Founders Pod #6 - Sam Walton: Made in America

May 27, 2023

He was obsessed with studying not only people that were doing what he wanted to do, in this case, become a retailer.
But also when he gets started in business, he's obsessed with studying his competition.
It says later on in the book that people work for him, think that he visited more stores, more retail stores all over the world than anyone else in history.
But he was obsessed with seeking information, which I find is a very common trait as I study entrepreneurs, whether they're reading, talking to people, studying their competition. (Time 0:03:06)

Most everything I've done, I've copied from somebody else. Again, I may get annoying, I'm saying it so much, but it's the importance of collecting information. (Time 0:25:09)

I always carry my little tape recorder on trips to record ideas that come up in my conversations with the associates. The associates is what they call the employees working in the store. I usually have my yellow legal pad with me, with a list of 10 or 15 things we need to be working on as a company. (Time 0:29:24)

The larger truth that I failed to see turned out to be another one of those paradoxes, like the discounters principle of the less you charge, the more you'll earn. And here it is. The more you share profits with your associates, whether it's in salaries or incentives or bonuses or stock discounts, the more profit will accrue to the company. Why? Because the way management treats the associates is exactly how the associates will then treat the customers. (Time 0:31:47)

And if the associates treat the customers well, the customers will return again and again, and that is where the real profit in this business lies. Not in trying to drag strangers into your store for one-time purchases based on splashy sales are expensive advertising. Satisfied, loyal, repeat customers are at the heart of Walmart's spectacular profit margins. And those customers are loyal to us because our associates treat them better than salespeople in other stores do.
So in the whole Walmart scheme of things, the most important contact ever made is between the associate in the store and the customer. (Time 0:32:22)

there may not be anything he enjoys more than going into a competitor store trying to learn something from it.

Personally, he's such a fine, unassuming, quiet gentleman. But he's always picking your brain and he'll always have a notebook or tape recorder. Here learn everything you know, but he shares his information freely with you in return.

you have to think small to get big. And he has interesting ideas on how you resist bureaucracy by doing it right the first time.

direct quotes from David Glass on Sam's philosophies. “ If you don't zero in on your bureaucracy every so often, you will naturally build in layers. You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it, period, without even knowing it. So you always have to be looking to eliminate it. You know when Tom Watson Sr. Was running IBM, he decided they would never have more than four layers from the chairman of the board to the lowest level in the company. That may have been one of the greatest single reasons why IBM was successful. A lot of this goes back to what Deming told us, excuse me, to what Deming told the Japanese a long time again, a long time ago. Do it right the first time. The natural tendency when you've got a problem in a company is to come up with a solution to fix it.”

But he has a chapter, it's chapter 17. And it's called running a successful company, 10 rules that worked for me. Sam talking. He says, when folks have asked me, how did Walmart do it? I've usually been flip about answering them. Friend, we just got after it and stayed after it.

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. That passion has pretty much kept me on the go looking ahead to the next store visit or the next store opening or the next merchandising item I personally wanted to promote out in those stores.
believing in your idea even when maybe some other folks don't and about sticking to your guns.
But I think more than anything, it proves there's absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary working people can accomplish if they've given the opportunity and the encouragement and the incentive to do their best. So maybe by telling it the way it really happened, we can help some other folks down the line take these same principles and apply to their dreams and make them come true.

The best way to reduce paying estate taxes is to give your assets away before they appreciate.
One of the real reasons I'm writing this book is so my grandchildren and great grandchildren will read it years from now and know this. If you start any of that foolishness, I'll come back and haunt you. So don't even think about (Time 0:52:44)