Podcast
FRONTLINE FRIDAYS with Ron Thurston
Hosted by FRONTLINE FRIDAYS Podcast · EN
Your store teams feel it: more pressure, more change, less time to get it right. FRONTLINE FRIDAYS helps you turn that pressure into impact. Built for senior retail + hospitality field leaders, each episode features candid conversations with execs and disruptors from the world’s most iconic brands — sharing honest lessons and clear tactics you can start using immediately. Hosted by Ron Thurston, retail leadership expert and two-time bestselling author of RETAIL PRIDE (2020) and HUMAN PRIDE (2025). Season 2 starts September 26, 2025. New episodes every other Friday.
14episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
What 900 Travel Centers Teach You About Frontline Technology
4w ago00:28:22Tap to summarizeMost technology leaders build for the screen. David Dawson builds for the floor.In Season 2, Episode 17 of Frontline Fridays, host Ron Thurston sits down with David Dawson, VP of Retail and Digital Technology at Pilot Company, to explore what it really takes to build and lead technology that serves frontline teams — not the other way around.With nearly 25 years of experience, David has spent his career building the systems that power Pilot's 900+ travel centers: point-of-sale, payment processing, task management, and digital tools that help cashiers, maintenance teams, and store managers deliver for guests 24 hours a day, every day of the year. He talks about what a 24-7 operation demands of technology, why simplicity is a discipline, and why the best decisions get made closest to the work.Ron and David explore the human side of what Pilot does — including why a Pilot cashier may be one of only one or two human interactions a long-haul truck driver has all day — and what that means for the people behind the counter, the technology that supports them, and the leaders responsible for both.They also dig into the IT Road Trip program, how AI is reshaping frontline operations, and why "simplify, simplify, simplify" is more than a mantra — it's a leadership philosophy.If you've ever wondered what great frontline technology leadership looks like from the inside, this episode shows you exactly that. How Technology Serves the Frontline: Lessons from Pilot — Frontline Fridays, Season 2, Episode 17 is available now.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontlinefridayspodcast/David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveadawson/ | https://pilotcompany.com/Ron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/YOOBIC: https://yoobic.com | https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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Calm Under Pressure: The Leadership Skill Retail Needs Most
Apr 2400:31:55Tap to summarizeFRONTLINE FRIDAYS S2 Ep.16: Calm Under Pressure: The Leadership Skill Retail Needs MostPressure isn’t the problem. How leaders respond to it is.In this episode of Frontline Fridays, Ron Thurston sits down with Lesley Hawkins, former Head of Retail at adidas Canada and leadership advisor.Lesley stepped into retail leadership during one of the most challenging moments in modern retail — leading 1,200 associates across 32 stores as teams faced burnout, constant change, and growing disconnection from head office.Instead of pushing harder, she chose a different path: slow down, listen, and rebuild trust from the frontline.By asking three simple questions in every store, Lesley uncovered what teams really needed — and used those insights to reset culture, re-engage teams, and shape a more resilient retail organization.Now, she helps leaders across industries navigate pressure, lead through change, and build teams that can perform without burning out.In this conversation, she shares:how to lead calmly when everything feels urgentthe three questions every retail leader should be askingwhy listening is the fastest way to rebuild trusthow small acts of initiative create powerful cultural shiftswhy “raising your hand” is the key to growth and innovationHer message is clear: pressure is constant — but calm, intentional leadership is what drives performance.🎧 Linktree:https://linktr.ee/frontlinefridays👤 Lesley Hawkins:https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-hawkins/👤 Ron Thurston:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC:https://yoobic.com | https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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Leadership Isn't a Role. It's a Weekly Discipline.
Apr 1000:36:25Tap to summarizeFRONTLINE FRIDAYS S2 Ep.15: Leadership Isn’t a Role. It’s a Weekly Discipline.Most retail leaders are told they have to choose: hit results or invest in people.Shalonda Dean spent 25 years proving that’s a false choice.In this episode of Frontline Fridays, Ron Thurston sits down with Shalonda Dean, Founder of Leadership Disrupted Consulting and former leader at Prada, Balenciaga, Apple, Tory Burch, and Intermix.Shalonda built and led a $400M portfolio, launched 120+ stores, and developed more than 100 leaders into bigger roles. But what stayed with her wasn’t the results. It was watching high-potential leaders burn out in systems that didn’t support them.Now, she’s on a mission to change that.Through her People-to-Performance Accelerator™, Shalonda helps retail leaders remove chaos, create consistency, and build teams that deliver results without sacrificing culture.In this conversation, she shares:why leadership must be a weekly discipline, not a titlehow to remove operational noise so teams can performwhat actually drives retention in today’s retail environmenthow to scale culture across multiple stores and marketswhy results and people are never a tradeoffHer message is clear: when you build the right structure, your people — and your performance — both thrive.🎧 Linktree:https://linktr.ee/frontlinefridays👤 Shalonda Dean:https://www.linkedin.com/in/shalondadean/👤 Ron Thurston:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC:https://yoobic.com | https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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The Four Pillars of High-Performing Retail Stores
Mar 2700:39:49Tap to summarizeThe Four Pillars of High-Performing Retail Stores — Frontline Fridays, Season 2, Episode 14Retail teams don’t fail because of effort. They fail because of disconnect.In Season 2, Episode 14 of Frontline Fridays, Ron Thurston sits down with Monika Espinoza, Founder & Principal Operator of Better Way Operations and former retail leader at Louis Vuitton Americas.With more than 25 years in retail, Monika has built her career in operations — the part of the business often overlooked, but critical to performance. Her perspective is clear: operations isn’t a support function, it’s a profit driver. And most retailers are underutilizing a significant portion of their store teams because of how they think about and communicate with them.In this episode, Monika shares why high-performing stores are built on alignment, not silos, and why the biggest opportunity in retail today sits within operations teams. She introduces her STEP framework — Strategy, Team, Efficiency, and Performance — and explains how leaders can use it to unlock productivity, improve collaboration, and drive results across the entire store.Ron and Monika discuss:Why front-of-house and back-of-house teams often operate in silos — and how to fix itHow operations teams can maximize the top line while protecting the bottom lineWhy communication gaps are costing stores productivity and profitHow to develop operations talent into business-minded leadersIf you’re leading stores, districts, or retail organizations and looking to improve performance without adding headcount, this episode offers a practical and powerful shift in how to think about your teams.The Four Pillars of High-Performing Retail Stores — Frontline Fridays, Season 2, Episode 14 is available now.🎧 Linktree:https://linktr.ee/frontlinefridays👤 Monika Espinoza:https://www.linkedin.com/in/monikabwo/👤 Ron Thurston:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC:https://yoobic.com |https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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How to Build a Culture People Don’t Want to Leave
Mar 1300:30:08Tap to summarizeHigh growth is hard. Sustained growth is harder. Building a culture people don’t want to leave? That’s leadership.In Season 2, Episode 13 of Frontline Fridays, Ron Thurston sits down with Paul Griffin, Founder & CEO of Griffin Strategic Partners and former Global President of Good American and President & CEO of SMCP North America (Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot).Paul began his career on the shop floor in London and went on to scale accessible luxury brands across North America, opening hundreds of stores and driving billions in revenue growth. His leadership philosophy is clear: results follow culture.In this episode, Paul shares why leaders must fiercely protect culture, why retention starts with belonging, and why empowering teams, not managing by committee, creates sustainable performance. He explains what has changed in retail and what hasn’t, and why people remain the foundation of every growth story.Ron and Paul discuss:Why culture must be intentional and protectedThe link between employee experience and performanceHow to scale high-touch retail without losing standardsWhy choosing who you work for matters as much as where you workIf you’re leading stores, brands, or global teams and thinking about retention, growth, and long-term performance, this episode delivers practical leadership insight from someone who’s built it at scale.How to Build a Culture People Don’t Want to Leave — Frontline Fridays, Season 2, Episode 13 is available now.🎧 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/frontlinefridays👤 Paul Griffin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-griffin-78b486b/👤 Ron Thurston:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC:https://yoobic.com |https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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30-Day Blueprint for Running Great Stores
Feb 2700:42:19Tap to summarizeRetail will always face disruption. Great stores still win.In Season 2, Episode 12 of Frontline Fridays, host Ron Thurston sits down with Rachel Williamson, Chief Strategic Retail Advisor at Running Great Stores Retail Consulting, to break down her 30-day blueprint for running high-performing stores in any environment.From tariffs and global pandemics to AI and shifting customer expectations, Rachel argues that disruption isn’t new. What matters is what leaders can control inside their four walls. Drawing on decades of experience transforming underperforming divisions into top performers, she shares the fundamentals that never change: disciplined self-leadership, clear expectations, behavioral accountability, and operational urgency.Rachel explains why telling teams to “get conversion up” isn’t a strategy, why KPIs are simply numbers driven by observable behaviors, and why modeling standards on the floor matters more than announcing goals in a huddle. She also challenges traditional hiring assumptions, making the case for hiring for attitude and training for skill, and unpacks how urgency, when defined as focus and purpose rather than panic, fuels operational excellence.Ron and Rachel explore the real tension between store teams and digital demands, why only 39% of employees feel their manager cares, and how clarity and care directly impact customer experience and revenue. This conversation is practical, unfiltered, and rooted in lived retail leadership, not theory.If you’re leading stores, districts, or frontline teams through change, growth, or performance pressure, this episode offers a field-tested roadmap for building stores that execute consistently and perform at a high level.30-Day Blueprint for Running Great Stores — Frontline Fridays, Season 2, Episode 12 is available now.👤 Rachel:https://www.linkedin.com/in/runninggreatstores54/👤 Ron:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC:https://yoobic.com |https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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The 3 Questions That Define Great Retail Leadership
Feb 1300:33:03Tap to summarizeMost leadership frameworks try to add complexity. The best leaders do the opposite.In Season 2, Episode 11 of Frontline Fridays, host Ron Thurston sits down with Corinne Suarez, VP and Head of Retail at Marine Layer, to unpack the principles that have guided her through more than two decades of frontline leadership across some of retail’s most iconic brands.From leading massive store fleets at Old Navy and American Eagle to scaling a fast-growing, high-touch brand like Marine Layer, Corinne shares why great leadership ultimately comes down to a few non-negotiables: respect, care, fairness, and dignity. She reflects on the three questions that define every strong leader–team relationship: Do you care about me? Can I trust you? Are you committed? and explains how these questions become practical tools for navigating conflict, building trust, and scaling leadership at any size.Ron and Corinne explore what it really takes to lead at scale without losing humanity, how to translate strategy for the end user on the floor, and why investing in people consistently delivers better business outcomes than any process or tool alone. They also dig into the future of retail, where technology should eliminate friction, not create it, and where physical stores remain essential for connection, storytelling, and emotion.If you’re leading teams through growth, change, or complexity, or thinking about how to build a retail career that lasts, this episode offers grounded perspective from someone who has done it at every level.The 3 Questions That Define Great Retail Leadership — Frontline Fridays, Season 2, Episode 11 is available now.🎧 Watch on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrohqoj-V_gskdgonZVHPSVNYO0K2mtpO👤 Corinne:https://www.linkedin.com/in/corinne-suarez/👤 Ron:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC:https://yoobic.com | https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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The Six Cs of Execution: A Playbook for Field Leaders
Jan 3000:33:30Tap to summarizeMost strategies don’t fail because they’re bad ideas. They fail because execution breaks down where it matters most.In Season 2, Episode 10 of Frontline Fridays, host Ron Thurston sits down with Kevin Ertell, CEO of Mistere Advisory and a veteran operator with more than 30 years of experience across brands like Nike, Tower Records, and Sur La Table, to unpack why execution is where strategies so often stall, and how field leaders can change that.Drawing on a career that began on the shop floor and led to global retail leadership, Kevin introduces The Six Cs of Execution, a practical playbook designed to help leaders bring clarity to complexity and turn strategy into daily action. He explains why execution is always a people challenge before it’s a process one, why leaders need to slow down to speed up, and how co-creation, clarity, and capacity set the stage for success long before rollout begins.Ron and Kevin dig into the reality of frontline leadership, from navigating the “messy middle” between headquarters and stores to building alignment across functions, communicating under pressure, and coaching teams through constant change. They explore why most rollouts fail in the handoffs, how to create shared ownership on the floor, and what field leaders can do every day to make strategy stick.If you’ve ever watched a well-intentioned initiative unravel once it reached stores, or felt the gap between ambition and reality on the frontline, this episode offers a grounded, experience-led framework for closing the execution gap.The Six Cs of Execution: A Playbook for Field Leaders — Frontline Fridays, Season 2, Episode 10 is available now.🎧 Watch on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrohqoj-V_gskdgonZVHPSVNYO0K2mtpO👤 Kevin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinertell/👤 Ron:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC:https://yoobic.com |https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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How to Inspire Employee Adoption Without Forcing It
Jan 1600:39:08Tap to summarizeThe hardest part of rolling out new tools in retail isn’t the technology. It’s getting frontline teams to believe in them.In this episode of Frontline Fridays, host Ron Thurston sits down with Missy Pool, executive leader, board member, and former senior operator at Apple, Ralph Lauren, Gap Inc., and West Elm, to unpack why most adoption efforts break down on the floor, and what great leaders do differently.Drawing on decades spent leading in stores, not just designing strategy from HQ, Missy shares why adoption fails when leaders move too fast, force change without listening, or treat rollout as a compliance exercise instead of a trust-building moment. She explains why the most successful transformations are peer-led, collaborative, and grounded in real frontline realities, and how slowing down under pressure often leads to faster results.Ron and Missy dig into the tension between technology and human connection, the role of vulnerability in leadership, and why acknowledging mistakes can accelerate adoption rather than derail it. They also explore how data, storytelling, and frontline proof points help teams see technology as an enabler, not a threat.If you’ve ever rolled out a new system that looked great on paper but didn’t stick in stores, this episode offers a grounded, experience-led playbook for doing it better.How to Inspire Employee Adoption Without Forcing It. — Season 2, Episode 9 is available now.🎧 Watch on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrohqoj-V_gskdgonZVHPSVNYO0K2mtpO👤 Missy:https://www.linkedin.com/in/missy-pool-3437427/👤 Ron:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC:https://yoobic.com |https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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AI for Frontline Teams is Changing How Stores Run
Jan 200:41:15Tap to summarizeThe real challenge in retail execution isn’t ambition or strategy, it’s the constant pressure on frontline leaders to decide what matters next while the business keeps moving.In this episode of Frontline Fridays, host Ron Thurston sits down with Fabrice Haiat, Co-founder and CEO of YOOBIC, to unpack how AI is beginning to change how stores actually run, not in theory, but in the real decisions made on the floor every day.Drawing on Fabrice’s upbringing in a retail family and years spent shadowing store managers, the conversation explores why so many retail initiatives break down at execution. Store leaders are overloaded with information, pulled into reports and inboxes, and forced to interpret strategy while managing live operations. Fabrice argues that frontline AI only delivers value when it removes that burden, replacing noise with clear, contextual priorities for each store.Ron and Fabrice dig into what personalization at scale really looks like for frontline teams, why AI delivers some of the fastest ROI in retail, and why 2026 will mark the shift from pilots to real adoption. They also explore the human impact of better execution, from reduced burnout and stronger retention to giving store leaders the confidence to lead in the moment, not after the fact.If you’ve ever seen strong strategy stall at the store level, or felt the weight of nonstop decisions without clear direction, this episode offers a practical way forward.AI for Frontline Teams Is Changing How Stores Run — Season 2, Episode 8 is available now.🎧 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrohqoj-V_gskdgonZVHPSVNYO0K2mtpO👤 Fabrice: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabricehaiat/👤 Ron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronthurston/💡 YOOBIC: https://yoobic.com | https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoobic/
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