Name: Sam Walton: Made in America
Rating: 4.3 (80 reviews)
Author: Sam Walton with John Huey

What’s in it for me? Learn all about one of the most successful businessmen in the United States.

In 1992, at the time of his death, Sam Walton was one of the richest people in the world. But Walton never forgot his humble beginnings. Indeed, those modest origins instilled in him the values that led to his developing one of the most successful retail businesses the world has ever seen: Walmart.

This is the story of his life and the insights he gained into how you create, run and develop a successful business. We’ll follow him from the origin of his first store all the way to the apotheosis of the Walmart empire, and the novel ideas he introduced to get there.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

how a trip to England changed Walton’s perspectives on his employees;
why Walton danced in a hula skirt on Wall Street; and
how Walton’s rearrangement of store cashiers became the industry standard.

Growing up during the Great Depression, Sam Walton learned the value of hard work.

Sam Walton was born in 1918, to a lower-class family in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. The Waltons didn’t have much but Sam’s parents made sure he was taken care of.

Sam’s father, Thomas, was an honest and hard-working man who took many different jobs in order to provide for his family. Due to his sense of pride, he refused to take on any loans or debt, which meant he was never able to start his own business. Sam Walton understood this, and he would later use a loan to help start his own store.

On the other hand, Sam’s mother, Nan, was quite the entrepreneur, often coming up with ideas to help the family earn extra money.

During the Great Depression in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Nan started a small milk business: Sam would milk the cows, his mother would bottle it and Sam would go out and deliver the milk to neighborhood customers.

These childhood experiences made Sam Walton realize at an early age that he would have to work hard to earn his keep.

Inspired by his mother’s efforts to bring in money for the family, Walton got his first job when he was just eight years old. He started by selling magazine subscriptions around the neighborhood, and by 7th grade he was out on his bike delivering newspapers.

He continued to earn money as he worked his way toward becoming a college graduate. Walton even hired assistants, expanding his paper route into a small business that made around $5,000 a year.

All of these experiences taught the young Sam Walton an important lesson: hard work pays off.

So, by the time Walton was 27 years old and preparing to start his first business venture, he already knew that in order to be successful and get ahead in the world, one had to be willing to put in the effort.

Part of Walton’s success was a result of blatantly copying the good ideas of others.

In 1945, at the age of 27, Sam Walton opened his first discount store, Walton’s 5-10. The store did all right, but Walton knew he could do better.

Walton paid close attention to his competition, and started experimenting with the sales tactics he observed others employing. This led to great success. Indeed, some of these ideas were so good that many of them are still considered standard practice today.

Walton always put the customer first, but not without controversy.

Sam Walton learned early on that, in order to get ahead of his competition, he needed to spend money to attract customers. After opening his first Walton’s 5-10, he even went so far as to take out a $1,800 loan for an ice cream machine for his customers to enjoy. But he didn’t stop there.

Walton was always on the lookout for ways to draw customers in.

Although it took time, Walton eventually began to value his employees, turning them into associates.

As we’ve seen in the previous blinks, Sam Walton always recognized the value of his customers. But this wasn’t always the case with his employees.

For a long time, Walton was very tight-fisted, a result of his humble upbringing. Unfortunately, this meant that he didn’t always pay his employees as much as they deserved.

Key ideas in Sam Walton: Made in America

What is Sam Walton: Made in America about?

Made in America (1992) tells the inspirational rags-to-riches story of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, one of the biggest companies in the world. Find out how Walton used a customer-first approach to turn a small variety store into a global business empire and how a poor boy from Oklahoma went on to become one of the richest people in the world.