This week on the Be Epic podcast, Brent engages in a fascinating conversation with Brett Biggs, the former CFO of Walmart. He is currently a Senior Advisor for Blackstone and member of the board of directors for Adobe, Procter & Gamble and Yum! Brands. Their discussion spans a range of topics including Brett's early career experiences, his journey to becoming a CFO, and his personal insights on management and motivation. Brett's narrative reflects how his initial pursuit of a medical career in college took a sharp turn towards accounting, a path that ultimately led him to top leadership roles in major corporations. Brent and Brett also delve into the world of mergers and acquisitions, recounting Brett's time at Leggett & Platt where he acquired significant experience in the field. This episode offers a unique glimpse into the life and career of a key player in the global business landscape, providing listeners with valuable insights into leadership, career transitions, and the dynamic world of M&A, finance and retail.

Boy I learned really for the first time how

each person is so unique and what they're motivated by. And

some people need a pat on the back to be motivated. Sometimes

somebody needs a little bit, a little bit of a little bit of a

shove to be motivated. But you have to do that and managing

people takes a lot of energy. But it's great. It's the best

part of any job in my career.

Welcome to the Be Epic Podcast, brought to you

by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of

Arkansas. I'm your host, Brent Williams. Together, we'll

explore the dynamic landscape of business and uncover the

strategies, insights and stories that drive business today. Well,

today I have with me, Brett Biggs. And Brett is the former

CFO of Walmart and serves as a board member for Procter and

Gamble, Yum! Brands, and Adobe and also a Senior Advisor for

Blackstone. Brett, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks.

Well, super excited to get to dig in a

little bit with you. But before we get to, you know, your time

as CFO at Walmart and what you're doing now, I'd love for

you to walk us through your history and kind of what are

some of the experiences that really helped shape you?

Yeah, so back to being born or a little later?

We can go a little later than that.

I am a I am a native Texan, which sometimes

doesn't sit well at University of Arkansas. But we've lived

here for 23 years now. And my girls have grown up here. So

Absolutely.

I consider myself an Arkansan. Yeah, I went to

school at Harding University. So not far from here in Arkansas

and had the chance to play golf, there wasn't really good enough

to be D1. So I got a chance to play golf at Harding. And, and

also it was a it was a great accounting school. And I

actually thought I wanted to be pre med, like a lot of students

do. And then I took my first organic chemistry class, and

that was it. And I was, I was not intended to be

New path.

I was not intended to be a doctor. So I don't

actually remember choosing accounting. But Harding had a

great accounting school. And so ended up in accounting. And soon

as I took a class, it just it fit me. Things equaling on the

left and the right made sense to me. And so that's that's kind of

how it started in accounting. I met my wife at Harding, and

we've been married, I need to get this right, almost 32 years.

Okay. Congratulations.

Thank you. I have two daughters. My younger one

maybe ends up at the University of Arkansas, potentially. So

she's a Rogers High.

So I've got some work to do.

We'll see how that goes. Yeah, started at Harding

and then, like almost everybody in accounting at Harding went

public accounting. And so I started out Price Waterhouse.

And I was in I was at PW, it wasn't even PwC. That's how old

I am. It was PW, you know, year and a half or so and wasn't

crazy about auditing. I think my parents were concerned that I

just didn't like to work. But I just auditing wasn't my thing.

So I went to work at Phillips Petroleum Company in Oklahoma,

and did kind of FP and A roles, accounting roles for about five

years, but I went got my MBA. While I did that, I actually

looked at going back full time. And just decided I liked my job

and decided to go part time. So I went Oklahoma State, part

time. I'm sure U of A had a great program at that time. But

I just it was in Oklahoma. So I went to, got it from Oklahoma

State. And I'm glad I did it. I wasn't sure exactly what I would

do with it at some point. But I knew it was investing in myself.

And yeah, I think it was it was it took four years. It was a 64

hour program, which they don't do those anymore.

No, they don't.

Yeah, so it was it

We don't

It was but I'm glad I did it. And it really opened

up some doors I think later in my career, not just the title

but but the the disciplines that I learned, you know, during that

period of time, so went to work at Leggett & Platt, which is in

Carthage, Missouri.

So you went from public accounting your in energy

for a little while and now manufacturing

I really just I wanted to do something, wasn't

sure what, but outside of a little bit, maybe outside of

accounting, but in business

Okay.

And I got a chance. There was, this is when you

found jobs in the newspaper. This is the old Tulsa World came

to our house and they had a it was Leggett & Platt, happened to

be where my wife was from Carthage, Missouri. And they

were looking for an m&a analyst. So I thought mergers and

acquisitions that'll be interesting. So I convinced them

somehow that I could analyze mergers and acquisitions. And

during that four year period of time at Leggett & Platt, we did

probably 100 acquisitions, I remember but really, it was it

was an m&a bootcamp and so really learned I did deals on my

own at some point And that's where I learned to do m&a, a

great company. And then I got called one day to, to see if I

would consider by headhunters and see if I consider going to

Walmart. And that's one of those ones you stop and think. Yeah, I

love I love Leggett & Platt, but I've, I've got to go look at

this and it was to be basically their number two m&a person

Okay.

In international and so that's how I entered the

company was through mergers and acquisitions and international I

spent over my entire 23 years I spent 10 years in International.

Really, ok

So I've seen seen a lot of the world.

Lots of miles?

Lots of miles. Yeah, so that's kind of how I

got to Walmart.

Okay. And then so you started in m&a. And then

you know that career inside Walmart just started to blossom.

Yeah, we had, we had just when I came in, we had

just bought Asda in the UK. So we'd had, we'd had some

operations in Mexico and Brazil, maybe Argentina, I think, at

that point, but we're just becoming an international

company.

Okay.

And I think at that time, maybe we had 20 billion in

revenue, something like that, in in international, but we didn't

have a pipeline of deals. And so for the first three or four

years, I was on the road really trying to generate a pipeline,

meeting, whether its founders, bankers, you know, company CEOs,

and the one of the great things and terrifying things about

Walmart was I was, when I went there I was 32 years old. So I'm

doing this in my early 30s. And you're almost wondering why is

this company

Really big deals, right

Why is this company letting me do this. And I

learned that throughout my entire career at Walmart, that

they'll, they'll let you go about as far as you can go. And

but it was, it was great. We grew and we grew in Brazil, grew

in Central America, grew in Japan, grew in China, Northern

Ireland, South Africa, Chile, we, we did a number of deals

that, you know, not only help us build what became over $100

billion part of the business, but places where we learned and

brought things back to the US, for instance, our grocery

business, a lot of the early learnings for our grocery

business are from Asda, in the UK, and quality and private

label and all those things we really learned from Asda,

learned somewhat in Japan. I probably spent the most time in

Japan, when we bought a company called Seiyu in 2003. I, over

five years, I was there at least two years over that period of

time. I was in Japan a lot. I was in Brazil a lot. And then at

the toward the end of my m&a time. And then later on as CFO

of International, and then CFO of the company I spent a lot of

time in India.

Okay, you know what. I want to ask you a question about m&a.

Yeah.

You know, sort of looking back at what you,

what you learned, either more broadly or specific to Walmart,

however you want to

What to do and what to not to do

Well or, like, you know, the deals that you

really say like, oh, that worked, you know, like any any

key like factors that someone you know, in that type of role

are considering m&a should be thinking about

I would say, you know, candidly, a lot of your

learnings come from what you wish you wouldn't have done we,

when I, when I came in, we had done a couple of deals in

Germany, two or three years before, and we ended up getting

out of Germany in 2006. That was one of the things I did in m&a.

But taking an American business into a foreign country, and

particularly in a country that consumers shop differently than

they do in the US. And you may think well, it's Europe, it's

very similar to the US. Not in places like Germany, where

they're very used to their, their certain type of retailer

more discount retail, customers go to different shops to buy

different things. The concept of Walmart, in theory was great.

The application of doing Walmart, like we would have done

it in the US was quite different.

Okay.

But there are great learnings from that that I

think, paid off later on. And there are certain times where,

you know, you look at a strategy put together I'll give Japan is

as an instance, when we went into Japan, you know, there was

an idea that that could be a $25-30 billion market for us and

for Walmart, you need scale you need you've got to do something

that's big. And over time felt like we could roll up that

industry a little bit in Japan all this is public. And just

didn't quite work out that way. It was we bought a tough

business and made it a lot better. And by the time we we

sold it, it was in much better position than when we bought it

but we just weren't able to kind of roll up that industry like we

wanted to. UK was amazing, great investment for us for that long

period of time. And then at some point, sometimes if it makes

sense for someone else to own it,

Yeah,

Then you do so it's not that well I wish you

wouldn't have bought Asda. It's things change and you want to do

things differently. The most successful international

business we've had is Mexico.

Okay.

Far and away. And a lot of things that worked well

there we had a great partner, particularly early on, we became

a public company. And which allows you to compensate people

in country with with something that's in their country allows

you to I think work with the government differently because

you're a Mexican company. But we had almost any kind of format,

you could think of some multi format where we could, we could

appeal to all the different income levels in Mexico and is

quite wide in a place like Mexico, put in small small

towns, big cities, and incredible operating model. It's

called WalMex. But our success there's been I think it's

unrivaled in the world. I don't, I don't I think WalMex is maybe

might be the best retailer in the world.

Interesting.

It's part of Walmart, who's really, really

good. yeah, but WalMex is incredible.

Yeah.

Well, I interrupted you. But you know, I

had to ask that question. Because it's quite a unique

experience to get to go

Yeah.

Work on those types of deals all across the

world.

Yeah. And sometimes, you know, you do

deals that were great 15 years ago, that now your strategy

changes in Walmart strategies changed a lot because of what's

going on with E commerce. And you just have, you have to

prioritize different things. And it doesn't mean what you did 15

years ago was was a mistake. And I think Walmart got a lot better

at that. I think early in my tenure, if we stopped something

or shut something down, it felt like a mistake, or a failure. I

think the company evolved a lot over the last 20 years to say,

hey, that's just it's not a priority now, we're not going to

do that anymore. So that we can go do you know, work on India,

the things that we want to do and grocery delivery. I think

the company matured a lot.

Well, I think one thing you said that I find

so interesting is I don't know if you said in all those

experiences, but I expect that to be true, that you probably

learned something that you brought back into the US.

Oh, yeah. Always. Always. A lot of times those

people, yeah, bring people and we would, you know, take people

in the US their entire careers and send them to a different

country. And it gave us those opportunities.

So you're doing m&a and then you know, what's

the next step within Walmart?

Yeah, I got asked to be assistant treasurer. And

so I'm, I'm being asked to go from this, travel the world job

to managing cash basically, around the world. And I'll be

honest, I was not really excited about it. And little did I know,

six months in we had the financial crisis in 2008. And so

the world changed. It was great to be Walmart, when you go

through a financial crisis and be a double A rated credit. But

it was it was difficult. It was difficult for our suppliers, it

was difficult for, you know, associates and you know, similar

some of things we saw in the pandemic, it was a really tough

period of time. And so I learned a lot about not just how to

manage money, but banking, relationships and relationships

matter. It's not just hey, I've got a contract with you. It's

what do you do when the rubber is really hitting the road? And

you, you, you need that relationship that you've

developed all those years. And, you know, the way we treated

partners, I think came back to our benefit during that period

of time. Because, you know, people were there to help us

when we, as we're going through that period of time. Then I went

to Sam's Club,

okay.

Went to be CFO, my first CFO job at Sam's and Sam's

is one of the best parts of Walmart. I was there for two and

a half years, but about a year into my CFO tenure. My boss at

the time was Brian Cornell, who's the CEO at Target now. He

he said, you seem to like and you enjoy being in stores and

you enjoy, you know, operations. I said, I really do. And he

said, would you consider ever going in operations and never

thought about it? So I did.

So you go from a CFO role to

I would surprise some people that I would go do

that. Now I'm reporting to one of my former peers, the head of

operations, so I moved to Dallas with my family,

Okay.

And I have basically the southern half of

the United States. That 240 clubs, something like that. But

I'd gone for managing, like 55 people with my largest group now

to 42,000 people.

It's a little bit of changing scale,

No training manual on this. But I had the chief

operating officer with my boss and he was great to give me

enough leash to learn but not too much leash to leash to

really be a problem. I learned working with people that were

not finance majors really for the first time and they'd grown

up in operations and many of my direct reports all knew more

than I did, about operations and life candidly. And so, you know,

trying to bring to that job what I was good at and I couldn't

become them.

Right.

They were great. They knew operations backwards

and forwards, I had to learn enough to be credible. But there

were things that I could do. And you know, whether that's just

leadership, communicating. Financially, obviously, how do

you look at a p&l? I think I was able to bring some things that

maybe hadn't been thought about in that way.

So sounds like that particular role, had a big

impact on shape and who you became,

Yeah,

As a leader

Big impact and humbled me.

Yeah.

Which was probably necessary at that point in my

career, and prepared me. You know, what, it wasn't a job,

nobody's gonna let me break anything that shouldn't be

broken. But I got to fail a couple of times in some things,

and that I learned how to be resilient, I think and learn how

to communicate with people when we had a bad when we had a bad

month. How do you realizing that whatever you say, is going to

find its way down indirectly to 42,000 people? And how you say

it. I learned yeah, I learned a lot about me. I think during

that period, time, what I was good at what I wasn't good at.

Well, and you know, the way the way you said

that, you know, does, at least to me shows humility. Like, you

know, you knew

I didn't have a choice being humbled.

Well, you're leading a bunch of people that

know a lot more about at least operations.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think as a as a leader, coming in

recognizing that and then recognize, like, alright, well,

I bring something unique too. How do I how do I kind of shape

the world in that way?

I'll never forget a conversations with a guy that

that worked for me. And he, he was I was a bit of an experiment

in that job. And he would have been a very logical person to

have that job. And eventually, he got the job after I did. We

were in the car one day, and I'd been in, we'd been in a club

visit. And I'd said something to the effect of, hey, I'm, I'm not

an expert here. But let me tell you a couple of things I see.

And he said, whether I think you should be the boss, or whether

you think you should be the boss, you're the boss. So start

acting like it.

Interesting.

That's operations it's very direct.

Yeah, that's right.

Very direct place in the world.

That's right.

So yeah, but it was helpful. I was like, alright,

it's time to go.

Yeah. Do you go from that role into CFO?

No, I went from that role in the CFO of the US.

Okay.

So it's the first time I've been in Walmart at

that time 13 years and never been in the US business.

Okay,

Other than Sam's, I hadn't been in the big US

supercenter business. So a CFO did that for two years. And

that's, that's the first time I think, where I really felt the

weight of the company. And that if you have a bad quarter, and

Walmart US, the company has a bad quarter. And so as you're

turning dials, you'd be really careful of how you do that. And,

but worked with amazing people at in Walmart US and loved it,

just fantastic job. So I did that for two years. And then my

boss at time Charles Holly said, he brought me into his office he

said sometimes there's things you want to do in life.

Sometimes there are things you don't want to do. This is one of

those latter. And we need you to go back and be CFO of

International we've, he goes I know, it's not what you want to

do. But this is what we need you to do so I was like, alright.

And it was fine. I went back. And, you know, I knew a lot of

what we were doing, I had done in my earlier part of

international. So I knew the ins and outs of international and it

would have changed a lot things have changed during that period

of time that I've been gone. And so you have to reflect and then

do some things differently. But so I did that for a couple years

and then was asked to be CFO of the company.

Well, pretty interesting, right? So

operations, US International. And

I mean, in hindsight, my career couldn't

have been managed better than it than it was and wasn't. It

wasn't always obvious. And, you know, hindsight, and I tell

people this sometimes, particularly a place like

Walmart, you know, if you would have said, give me your 10 year

plan, I would have missed opportunities. So it's great to

have a plan.

Yeah.

But don't be burdened by it.

Yeah. Well, and you know, I mean, paths aren't

linear always. And so it's and honestly, it's a lot of fun to

embrace that once you embrace it.

Well, in the in the yeah. And you know, in the, when

I took the assisstant treasurer role, I actually had people ask

if I'd been demoted, like my friends and I wasn't sure

actually, I maybe I was, I don't know. And then again, when I

went into operations, people were like, what? Like, what are

you you're doing and you seem to be on this trajectory to maybe

have a shot at the CFO role. This feels like a, you're moving

out of Bentonville, you're going to work for one of your former

peers. What are you doing? And I just knew I had people that

thought it was a good idea. In hindsight, had I not had that

job, I, I'd be a different person,

You seemed open to saying yes.

I was for that one, the Assistant Treasurer, if you

asked my former boss, he would say I really did not handle that

well. And matter of fact, when I, I tell people this when I

finally decided, it was decided I was going to do this. But when

I finally decided that I was going to do this, the I was

having this when you back in your desk phones, and the CEOs

name came up was Lee Scott. And Lee was funny and sarcastic. And

he goes, so I hear you finally decided to pull your head out of

your butt, and do what we asked you to do. And he said next

time, how about not make it so difficult?

Again, fairly direct, right?

Fairly direct. And it was like, Yes, sir. So when

they came the second time, I was like, yeah, sure, whatever you

think.

Got it. Now I see the learning process.

Yes, there was a learning process in there.

You know, so Brett serving as CEO of, you

know, largest company in the CFO of

Yeah, I don't want I don't want Doug's job.

The largest company in the world is a pretty

unique experience.

Very.

Just kind of interested in you know, how did

that evolve? What all did you learn? I know, there's probably

1000 things you could say just a couple of the key.

You know, it's interesting, when Doug, Doug

asked me, I remember I'll never forget the day I went in his

office and he said, hey, we'd like you to be CFO of Walmart.

And you kind of get chills up your spine, I still do when I

think about it. And I had never worked for Doug, we had missed

each other our entire careers. And I said, how do you know, I'm

the guy. And he said, cuz, obviously I've, you know, been

aware of you views as you come to the company. Because I know a

lot of people who think you're the guy, and I really trust

them. Which is kind of how Walmart works. It's it was a lot

of group involvement decisions, and you take people you can't

know everything about Walmart. So you've got to take people's

advice. And, and so he was that was an interesting conversation.

The job, I was in it for almost seven years, the role at the end

was very different than what it was at the start. Primarily

because the strategy was so different. When I left versus

when I started as we got much heavier into online grocery and

E commerce and and even one day, Doug, I'll never forget, Doug

said to me, I think it was the first day I was on the job. He

said, you're going to have to my exact words, your, you have to

unlearn some things that you've learned coming through the

company, and you're gonna have to forgive yourself for some

decisions you made that you'd probably have to undo. I thought

that was great. It was, it was kind of liberating to because

there were things that came along where you were like, why

did we do that? Why was I a part of that decision? And

yeah,

You know, sometimes they were bad decisions. But

sometimes it was just it was 10 years ago, what in the world had

changed dramatically

Amd leading people to, you know, so he gave

you the license, you know, to be able to think that way and feel

that way?

Yeah. And, you know, and I said, look, my

background is very different than Charles and. And he goes,

but that's, you know, that's, that's kind of what we need for

the next five years, and the person came up behind me, he's

got a different background than I do. And that's what you need

for the next five years and you learn, you know, how people in

the right place right time and, and, you know, then you need a

different type of person, which is, you know, that's okay.

That's what that's what organizations are meant to do.

So the strategy shifted

Dramatically.

And so how does that affect the CFO role?

Well, when I first came in, I think two days after

I was announced, we went to the street and said, We've got to

take our earnings down. We got to invest in stores, we got to

invest in E commerce. We've been under investing, and we've got

to go do this. And you can imagine what the reaction stock

was at that day, it went down 10-15% over a few days, and now

we're trading at 12 times earnings.

Welcome to the role, right?

Yeah, I mean, I wasn't you know, officially in

the role, but it was, you know, here, here you go. And I always

appreciate actually my predecessor took that hit for me

before before I came on, but, you know, I was coming in in a

very different situation. because we had been wildly

successful, but our comps were slowing down. And there were

just signs that an Amazon was becoming a juggernaut. And, you

know, one of the one of the best books I ever read was pretty

much spot on for Walmart, which was called Innovators Dilemma by

Clay Christensen. And if you haven't read it, you need to

read it. Because it talks about companies that didn't reinvent

themselves, because they were doing so well. And Walmart would

be a perfect example of that. And by not reinventing

themselves, someone else helped reinvent them, and put them out

of business, which is, you know, we had Walmart and I mean and

Kmart and Sears had ignored us for a long time until it was too

late. And to some degree, we had kind of, we didn't ignore

Amazon, but we had not fully leaned into what that business

model looked like. And we were emboldened that they weren't

profitable, you know, well, their not profitable, that just

doesn't make any sense. Why would we do that? And then, all

of a sudden, they came up with AWS, Amazon Web Services. And

within three years, they were like 30 billion in cash flow.

Like, wow, okay. Game on. And that was most of my tenure was

kind of during that period of time where Amazon and was really

growing, we slow down our store growth, which was tough one,

because we had we built stores, that's kind of what we did as

Walmart. And we had grown 2-3-400 supercenters, sometimes

in a year, which is staggering, that we were able to even put up

that many stores. But now all of a sudden, you know, the stores

aren't, you know, maybe the new ones weren't returning quite as

well as you would like. And people are shifting to e

commerce. And we were behind. We were in Doug kind of said that

in 2000, October 2015, we're behind. And now we've got to

catch up. And I think to his credit, in particular, and the

board's credit, and Walmart's in a very, very different place in

2023, than it was 2015. And Doug was interesting. He's, you know,

been with the company, 30 plus years, grew up in the company,

so the least likely person to change a company, somebody's

been there their entire life. And he managed to change how we

viewed ourselves and how and how the view world viewed us when we

went from a 12, multiple 26, 27 multiple, while our earnings

really weren't growing all that much. But did it without

changing the culture is really hard to do.

Which if you wouldn't have grown up in the

company, that would have been a part that's probably hard to do.

Right?

Yeah, I mean, culture evolved and, you know,

we're gonna have a new home office, and we're gonna have to

recruit differently than we did. And there's, you know, different

types of skill sets inside the company. But that gut of the

culture, Sam Walton would recognize it. No doubt about it.

What was your favorite part of the job?

Oh, I mean, I, people, I and it's the part,

it's a bit of why I'm here today on campus, I miss, I miss

interacting with mentoring. You do it in different ways. But

when you have a group that large and you get to see people get

promoted, where I was talking to earlier about Brandi Joplin,

who's a U of A grad and

Absolutely,

The day, I got to promote her to be head of

internal audit, why she wanted that job I don't know but she

wanted Internal Audit job. And being able to promote her was

just that's hard to replicate. Watching someone grow and, you

know, and other people where you feel like, where people were

really direct with me in my career actually made me

comfortable being more direct with people when I saw something

that was holding them back from being great. Maybe they were

good, but not great. And you see that element change, and they

become great. And you had some small part of that. I don't

think you can replicate that. Really hard.

Yeah. Well, you know, you've you've retired you

don't seem really retired to me. There's a lot of responsibility.

So what what's the day look like for you?

I wanted to have a longer kind of second phase of

my career. I was pretty sure I wanted to do that. And so I'm on

you mentioned I'm on three boards and they're all very

different, which is something I wanted I want something in tech

to keep me connected to that world. So Adobe, and now with

what they're doing Adobe is doing in AI is right at the

forefront of tech. P&G is like watching Walmart from the other

side. And so there's a lot of experience I have that can be

you know, hopefully helpful to to a company like Procter and

Gamble. Great company, great reputation. And then Yum!

Brands, which is very, very operational, very multi unit

they have 55,000 units. So that kind of felt familiar to me. So

I've got two boards that feel a little familiar. I've got one

that's a little over my head at times in Adobe. And then I

wanted to do you know my background in m&a, I always

enjoyed that. And so doing some advisory work with Blackstone

is, but even within part of the reason I chose Blackstone, and

they were nice enough to let me come on board is they have that

scale that Walmart has. And I like I you ask me things like

about Walmart, I like the scale of Walmart, because there's so

many things you can do in the world, you're you get your hands

in a little bit of everything which I enjoyed and Blackstone's

very similar, it's kind of what's going on in the world.

Blackstone's involved in it. And so, you know, I can work on m&a,

I can help them with existing companies. I do some CFO

mentoring, there's a lot of different things that I didn't

start at Walmart that I can think I can do at Blackstone as

well.

Sounds like

and I get to do things like this, which I really

I mean, to be fair to everybody listening, I asked to do this,

this this, this is not you guys ask I came and said, hey, how

can I help? And because I really enjoy being involved on campus,

and you know giving back in ways that people gave back to me.

Well, as everyone listening could

imagine, that was a pretty easy, yes. It's actually one of the

things that, you know, when I kind of drill in and think about

the Walton College, I, I tell people all the time that I feel

like one thing that's a little unique here, you know, and in

our state in Northwest Arkansas is the business community is

tightly connected, you know, and so, you know, we have the

advantage to really get it engage companies and people and

professionals in what we're doing in the business. So you

know, from, from teaching to various kinds of experiences,

like we're doing today. And so, you know, you'll be interacting

with students throughout the day. But just as you think

about, you know, our students, early career professionals,

people building their career, as you look back, and I know,

you've got a, you know, much of a second phase, you know, to go,

but as you look back, any just key advice you would offer up?

Yeah, we've I recruited a lot of students from

here

Yes you did,

which was always good, good for the company. You

know, we were talking a little bit about it earlier. You come

to university to learn, you're worried about your GPA, and you

should be as a parent, I will say that you should be worried

about your GPA. But it's, it's experiences that you can get in

these four years. Where it's leading people, learning how to

interact with people, learning how to interact with your

professors that are, you know, older than you interacting with

different types of people that, you know, if you grew up in one,

maybe grew up a small town, you come to a place like this, and

all of a sudden, you're with people from all over the world.

They're learning to interact in that environment. Because when

we, when we are hiring people that, you know, speak for

Walmart, but I would assume other companies as well. If

you're if you're interviewing with us, we probably know your,

your, your GPA is pretty good. And somebody has said something

good about you to get you to that interview. But are you

curious? So while you're here, you know, learning I tell

students read them. If you're not reading the Wall Street

Journal, what are you doing? Like you should know what's

going on in the world. Be curious, ask great questions.

What's your energy level like? Do you look like somebody that's

going to not only work hard, but just be productive? The main

thing too, though, is candidly do I? Do I like you? Are you

likable when we interview because I've got to assess how

are you going to relate to people across the organization,

because you may be great your job, but if you can't

communicate what you're doing, or you can't work with the

person in the cubicle or in the department next to you. It's

just not going to be enough. It might be enough for three or

four years of your career. But after that, and if you want to

get promoted, and you know, go on to do what you want to do.,

working with people, being a leader, you don't have to have a

large group to be a leader leading in events and

activities. That's what we're looking for. All right. Do you

know what's going on in the world? It seems simple, but a

lot of students I've interviewed don't, and they don't actually

seem that curious about what's going on in the world. If you

come to a place like Walmart, you kind of need to know what's

going on in the world.

I think you said this earlier used a phrase

something like the soft skills are really the hard skills.

Yeah,

Maybe the hard skills to develop.

They are and I think I think they're teachable.

I gotta asked one time do you think those are inborn? All of

us have DNA and there's some of that that's I mean, I can be

extroverted ish. But you can I think you can, you can teach

people and they can learn to interact with people

differently. And you know, so when he's brought other shell, I

think you can do that so

I think so till you know, and I think it's one

thing about, you know, a business school and a business

school like ours. I encourage, you know, students take

advantage of everything you can, you know, classroom is

critically important, but it's all the other things that that

make up the experience of whether that's internships or

simply, you know, come and spend a few minutes with you. Getting

some coaching, some mentoring, and

That doesn't mean be in 12 clubs on campus, but

find a couple and get some leadership positions, make a

difference. Tell me what you achieved in those couple of

years you were president of the business club or whatever it is

on campus.

Absolutely. Well, thank you for spending

time with us today.

Yeah, my pleasure.

And what a career and I look forward to

seeing what's going to happen in the future.

Thanks.

On behalf of the Walton College thank you for

joining us for this captivating conversation. To stay connected

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