#322 Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines)

**David Senra** (0:00)
So, I just have four quick things to tell you about before we jump into this episode on one of my all-time favorite founders, Herb Kelleher. Number one, I do a terrible job of letting you know, but I have a personal email list. For every book that I read, I take somewhere between 50 to maybe 150 different highlights. For my email list, I whittle those down, and this actually takes a long time to do, to my top 10 highlights. So, if you are interested in getting my top 10 highlights for every single book that I read, and you want me to email those to you, I will leave a link down below. You can also go to founderspodcast.com and put your email on there, and I will email you every single time that I read a new book. Second thing, I was interviewed recently on the Invest Like the Best podcast. I talked with my friend and the host of Invest Like the Best, Patrick, on what I've learned for the last year, in the last 12 months of doing Founders Podcasts and reading all these biographies. If you are interested in hearing that long form interview, I think it's about 90 minutes long, you can search for Invest Like the Best in your favorite podcast player. Listen to episode 343 in the service of Founders. The third thing I want to tell you about is I'm actually doing a live podcast, a live show with Patrick from Invest Like the Best in New York City on October 19th. I think that's a little over three weeks from now. If you have not already got your tickets, that link will also be down below. If you live in New York, I think it's a no-brainer to come out, but it's also a great excuse to travel to New York City. And the last thing I want to talk to you about is the presenting sponsor of this episode and a product that a lot of my founder friends are using, and that is Vesto. You can check them out at vesto.com. And what Vesto is really good at is helping businesses of all sizes invest their cash in US treasuries. You'd want to do that because when your business owns treasuries, that cash is backed by the US government and it earns interest while it sits there. I have one founder friend who raised a bunch of venture capital money and he uses Vesto as a way to extend his runway. And I have another founder friend who bootstrapped his company and he uses Vesto to get a better rate of return than if that cash was just sitting in his bank account. If this sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend you go to vesto.com and check out what they have to offer. I know the founder, Ben, actually just saw him again last week. I've spent a bunch of time with him. If you schedule a demo, so if you go to vesto.com and schedule a demo, you actually speak directly to the founder, Ben. I think he's incredibly impressive, and I think if you speak to him, you'll be impressed too. Make sure that you tell him that David from Founders sent you. And with that, let's jump into the episode. I actually read two books to make this episode. I hope you enjoy it.
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 US Air 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 to deviate from this plan. They would want to know why I want to buy six more airplanes. The problem is we'd analyze it and debate its merits for three months instead of getting the airplanes, taking over the gates, and dominating California.
The meticulous nitpicking that goes on in most strategic planning processes creates a mental straitjacket that becomes disabling in an industry where things change radically from one day to the next.
When a financial analyst chided Kelleher about not having a strategic plan, he said, we do have a plan.
It's called doing things.
That is an excerpt from one of the two books that I'm going to talk to you about today. That is from Nuts!, Southwest Airlines, Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, that was written by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg. The other book is called Herb's Heroes, and it was written by a pilot that worked at Southwest for 37 years.