Sam Walton: Made In America

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He often took competitor’s strategies and improved them, for example displaying items on wooden shelves was a new practice in many stores. To save money, Sam bought metal ones instead, thus saving enough to reduce prices even further.

Confidence of Sam in his success from the times of his childhood... As he said he couldn't even think about failure... For a long time, Walton was very tight-fisted, a result of his humble upbringing. Unfortunately, this meant that he didn’t always pay his employees as much as they deserved. One of the biggest opportunities for praise were their Saturday morning meetings. While the managers all gathered to discuss results, problems, and opportunities, it was also a time for praise: Indeed, observing the competition is what enabled Walton to come up with innovative sales strategies.Some of the values you can learn from Sam Walton are: frugality, creativity, confidence, a competitive spirit and, most importantly, always putting the customer first. Fred Meijer, West Michigan billionaire grocery magnate, dies at 91". MLive.com. November 26, 2011. Archived from the original on April 10, 2018 . Retrieved November 26, 2011.

These childhood experiences made Sam Walton realize at an early age that he would have to work hard to earn his keep. Sam Walton was always driven, ambitious and hard working. He was a leader in school and worked for his own money. After he opened his first store, he worked 6-7 days per week, starting before 5AM. 3. Daily Evolution: Keep trying new experimentsAfter high school, Walton decided to attend college, hoping to find a better way to help support his family. He attended the University of Missouri as an ROTC cadet. During this time, he worked various odd jobs, including waiting tables in exchange for meals. Also during his time in college, Walton joined the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He was also tapped by QEBH, the well-known secret society on campus honoring the top senior men, and the national military honor society Scabbard and Blade. Additionally, Walton served as president of Burall Bible Class, a large class of students from the University of Missouri and Stephens College. [9] Upon graduating in 1940 with a bachelor's degree in economics, he was voted "permanent president" of the class. [10] But honestly what I didn't like was that he only scratched the surface of the topics in almost every chapter. I expected him to go a little bit more into detail when it comes to failures and hard times but instead he basically praised the whole process as if everything worked with maximum efficiency and almost without major problems. Now when it comes to wall-mart, there's no two ways about it: I'm cheap. I think it's a real statement that wall- mart never bought a jet until after we were approaching 40 million dollars in sales and expanded as far away as California and Maine, and even then they had to practically tie me up and hold me down to do it. On the road, we sleep two to a room, although as I've gotten older I have finally started staying in my own room." Sam Walton graduated college in 1945 and he began working at JC Penney as a management trainee. This experience got him excited about the retail business and he decided to open his own store. But before he could do that, he served in the US army and got married. He was also reading all the books he could find in the libraries about the retail business.