Jump on the boat, or drive your own?
It happens all the time. There is a big trend that whips through town: a new clothing fashion, a new hip electronic device, that “must buy stock”, etc. The problem is that while trying to stand out and get the newest thing, we often just blend in with other “wanna bes.” Or when buying that hot stock, you just bought it with everyone else, and most likely paid a premium, only to be disappointed when the stock only gains a few more percentages then drops. Timing trends and stocks is very difficult, and sometimes near impossible. How cool would it be to create one of those trends, and not follow in the steps of so many other people.
Sam Walton is a man that likes to choose his own path. If you had the choice of building a store downtown, or 4-5 miles out of town, it seems as if everyone would choose the downtown location. It would be more expensive, but all the business you would gain would be worth it, right? A lot of successful people don’t do things like everyone else, and for that reason have innovative ideas that most don’t.
We never planned on actually going into the cities. What we did instead was build our stores in a ring around a city-pretty far out- and wait for the growth to come to us.
Sam Walton was very savvy. Instead of buying expensive land to have a store next to everyone else’s, he bought inexpensive land, was the first store in the area, and waited patiently. Build a valuable product, and people will come. It takes a lot of patience to have that business plan, but good things do come to those who wait. My challenge is just this, next time you encounter a problem, try to think outside the box, and look at it from all angles.
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July 16th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
You’ve got to have more than patience for this kind of waiting strategy to work. You need deep pockets. Consider all the people who bought homes planning to wait for the values to rise and then sell. As price growth has slowed, it is taking longer for houses to appreciate and now these people can not afford to keep so much money tied up in an unsellable asset.
In a more general sense though, your point about thinking outside the box and resisting the herd instinct (pardon my mixed metaphors) is good. Part of the problem with the housing bubble is that too many people were jumping on the bandwagon and investing in homes that were outside of their realistic price range just because lots of other people were doing it.
Rabenstrange’s last blog post..Out of town
July 18th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I really enjoyed reading Sam Walton book Made in America. It sounds like you’ve gotten a lot out of it from some of your posts. I liked how he always walked through every competitor’s store in every town that he visited. He was always looking for the next good idea to implement.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Yeah I thought that was really interesting. He never seemed afraid of doing “odd” things like you mentioned. A few times he even scoped out good employees at other stores and offered them jobs. He was a maverick, but it payed off!