Sam Walton Book Review
Chapter 1: Learning to Value the Dollar: When Sam Walton finally reached his success after many years, although he was generous, he didn’t give away money without making people earn it first. Although it is true that when you become successful, you give back, however, you don’t give back money, you help them. For example, you have a drunk broke man with a gambling addiction. It wouldn’t be a good deed to give him $10,000. It would just feed his gambling addiction and he’ll burn it all. You would rather buy him rehab lessons and give him a job opportunity and some money to get on his feet. People came up and begged Sam for money and houses but he refused. Sam was ambitious when it comes to making money but humble when it comes to comfort. He drives an old truck, practically lives in a little house and you can hardly tell he’s a billionaire and not a homeless man. Overall, he learned the value of the dollar, not to give it away to just anybody, and that you need to learn its value before you seek it out.
Chapter 2: Starting on a Dime: To sum it up, you have to start somewhere. It is never too early or too late to fulfill your ambitions. People believe it is best to stay in college in your twenties and work in your 40’s but look at Mark Zuckerburg. He is like 23 and made Facebook. Sam Walton started off with nothing when young. Nobody is self-made. I learned that you got where you are because of somebody. Nobody is a self-made billionaire. Somebody else gave them the driving force to do what they did. Sam competed in all the competitions and won like $10 he got from Eagle, and then he kept investing in what he had, until it grew and grew. He saw the value of $10, even back then.
Chapters 3: to the End: From here, I will summarize the entire book because there are too many chapters. Sam and his wife, Helen moved houses a lot. Their businesses and franchises spread everywhere and they had to move wherever their businesses moved. They moved over 21 times in only a few years. He started off small and did a few Ben Franklin shops to get in the competition. This is the period where Sam was building his success but wasn’t quite there yet. He inspected his competitors and did everything that they did but better. If a water bottle was 5 cents, he would make it 4. If they had a lot of workers, he would hire more. He did everything he could to maintain his customers from the competition. He started off living and selling in a small town where his store would expand through word of mouth. This is partially because there was no YouTube to put ads on and you can’t do word of mouth in a large city because there were simply too many people. One day while flying on an airplane (he was able to afford it for 1 million dollars because he was doing better and he needed it to travel) he was thinking of names for stores other than Ben Franklin. Then he scribbled out: W-A-L-M-A-R-T.
At the start he was doing not bad. They earned about 1 million dollars in 1 year but he didn’t think it was good enough in comparison to another store that was making 2 million dollars. Then he decided to cut prices. Whatever price they gave, he would give the better deal at a lot cheaper. You would rather have a lot of people coming because of low prices and have them as repeat customers rather than have one-time customers that you put up a high price for their businesses. With many people liking your store, you would get good reviews and more people would come. But if your store only had expensive items, you do earn a bit more short-term but you get low reviews and eventually few will continue to come back as repeat customers. As a result of the good deals that he offered, the lines were crazy and his stores were packed. Probably as packed as Black Fridays today. There were so many people, the fire department came and only let a few people in at a time. Sam Walton asks for sales reports from his employees so that he can make sure that they are actually doing their work. He put many ads in newspapers as they expanded. One technique that they used (not really a technique) was to put all of the good items at the corner of each aisle. Then people would see them first since they are standing out then buy them. Nobody explores the inside of each aisle, only the outside.
Sam Walton hosted many get-together and fun times with his employees. He checked in every Saturday and talked to his employees at 6 in the morning. One of the special events includes a free television if you can find it in the store. This strategy helped with his sales because since people were already there, they might as well buy some items. They did parades and very loud crazy stuff outside to get attention. The point of these fun times were to create memorable experiences so that the customers would come back and also to be loud and get some of the customer’s attention. Their target audience were anybody but they had to be repeat customers. They put low prices everyday but they are not aiming at one time customers who come for one time purchases. They want to give good service at a low cost so that they would come back. A special aspect they included was what they did to outplay their main competitor- K-mart. They aren’t looking too good now but at the time K-mart was like a modern day Target.
Walmart noticed a lot of robbers and they didn’t know what to do. To make people feel safe, they added security cameras. To give service, they hired greeters who stood at the front door and welcomed guests inside. The purpose of the greeters weren’t to just greet people but to prevent shoplifters. It’s hard to walk out with something you stole right next to a greeter that is trying to shake your hand. This was a clever example of what they did to improve service and safety. That’s why there are so many cameras at modern day Walmart.
They dealt with their competition by pretty much being better. It’s that simple. If you are better in all ways, you will take your competitors your customers. Sam did this by cutting costs to nearly retail price so that people would come. You wouldn’t know about the inside unless the outside is good so they included great service.
Sam got the best deals from manufacturers by asking them for the lowest price possible. When they refused, he threatened to go to another competitor and they will surely give him a good deal, but he just wasn’t rude about it. Just remember, a good deal for you means a good deal for the customer.
After Sam Walton reached his success, he decided that he needed to give back to the world since the world gave to him. He taught his kids very well about the value of money and they eventually became very successful. He did this to have an everlasting generation of wealth. He didn’t spoil his kids because he didn’t want them to blow all of his hard work away. Sam helped others, not give them money because money isn’t the problem, it’s actually you.
Overall, the tips from Sam would be to learn how to negotiate, deal with competition and give back when you finally reach success. Everyone starts somewhere so don’t be arrogant and also start young since it’s never too late or too early to become successful.
