corporation. But most of the values and the rules and the techniques we've relied on have stayed the same the whole way. Some of them are such simple commonsense old favorites that they hardly seem worth mentioning.
This isn't the first time that I've been asked to come up with a list of rules for success, but it is the first time I've actually sat down and done it. I'm glad 1 did because it's been a revealing exercise for me. I do seem to have a couple of dozen things that I've singled out at one time or another as the \that already, or you're not willing to do it, you probably won't be going far enough to need my list anyway. And another I didn't include on the list is the idea of building a team. If you want to build an enterprise of any size at all, it almost goes without saying that you absolutely must create a team of people who work together and give real meaning to that overused word \me, that's more the goal of the whole thing, rather than some way to get there.
I believe in always having goals, and always setting them high. I can certainly tell you that the folks at Wal-Mart have always had goals in front of them. In fact, we have sometimes built real scoreboards on the stage at Saturday morning meetings.
One more thing. If you're really looking for my advice here, trying to get something serious out of this exercise I put myself through, remember: these rules are not in any way intended to be the Ten Commandments of Business. They are some rules that worked for me. But I always prided myself on breaking everybody else's rules, and I always favored the mavericks who challenged my rules. I may have fought them all the way, but I respected them, and, in the end, I listened to them a lot more closely than I did the pack who always agreed with everything I said. So pay special attention to Rule 10, and if you interpret it in the right spirit — as it applies to you — it could mean simply: Break All the Rules.
For what they're worth, here they are. Sam's Rules for Building a Business:
RULE 1: COMMIT to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don't know if you're born with this kind of passion, or if you can learn it. But I do know you need it. If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you — like a fever.
RULE 2: SHARE your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations. Remain a corporation and retain control if you like, but behave as a servant leader in a partnership. Encourage your associates to hold a stake in the company. Offer discounted stock, and grant them stock for their retirement. It's the single best thing we ever did.
RULE 3: MOTIVATE your partners. Money and ownership alone aren't enough. Constantly, day by day, think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale, cross-pollinate; have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged. Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don't become too predictable.
RULE 4: COMMUNICATE everything you possibly can to your partners. The more they know,
the more they'll understand. The more they understand, the more they'll care. Once they care, there's no stopping them. If you don't trust your associates to know what's going on, they'll know you don't really consider them partners. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.
RULE 5: APPRECIATE everything your associates do for the business. A paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we're really proud of. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free — and worth a fortune.
RULE 6: CELEBRATE your successes. Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm — always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don't do a hula on Wall Street like I did. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools the competition. \those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?\
RULE 7: LISTEN to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines — the ones who actually talk to the customer — are the only ones who really know what's going on out there. You'd better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.
RULE 8: EXCEED your customers' expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want — and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Fix all your mistakes, and don't make excuses — apologize. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: \still up there, and they have made all the difference.
RULE 9: CONTROL your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For twenty-five years running long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation's largest retailer — we ranked number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.
RULE 10: SWIM upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.
Those are some pretty ordinary rules, some would say even simplistic. The hard part, the real challenge, is to constantly figure out ways to execute them. You can't just keep doing what works one time, because everything around you is always changing. To succeed, you have to stay out in
front of that change.
My Father's Son
Bill Heavy
When my father rings, I hurry down to the front door of my condo. There he is, in corduroy pants, the tread worn off the knees, and a shirt I outgrew in tenth grade. He's come to help me put in a new garbage disposal. Actually, I'm helping him. His mechanical gene passed over his only son, on its way to some future generation. At 39, I've made my peace with this.
My father hasn't been to my place since he helped me paint four years ago. The truth is, I'm often not sure how to talk to him. But this time it will be easy. We have a job to do.
In minutes he has taken over the whole enterprise, lying under the sink and squinting up into the machinery. And suddenly I am 12 years old again, watching him fix things and feeling useless. As a child, I identified so strongly with my mother that I thought my father was just a long-term house guest with spanking privileges. She and I are bookish, introverted worriers. My father is an optimist who has never had a sleepless night in his life.
Like most fathers and sons, we fought. But there was no cooling-off period between rounds. It was a cold war lasting from the onset of my adolescence until I went off to college in 1973.I hated him. He was a former navy fighter pilot, with an Irish temper and a belief that all the problems of the world—including an overprotected son who never saw anything through to completion—could be cured by the application of more discipline.
At a time when an eighth-grader's social status was measured in the fraction of an inch of hair kissing his collar, my father would march me down to the barbershop on Saturdays and triumphantly tell the man with the scissors. \eyes, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. Without even thinking about it, I froze him out of my life, speaking only when spoken to. I learned to use silence like a knife. My one communique for an entire dinner was usually a sarcastic \I be excused now? I have homework.\
I lay awake at night imagining him being transferred by the gas company he worked for to an oil rig in the North Sea. But it didn't happen, and soon all that remained was the contest of wills.
I went off to college, but he was still in my head. I could hear his voice every time I fell short in anything. Only when I began seeing my freelance articles in print did I begin to feel that I was slipping beyond his reach and into my own life.
Eventually I discovered that there is no anti-inflammatory agent like time. Now I wondered, could this aging 74-year-old be the giant who once thundered up the stairs to spank me, of whom I was so afraid that I wet my pants? In his place was someone I worried about, whom I dressed in my down hunting jacket for his annual pilgrimage to the Army-Navy game. My profession, which he had once ridiculed, saying, \
pride when fellow Rotarians mistook him for Bill Heavy \longer needed so desperately to please him, I had succeeded. We had become two old veterans from opposing armies, shaking hands years after the fighting, the combat so distant as to be a dream.
Before we can install the disposal, we have to snake out the pipes. Soon we get stuck trying to figure out how a gasket fits.
\
This is not how I remember him. He used to be so stubborn, the kind of guy who could make IRS examiners throw up their hands in frustration and let him off. Now that I have his mind-set and don't want to give up, it's as if he's acquired mine.
He says, \
\you.\
Though we've failed to install the disposal, it's been oddly satisfying. At last we're on even ground. Maybe he wasn't the best father. Maybe I wasn't the best son, but I realize I will never be ready to cope with his leaving. I know that I'm luckier than some of my friends, whose fathers died while they were still locked in the battle that neither really wanted.
The plumber comes two days later. He secures the disposal in its place as easily as I buckle my belt.
Not long ago, I started badgering my parents to get their estate in order. They didn't want to deal with it. I finally wrote them a letter saying if I were a parent, I would want to make damn sure the IRS got as little of my money as possible. I knew this would push my father's buttons. It worked. They met with a lawyer.xc
Later, my father and I lunch at a restaurant near my office so he can fill me in on the details. \thing I don't want you to worry about is what'll happen to me,\man who has taken care of business. \
\about how to get rid of the old disposal.
\me. When he turns back, I am crying, hot tears springing up in my eyes so suddenly I'm almost choking.
\ashes.\
\you with it.\
I have no way to tell him that I want to be burdened with it, that it is my birth right to be burdened with it. \
I don't even look around to see if anybody is watching. I don't care. I reach across the table for his hand and hold it, trying to stop the tears. (1 192 words)
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