Fred Smith

He was determined.

He was driven.

He was constantly thinking.

And he knew how to harness his mind to get the most out of it with focus.

Okay, I want to get into some of the lessons that I took away from this episode and the research that I did on Fred Smith.

So one, your diagnosis isn't destiny.

So Fred spent his childhood in leg braces, a rare bone disease cut off the blood supply to his hip joints.

Doctors said he'd never walk normally.

Through thousands of hours of excruciating therapy, he didn't just walk, he became a varsity athlete.

Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something, he'd later say.

When everyone said overnight delivery was impossible, he remembered the doctors who said he'd never play sports.

Most people accept their limitations.

The exceptional see them as data, not a verdict.

Two, and this one is incredibly important, incentives matter.

The Memphis hub was a nightly disaster.

Planes had to land, unload, sort, and reload in a matter of hours.

And nothing worked until someone noticed the obvious.

They paid people by the hour.

The longer it took, the more they earned.

FedEx switched to paying by the shift.