--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Hey, it's Kate. We're off for President's Day, but we wanted to share an episode we made last year about U.S. retail giant Walmart.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: In this episode, we look at how Walmart compensates some of its store managers with bonuses, stock options, and huge six-figure salaries. We followed one manager to see why the job demands such high pay and perks.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: It's about 7 in the morning at a Walmart outside of Waco, Texas, and Nicole Hart is getting the download from her night manager.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Good morning, everybody. Good morning. How's everybody doing?
--:-- Night Manager: All right.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: The night manager told her that some people didn't show up for their shifts overnight, and the letter T on the Walmart sign outside is burnt out.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Those are things that Nicole would have to deal with that day. But first, she takes a lap around the store.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Yeah, because I do this every single day. This is my morning, every morning.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: We walk a new tour, so there's things that I already, I mean, we walk by granola bars on the cereal aisle. I already know they're coming in on the 24th floor.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: On this day, Nicole had an addition to her morning routine. Our colleague, Sarah Nossauer.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Sarah was going to follow Nicole around to try to understand her job.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Sarah became interested in managers like Nicole when she saw a press release Walmart published about raising their pay.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Well, my first thought is, why do they feel they need to do this? Is turnover going up? Do they feel they're losing some of their better store managers to other big box stores?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: The competition for those folks is really, really, really high across retail.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Walmart has a manager for each of its 4,600 U.S. stores. And some of them can now make more than $400,000 a year.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Because the company is offering them bigger bonuses, higher salaries, and stock options.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It almost can't be understated how important a store manager is to Walmart.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: They are the ones who have the most control over the sales and profit of that box, of that store.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And those stores are the most important financial entity in the whole company.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: How would you describe a day in the life of Nicole?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It's really hectic. It's not for introverts. And it's, she is expecting the unexpected.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Welcome to The Journal, Our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaum.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Coming up on the show, the hectic, unpredictable, and increasingly well-paid job of a Walmart store manager.
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--:-- Kate Leinbaum: A Walmart store manager is basically running a massive business inside an even more massive business.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Its super centers, on average, generate more than $100 million in sales.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: And its store managers tend to be homegrown.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Like Nicole Hart I spoke to Nicole from her office
--:-- Nicole Hart: How much time during the day do you spend in your office?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Not very much. I would say. Maybe an hour tops.
--:-- Nicole Hart: What are you doing the rest of the time?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Walking my floor, touring my sales floor, meeting with my associates, just day to day.
--:-- Nicole Hart: And at the end of the day, how many steps will you have walked?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Oh, probably about 18,000 a day.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Is that a lot?
--:-- Nicole Hart: That's a normal day for me.
--:-- Nicole Hart: What kind of shoes do you wear?
--:-- Nicole Hart: It just depends. Today I'm wearing flats.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I have on some Kate Spade flats and a red dress.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I might come to work tomorrow in a pair of Jordans. You never know.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: So would you mind telling us like how you got started working at Walmart?
--:-- Nicole Hart: I was 19 years old and I was a mother of two little girls and needed a job.
--:-- Nicole Hart: So I started here as just a part-time job, never planned on it to turn into my career.
--:-- Nicole Hart: But as the years went by, I noticed the opportunities that Walmart can provide.
--:-- Nicole Hart: And so I decided to climb the ladder.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Do you remember how much you made?
--:-- Nicole Hart: $6.25 an hour.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Part-time?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Part-time, yeah.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Was that enough to support?
--:-- Nicole Hart: No. No?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Not at the time. No, it wasn't.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It wasn't.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: But I mean, I saw the opportunity, right?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: That's what I saw. I was young. I had kids. I had responsibilities.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And I saw that, yes, I was making $6.25 part-time, but I could go and be a salaried member of management.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: When did you decide you wanted to be a store manager?
--:-- Nicole Hart: I would say whenever I was an assistant manager.
--:-- Nicole Hart: My boss would show me the amount of their bonuses and what the money they were making in that role.
--:-- Nicole Hart: And that was the incentive to drive me because I knew I could do that.
--:-- Nicole Hart: It just needed to put in the work.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And so once I saw the financial benefits of becoming a store manager, I learned everything I could to get there.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Do you remember your first day as store manager?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Oh yeah. Oh my goodness, yes.
--:-- Nicole Hart: What was that like?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Oh, the second that I walked in the door of that store, I had associates like come and just like corner me almost.
--:-- Nicole Hart: It's like, oh, you're the new one. Fresh meat.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Exactly, fresh meat.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And that was something, you know, because I hadn't been in that type of a situation before.
--:-- Nicole Hart: But it was just all in how that you present yourself to them to win over their trust.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: They've got to be able to trust you.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Nicole's been running the Supercenter in Bellmead, Texas, for four years.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: She has to juggle managing her staff of more than 300, coordinating inventory, interacting with customers, and making decisions on the fly.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: She did several sort of tours of the store where you're literally walking around the store and understanding what's going on in every aisle and what needs to be stocked and where is there a mess and what work needs to be done.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Eggs and water those are two big ones.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: I mean, if I don't fill that up early now, then how many cells am I missing throughout the day, right?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Mm-hmm.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: She was always holding her phone because it has a Walmart app that a lot of the workers use to communicate.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It's a big store. It's over the size of three football fields.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: So you can't just like walk up to every worker at every moment and say, you know, can you do X, Y, Z?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: So they do use this app and walkie talkies and they're talking to each other that way.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: They don't have segues.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: I can see customers maybe not finding that that great.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: But she's constantly in contact, but also constantly walking around the store.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And on that particular day, something unexpected happened with a customer who had a camera rolling.
--:-- Customer: Hi. Can we get some Snoop cereal on the shelf?
--:-- Customer: Snoop cereal on the shelf.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Oh, my gosh. I used to have those, and they never sold. We had them forever.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Thank you.
--:-- Customer: You're welcome.
--:-- Customer: Y'all have a great day.
--:-- Nicole Hart: He was recording me.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: There was a guy who came up filming her, Nicole, and one of her managers, who was asking a question about Snoop's cereal.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Snoop had sued Walmart.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: We didn't know really what was going on, but it was something related to that.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: She has to sort of have a calm answer while she's being filmed.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: What did you learn from spending a day with Nicole?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: I think seeing sort of how the chaos can be wrangled was just really really interesting and eye for me about what it really actually takes to run a store
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: How so?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It like they managing all the humans that work for them and with them up and down managing up their bosses and the people that work for them.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: They're managing all the stuff and making sure it arrives at the right time and can be unloaded and is on the shelf.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And then they're managing customer expectations and trying to drive sales.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And now, Nicole is getting paid more.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Last year, her total income was $240,000, about half of that from bonuses.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Walmart put out this statement announcing higher pay for store managers and bigger bonuses.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Like, when you heard that, what did you think?
--:-- Nicole Hart: I mean, I was excited about it. It's awesome.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I mean, it's nice to be appreciated for the work that you put in.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Why is Walmart investing in store managers now?
--:-- Nicole Hart: I would say for retention, right?
--:-- Nicole Hart: To be able to get quality leaders in these positions because it's a very important position to hold.
--:-- Nicole Hart: And I think that they want to get the right people in the right place to be able to deliver results.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Would it be helpful if that investment was going to your associates?
--:-- Nicole Hart: They're investing in our associates as well.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I mean, there's been several changes over the last few years.
--:-- Nicole Hart: This was just another piece of the puzzle.
--:-- Nicole Hart: And I think that they just looked at the management as well because we are associates too.
--:-- Nicole Hart: You know what I mean?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Like you've got to be fair and consistent across the board and you've got to be able to compete with competitors when it comes to pay.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Did it feel like a shift in sort of how corporate appreciates people in your position?
--:-- Nicole Hart: I don't know about a shift.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I just think that they're recognizing that we have a very important role and that, I mean, I don't know.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I feel like they're taking care of us right now.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Like, it's good.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I mean, they're not giving us all this money.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I don't know.
--:-- Nicole Hart: It's not just like, here, take it.
--:-- Nicole Hart: You know what I mean?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Like, we've got to earn it.
--:-- Nicole Hart: We have things that we have to do if we want to meet the metrics that are expected for us.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: So it's not just handed to us, but it's there within reach if you want it.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And for Nicole to get that money, she's got targets to meet.
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--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Meeting sales goals is a crucial part of Nicole's job, and she needs to rally her more than 300 employees to get there.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: When Sarah visited, she went to Nicole's daily staff meeting, which Nicole kicked off by congratulating her team on a strong month of sales.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Right, all the things that we're doing is working, so keep doing what we're doing.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Keep going after the items, keep filling the holes, right?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Keep working the meal picks, doing all the things that we do because it's working.
--:-- Nicole Hart: It's working, and it's something to be super, super proud of.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I'm proud of y'all.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: The sales and profit goals for the store are set at, you know, in corporate offices and then filtered onto her, and she has to meet those, you know, month by month, day by day, week by week.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And so she's thinking about that for sure, as well as how profitable her store is.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: What's within her power to achieve those targets?
--:-- Nicole Hart: She can decide some of what gets sold in her store.
--:-- Nicole Hart: There's certain things in areas of the store where it's really her and her sort of direct reports that are saying, okay, for our store.
--:-- Nicole Hart: For example there was a little refillable barbecue bottle that she was selling at her store for 97 cents
--:-- Nicole Hart: And when we walked by it she explained like this is something that works well in our store
--:-- Nicole Hart: We have a low income core shopper
--:-- Nicole Hart: I know that this product is a low price point, but a high margin and we can sell a lot of them.
--:-- Nicole Hart: So here we put them in this high traffic area at the end of a shelf.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: You know, she can control some of the product decisions and then she can also have some control over what they spend on labor.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Some of that is decided by corporate, but ultimately it's her and her direct reports that are kind of looking at that minute by minute, day by day.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: There's a new challenge for Nicole that doesn't have to do with the in-store experience.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It has to do with Walmart's push into online shopping.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: What proportion of your store's sales come from online orders?
--:-- Nicole Hart: It's about 25%.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: So is that on top of what existing sales had been?
--:-- Nicole Hart: And I mean, it just continues to grow, you know, year after year after year.
--:-- Nicole Hart: It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
--:-- Nicole Hart: And the company just is rolling out many more initiatives that make people want to shop online.
--:-- Nicole Hart: It makes the experience better.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: So it's a moving piece, but it's fun.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: I like change and I like challenges.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: How has that changed your day to day?
--:-- Nicole Hart: It's not just the shoppers coming into your store.
--:-- Nicole Hart: You've got thousands of shoppers that are outside of your store that are expecting you to deliver excellence to them.
--:-- Nicole Hart: They want the items that they're ordering.
--:-- Nicole Hart: You've got to know what items are being ordered and not being found so you can fix them.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It's just it's one more piece that's just added to the puzzle.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: But it also brings in a lot of dollars.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: But you have to hit sales targets.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: You have to make sure your store looks good.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: You have to manage people.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It is a lot.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Not to mention like understanding your shoppers, what they want, where their price points are.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: What would you say is the hardest part of your job?
--:-- Nicole Hart: I think the hardest part is when you take a new store and you have got to get all 300 people to push in the same direction, right?
--:-- Nicole Hart: Because they've got to understand your expectations.
--:-- Nicole Hart: They've got to understand their rules.
--:-- Nicole Hart: They've got to understand processes.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It's not me that does all of these things.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: This is my team, my 300 people that I manage that makes this big building work.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: It's not just Nicole, you know.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And what are you going to do after this meeting?
--:-- Nicole Hart: I'm going to go back out on my floor.
--:-- Nicole Hart: I'm going to go follow up on the notes that I gave this morning and be sure that everything is ready for evening business.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Go and walk the grocery side and be sure I have rotisserie chickens and bread and fruits and meat out for the evening.
--:-- Nicole Hart: Just be sure that we're ready.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Do you think Nicole Hart is a typical Walmart store manager? Or is she exceptional in some way?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Yes and no.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: I've talked to enough store managers over the years to know that I think she is exceptional in some ways and her ability to sort of handle the multitasking that is needed to do the job without losing it.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: I think she's typical in the sense that she came up in the company.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: She doesn't have a college degree.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: She grew up in the place where she is.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: She knows the community quite well.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: I think those things are more typical.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: This is a job where a person doesn't have to have a college degree.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: They can make potentially $400,000.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: What does that say to you about the labor market?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: To me, it says that there are these still these sort of like choke points.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: Jobs that are hard to fill because they're hard jobs.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And you have to have a lot of expertise over time to do them.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: I don't think any college grad could waltz in and be the manager of a Walmart store, right?
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And as Nicole herself told me, if you can run a Walmart store, you can run a Home Depot.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: You can run a Target.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: You can do other things.
--:-- Sarah Nossauer: And so once someone has gotten to that level at the company, it makes sense that Walmart would really want to keep them.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: This episode was originally published last May.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Since then, Walmart's top-performing store managers can now make even more, over $600,000 a year.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Kate Leinbaum: Thanks for listening. We'll be back Tuesday with a new episode.
