- The greatest lessons that I learned was from working for the people who were the least successful because I learned what not to do.

Michael Humecky was more concerned about.

I remember, I wore a suit to work, but the suits I bought were two for $99 dollars polyester.

You can wipe them down, (audience chuckles) you know, they stood up on their own.

And literally the first suit shirt I had, the first shirt I wore with a suit I bought used, first five, first 10 I bought used, the first ties I had, I bought used, the first shoes I had, I bought used.

And he was always talking to me about the best place to buy nice glasses or nice suits.

And he would never go out and sell.

And it really, really hammered home that for any business anywhere anyhow, there's never been a business that's succeeded without sales.

And as an entrepreneur, the number one thing that you can do is sell.

Because if you don't love your product enough to go out there and tell every single person on the planet what you do and what you sell, and how you can help them, then why are you in the business?

Why are you doing what you do?

And I also learned very quickly that selling isn't convincing.

It's not like, "Oh, let me convince this person."

No, selling is helping.

Putting yourself in the shoes of the person that you're selling to and figuring out how you can make their lives better.

How you can reduce their stress.

Across any business on the planet, if you can figure out how to reduce people's stress and they understand it, and they're willing to pay you for that, you're gonna make money , you're gonna do well.

- You know, our theme this week, you heard Matt and Sandy a little bit talking about "The Power of &" and coming together.

You've seen, as we mentioned, a ton of businesses.

I'm sure some with good culture, some with bad.

When you think about "The Power of &," how important is that when you're trying to operate, when you're trying to scale?

- Oh, incredibly important.

We're going right now through a lot of discussion about woke businesses and not woke businesses and DEI and what's right and what's wrong.

I'm just gonna tell you what I think.

Everybody gets their own opinion.

You get to think what you want.

I think your business needs to match the demographics of your prospects and your customers.

That whoever you're selling to, you will connect better if the people that work for you look like the people that can buy from you.

And when you have those people who look like the people you're trying to sell to, they tend to understand them more.

They tend to have a better connection and that allows them to sell.

So when you talk about "The Power of &" you have to look at the people you're selling to and ask, "Who else can I add?

What's the A, and, who else can I work with?

What organizations?

What people?

Because everybody in this country, the demographics change and they're continuing to change, but that's where the money is.

You know, that's where the opportunity is.

And going into communities that don't have investment, don't have people that typically focus there.

That's where the biggest opportunities are because no one's looking there.

Why do you wanna be the 10,001 person doing the same thing when you can go someplace where nobody else is looking be.

And that's where the greatest opportunities are.

And so to me, call me woke, but you don't need to call it DEI, you can call it whatever you want.

I call it good business, right?

When you're looking like how your prospects look, because that's the only way you're gonna understand.

And to me seeing the ampersand everywhere, the and that's what it means.

It means taking the people that you're selling to and making sure your workforce looks like them and making sure you reflect their values and being able to connect to them.

That's what works for me and always has.

- Let's talk about moving into EVs and there are people that are driving them now who love them very much.

But to move to that point where we are going to be fully electric, and taking a look at the price infrastructure and people are not quite sure.

- Yeah, and they're not.

And the great thing about us is we've sort of positioned our company that we can go whichever way it breaks.

So we have an amazing collection of internal combustion products that I'm very proud of.

You know, whether it's Bronco or Bronco Sport or F-150 or Explorer, and you can go down the list, Mustang, those are great internal combustion vehicles.

They're gonna be around a long time.

If adoption happens more quickly, we're going fast down that road too.

So, I believe that optionality for us is the way to go because one size doesn't fit all.

Some people really do want EVs.

Other people are saying over my dead body, I'll never drive one of those things, that's fine.

I mean, nobody's forcing anybody into anything.

And yet we are placing our bets that the EV future will come.

- Let's go ahead and take a look at Michigan and finding the talent that's here and the deliberate place making and deliberate decision about when you grow and when you're picking a plant and where you wanna be.

What are some of the considerations that I think Michigan needed to take into consideration to be able to have more of Ford here?

- Well, Michigan's always gonna have Ford here as long as I'm alive.

So, I love this state.

I mean this, I can't imagine not investing in Michigan, (audience applauding) And we've invested billions over the last few years in Michigan and we'll continue to do so.

And one of the great things we have here are our universities.

Our universities in Michigan are fantastic and there's a lot of talent coming out of those universities.

But the problem was in the past, a lot of those graduates would move to Chicago or we lost them.

But we now can offer those kinds of jobs, software and hardware, but particularly working on future problems the young people find really compelling.

So we're doing a lot of hiring in Michigan and as I say, our pipeline here is really good.