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Founders: #322 Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines)

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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

[00:00:00] One plan, no matter how well laid out, couldn't possibly respond to all of these situations. This is why Kelleher does not put much stock in traditional strategic planning. He explains it this way. Reality is chaotic. Planning is ordered and logical. The two don't square well with one another. When USAir pulls out of six cities in California, they don't call me and tell me they're going to do that. Now, if we had established a big strategic plan that is approved by our officers and the board of directors, I would have to go to the officers and the board and tell them that we want…

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