Retail Relates
'Retail Relates' is not just a podcast; it's a journey into the heart of retail and commerce. Our episodes traverse the path from traditional marketplaces to digital platforms, highlighting the successes, trials, and invaluable lessons learned along the way. We're conversing with those shaping the industry—from the front lines to behind the scenes, the creative minds to the global strategists - offering a diverse 360-degree perspective. We're revealing the relationships and personal narratives that make retail engaging and accessible. 'Retail Relates' is an invitation to explore the world's interconnectedness through the lens of retail, encouraging listeners to discover the personal journeys and stories of those who drive innovation and unite us across cultures and continents.
Retail Relates
The Power of Empathy and Authentic Leadership: A Conversation with Ron Thurston
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What if retail could be more than just a job? Join us on Retail Relates as we chat with Ron Thurston, co-founder of Ossy and best-selling author of Retail Pride, to uncover the secrets of turning a retail career into a passion-driven journey. Ron's inspiring stories, from pioneering showrooming at Bonobos to redefining field leadership at Apple, provide invaluable insights for anyone eager to learn from a true industry innovator. Discover how emotional connection, empathy, and authentic leadership can transform not just your career but the entire retail experience.
We dive into the philosophy of strengths-based leadership, stressing the importance of leveraging individual talents over correcting weaknesses. Ron sheds light on how empathy, curiosity, and focus can create effective leaders in the chaotic retail environment. We also discuss how AI is revolutionizing retail by automating mundane tasks, freeing up more time for meaningful customer interactions and team engagement. It’s all about finding joy in your work and working for companies that recognize and value your strengths.
Finally, we explore the profound impact of building authentic retail connections and the vital role of trust between frontline employees and corporate leadership. Ron's journey across the country, living in an RV and meeting proud retail workers, emphasizes the essential role retail plays in communities, especially in smaller towns. We wrap up with a fun rapid-fire segment, revealing Ron's personal favorites and celebrating the joy of a retail career. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom and practical advice for anyone passionate about retail.
Ron's Biography:
Ron Thurston's life mission is to celebrate, elevate, and empower the people and spirit of the retail industry. His passion is evident in his over three decades of experience leading retail stores and operations for top American brands such as Gap, West Elm, Apple, Tory Burch, Bonobos, and Saint Laurent. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Stores at Intermix, where he honed an extensive skill set in retail strategy, management, and innovation.
Ron is not just a retail leader but also the bestselling author of "Retail Pride," an indispensable guide for accelerating careers in retail. With over 25 years of leadership experience with prominent fashion brands, he brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise. He is consistently recognized as one of the most influential people in the retail industry. As the host of the RETAIL IN AMERICA podcast and tour, Ron traveled across the nation in an Airstream trailer during 2022 and 2023 to uncover and highlight remarkable stories and individuals in retail. He also serves on the advisory boards of rapidly growing retail tech companies, including Ometria, Butterfly, and YOOBIC, lending his expertise to drive their success. He gives back as a Goodwill NY/NJ board of directors member.
In 2024, Ron co-founded OSSY, a forward-thinking retail recruiting agency that addresses the industry's hiring and recruiting challenges. This venture reinforces Ron’s unwavering commitment to retail.
Follow Ron at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/
Today on Retail Relates, we're excited to have Ron Thurston, co-founder OSSY and and best-selling author of Retail Pride. Ron shares his remarkable journey from pioneering the concept of showrooming with Bonobos to redefining field leadership with Apple, and his unique insights into why retail remains a human-centric, emotionally-driven experience. You want to stay tuned to hear more about Ron's journey coast-to-coast, engaging with frontline retail at all levels. Get ready to dive deep into what makes retail a truly dynamic career path, and here's some great stories along the way. Now let's get in my podcast BFFs, rich and Gotham, rich, gotham. What do you guys think?
Gautham:I'll kick this off. Ron is somebody I've known for several years. What I am excited about is he's always been very positive and uplifting Like I've not seen a single conversation of him that I've had with him where he hasn't figured out a way to frame it in a positive way. So I look forward to this in the sense that I do think retail needs to hear that perspective right. We talk about frontline employees and all the challenges that they face, but I think what I'm excited about is how Ron will probably frame it in the context of the positive things that they do for the company and how they represent the brand.
Rich:Yeah, and I'll make a confession. When I've known Ron for a couple of years, after he wrote the book, I was reading some of the things that he was writing and I love the fact that he was promoting retail. The confession is, I didn't really associate it with the things that he was writing and I love the fact that he was promoting retail. The confession is, I didn't really associate it with the fact that he was promoting frontline retail. I was looking at it in retail in general and then when he and I had the opportunity to have a conversation including Gotham, we went to dinner that night it hit me that he was really promoting frontline retail and I will admit that it shifted my own perspective, having started in the stores and having that feeling that it wasn't a career until I had made it into headquarters and after spending time with Ron, it hit me that that's kind of the wrong thing to look at, and so I love the fact that he's championing it and I can't wait to get into that a little bit more with him.
Paula:Well, welcome, Ron Thurston, to Retail Relates. We are so excited and so honored to have you here. So Ron Thurston is the co-founder of OSSY best-selling author of Retail Prime and his main areas of expertise are retail field leadership and team advocacy. So Ron Thurston is a dedicated retail leader with over three decades of experience with top American brands like Gap. West Elm Apple, Tory Burch, Bonobos and St Lawrence. As the best-selling author of Retail Pride, he offers invaluable guidance on accelerating retail careers. Ron has held key roles, including vice president of stores at Intermix and hosted the Retail in America podcast, traveling nationwide to highlight remarkable retail stories. In 2024, he co-founded OSSY, a retail recruiting agency addressing industry hiring challenges. Ron also serves on advisory boards for retail tech companies and the board of directors for Goodwill New York, new Jersey. Ron, it is an absolute honor to have you here. Thank you for joining us at Retail Relates.
Ron:Thank you. Thank you so much, Paula. It's a very generous introduction and you can tell I'm a busy, proud guy to be in this industry. Excellent.
Rich:So Paula embarrassed you a little bit with your resume and we'll have the broader resume on the site. But one of the questions that we like to start off with is if you think about what got you to this moment, can you give us three pivot points that happened throughout your career, throughout your life that brought you to where you are right?
Ron:now. Thanks, rich. I think I just turned 60 and you and I actually had some back and forth about how that feels, and you do spend time maybe in those milestone birthdays reflecting on like where did I make good decisions? Where did I pivot? Where did I maybe turn left when I maybe thought I was going to turn right, all of it?
Ron:So if I think about that, question number one would be writing Retail Pride. There's no question about that, that that book changed my life and the intention around writing a book. That really was the first book ever written specifically for the front lines of retail. The intention was not to change my life. It was to provide language and confidence and support to travel the country and speak to teams to be able to really change the dynamic of what it means to work in the front lines of retail, whether you're just joining or whether you've been doing it for 30 years, and the amount of inbound that I get still to this day in books spent out three and a half years about how the book changed their life is all that I needed to do. So writing the book was number one and in 2014, I moved to New York City for Bonobos, as Paula mentioned, which at the time was a very small brand in the retail landscape. I was very happy, living in LA, I was a regional manager for Tory Burch and I had not reached this kind of director VP level in my career yet, at the age of 50. And I said you know what? I'm going to take this risk. I don't know what this is going to become. I'm going to move across the country and I'm going to build something that I think has significant potential to change the entire industry and I was very grateful for the opportunity and it's exactly what it did. Bonobos really was at the forefront of what we called it showrooming at the time. Like the trends in language have changed, but this idea of how do you create a retail concept that is best in class and not sell anything, what does that mean to the customer? What is a real retail experience about? And it's about emotional connection. And Bonobos gave me the chance to create that in four walls and a high level of service, because you're not buying anything, so the only thing you can do is provide service. So the the concept of that choice for me going from a very large brand to a very small brand uh, was a pivot that, uh, I feel like at the time was very much the right choice and still today I would say in the the third, I'd say the third one would be in 2008,.
Ron:I joined Apple after having been a multi-store regional manager for many years, running hundreds of stores. I joined Apple and Apple asked me to run one store and said we don't hire multi-store leaders. If you're going to work here, you have to come in and show us that you know how to run a store. And at the time that seemed very strange from a career explaining my experience, like what do you mean? I have to run one store. Well, running one Apple store is like running a company, so hundreds of employees, millions of dollars generated a month.
Ron:But the pivot was really how do I learn an entirely new business model and really enhance my skill set and think about another Again? This was a time when Apple was reimagining retail and I wanted I would have been there at any cost. So, even though I had to really think about my level of responsibility and what that looked like on paper, it was a choice I made because I was not going to let, at the time, the most innovative company in the world retail, that I was not going to be part of that. Whatever I had to do, I wanted to be part of it. So I think those are three. There are probably 15 more.
Paula:That's remarkable. So you went from macro to micro to just everything in between and at the forefront of what Bonobos started. I mean, I remember very distinctly in Dallas. It is revolutionary because it was the first of its kind to not sell anything, experiment, experiential, and now that's more common, right. Really, this whole scope in your expertise in retail.
Ron:Thank you. I think part of that's also, paula, an intention around a career in this industry, and you think about students and you think about people that are joining this. We have a tendency, as a field leadership industry, to not manage our career the way people in corporate do, and because it's not a linear path. So what I wanted to do once I figured out I was good at this, like then, where do I need to be? What do I need to do in order to move my skill set forward? Ultimately, I want to have this job. What do I have to do to get there? And I don't think that that's always a common conversation, because it means changing companies often, and that's something that I think can be really scary and this kind of up down across.
Paula:Was retail accidental for you? Because you've been so intentional and you sound so like you knew this is what you wanted. So what would you? Was it expensive for you? And if it was, what would you be doing if it wasn't retail?
Ron:I love this question because it's like yes, yes and no. So all I knew as a 16 year old 17 year old is that I wanted to work in this business, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I come from a family I write a little bit about in Retail. Pride of my grandfather was the CEO of a construction company that built grocery stores, built all the Safeway stores on the West Coast, and so I had a large company in construction and all I knew I said I didn't want to be in construction, but I wanted to be something to do with retail, fashion, and the only school on the West Coast that taught that was it's called the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. My only intention was I need, I want to spend the least amount of time in school in order to go to work and that again maybe controversial. But I got a two-year degree in retail administration from that school and I got a two-year degree in fashion design and that's it. And I said, okay, I know enough about retail and I know enough about construction, design, fashion, to somehow create a career.
Ron:And so my first part, first six, seven years of my career, was in fashion design. I was a pattern maker, I was a design room manager, I was the designer of a couple of different brands and I'm like, okay, I learned this part, Now I want to learn the retail part. And then, once the retail part started, I joined Gap Kids at the time, in early 2000s and late 90s actually. Once that started, I never left retail again. I found my real love. Yet 30 something years later I was working in luxury fashion and all of that knowledge about history, construction, fabrication, fit, all of that actually serves me really well because I can sell anything to anyone, because I understand how it works. So ultimately it was sort of accidental, but this is an industry I had every intention of working in.
Paula:It also leaves room for other people, right? People listening to know that it's okay to go in it open-minded but also knowing. Well, I want to do retail, but not exactly what, but I know that I'll be okay. Right, it gives us the confidence to hear from you that that's an okay path and an okay way to think. So thank you for sharing that. And it's often said that failure is a better teacher, right? We always talk about successes and you have like a litany of successes. Just the brands alone that we've named are just incredible. Anyone would aspire to just one, and you've worked at multiple, multiple, just aspirational brands. So failure is often a better teacher than successes. Is there any lesson that you learned from failure that you would like to share with our audience as a way of learning?
Ron:It's funny, paula, because I spend very little time thinking about these things. I'm always, and I don't and I'm saying that in reference to how I lead I spend very little time. I have spent very little time as a leader on your performance evaluations, talking about your opportunities. I am very much one that says what do you do well, what do you want to be famous for, where do you make the greatest impact? And let's utilize and capitalize on all of that first, not what do you not do well, what did you make mistakes in, and let's try to fix those. I spend very little time in that headspace. So, to answer your question, I don't really have one, because I've always thought about this idea of where am I winning and how can I win more. It's a mental place that I put myself of not drowning to going too deep into the failure and more about not just celebrating the win but recognizing why you won.
Paula:Yeah, and how did you Coaching your strengths based leadership? Right, it's your strengths.
Ron:It's exactly right, it's, and so even in being asked to write performance reviews utilizing that kind of language, I really push back on it. I'm like I'm not. We're not going to sit here and talk about the things you don't do.
Paula:Well, what has been your biggest strength then?
Ron:I believe when people describe my leadership, it's, I would say empathy is a little, but I write in retail pride, empathy, curiosity and focus. I write about them as the pillars of success, but they're actually my own reflection of my own success. The idea of leading with curiosity but at the same time, having the ability to focus my energy and focus the attention where it needs to be to move the results forward is a very unique skill I've discovered because often retail is so chaos driven and it's new every day, and so it's actually really hard to predict what's going to happen. When you come in in the morning and unlock the front door, you have no idea what's about to happen. It's very different than working in the office, but someone's ability, where chaos is being thrown at you all day, to focus your energy is, I think, a skill that has led much to my success.
Ron:I've learned how to deliver the results that you need to deliver by being very empathetic and very curious about how to do it and deliver the results. I've always been do it and deliver the results. I've always been someone that could deliver the results and that feels good to be able to say that and and and unique and a unique balance of skills. It sounds like a job interview. I'm not even. I'm not.
Rich:I'm not working. Isn't everything a job interview from time to time, maybe it is.
Ron:I do all day, every day, it's what I do.
Gautham:Ron, I'm going to ask a question that piqued my interest in the way you framed it. You figured out when you were good at it. For someone who's starting. For many people it's always a challenge to figure out when you're good at something right and when it is to pack up the bags and move on to greener pastures. Is there any guidance that you can give for that from your?
Ron:illustrious career. Yeah, I think those moments in our careers where we recognize that we don't just find joy in it, and that you kind of go home and you're like, wow, I worked really hard today, I'm so tired, but I love what I do and can't wait to go back and do it tomorrow, I think those moments or you recognize your ability to deliver results. I mean, you have to face the fact that retail is not a nonprofit. And while I talk all day about emotions and coaching and managing through people, if you don't deliver the results that the company is expecting you to deliver, you will not be successful. And so once you discover that you actually have the ability to both love what you do and be recognized for it and deliver, then you say you know, I'm actually good at this, I'm good at this and I want to do more of this. And then the next step in that journey is then find the place to work that celebrates and recognizes you for that.
Ron:At that particular time, every company goes through arcs of when they're really good at this. When I talk about being curious, it's also about studying the industry, reading as much as you can about what brands are doing, who they're hiring, who's on their board of directors, who's in the C-suite? How many women are in the C-suite? Pay attention to these things, because it showcases. Is this a place where I want to work right now?
Rich:So that's going to allow me to pivot into a conversation about retail as a career. So we're at an interesting crossroads. With AI and technology, there's the discussion of how much labor is that going to replace and at the same time, we are trying to convince more people to consider retail as a career and really the 360 degree view, which includes being customer facing. How do companies, how should companies, face that challenge today?
Ron:So I think there's several things there, rich. So number one is the retail environment is inherently human centric. The purpose of a retail store is to create an emotional reaction and an emotional connection to your brand. Otherwise, you can Just buy it on a website. The purpose of the store, then, is inherently human, and so when I think about AI, I think about this idea of what can it support? How can it support my work? To provide time to give me back to my team and my customer, and a lot of that can be in data analysis. It can be in inventory management. There's a lot of statistical data that maybe I was doing manually that now can be done via AI to give me more time back in my day to be great at being a human.
Ron:And that's what I love about retail is that you actually can't replace this emotion. You can't take me out of the equation in a retail environment. We can generate AI when it comes to visual merchandising, where to put it but it requires humans to actually, particularly in many product categories, to make it beautiful, to storytell, to share the emotions that you have and the history behind it, and all of that requires us to be at our best. This idea of a career in retail is not only frontline. It is about customer acquisition, about building business, it's about loyalty, brand and it's the greatest expression of any company. Is what is the retail experience? I love the conversation about the difference between how AI can impact retail and how humans will always be the greatest asset to it.
Rich:How do you think retailers should improve their recruiting efforts to try and gain the most diverse talented individuals that they can, especially if retail is such an accidental career for many of us that wind up in it?
Ron:The interesting part about that question is that the most diverse part of any organization I've worked for is the field, and so this we are actually naturally diverse by how we recruit and hire. We always dominate in the percent of women that are in the organization. It's always higher in the field. The percent of people of color are always. It's always higher in the field. The percent of people of color are always always higher in the field. So we we naturally do that because it's just who we are.
Ron:Where there's intention behind that is. You know, maybe I need someone with a specific skillset in this product category. Maybe I need someone that speaks a specific language, because a large percentage of my customers speak this language. There are certainly ways to address how can I be best in service to the people walking in the store today? What does my team need to be? You see it often organically, but there can also just be strategy behind what's missing from the experience that I want to deliver to my customers every day, and I love the fact that the store side of any company is always more diverse. Yeah, we don't really celebrate that. I think we sometimes overthink all the qualifications and all the diversity and all of it of like hire people who love people. The rest of it will come with you.
Rich:I love that answer. Do you and without naming organizations either that you've worked for, that you've seen? I've seen a lot of organizations where there's this tension between headquarters and the field. How much have you seen that and how can retailers solve that equation or that divisiveness that can happen?
Ron:One of the fun slash, challenging things that I get to do now when I'm on the other side of the table, is go to almost every retail conference and be on stage and almost always the audience. Now, unless it's a conference specifically for store leaders, the audience is always corporate and it could be a marketing conference. It could be a store. I was at a store operations conference last week. There are always headquarters teams. Once in a while you'll meet someone that came from the field. Their overwhelming response to things that I speak about is oh my gosh, I love the field. I love to go and speak to the teams. They give me the most amount of energy. I love talking to stores and my response to that is then go do that. Because when I'm in stores and I ask the questions of who's coming in, what are they asking you? It's almost always. Nobody ever comes.
Ron:That is from traveling the country speaking to all kinds of different sizes of retailers, the brands that do this consistently. Well, it's a pretty short list, and when I say well, I don't mean just New York City, la, miami, it's all across the country, in small towns and big cities. Spend time in the field. Ask the questions they have the most insight about your customer that you'll ever want to know. I think sometimes it's flexible work schedules and a lot of things are obstacles to getting into stores.
Ron:But I met a gentleman at a conference I was at a few weeks ago in Dallas who runs racetrack, which is a big fuel stations and as someone that lives in an RV I know racetracks. He runs all store operations I think. They have 600 locations. They spend at a minimum two days a week in the field his entire team. That's their standard procedure and they divide and conquer the country. They have high turnover and they have their own challenges in that space. But he was so plugged into how the field was feeling and about what they could do better at the smaller headcount. Often in corporate environments today is preventing brands from doing this and line at racetrack and that it does come down to how you're taking care of the customer in front of you regardless of the structure, and there definitely is that leadership aspect.
Rich:I guess my follow-up to that would be having led field teams and having led store teams. What strategies do you use in order to maintain morale, keep people engaged, especially when you have high traffic times, organizational changes or just even a downturn in business, which is going to happen through cycle?
Ron:I think Rich, this idea of high levels of communication about exactly what's going on in the company, in the industry, in your product categories, the more you share. In a way, I believe that's educational. It brings people along on the journey. How you bring people along on the journey is this kind of sense of we are here, we're communicating, we're sharing the details, we're celebrating the wins, we're looking for the opportunities to do better. We are always with you side by side.
Ron:And there are brands several brands I've seen that have changed this idea of corporate or headquarters into support centers. We're here in service to the field. I hear that language and that is a really positive way for the field to feel like you're in service to us. We are, as a field organization, standing in front of a customer, but I know that behind me I have a group of people that are in service to me and if you can do that, then you're winning and people will do anything they can to deliver the results if you can create that emotion.
Ron:I've walked into an organization as a leader and said we're not communicating enough, we're not putting everybody on Zoom and talking about things, we're not sharing enough in the good and the bad. Let's just put it all out there and then all of us together can move this organization forward. But it requires everyone to agree on that strategy and there's a lot of old habits of like well, don't share the P&L with the store because they shouldn't know how much rent we're paying. And I just believe we live in a time where more information helps us be better at what we do and it creates this level of commitment and trust that can really change the trajectory of a company. If people again and she really changed the trajectory of a company If people again know that you trust them and you are in service to them, that's an emotion that you can't replace.
Rich:I have to ask have you trademarked in service of, and, if you have, can I pay you a royalty for it, because I want to start using that for our headquarters?
Ron:You're welcome to it, Rich. Welcome to it, Rich. You're welcome to it. It's as much of a. I think it's a mindset more than a phrase, because it's your actions actually demonstrate if you are in service or not.
Rich:I was going to say. I've always been given the advice If your company culture boils down to the phrase on a poster, go start from scratch.
Ron:It's true, because that's how you show up and what you do. You know, and I think, in many ways, there are a lot of people and a lot of brands who are still recovering from how they treated the field in 2020. I think that we are still recovering from that versus field divide.
Gautham:Let me start with that question right, and I'm a data-driven person. I honestly believe that people who are in the frontline have the greatest amount of data on how customer preferences are changing. What are the issues with companies? What are the opportunities that are untapped or yet to be tapped? Do you see companies where the information flows upwards, and how can companies actually empower frontline employees to be truly the face of the organization?
Ron:I think first, gautam, is trust. If you are in service to the field, they trust you, and that if you're going to put in the effort to share everything that you've heard, that you've learned, that you're experiencing, if you trust where that information is going, then you're more likely to share it. And so what I also say often to corporate audiences is that I want you to be in the field and I want you to spend time and ask questions. Spend time and ask questions, but if you go back to the office and do nothing about that information, you have actually done more damage than you intended to do. Because it feels really good for the C-suite to visit a store and ask a lot of questions and ask for feedback and everyone shares it, and you have muffins and coffee and everybody leaves happy and high-fiving you. Three months later, you ask your district manager what happened and they're like, oh, I don't know, I never heard anything. The next time you ask, the field's going to be like, yeah, I don't know, I haven't really heard anything this week.
Ron:I think that's a unique skill that leaders have that I tried to do. If I spent a week traveling in the field, the first thing I would do would be. Here's what I learned. Thank you for sharing. Here's what I learned. Here's what I heard, and here's what we're going to take action on immediately. And here's some things that we actually can't do, and here's why. And so if they understand why that could be next year, but if you just do nothing with all of this information, then you've wasted your time.
Gautham:I want to keep one more question, a real short question. You've used the word emotion, probably the most I've heard anyone use, and I love it, because I do think retail is about human connections. How can companies build lifelong human connections? You're able to connect for a period of time and then it seems to erode at best. How do companies build it? And you've done it across big companies, small luxury versus not so luxury yeah, what's the secret.
Ron:uh, I think I would challenge you on like for life. I would say I want to create an emotion that will live with you, maybe for the next few days, and that's okay, because the speed at which we live life if you created an incredible emotional connection, you will tell several people in the next 72 hours what happened and after that it dies off. And so I actually think that we over strategize and over expect people to build these lifelong connections. Build a connection that feels right for at this moment today. Great point, that's it. Great point, yeah.
Paula:It sounds a lot like you're talking about authenticity.
Ron:I would say authenticity, transparency. Being very authentic is part of being empathetic.
Paula:And talking about the world and authenticity and leadership, I know you've had several mentors in your life and advisors along the way. Is there one that stands out?
Ron:Paul. So I dedicated retail pride to my grandfather. I mentioned him earlier, no-transcript. I would watch him walk onto a job site and the guy started traveling with him in the summers, you know, as a high school student. And so I'd watch him walk onto a job site of like a hundred construction workers and he would know all their names, he would know things about them, he would know about their family. He would be extremely grateful and humble, and so I just watched that in action. I didn't even know what I was witnessing, but pretty soon I'm like that's who I want to be. I have really tried to emulate, because he was highly respected.
Paula:That level of personalization too right. I mean it matters when you know everyone's name and know the difference in where they're at, and not just knowing it but carrying back to authenticity.
Ron:Yeah, that's exactly what it is, because if you're not curious, again empathy and curiosity kind of where we started. If you're not curious, then you can't lead with empathy. It's a very powerful skill I don't actually see very often, so I really did try to do that in my career.
Rich:Ron, that's fantastic. One of the things that we were asked to do as we started to record this podcast. We are using it as a way to talk to college students, those emerging in their career, whether it's retail or not, those in frontline retail, to talk more about the opportunities that exist, and one of the suggestions that was made by the students that I had is get more students involved in the podcast. So we have invited one today and I'm going to introduce her quickly and she may have one or two questions for you.
Liliana:So if you can go ahead and introduce yourself, Hi Ron, I'm Liliana and I go to George Mason. Hi Hi, I read your book Retail Pride and I absolutely love it and I think that there are many interesting lessons in your book. With this, I have two questions. One I'm currently working at a frontline retail job and how would I be able to turn this into like an actual career?
Ron:No thanks, lily. I'll give you a couple of statistics which I think are helpful. Students at the National Retail Federation just released some of this. So, on average, stay with. Within the retail industry, you will change roles about every 14 months and that, in my mind, is one of the reasons that you kind of stick with it and you say you know I really love what I do. We talked about on this episode of finding the joy in it and then recognizing your skills and stick to it. I think there's endless opportunities across all kinds of product categories, store types and businesses and those skills translate into endless opportunities.
Liliana:That is one of the best answers I've ever heard. Thank you so much for your advice. Thank you With my second question. I've heard that you've traveled a lot and everything. You talked a tiny bit about it earlier. What did you love most about traveling around the country for Retail Pride?
Ron:I'd say number one is seeing. You know, living in campgrounds gives you this sense of the natural beauty of this country. So that's number one. I've spent my career flying all over this country, visiting every mall and every strip center. I feel like my only knowledge of this country was where the mall is. And to then actually live in an RV for over a year, live in campgrounds, find the natural beauty, that was number one.
Ron:I think number two is the opportunity to meet people that I would never have been able to meet. When you live in a major city like I was living in New York City at the time there are cultures and people and a lot of communities that I didn't ever meet anyone from and they never met anyone like me. So I think that there's this sense of divisiveness and that we all kind of live in our own separate walls. We don't cross over when you live in an RV park and your neighbors change every day Because someone's moving in, someone's moving out and like who are you, where are you from, what do you do? Like, why are you living in an RV? You meet the most interesting people and I love that about that life and I will absolutely do that again.
Ron:And third is meeting such proud people who work on the front lines of retail all over the country. I spent time in Walmart. I spent time in small brands. I spent time in family-owned companies Walmart, I spent time in small brands. I spent time in family-owned companies, very small towns where it was like one grocery store and wanted to meet the team. There's retail is everywhere. It doesn't get. Often the appreciation particularly in smaller cities, where it serves a very important purpose to a small city is when the one grocery store is closed or Walmart doesn't open, no one has anywhere else to shop. So there's this appreciation of the role that retail plays in the world that you can only get if you live there. So it's a long answer to your question, lily, but there were a lot of lessons, endless amounts of lessons.
Liliana:Thank you so much. And yeah, even if there are a lot of lessons, I do think that each and every one is just as important as the other. You're welcome. Thank you so much.
Paula:All right, so let's get to the fun part, the grilling the. You know we have caricatures of each one of us in a red seat, so this is your red seat moment. Are you ready?
Paula:I'm ready, oh boy All right, so say the first thing that comes to your head. You know, don't think too much, don't think about it. This is the rapid fire section, gotham, and I will shoot off questions, expect you to answer them very quickly, but uh, I've got to start because my husband and I have an airstream and we spent three months in it during the pandemic traveling around, so I can yeah, oh, we could swap stories, but this is about you. What is your favorite campground or national park and why?
Ron:I'm going to go with. Angel Fire, new Mexico. Just again, natural beauty. We were there in the summer versus the winter, so you've got all the mountains that are ski resorts in the winter. It's called Angel Fire because the sunsets look like fire. We spent a month there. It was absolutely incredibly beautiful. You're not far from Taos and some of these places that have played really important roles in the history of this country, and so you're learning about Native American culture. So much influence, so that's a big one.
Paula:Because we've stayed there. How's Angel Fire? We've stayed in between them.
Ron:We have, Because we've stayed there. How's Angel Fire? We've stayed in between them. We have. It was called it literally was like the only RV park in Angel Fire.
Gautham:Yeah, the one that has the hot tubs and the washroom. So now you've got the travel bug in me, but I'm more of a foodie than a traveler. In your travels, ron. What was the food item that stood out the most to?
Ron:you, it would actually be the lack of food. So I'm a vegetarian, we both are. The lack of healthy food options in this country is a real challenge. I'm not a foodie, gautam. I use food as fuel, not as entertainment.
Rich:All right, so I will ask the last one. You have and I've had the chance to see you speak several times, but I don't remember if you have your own walk on or walk off music. If you do, what is it? If you don't, what can I see? I don't. I'm not that big of a speaker yet. I would say I don't know, rich, I'm just going to say a solid level of applause is all I need. Well, we'll have. You know what. What we'll do is. We will take a poll when we air this episode and we'll see if afterward there is a nomination for a song that can end with thunderous. I like it, thank you.
Paula:Well, Ron, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for taking your time again and thank you for answering our student questions. We are so grateful for you and we hope to have you back again.
Ron:I would love that. Thank you, Paula, Thanks Rich and Gotham Always so fun to spend time.
Paula:Well, that was a fascinating conversation, but I've got to say my favorite part of this one was having your daughter, rich, so I loved hearing her question and having her a part of it. So, you guys, podcast BFFs what were your takeaways here?
Rich:her question and having her a part of it. So you guys podcast BFFs. What were your takeaways here? Well, I will tell you, and we went off camera when my daughter was asking the question, but she was beaming from ear to ear. She actually she's read Retail Pride. She has it at school with her. She actually is working in retail over the summer. I love it when she comes home and talks about the customers that she's met and how important stocking is, and she really likes things to be perfect. So she got the biggest kick out of being able to ask Ron questions.
Gautham:Yeah, for me. You know, I was hoping he would bring up his three pillars in the book, which he did Right, when it comes to empathy, when it comes to curiosity, I equate ron to those pillars, and so I'm happy that he brought that up so that we could have a more detailed discussion later on the importance of these intangibles and how they shape and make leaders today, and it's important lesson for students to take away. So I was glad that he brought that up. I'll also say that I'm glad that he's changing how retail is being recruited. Retailers are trying to recruit new talent. I'm really rooting for him on that aspect as well.
Rich:What I love is you hear people that have been in one segment of retail. They've been in, you know. Obviously, with him working for Bonobos and with Apple, that is going to be a higher end product, it's going to be a higher touch product, and so you would expect somebody with that experience to talk about customer service. However, when he also talks about Walmart and he talks about spending time at racetrack and he talks about traveling on the camper and meeting people in the local stores, he really genuinely believes and I think he's right that service is not a matter of what you spend and respect for frontline workers isn't based on what you spend.
Paula:It's say confidently that one of the attributes of success is to really care about your consumer, your client, the end product, how that's going to be received and the value it brings. And he really drives that home, just that love for people and that really understanding them people of all diverse backgrounds. So I really I resonated with that, coming from a journalism background as well and understand people and their stories, so I know a lot of our listeners will resonate with that as well. As far as campers, we started my husband and I started with a teardrop it's a king-sized bed with just a roof and then we upgraded to the Airstream.
Rich:I was struck by his comment about seeing the world through airports and that one of the things that means a lot to him right now is when he was traveling across country for Retail Pride that he was meeting everyday people, and he said it subtly, but he said meeting people, that I had never met people like them before and they had never met people like me. The comment you made about journalism and storytelling is important because I know how important that is to you. You can see him just absolutely loving those stories and that, fundamentally, is a connection point that I hope we don't run the risk of losing with all the talk about AI and technology and you've got to find that balance.
Paula:So I agree wholeheartedly. And the last plug I will make for camping for anyone who wants to be a camper which, by the way, you don't need an Airstream, you don't need a teardrop, you can just grab a campsite, you know, bunk with a friend I will say that you do meet some of the most interesting and down to earth people during camping. It's just opened my eyes because we come from large cities and the people I've met through camping were just some incredible stories there.
Gautham:And just a reflection point right Every conversation, every podcast we've had so far, it always pivots to human connections.
Paula:Thank you, Ron, for such a great talk today. We have a page full of notes. Thank you so much, and for everyone listening, we hope you were able to draw inspirational lessons from this relatable conversation. We encourage all of you to follow Ron Thurston, read his inspiring book Retail Pride and keep an eye out for his next release, coming in 2025. And stay tuned for more insightful conversation on Retail Relates. Until next time.
