Those who stood out (2): Sam Walton

The entrepreneur

Samuel Walton was born in March 1918 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Early in his life Walton and his family moved to Missouri, where he was raised. He was a great student and a good athlete. Walton quarterbacked his high school football team and was an Eagle Scout. He graduated from Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, in 1936 and enrolled at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he graduated with a degree in economics in 1940.

Just after college, Walton took a job in Des Moines, IA, with the J.C. Penney Company, where he got his first experience in the retail industry. He served as an Army captain in an intelligence unit during World War II. Walton returned to private life in 1945 and acquired his first store: a Ben Franklin franchise in Newport, Arkansas. Walton, together with his younger brother, James, came to own 15 Ben Franklin stores. Walton desired to further expand the business toward rural areas but the Company management ignored his ideas. That prompted him to strike out on his own.

The Company: Walmart

In 1962 Walton opened his first Wal-Mart store in Rogers, Arkansas. The Company growth was impressive. By 1976 Wal-Mart was a publicly traded company with a share value worth $176 million. By the early 1990s, Wal-Mart’s stock worth had jumped to $45 billion. In 1991 Wal-Mart became the US largest retailer.

Today Walmart has over 11,000 stores in 27 countries. The company operates under the Walmart name in the United States, in all of the 50 states and Puerto Rico. It operates in Mexico as Walmart de México y Centroamérica, in the United Kingdom as Asda, in Japan as Seiyu, and in India as Best Price. It has also operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada.

The preliminary results for 2013 are showing $469 billion in revenues with a net income of $17 billion. With an amazing number of 2.2 million employees, Walmart is one of the greatest examples of entrepreneurship in modern times. Walmart is currently the world largest public corporation when ranked by revenue, and the world largest public corporation when ranked by number of employees.

Key takeaways

Walton managed the business following his famous 10 golden rules. I am going to point out what in my opinion are the three most significant rules and let you explore the rest using a link to an article that presents all of them.

Commit to your business.

Walton was 100% committed to his business. His job was his passion and he was able to motive those around him by example. He always stated that you need to work passionatly to be really successful.

Exceed your customer’s expectations.

Walton managed the business focusing constantly on “Customer Satisfaction”. He was able to create this vision across the whole organization and it offered direct results. Satisfied customers always come back to the store.

Swim upstream.

This one is probably my favorite one. Walton broke conventional approaches. He went against mainstream ways of tackling problems. Although he received numerous criticisems for his decisions he kept on pushing the limits and going beyond what was considered appropiate at the time.

Based on the results we have seen, perhaps he should be given credit for his unconventional ideas.

You can have a look at the rest of his rules using this link:

http://www.powerhomebiz.com/leadership-management/success-tips/sam-walton-10-rules-for-building-a-successful-business.htm

Those who stood out (1): Fred Smith

The entrepreneur

Fred Smith was born in 1944, in Marks, Mississipi. He attended high school at Memphis University School and in 1962 entered Yale University. He started showing signs of entrepreneurship at a very young age. As a teenager he was able to become an amateur pilot as a result of his great interest in flying. While attending Yale he presented a paper for an economic class outlining the basic ideas for an overnight delivery service. At that time the idea was considered as unfeasible. Yet it was his first vision of the business model that would completely transform the express delivery services worldwide. It was the seed for his company.

After College, he served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War: First as a rifle platoon leader in the U.S. Marines and secondly as an air controller. This experience would greatly influence his career. He got the opportunity to see the complex logistic organization in the military. During this time he developed the leadership and discipline skills required for a Marine captain. Skills that he would use afterwards to lead his venture.

Excellent visionary and hard worker, Fred Smith is one of the most recognized entrepreneurs of our time. Among many awards, we can remark: "CEO of the Year 2004" by Chief Executive Magazine and the 2008 Kellogg Award for Distinguished Leadership, presented by the Kellogg School of Management.

The Company: FedEx Express

In June 1971, Fred Smith founded Federal Express (commonly known as FedEx). Based in Memphis, Tennessee, the Company was able to start offering express delivery services to 25 main cities within the US with a fleet of 14 Falcon jets (DA-20) two years after of starting up. Despite severe difficulties in its first years the Company was able to expand the business and become the leader in its field and a reference in the industry.

Today the FedEx is delivering packages and freight to more than 375 destinations in nearly every country of the world. FedEx is the world's largest express transportation Company.

With $39.3 billion USD in revenues, a market value of $30 billion USD and over 255,000 employees across the world. FedEx is one of the greatest examples of success in the entrepreneurial world.

Key takeaways

First of all F. Smith was able to create a vision as to what the future of express delivery services should be. Fast, efficient, accurate, 24h door to door services. That was amazingly innovative at that time.

Secondly it is remarkable how he was able to overcome all the difficulties that he encountered during the first years of operation. Just in the first two years the company lost nearly $29M USD. He was convinced that the company would become profitable and he continued pursuing his dream without any qualms. Ultimately FedEx become one of the most profitable companies in US history.

Finally I want to point out the company culture that F. Smith was able to generate as a critical factor to its success. This culture inspired a profound loyalty to the company and its founder. Smith operated his company using a basic concept that he called P-S-P: people, service, profit. The three elements work together in a circle, each one supported by the others.

A little bit of planning

Once I have covered the necessary introductions about myself and about my blog and I have also offered some hints about what the content is going to look like, I would like to do some planning before I start digging deeper into the subject.

During the next 20 weeks, I will be uploading into my blog one post per week. First of all I am going to dedicate five posts to my selection of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time. Obviously this is going to be absolutely subjective and I am sure many of you will have different preferences. I will be looking for some inspirational examples, outstanding achievers, unique people who changed the world with their passion and vision.

Secondly I will address in the following five posts the most relevant behavior and attitudes that we usually find in successful entrepreneurs.

I will continue with the five most common mistakes that lead to failure. We will present some lessons learnt that we cannot ignore if we want to minimize risks. And finally we will draw some conclusions and provide some guidance for those considering to jump in and to launch their very own projects.

I will usually share my new posts every Sunday. I hope you will find them useful. Don’t hesitate to give me feed-back. I am already looking forward to receiving your comments.

The ball is rolling…

About entrepreneurship - Warming up...

This is my first post about Entrepreneurship and I would like to start by presenting some basic ideas on this concept.

What does it take to be an entrepreneur? Is everybody able to be one?

These are some of the questions that we hear very frequently when we talk about the subject. Let’s find out a little more about them.

Entrepreneurship is a human condition. As a result, human beings are constantly looking for ways to improve their ‘status quo’; they are always willing to create a better space to live, a better future for their children. However success is not always achieved and sometimes problems are encountered. Nevertheless the spirit mobilizing their course of action is clearly related with entrepreneurship.

I believe that we all have an entrepreneur inside each of us. Depending on our education, our personal situation, the references in our lives, we may exteriorize the spirit or keep it secretly hidden. In this case it takes a specific and relevant event in our lives to awaken this spirit.

We are used to success stories associated with big companies that achieved great notoriety and publicity in the market place. Everyone would see Bill Gates at Microsoft, Steve Jobs at Apple or Jack Welch at GE as great entrepreneurs. Without doubt they are great examples. Yet, I am more interested in talking about the standard entrepreneurs. Those who are fighting hard to introduce their first product into the market, those who are struggling to raise some money to scale their portfolio of services or to launch their companies to the next level. These entrepreneurs may not become the next Steve Jobs but could have a great impact on his surroundings and a major influence on their own destiny.

There are many of these out there. During my next posts we are going to learn more about them. We are going to analyze their behavior patterns. We are going to find out some of the common mistakes that led to failure and some of the key factors which increased their success rate.

More coming next week…

About this blog

This blog is one of the most interesting projects I have ever started. I have been mulling over this idea for at least two years and finally I am ready to take off.

Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Two magic words. Two big tractors of growth, improvement and progress. Two captivating concepts. Both are worth exploring to better understand key ideas which are important to our society and life.

With the experience that I have been able to gain over the last 20 years I think I can share good examples and reflections about the subject. I hope I can also illustrate my posts with some of my colleagues’ most interesting experiences. I have been very fortunate to meet great entrepreneurs and innovators who will serve as an inspiration to explain some of the concepts that we are going to be dealing with.

This project intends to be a journey where I hope to share the most interesting aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship that I have come into contact with through study and professional experience.

I am planning to dig into some of the basics to really understand what is underneath entrepreneurship and innovation. I will be thrilled if you join me on this exciting journey which I hope you will enjoy. Please feel free to contact me in you have any suggestions. First post coming soon…

About the author

Enrique Teruel was born in March 1970 in Pamplona, Spain. He was the youngest son in a family of six children. Due to his father’s entrepreneurial spirit he was exposed to different business initiatives very early on in his life. He was able to participate and learn from several startups that in most of the cases introduced innovative products or services in the market. Although as a teenager he was inclined to start his own business, he was spurred by his parents and brothers to go to College to study Engineering. He obtained his degree in Industrial Engineering and started his career working in a large industrial family business. He worked as a sales Engineer developing new clients and products in different Countries. After several years he went on to work for a multinational American Company with operations in Spain, where he gained experience in Quality, Processes and Manufacturing. Finally he joined a startup in the Renewable Energy Sector, where he held different posts as Plant Manager, Industrial Director and Global Operations Director. Today he continues working actively in the same project leading the Company´s business unit in North America. In his spare time, he is actively studying and writing about entrepreneurship and innovation.

LinkedIn profile http://www.linkedin.com/pub/enrique-teruel/8/aab/198