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Andrew Liveris · The David Rubenstein Show

0:03
Speaker 1: In the past several decades, Andrew Livers has been one
0:05
Speaker 1: of the most important figures in American business. For fourteen years,
0:08
Speaker 1: he served as a CEO of Dow, transforming that company
0:11
Speaker 1: from a chemical manufacturing company to one led by science
0:15
Speaker 1: and innovation. Currently, Andrew Livers is involved in a number
0:18
Speaker 1: of business endeavors, including serving as chairman of Lucid Motors
0:22
Speaker 1: in e V startup company. He also serves as an
0:24
Speaker 1: advisor of the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. I sat down
0:27
Speaker 1: with Andrew recently in Lucid showroom in New York to
0:30
Speaker 1: discuss his accomplishments and his future ambitions. So I've interviewed
0:34
Speaker 1: many business people on the show, but very rarely have
0:37
Speaker 1: I interviewed anybody who has any interest in so many
0:39
Speaker 1: different continents. So you're doing something in Saudi Arabia, we'll
0:43
Speaker 1: talk about that. You're involved in things in Europe, in Australia,
0:47
Speaker 1: your native Australia. You are now the head of the
0:49
Speaker 1: Olympic Committee. Is that right for the next Olympics in
0:52
Speaker 1: Australia Brisbane Olympics. They won the bid last year and
0:56
Speaker 1: on the president of that to put it in place,
0:59
Speaker 1: and you know it's ten years, so that's an exciting project.
1:04
Speaker 1: In the United States, you were for quite some time,
1:07
Speaker 1: more thin a decade the CEO of Dowd Alchemical. Initially
1:10
Speaker 1: that we're called Dow and you merged it with DuPont
1:13
Speaker 1: before you step down. Isn't right, correct? So let's go
1:16
Speaker 1: back to your beginning. You grew up in Australia. How
1:20
Speaker 1: did you manage to get to Dow and to the
1:22
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, the the gene that got me to
1:27
Speaker 1: have wonder lust was because I grew up in a
1:29
Speaker 1: little multicultural town in northern Australia called Darwin. Lots of Asians,
1:34
Speaker 1: lots of Indigenous people, First Nations people, lots of immigrants
1:38
Speaker 1: like Greeks that came from these very poor areas. So
1:41
Speaker 1: I had this desire to go see where they were
1:45
Speaker 1: from and understand the places north of US, Indonesia, China, Asia,
1:50
Speaker 1: and as a whole, the American into into you know,
1:54
Speaker 1: if you like. Uh knowledge that I got was listening
1:58
Speaker 1: over the radio to know things like the jfk assassination
2:02
Speaker 1: and Man on the Moon, and you know, we didn't
2:05
Speaker 1: have TV where I grew up, so I was just
2:07
Speaker 1: fascinated by America. And what had offered the world. So
2:10
Speaker 1: that combination got me recruited out of campus. I didn't
2:14
Speaker 1: join a British company. I didn't join an Australian company.
2:17
Speaker 1: The companies that came by that were American were the
2:19
Speaker 1: ones that I was intrigued by, and Dow had the
2:22
Speaker 1: best recruiting line of them all for one year old,
2:25
Speaker 1: join us and we'll show you the world. So that
2:27
Speaker 1: combination of where I grew up, what I was exposed to,
2:30
Speaker 1: and the Dow recruiting line. Because your family a wealthy family,
2:34
Speaker 1: no blue collars, we would call them immigrants. My father
2:39
Speaker 1: we lost our grandparents. He lost his parents and so
2:43
Speaker 1: he raised his two younger brothers. When he was twelve,
2:45
Speaker 1: he became an apprentice and a carpenter, and he and
2:48
Speaker 1: his two brothers built a small fledging building business in
2:52
Speaker 1: Darwin and Um. I was the first to go to
2:54
Speaker 1: university in my family. Grant with university and you go
2:57
Speaker 1: to work at Dow and in Hong Kong. Initially ull
3:00
Speaker 1: they sent me down to a very cold part of
3:03
Speaker 1: Australia called Melvine, which happened to have a lot of
3:05
Speaker 1: Greek people. I got cold redefined when I went to Michigan,
3:09
Speaker 1: but I thought it was cold at the time they went.
3:12
Speaker 1: I went there for six months and there was an
3:14
Speaker 1: accident in a factory in Hong Kong and they sent
3:17
Speaker 1: four Australian engineers. I was wanted them to go work
3:20
Speaker 1: to actually help the locals adjust to operating a complex
3:23
Speaker 1: chemical environment. And so now is a very famous chemical
3:27
Speaker 1: company was for quite some time. And how do you
3:30
Speaker 1: go from Hong Kong with this Australian accent to an
3:34
Speaker 1: American company in the middle of the United States. The
3:36
Speaker 1: visionaries that ran down in the sixties that led to
3:39
Speaker 1: my recruitment in the seventies had this view that to
3:43
Speaker 1: go international yet to hire local well before it was vogue,
3:47
Speaker 1: and they went around the world looking for people who
3:49
Speaker 1: were willing to go to these far flung locations. Hong
3:53
Speaker 1: Kong at that time wasn't a sophisticated city that it
3:56
Speaker 1: is today. And basically, you know what they did was
4:00
Speaker 1: they localized and grew talent locally, but kept a playbook.
4:05
Speaker 1: So I was spotted early by the then Dow leaders
4:09
Speaker 1: and they started to move me around to test me
4:11
Speaker 1: in different places, mostly in Asia and then eventually to
4:15
Speaker 1: the U s where you're trained as an engineer. What
4:17
Speaker 1: was your skill set? Chemical engineering? Which you know, when
4:21
Speaker 1: I look at today's world and I think about chemical engineering,
4:24
Speaker 1: the word chemical sort of sort of puts you into
4:27
Speaker 1: a different place with the thought, it's really problem solving engineering.
4:31
Speaker 1: And I learned how to be a problem solver about
4:33
Speaker 1: learning chemical engineering. So you eventually moved to now headquarters
4:36
Speaker 1: where is? It's in Michigan? Right? But what what small city? Is?
4:40
Speaker 1: A little town called Midland where the founder founded the
4:42
Speaker 1: company and we're still headquartered there, right, So you moved there?
4:46
Speaker 1: And for how many years were you the CEO? So
4:49
Speaker 1: just shire fifteen? Of course the last couple were in
4:53
Speaker 1: the merged entity, which my successor. Then we've set up
4:58
Speaker 1: the d merger and we can talk about that if
5:00
Speaker 1: you like, But certainly the fifteen years included the last
5:03
Speaker 1: two as executive chairman of the DuPont entity. But I
5:08
Speaker 1: led us into the merger and the rationale behind that
5:13
Speaker 1: was a ten year remake. We put a strategy in
5:15
Speaker 1: place at oh five uh, and we executed over ten
5:19
Speaker 1: years to move us back to an innovation centric company.
5:23
Speaker 1: We had lost our way, we had commoditized, we had
5:27
Speaker 1: rested on the laurels of all our previous inventions. And
5:30
Speaker 1: by the time the nineties and the os came around,
5:32
Speaker 1: we were really our innovation chest was bare, our cupboard
5:36
Speaker 1: was bare. So we reconstitute an innovation in the company
5:40
Speaker 1: by changing the portfolio. So you took down chemical, you
5:44
Speaker 1: renamed it Dow at one point, took the chemical out
5:47
Speaker 1: of it, and then you merged it with du Pont,
5:49
Speaker 1: and then you split the company into three different companies.
5:51
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yes? So too amazing American iconic companies.
5:56
Speaker 1: Three hundred so years of corporatetory between them. Um DuPont
6:01
Speaker 1: founded on explosives, Dal founded on you know, chlorine. Um.
6:05
Speaker 1: You think about the corporate history and both of those
6:08
Speaker 1: the portfolios they both had assembled by the time we
6:11
Speaker 1: hit this century were across a range of different applications
6:16
Speaker 1: and there were many things, too many markets. So what
6:19
Speaker 1: the premise of the case was, working with their green
6:21
Speaker 1: on the DuPont side, as we put the two together
6:24
Speaker 1: and separate them into more pure plays, so Dow Materials,
6:29
Speaker 1: the Agg company agricultural products, and of course the DuPont Company,
6:34
Speaker 1: the new DuPont Company on specialty chemicals and plastics. And
6:37
Speaker 1: you step Down as CEO of Down a number of
6:39
Speaker 1: years ago. Did your wife's say, when you're done being
6:42
Speaker 1: the CEO is the time you've spent more time with
6:44
Speaker 1: me and stay at home and now you're running around
6:46
Speaker 1: the world. So was she disappointed or she happy to
6:48
Speaker 1: have you out of the house there? Did she expect
6:50
Speaker 1: me to retire? No? She knew me better. The story
6:55
Speaker 1: on the Olympics is a classic. That call came I
6:58
Speaker 1: don't know two months ago on a Saturday, We're in
7:01
Speaker 1: Sydney in our living room, I got a call from
7:04
Speaker 1: the Premier of the State of Queensland saying we'd like
7:07
Speaker 1: to offer you the presidency of the Olympics. I said,
7:10
Speaker 1: excuse me, And you know I was aware of Brisbane
7:13
Speaker 1: at one so I didn't embarrass myself. But um, I said,
7:17
Speaker 1: can I get back to you. Can you tell me
7:18
Speaker 1: a little more and I'll get back to you. Yeah,
7:21
Speaker 1: but we want to announce it on Monday. Stop. Okay.
7:25
Speaker 1: So anyway, my wife said, who's that? And I told
7:28
Speaker 1: her and she said, looked to me in the face
7:30
Speaker 1: and said you've got to take it. And I said,
7:34
Speaker 1: you know how busy I am? Right? And she said,
7:37
Speaker 1: I know how busy you are, but you've got to
7:38
Speaker 1: take it because you're the right person to get it done.
7:41
Speaker 1: And if it means you've got to drop some things,
7:43
Speaker 1: drop some things, but take it. That's the type of
7:45
Speaker 1: partner I have. How did you wind up to be
7:47
Speaker 1: the chairman of an automobile company when you hadn't really
7:49
Speaker 1: been in that industry. I think the manufacturing thematic that
7:54
Speaker 1: I had throughout my whole career, wrote a book on it,
7:57
Speaker 1: making it America UH made me an attractive Canada to
8:01
Speaker 1: a whole host of different companies around the world, whether
8:04
Speaker 1: it be board or advisory. Um. Certainly the lucid experience
8:09
Speaker 1: was something I didn't predict, but it came really through
8:12
Speaker 1: my association with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who with
8:15
Speaker 1: a major investor in l Tiva, the predecessor lucid Um.
8:20
Speaker 1: I got asked by the p a F to come
8:22
Speaker 1: in and help rebuild the company and create what you
8:25
Speaker 1: see here, which is a full fledged EV company. First
8:29
Speaker 1: greenfield site e VS Tesla did a modified site right,
8:34
Speaker 1: so we built a greenfield site and it's up and
8:36
Speaker 1: running right now. So manufacturing was a big piece of
8:38
Speaker 1: my expertise that it was attractive to joining the lucid experience.
8:43
Speaker 1: So Saudi A Ramco is now the most valuable company
8:46
Speaker 1: in the world. Is that right? Yes? And your involvement
8:50
Speaker 1: is that you're on the board of it. Yes. And
8:52
Speaker 1: you see energy prices or oil prices coming down at
8:55
Speaker 1: any time in the near future, you think they're going
8:56
Speaker 1: to be over hundred dollars a powerful quite some time.
8:59
Speaker 1: Look commodity markets, as you must know well known your
9:03
Speaker 1: storied career, David, impossible to give you an answer other
9:06
Speaker 1: than you know, the most important dynamic of them all
9:09
Speaker 1: is climate change and CEO two emissions and how can
9:12
Speaker 1: we make oil and gas for that? A man of
9:16
Speaker 1: cold before, But I think coal is destined to be
9:18
Speaker 1: phased out. But all in gas and our addiction to
9:21
Speaker 1: it and the transition that is needed to get c
9:24
Speaker 1: O two out of the air will eventually damp and
9:27
Speaker 1: demand EVS, which I'm sure we'll talk about soon. EVS alone,
9:31
Speaker 1: electrification of the transportation market will see a dampening of demand,
9:36
Speaker 1: But it's impossible to predict in a short term. How
9:38
Speaker 1: do you predict a war Russia Ukraine and the effect
9:42
Speaker 1: that it had on commodity prices? So we do. We
9:44
Speaker 1: will go through periods, a zigzagged line, if you like,
9:48
Speaker 1: a pricing for some years to come. And I can't
9:51
Speaker 1: tell you whether it's going to be high or low.
9:52
Speaker 1: No one can. But Sara Arabia, which has an enormous
9:55
Speaker 1: amount of oil, seems to be interested in finding ways
9:58
Speaker 1: to do things that are not related to the oil.
10:00
Speaker 1: Electric vehicles is one of them. I guess that right. Yeah.
10:03
Speaker 1: Diversification the vision that was put in place and you're
10:07
Speaker 1: you're quite familiar with by His Highness the ground prints
10:11
Speaker 1: has has a big piece of it to diversify away
10:14
Speaker 1: from oil and to go into other businesses and other
10:18
Speaker 1: activities that might be related, so chemicals and plastics and
10:22
Speaker 1: downstream creating a circular carbon economy hydrogen and going to
10:27
Speaker 1: the green economy solar renewables, his general wind, nuclear power.
10:32
Speaker 1: This diversification on the energy mix is a big part
10:35
Speaker 1: of the vision and that's what Ramco and others in
10:39
Speaker 1: the Kingdom are driving. Let's talk about Lucid for a moment.
10:41
Speaker 1: Here the chairman of Lucid and it's an electric vehicle company.
10:45
Speaker 1: Um Tesla seems to be so far ahead of everybody else.
10:48
Speaker 1: How do you compete with Tessa when they have such
10:50
Speaker 1: a large share of that market. This is a technology business.
10:54
Speaker 1: So in your earlier question about how did I get involved,
10:57
Speaker 1: I said manufacturing. Well, manufacturing is an interesting word being
11:01
Speaker 1: used for a couple hundred years in humanity, as we
11:04
Speaker 1: obviously went up the technology ladder. Humans are inventive and
11:08
Speaker 1: innovative because of technology advantages. Lucid offers a technology advantage
11:12
Speaker 1: and beats everyone right now and it's being recognized for it. Firstly,
11:16
Speaker 1: is the distance we can travel without needing, you know,
11:19
Speaker 1: to charge, and that's over five miles ep a certified.
11:22
Speaker 1: Second is our charging time. We can actually get a
11:25
Speaker 1: recharge of up to three miles in twenty two minutes.
11:29
Speaker 1: That's technology. Those two topics are all about technology. The
11:33
Speaker 1: car and it's surrounds is esthetically beautiful, it drives fantastically.
11:40
Speaker 1: It's absolutely totally a luxury car and clearly in experience
11:44
Speaker 1: and the software that supports it is also technology. So
11:47
Speaker 1: what we've been doing at Lucid is homing in on
11:50
Speaker 1: the technology side of differentiation. Is there room for a
11:54
Speaker 1: Tesla or a Lucid and a bunch of others? Of course,
11:57
Speaker 1: I mean we are going to see e v s
11:59
Speaker 1: as the prim remotor transportation in our lifetime. Where does
12:03
Speaker 1: Lucid manufacturers cars Arizona, Cassa Grande Arizona just outside of Phoenix.
12:09
Speaker 1: And if I wanted to go buy one, where do
12:11
Speaker 1: I go buy one? You buy him online or you
12:13
Speaker 1: come the showroom like this and they cost about five
12:17
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a piece or something like that. You are
12:21
Speaker 1: in the right place to buy one. We can maybe
12:23
Speaker 1: hopefully solve your one as you leave the We have
12:26
Speaker 1: a retail strategy. We go directly retail and service centers
12:31
Speaker 1: around the country. We're opening up retail centers as we
12:35
Speaker 1: speak in Europe, but we have them in the United States.
12:38
Speaker 1: And this is an example of one. And know the
12:41
Speaker 1: price point is not five thousand dollars. We have a
12:44
Speaker 1: price point at the high end, luxury end. Our competition
12:47
Speaker 1: is Porsche BMW out You're trying to be an electric
12:51
Speaker 1: vehicle for high end car at this point in time.
12:54
Speaker 1: That's our strategy. We've got the Dream, the Grand Touring,
12:57
Speaker 1: We've got the Air and then the SHUV the gravity.
13:01
Speaker 1: These price points north of a hundred thousand dollars with
13:05
Speaker 1: the Dream at about one seventy thousand. But clearly that's
13:09
Speaker 1: the luxury and the mass market end where General Motors
13:13
Speaker 1: and Ford and others are, you know, pointing themselves. Is
13:15
Speaker 1: obviously the big opportunity will eventually get there, but we've
13:19
Speaker 1: made no announcements, and you have one of these corners
13:22
Speaker 1: I do. I was an early buyer at full price.
13:25
Speaker 1: I felt it was important that I demonstrate my support
13:28
Speaker 1: for the team. I'll never forget the the amazing drive
13:33
Speaker 1: I had in it. Have it down in Florida where
13:36
Speaker 1: my residences. I drove it, drove to Palm Beach and
13:40
Speaker 1: drove around there, and every time I stopped, I had
13:43
Speaker 1: people looking at me, and I knew it wasn't me.
13:46
Speaker 1: It was clearly the car. And then I parked it,
13:49
Speaker 1: and I will kid you not, it was like a
13:51
Speaker 1: mob scene around me. It was one of the I
13:53
Speaker 1: think it was the second car in Florida, so clearly
13:56
Speaker 1: had not been seen. I valet parked it at this
13:59
Speaker 1: hotel where I was in dinner, and the gentleman wanted
14:03
Speaker 1: to compete with the other gentleman to valet park that
14:05
Speaker 1: can I drive it? Can I drive it? And as
14:07
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, maybe I should puck it myself,
14:09
Speaker 1: and so it's it's it's an attractive car and it
14:13
Speaker 1: really drives supremely. Well, let's talk about the roads on
14:16
Speaker 1: which these cars drive. So you've been an advisor at
14:18
Speaker 1: the president United States on infrastructure and manufacturing. But on infrastructure,
14:22
Speaker 1: you've been involved with the legislation that was pay used
14:24
Speaker 1: not long ago. Why is the United States infrastructure so
14:28
Speaker 1: terrible compared to so many other wealthy countries. Well, you know,
14:32
Speaker 1: I have been around US politics like you for a
14:35
Speaker 1: couple of decades and have served a variety of presidents
14:39
Speaker 1: from the different parties, and and the attitude in the
14:43
Speaker 1: United States is obviously to keep taxes low and keep
14:46
Speaker 1: the public spend under control. And the word control is interesting,
14:51
Speaker 1: but that stops forward thinking in terms of planning, and
14:54
Speaker 1: therefore the short termism around our fiscal policies has heard us.
14:59
Speaker 1: I mean, in essence, infrastructure is a long term return
15:02
Speaker 1: and and to get a long term return, putting it
15:04
Speaker 1: into private hands is one way of doing it. But
15:07
Speaker 1: really the public side of life has to be willing
15:11
Speaker 1: to blew the forward spend, the forward spent on airports
15:14
Speaker 1: and roads and e V charging stations has to come
15:18
Speaker 1: from the public domain. Now, raising taxes to spend money
15:22
Speaker 1: on infrastructure means you've got to trust the people doing
15:25
Speaker 1: the spending. And I think the public private model is
15:28
Speaker 1: the way to go there, which is actually create an
15:30
Speaker 1: infrastructure bank that the US public company owned or public
15:36
Speaker 1: sector owned, that has private sector matching funds. I think
15:40
Speaker 1: that sort of breakthrough has yet to occur in the
15:42
Speaker 1: United States. So where we go is tax and spent,
15:45
Speaker 1: which unfortunately one side of the aisle disagrees with. So
15:48
Speaker 1: what is it that you look back on your career
15:50
Speaker 1: with and say, this is what I'm most proud of
15:52
Speaker 1: having done. As you know the old adage, right, who's
15:55
Speaker 1: at your bedside in that final gasp, you know it's
15:57
Speaker 1: it's your close family and and and you know, obviously
16:01
Speaker 1: I'm very blessed that way, But the wider ecosystem. Last
16:05
Speaker 1: night I did a one hour interview of Irvan Kristner,
16:08
Speaker 1: the CEO of IBM to my Academy of Credit, an
16:11
Speaker 1: academy and my alma matter. Uh and it's to teach
16:17
Speaker 1: year olds. And lately we've been introducing postgrads leadership in
16:20
Speaker 1: the modern century. But do you think business leaders have
16:23
Speaker 1: an obligation to do more than just make profits for
16:26
Speaker 1: their shareholders. Do you think they should be more socially responsible,
16:30
Speaker 1: more worried about e s G. Than years ago? The
16:33
Speaker 1: rules are changing, what should be the new rules? Who
16:37
Speaker 1: knows who's working on them? Is a just government? No?
16:42
Speaker 1: Is it just business? No NGOs, no citizens? Yes, but
16:48
Speaker 1: many of them don't know how to direct their their inputs.
16:51
Speaker 1: So the collective needs to get together. How problem is
16:56
Speaker 1: top down isn't working. Top down institute sans are not
17:01
Speaker 1: winning over the people they are affecting. So bottom up
17:04
Speaker 1: needs to occur and meets top down in some way.
17:08
Speaker 1: Which is what? Which is awareness groups, community sessions, town halls,
17:14
Speaker 1: knowing what your employees think, being available to them, ubiquitously
17:19
Speaker 1: communicating to get the sentiment. What's the sentiment? The sentiment
17:24
Speaker 1: is what's going on out there in terms of inequality,
17:27
Speaker 1: lack of inclusion, this notion on environmental responsibility, digitalization, and privacy,
17:33
Speaker 1: the issues of our time need to be integrated into
17:36
Speaker 1: your strategy. Now, your first book was about manufacturing and
17:40
Speaker 1: manufacturing of something in the United States has thought by
17:43
Speaker 1: many people not to be as good at as we
17:45
Speaker 1: were forty fifty years ago. Is that fair or not
17:48
Speaker 1: that that's the perception at least, Yes, that's fair, and
17:51
Speaker 1: I addressed it in the book because we think smokestacks
17:54
Speaker 1: and we think of rivers on fire when we use
17:56
Speaker 1: the word branding is everything, and today everything gets branded
17:59
Speaker 1: in a heartbeat right through Instagram and you name it.
18:02
Speaker 1: And as a result of that, there's a perception that
18:05
Speaker 1: manufacturing is yesterday's sector. And that is so erroneous because
18:10
Speaker 1: pretty much everything in modern life is made. I like
18:14
Speaker 1: I used to say, now we've only got three functions, okay,
18:17
Speaker 1: to invent, to make, and to sell. The rest is overhead,
18:22
Speaker 1: and the make part is actually very connected to the
18:26
Speaker 1: invent part. China was brilliant in its strategy through the
18:30
Speaker 1: thirty years of densil being because it attracted assembly and
18:35
Speaker 1: then insisted on R and D. There were only ten
18:39
Speaker 1: R and D labs foreign owned in China. By two
18:42
Speaker 1: thousand and ten there were forty thou foreign R and
18:46
Speaker 1: D labs. Why because they wanted to know not just
18:49
Speaker 1: how to make an assemble, they wanted to invent all
18:52
Speaker 1: the way back to the material, to the actual the battery,
18:56
Speaker 1: to the products. And to do that they needed R
18:59
Speaker 1: and D. Manufacturing R and D live together, Okay, they
19:03
Speaker 1: live together through prototyping and scaling, and the topics of
19:06
Speaker 1: invention and innovation are in manufacturing because you actually learn
19:11
Speaker 1: while you make, and then when you digitize you learn more.
19:15
Speaker 1: Digitizing manufacturing is a massive innovation opportunity. And frankly, one
19:20
Speaker 1: of the things that the United States is for normal
19:22
Speaker 1: at is we know how to innovate and be an
19:24
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs and how to scale. But if we've lost our
19:28
Speaker 1: billy to actually make, then we start to atrophy the
19:32
Speaker 1: innovation side. The conventional wisdom is that the United States
19:36
Speaker 1: can't manufacture things at costs that are attractive to markets,
19:40
Speaker 1: so that's why we've outsourced it. You think that's unfair.
19:43
Speaker 1: It was fair during what I call the loss of
19:47
Speaker 1: industry such as textiles and footwear and clothing, which were
19:52
Speaker 1: very labor intensive. It's completely not the case with things
19:56
Speaker 1: that make the iPhone okay, and all the circuitry and
20:00
Speaker 1: semiconductors and high end technology content parts e vs. This
20:06
Speaker 1: is where the United States is actually the best at
20:09
Speaker 1: and it's not labor cost driven. So offshoring and outsourcing
20:14
Speaker 1: and and moving things for labor costs. Fine, they went
20:17
Speaker 1: to countries that have lower labor costs, the Bangladesh and
20:21
Speaker 1: the Vietnams. But the high end manufacturing, the quality manufacturing
20:26
Speaker 1: for two days and tomorrow's technology innovations, we should be
20:30
Speaker 1: the epicenter of that right here in this country because
20:32
Speaker 1: the labor cost is actually not the relevant cost. The
20:36
Speaker 1: relevant cost is actually the raw material, the supply chain,
20:39
Speaker 1: and we have the market. This is one of the
20:42
Speaker 1: few countries in the world that can say I'm one country,
20:45
Speaker 1: I have a massive market and by the way, I'm
20:48
Speaker 1: endowed with a lot of people and natural resources. That's manufacturing. Now,
20:53
Speaker 1: you were an immigrant through the United States and your
20:56
Speaker 1: grandparents were immigrants to Australia. Immigrants has often said have
21:00
Speaker 1: a capacity to work very hard, to prove themselves to
21:03
Speaker 1: move up the ladder. So do you feel you have
21:06
Speaker 1: an immigrant mindset that has pushed you to do all
21:09
Speaker 1: these things? I think my story as growing up in
21:12
Speaker 1: an immigrant family where English wasn't the first language at home.
21:16
Speaker 1: It was Greek and speak Greek? Do I do? Yeah?
21:19
Speaker 1: And that useful a lot, I guess when you're talking
21:21
Speaker 1: to the Olympic committees, never thought of that, but yes,
21:24
Speaker 1: it's probably useful for that. I think the immigrants backstory
21:27
Speaker 1: I have really drove me to work hard, but also
21:31
Speaker 1: to make a difference and a very American trade. What
21:35
Speaker 1: attracted me to America this very day, and I don't
21:38
Speaker 1: want to embarrass you, you're a great example of it,
21:40
Speaker 1: is the amazing giving back that occurs in this country,
21:44
Speaker 1: and not enough of us know a lot about it.
21:46
Speaker 1: It gets a bit a few headlines. So I mentioned
21:49
Speaker 1: the tax and spend thing as being a detriment to
21:52
Speaker 1: building modern infrastructure. But they on the other side, Americans
21:56
Speaker 1: are charitable and give and care about making a difference
22:01
Speaker 1: in their community. That's what Dow showed me, and that's
22:04
Speaker 1: what I and my wife Paula and I live today.
22:07
Speaker 1: That American way to an immigrant means that for the
22:13
Speaker 1: next immigrants I can make that we can make their
22:15
Speaker 1: life better. So for somebody's watching this who wants to
22:17
Speaker 1: be a successful global business leader, what are the skill sets?
22:21
Speaker 1: Is it hard work? Learning how to read well, keep
22:24
Speaker 1: continuously reading, learning, how to be a good speaker? What
22:26
Speaker 1: are the skill sets that you think somebody really needs?
22:29
Speaker 1: One of the things that I would add to that list,
22:32
Speaker 1: I agree with all of that that I would do,
22:35
Speaker 1: and I still do to this very day, is I
22:38
Speaker 1: would prepare well before I got the job or was
22:43
Speaker 1: given the nod. I would know as much about what
22:47
Speaker 1: I was about to be offered or to do before
22:50
Speaker 1: I actually did it. I would read, I would talk well.
22:54
Speaker 1: Before the days of the iPhone, I would go to
22:57
Speaker 1: the library. I remember my father knocking on the door
23:00
Speaker 1: was the Encyclopedia Britannic as salesman. Remember those books. There
23:04
Speaker 1: were twelve of them, right, and I would begged him
23:07
Speaker 1: to buy them, and he said, only if you read
23:09
Speaker 1: them all. And I read them all, and I was.
23:13
Speaker 1: I was twelve and so so I think preparing so
23:18
Speaker 1: that when you get the right to talk, you have
23:21
Speaker 1: the podium. When you have the right to say something,
23:24
Speaker 1: you actually have the knowledge to speak to it. I
23:27
Speaker 1: think people have gotten bored with facts, so you've got
23:32
Speaker 1: to blend it with interest. So personalize the facts, show examples,
23:38
Speaker 1: and then demonstrate it yourself. I think that cycle of
23:42
Speaker 1: teaching needs to be introduced, certainly in no education system,
23:45
Speaker 1: but in real life, what did your parents say to
23:48
Speaker 1: their neighbors? We have an unusual twelve year older sitting
23:50
Speaker 1: here reading the ends likely Pedia Britannica. It wasn't an
23:53
Speaker 1: era where you were told to read. You know, these days,
23:55
Speaker 1: of course, parenting is forcing kids to get off the
23:58
Speaker 1: TV and reading. But no, it was nothing I already noticed.
24:03
Speaker 1: I wasn't seen as odd. Thanks for listening to hear
24:07
Speaker 1: more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my
24:10
Speaker 1: podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen