Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
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.
00:26:59 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
[00:26:59] S1: Right. [00:26:59] S0: And again, we... I feel like, you know, it's sort of embedded in our brains that that's okay. But when you see how much other cultures don't necessarily walk that so naturally, you realize that we need more people on this planet having that American ambition in them. And we need the American entrepreneurs swinging harder on behalf of the whole planet. [00:27:22] S1: Well, and and also encouraging innovation elsewhere. Think. Yes. It's it's... For sure, I think innovation and risk taking is part of the culture and part of the DNA of The United States. But I also think it's good to encourage that evolution, which has happened. One of the things that happened from you being a mentor and others is incubators and accelerators got created in places you wouldn't ever have imagined. And, you know, so it is, to me, something that has to be nurtured and promoted as much as it is something just to talk about.
00:27:22 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
[00:27:22] S1: Well, and and also encouraging innovation elsewhere. Think. Yes. It's it's... For sure, I think innovation and risk taking is part of the culture and part of the DNA of The United States. But I also think it's good to encourage that evolution, which has happened. One of the things that happened from you being a mentor and others is incubators and accelerators got created in places you wouldn't ever have imagined. And, you know, so it is, to me, something that has to be nurtured and promoted as much as it is something just to talk about. [00:28:03] S0: I remember... And again, it was... I was probably... Had dropped out of Harvard Business School. Maybe I was in my twenties. And I heard Bill Clinton speak at something, and he was talking about how one of the things he wished for the planet was that there were more people putting their hand up to take personal, emotional risk as entrepreneurs to solve more of the problems. And it had never dawned on me. I remember as a young person really leaving this talk that he gave and thinking to myself, I just assumed there were billions of people on the planet waking up every day wanting to do that. And when you really start to think about the problems, it's like forget Elon Musk's politics, You appreciate people that work twenty hours a day on behalf of society to try to do hard things. And I remember being really proud that I was so grateful I was born here. [00:29:03] S1: Yes. I think we're both very lucky to be born in this country.
00:29:03 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
[00:29:03] S1: Yes. I think we're both very lucky to be born in this country. [00:29:07] S0: Yeah. So quick flag. When you were in the White House, they called everything that you were doing the Innovation Agency, which is pretty cool. Let's be honest. That's pretty rad. Because you broke through in one hundred years, there wasn't enough data and infrastructure to think about business for this country. And you really went in and kinda took your gloves off as an entrepreneur that you are. And you were trying to innovate inside the walls of the White House. And my question is, do you like walk around with your cup of coffee and be like, I work in the White House? Like, I mean, that's pretty cool. [00:29:39] S1: I remember the first time But give me [00:29:41] S0: a story of, like, you
00:29:43 · Penny Pritzker
[00:29:43] S1: So as a secretary, you're dropped off at the White House in the West Wing. You're dropped off in the West Wing, and there's a door you walk in. And I just walked in all by myself, and I walked past the guard. And I walked up the stairs, and I watched Pax another guard. And then I was walking down the colonnade, which, you know, that famous colonnade you've seen press. And I was going over to the East Wing for a meeting that was occurring there. And no one's escorting me, and no one's telling me. And and I'm thinking to myself, oh my god. And I walked by the, you know, the fountain that's on the grounds of the White House, and I said, and I'm looking at the Washington Memorial. And I said to myself, oh my god, I work here. And then I felt this enormous weight in the sense of the responsibility to bring your best self and bring everything you've ever learned in your life to the job. And there were so many instances where I was studying hard and work. I felt like I was back in college and graduate school, you know, working so hard to, you know, be knowledgeable enough. And, you know, it's a real privilege to have those positions, but there's a real responsibility that goes with it. And one of the nice things that is possible is when you reach out to people like you and say, I need help. Would you brief me? Would you teach me? Would you help me? What are your perspectives? You could reach out to expertise all over our country. And we did a lot of that. I did that constantly for every country that I worked with and for each of the topics and really listened hard to what the challenges were. So innovation, I was talking with someone about innovation today and the relationship between innovation and listening to the customer. And to me as secretary of commerce, the customer was the American business community. Yep. And so what I did... The first thing I did was when I got there was also... We took the country. We divided it into eight different sections. And I went to each of those, you know, geographies, and I met with large business leaders and small business leaders and, you know, leaders in the community, etcetera, and tried to understand what are the most important things you think are getting in the way of your building your enterprise more and creating more jobs.