Welcome to Retail Checks and Balances, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the bustling world of commerce and culinary delights to help you grow your business and win. Join us as we explore the fascinating stories, trends, and challenges that shape the retail and hospitality industry, from cozy corner cafes to sprawling shopping malls and everything in between. And now, here's your host, Kevin Spencer. 

We're back again. Retail Checks and Balances, baby. Sorry I'm a little late this week. It's because I was a little under the weather and had a sore throat, some headaches, and I didn't want to not give you my real voice. Of course, I could have used AI, but at the end of the day, I want this to be always real. and I appreciate you guys' feedback and listening to the podcast. Those of you who reached out and said, where's my episode for yesterday? I'm happy to hear that you look forward to my episodes every week. This week, it's a big one. It's going to be navigating the retail and hospitality maze, the leadership insights that we all look forward to. I want to delve into the intricate world of leadership within the dynamic realms of regional hospitality, because this is where you're going to uncover the strategies, the challenges, and the triumphs that define effective leadership in these fast-paced industries. And these are indeed fast-paced industries, because you can win or lose based on your leadership style in retail and hospitality or in any business. The first thing I'd like to talk about is we have to understand the pulse of consumer trends. Discuss the importance of staying attuned to the shift in customer preferences. and how effective leaders anticipate and adapt to these changes. And we do that in everyday life. Every day, people change their minds of what they want to buy, what they want to do. I mean, even in life, you know, where we want to go today, where we want to see what's on the shelf, you know, like new supermarket opens, all of their loyal to you, they still want to go see what that new supermarket have to offer. Is it different from your specific store, right? And the things about it is that we need to understand as leaders, you know, where the landscape is. The landscape is based on us having vision, having the time to focus on the vision and innovation of our business. Because if we're not doing that, if we are involved too much in the operations, we are going to lose. And that's the type of thing that I've done with my business. I mean, I'm in the driver's seat now, or I shouldn't say the driver's seat, I should say I'm in the back seat because I'm letting other people drive business decision. I'm training them to drive those business decisions. I'm allowing them to make mistakes. It's like, you know, we talk about backseat drivers, backseat drivers say, Hey, don't go there. Don't do that. Don't. I mean, we don't want, I don't, I don't focus on that in terms of my leadership because I want to be able To help them stay their own way and you know that doing things in my best interest and i appreciate that from all of my management and all of my employees. Because that's what we need to do we as leaders need to really stay focused on that part. of bringing new ideas, bringing new innovation, even getting innovation from your staff. They bring it to you and you run with it in the sense that you know what your business can take and what your business cannot take because you're overall looking at the entire business. And this is fundamentally important. And I'm sure most leaders would agree with me on this aspect. You know, and I'm talking about empowering the frontline teams. So the people who are in the frontline of your business, you know, they foster that culture. I mean, people talk about culture, but do you really know what culture is? And that culture of excellence in customer service and satisfaction, because that's the biggest thing we got to make sure. that our customers are happy. We got to focus on keeping our customers happy because that rolls back into retention of keeping the customers coming back and coming back and coming back, you know. And the thing about balancing that innovation and creating that tradition, you know, we explore the delicate balance, right? We got to navigate this landscape to drive growth while preserving brand identity because our brand is there to stay. Anybody ever sees your logo or sees you on any social media post, they're going to recognize that brand and say, these guys have it together. These guys do a great job. And I'm not saying sometimes you're going to make mistakes, but we've got to learn from the mistakes and we've got to be able to understand that mistakes will happen. And we don't stamp down on the people that make mistakes. We try to guide them in terms of understanding the mistake they made and pushing them, not to make the mistake again, but letting them learn from their mistakes. Because we're not perfect leaders. We make mistakes. but we're not accountable to anybody but ourselves of course but we will beat up on ourselves if we have to right and that is where we the crisis when we have a crisis the crisis management and the resilience you know we gotta look at the first-hand accounts of leaders tackling crises You know, from a simple thing as supply chain disruption, when we have to go to a customer and say, your order is delayed because of this, right? Or some other emergency. But we got to manage that expectation and not run from it and strategize how we employ to lead our teams through adversity, right? And I talked about that accountability, building that culture. We as leaders learn how to instill a sense of accountability throughout our organization by fostering teamwork, fostering trust. And the high performance of our teams is based on this. Because we have to make sure our team can move together, even if disagreements happen, right? And that's a fundamental importance when it comes to your people. Your people must understand. Your people must not be divided. We must all be in this together as a team, you know? And sometimes as leaders we sit back and we see things going on because we are at that level where we can see everything from the organization. Although people in lower level of management or lower level as employee don't see that you're looking on and seeing things happening. just by looking at the tone of an email or being copied on something that they want you to see and expect you to jump in. But sometimes you got to sit back and say, I'm not jumping in on that as a leader because I have to let my team sort this out themselves because they are the ones that have to work together to get the job done. Otherwise you're pulled back into that and then the leader you don't get the time needed to look at your vision and look at your innovation and then the business starts to take a halt and then people say you know your customers come and say you're not doing anything different where this spans into into supermarkets, for example, you know, people would say, Hey, they haven't come out with a new product or anything in terms of specials for the over a year. And people realize this and then they go to different things or different your competitors in that sense to do that. Or like a restaurant or they haven't changed that. It's the same goddamn menu that I come here every, every week or every month that I have to choose from. And then, you know, people get tired of eating the same thing. I'm the type of guy, I wouldn't even eat lunch for dinner. You know, I like to get something different. That's just me. That's in that everybody needs to be there, but that's just me, you know. And, you know, as we go back now into where the role of technology jumps in, you know, from even using AI-powered chatbots to data analytics. We got to realize how technology is reshaping leadership strategies in this industries of retail and hospitality. And the skill leaders need to harness in its potential. We hear AI all the time. and you know there's some things that I believe AI would not be able to do but there are some things that they can and we got to differentiate what's available and what's possible. You know I believe the personal effect will never go away. I think people love that personal reach at most individuals. It's like when I call anywhere and I get this automated recording and press one, press two, press three, press four and then you realize you're on the phone for six minutes or seven minutes of your time and you haven't even gotten somebody to even talk to you. Or you know some of these things don't even understand your accent or they don't understand where you say you have to change. It gets frustrating. I'm not saying it's bad all the way, but sometimes, because sometimes you need it based on the time of day that you call. But what I'm saying is that we got to put some sort of balance between what should be automated and what should not. And I'm hoping that people can agree with me on that. We got to lead with some sort of purpose. We got to explore the importance of purpose-driven leadership and how aligning with the broader social and environmental values can drive employee engagement and customer loyalty. You know, people must see what are you trying to achieve from a leadership perspective. And then that's how your employees are going to engage with your customers, how they're going to build that customer loyalty for you, because you cannot do it by yourself. It's the people in the front that build that loyalty. Marketing can do whatever they want in terms of promoting this and promoting that, but the people who are in the front line are the most important people, from a server to a cashier to even a telephone operator who's taking orders. These people are the ones that drive the engagement with your customers. And you have to always bear that in mind. And you don't want, even if they make a mistake, you don't want to come and drive a stake down in their heart because they made a mistake, right? I'm not saying that you don't get upset, but you got to internalize that and say, okay, what do I do to make this better? Because that's what you want, right? And sometimes, you know, we got to get the lessons from the industry titans, you know, looking at different insights or interviews with industry leaders who have successfully navigated the complex landscape of this retail and hospitality industry and the lessons they've learned along the way. And, you know, we've got exposed to so much social media. You can see these things happening in front of you. You know, those interviews, those, those white papers, and those things are what people who have, I'm not saying to copy exactly what they did, but learn from it and see what you, how you can make your own flavor of positioning, um, positioning these things in your business. You know, and, you know, as we uncover all these strategies and drive success in these ever evolving industries of retail and hospitality, I want to make sure you understand how the importance of great leadership will get you there. You know, some people think beating people with a stick works. It may drive some sort of... Because you're looking at sales, you're not looking at morale, you're not looking at anything else that builds your business as a brand. It could be that people come to your store because they have no other choice. It's the only store that has that variety in the area. Or the only restaurant that has that... type of food in the area. But once people get choices, they're going to move away. And that's what you have to focus on. Your business must always be in a competitive mood. You must never get stagnant or just relax because somebody will just bypass you and position themselves above you. So I hope this was very, very essential information for you all. And I appreciate your listening to my podcast every week. As always, God bless you all and keep you safe. 

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