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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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Sam Walton
Age: 74 †
Born: 1918
Born: March 29
Died: 1992
Died: April 5
Businessman
Businessperson
Economist
Entrepreneur
Kingfisher
Oklahoma
Samuel Moore Walton
Still
Efficient
Make
Operations
Brilliant
Mistakes
Mistake
Business
Inefficient
Running
Recover
Stills
Operation

More quotes by 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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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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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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High expectations are the key to everything.
Sam Walton
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I had to get up everyday with my mind set on improving something.
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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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Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitor.
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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We let folks know we're interested in them and that they're vital to us. cause they are.
Sam Walton
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Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.
Sam Walton
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Leaders must always put their people before themselves. If you do that, your business will take care of itself.
Sam Walton
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Focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it.
Sam Walton
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Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.
Sam Walton
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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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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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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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Individuals don't win in business, teams do.
Sam Walton
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I've always been driven to buck the system.
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