We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nate Stone. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nate below.

Nate , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

We believe that people see the problems of our world and want to help but often don’t know where to start. So we opened Cathedral — a space dedicated to helping people, help others. Our sole purpose of existence is to help others. We host all sorts of events from weddings to corporate meetings. Cathedral donates all profits to charity — so guests can throw an event while supporting a cause they care about.

We work directly with young men in the juvenile justice system. Initially, our guys would do odd jobs in the space to help prepare for our events. During COVID, we essentially had no events for over a year, so we learned how to make candles and started selling them in our markets and online — mostly at first to our local community.

We’ve rebranded the candles to Spir Candle Co. and now offer wholesale, private label, and retail. This month we are approaching 4000 hours of paid employment to the amazing young men we work with. We’ve worked with 35 young men and counting. Our longest-tenured guy started with us when we met in 2020, was released last June, and is now in a full-time role overseeing all candle production. He’s just the best dude. We’ve sold thousands of candles and have invested a ton of time, energy, and resources into the candle brand as we work towards providing more jobs and support to the young men we work with.

Nate , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As a general rule, businesses are created with the purpose of profit. When profit is your purpose, people will always come second. There’s a better way to do business. We want to help people engage with what they care about, tangibly help people, and prove that you can create a sustainable business that serves the greater good instead of an individual or shareholders.

We decided to open an event space for several reasons. We originally intended to open as a bar/restaurant but didn’t love the idea of navigating food and beverage challenges. We are passionate about the why, not the what, so we pivoted to an event space. It’s provided flexibility while allowing us to play a role in our guests’ most meaningful moments — weddings, birthdays, memorials, etc.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We opened in 2018, ramped up in 2019, and started to hit our stride in early 2020 before the pandemic hit. Our business model is built on gathering people, so we got hit particularly hard. We are based in Seattle and were shut down for nearly 18 months due to safety and local restrictions prohibiting events and gatherings. Unlike restaurants or retail, we couldn’t do to-go birthdays or ship weddings. We do more revenue in a typical month than that entire 18-month season — each month getting closer and closer to being unable to pay our bills.

We refused to pause our relationship with the young men we work with, so, like many, we had to get creative. We began learning how to make scented candles. We’ve been doing that now for nearly three years. Each candle is hand-poured in-house and signed by the individual that made it.

We host many events but put substantial time, energy, and finances into growing the candle business. It’s incredibly labor intensive, which is fantastic because it provides us with more opportunities to employ and invest in the exceptional individuals that come through our doors. We have giant aspirations. Our long-term goal is to get to 1,000,000 hours of employment provided to underrepresented youth. It’s a big goal, and we have a long ways to go — but we believe we can get there. More importantly, the need is there.

We must expand our national brand and wholesale capacity to do this. We are currently at stores in 26 states but have massive opportunities to grow that area of our business. It means creating jobs and a space to belong to the community we aspire to support if we can.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I think you have to care and be intentional. It seems more complicated than that, but it isn’t. You don’t have to develop elaborate motivation systems when you practice compassion, create purposeful environments, and invest in your people. Our team says things like “Monday is my favorite day of the week,” and they mean it. Our work matters, and they know that they matter to us.

If your primary purpose is profit, you’ll always have to find creative ways to get your team to care. And frankly, why should they? Nothing is engaging or exciting about helping someone else make money. Whether a small company or a tech giant, you’ll constantly have turnover and discontent. There has to be more to it. You’re asking people to give their most precious commodity — time — it has to matter.

We cultivate this intentionally — we involve our team in creating the culture, invest in their personal development, ask them how we can better support them, eat meals together, ask them how they are and listen. Our team members know our kids, encourage them specifically, and apologize when we make mistakes. People aren’t mercenaries or ATMs. There are no shortcuts to building trust. You want high morale? Develop relationships, not teams.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.seattlecathedral.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seattlecathedral/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SeattleCathedral
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seattlecathedral/?viewAsMember=true
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cathedral-seattle?osq=venues+%26+event+spaces