Patriots

And how do you think that experience and your newfound respect for all the civil servants out there, how will that inform you in your next role, whatever you choose to do? How will that inform you as a leader the next time around?

You know, I always jump in water over my head. I have been, it's probably every five to six years, I think my time in government was probably like equivalent to seven years in the private sector, but you always learn more so it's kind of a cumulative effect. I learned a tremendous amount in the government. I really wish I would have had that experience early on in my career. From a business perspective, there's so many ways to be able to leverage all the help the government can provide, and I really saw a lot of that. So one of my missions is to educate my fellow CEOs and business leaders on all the things the United States Government can do for you.

Such as? Can you give some examples?

Such as when you're taking a company or a category overseas, so what I always used to do is you go on a listening trip, when you're going to Japan, you're going to Germany, and maybe it's one, maybe it's two weeks, and you want to meet with potential customers, potential investors, distributors, partners, people you want to hire, even your competitors. It also was really interesting for me to see that when private sector leaders talk to the government how serious the government takes that. And you know, one of the things that I told my fellow State Department, folks who haven't spent time in the private sector, I said, Hey, you know, these CEOs, they want to be like you guys. They want to serve their country for whatever reason they may never get that chance. Maybe they didn't serve in the military or Peace Corps or something like that. But these folks are patriotic. And so you should not be afraid to ask them a favor. And as long as it doesn't breach their fiduciary duty, this is a way they can serve their country. And during the pandemic, we did that over and over and over again, because one of the big things I was responsible for was the expatriation of American citizens when the pandemic hit. We expatriated 100,000 citizens in over 100 countries, the biggest in history. And this is when commercial aircraft wasn't flying. So I'm calling the CEO of United American Delta and I'm like, you know, I go, "By the way, thank you so much for doing this." They go, "Oh, this is our duty. We thank you."