Sam Walton was an avid pilot who owned his own small planes. It was part of his thinking small strategy. He flew himself to rural stores that would one day number in the thousands. Competitors like Sears and Kmart weren’t doing this. Flying to his stores let him hear directly from frontline associates. Walton’s edge wasn’t scale. It was acting small—at scale.
A thinking small strategy let Walmart learn the specific needs of a community before scaling. Walton encouraged associates to focus on one customer at a time. He insisted on a small-company mindset, even as Walmart grew. Walton did this himself, visiting competitors with a yellow legal pad to note what they did better—and copy it.
“What’s wrong with changing? If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” — Sam Walton
Overnight Success
It’s the mid-1940s in Newport, Arkansas. Sam Walton is running a Ben Franklin franchise. Sales rise each year. He’s finding his footing.
The landlord refuses to renew his lease and gives the store to his son. Walton is forced out. A major setback.
Getting kicked out forces Walton’s hand. In 1950, he moves to Bentonville and opens Walton’s 5&10 on the town square. For 12 years, he experiments—discounting, new suppliers, even buying a plane to scout new store locations.
By 1962, at 44, Walton opens his first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas. It wasn’t a new idea. It was the result of two decades of experiments: buy low, stack high, sell cheap, and think small.
Surround Yourself with Talented People
In the late 1960s, Sam Walton realized Walmart needed to scale. Even though very few of his competitors had distribution centers and data systems, he wanted them. He didn’t try to figure this out on his own. Instead, he brought in Ron Mayer, a data expert who was his opposite.
Mayer built out the distribution system. It was years ahead of its time. Insiders thought he was insane—spending heavily on computers with only a few stores. Walton stuck to his thinking small strategy. He wasn’t the smartest—but he found the smartest.
Mayer and Ferold Arend helped him run Walmart. Before David Glass, Walton added Jack Shewmaker, who excelled at opening new stores and had managed a Kroger supercenter.
Kroger combined groceries and general merchandise. Walmart later adopted this model. Shewmaker didn’t have decades of experience. He was part of the first wave of college-educated hires Walton brought in.
Shewmaker graduated from Georgia Tech. He had an engineer’s love of systems and organization. Walmart needed both when it brought him on. This was the moment Walton hired for his weaknesses—especially as growth accelerated.
Walton later said that without talent like Shewmaker, the business would have torn itself apart in the 1970s. Walmart’s 1980s expansion depended on these early systems. Shewmaker helped build the distribution network and bring data into stores.
By surrounding himself with talent, Walton admitted his limits in logistics and technology. The team mastered the back end while he ran the front.
Constant Change
Brazil, 1980s. Sam Walton is in a grocery store, on his hands and knees, measuring width with a tape measure. He had a hunch that local stores have a more efficient layout. It was humility and a willingness to adapt. His small thinking strategy had taken him to another continent.
Someone reportedly flagged him as suspicious. The story goes that he was briefly detained—an old man on his knees with a tape measure looked like a spy. He was just trying to learn. Constant change made him comfortable.
Walton had to fight for constant change as Walmart grew. People default to one way of thinking and resist change. He made constant change a core part of Walmart’s culture.
He forced change, sometimes just to keep people uncomfortable. Walmart’s strength was the ability to change on a dime. Comfort was the enemy, and competitors exploited it.
To succeed, you have to change. Resistance is human nature. So he made change part of Walmart’s DNA to prevent stasis.
Think Small
Sam Walton loved visiting his stores. He’d arrive unannounced in his pickup truck and beeline to frontline employees and truck drivers. They had the clearest view. This was his thinking small strategy.
His point was simple: the bigger Walmart gets, the more essential it is to think small. Walmart grew by focusing on one customer at a time, not acting like an 800-pound gorilla.
In the beginning, they were small-town merchants. Everyone needed to remember that. It’s easy to brag about scale. Walton made sure no one forgot it was built one day and one store at a time.
Hard work, a good attitude, and teamwork built the business. No one should forget that or get carried away from its roots. Remember the one store in Blytheville, Arkansas; McComb, Mississippi; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee—even as Walmart became a $50 billion company. Forget that one-story mentality, and Walton said you can close the book on Walmart.
Look customers in the eye. Greet them. Help them. Stop, and Walmart is dead. It was true at one store as it was at $50 billion.
As Walmart scaled, thinking small became more critical. Its strength was acting like a collection of small-town stores, not one giant corporation.
Swim Upstream
The early days of discount retailing were in the 1960s. Established giants like Kmart and Gibson’s controlled the market. Their model: big cities over 50,000 people. Conventional wisdom said scale required population.
Walton went the other way, targeting small towns, sometimes in the low thousands. Big retailers ignored him. Walmart had the field to itself.
Ignored markets proved his hunch: there was far more business there than anyone thought. Growth came with little competition.
Sam loved swimming upstream. It became rule number 10: go the other way. Ignore the crowd. Expect resistance—people will tell you you’re wrong.
He ignored the rule that discount retailing only worked in big cities and proved it wrong.
Thinking Small Strategy
Walmart wasn’t an overnight success; it was twenty years in the making. Sam Walton grew the business by surrounding himself with the best people he could find. With talent, he instilled constant change to avoid complacency. He forced everyone to think small so they would remember what made them successful. Walton built one of the most valuable retailers in history. Not by thinking big—but by never letting the company realize how big it had become.
