比尔.查德
威利家具公司
要点：查德从1954年大学毕业的那天起，就被丢进经营企业的深水区，因为查德的岳父要他帮忙照顾生意2到3周。3个月不到，查德的岳父便因癌症病逝，22岁的查德因此成为家电行老板，这家店年营业额20万美元，有2名员工。查德就从这小小的家电行开始，把威利连锁店打造成犹他州最大的家具与家电零售商，旗下拥有11间综合卖场与2000名员工，年营业额超过4亿美元。巴菲特在1995年买下威利家具，鼓励查德让威利家具成为家具与家电一次购足的综合商场，并且开设更多新零售点，挑战营业额10亿美元的目标。
“一旦企业主对公司抱持着这种感情，就表示我们应该会在这家企业之中发现一些重要的特质，那就是诚实的会计作业、对产品的信心，对顾客的尊重，以及清楚经营方向的忠诚团队。”
查德的经营原则：
一、尽力维持公司的诚信
曾经有一家威利家具的服务承包商，因为破产无法提供服务，即使威利家具在法律上没有履行服务的义务，该公司还是接手提供顾客各项服务，并且为此付出超过140万美元。后来有人质疑查德为什么这么做，查德的解释是，顾客并不了解那些法律条文，但是如果公司钻法律漏洞，会大大影响公司最重要的资产，也就是在顾客心中的信誉。威利家具因为重视承诺精神胜于法律条文，让顾客感受到公司的诚信。
二、超越顾客期待
要维系顾客忠诚，关键就在做得比顾客期望的更多。这样顾客不仅会变成常客，在未来持续跟你往来，还会鼓励自己的朋友跟你往来。对任何企业来说，让过去跟你往来过的顾客留下满意体验，并且获得这些顾客的口碑推荐，就是最好的促销方法。
三、作重要营运决策时，跟着自己的直觉走就对了
有时候，你可能会算出所有财务数字，还是没办法确定到底怎么做才是对的。在这种状况下，觉得怎么做最好就怎么做。有些决策你没办法用言语明白解释，就只是觉得该这么做，那就会是你最正确的营运决策。
“企业扩张引发的各种问题，通常是最难解决的。这些问题所牵涉的未知数最多，假如我们是从今天才开始经营，我会努力深入思考这些问题，为公司扩张订出更完善的计划。这也是我们在最初几年的弱点之一，我们当时只顾着销售，没有时间补充新的观念，也没有时间先退一步想想：“那我们该朝哪个方向发展？该怎么做才对？”我们只知道迅速做好每一件事。一时之间，我们发现仓库或展示间不够用了。怎么办？只好再度扩张。即使这么做还过得去，可是我想，如果我们能在事先多做一些规划，应该可以让扩张更顺利。但是规划实在很困难，要在情势变化这么快速的情况下订长期计划，更是困难。我们必须要能满足顾客需求，如果我们提供的服务，达不到与售价等值的水平，那我们就必须改变自己。”
------比尔.查德
Bill Child
R.C. Willey Home Furnishings
Main Idea: Bill Child was thrown into the deep end of business when on the day he graduated from college in 1954, his father in law asked him to look after his business for him for two or three weeks. Within three months, his father in law had died of cancer, leaving the 22-year old as CEO of an electrical appliance retail store turning over $200,000 per year with a staff of two. From those humble beginnings, Bill Child built the R.C. Willey chain to become the largest home furniture and appliance retailer in Utah with eleven full-service stores staffed by 2,000 employees generating in excess of $400 million in sales each year. Warren Buffett purchased R.C. Willey in 1995, and has challenged Bill Child to grow the company to achieve $1 billion in sales in the near future by becoming a one stop shop for furniture, appliances and home electronics, and by starting more new retail stores.
Bill Chinld's key business principles:
***Do anything that's required to maintain your integrity
When one of R.C. Willey's service contractors went bankrupt, the company stepped forward and filled all the customer service contracts, even though it was not legally obligated to do so. In the end, this cost R.C. Willey more than $1.4 million. When questioned later about the wisdom of doing this, Bill Childs explained his customers would not understand the legal niceties, but it would reflect badly on the most important asset the company had---R.C. Willey's reputation with its customers. By honoring the spirit of the guarantees rather than the letter of the law, R.C. Willey showed it had integrity.
***Provide more than the customer expects
The key to keeping customers loyal is to do more than they expect. Exceed their expectations and they will keep coming back to do more business with you in the future, and they 'll encourage their friends to do business with you as well. The best form of promotion available for any business is the world of mouth recommendation of someone who's done business with you in the past and enjoyed the experience.
***Go with your instincts in making major business decisions
Sometimes, you can do all the financial number crunching and still be uncertain whether or not something is the right or wrong move. In those circumstances, go with what feels best. The vest business decisions you'll ever make will be those that you can't explain adequately in words, but just somehow feel right.
"The questions that arise from expansion are usually the most difficult to answer. They represent the most unknowns, and I think if I were just starting out today I would try to think about them more, to plan our expansions better. That was one of the weaknesses we had in our earlier years. We were so darn busy selling that we didn't have the time to sharpen the saw, didn't have time to step back and say,"Okey, where do we want to go, what makes sense?" Instead, we just did it all very quickly. All of a sudden, we'd find that we'd outgrown our warehouse or we'd outgrown our showroom. What do we do now? We'll expand again. Even though it's all worked out, I think it might have worked even better if we'd done a little more forward planning. But planning is really hard. It's hard to come up with a long-range plan when things are changing so rapidly. We have to fulfill the needs of our customers. If we can't offer them a service that's worth what they pay us, then we need to make changes."
---Bill Childs
