#345: Doug McMillon — CEO of Walmart

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to get fifty dollars off your first job post. LinkedIn.com forward slash Tim. Take a look. Terms and conditions do apply. Well hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. I am recording Out in Nature because we should all get out in nature more often. And my guest this episode is Doug McMillan, president and CEO of Walmart.

That is a big company. And a lot of people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere talk about Walmart as a big company, but they don't really look into the details. And I'm going to give you some facts and figures that will blow your mind in a moment. But how did this come to be? Well, I want to thank Doug and his entire team for helping to make it happen. I visited the Heartland Summit. in Bentonville, Arkansas, and I would recommend checking it out, theheartland summit dot org. which is about В кос Making us think about more than just

the coasts. And we are strongest when we're most connected to each other. And uh the gaps we experience in the US inequality and disconnection uh related to education, health, income, skill gaps and so on will not be solved just by California and New York. So it was a real

fantastic experience to spend time in Bentonville with people from all across the US at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American art which was the venue. And this is absolutely mind blowing, jaw dropping as a location. I encourage everybody to check it out. Crystalbridges dot org. And let's jump into Walmart first and Doug. Second. So Walmart, here's some stats.

In fiscal year two thousand eighteen, Walmart registered approximately five hundred billion in revenue, which is five billion more than Belgium's GDP. And there are many other countries, of course, I think Austria among them that are dwarfed by Walmart. If Walmart were a country, it would be the twenty fifth largest economy in the world. Walmart serves two hundred and sixty five million customers a week in twenty seven countries and across more than eleven thousand stores, and of course online is growing rapidly. from an e commerce standpoint. They have two point two roughly million associates that's employees worldwide, which means if Walmart were an army, it would have the second largest army in the world behind China. just to give you an idea. So greater than San Francisco and Denver and other cities and close to the population of Houston.

Seventy five percent of their store management team started as hourly associates like stalkers, cashiers, cart pushers, and those managers make an average of 170 K per year. Walmart files thousands of patents a year in categories ranging from last mile delivery to biometrics and augmented reality. We talk about some of the technology. They have scaled grocery pickup, that is you order on a mobile device and get groceries loaded into your car from nothing four years ago to more than two thousand locations today and will serve seventy percent of the population by the end of the year. How is that possible? Well, ninety percent of Americans live within ten miles of a Walmart and they will offer grocery delivery for forty percent of the US population by year end. It's really wild how big And the scope.

And last fact. Sam Walton started Walmart with one small five and ten store in rural Bentonville, Arkansas in the fifties and grew the company to be Fortune number one. We hear about Fortune one hundred companies. Number one. in that initial store, that very first original store, which is amazing. And I'm gonna put some photographs up. of uh some of the memorabilia and so on which is uh

quite frankly, really inspiring. And I'm not getting paid to say that. It's just amazing. How incredibly large as companies become from such humble beginnings. So to Doug, Doug McMillan, M C M I L L O N, Facebook

Doug McMillan, Instagram.com forward slash Doug McMillan, LinkedIn also Doug McMillan is president and CEO of Walmart. Back in eighty four, Doug started out as an hourly summer associate in Walmart Distribution Center. And in nineteen ninety, while pursuing his MBA, he rejoined the company as an assistant manager in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Walmart store before moving to merchandising. as a buyer trainee and we talk a lot about his training as a buyer. Very important function. within this entire organization. He worked his way up And from two thousand five to two thousand nine he served as president and C of Sam's Club, owned and operated by Walmart, with sales of more than forty six billion annually during his tenure. From February of oh nine to February of fourteen, Doug served as president and CEO of Walmart International, a very uh fast growing segment of Walmart's overall operations, and he has served on the board of directors for Walmart since 2013 and is currently the chair of the executive and global compensation committees.

In addition, he serves on the board of directors of the Consumer Goods Forum, the US China Business Council, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Once again, check out Crystal Bridges. It is incredible crystalbridges.org. Back to the bio. He also serves on the executive committee of the business round table on the advisory board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China. Doug really came to the table. He does not normally do long interviews like this at all, and he was very willing to dance the dance and go places that he hasn't gone before. I really enjoyed it. and plan to get back to Arkansas to explore the very least all the mountain biking trails. You guys can do a a little Google search on that and see what pops up. But

Without further ado. Please enjoy. This very wide ranging conversation with Doug McNillan.

Is that your fan group over here? That's my plant. I hired one person. I'll give him his twenty later. Thank you for that. So I think we should just jump right into this. What a beautiful location. This is my first time in Bentonville. And I've been absolutely

surprised by how Tremendous. Everything is here. I was walking around all last night I've never spent any time in Arkansas, so First of all, thank you for

Welcoming me here. And I know we have a limited set of time to chat on stage here today. So It feels like a lot of time and I don't do interviews that are very long. And that clock says sixty minutes on it. Could we at least start it? Because I'm used to like fifteen minutes.

I don't want to be up here. We're edging in from different sides, so I guess maybe you do shorter, usually I do. We'll meet in the middle. on this one. And uh I thought we could just jump right into it. with a very important question which is can you tell me about the bait mate story?

And I do not know the answer to this. Does anyone in the room know what Batemate is? Okay, so Um when I moved into the home office I worked in a store, this was nineteen ninety one, and I got into our buyer training program at Walmart. And um I was excited because they were putting me in sporting goods. I got to sporting goods and they gave us fishing tackle.

And they s the other buyers, I didn't know it immediately, were hazing me. And as the new person they said on Saturday, at the Saturday meeting You must present an item that you have negotiated a lower price on

reduce the retail price and you have to explain in the meeting The item, the price etcetera. How many you can sell. So I didn't know the first thing about being a buyer. It was literally my first day. And so other buyers helped me and we found a supplier who makes this product called Bait Mate, which comes in several flavors. You spray it on a hard lure if you're fishing, and it apparently causes the fish to think it's more

Real. And the fish strike the lure because it's been a very important thing. Coded in Bait Mate. So it was over two dollars. We rolled it back to$1.97. We maintained our margin, I memorized everything about the item, and I wrote the rest of the answers on the back of the label. and I showed up at the Saturday morning meeting and Sam Walton was leading the meeting.

And so my level of nervousness went nervousness went from high to somewhere off the charts. So I'll wait till the end of the line at the end of the meeting to present Bait Mate to the auditorium full of hundreds of people with Sam Walton standing next to me. and I am shaking and my hands shaking and my voice is shaking, but I get all the information out that I'm supposed to remember And at the end Sam says that's all well and good, son, but what makes you think fish can smell?

How did you respond to that? I think I just walked away. I don't remember having anything pithy to say.

But I think it was you know it was probably awkward because I was so nervous and he was trying to break the ice and but we sold a lot of bait mate. Were there were there any other particular approaches or techniques or types of training that you received? as a buyer that that come to mind. Because I don't know the first thing, certainly, about buyer training. But that is would seem to be a very important component. Uh

of what Walmart does. It's certainly a big piece of it. Yeah, it's kind of getting that price down to one ninety seven for an important item like BaitMate. And What what type of training did you experience? Are there any particular memories or stories that come to mind? uh learning that you have as a merchant, especially back then, came from the people around you. So it's really learning on the job. and and principles coming out like back then

We didn't really sign contracts and we had some vendor agreements to make sure we could pay people. But your handshake was your agreement. and I remember early on uh one of my uh supervisors, a guy named Dave Dibel, um emphasising to me we were about to make a big commitment. And the supplier had asked for something in writing and Dave said you need to explain to him that your word and your handshake

is the contract. And it worked. So you learn things like You're working on behalf of the customer, you should be tough, but you should be fair. You want suppliers to make money because you want them to be here in ten years' time. We're going to grow, we're going to need supply.

So you know Walmart has in in some circles this reputation for be being really tough. Well I would say we're tough on behalf of the customer, but we always try to be fair, and if you look at the financial results of our suppliers, they've done really well. And PG still makes more money than Walmart does. After all this time. So this has worked out well well for everybody, but we do keep pressure on on behalf of the customer. So you learn, you know, kinda how to how to think on the job but with some principles behind you.

You seem to be from What I've observed. Also in Facebook posts, don't worry. Uh A voracious reader.

And I've noticed a a number of books like Team of Teams. by General Still in the Crystal. That was from I think your two thousand six recap. where you you took a photograph of books that have had a sixteen excuse me big big impact on your thinking that year.

Арні бокс? from people that have had a big impact on you or that you have given out more than once to people. For any reason. Yeah, there's that book about Amazon. That one comes to mind. The everything st the everything store? Yeah.

Why do why do you give that book out? Um you need to understand what you're up against. You know? Um but team of teams has been huge. I'm still giving that one out. The truth is if we my house is not far from here, we went over there right now, my book of my stack of books to read is like more than knee high right now I'm behind. I'm trying to catch up. But I'm I'm

I am trying to learn and we've got to we Brett's on the front row, Brett's our CFO. This morning in our officer meeting we were talking about learning and curiosity because retail is changing so fast. And the business we have today is different than it was a year ago, certainly five years ago, and it's going to be different in another year's time. um we are spending a lot of try time trying to learn new things. So if you looked at my last month. in the pie charter time allocation, you'd be surprised how much of that time was learning

US healthcare, becoming a digital company, other things other than how to run a brick and mortar retail store, because we're trying to figure out how to get this company positioned to be here in fifty years' time. So like on team of teams, Stan McChrystal, who's who's awesome, we've spent time together, he's been to Bentonville, I've been to his place. He talks about a few principles. One of them is shared consciousness. And when he was in his role in the military, he took silos that had been around for a long time.

Um Army, Marines, CIA, all of those historic silos and figured out a way to get them to work together. to get on the same page and know the same things. Once you have shared consciousness, you know what I know, I know what you know, then you can pivot to empowered execution.

Now that you know what I know, I expect you to act without seeking input. Go. And even today in officers' meeting we were talking we We were talking about

What our strategy is again And then saying to everybody, Andy Go. This is on the All of us, not just me, and you now know

Pretty much everything I know. So those principles that you can glean from books and things like that are really helpful. How do you pick books? Because I think everyone here whether it's a stack of books to the knee or just considering all the books their friends might recommend or that they might see recommended on social media might feel a paradox of choice stress about what to read, and you have a lot on your plate. You have a lot of responsibilities. If you think back, say in the last year to anything you've read, it doesn't have to be the last year.

But how did you find that book, or how did you select that book as something worthy of your time? Um I bet some of you in the room have the same situation I do. I don't have a shortage of books because they're constantly being sent to me. um the challenge is filtering through which one you're gonna read next. So right now I'm about a third of the way through Ray Dalio's principles. And that's because um Greg Pinner, our chairman, asked me to read it, so it went to the top of the stack. I'm finding that one hard to read.

But m most of the ones that I've been choosing on my own are are related to change management and specifically becoming a digital enterprise, because the The transformation that's underway in the world in business and certainly at Walmart is largely a data and technology and automation transformation.

leading through that while still retaining who you are as a company and and uh the DNA and the values and the culture. The one of our officers today during the QA grabbed the microphone. Her name is Jody And Jody said Um

You said it earlier, but I just want to underline it. The thing that will cause us to win is our humanity. And yeah, we need to learn how to become a digital enterprise. But we understand we're a company made up of two point two million associates and that human interaction in the future will matter. Yes, automation will do things that that the humans might not want to do, m mundane routine tasks at store level or in a warehouse. What

Elsewhere. But it's that. personal interaction, that sense of community that I think people will want. in the future and it won't be just digital. I mean that you see next door or Facebook or others that are creating a digital sense of community that as we're all learning that has some flaws associated with it. This

sense that you can have when you come to a place and we hope it's a store sometimes where you interact with others could be special and warm and safe. And if you can do that. while delivering good prices and all the other stuff we gotta do, we think we've got an advantage. I did.

uh come across a mention of virtual reality in training employees or associates. Well maybe even executives, I don't know. Is that currently underway or is that something planned? And could you just Describe that. Because I I was not aware of that perfectly. Um

Our US leadership team um Greg Foreign, Judith McKinnon and others a few years ago took an idea that they had seen us practice in the UK to put training academies in our stores. Um And now around the United States we have about two hundred locations dotted around the map. There are

Uh 138 of them actually are in the back rooms of stores. We've been we've been able to reduce our inventory and create classrooms. So they're nice classrooms equipped with technology, mobile technology. Large screens. Really, really well done. And as you're getting trained on interesting things, not just how to execute a retail store, but also

Um, some soft skills like we're teaching people how to have a difficult discussion using VR? So you know if you're if you are a supervisor or a leader uh at Walmart, you probably weren't trained to coach someone for improvement? You you might shy away from conflict, for example.

So these VR headsets have an avatar, and if you put one on right now, Tim, you would have a conversation and at the end of that conversation when you take the headset off it would score you. and tell you how you did in that conversation. watching the other person the avatar's facial expressions and the words that come back. So we're trying to help people grow for the jobs we have. And as automation happens and some of them go on to other jobs help prepare them for more than that. But we also teach people how to do um

Routine task like So you know Ivanka Trump is interested in uh workforce training. And she heard about the programs we were doing and wanted to come to a store, so I met her in Mesquite, Texas about a month ago, and we put VR goggles on her, and she stocked our vegetable wall, what we call the wet wall that's got leafy greens on it and stuff like that. Um she scored a twelve out of twenty. So we got a little work to do there.

But you can use VR in ways that get you off the sales floor, let you have an opportunity to really learn when you are not interrupted by customers, and we will have 17,000 VR headsets deployed by the end of the year for things like that. That's incredible. S I want to talk a little bit about your personal practices because you have course many responsibilities to other people, but I would imagine at at some point you have to put on your oxygen mask first before helping others. And

Keep yourself focused, which you clearly are. in the Walmart Museum last night, which I found endlessly fascinating. I expected to find it interesting, but I really found it fascinating. I fixated on uh Sam Walton's keychain next to his red pickup and it is there's a gigantic metal plate. about five times the size of say a nail file in a huge font that says go for it.

I was just imagining in my mind. How he might have referred to that at different points, making different decisions. Do you have any reminders built into your life or any quotes that you think of often.

that might in some way resemble that. I think that go for it. was a a phrase we used in one of our annual we had kind of a theme for the year. And um we were growing so fast and and that was really a rallying cry at one point. Um for me personally, the first thing that comes to mind is a cross that I have in my office.

Um there's a SAMS Club member that I met years ago named Martha Hawkins. And we happen to see Martha uh in Montgomery, Alabama, a couple of weeks ago. She runs a restaurant, but she's got an incredible personal story. overcoming a drug drug addiction and serving others, and we asked her to come to a SAMS Club meeting and give us feedback on what we could do better for small business owners and restaurant owners. And I we don't rehearse these things, and I'm standing in front of all of our club managers with a group, you know, that's Haver.

And she grabs a microphone and starts giving her personal testimony. It was awesome. and um we've just been pin pal since then. And I've been to Montgomery a couple of times and eaten at her place, and she sent me this big cross and these wonderful notes.

about you're in this big job, you need support, I'm there for you, I'm gonna encourage you, and I'm gonna pray for you. And she says stuff like when you show up at the restaurant, like I've prayed all the calories out of the food. If that works, let me know. Chip peach cobbler that didn't feel to me like that had been accomplished. But that's that there are other mementos with that that comes to mind. Now I I had read somewhere well let me back track.

You are Clearly very curious. And I think to maintain that level of curiosity which is necessary for the business, certainly. there you need to sustain a level of of humility. And

There are different ways to do that. So a friend of mine who's been on uh my podcast, Alexis Ohanian, who is the co-founder of Reddit, at one point was told by Yahoo Exec very early on You are a rounding error. And so he put that up on the wall for his entire team to see, which ended up working out pretty well for them. I had read, and this may not be true, so please correct me, not everything on the internet turns out to be true, I found out recently. that

This was in an interview. you had the top ten retailers, I want to say from the last five decades on your phone. Uh can you explain why that was or why that is? Yeah, because retailers Grow and die.

And Um I've been doing this almost thirty years now, which is amazing to me'cause I still feel like that In some ways we're just getting Getting started but

Um If you're a student of retail, I suppose it's probably true for other industries. more or less But in retail. Um they have a good idea, they have a great founder, they start moving, they expand, and then something happens over time. They get complacent, they have

Too much success. They don't manage inventory and they go. So if you go back and look at Uh when Walmart Kmart and Target started, which all started in nineteen sixty two.

Dollar General I think did it the same year. Um the retailers that were before them. Sears is interesting to talk about this week.

I mean who are these upstarts? Walmart started in Rogers, Arkansas. Where's Rogers, Arkansas? No we w no one was scared that day when the first one was Um so You can go away.

The thing that can keep one of the things that can keep you from going away is an openness to change. And that's the point. So if we were there are some Walmart people in here. But if you were all Walmart people and you had a leader up front and that leader were to say The only thing that's constant at Walmart is

There's more people in here. The truth is we have a consistent purpose that we got from our founder, some values that we share those are persistent too. It's not just change. But the fact that that's the thing that people underestimate underestimate about Walmart right now.

is that it has an ability to change. They they think it is going to be what it is right now. And in some cases, I might argue most cases, they don't understand what it is right now, because it has only been explained to them through the media. They have had no personal interaction behind the scenes. other than other than in the stores or online. Um but they certainly don't anticipate what it's going to become. And if we can keep that kind of attitude, we got a shot at surprising people and being here in the future when a lot of people think we won't be.

So openness to change. Is is A prerequisite to then Initiating change. But a lot of people.

Don't get to that second part because change can be really scary. Would you mind talking about Any particular scary decision For you. And

Walk us through how you thought about it as you were going through it. And that could be A dis it could be a decision, it could just be a difficult or dark moment for you. Because uh what I like to do whenever I have these types of conversations is to humanize the person I'm talking to so that

people who are listening don't think that, and maybe this is the case, but every time you've stepped up to bat you've hit a home run. Because that can be the impression that some people come away with otherwise. So could you walk us through a difficult time, a difficult choice and how you experienced that. From this week? Just thinking about all the stuff that's happened in the last two weeks. Anything that sticks out. It could be from twenty years ago, thirty years ago, doesn't matter time wise. Uh but something that was truly, truly difficult for you.

Well yeah, the I mean there are a lot of them, but I guess one of the themes that comes to mind is acquisitions. Um These are not small decisions. to acquire a company, big or small. There are founders, Andy Dunn sitting on the front row, Andy founded Bonobos.

Um He's got a baby. And if he wants to put it in the family That's huge risk for him, and I don't want to let him down. Then you got

Flip card. Well um We sp we invested Stuart sixteen billion dollars to buy seventy seven percent of a company that loses a lot of money. Sounds brilliant, doesn't it? And before that we we did

the board and management umjet.com. And Jed.com was like a billion dollar run rate. and lost money. And still does. Um

These decisions, we believe, are necessary for a variety of reasons which we can talk about if you want to But once you do it you take on those losses, you take on those people and responsibilities, and you've got to execute in a way that makes that a really good decision. And boy, we've we fret over those.

And um we're moving faster now. We're taking more risk. Um but that's that's an area where you I have a lot of a lot of self doubt. You you have a meeting and you hear about the strategy and you think, yeah, we we gotta do this. And then you go home that night and you're about to go to sleep and you think, I can't do that. And then you get up the next morning and you go back through it, and we just iterate to a point where finally you got to make a decision and go for it. Because I think a lot of people hem and har go back and forth on on

Potentially big decisions. What do you say to yourself, or what do you ask yourself, or who do you ask? questions to try to gain clarity. Yeah, well it's collective wisdom for sure and one of the great things it has always been true in these jobs at Walmart because I think that's the thing that is You know, people will talk to you. When you're a buyer at Walmart, you can call a CEO of a company and they'll take your call. And in the um job that I'm in right now I get exposed to incredible people and you can use that collective wisdom by asking questions. So th that's definitely

Part of it. Um but the other thing that runs through my mind is what you know, what do you have to believe. If you want to go do this, and this is the calculated bet you're making, What do you have to believe is true? Yeah.

And if you can get to a point where after thinking about it you come back to the same things and you're convicted I really do believe those things are true, then take the risk and go for it. So this might be too inside baseball, and if we don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But let's let's talk about Flipkart for a second. So uh I think you'll do fine on Flipkart. Uh i if if if a few things are probably true, but um very bullish.

What did you have to believe? To be true. For that to make sense. So um First one is do you believe in India?

In the environments, one point two billion people with a growing middle income, with a lack of infrastructure, they've adopted mobile, they're moving to digital forms of currency. There's a lot of lot of challenges, a lot of governance issues. It's a very diverse place. It's not really one country. It's enormous. We've been there for more than ten years. I've been there quite a few times. But do you believe in India? Check.

Second question, what type of business in India? and the e commerce business in India is under three percent of the total business, and we're certain it's going to get bigger. So you got a big pie and it's getting bigger, and you got a small section called e commerce today. Is that gonna get bigger? Yes.

Who are the players within that? There aren't very many. digital businesses and e commerce businesses. It's It turns out to aggregate business more than bust it up in some cases, and there are a few e-commerce players. Flipkart was one of them. And then you get to what is Flipkart? Well Flipkart is actually not just an e commerce business, it is an ecosystem of businesses. There is a last mile delivery component, there is an e commerce

There is kind of a traditional e-commerce business. There's a uh payment system called phone pay. They're doing all kinds of interesting things with AI. They're even designing apparel with AI. So it's an interesting set of positions. in the country, not just a pure e commerce business selling

dry grocery items at a loss. And then you get to the leadership team. How do you feel about values? How do you feel about their capability? We were really impressed with their ability to solve problems. And we recognize that this is not a situation where the business model is figured out and they're just going to execute it. It's a situation where they have a business model and they're iterating every hour of every day to change it, navigate the market, which is exactly what you need in India. because it's it's gets disrupted in so many different ways. They have to be quick, you have to be agile, you have to be on the ground, you have to know the business, you've got to be able to solve problems together as a team, and they have that characteristic. And it was that set of things that caused us to say

We should do this. There just aren't very many opportunities in the world that are that big. And for a company like Walmart that needs to move the needle in a big way. you have to take some big bets, but if you're going to take that much risk, the reward's got to match up, and in the case of Flipkart it does. And you have the ability to iterate.

after that large event. Which kind of mitigates some of some of, but not all of the risk as well. And we're going to learn things in India that we can use in other places, including here. If we talk about experimentation, And openness to change. I think for a lot of, say, entrepreneurs who are listening to this who have a ten person company, they can't even imagine

what it might be like to experiment within, say, Walmart. they might think that it's trying to steer a continent. Uh I would love to because I'm personally curious, talk about Sand's Club. I grew up going to Sams Club, getting in the car, and it was like a pilgrimage to go to Sans Club to buy all the things that we needed. Growing up.

And uh I recently came across what the Wall Street Journal had called Treasure hunt items. And This may go nowhere, folks. I'm warning you in advance. I don't I don't know. But could you please explain? what this means.

You really don't know what that means. Well we must not be doing a very good job then if we don't know where it is. Keep in mind I was going during the the Pleistine era. This is early so I may have not come across Treasure Hunt. When you go to a Sam's Club, you should experience great quality fresh food. And then other items that you didn't expect to see that are affordable luxuries that make it feel like there's a bit of a treasure hunt. Like what's around the corner? Like when you sell a swing set, it should be a special and big swing set. When you sell a cooler, there should be something about it that's different than Walmart or some other place. And um a long time ago when I was at Sam's the most extreme example I could remember is we sold a uh jet.

um during our holiday period. We had a shit. Uh we had a holiday catalogue. And we made a commitment for a jet. And sold it. Um Yeah.

Didn't didn't make a lot of money. But it generated a lot of buzz. But we've sold like a like a like a wine uh basement. We've sold extraordinary travel experiences, um seventy thousand dollar price points. We sold a cool Harley one time. that was seventy five thousand dollars. We bought one. And we

told everybody in our ad we have one, so whoever gets their first gets it. And we sold it to some Plum in Indiana, if I remember correctly. Okay. I can't just move on from this. Is this like the two hundred dollar hamburger

with gold leaf on it that you see in almost every major city like once a year for driving foot traffic and PR? How much how much of say a jet or the Harley is driving foot traffic versus PR versus other considerations? Those were more PR and buzz related, but we didn't overcharge for it. It wasn't a$200 hamburger. It was a good price on the jet. Right. Yeah. But you do blend like with our With our merchandising assortment, whether it's online or in stores, Walmart or SAMS or other brands, you blend together The practical with the more aspirational all the time, trying to attract people to come to your place?

Mm-hmm. You have a reputation for being Very poised, very calm. I had read that you that your competitiveness comes from your mom, which may or may not be true. Again, internet question mark.

That's very true. Uh. So where does the poised comments come from? Yeah. I have all the dirt, all the skeletons.

Poised and calm. Nature? Is that nurture and it's No, I'm faking that. You're faking it. This this is something I think a lot of people would like to fake. If that's actually true. No, so tell me, I mean d talk about where that comes from.

If it comes from anywhere, or if if that's just from the womb onward. Uh like most of us, it probably comes from your parents and your upbringing mostly. My dad's like that, and then there the older I get, the more I see my father in me. Which you know I've mixed feelings about. My m my mom is Super competitive. She is literally the most competitive person I've ever met. So she's she's

Like We took a summer vacation this year where we brought everybody together. We had like eighteen people staying in this one house and А банчевом are twenty year old. young men, our sons and my nephews, and we play beach volleyball two a days. For a week.

So we'll be out there before it gets too hot, we'll be out there after it gets cooler. And those boys are spiking the ball off her forehead and she just keeps coming. It's for real. Her nickname, her grandson's nickname for her is Killer. How does that matter?

How does that manifest in your life? Oh I'm super competitive. Look, I don't like to lose a anything. It's bad actually sometimes because You know, I play basketball on Sunday afternoons with a bunch of friends and my son and

It's a longstanding tradition we have on Sunday afternoon, and I hate losing so bad that Sometimes I'm not as friendly as I should be. I should be like the wise guy at this point that's nurturing these young men, and I'm out there battling them. I would like to be a bigger person, but It's not I'm not there yet. Uh I was I was uh I think I was reading it might have been on the podcast uh Exchange with Peter Thiel.

And he he was describing how I I might be getting this slightly off, but I'm paraphrasing here. Looking for areas where he could be less competitive, sort of increase well being. Are there areas where you've consciously tried to ratchet back on the competitiveness? No. Moving on. Yeah. What is the first

say, and this may vary, I'm sure it does vary day to day, but if you have the time to follow a particular routine in the morning. Are there any particular rituals or routines that you have in the first hour or two of what you eat? Yeah, very much so. Um it gets disrupted by travel and we travel a lot. But if I'm in town You know

Shave, shower, get some food. I'm reading the same thing. I'm reading the Wall Street Journal. Uh well first there is a daily devotional. Right now Tony Dungy has got this daily devotional book, so it's I start with that. It doesn't take a lot of time, but I do it every day. And that's something you read? That's something you read out loud? Not out loud, but like I'm in the kitchen. I have got C and B C at squawk box on. I will mute it for a second, I will read the daily devotional. Then I'm into the Wall Street Journal. Glancing at the New York Times um CNBC app C and B C is playing in the background, C and B C is in the car, watching squawkbox, and then I get to the office. What time do you wake up generally if you're at the time? Five thirty and in my office. What does your default breakfast look like?

What do you eat for breakfast? Um two fried eggs and toast. That's the first time I've ever been asked that. Two fried eggs and toast. Do you drink coffee?

Yes. Too much. Yeah. That sounds like a conversation under

Uh You get to the office. Alright, you arrive at the office, then what do you do? If you're in town, is there there I can't imagine that it's just left to whim. So there must be some structure, some lattice work. Uh on your day or week? Are there any any must-dos on a on a daily or weekly basis? Yeah there's a lot of variety, which is one of the things I love about it.

Um I try to get there early enough to get a little bit of quiet time going. We've already seen sales, so when we get up in the morning the first thing that we all do is Look at our device, and you can see in seconds how were sales around the world yesterday. by format, by country. So we already know what is you know, what happened Um

And so Try to get there early enough to get a little bit of quiet time to get ahead on reading. These days we get a lot of reading materials like People will send you a white paper or a a deck and say this is for tomorrow's meeting and it's forty pages. We have a board meeting that's got a thousand pages of reading material. Um so you got all this incoming data.

And it's helpful because we're trying to get into meetings and not you know, have old fashioned PowerPoint flipping, but get right to the root of issues. So it's really helpful if we can people can read things beforehand. So there's a lot of that going on. And then there's just a ton of variety. And I talked to Lou Holch yesterday. the former Arkansas Razorback coach. Yes, he coached at Notre Dame and won a national championship, but we know him as the Arkansas Razorback coach. And Lou is responsible or working with a health care company, and he read in the news that we were working on health care. So it's hilarious. I got to ask him what would you do, could you fix razorback football, because we won one game this year.

And he said yeah by the second quarter. Which I thought was hilarious. So you just never know. You know, you can walk down the hallway and Shaquille O'Neal will be walking down the hallway. And then you go into a meeting on compliance in China. And you learn about how to manage ethics within a within that country. So it's just a ton of variety every day. And there's really not a down minute.

Days are never what you think they're gonna be. But you try to plan. So like I learned from Mike Duke, my predecessor, when I moved into our international job, that I couldn't manage my international travel without a really good plan. So when I moved into the job, one of the things Mike did for me was to hand me his schedule by week for the last three years. And Mike's an engineer and he's very disciplined

So he was like Argentina. I'm going to get to once a year. China we're going to get to three times a year. We're gonna schedule it out in this way. We're in twenty seven countries now.

So I just copied His method and like right now, in fact for about a month now, I would be able to tell you for next year where I will be by day. Some of the days are kind of planned out.

with board meetings and we have this thing we call meeting week where we bring everybody together. You know, Mark Lori lives in New Jersey and We just had people distributed. So we come together for one week kind of three or four days every month where we all get on the same page. And then we disperse out again. So all those kinds of things drive the calendar and the discipline. We pretty much stick with it, but within a day it can get crazy. Because things come up.

Looking at your travel schedule, which I haven't seen all of, but you were describing just the last few weeks to me before we got up on stage. What are some of the Self care. techniques that or strategies that you've developed so that you just don't wear yourself out.

What are what are some of the What are the some of the things you do or don't do? When you're traveling, before you travel, when you land, anything like that that helps you to sustain what seems to me to be a just Ultra endurance. Marathon that doesn't end.

Yeah. So sleep's real important for me personally, sleep's real important. I wish I needed less, but I need s I need seven or eight hours. Time with family is really important. So protecting weekends as much as I can. I work every day some But try to manage that in a way that's not too disruptive with my family. My family's a huge priority showing I have two boys

They're in their twenties now, but man, that was really important to me. So I protected that a lot. So like getting this basketball game in on Sunday afternoon is a big deal? If I get a good good sleep on Saturday Sunday, get in some basketball, get enough sleep while I'm traveling, I'm in I'm in pretty good shape. The other thing that happens sometimes is Paula, my assistant and I call them fire breaks. Every once in a while I just have to s because it's too much, you just have to go back and say, I know what I was supposed to do on Tuesday. But clear it.

'cause I just need some time to get back up on my feet. Read a few things, so we we will call it audible and put a fire break in every once in a while. So if you if you think back to any one of those fire breaks, could you give us an example of what you then do? In that day. Yeah, it's usually

Thinking. it's strategy. We have a collaborative environment and it's Definitely collaborative as it relates to strategy. And I'm I'm a blend of an introvert and an extrovert.

There are times when I gotta have interaction with people and I get energy that way, and there are times when I need to have some quiet time and just shut the door in the office to read Think That kind of stuff. Like when we I guess it Berkman you take? It's one of the tests where you can kind of assess yourself and you can be on one of these extremes. I'm kind of right in the middle and pivot both.

both ways. So there are times when I just I need half and I can't do it in thirty minutes. I need like a few hours. To think. When you sit down to think, for instance, I need to journal when I think, otherwise it's just like trying to grasp at mosquitoes. I can't seem to catch anything.

For Doug to sit down and think. Do you steer off into space? Do you read, do you take a long shower? Listen to classical music? What does it look like? It's drawing pictures. Drawing pictures. Yes, schematics of how strategy works or how a problem is deconstructed. So and there are people that work with me in the room. I can't hardly have a conversation with Brett without the whiteboard. And I'm so thankful. Um I see Jim and Lynn there. Sam Walton had a pegboard in his office.

And I'm thankful for that because I had to put up a whiteboard And people said you can't do that at Sam Walton's office. And I'm like, nope, look, there are pictures here. He had a pegboard. A whiteboard's not that different than a pegboard. A library or a museum in Sam's office.

It's hallowed ground, so you don't mess with it too much, right? But I we got this big whiteboard and we have conversations where Brett's got a marker and I've got a marker and we're drawing pictures of well if it the customer experience went this way or went that way or the financials look like this instead of that. What does health care really look like? You've got a a a life here, you've got care here. You've got insurance. What's how does that work? Like how could you help somebody be healthier and make a margin at the same time. And how could clinics play a role in that? So it for me I'm a visual learner and when I can't solve a problem, I'm constantly trying to draw a picture of it and trying to get other people to draw a picture of it.

And when you do those those fire breaks. And you let's just say you have blocked out three to four hours to think. How often is that by yourself? versus with other people.

It's Bama Self I need that time by myself, but I run into things that I don't know. And so I'll run out and interrupt. place a phall and say, I'm working on this problem, what do you think?

And then I'm trying to put the phone back down or Walk back to my office and work on the next. Turn of the crank on the problem. Thank you. But I asked that.

Yeah. Uh. This is a tough question, but I I want to Go fishing. And see what we get here. So it's in the last handful of years, could be five, three, doesn't really matter. What new we talked about belief earlier, new belief, behavior, or habit has most.

improved your life or greatly improved your life. What do you say? A change of thinking. new thing that you do or have stopped doing. Anything at all. New additional.

It's the influence of other people And it's an openness to change. And I described my morning routine for you I would say years ago my whole life was more routine. And now

The pivot Is to let go more and be more open to change and more open to risk. realizing that continuing to do what I've always done Won't

result in me being the person that the company needs me to be. And if I'm rigid and routined and disciplined too often So will everybody else. And so And we were talking about risk today with our officers.

And trying to encourage them to take a risk. Well they won't take risk if they don't see us taking risk. And so some of the things we've done lately I'm a really conservative person. I would not have wanted to take those risks or historically expected to?

But it's kind of liberating. And once you survive one. The next one's a little more comfortable. And if we can get everybody thinking that way, we got a shot. What led to

So the fifteen minute increment routine dug to the being more open to change. Was there particular event or conversation or period of time that led you to realize how valuable that could be. What what led to the change?

The realization That um without it. We were We are going to have a problem.

Like The retailers that fail by decade. That feeling that if we don't really open ourselves up to change here, which starts with us, you know, change is really cool when it's for somebody else, but when it's for yourself, it's really hard. One one experience we had in Walmart one time, this this lady that works for Walmart was teaching us about change management and she had us take our watch off and put it on the other hand.

and just leave it that way for a day and it bugs the heck out of me. it's a indicative of how hard it is for us to change personally. So I'll I'll put this on my right wrist. But by tonight that'll be back on my left wrist because I won't be able to take it anymore. So if you recognize that

In yourself you got a shot at doing something uh about it. That watch experiment is really cool friend of mine uh had a similar experience where someone he had hired to assist his company recommended same wrist but put it on the other side and see how long it takes you to actually turn your wrist. to that new side. It takes a long time.

as an indication of also not the just the potential importance of change, but how you have to give it some time.

When you feel Maybe you don't feel this, uh but when you feel it seems like the the fire breaks are one example of contending with this, overwhelmed or are unsure of what to do. Besides the fire breaks. Is there anything else that you do? Prayer. Do you have particular prayer or type of prayer? What does that look like?

Versus really getting personal. Two fifty five left on the clock. Dude. That's what I'm trying to figure out right now. Um

There's a bigger. It's bigger than any of us. And realizing that. And realizing that if you grip that steering wheel too hard.

You will fail. Um is the is the moment where that fire break comes or you let go and say, Okay, I'm listening. So that prayer is frequently not me speaking, it's me listening.

And he'll put people in my life. It feels like this happens frequently where There's no other ex no other reason I can think of that that person said that to me, gave me that idea at that moment. Other than some other higher calling That I think is

You know. Um very real and tangible for me personally given my faith, but also helpful to the company. You know, my prayer is

That the company will bless God. I can't believe you got me to say all this. Let's wrap this dude up.

Who invited this guy? one twenty two. I think we have Time for maybe one more, but I'll see if I can sneak in two. Do you have a favorite failure of yours, meaning something that seemed like a failure at the time that ended up setting the stage for something better.

Yeah, a bunch of them. The one that that um was so memorable for me was early. That's why it s left such a mark. But if I tell the story briefly, I was the chip buyer, I had a bunch of categories that I was responsible for in food and Fritoley chips was one of my items and I got really excited. This is early nineties because Fritoley brought out Um lime um flavored tostitos. Lime and chili flavored tostitos.

And so I wanted to put it on the front page of the Walmart tab. And we did back then print tabs, mailed to American homes, tens of millions of them, it is a big deal. And everybody knew that if the merchant screwed up the tab, you were dead, like you had no career, nobody makes a tab mistake. Every item, every picture, every price, all the end stock has got to be there, because we print 100 million of these things, it has got to be great. Well uh we we put I got the whole cover of the tab. I talked marketing into letting me have the whole thing and we fann out Lay's and Cheetos, and right there in the front.

Lyme And chili flavored tostitos. And the tab hit And the phone started ringing and we learned that Friedolet didn't have that item west of the Mississippi.

Yeah, that was the feeling. So I'm in my twenties, Shelley and I have a young child and I'm thinking this is it? This is This is how this ends. This is really, really bad.

To make a long story short, it was so bad, I went I went to my supervisor once I figured out it was happening and I said, here's what's happened. And he looked at me and said, You need to go tell Bill Fields. and Bill was the chief merchant. And if Bill were here, I would say the same thing, so I'm not talking out of school. He's like Darth Vader in my mind. Like imagine Darth Vader. I love him, but he's scary.

And So I said okay, let's go tell him and my supervisor said I ain't going. So that's true. I've left their name out because that's true. So

I go to tell Bill Fields that that we've made this mistake and that didn't go well. And so the the solution was put back on me, like what are you going to do about it? And Fritele gave us a coupon for a free bag of chips.

for any customer that complained west of the Mississippi and we printed them at PMDC down the street and mailed them out in twenty four hours so that store managers had something to give to the customer when they complained. But that didn't totally satisfy the customers. So it was really bad. So nobody would talk to me. Like I was, I don't know, what do you call a pariah? So everybody knows how bad that is. So I'm walking down the hallways and people that I thought were my friends they had their head down. Like I'm deaf. Like I'm dead. It's over. And this lasts for like two, three days.'Cause the

the tab is a week long, so you don't get to just get up the next day and forget about it. You got to live with it for a week. And there was one person in the whole company that reached out to me. And his name's J.R. Campbell. JR was a DMM of Divisional Merchandise Manager supervising buyers in another area unrelated to mine, and he called me over to his desk. We had an open office environment at that time. And in front of other people around he gave me a pep talk and said

You screwed up. But I believe in you. Never do this again. Learn from it. Get your head up.

And get back to work. And that's all I needed. And it all worked out. But I learned empathy. from that mistake.

Uh learned. what it's like when somebody that you think is really good makes a bad mistake. Just a little word of encouragement's huge. I know we're at zero zero zero. Very last question. Very last question. You have a billboard. That billboard, metaphorically speaking, gets a message out to billions and billions of people.

Anything you would put on that, a word, a quote, a question. Anything that comes to mind that you would you would put on that bowl. Shop at Walmart. Okay. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share The coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up.

in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite. of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode of the Tim Fair Shows brought to you by LinkedIn, The Right Hire can make a huge impact on your business. The wrong hire can creator your business. And I have seen example after example from Thousands of my readers.

at a minimum. where they've told me stories of how finding the right person at the right time, and in some cases not even asking what should I do, but asking who should I find, because that person can help me determine what exactly to do more intelligently. I've had a chance to hire two such people in the last year that has just made my business take a quantum leap forward and my complexity in my personal and business life. Get cut.

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