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By the mid-1960s, Sam Walton no longer has to prove that Walmart can work. The first stores are succeeding, customers are responding to low prices, and Sam can see the opportunity ahead of him.Now comes the harder part: building a real company.In Part 4 of our Sam Walton series, we follow Sam as Walmart begins growing faster than the small Bentonville organization behind it can keep up. The early stores are still largely run by their individual managers, while Sam and a handful of bookkeepers try to keep track of everything with handwritten ledgers, and what Sam jokingly calls the “ESP” accounting method, or error someplace.Sam begins bringing in people who can help him build something bigger.Claude Harris becomes one of Walmart’s first important merchandising leaders. Ferold Arend arrives to bring order to operations. Jim Henry helps professionalize the company’s finances and store leases. Bob Thornton begins working on Walmart’s growing distribution problem.Meanwhile, the stores keep multiplying.We visit one of Walmart’s roughest early locations, an old Coca-Cola bottling plant in Morrilton, Arkansas, where fixtures hang from the ceiling by wire and twenty-eight fans fight the summer heat. It may not look pretty, but the stores keep working.Sam also begins strengthening the culture between them. Saturday morning meetings bring managers together to share prices, promotions, mistakes, and ideas. Sam encourages them to study competitors, look for what others are doing right, and bring the best ideas back home.Then another problem begins to take over: information.Sam travels to an IBM school for retailers, studies early computer systems, meets future Walmart executive Ron Mayer, and later flies to Green Bay to inspect one of the first computerized distribution centers he has seen. Once again, Sam follows the same pattern that has guided him for years: hear about something better, go see it, take notes, and bring the idea home.By the end of the 1960s, Walmart finally has the beginnings of the management team and systems needed for serious growth.But growth takes money.Sam’s personal debt approaches $2 million, lenders begin pushing back, and every new Walmart requires another large investment. After years of borrowing from banks, friends, partners, and insurance companies, Sam finally reaches his limit.On October 1, 1970, Walmart goes public.For Sam Walton, it means something more important than Wall Street prestige.It means freedom from personal debt, and the money Walmart needs to grow.Deeply Driven Books (Amazon Affiliate) - 100% of commissions will be donated to help support Children’s Literacy!Sam Walton SeriesSam Walton - Part 1 - Early Years, First Store & First Big LossSam Walton – Part 2 - Building Back Bigger and BetterSam Walton - Part 3 - The Birth of Walmart If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. It would greatly help the show and we thank you in advance for all your tremendous support. Deeply Driven Podcast WebsiteDeeply Driven NewsletterDeeply Driven (@DeeplyDrivenOne) / X All Episodes on PodViewDeeply Driven - Home Thanks for listening friends!
In Part 3 of our Sam Walton series, the idea that becomes Walmart finally moves from Sam’s yellow legal pad into the real world.We begin in 1961, when an unexpected opportunity leads Sam to buy the struggling Bank of Bentonville. The deal gives him another education in finance and once again shows the important role Helen Walton plays behind the scenes as Sam continues pushing forward.But Sam’s real obsession is discount retailing.He has spent years flying around the country, visiting competitors, asking questions, studying prices, and filling notebooks with everything he can learn. Sam believes discounting is the future, but he does not want to build the entire operation alone. He first takes his idea to Butler Brothers, hoping the company behind Ben Franklin will provide the buying power, distribution, and support he needs.They reject him.Next comes Herb Gibson.Another rejection.Then Sam approaches the Ben Franklin operator in nearby Rogers, Arkansas.Another no.Eventually, Sam runs out of people to ask.At 44 years old, with more than two decades of retail experience behind him, Sam Walton decides to bet on himself. With Helen signing the notes, houses and property pledged, and nearly everything they own at risk, the first Walmart opens in Rogers on July 2, 1962.It is rough, disorganized, and far from the polished stores Walmart will later become. But customers come for the low prices.From there, Sam keeps testing.In Harrison, Arkansas, he learns that customers will shop in an ugly, bare-bones store if the price is right. In Springdale, he tests a much larger and nicer Walmart. Deep discounts on Crest toothpaste and Prestone antifreeze draw shoppers from miles away, and Springdale quickly becomes Walmart’s top store.By the mid-1960s, Sam no longer has to wonder whether his idea will work.He knows it will.But now a new problem is forming. Other discounters are beginning to notice the small-town opportunity too.Sam has found his opening.The question is whether he can grow Walmart fast enough before everyone else figures it out.Deeply Driven Books (Amazon Affiliate) - 100% of commissions will be donated to help support Children’s Literacy!Sam Walton SeriesSam Walton - Part 1 - Early Years, First Store & First Big LossSam Walton – Part 2 - Building Back Bigger and BetterEpisode #13 on Sam WaltonSam Walton: Simple Ideas & Deep Business Impacts If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. It would greatly help the show and we thank you in advance for all your tremendous support.Show WebsiteDeeply Driven NewsletterXDeeply Driven (@DeeplyDrivenOne) / XSubstackhttps://larryslearning.substack.com/ Thanks for listening friends!
In 1950, Sam Walton was 32 years old, married with four young children, and about to lose the most successful store he had ever built. But rather than dwell on his loss, Sam saw a chance to start over. This time, he knew what he was doing.In Part 2 of our Sam Walton series, we follow the future founder of Walmart as he moves from Newport, Arkansas, to the small town of Bentonville, where he buys a struggling five-and-dime store. What follows is a decade of hard work, bold ideas, costly mistakes, and lessons that will shape one of the greatest retail businesses in American history.Sam wastes no time putting his experience to work. He expands the Bentonville store, installs better lighting, and travels to Minnesota to learn about a new way of shopping called self-service. Customers can now walk through the store, pick out what they want, and pay at a central register. Sales take off.But Sam isn't content with one successful store. He begins opening stores in nearby towns, recruiting young managers like Willard Walker and Bob Bogle, and giving them a share of the profits. He wants people who think and work like owners.As his chain grows, Sam faces a new problem. His stores are spread across Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Driving between them takes too much time. So he learns to fly, buys a small airplane, and begins scouting new towns from the sky. What starts as a way to save time becomes one of his greatest advantages.Not everything works.Sam ventures into shopping center development in Little Rock, Arkansas, and loses $25,000. A tornado nearly destroys one of his best stores in Ruskin Heights, Missouri. But Sam keeps moving forward, learning from each setback rather than allowing it to slow him down.Along the way, we see Sam's endless curiosity at work. He makes his own hula hoops when suppliers can't keep up with demand, partners with other merchants to lower costs, and studies successful retailers like Marty Chase of Ann & Hope and Sol Price of FedMart.By the end of the 1950s, Sam Walton has built a growing chain of Ben Franklin and Walton's five-and-dime stores. Yet he sees trouble ahead. A new wave of discount stores is changing the retail business, and Sam knows that standing still is not an option.As this episode closes, we find Sam hunched over his makeshift desk in Bentonville, working on a new plan. The pieces are falling into place for what will become Walmart.Source material for this episode:Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John HueySam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance H. TrimbleListen to Deeply Driven for the stories, lessons, and lives of deeply driven founders, entrepreneurs, and explorers.Visit deeplydrivenpodcast.com for more on Sam Walton, historical photographs, and the source materials behind this series.Deeply Driven Books (Amazon Affiliate) - 100% of commissions will be donated to help support Children’s Literacy!Sam Walton SeriesSam Walton - Part 1 - Early Years, First Store & First Big Loss If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. It would greatly help the show and we thank you in advance for all your tremendous support.Show WebsiteDeeply Driven NewsletterXDeeply Driven (@DeeplyDrivenOne) / XSubstackhttps://larryslearning.substack.com/ Thanks for listening friends!
Before Sam Walton became one of the most successful merchants in American history, he was a young man growing up during the Great Depression, learning the value of hard work, competition, and the almighty dollar.In Part 1 of our eight-part series on the deeply driven life of Sam Walton, we go back to the beginning to uncover the people, events, and early experiences that helped shape the man.We follow Sam through his childhood in Missouri, where he watches his father repossess farms during the Depression and learns from his mother's strong belief in hard work and aiming high. From earning his Eagle Scout badge to winning state championships in high school, Sam develops a deep love of competition and an expectation that he can win.While attending the University of Missouri, he builds a small newspaper delivery business to pay his way through school. Then, in 1940, he lands a management trainee position at J.C. Penney, where he discovers something that will stay with him for the rest of his life: a love of retailing.Along the way, we meet Helen Robson, the woman who will become Sam's wife and one of the most important influences on his future. Her insistence on living in a small town sends the young couple to Newport, Arkansas, where Sam buys his first Ben Franklin variety store in 1945.And this is where things get interesting.Across the street sits a much stronger competitor, run by an experienced merchant named John Dunham. Rather than shy away, Sam begins studying him, borrowing his best ideas, and finding new ways to buy merchandise cheaper and sell more of it.Within five years, Sam builds his struggling little store into the leading Ben Franklin operation in a six state region.Life looks good.Until one costly mistake threatens to take everything away.Drawing from Sam Walton's autobiography, Made in America, and Vance H. Trimble's biography, Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man, we explore the early drive, curiosity, and competitive spirit of a man who simply refused to quit.This is the story of Sam Walton before the empire, when winning was not always enough and losing was just the start of something new.Deeply Driven Books (Amazon Affiliate) - 100% of commissions will be donated to help support Children’s Literacy!Our First Episode on Sam WaltonCheck out our Website If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. It would greatly help the show and we thank you in advance for all your tremendous support.Show WebsiteDeeply Driven NewsletterXDeeply Driven (@DeeplyDrivenOne) / XSubstackhttps://larryslearning.substack.com/ Thanks for listening friends!
In the final part of our three-part series on Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance expedition, we pick up the story on Elephant Island.After months trapped in the ice, the men have finally reached land. But they are still hundreds of miles from help, winter is closing in, and no one in the outside world knows where they are.Major Episode Chapters01:36 Life on Elephant Island05:50 Shackleton Choosing South Georgia Island for Rescue 07:24 Shackleton Picks his Boat Crew to Cross Drake Passage in the James Caird18:56 Into the Drake Passage - Can the James Caird Survive39:06 Shackleton Lands on South Georgia 522 days after Leaving44:28 Into the Unknown as Shackleton Crosses South Georgia Island53:25 Shackleton, Crean & Worsley Whaling Station Reunion01:00:21 Shackleton Rescues the Crew of EnduranceShackleton knows they cannot simply sit and wait.His plan is almost unbelievable.He and five men will climb into the James Caird, a 22-foot lifeboat, and attempt to sail roughly 800 miles across some of the most dangerous ocean on earth to South Georgia Island.Their target is a tiny speck of land in a massive ocean.Miss it, and there may be nothing ahead of them for thousands of miles.Before leaving, the men strengthen the little boat as best they can. They add a makeshift deck, load thousands of pounds of ballast into the bottom, pack several weeks of food, and bring whatever navigation tools Worsley can protect from the sea.Then they push off.What follows is one of the greatest small-boat journeys ever made.For more than two weeks, the six men battle huge waves, freezing temperatures, soaked clothing, rotting sleeping bags, saltwater boils, frostbite, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion.At one point, the James Caird becomes covered in ice and begins riding dangerously low in the water. Another time, a massive rogue wave nearly ends the entire journey in seconds.Through it all, Frank Worsley searches for tiny breaks in the clouds so he can take readings with his sextant and somehow guide them toward South Georgia.Then, after hundreds of miles at sea, they finally see land.But reaching South Georgia does not mean the journey is over.They land on the wrong side of the island.Between them and the whaling stations are nearly 30 miles of mountains, glaciers, snowfields, and terrain that had never been crossed before.So Shackleton, Worsley, and Tom Crean set off again.With almost no climbing equipment, nails driven through the bottoms of their boots for traction, and only a small amount of food, the three men cross the unknown interior of South Georgia.After more than a day without sleep, they finally hear something they have not heard in 17 months.A factory whistle.Civilization.But even then, Shackleton's work is not finished.Twenty-two men are still waiting on Elephant Island.For months, Shackleton repeatedly attempts to fight his way back through the ice to reach them. Meanwhile, Frank Wild keeps the men going with the same words each morning:“Lash up and stow, boys. The boss may come today.”And eventually, he does.When the Endurance sailed south, 28 men were aboard.All 28 came home.This episode brings us to the end of one of the greatest stories of survival, leadership, friendship, and endurance ever recorded.Our main source for this series is Alfred Lansing's incredibl
Today on part two, the pressure has been building for months all around Endurance. When it finally comes on October 24th, 1915, it moves through the pack like a shock wave. The stern is ripped away. Water pours in at 6:45 in the evening, and the men fire up the pumps, but the intakes are frozen. Worsley, Hudson and Greenstreet squirm down into the bowels of the ship through wet, slimy, blubber-soaked coal, pouring bucket after bucket of hot water onto the pipes until they break free.Then it's fifteen minutes on the pumps, fifteen minutes on the cofferdam, all night long. Their muscles are so tight it takes ten minutes to loosen up enough to sleep, and just as they doze off, they're woken for the next shift.They fought unceasingly for three days, and they lost.Frank Wild puts his head into the pump room: "She's going, boys. I think it's time to get off."What follows is five months on a drifting sheet of ice. Shackleton calls all hands together and tells them every ounce has to go, then reaches into his own parka, pulls out a gold cigarette case and a handful of gold coins, and throws them into the snow. He makes one exception. Hussey's twelve-pound banjo. Vital lifesaving music!They try to march out. They fail. They try again at Christmas and fail worse, nine miles in five days, and that's where 56-year-old carpenter Harry McNish refuses to go another step, arguing his contract died with the ship.Then Patience Camp. Four months of waiting, a sea leopard that hunts one of the men across the ice, and a decision Shackleton got wrong, one his own doctor was so unhappy about that he invented a secret code to write it down.On April 9th, 1916, the ice finally opens. They launch three lifeboats into the Weddell Sea with no drinking water, and six days later, no sleep, thirst so bad they chew raw seal meat for the blood, they see the gray-brown cliffs of Elephant Island less than a mile away.Solid ground, for the first time in 497 days.Source material: Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, 1959.Part 3 is next, camp life on Elephant Island, 800 miles of the worst ocean on earth in a 22-foot boat, and the crossing of South Georgia. And then we bring the boys home. I promise we will bring them home.If the show is helping you, leave a review or follow wherever you listen. It helps me reach more people, and the best part is it doesn't cost you a dime.Until next time, make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood, my friend. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. It would greatly help the show and we thank you in advance for all your tremendous support. Deeply Driven NewsletterWelcome! Deeply Driven WebsiteDeeply Driven XDeeply Driven (@DeeplyDrivenOne) / X Substackhttps://larryslearning.substack.com/ Thanks for listening friends!
Today we are talking about Ernest Shackleton and his quest to become the first man to cross the Antarctic. It all goes horribly wrong and he never even makes it to Antarctica. But what happens is perhaps the most epic survival tale of all time, revealing the real heart of Endurance. Not the ship. The ship is gone. She was crushed in the ice and swallowed up by the Weddell Sea. The ship Endurance never made it. But the word did. Because the word came first. Fortitudine Vincimus. By endurance we conquer. That was Shackleton's family motto, carried by the family long before there was ever a ship to put it on the side of. When he bought a vessel for his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, he renamed her for it. And then the ice took the ship, but not the motto. The motto was already rooted in the hearts of the men. In Part 1: We start with a boy born in County Kildare who was poor at best in school, finishing near the bottom of his class, but who was a greedy reader, and who was simply not interested in any sort of normal work. We follow him onto Scott's Discovery expedition, where he gets within 500 miles of the South Pole and is hauled back to the ship on a sledge, coughing blood. That humiliation becomes the fuel for everything after. Then the plan. Two ships, two teams, opposite sides of the continent. Eighteen hundred miles across ground no human being had ever seen, carrying only half the food they needed, betting their lives that men they would never meet had left the rest of it waiting for them. We look at the ship herself, and she really is a beast. A keel of four solid oak pieces stacked seven feet one inch thick. A bow where every timber was cut from a single oak tree, chosen so its natural growth followed the curve of the design, four feet four inches of solid wood. The strongest wooden ship ever built in Norway. Armored end to end against the wrong threat. We meet the crew, more than 5,000 people applied, including three women and Shackleton's interview process, which was quite odd but effective. Five minutes. Sometimes less. He wasn't hiring from the resume. He was trying to get under it. Then they sail into the Weddell Sea in the worst ice year anyone could remember, after every man on South Georgia told him to wait until next season. And on January 24th, 1915, with open water close enough to hit with a stone, all sails up and the engine at full steam, she leaned against the ice with all her might and never moved a foot. Never moved a foot. Source material: Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, 1959. It's a fantastic book. I highly suggest you pick up a copy if you can. Part 2 coming soon — the ice takes the ship, and we follow Shackleton as he battles to save every man. If the show is helping you, leave a review wherever you listen. It grows the show, and the best part is it doesn't cost you a dime. Until next time — make it a beautiful day in your neighborhood. ___________________________ Please Check out Explorers Podcast if you would like to learn more about Ernest Shackleton Ernest Shackleton – Explorers Podcast Books Deeply Driven Books (Amazon Affiliate) - 100% of commissions will be donated to help support Children’s Literacy! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. It would greatly help the show and we thank you in advance for all your tremendous support. Deeply Driven NewsletterWelcome! Deeply Driven WebsiteDeeply Driven XDeeply Driven (@DeeplyDrivenOne) / X Substackhttps://larryslearning.substack.com/ Thanks for listening friends!
Sharing what I learned by reading Confessions of an Advertising Many by David Ogilvy, who In 1948, at 37 years old with no clients, no money, and no American reputation hung out his shingle in New York and wrote down the five companies he intended to have: General Foods, Bristol-Myers, Campbell Soup, Lever Brothers, and Shell. He called it an act of mad presumption. Inside twelve years, every one of them was his. Getting there took him seventeen years of wandering. He won a history scholarship to Oxford and left without a degree, he says he was expelled, but the truth is he flunked out, and what he did to that fact tells you everything about the man. He was a chef in a Paris kitchen, a door-to-door salesman in Scotland, a social worker in the Edinburgh slums, a researcher for Dr. Gallup testing what American moviegoers actually wanted, an assistant in British wartime intelligence, and a tobacco farmer in Pennsylvania. The drive was in him the whole time. It just took seventeen years to find somewhere to point. The foundation was laid at the Hotel Majestic in Paris, where thirty-seven chefs worked sixty-three-hour weeks under Monsieur Pitard, who worked seventy-two. Pitard praised almost never, so when he gathered the whole brigade to point at a young Ogilvy's frog legs and says "that's how you do it," Ogilvy said he was his slave for life. Pitard would not tolerate incompetence beside professionals. He inspected every plate that left the kitchen. And when Ogilvy told a waiter they were out of the plat du jour, Pitard nearly fired him, in a great kitchen you honor what you promised on the menu, whatever it costs you. Thirty years later Ogilvy was inspecting every campaign before it reached a client and sending most of them back. We work through the agency he built on those lessons: only nineteen clients, because the pursuit of excellence beat the pursuit of bigness. One new account every two years, so he never outgrew his ability to train people. Hiring nonconformists, dissenters and rebels. Refusing the New York Times because he didn't believe he could beat the work they were already running. Flying to London on a hunch and inviting the president of Shell to lunch at the House of Commons. Plus the craft itself: what you say matters more than how you say it, spend eighty percent of your time on the headline, give people facts because the consumer isn't a moron, and never stop testing. Repeat a good ad until it stops selling, his Dove campaign ran thirty-one years because you aren't advertising to a standing army, you're advertising to a moving parade. And one idea that changed how I look at my own mailbox: Ogilvy spent twenty-seven years studying mail-order advertising, the stuff we throw away, because it was the only kind anyone could actually measure. The junk mail run is a learning run. Along the way we bring in Steve Jobs, Sam Walton, Estée Lauder, Harry Snyder, Charlie Munger, and Claude Hopkins, men and women who arrived at the same conclusions from very different rooms. Deeply Driven Books (Amazon Affiliate) - 100% of commissions will be donated to help support Children’s Literacy! Podcasts Mentioned #82 David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising) | Founders Podcast #89 David Ogilvy (Confessions of an Advertising Man) | Founders Podcast Past Deeply Driven Podcasts #36 Becoming Steve Jobs - The Long Journey to Greatness Estée Lauder: Divine Purpose of Beauty #7 Elon Musk - Birth of SpaceX (What I Learned) E18 Harry Snyder: In-N-Out and the Power of “Keep It Real Simple” Sam Walton: Simple Ideas & Deep Business Impacts If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. It would greatly help the show and we thank you in advance for all your tremendous support. Deeply Driven NewsletterWelcome! Deeply Driven Website<a href="https://www.deeplydri
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