Founders - #167 Jackie Cochran (Aviation)

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

What I learned from reading Jackie Cochran: An Autobiography by Jackie Cochran. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[4:37] At the time of her death on August 9, 1980, Jacqueline Cochran held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other pilot, male or female, in aviation history. Her career spanned 40 years, from the Golden Age of the 1930s as a racing pilot, through the turbulent years of World War Il as founder and head of the Women's Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) program, into the jet age, when she became the first female pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound. She was a 14-time winner of the Harmon trophy for the outstanding female pilot of the year and was accorded numerous other awards and honors in addition to the trophies she won with her flying skills. [6:15] Jackie was an irresistible force. Time and time again in the many, many interviews I was so kindly granted, the repeated theme was "Jackie just could not be stopped." And indeed, this driving, cussed determination is signally evident in Jackie's own writings. Her unremitting persistence is clear in everything she did, from regaining the doll of which she was robbed at the age of six to her need to be the world's top aviatrix. Generous, egotistical, penny-pinching, compassionate, sensitive, aggressive -indeed, an explosive study in contradictions—Jackie was consistent only in the overflowing energy with which she attacked the challenge of being alive. Always passionately convinced of any viewpoint she happened to hold (nothing Jackie ever did was by halves), she raced through life, making lifelong friends and unforgetting enemies, surely breaking all records in the sheer volume of her living on this earth—as she did in the air. [8:07] To live without risk for me would have been tantamount to death. [14:16] Whenever I turned on a light, I'd think of how my foster family had been able to sit back and sit around that goddamn mojo lamp. Not me. [16:39] I always knew I was different from the others. [24:02] "What are you going to be when you grow up, Jackie?" they'd ask me. I never wavered in my response. "I'm going to be rich," I'd say, knowing even then that they thought I was silly or crazed. "I'll wear fine clothes, own my own automobile, and have adventures all over the world." They'd laugh. I was certain that's where I was going, I felt no embarrassment about my big dreams. No dreams, no future. They could laugh, but most of my mill friends wanted as little from life as they were destined to get. [26:51] To get the best performance, to do better than anyone has ever done before, you've got to take chances. [30:21] You almost had to have been there to know what such a range of existences did for me. Because of where I came from and then where I went, I ended up understanding intimately one very sustaining line of life: I could never have so little that I hadn't had less. It took away my fear. It pushed me harder than I might ever have pushed myself otherwise. The poverty provided me with a kind of cocky confidence and made me relatively happy with what I had at any given moment. [42:05] Jackie always felt that there was nobody better than she was. She was equal to anybody and had as much confidence as anybody. That's why she was able to accomplish so much. If somebody else can do it, so can I. That was her theory, her motto. [45:16] She could be ruthless when she wanted to pursue something, and she'd go at her goal with an intensity that wouldn't stop.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

I'm Jackie Cochran, she said, pumping my hand. Great job, Captain Yeager. We're all really proud of you. She invited me to lunch acting as if I should know exactly who she was, and caused an uproar just by entering the posh Washington restaurant. The owner began bowing and scraping, and the waiters went flying. In between pumping me for all the details of my flights, I learned a little about who she was. She was a honcho on several important aviation boards and committees, and was a famous aviatrix before the war,

winner of the Bendrix Air Races. She had been a close friend of Amelia Earhart's. During the war, she was a colonel in charge of the WASP, the Women's Air Force Service Pilots, and ferried B-17 bombers to England. Hell, she knew everybody and bounced all over the world. On VE Day, she was one of the first Americans to get down inside Hitler's bunker in Berlin and came away with a gold doorknob off his bathroom by trading for it with a Russian soldier for a pack of cigarettes. On VJ Day Day, she was in Tokyo, playing poker with a couple of generals on MacArthur's staff and conned her way on board the battleship Missouri to watch the surrender ceremonies. As I would learn more than once over the next couple of decades, when Jackie

Cochran set her mind to do something, she was a damn Sherman tank at full steam. She was as nuts about flying as I was. If I were a man, she said, I would have been a war ace just like you. I'm a damn good pilot. All these generals would be pounding on my door instead of the other way around. Being a woman, I need all the clout I can get. But clout was no problem for Jackie. Her husband was Floyd Oldham, who owned General Dynamics, the Atlas Corporation, RKO, and a bunch of other companies.

We liked each other right off the bat. I could talk flying with her just as if she were a regular at ponchos. She knew airplanes and said flat out that flying was the most important thing in her life. She was tough and bossy and used to getting her own way, but I figured that's how rich people behaved. When we parted that day, she said, let's stay in touch. We sure did that. Glenis and I became Jackie and Floyd's closest friends. It was a friendship that lasted more than 25 years until their deaths. I was the executor of Floyd's estate. They treated me like an adopted son.

I flew around the world with Jackie, and she was right. She was a damn good pilot, one of the best. And I'm sure the reason she latched onto me was because for Jackie, nothing but the best would do. And she thought I was the best pilot in the Air Force. Hell, she said that to anybody, anytime. Jackie played a big role in my life, and I in hers. I met two sitting presidents in her living room.

Wherever she traveled overseas, she was treated like a visiting head of state. I never met anyone like her, man or woman. She came on like a human steamroller. Jackie Cochran didn't own a pair of shoes until she was eight years old. Compared to what she suffered as a child in rural Florida, I was raised like a country gentleman. She never knew her real parents or why she was given away. The people who raised her lived in a shack without power or running water. As a little kid, she had to forage in the woods for food to keep from starving to death. She had no education, no affection, no nothing. She was kept filthy dirty, her only clothes

an old flower sack. But she was as tough as nails. She learned how to become a hairdresser, got out of Florida, and finally landed in New York. She got into the cosmetics business and started her own company. She became very successful and then got interested in flying. So that was an excerpt from a book that I covered on the podcast a few weeks ago, which is the autobiography of Chuck Yeager. And once I read that excerpt, I was very interested in learning how. Like, how is it possible for somebody that grew up in such dire circumstances to accomplish as much as Jackie did in her life? And so today I'm going to talk to you about her autobiography, which is Jackie Cochran, the autobiography of the greatest woman pilot in aviation history. Okay, so let's jump into the book. I'm going to start with an overview of her entire aviation career. This is actually a quote from the National Air and Space Museum at the

Smithsonian Institute. And really a good way to think about this is Jackie put up numbers. So it said, at the time of her death, Jacqueline Cochran held more speed, altitude and distance records than any other pilot, male or female in aviation history. Her career spanned 40 years from the golden age of the 1930s as a racing pilot to the turbulent years of World War Two as the as the founder and head of the Women's Air Force Service pilot program into the jet age, where she became the first female pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound. She was a 14-time winner of the Harmon Trophy for Outstanding Female Pilot of the Year and was accorded numerous other awards and honors in addition to the trophy she won with her flying skills. And that sentence right there, it says her career spanned 40 years. That was really one of the most mind-blowing, there's a ton of mind-blowing things that we're going to talk about today. with her flying skills. And that sentence right there, it says her career spanned 40 years. That was really one of the most mind-blowing,

there's a ton of mind-blowing things that we're going to talk about today. But something I found even more remarkable was the fact that she learned how to fly, she was somewhere in her mid-20s. Jackie never actually knew her exact age. It was a guess, an approximation. But sometime she was around 60 years old. She was still setting records, which is just remarkable to learn.

So this is an introduction into Jackie written by the author that helped her write this book. And it says Jackie Cochran was a self-created phenomenon. That's a great way to think about her, self-created. True, she had a poverty-stricken background, but somehow I think that wherever or whoever she was at birth, her native acumen, her extraordinary energy, talent, and sheer guts would inevitably have driven her to the very top. Jackie was an irresistible force. Time and time again, in the many interviews I was granted,

the repeated theme was, Jackie could not be stopped. And indeed, this driving determination is evident in Jackie's own writings. Her unremitting persistence is clear in everything she did, from regaining the doll of which she was robbed at the age of six, to her need to be the world's top aviatrix generous egotistical penny pitching compassionate sensitive aggressive indeed an explosive study in contradictions jackie was consistent only in the overflowing energy with which she attacked this is another great sentence a great way to put about to a great way to describe the the experience of living right he says uh jackie was consistent only in the overflowing energy with which she attacked

the challenge of being alive always passionate passionately convinced of any viewpoint she happened to hold nothing jackie ever did was by halves. She raced through life, making lifelong friends and unforgetting enemies, surely breaking all records in the sheer volume of her living on this earth, as she did in the air. This is a biography of an authentic, native-born American heroine, a real-life little orphan Annie, who battled her way through adventures that Annie never even dreamed of. It is built on autobiographical scenes from a life lived flat out.

Jackie was loved and hated, probably just about equally, in her 70-some years of living. But no one who encountered her was indifferent. Whatever she did was done her way, and Jackie believed in jumping into any adventure feet first. A few pages later, we're introduced to what I would consider Jackie's life philosophy in one sentence. And it says, this is now her writing, To live without risk, for me, would have been tantamount to death. And now this is Chuck Yeager commenting on Jackie. She's talking about Jackie, but he's giving us advice on how to achieve whatever you want in life. He says, you've got to be aggressive and you've got

to have guts to go out and get exactly what you want. Jackie was damn well aggressive enough and she got what she wanted and she wasn't dumb. She was a very smart gal with a lot of horse sense. So I had to look up that term. I've never come across it. It's another word for common sense. Her formal education may not have been much. Yeah, that's an understatement. But she sure had a tremendous amount of horse sense. OK, so let's go back to our let's rewind in the story. And this is Jackie telling us about her early life. And she says, until I was eight years old, I had no shoes. My bed was usually a pallet on the floor and sometimes just the floor. I'd always choose the floor over the option of sleeping with my foster sister Myrtle because Myrtle was a was a dirty, sloppy sort.

And I had a cleanliness fetish for as long as I can remember. I can still recall my sisters making fun of me because I would carry buckets of cold water from a pump to give myself a good icy scrubbing in the wash tub on the floor of our house. Remember, there's no lighting, there's no plumbing. They laughed at me, but I kept right on. I wanted to be clean. They said I was putting on airs, but I like being different from them, stronger in fact, and I used my strength to get what I wanted. Food at best consisted of the barest essentials, sometimes nothing except what I forged for myself in the woods. My dresses were made from flower sacks. We lived in a house which didn't have any windows. If fending for yourself carries its satisfaction, I had my share of satisfactions in my childhood.

We were always hungry. Mama was always tired, upset, angry with the world, and especially us. So that's her foster mom. She never knows who her real parents are. My sisters were of no comfort to me. Nasty conversations and miserable tales fill my mind when I try to bring back those years. So her entire family works in mills. They're doing backbreaking, hard, dirty labor from sunrise to sunset, even the kids. That's why when Chuck was saying that, you know, she didn't have much of a formal education, I think she's a second or

third grade dropout. So she had to work from the time she was a very young child. So at this point in the story, to give you an idea of just how poor but smart and determined she is, they're taking a train to another town in the South. Sometimes she's in Florida. Sometimes she's in Alabama, other different states, Georgia. They just go wherever the work is. There's somebody on the train selling candy. And this is how she reacts to someone on the train selling candy i want one more than anything before in my whole life i know i can't have it and i don't cry i lose myself in the fantasy of all the things i'll buy when i can buy whatever i want and then she reiterates the fact that hunger was a constant companion during her childhood hunger was a permanent way of feeling

when i was growing up common to all and in this part, we see her inner monologue as a young child, and she actually comes to the conclusion that's rather wise. And she's like, listen, she's talking about the fact that, you know, who are my parents? Why was I abandoned? Her foster parents never adopted her. She winds up running away. She picks her own name. Cochran is not a last name, her last name. Cochran is not her last name. She never knew what her actual last name was, so she just decided to give herself her own identity. And that's why at the very beginning, where it says that she was a self-creative phenomenon, that is both literal and figurative. But this idea that I'm not going to let this wise idea,

that I'm not going to let things outside of my control define me. Okay, so let's go to a young Jackie Cochran's inner monologue. As a young girl, I used to ask myself, am I illegitimate? Who were my real parents? Why would a mother give away her child? But having gone through my childhood, never knowing exactly what happened or why I was never adopted by anyone, not even my foster family. The letters didn't hold much sway over me. So they there was some research done.

There's going to be these letters that are sealed. She keeps her entire life. Eventually, Chuck decides to burn them because Jackie does not want to know what's inside them. It was information on her real family origins. Okay, so that's what that's the letters that she's referring to there. So let me read that that that section again. Why I was never officially adopted by anyone, not even my foster family. The letters didn't hold much sway over me. I didn't care what they said. I realized that might sound strange. But what could the knowledge have added to my life then? More important, what could have taken away from me?

So again, these things are outside of my control. I didn't choose to be abandoned. I didn't choose to be given up for adoption. I didn't choose not to be adopted by my foster family. But there's nothing I can do about it now. So just knowing this information is not going to help me. So let me just keep moving forward and actually worry about things that I can't control. It's actually a lot of wisdom for such a young kid. Right. And in this next part,

what she does, this is not really a chronological book. She'll talk about things going on at a certain point in her life, and then she'll flash back to her childhood and move back and forth. And in this, she's comparing and contrasting the living conditions that she had to endure as a very poor young, young girl compared to being very wealthy when she was older. And she says, have you ever seen a moho lamp? It's made by shoving a hollow corn stalk into a bottle with a little oil on the bottom. A piece of cloth, hopefully wool if you got it, is inserted through the stalk to act as a wick. Well, we got ourselves a moho lamp. She's talking about the source of lighting in her house, right? In my ranch house living room in California,

I had the biggest lamps you could ever imagine. They were beautiful. Whenever I turned on a light, I think of how my foster family had been able to sit back and sit around the goddamn moho lamp. Not me. And we see two things in that last sentence, both her ego and her drive. The fact is you're okay sitting here living in poverty. I'm going to do whatever I have to do to get out of this. And then once I get out of this, I'm not going to stop there. Any other goal that I have, I'm going to focus on it. I'm going to maintain, never take my eyes off that goal. And I'm not going to stop until I achieve it. So we see her ego and her drive. And this is a little bit more about her ego. Another way to think about this is

the power of believing in yourself. And she's talking about entering a race and she's fast forwarding in her life again, entering a race where there wasn't any women racing at the time. And she says, I can fly as well as any men entered in that race. I didn't see it as being boastful so much as speaking the truth. I learned through hard work and in that race. I didn't see it as being boastful so much as speaking the truth. I learned through hard work and hard living that if I didn't speak the truth about myself, no one else would fill in the missing pieces. I never let my insecurity stop me. So there's a lot of people. This book is very similar to the Yeager book where they have sections called Other Vo where um they interrupt the

the the narrative and you have friends and acquaintances throughout her entire life write paragraphs about jackie about certain experiences to go through and a lot of them said you know she was very boastful she wouldn't wait to receive compliments she would tell you how great she was and so there's a lot of parts in this book that remind me that Kanye West said one time that his biggest regret in life was never being able to see himself perform live. Right. I could see Jackie saying something very similar. There's definitely a little bit of Kanye West. I would say a little bit of Tom for what I call Tom Ford syndrome with Jackie. And I'll explain what I mean about that in a minute. Right now, she's at church.

She's still a little girl. She's over here and she's eavesdropping on a conversation between her foster mom and another lady in the church. So it says, did you hear anything about Jackie's family these days? A friend of my foster mother's is asking. I am within earshot, but not sight. Not a word. My mother answers, silence. My heart beats faster.

My mother continues. And I'm going to keep it that way. Jackie doesn't know she's any different from the others. So that's what her mom says. This is Jackie writing. She disagrees with that statement. She says, but I always knew I was different from the others. And what do I mean about Tom Ford syndrome? I was reading this, this, this got to be almost 10 years ago.

I was reading this article in GQ, an interview about Tom Ford. And he said something that I thought was hilarious. And I saved it to this day. And he was asked a question. He says, or GQ says, didn't you always feel like a freak growing up? And this is Tom's response. I thought I was fabulous and everyone else was stupid. And there's just these different levels of self-confidence. Tom Ford, Kanye West, Jackie Cochran, Steve Jobs. There's a number of people that I've covered and studied on the podcast. They have the same thing.

There's nothing that you're going to be able to do that is going to dimmer their confidence and their belief in themselves. So now let's go back to where she's still a young girl. She's trying to run away to the circus. So this is very interesting. She says, I tried running away with gypsies, staying out in the woods all night with a neighbor boy and his older sister. No one looked for us. So that's another statement. That's only a few words, but I don't want to just jump over it. She was essentially left to her own devices. She could leave in the middle of the night. She's around eight years old, maybe 10 years old this time. She could disappear for days. Her foster family, to give you an idea of the lack of love that she had to endure, didn't even bother looking for her. She says, and no one looked for us. And once I decided to hitch my wagon to the stars in a

local circus, you have this traveling circus, they're about to leave town. Jackie decides, hey, I'm going to try to go with them. Though her life was never easy, Mama always seemed to be able to make it worse for herself and everyone around her. She'd take out a lot of her frustrations on me. I probably made her angry because she couldn't seem to touch me with her foul moods. And when she tried to whip me for quote-unquote bad conduct, I once found a chunk of firewood. That day I raised my hand holding the stick to hit back. She took several steps away from my life forever. But the day the circus came to town, the steps i needed to take to grow away from her became more tangible to me than ever before i honestly saw that motley carnival crew as my future when they

leave i leave i said to myself so just try to place your yourself in her shoes you know you're a young person eight maybe ten years old and And not only is your foster mom, you know, she's got a bunch of foster kids. You know no one actually loves you. And yet you see your only hope in life is to leave and to run away with a traveling circus. And then not only is that how desperate you have to be, but listen to how excited she is about that opportunity. She says, have you ever felt that giddiness that comes when you're on the verge of something good or even great?

And what is she talking about? She's saying, I was going away. So unfortunately, she falls asleep. By the time she wakes up, the circus has already left town. So she doesn't get to run away. But then this winds up leading to one of the most important people in her life. And this person's a teacher. He's only in her life for a very short amount of time. But this really is a reminder of the impact that one positive person can have on the trajectory of your life. We've seen this example most recently in the podcast last week on Bob Noyce. He's got this teacher, lives in a tiny town in Iowa, is teaching him to have a love of physics and then sends you know

Noyce is a great student winds up going off to MIT to study physics and Gale is his last name stays in touch with Noyce for the rest of his life but also writes up and decides to take the initiative and write to Noyce's teachers at MIT like hey you know making sure did I prepare him well enough to actually care about somebody and so again the impact one positive person can have on the trajectory of your life. I tie this to that other idea that I've never forgot that, that Jeff Bezos has never forgot because he talks about it, you know, 50 years after it happened and that the lesson from his grandfather, that it's harder to be kind than it is to be clever. And so this is really the kindness and the caring of a teacher that she never felt her entire life from any kind

of family members. I guess she didn't really have a family to speak of. So it says, I'll never fully understand why Miss Boswick came south that next year and took me in her arms. All I know is that she became the greatest positive influence on my early life. From her, I learned how to take care of myself, to stay clean and neat in spite of the sneering I always receive from my sisters. I learned love from Miss Boswick. Think about that. She's 8, 10, 12 years old maybe. No, how old are you?

I think this is second or third grade. So she's around 8 years old, right? Or at least she thinks she's 8 years old. And never to know love for the first 8 or 10 years of your life. That's got to be devastating, right? From her, I learned how to take care of myself, to stay clean and neat in spite of the sneering I always received from my sisters I learned love from Miss Boswick when she touched me but I learned how to turn my back to what others thought to turn my back on them if that's what had to be done

that's something she does her whole life my first hair ribbon that comb and brush set those hours of reading together in the afternoons the prunes just having food is what she's talking about i wanted desperately to thank her many years for showing me that the rest of the world was out there for me i went to cincinnati to find her this is now later in her life and called every bosswick in the telephone directory with no luck. I wanted to see her lovely face again and put my arms around her in the same way she had hugged me. Remember, these are thoughts she's having as an adult now, but she was never to be found. When she stopped teaching after that second year of my schooling, my formal education stopped too. Informally,

I never stopped learning. I like to tell others that I passed through the school of hard knocks, of which there are no real graduates, because you simply keep on learning until you die. And I think the most important sentence out of that entire section was the fact that she showed me the rest of the world was out there for me, teaching her, hey, you're not confined to your present circumstances. This does not have to be your life. You can actually have a broad life. You can choose what you want to do in life as long as you're willing to work for it and never give up. And that's something that she takes. She takes that advice and runs with it up until she dies. This is another one sentence life philosophy of Jackie Cochran. Later, I would find that my horizons were limited only by my

imagination and knowledge. That's kind of an extension of the lessons that she learned from Ms. Boswick, right? So a few years later, she's working in a cotton mill in Georgia, and this is where she's realizing from a very early age, we see her drive and determination to be wealthy. She realizes that money is going to equal independence, and independence is what she greatly desires. So it says, at the time, she's working 12 hours a day for six cents an hour. Okay, and this is how she's able to buy her first pair of shoes. I love my job in the cotton mill in Columbus, Georgia. It made me happy.

I was pushing a cart up and down the aisles, delivering spools of bobbins to the weavers. An expert could handle six looms. I wasn't an expert, but I decided I would be one day. The working conditions were despicable. The pay was delightful. That's why I was happy. Money. The money made me happy because of the freedom I knew it could buy. So she's having conversations with her coworkers and they say, what are you going to do when you grow up, Jackie? They'd ask me. I never wavered in my response. I'm going to be rich, I'd say, knowing that even then, knowing even then that they thought I was silly or crazy. I'll wear fine clothes, own my own automobile and have adventures all over the world they would laugh i was certain

that's where i was going i felt no embarrassment about my big dreams no dreams no future they could laugh but most of my mill friends wanted as little from life as they were destined to get that's a hell of a sentence let me read read that again. They could laugh, but most of my male friends wanted as little from life as they were destined to get. So I'm going to fast forward in the story a little bit. This section is really that you've got to take chances. What has happened in the interim is that she just jumps from whatever opportunity she can. She takes the best opportunity presented to her. Then she'll take that, do the best job she can, and see if that opens up another opportunity. And so there's a series of jobs. She keeps switching, trying to find a better opportunity. Eventually, she works for a family that owns a bunch of beauty salons. And first she's taking care of the kids. And then she's like, hey, I can, you know, I can help out in the shop too. And she'll start at the very bottom. And that's another thing to learn from Jackie's, you know, maybe you have to start at the very bottom, but she's always going to aim to the top. She wants to be at the top of

whatever profession she's doing. So eventually she works her way up and she starts doing the actual, she becomes a beautician and a hairdresser. And the reason she does this is because they work on commissions and tips. And she's like, wow, I can make way more money than I thought possible. And she's like 15, maybe somewhere in that age that she's, that she's figuring this out. And so she's been working at the beauty shop for a while. And then this is going to give her an opportunity to jump to another occupation and another actually state.

She's going to move again. So it says a traveling salesman arrived in the shop one morning. He was selling permanent wave machines and was complaining to Ms. Richler that not enough operators understood the damn process. He had one machine practically sold to a big store in Montgomery, Alabama, when they realized they needed an operator to go along with the machine and back down on the contract. So she had worked her way up to be an operator of these machines, right, To give perms, essentially. Quick. Now, this is really fascinating. This is just the one paragraph, but I like the writing here, and I also like her thought process. Quick. No chance for any mid-sentence pause. Not a second for Ms. Richler to consider the possibilities inherent for anyone else in her shops, let alone her. There I am am the person he needs to make that sale in montgomery a permanent wave expert at maybe she put in parentheses 15 to get the best performance to do better than anyone has

ever done before you've got to take chances so the chance there is her walking away from a job that she already has uh she's gonna have to move to a place she's never been before she's like, okay, I will go and operate the machine and I'll go move and see if it sounds like a better opportunity for me there. So let me go ahead and pursue that. And this is where we see her personality. She's obsessed with being self-sufficient because remember her goal is independent. She does not want other people to have control of her time. She wants to have money, not to buy a bunch of stuff, but to make sure that she can live the life that she wants to live. And the vast majority of her life is just having these experiences through aviation. We're not there yet, though. She says, I was probably 15 or 16 when I walked every street

in Montgomery, Alabama, until I found the nicest neighborhood in the city. Then I knocked on the door at 12 South Ann Street and asked the startled woman if I could rent room and board. At first, she was horrified, but I was determined. I had never lived in a house as elegant as her house, and I pleaded my case to the limit of my persuasive power. So again, think about what she optimizes for determination when she says, okay, I want this, I'm going to do this. She doesn't give up.

You can tell her no over and over again, she's still going to pester you, right? And then she also talks about the importance of salesmanship, about being good with people, getting them to do what you want them to do. Right. And so then this way she talks, she, she, she uses the term persuasive power. Later she'll explicitly cause, cause a salesmanship though. I lived at that house for years. At the store I worked, at store, I worked on commission, giving more perms than Montgomery society could believe

and earning more money than even the store manager could feel comfortable about. Montgomery began to offer me glimpses of the other side of society. I was able to buy a car. I never lost my compulsion to be totally self-sufficient. I even learned how to repair the engine on my car. That Model T Ford was such an asset. I made sure I understood what it took to keep the car running smoothly she possibly can about the thing that is important to her the thing that's right in front of her do you remember in that Chuck Eager podcast where he's the same way that's why Jackie and Chuck said that you know they were essentially the same person um where you know he's learning everything he can about planes because he realized one he's really into it but two it could also save

his life or help him later on and he winds winds up testing a new airplane and then writing a bunch, like a manual for the plane, giving it over to another pilot. The pilot was dismissive. He's like, oh, I don't need your notes. You know, I can just, I'll figure it out for myself. I think he even maybe would have read the actual manual that came from the manufacturer, but not Chuck's notes. And he winds up having an accident. Thankfully, it wasn't fatal, but he winds up running the plane into the hangar. And Chuck just had a lack of respect for people that would not take the necessary time to actually learn as much as they could. I think Jackie would echo those same sentiments. I'll learn as much as I care about hairdresser when I'm a hairdresser or hairdressing is when I'm a hairdresser.

If I relying on this car to get me around, I need to make sure I can fix it. I don't want to be to rely on the good graces of other people. She's the same thing for planes. Everything she did, she would learn as much as possible about. Now, this is very interesting because the summary of this section is happiness is relative. Or another way to put this is the this is the upside to growing up poor. And again, this is where we see what Chuck calls horse sense. We're going to call common sense. She's really good with people and she's just got a lot of common sense, a lot of practical knowledge. She said, you almost had to be there to know that what such a range of existences did for me. Because of where I came from and then where I went, I ended up understanding intimately one very sustaining line of life.

And for this next sentence, she actually italicizes the entire sentence. This is not very common in this book. So it's her telling us explicitly, hey, this is a really important thought for you to remember. So let me read that section to you again. Because of where I came from and where I went, I ended up understanding intimately one very sustaining line of life. And this is the part. I could never have so little that I hadn't had less. It took away my fear.

It pushed me harder than I might have ever pushed myself otherwise. The poverty provided me with a kind of cocky confidence. It made me relatively happy with what I had at any given moment. So not only is that a really good thought, like I could never have so little that I haven't had less, but we also see that she also has self-awareness. A lot of her friends, enemies, associates, the wide range of people that knew Jackie when she was alive described her as, you know, she had a giant ego. She says she has a giant ego. She she says i'm cocky she says it's an asset the fact is i had undeniable self-belief of myself is that the reason i was able to accomplish so much

is because of the fact that i had such self-belief even if other and she was comfortable if other people are going to criticize that say oh you're cocky you shouldn't give yourself compliments she says i disagree it was actually an asset for me. It was an actual tool, which is very counterintuitive, I think, for most people to understand. OK, so we're still in her early life. This is where she's going to leave Alabama. She she continues to work in hairdressing field. She winds up doing small saving as much money as possible, doing like small investments in other salons. And then eventually decides, hey, I've made as much money as I can in the South. I'm going to the world's, I'm going to New York City.

I'm going to where all the action is because I want to chase wealth. It's going to afford me the opportunities that where I'm currently at in Alabama is not. And if you look at the notes, the vast majority of the notes and highlights I have in this book are actually in her early life because I found it such a it's a very inspiring story because you just realize how much you know she had to overcome in all the just the terrible circumstances of her early life it reminds me all the way back on founders number 117 um I did the the biography of the autobiography of Chun Chun Ju Young um which was actually the founder of Hyundai. And his story, his early life really does parallel Jackie's where, you know, he had to forage for food. I remember one of the most memorable lines in the book is him talking about, you know, when he's a little boy,

he couldn't go to the bathroom at his friend's house. He had to go home and his entire family had to defecate in buckets. And they used, they called it night soil. And they use that as manure for their meager crops. And even then, in the winters, they had to eat tree bark. And then he overcomes all that and winds up becoming the richest person in South Korea. If you haven't read that book, you should read the book. It's crazy. And then if you haven't listened to the podcast, make sure you do that as well. It's Founders Number 117. It's crazy. But then if you haven't listened to the podcast, make sure you do that as well. It's Founders Number 117. It's crazy.

But there's a lot. The reason I bring that up is because that's what I found most interesting about her story. It is amazing all the aviation records she's able to do when she's older and the fact that she doesn't give up until physically her body can't do it anymore. Her doctors say you can't fly anymore. That's when she's heartbroken. She's in her 70s because she's having heart trouble. She's having seizures and everything else. But just her early life is amazing. So anyways, let's go to New York. She's a young woman. She might be in her early 20s here. She hasn't let her hasn't yet learned to fly. So I would say she's probably early 20s because she learns to fly somewhere in the mid 20s. Right. But this is the unusual way she tries to get a job in New York. And really, this is another illustration of her personality, a way to get to know who she was. Start at the top. I can't tell you how many times that that statement is in the book. Aim for the top. Start from the top. She's always talking about the over again.

Start at the top, Jackie. I said to myself one morning out job hunting Charles of the Ritz. That's where she's trying to get a job. But what an irritating snob of a man Mr. Charles was. I made the interview worse by insisting outright that I was an expert at everything. He didn't believe me. I didn't look old enough to be an expert at anything, he said. We were two big egos out to prove who was bigger and better. In fact, I told Charles of the Ritz that not only was I good, I was probably better than he was. Remember, this is an unusual way that she tries to get a job that amused him for a minute, but he was not so amused when I wanted 50% commission on every customer I had in his salon. I was sure my outrageous demand would end the interview

right there when he said, you'll have to cut your hair. Wait a minute. I wouldn't cut my hair for you. Even if you promise to turn the whole business over to me, I answer. So then she leaves. The next morning he called me at my rooming house. Changed his mind, he said. I wouldn't have to cut my hair, and I could have 50% commission. Anything I wanted. Did I want the job, or didn't I?

I didn't. I was so stubborn, and I still am. It makes me smile now to think that the cosmetics company that I would found several years later, Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics, still competes with Charles of the Ritz. Charles himself is long dead, of course. So it is while she's working in New York, she travels back and forth from New York to Miami, serving different salon customers. And this is where she meets her husband. This is Floyd Oldham. He's actually the founder of Atlas. And he, at the time they get married, I think he's like the 10th richest person in America. So it says, there weren't night and day differences between Floyd and me. Temperamentally, we may have been miles apart, but when it came to knowing what we wanted

out of life, security, power, and a certain kind of fame we were very much alike and work hard work was always a tie that bound us together when it came to schemes and dreams floyd has had as many as i did so she has a few weeks vacation from the beauty salon and she says okay i'm going to learn how to fly. And they offered flying flying schools. It wasn't that expensive. It's still like not. She didn't have a lot of money this time. It was, you know, about 400 bucks or something like that. So she had to like scrape the money together. But this is where she it's just she realizes she falls in love with flying from the very beginning. So said Husky was really Husky. He was huge. And he's to be my instructor.

When I looked over at the airplane, it was a little machine. And then I looked back at Husky. I seriously began to question whether or not it would take the two of us up. No way, I think. But I say nothing. Without a single explanation, we climb into the plane. Husky opens the throttle and off we go. And this is her immediate reaction. Why have I waited so long? I can't believe that I've put this off. My reason for living. Why? For some unknown reason, I catch the feel of the plane right away. I had just scratched the service, but I was less beautician and more flyer already. How many hours do you need to fly to get a license? I ask when we're both up, when we're back on the ground, you got to fly 20 hours and then pass a test. Can you imagine that now? He explains it'll take two or three months. If you're

lucky, uh, I have to do it in three weeks because I don't intend to spend my entire vacation out here. I say, he just laughs. That'll be tough, he says. I don't think so, I say. The next day, I arrived to the airport by 7 a.m. No one was there until 9, and I spent two glorious hours watching the sky. Now, I underline this next sentence twice, because it's just the way she had her mindset for everything. She's talking about the sky. I intended to conquer it. Just 48 hours after I first climbed in the cockpit, Husky climbed out of our trainer airplane and said, okay, it's all yours. I wanted to be the world's greatest pilot. And I didn't think twice about soloing after so little time in the air. Jackie received her pilot's license in 1932 after three weeks of instruction. So at the time, what's even more remarkable is at the time she

passes her pilot test, she can't really read and write. So she has to take the test orally. She eventually learns how to read and write, but a lot of what she was learning. So she went through, you know, very limited instruction and she just says, Hey, I'm going to learn everything I can, but I'm going to learn it through experience. And so she's flying into this really bad storm in Montreal. And she realizes something where she's like, okay, I, I, I'm going to kill myself. If I, the ignorance that I have about the profession that I'm choosing can be deadly. So it says most of us call just call it air.

But I began to learn that there was much more there in the air than ever meets the eyes. My eyes anywhere. She's talking about all the different inclement weather that she can experience, how to deal with turbulence, when to fly, when not to fly, all that kind of stuff. She says it wasn't until I hit that storm on the way back from Montreal that I couldn't understand even remotely why aviation people were always talking about the conquest of the air. Now, before I finish this paragraph, really what she's describing as the conquest of the air of learning to be a good pilot. I would say what she's describing here, it's the same for any complex or difficult endeavor. And there's always going to be these unknown unknowns. So it says, it wasn't until I hit the storm on the way back from Montreal that I could understand even remotely why aviation people were always talking about the conquest of the air.

It was a conquest. Pilots had to fight all kinds of unpredictable and occasionally invisible enemies. So again, unpredictable and occasionally invisible enemies that you're going to have to fight and conquer. So she learns how to fly. She decides, hey, around this time, she keeps going and getting all the different, there's like a bunch of five or six different certifications, and she goes all the way to the top,

learning as much as she can about flying and being a pilot. And then this is where she starts her cosmetic business at the very same time. And we're going to see her, again, what she repeats over and over again, go to the top at the top. So it says by 1934, after I had my commercial pilot's license, I wanted my own beauty business so I could end up at the top. I had started at the bottom and supervising shampoos and permanents was not for me anymore. I wanted no part of other people's products. I was crazy enough to think I could do better. I first set out to develop a greaseless night cream. I was told

that a greaseless lubricant was clearly impossible. I knew they were wrong and I never recognized the word impossible. My most successful cream, the product is called Flowing Velvet, is the result of my stubbornness. we'd put our formulas in plain bottles with type labels and then try them out then once i had a product this is how she focused on distribution then i'd go on the road and in the air to sell the combination of my flying career and cosmetics worked in fact the first two department store accounts that she ever had ordered from me precisely because of the flying angle. I knew several flying enthusiasts in those stores and they honestly wanted to help me to help get me started. And then she starts hiring a bunch of employees and essentially just she had she

employed a bunch of traveling saleswomen to push out her products. My employees were a little like the Avon ladies of today selling products to stores all over the country. This is more about her personality. It's a friend of hers saying, Jackie always felt that there was nobody better than she was. She was equal to anybody and had as much confidence as anybody. That's why she was able to accomplish so much. If somebody else can do it, so can I.

That was her theory. That was her motto. And once she was your friend, she was your friend forever. She would do anything for you. So this is an example of an idea you and I have talked about a few times, that it's really hard to have an unhappy life if you pick the wrong profession and you pick the wrong spouse. So this is on her husband and her profession, and usually an indication of why she had such a unique and relatively happy life. Sometimes I think of the sawmills, the hunger, the work of the earthquakes and hurricanes I lived through, the fires in the sky and the mishaps on the

ground, visiting with queens, presidents and two private audiences with the popes. Then I think of Floyd and how privileged I was to be able to spend 40 years of my life with that man. OK, so I want to fast forward to the beginning of where she founds the Women's Air Force Service Pilot Program. And this came because she was given the opportunity to become the first woman to fly a bomber. So they're flying planes and other military equipment from the United States to Britain. This is during World War II when Britain's getting pounded by Germany. And so she says, that's all I needed to be off and running. Of course, I'd do it. I'd jump at such a chance to be the first woman to fly a

bomber to Great Britain. I was also convinced that our own women pilots might be needed should the time come when our own country needed to defend itself. Women would want to do their part. I'd heard that there were female pilots who were ferrying planes in the English countryside. And this was my chance to see it firsthand. So she goes over to Britain, realizes, hey, and obviously Britain's under an immense amount of strain at the time, and they need every able body they can get. And so they're still not letting women in combat,

but if you need to ferry equipment or troops or other supplies, they'd have women pilots do that. So she goes to Britain, sees that, then takes that idea, and starts the very same thing in the United States. This is right before and programs can be the acronym is WASP in order to prove to U.S. and British officials. So the reason I included this, because as you can imagine, she's chasing after a male dominated profession. This is in the 1940s. She is going to encounter just another obstacle. She's going to encounter an unbelievable amount of sexism. And it's an example of that. In order to prove the

U.S. and British officials that women could handle such heavy aircraft as bombers and thus play a role in wartime flying activities, Jackie Cochran gained the support of the British Minister of Supply and the American General Hap Arnold to allow her to ferry a bomber to England. Because of opposition by male ferry pilots, this is crazy, a compromise had to be worked out. Jackie piloted the bomber across the Atlantic, but had to relinquish the controls to her male co-pilot on takeoff and landing.

So she's got to build this program from the very, like from the ground up, there's nothing in place, she's building it from the very beginning. I'm going to tell you more about that. But I have to read you this quote, because it's more about her personality. But really, there's a million examples in the book describing Jackie this way. And this is one of the pilots, one of the young, because she recruited mainly young women, I think they were around the age she was when she learned how to fly. So you're talking early, maybe mid-20s. And Jackie's about 20 years older at this time. She said she could be ruthless when she wanted to pursue something and she'd go at her goal with an intensity that wouldn't stop. Again, that's just one example. There's a million examples of people describing

her that exact same way. She knew what she wanted and she was not going to give up until she got it. So the very beginning of the WASP program, she's under direct order from General Arnold. She's meeting with him and she says, what do I do now? Let's train 5,000 women is his response. And she goes, that seems like a ridiculously high number. They wind up training, I think, about 1,000 pilots, 1,000 female pilots. So she talks a little about the challenges she had to overcome here. We needed everything, aircraft, instructors, a field, sleeping and eating facilities for the young women. And I had 25,000 applications to go

through. I had three objectives. Number one, to see if women could serve as military pilots. And if so, to form the nucleus of an organization that could be rapidly expanded two to release male pilots for combat she achieves all these objectives by the way three to decrease the air force's total demands on the cream of the manpower pool american industry was producing tens of thousands of airplanes in the fall of 1942 no one could tell whether we had enough young qualified men to fly them if a woman could handle a plane then a man could be released for active duty so the exact same thing that was happening britain is what she's trying to do in america okay that's what uh that's what i thought that's what i'd seen work in england i just ran over my own point there and that's exactly what i would prove in the long

run but it was a very long run so there's a lot of a lot of i'm gonna omit a lot of this because a lot of it's just like high school this is's just, you know, the army's obviously the military is a huge bureaucracy and you have Jackie fighting with all these people about who's in charge, who should get credit. It reminds you like a, like something you'd see in high school, except these are grown adults, which makes it even more pathetic. But this is more about that time and really her, her desire to seek out challenge, to seek seek out challenge and then her refusal to quit, which again, I know I'm repeating, but that's really the story of Jackie's life in a nutshell. The challenge appealed to Jackie. She had been told no. Women couldn't do it. We weren't needed. And that first no made her all the more determined to get the program off the ground. When she made up her mind, Jackie Cochran was like a steel railroad going down the side of a track. She had a great sense of her own worth and she knew she was good. People didn't know what to do with her.

And I think about what Chuck said, Chuck Eyer said in his book. Because think about, you know, the guy's arguably the most famous pilot that's ever lived. He's had a bizarre range of experiences that just so few humans, other humans ever have ever had. Think about all the people he's met in his life. And for him to say, hey, I've never met anybody, man or woman like Jackie, just gives us an indication of how unique this person that we're learning about really, really, really was. So this is more, I'm going to fast forward after the war. She's in Germany. She winds up going into Hitler's bunker, taking a doorknob, which I think she kept for her whole life.

But she's driving through the streets and, you know, Germany's devastated at this point. And this is also, you know, an example of her trying to be a good person. This is her helping a poor mother in Germany right after the war. So it says, A woman with at least five children came to the car as we stopped. Her husband had disappeared in the fighting. She had nothing to eat and nowhere to go. I reached into my purse and could only feel a chocolate bar.

It had started to snow. I was numb. I wanted to do something for her, something more. We drove off and traveled at least a block when I remembered the trunk and what goodies it held. Stop the car, I ordered the driver. He thinks I'm crazy. We've got to go back and find that mother, I say. Why, he wants to know.

Because there's some food tucked away in the trunk of this car, I explained. There was some sugar, cocoa, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, cans of fruit juices, and some big lumps of German bread in the trunk. Now, this is, I'm not just trying to whet your appetite here in case you're hungry. This is crazy. She travels with food her whole life. Do you want to know why? She tells us why right here. I never go anywhere without some food.

I guess it's a hangover from my childhood. She didn't want to starve again. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, this guy insists. Why even try? Because. That's her response. Luck was with us and with her. We found her and the image of her face is etched in my mind's eye.

There she was, standing there on that crowded street, arms full of food, tears streaming down her cheeks, snow falling. I had a good cry too. So around this time, she's also selling a lot of ideas and programs she wants to do in the military. So I'm going to omit all that because I want to give you the punchline. This is her, this is Jackie and the importance of sales. I've always been a very good salesman. My whole life has been built on promotion and sales. And it doesn't matter whether you're selling wash tubs or cosmetics or human ideas. If you can present it well, you can make people believe you. And I know that there's a quote that I always like to repeat over and over again, because I think it's important for

people to learn and to actually believe. I don't know how – I think a very small percentage of the human population actually believes it to be true. But it's that quote by Marc Andreessen that the world is much more malleable than you think. The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion. The world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you will think. That's the actual full quote. And I feel that's, Jackie would believe that, but that's also what she's talking about there is like the ability to convince others and persuade

people around you to get them to believe what you want to believe is the first step in making the world malleable around you. So I talked a little bit about this in the Chuck Eager podcast. He helps her, he breaks the sound, he's the first person ever to break the sound barrier. He helps her become the first woman to ever break the sound barrier. And this is what she says about that experience. Believe me, breaking the sound barrier and being the first woman to do it was the greatest thrill of my life. So she's almost 60 at this time. And this is she's eventually going to have heart troubles, seizures, all this,

her body kind of falls apart a few years after this. And there's, you know, a whole paragraph talking about, you know, this record, she said, you know, speed record for here and course record for here. And I'm going to skip over that because a lot of it's just numbers and course numbers and all that. But really the punchline is she's setting new aviation records when she's almost 60 years old. And the lesson there is, you know, she found something she loved to do and tried to do it until she died. Now she's having all this health trouble. So this is really, really heavy. And this is her writing. It's a lot of knowledge here because now she's a much older lady. This is really on death and love. I'm going to read this is going to be a little bit longer

part. Well, now it seemed I was looking at the end game for myself. Whenever I'd want to get a proper perspective of man's place here on Earth, I'd go out onto a ranch lawn and look at the moons, planets and stars through a rather large size telescope. The moon is so near that light reaches us here on Earth in less than two seconds. I used to look at it closely. Then I'd take a look at one of the distant stars and realize that it might have been extinct long before man here on earth came into being. It takes the light from some of those stars millions of light years to reach us as opposed to the seconds from the moon. When you start to consider the billions upon billions of balls of fire called stars

going on and on in accordance with a pattern, you've got to feel small, but not too small. For then I'd consider how smart we were, how much we knew and how the mind of man had gradually taken ascendancy over so much. I possess a rather simple-minded approach to religion. The universe is so ordered and so divinely planned that there must be something more. It's that simple. It doesn't have to be complicated. I'm satisfied that if my body goes back to nourish and create flowers, then I'm part of an infinite divine plan. It's only human to believe in an afterlife where your

personality is important and you'll continue to do and love the same pleasures you pursue and love here on earth. For a long time after returning from Albuquerque, that's where she was hospitalized and they told her she couldn't fly anymore, I couldn't look up into the sky without bursting into tears. Then I began thinking, this is stupid. And that was that. In fact, I decided that if I couldn't fly in high performance jets any longer, then I'd take up soaring, flying airplanes without engines. My body could stand the pressure of an altitude up to 7,000 feet. So I applied for my permit. I could see no reason why I couldn't soar alone, particularly when I planned to fly in remote areas where I couldn't possibly hurt anyone but myself.

And at least I'd be in the air again. And this is her friend talking about this time in Jackie's life. When the doctors told Jackie that her flying days were over, her whole roof caved in. It hadn't dawned on her until that very moment that the seizures, the heart trouble, and finally the pacemaker would actually put an end to her aviation career. She'd go out at night and look up into the desert sky, counting the stars, wishing she could fly again. But she

couldn't. For once, her dreams were bigger than what she could accomplish. And then I'll close on some of the last writings she did right before she died. The head of the New York Adventurers Club asked me to give a talk that would focus on adventure. It was almost impossible to do. Even back then, before I broke through the sound barrier, had my day in the Starfighter, or saw stars at noon, I couldn't choose then and ended up talking about my childhood, about learning to fly, getting caught between the mountains in a plane,

flying that bomber to Britain. I have found adventure in flying, in world travel, in business, and even close at hand. Adventure is a state of mind and spirit. It comes with faith, for with complete faith, there is no fear of what faces you in life or death. I ended up living a life of continuous adventure. I think it was Peter Pan who said, to die will be an awfully big adventure. Jackie never lost sight of her main objectives, living the good life and always aiming for the very top in any endeavor.

Nor did she even begin to doubt that if she tried hard enough, and fought hard enough, and maneuvered hard enough, she would not only achieve what she most wanted, but she could even affect the course of history, and have one hell of a lot of fun doing it. And indeed she did. As Chuck Eager said, sometimes even Jackie Cochran couldn't believe what she had accomplished. And that's where I'll leave it. To get the full story, read the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in your show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That's 167 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.