Publicado en junio de 1992, el mismo año de su muerte a los 74 años debido a un Mieloma múltiple, es la autobiografía de Sam Walton, escrita con el apoyo del periodista John Huey.
Es un libro clásico del emprendimiento. Sam Walton relata su historia de vida. Su visión, trabajo duro, constante investigación, desarrollo, creatividad y análisis de clientes. Parte de lo que más me asombró fue su concepción de frugalidad, un concepto muy genuino. Su pueblo natal, su mismo barrio, su mismo peluquero, su mismo pickup Ford 150 modelo 1979. Entender el valor de un centavo y de $1, equilibrar la vida con pocos gastos. Aprender de cada error. Ser sumamente competitivo.
Samuel Moore Walton nació el 29 de marzo de 1918 en Kingfisher, Oklahoma, fue criado en una granja hasta sus 5 años, su padre se dio cuenta que la agricultura no sería suficiente para sostener a su familia por lo que se mudaron a Missouri y durante varios años estuvieron mudándose de un lugar a otro. Sam Walton, relata que vivió una infancia muy activa, fue el Scout más joven de todo el estado y además en su escuela fue siempre reconocido por sus altas calificaciones.
Durante la gran depresión tuvo que trabajar en varias tareas para apoyar a su familia, incluso se dedicó a ordeñar vacas y embotellar la leche para venderla; durante un tiempo también se dedicó a repartir periódicos y revistas. En su juventud ingresó a la Universidad de Missouri graduándose en la carrera de economía. Perteneció a la fraternidad Zeta Phi Theta, tras graduarse ocupó el cargo de gestor de prácticas en Des Moines ganando 75 dólares mensuales. Conoció a Helen Robson con quien se casó en febrero de 1943, precisamente antes de empezar a trabajar para el servicio de inteligencia de Estados Unidos. En 1945, dejó el ejército decidido abrir una tienda de mercancía variada. Con la ayuda de su suegro, quien le prestó $20,000 más sus ahorros de soldado, $5,000, Walton montó una tienda franquicia en Newport, Arkansas. En 1950, cinco años después, su local era el mejor y el más rentable de todo Arkansas. Pero cuando tuvo éxito el propietario del inmueble decidió ya no renovarle el contrato de renta, para dar el negocio a su hijo; Walton, a partir de entonces todos su contratos de renta fueron firmados a 99 años. Sam Walton se quedó sin nada. Y… tuvo que comenzar todo nuevamente.
Al verse en la necesidad de comenzar de nuevo su vida empresarial, a sus 44 años, fue a buscar un pueblo que tuviera el suficiente tráfico de personas y que no tuviera tanta competencia, decidió iniciar en Bentonville, otra pequeña ciudad de Arkansas. Pronto, aquella tienda en Bentonville triplicó su volumen y había obtenido ganancias comparables con las de su primer tienda.
Treinta años más tarde, Walmart ya contaba con 1.900 tiendas, más de 430.000 empleados, ventas por 55.000 millones de $ y ganancias por $2.000 millones, se convirtió en el supermercado más grande del mundo. 
En solo 4 años, entre 1976 y 1980, Walton abrió 151 tiendas. Para decidir cuál sería una nueva localización, exploraba personalmente los lugares piloteando su propio avión pequeño de bajo costo.
El concepto de negocio de Sam Walton era: comprar barato, ordenarla en las estanterías y venderlo barato. Vender volumen sacrificando margen. Todos los costos que ahorraba se los traspasaba en bajo costo a los productos. Trataba de manejar un equilibrio entre poco stock (para evitar perder ventas), y demasiado stock (para evitar el excesivo costo). Siempre estaba al pendiente ¿qué era lo que se vendía? ¿Que había en las tiendas? ¿Qué era lo que el cliente requería?. Walmart se transformó en una de las primeras grandes cadenas que instaló códigos de barras en las cajas registradoras conectadas a una computadora central. Luego, avanzó en un sistema de comunicaciones satelitales que emitía los datos desde las tiendas hacia Bentonville, la sede central. A principios de los años 90´s la empresa había gastado más de $500 millones en su red de comunicaciones. La tecnología y comunicaciones entre todas las tiendas a la sede central, las plantas de los fabricantes, le permitió analizar lo que la gente compraba y convertir esas transacciones en análisis de preferencias de los compradores, así como preferencias de precio. Walton fue un innovador. Él reconoce que su competencia con Kmart fue una verdadera inspiración para él. La competencia es buena dice en su libro. Aprendió las reglas de las ventas al por menor y luego rompió esas mismas reglas. Sam Walton fundamentó su desarrollo en el autoservicio y los descuentos, visualizó que estas medidas serían adoptadas por los pueblos pequeños y rurales de los EE.UU, de hecho se dio cuenta que su cadena podría tener éxito en localidades con menos de 5,000 habitantes, si ofrecía algún tipo de incentivo de bajo precio a la gente para animarla a viajar entre 10 y 20 kilómetros, principalmente si había falta de competencia en esos lugares.
A continuación extractos textuales, que resumen puntos claves del pensamiento de Sam Walton. Lo leí en inglés, lo transcribo en inglés para ayudarlo a imaginar que el mismo Sam Walton lo dice, pero el libro esta también disponible en español.
As I do look black around though, I realize that ours is a story about the kinds of traditional principles that made America great in the first place. It is a story about entrepreneurship, and risk, and hard work, and knowing where you want to go and being willing to do what it takes to get there. It’s a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other folks don’t, and about sticking to your guns. But I think more than anything it proves there’s absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary working people can accomplish if they’re given the opportunity and the encouragement and the incentive to do their best. Because that’s how Wal-Mart became Wal-Mart: ordinary people joined together to accomplish extraordinary things. At first, we amazed ourselves. And before too long, we amazed everybody else, especially folks who thought America was just too complicated and sophisticated a place for this sort of thing to work anymore.
I learned from very early age that it was important for us kids to help provide for the home, to be contributors rather than just takers. In the process, of course, we learned how much hard work it took to get your hands on a dollar, and that when you did it was worth something. One thing my mother and dad share completely was their approach to money: they just didn’t spend it.
The best way to reduce paying estate taxes is to give your assets away before they appreciate.
We don’t need the money. We don’t need to buy a yacht. And thank goodness we never thought we had to go out and buy anything like an island. We just don’t have those kinds of need or ambitions, which wreck a lot of companies when they get along in years. Some families sell their stock off a little at a time to live high, and then boom somebody takes them over, and it all goes down the drain. One of the real reasons I’m writing this book is so my grandchildren and great-grand-children will read it years from now and know this: If you start any of that foolishness, I’ll come back and haunt you. So don’t even think about it.
We have enough groceries, and a nice place to live, plenty of room to keep and feed my bird dogs, a place to hunt, a place to play tennis, and the means to get the kids good education that’s rich.
I have always pursued everything I was interested in with a true passion some would say obsession to win. I’ve always held the bar pretty high from myself I’ve set extremely high personal goals.
I think that record had an important effect on me. I taught me to expect to win, to go into tough challenges always planning to come out victorius. Later on in life, I think Kmart, or whatever competition we were facing, just became Jeff City High School, the team we played for the state championship in 1935.
Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I did that in college.
Refiriéndose a cuando conoció a su esposa: “She was pretty and smart and educated, ambitious and opinionated and strong-willed with ideas and plans of her own.”
I felt I had the talent to do it, that it could be done, and why not go for it? Set that as a goal and see if you can’t achieve it. If it doesn’t work, you’ve had fun trying.
You can learn from everybody.
Looking at what was going on. He was always looking or a way to do a better job.
I’ve always, thought of problems as challenges.
I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.
He gets up every day bound and determined to improve something. He is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I’ve ever known. And once he sees he’s wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction.
If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores.
It must be human nature that when somebody homegrown gets on to something, the folks around them sometimes are the last to recognize it.
Payroll is one of the most important parts of overhead and overhead is one of the more crucial things you have to fight to maintain your profit margin.
The more you share profits with your associates whether it’s in salaries or incentives or bonuses or stock discounts the more profit will accrue to the company. Why? Because the way management treats the associates is exactly how the associates will then treat the customers. And if the associates treat the customers well, the customers will return again and again, and that is where the real profit in this business lies, not in trying to drag strangers into your stores for one-time purchases baes on splashy sales or expensive advertising. Satisfied, loyal, repeat customers are.
You’ve got to give folks responsibility, you’ve got to trust them, and then you’ve got to check on them.
Sharing information and responsibility is a key to any partnership. It makes people feel responsible and involved.
Appreciation. Look for things that are going right. We want to let our folks know when they are doing something outstanding, and let them know they are important to us.
There’s no better way to keep someone doing things the right way than by letting him or her know how much you appreciate their performance.
It goes back to what I said about learning to value a dollar as a kid. I don’t think that big mansions and flashy cars are what the Wal-Mart culture is supposed to be about. It’s great to have the money to fall back on, and I’m glad some of these folks have been able to take off and go fishing at a fairly early age. That’s fine with me. But if you get too caught up in that good life, it’s probably time to move on, simply because you lose touch with what your mind is supposed to be concentrating on: serving the customer.
“Sam Walton understand better than anyone else that no business can exist without customers. To make the customer the centerpiece of all his efforts.
The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want.
I think we’re going to have to become a more international company in the not-too-distant future.
It automatically shortens your lead times, but also you can constantly look for ways to improve your operation and try to make it more efficient.
“Well, now, Sam, how big do you really want this company to be? What is your plan?” “Ferold, we’re going to take it as it comes, and If we can grow with our money, we’ll maybe add a store or two”.
I always tried to maintain a sense of hands-on, personal supervision.
I have also been a delegator, trying to hire the best possible people to manage our stores.
Thinking small is a way of life, and I suspect thinking small is an approach that almost any business could profit from.
Think one store at a time.
Keep lowering our prices, keep improving our service, and keep making things better for the folks who shop in our store.
Their real job is to support.
Communicate, communicate, communicate. Keep your ear to the ground.
A computer is not and will never be a substitute for getting out in your stores and learning what’s going on. 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.
Push responsibility and authority down. Force ideas to bubble up.