It’s true that I was 45 when we opened our first Wal-Mart in 1962, but the store was totally an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since Newport — another case of me being unable to leave well enough along, another experiment. And like most other overnight successes, it was about 20 years in the making. Management Style Playing on Strengths

Samuel Moore Walton was born to Thomas Gibson Walton and Nancy Lee, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He lived there with his parents on their farm until 1923. However, farming did not provide enough money to raise a family, and Thomas Walton went into farm mortgaging. He worked for his brother's Walton Mortgage Company, which was an agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance, [3] [4] where he foreclosed on farms during the Great Depression. [5] Sam Walton is the founder of the worlds biggest company Walmart with now over 2 million employees. He basically grown up selling stuff and he knew very early in life that he wanted to work in the retail business. He involved almost the whole family in his career and earlier businesses which he already had founded before he created his great idea called Walmart.Sam Walton spend a lot of time in his competitor’s stores. He was always studying what other businesses were doing, talking to their employees and taking notes. He wanted to find good ideas and borrow them for his own business. 5. Looking Ahead: Forget the past and focus on future goals When they joined the company, Ron Mayer and Royce Chambers brought with them sophisticated communication and distribution systems that made Walmart's national projection possible, as they allowed a concentration of goods, which were now stored in the distribution center and redirected to stores. Family

Patty de Llosa and Jessica Skelly von Brachel (March 23, 1992). "The National BUSINESS HALL OF FAME". Fortune. Peter Nulty Reporter Associates. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016 . Retrieved May 25, 2016. I think one of Sam's great strengths is that he is totally unpredictable. He is always his own person, totally independent in his thinking." Walton indeed wasn’t afraid of other big retailers: he thought that competition improved their acumen and made Walmart better. The Big Discounts Self-service stores. In the past, a store employee would find the items you want and bring them to you. Sam heard about the first self-service stores and rode an overnight bus to see them firsthand. Then he opened the 3rd self service store in the USA. Sam set big goals for himself. He wanted his little store to be the most profitable one in the area. Then he worked 6 or 7 days per week to achieve his goals. He usually came into the office before 5AM. In fact, he continued starting work this early even after Walmart became a big success. (However, he often did take time off to go hunting, play tennis or go on long summer road trips with his family.)

When it comes to business, however, he has always been inclined to reject the system. Change is an integral part of his philosophy. Given its scale and economic influence, Walmart is noted to significantly impact any region in which it establishes a store. These impacts, both positive and negative, have been dubbed the "Walmart Effect". [25] Personal life [ edit ]

Sam Walton was born in 1918 in a lower-class family. His parents didn’t have much but always took proper care of him. The beginning of his journey is marked by a practice that has become a fundamental part of Walmart's philosophy: the search for goods directly with manufacturers. At the end of the day, after closing the store, he would tour the surrounding states, filling his car with everything he could get at a good price.John Huey is an American journalist with experience in Economics. Graduated from the University of Georgia, he currently works with major publications, such as Fortune, Time, and The Wall Street Journal. Why should I read it? Niklas Göke is an author and writer whose work has attracted tens of millions of readers to date. He is also the founder and CEO of Four Minute Books, a collection of over 1,000 free book summaries teaching readers 3 valuable lessons in just 4 minutes each. 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 experiments

Efficiency is further explored in Chapter 15, in which Walton describes the business philosophy he used to guide Walmart’s growth. By controlling his expenses better than his competitors, thus creating a more efficient operation, he was able to establish and maintain an edge on his competition. Fraud Prevention: It helps us verify users and prevent multiple free trials from a single person. This is a common practice used by many digital subscription services.Reading about Sam’s life makes you really like him as a character as he lives such an authentic life without pretending to be anyone else. Some of my favourite parts were all the different experiments he kept on trying, buying an airplane to get around the US and scouting shops and his Saturday meetings. Take action first and a lot of things will fall into place. We always think about preparing ourselves perfectly for a situation before we take any action on it however if you look at Sam Walton's story he usually learned by taking action.