Gui Loureiro 0:00 

I told Carlos, who became my partner in the book as a coach. I said, Carlos, I need your help. We need to start to change Walmart. Can lead it. And Carlos Look at me, and he knew me pretty well, and said, Yeah, I can do that. I just have one question, who's going to be the CEO of this new company? What do me? I am the CEO. Yeah, but who's going to be the CEO when we transform the company? It is me. Carlos, no, no, you can't. You can't because you grew up in common and control. When you think you're right, you don't listen. And it says, so you cannot be the in a much more agile company, much more digital. You are not, you're not the right guy, yeah, but I want it. Yeah, the fact you want doesn't matter. You cannot be unless you want to change. If you want to change, if you're willing to, and it's going to be tough now I had to change to deserve the job that I already had.

David Novak 0:58 

If you're wanting to see big changes in your company. Here's a question for you. Are you willing to change too? Welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader you can be. My guest today is guy Luray ero, the chairman of Walmart Mexico, also known as walmex. It's the leading retailer in Mexico with more than 200,000 associates and a current market cap of $60 billion guy has led a massive digital and cultural transformation there, and you're going to love all the stories he has to tell about it, but you're also going to see that guy didn't just ask the company to change. He was willing to change himself, too. I see a lot of leaders make big company plans, but they don't stop to think about how they personally need to change in order to lead them. But guy does, and after this episode, you're going to be inspired to do the exact same thing if it's required. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours. Guy, Lou Ray, ero,

you know. Guy, whenever I used to have meetings at yum brands, I would start by doing a yum cheer. It's like, give me a Y, give me a U, give me What's that spell? And I understand you have a signature Walmart here, tell us about it. Well,

Gui Loureiro 2:22 

you know, that's something that our founder has created. I think he went to Korea, and then he saw something and he created and something we every day, we say it and has meaning. So we start by give me a, W, give me a, give me L, M, a, r, t, what does it spell? And we say, Walmart. So first of all, we say the name of our company. Then I say, Who does it belong to? So whose Walmart is it? It's my Walmart. So we like this ownership. We treat associates like owners. We call our people Associates, and then we say, Who is number one, the customer always and then we say, Who. So it has strong messages there. So it's our company we need to act as owners, and the customer is always right.

David Novak 3:17 

And you know, whenever I did the yum shirt, there was never a time people were smiling. And I've given speeches to different companies, and, you know, make everybody stand up, but they do it and everybody smile. I don't care what industry you're in, finance, technology, every everybody kind of says, I really have to do it, but when it's over there, they're smiling and and speaking of smiling, you got a great smile, and you're known for your positive energy. There's, there's this thing I understand that is associated with you. It's called the ghee factor. Have you? Have you heard about that?

Gui Loureiro 3:49 

Well, some people say I feel embarrassed to talk about it, but yeah, I did here. I've look, I always like to be passionate about things I love, what I do, and I try to do things that I love always. And I think this passion is something that you can transmit to people and and when you link that passion with a great purpose, or purpose to help people save money and live better, which I fully identify myself with, that can move mountains you, everything is possible, when I think that what you are doing can improve people's life and the leadership is miles at that opportunity that can move people to go beyond what they think they can do.

David Novak 4:32 

You know, I always say, positive energy lifts you up. Negative energy brings you down. Yeah, what do you do to get your positive energy up so that you come in there every day and you've got the energy you need to have a CEO.

Gui Loureiro 4:41 

He always tells you, for a purpose, I love our purpose, and I do think the company that I work for can help people develop because we provide access. We provide access to merchandise at the price they can pay. We provide access in Mexico to internet seven times cheaper than what the market. A leader, that we provide access to health, to education. So first of all, you have to identify yourself with the company work. Second is that, have you seen this difference that makes when somebody enters a room smiling, or if you went to the room? So I always believe on smiling, and always believe on you building trust with people and and I think that and I heard the definition, always look for a definition what trust means. Of course, we all know what it means. But then I read that definition, name Mayo that came to me. I don't know why I read I opened that email. There was no credit to the person who said that, but I said, Trust either a company or a person you need to be honest, reliable and caring. And caring is a very important part of that trust. So I think that the motivation comes from building the trust, having the purpose and loving what you do. If you love what you do, man, you do more than than normal people, do

David Novak 6:00 

you know, and I love the passion that you have, but, but I know you also lead with a tremendous amount of intensity. You know? Can you? Can you give me an example or tell a story about how, how that intensity that you have shows up in your leadership style?

Gui Loureiro 6:17 

So our business, if you should go to a store, and the best place to go energize yourself is go to a store. Our associates, they're so good, and it's a hard work to have a before you work for a supermarket, you haven't got the clue how difficult it is to have a store ready for the customer, and that's the partial those associates have to get things. But in our business, you, as you have, if you have a restaurant, the store has always to be ready for the customer. And you go to a store, one day is good, and you tell good things about the company. If the next day you come and it's not good, you change your mind. So if our business has to be always ready for the customer, you cannot live on the past. So we say, we celebrate, we recognize, and then we move on, because the store needs to be good for the next customer as well. So I think the same about business. I have a say here. They say, I don't get paid to do well. I get paid to take this company to the maximum potential. But I also believe the maximum potential keeps moving up, so because we can always do better. So that moves me to be intense, very, very intense, because I always believe that we can do better than what we did in the past. So let's move on. Let's keep intensity. That's the only way to remain competitive in today's world.

David Novak 7:43 

So you attack the business with this daily intensity. And you know, for a lot of people, that can wear people out. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, you're grinding and, you know, yeah, you get a lot of positive energy and everything, but you're also focused on results and making things happen. How do you personally manage both of those as you think about your own leadership style,

Gui Loureiro 8:02 

well, people need to, first of all, they need I think that this purpose that I mentioned, you have a strong purpose as a company, and your personal alignment with their purpose can help. So we try in our company, we say, if you have our values and you like our culture, the rest we can teach you. So if you have people that are aligned in terms of purpose and culture, that makes life much, much easier, to keep people motivated. Second, good results motivate a lot people want to be successful. So and you see the same people when you have good results, they're very motivated. They're working very hard, then they work a little bit less, but they don't get the result. Oh, my God, this is too tough. So generating results, meaningful results, not only numbers, but meaningful results, can motivate people. And you also need to know what's the limit. I have a story that marked me my first CEO job. I came I was working in a CPG company in Mexico. It was my first job, and I want to succeed. And I come the company was, I haven't had a good previous year, and I was trying hard to be successful, to deserve the job that I got. And I received a visit of a great mentor of mine who was about to retire, and he was a British person, and he came, and I said to him, can you come and see us before you retire, and tell me how we are doing? And the guy came, and he was always very direct, but he didn't give me the feedback. And I was walking with him after the VIS and willing to have the feedback, he was not giving me the best. I said to him, direct. So what's going on? Why are you doing? Provide me feedback, because I don't know how to tell you, because I'm workaholic and you know, and so you're going to point the finger to me when I give you my feedback. So let's have a go. The guy said, Look, you are going to succeed. You're going to do very well with your first job as CEO. You wanted it very much. You are doing all the. Right things you are going to do great. The problem is that you are working 24 by seven. This is your dream. And I know you're not tired and we're going to go for it, but you haven't asked your team if it does is their dream as well. And because you are doing this 24 by seven, you're pushing your team to do the same. This is not fair. This is your dream or theirs. And I think I learned that that thing so you need to pause. You need to say thanks. You need to celebrate. You can be ambitious about improving the business, always improving the business, but there is a limit. And the response on that is that focus. You need to focus on the core things. You

David Novak 10:40 

know, that's, that's, that's so true. And I, you know, I remember visiting Walmart, the in Bentonville, Arkansas, and, you know, learning about Sam Walton and and the values of the company and Ed they, you know, a lot of companies say they want to beat year ago. Sam Walton said beat yesterday. So, you know, so do you have even that kind of intensity now? Is it like beat yesterday, beat year ago? How do you think about it?

Gui Loureiro 11:05 

I do. It's so amazing. Because sometimes, if we're in doubt, go to some Walton book, the answer is there. It's amazing how, after so many years, decades, the books is too up to date and a lot of that so but I think that motivates people, because we if you really believe in that customer is number one, and you really one day store to be competitive and to be serving your customer, you can always do more. You can always do better. So I think that's what motivates so I always start by our purpose, by what we want to achieve by our customer. You know, when we one thing that we change here that has had a tremendous impact in when we visit stores or when we have internal meetings, instead of talking about what we are doing, we talk about what the customer sees from what we are doing. So it doesn't matter what I'm doing, what makes that what's the customer going to see? And when you see your business from the eyes of the customer, there is always something better you can do.

David Novak 12:06 

Makes sense, you know? And I can't wait to talk more about how you're leading at Walmart. But first, you know, I want to take you back a little bit. You know, what's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today?

Gui Loureiro 12:21 

You know, what I used to play in my house. We used to live when I was, like, I was five, and so we had the house. In the back the house, there was a place I used to call my office, and I used to go and put papers there I couldn't read because I was thought of advertising, though, yet,

David Novak 12:39 

and you had office five years

Gui Loureiro 12:43 

old office, I call it, come on. I told it my office, and I played it around, but there's one story about myself, so I went to school one year earlier, not because I was a very smart kid, but because my my big brother, which was 11 months older than me, couldn't understand why he had to go to school and me not. So they pulled me one year earlier, and believe or not, one year made my life much more difficult, much more difficult. Everything was more difficult. So I used to like to play football, or you call it soccer, and at some stage I was much smaller, so I had to fight a lot more for the things I like the girls, but I couldn't get the girl because they wanted older boys, etc. So I think I had to fight more for things because of that one year gap I had and and that made me a fighter. Yeah,

David Novak 13:35 

you know. And you now live in Mexico, but as I understand it, you grew up in in Brazil. What was life for you like growing up there? And when did you start to get this sense that leadership might be in your path? Now, you said you had an office at five years old, but when, when did you really start saying, hey, you know, I think I'd like to lead, become a leader. No, I

Gui Loureiro 13:57 

was ambitious, and I loved finance, so I started, I studied business, but a lot focused on finance. I started my career in finance, and I was very technical, and I studied and Latin America has been a great school, especially for finance people, because of hyperinflation, divided ways. So there was a time inflation was 80% per month, per month, and I was asked to move to the buying area. So I was a buyer. Imagine you buying something with 80% inflation per month, and then I start to have more stay closer to the business. And I said, I reset my ambition. I said, instead of being CFO, I want to be CEO. I always look 20 years 1020, years ahead, and then I start to have conversation with the company, which looked crazy because I was like 25 years old, 26 so I want to be CEO. How can I prepare myself? And one of. Things that came up was leadership. So I became very much interested about learning about leadership, and I think it's something you can learn. I think the thing I most learned was to observe other leaders and get the things that I liked more about them, and saying, How can I be like then? And get the things I didn't like about them and say, How can I avoid being like then in those parts. So I start to observe a lot of people because I came to crucial leadership. Was the most important thing to be CEO. Hey everyone,

Koula Callahan 15:31 

it's Kula from how leaders lead. And if you've watched our podcast for any number of episodes, you probably know that a common theme from all of the great leaders we interview is that they are active learners. They have this commitment to continuing to learn and grow so that they don't stay stagnant, and so that they continue to see success in their leadership and in their life. This theme of active learning is so important, and it's what David's latest book, how leaders learn is all about. It's all about helping you develop that skill of active learning so that you too can continue to see success in your leadership and in your life. The book is really entertaining. It pulls stories from some of our greatest podcast guests and pairs those stories with insights that you can incorporate into your leadership and into your life right away. Grab how leaders learn on Amazon or wherever books are sold. And I think you're really going to love it. You feel David's personality through the pages and through his storytelling, and it's a really powerful way to level up your leadership. You know, you

David Novak 16:29 

say that leadership can be learned. And you know, a lot of people think that leaders are born. You know, you're, you're a born leader. How do you how do you reconcile that the difference between the born leader and the leader that learns?

Gui Loureiro 16:42 

Well, there's some people that are born good for certain things. I do believe some people are born, but I think most of people, they learn. I think learning is a question of being vulnerable, is a question of accepting that you can always improve, is a question of admiring others that are better than you in certain things, instead of hating them or being jealous, you admire them, and you try to learn from them. So always try to absorb the most I could get from my bosses, from my peers and from people that worked with me, and be open to change, be open to to improve, be open to learn more. And I had even when I moved to Omar, that was late in my career, that was only 12 years ago, and I was very senior in my previous company. And at some stage you become arrogant, and you don't even notice it, and understand, look, why? Well, do I get appraisals? Right? I'm already too old, and I am who I am, and I have good and bad things, but I succeed with the good things I have. And then I moved to Walmart and our CEO, one of my first meetings, he was talking, oh, I just got my appraisal, and I have to improve on this, this. And they said, Gosh, this is the biggest company in the world, and I have the CEO telling me he has to improve in certain things. Who am I to believe? I've already got it so he can learn and I can learn so leaders can have always to learn. Even if you're born like a good leader, you still have a lot to learn in your life. Absolutely,

David Novak 18:12 

I want to go back to this 80% inflation. You come into this job, you got 80% inflation. You know? What did you learn about leadership, having to deal with that kind of hyperinflation, there was a

Gui Loureiro 18:23 

worst waste of time, because you are dealing to negotiate things instead of how to improve the business. It's tough, and you have to bring more than there was one lesson that was good. I had the trainee that came to work for me and my team was I was the main buyer of packaging materials at that time, and I had a trainee. And as a trainee, he was like, I know everything. Is my first year of World War. I know everything. The guy came to me and said, Look, you we had a mission. I know why you work too hard, because you're very disorganized. They said, Okay, I'm very disorganized. Fine. You know, you receive somebody at 5pm which was already late, your main supplier, and you had to discuss price increase, and you talked to him about his family, he talked to you about these and you guys wasted like 1015, minutes talking about those things before you start negotiation. And there's a waste. Okay, fine. So the following day, I gave that guy the trainee, I said, Look, you're going to buy the small caps. I buy for the detergent, liquid detergents, you're going to buy that small caps. It was a very small part of my job. And then when you do everything, you come to me if you need help, fine. Then three weeks later, I said to him, you know, the hard soap wrapping, the plastic wrapping. You're going to buy this as well. The guy, after two weeks, he came to me say, you know, give, let me tell you something. I don't think you are disorganized. I've got enough, and don't give me anything more, because I'm very, very busy. And the lesson, the. Were two lessons when you have any negotiation, especially if you have this type of negotiation, you have to go back every month. You need to create trust, and sometimes you invest a little bit more time to show people that you care about them, that you may be supplier and customer relationship, but you care. You care about the success for the company. You care about themselves, you create the bond people trust. Because a lot of the times during that time, we had to continue receiving the supply without having agreed the price, and people trusted me so they will continue to supply, then would agree the price later, because was not never easy, and we sometimes you don't have the authority because the price increases are so high. He had to go back, or she had to go back and consult their boss. I had to go back and consult my bosses. So sometimes things that less experienced people see as a waste of time, you build those relationships, and even when there are tough discussions about price increases, the company could go bankrupt if they had a bad negotiation. If you build the trust, then you have good negotiations, and you can never win all the time. You don't build a trust if you want to win all the time. So I think I learned a lot about negotiation, a lot about how to build that trust that created me the opportunities later in my career, I was head of margin acquisitions to do negotiations that look at impossible because I learned a very young stage of my career to build the trust do your negotiation. You know,

David Novak 21:36 

it's interesting. You know, one of the things I learned at Walmart from Sam Walton was that no one will care about you until they know that you care about them. And that's basically what you're saying there. And you were promoted when you were at Unilever's to the global headquarters in the UK, and you've called that one of the your toughest stretches of your career. You know, tell us a story and why it was such a pivotal point, point in your development as a leader.

Gui Loureiro 22:04 

There were two points. So the first time I moved to the UK, I realized when I arrived that I couldn't speak English. I went to sue my English school because I thought I could speak. But when you arrived there, and that was tough, and they got mental blockers, and took me long, long time to get rid and I think paid us this psychological block. So how can you work if you don't understand the language and and they learned that I should have raised my hand well before, and maybe I should have gone to intensive course, but I wanted to prove myself. I want, I think I was hiding that deficiency. I was not hiding anything. Everybody knew it. So that was very tough one. But the second one was, you know, you you get a big promotion. I was much more senior, much more experienced, and then I start to suffer. I started for anxiety, because then the problem was me. I want to prove myself that they deserve the opportunity. I thought I had to prove others, but I was trying to prove myself. And you start to to suffer anxiety, a lot of anxiety that with the when anxiety, some level of anxiety is good, a lot of anxiety is very bad. So I suffered a lot. And the problem was myself, with myself, till the moment, I just relax it. And when you relax, you just move on and do your job. We always go through those things. The best thing is to share with more experienced people, instead of hiding, share it. Share your difficulties, and they will help you. Yeah,

David Novak 23:34 

another job you had at Unilever was that you were a head of strategy, and you know, what'd you learn about cutting through all the complexity that's out there and keeping strategies simple so that people can really rally around it and execute it, make it happen.

Gui Loureiro 23:51 

First is to focus the most important part of the strategy is not necessarily what you're going to do, is what we're not going to do, and we tend to discuss what we're going to do, and we tend not to discuss what we are now going to do. And then the organization continues to do things, and they just add things on top of what they're doing. So I learned how to say no to certain parts. And if you focus, you will succeed. Focusing was one. The second was this part about thinking long term and defining what company you want to be. And I had learned from a professor of mine years before, but I used it more when I was the strategy person. There are companies that they do well, and when they plan the future, they say, oh, I want to continue to do well. I'm happy with my performance, and that company is a slave of their past, because the biggest component of their future is their past, because they just say, I'm happy before I have I'll continue to deliver that. Other companies improve a little bit and say, Yeah, but we can always improve a little bit. So let's improve. That company is too a slave of the past, because that's. To fix the past and improve a little bit sort of thing that comes, I think, 10 years in advance, 1020 they say, what's the company want to be in 10 years? And then they come future back, and they decide what they have to do in order to be that. And I use that both for a company, but also for my personal career, and how can I develop and also for the people that I mentor on their career. Have you noticed that when people come to talk to you about the career, and if they have half an hour, they spend 28 minutes telling you what they did in the past, and then they ask you, what do you think about next job? Is this a good job for me? And I always tell them I don't know, because if I don't know where you want to go, you can take any bus. So if people come to you and say, This is what I want to be in 10 years, and how can we what do I need to get there and then this, this job fits with what I need in 10 years time is a much better discount, the same for the company. So I learned about this thing, about thinking long term and then building that long term. And if you do that, anything is possible.

David Novak 26:05 

And you were at a great company, Unilever. I mean, you were did extremely well, and then you moved to Walmart, you know, I like to get in the heads of how people make decisions, you know, you know, what was it about that opportunity that that made you say, yes, there

Gui Loureiro 26:21 

were two things. First was a very unfortunate thing. I left Unilever because there was a huge disagreement about future. So I wanted to I was CEO. Was a successful CEO. I want to go back to CEO. And some bosses want me to go back to finance, because they needed me finance, and I was a good finance person, and I had to take a decision about getting a senior job demo, senior job in finance, or be a happy person. And I decided to be happy. And I think that if you do what you like, you're going to do it well. And that opportunity was no longer available for me at Unilever. Then I had to change and Walmart, since I was CEO for invivo in Mexico, Walmart was trying to convince me to join Walmart. And at that time, I decided to leave. They approached me at that time, and they made me a big offer, which was, I want to go back to Brazil because family reasons, they said to me, okay, we can train you. So they made an offer a CEO package, without a job and with an offer to be trained, because a lot of people fail when they move to strong CPGs to retail. Retail is a lot different. So they offered me to train me, but I look at 10 years in advance, and I said, What do I want to do in 10 years time. And I said, in 10 years, I'm going to approach in retirement, and maybe I want to do boards. Maybe we want to do this. And the experience at Walmart from the other side of the table, they continue to be CEO, would give me the capabilities and experiences to be what I wanted to be in 10 years. So there was a fit, there was a big risk. Was going to be much safer if I moved to another CPG company, but I was 45 I said, I can take the risk, and I don't regret. I own a lot to Unilever. I learned a lot. I love the company. I have so many friends there, but the 12 years at Walmart have been great as well.

David Novak 28:21 

Yeah, fantastic. And you know, Walmart is one of the largest and most influential retailers in the world, by far, and what's something that Walmart does better than any other retailer on the planet? Well,

Gui Loureiro 28:34 

we have everyday low price philosophy. So we believe that we can do a better we can be a better service to our customers if we negotiate and we implement the price policy that is the lowest possible price ever, trying to do much less promotions, because a promotion, You reduce your price. But that's temporary. Sometimes it's not at the time the customer wants to buy that thing, and the customers just force it to buy that thing at the time you you lower the price, but then you have to compensate it having higher prices either in your other merchandise, on that merchandise. So we think you cannot say customer is number one if you push them to buy things not at the right time for them. So everyday low price tries to put the price the best possible price every day and maintain them constant. So you buy whenever you want, the quantity want, and you can trust that when you come to our store, you can pay the lowest price. And I think that's very unique to Walmart, and we take it very seriously and and then create that great stress I told you about the definition of stress. You need to be honest. Rely on caring if you come to a place that you know that tries to give you the lowest possible price, and don't mislead you fake promotions. It's honest. Is reliable. Level, and it's caring, because we try to give you the best Walmart

David Novak 30:03 

calls its employees, associates and and I know that's more than just a label. How do you create a culture where people feel like they belong and and that their work no matter what they do in the company? It really matters. Our

Gui Loureiro 30:19 

founder has always listened to associates a lot, and that's the best way to prove on a daily basis that they matter. So if you come to a store and you try to lecture people, you're not being respectful to them. You need to come to the store, because they see the customer every day, everything good or bad that we do in our offices ends up at the store, but it's the store person who has to face the customer. So when you walk with your notepad and you talk to a store associate and you take notes, they feel valued if you take action from their notes. Even better, they feel valued a lot. So give you an example. One, when I came to CEO here in Mexico, and I used to go to a stop, you call me sir, sir. Give whatever No. And I said, don't, don't, because I'm just playing a role here. And if you tell me, gee, instead of Sir, you're going to feel better to tell me the truth. And what I want is for you to your opinion matters, and we take it very seriously. And we have things like open doors, which is, you can come to the Office of the CEO anytime, and you can say what's going on. You have full access to people, and we need to show that we have rules like the three meters rule. I have to say, Hello. How are you customers? To associate we try to respond. It's becoming difficult, but you have the sunset rule. If you ask me something, I better give you an answer the same day, even if the answer is that, David, I know you want this. You asking me, it's going to take two days for me to get the answer to you. You know, I care about what you ask and you know I care about providing you a response. So there are very small things that we do every day that are part of our culture, that show that we value you. We value your contribution. And the other thing is that you look at their CEO, he started in a warehouse, and then you grow. So we say, we you have the opportunity. You go as far as you want, and we'll provide you the opportunity to grow. You feed the companies. I think those things together, they make the company as we are, and we, we provide this to our associates. And

David Novak 32:44 

you said that, you know, you really need to see the business or at the stores from the customer's eyes, you know. And and here you are. You know, your CEO, you're overseeing eight different countries, you know. How do you personally get connected to the front lines and listen to customers and understand the behaviors and and where there are widely different cultures in every, every, every country you need

Gui Loureiro 33:12 

to go out. This is the campus I cannot do my job from my comfortable seat. I travel a lot. My wife will tell you, I travel a lot. You go and you talk to people, and you go and you show respect and and you go and you take action from all you talk. So you visit stores in every country where we go, I try to talk to as many people as possible. And then you need to have a very organized agenda. So you can talk to the people. You can talk to the right people that you need to talk and you can have open space to receive other people. When you respect what people say, they come more to you, and they tell you more. So if, if they feel respected, they will come back. If they don't feel respectful, they will hide things from you. So what we try to keep is this openness and disrespectful culture where people are gonna say so I spend most of my time talking to people, and then I can make my decisions faster and better. And the second thing that I do, a lot of mistakes every day, the sooner you recognize your mistakes, the sooner, the better, and people will look at you as a human being that also make mistakes, recognize and move on, so you create a distrust with them. We'll be

David Novak 34:32 

back with the rest of my conversation with guy in just a moment. You can hear how guy's focus on the future really guides him as a leader, and it reminds me of this terrific insight from HubSpot CEO, Yamini Rangan, who also talks about the importance of starting with the future when you're trying to define your career path, what

Yamini Rangan 34:53 

is the future that I want to help create as a leader? One of the lessons that I have. Learned as a leader is not to focus on the past and where you're coming from, but really focus on the future and work backwards. I had to make that choice, David, because I could be sitting there and I could be thinking about, what shoes Am I filling. How am I going to get this role, you know, to be where it needs to be, and do I have the capability, the credibility to be able to lead this company? But that's not where I started. I made a choice. I made a choice, and I thought about 2030, and where HubSpot can be as a company, and what would be my role in getting the organization to where it needed to be in the next decade, and what would a great leader do, and how could I be the part of that journey? So I started in the future, and then the answer became clear. I wanted to be the best CEO that the company and the employees and the customers deserved, not where I was coming from, but where it needed to be in the future. And so working backwards from the future really helped create a vision for where I can go with this company.

David Novak 36:12 

Go back and learn from my entire conversation with Yamini episode 161 here on Hal leaders lead, you know at walmex, you were serving a customer base in Mexico and Central America where most people preferred cash and didn't have, you know, bank accounts and didn't trust buying online. Yeah, not easy. Now, what advice can you give to leaders about meeting customers and where they're at and building your strategy based off of that.

Gui Loureiro 36:45 

I used to receive the visit of my bosses, and they would ask, Why, back in 2016, 17, why e commerce is not growing Mexico, and we have the answer ready. Mexico, internet is very expensive, so people don't have full access to our customers. They don't have access to internet all the time. They buy one week, they get prepaid cards, they buy one week, then they stay some weeks without and also they don't have bank accounts, so they cannot pay online. So they don't trust they don't oh yeah, understand that. We'll show data to reinforce the idea. And one day, as we were transforming, the company, said, Look, if we see things from the customer point of view, that's not the way we acting regarding e commerce, because if they have those limitations, how can we serve them? And it's funny, because I have a friend who says interesting that the harder I work, the luckier I get as we start to think about that, there was an opportunity for us to launch our own internet plan, phone and internet, and we launched it seven times cheaper than the leader. So the same way that our founders, 60 plus years ago, offer access to goods at the price people could pay. We offer access to internet. By offering that access, we open the benefits of the digital economy to our customers. They now can have internet all time. When we did that, we came to another conclusion, which was, Well, now let's help them to get the thing. So we now offer help. We offer high school, the whole high school you can do in five months online in a top school in Mexico paying $100 so we provide access to people to think technology allows you to think bigger and to provide access to things. So the moment you think about your customer, you go for solutions. You don't go for explanations about why you are not doing you go, wow, I have to find a solution.

David Novak 38:54 

So you really created a digital revolution in Mexico and and I understand you introduced in store kiosks where customers could browse digitally. Well, tell us about that and how you came to that, and then how you really drove it into the organization, because you were basically old school now you're becoming new school in a hurry.

Gui Loureiro 39:19 

You know, that's a proof that the CEO doesn't know everything, and thanks God, certain things happen without the CEO knowing. So I have nothing to do with the kiosk. So somebody invented the kiosk because that person was thinking about the customer. So when I got to know I said, explain to me, everybody in the whole world is moving to buy from a phone, and we at womax, we created this physical kiosk in a store with a salesperson a computer that the customer comes and buying that kiosk. I thought was the most stupid idea, and I was wrong, as most a lot of the time I am. Because what happened is that that person that created thought about solving a customer pain problems, so they said the customer doesn't buy because they don't have internet, because they don't have a payment method, and they don't trust because they if they get wrong or if they buy something and that they buy from the wrong the wrong site, and the things never get delivered to them. They don't have money to go and buy again. My customer cannot get it wrong. And by putting a kiosk inside the store where the customer would go there see the thing be helped by a salesperson, buy and pay cash at the store, and if something goes wrong, they will go back to So what's a brilliant a brilliant solution that I would probably think 10 times before approve it. Thanks God. I didn't approve. It didn't come to me for approval. They implemented it, and it went very well, very well. So we have more than 1000 of those kiosks today, still serving people over time, they are going to migrate to buying from their phone as they trust, as we give them internet enterprise they can pay, they will and a wallet, they will be able to migrate. But we're up create creative solution from somebody that had the customer on their mind and was not me. I would love to be the person who did it, but it was not me.

David Novak 41:23 

Well, you've orchestrated a major transformation to Walmart, and you've now captured a lot of that journey in your new book. It's called reinventing the leader. What made you want to put this story into words?

Gui Loureiro 41:37 

The first idea I had was, how can I transmit to my kids everything I learned during my career? I started with that, and then I went to a hotel with my wife, and like the middle of nowhere, and I started to write. Then I had heard that one of things we should do in life is to say thanks to people that help others. So I said, okay, all the stories I want to tell my kids I learned from somebody else. So also take the brain, start to phone people and say, Thank you. You know, I remember that. And then I came, I had a coach that had done a couple of work with me, and I came home, don't want to Carlos Marine, great coach, Carlos don't want to write a chapter, and Carlos start to work with me, and they start to write a book. And he had the same intentions that I had. And then when we wrote it, we said, why don't we publish it? And then we start to get to know that. He said, nobody writes a book. You write an idea and you sell it, and if somebody buys it, you write the book. We had already had the book, and it's a great way to tell the story. It's a great way to say thanks to many people that thought things to you as a great pleasure to see it. It's going to be released this week. Good.

David Novak 42:56 

Congratulations on that. And you've said that that you could transform a company, but you have to transform yourself first. Yeah, what was the moment that made you realize that you had to transform yourself first?

Gui Loureiro 43:12 

I arrive at Well Max, and we have had a great year. This company is very successful. Has been successful for decades. Was not successful because I was the CEO, and because we were as a country, we were late on the digital space. We could see what was happening in the US, in Asia, and we could see that we didn't move the brilliant guy to see that was coming to Mexico. I started to think about, how can we move this company into the digital era? I called Carlos, who became my partner in the book as a coach. I said, Carlos, I need your help, because I need to convince my executive committee that, despite the fact we are doing very well and despite the fact Mexico is late in the digital moves, we need to start to change Walmart can lead it. And I explained to him, and said, Can you help me to convince my executive committee that we need to take the risk and we need to move first, because they're going to tell us why two movies were doing pretty well. And Carlos looked at me, and he knew me pretty well, and said, Yeah, guy, I can do that. I just have one question, who's going to be the CEO of this new company? What do you mean? I am the CEO, yeah. But who's gonna be the CEO when we transform the company? It is me, Carlos. No, no, you can't. And he was blind. You can't because you grew up in common and control. When you think you're right, you don't listen. And it says, so you cannot be the in a much more agile company, much more digital. You you are not, you're not the right guy. Yeah, but I want it. Yeah, the fact you want doesn't matter. You cannot be. Then the conversation always said, unless you want to change, if you want to change, if you're willing to, and it's going to be tough. And then we did the plan about how I could change, and that's the origin of the book as well, to tell the story about. How I changed it, how I had to change to deserve the job that I already had.

David Novak 45:06 

That's great, you know. And you write a lot about trust, moving away from that command and control towards autonomy and ownership. When did you learn, or how did you learn that you needed to let go, and how do you decide when to let go?

Gui Loureiro 45:23 

It's funny because we start to look at the digital native companies, and we said they are solving problems our customers, problems faster than us and better. And it's going to come to Mexico. And then we start to say, Okay, we need to be more digital. We need to have more data and get insights from those data. But if you have more data and you have more insights, what do you do with those insights? How do we implement things? Okay, so we choose to use the method, the agile methodology, to help us to identify customer pain points, to identify solution, to implement it. This requires you to have multidisciplinary teams that see things end to end, and solve customer pain points in a much faster way than in the past. When I start to grow up, you would come the researcher would identify the problem, would pass it to the marketing and to the technical experiences. They would develop a product, then it would test in the market. Then after 10 years, you would have it delivered to the customer. And we're always trying to have a perfect product. Then what we notes in the new comes that they don't have a perfect problem. Every time they launch a new phone, it comes with bugs, and then we help them to fix it. There's one condition, the product has to be better than the previous one. So I said, and we wait to the perfect product. So it takes too long. They said, Okay, the only way is that you create those multi similarities, and you give them freedom. So the leadership keeps setting the what, what, where we're going to take the company, what? But those things, they decide to how themselves. And I was inspired by that book, Team of Teams. It's inspired me sometimes, because they need my approval, we delay a decision by weeks or months. And 99% you have a good team. 99% of time have good approval anyway. So why to do that? But it's if you grew up in command and control. The time you have the command, you release it, it starts. So we said the only way it's going to work is that. So if I am a customer centric person, and if I want to succeed, and the condition to succeed in this current world is that I have to change. So let's move. But it was not easy. And how many meetings we went that we did it wrong, but we stated clear to people, saying, This is the way want to run the company. We are going to get wrong. Sometimes you raise your hand and say you're not doing what you said you were going to do, and people start to request us to behave the way we said we would behave. And so there was constant feedback. And we end up training a lot. We're not perfect, but we end up training a lot, you

David Novak 48:18 

know. And you also said something that I love, we must perform to transform. It's a nice little rhyme, you know. But what do you do as a leader to take care of that first part, to really drive results, the performance part.

Gui Loureiro 48:35 

There were two people that influenced me. One was that a boss that I had vinicious pre end that I had in Brazil, and was I learned a lot from him, and I still do. He kept saying to me in the past, look, if you deliver your targets, you have freedom to do your way. And I saw it happen. So I always had this when I am See, when I become CEO, I'm going to deliver, so I'm going to do it my way. And then the friend who came to me and said he had just taken over a global the CEO job of a global multinational, multinational company, and he said My predecessor was trying to transform the company. In order to perform, he lost his job. I have to perform so I can transform. And I perfectly, guess I have to in the case situation we work, I had to perform in order to transform, and I had to transform in order to continue to perform, because we didn't resolve the tunnel. And it happened because when I started to implement those agile methodologies, those all those changes, were doing, somebody in the head office told me, No, no, you are wasting your time because you are developing from the center of the company, so you stop duplicating the spend tool. And then my boss, I talked to my boss, my boss said, you have good results. You have so you have a little bit of time and you want desperate to go ahead, you have my permission to go ahead. Then I had. That thing works. So I only got permission to go ahead and duplicate, but the people that in the head office that were doing it, they came later to see us here and to learn from what we were doing, because it never developed it.

David Novak 50:13 

You bring up a good point. There's always tension between, you know, divisions and companies and the head office. You know that, and the head office is always driving centralization and saying, We've got people working on it. And you're a lot of times, you're out there and your your piece of Walmart, and you're waiting and waiting and it's not coming. How do you decide when you say, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna let the I'm gonna let headquarters do that, versus I'm going to do it.

Gui Loureiro 50:41 

I think I benefit from the fact that I have done operational jobs in my life, but also have worked a lot in the head office. So I learned to appreciate what head office does and to value a lot what they do, but also to learn how to deal with that. So I think that if have transparency, cooperation, this can work, but also if you deliver results, nobody's going to stop you. And I remember one day at Unilever, we were having difficult times, and we're having a discussion, and I was the younger person that team was the finance leadership team, and people were complaining. Everybody knew the solution. I said, I can't remember. I said to them, looks like you all have that was not very popular that day, but they were all my bosses in previous jobs, etc. So I said to them, look it looks like we all have the solution. Why don't we do it? Because I tell you, in my hooker, I have almost four years of career. I can't remember any time people stop at me, but I can remember many times hiding behind the excuse, oh, I don't have permission to do things. It's not true. Most of the times you do have permission go for it, and if you have good results, you have double permission to do it and to try. I love it.

David Novak 52:02 

This has been so much fun guy, and I want to have some more with what I call my lightning round of questions. Now, are you ready for this? Yeah, I'm ready for this. What three words best describe you?

Gui Loureiro 52:13 

Oh, that says because I did that by my I like to live with intensity. I love with intensity, and I like to cause impact, to impact people in business.

David Novak 52:24 

If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be? My father? What's your biggest pet peeve

Gui Loureiro 52:31 

if you mistreat people who would play you in a movie?

David Novak 52:33 

Oh, my God,

Gui Loureiro 52:34 

ringing jeans.

David Novak 52:40 

What's What's something only a CEO knows about. WalMart.

Gui Loureiro 52:43 

We are much greater company than people believe.

David Novak 52:46 

You get two front row tickets to do anything to anything you want. Where are you going and who are you taking with you? I'm going

Gui Loureiro 52:55 

to watch my team winning the world championship Sao Paulo football in Brazil, and I will take my kid who supports the chimney as well.

David Novak 53:05 

What's the one thing that you do just for you, swimming beside your family? What is your most prized possession? Friends? If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear football? What's something about you? Few people would know I'm shy. I don't look like what I am. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss?

Gui Loureiro 53:24 

Well, I start to meditate, and I never miss meditation.

David Novak 53:27 

I'm trying to get into that myself. I'm doing it. You know, it's interesting. I

Gui Loureiro 53:31 

wish I had started much well, so

David Novak 53:33 

why do you think meditation is something that every leader should do? Because it

Gui Loureiro 53:37 

reduces your anxiety, it reduces the fear, and it brings you to the present.

David Novak 53:43 

Great, well, we're out of the lightning round, and thanks for enlightening us on that. What's your favorite? What's your favorite? Spiritual Growth book. Spiritual

Gui Loureiro 53:49 

Growth book is not that spiritual, but similar, which is the psychology of money.

David Novak 53:59 

Great. You know, you're leading more than 200,000 associates across eight countries, and you're, you're also a husband and a dad. You said that you're, you just talked about how much you loved your wife. You know, how do you juggle all of that and and still show up the way you do? It's

Gui Loureiro 54:18 

more important the quality of the time you spend with people than the quantity of time. So I try to spend real time with people my family and my friends and and people at work.

David Novak 54:32 

What have you learned at home that's helped you become a better leader? Well, there

Gui Loureiro 54:36 

were a couple things that I mentioned the book, but there was one that my wife I was upset, despite the fact everything I defined in the book and I tried to implement during the I was upset with somebody couldn't agree with me, something I was trying hard, and some people couldn't agree about the transformation. And I came home very upset, and my wife said to me, you're very arrogant. They said, How I. Don't think I am arrogant. Why is my wife telling me I said not even Jesus Christ managed to get everybody to grieve him. Why do you think you're going to and some people disagree with you. That's good. That was a great lesson.

David Novak 55:16 

So guy, what do you see as your unfinished business now you've accomplished so much in life? Oh, people

Gui Loureiro 55:21 

say that you finish when you you give back. So I think that once I retire, I'm gonna push it. How can I give back? I got a lot. How can I give back? And

David Novak 55:33 

last question, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? Care,

Gui Loureiro 55:39 

caring. You need to people follow you if they feel you not if you are intelligent, you have all the solutions, but if you they feel you care, well.

David Novak 55:48 

Thank you very much, guy. It's been a great conversation. I appreciate you taking the time and good luck with your new book. Thank you

Gui Loureiro 55:54 

very much. Great to have the opportunity to talk with you.

David Novak 56:02 

You know, guy's got that rare combination of intense drive and genuine humility. There's no doubt about it. He's an ambitious guy, and he loves getting results for his company, but he's also reflective and honest and vulnerable about what he needs to do to improve himself. I'm telling you, it takes real guts to look in the mirror and realize that the leadership style that's made you successful so far might not get you to where you want to go next. If you want to see big change in growth in your team, you've also got to stop and ask what big changes you need to make personally and what your plan of growth is. Because you can't transform your company, unless you're willing to transform yourself. I've already ordered a copy of guy's new book, reinventing the leader, and I hope you will too. There's just so much we can all learn from the way he leads. But in the meantime, here's something to think about. What's one aspect of your leadership style that might need to evolve to meet the moment that you're in? Is it how you delegate? Is it a skill that you need to pick up? Is it how you listen? Is it how you show up for your people? Well, whatever it is, be honest with yourself and commit to making that change. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders know that they have to transform themselves in order to transform their businesses. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Steve Case, the co founder of AOL and the chairman and CEO of revolution, a venture capital firm based out of Washington, DC. So be sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday, you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each and every episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be.