Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lori Borer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Lori, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

My business from day one was started with 4 employees which included myself. I had mself and 3-part time employees. We were open 7-days a week so that meant working 70-80 hour days for the first 6-8 months. When I hired my first few employees I had some that I knew and some that were students at the local university. It was a growing process with each day and am thankful to this day with the employees that were so great with all of the learning curves that I endured those first few years! The training process was short and very hands on. They would train a day and then job shadow me for a day and then learn as we went from there. We are a specialty running/walking shoe store so our fit process was more detailed than most shoe stores. They ran on a treadmill and were recorded from behind to look at their gate pattern. My number one priority in my stores was always my customer service so as long as everyone was taken care of in a timely manner I knew they were happy customers!
If I was to start today I honestly would not change much. With the lessons I learned early on it made me better at dealing with issues that I currently face today.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have always had a love for running, people and community. I had put on several charitable fun runs and coached cross country and track at a local high school. I had always enjoyed visiting the local running store and had many fun ideas that I knew I could implement if I had my own. My husband has always owned his own business so we knew the time and work it would take. With our family top of mind I felt confident I could balance it all. We decided to go for it!
At the time I had a potential business partner. A very close friend that had the same passions as myself to make this dream a reality. We reached out to a local running store in Omaha called Red Dirt Running Company. We told them our idea and plans to open a store in Lincoln to see if they would potentially partner with us. After many conversations we finally came to an agreement and we opened Red Dirt Running Company on August 29th, 2014! In May of 2017 we converted to a Fleet Feet and opened up a store in Omaha, In 2022 I opened up my second location in Omaha.

Our store is a specialty running and walking store that focused highly on customer service and the fit process. We sold most major brands of training shoes as well as clothes, running nutrition, running watches, hats, insoles, socks, injury prevention accessories and more.

The biggest thing that sets our store apart is the one on one customer service that we provide. We make it a priority to greet each customer promptly when they walk into the store. From their each customer is taken through an in depth fit process. We take a picture of your feet in 3D and explain the entire shape of the foot and then pull specific shoes that we know would fit and support that customers feet the best!

I am most proud of the outstanding customer service that we continue to provide. We take great pride in making sure each customer feels welcome when they walk through the door. A store like mine can be intimidating so we do our best to assure that everyone is relaxed and feels invited from the moment they walk through the door.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The moment that will forever stick in my head was when Covid hit the US and we were forced to change the way we do business. Being in the midwest we were lucky in the sense that we were never required to completely shut our businesses down. We did have to follow state and local restrictions closely. With knowing our stores were going to be drastically affected we decided to quickly think outside the box on how we were going to continue to drive business and service our customers. We decided to start monthly challenges to keep our customers and community active and positive. Along with these challenges we have back to a local charity each month. These were very popular and well received. We did these for 8-months until we could finally start meeting in person again for regular group runs and events that we typically held at the store.
The monthly challenges were so popular we still do 2-of them a year! Our September Team Jack challenge has raised over $75K to date!

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We utilize social media platforms such as: facebook, instagram, website and a local newsletter. We have a great system in place on posting and sending out our newsletters. They have been extremely effective for our growth.
I also put on group runs, events, and provide workplace fits to keep customers coming in the store on a weekly basis. Our workplace fits are valuable to many businesses to provide for thier employees. We bring our fit process and shoes to the workplace and sell on site. This has been very valuable for our store growth as well!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fleetfeetlincoln.com and www.fleetfeetomaha.com
• Instagram: @fleetfeetlincoln, @fleetfeetaksarben, @fleetfeetomaha
• Facebook: Fleet Feet Lincoln, fleet feet Omaha-Legacy, Fleet Feet Omaha – Aksarben