I showed up in the lobby at 7 by 7:30 I was the fishing tackle buyer for Walmart and I think I had like 200 plus million dollars of of open to buy oh my gosh I had this huge business and with no training and it's like here you go kid see what you can make of this and I just that entrepreneurial nature of that is still here we have Doug McMillan who is the CEO of Walmart you might have heard of it and he is joining glue guys today and Doug has had just in ridiculous career what's incredible about it is that it's basically all at Walmart you know he started at 17 years old after growing up in Arkansas and packing trucks uh in a distribution center then you know worked at Walmart before business school went to business school came back as a buyer for fishing tackle um and then worked his way all the way up you know to the uh CEO of Sam's Club then the CEO of Walmart International and ultimately in 2014 uh took over a CEO of Walmart which is obviously this iconic uh company um but I think more than his career he's somebody who's made a big impact on me personally you know uh I tell the story but Doug uh had one of the more notable meetings ever for me when he first uh when I first met him where he started with gratitude for what Walmart has done for him he started with vulnerability about being nervous about getting the meeting wrong and it just taught me so much about leadership that this guy in this ultimate position of strength you know uh would start a meeting with gratitude and with vulnerability and it's something that stuck with me and um he also just always has time for people that he cares about and I'm so happy that uh we get a chance to spend time with him today all of us are very grateful that you're here I really admire you as a person and as a leader and so the fact you decided to come on our podcast is amazing we're going to get right into the hard-hitting stuff if that's okay it's your time I I don't know why I'm doing this Robie you're just very persuasive well the hard-hitting stuff dou Doug Shane and I say this exact same thing I know exact same thing I know so he got you he got you too Doug you so welcome to the club welcome to the club yeah yeah listen you know closed mouths don't get fed that's what I've learned um and so Doug my hard-hitting question for you is what was your game like when you were a point guard in high school we want to know the style we want to know how you played and we want to know a current NBA player comp I had uh an above average high school career I'm no Shane Bader let me put it that way and you can tell that I've now chosen a different career and that's worked out just fine but I Lov playing ball I still play basketball my son runs the game now but we actually have a 40-year tradition 40 of playing basketball on Sunday afternoon that started at our preacher's house when I was a teenager my dad had the game at his house for for a while now it's at my house my son organizes it and then yesterday we had 12 guys out in 49 degree weather playing ball in the backyard and I love it it's still my highlighted my week I love hearing you say that because Shane gives me a lot of grief I I still play on Sunday mornings and if my my the guys who playing our game would be dramatically offended if I did not call it out as you know uh us playing basketball on Sunday mornings but Shane tells me it's a young man's game and that I need to be more careful about about playing basketball in the weekend I don't know Shane what do you think well as someone who assesses risk for a living you know I don't think you do a very good job Rie on Sunday mornings all right so uh Doug you look like a shooter all right so I you know it seems to me like your game is just you know three-point line of three-point line which which is good and safe you know don't don't go to the bat don't go to the hoop anymore that's the problem with my I have no game I've told you guys this like it's just pure hustle and and grit on the course for me like there's no Nuance to my basketball game so the last pickup game you know I played in it it got I took a head I took a header to the lip I put my tooth through my lip and had to go to the emergency room and you know ry's invited me to this pickup game and I've politely declined because of that we always ask you know athletes you know what have you taken from your athletic career to your corporate career you know what are the lessons you try to to bring from locker room to the to the Board Room I get a competitive Spirit from my mom she's the most competitive person I've ever seen been around in my entire life and I can't stand to lose you know winning you kind of forget but losing sticks with you and that Spirit of teamwork we have a scoreboard we have an opponent that plays through in business it definitely plays through in retail and I think that that reminds me so much of what sports is about and it's one of the reasons why I love doing what I'm doing we get a we get customer feedback and we get our scorecard all the time and I'm driven by that D if you don't mind jumping back to kind of the beginning and like quickly just that it's fascinating if people haven't read it or or heard about it like your history with starting at Walmart in high school and then even when you were getting your NBA and really like what why Walmart like what what was it that that Drew you to it and made and obviously made the the career decision uh to kind of be a lifer in some ways I think Walmart is unique but I think in many ways big businesses sometimes get bashed around and people make bad assumptions about what it's like and who they are and what drives them and what I found out about Walmart as a very young person was how much people loved it and how much they cared and how much fun it was and what kind of challenge it was my first job unloading trucks was with a guy named Johnny who loved the company had $200,000 in Walmart profit sharing and had a new truck in the parking lot and he was fired up and that was I was 17 years old at that time and I'm like huh this guy's happy and it is hot in this trailer and we are working our tals off and he loves it and then I just got my dad was a dentist he moved us to Northwest Arkansas and told me to go get a job to make money for school and the highest paying job in town was unloading those trucks so that experience kind of started it off but everybody I met the story I the stories I heard about Sam and Helen and being around the Walton family and watching them and and seeing the future potential of the company got me excited so when I finished my NBA program they they offered me a job as a buyer and I got to be a a buyer for fishing tackle on my first day I showed up in the lobby at 7 by 7:30 I was the fishing tackle buyer for Walmart and I think I had like 200 plus million dollars of of open to buy oh my gosh I had this huge business and with no training and it's like here you go kid see what you can make of this and I just that entrepreneurial nature of that is still here we still have all these young people that are running these big businesses and it's it's just so fun very challenging but a good group of people and a great culture did I read correctly that your very first day as a teenager was setting up the shareholder meeting at the bville at the Bonville high school gym is this the same gym by the way that you were hooping in yeah it was so that's funny that the first day they said to a few of us you are not trained you don't know how to pick an order you don't know how to unload or load a trailer so follow us over to the high school gym we're going to set up for the shareholders meeting and yeah it was that gym where I was playing ball and on the way over I rear ended my boss with my car not your boss with a new truck so it gets worse the the boss that I rear ended was also one of the officials the referees for high school basketball oh no disaster small disaster brilliant start you know it reminds me though of one of the most notable things for me was the first time we met which was seven eight years ago and you know you obviously were the CEO of this enormous and important company and you know we were representing a very small company uh at instacart and I was shocked at how you started our meeting you know the first thing you did was you went on a relatively long discussion of your gratitude to Walmart just what the company has done for you and then you mentioned that you were nervous about the meeting you know and you were nervous about getting it wrong and I've never seen somebody with this combination of gratitude and vulnerability you know from such a seat of leadership and I I've told so many people about this moment of like I me I wrote it down I think about it all the time and it's so unusual and I've never seen it before or since and I'm just curious like is that where did that come from where is that style from and is that the way you've always been is that something that uh developed over time we say to each other around here the only thing that's constant here other than our purpose and values is change and in that moment in time and Still In This Moment In Time I don't want to miss something that's significant and we've missed things I mean we we missed e-commerce for almost a decade messing around with all these different beliefs that we had and not really getting after it when we should have been and I remember when we first started talking to you guys at instacart I recognized how much people loved your service and how fast you were growing and that it was going to be significant and there was a question on our mind which I think we were transparent about all along which is do we try to do this ourselves or do we partner and if we partner what are the pluses and minuses of that and so I think not just with my leadership team but with all of us here there's a degree of humility that we know we can lose everything we've got like any day like retailers come and they go and they die and this business was born in 1962 I think it's worthy of being here in the next generation of retail because it has a really good and healthy culture it creates lots of opportunity for people and it is wired to save people money and help them live better like our folks around here are trying to figure out how to sell things for Less not more and most most companies are not wired that way so if we can make the digital transformation happen and get this company positioned for the next generation of retail that's that's obviously important in first prize and it's really motivating to me so I think that that Spirit of openness to say we don't have all this figured out is so important and I think you know it's represented here in large numbers well you should know is very affecting to me is something I've taken with me I I'm curious you know as a leader so here you have Doug mcmiller walking into you your office and you're pitching him and all of a sudden he leads with an unbelievable vulnerable moment and C kind of caught you off guard like what was your reaction and what was your takeaway and how did that shape that entire meeting and that relationship really well we were definitely in Doug's office you know we had we had Mak made made the pilgrimage down to Bentonville but that almost made more affecting because he's sitting there and you have this impression of what he's going to be like and it was totally different and so much better right we all knew he was going to be so impressive but you know so much better than what you know we expected in that and I think what it did was it made us one it raised the stakes for us to do a good job right because this person had obviously set it up as you know I'm interested in taking this meeting I'm interested in learning so we're like we better show up but the other thing was it it was so much better because it inspired us to be more real right we didn't feel like we had to be perfect on part of our business when we can say hey look this is something that's going great this is something that's not it just set up for a much more of a real conversation which was so much better and if I recall correctly and I'm certain I do the meeting actually went much longer than it was scheduled and we even noticed that because we said Doug was somebody who was going to spend time on something that was important he wasn't going to be you know presidential in his schedule of okay it's been you know 42 minutes and someone brings in a Post-It note okay it's time to go you know he was spending time with us and yeah it's something I think about all the time and then the Gratitude was a big deal to me I still remember him just talking about what this company has done for him and it was a cool thing versus a lot of the CEOs you see talking about what their role is and you know it was this thing of Walmart's going to live existed before me and it's going to live after me and it was a yeah it was very something I think about a lot this thing of keep keeping it real just to underline that like when you're earlier in your career and you're trying to impress people like I had meetings where I was trying to look the heart and be that person and some senior leader would just be super real and just dismiss everything all the baloney that I just said and just cut to it I think the older you get the less patience you have for things that aren't real and you get you know to a point where you just say just say the truth and just speak it like it is and I wish I could have done that earlier in my career I think we can all appreciate like when we're insecure and we try to project you know some image that we think people want to see and we don't and I think that comes from a self-doubt right like that maybe were not good enough and I know I live that when I got drafted I've talked a lot about that like my insecurities of what a lead I was a young kid and a in a locker room with you know a bunch of grown men like what what is the leader what should a leader say and I always I felt like I had to stretch myself and do more and I just want to go back because I feel like you just talked about like all of a sudden you got the bait and tackle and it's $200 million and or the butt whatever it was and you had no idea was there a I mean obviously how have you handled your own self-doubt along those way all the these stages then to to Sam's Club and then International Walmart and then obviously to the biggest coo job in on the planet like how have you handled that and then I think it with that has there been a culture where a growth culture like within Walmart it seems like right like that allows you to grow into that role and develop no doubt the company does a pretty good job but I I think most companies do like when I meet my peers most of the CEOs that I'm working with through business round table or things like that are people that have had 25 30 35 year careers and they've done all these jobs and they got tested like you got you got tested a dozen times by big jobs so the the leaders that get through that are are really capable and in our case here we're moving folks all the time I spend a lot of time now getting to do the moving to say hey go try this see if you can learn this stretch that way and back to your point about vulnerability the people that earn trust are the ones that are that are transparent and and vulnerable and honest like they'll say I don't know and they'll ask for help and we we see see instances around here now where there's something bad that's happened and you can watch someone draw Inward and focus on I must solve this problem kind of the individual contributor mindset like if I if I hunker down and focus on this I'll bring back an answer and then you see other people that are like that was bad and part of that was on me um can we solve this together and what do you think we ought to do and and those are the ones that earn that trust and get pulled through the system and I'm constantly trying to get those other folks to relax take a breath we know you're not perfect and we know the Situation's not perfect and if you'll just let us all help you you'll be fine but some people actually seem to really have a hard time doing that like repetitively we talk about this all the time especially with young people and when we talk to senior leaders and Executives they say how do we reach you know genz how do we reach the Millennials who grew up in a generation looking at their looking at their phone and swiping up and down and all you see are messages of perfection right and the narrative out there is no I got to have the answer I I got to be perfect because this is what I see and this is what success is when it's like every person has said the exact opposite it's about failing it's about learning it's about collaboration it's about being vulnerable and so like how do we how do how do we throw that message especially with young people trying to figure it out you definitely can't can't do it over Zoom we we've all taken some criticism for wanting people to come to work in our case we've got 2.1 million people and all but for about 70,000 of those people they're going to work every day in a store a club a distribution center they're definitely in person and the rest of us also benefit from being together from going on store trips together and and modeling behavior for each other and being around each other in the office just to have a conversation when you're getting coffee or walking down the hallway about what's happening in the world or what's happening in our business and so I I think the answer Shane is is modeling you can you can say it but if they actually see you do it it does have an impact and in our case not everybody's going to get it but the ones that do get it that want to that are leaning in that want to learn that want to grow that get there those are the ones that'll get pull through the system you know it's funny you said that Doug one of the things Shane taught us as an expression is we talk about parenting a lot right because all of us are dads and we're you know very focused on that and he says the lessons we learn from our he says from our fathers but in this case from our parents are the ones when they're not trying to teach us anything right and it's just like what you said on the modeling it's you know it's not the lecture it's not the sitdown it's just what we see every day you know and then you know as kids we learn it and that reminds me a bit look you've had a pretty demanding job the the whole way you know and you now you have kids 31 and 29 what did you do to stay connected to them what did you do to stay close to them you know the whole way uh when you were doing jobs like running Walmart International or running Sam's Club even before you know taking over a CEO first of all Shel did a great job Mar marrying well marrying well is a big key to success so sweetheart full check on that um I got rid of everything else like for me Faith Family and Walmart or it like I haven't played golf in years I like golf I would like to play golf someday I haven't had time to play golf in 15 years you have to just give up some stuff and those are the things that I gave up and I like I mentioned before and you guys are the same way I get I get my adrenaline and and energy from competition and so I'm getting a lot of fulfillment from from those things and as it relates to family I I would fly around the world in Walmart International land on Friday night and on Saturday morning drive to Tulsa for a soccer tournament and act interested you know you got to be present right and you know go to first day of school go to practice do what you can to prioritize and I don't think our guys would say that I wasn't present and that I missed out a lot and it's because I just got rid of everything else no shortcuts that that's you know there's only so many hours in the day must be present to win D you talk about like the culture of Walmart and even obviously going back to when you started did and then fast forwarding now and and now you have this comp you have a team of over two million people right like that's your locker room that's it's the biggest team in the world right and and how was something of that scale like you're the CEO office is so far removed from the Frontline Associates how do you combat that how do you create culture right like I I just think now the whole image again of you setting up for that shareholder meeting when you were a teenager and now you are the focal point of it it's so visible it's no longer in the Bonville high school gym right like it's a big time event and how do you how do you combat the scale of the company to create culture right like it's it's hard I mean it's got to be insanely challenging yeah it's a lot of fun to try and perpetuate something that should be perpetuated and what I've learned in at least in my experience is repetition really matters on the most important things I can't tell you how many times during the day I will say our purpose is our values are our culture should be repetition storytelling people remember stories much more than they remember facts I've done so many different presentations been part of so many different conversations and I get reflected Back stories all the time and no one reflects back data points and stats like it just almost never happens and then the other thing is you've got to be on the front line a lot you got to be in stores you got to be in Sam's Clubs which is actually the most one of the most fun things that we do and we do it all always on a surprise basis um a few days ago I was out in DC nobody knew I was coming every week when I'm not required to be here I'm out somewhere and you just show up and you're like hey my name's Doug how's it going and you can read body language and people will eventually like if you're there for a couple hours they eventually get comfortable enough to start telling you the truth about the challenges they're dealing with and that kind of lead the leaders shape the culture at the top we've got about 600 officers and my peers and I we our leaders we we invest in them and then you go straight to the sales floor and you figure out what's really going on and try to solve problems and if you view your job as a problem solver which is what we're all doing um you get up every morning and you realize something's going to happen today that's not what we want it to be and my job is to help figure out who's solving it do they have the resources they need and are we making progress and and it's really kind of simple manage the top and the bottom I don't get to middle management is you know wish an area where I wish I had more engagement but I'm I'm dependent upon some other folks to get to them are the surprise visits a legacy of Sam Walton because I I love I love the history of it and I know he used to everywhere he would go when he'd be traveling with his family and he'd go you know checking out stores and is that is that still kind of has that been in the company since you came up 100% and you probably remember from Reading Sam's book he flew around with his plane and so we've got it's it's it's a good book we've got a bunch a bunch of planes and we're surprising people all over the place this morning there were planes taken off and people don't know where they're going so yeah it's it's key what are the other legacies or lessons you know from the from Sam Walton I think one thing I remember from visiting is there's this giant for this is Alex and Shane there this giant font I mean I don't think I've ever I took a big picture of it and it says there is only one boss that is the customer right and I always joke with our kids that you could change that that there's only one boss you know your mother right that same sign could exist in in the G household um but you know there are all these things that are legacies I think from Sam Walton what are some of the other ones other than the surprise visits that you guys still have and you carry with you yeah I'm servant leadership would be at the top of my list I mean I think Sam's characteristics are still practiced here today because they work not because we're nostalgic about them and we talk about Sam all the time he passed away in 1992 and the company grew one of the things that Sam did is he had a great team around him like Sam managed his ego to the point that he let David glass Jack Shoemaker and all these other people that after he passed away took the company to extraordinary levels because he was giving away credit and he wasn't all about himself and so servant leadership is at the top of the list you you see images of him on one knee in a store listening to our Associates and taking notes and the most powerful voice when Sam would come back I had the privilege of being in some of the meetings on the weekends when he would come back from store trips and he'd have that yellow pad and he would say something like Sally and Tuscaloosa said and whatever she said was gold like you you couldn't she was a department manager in toys or something but she said we have too many Hot Wheels and therefore let it be known we have too many Hot Wheels eventually we got some data and the buyers like me started saying well actually s Sally only has 388 pieces and she needs 500 but you know Sally's word was gold Sam taught us about servant leadership and he made this emotion occur in the company where we were all in it together didn't matter what your job was you know you could get promoted to be a store manager today store managers make a lot of money you you you can you can change your life the American dream which can be repeated in Mexico and other countries you can live out there American Dream here you can start without a college education and you can become a vice president and you can change the trajectory of your family for a generation or Generations he made that happen Doug do you think that servant leadership helps and again I kind of I'm G I want like the the whole the pressure to perform right like you have immense pressure to perform and on all these positions they're there right like that pressure sometimes can take you down a negative route right like uh negative selft talk and doubt and I do feel like when you the the service leadership the servant leadership like when it's for others I I it just spins you in such a different direction me mentally right like a positive direction and do you think that's something about the the leadership culture at Walmart yeah I do think that that helps a lot when you're all in it together you can you can share in that pressure and you can realize just as in sports it's the input metrics that matter you the outputs are the outputs what happens in the quarterly financials are just a reflection of the tiny little operating things that we did to keep a store in stock to fulfill an e-commerce order to improve our code to deploy generative AI all the inputs and so when I hear people like uh like Nick Sabin talk about focusing on the inputs it really resonates with me and when I feel pressure I go I go get the team together to focus on the inputs how do you think about serial success right we we talk about most people don't know What It Takes when a championship whatever your Championship is until they do it and then once they do it they say oh my gosh that was the hardest thing I ever had to do and you want me to do it next quarter and next year yeah next five years so like like and you like your biggest enemy not necessarily as your competitor your biggest enemy is yourself because you know what it takes to win your championship and you got to do that again and do it in a different way so how do you think about climbing that mountain quarter after quarter year after year and and inspiring your your your your your folks to to reach new heights yeah we we laugh around here Shane about our daily sales we look at our first thing we do in the morning is we wake up and look at sales so you know it's 5:30 in the morning morning and you're looking at sales thinking oh great we had a good day oh no we had a bad day now I have to beat it just live that from day to day quarter to quarter I want it to be good not too good because then we'll have to beat it again the bar going up and up up so change change has to happen you don't get growth without change and you don't have change without risk and I'm a really conservative person but in this job and in my previous role we really had to take some big risks to get that growth and I think that's the other thing that comes to mind is you have to create an environment where people at all kinds of levels are comfortable taking intelligent risk how do you think about risk who who do you listen to and and and how do you how do you process all the data points you're getting I mean you have more data points than anybody how do you process all all those little data points when you're trying to make a Monumental growth change decision yeah intuition gut matters a lot you should you should use data but data frequently can't tell you about the future it can only tell you about the past generally speaking it's not always true but generally speaking and I I think you have to trust yourself and your team to go for it sometimes we we have these things that face us that frequently are choose the best choice from a list of answers not the right choice because every choice has some bad outcomes there are trade-offs in every one of them and we try to do that together because we're Collective wisdom is better than individual wisdom but sometimes you just have to make a call and tell everybody you made the call that's another thing I've learned that we have such a participative culture around here that if I don't actually say out loud I've made that decision people will still think about it they're still it's all negotiable and so sometimes you have to say no we we had that conversation here's what we're doing get on with it Doug how do you allow how do you enable some of the folks who are not in your seat to take risks the way you did earlier on in your career right is it that they kind of get full decision-making Authority on some level of stuff and you're like even if I think you're wrong I'm going to let you do it or is it or Andor is it something else where you encourage it and talk about your stories how do you enable that at a company as big as Walmart yeah when there's a failure that everybody can see but you know it was well thought out and well-intentioned and still didn't work you have to praise people publicly for taking that risk and get them up off the ground and let them get on with it when the pandemic happened we we had to really change quickly we we were on a kind of weekly and monthly Cadence of decision making there was a rhythm to the company and when the pandemic happened and all these questions were flying our way related to supply chain um issues keeping stores open keeping our assciates safe how we treat our suppliers there were all kinds of state regulations and C we were operating in we operated in 19 countries so each country was processing it differently one of the things that happened was we pretty quickly figured out that my leadership team needed a morning meeting every morning and so we started the day together and we would run the run the the zoom and ask okay Robbie what's on your plate today we'd all listen to that and then by the end of the call we were like okay these decisions need to be made I don't have any more information than you do so you make that decision and let us know tomorrow what you decided and the the speed of the business really picked up and I got to see the quality of decision making by our leadership team levels down and was really impressed with it which gave me kind of conscious confidence to give them more and make fewer decisions and now my I have my inner voice has still have to remind myself don't make too many decisions like if you're being directive be deliberate about being directive otherwise let them decide because they're closer to it and they'll make better decisions and you've got confidence in them that that pandemic experience brought at all to life and color Doug what do you look for in that leadership team like when you're making Personnel decisions I mean where where does Talent rank amongst trust and motivation we talk about all the time like the motivated person right the the guy or girl that's got the chip on their shoulder and wants to go you know prove something and can do you know like where where do all these things Rank and what do you look for which is all Talent all right Talent is very very you know the true I mean more than the operative word here Alex you know I have eight direct reports and some of them have big leadership jobs where they're running businesses the Run John ferer runs Walmart US Chris Nicholas runs Sam's us Kath mlay runs our international business um and then I've got a People leader a finance leader functional leadership and they have to work together to create the best outcomes and when we're interviewing for those jobs and and jobs at the higher level of the company we're looking for a degree of not competence is obviously very important experience sets very important but character is it about you usually when I'm sitting down to interview somebody from outside the company I'm that's my number one question is you're you're accomplished or you wouldn't have gotten here but is this all about you because if it's all about you you're not going to make it here this organization will eventually kick you out so you want great people that are willing to let others join in that success and do it together because these are to these are too big these issues are too significant for us to try and to do them individually so that's that's a big thing and internally you get that tested through experience you can see but externally it's it's riskier to hire High folks Alex you should share your coordinator versus culture leader Theory from the NFL with Doug and see what he thinks of it oh yeah so you know in there'll be every year there's going to be seven head coaching job you know openings and the pool of candidates almost exclusively comes from offensive the hottest offensive coordinators and defensive coordinators and those positions are very strategic like being an offensive coordinator you're very in the weeds um it's it's very schematic right like putting your players in positions to succeed and and really coaching the fine details those are not the things it takes to be a head coach they're very different right like and and I think to lead the room to put their staff together right and I think to like you talked about to lead your leaders um and then I think to have your pulse on the locker room like like Dan Campbell to me comes to mind he's just such a right like this guy was never the X's and O's Guru he is an unbelievable head coach though and I think he got looked over for a long long time because he wasn't the Hot Shot coordinator and so often we've seen these gurus like the savants they don't make great head coaches right and so um I think there is no trying to find the talent pipeline to be a good head coach like in the NFL they haven't found it yet I think it's a little bit of a guess work that totally resonates and some of our jobs like the job that kath mclay is doing now leading international she's got a leader for um Mexico and Central America another couple of leaders for India another one for China and so she has to be the one that manages the room she's the Dan Campbell and sometimes I've had people that have gone on to do that kind of a group job that kind of breath job and they don't like it because they want to go back to calling plays and designing the strategy and it's not for everybody like to your point so sometimes we make Talent choices to move people around out of some of those strategy roles into big leadership roles where you're just really leading people that's the primary function that you have just to see do you like it if you don't like it you probably shouldn't be Dan Campbell you have to have both of those skill sets to do the biggest job s absolutely a parallel do they teach you that in business school no no I mean I didn't go to business school obviously but you know it seems like that's a pretty basic lesson of leadership right so you know at some point you just got to figure that out and look around the room and say okay this this is how to be a leader it depends on your duration Shane you know if you have a short-term view of leadership then the thing that matters is like this specific tactical decision I think if you have a longer term view then you realize every everybody everybody who has any experience leading anything they always come back to the same thing as it comes back to the people every time every single person always says that but I do think it's a duration thing and I think I didn't go to business school but my impression is that it's just a shorter term set of stuff that they're trying to teach rather than the super long-term which is how do you get the best people in the world to want to work with you and accomplish things together like one of the things that uh I've mentioned this Doug before that's crazy you Walmart is a huge company with tons going on their responsiveness is as fast as the fastest startup in terms of like email responsiveness and text responsive it's crazy you'll ask them a question and it's really it is remarkable how quickly they will get to you with we're going to do it we're not going to do it or like here talk to this person and at the highest levels of the company and I do think that that comes back from some idea of like these are people that you know Doug looks for and that's obviously a character trait that matters of the responsiveness and you can feel it but um I think it's a duration uh is why they don't teach it Harvard case studies typically teach you how to be a good offensive coordinator but not a good head coach yeah yeah yeah that makes sense dou on that exact note the kind of the NBA business school mentality I I can't get out of my head when you first I believe first got the the CEO job kind of 2014 and faced obviously with the the looming Amazon e-commerce growth is kind of stagnated and you make the decision that to raise associate wages right and and the pressure from Wall Street that look so negatively on that and I think the stock took a huge hit and I I I think I read it correctly that it was like The Duality of it was the technically from your NBA side it was the worst day possible right here you just taking over this company take this huge yet but like on the other the leadership side it was the best day right like because of what you did for all the associates out there and The Duality of that I think I just can't get over right because it's not just the NBA thing Shane right like it's not there's so much more to obviously your position and your job and I don't know if can you just speak to that I just found it and it worked this is the other thing it was the right answer even though it was you know uh negatively received at first by certain audiences yeah I think robie's point about time Horizon is kind of the headline here if you're thinking about this long term it's clearly the right thing to do if you're thinking about it short term it it's not in a sense but you're right it my best days in my entire career are the ones where we've raised wages for associates that's my favorite thing to do we want to do that as much as possible and there are things staggered coming and things we've done that I'm I'm excited about and proud of and it can never be enough that's everybody deserves it that's all good stuff in that particular instance we were not having a very good sales result in our Walmart super centers and I had been an international for 5 years and Sam's for six years before that so 11 years outside of the Walmart US business and the Walmart US business needs attention so as I started doing surprise store visits and just taking my notepad the associates tell you exactly what they need like my schedule's inconsistent our inventory is too heavy we've gotten away from everyday low price we need a wage investment our prices are a little high here and there it's like a prescription from a doctor they just tell you so if you went with me you'd be like duh like in Colorado they told me the same thing they told me in Florida the same thing they told me in this other place so it must be the formula so I come back with that plan with our team to talk to our board and our back to risk-taking I had a recommendation and it was at a certain level and our board said it's not enough go give them more which increased the pressure from Wall Street in the short term and emboldened me that we were on the right track and that was such a great moment in our history because the board and the Walton family said we believe in the plan we're willing to go through short-term pain for long long term gain go for it in fact go for it bigger I'm really proud of them for that and grateful for that and it set the tone for everything else and so then you had a sequence okay we're g to do this first and our Associates will know we're listening to them and care about them and we're going to make these other changes they they gave us on our yellowad and then we're going to do this in Ecom and then we're going to do this International and it just laid out into a a plan that came from them in the beginning and that's really rewarding do they make you guys uh have to be Bronco fans now by the way yes required Greg make guys you know I I'm a lifelong Cowboys fan so I'm find it really easy to be a Broncos fan right now yeah that's great Doug one thing that we asked uh everyone and we'd love to ask you you know the name of our podcast is glue guys right and it can be glue gals glue people but the idea is that there's a set of people that really matter uh in your life on your team who aren't always you know the uh uh they don't always get the Limelight right and um so who are some of the glue guys or glue people in your life and we'd love to hear about them we'd love to hear about what impact they've had on you yeah I'm personally a tight-knit family and lots of members of family that form that glue um professionally um I get to sign associate service award certificates every month people that are celebrating 25 30 35 sometimes it's 50 years of experience we have a few Associates that have made within 60 years of service so there's this moment every month where I'm reminded of who's actually doing the work it's really cool there's a big stack of them there's a lot of them Ricky Oliver and Greg Carter come to mind because we've been through these storms recently the Hurricanes that hit the Carolinas in Florida these are two truck drivers who have basically a Ministry through Walmart they're professional truck drivers all the time but they when storms happen they have some specialized equipment to cook for people they rally other associates including other truck drivers and they show up like I was in Augusta Georgia after the storms went through there they were Augusta for days serving tens of thousands of hot meals to people that need food and you'll go you'll see them go from there to the Carolinas to Florida as the storms work through and by the time they're through I think they serve something close to 100,000 meals to people and I love them and I love that and they've been doing it for years and they're part of the culture that holds these people together so you know when you think about our truck drivers and how hard their jobs are they are called to a higher purpose of serving others and not just Ricky and Greg but but all of them that participate in this process gets that get that fulfillment and stuff like that happens all over the company all the time and th those are the glue people at Walmart oh that's so good yes that's freaking Greg I love it they're great they text me all the time um like here's what's happening we need a new truck I'm like okay whatever you guys want like we'll get you a new truck get you bigger cooker whatever you're the best I think the idea that there's these people like you said the the ministry through Walmart with the scale at which you guys operate and the kind of local approach that you guys have it enables these incredible stories like that right and I think that one of the things Doug we talked about in the past I don't know if you've read the Phil Knight book Shoe dog but you know he talks a lot about the reason he was good at you know leading Nike was because he believed in it he really believed it wasn't it wasn't an act and I think one of the things that comes through with you so clearly on Walmart is you know it's in there it's it's in your blood you believe it you really believe in the impact that this company has and can have and I can tell you it it comes through in all the interactions that you know you have with others too I would want to do a job you didn't really believe in I think there's some people that do that but that that's just sounds awful to me it's got to be real who are some of the other leaders that you respect or you know uh learn from or Look to You know whenever you have something that matters to you most of the people who had the biggest impact on me are former Walmart leaders you know watching what David glass did after Sam Walton passed away and getting to spend a lot of time with him had a huge impact on me for example um today I'm talking to a lot of technologists I'm asking Sacha and Sundar and and um Sam maltman and others for time can I come see you can we have a quick phone call like are we being aggressive enough on generative AI are we investing in the right areas our strategy is different than some of our competitors is that smart so those kinds of leaders one of the great benefits of having the job I have is that you can call people and they'll call you back they'll they'll spend time talking to you and I try to take fullly advantage of that to to get an education and change what I know change my mindset change my habits in a way helps keep this company contemporary so I I got a lot of advisers a lot of peers that I've been fortunate to get to know well we really really really appreciate your time this was absolutely fantastic and uh I will I'll end with one thing that you got me in a little trouble last night Doug with with my teammates here because I was uh excited about our chat and I texted these guys last night being like hey you guys remember we have Doug tomorrow morning so just trying to make sure you guys guys are you know all ready with your questions and going to be on time and they accuse me of stereotyping the athletes that they weren't going to be aete on time or prepared for our meeting with uh our time with you but uh I think couple Pros here exactly we know you're a busy man Doug and we appreciate your time so many good nuggets of of wisdom on not just business but life and we we appreciate your thoughts and your energies hey he he he hey hey he hey