4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
While Sam gears up to finally take on Kmart, he also fights to overcome obstacles from both inside and outside the company.
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0:00.0 | Hey prime members, you can listen to business movers add free on Amazon music. Download the app today |
0:22.2 | It's January 1986 at promptly 7.30 a.m. on a Saturday morning |
0:28.0 | 68-year-old Sam Walton walks briskly to the front of an auditorium inside Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas |
0:36.4 | 300 of Wal-Mart's top executives have gathered here for a mandatory weekly meeting to review the company's financial performance |
0:43.6 | The news is good. It's still Sam's mood is bad |
0:47.0 | He thinks some of Wal-Mart's top leaders are living too high on the hog |
0:51.2 | So as he kicks off this meeting, Sam sets out to make an example of one executive in particular |
0:56.7 | Good morning. I'd like to start this meeting with Bob sitting here in the front row. Morning, Bob |
1:01.8 | Morning, Sam. Got those sales reports you requested. Well, just hold off on those. I've got something else I'd like to talk about |
1:08.9 | Bob, do you know what kind of car I drive? Yeah, everyone in town knows you drive a red Ford pickup, Sam |
1:14.4 | It's pretty beat up. Yeah, that's my hunting truck, Bob |
1:17.6 | I load my bird dogs in the back when I go out to shoot coil and I drive that same truck to work every day |
1:23.2 | It's a 1979, but it's plenty good enough to get me where I'm going, but Bob |
1:29.8 | I saw you getting out of a car this morning. Looks like a brand new Cadillac. Is that right? |
1:34.9 | Yes, I just bought it yesterday. Well, that must have sent you back a pretty penny Bob |
1:40.5 | It wasn't cheap. No |
1:42.5 | And I'm sure you've got the money after all our stock is way up, right? |
1:46.0 | We've tripled revenues in the past few years right on the brink of catching up to came art and becoming the biggest discounter in the country |
1:53.4 | But see that's why I don't like your car, Bob |
1:56.9 | Sam, I'm sorry. I don't follow |
1:59.6 | Sam looks out over Bob's head and into the audience |
2:02.8 | Did you all know that a decade ago there were 100 discount chains operating in this country only two of them were Wal-Mart and came |
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