Sam Walton: Made in America

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.