Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at the BusinessMakers.com. Now it's time for our flashback and this is where we go back into our archives and revisit some of our very special and most favorite pieces of interviews. This morning we're gonna feature two very special corporate executives who both started their careers as secretaries. First up we're gonna visit with the former secretary to Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines and that would be Colleen Barrett who today is the president of Southwest Airlines. We enter the discussion with her where I just asked her if in the early part of her career did she ever anticipate thinking that maybe someday she would be president of the most profitable and successful airline in history.

Colleen: No; I'm sure I will disappoint many of my sisters, but I have to tell you that I've often thought about it. I've really never had a career path or career goal and in mind and maybe that's why it was never much of a struggle for me. I just really wanted to make a positive difference no matter what I was doing and I'm kind of a problem solver. That's what turns me on. Firefighter or whatever. So I really did that role as a secretary and it was just sort of a natural progression.

Russ: A little bit later in the discussion we got into some of those unique processes used by Southwest Airlines, specifically open boarding. I asked Colleen to describe how that evolved.

Colleen: I wanna say it was about a year and a half into our existence. So we started in '71. So maybe '72, '73. We had to sell an airplane in order to have the cash to pay our salaries. So we looked at it and we said, ya' know, we've got to operate a four airplane schedule with three airplanes. We simply cannot have any less service than we have in the triangle cities. Well the only way that we could do that was to turn our airplanes in ten minutes. Now, it wasn't like we had 137 people on every single airplane at the time, but never the less, we'd looked at our people and told them that's what we're gonna do. They said, 'You've gotta be kidding. You can't turn an airplane in ten minutes.' We said, 'Yes, you can.'

Russ: Alright. From there we ventured down that path of that very unique Southwest Airlines company culture. I asked Colleen to tell us just how important that culture is to the bottom line of Southwest Airlines.

Colleen: Well in my opinion it's all important. Probably the most important thing to the bottom line because I really do believe that if you - well, let me put it this way. I think that if you have a group of people who are all singly dedicated to a cause as opposed to just profitability or just a paycheck as individuals that they're going to put their whole hearts and souls into what you do. If you in fact have a group of people that are owners in your company, which we do, and if you empower them to think and act like owners and to be part of the decisions that you make, then they're gonna think about their money as though it's their own.

Russ: That wraps up our flashback with Colleen Barrett. Now we move to another famous business executive who also started her career as a secretary and who also as a prior guest on the BusinessMakers Show. That's Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP and now a candidate for the U.S. Senate representing California. We enter our discussion with Carly where I had just asked her what advice would she give to an aspiring entrepreneur.

Carly: Well my history is perhaps not all that helpful. I studied medieval history and philosophy in college. I went to law school and dropped out and my first exposure to business was as a secretary/receptionist. I had no plan to become an entrepreneur or a business woman, but what I would say is this. I think people need to find what they love. Success requires passion. Success requires courage and risk taking and tons of hard work, but I guess I didn't have a plan to become a CEO. I did throw myself into every challenge that came my way and I wasn't afraid to answer the door when opportunity knocked, but the first and toughest choice for me as an adult was to figure out that I hated law school and to spend the time to find what I really loved, which turned out to be business.

Russ: My discussion with Carly took place back shortly after she had released her book, Tough Choices, which was all about her ouster as the CEO of HP. My goodness, was that ever controversial. So I asked her why she wrote the book.

Carly: Because perhaps of my unique experiences and my unique life. I think I know a lot about people. When you start as a secretary and go all the way up you see a lot of stuff. I think I know a lot about change and I wanted to write a book about all of that. Finally I guess I would say I wanted to write an authentic book. It is why I wrote it myself. There is no ghost writer. There was no collaborator and I wanted to tell authentic stories in an authentic way, whether that was the story of my getting fired, which I tell in the first two pages, or whether that was the story of how I learned some of my most important lessons in life from my mother and father or whether that's the story of what it took to transform a tradition bound company like Hewlett Packard into a leader in the 21st Century.

Russ: As it turns out I think Carly's strategy with HP, which included the controversy of acquiring Compaq computers turned out to be so very right on. That concludes this morning's flashback. Stay tuned in for our featured guest segment that actually takes place on a beautiful jet. We are in the cabin of a Hawker 850 where I sit down and interview Janine Iannarelli, founder and CEO of Par Avion. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at the BusinessMakers -