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 tacos
• Why quick service creates experts faster than retail does — and what retail should steal
• The two components of genuine connection: psychological safety and interpersonal alignment
• Why the best store leaders are great filters — the critical few, not the important many
• The head of stores as part strategist, part people leader, part bodyguard
• Why hiring across the retail/QSR wall works in both directions
• Where pride actually comes from, and why it fuels the business

Find Blake: LinkedIn and blakedevillier.com · [email protected]

Links referenced in this episode:

• blakedevillier.com
• ronthurston.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 them
• The in-aisle decision moment, and why the store is still a black box
• The real reason training doesn't stick
• What actually separates an associate who converts from one who doesn't
• Turning device spend into revenue per device
• Who Rallyware is built for, and who it's not
• One mindset shift for NRF and the holiday season

Find Juan on LinkedIn

Learn more about Rallyware here

Find 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 EPISODE

• Why nobody buys retail technology off a demo
• The blind spot in LinkedIn: everybody is connected, nobody knows who actually knows who
• What AI did to cold outreach, and why the human became the filter
• Relationship ratings, and sorting 30,000 connections in minutes instead of months
• Quality introductions versus matchmaking, and how advisors get paid
• Who the platform is for on both sides, and who should not bother
• Why 85% of decisions start with a referral, and what it would take to make that a channel
• The lesson Eric believes more deeply now than when he started: this is an engagement problem

LINKS

• truelynk — https://truelynk.com
• Become a truelynk advisor — https://truelynk.com/advisor
• Eric Aubertin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericaubertin/
• Ron Thurston on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/rthurston/
• Ron Thurston — https://ronthurston.com
• The 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 Soffe

Retail in America · Season 3: The Human Edge of Selling

She 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.

🎧 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/lorettasoffe

Follow 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 license
• How frontline workers deliver some of the fastest, clearest ROI of any tech investment
• The 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 checklists
• Why Teams acts as a platform that reduces the number of apps a frontline worker juggles — not adds to them
• The link between giving managers time back and frontline retention, career conversations, and pride in the work
• Where AI fits: handling the mechanics so humans can focus on judgment, connection, and meaning
• How to start: pick one or two use cases, pilot in a couple of stores, and scale from there

Resources mentioned:

• Microsoft Frontline sessions: aka.ms/frontlineFridays
• Contact the Teams Frontline team: [email protected]

This 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

The entire retail sales-training industry is built on scripts and closing techniques. Daria Tcherkachina threw both out — and built a career proving they were never the point.

In this episode, Daria and Ron make the case that customer service is the most underrated revenue strategy in retail, and that the human standing on your floor is the asset most businesses are quietly wasting.

Daria's 22 years span door-to-door sales, luxury floors at Harry Rosen, a bespoke suiting studio whose clients included Drake, and building Lighthouse Immersive's retail operation across 27 markets from scratch. She now runs PUBLC SERVICE.

What you'll hear:

• Why curiosity — not closing — is the glue holding her five-element framework together (Purpose, Presence, Connection, Curiosity, Care)
• Why "presence" is measurable, not a feeling: the sum of every operational decision made before the customer walks in
• The closed loop that quietly kills sales: businesses underinvest in training, staff feel undervalued, customers feel nothing, numbers suffer — each side waiting for the other to move first
• Her one Monday-morning shift for any leader: give your team individual purpose before every shift. "It costs nothing. It takes 60 seconds."

Find Daria on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariatcherkachina/

The more we shop with algorithms and let AI agents shape our decisions, the more valuable one thing becomes: a human who actually knows how to sell. That is the thesis of Season 3 — and there is no better person to open the conversation than Ben Rodier.

Ben is the CEO and co-founder of FrontlineIQ.ai and a repeat entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience building sales technology, including his earlier company, Salesfloor. While many AI sales tools were designed for office-based B2B reps working from call transcripts, emails, and CRM data, FrontlineIQ was built for a different reality: B2C and field sellers who win or lose the customer in person, in real time.

In this conversation, Ron and Ben explore:

What the “coaching crisis” actually looks like on a Tuesday afternoon on a real sales floor.

Why the problem turned out to be far bigger than the category FrontlineIQ started in.

The honest version of where this technology works, where it does not, and what the skeptics get right.

What AI is revealing from real sales conversations about how top performers open differently than everyone else.

Whether the market is truly ready to pay a premium for human selling — or whether that idea is still wishful thinking.

This is a tactical, candid, and occasionally pointed conversation about the most human work left in business.

Disclosure: Ron recently joined FrontlineIQ as an advisor, which he discloses in the episode.

Special Series: The Human Edge in the Job Market (Part 4 of 6)

In 2024, Insight Global surveyed over a thousand U.S. hiring managers and found that 88% can tell when a candidate is using AI in their application. One in five recruiters say they would reject a fully AI-generated resume or cover letter outright. And industry estimates suggest that somewhere between 40 and 80% of applicants in 2026 are leaning on AI to draft their resumes, cover letters, and interview answers.

The result: the rules of standing out have inverted. The thing that’s supposed to give you an edge — the AI polish, the optimization, the perfectly worded cover letter — is the same thing that’s tagging you as forgettable. Polish is the new generic.

In Part 4 of The Human Edge in the Job Market, Ron Thurston walks through three specific moments in a job search where humanity beats polish — and names the edge that lives inside each one. Because these are advantages you already have, built into how you’ve been working your whole career.

Place One: The Application — the edge is Specificity. The cover letter’s job is no longer to summarize a resume. It’s to prove a real human being lived this career. The exact stores. The exact week. The exact hours saved. Three sentences of that beats three paragraphs of optimized polish, every single time. Because no AI knew about the moment that actually mattered.

Place Two: The Conversation — the edge is Presence. Hiring managers are exhausted by perfect answers. What they remember is the candidate who paused before answering, who admitted uncertainty, who told a real story instead of running a STAR-method script. Stop preparing answers. Start preparing stories. Pick three to five real moments from your career and memorize the feeling, not the words. Let yourself be a person, not a performance.

Place Three: The Follow-Up — the edge is Generosity. The thank-you note is where almost no one stands out, which is exactly why it’s where you can. A real follow-up does three things: it references one specific thing the hiring manager said, it adds one thing you wished you’d said in the conversation, and it closes with a genuine offer to give more. Specific. Additive. Generous. In a market full of polish, that’s the rarest thing of all.

🎧 Subscribe: ronthurston.com

📚 Ron’s Books:

Retail Pride — amazon.com/dp/1544509456

Human Pride — geni.us/humanpride (the first four chapters speak directly to the person in the job search right now — about the version of you that hasn’t been edited down to fit)

🔗 Sources & Stats Referenced:

• Insight Global, 2025 AI in Hiring Survey Report — 88% of hiring managers say they can tell when a candidate is using AI in applications, cover letters, or resumes; 54% say they would care if they did. Conducted with Atomik Research, surveying 1,005 U.S. hiring managers in November 2024. insightglobal.com/2025-ai-in-hiring-report
• TopResume, Where Employers Draw the Line on AI in Hiring — 19.6% of recruiters would reject a candidate with an AI-generated resume or cover letter; 33.5% can spot an AI-generated resume in under 20 seconds. Survey of 600 U.S. hiring managers, May 2025. topresume.com/career-advice/ai-in-hiring-survey
• SHRM, Recruitment Is Broken. Automation and Algorithms Can’t Fix It. — Industry estimate that 40% to 80% of job applicants use AI to write resumes, craft cover letters, and prepare for interviews. shrm.org/topics-tools/news/hr-trends/recruitment-is-broken
• Disher Talent, AI in Recruiting 2026: What Actually Works (and What Doesn’t) — Industry analysis on AI-flooded application volume and the erosion of resumes as a reliable signal. dishertalent.com/blog/ai-in-recruiting-2026

👤 Follow Ron:

LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/ron-thurston

Instagram — @retailpride

Website — ronthurston.com

Episodes 18–23 are built for anyone in career transition — retail or otherwise. If you built something, lost a role, or you’re figuring out what’s next, this series is for you.

Next up — Episode 22: Your Story Is the Strategy

Special Series: The Human Edge in the Job Market (Part 3 of 6)

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 surveyed over a thousand companies and found that 39% of workers’ core skills will change by 2030. But the skills employers say are most essential right now — analytical thinking, resilience, leadership and social influence, creative thinking, empathy and active listening — aren’t the technical credentials on a resume. They’re the things you’ve been quietly building for twenty or thirty years and calling “just what I do.”

In Part 3 of The Human Edge in the Job Market, Ron Thurston walks through four questions designed to turn a vague sense of “I did good work” into something you can actually say out loud.

These four questions were built for interviews — but they work anywhere you need to articulate what you actually contributed: a performance review, a quarterly check-in, or a moment of self-doubt at the kitchen table at the end of a long week. This episode is for anyone in transition. And it’s also for the listener who is currently employed, currently questioning whether their work has been seen.

Question #1 — Who is better at their job today because of time they spent with you? Not who you trained officially. Not who reported to you on an org chart. Who is genuinely more capable, more confident, more clear on who they are as a professional — because you were in their life? That’s leadership and social influence. It’s one of the skills the WEF identified as essential. And most people have been doing it for free, often without anyone noticing.

Question #2 — What problem did you solve that nobody asked you to solve? The hardest one to claim, because by definition nobody assigned it to you. But you saw it. You acted. Something got better. An employer can hire someone to do what they’re told. What they cannot easily hire is someone who notices what nobody else is noticing — and does something about it.

Question #3 — What did the team do differently because of the standard you set? Not the policy. Not the procedure. The standard. The way people showed up, talked to each other, treated the work. Somebody set that. In a lot of cases, that somebody was you.

Question #4 — What would have been worse if you hadn’t been there? The hardest of the four — because it requires you to imagine your own absence. But it’s the most clarifying. When you can answer it honestly, you stop talking about a job title. You start talking about impact. And impact is what every hiring leader is trying to find.

🎧 Subscribe: ronthurston.com

📚 Ron’s Books:

Retail Pride — amazon.com/dp/1544509456

Human Pride — geni.us/humanpride (the first four chapters are written for the person standing at this exact crossroads — trying to see their own work clearly enough to say it out loud)

🔗 Sources & Stats Referenced:

• World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025 — 39% of workers’ core skills will change by 2030; 7 in 10 employers say analytical thinking is essential to their business in 2025; top skills employers say are most essential through 2030 include analytical thinking, resilience/flexibility/agility, leadership and social influence, creative thinking, curiosity and lifelong learning, and empathy and active listening. weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025
• WEF Future of Jobs 2025 — Skills Outlook chapter, full data on rising and declining skills 2025–2030. weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/in-full/3-skills-outlook

👤 Follow Ron:

LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/ron-thurston

Instagram — @retailpride

Website — ronthurston.com

Episodes 18–23 are built for anyone in career transition — retail or otherwise. If you built something, lost a role, or you’re figuring out what’s next, this series is for you.

Next up — Episode 21: Polish Is the New Generic — How to Stand Out in an AI-Flooded Job Market

Special Series: The Human Edge in the Job Market (Part 2 of 6)

Job applicants in 2025 were 12% less likely to reject a job offer than they were in 2023. People are taking jobs right now that — two years ago — they would have walked away from. Not because the jobs got better. Because the people got more scared.

In Part 2 of The Human Edge in the Job Market, Ron Thurston speaks directly to the listener who doesn't have a stack of offers in front of them right now — and walks through three big questions that protect you from the wrong yes, even when the market is pressuring you to settle.

This isn't a philosophy. It's protection. Three big questions for you. Five interview questions for them. And a 24-hour rule that stands between you and the wrong job.

Big Question #1 — What are my three non-negotiables? Not five. Not ten. Three. Preferences are the things you'd like. Values are the things you won't live without. When the offers are scarce, your non-negotiables are the only thing standing between you and a wrong yes. Ron explains why three is the number — and why five or ten gives you permission to trade.

Big Question #2 — What am I asking them? An interview is a two-way decision. The candidates who win offer after offer are the ones who walk in evaluating the company right back. Inside this question: five specific interview questions to carry into every interview from now on. Pick two or three. But know them. They shift the dynamic from candidate to peer.

Big Question #3 — Have I given myself permission to say no? Permission to say no is not the same thing as planning to say no. Most of the offers you get, you're going to take — that's fine, that's often the right answer. But you cannot say the right yes if you haven't given yourself permission to say no. Plus the 24-hour rule that protects you from a yes-by-default, and the kind, warm, professional no that keeps the bridge intact.

🎧 Subscribe: ronthurston.com

📚 Ron's Books:

• Retail Pride — amazon.com/dp/1544509456
• Human Pride — geni.us/humanpride (the first four chapters are written for the job seeker)

🔗 Sources & Stats Referenced:

• Glassdoor Worklife Trends 2026 — Job applicants 12% less likely to reject an offer in 2025 vs. 2023; hiring rates at a 10-year low. glassdoor.com/blog/worklife-trends-2026
• Glassdoor Worklife Trends 2026 — Mentions of "misaligned" up 149% in employee reviews from 2024 to 2025; "disconnect" up 24%; "distrust" up 26%. glassdoor.com/blog/worklife-trends-2026
• Resume Now International Career Regrets Survey 2025 — 58% of workers regret staying in a bad job too long; only 38% regret quitting. Survey of 1,000 workers across the U.S., U.K., France, and Germany. resume-now.com/job-resources/careers/career-regrets

👤 Follow Ron:

• LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/ron-thurston
• Instagram — @retailpride
• Website — ronthurston.com

Episodes 18–23 are built for anyone in career transition — retail or otherwise. If you built something, lost a role, or you're figuring out what's next, this series is for you.