2/3 of our management associates come from our hourly ranks. We put in place academies to help people with education. We've put a dollar a day college program in to help people get college hours if they want to advance their degrees.

Volunteer for something extra, volunteer for something hard. One of the reasons that I got the opportunities that I got was that I would raise my hand when my boss was out of town and he or she was visiting stores or something, and someone needed to pinch hit and go to a meeting, I would go, and if I knew the answer to the question that came up, I'd share it, if I didn't, I'd say, "I don't know, but I'll find out fast and get back to you." I then put myself in an environment where I became a low risk promotion because people had already seen me do the job.

There just aren't that many opportunities in the world that are that big, and for a company like Walmart that needs to move the needle in a big way, you have to take some big bets, but if you're going to take that much risk, the reward has to match up.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

It is unwise to make education too cheap. If everything is provided freely, there is a tendency to put no value on anything. Education must always have a certain price on it; even as the very process of learning itself must always require individual effort and initiative.

Today, we still have more than 300,000 U.S. associates who were with us since 2015 and are now leading teams, running stores and clubs, and continuing to grow their careers. Their stories are a reminder that when people are given opportunity, they make the most of it - and a culture of opportunity creates a cycle where happy associates lead to happy customers and members, and vice versa.