Nick Stone
speaker
134 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Nick Stone’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I decided to keep studying after football. I did a master's degree. And then part of my plan to get to New York, because of the financial crisis and the inability to really get a job, a lot of the US banks, Lehman Brothers failed, a lot of the banks were cutting roles, was actually to do an MBA. And I had a mentor who had coached me in banking who's from Princeton, New Jersey.
And his advice to me was actually, don't quit your job to go full-time in an MBA. Why don't you do an MBA in Melbourne at Melbourne University and continue working, continue learning and experiencing a practical job? Don't just go academic. And the advice was invaluable. It was such salient, truthful and beneficial advice. So when I went to New York, I actually ended up...
facilitating an exchange. And I went to a university that I wasn't really familiar with. It was called Fordham University. And I went to the graduate school there and I was able to study at the executive program. So when I landed, I was a student full time for the first time in my life. And I used that as an opportunity to meet as many people as humanly possible. So I formed friendships. I
but I just proactively engaged them. I asked how their journey, why they're here. Do they ever want to go have a coffee or a beer or go for the gym and go for a run? What's their best restaurants? What are the things I have to see? And then when I was in New York, I was really fortunate. I had my wife or girlfriend back there. She knew some people, but I think she connected me with someone. And
Then I joined a gym group. And then there was an Australian rules football group. And it's probably a bit of a secret source, a special skill that a lot of Australians embody, particularly those that are more nomadic and are willing to go overseas and try their best. It's the ability to socialize. Aussies love social settings. They love...
getting together with others to celebrate, to catch up, to have a coffee, to watch a game, to go to a concert, go to a festival, go skiing. I think it's probably very similar to Israelis. Australia only has a population of 25 million. And a lot of people are shocked when I say that because there's Aussies everywhere.
And there's some of those common traits around socializing and hanging out and humility and also being generous with your time. So if someone does reach out to you and say, hey, Nick, I heard that you're in town. Is there any chance I could grab a coffee to chat about my startup idea? Or I'm trying to get a job in finance or I've got a hospitality company. Can I pick your brain?
I've always paid it back because so many people have provided me that opportunity. It's a very, very strong Australian trait and a value that my parents also instilled in me.
It has its status.
Alana, this is the million dollar question because there's been... Many times over the Bluestone Lane journey of 11 years, especially during the depths of COVID, I was really scratching my head. Why did I have a retail business that wasn't able to operate, that was shut down by the city, that was trying to ensure that people didn't come together? It's a very, very good question.
But ultimately, I think I became so frustrated and disillusioned with the coffee culture in New York and how different it was from what I was used to and what I craved in Australia. I had a very myopic view on Starbucks and on Dunkin'. They are brands that are not found in Australia.
And Starbucks has emerged over the last couple of years, but it's very much focused on shopping centres where there's a critical mass of international students. Very, very rare to find I think Australians that have been in the country for a long period of time or born here to be drinking coffee at Starbucks, it's just atypical.
It might change, but Starbucks effectively failed in Australia like they failed in Israel. Starbucks wasn't as successful in Italy. And I just felt that there's got to be something different here because it wasn't just about... the coffee taste and the product per se for me. What was much more important was getting a coffee or the act of going to coffee was a ritual. It was a process.
It was a way to facilitate human connection. And it was such a critical part of my day as a banker because we would start the morning with this team ritual of getting coffee. And then we would also often get a coffee in the afternoon because at times we wouldn't know what time we would go home. And we depend on the demands of the client.
You might have calls internationally that could run into the evening. So I just missed that feeling of being a local where I walked in and they knew my name, face and order. It's pretty simple. That's what I was used to. And that's what I expected. And after a number of years of living in New York, I just thought, we've got to change this.
And I had an opportunity to really think about a business model through completely objective, I had never worked a day in hospitality. I had this customer-centric view. I had experience with numbers and advising businesses and financing businesses. And I had some insights around building brands and marketing through my time studying my MBA. And also my brother was in advertising.
And my best friend, who I lived with for five years prior to moving to New York, was very, very strong, a bit of an expert in brand management. I just put the business plan together, thought about it for a couple of years, asked a million questions, most of them repetitive and naive and very much a novice. But that's how it all came together.
And I didn't have these ambitions of building it into... 60 plus stores that we have right now, 65. But it was something I thought the community would love because we were going to focus on people and have much better product. And that's what we went about executing.
It's such a great question. And when I think back to my mental state when I was considering Bluestone, I am naturally pretty risk adverse. I like to do a lot of planning. and become a student before I dive into anything. And with Bluestone, I think I just summed up that I understood what the downside was going to be. I wasn't going to leave my job as a banker full-time.
The company couldn't afford to compensate me as CEO. The company also didn't need me as a full-time CEO. It was one store and it was going to be two stores within six months. It didn't warrant a chief executive. In fact, I think I had enough self-awareness to appreciate that me full-time is probably not going to benefit this business. I would probably push it too hard. I might be too ambitious.
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