Sam Walton Quotes
-
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.
-
Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune.
-
Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.
-
Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.
-
I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been.
-
I learned early on that one of the secrets of campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them I would call them by name, but even if I didn't I would still speak to them.
-
Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures.
-
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
-
One person seeking glory doesn't accomplish very much.
-
All that hullabaloo about somebody's net worth is just stupid, and it's made my life a lot more complex and difficult.
-
All of us profit from being corrected - if we're corrected in a positive way.
-
If everybody is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.
-
I got into retailing because I wanted a real job.
-
Capital isn't scarce; vision is.
-
I learned this early on in the variety business: You've got to give folks responsibility, you've got to trust them, and then you've got to check on them.
-
Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up.
-
Exceed your customer's expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more.
-
We're all working together; that's the secret.
-
What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?
-
I've never been one to dwell on reverses.
-
The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers.
-
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.
-
Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don't know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.
-
I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America.