Kiwi Business Story: Jono Jones and Ash Nicholson at Bluelab

Jono Jones and Ash Nicholson are the CEO and COO of Bluelab and Leadership Development Programme alumni. 

This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 8 February 2023, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.



What are your work passions? 

Jono: I’m really passionate about taking New Zealand product and businesses to the world, so export businesses. That intersection between technology and sustainability and design, is actually a really interesting place to play – where you take into account the promise of technology, what you can do for customers to meet their unmet need, and then also just achieving solutions, which are going to be better for the world going forward. 

Ash: I've always enjoyed talking to people. I'm an extrovert, and I like interacting and leading and being in that relationship between employee and employer. And I've always been someone who likes getting stuff done, a deliverer of things. So I've always been in roles which have been on the operational/delivery side. My career journey has always been across a number of different industries, companies and structures. 

Were there any hesitations about doing LDP? 

Jono: Probably some hesitation around the time commitment because you do commit to three days once a month, for three months. But that’s quite quickly knocked on the head when you step in through the door, and realise you're with a pretty unique set of individuals who are there for the same reason. 

Ash: I’d just heard great things. Jono had been through, and Greg [Jarvis, Bluelab’s Founder] did the Owner Manager Programme yonks ago, so it came with a really high rep. I saw it as just a good opportunity really.  

And like Jono said, any time commitment hesitations, as soon as you walk in, there's so much value: ‘I'm looking forward to this, I have to do it, and it can't come around fast enough because I'm just getting so much out of it.’ 

Did LDP tap into ideas around work/life balance or anything along those lines? 

Jono: My view of work/life balance is you learn it the hard way. You have to oscillate between ‘it's out of control’ to ‘I can probably push myself a little bit further!’ From a lifestyle perspective, I learned a lot around resilience training… 

You’ve got to invest in yourself, into your own personal health, and your own personal mindset if you want to achieve things for the team, the culture and business. And I've applied loads of things around that – sleep, for example! A much bigger commitment to sleep through that time. 

What about that resilience?

Ash: If you've got that perspective that this as a period of time where it's going to be grindy and hard, I'm not going to get a lot of sleep, and I'm going to be stressed –  if you're optimistic through that, and know that it's going to be a difficult period, then it's easier to deal with. 

But at the same time, you've also got to recognise when you're tapped out, and if you don't recognise that, and people aren't telling you, then get people that can tell you, and get a better “base camp”. 

Jono: Greg said to me when I was coming in, ‘treat it like a marathon, not a sprint’. It would be easy for both of us to do 26 hours of work a day, but that is a sprint, and you’re never going to be sustainable, so you have to look at it over the long-term. 

The other thing for me has been having a network of people who I can talk to, and just talk about your challenges – mentors, if you like, and it's not just one. l have several people [I talk to]. You want to pick on different people at different times, depending on the challenges that you have. 

I cathartically like talking to people about challenges. We're both sitting in the same camp where we’ve both got really supportive partners, and just finding the time to do the physical exercise.  

What were your ultimate takeaways? 

Jono: The application of leadership. The other part was I learned a lot about myself through the course – how you think differently to some other people in the room, how you think the same, how you share the same problems, how you tackle problems in different ways. And the profiling was really, really useful. So it was very reflective, as well as developmental.  

Ash: You're just learning as much off the people who are sitting in the room with you, as you are off the facilitators. That alumni, I think it’s called ‘The Icehouse magic’, is real and quite cool! And confidence-building – knowing that most of the people in the room are all having the same sort of challenges, even though they come from different industries and different-sized businesses. You gain a whole lot of connections you can touch base with and bounce ideas off post-course. You're learning a lot of new and sometimes not-new stuff, but just the confidence that you not alone battling your own battle.