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Sam Walton Quotes

Total quotes: 21
“A lot of what goes on these days with high-flying companies and these overpaid CEO’s, who’re really just looting from the top and aren’t watching out for anybody but themselves, really upsets me. It’s one of the main things wrong with American business today.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Capitalism, Lack of Compassion, Business, American Business
“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. 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 it.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Foolishness, Business Strategy, Business Plan, Success Tips
“Actually, during this whole early period, Wal-Mart was too small and insignificant for any of the big boys to notice, and most of the promoters weren’t out in our area so we weren’t competitive. That helped me get access to a lot of information about how they were doing things. I probably visited more headquarters offices of more discounters than anybody else—ever. I would just show up and say, “Hi, I’m Sam Walton from Bentonville, Arkansas. We’ve got a few stores out there, and I’d like to visit with Mr. So-and-So”—whoever the head of the company was—“about his business.” And as often as not, they’d let me in, maybe out of curiosity, and I’d ask lots of questions about pricing and distribution, whatever. I learned a lot that way.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Success Story, Learning, Business Strategy, Wal-mart
“As usual, some of our critics—mostly unions in this case—took a shot at me for this idea. They said I was wrapping myself in the flag and pulling a typical Sam Walton promotion to hide the fact that we sell a lot of import goods. These folks, I’m afraid, are really living in the past. They don’t believe in a free market. They’re not interested in new solutions. And they only care about jobs if they are union jobs, many of which, frankly, have priced themselves out of the market either with unrealistic wages or total inflexibility.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Critics, Union, Business, Success Story, Challenges
“When you move like we did from town to town in these mostly rural areas, word of mouth gets your message out to customers pretty quickly without much advertising.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Business Strategy, Word of mouth, advertisements, Success Story
“And like most other overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Success Stories, Successful People, Wal-mart
“The basic discounter’s idea was to attract customers into the store by pricing these items—toothpaste, mouthwash, headache remedies, soap, shampoo—right down at cost. Those were what the early discounters called your “image” items. That’s what you pushed in your newspaper advertising—like the twenty-seven-cent Crest at Springdale—and you stacked it high in the stores to call attention to what a great deal it was. Word would get around that you had really low prices. Everything else in the store was priced low too, but it had a 30 percent margin. Health and beauty aids were priced to give away.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Advertisment, Success Story, Word of mouth, sale, Price, Discount
“Creating a huge personal fortune was never particularly a goal of mine, and the proof of that lies in the fact that even to this day most of my, and my family’s, wealth remains in the form of Wal-Mart stock. I think most people in our position would have hedged their bets a long time ago and diversified into all kinds of investments. As it’s happened, though, our very simplistic, very personal investment strategy has turned out far better than anyone could ever have expected. So Wal-Mart stock has made the Waltons a very wealthy family—on paper anyway.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Fortune, Wealth, Success Story, Stocks, Business, Investment
“We opened one, store number 8 in Morrilton, Arkansas, that was really a sight. We rented this old Coca-Cola bottling plant. It was all broken up into five rooms, and we bought some old fixtures from a failing Gibson’s store for $3,000. We hung them by baling wire from the ceiling. We had clothes hanging in layers on conduit pipe all the way to the ceiling, and shelves wired into the walls. But this was really a small, small town, so number 8 was another experiment.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: experiment, Business, Success Story, Wal-mart
“I don’t subscribe much to any of these fancy investing theories, and most people seem surprised to learn that I’ve never done much investing in anything except Wal-Mart. I believe the folks who’ve done the best with Wal-Mart stock are those who have studied the company, who have understood our strengths and our management approach, and who, like me, have just decided to invest with us for the long run.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Investment, Theories, Wal-mart, company, Stocks
“The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” They’re still up there, and they have made all the difference.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Wal-mart, Success Story, Customer Satisfaction, Business
“Every time Wal-Mart spends one dollar foolishly, it comes right out of our customers’ pockets. Every time we save them a dollar, that puts us one more step ahead of the competition—which is where we always plan to be.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Wal-mart, Spending Wisely, Saving Money, Financially wise
“He proved that people can be motivated. The mountain is there, but somebody else has already climbed it.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: motivation, Proof, perseverance
“Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who’s going to have a great idea.””
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Ideas, Great Ideas, Listening To Others
“What’s really worried me over the years is not our stock price, but that we might someday fail to take care of our customers, or that our managers might fail to motivate and take care of our associates. I also was worried that we might lose the team concept, or fail to keep the family concept viable and realistic and meaningful to our folks as we grow. Those challenges are more real than somebody’s theory that we’re headed down the wrong path.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Customers, Business, Challenges
“For my whole career in retail, I have stuck by one guiding principle. It’s a simple one, and I have repeated it over and over and over in this book until I’m sure you’re sick to death of it. But I’m going to say it again anyway: the secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Career, Business, Principle, Success
“There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
— Sam Walton
Tagged: Customer, Business
“What we guard against around here is people saying, ‘Let’s think about it.’ We make a decision. Then we act on it.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: actions, Words, Hesitation
“I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.”
— Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made In America
Tagged: Persevarance, Patience, Moving On
“I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been.”
— Sam Walton
Tagged: Innovation, Activism
“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves it's amazing what they can accomplish.”
— Sam Walton
Tagged: leaders, Self Esteem, Believing In Yourself, accomplishments
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