Sam Walton: Made In America

by Sam Walton

If I had to single out one element in my life that has made a difference for me, it would be a passion to compete.

I learned from a very early age that it was important for us kids to help provide for the home, to be contributors rather than just takers.

the best way to reduce paying estate taxes is to give your assets away before they appreciate.

We don’t need to buy a yacht. And thank goodness we never thought we had to go out and buy anything like an island. We just don’t have those lands of needs or ambitions, which wreck a lot of companies when they get along in years. Some families sell their stock off a little at a time to live high, and then—boom—somebody takes them over, and it all goes down the drain.

I still can’t believe it was news that I get my hair cut at the barbershop. Where else would I get it cut? Why do I drive a pickup truck? What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?

I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you.

And like most other overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.

He was so good at evaluating and selecting these fellows. He wasn’t just looking for store managers. I think he was selecting people he thought he could go forward with.

If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores. That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success.

Sharing information and responsibility is a key to any partnership. It makes people feel responsible and involved,

Submerge your own ambitions and help whoever you can in the company. Work together as a team.

the secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want.

We never had fancy furniture or thick carpet, or suites with bars for our executives. I like them just like they are. We sure as heck won’t win any interior decorating awards, but they’re all we need, and they must be working fine.

If you want to build an enterprise of any size at all, it almost goes without saying that you absolutely must create a team of people who work together and give real meaning to that overused word “teamwork.” To me, that’s more the goal of the whole thing, rather than some way to get there.

I believe in always having goals, and always setting them high.

COMMIT to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I

SHARE your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners.

CONTROL your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.

You can’t just keep doing what works one time, because everything around you is always changing. To succeed, you have to stay out in front of that change.

I’m really sick these days, and I guess when you get older, and illness catches up with you, you naturally turn just a little bit philosophical—especially late at night when you can’t sleep and your mind is turning everything over and over trying to take stock of where you’ve been and what you’ve done.