Brian Walker is The Retail Doctor. The ‘go-to’ man when retailers feel a fever or cold coming on; his business diagnoses and nurses them back to good health. Working in senior roles for a number of blue-chip household name retailers, Brian knows how tough it can be at the business coalface. When journalists need retail insights, Brian is the first person they call.

Born in London to an Australian mother and a British father, Brian came to Sydney when he was about nine.“I started life in Australia at Clareville, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and I was always around people who were doing things; building and creating. It instilled in me a love of the outdoors, the ocean and that culture, which I find so very relaxing. Particularly when there’s been a lot of work, that’s always been something to which I go back.”

Brian admits he could have been a better student. “I was always more interested in running around, playing football or surfing and all those things. I left Barrenjoey High School in Year 10, and education for me came later in life. I was also a budding entrepreneur even in those days.”

After school Brian had various itinerant jobs; labouring, telegram boy, gardening and other short-term roles. “I’d come from a family where my cousins were doctors and solicitors and so there was always this great expectation. At one point in my life I guess I was seen as the black sheep.

“I always felt I could do something more, and I realised, rightly or wrongly, that it took a good education, and this is what I say to my kids, ‘it’s all about getting the ticket’. No matter what it is, as long as you love what you do and you get a ticket, it’s going to help you.”

Brian’s mother was disappointed he left school young. “I think she was a bit worried, but she also knew I was pretty headstrong. I wouldn’t describe myself as a natural student but I was probably clever enough to get by.

“I was also very used to talking and negotiatingwith adults, and had a reasonable amount of energy and motivation, and in hindsight an even greater level of optimism.”

Those early years living away from home at an early age enabled Brian to mature earlier. “Living in guesthouses and flats; playing football, working and studying, from when I was about 16 going onto 30, helped me be more comfortable conversing with adults. I felt confident enough to make my own way, and lucky enough to be able to pay my way too.”

Brian highlights the key points in the journey to what would be his eventual path. “I can recall getting a job as an accounts receivable batch collator for the gas company, and I was just bored senseless. I started to think ‘there must be more’. At that stage I got myself a job serving customers at a retail plant nursery. It was my first foray into retail and I developed an interest in Horticultural Science. I went to Seaforth Tech and did Years 11 and 12, in one year, and got enough marks to get into a diploma in Applied Science in Horticulture. For the next four years I worked in nurseries and in landscaping. From there I was approached to join Woolworths as a gardening buyer. Then I enrolled in a Bachelor of Business.”

Brian recalls always being curious, and having a desire to know more and learn more. “I went to the school of hard negotiating knocks, working for Woolworths at Sydney’s Flemington markets as a produce buyer. If I think about life’s lessons, that one stands out as one of the great ones.

“It was definitely a time of learning from the ground up. I’d start work at five in the morning, working at the markets, with the providores and the agents. They taught me so much about negotiation, and I landed on my backside more times than I care to remember. It was also my first relationship with a mentor – who I’m still close to now – a gentleman called Peter Porkony, who regularly comes to our events even now.”

This became a very pivotal relationship as “Peter was particularly effective at communicating with me. He was a great influence and a great mentor. Over the years he has really played his part and I’ve been very grateful to him.”

One of the lessons in dealing with the providores was that all is not as it appears. “Some of the smartest men there were often the most poorly dressed. I’ll also never forget once, getting ‘dudded’ as they call it when buying pallets of apples. The first few top apples looked good but the rest were terrible. Peter relegated me from the buying role into quality control for six weeks until I learnt my lesson. He had a discipline and a structure about him that I really appreciated; it was a wonderful and challenging experience.”

When asked about lessons learnt from failure, Brian reminisced about another mentor. “I worked for another man called Bob Boutain, who’s sadly passed on now. He used to say; ‘Brian will be okay once he’s had his comeuppance, once he’s learned what failure looks like’, and I think that’s right. Even now in interviewing people, I like to get a sense of what they’ve learnt from their failures and their recognition of them. They’re all instrumental in one’s career. You want people ideally who can take some risk, calculate the consequences, be self aware, and go forward. These were very valuable lessons.”

After Woolworth’s, Brian joined KFC in buying. He notably won a scholarship with the Australian Student Management and a National Young Manager Scholarship Award. “KFC liked that, so they promoted me suddenly into leading a region of people. Again, another set of wonderful lessons; again some people around me who were very instrumental in coaching and guiding me in all sorts of ways. Meanwhile I was still studying at night.”

The journey continued when “I joined Westfield after that, about four or five year’s later, managing shopping centres including their largest assets such as Miranda at the time. Wonderful organisation, great teachers once again.”

Recounting this progression, Brian comments, “There is a theme of mentors, and people who didn’t badge themselves as that but really did play that role. From Westfield I went to Angus and Coote Jewellers, in national retail operations as I wanted to get back into retail. That was leading teams and really understanding more and more about the people aspects of leadership.”

New Zealand then beckoned, and Brian worked with Whitcoulls, then New Zealand’s largest book retailer. “That was a fascinating time as it was the start of the online retail entry into New Zealand with businesses like Dymocks and Borders. I worked with a man who held a Stanford MBA, so again with really clever people and again very educational.

“I then came home to run the national Optus Franchise channel. A different and fascinating culture with a brilliant “challenger” ethos at the time that still influences me today.

“My last corporate role was for 3 1/2 years as General Manager for Athlete’s Foot which was a wonderful business as well, because it was so well positioned. Again, I was surrounded by very smart business people who were always approachable and understood the role of influencing and leading a team.”

Perhaps derived from that early start away from home, Brian feels “I’ve always had some degree of confidence and optimism. That’s helped me in my consulting practice as well as the view that what I didn’t know, I’d learn. By this stage I’d finished both the Bachelor of Business and post graduate at the AGSM and Company Directors.”

Ten years ago Brian struck out with his own venture, The Retail Doctor Group. “I’ve always wanted to be able to look back at my life, as trite as it sounds, and say, ‘did I have a go? What have I left behind? What have I created? What have I created for others, what have I created for my family?’ That’s always been a motivator for me.

“Now I play that out as best I can, in a team context with people who also ask similar questions of themselves,” he added.

How did the name Retail Doctor come to him? “It started by accident. I’d finished at Athlete’s Foot and was talking with a fashion retailer with whom I’d just done some contract work, and when I described the whole process, he said, ‘Oh it’s a bit like being a doctor isn’t it?’ So that day I registered the business name and trademark for Retail Doctor and the business began.”

Using that name provided the lynchpin for the brand. From it, Brian “created the business fitness programs and business fitness modules we’ve used over the years. I created about 150 PowerPoint slides, likening the human body’s KPIs to business KPIs, and built this whole thematic around ‘doctor’. From there I started to shape up diagnostic and interpretive models and I trademarked them all; Strategy Sensor, Effective People, Category Cardio. There’s a whole range of them.” Again I have a debt of gratitude to people, like Graeme Gladman and Ken McInnes, whose belief and friendship certainly helped in the journey.”

For Brian, starting his own business was a steep learning curve. “It’s a bit like doing the Everest trek which I did years ago. In the early years if I’d have thought about what the summit really was, I probably wouldn’t have kept going because there were periods where it was tough, but never enough to dampen my enthusiasm or my optimism. There was always enough to keep me going. I very much love the diversity of the retail industry. I love the idea of new ideas and projects. Above all, it’s about people and many of my work colleagues and our clients are people whom I consider close friends.”

As with most small business owners, there have been lessons learned here too. “There have been times when, without an overdraft, we probably wouldn’t have been able to stay in business. I’ve made mistakes along the way – no doubt about it. I’ve learned more about retail by being the Retail Doctor than I ever learnt running other people’s businesses because we’ve worked with over 700 retailers over the years at least.”

For Brian and his team there have also been plenty of highs. He was recently selected to join an international retail expert’s alliance, and then there are the great results he generates for his clients. “I think the best highs are coming in on a Monday morning looking at everything going on and thinking, ‘wow’! There’s a constant high about that. Or when the client writes you a note and says thank you, or when you’re able to bring people into businesses and give them a job. Winning awards such as BRW, National awards are so great for our team. I think that’s fantastic.”

In the early years Brian did various things to supplement his income, such as teaching retail at University at night. “I know I could’ve earned more by running a large company, but money was never the driver. The driver for me has been to see what we can achieve. Life’s about learning, variety, and about helping others as well as asking where am I going to be most effective, and what do I want to do?”

When asked about his philosophy in business, Brian comments, “Everyone says this, but we have to be able to add value. We have to be very much around relationships in working with and understanding clients; I think that’s critical. From a business perspective, we network consistently. I’ve got around 7,000 LinkedIn contacts with whom we communicate; always building the brand.

“Above all, be the person that you are, rather than what you think others might expect, and let the quality of your expertise and authenticity shine through.

Continuing to learn himself, as well as educating others, Brian is now incorporating Neuroscience into his business approach. “A more profound understanding of consumer behaviour first came to me through our international alliance. I started to look at Neuroscience and the role of the limbic area, which is the emotional processor in our minds. Through that, I learnt that 95{56e17aafef6daaed9f084c75df7cbcf80ee48fd729b916e4391cccc9c4753b85} of our decision-making around brands together with movement toward or away from people is personality based. We now have a Neuroscience division and a Neuroscientist on the team. For the last four years we’ve had the Limbic® licence in Australia, so we use insights around markets, consumers, and what we understand about the client’s business to strategise with them into implementation.

“We’ve formed a new division, RDG Insights, headed by neuroscientist Katharina Kuehn, who is a remarkable practitioner,and myself. Very few people had heard of neuroscience in this country in the commercial sense; it was more well-known certainly in academic applications. The Limbic® methodology was such that we felt like Christian missionaries in deepest darkest Africa. Not only were you spreading the word, you were trying to avoid being eaten and it took a while to become profitable in the first few years there. But now it’s a strong part of our offering, and it’s growing every day. Our insights team, headed by Katharina, certainly adds another dimension of rigour for our clients.

“Now we’re able to give insights into how consumers view a retailer’s business. We also working more with FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods). They can understand the really true predictors of their customers’ behaviours, and those of their desired customers, right down to the psychology of colour, retail layout, website design, and marketing. Through this process, we now have a much broader offer than a few years ago, and a bigger range of clients.”

Brian observes that “retailing has changed over the years to some degree, however, not as dramatically as some would say. Consumer understanding and the role of technology have certainly changed the landscape for retailing. Retailers now need to think about their business information systems, their digital and social media strategies and build this all around the hub that is the physical network. I’ve taken a pretty keen interest in that. Consumer mobility and the changes in that space have directly and indirectly influenced the way retailers operate. But they still need to be brilliant on the basics too.”

Has online retail had a significant impact on Brian’s business? “Statistically, at this moment, online sales are about 9{56e17aafef6daaed9f084c75df7cbcf80ee48fd729b916e4391cccc9c4753b85} of national sales. We’ve never been one to think that the internet would rule the retailing world. I just can’t see online working for societies who need people. We communicate with people; the whole social fabric is around people. I can’t see societies living in little dark rooms ordering all their products online every day. It’s an important part of purchase research and transparency, and that’s generally how consumers are using it.”

What factors impact the growth of the Retail Doctor business model? “One of the challenges of the business – and we haven’t been without failure and challenges – has been to develop other people to become retail doctors. Replicating a consulting business is not that easy and I take my hat off to people who have done it successfully.”

How does Brian keep motivated? “I travel once or twice a year to look at retail and I always take a few days off either side of that. So I was at a conference recently in Lima, Peru for example, and then did an Inca Trail trek to Machu Picchu for a few days. That motivates me. Seeing us do good work motivates me, family motivates me. Love of theatre and the arts, as does longboard surfing, I don’t think I’m that good at it but I find it extremely motivating.”

In conclusion, Brian offers, “You can’t run even a small-to-medium business like this without great people. We’re choosy about the people who work with us and they’re all fantastic. I’m a driven person yet another part of that motivation element is to have people around you who are motivated within their own right, and that can’t always just be about salary.”