally. And I think with me, I just looked at the way in which I could keep iterating and learn and with a real discrete focus on building a brand.

And my wife in particular being core customers and like, what would we want if we walked in? And we had fantastic examples being kind of stills living in Melbourne that we felt like we could replicate that here. And so when you moved to the US, what was your previous experience? How long did you spend in the US prior to actually moving here?

So I moved September 2010, studied until the end of the year and then started at ANZ in their corporate finance team in February. And I was really tasked with rebuilding the team in New York and London because there was obviously a view that the world and the financial markets were destined to be obliterated. And that was sort of happening in the US and Europe, but Australia was relatively immune. And we had some catalysts that predated the GFC that meant that the regulatory sort of authorities were more stringent and we didn't have this nasty problem with debt serviceability at the household level.

So suddenly it went from risk off to risk on and like, oh no, if you can build a business, we could actually go for market share here. And we could grow in Asia and we had a new CEO who was very excited about opportunities. So I worked, so I started then and I didn't do anything for a couple of years, even though I'd worked on the business case at business school in New York. But then it was until July, 2013, we opened our first store in Midtown Manhattan, very close to where our office was, which was on between 47th and 48th on park.

And then went from one store to two stores and went to three stores and four stores. And it all kept working. And I didn't really have any, have any ambitions of ever going full time. And then I went full time finally in mid 2016 to 12 stores, three years later, nearly 50 stores.

So what is it? What does an investment banker actually do? I guess we have this Tommy imaginary. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. What is an actual day to day? I can assume that it's like a click a few buttons and then you do like cocaine for lunch and then you come back. Like what is it?

What is the reality of it? That was definitely the heydays of the eighties. You know, we missed that period. We got the austerity measures and like bankers are overpaid.

Oh, listen, I think if you're interested in companies, it's an amazing job because your basic role is to understand how a company creates value and how it grows and what the capital it needs to be able to make investments. And Divided by 10 hours. Holy smokes, that's 400 coffees an hour. Like, how long does a coffee take?

Oh, three minutes. Uh-oh, I can do 20 in an hour. Oh, like, how do I get the... I need 10 espresso machines.

So where is the money in cafes? So, yeah, it's a very, very, very delicate balance between managing your lease costs and driving enough productivity through your staff. It's certainly not easy. You've got to get the right rent deal.

It takes a long time to get those deals. The landlord's got to trust your brand, got to trust your value proposition and who you are. And, you know, for us, obviously food was a larger part of it, but with more food needs more people. So, it's not easy, but you need...

In our case, we won't sign a deal where the landlord doesn't really want us over anyone else. They have to feel so fired up and motivated that we're going to be an amenity to their building where they're happy to take a bit of a hit or subsidise the retail rent because they're getting their core rent roll or core revenue from the office tenants above or the mixed-use campus. Like, that's how we've been able to do it. A lot of the big guys, the incumbents like Starbucks, they've been in there through grandfathered leases which really, you know, they probably signed 10 years ago.

Is that cheaper rent? Yeah, certainly, because rent goes up. Like, rent's basically indexed. It goes up 3% a year typically.

So, over 10 years, you're talking 30% increase, right? And when they reset rates, rents, they up and reset them higher after, you know... So, you could be paying 30%, 40% higher than what they were 10 years ago. Now, that's going from $200 a square foot to $370.

Now, that's a big, big difference. I look at... We were at IHOP last night. Classic sales meeting.

Oh, yeah. I know. They're the best. Great experience.

I've never been to IHOP. Really? You have the pancakes? Yeah, we had pancakes.

The IHOP pancake parlor? Cornia. It was... I mean, the pancakes, they're fine, but it's...

We're in this... On Santa Monica Boulevard. It's an old building. It's a bit run down.

And I was thinking, there wasn't many people in there. And I was thinking, how are these guys surviving? When you look at businesses that are franchised, is there some game that's happening where they're spreading the cost across a whole bunch of them? And that's how they're even able to have ones that are not doing that well?

Yeah, scale. Scale gives you a portfolio approach. And ultimately, brands like IHOP make all their money in suburban markets and markets that the cost pressures are a lot lighter. They don't have...

They've got a lot lower minimum wage. They have significantly lower rents. The food input cost could be very close to what it is in LA. Like, getting food product in here is not easy with the density.

It's not easy in New York, but a lot easier out in the suburbs. And honestly, labour could be 50% the cost it is here and rent could be 30% the cost it is in the middle of LA or the middle of New York City. So, once you've got enough scale, you've got units that some do 5% margin, some do 30% margin, some do 7%, some do 27%. It blends out at around anywhere from 15% to 22% profit margin because they can make more money in certain markets than they can in the city centres.

But the city centre gives you the incredible brand awareness and the momentum to be able to franchise and grow in other markets. I saw you give me a keynote and you mentioned that next year, 2020, you wanted to have 200 stores, 200 cafes. But in the same token, in the same keynote, you said Starbucks has 15,000, which is, in perspective, it's a small number, what you were saying. What's the thought on going to a number like 200?

How are you feeling from the first 50? Well, it's interesting because I think we have, obviously, naturally a very Australia-centric lens with how we look at hospitality and we're pretty much anti-chains and certainly as it relates to coffee. The way that you're talking about coffee, like, I came to America and I was going to drink black coffee and then I've had a Bluestone Lane at another chain of cafes. They're independent, owner-operated, very high standard.

The owner knows everyone, really cares about the product. Australia's 25 million people. The US is 320 million people. So, if you have four cafes in Melbourne, which a lot of proprietors do, they're just under different names, you can multiply that by, what, 15 times or something?

So, four by 15, you know, it's a lot less than 60 cafes, right? So, I think with us, like, 200 is very, very achievable because the market's so big, the white space is so great, the independent operators aren't here. And I look at Starbucks and I look at just how many... This is a trivia question for you.

How many stores in New York City, New York City, does Starbucks have? There's one on every other street corner. That's not the correct answer. No, I reckon I'm just doing the maths.

I reckon 200. I was going to say 200, but now I can't. So, I'll say 280. 280?

200. 240. I went lower, so that's better. I went lower, so that's better.

Congratulations. I thought you meant to be saying all the place. Plus you. No, no, no.

Of course. One tax, no discount later. But, you know, so, I look at New York City and Starbucks and 240, like, you know, it feels sort of without, you know, back of the envelope, it feels like 200 is very achievable across, say, 10 cities. The market's we're in now.

We're in seven markets if you cluster New Jersey and New York metro together. And, you know, I feel like that's very achievable over the next three to five years. I think that next year we're actually going to slow our rate of opening down because we want to have a year where we consolidate the markets we're in. We're not going to go to any new markets.

We need a deeper. And I think we just want to make sure we're perfecting everything we're doing as it relates to systems and our team and training and the economics to then rapidly be able to accelerate in 2021. And whether that's under a company owned and at a franchise construct or just company owned. But I think, like, next year is that year where we slow a little bit, get everything right to go fast again.

So, yeah, I don't know if I said it, 200 by next year, but, like, that's certainly not possible and not the ambition. But 200, I think, is very, very comfortable for us over the next, you know, five years, I would say. Yeah, I feel like coming to the US, there's something a bit scary, like, there's a few things that scare me. Seeing all the billboards with the lawyers and then seeing the ads where it's like everything from, you know, have you been injured at work to, like, every spectrum.

It seems like every second ad is a lawyer saying, you know, call us now. So there's that element. Then you've got, like, everything causes you cancer. Like I said, like, there's signs everywhere saying this can cause you cancer.

Do you get the sense or the feeling in the US of that anxiety or does it sort of not into your system? It's an extremely litigious culture. Like, I think that everyone talks about there's more lawyers than nurses and doctors combined. And, yeah, it's definitely a major risk with operating in this market.

Often, you may not do anything wrong. No, sorry, you may not do anything wrong that brought you in a slip. But everyone has the right to sue in a very sort of open way and in a flexible way because costs aren't awarded. So, for example, you trip over here and you say, Nick tripped me.

It's hurt my leg. I'm going to sue you because I can't go to work. I'll have to defend myself. But if the court says, you're right, Nick, you did nothing wrong, I can't counterclaim costs against you.

So the motivation to sue is infinite. And that's very strange. In Australia, that doesn't exist, right? You know, you sue someone on a false pretence and you lose, you pay the other person's lawyer, like legal fees.

In the US, that's not the case. So that's why the notion of an ambulance chaser is right. And, you know, that's definitely one of the challenges in the market. You need to be really, really careful.

You need to be... What does that do to compliance? Like, that's huge. The compliance costs are massive.

Absolutely massive. The amount of money you'll spend on HR, people centric and lawyers is huge. It's a cost of doing business here and a very major one. And I guess there's been a lot of discussion around trying to reduce some of the regulations in certain pockets that could make sense in others.

Like the EPA, I vehemently do not agree with. But, you know, there are a lot of costs in doing business. And I guess the concern a lot of entrepreneurs or small business owners have is that inflection point where suddenly it becomes cost prohibitive or there's not sufficient motivation or incentive to take to dependability. I'm looking for for people who are extremely dependable and reliable, who give consistency of effort, and that they are at work on time and they care and they're committed and passionate.

Like I'm not looking for the best barista. I'm looking for someone who again can like play their role, and playing a role as part of a barista is, yeah, you're gonna make great coffee, but you've got to provide outstanding service. You've got to have that theatrical element that I think people love about Australian cafes. What about the senior stuff, like in the books, like the structure level?

How do you like that high-up level? How do you gauge that? Because I guess there's a lot, like one thing with the US is it feels like people know how to hype. They know how to talk.

And I feel like I would get a bit paranoid that, is this person just really good at talking? Can they execute? I think that sometimes people in this market sort of over-promise and under-deliver versus maybe my standards. You know, we're trying to grow faster than most and do it at the premium value proposition, and we're trying to do it in complex markets.

And you know, to be able to execute effectively, you've got to have very, very high standards, unrelenting standards. And sometimes people's expectations on what's premium is different from yours, and that's your over-promise, under-deliver. But I think, you know, you never entirely know. You've just got to ask the right questions and observe and make sure you have enough critical people on your team that can make calls and provide the right feedback and coach them and if they're either going to get it or they're not.

You've got to assume good intent and give everyone an opportunity. But it's not working, you've just got to be honest. That's not going to work. And I think you're a great person.

Happy to go for a beer with you. Happy to have a coffee, but maybe you're not a perfect fit for Bluestone Lane. You're going to try and do it with as much dignity as possible. But that's like life.

You may have lots of people that want to work on sit in this seat and get on a podcast, but, you know, they're not a perfect fit for it. That's okay. Like, I think, you know, in hospitality, culture is far more important than any technical component. In other industries, technical skills are more important than maybe your cultural fit.

But hospitality is about making other people feel happy and satisfied and excited. And you've got to change the way they feel. So if you're not dedicated to that pursuit, I don't know if the industry's cut out for you and probably not Bluestone Lane's cut out for you. How, as a business owner, do you set up a solid framework to create a great culture?

You've got to lead by example, right? You know, the fish rots at the head, as they say. And I think you need to be very clear on your expectations. You need to be very clear on your value proposition and why Bluestone Lane should exist and why your customers are going to like us and why come back.

And then just be very, very clear on your standards out of the gate and just know who you are and be so crystal clear on what makes you special and why you think there's an opportunity for you to grow a business. And is this something you had before you launched? You opened your first one? I spent an incredible amount of work on analyzing how we could compete and how we could grow and what the brand should stand for and the way it should be and the experience should be like and the cost structure.

Like, I came from a, I was very fortunate. I had a background of being like analytical, right? That was my, that was my skill set. That was my business as usual.

And then I could overlay it with a real deep interest in how to build brands and rather than a collection of stories, how to build an actual brand that stands for something. And in our case, we wanted to be this, this extension of Australian lifestyle. We wanted to encourage people to go out and get a coffee and socialize, not just get a coffee to go, to drink in your guests. We wanted you to come down with a colleague and chat and, and get that broader sort of daily escape.

And I think that a lesson I, you know, I always convey to entrepreneurs is, don't jump into this unless you can answer all the questions. And you don't have to have, like, just general questions. Like, you know, can you make a profit? Can you generate revenue?

Can you make a profit? Can you employ people? Are they actually going to go to work? Can you generate loyalty with your customers?

And I think I got a lot of, I got a lot of confidence from people challenging me and saying, Oh, you know, it's too expensive. Oh no, it's too slow. Oh no, it doesn't have syrups and it's too blue. And just like tick off the boxes.

Yeah. But there's a person who doesn't want syrup because there's, there's a health conscious nation, this niche is this age. And that's our core customer. And if I put the stores where the core customer wants to hang out or work or live, maybe I can compete there.

Okay, good point. Okay. Tick that one. And then just work in methodically down the list.

And then I suddenly felt like, Hey, there's enough. There's enough sort of signals that we could make it to overcomber the barrier. Is it the opposite approach to test and learn minimum viable product? Well, I think like test and learn and rapid prototyping are really like concepts linked to technology, right?

Like where you are assessing things so dynamically. I can't. It's harder to do with a lease. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. I can't open a store and go, ah, four days in, poor sales. Yeah.

Done. You know, my lead time is so much bigger and my capex is so much bigger. So the culture, the brand, I think Tommy and I are very comfortable with that sort of stuff. The thing that I find fascinating is the cost structures and the idea that if you're in all these different markets, paying a few cents more on almond milk at the supplier level could be the difference between making money and not making money.

Like how, how do you make sure that those things are all dialed in so then you don't have to worry at that sort of sell level of a spreadsheet? Supply chain is absolutely critical and we have a really, really good one. In fact, a partner in banking, I brought in to oversee supply chain. Never worked in supply chain in his life, but he just had a fantastic mindset on business and he, and he was a, he studied law and then he was in banking.

And he's just sort of very practical and pragmatic. And like most of these things are like, you don't need to be a professor of supply chain. Like you've got to work out how to get point A to point B the most efficiently, the most reliably and with the best quality product you can get for the price. Like, so, but supply chain in our case has big risks in some commodities, like particularly coffee prices, paper prices.

And what we experienced this year was avocado prices. Avocado prices went up 500% in July and August and it really crushed our, our gross profit line. And we are now looking to purchase, like have a forward purchasing obligation where we have the price locked in if we buy a certain amount of volume. But that takes time to be able to get to that scale.

And we're sort of there now, but it's, it is, you know, it's not only just what I'm buying the avocado price, it's getting the portion control right. It's getting your wastage right. It's making sure that, you know, that we're not just giving products away and that the staff aren't having a free for all. Like it is, it's a, it is a business ultimately that needs to be sustainable.

And the business is what generates the cash to be able to pay everyone's wages and to be able to grow and to invest more into the stores or more into our training and opportunities to grow. So, you know, we, we, it's, it's an area that we're spending an inordinate amount of time right now on getting the gross profit right and also getting the labor productivity right. And yeah, you know, it's, it's a minimum wage in New York city went up 20% this year. Can you imagine like costs, like everyone that works for you got a 20% raise one year.

It was mandatory by, by the state government. And that's pretty hard to swallow. I couldn't put up all my, I couldn't put up my avocado toast price 20%. I had to absorb it and somehow offset it through increased sales volume, not really spend.

Did you see a shift in culture? I mean, teams that are going, okay, now we're earning 20% more. This is actually live. Yeah.

Well, it's a, it's a pro and a con. Like I think for certain pockets, it's a, it was a very beneficial and much needed. There is definitely a big disparity here between those who are entitled to tips and gratuities and those who aren't. It's an archaic system.

100% don't agree with it. But effectively those who don't directly serve a customer aren't entitled to a tip. So you, you've got a coffee here and let's just say you give a dollar tip, which is nothing in the U S when you consider you go to a bar and you're guaranteed to give one or $2, even though pouring a beer is a lot easier than making that milk pick a lot of coffee. There's a big, that's another broader issue.

That's a bit strange here, but you give a dollar tip. Like none of that dollar is entitled to go It's a country in which people all around the world want to come and make it even. And certainly like a city like New York City, it's the world city. So you're not just competing against New Yorkers, you're competing against people from other parts of America.

You're competing against people from South America, from Europe. So I think that you need to be all in. And to be all in, you've got to take a tremendous amount of personal risk. So that would be my one piece of advice.

Be prepared. You are moving. You're going to be on the hook for a lease. You're going to have to rent a place.

You're not going to consider about flying in from Australia and flying to the States. They see through that. You're all in and you need to pay the price and you need to put yourself on the line. And if you do, honestly, Americans are really, really open-minded and they're very proactive and entrepreneurial.

And I do think they look through things with good intent and optimism. And that resonates really, really well with Australians who've got that attitude of giving it a go and are not too fussy and are happy to be scrappy and lean in and do whatever it takes and be social and be open-minded. If you've got those qualities and they know you're here and you're going to give it everything you've got, people will give you a chance. And that is what's incredibly exciting and inspiring about being here.

Yeah, I think you feel it. Like us just being in the store, there is that. And seeing all the experiences of the U.S., it's not until you sit down at a Blue Stone Lane having a coffee that you appreciate the amount of logistics and also just ability to cut through all of the things that you need to do to make it happen. Like we find it extremely inspiring.

So we're going to see the daily talk show. Well, we keep talking. So this is the funny thing. When you're in Melbourne, it's like, yeah, if we were in L.A.

and then you come here, it's like, we're just some big babies. We've got a few years. You realize the scale that it's being played out. And I think there's such, the bubbles in Australia consist of quite a few people that make up quite a lot of the majority.

We come over here and you realize how small our bubble is or how there's just little bubbles here that there's so much more to it in L.A. There seems like there's a bit of a bullshit filter too. So like if we were to do it, if you don't have those things lined up, as you said, if you're sort of half putting a toe in, you're destined. I think they see through it.

They're used to it. They're used to it. Oh, yeah. I had a friend like this from France three years ago.

He lasted one winter. It's gone. You know, the exciting part about the U.S. is, and this is, the technology has certainly facilitated this, but you don't need to now land in L.A.

or New York. You can honestly land in Austin, Texas. You could land in Nashville, Tennessee. You could land in Miami, Florida.

And these tier two cities are absolutely exploding because people now have more flexibility with where they want to work and how they can work. So that's super exciting because the cost structure in those cities is a lot lower. You know, the barrier of entry is lower. So that's, I think, Australians think, yeah, got to make it in big Apple.

Well, maybe now it's maybe big Apple's the second step. Maybe let's land in, let's land in San Diego. Let's land in Seattle and then see if we can make it there. Those cities are still big.

You've got a million people and there's lots of opportunities to broadcast your proposition and your message. And then let's attack New York next. So that's a little bit of salient advice. And that's definitely a new thing, the emergence of these tier twos.

And without a doubt, it's been underpinned by technology because people now can, for example, live in Austin, Texas, pay no city tax, no state tax and pay less to rent. It gives you a lot more runway to get something off the ground versus California where you're paying state and city tax of 14, 13, 14%. Are you paying for the dream? Is there overinflation?

Like there are all these things. Like, is it overinflated? Is it like, I guess just oversaturated in the sense of New York, like actors, for instance. If you want to act, you go to Los Angeles and we see the amount of Uber drivers that have actors.

You can speak in seven different accents. I mean, so I guess that's part of the whole thing too, is going to those other cities. It's like, it's probably not as crazy inflated. Yeah, without a doubt.

And it obviously depends on the industry you're trying to crack it. You know, if you're trying to make it in acting, you're going to play Hollywood and you're going to play maybe New York on the theater circuit. But a lot of other industries aren't linked to a particular city. There's pockets of engineering in 30 cities.

There's pockets of technology in 10 big cities here. Hospitality, you know, it's probably 50 cities that you could do something pretty special. Coming to Los Angeles, I realized the ease that I have it back home in terms of ease of life, having a kid, the roads that I drive on. They're not as busy as I thought they were.

It feels like traffic, but when you come here, it is pretty crazy. What is one thing you actually love about living in California? So I've only lived in LA for just under two years and we live in Santa Monica. So I think Santa Monica and everyone talks about the 405 like dividing the city.

And it's actually very true. Like the fact that I made it out here. Well, this is the second time I've attempted to drive. Yeah, you've persisted really well.

First time was a mishap. It was going to take too long to get here. What I've learned is it's usually about 25 minutes one way and then you double it to get back. Yeah.

So it took me, and what happens is, what is crazy is you look on your phone and the Uber says, all right, 22 minutes. Okay, great. Get in the Uber, 22 minutes. I'm on time.

Mid Uber ride, it goes from 22 to 27 to 32 to 37. You're like, what is going on? I'm going closer. And then like the time's going up.

And literally that's because it's so dependent on roads. You have one accident, blocks of lane. Like there's 20 minutes on your journey. And I remember when I moved here, I was like, don't apologise when you're calling people.

And I'm often not the most prompt, I must admit. I always put too many things on my calendar. But people are like, no, it happens all the time. Like I only get to half our meetings.

Half the meetings I take in the car trying to get to the meeting because there'll be an accident or something goes wrong. Where in New York, like the subway is so damn efficient. Pretty grimy and dirty, but incredibly efficient. But you know, Santa Monica is close to the beach and the weather is absolutely extraordinary.

Like consistency of weather. It might, you know, it's probably improving because of global warming, which is not a good thing. But, you know, it's just like, it's pretty epic. But, you know, I think it's more like an Australian style lifestyle.

Closer to the beach. We can walk to the shops. We don't have to drive. The climate is very moderate, particularly in winter.

And being close to the beach, you don't get the crazy heat that you get in the valley. You get the sea breeze that cools things down. So it's worked out well, but we're actually moving back to the East Coast. So this is going to be two years here and we go back to the East Coast because I've been travelling so much and doing one week in LA and one week in New York.

And it's just, it's just too, just too, just too hard. When you go to Melbourne, what cafe do you go to? Oh, there's a lot. You know, I think like the top, the top cafes are obviously, You know, I think I love the Kettle Black Top Padding, but I love things like Pillar of Salt.

I love Journeyman. You know, I love Steve Rowley's cafes are amazing. Plane Sailing in Elwood. That's my.

All right, you can have half. You can have half. There you go. Okay.

So Los Angeles, there you go. You know, I think it's, there's so many, you know, every, every time I go there, but you know, I used to go to Patricia in the city. Absolutely love that. And I used to, and when I go home, we often stay at my parents-in-law's place and they're around the corner from a cafe called Little Locks and you close the plane sailing.

That's right. Because the consistency of cafes are so high in Melbourne. I think it's more the social ritual I love. The fact of just going, going to catch up with, going with my wife and reading the papers back to front, having two coffees, avocado toast with, with halloumi and mushrooms, roasted tomato.

It's just magical. It's such a great way to disconnect and just relax a little bit. And then during the week, you know, Monday through Friday, I'd go twice a day, morning catch up as a team. And then, yeah, all good.

And then, you know, the afternoon was before we, you know, we were working so late that we used to get another coffee at three o'clock because we might