Retail in America

Blake Devillier thought he'd work at the Gap for six weeks. He needed a summer job. He stayed twenty-eight years.What changed everything was one sentence from an acting district manager named Julia: if you were interested in building a career in leadership, I think that could happen. That conversation put Blake on a path through Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy — finishing as Territory Vice President for the East and Canada — then out of fashion entirely, to Senior Vice President of Field Operations at Taco Bell, and then President of Carl's Jr. USA.Ron opens by asking Blake a number he can't give: how many people have worked for you? Blake's answer — hundreds of thousands — sets up the real subject of this episode. Retail is the largest private sector employer in the country. It's where a huge number of Americans learn how to work. And the people running field teams quietly set the ceiling on all of it.Blake has spent the last seven months building a keynote around a single claim: connection is a performance multiplier. Not a value on a break room poster — something measurable, made of two nameable parts, and the reason two teams with the same product and the same payroll get completely different results.Then, unprompted, Blake offers the thing he most wants retailers to hear — that pride is born in the pursuit of details that seem unattainable.In this episode:What's the same about a frontline whether you're selling denim or tacosWhy quick service creates experts faster than retail does — and what retail should stealThe two components of genuine connection: psychological safety and interpersonal alignmentWhy the best store leaders are great filters — the critical few, not the important manyThe head of stores as part strategist, part people leader, part bodyguardWhy hiring across the retail/QSR wall works in both directionsWhere pride actually comes from, and why it fuels the businessFind Blake: LinkedIn and blakedevillier.com · [email protected] referenced in this episode:blakedevillier.comronthurston.com

Somewhere between 50 and 70% of people who walk into a store leave without buying anything. Eighty percent of them walked in with an AI-generated answer already in their pocket.Juan Molina built his career on the moment before that — 3D product visualization at Cylindo and Chaos, making a product look convincing on a screen. Now, at Rallyware, he works the moment after: the ten seconds when a real person, standing in front of a customer, either closes the sale or doesn't.Twenty years after "360-degree view of the customer" became a boardroom phrase, the store is still a black box. Juan calls the gap the in-aisle decision moment — Google's Zero Moment of Truth, for the sales floor.The number that should worry every retail leader: under 15% of associates engage with voluntary training, and most of what lands is forgotten within days. Not laziness — the day in the life of a frontline associate isn't built for homework. Juan's CEO put it simply: "Every time I walk into a retail store, we're nowhere to be found."From there: the real math behind "false" turnover, why associates avoid products they don't understand, and Juan's case for treating the device in an associate's hand as a revenue driver, not a cost center. It closes on something Juan didn't plan to say — that his own career has quietly made him an acolyte of the frontline associate's moment of decision.In this episode:Why 80% of shoppers now walk in more informed than the associate helping themThe in-aisle decision moment, and why the store is still a black boxThe real reason training doesn't stickWhat actually separates an associate who converts from one who doesn'tTurning device spend into revenue per deviceWho Rallyware is built for, and who it's notOne mindset shift for NRF and the holiday seasonFind Juan on LinkedIn Learn more about Rallyware hereFind Ron: ronthurston.com

AI can write an email that sounds exactly like you. It can personalize at a scale no sales team ever could. And that is precisely why the inbox stopped working. When every message sounds human, none of them get read.Eric Aubertin, founder and CEO of truelynk (https://truelynk.com), has built his sixth company on the one thing buyers still trust: a warm introduction from someone they know.Eric's story doesn't start in software. It starts on the ice, drafted by the Montreal Canadiens and playing for Canada. Since then he has started, built and sold company after company. truelynk is number six, and it rests on a simple observation: the vouch, the "you need to talk to this person," is the most valuable and most wasted asset in business.Ron is an advisor to truelynk, disclosed up front in the episode.IN THIS EPISODEWhy nobody buys retail technology off a demoThe blind spot in LinkedIn: everybody is connected, nobody knows who actually knows whoWhat AI did to cold outreach, and why the human became the filterRelationship ratings, and sorting 30,000 connections in minutes instead of monthsQuality introductions versus matchmaking, and how advisors get paidWho the platform is for on both sides, and who should not botherWhy 85% of decisions start with a referral, and what it would take to make that a channelThe lesson Eric believes more deeply now than when he started: this is an engagement problemLINKStruelynk — https://truelynk.comBecome a truelynk advisor — https://truelynk.com/advisorEric Aubertin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericaubertin/Ron Thurston on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/Ron Thurston — https://ronthurston.comThe newsletter — https://ron-thurston-newsletter.netlify.app/If this conversation changed how you think about how you sell, who you know, or who vouches for you, pass it on to someone who needs to hear it.Subscribe and follow.Thank you!Ron

S3E4 — Balance Is Bullsh*t: Cut Your Life From 25 Things to 5 with Loretta SoffeRetail in America · Season 3: The Human Edge of SellingShe pulled into her driveway with her hands still on the wheel and couldn't get out of the car. Inside the house: three kids, a husband who had paused his legal career for what they thought would be one year and became twelve. Outside: the title, the corner office, the private plane, the front row at fashion week. Everything in the picture was perfect, and she was completely, quietly exhausted.Loretta Soffe spent 25 years climbing Nordstrom — sales floor to Executive Vice President of a $2 billion division — until the day she was fired at the peak. Asked recently whether she'd have quit if they hadn't fired her, she stopped cold: probably not. That's what golden handcuffs do.What she figured out afterward became a book, a framework, and this conversation.The Edge: The 25-to-5 exercise. Write down 25 things sitting on your calendar, your to-do list, your phone, your brain. Now force it down to five. Loretta runs this with rooms of women aged 20 to 65, and what falls off is never what people expect — the cupcakes for the soccer team, the recurring meeting that recurs for no reason. What's already gone is fitness. Date nights. The things that mattered. The audit is where the aha lives, and it's the one step of her Self Architect Method she goes deep on here.The Truth: Trying to do all things, all the time, at once gives you exactly two outcomes — burnout or mediocrity. The alternative isn't balance. It's going 150% in when it counts, with the confidence that the rest of your life is built to hold. And that requires letting go of a standard of success you never chose in the first place.Also in this episode: why what got you here is exactly what stops you from seeing you're drowning. Why your network is your net worth, and why mentorship runs both directions. And the hardest chapter in her book — "A Boss, a Bitch, or a Bold Brave Leader" — on the reorg where the men were praised as efficient and direct for the same decisions that got her called difficult, overanalyzing, and slow."Fair is something you pay on the bus."🎧 Subscribe to Retail in America at ronthurston.com📚 Books Retail Pride — amazon.com/dp/1544509456 Human Pride — geni.us/humanpride Balance Is Bullshit by Loretta Soffe — amazon.com/dp/B0FMNMNNXZ🔗 Find Loretta Web: lorettasoffe.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/loretta-soffe/ Instagram: @loretta_soffe All links: linktr.ee/lorettasoffeFollow Ron linkedin.com/in/ron-thurston/ Instagram: @retailpride ronthurston.com

The Human Edge, Amplified — with Tulsi Keshkamat (Microsoft Teams for Frontline)What if the technology to transform your frontline already exists — and you're already paying for it?In this episode of RETAIL IN AMERICA, sponsored by Microsoft, Ron Thurston sits down with Tulsi Keshkamat to unpack one of retail's biggest blind spots: the gap between what frontline technology can do and what most retailers realize they already have. Tulsi shares why Microsoft Teams is far more than a meetings-and-email tool for corporate, and how it's quietly becoming the operating system for the people who actually run the store floor.The conversation moves from the practical to the profound — from cutting a store walkthrough's documentation time in half with voice-based checklists, to giving every frontline worker a "digital identity," to the bigger truth underneath it all: as AI and agentic commerce reshape retail, the human connection on the floor becomes more valuable, not less. Tulsi's design philosophy says it best — use technology for the mechanics, but leave the meaning untouched, and create more space for it.For any retail leader weighing how to bring AI and digital tools to their frontline without losing the human core of the work, this is a roadmap — and a reminder of why the people closest to the customer matter more than ever.In this episode:Why there's a massive "awareness gap" around frontline technology — and why many retailers already own the licenseHow frontline workers deliver some of the fastest, clearest ROI of any tech investmentThe difference between deploying for big-box operations (inventory, labor) vs. luxury (the associate-customer relationship)How voice is removing the "heads-down" drudgery of store walkthroughs and checklistsWhy Teams acts as a platform that reduces the number of apps a frontline worker juggles — not adds to themThe link between giving managers time back and frontline retention, career conversations, and pride in the workWhere AI fits: handling the mechanics so humans can focus on judgment, connection, and meaningHow to start: pick one or two use cases, pilot in a couple of stores, and scale from thereResources mentioned:Microsoft Frontline sessions: aka.ms/frontlineFridaysContact the Teams Frontline team: [email protected] episode is sponsored by Microsoft.🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Retail in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.This episode features a sponsored conversation with Microsoft. Product capabilities and outcomes may vary by organization, and not all results or claims discussed are guaranteed. Any references to features in preview or development are subject to change