JetBlue Airways: David Neeleman

Herb invited me to Ruth Christ Steakhouse in Dallas and said, This isn't gonna work. You know, you're driving everybody insane in this company And he reached across the table and held my hands and I was crying and He said, Everybody. Even your even the people that were biggest supporters said I you had to go. Ha ha ha. I'm N PR? That's how I built this.

show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They don't. Guy Raz and on the show today How one man reinvented airline travel again. Again and again.

To create one of the most innovative carriers in the US. Jet Blue. I flew on a Budget Airline.

You know, it's public radio, guys. Anyway, this was a short flight, so no big deal. I know what to expect. Non-refundable ticket, middle seat in the back of the plane, I board last, no recline, no legroom, no TV, no snacks. Print my ticket out at home. And it's fine, that that's the trade-off.

As long as I get to where I need to go safely, I'm more or less fine. But once in a while. The route I'm taking is one that Jet Blue flies, and the price is the same. And with that ticket.

I get a seat that does recline. a snack and a beverage, really nice flight attendance, and even a little TV. Which is why when Jet Blue debut in two thousand It made such a big impact. It was a discount carrier that offered stuff the more premium airlines were already offering or in some cases not offering.

and customers noticed pretty fast. In less than a year, JetBlue flew more than a million passengers and quickly built a super loyal following. And that was the vision of JetBlue's founder. David Neileman. to build a more humane airline. But the thing is

David's passion for a better flying experience actually came from his own background, his own faith. David's family is Mormon. and the Mormon faith emphasizes civility. And every practicing Mormon is encouraged to go on a mission when they're in their late teens or early twenties. And back in the 1950s, David's father was sent on a missionary trip to Brazil.

He loved it so much, he went back as a journalist and started a family. which is why David was born in Sao Paulo in nineteen fifty nine. And when he turned five, David's dad moved the family back to Salt Lake City. where being a Mormon was just kind of baked into everyday life. It was you know a pretty considerable place. I mean it was obviously a place that was founded by

Brigham Young and as they you know started the church, they moved across the country and My mom's side of the family were were pioneers. They came in covered wagons. My grandmother seven generations back. a lady by the name of Sally Hewlett. The family stories is that she was given a book of Mormon by Joseph Smith himself, who's the founder of the of our church and and a lot of people have those stories. I mean almost everyone you

you meet and sell like has a story of somebody who either crossed the plains or crossed the ocean or You know, had a grandmother die on the planes. It was just kind of part of our Laura of our religion and and uh these pioneer families. And as a kid, were you um Were you entrepreneurial in any way? But did you like

Wash cars or w walk dogs or anything like that? My grandfather had a few grocery stores, small grocery stores, he call them miniature markets, that were like fast food and we he would make the sandwiches in the back and bring in fresh donuts and You know, kind of a precursor to maybe a seven eleven, but everything was done fresh. So when I was nine years old I got a job there standing on a milk crate. working the cash register, checking out people, you know, counting money.

And so that was kind of my introduction to business. And my My grandfather was a really Kinda old school. He was born in Salt Lake, but his whole family came from Holland. And so you know, he he paid me fifty cents an hour, which kinda made me mad'cause other everyone else made a dollar an hour. He expected more out of me than the other kids and He was really focused on customer service.

If there was something in the store that somebody wanted and that we didn't have it, he'd run out the back door and run over to Safeway and buy it and bring it back for'em. You know, he was He never wanted to lose a customer. I look back on those years and I didn't pr get to participate as much in high school and do things as sports as maybe as I would have wanted to do, but You know, I I think it probably taught me a lot about a lot of things.

Was church a b a big sort of center of life for you as a kid, going to going to services and going on Sunday and things like that. Yeah, always was. I mean it was three hours on a Sunday and It's a cultural thing, you know, I think as much as a religious thing. So you have both elements. You know your neighbors, you talk to him on ch church on Sunday, you have uh boundary areas in our church where if you lived in a certain geographical area, then you have to go at this church at this time.

And when it was my time to serve a mission, there wasn't even a question. It was you know, I'm gonna go on a mission just like my dad did. How were you as a student? Horrible. Uh, you know, I it's not that for lack of not wanting to be, I just Yeah, it was something I I discovered later in life.

Uh but I had a raging case of ADD and I know everyone likes to say they do today, but it was really something that uh was tough for me because I You know, I was I was gregarious and and I could get my way through things, but I couldn't read. I mean it was really hard for me to read and you know I would read a page in a book and I could tell you everything that I thought about while I was reading that page except for what was on that page. You couldn't concentrate on the book. No, no it was really hard and I mean if you asked me today what was my favorite book I read in high school, I couldn't tell you'cause I don't recall even reading a single book in high school.

Um you know, I got through it, uh, you know, with pretty well decent grades, but did horribly on the A C T. I think I I got like an 18 or something. Um and I think my reading was below ten. My counselor said, I don't know how you got a score this low. Had you just marked C on every answer, you would have gotten a higher score than what you did. It's like he tried to get it's like you tried to get the lowest score possible. And this is what I learned about A D D afterwards, is if it was something I was interested in, I would devour it. But if it was just something that I wasn't interested in, I just couldn't focus on it.

It was really hard. I mean this is it and this is like the seventies when when people weren't really diagnosing A D D wasn't like a common thing that people talked about. No it wasn't and it wasn't until it's not a little bit more. Years later. When my little brother

I have a little brother that uh is eighteen years younger than I am, almost almost nineteen years. That he was diagnosed with it. And And uh my mom She read this book called Driven to Distraction.

By Doctor Hallowell. And my mom sent me the book and she said, You know, Mark's just been diagnosed with this I think y you might have this. Ten. It was the you know, I of course didn't read the book, but

I did read there was there was twenty one. Characteristics of somebody. Who has A D D and I read those twenty one things and I just put the book down and I just like got tears in my eyes and I go, Wow, this is me. So I I guess you were you were nineteen when you went on your

your mission um for the church and and basically you are sort of assigned to a country to go and and do mission work, right? Correct, and I was so fortunate to be to be assigned to Brazil. And I think part of the reason is because I was born there and I had a Brazilian passport. So it was just it's just kind of random. You just put it in and you receive your call and and your call says you're going you're going to Brazil.

What what was your impression of it? I mean what What what stood out to you when you got there? You know, I had been there several times and I was but my dad being a journalist and being a foreign correspondent and you know, he knew all the rich and famous, and so every time we would go visit Brazil, We were hanging out in the sports clubs, we were hanging out at the beach, we're going to the best restaurants and you know, everything was just like wow, Brazil's a cool place. Everything's so amazing.

But you know, when you're a missionary, you don't hang out with those rich people. They don't they've they've already got their gods, you know, that's their money or you know, or whatever. They don't they're not humble enough to change. It's really the people that are really downtrodden and really down on their luck. Those that have virtually nothing that listen to your message. And so I spent all my time with those people and and Wow, it was a eye opener for me. I you know, obviously in in the United States

We have disparity of income and classes, but at least you have an ability to move from one class to another if you work hard and you're luck you know, you have some luck and you know, you do certain things, you have student loans and other things. In Brazil it's virtually impossible to do that. And it it made me very resentful. And um you know, I I really In and that yeah, I got it tucked away in my mind. um that I w I wanted to come back to Brazil and I wanted to do something uh to help these people.

at some point in time in my life and kinda make my contribution. And did you'cause I I I'm I'm just trying to remember my experience seeing young young missionaries, like did you wear a a black tie and a white shirt and like go around on a bike? Just like the guys in the play in New York City. In the book of Mormon. No, we didn't have a bike, but uh we had white shirts, uh short sleeve white shirts. You know, just a tie, not necessarily a black tie and slacks.

I was very successful in in kind of, you know, being a leader and the first time I had ever done that before. And then you know, also just learning discipline and and kind of overcoming my A D D being able to read scriptures and to learn a language and I was able to go back to university and

where I left getting Cs and D's I was home getting straight A's.'Cause you know, it made me I grew up a lot and it t it taught me discipline, which is something that I hadn't learned in my in my childhood, you know, because of my A D D. It might it might be kind of a stretch, but I mean in some in in like a weird way.

It's it's almost as if Your experience as a missionary 'Ca I mean, you are essentially pitching Something to people. you're you're pitching in in this case the word of God, right? You're pitching your faith and you're trying to convince people

About what it's done for you and how it's fulfilled your life. It's like business, right? You're pitching the people something you believe in. Yeah. I mean it's well. There's a lot of companies that are in Provo, Utah.

They do door to door sales of alarm systems and pest control and whatever And you know, they take all these all these guys that come and gals that have come home from missions that are kinda fearless now. And then they say go sell alarm system or go sell pest control. That's so interesting, yeah. Some people go out for the summer and make fifty thousand dollars. Uh just you know, selling pest control or selling alarm systems door to door. So when you got back to

to the US. Were you were you single at the time? I was and you know got married right away and started having kids and went to work. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of Uh what you do, you know, it's the the way it works i in the church. You get home and you're encouraged to get married and We got married in December and our first child was born on November first, so we didn't the Kind of eleven months later. And it was just kind of off to the races from there.

When you were um when you got back and you started up a college again at the University of Utah and we guess you s you started a business, right, as w while you were a student. I did. I was sitting in my accounting class one day and I was talking to someone who was seated behind me and her name was Lily Ron, I can still remember. And uh she told me about this

Guy who w who's this man who is a friend of her mother's that own some time shares in Hawaii at this place called the um Imperial Hawaii Resort. And he was having difficulty selling the timeshares. And so I got this idea to go talk to him. I said, Give me his name and I'll call him up and his name was Al Lieber and so I called him up and I went down to meet with him and I said

Hey, how about if I just rent your timeshare out? Because he was paying a m um a weekly mainten fee on all of them and it was kinda draining him. I said, Let me let me fill him up and he said, Okay. So I eat under the resort accommodation section of the local newspaper at the time. I would just run little wand ads and say, hey Hawaii Condo for seventy five dollars a night or whatever, fifty bucks a night, sleep six. And so I'd start getting phone calls. Um and I'd book'em and I'd

I'd pay him a hundred and thirty five bucks, I'd collect four hundred bucks, and then I would just keep the difference. So he was I was doing a couple of those a day and next thing you know I was making some pretty good money just uh filling up these condominiums and And then I started getting other ones and one day I I heard about an airline. It was right after deregulation. This is like the early eighties. Yeah, the early eighties. Seventy two. Seventy eight was deregulation. So there were airlines that were s kind of sprouting up. So there was an airline called Pacific East. And I called the guy that was running it in LA and I said, Hey I'm not a travel agent or anything, but if I send you some money will you

Can you send me some airline tickets? And he said, Sure. So um I would send him the money, he'd send me the tickets, and then I I would package them with these hotels and then I would say two ninety nine you can f fly to Hawaii, but you gotta drive to LA. So people would say, Oh, we love Hawaii. You know, U Tuns have always loved Hawaii, so they'd jump in their cars and they'd drive down to LA Hop on this specific east old D C eight and fly over to Hawaii. You did this while you were a college student? You would just like create package holidays for people. Yeah, that's how I did it. And I eventually dropped out of college. The company was doing six million dollars a year. Yeah, and it was I had I had a whole staff of people and we were salespeople. People would come in and sit down, we'd show'em brochures of different hotels that we had or different condos, because then I would call in Hawaii over to

to other places and say, Hey, could I buy a block of rooms for twenty bucks a night and that's okay? And so I just started packaging'em. And that was all working well until there was um a new airline that started and I was a little enamored with this because it was Hawaii Express and they had a big pineapple on the tail and they flew seven four sevens. So I said, Well I'm gonna switch to these guys. So I I started buying tickets from them and then right before Christmas I think it was 1982, or maybe 1983. They called me up and said, you know, hey, we're ceasing operations tomorrow. And I said, You can't cease operations tomorrow. They said, Well, we don't have any money. And I said, Well, I've pre-paid all these people. It was right before Christmas. People had paid for their hotels, but had no way of getting them over there. Of course, all the airplane tickets were full. I didn't have money to send everybody over there. And so it was kind of a disastrous time. And I learned a huge lesson from that that suited me well through the years, but it was obviously very difficult to go from a point where I had this thriving business to from one day to the next I virtually had nothing. Wait, that That wiped the business out.

It did because I had prepaid, you know, every single ticket. And it was about a half a million dollars. And Yeah, I probably had a lot of things. you know, a couple hundred thousand that I had of my own money and

You know, I should have at the time just called everybody up and said, Look, I could just give you half your money back. But of course, you know, you file for bankruptcy, not personally, but it was the business and And then the ju you know, the lawyers end up getting getting most everything. So I was of the time I was in my early twenties, I think it was twenty twenty three or twenty four, something like that. I I really didn't know anything about business or how this all worked.

So you were like a living you were probably like thinking I'm sad. Like this is gonna be Like I'm gonna be a millionaire. Yeah, I I was. I you know, went out and bought myself a BMW. I thought I was you know things were great. You know, I never I never bought another one again after that'cause I learned I learned my lesson. Um You know, you're young, things are coming easy, it's good, the money I mean, you can imagine you you know, your first condo

you sell, you get to make three hundred and fifty bucks on it, you're like, wow, that could last me for for two weeks just for that one sale, that one phone call. So it started up fast, it was very successful, and then boom. Collapsed. Collapse, yeah. Alright, so you are a college dropout.

With a failed business. And by that point you had at least one kid, I guess. Two kids by then. Two kids. Yeah. Uh, so what did you what did you do? What did you do for work? Well, my father in law had a drapery business

And I was kinda working in the back room, kinda doing the counting and stuff. So I went to back to doing that. And my gr my grandfather's grocery store. I went back to work at my grandfather's grocery store just like I did when I was nine years old. Without the crate. No, I didn't. I lost the milk crate. I d could stand up the cash register. But yeah, it was it was pretty devastating. I mean you thought maybe I don't wanna g get out of bed and do anything, but you know, I just kinda like said I gotta keep going and so Um, and then I got a call from my my uncle Stan.

Who just happened to be the estate lawyer for The Morris family. Uh June and Mitch Morris. And June w uh ran a very successful travel agency in Salt Lake City. It was

Dealing with mainly corporate travel. at the time. And so Michael Stant called up and said, June Morris wants to talk to you. about doing some of the things that you were doing on your own for her company. She was older than you, I guess, right? Oh yeah. She's about the age of my parents.

And so we sat down And she gave me her big smile and she said, You know, I If you come to work for me, I'll make sure you get a piece of the company. You know, we you we'll can do this together and you know, I really like what you did and so she convinced me. She convinced me to do that and so I

Kept a job at the store at night. I would go there during the day. and and st and called up all those hotels and said, Hey I'm back. I then I called up Hawaiian Airlines and I had this contract in my drawer.

um at my old office It was a a charter contract to fly at uh Hawaiian Airlines chartered from Hawaii to Salt Lake directly, you know, bypassing the drive to LA. And I just didn't have I was just getting together the bond. My you needed a two hundred fifty thousand dollar bond'cause it was a public charter. And I was just trying to arrange that when the other airline failed.

So I went back to the drawer, I got the contract out, I went to June and I said if Mitch your husband can can help with this bond. We can launch these flights directly from Salt Lake City. A Ha Hawaiian Airlines flight direct from Salt Lake. Yeah, it was a it was a r what we call the reverse rotation that plane would

On a Friday night would start in Honolulu and it would fly nonstop to Salt Lake and then it would turn around Saturday morning and fly back. So that was the flight. You'd spend, you know, basically seven days, six nights in Hawaii. And then play direct in the whole package was three ninety nine. 'Cause we were buying the charter flight. And so we started this company called Morris Air Charters and that was kind of the hallmark of our of our trip was this D C eight that would f that would make this trip. And so Hawaiian called me after one season and said, Hey, this plane's gonna be going back

In about six months. Can we come and base the plant in Salt Lake? And so you can fly straight to Hawaii and back, but for the other six days a week, is there anything you wanna do with this airplane? And I said, Yeah, I wanna fly to LA. You know, there's a lots of lots of Mormons in LA and and lots of family interests between the two. My grandparents were there and You know, I kinda spent my whole life in the back seat, you know, back of a station wagon driving Death Valley between Salt Lake and LA and I thought if I could sell those tickets for cheap and I had

Read up a lot on South West Airlines. You know, Herb was my Herb Keller who was my was my hero and I had read every annual report ever on those guys. It was kind of my dream to to be like them. So I put flights on to Los Angeles for sixty nine dollars using this old airplane flying into the old West Imperial terminal. So this was a a Hawaiian Airlines plane that was just parked in Salt Lake for six days a week'cause it was going to Honolulu once a week. And and those and they said, Look, you can lease this from us and Do whatever you want with it for for those other days. Right.

So I said let's fly to LA three days a week. And so we ran an ad in the newspaper. And the first day I didn't give me calls and then I remember coming in The next day at work. And I heard Verla, who is our receptionist, saying

I have twenty four Los Angeles calls on hell. Somebody please help me. So I went running in there and start answering the phones myself and booking people on pieces of paper and It was funny'cause there was a glitch in the system. So we were basically overbooking every flight by a hundred people. As we were booking everyone. We we lost a little bit of money on that, but You know, it was it was a a kind of a big success from the very get-go. So June I mean June Morris had set up a travel agency which then kind of focused on package tours and chartering planes, and that seems manageable.

But but then you become you essentially become an airline. Did did you and June sit down? Did you ever sit down June and say, Hey, let's become an airline or did it just did it just kinda happen that way? Well, it was about that time that uh Steve Hazy, who's a well known entrepreneur in the aircraft leasing business, he he called up and said, Hey My wife's from Utah, you know my relatives come flying on you guys all the time. You need to get legitimate. You know, I I have some air I have some airplanes. I will lease you, but I want you to get your own airplane certificate. At this point, this is what, like eighty mid eighties? Something like that? Yeah, it was probably l late eighties. So Steve Udvarhazi

Famous guy, he's a b made tons of money in aviation and funded uh one of the air and space museums outside Washington D C um he comes to you, he says Hey, you should Start your own airline with your own name on it? Right. Uh and he said, I got a guy that can help you. And it was a guy named Uso Schultz.

And you still was an old FA guy. So I called Yusto and he was living up in Idaho and he came down and said, Okay, let's certify this airline. He's still alive. He's in his mid nineties, this guy, and called me up recently and said, If you got a little something for me to do, I'm still here. So but he did th went through the certification and and uh And June was really funny. She w she wanted a compass rose on the tail'cause that was uh logo of her travel business.

So we put a compass rose and then she wanted it to be magenta. That was her color. And so we made these planes with the blue towel with the magenta cu compass rose. And it was called Morisera. Who financed this? I mean did did did June Morris and her husband finance this? Did you get investors to to'cause you have to By planes, I guess.

Well i initially we were just making enough cash flow. We were just using that and you know, you aren't buying the airplanes, you're just you know, agreeing to pay them like a monthly rent payment on the airplane with with leasing and then they take a certain amount per hour in reserves for maintenance and then when the plane's go in for maintenance they use that money to do it. So It doesn't require a lot of capital. from the very beginning and so we were we were just kind of bootstrapping it. And that's how we got Mitch was really funny though,'cause w during those years where we were making money Mitch w Mitch wasn't a Mormon. And Mitch was was June's husband.

Yeah. He was really a a great guy, one of the most you know, amazing man I've ever met, and he was a great mentor. But he'd say, Okay, this is what we're gonna do, guys. We're gonna do a third and a third and a third. Third's going to the government.

A third is staying in the company. And a third is gonna be whiskey drinking money. That's our whiskey drinking money. So it's okay. So that was our term for what we distributed. So So one one year I got my I was in my

maybe twenty six or twenty seven, and I got my whiskey drinking money and it was enough for me to pay off my house. And so I went the first thing I did is I went down to the bank Where am I? Family had done business forever.

And you know, where this banker was kind of knowing that my dad was always he was always covering my dad's over draft checks and my grandpa's over draft checks kind of knew that these Neilman's, you know, didn't have a lot of money. So I walked in there with I think it was a hundred and sixty five thousand dollar check and I said, I just want to pay off my house. Wow. And he said, Okay. Took the took the money. And so I by the time I got back

to the office. June called me in and said, Hey that he had to inform me this, but someone in your company is embezzling money.

Yeah. She she got the biggest kick out of that, so I went back and closed my account and moved on to another bank. But uh it was she couldn't imagine that somebody that my age, kind of a newman that uh you know always hard working people but didn't have that kinda money could could could walk in and pay off their house when they were in their, you know, mid twenties. And then just a few years after you launch Morris Air Southwest.

In nineteen ninety three buys the company for a hundred and thirty milyen dollars. I mean, it's a Must have been incredible to to to to to have that happen. Well a couple a couple of uh you know really incredible things happened around that time. I I idolize Southwest and you know, I kind of I just like

There yeah I can't even tell you how I felt about that company. Uh you know, com you know what I was building. I would pattern everything we did after Southwest. Um you know, there was a few things that we did at Morrisera that South West wasn't doing. One of them is that we invented e ticket travel. I mean the first ticketless travel was done at Morrisera. In the world. And it all came about because a guy who worked for me at the time named Stuart Thatcher came into my office and he goes Yeah, yeah, you know, I just went up to the fourth floor, we have like fifty people up there printing tickets and stuffing them and mailing'em out

Why don't we just come up with a computer driven form that we can just go through it, you know, automatically gets done, has a confirmation number on it. We just mail people that way and we just accept a confirmation number. And I said, Well why don't we just give it to him over the phone? Why do we have to mail him anything? Well, people might have something in their hand. So I said, Well let's get a fax number, we can still mail it to'em, but we don't really need it at the airport. You know, rental cars don't have it and And so we didn't have a repository for that information. So I had a a young guy that was backing up the computers and he kept telling me he could write us a new reservation system.

Why don't you Right, it's a reservation system. And he said. I don't know if I can do it.

I'll give you twenty thousand dollars and you can buy yourself a Jeep. If you can do it. And so He He went out and and uh Wrote the system.

and got it all done and we were we launched this thing as the first E ticket airline. Well South West didn't know what a great thing they were buying. That was really kind of the best thing that they were buying from that. Um they were and have credit today in the Smithsonias being the first ticketless airline. But it was really our system that did it. Wow. kind of going back a little bit. So her

called me up and and uh you know said hey, you know, I hear you might be interested in in selling and then This is Herb Kelleher. Your idol. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. When he was on the phone I can still remember hearing his voice at like I herb. Oh, would you want to come down and meet with us? And so I went down and met with them and Smoke filled room with all these guys in there that I had idolized over all the years.

And then I found then I came home and then we found out that June had um a very serious form of cancer. It was a it was call inflammatory breast cancer. And so I went to my office and I was just sitting there staring at my phone and it rang and I picked it up And it was a guy named Weikert. And I was he said, How you doing? I go, Oh, I'm just sick. He he's a guy we had chartered planes from. I said, I'm just sick. I just found out June has this terminal breast cancer, inflammatory breast cancer. I don't know what what am I gonna do.

And he said. Get her on a airplane now. And I said, What do you mean? I said, She's scheduled for surgery. No, no, don't let her have the surgery. We know this doctor Blumenschein that is is is having amazing success with this. So I called up June, I said, June, I just booked you two tickets on American Airlines. You need to get on the airplane. So she raced out to the airport, got on the airplane.

What? Because when they what they found is if you had the surgery it spread the cancer through your body. And they needed to To zap it. And and get rid of it first.

She got on the plane and he convinced her to go into the treatment and they just took her almost, you know, to to death. I mean bone marrow transplant, everything. And uh she lived. And she's still alive today. And wow. She and I have a very special relationship from this day because of that. That it was a it was a it was a miracle. And so she was going through this treatment and herbs there, and so I'm saying I assume assume June, you want to sell this company? She said, Yes, I do. You see, you're like

in your early thirties. And you you've got a decent amount of cash, like at least twenty million bucks, and All of a sudden you become an employee of South West Airlines, I guess. Yeah, well her

He he always tells the story that I had my My book of Mormon. My Bible and my South West Airlines annual report in my car and that that was my scriptures. And it was not too far from the truth. So we we were you know close and and he said look I wanna put you on the executive planning committee Which is our top

Uh Steering Committee. And I would just s 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 what does this guy know? He's this young punk. He doesn't know anything. He's never been here and So I used to just I used to just write, Don't say a word, don't say a word. Just keep like writing it. Now you just blurt out something else. They asked me to take two years to integrate Morris into South West. And within six months I had it all done. I I basically

Joint fuel purchase, joint ground handling. you know, joint everything was all done and South West had this had this deal where they were charging off peak fares on Saturdays and Sundays. And after like eight PM at night. And I went to him and I said, Guys

My a 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 K you know Keith Taylor at the time, who was the head of revenue management. I showed him all the numbers and And it was during that time they switched, you know, and started charging peak for Sundays and they

Yeah, South West. Has made profit for forty three years in a row or whatever it was And They they they were so successful, you know, 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.

And so I I was pressing all that stuff with them and finally Herb invited me to Ruth Crist Steakhouse in Dallas and said, This isn't gonna 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'em to s take our contract instead of your contract and Herb, I got the the peak fairs and I got the thing integrated and I got this he said I know David, but that Yeah. 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, but you were supposed to

stay at South West for at least two years. And within six months. I mean, he kinda led me to believe that if I just mined my Psy Qs that I would be a successor one day, you know, that I could you know, follow in his footsteps and You know, obviously there were other people that wanted that job and I was young and you know and I just completely didn't fit into the corporate culture. My my ADD was just raging. So you you were supposed to I mean, this was going to be your employer and maybe you would have succeeded Herb Kelleher as the Head of South West and you were um b basically were fired after like five or six months.

Yeah, in May. So I started in December and they fired me in May.'Cause he's a nice guy. He's been on our show. Like I can't image him like yelling at you and saying, Get out of my office. Did he let you down gently? Oh yeah, yeah. He reached across the table and held my hands and I was crying and He just said, you know, it's just not gonna work. He said, everybody. Even your even the people that were bigger supporters said I you had to go. David Neelman may have been out of a job, but Not for long. When we come back, how he built the framework that would become

Jet blue. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. From NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's 1995, and David Neileman was just fired from Southwest Airlines. Southwest, the company he idolized. Oh, and he cannot work for a domestic airline for five years because of Southwest's non-compete clause. So David?

He went home. I went home and I spent a couple of days at home and I I feel like I can't do this. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna retire. And so I went down and I I I ran to 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. And Dave Evans, I'm guessing you guys work together at Morris Air? Yeah. And he came to me and he said, Look

Ticketless is the future. Why don't we build a system and and sell it to all the airlines? So I said, Well, how much money do you think it'll take? And he said, Oh, a million dollars. So I said, Okay, let's do it I mean it's hard to remember, but like even in the mid-90s when you were running this company. Like an airline ticket was a was like a a booklet with carbon copy pages in it. Like you would bring this physical booklet

to get onto a plane. And have it help you if you lost it. You know, you were you were in trouble. If you lost it, you had to fill out big forms, lost ticket forms, and then they had these big auditing departments who would look for'em and you'd have to keep calling them back every three months to see if they're if anyone ever claimed your ticket. And if not, then you know, maybe they would give you a refund at the end of the time. So It was a it was a real pain. So okay, you guys I guess you guys wanted to build a a reservation system that you could essentially then sell to the airlines, but w why wouldn't why wouldn't airlines just Just do it themselves. Well they they didn't 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 actual the database was actually the ticket. So if you lost your ticket,

And you know, 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 rear view 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 and all the reservations that were coming in. you know, we could tell them, you know, what the average fare was, what the

But the load factor was on each flight, all the stuff that they never had before. And so it was a huge it was a revolutionary uh change for the airline business at the time. And so, you know, did that during this period of the non compete and About halfway through the non compete I called A couple couple uh maybe a year and a half into it, I called Herb and I say, Hey Herb. You know, I've consulted

you know, legal counsel. Th this thing is not really enforceable. I mean y I didn't get in 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 in a sand. All right, fair enough. You know, I signed it. That's I'll live by my word. you ended up selling um this company to H Pila Packard in nineteen ninety eight and and that's when you Kinda I guess put your head down.

uh on this the jet blue idea. But but even before then, I my n my understanding is that you actually started to think of The jet blue idea. Wait. Within a year after leaving South West, is that right? Yeah.

I mean I knew I had four years. Um you know, I had the reservation system so I knew exactly what the reservation system would be. You know, I just I just kind of bided my time. W wha what I'm trying to understand is why I mean Th the the graveyard of airl like failed airlines is huge, right? Like Trump and Laker and uh people movers or whatever it was called. T W A Pan Apps. What did you think the world needed? Like there were a bunch of airlines

South West was thriving like What was it that you thought you could contribute to that.

Well, I thought that uh a couple of things. South West had a rule book that they didn't really violate at the time. One of them that they never flew into Kind of congested airports. They they didn't want because on time percentage and you know turning airplanes in ten minutes was just so important to them. that they didn't want to go to New York, for example. Um Boston, they weren't in Boston. They want they were in Providence and

So they they they kinda skirted around airports. They never went into SFO, they were in Oakland. And so they didn't really you know, go into these e these east coast uh congested airports and You know, Don Burr, who is a 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 J F K

And he was saying, you know. During the middle of the day you could run a bowling ball down the middle of of the air runways at J F K they're only busy at night. There's nothing in the day and there's a lot of people there. So I just kinda filed that away and and you know, his his airline didn't materialize. So When it came time for me to

You know, Jeff Blue, I wanted to find a place that I could starred in a in a 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. You thought you could do a discount airline that would fly to places that discount airlines were not flying to?

Yeah, where South West Airlines wasn't. And you know, it you gotta remember at the time too, And all the carriers these legacy carriers had accumulated so much stuff. I mean pension programs and Yeah, you know, the the customer service at that time wasn't very good. And We we wanted to bring humanity back to air travel.

You know, and this is something that I 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 That You know, 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 was saying my team, guys, too much overkill is never enough. Let's just keep layering it on, make it better and better and better. What did you want? I mean Did you have a vision of what you wanted Jet Blu to be? I mean d'cause I mean traveling in the nineteen nineties, like there were there were some I mean, Virgin, for example, like that was revel I remember

going on a Virgin Air Airlines flight in the nineties, you got little TVs and great food and it was just It was very different. It felt completely different from any other airline. Yeah, and and I you know, I was talking to early to Richard Branson early on. Jeff Blue was gonna be called Virgin America. You know, kind of a funny story, you know, I'm still a little bit off the tournament track coming from Utah, you know, so Richard invites me to fly over to it and I go to his house. And of course he's there with his wife and speaking in this

Suab British accent and I'm t 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 and And uh w he and his wife and I and we saw the full Monty, which was for a Mormon guy. It was completely you know, a little off color for me, but I came home um kinda chuckled about that movie, but Loving Chicken Curry, which I had that night, which I haven't been able to stop eating ever since. So But 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 that he could change the laws on foreign ownership so he could control it and I just said now Richard it's not gonna work. So so there was a moment where you may have, instead of launching Jet Blue, would have launched Virgins U Domestic airline. Yeah, I mean I yeah, I thought having a brand was important. I flew on Virgin, I saw those little T Vs, I you know, saw that whole service and I thought, wow.

You know, if I could create this, this would be amazing. So so that five year Like period of that like uh uh non compete would w ended I guess around ninety eight. W at that point, like right when it ended, is that when you

announced that you were founding Jet Blue. Did you did you announce that publicly? Yeah, I mean I I c I couldn't sell a ticket, but I could do everything but so You know, I had the reservation system ready to go. I had you were already ready to go. You could start working on it even before this non compete ended. Yeah, I mean we started flying in February of of the year two thousand, so We were working hot and heavy. We moved I moved the family to Connecticut.

In July of ninety nine. And we were you know, full bore had raised uh one hundred and thirty five million dollars. And so we were re we were ready to go. One of the things that South West revolutionized was they just you know, they've never served food, right? They they was peanuts or or pretzels and free drinks and uh Very friendly service. And w and they also only flew and the still do only fly seven thirty sevens, Boeing seven thirty sevens. So did you kind of look at that and say, Yep, that's sort that's the model that we should go for. We should get the same exact plane,'cause then you only have to maintain one kinda plane and not worry about food and all that stuff. Yeah, that was it. I mean yeah, I

I hired to be my CFO at Jet Blue. uh a man by the name of John Owen and he was the treasurer at South West. And so he knew all the financial stuff about South West, you know, where they were buying their airplanes from Boeing from and they have Boeing seven thirty sevens. And we tried to go to Boeing. We wanted the seven thirty seven, we really wanted it. And we just said, look, how about giving us this price? And they said

Ah too low, can't do that. We're gonna go see our bus. And they said, Well, go ahead. So flew back to Washington, D C where the North American uh offices were for Airbus and Henri Coupon walked in He's a good friend of mine today and he says he was CEO of uh the the head of Airbus? C yeah, he's CEO of North America for Airbus at the time. He walks in and he says, You know, are you just here using us as foil? Or you really interested in buying our airplanes? And I said I'm just here using US foil, but I'm not going to be able to

So he started selling us in kind of the wider cabin, the flyby wire. All this stuff, the more seats because we could we could go to a hundred and sixty two seats on an airplane. And so I completely got got converted. And Boeing ended up coming below that number, which I would have shaken with him on the first day. Um but we were we went with Airbus and we've got the relationship with the three. So and that's their version. planes, you go with the Airbus A three twenties and

put T Vs in the back and s free T V and uh Nice. Snacks. I remember I I've read I read somewhere a quote of yours. You you said Look, ChetBlue is a customer service company, or you know, you described it as a customer service company that happens to fly airplanes, which reminded me a lot of of Tony Shea and Zappos, because he describes, you know, we we were a customer service company that happens to sell shoes. Yeah.

Is that how you start I plagiarize that with not even knowing. I don't know when you started when I started, but that was my thought. I just I just wanted to do everything and maybe it was because I came up with this whole notion of servant servant leadership. You know, I maybe I learned that on my mission of serving others and just saw how South West had built their culture and Yeah, I just developed this thing uh you know, we're gonna go out and we're gonna take care of our people

And the people are gonna 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 gonna find friendly people in New York. And I say, Well, I got a lot of ch lot to choose from. So there's there's fifteen million people there, I'm sure I'll find some nice people And we sure did. You guys um were profitable r pretty quickly, I think, um, and at at a difficult time after nine eleven.

Um, and one of the things that you did a lot, you you'd fly in the planes all the time, you'd make an announcement that you were the the head of the company and then you would sit on the planes and serve snacks and help clean the planes, um was that a shtick or was that real? I mean the what was that about? No, I just really wanted to stay in touch with our customers. I really wanted to hear from them. You know, not only would I get up and introduce myself but I would also say I'm gonna come by and serve snacks.

But I also want to hear from your experience with our company. I wanna know What we did good, what we did bad. You know what we can improve on. W you know, any ideas you have for us? And then I had

you know, other people in our company doing the same. I just think it's just incredible to stay in touch with your with your people. And then You know, those working the flight see that you care. I mean Southwest Their staff is unionized and you did not have a union staff. Um

Why? I mean w d did you feel like I don't want to deal with unions? I that that's gonna just drag us down. W was there a reason behind that? Іно, авісто нет сама елс. To come tell us how to treat them. Then that would be Pretty tragic.

I didn't treat our people well enough. that they needed somebody else, then you know That's not the company I wanted to run. So by not being unionized, you know, I could chip in and you know, pick up trash on the airplane and there wouldn't be a grievance filed, for example. Or you know, one one of the questions we ask in the interview process is a very important thing.

career in your in your life, can you give us some examples of where you left your area of responsibility and helped somebody else out in another area? Because that was really something that we thought of and you would It's amazing how many people couldn't come up with one single example of of how they could, you know, chip in and help out. Um, you know, we didn't hire a pilot that had fifteen thousand hours and he was 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 um It was a cultural thing and building the culture was important.

One of the things about about the airline industry is that uh it's volatile, right? Like The price of oil is is is a huge factor. You've got recessions, security scares, nine eleven, right? When people traveled a lot less. So I mean the My understanding is that in general the margins, e e you know, even though we think of these airlines as hugely profitable, they're generally

The the margins are generally pretty thin, right? Uh they can be, yeah. I mean it's a it's a business that you can make a lot of money and you can lose a lot of money. Yeah, so what is it that you guys I mean how are you able to be profitable So fast and for so long. Compared to the

The other airlines. Well, I think it was just we were d a differentiator. I mean people saw us and you know, we had the word of mouth and people love flying us. But it's just Building a better mouse trap and building a better company and and uh You know, I I became enamored uh with this whole thing when I was running the company and I I read

This article called The Constant Customer. They said, Look. Some companies just grow quicker. They're more successful. You know, and they've d they did a lot of research into what

Wha what it was about these companies that differentiated them from from other companies. And there was actually United Airlines and South West in the article and it talked about the differences between the two and how they ran their businesses. And the three things they named was n you know, number one is having people who work for you that are ambassadors for your brand, that adore your company, that feel valued and and feel loved in the company. Um number one. Number two was

Flawless execution. On every single level, you need to be completely flawless. And so I we have dashboards every day where I can tell you everything that's going on at my companies, you know, from on time percentage when the last bag made it to the carousel on the most delayed flight. Yeah, 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 have a make a mistake or you treat someone poorly 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.

So Jet Blu is like riding high, it's profitable, it's a darling of Wall Street, customers love it. And then comes Valentine's Day. Two thousand seven. The biggest ice storm in the northeast in like decades. And

What happens? Well, it wasn't just an eyestorm, it was The FAA had come out with this regulation. That ye it was only that year. Yeah, it was only in two thousand and seven where they said if there's 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 any time before that and they haven't had it any time since. So it was just one of these convergence of events. Where our planes um Got out to the runway to take off, they called ice pellets. Planes were stuck. Planes were landing.

Um and then this storm moved in, we had people stranded on airplanes, we couldn't get'em back to the gate because we have. Eight hours, right? People saying eight actually more, I think one of them even ten hours. And so It was you know, it was a disaster and it was something that um and then, you know, Humpty Dumpty was all over the place and it took us a long time to recover. But what happened? What our operational team failed the airline, you know, it was it was just simply that simple. I mean it was you know, they just didn't do a good job of of handling the situation and You know, as as I was um I was in the command center for

four straight days after you know, obviously we got people off the airplane and you know, after the f the first day, but when we had the whole place was scrambled and there was all kinds of bad publicity uh you know, to the airline, which was you know devastating for me personally, because we had pride 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 and you were apologizing? Apologies explaining what happened.

Uh twenty seven live interviews um on you know all kinds of T V. But I came up with this list of things that you know we were gonna do and and a bill of rights saying this ever happens again, this is how you be compensated. But how did it I mean, how did it happen? Like I think there are twelve hundred flights that were canceled over the next couple of days. Like why did it did this winter storm hit jet blue harder than other airlines? Like w was it just a a failure of management?

Well well, ironically, I think the others may have recovered better, but Delta had planes out there. um you know, for about the same amount of time. Ever you know, everybody was affected by it. It wasn't just us. Took us longer to recover. Um 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. You know? I mean it's kinda like if you're flying too high

You know, we're gonna come after you. If you if you're a rising story we're gonna tell about you, but You mess up even just this much. And and I was, you know, well on the way to fixing it. Um and making sure that it would never happen again when And

a couple months later the board asked me if I would just step up to be chairman and, you know, kinda let the COO at the time be the CEO. How did you feel about that? Yeah, it was 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. I mean this was your baby. I know. It was I killed myself for this company.

And the board,'cause you didn't it was a public company and now you work for the Shareholders. They said. We don't want you to run it anymore. I can't imagine that wouldn't be devastating.

Yeah, it was. It was it it was not only devastating, but it was it was just absolutely the wrong decision. Um that was the worst part. I mean if I Maybe I was I'm I you know pr My perception is better than when I actually was my persona has taken on a much bigger role, but We had a couple of, you know, guys on the board that were

had developed this thing about founder syndrome and thought, hey, maybe it's better to turn it over to someone and to that can I can run the company without the the the passion and and just you know kinda run it like a regular business. I mean they they felt that that you had to be held accountable, fair or not, for the the blizzard fiasco, I guess. 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. You know, we don't like you to apologize. I go, Why not? I said, Because

You know you shows a sign of weakness, you know, or whatever. So were you blindsided by it? Uh completely. I mean it was the most shocking thing in the w I couldn't believe it. I mean it was How did they break the news to you? Um I was my office was just off the boardroom and the you know, two two of the board members um came in and said, you know, this is what we're gonna do. And then they all got up and left. Um

got on airplanes and flew away. Were you personally hurt? Oh yeah, totally. For years as I would land in in J F K it would be hard to even look over, you know, at Jet Low'cause it was hard to even see my airline, you know, and I wrote a letter.

Um to uh the crew members when I left and I still had access to everyone's email, so I sent it out and I just said You know, I've always taught you that it's not really what happens to you, is 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 gonna do it. So I'm gonna leave the board and you know, I just want you to remember all those values and you know, treat each other well. And I'll miss you terribly and you know, um nothing I'd like more to be back as your CEO but You know, that's not the way life is sometimes. You don't get to make all the decisions and Wish everyone the best and and I was gone.

We can stop this podcast now and like end of story. You start another airline. You start a brand new airline in two thousand eight. called Azul in Brazil. By the way. Which means blue. Was that was that deliberate? Did you call it Azul deliberately? Yeah, I I did.

It was I I think you know, I I obviously was have great affection for Jet Blue and Azul was the closest thing and Azul's you know blue in Portuguese and in Spanish, so I had made some trips down there and and you know, 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 nineteen year old boy. And one of the things that was amazing to me is how few people were traveling uh in Brazil.

And I determined that there were two major reasons. Number one The service just wasn't good y as far as nonstops between cities. The twenty five largest cities in Brazil only had nonstops about twenty percent of the time. But then there were like fifty cities that had no service that needed service. Yeah, they had they had you know, during the the military rule, the military had done a nice job of building airports, but nobody flew to'em. Um 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. And it happened. It's I think it's the third largest Airline in Brazil today. It's the number one airline in terms of daily departures. Number one airline in numbers of cities serves. We serve over a hundred cities in Brazil. We have eight hundred flights a day. We fly about eighty thousand people every single day. Wow. That's ten years.

Ten yeah you look at it. Did you I mean, you must have learned so many lessons along the way, right? At Southwest, you were You know, they fired you after five months and you couldn't do anything about it and and then, you know, Jet Blue obviously the the board uh decided that they wanted somebody new there. When you structured Azul, did you make sure that that could not happen to you again? Absolutely. I can't be fired at Azul. It's privately owned.

No, it's public. It's on the New York Stock Exchange. Uh but I have uh voting control, yeah. So so you made sure that that could not happen again. Fair enough. Which is part of like l learning lessons along the way. Absolutely. David, you have Ten kids, right?

Yes. How were you able to do all this stuff, like fly all over the place and go to board meetings and run these companies and also raise kids. Like h how were you able to make time for them? Were you? Did did you

Did you have to make sacrifices? Well, I I had a couple of 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.

Um you know, 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 and g you know And if it my daughters were dancing or my sons were playing football or lacrosse, I always tried to

make sure I work my schedule around it so I would always be there for'em if they need me and And I you know, tried to be the best father I could. I mean obviously I wasn't there at five o'clock every night. They have dinner with them. Um But you know, I had a lot of support from

you know, my wife and and the kids, you know, 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 and they chipped in and then when the first one got the driver's license they were you know helping haul the kids around to their lessons and so

It was really a family effort. It's a great family. And I you know, you didn't mention that I have eighteen grandkids and and three on the way. What is your sort of like guiding principle as a leader? Like now that you've made mistakes and you've you know, driven people crazy and kind of had time to reflect on The kind of person you are and the kind of leader you are, what do you

What do you aspire like how do you aspire to lead? Like what do you want people to say about you when they're like oh yeah, David, he is. He made my life better. Yeah, I You know, we have this thing at at at Azul where I'm t 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 ever had? If not, why not? 'Cause I think if you do that You know, if you matter. If your company matters. Um then you're gonna be more successful.

You know, if you were plucked from the face of the earth, would anybody care? You know, who would show up at your memorial service? And 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 that you serve and the more lives that you change The happier you are too. So all those things all work together.

At twenty two, twenty three, you were Totally broke. You you you you like Reach these these heights and then you were broke and then

Back to working at your grandfather's store. And then all these amazing things happened to you in your life. How much of that do you think is is because you were r really smart and and hard working and how much because of luck. Well I I think obviously you have points of luck.

But I think you make your own luck to a great degree. You know, A D D people's And I I tell people this, uh have A D D, m embrace it. It's you and it's who you are and take all the good from it. And My form of A D D has it I have an ability to just look at a situation That's very complex and simplify it and say, Let's just do it this way.

And It drives my teams crazy'cause 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 You know, that's just who I am and that's how I'm wired. I can look at a situation and you know, I can I can see solutions. And so Um rather if it was in the airline business or any other business, I think I would have probably had that skill and But you know, certainly the airline business has been

my ticket to a lot of um exciting times in my life and there's you know there's nothing like sitting in a cockpit landing an airplane and a forty eight hundred 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 uh it's it's quite a thrill. That's David Neilman. founder of JetBlue. On top of building one of the most successful airlines in Brazil.

David now wants to launch another airline here in the US. It's still in the planning phase, but the project has a name that Kinda fits David himself. Box. Oh, and you probably noticed how Southwest founder Herb Kelleher played a huge role in David's life?

Well, Herb actually passed away soon after we recorded this interview, but I was lucky enough to talk with him a few years ago, and he told an amazing story, and you can find that episode on our podcast feed. Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And today's story starts in May of 2018. In Queek, Arizona. Lisa Dalton was dating a software engineer named Brian.

And Brian is blind. And one day Lisa was at his house looking through his pantry and making a shopping list. He had eighteen cans of refried beans and and didn't know it. So Lisa decided to reorganize. A nice gesture, but also A big mistake. He had used a memorization based system to organize what he had in his pantry. And In my man handling the goods, I had completely messed them up. But Brian was forgiving. He said it's okay, you didn't know.

But really, it wasn't okay. Because Brian's personalized pantry Самтин гі реліген. was gone, and now he had to reorganize and re memorize, and Lisa she felt awful. I felt like melting into the floor. But she also thought there has to be a better system for Brian's pantry. So she started to research and she found a few solutions like putting Braille on an index card and then wrapping it around a can with a rubber band.

But that seemed wrong for a guy like Brian. I just thought this is not the level of household. He's a stylish dude. I I wouldn't want him to have to do that. Okay, something to know about Lisa. She actually sells customized and commemorative bricks using stamps she makes with a 3D printer. And as she tried to figure out how to solve a problem like Brian's pantry, she thought, What about using my printer to make reusable labels? And so she did. She came up with something that's kinda like those live strong wristbands, but with braille on the outside. Something you might slip around a container. It's a rigid plastic. Um it has a little bit of a give in it for you can just slide it on and then they pop right off.

Now Lisa had kept all of this a secret, so when she gave Brian the labels, he kinda cracked up and his face changed and he's like That's weird, but that's really cool. And the next thing he said was, hey, you should really sell these. So Lisa started working on more braille labels for all sorts of cans and jars. And after a few months, she packed up her prototypes and she went to a convention hosted by the National Federation of the Blind. She didn't really have any expectations, she just wanted a little feedback. But instead, people kept coming to her booth.

And then they'd come back with friends and say, Hey, check these out. And one woman asked Lisa if she would sell her a few of the prototypes. She had packed her husband's lunch and grabbed the wrong container. She packed him a beer. I mean I I know how mortifying that is and to know that you potentially m made a job ending mistake over something so simple.

That's gotta be terrifying. She said that she didn't pack his lunch anymore. And that day, talking to the people at the convention, It was a revelation. I got to the car that day and I totally cried. It was ridiculously moving the stories, how they've been trying to solve that problem, and how they wish that this had come out 20 years ago. So Lisa went home and she built a website. It went live in October of 2018 and now she sells her Brea labels for$2 each.

She also sells them in starter packs, and the name of the product? Well, it comes from a kind of mantra she had four years ago while she was recovering from a stroke she had when she was just thirty. There's a lot of things that I thought, you know, I can do that. I can do that. So Lisa Dalton calls her products can do labels. I just thought this would bring a lot of independence to people who are also wanting to be able to do their own things. I thought These are yes can do things. And Lisa Dalton's business is can-doable. This year she's planning to make it her full-time job.

If you want to find out more about Lisa or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page. How I built this.npr.org. And of course if you Want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at hibt at npr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this.

Our show is produced this week by James Delahousey with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. Thanks also to Mia Vencat, JC Howard, Nor Kutsi, Neva Grant, Melissa Gray, Sanas Meshkinpur, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candace Lim. I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to how I built this? From NPR.

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