Quote

Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

Sam Walton

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Sam Walton
Age: 74 †
Born: 1918
Born: March 29
Died: 1992
Died: April 5
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Entrepreneur
Kingfisher
Oklahoma
Samuel Moore Walton
Good
Exactly
Wisdom
Everybody
Niche
Chance
Conventional
Else
Ignore
Find
Opposite
Going
Opposites
Way
Direction

More quotes by Sam Walton

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I not only knew I wanted to go into retailing, I also knew I wanted to go into business for myself.
Sam Walton
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Individuals don't win in business, teams do.
Sam Walton
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The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.
Sam Walton
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I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America. I am just trying to get ideas, any kind of ideas that will help our company. Most of us don't invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.
Sam Walton
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I learned a lesson which has stuck with me all through the years: you can learn from everybody. I didn't just learn from reading every retail publication I could get my hands on, I probably learned the most from studying what John Dunham was doing across the street
Sam Walton
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If one of our customers comes into the store without a smile, I'll give them one of mine.
Sam Walton
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High expectations are the key to everything.
Sam Walton
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Capital isn't scarce vision is.
Sam Walton
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We're all working together that's the secret. And we'll lower the cost of living for everyone, not just in America, but we'll give the world an opportunity to see what it's like to save and have a better lifestyle, a better life for all. We're proud of what we've accomplished we've just begun.
Sam Walton
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One thing my and mother and dad shared completely was their approach to money - they just didn't spend it.
Sam Walton
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I'd hate to see any descendants of mine fall into the category of what I'd call 'idle rich' - a group I've never had much use for.
Sam Walton
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Communicate everything you can to your associates. The more they know, the more they care. Once they care, there is no stopping them.
Sam Walton
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Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune
Sam Walton
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Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was...just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But...it was an outgrowth of everything we'd been doing since [1945]...And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.
Sam Walton
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It's just paper - all I own is a pickup truck and a little Wal-Mart stock.
Sam Walton
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Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who's going to have a great idea.
Sam Walton
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...You can make a positive out of most any negative if you work at it hard enough.
Sam Walton
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Focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it.
Sam Walton
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Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.
Sam Walton
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You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.
Sam Walton