Richard Moore on Making People Your ‘Why’

When a key team member at The Good Feet Store got a job offer to join his mentor at another company, CEO and president Richard Moore could have reminded him of all of the time spent training him or dangled a juicy raise. Instead, Richard took the approach, “What’s best for your long-term development?”

The employee left — but then he returned, and the company threw out the welcome mat. More often than not, Richard finds, thinking about what’s best for team members in the long-term pays off with relationships like this for The Good Feet Store, a one-stop shop for arch supports headquartered in Carlsbad, Calif.

“If you work with people in a humane, ‘you’re smart, I’m decently smart, and we’re going to treat each other with respect’ kind of approach, and you care about their path, well, it will come back,” he says.

It’s a refreshing perspective, and one that brings a new dimension to the conversation many companies are having right now about attracting and retaining a team. And it’s one of many fresh insights Richard shares in an exclusive interview with Social Capital.

We first honored Richard last year while building our network of Social Capital CEOs and are excited to recognize him here as one of the early honorees of the Dave Alexander Center for Social Capital. He believes it’s easy to forget about this “Why” behind the business — and makes it a point to think about it frequently.

“For me, it boils down to helping people live a better life, helping people do the things that they want to do,” he says. “And those people are definitely our customers, but they’re also our partners, our employees, for us, franchisees.”

At the end of the day, Richard says, the “why” that drives him is “helping families, helping people be able to live the life that they’re called to live and how they want to be.”