If you lay down a proper business plan, you can have the attention of the world’s top executives — even if you’re 10 years old.
10-year-old Alex Jacquot has gotten a response from the CEO of Qantas after he meticulously detailed his plans to start his own airline in a hilarious letter. “Dear Mr. Alan Joyce, I’m Alex Jacquot, a 10-year-old boy (Please take me seriously), and I want to start an airline,” Jacquot had said.
Jacquot then spoke about his plans to start his own airline. “I have already started some stuff like what type of planes I’ll need, flight numbers, catering and more,” he said, talking about his market research. He’d also assembled a team. “I’m the CEO of the airline..I’ve also hired a CFO, a Head of IT, a head of Maintenance, a Head of On-board services, and a Head of Legal as well, along with my friend Wolf, who’s Vice-CEO,” he said.
He then spoke of his reasons to start up — his school holidays. “Seeing as it’s the school holidays, I have more time to work,” he said. And he’d also identified a problem to solve. “For Sydney/Melbourne to London flights, seeing as it is a 25-hour flight, we are having a lot of trouble thinking about sleep. Do you have any advice,” he asked.
Now Qantas CEO Alan Joyce presumably spends most of his day running his airline which has 26,000 employees and made $16 billion in revenue last year, but he took time out to respond. “Dear Mr. Jacquot, Thank you for letting me know about your new airline. I had heard rumours of another entrant in the market,” he playfully said.
Joyce then responds to the letter in all earnestness. “First, I’m..not typically in the business of giving advice to my competitors. Your newly-appointed Head of Legal might have something to say about it too,” he began. “But I’m going to make an exception on this occasion, because I too was once a young boy who was so curious about flight and its possibilities.”
He then responded to Jacquot’s questions — the most important thing to keep in mind while running an airline was the safety and comfort of passengers, and he even talked about how they were designing cabins so that passengers could comfortably sleep on long flights. But he’d saved the best for last — he then invited Jacquot for a meeting, and a tour of Qantas’ operations center.
It’s a better result than most entrepreneurs have received with their business plans — not only did Jacquot get the attention of a top executive, he also got invited for a meeting. And while the whole response was in jest, it does show that it is possible to connect with some of the biggest names in business — all you have to do, at times, is just ask.