Costco CEO Ron Vachris rose from the warehouse floor to the corner office without a college degree—and he says it’s thanks to not job hopping

Forget a six-figure MBA—the path to the C-suite can start with a forklift certification. At least, that was the route for Ron Vachris, the CEO of Costco.

Today, he leads one of the world’s largest and most admired companies, with a compensation package worth nearly $14 million. But Vachris never set out chasing the corner office. Instead, he approached his career one step at a time, guided by advice from his father, a utility lineman.

“I wish I had the vision back in the ’80s about what this industry and what this company could be,” Vachris said last month at the Economic Club of Chicago. “But it rings true to my father’s comments: find this company that stands for what you want to stand for, and then the rest is up to you.”

His father’s lesson was simple: “Don’t chase a title. Don’t chase anything big. Just go make yourself your own success.”

Vachris took the advice to heart. After graduating high school in the early 1980s, he enrolled at Glendale Community College in Arizona, studying........

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