#345: Doug McMillon — CEO of Walmart

Doug McMillon (IG: @dougmcmillon https://www.instagram.com/dougmcmillon/) is president and chief executive officer of Walmart, a company that, if it were a country, would be the 25th largest economy in the world. Walmart serves 265 million customers weekly in 27 countries across more than 11,000 stores and online, and the company employs roughly 2.2 million associates worldwide, which would equate to the second largest army in the world (behind China) if it were tasked with defending that 25th largest economy. 75 percent of Walmart's store management team began as hourly associates, and Doug is no exception. He started out in 1984 as a summer associate in the Walmart distribution center, and in 1990 while pursuing his MBA, he rejoined the company as an assistant manager in Tulsa before moving to merchandising as a buyer trainee. He worked his way up, and from 2005 to 2009 he served as president and CEO of Sam's Club (owned and operated by Walmart) with sales of more than $46 billion annually during his tenure. From February of 2009 to 2014, Doug served as president and CEO of Walmart International, a fast-growing segment of Walmart's overall operations. 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. He also serves on the executive committee of the Business Roundtable and the advisory board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China. This episode was recorded live at the Heartland Summit http://www.theheartlandsummit.org/ in Bentonville, AR, surrounded by the jaw-droppingly mind-blowing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art https://crystalbridges.org/. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn https://LinkedIn.com/Tim and its job recruitment platform, which offers a smarter system for the hiring process. If you've ever hired anyone (or attempted to), you know finding the right people can be difficult. If you don't have a direct referral from someone you trust, you're left to use job boards that don't offer any real-world networking approach. LinkedIn https://LinkedIn.com/Tim, as the world's largest professional network — used by more than 70 percent of the US workforce — has a built-in ecosystem that allows you to not only search for employees, but also interact with them, their connections, and their former employers and colleagues in a way that closely mimics real-life communication. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  No, we're just seeing an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by LinkedIn. The right hire can make a huge impact on your business. The wrong hire can crater 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. And I've had a chance to hire two such people in the last year, and that has just made my business take a quantum leap forward and my complexity in my personal and business life get cut dramatically.

• 1:09Tim Ferriss?

  And this type of simplification cannot be overvalued. We think a lot about hiring, and I think a lot about hiring, and it is a skill that I've had to learn. It is important to find the right person. But where do you find that person? You can post a job on a job board and hope that that right person finds your job, that they are on the internet, happening to scan something here and there, and then find you. But, think about it, how often do you hang out on job boards? The answer is probably not very often. So don't leave finding someone great to chance when you can post your job exactly where people go every day to make connections, grow in their careers, and discover job opportunities. That is LinkedIn. Most LinkedIn members haven't recently visited the top job boards,

• 1:53Tim Ferriss?

  but nine out of 10 members are open to new opportunities. And with 70% of the US workforce on LinkedIn, posting there is the best way to get your job opportunity in front of more of the right people. And you can be very, very highly targeted and specific. People who are qualified for the role you have and ready for something new. This is where you find them. It's the best way to find that person, that key person who will help you grow your business. And this is why a new hire is made every 10 seconds using LinkedIn. That's bonkers, every 10 seconds. So head to LinkedIn.com forward slash Tim and get $50 off your first job post. That's LinkedIn.com forward slash Tim, T I M, to get $50 off your first job post.

• 2:38Tim Ferriss?

  LinkedIn.com forward slash Tim. Take a look. Terms and conditions do apply.

• 2:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss 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, the HeartlandSummit.org, which is about, of course, making us think about more than

• 3:32Tim Ferriss?

  just the coasts. And we are strongest when we're most connected to each other. And the gaps that we experience in the US, inequality and disconnection 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...

• 4:07Tim Ferriss?

  Mind blowing, jaw dropping as a location. I encourage everybody to check it out. CrystalBridges.org. And let's jump into Walmart first and Doug second. So Walmart, here's some stats. In fiscal year 2018 Walmart registered approximately 500 billion in revenue, which is 5 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 25th largest economy in the world. Walmart serves 265 million customers a week in 27 countries and across more than 11,000 stores. And of course, online is growing rapidly from an e-commerce standpoint.

• 4:48Tim Ferriss?

  They have 2.2 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 combined, and close to the population of Houston. 75% of their store management team started as hourly associates, like stockers, cashiers, cart pushers, and those managers make an average of 170K 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 2,000 locations today and

• 5:32Tim Ferriss?

  will serve 70% of the population by the end of the year. How is that possible? Well, 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart and they will offer grocery delivery for 40% of the US population by year end. It's really wild how big and the scope of which, the breadth of which this company operates. And last fact, Sam Walton started Walmart with one small 5 and 10 store in rural Bentonville, Arkansas in the 50s and grew the company to be Fortune number one. We hear about Fortune 100 companies, Fortune number one. And I spent time in that initial store, that very first original store, which is amazing.

• 6:13Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm going to put some photographs up of some of the memorabilia and so on, which is quite frankly, really inspiring. And I'm not getting paid to say that. It's just amazing how incredibly...

• 6:28Tim Ferriss?

  Largest companies become from such humble beginnings. So to Doug, Doug McMillan, M-C-M-I-L-L-O-N. Facebook, Doug McMillan, Instagram.com/DougMcMillan. LinkedIn, also Doug McMillan. Is president and CEO of Walmart. Back in 84 Doug started out as an hourly summer associate in Walmart Distribution Center. And in 1990, 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 2005 to 2009, he served as president and CEO of Sam's Club, owned and operated by Walmart with sales of more than 46 billion annually during his

• 7:13Tim Ferriss?

  tenure. From February of 09 to February of 14 Doug served as president and CEO of Walmart International, a very 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 U.S.-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 Roundtable and the Advisory Board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China. Doug really came to the table.

• 7:56Tim Ferriss?

  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, at the very least, all the mountain biking trails. You guys can do a little Google search on that and see what pops up. But without further ado, please enjoy this very wide-ranging conversation with Doug McMillan.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Is that your fan group over here?

• 8:28Tim Ferriss?

  That's my plant. I hired one person. I'll give him his 20 later. Thank you for that.

• 8:34Tim Ferriss?

  So I think we should just jump right into this. What a beautiful location. It's 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.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  It feels like a lot of time and I don't do interviews that are very long. And that clock says 60 minutes on it. Could we at least start it? Because I'm used to like 15 minutes. I don't want to be up here that long.

• 9:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so we're edging in from different sides. So I guess maybe you do shorter. Usually I do 2 to 17 hours. So we'll meet in the middle on this one. And 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.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  The bait mate story. Does anyone in the room know what bait mate is?

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Okay, so when I moved into the home office, I'd worked in a store. This was 1991. And I got into our buyer training program at Walmart. And I was excited because they were putting me in sporting goods. I got to sporting goods and they gave us fishing tackle. And the other buyers, I didn't know it immediately, were hazing me. And as the new person, they said on Saturday, at the Saturday morning meeting, you must present an item that you have negotiated a lower price on and reduce the retail price. And you have to explain in the meeting, the item, the price, etc. 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

• 10:19Speaker 03

  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 coated in bait mate. So it was over $2. 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 from high to somewhere off the charts. So I 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.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  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?"

• 11:15Tim Ferriss?

  How did you respond to that?

• 11:21Speaker 03

  I think I just walked away. I don't remember having anything pithy to say. But I think it was probably awkward because I was so nervous and he was trying to break the ice. But we sold a lot of bait mate.

• 11:35Tim Ferriss?

  Were there any other particular approaches or techniques or types of training that you received as a buyer that come to mind? Because I don't know the first thing certainly about buyer training, but that is what seemed to be a very important component of what Walmart does. Certainly, it's a big piece of it.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's kind of important.

• 11:55Tim Ferriss?

  Getting that price down to $197 for an important item like bait mate. And what type of training did you experience? Are there any particular memories or stories that come to mind?

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, most of the 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 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, one of my supervisors, a guy named Dave Dible, emphasizing 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 them 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.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  You want suppliers to make money because you want them to be here in 10 years' time. We're going to grow, we're going to need supply. So Walmart has, in some circles, this reputation for being really tough. 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 P&G 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, kind of how to, how to think on the job, but with some principles behind you.

• 13:21Tim Ferriss?

  You seem to be, from what I've observed, also in Facebook posts, don't worry, a voracious reader. And I've noticed a number of books, like Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal. That was from, I think, your 2006 recap, where you took a photograph of books that have had a-

• 13:43Speaker 03

  2016.

• 13:44Tim Ferriss?

  2016, excuse me. Big impact on your thinking, that year. Are there any books that you received from people that have had a big impact on you, or that you have given out more than once to people, for any reason?

• 13:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's that book about Amazon, that one comes to mind.

• 14:00Tim Ferriss?

  The Everything Store?

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:04Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you give that book out?

• 14:06Speaker 03

  You need to understand what you're up against, you know? 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, if we went over there right now, my book, 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'm trying to learn, and we've got to, 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. So, we are spending a lot of time trying to learn new things. So if you looked at my last- Month in the pie chart of time allocation,

• 14:50Speaker 03

  you'd be surprised how much of that time was learning about 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 50 years' time. So like on Team of Teams, Stan McChrystal, 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, 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.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  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 an officers' meeting, we were talking, we've got a few hundred officers, we were talking about what our strategy is again, giving people a chance to ask questions, and then saying to everybody, Andy, go. This is on 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, really helpful.

• 16:08Tim Ferriss?

  How do you pick books? Because I think everyone here, whether it's a stack of books to the knee, or just considering all of 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?

• 16:34Speaker 03

  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. The challenge is filtering through which one you're going to read next. So right now, I'm about a third of the way through Ray Dalio's Principles, and that's because Greg Penner, our chairman, asked me to read it, so it went to the top of the stack.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm finding that one hard to read. But most of the ones that I've been choosing on my own are related to change management and specifically becoming a digital enterprise. Because 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 the DNA and the values and the culture, that one of our officers today during the Q and A grabbed the microphone, her name's Jody, and Jody said, "You said it earlier, but I just want to underline it. The thing that will cause us to win is our humanity.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  And yeah, we need to learn how to become a digital enterprise, but we understand we're a company made up of 2.2 million associates and that human interaction in the future will matter. Yes, automation will do things that the humans might not want to do, mundane routine tasks at store level or in a warehouse or 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, you see Nextdoor or Facebook or others that are creating a digital sense of community 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,

• 18:21Speaker 03

  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've got to do, we think we've got an advantage.

• 18:30Tim Ferriss?

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

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Yes, so our US leadership team, Greg Foran, Judith McKinnon, and others, a few years ago, took an idea that they'd seen us practice in the UK to put training academies in our stores. And now around the United States, we have about 200 locations dotted around the map that are, 138 of them actually, are in the back rooms of stores. 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 some soft skills.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  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 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.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  But we also teach people how to do routine tasks, like, so you know Ivanka Trump is interested in 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. She scored a 12 out of 20, so we got a little work to do there. But you can use VR in ways that, you know, get you off the sales floor, let you have an opportunity to really learn when you're not interrupted by customers. And we'll have 17,000 VR headsets deployed by the end of the year for things like that.

• 20:54Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible. I want to talk a little bit about your personal practices, because you have, of course, many responsibilities to other people, but I would imagine 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 Sam Walton's keychain next to his red pickup. And there's a gigantic metal plate about five times the size of, say, a nail file. And in huge font it says, "Go for it."

• 21:35Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 21:53Speaker 03

  I think that "go for it" was a phrase we used in one of our annual... We had kind of a theme for the year. And we were growing so fast and that was really a rallying cry at one point. For me personally, the first thing that comes to mind is a cross that I have in my office. There's a Sam's Club member that I met years ago named Martha Hawkins. And we happened to see Martha in Montgomery, Alabama, a couple of weeks ago. She runs a restaurant, but she's got an incredible personal story, overcoming a drug addiction and serving others. And we asked her to come to a Sam's 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.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  And I'm standing in front of all of our club managers with a group, you know, that's five or 10 times bigger than this. And she grabs the microphone and starts giving her personal testimony. It was awesome. And we've just been pen pals 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 going to encourage you and I'm going to pray for you." She says stuff like, "When you show up at the restaurant, like I've prayed all the calories out of the food."

• 23:14Tim Ferriss?

  If that works, let me know.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Chip Peach Cobbler that didn't feel to me like that had been accomplished. But that's, there are other mementos, but that comes to mind.

• 23:27Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I had read somewhere, well, let me backtrack. You are clearly very curious and I think to maintain that level of curiosity, which is necessary for the business, certainly, you need to sustain a level of humility. And there are different ways to do that. So a friend of mine who's been on my podcast, Alexis Ohanian, who's 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 on your phone, at least at some point, this was in an interview, you had the top 10 retailers, I want to say from the last

• 24:12Tim Ferriss?

  five decades, on your phone. Can you explain why that was or why that is?

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, because retailers grow and die. And I've been doing this almost 30 years now, which is amazing to me, because I still feel like that in some ways, we're just getting started. But if you're a student of retail, I suppose it's probably true for other industries, more or less, but in retail, 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 when Walmart, Kmart, and Target started, which all started

• 25:00Speaker 03

  in 1962, Dollar General, I think, did it the same year, the retailers that were before them, Sears is interesting to talk about this week, they thought they had it. I mean, who are these upstarts? Walmart started in Rogers, Arkansas. Where's Rogers, Arkansas? No one was scared that day when the first Walmart started.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  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 some Walmart 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's the thing that people underestimate about Walmart right now, is that it has an ability to change.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  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's only been explained to them through the media. They've had no personal interaction behind the scenes, other than, other than in the stores or online. 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.

• 26:33Tim Ferriss?

  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, it could be a decision, it could just be a difficult or dark moment for you. Because what I'd 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 homerun.

• 27:16Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  From this week? I'm just thinking about all the stuff that's happened in the last two weeks.

• 27:31Tim Ferriss?

  I would say anything that, anything that sticks out, it could be from 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it doesn't, doesn't matter time-wise, but something that was truly, truly difficult for you.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of them, but I guess one of the themes that comes to mind is acquisitions.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  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. 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've got Flipkart. We invested, Stuart, $16 billion to buy 77% of a company that loses a lot of money. That sounds brilliant, doesn't it? And before that, we did the board and management, Jet.com.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  And Jet.com was like a billion dollar run rate and lost money and still does. 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 fret over those. And we're moving faster now, we're taking more risk, but that's an area where I have a lot of self-doubt. You have a meeting and you hear about the strategy and you think, "Yeah, we've got to 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."

• 29:11Speaker 03

  And then you get up the next morning and you go back through it. And we just iterate to a point where finally you've got to make a decision and go for it.

• 29:18Tim Ferriss?

  How do you navigate that? Because I think a lot of people hem and haw or go back and forth on potentially big decisions. What do you say to yourself? What do you ask yourself? Or who do you ask questions to try to gain clarity?

• 29:30Speaker 03

  Well, it's collective wisdom for sure. And one of the great things, it's always been true in these jobs at Walmart, because, 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.

• 29:44Tim Ferriss?

  They will take the call, yes.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  And in the job that I'm in right now, I get exposed to incredible people and you can use that collective wisdom by asking questions. So that's definitely part of it. But the other thing that runs through my mind is, 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?

• 30:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  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.

• 30:15Tim Ferriss?

  So this might be too inside baseball, and if we don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But let's talk about Flipkart for a second. So I think you'll do fine on Flipkart.

• 30:26Tim Ferriss?

  If a few things are probably true, but very bullish. What did you have to believe to be true for that to make sense?

• 30:35Speaker 03

  So first one is, do you believe in India? And the environment's 1.2 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 change happening there. 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 10 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 e-commerce business in India is under 3% of the total business, and we're certain it's going to get bigger. So you've got a big pie and it's getting bigger, and you've got a small section called e-commerce today, is that going to get bigger? Yes.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Who are the players within that? There aren't very many. The number's been whittling down, which is, you know, what we're learning about digital businesses and e-commerce businesses. 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's an ecosystem of businesses. There's a last mile delivery component, there's an e-commerce component related to apparel, there's kind of a traditional e-commerce business, there's a 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,

• 32:03Speaker 03

  not just a pure e-commerce business selling drag 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 gets disrupted in so many different ways. They have to be quick. You have to be agile. You've got to be on the ground. You've got 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.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  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 rewards got to match up. And in the case of Flipkart, it does.

• 33:00Tim Ferriss?

  And you have the ability to iterate after that large bet, which kind of mitigates some of, but not all of the risk as well.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  And we're going to learn things in India that we can use in other places, including here.

• 33:11Tim Ferriss?

  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 10-person company, they can't even imagine what it might be like to experiment within, say, Walmart. And they might think that it's trying to steer a continent. I would love to, because I'm personally curious, talk about Sam's Club. I grew up going to Sam's Club, getting in the car, and it was like a pilgrimage to go to Sam's Club to buy all the things that we needed growing up. And 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 know.

• 33:54Tim Ferriss?

  But could you please explain what this means?

• 33:57Speaker 03

  You really don't know what that means?

• 33:59Tim Ferriss?

  I really don't know what it means. I mean, I have like a one-line idea of what it might mean.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Well, we must not be doing a very good job, Dan, if you don't know what it is.

• 34:07Tim Ferriss?

  Keep in mind, I was going during like the Pleistocene era. This is early, so I may have not come across treasure hunting.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  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 a long time ago, when I was at Sam's, the most extreme example I could remember is we sold a Jet during our holiday period.

• 34:43Tim Ferriss?

  A Jet?

• 34:43Speaker 03

  We had a holiday catalog, and we made a commitment for a Jet and sold it. Didn't make a lot of money, but it generated a lot of buzz. But we've sold like a wine basement. We've sold extraordinary travel experiences, $70,000 price points. We sold a cool Harley one time that was $75,000. We bought one, and we told everybody in our ad, "We have one, so whoever gets there first gets it." And we sold it to some plumber in Indiana, if I remember correctly.

• 35:20Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I can't just move on from this. So, is this like the $200 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 of, say, a Jet or the Harley is driving foot traffic versus PR versus other considerations?

• 35:39Speaker 03

  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.

• 35:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  But you do blend, like, with our merchandising assortment, whether it's online or in stores, Walmart or Sam's or other brands, you blend together the practical with the more aspirational all the time, trying to attract people to come to your place.

• 36:04Tim Ferriss?

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

• 36:17Speaker 03

  That's very true.

• 36:19Tim Ferriss?

  So where does the poised, calm, edgy come from?

• 36:23Tim Ferriss?

  I have all the dirt, all the skeletons. Uh, so the poised and calm, is that nature? Is that nurture?

• 36:30Speaker 03

  No, I'm faking that.

• 36:32Tim Ferriss?

  You're faking it? This, this is something I think a lot of people would like to fake. If that's, if that's actually true. No, so tell me, I mean, talk about where that comes from. If it comes from anywhere, or if that's just from the womb onward.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  Like most of us, it probably comes from your parents and your upbringing mostly. Uh, my dad's like that, and then the older I get, the more I see my father in me, which, you know, I have mixed feelings about.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  My, 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 18 people staying in this one house. A bunch of them are 20-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.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  It's for real. Her nickname, her grandson's nickname for her is Killer.

• 37:39Tim Ferriss?

  How, how does that, how does that manifest in your life?

• 37:43Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm super competitive. Like, I don't like to lose at anything.

• 37:47Tim Ferriss?

  At anything?

• 37:47Speaker 03

  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.

• 38:11Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, hi, you know, I was, I was, I think I was reading, it might have been on the podcast, uh, exchange with Peter Thiel, and he, he was describing how, and 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?

• 38:33Speaker 03

  Mm-mm, no.

• 38:35Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Can't think of one.

• 38:36Tim Ferriss?

  Moving on.

• 38:40Tim Ferriss?

  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 waking up?

• 38:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, very much so. 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. Well, first, there's a daily devotional. Right now, Tony Dungy's got this daily devotional book, so I start with that, doesn't take a lot of time, but I do it every day.

• 39:15Tim Ferriss?

  And that's something you read, that's something you read out loud?

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Not out loud, but like I'm in the kitchen, I've got CNBC and Squawk Box on, I'll mute it for a second, I'll read the daily devotional. Then I'm into the Wall Street Journal, glancing at the New York Times, CNBC app, CNBC's playing in the background, CNBC's in the car watching Squawk Box, and then I get to the office.

• 39:34Tim Ferriss?

  What time do you wake up generally?

• 39:36Speaker 03

  5:30 and I'm in the office, about 6:30.

• 39:38Tim Ferriss?

  What does your default breakfast look like? What do you eat for breakfast?

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Two fried eggs and toast. That's the first time I've ever been asked that.

• 39:48Tim Ferriss?

  I got one original question. Two fried eggs and toast. Do you drink coffee?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:56Tim Ferriss?

  How much coffee do you drink?

• 39:56Speaker 03

  Too much.

• 40:00Tim Ferriss?

  That sounds like a conversation.

• 40:04Tim Ferriss?

  You get to the office, alright, you arrive at the office, then what do you do? If you're in town, is there, I can't imagine that it's just left to whim, so there must be some structure, some lattice work on your day or week. Are there any must dos on a daily or weekly basis?

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a lot of variety, which is one of the things I love about it. 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 happened, and so...

• 40:46Speaker 03

  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 deck and say, "This is for tomorrow's meeting and it's 40 pages." We have a board meeting that's got 1,000 pages of reading material. So, you've 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 people can read things before, and so there's a lot of that going on. And then, there's just a ton of variety. I mean, I talked to Lou Holtz 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.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  And Lou is responsible or working with a healthcare company, and he read in the news that we were working on healthcare. So, it's hilarious. I got to ask him, "What would you do? Could you fix Razorback football?" Because we've won one game this year, and he said, "Yeah, by the second quarter," which I thought was hilarious. Well, come do it, man. 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, you know, how to manage ethics within that country. So, it's just a ton of variety every day, and there's really not a down minute, and the days are never what you think they're going to 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

• 42:13Speaker 03

  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 going to schedule it out this way." We're in 27 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 Laurie lives in New Jersey, and we just had people distributed.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  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, and we pretty much stick with it. But, within a day, it can get crazy because things come up.

• 43:15Tim Ferriss?

  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 or strategies that you've developed so that you just don't wear yourself out? What are some of the, what are 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?

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:42Tim Ferriss?

  What seems to me to be a just ultra-endurance marathon that doesn't end?

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, sleep's real important. For me personally, sleep's real important. I wish I needed less, but I need, I need seven or eight hours. Time with family's 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. Shelley and 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's a big deal. If I can 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, because it's too much, you just have to go back and

• 44:31Speaker 03

  say, "I know what I was supposed to do on Tuesday, but clear it." Because I just need some time to get back up on my feet, read a few things. So, we, we will call an audible and put a fire break in every once in a while.

• 44:44Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 44:50Speaker 03

  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 rethink that kind of stuff. Like when we, is it Berkman you take? It's one of the tests where you can kind of assess yourself and...

• 45:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it could be.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  You can be on one of these extremes. I'm kind of right in the middle and pivot both ways. So there are times when I just, I need half, and I can't do it in 30 minutes. I need like a few hours to think.

• 45:34Tim Ferriss?

  And 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. What does, what does it look like for Doug to sit down and think? Do you stare off into space? Do you read? Do you take a long shower? Listen to classical music? What does it look like?

• 45:51Speaker 03

  It's drawing pictures.

• 45:53Tim Ferriss?

  Drawing pictures?

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Yes, schematics of how strategy works or how a problem is deconstructed. So, and there are people that work in the room. I can't hardly have a conversation with Brett without the whiteboard. And I'm so thankful, 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." Because I live kind of in 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've got this big whiteboard and we have conversations where Brett's got a marker

• 46:36Speaker 03

  and I've got a marker and we're drawing pictures of, well, if the customer experience went this way or went that way, or the financials look like this instead of that. What does healthcare really look like? You've got 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.

• 47:08Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 47:19Speaker 03

  It's by myself, 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 phone call 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.

• 47:38Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. Glad I asked that. This is a tough question, but I want to go fishing and see what we get here. So it's in the last handful of years, it could be five, three, it 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, would you say? Any change of thinking, new thing that you do or have stopped doing, anything at all? New addition to your life?

• 48:09Speaker 03

  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 routine and disciplined too often, so will everybody else.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  And so, and we were talking about risk today with our officers and trying to encourage them to take 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.

• 49:19Tim Ferriss?

  What led to?

• 49:22Tim Ferriss?

  Sort of the 15-minute increment routine Doug to the being more open to change. Was there a particular event, or conversation, or period of time that led you to realize how valuable that could be? What led to the change?

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Probably more than one thing. The realization that without it, 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 experience we had in Walmart one time, this lady that worked 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 such a little thing, but it's indicative of how hard it is for us to change personally.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  So, like, 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 about it.

• 50:36Tim Ferriss?

  That watch experiment is really cool. A friend of mine 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 just the potential importance of change, but how you have to give it some time to become instilled. When you feel, and maybe you don't feel this, but when you feel it seems like 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?

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Prayer.

• 51:18Tim Ferriss?

  Prayer. Do you have particular prayer or type of prayer? What does that look like?

• 51:22Speaker 03

  This is really getting personal. We got like 2:55 left on the clock.

• 51:29Tim Ferriss?

  2:55. So it's definitely if you want to dance around the ring until the time goes out, you can do that.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  That's what I'm trying to figure out right now.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  There's a bigger thing at play here. And it's bigger than any of us. And realizing that. And realizing that if you grip that steering wheel too hard, you will fail. 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. It's being quiet. And he'll put people in my life, it feels like this happens frequently, where there's 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, very real

• 52:25Speaker 03

  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.

• 52:34Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you for this.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  I can't believe you got me to say all that. Let's wrap this dude up.

• 52:42Tim Ferriss?

  Who invited this guy? 122, 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?

• 53:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, a bunch of them. The one that 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 Frito-Lay chips was one of my items. And I got really excited, this is early 90s, because Frito-Lay brought out lime-flavored Tostitos, lime and chili flavored Tostitos.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  And so I wanted to put it on the front page of the Walmart tab. And we did back then, print tabs, mail to American homes, you know, tens of millions of them. It's 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 in-stocks gotta be there 'cause we print a hundred million of these things, it's gotta be great. Well, we put, I got the whole cover of the tab. I talked marketing into letting me have the whole thing. And we fanned out Lay's and Cheetos. And right there in the front, lime and chili flavored Tostitos. And the tab hit, and the phone started ringing. And we learned that Frito-Lay didn't have that item west of the Mississippi.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  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. And to make a long story short, like 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.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  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 gonna do about it? And Frito-Lay 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 24 hours so that store managers had something to give to the customer when they complained. But that didn't, that didn't totally satisfy the customer. So it was really bad. So nobody would talk to me. Like I was, I don't know, what do you call it, pariah? Pariah. So everybody knows how bad that is.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  So I'm walking down the hallways, and people that I thought were my friends, they had their head down.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Like I'm death, like I'm dead, it's over. And this lasts for like two, three days, because the tab is a week long. So you don't get to just get up the next day and forget about it. You gotta live with it for a week. And there was one person in the whole company that reached out to me. And his name's JR Campbell. JR was a DMM, a 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.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  But I learned empathy from that mistake. I 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.

• 56:46Tim Ferriss?

  I know we're at 000. 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 put on that billboard?

• 57:01Speaker 03

  Shop at Walmart.

• 57:11Tim Ferriss?

  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 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.

• 57:53Tim Ferriss?

  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 Ferriss Show is brought to you by LinkedIn. The right hire can make a huge impact on your business. The wrong hire can create your business. And I have seen example after example from thousands of my readers, at a minimum, where they have told me stories of how finding the right person at the right time,

• 58:33Tim Ferriss?

  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." And I've had a chance to hire two such people in the last year, and that has just made my business take a quantum leap forward, and my complexity in my personal and business life gets cut dramatically. And this type of simplification cannot be overvalued. You think a lot about hiring, and I think a lot about hiring, and it is a skill that I've had to learn. It is important to find the right person. But where do you find that person? You can post a job on a job board and hope that that right person finds your job,

• 59:16Tim Ferriss?

  that they are on the internet, happening to scan something here and there, and then find you. But think about it, how often do you hang out on job boards? The answer is probably not very often. So don't leave finding someone great to chance, when you can post your job exactly where people go every day to make connections, grow in their careers, and discover job opportunities. That is LinkedIn. Most LinkedIn members haven't recently visited the top job boards, but nine out of 10 members are open to new opportunities. And with 70% of the US workforce on LinkedIn, posting there is the best way to get your job opportunity in front of more of the right people. And you can be very, very highly targeted and specific.

• 59:58Tim Ferriss?

  People who are qualified for the role you have and ready for something new. This is where you find them. It's the best way to find that person, that key person, who will help you grow your business. And this is why a new hire is made every 10 seconds using LinkedIn. That's bonkers, every 10 seconds. So head to LinkedIn.com/Tim and get $50 off your first job post. That's LinkedIn.com/Tim, T-I-M, to get $50 off your first job post. LinkedIn.com/Tim. Take a look. Terms and conditions do apply.