Chapter 1: What is the purpose of the Advice Line podcast?
Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show.
Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is David Nieleman, founder of JetBlue, which he founded in 1998. David is also the founder of Azul, which is now one of the largest airlines in South America.
And he's also the founder and CEO of another airline in the U.S. It's called Breeze Airways, which began operating in 2021. David, it's great to have you back on the show.
Always great to talk to you, Guy.
So you've been on the show, I think, three times in the past. You were first on back in 2019 when, of course, you shared the story of how you started your first airline, which was Morris Air, which was acquired by Southwest. And then you got you ended up getting fired by Southwest. But then you launched JetBlue and turned it into this incredible business. And then you got fired from that.
And then you started another airline here. in South America, and another one called Breeze. It's just an incredible story. We will put a link to it in the show notes if you guys have not heard that episode. It's really, really, really good. It's just an amazing story. So thank you for coming back onto the show, David.
Before we get to today's callers, I want to ask you a couple questions about what's been going on in your life since you were last on. So you... You started Breeze, and I think we talked a little bit about that when you were last on. It's been now going since 2021, and you're flying, I think, only Airbus A220s. Is that right? That's correct.
Yeah, we have some others, but, yeah, primarily A220s.
Which is amazing because it reminds me of the Southwest model with 737s. All right. Tell me about Breeze. What makes it different from JetBlue and Azulon or similar or different from other airlines operating right now?
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Chapter 2: Who is David Neeleman and what is his background?
And I learned from my Southwest experience that if you bought brand new airplanes, it was actually cheaper than if you got old airplanes. And I did that at JetBlue. And then I learned also at Southwest that you need to treat your people awesome. So I did that at JetBlue. And then, as you said, I was somewhat forced out of JetBlue. They wanted me just to be the chairman. I said, no way.
So I went back to the country of my birth and founded Azul.
Country of birth is Brazil because I think you were born there while your dad was on a mission there, right?
Yeah.
Well, he was actually a journalist, but he had served his mission there, fell in love with the country and came back to work, as so many do when they serve their missions. So it was amazing. Brazil was kind of like the US airline business when it was in the 1960s. So I really learned the value of being the exclusive person in a market, being a monopoly market. Even till today, Azul...
About 85% of their markets, they have no nonstop competition. So I learned that big lesson. And then I looked back to the US and I just saw some interesting trends that airplanes were getting bigger and bigger. And then the big guys were dominant hubs and really forcing people to fly through hubs. 125 cities had lost 25% of their air service over the last 10 years.
And I also saw this trend about premium travel. People wanted to pay up for a little better service. And so I just found a plane that was conducive to first class, that was brand new, that had bigger windows, the two and three seating people loved. And with a 25% lower trip cost. And so we started flying today. We've announced 89 cities. We're in 36 different states. We have 314 different routes.
And people love flying us. It's the highest NPS score I've ever seen in any of my airlines I've ever started because people are really appreciative of the nonstop. But also we have great people that take care of our guests every day.
And so for you, the differentiator, right, as you say, is that of course, you want to offer the best value in the lowest prices, but it's really it really comes down to like, what is the experience like, you know, you see these things on social media all the time, I'm never flying Delta again, I'm never flying American again, or United again.
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Chapter 3: How did David launch Breeze Airways and what makes it unique?
And this is a for-profit, not a non-profit.
It's a for-profit, yeah.
And give me a sense of how your business is going. What do you guys do in revenue?
Yeah, it's been really hard. I mean, we probably should have been a nonprofit years and years ago, but I just have been on the boards of nonprofits, and I just really like being an entrepreneur, and I hate the bureaucracy. So I never did that, but we are a project. from a fiscal agent. So that allows us sometimes to get grants.
But the best thing we ever did was realize that we could partner with organizations like healthcare organizations, supermarket companies, that kind of thing. And they would sponsor us and bring us to schools in their region. Therefore, schools wouldn't have to pay, which is really the biggest obstacle against us doing these programs.
In our heyday, which was more like 2010 to 2016 or 17, we were doing really well, really big staff, lots of We had four vans touring. And it was so much work, though. And with COVID, we ended up really downsizing. We did live stream shows, which were amazing because they were so much easier. But now schools don't want live stream.
And I'm getting up in years, and I'm trying to figure out how can I keep food play alive somehow in this day and age? Because in 1982, things are pretty different.
Yeah. And when you say sort of, well, I mean, are you sort of what's your budget? You're roughly now.
Yeah. Well, back then we were our revenue was probably one and a half million dollars. And we had a staff of like 12 people and we had four vans and each van had like three performers and stage managers.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does Barbara face with her nutrition education company?
I didn't know that synthetic underwear was potentially bad for my health. What should I buy? And I didn't know the answer. That's kind of where the light bulb went off.
Huh. So, right, and it's interesting. I see a lot of these Instagram ads now for, like, organic gym shorts. There's, like, a lot of people who are talking about, you know, we're basically wearing plastic. You know, I'm probably wearing plastic right now with my, like, athleisure wear. And so there's a lot of these brands looking at, like, merino wool. You're doing cotton.
How long have you been around?
We launched January 2025. Wow. Wow. And how did you do your first year? Our first year, we did 40K in revenue, but it was so many rookie mistakes. I was working a full-time job for the first half of the year. We knew absolutely nothing about marketing funnels or anything. I would say in September, we got a lot more serious and structured and focused.
And projection for this year is $150,000 in revenue.
Amazing. And you're selling entirely through your website, direct-to-consumer? Entirely online, D2C, through our website. And you're making these, you're having them, they're manufactured in Asia? Turkey. In Turkey. Okay, nice. All right. Before we dive in further, what's your question?
So given that we're bootstrapped and we have limited cash on hand, how do I decide whether to spend that cash on new unproven SKUs that will increase optionality for new customers and give existing customers more things to repurchase versus putting it back into what's already selling and using that money on building the brand through marketing? Got it.
Okay. David Nielman. Underwear, this looks like they're going to hit 150 in sales this year. Do they add another product now or do they, what do you think? Do they stick with underwear or questions that you might have for Vince?
Well, I guess SKU would be different colors, right?
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