The Future of Retail Over The Next Five Years, with Wayne Strickland, Leadership Mentor

I had the pleasure of interviewing Wayne Strickland. Wayne is a former executive with over 40 years experience in retail, marketing, strategy and sales who has worked with some of the largest retailers in the world including, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target and most of the largest retailers in North America. He has lead organizations of over 11,000 people and has started many new organizations from scratch. He is a keynote speaker, consultant and Author.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

This started a long time ago. While I was in graduate school, Hallmark Cards interviewed me but I turned the job down — only to accept the offer 9 months later when my first job was not a good fit. I thought this might be a 5–6 year job, just until I saved up enough money to start my own business. However, I found that I loved the brand, the customers, and the people I worked with, and later, the family that owns the business. I had the unique opportunity to grow up in the business with the grandsons of the founder who are now the CEO and President of the company. I saw first hand, hundreds of times, where they made the right decision for the brand, the employees and long term instead of short-term decisions to solve short term problems. They lead a company that has a strong moral code that is diverse, inclusive and gives back to the community, but do not want any recognition for it. That is a pretty special place to work. I know this sounds like a Hallmark commercial but it’s true.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

First, a little context: my family was poor. As they say in the south, “we did not have two nickels to rub together.” My mom, dad and brother did not finish high school. My dad was a WW2 vet and a POW in Germany and he valued an education and did not want me to grow up and have a job, “where I came home dirty” everyday. His number one goal was for me to go to college. I did.

But I had to work my way through college and graduate school and the jobs I had taught me some basic skills that you could never learn in college. I am not a big fan of the big name universities and never hired people just because they went to one of the good schools. I am impressed by what people do and the skills they have versus where they went to school and what professor taught them.

I had 3 jobs in college that gave me great skills and I earned lots of money doing them. I sold pots and pans door-to-door, vacuum cleaners door-to-door and repossessed cars and trucks. These were jobs very few people wanted to do but I thought it was a blast and I learned skills I still use today.

So, here is your interesting story: this happened on my 22nd birthday, January 18, 1978. My friend and I received a call to repossess a pickup truck in Farmington, Arkansas. The address we were given was “somewhere along a rural route,” and as our boss was giving us the details over the phone, he said, “The place is a little bit of a cult.”

“What exactly do you mean, a little bit of a cult?” I asked. He said, “I’m just reading you the paper the bank gave me. I’m sure it’s nothing.” He always deflected and downsized any sort of bad news, so we should’ve been a little more leery, but again, we were young and needed the money, so we drove out to that rural route late in the cold, snowy, January evening. We found the house sitting back about a hundred and fifty feet from the road, with the front gate locked. We couldn’t see the truck and didn’t even know for sure if it was there.

We parked up the road and waited until about midnight when we thought it safe to take a closer look. We hopped the fence, walked all the way up to the house, and found the truck. The keys weren’t in it, but for this particular job, we had a key. That wasn’t always the case. If we didn’t get a key for a repo, back then, you could use a lock puller or a slide hammer, depending on the make of the vehicle. You exposed the lock however you knew how, and could use a screwdriver to turn the ignition. We were always prepared with these tools just in case, but because we had a key for this job, it should’ve been easy.

We knew we’d be able to start the truck, but that didn’t help us with the locked front gate. We figured we could try to break the lock when we got there, but we discovered another problem first. The truck was full of firewood. We didn’t see any lights on in the house, so we didn’t know if they had electricity. We assumed they were probably living through the winter by the heat of a wood burning stove. Although we knew we needed to get out of there quickly, I said to my friend, “Before we go, let’s just throw the firewood out. They must really need it.”

My friend agreed, and he climbed up in the truck bed and started throwing the wood out onto the ground while I shoved the pile away from the truck. We were almost ready to get out of there when I heard the distinctive sound of a cocked shotgun, followed immediately by the unmistakable feeling of the gun barrel pressed against my back. I froze.

“What the #%&@ are you doing’?” a rough, gravelly voice demanded from behind.

“Arkansas Recovery Agents!” We fumbled for our makeshift badges. “We’re here representing Bank of America. We’ve come up from Little Rock to recover your vehicle due to lack of payment.”

Still holding the gun to my back, the man growled, “We don’t believe you. We think you’re just here stealing our stuff. We could just shoot you, kill you right here, right now, bury you out in the pasture, and nobody would ever know you were even here.”

“Please don’t do that! We’re here on official business! We can prove it if you can take us to a phone!”

Without saying a word, they walked us toward a shed out back, which we took as a very bad sign. The property didn’t have electricity, but it turned out that they did have a phone line running to this shed, and much to our surprise, they were going to let us make the call. At about one o’clock in the morning, we called our boss back in Little Rock. He got on the phone and verified us. “These two young men work for me, and they’re gonna get that truck.”

The guy with the gun said, “We’re not giving them the truck.”

Our boss did not back down, “If you don’t give my guys the truck, then I’m gonna drive up there tomorrow, and get it myself.”

Pointing the gun straight at us, our captor said to our boss, “We’ll shoot these two sons of bitches right now… and bury them in the yard.”

“You go ahead and shoot ’em if you want to. I’m still comin’ to get that truck.”

I was thinking, “This is it. This is how it ends. I’m going to die right here, right now, and be dumped in the woods on my twenty-second birthday.”

The guy hung up the phone, and he and his friends proceeded to roughed us up a little bit. They shoved us around, punched us in the stomachs, and threw us off the property into the snow. We ran back to our car and got the heck out of there.

We drove back home, but were so jacked up we couldn’t sleep. Once we got over the initial shock of the experience, we were mad — really mad — so about four in the morning we drove back up that dirt road to where we had originally parked. We figured they were going to have to leave the property with that truck at some point, so we waited. A little later that morning, sure enough, the truck pulled off the property. We followed them at a distance down that backcountry road until they parked at a grocery store. When they went inside, we snuck over and took the truck and hightailed it out of there.

We drove it back to Fayetteville, where we had a storage yard. We celebrated getting that truck, and even though no one believed our story, we felt pretty good about it.

After that truck sat in the storage lot for about two months, those guys showed up with proof that they had finally paid it off and were eligible to retake ownership. My friend and I happened to be there when they arrived, and they sure were bent out of shape. Boy, were they mad at us, but we got the job done, and the bank got their money.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Well there have been so many it’s hard to choose. Early in my career I ordered a customer 250,000 pieces of an item instead of 2500. She called in a panic because there was so many semis lined up in front of here store. Or the time I was too aggressive with a Gremlin’s promotion and the customer called me up furious about the inventory and I responded, “well be sure not to get them wet” (remember the movie?) Being too aggressive was a theme that described me most of my career, but I learned over time to back off and let things come to me. I stopped working the system and going around the hurdles. I learned to face the hurdles head on and trust my skills. I developed more confidence in myself and put my best ideas on the table and let the process work.

If you asked about funniest stories I have kept a list of the 50 funniest stories that I might turn into a book of at least a series of articles. You would shake your head at some of the dumb things that happen in Corporate America. Maybe that’s another article at another time.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

I am switching gears from my Hallmark career to my current company. The number one goal of what I am doing today is to share what I have learned and give back to others so they can have a smoother and more predictable career.

I made tons of mistakes. Some were big painful ones that should have been avoided if I had more experience or would have just listened to what people were trying to tell me. I believe companies today fall short on teaching their young up and coming leaders the principles and insights they need to develop their own leadership philosophy. Companies expect people to just figure it out on their own. Most never do and they find themselves out of a job and costing the company money for the bad decision they made.

Being a great leader is hard work and as you go up the ladder you need new skills. The ones that got you to the new position will not be enough to get you to the next step. I want to help leaders become better leaders by developing their own leadership philosophy and new skills to succeed.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

I think burnout is a factor of not having balance in your life. I know — I have had it a few times. When you put too much of your energy into only one or two parts of your life, you get out of balance an it catches up to you. I have seen many executives be the first ones in the office and the last ones to go home, and they are not the best leaders. Most of the time they level out because they can’t attract the best people because the best people want to be challenged not micro- managed. These leaders also lose touch with what’s happening in the world around them and can’t see things from today’s consumer’s eyes.

Everyone needs to figure out what makes them happy and bring joy to their lives and when they figure it out they need to spend times on all of it, consistently, each week. For me it’s staying in shape (I still do 1500 push ups a week) because if you don’t have your health, nothing else matters. Next, it’s family, self-renewal, and a couple of hobbies. I love to play guitar although my wife describes me as a guitar collector not a guitar player. (I am in guitar purchase probation right now). When these get out of balance, I am not as productive at work or as much fun at home. All leaders need balance to be productive long term.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

There were 3. The first two were Homer Evans and Lanny Julian. One was the head of sales and the other the head of product development. Picture the old Bartle and James ad. That’s what they looked like.

But the one who had the most influence on me was Doranne Hudson. I was the VP of Marketing for the Hallmark Gold Crown Stores and she became my boss. She was a marketer with an MBA from Harvard and was smart, savvy, tough and aggressive. Our “how to get things done” styles were 180 degrees opposite. I had to re-do everything I sent to her. I would stop by her office and she would say, “what are you doing here?” We would have one on one time together and I would ask about her day and she would respond, “I am working, that’s what we should do.”

After the first 60 days she asked my what I thought about working together and I responded with, “half the time I don’t like it and the other half I am undecided.” She smiled and said we were going to work on that. A few weeks later, she took the management team to an off-site location and walked the team through her background and then her leadership philosophy and her “nits”. The nits were things that made her crazy. I quickly realized that I was doing good work but not the way she wanted it done. She was over the top busy with a professional spouse, two young kids, a big new job, interests outside the company and she simply did not have time and for chit chat or anything that was not highly productive. She wanted work 100% complete, not turning in something that was 80% done with the expectation you’d finish it together. She hated it when people stopped by her office. She wanted the one on one time to push through the most important issues against her strategy. It was not time for a friendly chat. Everything started with her strategies and it flowed down from there. She was highly focused and intense. There was no slack in her day.

I shifted gears, applied what she told us, respected her time and we got on a good path together. I learned key lessons from her that I still apply today. She invested time in me and helped me even when I may have looked like a lost cause in our first weeks together.

Are you working on any exciting projects now?

Yes. I recently attended Rock n’ Roll Fantasy Camp and had a very nerve racking experience, at first, but finished with a fantastic experience. During the camp, I started observing leadership methods and skills that the musicians used that would also apply to corporate America. I also found that the musicians had a passion for learning skills from the corporate world. I have written a few articles about it, but the fun work is coming soon: I am working on a keynote presentation with Tanya O’Callaghan from Ireland. She is one of the best bass players in the world and certainly one of the top performers. We are partnering together to discuss what the Rock n’ Roll Culture can learn from corporate America and vise versa. It will be interesting to crash these two very different cultures together and see what they can learn from one another. I think people will love it and I might be able to talk Tanya into playing with a little backup from me.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Well. I worked Hallmark for 38 years and they certainly have that at the top of their goals. As for me personally, I think the best is in front of me. I really think I can help young leaders become better leaders that will in turn create another generation of great leaders. These are not just leaders who want to maximize profits but those that want to do it in a way that they do the right thing everyday, even when no one notices or when it’s really tough. They need to have the courage to still do the right thing.

Can you share 5 examples of how retail companies will be adjusting over the next five years to the new ways that consumers like to shop?

I believe all executive teams of every major retailer have a war room with these issues being debated and discussed.

1. How big of a store do we need in 5 years? I believe the average size of a store will be smaller. This is being driven by a couple of factors: the rapid expansion of dollar stores have taken “trips” away from the big box retailers. Consumers are getting more of their fill-in needs taken care of from these very convenient and low price options. The other factor is Amazon. The extreme convenience of the expansion of same day delivery of general merchandise and grocery is taking significant trips from the big box retailers.
2. What does our experience look like? There has to be compelling reasons to go to a store beyond just product. What services can you offer? Can you provide new ideas for consumers? Can you partner with another retailer to have joint solutions?
3. How do we customize our assortments? How can you customize your solutions that can’t be found anywhere else? What role does personalization play? How many exclusive products should you have in your assortments?
4. What is the role if AI? (artificial intelligence) Does AI check out consumers? Does AI provide shopper creative ideas? Does AI replace sales associates?
5. How many banners do we really need? Retailers that have multiple banners are asking the question about consolidation and editing of multiple banners. There is great expense and duplicate work done to run multiple banners in the same company. They must vet these solutions with the consumers to make sure they are really delivering relevant solutions. Not just doing it because it’s too emotional to let them go.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Baby Boomers give back. (It needs a catchier name.) As a Baby Boomer I know we build our careers on the backs and hard work of our parents’ generation. My dad was a WWII veteran and a POW in Germany. That generation gave up almost everything so all the rest of us could find our own path.

I think all of my fellow Baby Boomers should find 10 hours a month to find a way to share what you have learned to those who need to learn it. We have so much to give not only financially, but also knowledge and insights. We can all find a way to share with others so their paths are much easier.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

LinkedIn Wayne Strickland

Twitter @WayneLeadership

Website waynestricklandspeaking.com

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!