Fred Smith

In combat, the plan falls apart in the first five minutes.

What matters is how fast you adapt.

The problem wasn't the concept.

It was education.

Businesses didn't understand what overnight delivery meant because nothing like it had ever existed.

So Smith sent sales teams to visit companies directly, demonstrating how this service worked.

Package volumes began climbing slowly.

Six months later, a bigger crisis arrived.

The Arab oil embargo and aviation fuel prices tripled overnight.

Federal Express was now losing money on every single flight, even as package volume grew.

By 1974, the company had exactly $5,000 left in its bank account, not enough to fuel the planes for the upcoming week.

I want to just pause here and put things in perspective.

They were so up to their eyeballs in debt.

It was so bad.

They had somebody monitoring airports for when creditors would show up and they would tell the planes not to land because they might get seized.

And there was one quote in the book which says, in Detroit, the airport parked a fire truck in front of the Federal Express Falcon so it couldn't take off without paying an overdue bill for fuel and landing fees.

Employees get a memo from Fred directly asking them not to cash their paychecks.

And so what happened next became legend.

Smith flew to Las Vegas with the company's last $5,000.

And by Monday morning, he'd won $27,000 of blackjack, enough for fuel and payroll for another few weeks.