Serious Running Blog

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Galloway on building and running a business.  Not only is Jeff a very accomplished athlete, being on the 1972 Olympic team, breaking the U.S. 10-mile record in 1973, and winning such races as the very first Peachtree Road Race, the Honolulu Marathon, and the Atlanta Marathon, but he has also become very successful in the running industry.  Jeff Galloway has become an expert in the sport of running, writing best-selling books such as “Galloway’s Book on Running,” starting Phidipiddes Running specialty store, starting many inaugural races, and training over 250,000 people in Jeff Galloway’s Training Programs.  As a runner and an aspiring entrepreneur, Jeff Galloway inspires me.  That is why I wanted to ask Jeff some questions about his experience in the business of running.

Jeff Galloway’s first entrepreneurial venture was Phidippides running specialty store in 1973.  He started the first one in Tallahassee, Florida with a partner who was one of his professors in graduate school.  While Jeff wanted to keep the sporting goods store running specific, his partner wanted to expand the product line.  In 1975 Jeff and his partner decided to part ways so Jeff could start a running specialty store in Atlanta.  Phidippides was one of the first running specialty stores in North America.  Here Jeff developed their unique running shoe fitting process which enables Phidippides employees to match the right shoe to the person.  Phidippides still uses this superior fit process today without special gadgetry, which has given better results than the fit processes of their competitors.  This superior process, along with being one of the first to the running specialty stores market, made a perfect opportunity to franchise Phidippides.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s Phidippides was franchised for a nominal fee.

From Phidippides, Jeff Galloway’s other entrepreneurial ventures were bred.  Jeff says, “A lot of entrepreneurial things came out of the store, the most important thing is to wait until demand reaches a critical mass, then you react.”  In 1978, at the request of many of his Phidippides customers, Jeff began developing training plans and giving running advice.  He would conduct training sessions in Atlanta and also began to communicate training plans with other runners outside of Atlanta via phone, fax, or even letter.  This lead to his very successful training clinics, events, and retreats that he currently conducts all across the Nation and the World!

Tomorrow I’ll tell you more about how Jeff was able to leverage his running experiences and knowledge to develop some of the most popular training programs in the World and become an expert in the running industry!

Tags: Jeff Galloway

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.