As you embark on your San Antonio Running Event 2025 experience this month, I’d like to share an approach strategy that’s certain to prove your show attendance worthwhile. Allow me to illustrate this with a brief anecdote.
It’s been a long time since I spent consecutive weeks on the floor with customers. I’ve fit folks sporadically while working on-site with clients. But not since I operated a store of my own have I churned through flurries of patrons from open to close, navigating countless cases of plantar fasciitis and toe-bending bunions, while delivering advice on injury-free running, good walking form and how to train for a 100 miler without compromising the viability your domestic partnership.
Earlier this fall I worked a long-term training stint with a running store in Northern California. When my arrival unexpectedly coincided with a sudden change in personnel, I pivoted to help fill crucial gaps on the schedule. And though my intentions to train were mostly thwarted, the situation turned fortuitous. The team’s collective energy ticked upward and customers were feeling it. Like, really feeling it.
Days became flooded with customers profusely thanking us for spending quality time with them. For really seeing them. For leaning in and listening intently to their unique needs. I wasn’t the only recipient of multiple customer hugs and I, for one, took none of them for granted. Surely you can relate to this being a relatively common outcome when we’re doing what we’re here to do.
In more than two decades in the run specialty industry, I’ve learned that the best business strategies are those built on a relentless foundation of love. That’s right, I said it, LOVE. Which means we actively extend ourselves for the purpose of nourishing folks’ growth. Love is what we do.
Whether it’s our own growth or someone else’s – a staffer’s, customer’s or anyone else’s – we spend our days committed to a collective uplift. We insist on things being better. We deliver hope. We focus on the illumination of our shared humanness. We never lose sight of the fact that shoes and socks and insoles and whatever, though all imperative to our professional plight, take second billing to the most appealing and consequential piece of the puzzle.
Our business, when done right, revolves around love. And the care we deliver from minute to minute – the seeing and listening and compassionate and thoughtful togetherness – is this love in action. And even if caring comes naturally, it’s the hardest thing we do. Which is why it behooves us to make sure there’s as much care and love being given as there is being received. Making this a reality is a daily choice.
I challenge you at this year’s TRE experience to keep love and care at the forefront. Talk numbers, sure, but don’t neglect the softer, emotional piece that inspires those numbers to swing upward. Talk fit process, too, and all the other objective machinations of running a successful run specialty business. But make sure the impactful nuances of authentic connection and care are discussed with, at the very least, equal weight. Because otherwise you’re missing the point. You’re probably also compromising your business.
A powerful question to ask coworkers, fellow retailers, vendors and professional partners might be something like: How can we add more love to what we do? How can we care more? Folks may giggle a bit at first — and that’s OK. They may even feel a little uncomfortable. That’s fine, too. Love needs our help to get a bigger seat at the table.
So, at this year’s annual gathering of the run retail family, break through the norms of conference chatter and soften things up a bit. Invite in care. Tell folks you love them and see what happens. And when someone tells you the same, maybe go in for that hug. That’s what we’re all about, after all.
