YouSaid · the spoken record

Sam Walton

lines on the record: 91
first: 2022-02-28
most recent: 2022-02-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“learned his trade, swept the floor, kept the books, trimmed the windows, weighed the candy, wrung the cash register, installed the fixtures, remodeled the stores, built an organization of this size and quality, and kept on doing it right up until the end because they enjoyed it so much. No one that I know of has done it that way. Here's how I look at it. My life has been a trade-off. If I wanted to reach the goals I set for myself, I had to get at it and stay at it every day. I had to think about it all the time. And I guess what David said about me is true. I had to get up every day with my mind set on improving something. Charlie was right too when he said I was driven by a desire to always be on top of the heap. But in the larger sense, the life and death sense did I make the right choices?”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But since I have, I'm going to go all the way and try to share with you how I feel about some things that seem important to me. This will sound strange to people who know me well, but lately I've wondered if I should feel bad about having been so wholly committed to Walmart. Was it really worth all the time I spent away from my family? Should I have driven my partner so hard all these years? Am I really leaving behind something on this earth that I can be proud of having accomplished? Or does it somehow lack meaning to me now that I'm facing that ultimate challenge? We could have gone a lot of different ways at several points. Many folks started out in retailing just like I did and built their companies up to a point and then said I've had enough and sold out and bought an island. I could have kicked back and played with the grandchildren or I could have devoted the later years of my life to doing good works. I don't know that anybody else has ever done it quite like me, started out as a pure.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. The truth is, if I hadn't gotten sick, I doubt I would have ever written this book, or taken the time to try to sort my life out. As you know, I'm much too biased toward action to”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By now it's probably clear to you that I've devoted most of my life to Walmart, starting it, growing it, and always refining the concept of this whole phenomenon. My life has been full and fun and challenging and rewarding beyond even my wildest expectations. I've pretty much gotten my own way for the whole run, while a lot of people were working away at jobs they might not have particularly enjoyed, I was having the time of my life. If I wasn't in the stores trying to pump up our associates to do an even better job or in the office looking over numbers to see where the next trouble spot was going to pop up, or leading the cheers at a Saturday morning meeting, I was probably at the stick of my airplane, looking out over some part of this beautiful country of ours, and checking out the number of cars in those Kmart parking lots. Or maybe I was taking a few hours off to get in some tennis or to hunt with my dogs. All of that has wound down for me now. I'm really sick these days, and I guess when you get older and illness catches up with you”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And rule number 10, which he says, if you interpret it, it's to break all the rules, swim upstream, go the other way, ignore conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, this is a good chance you can find your niche by doing it exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you that you're headed the wrong way. And I'll close on this. The goal is to get to the end of your life with no regrets.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Number eight exceed your customer's expectations if you do, they'll come back. Rule number nine, control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find a competitive advantage. For 25 years running, long before Walmart was known as the nation's largest retailer, we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expensed sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation, or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chosen, well timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and they're worth a fortune. six. Celebrate your success, find humor in your failure. Don't take yourself too seriously. Loosen up and everybody around you will loosen up. Have, fun, show enthusiasm always. seven listen to everyone in your company and figure out ways to get them talking the folks on the front lines the ones who actually talk to your customer are the only ones who really know what's going on you better find out what they know”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are not enough. Constantly, day by day, think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep the score. You should make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale, cross-pollinate. Have managers switch jobs, and then, with one another, to stay challenged, keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Do not become too predictable. Number four, communicate everything you possibly can to your partners. The more they know, the more they'll understand, the more they understand, the more they'll care. Once they care, there's no stopping them. Rule number five, appreciate everything your associates do for your business. A paycheck and stock options will buy one kind of loyalty, but all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we're really proud of. Nothing else can substitute for a well-chosen.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Mavericks who challenge my rules. So pay special attention to rule number 10, and if you interpret it in the right spirit as it applies to you, it could simply mean break all the rules. And so he'll state the rule and then he'll describe it. Sometimes I'm going to read you the entire thing. Sometimes I'll just read you the highlight because I think that it does the job. Rule number one, commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by sheer passion. By the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don't know if you're born with this kind of passion or if you can learn it, but I do know you need it. If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you, like a fever. Number two, share your profits with your associates and treat them as partners. Number three, motivate your partners. Money and ownership alone”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Scanners. These are people who'd go around the stores with heldhand scanners making sure everything is priced correctly. There is another layer right there, and Sam never visited a store without asking if we really needed these folks. And he says, really, it's a simple philosophy. What you have to do is draw a line in the dirt, in the dirt, and force the bureaucracy back behind that line. And then you know for sure that a year will go by and it will be back across that line and you have to do the same thing again. And one way to think about how to minimize bureaucracy in your company is this simple framework that Sam has here, which I love. It's really on how to remove unnecessary layers. If you're not serving the customer or supporting the folks who do, we don't need you.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No room for creativity, no place for the Maverick merchant that I was in the early days of my career and no call for the entrepreneur or the promoter. Man, I'd hate to work at a place like that, and I worry every single day about Walmart becoming that way. So Sam also has an idea that as you grow, bureaucracy is natural, and so you've got to zero in on it, and you've got to keep building it back because it's natural to add these excessive amounts of layers as the company grows. And he says, like, you never set out to get bureaucracy. You just get it, period, without even knowing it. So you've always got to be looking for ways to eliminate it. And so here's an example of that and then what Sam says about that. He says, I'll give you an example that drove Sam crazy until we started doing something about it. When merchandise came into the back of a store, it was supposed to be marked at the right price or marked correctly on the spot. But because it often wasn't getting done properly, we created positions called tests.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sam's got another great idea. It's the fact that if you think small, you grow big. And so this is what he says. Here's the point the bigger Walmart gets, the more essential it is that we think small because it's exactly how we, that's exactly how we've become a huge corporation by not acting like one. Above all, we are small town merchants. And I can't tell you how important it is for us to remember when we puff up our chests and brag about all these huge sales and profits that they were all made one day at a time, one store at a time, and mostly by hard work. For us, thinking small is a way of life. It's almost an obsession, and I suspect thinking small is an approach that almost any business could profit from. The bigger you are, the more urgently you probably need it. At our size today, there's all sorts of pressure to regiment and standardize and operate as a centrally driven chain where everything is decided on high and passed down to its stores. In a system like that, there's absolutely no...”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sam talks about the importance of meeting competitors head on, that they ignored us, so we blew right by them, something he says. So he says, our competitors have honed and sharpened us to an edge, to have an edge that we wouldn't have had without them. We wouldn't be nearly as good as we are today without Kmart. And I think that they would admit we've made them a better retailer. One reason Sears fell so far off the pace is that they couldn't admit for the longest time that Walmart and Kmart were their real competitors. They ignored both of us and we blew right by them. And this is his brother about the fact that, like Jeff Bezos, Sam went to school on everyone, competition is very definitely what made Walmart from the very beginning. There's not an individual in the whole United States who has been in more retail stores, all types of retail stores, not just discount stores than Sam Walton. Make that all over the world. He's been in stores in Australia and South America, Europe, and Asia and South Africa. His mind is just so inquisitive when it comes to business, and there may not be anything he enjoys more than going.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The guy who So they talk about the beginning of this other idea of Sam's Club and really sole price summarizes Sam Walton in a couple sentences. Sam phoned me one day to tell me he was going to start a wholesale club. It was no surprise. He is notorious for looking at what everybody else does, taking the best of it, and then making it better”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just couldn't quite stay away from the company to that degree. The situation was quite a burden for Ron and would have been for any 40-year-old guy wanting to run his own company, I think. And so this goes on for quite a bit of time. He says, I agonized over all this. I rarely lose sleep over crisis as the office, but this time I did. So finally, I called Ron in one Saturday morning, 30 months after I'd given up the chairman's job and simply said, well, Ron, I thought I was ready to step out, but I really see that I was. But now I see that I really wasn't. I've been involved and in a way it has put you under a real handicap. I told him I wanted to come back in as CEO and have him assume another job. My proposal wasn't agreeable to Ron and I certainly understand why he wanted to run the company and when he couldn't he decided to leave us. In Company Lore that incident became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. What followed became known as the Exodus first a whole group of senior managers who had been part of Ron's team, our financial officer, our data processing manager.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had a lot of ambition. He made it pretty well known that his goal was to run a company, for he wanted to run Walmart. He told me one day that if he couldn't run our company, he wanted to get out and run another one, so I thought about that for a few days, and I really worried that we were going to lose Ron. Then I said to myself, well, I'm getting pretty old, and we could probably work together, so I let him be, so I'll let him be chairman and CEO and I'll just enjoy myself. Step back a little, and of course, continue to visit stores. So up until this point, I think you have an understanding of Sam's personality. It's just way too formidable to do this. Of course, this isn't going to work out. So he says, well, I was no more ready to retire in 1974 at the age of 56 than the Arkansas son is ready to start rising out of Oklahoma. The truth is, I failed that retirement worse than just about anything I've ever tried. I tried to stay out of Ron's way. The problem was that I actually just kept doing exactly the same thing that I'd always been doing. I wanted to see my ideas keep flowing around the company, but I wanted Ron to be successful in operating the company and building an organization.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Compounded the problem tenfold, and this is when he relinquishes his role because all the technology sophisticated systems we were needing, I felt, I really felt at the time that Ron was absolutely essential to the company's future.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so then he makes one of his biggest mistakes in business and he tries to step away and fails, and he only did this because he was worried that he would lose talent because he knew that the guy that's going to take over as CEO for him, like he wanted to run a company, so if he wasn't going to run Walmart, he'd run somebody else, some other company rather. So he says, I have to admit back around 1974, I was awfully tempted to take more time for myself, to step back and let Ron run the company while I went off to enjoy life. So for the first time since I began retailing in 1945, I was beginning to back off from the business. What happened then is the one period in Walmart's history that I'm still the least comfortable talking about. As I look back on that period now, I realized I had split the company in half, setting up two factions which began to be compete fiercely with one another instead of working as a team. There was the old guard, which was him, and including many of the store managers and the new guard, many of who owned their jobs to Ron pretty soon everybody began to take sides. What I did next, which seems totally out of character for me, only comes.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He says, if I've given the impression so far that Walmart has occupied most of my competitive energy over the years, that's not completely accurate. I've pursued my other passions all along too, mostly quail hunting and tennis, and I've pursued them both very competitively. And so he takes breaks throughout his day. This was actually surprising. So he says, for some reason, I love to play tennis around noon when the sun was hottest, and I guess I was pretty aggressive. And so he plays tennis during the day, and then later afternoon, this is what it meant. There's really no work-life balance, more like work-life integration. He'll go and he'll go out and hunt. It was really interesting that he had a break in his day, a few hours where he could actually get away and decompress and turn his mind off, which I think is really important. Bentonville, Arkansas appealed to me because I could quail hunt quail seasons in four states. So during the season, I usually took off almost every day around three or four in the afternoon and went out to do a couple of hours hunting.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I've got to hire people that cover up my weaknesses, and I need people that are building out not only the technology, but the logistics, all that the things needed so we can actually keep servicing the stores when we have 200 stores, 500 stores, 1,000 different stores. So this is a guy named Jack that they hire because they're writing up policies and procedures. And really, I wanted to include this little story in here because of that famous, the post I always tell you about, that the standard paces for Trump. There's no speed limit. You can go a lot, usually a lot faster than most people think you can. And there's a benefit to being impatient, to having an intolerance of slowness, right? So he says, we want you to come in and write up our policies and procedures for us. How long do you think it would take? I knew from experience that it would take six months to a year to properly do this job. But I said, I'll do it in 90 days, right? So he says, no, no, this is going to take six months to a year. I'm going to tell him three months. Same replied.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's fantastic. You don't know it because you're doing something new, you're inventing it. So don't worry about it. Just keep trying to expand it. Sam goes on about early days of Walmart, and this is even after theyPO'd, and he says, really what he's telling us is like you should only hire once it hurts. We always ran a real tight organization. We had no excess people. So something he talked about at length in the book is that logistics was the hardest problem to solve. He needed the talent and people that he didn't think he was really good at that. So he says, by now I was really surrounding myself with guys who were good at things I tended to just slurf off, like organizing the company to handle the growth explosion that we had started. If I had not gone after those folks and kept on going after them, we would have come apart somewhere in the 70s, in the 1970s. And we certainly wouldn't have been able to pull off our really incredible expansion that we had in the 1980s. And so he's like, I'm always going to lean into my strength.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we could be establishing this number of stores that we were. We were putting in 50 stores a year when most of our group would try to start three, four, or five a year. So in their mind, there's limits like, oh, I can't grow. Three stores a year, that's probably the limit that we can do. And then you meet with somebody else. They're like, oh, this dude's doing 50. That limit is bullshit. It doesn't exist. I just made this fake limit on myself for no reason. Back to Sam. It always confounded them. They would always ask, how do you do it? There is no way you could be doing that, but we were doing it. We just stayed on top of it.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's in another group of discount retailers, and so they would meet, and then they'd compare numbers and strategy. This is, again, something we talked about that he did at the very beginning. He has all these little groups and organizations. Some of them are formal, some of them are informal. But this was very fascinating. And it really speaks to human nature, the fact that we love to pit limits on ourselves, even if those limits don't actually exist. If you see my home screen on my laptop, it says it's Bruce Lee, and he says If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else that will spread into your work and into your life there are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there. You must go beyond them. And that's important for me to see every day because I know that I put artificial limits. I just make up that I have these imaginary things. I'm like, oh, no, I can't. You just can't get past this number or whatever the case is. No, it's not true. And this is a perfect example. It says comparing notes with them made me realize what an amazing performance Walmart was turning in. I remember they were just astonished. They could not believe.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My little tape recorder to record ideas that come up in conversations. I usually have a yellow legal pad with me with a list of 10 things that I need to be working on as a company. My list drives the executives around here crazy, but it's probably one of my most important contributions. And so this is one of his executives building upon this idea. When Sam feels a certain way, he is relentless. He will just wear you out. He will bring up an idea. We'll discuss it and then decide maybe it's not something we should be doing right now or ever. Fine. Case closed. But as long as he's convinced that it is the right thing, it will just keep coming up week after week after week until finally everybody capitulates and says, well, it's easier to do it than keep fighting this fight. I guess it could be called management by wearing you down. And then he gives us advice that we really need to find uninterrupted time. He says 4.30 is not an unusual time. 4.30 a.m. is not an unusual time for me to get started down at the office. That early morning time is tremendously valuable.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out, no, not at all. Being organized would really slow me down. That's a hell of a statement, right? In fact, it would probably render me helpless. I try to keep track of what I'm supposed to do and where I'm supposed to be, but it's true that I don't keep much of a schedule. My style is haphazard.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's going to talk about his management style. I've been asked if I was a hands on manager or an arm's length type manager. I really think I'm more of a manager by walking and flying around. And in the process, I stick my fingers into anything, and I can see how it's coming along. I've let our executives make their decisions and their mistakes, but I've critiqued and advised them. My appreciation for numbers has kept me close to our operational statements and to all the other information that we have pouring in from so many different places. In that sense, I think my style as an executive has been pretty much dictated by my talents. I've played to my strengths, and then I rely on others to make up for my weaknesses. And then this next paragraph I wrote, unapologetically extreme. Imagine having to compete with this guy. I come in every Saturday morning, usually around two or three in the morning, and go over all the weekly numbers. I steal a march on everyone else for the Saturday morning meeting. This is more on his why he favors and optimizes for flexibility. If you ask me if I'm an organized person, I would say flat.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up in the air, we could check out traffic flows, see which cities and towns are growing, and evaluate the location of our competition, if there was any. Then we would develop our real estate strategy for that market. I love doing it myself. I'd get down low, turn my plane on its side, and fly right over town. Once we had a spot picked out, we'd land, go talk to who owned the property, and try to negotiate the deal right then. That's another good lesson. That's another good reason I don't like jets. You can't get down low enough to tell what's really going on the way I could in my little plane. Bud and I picked almost all of our sights that way until we grew to about 130 stores. Go back to the idea what Charlie Munger said. Do things that other people aren't doing. Sam Walton says, I guarantee you, not many founders of retailing companies were flying around sideways studying development patterns, but it worked really well.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm skipping ahead. He talks about from store number seven or eight to actually store three, he believed in his bones was going to work. Seven and eight, it's very obvious going to work. And so he's like, all right, well, I just figured out that Walmarts worked. And then all I did was focus on making more of them. You don't have to overcomplicate it. For the most part, we just started repeating what worked. Like so many ideas that have made our company work from the beginning, we're still more or less following this same strategy. And so we go back to this idea about investing in technology, savings compound, gives you advantage over your slowing moving competitors. In the retail game, no one was actually investing in air travel like he was. So it says there's no question whatsoever that we could have not done what we did back then if I hadn't had my airplane. I bought that first plane for the business to travel between the stores and keep in touch with what was going on. But once we really started rolling out the stores, the airplane turned into a great tool for scouting real estate. We were probably 10 years ahead of most other retailers and scouting locations in the air. And we got a lot of great ones that way.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One great company will make you fabusly wealthy. Skipping ahead, he hits this point again about being in the long importance of having a long-term view, being in for the long haul, really a way to think about what he taught sales is just ignore the noise and please your customers. If we fail to live up somebody's hypothetical projection to what we should be doing, I don't care. It may knock our stock back a little, but we're in it for the long run. We couldn't care less about what is forecast or what the market says we ought to do. If we listen very seriously to that sort of stuff, we would have never gone into small town discounting in the first place.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's like, you don't need a bunch of businesses to get wealthy. One great company can make you and your family fabulously wealthy. What does Sam say here? Right here, what does Sam Walton say here? I don't describe 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 Walmart.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he's talking about the critics now that he's a public company. He says something fantastic here. He says, the ones who paid attention understood that we were serious operators who were in it for the long haul, that we had a disciplined financial philosophy, and that we had growth on our minds. That is fantastic traits to copy. The ones who paid attention understood that we were serious operators who were in it for the long haul and that we had disciplined financial philosophy and that we had growth on our minds. Maybe think of something, a friend of the show Truman said to me, his mentor, Sam, they both listened to the podcast. Sam gave Truman advice one day that I thought was genius and it said that you should always have the long, any room that you're in, you should always have the longest view in the room. Sam Walton is saying a very similar thing here. He says, listen, we are serious operators and we're in it for the long haul. We got disciplined financial philosophy and we have our growth on our minds. Let's go. Something that Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett repeat over and over again.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're already, you know, you started Walmart a little later on. Just kick your feet up. Why not retire? Why not let somebody else run the company? And he says, but I enjoyed doing what I was doing so much and seeing the thing grow and develop and seeing our associates and partners do so well that I could never quit.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And again, this is another version of the Andrew Carnegie You need to invest in technology, always invest in the latest technology. We as a company have been ahead of most of the retailers and investing in sophisticated equipment and technology. And so it goes back to this idea. He's like, I wanted to get out of debt in the worst way. I talked a little bit about the idea of taking the company public. He needs a better way. He's looking for a better way to finance growth than constant debt. His wife does not want him to take it public, but he just can't stand the pressure. I'm skipping over large parts of the book. Obviously, I'm hopefully encouraging you to read it. All I'm saying is if Jeff Bayes and others have picked up this book and it changed my life, I don't see why you wouldn't spend 15, 20 hours learning from a master. I really don't. I don't think there's a better use of time. So this is the day after the IPO. I'm obviously skipping over that. But I want to tell you how he fails. Coming back from New York that day, I experienced one of the greatest feelings of my life, knowing that all of our debts were paid off. And so people were asking him, you know, now it's public. You have a system that works.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we needed to get better organized and come up with a more sensible way to finance the growth. I needed someone to help me with systems and distribution. And this is where he realizes I've gone as far as I can with the structure I have. I need talent. I need people that have the skills to take us to the next level. And this was crucial for that to happen. And so he says, even though it may surprise people, I have to say that I consider the time Ron when Ron Mayer was at the company from 1968 until 1976. And I'll get into it, like he winds up quitting because he wanted to run the whole company to be the most important period of development in Walmart's history. We had a good thing going before Ron arrived, but he and some of the people he brought on board, like our first data processing manager, gave the company its first sophisticated systems. And those systems were the beginning of a management method which allowed us to stay real close to our stores, even as our growth exploded. And one thing Ron did was really put Sam to invest in technology. So that's why he's thinking him.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So then he starts bringing up this is still now we're about what seven eight Walmart steep and he's getting nervous because he's just got a ton of debt and so this is again he mentions this over and over again until the IPO and then he feels fantastic It's true enough that I was nervous about spending any unnecessary money in those days we were generating as much financing for growth as we could from the profits of the stores but we were also barring everything we could I was taking on a lot of personal debt to grow the company it approached $2 million the debt was beginning to weigh on me our first seven or eight Walmarts were showing spectacular results once we got it going it was hard to see why we should quit the thing was you could see the potential so clearly so this is let me I'm gonna start this paragraph over because I just realized I should have told you my note on this paragraph first this is what it looks like at the beginning of what will soon be a giant business our first seven or eight Walmarts were showing spectacular results once we got it going it was hard to see why we should quit the thing was you could see the potential so clearly the profits and the sales were there”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is how I met Sam Wall. And then a few paragraphs later, the same guy highlights exactly what Charlie Munger knew about, or observed about Sam. He has just been a master of taking the best of everything everybody else is doing and adapting it to his own needs.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bankrupt. They just didn't go back to Sam Walton. They just didn't stay close enough to their business. They sort of chose to go over to the other side of the road. And you can think about Sam constantly learning from somebody else, visiting stores. That is a form of practice. Every single craft has a form of practice. It's just not as obvious as it is in sports, right? And so this is an example of this. I probably visited more headquartered offices of more discounters than anybody else. 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 company was, about his business. And as often as not, they let me in, maybe out of curiosity, and I'd ask lots and lots of questions about pricing and distribution, whatever. I learned a lot this way. And this is, it's hard to say what my favorite story in the book is. This is definitely a nominee for my favorite story of the book.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Companies. They don't have to be done the Walmart way or my way or anybody else's way. That's really, I really appreciate that statement right there. And it's something now I've read 240 of these books. There are a lot of ways to build strong companies. They don't have to be done on the Walmart way or my way or anybody else's way, but you have to work at it. And if somewhere along the line, these folks stop short of setting and somewhere along the line, these folks stop short of setting the goals and paying the price that needed to be paid. I got to stop this because I didn't catch this the first time. Think about what he just said. Somewhere along the line, the folks, stop short of setting the goals and paying the price that needed to be paid. They stopped short of paying the price that needed to be paid. Let's go back to founders number two. This 600-page biography of Michael Jordan I read called Michael Jordan A Life. And I got to read this section to you. Like so many NBA players, Clyde Drexler was operating mostly off his great store of talent. This is when...”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then this next sentence is fantastic. And if you read between the lines, he's telling us he's giving advice to future generations of entrepreneurs. The goal should be to build a real business. Anybody who has ever known anything about me knows I was never in anything for the short haul. I always wanted to build as fine a retailing organization as I could. He mentioned Sol Price again. Solice is all over this book. I learned a lot from Sol Price, a great operator who had started FedMart out in Southern California in 1955. I made friends with Sol's son-in-law, who was running a distribution center in Houston, and talking with him helped me sort out some of my thinking on distribution, which would eventually become another key to Walmart's success. I guess I've stolen as many ideas from sole price as anybody else in the business.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That personality, I've always had the soul of an operator, somebody who wants to make things work well. Then make them better, and then make them the best they possibly can be. So I guess when folks saw me walking around scribbling notes on my yellow legal pad or hauling boxes of ladies' lingerie into stores out of my station wagon, maybe they didn't take me that seriously. They assume we wouldn't be in it for the long haul. Some folks, no doubt, figured that we were a little fly by night. I think that misunderstanding worked to our advantage for a long time, and enabled Walmart to fly under everybody's radar until we were too far along to catch.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Challenging with their lives. And so he just referenced himself as a fairly overactive fellow. He's also somebody who just doesn't have any, didn't really believe in limits, didn't see any reason to stop. And this is something his wife said about him. I kept saying, Sam, we're making a good living. Why go out? Why expand so much? So much more. The stores are getting farther and farther away. After the seventeen store, though, I realized there wasn't going to be any stopping it. And so he talks about this compulsion in him, but he also says something here really fascinating that it is to your advantage if you can fly under the radar until you're way too far ahead to catch. This was fascinating. So he says, there's no question that I have a personality promoter. That personality and our somewhat unorthodox style at Walmart probably confuse people at the outset. In fact, I have occasionally heard myself compared to PT Barnum because of the way I love to get in front of a crowd and talk something out. Up, an idea, a store, a product, the whole company, whatever I happen to be focused on right then.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Avoided a mistake. He avoided, he says, One thing I never did, which I'm really proud of, was to push my kids too hard. I knew I was a fairly overactive fellow, and I didn't expect them to try to be just like me. So really what he's telling us is let your kids choose their own path. But that doesn't mean he's not a fan of idleness. He feels like you have an obligation to be useful to fellow humans. And so he says, I do admit to worrying sometimes about future generations of the Waltons. I know it's unrealistic of me to expect them to all get up and throw paper outs. And I know it's something I can't control, but I'd hate to see any descendants of mine fall into the category of what I would call idle rich. This is a group I've never had much use for. I really hope that somehow the values that both Helen and I and our kids have always embraced can be passed down through the generations, and even if these little future Waltons don't feel the need to work from dawn into the night to stay ahead of the bill collector, I hope they feel compelled to do something productive and useful.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Growing up as the oldest child, I felt I took a lot of the brunt of this domestic discord. I'm not exactly sure how the situation affected my personality unless it was a motivation to stay so busy all the time. But I swore early on that if I ever had a family, I would never expose it to that kind of squabbling. And then he says, you know, I could not have done. I could not have built Walmart without the support of my wife. Helen bore more than her share of raising the kids. I worked long hours, at least six days a week. Saturday was our big store day, and I worked all day Saturday and Saturday night too.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His goal, he's like, I have to have a happy home. I didn't grow up in a happy home. My wife did, so let's try to make that their version of family life the version that our kids experience. So he says, I have found memories of my own boyhood, yet it paints for me to talk about one part of it. But because Helen thinks it had an important influence on me, I'll mention it briefly. The simple truth is.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so one way, say, I'm trying to force, like, there's really no work-life balance for him. It's more like work-life integration. It was a family business. And so they had work in the stores. They would talk about that, like, I mean, he gave his kids a piece of the business way before he was even valuable. That's one way they avoided inheritance taxes, give away equity before it's worth much. He talks about, if you're interested in that idea, he talks about it at the very beginning of the book. So this is his reason I'm bringing this up to you though, is this is his daughter, a childhood memory from one of his daughters, or from his daughter rather. And she said, as kids, we work for the company one way or another. I got to work behind the candy counter or run the popcorn stand when I was just five years old. The business was part of our life and it was always included in the dinner conversation. We heard a lot about debt it took to open new stores and I worried about it. I remember confiding to my friend one time crying and saying, I don't know what we're going to do. My daddy owes so much money and he won't quit opening stores. So he does say even, you know, I'm going to be working a lot.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know the way the rules of retail said it had to be done. And so he uses this term for independent thinking. So what you and I would call independent thinking, he's going to call swimming upstream, okay? We started out swimming upstream and it's made a strong and lean and alert and we've enjoyed the trip. That's a really good sentence. We sure don't see any reason now to turn around enjoying the rest of the pack headed downturn.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All kinds of crazy ideas themselves. And then you combine that with Sam's natural instinct to have this bias of action. It says very important in the early development of the company was establishing the philosophy of let's be out in front, let's do it right, let's get it done now and get on with it. He continues to steam the importance of having a bias of action later on. We looked for action-oriented do it now go type of folks.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Business. There's a reminder of each event or action behind every check. It influences your feel what direction you're going to go. He pays all the bills and signs all the checks calling it a form of discipline. And so something that Sam mentions at the beginning, because it was just him and the managers in the stores, he had no admin layer. He couldn't be in every store. And so it was very important to align incentives, so that's why the store owners and managers would have a piece of the profits. But he also gave, it was like an extreme form of decentralization, which he's a big fan of. He even hypothesizes later. He's like, I bet you, I wonder if Walmart would be better instead of being $100 billion company if it was $520 billion companies. So I'm just going to read one sentence that there's an illustration of this time. Again, a lot of this is because he was forced to, going back to the idea that constraints are your friends. I don't have time to hold your hand. You got to figure shit out for yourself. And he says, each of them, his managers in the stores at this point in time, each of them had lots of freedom to try all.”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Store. And so I'm not going to read all the columns, but stuff like sales, expenses, net profit, markdowns, utilities, insurance, taxes, that kind of stuff. I entered the numbers myself each month with a pen, which helped me remember them better. It became a habit with me, and I carried this ledger sheet in my pocket when I went to the store so everybody knew exactly where they stood. For several years the company was just me and the managers in the stores. There's no layer. There's no admin layer. So we had to do this. He forced himself to do this. We've seen this idea before. One of the smartest people I've ever studied on this podcast was Henry Singleton. All the way back on number 110, I'm going to read this. This is from the book Distant Force. And he said a very similar thing. He calls this a form of discipline. Very fascinating. So it says he pays all the bills and signs all the checks, calling it A. This is now Henry talking. Calling it a form of discipline. They're doing the signing. It's amazing how much you learn about the...”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like the discount warehouses of Costco. In business, we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing or minimizing one or a few variables. And the only way that he could maximize, or excuse me, minimize prices rather and be completely dedicated to the ideas, he had to know his business. He had to know the numbers of his business down pat. And so even as he's expanding, he does something really smart here. And this is something I missed the first time I read the book. He forces himself. He finds a way to force himself to know the numbers for every single story. This is a fantastic idea. I'm going to read the whole paragraph to you. We would come up with a P&L, so a profit and loss sheet for each store and get it out to the store manager as quickly as we could. Something we still do to this day. If there was a problem, I would get what that manager immediately, but most of them owned a piece of their store, so they got a piece of profit, right? So they were likely to be as concerned as I was. I had a big ledger sheet pasted together to make room for everything I wanted on it. There was probably 15 different columns for every...”
2022-02-28 · Founders · #234 Sam Walton: Made In America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source