You can learn pretty much everything you need to know about Robyn Benincasa just by driving behind her red two-door Toyota RAV4 with the personalized license plate: TMBLDR.

If at first you sounded out the words “Tumble Doctor”—which many folks do—try again. It’s actually an acronym for her self-anointed title: Team Builder. And that basically defines not only what she does professionally but who she is personally.

“That’s who I am at my core,” said Benincasa, the professional adventure racer, firefighter, author and motivational speaker, who will be a keynote speaker at the 2019 NACS Show to take place at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, October 1–4.

For the thousands of NACS members and attendees on hand at the NACS Show, Benincasa’s very personal presentation touches at the heart of one of the most nagging problems shared by c-store owners coast-to-coast: How to build and retrain a team of dedicated workers. This is an issue that the industry has grappled with for decades. But it’s one that has grown more pronounced in recent years as millennials raised on social media with expectations of instantaneous service make up a large part of the workforce.

“The crux is: How do I become the kind of leader and team builder who can deeply inspire a team?” said Benincasa. “We can’t just be at work with each other—but for each other.”

Adventure Racing

Perhaps nowhere does this concept of teamwork run more deeply than in the rough-and-tumble world of adventure racing. Adventure racing is a wild-and-crazy, multidisciplinary team sport involving navigation over an unmarked wilderness course, lasting up to 10 days and 1,000 miles—non-stop. Her adventure races have taken her to the jungles of Borneo, the Himalayan peaks of Tibet, the rivers of Fiji, the rainforests of Ecuador and even the epic brush fires of Southern California.

When you’re not leading, your job is actually to facilitate the success of everyone else.

Trekking, mountain biking, paddling, climbing and white water rafting are among the principal disciplines in adventure racing. Teams generally vary in gender mix and in size from two to five competitors. Unlike so many other sports, however, it’s not about one individual excelling. Rather, it’s about the entire team ultimately finishing the race as one and reaching the finish line together.

Strategic compromising is key. In adventure racing everyone has to decide together when to sleep and when to wake up. Competitors have to decide, as a team, what route to take to the finish line and how to best navigate there. But wait a minute! What on earth does a sport that sounds so extreme have to do with the world of successfully operating a convenience store?

Pretty much everything, said Benincasa.

“What c-store owners and workers do every day is like an adventure race,” she said. “You have small teams facing endless challenges and setting impossible goals. You are competing in constantly changing conditions and always trying to be best in class.”

Oh, and one more thing: This is what happens every day. Sound familiar?

Benincasa has assembled the eight essential elements for teamwork in an acrostic:

• Total commitment to winning as a team.
• Empathy and awareness of each other.
• Adversity management in difficult times.
• Mutual respect for everyone on the team.
• We thinking over me thinking.
• Ownership of actions and outcomes.
• Relinquishment of ego.
• Kinetic leadership (ability to quickly change who is leading).

When you have those eight team-building characteristics as a business, Benincasa said, “There’s something that elevates your business consistently.”

But you have to replace the “me” with the “we.” Even things like who is the “leader” is something that’s constantly evolving. At different times, different team members will lead best. In fact, not one team member can call themselves a success until all of the teammates cross the finish line together.

"When I started adventure racing, it’s the first time I couldn’t run ahead and finish first. I couldn’t just focus on finishing as fast as I could, alone. The rules of the race are what created our team’s synergy," said Benincasa.

Her adventure racing team has won two world championships. During the past 17 years, the team has amassed 20 top-five finishes at the international level—an accomplishment that no other adventure racing team has achieved. One race required running 75 miles into the path of an active volcano at the World Championships in Ecuador. But adventure racing has cost her, too. Specifically, she’s had four hip replacements in the past 10 years. (Alas, the first set of hip replacements failed.)

She’s faced similar team-building challenges as a firefighter for the San Diego City Fire Department for the past 20 years. This is her full-time job, and at one point she was working with one of America’s first all-female fire crews. Training at the fire academy is where she met her husband, Jeff Akens, who has been on her crew for every adventure race since they met. For their next life adventure, the couple plans to start an animal rescue sanctuary near Sedona, Arizona.

Shared Success

Of course, sometimes on the road to life’s adventures there are failures. The most common team failure—whether with the fire department, on her adventure racing team or in corporate America, she said, is when the team fails to build a shared consensus about how to finish. “Everyone has to look at the map together and agree where we are heading. We can’t have people walking toward different finish lines.”

The best way to avoid split teams: Hire the right people the first time. Perhaps the most important questions to ask job candidates aren’t for examples of individual successes but examples of key team successes of which they’ve played a part.

Here are the four most important questions she suggests asking job candidates:

1. Can you tell me about a time when you created an exceptional experience for others?
2. When have you been part of a great team—and what did that team accomplish?
3. What motivates you the most?
4. Do you want to open a c-store someday?

Team successes require that individual egos be checked at the door. In other words, they don’t care which member of the team gets the credit for success. That’s because the leadership role has to constantly evolve depending on who is best prepared to lead the team through each situation.

What c-store owners and workers do every day is like an adventure race. You are competing in constantly changing conditions and always trying to be best in class.

“That’s what kills most people in business races. They bring their egos along with them to the starting line,” said Benincasa.

But when you’re not leading, that doesn’t mean that you’re following, either. “When you’re not leading, your job is actually to facilitate the success of everyone else,” she said.

This might all sound pretty pie-in-the-sky for a tiny chain store. But it’s not at all. Nor will success be measured by some mid-level executive constantly repeating the teamwork mantra or etching it onto a whiteboard during a team meeting. Instead, said Beinincasa, it’s about each team member embracing the concept of shared success.

Sometimes, however, there will be team members who can’t separate the me from the we—and whose egos are always getting in the way. That person will have to be fired, said Benincasa, “In the end, you have to know when to cut bait for the sake of the team’s success,” she said.

Reach Out, Not Up

What about great employees? How do you retain them for the team’s benefit?

That’s all about proving yourself to be the kind of leader who people want to work for. Remember, your employees ultimately work for you—not your company. “You want to be the kind of person whom they want to make proud,” she said.

In other words, higher pay isn’t always the most successful lure for retaining a super team member. The best way to keep a great worker is to keep them engaged and show them that you care. For example, suggested Benincasa, ask them to specifically show you how they fixed a problem—then praise them for fixing it. “Think about what special thing you can do for each employee to show them they’re not just working at a minimum wage job,” said Benincasa. “They have to think that it’s their store, not your store.”

As employees, millennials like to feel as if they are having an impact right away. So quickly find out their talents—and let them lead in situations where they feel competent. That might be something like them helping to create a new webpage for your c-store. “Give them the reins to lead without micromanaging,” she said.

When team building is done right, it should be recognized. Perhaps that’s why, in 2014, Benincasa was named a “CNN Hero” for creating the 501c3 Project Athena Foundation, which helps survivors of cancer and other diseases live an adventurous dream as part of their recovery. Benincasa said she was inspired to start the foundation, in part, because of her own medical challenges with stage 4 osteoarthritis, which resulted in her having both hips replaced twice.

None of this has stopped her from continuing to push herself—and her teams—in adventure racing.

So, her advice to the little guy—the independent c-store owner who is seeking team success in a very competitive environment—is this: Don’t reach up as an individual. Instead, reach out as a team. Don’t try to do it alone, she said. Connect to others who have the experience that can help your team grow. “Don’t hesitate to grab a towline,” she said.

That’s what she’s done as a firefighter. That’s what she’s done as an adventure racer. That’s what she’s done as an author of the New York Times best-seller How Winning Works. And, yes, that’s what she’s done through two full sets of hips.

“Just a combo of too many miles and a genetic femoral acetabular impingement,” she said. “But I’m good now.” Good as in, all healed and ready for the next challenge.

How she got there? Teamwork.