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Founders: #234 Sam Walton: Made In America

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What I learned from rereading Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:56] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179) [5:45] We just got after it and stayed after it. [6:06] Foxes and Hedgehogs [6:39] Hedgehogs may not be as clever as foxes but they obsessively measure and track everything about their business, and over time, they acquire deep, relevant knowledge and expertise. Their single minded approach may appear risky at times but they are conservative by nature. Hedgehogs don’t speculate or make foolish bets. If all their eggs are in that one proverbial basket, they follow Mark Twain’s advice – and watch that basket very carefully. [7:17] The thing with Hedgehogs is that they never give up. They keep at it – and they don’t ever get bored because they just love what they do – and they have a lot of fun along the way. [7:28] Hedgehogs are the ones who build great, lasting companies. As entrepreneurs, they are the rarest of breeds – those who can start something anew, make it work, stick with it, and build something special, and ultimately

[00:00:00] A lot of folks ask me two related questions all the time. The first one is, could a Walmart-type story still occur in this day and age? My answer is, of course it could happen again. Somewhere out there, right now, there's someone, probably hundreds of thousands of someones, with good enough ideas to go all the way. It will be done again, over and over, providing that someone wants it badly enough [00:00:26] to do what it takes to get there. It's all a matter of attitude and the capacity to constantly study and question the management of the business. The second question is, if I…

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