Quotes from Sam Walton

What has carried this company so far so fast is the relationship that we, the managers, have been able to enjoy with our associates. By "associates" we mean those employees out in the stores and in the distribution centers and on the trucks who generally earn an hourly wage for all their hard work. Our relationship with the associates is a partnership in the truest sense.

These days, the real challenge for managers in a business like ours is to become what we call servant leaders. And when they do, the team—the manager and the associates—can accomplish anything.

He became, really, the best utilizer of information to control absentee ownerships that there's ever been. Which gave him the ability to open as many stores as he opens, and run them as well as he runs them, and to be as profitable as he makes them.

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. That's the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart's success.

Communicate everything you can to your associates. The more they know, the more they care. Once they care, there is no stopping them.

Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.

I learned from a 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 shared completely was their approach to money: they just didn't spend it.

And here it is: 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

Through our combined efforts the kids received your everyday heartland upbringing, based on the same old bedrock values: a belief in the importance of hard work, honesty, neighborliness, and thrift.

As I look back on that period now, I realize I had split the company in half, setting up two factions which began to compete fiercely with one another. There was the old guard, including many of the store managers, remaining loyal to Ferold, and the new guard, many of whom owed their jobs to Ron. Pretty soon, everybody began to take sides, lining up behind either Ron or Ferold, who didn't get along at all.

I believe in always having goals, and always setting them high.

Leaders must always put their people before themselves. If you do that, your business will take care of itself.