YouSaid · the spoken record

David Neeleman

lines on the record: 96
first: 2019-02-04
most recent: 2019-02-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Ticket to a lot of exciting times in my life and there's nothing like sitting in a cockpit landing an airplane and a 4,800 foot runway in Rio de Janeiro to give you a thrill and knowing that that's your plane and your people and your happy customers on board. It's quite a thrill.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I I think obviously you have points of luck, but I think you make your own luck to a great degree. ADD people's, and I tell people this have ADD, embrace it. It's you and it's who you are and take all the good from it. And my form of ADD has an ability to just look at a situation that's very complex and simplify it and say, let's just do it this way. It drives my teams crazy because they're like, no, it's not that simple. I'm saying, yes, it is. Just go do this, this, and this, and we'll have it solved. And so, you know, sometimes it's not that simple. But that's just who I am. And that's how I'm wired. I can look at a situation and I can see solutions. If it was in the airline business or any other business, I think I would have probably had that skill. But certainly the airline business has been my...”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He made my life better. We have this thing at Azul where I tell everyone I want this to be the best job you've ever had. I want you to look forward to coming to work every day. And so I walk around the company saying, is this the best job you ever had? Is this the best job you had? If not, why not? Because I think if you do that, if you matter, if your company matters, then you're going to be more successful. If you were plucked from the face of the earth, would anybody care? Who would show up at your memorial service? How many lives have you touched? Because I think the more people you touch and the more good that you do and the more people you serve and the more lives that you change, the happier you are too. So all those things all work together.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I had a lot of support from my wife and the kids really helped each other. I mean, my oldest daughter was amazing. And then the second daughter and then the third daughter and then finally got a son number four. And so they helped with each other and they chipped in. And then when the first one got the driver's license, they were helping haul the kids around to their lessons. And so it was really a family effort. It's a great family. And you didn't mention that I have 18 grandkids and three on the way.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had a couple rules, and number one is I always was home on weekends. I never, since I don't golf and I hate people who golf, no, it's kind of a joke I have, but no matter where I was in the world, I would make sure I was home on either Friday morning or Saturday morning and stay till either Sunday night or Monday night. So that was really important to me. I needed to be home. I needed to be recharged with my kids and I needed to be with them. My daughters were dancing or my sons were playing football or lacrosse, I always tried to make sure I worked my schedule around it so I would always be there for them if they need me. And I tried to be the best father I could. Obviously, I wasn't there at five o'clock every night to have dinner with him.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's the number one airline in terms of daily departures, number one airline in numbers of cities serves. We serve over 100 cities in Brazil. We have 800 flights a day. We fly about 80,000 people every single day.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and they had, you know, during the military rule, the military had done a nice job of building airports, but nobody flew to them. And then the fares were really high. They were about double where they were in the United States. So I thought, well, I'll go to Brazil, I'll buy Brazilian-made airplanes, which are a little bit smaller, have a lower trip cost, and then I'll start flying to all these cities that nobody flies to, and we'll be a big success.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I did. It was, I think, you know, I obviously have great affection for Jet Blue and his always the closest thing. And Azul's, you know, blue and Portuguese and in Spanish. I had made some trips down there, and I had this thing tucked away in the back of my head about going back to Brazil and making a difference and that I had when I was a 19 year old boy. And one of the things that was amazing to me is how few people were traveling in Brazil. And I determined that there were two major reasons. Number one, the service just wasn't good as far as non-stops between cities. The 25 largest cities in Brazil only had nonstops about 20% of the time. But then there were like 50 cities that had no service that needed service. No one flew to these cities. They were making people drive four hours.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know that's not the way life is sometimes. You don't get to make all the decisions and wish to everyone the best, and I was gone.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, totally. For years, as I would land in JFK, it would be hard to even look over at Jeff Blue because it was hard to even see my airline, you know. I wrote a letter to the crew members when I left, and I still had access to everyone's email, so I sent it out and I just said, I've always taught you that it's not really what happens to you, it's how you deal with it. And so, you know, I've always had this lifetime dream to return to Brazil and make a difference in the country of my birth. And I'm going to do it. So I'm going to leave the board. And, you know, I just want you to remember all those values and treat each other well and I'll miss you terribly and nothing I'd like more to be back as your CEO but”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My office was just off the boardroom, and two of the board members came in and said, this is what we're going to do. And then they all got up and left, got an airplanes and flew away.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Blindsided by it completely. I mean, it was the most shocking thing in the world. I couldn't believe it. I mean, how did they break?”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, I had to be held accountable. And, you know, and I was taking responsibility of it. I mean, one of the board members kept saying to me, quit apologizing. We don't like you to apologize. I go, why not? I said, because it shows a sign of weakness or whatever.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was. It was not only devastating, but it was just absolutely the wrong decision. That was the worst part. I mean, maybe I was my perception is better than what I actually was. My persona has taken on a much bigger role. But we had a couple of guys on the board that had developed this thing about Founder Syndrome and thought, hey, maybe it's better to turn over to someone and can run the company without the passion and just kind of run it like a regular business.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here we go again, you know, and now it was Herb and this, but it was different with this time, obviously. This was my baby. This was you.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, ironically, I think the others may have recovered better, but Delta had planes out there for about the same amount of time. Everybody was affected by it. It wasn't just us. It took us longer to recover, but also people expected more from us. I mean, I think sometimes the media likes to build you up and then they like to tear you down. It's kind of like if you're flying too high, you know, we're going to come after you. If you're a rising story, we're going to tell about you, but you mess up even just this much. And I was well on the way to fixing it and making sure that it would never happen again A couple months later, the board asked me if I would just step up to be chairman and kind of let the COO at the time be the CEO. How did you feel about that?”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Apologies explaining what happened. 27 live interviews on all kinds of TV. But I came up with this list of things that we were going to do and a Bill of Rights saying if this ever happens again, this is how you be compensated.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our operational team failed to airline. It was just simply that simple. I mean, it was. Know they just didn't do a good job of handling the situation. And, you know, as I was in the command center for four straight days after, you know, obviously we got people off the airplane and after the first day, but when we had the whole place was scrambled and there was all kinds of bad publicity to the airline, which was devastating for me personally because we had prided ourselves in running such a great airline. I think I set a record on that day where I started on the Today Show and I ended up on the Letterman Show.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it wasn't just an eye storm, it was the FAA had come out with this regulation that was only that year. It was only in 2007 where they said if there was what they called ice pellets in the air, then you can't take off. They reversed it the next year. They didn't have it anytime before that and they haven't had it anytime since. So it was just one of these convergence of events. Where our planes got out to the runway to take off, they called ice pellets. Planes were stuck. Planes were landing. And then this storm moved in. We had people stranded on airplanes. We couldn't get them back to the gate because for like eight hours, right?”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the three things they named was number one is having people who work for you that are ambassadors for your brand, that adore your company, that feel valued and feel loved in the company. Number one. Number two was flawless execution on every single level, you need to be completely flawless. And so we have dashboards every day where I can tell you everything that's going on at my companies from on-time percentage when the last bag made it to the carousel on the most delayed flight. Everything about that experience, so you need to be flawless. And then the third thing is you need to make it right with the customer. If you make a mistake or you treat some important or whatever, you need to make them more loyal having had an issue with your company than if they had not had an issue in the first place.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it was just we were a differentiator. I mean, people saw us and we had the word of mouth and people love flying us. But it's just building a better mousetrap and building a better company. And I became enamored with this whole thing when I was running the company and I read this article called The Constant Customer. They said, look, some companies just grow quicker. They're more successful. And they did a lot of research into what it was about these companies that differentiated them from other companies. And there was actually United Airlines in Southwest in the article, and it talked about the differences between the two and how they ran their businesses.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We didn't hire a pilot that had 15,000 hours, and he called me up screaming. I can't believe you wouldn't hire me. I'm an experienced pilot. So I went to the interviewers and they said, well, he couldn't come up with one single excuse of anything he's ever done to help anyone other than himself. So, you know, it was. It was a cultural thing, and building the culture was important.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I always thought if our people need someone else to come tell us how to treat them, then that would be pretty tragic. If I thought I didn't treat our people well enough that they needed somebody else, then that's not the company I wanted to run. So by not being unionized, I could chip in and pick up trash on the airplane and there wouldn't be a grievance filed, for example. One of the questions we ask in the interview process is in your career in your life, can you give us some examples where you left your area of responsibility and help somebody else out in another area? Because that was really something that we thought of. And it's amazing how many people couldn't come up with one single example of how they could chip in and help out.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, I just really wanted to stay in touch with our customers. I really wanted to hear from them, not only what I get up and introduce myself, but I would also say I'm going to come buy and surf snacks. But I also want to hear from your experience with our company. I want to know what we did good, what we did bad, what we can improve on, any ideas you have for us. And then I had other people in our company doing the same. I just think it's just incredible to stay in touch with your people. And then those working the flight see that you care.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I came up with this whole notion of servant leadership. Maybe I learned that on my mission of serving others and just saw how Southwest had built their culture. And I used to develop this thing. We're going to go out and we're going to take care of our people. And the people are going to take care of our customers. And it was funny because when I was talking to the investors in New York, they said, hey, dude, you're in New York. You're not going to find friendly people in New York. And I said, well, I got a lot to choose from. So there's 15 million people there. I'm sure I'll find some nice people. And we sure did.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that how you saw that? I pledged that with not even knowing. I don't know when you started when I started. But that was my thought. I just wanted to do everything. And maybe it was because...”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“CEO of North America for Airbus at the time. He walks in and he says, you know, you just hear using us as foil or are you really interested in buying airplanes? And I said, I'm just here using you as foil. Convince me you have a better airplane. So he started selling us in kind of the wider cabin, the flyby wire, all this stuff, the more seats because we could go to 162 seats on an airplane. And so I completely got converted. And Boeing ended up coming below that number, which I would have shaken with him on the first day. But we went with Airbus and we've had a great relationship with him. The A320s, is that what you use?”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was it. I hired to be my CFO at JetBlue, a man by the name of John Owen, and he was the treasurer at Southwest. And so he knew all the financial stuff about Southwest, you know, where they were buying their airplanes from Boeing from and they're Boeing 737s. And we tried to go to Boeing. We wanted the 737. We really wanted it. And we just said, Look, how about giving us this price? And they said, too long, can't do that. We're going to go see our bus. And they said, well,”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we started flying in February of the year 2000, so we were working hot and heavy. We moved, I moved the family to Connecticut in July of 1999. And we were a full bore, had raised $135 million. And so we were ready to go.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I couldn't sell a ticket, but I could do everything but. So, you know, I had the reservation system ready to go. Oh, so you were already ready to go.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I thought having a brand was important. I flew on Virgin, I saw those little TVs, I saw that whole service and I thought, wow, if I could create this, this would be amazing.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he and his wife and I, and we saw the full monty, which was for a Mormon guy. It was completely a little off color for me, but I came home, kind of chuckled about that movie, but loving Chicken Curry, which I had that night, which I haven't been able to stop eating ever since. But Richard, at the time then he wanted a franchise fee and he wanted to maybe change, go to, he had gone to Washington and they had convinced him that maybe he could change the laws on foreign ownership so he could control it. And I just said, now, Richard, it's not going to work.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I was talking to Richard Branson early on. Jeff Blue was going to be called Virgin America. Kind of a funny story, I'm still a little bit off the tournament truck coming from Utah. Richard invites me to fly over to him and I go to his house. And of course, he's there with his wife and speaking in this suave British accent. I'm completely enamored. And then he says, let's go eat Indian food. And I'd never eaten Indian food before, if you can believe that. I love Indian food. Then he said, let's go watch a movie. And he took me to his virgin theater.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We wanted to bring humanity back to air travel. And this is something that I've kind of learned over the years. Number one is you don't just go start an airline for the sake of starting it. You have to have a reason for being. But also just because you're in a place where no one else flies or can fly doesn't mean that you can treat people poorly. So let's treat people awesome. Let's find a place that nobody else flies. Let's fly between routes. And so layering all this, I say, I always say to my team, guys, too much overkill is never enough. Let's just keep layering it on, make it better and better and better.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, where Southwest Airlines wasn't. And you got to remember at the time, too, all the carriers, these legacy carriers had accumulated so much stuff, I mean, pension programs and the customer service at that time wasn't very good. Yeah.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Start in an area where I knew there was a lot of people. I studied the New York travel market. And so I thought, well, this is a perfect place to put an airline.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they kind of skirted around airports. They never went into SFO. They were in Oakland. And so they didn't really go into these East Coast congested airports. And Don Burr, who was the founder of People Express, came to see me one time. And I remember he was looking at starting an airline and he wanted to do it in JFK. And he was saying, you know, during the middle of the day, you could run a bowling ball down the middle of the runways at JFK. They're only busy at night. There's nothing in the day. And there's a lot of people there. So I just kind of filed that away. And, you know, his airline didn't materialize. So when it came time for me to found Jet Blue, I wanted to find a place that I could.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I thought that a couple things Southwest had a rulebook that they didn't really violate at the time. One of them that they never flew into kind of congested airports they didn't want, because on-time percentage and turning airplanes in 10 minutes was just so important to them that they didn't want to go to New York, for example. Boston, they weren't in Boston. They were in Providence.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I mean, I knew I had four years. You know, I had the reservation system, so I knew exactly what the reservation system would be. I just kind of bided my time.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so did that during this period of the non compete. And about halfway through the noncompete, I called maybe a year and a half into it, I called her, and I say, hey, Herb, I've consulted legal counsel. This thing is not really enforceable. I mean, I didn't get any consideration. He said, David, you're the last person I want to see in the airline business. So I will fight you tooth and nail. I do not want to see you in the airline business. All right, fair enough. You know, I signed it. I'll live by my word.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, airlines had these big mainframe computer systems. They were using at the time and everything was done on a flat file. So there was no relational databases. The database was actually the ticket. So if you lost your ticket, And it became a negotiable document, and they didn't have any other way of tracking anything. And then they would look at things in the rearview mirror that happened three or four months ago. They had no forward-looking ability at the time. And so by us building the system, we allowed people to have real-time information on all their reservations that were created.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And heaven help you if you lost it. You were in trouble. If you lost it, you had to fill out big forms, a lost ticket forms, and then they had these big auditing departments that would look for them. And you'd have to keep calling them back every three months to see if anyone ever claimed your ticket. And if not, then maybe they would give you a refund at the end of the time. It was a real pain.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And he came to me and he said, Look, Ticketless is the future. Why don't we build a system and sell it to all the airlines? So I said, how much money do you think it'll take? And he said, oh, a million dollars. So I said, okay, let's do it.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went home and I spent a couple days at home, and I feel like I can't do this. I'm not going to retire. And so I went down and I rented a little office and started going to work every day in Salt Lake. And by this time, Dave Evans, who was my partner, had been going back and forth to Texas.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, yeah. He reached across the table and held my hands. I was crying. And he just said, you know, it's just not going to work. He said, everybody, even the people that your biggest supporters said, you had to go.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, he kind of led me to believe that if I just minded my P's and Q's that I would be a successor one day, that I could follow in his footsteps and obviously there were other people that wanted that job and I was young. But I was completely didn't fit into the corporate culture. My ADD was just raging.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I was pressing all that stuff with them. And finally Herb invited me to Ruth Christ Steakhouse in Dallas and said, this isn't going to work. You know, you're driving everybody insane in this company. And I said, well, you're paying more for long distance per minute than we are. I'm just trying to get them to take our contract instead of your contract. And Herb, I got the peak fares and I got the thing integrated and I got this. He said, I know, David, but that's five months. It should have taken you longer to do all that stuff. And I said, all right, I'm out of here. I was in tears, you know.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Southwest had this deal where they were charging off peak fares on Saturdays and Sundays. And after like 8 p.m. at night, and I went to them and I said, guys, my highest fares are on Sunday and you just switched them all to off-peak. I'm losing like millions of dollars every month because you're charging off peak. Let me charge peak on these flights. And so I sat down with Keith Taylor at the time who was head of revenue management. I showed him all the numbers. And it was during that time they switched and started charging peak for Sundays. And Southwest has made profit for 43 years in a row or whatever it was. And they were so successful. They didn't really need to find, and I was just absolutely paranoid all the time. And I had to keep tweaking everything all the time.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is our top steering committee. And I would just sit in this meeting and I would just watch these guys and they would just go on and on. And every time I would say something, they'd look at me like, what is this guy now, this young punk? He doesn't know anything. He's never been here. And so I used to just write, don't say a word, don't say a word. Just keep writing it. And I just blurt out something else. They asked me to take two years to integrate Morris into Southwest. And within six months, I had it all done. I basically joint fuel purchase, joint ground handling, joint everything was all done.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he always tells the story that I had my Book of Mormon, my Bible, and my Southwest Airlines annual report in my car. And that was my scriptures. And it was not too far from the truth. So we were close. And he said, look, I want to put you on the executive planning committee.”
2019-02-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT