Valuable Insights About Herb Kelleher And The Success Of Southwest Airlines

 

It’s no secret that in the United States, Southwest Airlines is one of the most successful airlines out there, if not the very best. In an era where many airlines are losing billions of dollars, Southwest has continued to thrive and make money in an unprecedented way.

Much of their success is due to their founder and CEO, Herb Kelleher. You can learn lots of valuable business advice if you study Herb and Southwest Airlines.

The person who turned me on to Herb was billionaire and Virgin founder Richard Branson, who is a business genius himself.

Herb and Richard share much of the same “primary attitudes” and I will highlight a few of them here:

1. Employees are number one. The way you treat your employees is the way you treat your customers.

I will add that in addition to employees, you should also include vendors, JV partners, and people like that to the list.

2. Think small to grow big.

This is a big one! I am telling you, the small companies have a huge advantage right now over the huge brands. It’s one of the reasons why Richard Branson runs so many of his Virgin business units as small companies.

3. Manage in good times for the bad times.

This is so important, especially now. As someone in business, you always need to be thinking about what you will do if sales go down, or you lose a key supplier, customer, things like that. Make sure that you always have action plans for these types of things and set up your business so you have various forms of income coming in at all times. (remember that old saying, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket)

In my next blog post, I will share three more strategies and business principles from Richard Branson and Herb Kelleher and we will dig a little deeper to see how they apply to smaller businesses all the way down to the one man (or woman) internet business.