Sam Walton: Made In America

by Sam Walton

It never occurred to me that I might lose; to me, it was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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

most everything I’ve done I’ve copied from somebody else—and

Another way we tried hard to make up for our lack of experience and sophistication was to spend as much time as we could checking out the competition. It’s something I did from the beginning, and it’s something I insisted all our managers do.

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.

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

Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don’t become too predictable.