Walton, Sam (2012). Sam Walton: Made in America. Random House Publishing Group. p.18. ISBN 978-0-345-53844-4.

Sam Walton wrote this book to recount his fascinating story of how Walmart made it from a small-town America discount store to the present-day giant retailer. The tone of the book is informal, as if Sam Walton is right in front of you. That makes the book funny and engaging. Sam Walton, Made in America: My Story" is a collaboration between Walmart founder Sam Walton and writer John Huey, being originally published in 1992. The beginning of his journey is marked by a practice that has become a fundamental part of Walmart's philosophy: the search for goods directly with manufacturers. At the end of the day, after closing the store, he would tour the surrounding states, filling his car with everything he could get at a good price. As for his management style, I found it amazing that even as a successful a man as he was, there are plenty of stories of fights with his management to implement something that is so obvious today (such as greeters). This took him 1 year to get all his regional managers on-board. Reminds you that no matter who you are, you still have to sell your ideas.Walton recounts carefully studying his competitors, looking for the pros and cons in their business practices and then improving upon winning tactics, such as consistently keeping prices as low as possible, minimizing infrastructure costs, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Walton also believed in sharing profits with associates through salaries, bonuses, and other incentives. In fact, his mission to create a certain kind of work culture is one of the book’s main topics. Walton believed the customer must be taken care of, first and foremost. In his view, treating associates well translated into treating customers well. He believed true profit lay in the repeat business of loyal customers, and so the customer became his number one priority. A humble and earnest man, Walton considered material possessions like fancy cars, big houses, and other excesses to be distractions from serving the customer well. I think one of Sam's great strengths is that he is totally unpredictable. He is always his own person, totally independent in his thinking." Samuel Moore Walton was a born entrepreneur. In his book, "Sam Walton: Made in America", the founder of Walmart claims to be, in many of its basic values, such as religion, family and politics, a conservative. It’s true that I was 45 when we opened our first Wal-Mart in 1962, but the store was totally an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since Newport — another case of me being unable to leave well enough along, another experiment. And like most other overnight successes, it was about 20 years in the making. Management Style Playing on Strengths

a b c Walton, Sam; John Huey (1992). Made in America: My Story. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-42615-1. I read a good amount of biographies of successful business people and obviously there are many parallels between them both in personality and business development. Sam loved what he was doing and his enthusiasm and motivation to grow more and more lead to the fast growth of his career. I also liked to read about his private and humble (obviously only for a Billionaire) life. Some of the values you can learn from Sam Walton are: frugality, creativity, confidence, a competitive spirit and, most importantly, always putting the customer first. My whole life I never played a losing football game. […] I think that record had an important effect on me. It taught me to expect to win, to go into tough challenges always planning to come out victorious. Bias towards Action To ensure productivity, Walmart has several ways to reward the work of its associates, such as a profit-sharing plan and other financial association programs, bonuses on loss control expectations, and incentives for formal education for its directors.Hodges, Sam (April 20, 2007). "Presbyterian obit on Wal-Mart founder's widow". The Dallas Morning News. Archived from the original on November 1, 2019 . Retrieved November 1, 2019. Given its scale and economic influence, Walmart is noted to significantly impact any region in which it establishes a store. These impacts, both positive and negative, have been dubbed the "Walmart Effect". [25] Personal life [ edit ]