Trailheads

Stephen Sweezey purchased Santa Fe, NM’s locally owned specialty retail running store, The Running Hub, six months before attending The Running Event in San Antonio last year. Six months in, Sweezey was doing what many first-time shop owners do: holding everything together while quietly wondering if he was doing it right. After nearly a decade managing the Santa Fe run specialty store, ownership brought a different weight. “I didn’t think it would be that much different,” he said. “But boy was I wrong.” The shift wasn’t just financial or operational. It was personal. “Now it’s not just me and my family. All of our employees and their families, they’re all relying on me now.”

That sense of responsibility was paired with isolation. The Running Hub is the only locally owned run specialty store in Santa Fe, and while Albuquerque has a few options an hour away, Sweezey didn’t feel like he had peers he could openly lean on. “That first six months felt very isolated for me as an owner,” he said. “There’s just no one in town for me to reach out to and ask some of these hard questions without reaching out to someone who in a way is my competition.”

He had a lot of reasons not to attend The Running Event as an early shop owner. He was falling behind with staff training, reeling from the stresses of re-establishing all of the store’s accounts, and gearing up for his first holiday season as an owner. When ASICS offered to help him go, he decided to attend.

Inside the Henry B. Gonzales convention center, Sweezey immediately found himself surrounded by an invaluable resource: other retailers. Being around store owners from across the country broke the sense that he was figuring things out alone. “Meeting all these other store owners where we’re not competitors whatsoever, being able to ask these questions that I had kind of wondered about,” he said, helped him sanity-check how he was running the business, from inventory flow to ordering strategy. He spoke with owners who hadn’t opened their doors yet and others who’d been in business for 30 years. “It was a cool experience to meet those people and be able to have difficult conversations with people who had been through what I was experiencing.”

That peer-to-peer learning came into sharper focus during roundtable discussions. Sweezey walked into one session where he genuinely questioned if he had sat down at the correct table because of the pedigree of the others seated. “I quickly started feeling some imposter syndrome,” he said after noticing that there were c-suite executives from major brands at the table. But when the conversation turned to shoe returns, he spoke up anyway, sharing his perspective as a six-month owner and nine-year manager. Later, another attendee thanked him. “He told me, ‘Thank you so much for saying something in that round table because that gave me the courage later to say something.’” While the access was as easy as sitting at a table, Sweezey found the impact to be profound. “I never would’ve thought that I would’ve been at that table with so many higher ups being a six-month-old owner of a tiny little running store in Santa Fe,” he said. 

The most immediate business impact, however, came from TRE’s education sessions. The “Are You Running Your Business or Is Your Business Running You?” session stopped him cold. “It just completely blew my mind,” he said. The session focused on putting the right people in the right seats, and Sweezey realized he hadn’t done that. “I had put people in the wrong seats,” he said. Talented employees were misaligned, and others weren’t fully empowered.

The session also introduced him to EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System) and prompted deeper reflection. “They gave us this booklet that helps you develop your 10-year target goal, your core focuses, and your core values,” he said. Despite years of management experience, he hadn’t built that structure as an owner. “If I don’t, I’m never going to know where to go,” he said. “I’m never going to know what my core values are and how that affects the business and the bottom line.”

Crucially, these ideas didn’t stay in a notebook. “As soon as I got back,” Sweezey said, “I implemented changing the seats at the table.” He restructured his management team, moving a key employee into a marketing and events role that matched his strengths. “That freed up all the marketing. It took it off my plate,” he said. He also rehired and promoted another staff member to focus on training which was an area that had slipped during his first months of ownership because of how swamped Sweezey was. “I realized I just can’t do everything myself anymore,” he said.

For outdoor specialty retailers considering this June’s Switchback Spring show in New Orleans, Sweezey’s experience offers a clear takeaway. Trade shows aren’t just about new products or industry buzz. At their best, they provide perspective, community, and practical tools that help retailers run better businesses. Attending TRE gave Sweezey confidence, clarity, and connections at a moment when he needed them most. “It was a huge eye-opener,” he said. “And a very pivotal time for me to go.”

For shop owners feeling isolated, overwhelmed, or simply curious whether they’re doing things the right way, that alone may be reason enough to show up.