Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:18:19 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
[00:18:19] S1: Well, I think there are two things that are important. First is to build a business that succeeds means you're filling some need that society has. Yep. Businesses don't endure if society doesn't need them. Doesn't matter how much effort you put into it. I think the other part that I learned, and I learned this as a young person, I watched my parents, you know, help the bellman become ultimately the general manager of a hotel, if you will, or I watched this... Them helping people grow. And I and I really felt the humanity of that. I felt the... Boy, if you can create a new entity that employs people and gives people purpose and they feel belonging and the culture is healthy, we've all been seeing unhealthy cultures, but you can create a healthy culture where people feel respected and trusted. What's wrong with that? That feels noble to me. [00:19:18] S0: You and I also bonded over the fact that the innovation economy, the innovation part sector startups, whatever you wanna call them, those are often the part of the economy where you go from zero jobs to 5,000, 10,000. When a company grows dramatically overnight and invents a lot of jobs, that's also pretty noble, right? [00:19:39] S1: That's what I mean. You're creating opportunity for
00:19:39 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
[00:19:39] S1: That's what I mean. You're creating opportunity for [00:19:42] S0: creating And you're absolutely right, it is the humanity of helping people get to the top, and pulling people along with the business. But then also just the fact that you're solving real problems for society, and creating net new jobs, all while creating a lot of value. It's... It it... There's a lot of alignment. [00:20:00] S1: It feels good.
00:20:00 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
[00:20:00] S1: It feels good. [00:20:00] S0: It feels good. It feels really good. So just to quickly name some of them, Penny. You've co founded more than seven companies. V Senior Living, which is basically your, like, an early breakout to the concept of senior living in general. The Parking Spot, which we've all seen those around the airports. Artemis, obviously an incredible real estate, inspired with me here. And and I won't name them all. And then you went in to become The US Secretary of Commerce for the country. And one thing I'm really proud of, and it's pretty corny, but when you were there, you're really known as the innovation leader and it's like bringing incredible innovation to the White House. And I mean, the way we met was because you... I remember getting an email from President Obama, which I thought like my husband was punking me. And it was like, would you become an ambassador to the country with... On behalf of Penny Pritzker and US Secretary of Commerce? And I truly was like, this is not real. And then quickly, was like, is this real? Oh my god. I'm... Wow. But you were just innovating. You were thinking outside the box. You guys were doing things, not following normal playbooks, and really trying to think about being in the White House and using the reach of the the incredible love of America differently. Say more about that.
00:21:19 · Penny Pritzker
[00:21:19] S1: Well, first of all, one of the great honors of my lifetime is to serve our country. And I... If one ever has the opportunity, I highly encourage people to do it. You know, first of all, I think I didn't really know what the rules were in the sense of, oh, well, this is the way it was always done. So I treated it like it was a business, and I just brought my entrepreneurial thinking to the table. And it forces you in government, you know, because you're moving from thing... Different topic to topic. You have to be agile, but you also have to be creative because there's always problems. Right? You're not there to work on things that are working smoothly. You're working on things that aren't working. And one of the things that President Obama was interested in, he gave a speech in 2009 about... In Cairo about one of the challenges in in countries is there isn't enough job creation or entrepreneur... There isn't a capital available for entrepreneurs to succeed. And so he wanted to really promote entrepreneurship in The United States and around the world, and he felt that that might be a solution to some of the ills and and the fact that there were a lot of people who just didn't have opportunity. And so that was the concept. What are you gonna... You know, come up with something. And so now you're you're sitting there, and on a white sheet of paper, it's like, well, let's create presidents, ambassadors for global entrepreneurship, which you were one. And that's how we met is was we selected you among one of 20 people, and we asked you basically, would you... And then we made it up. It was not like there was a playbook. We made it up, and we said, we would ask you as a, you know, premier entrepreneur in our country, agree to once a year go on a trip with either the president or the vice president or the secretary of commerce or the secretary of state and promote entrepreneurship. And then we also asked you each to have some kind of philanthropic activity around entrepreneurship. So set an example. Be an example. The way you're an example every day to everybody here and with our founders, please do it on behalf of the country. So you and I are in Morocco, which is... We were at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, and we... You know, which was another thing that was created. It didn't exist, But I think it...
00:23:52 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
That summit had, like, 6,000 entrepreneurs [00:23:54] S0: It from the region was incredible. [00:23:56] S1: Who were all creating things. And you realized that the president was right in the sense that most people in many countries don't know what entrepreneurship is or their families are... Like, I met a young man. He said to me he had had a company that he had created that had $70,000,000 of revenue. And I said to him, what does your family think about this? And he said, don't tell my mother. And I said, what do mean don't tell your mother? And he said, my mother thinks I should be working for an accounting firm or a law firm because it's a safe and steady job. But I created this company, and he was obviously wildly successful. Wildly successful. Much more so than he was... Would have been as a lawyer or an accountant. But it was... But it gave me insight into the culture, which is do something safe as opposed to take a risk. And I think we take for granted in this country the fact that we honor risk and we allow for failure. In other words, you don't go to jail if you fail building a business. There are places you go to jail if you fail or if you, you know, are out over your skis in this world. So this idea of promoting entrepreneurship, it's not a law. It's... But it's an idea that is important.
00:25:17 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:25:17] S0: I wanna touch on this because I... It's something that you and I have talked a lot about, and and we kind of term it here, inspired together, American ambition. And And it's something I know we are both pretty crazily passionate about, which when you get outside of the walls of The United States and really learn a lot about many, many other cultures, you quickly realize we almost take for granted how much we root here in America for people trying hard scary things. We root for people. It is part of our DNA. It is such a deep part of the fabric of this country, which is you show up and say, I'm gonna go build something. People say, cool. And that is a subset of how we think about building and innovation. And it is so truly a part of our fabric. Doesn't matter what your political position is. All parts of America root for people doing hard, exciting, scary things. And when you leave the walls of this country, you realize, to your exact point, that is so not necessarily... I mean, I I know when I younger, was I thought that that was sort of a ubiquitous thing. Thought every culture does it. When you really see it firsthand, and I remember in Morocco with you seeing it firsthand, how that is not normal outside in many other countries. And then you realize it is so important that we in America keep innovating, because it's not like every part of this globe is innovating all the time. There are not enough innovators. And in fact, one of the things that we are truly to our bones is leaders of the planet, showing people how to do scary things and take risk. And if you fail, you get back up and you try again.