#322 Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines)

What I learned from reading Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg and  Herb’s Heroes by David Sanders.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- (2:30) Reality is chaotic; planning is ordered and logical. The two don’t square with one another. (5:30) You undergo a lot of stress all the time. How do you handle it? I don’t handle it. I like it. (7:30) He smoked 5 packs of cigarettes a day. He drank Wild Turkey Bourbon daily. He said “Wild Turkey and Phillip Morris cigarettes are essential to the maintenance of human life.” (8:00) He built the most successful airline in history. Southwest was profitable for 47 straight years. (9:30) All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. — Charles de Gaulle (18:00) Kelleher didn’t mince any words: “I told Lamar, you roll right over the son of a bitch and leave our tire tracks on his uniform if you have to.” (27:30) No carrier knows its niche as well as Southwest. (28:30) While other carriers have been lured by the temptation to step outside their niche, Southwest has maintained the discipline to stay focused on its fundamental reason for being. (29:00) Herb on why he was conservative with debt: When there are bad times you aren't threatened by debt payments and debt payments are what put other airlines in and out of bankruptcy forever. (30:00) Southwest is obsessed with keeping costs low to maximize profitability instead of being concerned with increasing market share. (30:15) Southwest is willing to forgo revenue generating opportunities in markets that would disproportionately increase its costs. (35:00) Keller has said on many occasions that a company is never more vulnerable to complacency than when it's at the height of its success. The number one threat is us