Transcript
Introduction
“At age 30, Frederick Wallace Smith, was in deep trouble. His dream of creating Federal Express had become too expensive and was fast fizzling out. He had exhausted his father's millions. He was in hock for $15 million or $20 million more. He appeared in danger of losing his cargo planes and his wife. His own Board of Directors had fired him as CEO, and now, the FBI accused him of forging papers to get a $2 million bank loan and was trying to send him to prison. He thought of suicide. But any talk of suicide was uncharacteristic of Fred Smith. It is ridiculous to think of Fred even contemplating such a thing, jump out of a window. He's more likely to throw somebody out of a window. Fred never talked about this difficult period, perhaps the lowest point of his life. His infant Federal Express became a ravenous money-eating ogre. To keep his planes flying, Fred had to beg, borrow, and steal. At any risk, at any cost, he refused to let Federal Express die. The situation confronting him on this May morning in 1974 was dismal, at a dangerous ebb. Not only was Federal Express teetering on bankruptcy, but its founder, with the FBI and the U.S. district attorney hard on his heels, could possibly go to prison for bank fraud”.
That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator, and it was written by Vance Trimble. Vance is a guy that wrote the last week's book, the biography of Sam Walton. He actually wrote this book right after he wrote the book on Sam Walton.