Shelley E. Kohan (00:01.614)
Hi everybody, welcome to Retail Unwrapped. I am so excited to have Rachel Williamson with me. Hey Rachel.

Rachel Williamson (00:10.134)
Hi, Shelly. Hi, everybody out there watching and listening.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:14.254)
I love it. So Rachel, you are CEO and founder of Running Great Stores, which we’re going to get into kind of your passion there. And you just recently launched a new book. So congratulations on that.

Rachel Williamson (00:20.918)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (00:30.742)
Thank you so much. It’ll be out February 24th wherever books are sold. So exciting.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:34.22)
Yay! And of course the name of it is Running Great Stores.

Rachel Williamson (00:39.648)
That’s right, 30 Days to Running Great Stores. it is, you know, I think it’s a book that is gonna help frontline workers, whether you want to be a manager or you already are a manager. So I’m excited at how many retail organizations out there are, you know, gonna really benefit from giving this book to folks that work in the front lines. So I’m excited to get it out there.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:03.15)
love that. And what I love about your background is like me, you’ve served your whole career serving the industry, which is amazing. You’re a strategic retail leader. You do a lot of consulting work. You also have, you have a well-known area about you, which is you are excellent at turning around underperforming stores or divisions or teams.

which is fantastic. And I did get a sneak peek at your book and I love a lot of the content that’s in your book in terms of I wish I had it, know, okay, 30 years ago when I started in the business, it’s a little more than 30, but we won’t go there. But you also have a lot of experience because you actually worked in the industry, you worked for Coach, Asina and some other multi-billion dollar companies and all the consulting work that you do, which is great.

Rachel Williamson (01:42.006)
Yeah

Shelley E. Kohan (01:55.124)
And I love your motto, which is retail is hard, but leadership doesn’t have to be. And I think the book coming out this year is really a great timing because our leaders in our industry are, I believe, been very challenged over the past few years, really since COVID. So your book is really to help every leader who wants to build better teams. But before we… go ahead.

Rachel Williamson (02:19.234)
Absolutely. No, I say absolutely. completely agree. You know, when I wrote this book and I was…

showing it to publishers and I was like, you know, I just wish someone had given this to me when I started because it would have saved years of heartache. Fortunately, I’ve had wonderful bosses and mentors over the years that also helped me shape. you know, I mentioned some of them in this book, but it’s, the impact that we have on the people that we work with does live on. And so, you know, a big thank you to all of those leaders that I had working

in retail that helped me get to this point. And now this is just that opportunity to give back and do it in a way that is so digestible and so easy to read and implement.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:07.629)
I think it was, it’s a very easy read. I agree. And I don’t even laugh when I tell you the management book that I read when I was young, Getting into the Industry. And it’s an iconic book, but you know, yours is so much more elevated. I remember One Minute Manager. I mean, that was my go-to book.

Rachel Williamson (03:24.281)
yes! Yes! You know what’s funny is-

Shelley E. Kohan (03:27.743)
And it was awesome.

Rachel Williamson (03:29.436)
Shelly, when I was a new manager, I actually bought that book. I was at the Gap and it was my big leap from working for small, I’ll call mom and pop, retail brands to making that leap into the Gap. I talk about, there’s a story that I share in the book about how I made that leap. But I remember buying the One Minute Manager for all of my managers. And I asked them to read it and of course it was a quick read as you remember. And we huddled in like a little breakfast

Shelley E. Kohan (03:57.111)
Ha ha.

Rachel Williamson (03:59.492)
meeting and talked about what we learned, but more importantly, we talked about how we would apply what we learned into what we were doing and what our goals were. And I think that’s the key. It is so good to read books, but if we don’t apply what we learned, it doesn’t really do a whole lot of good, right? And so one of my reasons for making this book as digestible as it is was take one topic, read about it, and then go apply what you learned.

and then come back the next day and do another topic. Don’t speed read through the book. Just do a day at a time for 30 days. It’s short enough to hold our attention span, but long enough to build that muscle memory. So…

Shelley E. Kohan (04:29.517)
Exactly.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:43.091)
No, that’s great. And before we jump into the con some content that we’re going to talk about, I hope you’re going to share some of your stories as we talk today, because I love I love hearing your stories and your Rachel isms that you have. But before we jump in, I’m going to share a little fun fact with you. You and my husband started at the same job. My husband scooped ice cream at Basket Robin. He did.

Rachel Williamson (04:50.408)
I will, I will.

Yes.

Okay.

Rachel Williamson (05:06.817)
He did? Oh my goodness. And what city and state was he doing that in? Which Baskin-Robbins was he? In Philly, okay. Yeah, I was in Columbus, Ohio and I rode my bike two blocks up to the Hearts and Big Bear Plaza, as they used to call strip centers, know, plazas. And yeah, I was 14 and that…

Shelley E. Kohan (05:13.613)
Phili- Philly. Philadelphia. Yeah, Philly, yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:28.441)
yeah!

Rachel Williamson (05:31.554)
Yeah, I think there’s probably some jobs you can still get at 14, but it’s mainly like delivering papers or babysitting. But back then, you could work in food, surprisingly.

and it was just the best. It was just the best job. But I talk about, obviously, as you know, in the introduction, I talk about that experience, which is kind of funny. I shared a pre-read of the book with some of my colleagues, and one of them called me and said, you had me at hopping on the counter and sliding out the flavors and going and telling the owner at 14 years old, all the things that were opportunistic.

that customers were upset about what we could do different. so I think that’s really where my obsession with retail began.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:20.533)
It’s great. I mean, I love this story because that’s where a lot of us really started in the industry. So one of the big kind of key topics is you talk about empowering store leaders with practical tools and clear processes. And I don’t think there hasn’t been another time in our retail industry where that has not been one of the most important things that we can do today. Our retail environment is so complex right now. We have

the Gen Alpha kids that are coming into the workforce, these are the COVID kids. And they may be lacking some of these key leadership imperatives. And then we also have to learn how to manage the Gen Alpha, the Gen Zs, the millennials and the boomers because there’s like five generations in the workforce. So tell me a little bit about your idea about this having practical tools and clear processes.

Rachel Williamson (07:13.557)
Yeah, I mean, I really wrote this book not thinking about generations, but thinking about easy to apply proven, not theory, proven methodology on how to win at retail. And frankly, it will apply to any generation if, and here’s my first Rachelism in the book.

What I believe drives how I behave and how I behave drives my results. So as leaders in retail, it isn’t just about barking orders, about telling somebody what to do. Our mission.

is to understand what people believe to be true about what we’re there in that store to deliver. And once I understand what you believe to be true about retail and the customer experience and what we’re really here to do, I can then influence your thinking. And that’s really my job as your leader is to influence the way you’re thinking about what we’re there to do. If I just tell you, look, we have to have a good customer experience. You need to wait on everybody who walks in. What am I going to get? Okay.

But then what will that really look like? And so that’s really where I get into in the book, the different components. And it really starts with, you know, who you are just looking in the mirror. And we’ll get into that here in a little bit. But, you know, we really see…

all of the disruptions that retail has had over the past six years. In 2020, we had COVID, which was something we had never really seen or could have predicted the impact.

Rachel Williamson (08:55.635)
And then when we got a new president in office, the tariffs and retailers margins became a really big impact. you and I have been in retail long enough. We know one of the things that you can count on is that there are disruptions in retail. So I put together, this is not in the book.

but I do think it’s really interesting. So before we went from COVID to…

know, margin and tariff implications. Retailers were dealing with this post-COVID phenomenon called working from home. And while retailers, retail store leaders had to be in stores, there was a lot of bitterness around all my colleagues get to work from home and be in sweatpants and what have you. And it almost became, gosh, this is just our normal.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:35.558)
yes!

Rachel Williamson (09:49.665)
And so we’ve got some, you know, Jen Alpha to go back to your perspective that I was recently mentoring a young woman who said, well, my goal is to work from home. I’m like, OK, well, first, that’s not a goal and that’s not a thing. We get up, we dress up, we show up for work. Going to work in general is about getting up and going somewhere. And if that’s what you’re telling people who are interviewing you, why are you not getting the job? So, you know, and sometimes we just have to be super honest, right?

But before COVID, in 2016,

with Trump’s first presidency, tariffs reared their ugly head. I remember I was at Justice then and we were talking about price points and what was that impact going to look like for moms who were used to buying their daughter clothes at Justice and now the prices are so much higher. In 2015, if we just keep dialing back, do you remember how influencers came on the scene and now they’re so common? But

They were changing the way customers shopped. You could now shop a live sale on Instagram or on Facebook and now even on TikTok.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:56.983)
Absolutely.

Rachel Williamson (11:01.504)
In 2010, in that era, it was all about fast fashion. And if retailers couldn’t keep up with Zara and H &M and Forever 21 and get goods out, that was causing problems. I mean, in the early 2000s, Amazon was ramping up and they were changing the expectation around what customers could get and how you could get it on your front door so much faster. And even in the 90s, and this is as far back as all good,

Shelley E. Kohan (11:07.168)
and

Rachel Williamson (11:31.631)
because, you know, I’m going to really date myself here. But in the 90s, there was this whole, you know, these big chains. Walmart came on the scene in a bigger way. Target, Home Depot, Best Buy, they were dominating categories. And department stores couldn’t keep up. They couldn’t give the margin break. They couldn’t have the depth of assortment. And so my point in sharing this is, and we could go back further, clearly,

decade has had disruptions for retailers and here’s what I’ll say there are more coming we just don’t know what they’re gonna be but there are more coming and so one of the things that I that drove me I think to write this book is there are things we can control and there are things we can’t control

And we can control the way our stores operate. We can control the operational excellence. We can control the talent that we hire. We can control the experience that we deliver. Those are all things that retailers own and can control. there’s so many missed opportunities in how retailers are delivering that. And so, you know, when business gets tough, what happens? Training gets cut.

And so now you have store managers being hired and they’re going through a quick little training and retailers assume that’s all they need. And what happens from store to store? The experience varies from district to district, what have you. And so this book, buy the book, read a copy of the book, implement the book, and you’re going to be able to deliver more consistent experiences, find better talent, drive better customer experience because you’re not

Shelley E. Kohan (12:45.965)
now.

Rachel Williamson (13:15.83)
relying on someone else at your organization giving you information that maybe there’s no longer a training department, you now can grab that kind of the bull by the horns and own it and and deliver the.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:28.715)
Yeah.

Rachel Williamson (13:32.017)
expectations, the experiences that customers have. mean, customers have are so empowered. They can look on their smartphone and they can see what that item costs everywhere else. But you know, when the day is done, there are things that are also bigger than cost. That’s what we call value, right? Value isn’t just price. Value is the experience that I get when I go into that store.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:49.965)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (13:54.845)
And there are retail brands that I love. I go into the store and they know me by name and maybe that’s AI. Maybe they know me because some AI tool is helping, but it’s they still know me and they welcome me when I come in and they offer me a water and they know what I like and and each of those store managers that are delivering that experience.

They may be getting that from their company and they may be getting it from something else. And this book is one of those something else’s that retailers will be able to use, which I’m excited about.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:25.387)
Yeah, I love that. So two quick things. So one is, so as you kind of went back in history, and I won’t go back in history, but I just want you to think about this. The consumer, as in all those decades, also changed. And so that really is either us, and usually it’s retailers trying to chase the consumers and their behavioral changes versus the other way around. So I do believe that there is this super empowered consumer. And I think the other thing that you said that’s really important, very difficult to deliver,

Rachel Williamson (14:31.966)
haha

Rachel Williamson (14:37.888)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (14:46.762)
That’s right.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:54.941)
is this customer service that is, as you say, stellar, but it has to be consistent. One of the biggest challenges in physical retail is inconsistency by location by store. So talk to me a little bit about this super empowered shopper and how can you deliver this experience consistently day after day?

Rachel Williamson (15:01.792)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (15:07.732)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (15:18.132)
Yeah, I mean, think to be honest, many retailers still view customer service as the set of niceties.

and rather than core daily work that actually motivates people to buy and fosters that loyalty. Loyalty doesn’t come because you’ve implemented some great piece of technology that’s a CRM or what have you. Loyalty comes one customer at a time, one engagement at a time. The biggest missteps that I see retailers taking is an over-reliance on systems instead of that real human connection. And we assume when we hire someone who’s got retail experience,

experience and what have you that they’re going to already be great at it. They may not be. We delve into that in the book.

Stores are investing in technology and in automated signage and in incentives, but the customer experience is delivered, like I said, one interaction at a time. And if associates aren’t tuned in, the best promotion, the best sale on the planet, the best technology implemented in that store is not going to create a meaningful experience or drive customer loyalty or repeat customers. Number two, ignoring the store associates emotional and mental state.

I feel like customer service suffers when the staff feels unclear or uncared for or unsure of what success really looks like. You know, there’s a recent Gallup poll out

Shelley E. Kohan (16:40.555)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Williamson (16:47.525)
that it’s kind of a scary number. It says only about 46 % of employees know what’s expected of them and only 39 % feel like someone even cares about them as a person. And that gap directly undercuts how they’re treating customers on the sales floor. And then

Shelley E. Kohan (17:08.278)
Absolutely.

Rachel Williamson (17:09.139)
think the third misstep that I see is just thinking of service as a one-off instead of a habit. And too often, I mentioned this earlier, retailers train once and then they think we’re good to go. But it isn’t really that. It’s got to be this daily behavior of noticing, listening, responding, right to what they see associates doing. I was recently in a store and their district manager was visiting and I always love to watch that interaction between the district manager and the store.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:36.83)
Hahaha!

Rachel Williamson (17:39.026)
And the district manager started filling online orders.

There was no engagement around their sales, where they are, how much more they need to make their month. There was no conversation around the sales team, you know, do you have openings, who’s doing well, who needs some help? Not judging, maybe they did that at some other time. But I was in there for quite some time. I bought a few things from them and so I was in there and was able to, and just never heard or saw anything.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:55.81)
Hmm.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:10.839)
Hmm.

Rachel Williamson (18:12.197)
So I was in there a day later, I had to exchange a size on something and I asked the store manager and she said, she’s like just extra set of hands. She fills orders, she cleans the back room. Now, again, culturally that might be where this brand is. But what I would encourage district managers, regional managers to think about is how do we leverage our experience when we walk into stores and how do we help our store managers be that

much better at what they’re doing, be that much better at delivering the experience when we leave than they were before we got there. And this is just an opportunity. If I was talking to the CEO of this particular retail brand, I would encourage them there’s a better way to leverage district managers. You can bring in minimum wage employees to fill online orders. My guess is that district managers making quite a bit more per hour than should be filling an online order. But again, you know, she thinks she’s being

very helpful to the store team and helping the store managers that they can be engaging customers. So, you know, this is a big opportunity. Probably the other big opportunity around the customer is just KPIs. And how do we talk about the behaviors that are driving the results, not just the results. you know, you go into a store and you hear the store manager say to a salesperson, we need to get conversion up. Now, go do it. Okay.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:15.094)
Mm-hmm.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:25.549)
Hmm

Shelley E. Kohan (19:40.909)
Rachel Williamson (19:41.874)
Well, the salesperson is probably saying, okay, turns around, walks away and is like, what does that mean? What should I be doing? And so instead, we can be saying, we need to get conversion up and let’s talk about how we’re gonna do it. What are your guys’ ideas? And when they look at you with a blank stare, what do you now know? You now know that they don’t know what it really means. And so then it’s like, well, let me share a couple ideas.

I know I just gave you tasks to do, but when someone walks in, drop those tasks and welcome the customer in.

share with them something that new that you’re excited about. Maybe this new item that you’re putting out, this cashmere sweater that comes in four colors and the blue would be beautiful on her because of her blue eyes. Like, you know, just helping them understand behaviorally what is going to drive those KPIs. And no matter what KPI you drive, not everybody uses conversion and traffic counters, but there are behaviors that drive no matter what the KPI is. And so focusing on those behaviors is huge. And often,

a miss.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:45.601)
Yeah, I want to go back to something you said, because I have to bring back in this generational thing, because I do think it’s it’s kind of an issue if you’re not paying attention to it. So let’s go back to the district manager that goes and immediately starts taking care of orders. So that district manager and I’m not saying this is in her case, I’m just saying hypothetically, you know, when you look at the Gen Z’s and you look at the Gen Alphas.

Their comfort level is probably more attuned to knocking out operational tasks, that’s their comfort level, as opposed to actually being comfortable with the leading and leadership skills.

Rachel Williamson (21:29.235)
Yeah, mean, it depends. I wouldn’t necessarily label generationally. So I have a Gen Z daughter. So she definitely keeps me honest on how Gen Z thinks about things. And she scolds me if I am labeling for sure. But I will say that…

It comes down to, I think, who you’re hiring to work in your store. You know, often store managers, and I talk to store managers all the time, and they often say, I just want to hire people with retail experience. Just makes it easier. They know what to expect. They won’t be surprised. But oftentimes we surpass, we overlook talent that maybe doesn’t have retail experience. And I talk about this in the book. You hire for attitude, you teach skill.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:12.781)
Absolutely.

Rachel Williamson (22:19.457)
if I find someone that is bubbly and vivacious and outgoing, they’re in their sorority or their fraternity in college and they’ve got really great skills, I can teach them how to sell my product all day long and twice on Sunday. And so, I think it’s important to understand what the expectations are. And then when you’re engaging potential employees to be talking about that, like what do you love to do and what do you hate to do? And if they say,

Shelley E. Kohan (22:19.499)
Yep.

Rachel Williamson (22:49.597)
I hate like one-on-one making eye contact. It’s like all right. I need stock people I need people to help with floor set you might be a better fit But I’m never gonna put you on my sales floor as a greeter because you’re gonna be more comfortable looking at your phone And I you know I used to joke with my daughter if our relationship could just be about texting back and forth It would always be fabulous, but because I need to talk to you. I need to see the whites of your eyes Sometimes you just don’t want to

Shelley E. Kohan (22:57.953)
That’s right. Yeah.

Rachel Williamson (23:19.419)
And that is a real thing.

I think the other thing, my daughter was raised, I we weren’t, I wasn’t raised in this, but my daughter was raised in a, everyone gets a trophy environment. So yeah, it’s like, you know, she played on soccer teams and, know, always tried all different sports, ultimately did horseback riding and tennis, but you know, played all different sports and everybody had to get an award at the end. It’s like, you didn’t even win. What do you get in an award? I mean, for showing up. And so I do.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:31.86)
yeah, don’t even go there.

Rachel Williamson (23:52.523)
think that we’re dealing with some of those complexities where people get hired and they want to get promoted fast, like really fast. And so I think it’s just being aware of the generation that you’re hiring and being knowledgeable about what it is they need, what it is they want. I love just talking to people about it. It’s like, won’t, you I don’t want people to think I’m labeling them. So it’s like, you tell me, what are your expectations when you start working in my store? What is it?

Shelley E. Kohan (24:13.216)
Right, right.

Rachel Williamson (24:22.456)
that you expect. When do you think you’ll go from being a key holder to being an assistant manager? Like what’s going on in your mind? And it goes back to what I believe drives how I behave and how I behave drives my results. If I understand what you believe to be true, I’m going to be much more effective in working with you and setting clear expectations around reality and what’s really going to happen.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:47.597)
think Rachel, the other thing that’s really important that you kind of hinted to is you really try to understand where they’re coming from. And so you can’t motivate people unless you know where they’re coming from. And so that’s an important step. But let’s talk about culture for a second, because I’ve always said culture takes years to build and seconds to collapse. So how do you build a winning culture? How do you make it a winning culture? And I know you’ve done this

a hundred thousand times, but tell us about that.

Rachel Williamson (25:20.114)
You know, it’s such an interesting…

quote that you that you said where it’s years to build and seconds to collapse and maybe you made that up or I’ve heard it somewhere before but you are 200 % right and I think what happens oftentimes and I’ll stay with retail stores for a moment I think what often happens is retailer retail frontline workers believe that culture is their company and what their company is created so what their HR team works to create and they’re

Shelley E. Kohan (25:50.349)
That’s right.

Rachel Williamson (25:51.561)
wrong. There is a component of culture that is that. But I would argue that a district manager creates the culture of their district. What is important?

Shelley E. Kohan (26:02.317)
That’s correct.

Rachel Williamson (26:04.026)
what they value, what their priorities are. And likewise, a store manager creates a culture within the building that she or he are leading. And so I think that we can’t just say, well, the retailer has created the culture and the culture here is good or the culture here isn’t good because of that. I think…

Those of us that are running stores need to say, how am I creating a culture where I’m the leader others want to follow? Where we’re the store customers want to shop in?

where we’re the employer that customer that employees want to work for. And I think the store store manager, the district manager, the regional manager, they really own a huge component of creating that culture inside the four walls of their building.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:57.429)
totally agree with you. You’re part of the culture. You can drive it, move it, change it, and you’ve proven that. I read a lot of the stories from your book. So the other topic I want to try to get to is this idea of mastering operational excellence. And I’ve always believed that. I come from operations, so that’s kind of been my mantra as well. But I look at what’s happening today and the supply chain.

everything going on with that, the tariffs, the uncertainty. And you said, yeah, Shelley, that’s great. Every decade we have problems. But how can you master operational excellence when a big piece of that operational functionality or process is being challenged and taxed, especially over the last few years?

Rachel Williamson (27:45.469)
Yeah, it is. I mean, the bottom line is all the people that are working in the corporate office, retailers that are dealing with, struggling with, trying to fix all this, know, a lot of it falls on them and the stores have zero control over it. If the store, you know, if like, remember at COVID, couldn’t get, stores were empty. You couldn’t get product to save your life, right? But if a store is empty, if a store is broken in sizes, if a store doesn’t get the marketing on time, if it’s, you know, all these

Shelley E. Kohan (28:05.002)
yeah.

Rachel Williamson (28:15.512)
that come from outside of the building that are come from the corporate side. And I did corporate store operations for many years and I loved it. And I did it primarily because I had been on the receiving end as somebody who worked in stores of a store ops group that wasn’t giving me the things that I needed. I was like, I’m pretty sure we could do this better. Let’s get into this corporate side of it. But the truth of the matter is, that operational excellence, there’s a component of it that does reside inside the four.

walls of that building, of that store that you’re leading. And we delve into that in the book. I think it’s like, how are you managing every detailed component within the four walls? I remember when I was a store manager for Ann Taylor, this is way before Acina owned them. And I managed the city center location up on the third floor. And I talk about a story about that, a couple of stories in the book about

Shelley E. Kohan (28:51.607)
and

Rachel Williamson (29:15.312)
this location, but I remember getting there at eight in the morning. We opened at ten and back in the day we were allowed to come in two hours early like that. Now I highly discourage it because it’s not payroll that you can earn back with sales because your store’s not open. But I would literally walk the store from front to back. I’d stand out front. I’d look at the windows, the mannequins. I’d look for dust bunnies in the windows, signage crinkled, you know, is it hanging straight? And I’d walk through and I had a

just a legal pad and a pen and I would make a list of every single operational thing, a light bulb out, a bulb not aimed, dirty fitting rooms, pins from shirts stuck into the drywall, like every little detail. And when my team came in, we would divide and conquer and we would get all that cleaned up. And what I taught my team was these are the details that we have to master. Loss prevention, backroom organization.

And the woman who hired me for that Ann Taylor job was the regional manager, Jean St. Pierre. She’s retired now. I don’t know where she is, but she really had a big impact on me as a leader on my career. And her standards were very, very high. But one of the things that she used to always say to all of us was if your back room isn’t organized and humming like a well-oiled car, know, like the the sales floor is not going to run right either.

would talk about if your car is washed and waxed and looks beautiful, but you’ve not changed the oil at some point, the engine’s going to fly through the hood of that car and that car is going to be no good. Because if you don’t care for the things no one sees, no one sees that back room. But if you don’t keep it organized and running smoothly, the goods won’t get to the floor either. Customer sizes will be missed, et cetera. And so there are so many operations

pieces that still can help a store be successful and those are things that a store manager can own.

Shelley E. Kohan (31:25.835)
love that. So one last topic, I know we’re kind of out of time, but I really want to get to this last topic because I’m a big believer in it. Grow the leader within yourself by investing in yourself. And one of the things you really believe in, and I actually wrote a leadership course for Fashion Institute of Technology. And in that leadership course, we have a whole module on EQ because I believe emotional intelligence is one of the most important.

Rachel Williamson (31:44.824)
Shelley E. Kohan (31:50.968)
qualities and skill sets that leaders can have. And I know it’s a big passion of yours as well. So tell us a little bit about kind of your philosophy about growing the leader within yourself.

Rachel Williamson (32:01.979)
Yeah, you know, like we said at the very start of our conversation today.

You can read all the books you want, but if you don’t apply what you’ve learned, you’re not going to really see meaningful growth and meaningful movement. And even at the end of this book, your journey’s not done, right? It just continues. And so the idea of continuing to invest in yourself, continuing to talk to your supervisor about where you’re winning and where you’re not, and not being afraid of those hard conversations, but just seeing it as, I just want to keep growing as a person.

and I want to keep growing as a leader. And, you know, when you lead yourself with intention, results always follow. And so I think that’s probably a really big piece. Day seven in the book, EQ is your superpower, is an important component. And I do talk about, you know, some tips there on managing EQ. And that, every generation, you know, it’s something that people struggle with because you’re not necessarily born with it, right? And so

Shelley E. Kohan (33:06.783)
Right? yeah.

Rachel Williamson (33:08.132)
It’s like we’re not born with the skills you need to run a great store.

but you can learn them. We learn them from people around us. We learn them from great organizations. I I spent 10 years at limited brands. That’s really where I learned that operational excellence was going to be the deciding factor on if you were going to have a successful brand or less so. The gap was operations boot camp for me. I remember early on, but oftentimes because store operations isn’t all that sexy, is it? It’s the fundamentals. It’s like in football, it’s blocking.

and tackling. The football teams who win are the teams that do those fundamentals really well. Trick plays are super fun, but

They’re not what win football games. And I think that for retail, it’s very similar. The fundamentals of clean stores, well-trained employees, focused KPIs, caring about the customer. Those are the things that make retail stores successful. And those are well within the control of the store manager, assistant managers, even sales associates that don’t have a key to that store. They choose

If the experience is going to be a fabulous one and help customers continue to want to shop there or if it’s the opposite. And so I think this book will be for every level. You don’t have to have the keys to the store in order to really learn about how to be great at retail. And I want retail to stop being the revolving door, the job I have until I get the job I want. know, retail can be such a

Shelley E. Kohan (34:32.375)
love that.

Rachel Williamson (34:52.103)
fulfilling, well-paid career choice, but…

We can’t rely on, I have a great boss who’s going to train me? We have to take that ownership within ourselves and say, you know what, I’m going to own this and I am going to be the leader others want to follow and I’m going to develop people and I’m going to get a reputation for it. And then that’s how you leave that legacy. And I think that’s also part of that whole, where am I going from here? I finished this book, I apply what I learned, I’m running a great store. Who are you mentoring? You know, who are you helping with their

Shelley E. Kohan (35:25.995)
Love it.

Rachel Williamson (35:27.807)
career and all of those things just make it so meaningful and make this journey worth it.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:35.351)
Love it, Rachel, thank you. And leading with intent and purpose. So thank you. Thank you so much for being here. It’s great to have you here. I’m sure our audience learned a lot. And don’t forget to pick up your copy of 30 Days in Running Great Stores.

Rachel Williamson (35:38.747)
That’s right, results will always follow. Thank you, Shelly.

Rachel Williamson (35:52.733)
That’s right, available February 24th, 2026. Thank you so much.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:56.919)
Thank you.