Sam Walton

“And remember all these managers were equity owners in their own stores and in most cases in the stores of all the other managers too.”

“So they rename it Walton's five and dime, and it becomes the third self-service variety store In the entire country.”

“Reading the story is how much Walmart embraced technology and Sam embraced technology, and I think they were arguably the first corporation in America to embrace computing as a business paradigm.”

“The Walton family goes on to be the wealthiest family in the world. All of Sam's future generations are worth a few hundred billion dollars, depending on the day that you look at Walmart's market cap, since it's nearly all invested in Walmart, but it's a multi…”

“Sam and the Walmart story is like the bridge between the business America that was John Rockefeller and Standard Oil and Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Like, this is the connective bridge between those two realities.”

“I actually think this is super brilliant. I was thinking about this with regard to tech companies today and everything. And like, even though employees of tech companies get much better economic deals with stock options, I think psychologically, this is a bett…”

“Which is interesting because Sears was the dominant retailer. Everyone bought everything for their homes, including some homes from Sears.”

“It's that insight that people far out from cities want the same thing as people in cities, and so they're just as bright, they want the same things in life, they just happen to not live in cities, and so let's not be pejorative, let's serve them with high qual…”

“Each store was actually its own company, so that different people could sort of hold shares in each store. The management, different people who, you know, wanted to invest in the store, that sort of thing.”

“You can't understand Jeff Bezos until you study Sam Walton. You can't understand Sam Walton. So you understand JC Penney and sole price.”

“The low cost structure thing, that's not, that's a Walton thing. That's a sole price thing. That's a Jeff Bezos thing. That's a Rockefeller thing. That's the most common theme in the history of entrepreneurship.”

“Also in 1982, Saul gets a call from his old buddy Sam Walton... Saul tells him all about Price Club, how the model works, the cash flow dynamics, everything. Sam, of course, goes back to Bentonville, and within 12 months, guess what pops up? Ben Gilbert: Sam's…”

“Sam Walton actually wrote in Made in America That he stole more ideas from Saul than anyone else in his business career.”

“You look at Ingvar, you look at Sam Walton, you look at Buffett. I mean, all these guys, it feels like it's a part of their childhood story that as a teenager or a college student or something, they were out earning the average head of household.”

“And because the company is so private, like, nobody knows about him, you know, like, but he should be right up there With Sam Walton, Henry Ford, with the very, very greatest American entrepreneurs of all time. He was truly a genius.”