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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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Sam Walton
Age: 74 †
Born: 1918
Born: March 29
Died: 1992
Died: April 5
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Entrepreneur
Kingfisher
Oklahoma
Samuel Moore Walton
Also
Wanted
Retailing
Knew
Business

More quotes by Sam Walton

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Exceed your customer's expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more.
Sam Walton
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Each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community.
Sam Walton
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I had to get up everyday with my mind set on improving something.
Sam Walton
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There are only four things in life that matter. The first is happiness and I'll sell you the other three for a dollar.
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
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A computer can tell you down to the dime what you've sold, but it can never tell you how much you could have sold.
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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Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.
Sam Walton
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Job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owes anybody else a living.
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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...You can make a positive out of most any negative if you work at it hard enough.
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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Individuals don't win in business, teams do.
Sam Walton
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Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.
Sam Walton
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I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment.
Sam Walton
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Don't get so stuck in your ways that you can't change.
Sam Walton
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Some families sell their stocks off a little bit at a time to live high, and then - boom - somebody takes them over, and it all goes down the drain.
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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I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of my biggest contributions to the later success of Wal-Mart.
Sam Walton
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Money and ownership alone aren't enough. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.
Sam Walton