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