Made In America BY Sam Walton full AUDIOBOOK Abridged best BUSINESS AUTOBIOGRAPHY of all time!

Sam Walton: Made in America is an autobiography about the man behind the multibillion-dollar Walmart empire. Walton was an entrepreneur and businessman born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He died of cancer in 1992 and wrote his autobiography in the year before his death. Published posthumously on June 1, 1993, the book is a first-person reflection on Walton’s personal life and business philosophy. Walton’s writing is supplemented by quotes from friends, family, and colleagues that illuminate his work ethic and core values. The book’s nine chapters delve into lessons learned throughout Walton’s life and how he applied those lessons to business.

In the first chapter, “Learning to Value a Dollar,” Walton recalls that he and his siblings were expected to work from an early age. He learned the power of hard work as well as the value of a dollar. These early business lessons ultimately taught Walton that job security depends on customer satisfaction. Though money itself never motivated Walton, saving his customers money did, and providing value to his customers was of the upmost importance.

The Walmart empire was founded on these ideas, and they are further explored in Chapter 2, which discusses cutting prices as a sales-boosting strategy. Walton knew he could buy an item for $0.80, price it at $1.00, and sell three times as much product than if it were priced at $1.20. Such discounting became Walmart’s defining sales tactic.

Chapter 4 talks about adding a bit of anarchy to business. Shaking up the status quo and ignoring conventional wisdom is a big theme in Walton’s book; he understood that innovation is crucial to finding a profitable niche. Larger-format stores and a generous return policy were two inspired ideas that proved especially lucrative for Walmart.

Walton recounts carefully studying his competitors, looking for the pros and cons in their business practices and then improving upon winning tactics, such as consistently keeping prices as low as possible, minimizing infrastructure costs, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Walton also believed in sharing profits with associates through salaries, bonuses, and other incentives. In fact, his mission to create a certain kind of work culture is one of the book’s main topics. Walton believed the customer must be taken care of, first and foremost. In his view, treating associates well translated into treating customers well. He believed true profit lay in the repeat business of loyal customers, and so the customer became his number one priority. A humble and earnest man, Walton considered material possessions like fancy cars, big houses, and other excesses to be distractions from serving the customer well.

In Chapter 7, “Meeting the Competition,” Walton offers suggestions to Walmart’s competitors, such as getting out on the floor, greeting every customer, and training sales associates well. He states that in order to compete in retail, businesses must understand that the market is in constant flux; surviving requires adapting to these changes. For example, many retailers failed to use technology to manage time and inventory more efficiently; Walton viewed this failure to adapt as a critical pitfall, one that resulted in many store closures.

Efficiency is further explored in Chapter 15, in which Walton describes the business philosophy he used to guide Walmart’s growth. By controlling his expenses better than his competitors, thus creating a more efficient operation, he was able to establish and maintain an edge on his competition.

Walton’s business values and principles are succinctly described in Chapter 17, where he shares his 10 rules to build a successful business. These rules form the core of Walton’s business philosophy, and they are reflected in many of the book’s earlier chapters. The rules are:

As Sam Walton himself said, this is "...a story about entrepreneurship, and risk, and hard work, and knowing where you want to go and being willing to do what it takes to get there. And it's a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other folks don't, and about sticking to your guns." It's the story of how Walton parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, he never lost the common touch. Here Walton tells his extraordinary story in his own inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure of his ambitions and achievements, Walton shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style.
"Here is an extraordinary success story about a man whose empire was built not with smoke and mirrors, but with good old-fashioned elbow grease."