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
My brother who works in the business has been an extraordinary ally and someone who is so supportive. I can often vent and I give him more critical feedback. I'm so raw with him at times, probably shooting too straight, but he can sort of bounce with it and deal with it and process it and not let it sort of go too deep.
And that's another thing that's been a bit misunderstood at times, even with, I think, some people that are very close to the business. They at times think that, oh, your brother's working your business, you must give him special treatment. I actually think it's absolutely the opposite.
The way you treat your siblings is, I think, a lot harder than how you treat your executive team, let alone in the staff, your teammates working in the store that I'm I'm trying to be as pleasant as possible. And even when I see something terrible, I'm not going to make a scene. I'm going to walk out. And so Andy's been extraordinary. And then just my school friends, it's really important.
They don't really care about what I do, how much I earn, whether I'm on this podcast, whether I know famous people, whether I go on great holidays or not. They just care about me as a person, the values. They're the ones that I've known since I, in some cases, were four years of age, others at 12.
We spent those school years playing sport, playing every different sport under the sun, going out to parties, chasing girls, going on holidays, just living in a really unencumbered, fun way. And they're the ones that, they're just amazing because when I call them, they're not interested in, really Bluestone. They're just interested in me.
They're not interested whether it's really profitable, whether it's going to be worth a lot, whether it's going to fail. They just want to make sure I'm okay. And no matter what, and even when I call them, I'm really down. I've had a really bad day, a bad month, bad year. They'll be like, mate, it's all good. You'll be fine. You'll work it out. Hey, so when are you back?
When do you come back just so we can catch up? When are we going to Let me get all the family together. We've got to go out and have a big dinner or a big lunch. And I want to go get together with this restaurant. They bring you back to earth. They level you.
They talk about what's most important, which is your health, your happiness, your family, the most critical relationships you have in your life, the people that you know are going to be on your deathbed. They're going to be there or they're going to be at your funeral. And you often get a lot of advice as you grow up.
from wise people that tell you like, you're probably only going to have 10, 20, 30 people at your funeral that really matter. And I think that's right. Like you get caught up and absorbed with all these distractions and you think that I have to do this and it's so important. And sometimes you just, you got to keep a bit of perspective because life is to be enjoyed and you can do both.
You can have a really successful business. Is it going to take a lot of commitment, a lot of hours? Absolutely. There's no shirking from that. And I love hard work, but There are times where you've just got to realize that your life shouldn't be just work and achieving this because it goes really fast. And for me, I am not a great individual sportsman.
I've always been a really good addition to a team. And that's Bluestone Lane and banking were team sports. I wasn't a trader. I wasn't a sole operator. I'm great in teams. And part of that is celebrating success as a team.
And I feel that that whatever happens at Bluestone or any of my other endeavors on my career that I want to celebrate with my family and friends and the people that matter the most. And of course, my parents who are just incredible. Yeah.
It was extremely challenging, sad, scary, and very complicated. So we lost 87% of our revenue in a couple of days. So we went from 51 stores to 14 and those 14 stores couldn't offer dine-in. They were simply serving out of a window. When we had to make those really hard decisions, like eliminating 85% of the staff, that was heartbreaking because it wasn't just people losing their jobs.
It was many people having a real disruption to their career, a real impact on their family. And also I had a number of Australians or others that their visas were tied to working to Bluestone. And without a job, they weren't able to stay and they had rent obligations. They'd signed leases, but then they weren't entitled to work. So that was really, really very hard. We did it.
We weren't allowed to be together. So many of my team had COVID that first week, you know, around March 13. No, I had COVID. I was home. We couldn't be together. So it was done, of course, over Zoom, which you never want to do, but it was done very quickly. But it ended up we used it as a way to turn a crisis into an opportunity. And even how we make people redundant, we were able to
pay severance, and then move them on to, if they were eligible, to that enhanced unemployment benefit that the federal government provided, plus the state support. So a lot of our team got an upfront payment. Then they went on to a decent payment from the government. So it ended up working out okay. We didn't know. We thought the best thing was just to pay severance.
And that means we had to make the decisions on eliminating positions straight away because we wouldn't have no cash in two more weeks. Because in hospitality, you're always paying on terms, right? You're paying Staff on arrears, you're paying your vendors on 30-day terms, 60 days. So you've always got a big account payable balance. So we did that.
We were so fortunate that we were able to get a PPP loan that kept us in business. And then we just had this clarity that we had to keep stores open for three reasons. One, we had to preserve as many jobs as we could. Two, we had to give locals that were holed up in their apartments that were coming out once a day a reason to get out.
Some of them were international and they had no way of going back to their own homeland. Like they were stuck in New York or in D.C. or in L.A., And going to a Bluestone for a coffee once today, even though there was a lot of, they couldn't go with other people and they couldn't sit down, they couldn't, California effectively banned furniture outside for over a year. Like, can you believe that?
Let alone two years indoor dining, but they were sitting on the curb, they were sitting, it was just, it was a wild time. And then thirdly, we had to be open for the healthcare heroes that were working so hard, keeping society going, first responders doing their job the best they could. in really, really challenging circumstances. So it gave us enormous inspiration and the fortitude to keep going.
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