Live for Yourself - Leadership coaching, executive coaching, and career coaching
LFY Consulting, offers international coaching and consulting services for achievement oriented business professionals that are in a managerial or directorial level position, that have thought about leaving their job or starting their own business due to feeling stuck and unfulfilled.
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The Executive hosted by Dr. Benjamin Ritter

What does it mean to be a leader? The Executive highlights the career journeys, struggles, successes, and day to day experiences of leaders.

Your host Dr. Benjamin Ritter brings over 12 years of experience as a leadership and career coach, L&D consultant, healthcare executive, and international speaker focused on guiding others in finding, creating, and sustaining a career they love. Find out more at liveforyourselfconsulting.com

The Fun Side of Leadership with Shelli Taylor

Shelli Copelan Taylor is the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse. She joined Alamo in May 2020. She has rebuilt the executive team, bringing in leaders who are passionate and committed to Alamo’s iconic brand, coupled with the required professional experience to grow and scale the brand. Today the company’s culture is healthier than ever and – despite Covid and the industry headwinds – Alamo Drafthouse is outperforming the industry by 12% and in growth mode, adding six new franchisees and five corporate locations.

Her 30-year global career spans the US, China, Taiwan, Starbucks Coffee Company, The Walt Disney Company, and Planet Fitness. Shelli is well known for leading high performance teams through rapid growth and transformation to achieve outsized results.

Shelli joined Starbucks Coffee in 1992, when the pre-IPO company had fewer than 125 stores. As a store manager, Shelli quickly proved her capacity to drive sales through culture and leadership development. As a result, she was regularly called upon to take progressive roles of leadership in the organization in operations, real estate, human resource roles, food and beverage R&D, bakery and business development.

Known for leading from the front to drive outsized results through culture and people, Shelli was relocated to Starbucks in Taiwan, where she successfully joined Starbucks joint venture partner to reimagine the customer journey and real estate strategy, resulting in an 11-point profit improvement. She then relocated to China to join the China Starbucks executive team. There she was part of the executive team that flipped the customer value proposition to meet the China market needs and thus solved the unit economic model that enabled rapid growth. In 2015 she was promoted to SVP, head of China Retail. She led the multi-billion China business, opened 500 stores (a store every 15 hours), and grew the market from 1200 stores to more than 3000 stores. At The Walt Disney C

ompany in China Shelli scaled the newly formed business from five to 20 locations throughout China. In 2017, Shelli relocated back to the United States to repeat her success in Texas, scaling the largest Planet Fitness franchisee from 48 locations to 170 locations in two and half years through unit economic improvement, organic growth and M&A, resulting in sale of the company.

Today she serves on the board for Fitness Connection, a regional high-value, low-priced fitness chain backed by Roark Capital. As a board director she provides thought leadership and guidance in the areas of company culture, strategy, member journey, capital investment and real estate for the CEO.

Shelli also serves as an advisor for FestivalPass, a Texas based start-up. She has helped the founder with network and community connections to complete a successful capital raise.

Shelli is the proud mother of Rory who is attending Syracuse University. She is committed to affordable housing, serving on the Austin Habitat for Humanity Board.

Find out more at /in/shellitaylor/

Benjamin Ritter