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The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
To create an ecosystem that connects leaders of all kinds – industry, community, student, educational, civic, investment and entrepreneurial – to help overcome Omnichannel Retail barriers through exclusive, insight-rich content.
The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
Ep. 129 - Speed, Simplicity, and Sam Walton’s Legacy
Big results come from simple rules practiced every day. We sit down with longtime Walmart leader Sam Dunn to unpack the principles from Don Soderquist’s "The Walmart Way" and trace how culture, vision, and speed transformed small ideas into system-wide advantages. From the four basic beliefs, respect for the individual, service to the customer, strive for excellence, and act with integrity, to the rituals that made them real, we share firsthand stories that reveal why these weren’t slogans but a decision system used in tough moments.
You’ll hear how bold vision stayed grounded in details: a better fixture spotted in a competitor store, a people greeter that lifted service and cut shrink, and an open door moment that saved a driver’s career and strengthened trust. We break down the cadence that powered execution, Friday morning management meetings, fast cross-functional solutions by noon, and field-facing updates the same day, plus the early investment in communication tools that carried clarity to every store. Speed shows up as a quiet superpower: closing the books in three days, acting on facts while rivals were still waiting, and iterating faster than the market could respond.
We also talk about the discipline to stick to the basics even while testing new formats, and how leaders can translate these ideas today: get closer to the front line, shorten decision cycles, invest in the right tools, and let shared beliefs guide tradeoffs. It’s a practical playbook for operators, founders, and managers who want a stronger culture and sharper execution without adding complexity. If you’re ready to lead with clarity and move with urgency, this conversation will give you concrete steps and fresh conviction.
Enjoy the episode? Follow the show, share it with a teammate, and leave a quick review. Tell us: which principle will you put to work this week?
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to doing business in Bentonville. I'm Andy Wilson and welcome back. We've got such a great podcast today. I can't wait to jump into this with you. I will tell you this is going to be so exciting. And my guest today is my great friend, long-term friend, Sam Dunn. Sam, welcome back to Doing Business in Bentonville. Andy, it's great to be back. Thank you for inviting me today. Oh, listen, man, I've been looking for this forward to this for a long time. We had a great podcast several months ago. And if you haven't uh heard or or or uh watched, I really would go back into archives of doing business in Bentonville and check it out because Sam Don uh shares some great principles around leadership that and stories that you would you won't want to miss, and it's real applicable to you and your team. So Sam, uh give everyone a quick update about you, and I may add to that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, sure, Andy. Thank you. Well, uh, by way of introduction, Andy and I worked together for many years on the Walmart leadership team. I spent uh almost 30 years at Walmart Andy in various roles, uh, most of them in the finance area and the strategy area. Had a chance to work overseas a couple of times in Mexico and Japan. And uh after retiring from Walmart in 2016, I joined the uh the business school, Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University, which happens to be my alma mater, and spent five years there as an assistant dean uh directing the business career center. So helping these young people, these uh BYU Marriott graduates find good jobs with good companies. And I loved that experience, but after five years there, uh I guess it started to feel like a job, and I thought, you know, I'd I'd like to maybe uh try something a little different. And our our church, which operates BYU, also operates a small business college in downtown Salt Lake City. Uh about half of the students, there are about 2,000 full-time students there. About half of them are international students, and the other half are mostly first gen and non-traditional students. So I'm now teaching on the business faculty at Ensign College, which is this uh business college located in downtown Salt Lake City. I've been here about a year now, and I'm really enjoying that experience.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Sam, I first congratulations uh to you on your successful career at Walmart. And then as you continued, you know, that's that seems to be what's you and I have followed a very similar track in that continuation after our careers at Walmart, and Walmart with no question was a great foundation for us, and we learned so much. And in fact, uh everyone, we're gonna talk a bit about Walmart today. And and um Sam's Sam and I, as we were talking months ago about this idea. Sam suggested that we talk about a book that we we've all really enjoyed. And the book today we're gonna talk about was written by Don Soderquist. Don Soderquist is a former CEO, COO and uh vice chair at Walmart. And Don wrote a book called The Walmart Way. And it's really insightful, it's really inside story of looking at Walmart, Sam, is what it is. And after Walmart, I had the opportunity to uh work with Don. Uh Don's vision was to begin a Center for Leadership and Ethics at John Brown University, located here in Northwest Arkansas. And he asked me to come alongside him and be the president CEO of that center. And for the next eight plus years, I had the opportunity to work with Don, and we built a center uh and where we focused on values and ethics, and we were we had clients uh around the world. And uh actually, Sam, we were in Japan and with a client, and we got to visit you in Japan. So uh it was great to connect again. So today, what Sam myself are going to do, we're gonna lead you through these real key principles of this book. And uh we recommend the book for you. And but then that's part one. And so part two will be how you will apply these principles to today's business. As leaders, we know business is difficult, business is not easy, people are not easy, and so we're gonna walk you through some very key principles and application to the principles we talk about in part one. Sam, would you add anything to that?
SPEAKER_01:Andy, I think you've summarized it well. And I and I think one of the things that really appealed to me about uh focusing on the Walmart way that Don Soderquis wrote was that I think it's a book that doesn't get enough attention. Uh most people, of course, have read Sam's autobiography, Made in America. What a fantastic book! Should be must-read for every business student and every business person. Uh, but I think Don's book is the other book that I always recommend to people when they ask me, what was it like to work at Walmart during those booming growth years? Uh, Don did a great job capturing the essence of what made Walmart Walmart. And so I'm excited that we get to share that with our read uh listeners today.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we're gonna jump straight into it, as I mentioned. So let's talk about these principles, uh, Sam, and once you lead off, and then we'll just go back through, we'll go through these. So, what we're what this is, is your foundational piece uh uh to really put this together. Then, as I mentioned, we're gonna talk about execution and application and in section in part two. So, Sam, lead us off on that, please.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, thank you. Well, Andy, I think first let's let's just preface it. I there were probably some viewers who are not that familiar with Don Sertiquist. Anybody who came out of our generation knows him well and knows the pivotal role that Don played in the company. And you mentioned his title, Chief Operating Officer. Uh he also became, as you also mentioned, the the vice chairman, I think the senior vice chairman of the company and sat on the board at Walmart for many years. But uh I think there's a good backstory here, if I could share it quickly, about how Don ended up at Walmart. Uh you remember that when Sam Walton uh launched his first uh store there in Bentonville, he was a franchisee of a company called Ben Franklin. And Ben Franklin was based in the Chicago area. Don happened to be uh the president of Ben Franklin. And uh over about a 10-year period, Sam really tried to recruit Don to come down and work with him in Bentonville as he launched Walmart. And, you know, at the time that would have been a huge risk because of the two companies, Ben Franklin clearly was the largest and the most successful. But ultimately, you know, Sam prevailed and convinced Don to join the team. I think that was in 1980. And uh Don came down to uh Bentonville, set up shop there uh with his wonderful wife, Joe, and and their family, and he became an integral part of establishing the culture and the values and the basic beliefs that really were at the heart of Walmart. And of course, you can't mention Don without mentioning his uh partner in crime, David Glass, our CEO. What a fantastic leadership team that was, Andy. Uh David and Don, the Yin and the Yang, they complemented each other so well. And Don was more of the people person, David was more of the hard-nosed business person, but you put the two together in a blender, you had the perfect combination of leaders to take Walmart to the next level, which is exactly what they did. So at the center of Don's book, The Walmart Way, is the culture and values. Uh and one thing that many people may not know, you've heard of the Walmart three basic beliefs. There are now four. Don really was the person who took the time to say we need to put these down in writing. We need to make them very, very available to our associates so that everybody knows and understands what are the three or four basic beliefs that guide our company. And those beliefs were respect for the individual, service to the customer, and strive for excellence. And now, since Don uh left Walmart, a fourth one has been added, which is terrific, act with integrity. So, Andy, those basic beliefs have guided Walmart all these years. And Don, I would say, is really the author, or at least the person who capsulized them in a way that uh that they were able to be understood and shared.
SPEAKER_00:You know, uh Sam, I I would add with that. In fact, I agree with what you said. And then even we were there after Sam passed away, and then what Don did was really stepped up, and uh he really talked a lot about our culture, and he really and those three, those four principles you mentioned, he really anchored those principles within the culture, but more importantly, then the it anchored into the hearts and minds of all of us, the associates at Walmart, all the way down to the store level, club level, and to and so you know, he he because he began to bring those forward and talk about those principles. And then, you know, Sam, we had every once a month a culture Saturday morning meeting, and and someone got up to talk about what one of those principles meant to them personally and how they applied those that principle to their business.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. And Don was definitely the one behind that, Andy. He recognized when Sam passed that the culture needed to live on. It needed to outlive Sam. And he recognized that the value of the Saturday morning meeting, which was our leadership meeting that we held every week there in the auditorium at the home office in Bentonville, that was a great way to uh to live out or talk about how we lived out the values and the culture and the beliefs. And so I can remember sitting in many of those Saturday meetings. I think it was the first Saturday of each month, was what we called Culture Saturday. And we had a leader, could be a male leader, a female leader, it could be an international leader, it could be a domestic leader, talking about one or more of the values and how those were being lived out. Very important to extending our culture.
SPEAKER_00:So I think what the point we want to make, Try our ears and listeners here, is that that that number, and you're gonna hear us talk a lot about this, but number one, what are your core beliefs in your company? And then how do you anchor those beliefs inside the hearts and minds of your people and how, as the leaders in your organization, you lead and make decisions based around those core values that support those core core values? And we're going to talk about some of those decisions that Sam made and Don made and others made that we question like we should we shouldn't do this because of this. And they but they would teach us how to support that core value, and we'd learn from that. And especially as your company, you were probably like Semini, you're a very early age in your company, and you were learning and growing, and you had more responsibility than you ever had in your life. Those core values were what they were, they were our guide. They are the guide in making decisions. They were they were the guide.
SPEAKER_01:They were the guide. And um, you know, Don in his book, uh, just as Sam outlined what he called 10 rules for building a business, and everybody should commit to memory those 10 rules because look what became of Walmart as a result of that. Don came up with 12 principles in his book. And the very first principle, in fact, I'll talk about the first two. The first one was dream. Have a dream. And he related a story uh about Sam Walton in his early days. You know, Sam was a student of retail. He loved to visit other retailers, he had a lot of friends in the retail community. And apparently there was a group of these retail CEOs and presidents who would get together periodically. And at one of their meetings, uh, these informal get-togethers, um somebody challenged them to say, okay, whatever your sales volume is this year, look out five or ten years and predict what you think your sales volume will be. Andy, when Sam Walton uh launched Walmart, he was, as you know, a student of retail. And he developed a lot of relationships and friendships with, frankly, with competitors, uh, people who were running retail companies around the country. And they would get together periodically. And Don Soterquist tells a story in his book about one of these meetings in the early days of Walmart, where Sam met with uh with these other uh CEOs and presidents of various retail companies. And someone said, Let's let's play a game here, write down your current year sales volume, what is your annual sales volume this year, and then forecast out 10 years and tell us what you think your volume will be 10 years from now. And Sam at the time, I think he did about$40 million that year. 40 million, Andy. We have individual stores who are doing much more than that now. And his forecast 10 years out was to do$2 billion. So when you talk about having a dream, Sam was dreaming. I'm sure everybody in the room laughed their heads off when they saw his number and said, there's no way that's going to happen. And I think last year Andy Walmart did about 600, almost 700 billion. So, you know, having that dream is so key. And to accompany the dream, um uh Don talked about the importance of vision, having vision. Dreaming is one thing, having a clear vision is another. And he used the term sometimes vision is what's right in front of you. In other words, you don't have to come up with something that's out of this world. You just need to focus on the basics of what's right in front of you. And it's also Don defined vision as seeing what others don't see. And he told the story, Andy, about how he had visited a store with with uh with Sam, a competitor store. And they walked out of the store and the store didn't look particularly good. And Don was commenting on that, and and Sam asked Don, he said, Did you see the pantyhose rack? The pantyhose rack. And Don said, I guess I missed that. He said, It's probably the best-looking fixture uh of that type that I've ever seen. And I've copied down the serial number and the manufacturer. Don, I want you to get with our store planning people and find out if we can get these pantyhose racks for our stores. You know, just a simple example, Andy, of somebody having vision and seeing what others don't see when it's right in front of them.
SPEAKER_00:You're right. You know, Sam had so Sam had that vision. And um, you know, I think I think what how what vision does for your company, it inspires your people, it engages your people. And the key to vision, though, and and what I is that we would talk about that almost every week, where we were going, and and new ideas. And Sam would bring us together on Friday mornings as we've all been out traveling stores three or four days during the week. We've come back on Fridays and we would talk about what we seen. And Sam didn't want, he he said, you know, what was great, what was great about the competitors, what was working about the competitors, we spent time on how to get better. We didn't spend a lot of time on what was bad. We were we knew we had to work on that. So we didn't need to, you know, but we worked on on that vision all the time and moving forward. And um my story is that uh I was in charge of store operations in and uh southern part of the U.S. And and I was in New Orleans, and Sam would ask, call on some of us and say, Where you been this week? And I quite frankly, I tried to dug down hide between somebody, you know, because I I didn't want those those him to look at me because I knew when he looked, you know, he was gonna ask a question, and he would say, Okay, what what would New Orleans look like? And I mentioned a couple of things, and I was new in this role, and and I'd mentioned some things that needed improvement, and he rushed me through it. He said, Okay, I know you're gonna take care of those. Let's talk about what was working in these competitors. What should we do better today than Walmart? You know, so he drove that vision in all of us.
SPEAKER_01:He did. Andy, remember uh it was basically the same year Sam passed. Uh George Bush was the president of the U.S., uh, George the Father, and he uh chose to award Sam the Medal of Freedom, which is the highest honor a citizen of the U.S. can receive. And because Sam was too weak and ill at that point due to his cancer to travel to Washington to receive the medal, George Bush and Barbara came to Bentonville. And you and I were there when that medal of freedom was awarded to Sam. Sam was in a wheelchair, and he mustered the strength as President Bush hung that medal around his neck to stand from his wheelchair, and he talked about his vision of lowering prices for people not just in the U.S. but around the world and helping them to have a better life. And then he sat back down. At that time, we were not operating outside the U.S. We weren't even operating in all 50 states. Uh, but that was his vision. And to his son Rob's credit, who then became the chairman as Sam passed, uh, that vision was played out and Walmart's in over 20 countries now. Uh and again, bringing everyday low price to those those customers.
SPEAKER_00:Uh I think that was a great story. And I think really, too, Sam, we're going to move on to some more principles. But one of the things I want you to to our leader, our viewers, uh, to really understand here how important a vision is, vision, not just for you and your company and your leadership, but for the people that are doing the heavy lifting. You know, Sam always said, we stand on the backs of our people. And that's really what you do. If you have a company today or you lead a division or whatever you do, you stand on the backs of those great, wonderful people that get the job done every day. If it's in surface, if it's in the warehouses, loading trucks, whatever it is, you stand on their backs and you owe them the a great vision and engage them so they have a future. And in part two, we're going to talk quite a bit about this. So uh you'll get a lot more information about that. So, Sam, what's the next principles you want to talk about?
SPEAKER_01:Well, we've talked already a bit about shared values, which is this third principle. Uh, let me go to the fourth principle, which is respecting others, respecting your people. And Andy, one of the great ways to show respect for your people is to listen to them and then take their good ideas and put them to work. And Don uses a couple of examples of this in the book. One is the open door policy. At Walmart, uh, we operated with the open door policy for as long as I was there, which meant that everybody had access to leadership. And if you had a concern, if you had an idea, if you had a complaint, you were welcome to use the open door policy and raise your concerns uh up the ladder all the way to the chairman if you wanted to. And I know Sam for sure listened to many people, and Dawn tells the story of an example of a truck driver who had had some uh behavioral challenges and uh and had made some errors, and ultimately the head of the trucking division said, you know, we we just need to let this truck driver go, and uh ran it by Don, and Don was his uh supervisor, and Don agreed. You know, he said, Yeah, you've documented this. This truck driver's made enough mistakes, it's time to fire him. Well, that truck driver used the open door to go visit with Sam Walton and explain why he didn't think he should be fired. And Sam reached out to Don Soterquist after that open door visit and said, Don, I want you and Lee Scott, who was running transportation, I want you to hire him back. And Don said, Well, Sam, we can't do that. You know, we've documented, it's clear that this uh this driver is a problem. And Sam said something very important to Don. He said, if we don't listen to our people and come down on the side of our people when they have a complaint or a concern, what good is the open door policy? Hire him back. If he's as bad as you think he is, he'll make another mistake and you can fire him again, and you won't have to rehire him. Well, they did. They hired him back, and guess what? He turned it around. He became a great driver, a great associate, and the open door worked the way it was supposed to work. So, Andy, that's a great example of listening to your people and taking their side from time to time, even when you think maybe they're wrong. Uh it really lets them know that you care about them.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I think we've all had the open door reversed on us at times. And uh, you know, it was such a great learning for all of us. And uh it caused us to think more deeply deeply about uh how how we work with someone and give them other give them opportunities. And um, and and and then, you know, about 50% of the my time when I would uh I would have to go back and and and make make a change in my decision, um that person worked out about 50% of the time. I kept up with it, Sam. And you know, if you can, if you can turn 50% of people around through your leadership and working with them and for them to get on board, that's not bad.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's it's not bad at all. It's great. And um I I hope that again, people who are listening or watching today who uh you know think, well, I'm not sure about this open door policy. It does work, and like you said, half the time it works really well and it makes a huge difference. There was another angle there, if I could mention it, Andy, on listening to your people. Don was a big advocate of what we called at Walmart MBWA, management by walking around. And it was just getting out of your office, getting out from behind your desk, and going out and talking to the folks on the front line and listening, listening to what they had to say. Uh and I think that's a little bit of a lost art. It's a little more of a challenge in the world we live in today. And there's so many people working remotely. Uh, you have operations that are far-flung all across the globe. It's hard to just get away from your desk and be able to connect with people. But you have to make that effort. And as you do so and as you listen to your people, you get some great ideas. Don talked about one in particular. Down in Crowley, Louisiana, there was a uh a female associate there, an hourly associate, who came up with the idea that we should have a people greeter at the front door. Nobody had one at the time, but the manager was willing to listen to that associate and said, let's try it. And she became the company's first people greeter. And as word got out to the company, everybody thought, you know, we should have a people greeter. And before long, every store in the chain had somebody at the front door greeting people. And of course, that job has morphed over the years and changed, but uh uh at its heyday, it was a great customer service uh feature that Walmart offered that nobody else did.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I was in charge of Louisiana at the time. Um that I was in my my region, and I thought it was a horrible idea. I uh I thought, look, we can't afford to do this in a restore. We don't have the payroll to do this, and you know, and and I was, and you know, with the pressure on payroll and all that, I thought, okay, we we can't do this. So I was like, not for it. Well, um, you know, I was I I got calls to the chairman's office and he explained clearly to me that you know we're gonna do this, and I need to figure out a way to do it. Well, we did. We figured it out. I got on board and uh after a little direction. And here's the thing. It proved number one to be so great when someone would welcome you into their building, into their store, into their club, and thank you for coming in. And it also reduced our shrinkage, our theft, and all of that throughout the store. And we turned around huge savings in our shrinkage area because of having someone at the front door. But the wonderful thing, and I I still hear stories about it, is when uh the person walk in and person would greet them, and they would give a smiley face sticker to their kids or say hello or help them get a shopping cart. And whatever, it was it worked wonderful, Sam. And uh I'll become a huge component of it, I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_01:But Andy, your reaction would have been my reaction. You know, we can't afford the payroll. Uh, we're looking at the bottom line, we were very bottom line driven, we were. Uh, but Sam again had that vision. He cared about people, he said, let's try this. And you were you were willing to give it a try. And look what happened. It became a feature in every store in the chain. So I think this idea of giving associates access to leadership and and then listening to them and taking their ideas and putting them to work is such a key. Such a key. Andy, um, you you we earlier talked about the Saturday morning meeting. Uh, it's very famous. I I think everybody who knows the Walmart story knows about the legendary Saturday morning meeting. And used to be that they were every single Saturday. You know, I think we got one Saturday a month off. And uh otherwise we were in that meeting. And uh I actually loved those meetings. Uh sometimes they were a pressure cooker, as you've alluded to earlier, if you got called on to talk about your business and what you had done that week. Uh but we had such a great group of leaders, and we had great guests that would come in and talk about uh, you know, some some were in from the business field, some were athletes, some were actors. But it was great to meet so many wonderful people and learn from them. There was another meeting, though, that seldom gets talked about, and it's still going on at Walmart. It's the Friday morning meeting. And if I could uh mention Don's comments on the Friday morning meeting. Uh the Friday morning meeting, unlike the Saturday morning meeting, was uh I'll call it a closed door meeting. It was just the management team. And uh candidly, it could be a confrontational meeting. I mean You went in there and you were expected to kind of lay out what the challenges were and how you were addressing them. Merchants and operators sometimes hand-to-hand combat in those meetings. Um, but you know, we would leave those Friday morning management meetings with a really clear vision of what we needed to do coming out of there and getting ready for the next week. And those Friday meetings to me, uh, and of course you had to be an officer of the company uh to participate in those, uh, but they became almost as important or more important maybe than the Saturday morning meeting, which ultimately became kind of symbolic in nature. So any thoughts you have on that, I'm sure uh you and you and I have both sat through a lot of those meetings.
SPEAKER_00:We did. You know, as an operator, uh in that time I was operating, you know, a region of 120 stores and or more, and um 10,000 people in the region. So it was a company, like an assized company. And so when I would go in and listen to the group talk about their week and the challenges that we faced, but but here's the key, and this is what I this is what I want our business leaders to really grab here today. First of all, we took we've already talked about the importance of vision, we talked about the importance of communication. And this was about execution, which was part of our our principles. And so we would talk about the issues, then we would then then then we sometimes we make decisions in that meeting, but then we'd break down, go back and we break into our individual divisions, operations, merchandising, finance, all those different, you would have your own meeting, and within that meeting, you would begin to solve the issues. You would solve the issues, and then what merchandising would do or or finance would do, you would go into these other division meetings and say, okay, we have this is our solution to the problem. That was 7 a.m. By noon, we had solutions. Now by noon or earlier, okay. By noon, then what I would do as an operator, I would, I would, I had 12 district managers reporting to me. I would then have a call with those 12 by mid-afternoon, maybe 3 or 4 p.m. And we would, I would talk about the week, we would talk about our opportunities, but then the issues we had as a company, either merchandising, operations, finance, I would say, this is what we're going to do to solve the problem. It's already been solved, it's now executed, this is coming down, this is the change or correction or new whatever we needed to do. Now think about it. Think about it as a leader of your division or company right now. 7 a.m. you have a problem, 3 p.m. it's solved. It's done. It's solved and you're moving on to business. That's called speed. Walmart success on so many things into our Walmart success, but it's speed of making decisions, correcting it, and getting it done and taking care of your customer. Because everything decisions we made was about the customer. It was about being a better merchant, being a better retailer, being being better at what we do. So, Sam, that's what we did every Friday.
SPEAKER_01:It is, Andy, you've described it well. And um, you know, going back to Don's principles, customers first, that was principle number uh five, execution was number seven, and then he had one called Invest in Tools. And you mentioned the calls that you would do with the field coming out of those Friday meetings. We have Don to thank for that because he was the one that took the plunge on investing in communications with the stores, satellite communications at that time, that allowed us to broadcast out to the stores. And many times we'd leave those Friday morning meetings, we'd do those group meetings with our individual departments that you just shared, and then we would go straight into a broadcast with the stores, sharing out with them all the things that we had just discussed and kind of talking about the next week and what to expect and what to focus on. And again, Don was at the heart of that. He was running the information systems group, and he was the one that made the investment in those communication tools that allowed us to have that tremendous communication out of the field. And then you talked about speed, Andy. Uh let me just share one little anecdote. Uh when Don was writing the book, I know you were instrumental in helping him uh edit it and compile it. He reached out to several people, including myself, and said, Hey, if you have any ideas or thoughts that you think ought to go into this book, uh feel free to share them with me. And I took a little time and I sent him a two or three-page letter with some ideas. And one was on this concept of speed matters. He ended up including that in the book. And the the story that I shared was uh, as you know, I was the CFO of a couple of our businesses. I was running the finance team for the Walmart US business. I was the CFO of Sam's Club and uh the CFO of our Walmart.com business when we launched it. Back in the early days of the company, we did not have great technology. Uh, we had a great systems department who supported us, but Sam expected us to close the books and produce PLs for you and the other operators within three working days. The only way that could happen is if we literally worked around the clock three days in a row in order to generate uh these profit and loss statements. And we did that every month end. Uh we would uh go down to the waffle hut in between passes and grab a bite to eat, and we would crank out the PLs. And and you know, three days later, you had the results from the prior month, and you could act on those as an operator. Uh about two weeks after the month ended, I was in a meeting with a bunch of other CFOs from other companies. And one of them was talking to me and said, Oh, you know, he was on the phone with his team and he said, We're just getting our books closed. And I said, You're just closing the books. You know, this is again two weeks into the month. And he said, Yeah. And I said, Is that are you late? Are you running behind? He said, No, that's that's kind of our standard. We by by two weeks after the month ends, we we get our books closed. And I didn't have the heart to tell him that we generated our PLs after day three, and this company was still not sure what to focus on because they did not have PLs in their hands. Speed matters, and Walmart has always believed that and focused on it.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you're right. And you know, again, that's one of the principals of Don's books, that's a principal of Sam that that he shared with us. But as as think about this if you when you leave if you leave a company or division today, is that if you have your financials three days in, then your competitors have their 15 days in. Look at the days ahead that you are, your competitors, and decisions you make financially, your adjustments that you need to make for your profit or whatever revenue, whatever that are expenses. Look at that, what you can do. That's a competitive advantage. And if you go back and hear what Sam has talked about already today, about each of these core principles that Don talked about, Sam talked about, it's all about being a competitive advantage. It's all about serving your customer, it's it's all about engaging the people inside your business. And when you do that, it equals success. And uh we're gonna talk again, as I mentioned, we're gonna talk more about that in our part two as we talk about your talent. But anyway, Sam, what other principles you want to share with us today?
SPEAKER_01:Well, Andy, um, one of the things that Don uh always harped on, I wouldn't say harped on, but he he focused on it was stick to the basics. Stick to the basics. And uh what I've seen in some companies, um, some companies love acquisitions, they love to branch out and and diversify, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. Walmart has had its share of acquisitions over the years, and even during the time that Don was in his role, we tried a lot of things, a lot of new formats. You might remember Dot Drug, Helen's Arts and Crafts. Some of them hit and some of them didn't. One that really hit was the Super Center concept. That became a growth vehicle for uh two or three decades. Um but you know, at the heart of it all, they said, you know, you've got to stick to the basics. And Don believed that that was rule number nine or principle number nine in his book. And that's advice that any of us can use. Uh, if we get too far away from our core business and we get enamored with other concepts or ideas, yeah, you know, you got to be careful because sometimes, as they say, you got to dance with the one who brung you. And uh Walmart really believed in that. And we did stick to the basics. And even the businesses that we've acquired have simply allowed us to take those basic concepts and just execute them at a higher level. So that would that was great advice from Don. It was.
SPEAKER_00:You know, Sam Don, I can't thank you enough for being here today and sharing uh your thoughts, uh, your stories. Uh great walk for me and down to the the past and memory lane. I I can't thank you enough for the impact you had in my life personally and professionally. And so, Sam, it's been so wonderful. We have talked about today The Walmart Way by Don Serterquist. We shared some of the principles that inside the book. We recommend the book. And now I want you to um check out our next podcast. It's gonna be about how we take some of these principles and you apply those to your business. We're gonna get into your about your talent and how to really grow your people and create a very successful uh business. But Sam, thank you, thank you. It's been so wonderful being with you and uh all of our viewers and and today, thank you. Because of you, you have you have helped us uh exceed our expectations. So we thank you. We're now and viewed in over 100 countries. We're now have over 2,000 views on our podcast today, and we can't thank you enough. We and and uh we're I'm always here. Don't forget you can reach out to me on LinkedIn and message me, and I will answer you back. Uh I I have been told I have been integrated and make sure I communicate back is some of the principles that Sam talked about. So, Sam Dunn, any closing words?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, Andy, just uh congratulations, first of all, on the tremendous success of your podcast. And so great to talk about one of our mutual heroes, Don Silerquist. I hope all your listeners will go out and buy the book, The Walmart Way. You will learn a lot from reading that book. It's been great to walk down, as you said, memory lane with you and remember uh the great experiences we had working with Don at Walmart. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thank you, Don. Uh, thank you, uh Sam.