 |
Retail in AmericaRetail leadership, with Ron Thurston Author: Ron Thurston
RETAIL IN AMERICA is a conversation about running stores and leading people. Ron Thurston talks with the executives, founders, and frontline retailers shaping where the industry goes next: what they're building, what they got wrong, and what it takes to grow a business at store level. Retail leadership, store operations, customer experience, culture, and the technology underneath it. Season 3 is about the human edge of selling how the best retailers win with people, presence, and craft. Ron Thurston is an NRF Retail Voice, a Top 100 Retail Technology Influencer, a ReThink Retail Top Retail Expert, and a two-time #1 bestselling author. New episodes regularly. Language: en Genres: Business, Management, Marketing Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Connection Is a Performance Multiplier with Blake Devillier
Episode 7
Tuesday, 29 September, 2026
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 · blake@blakedevillier.comLinks referenced in this episode:blakedevillier.comronthurston.com
