Walk into the room anymore. Laura did bring the coffee. [laughter] would you fix your tie, please . David well, people wouldnt recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. Just leave it this way. Alright. David i dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . David at what point did you realize that you had some skills that were maybe going to let you rise up . My grandmother taught me how to read. I grew up learning to read and read bible verses. The grace for me is that i did not spend a single day in a segregated school, so i did not have one moment of being conditioned to believe that i was less than anybody. When i walked into my first kindergarten class, first time i had seen little, white children that my grandmother did not work for, and everybody was doing their abc things, and i was like, why are children doing abcs . [laughter] so i wrote my Kindergarten Teacher a letter and said, i do not belong here. [laughter] because i know a lot of big words, and then i proceeded to write every big word i knew. Anybody who reads the bible here, it was jeremiah, and then i put in elephant and hippopotamus just because they were big words. I saw the impression that made on her. My mom never went to high school. My dad went to two years. So when i was recruited by west point, they could not imagine a polish kid from chicago was going to go to school, could go to a school where president s went to, so i did not really want to go to west point, but my parents kept putting on pressure. They would speak in polish in the kitchen. We never had a house, but we had a flat. They would talk in polish. David you did not know polish . I did not. I did not know this until later. They did not want me to take publishing grade school and high school so that i would not have an accent, but they would put a few english words in there, stupid, mike. Finally i said i will go. And it was the best decision i never made, to go to west point. And it is really, going to west point is the basis, the foundation, of everything i am right now as a man. David at one point your father left her mother, and your mother was not College Educated at the time, so how did she support four children . My mother had a high school degree, but quickly had us as children after that. I was in my early teens when my dad chose to leave. And it was sudden. And my mother found herself with four kids, no money, soon to be no home, soon to be no food. And she did, as i said, i learned, she was so intent on not letting other people define who she was. We had to do some things for a short time. She had to go on food stamps. We had to get help. I mean that is what entitlement programs in this country are for. But she went back to school. I had to help. I was the eldest. A lot of people pitched in, and my mom really taught us. I would say the lesson that i learned is never let anyone else define who you are. She was never going to let that situation define who she was. David did you ever think one day you would be the chairman of the joint cheese and the secretary of state of the United States . No. It usually starts out with, what year did you graduate from west point . I did not go to west point. I could not have aspired to go to west point. Well, did you go to texas a m or Virginia Military institute . I said, no, they would not let black guys in. It was bu beyond any possible level of aspiration or expectation, but it happened. Why did it happen . Because i got a Quality Public School education that i did not know was of that highquality at that time. Elementary school, junior high school, high school, then ccny let me in with my modest average. Then it was rotc at ccny that really made the difference. David you were a geology major. Did you think you are going into the geology world . No, i was the geology major that busted out of civil engineering. Now you know. That didnt need to come up, david. Thank you very much. Rishaad david when microsoft ig forward, you decide to take the Company Public in 1986, and at that point you are a billionaire . Close to it . Pretty close to it. Within a year of going public, i think. There is some fortune cover that says the deal that made bill gates 360 million or some weird thing like that. David how did it change your life . That whole time was amazing because i was hiring people as fast as i could. I brought in steve ballmer, who was good at that, and he was helping out. We had a sense of urgency that we wanted to lead the way, but i was really busy. If some friend had tried to call me, i would not have had too much time for that. I was really into building this company, and i was going out and telling people about the magic of software, which is good for microsoft, but also helping them understand the opportunities and huge change agent that software, and eventually software plus the internet, would become, so i was having fun, but i was always thinking we are one step away from not leading here. We have to keep doing better. David so you grew up in a close family. When you were young, your mother would say at the kitchen table, why dont you pretend you are Prime Minister of india or something. What was the drill she was trying to exhibit to you . She was a bright woman. She did not go to college. Her parents did not think girls should go to college. They could not afford to send her to college. So in a way she lived vicariously through the daughters. She kept pushing us to be whatever we wanted to be, dream big. But she would always tell us when you are 18, i am getting you married off, but you can dream until then. So at the dinner table virtually every day she would sit down and have this conversation, give me a speech as if you are president. One day it will be Prime Minister. One day it would be chief minister. She would always critique us. She would never give us a compliment. She would just tell us, no chief minister would do this, no prior would do this, so she kept no Prime Minister would do this, so she kept pushing us to be better and better and better, and if we got one compliment, we thought we must have done really well, so she raised the bar constantly on us and i think she gave us hopes, but then anchored us firmly into the conservative values of you have to get married at 18, which didnt happen, i want to tell you, but that is what she kept telling us. David you were first in your class at the university of california berkeley. Yes. David when you were there, i understand you are not being a student so much, you are doing business on the side. I was a good student. I said, five minutes i would allow other than study. I have to make money. I want to earn 10,000 per month, and i would allow me, myself, five minutes a day, so i asked my friend, isnt there a good job that i can earn 10,000 in five minutes a day . My friend said, you are crazy. It is impossible. Nothing like that. You want to sell drugs . [laughter] so i said, no, no, i dont want to do that. So i said ok, what is the best, most efficient use of my time . It is invention. It is invention. And i have to find patent. If i get the patent, five minutes. If i focus, i can make some idea, so i set the alarm clock five minutes. Tick, tick, tick. In five minutes i said invention, come , invention, come right . [laughter] david it worked. It worked. David you invented a machine that helped people translate languages. Yeah. That one was the electric dictionary, the First Electric dictionary. Many students use the electric dictionary. The first one ever made was by myself. David another crisis arose, the financial crisis 20072008. It was the single most stressful, i just kind of wanted to say, i want my mommy. You know, right now. David youre driving around in michigan on a weekend and you need gas, do you pump it yourself . Absolutely. David does anybody say you are the ceo of General Motors and you shouldnt be pumping your own gas . Absolutely. In michigan it is selfserve, it is between you and the pump. [inaudible] david when you went to baltimore, you went initially to be an anchorwoman, and then it didnt quite work out. Yeah, i got fired. [laughter] well, demoted. David you got demoted, but they had a contract, so they did not say goodbye. So how did you work out to be on an afternoon show where you got to be an interviewer . How did that actually happen . This is what i now know with age and perspective, that many times getting demoted is an opportunity for Something Else to show up, or getting fired. Lots of people i have interviewed over the years have these stories about the best thing that ever happened to you. Once i got demoted, they did not want to pay out my contract. I was making 25,000 a year. They did not want to pay me the 25,000, so they kept me on and said we will put you on this talkshow just to run out your contract. David the person who wanted to demote you, has that person risen in the broadcast world . [laughter] as a matter of fact they did. They moved on. It worked out. David in 2001, you become the ceo. On september the 11th, tragedy occurred not far from here. How did you handle that leadership challenge . That was, david, an incredible challenge at any point in someones career, but particularly in my first year as ceo. We had several employees who perished. That was emotionally traumatizing. The travel business was in disarray as a result of 9 11. Spending dropped precipitously. I got all of our employees in the tristate area to come to an event at Madison Square garden. David i see. I talked to them about the fact that i cared a great deal about them and their families. That was a very, very challenging time. We emerged stronger as a company, but certainly the leadership of this company and my leadership was tested at the highest level. David when you became president of pepsi, you came home one day and your mother was there and she asked you to get some milk, well, maybe you could tell the story better than i could. It was way back in 2000. 9 30 at night from a phone call that i was going to be president of the company, so i went home because i was working on the quaker oats deal to tell my i was going to be the president of pepsico. I walk in the house and mom opens the door. Have news for you. She says, before your news, go get some milk. I said, it is 10 00 at night. Why should i get milk . My husbands car was in the garage. Get the milk . She said, your husband came in 8 00 and was tired, so i let him go get the milk. You never question your mom. I went to get the milk, came said, i was just appointed president of pepsico and all you care about is the milk. She looked at me and said, what are you talking about . She said, when you walk in that door, just leave that crown in the garage because you are the wife, the daughter, the daughterinlaw, and the mother of the kids, and that is all i want to talk about. Anything else, just leave it in the garage, so dont try this with me anymore. So i think with mom you dont try anything. David but she must be very ceo. I think she is, but she keeps david you went to the infantry and you almost lost her life, in combat. Yeah, this was a pretty aggressive live fire exercise. David pretty aggressive live fire exercise. Live grenades, supporting machinegun fire and the rest of that. A one star general, the vice chief of staff of the army fourstar was with me when we were walking behind the soldiers. One of them knocked out a bunker, spun around, tripped, went down, and we think he probably squeezed because you tense up when you are about to take a blow and a round went went m16ound, brown went through my chest. It went over the a in petraeus rather than the a in army. I was put in a helicopter and fun down to the vanderbilt medical center. I was out of the hospital in 56 days. In the hospital they did not want you to leave, so you did 50 pushups to make sure they knew you were ok, is that right . The only time i have ever stopped at 50, david. [laughter] david ok. [laughter] david if someone wants to be the president of United States, is the quality that is most important hard work, intelligence, optimism, luck . What do you think it takes for somebody who says i want to be president . I want to be like you . I want to be like you . Humility. It is important to know which you dont know and listen to people who know what you dont know. I also think that you have to begin with the end in mind. That is you have to say, yeah, you have to win the election, but why in the heck are you running . If you want to be president , realize it is about the people, not about you, and when it is over, and that is what a lot of these people who are arrogant and office forget, time passes, and it passes more quickly than you know. You want to be able to say, people were better off when i quit, kids had a better future, things were coming together. You dont want to say, look at all the people i beat, or the people that i worked over. I think the most important thing is to be humble, to listen, to realize everybody has got a story. David your first child was born with cerebral palsy. He is now 21 years old. And one of the qualities you say you got from all this was empathy, and the result was that it made you a better ceo and a better person, is that fair . Yeah, in fact when i look at empathy, and most people think empathy is something you reserve for your life and family and your friends or what have you, but the reality is it is an existential priority for our business. Because if you look at it, what is our business . Our business is to meet unmet, unarticulated needs of customers. There is no way our innovation to meet unmet unarticulated needs is going to come about if we dont listen, not just listen to the words, but go deep to understand what the needs are behind it, so i think empathy is core to innovation and my year is there a growing sense of empathy for people around me. There is a story about lincoln i always appreciated. In the early days of the civil war, he would go to the old soldiers home outside the swampy area in the north part of the city, and there was a telegraph office there. And one night a message comes in and the telegraph operator writes it down and says, mr. President , it is not good. And he hands it to him. And the message says, the confederates have just raided a union outpost out by Fairfax Station and they have captured 100 horses and a Brigadier General. And lincoln says, oh god, i hate to lose 100 horses. So the telegraph operator asked him, what about the Brigadier General . And lincolns reply was, i can make a Brigadier General in five minutes, but it is hard to replace 100 horses. Somebody gave that to me the day i made Brigadier General. [laughter] and it has been by my desk ever since, to this day. It is there if you came to the house now. You would see it. Your job is always to take care of the horses. Dont worry about being a Brigadier General. Take care of the horses, the soldiers, the employees, the clerks, the students, the faculty, what ever it takes to be successful in whatever it is you are trying to achieve. In 2007, the Fukushima Nuclear disaster took place. And a couple of the reactors were ours. It was, it was terrifying, i would say. So i was on a two hour teleconference. Hey, we dont know what is going on. The cnnan see is helicopter feed, but if something happens to the reactor, this is horrible. I am in perth, australia. Click. I have to go to a town hall with 1000 people. So i have to walk like 20 steps. And i am going from the world we know it is ending to walking in and saying, hey, guys, i am feeling good today. Everything is groovy. Right . Everything is cool. We are going to get through this and things like that. And i think good leaders know how to be in the moment, intense, but compartmentalized. And i have always been able to do that in my personal life as well. Family in themy oval office after the surge in iraq. The president said, general, when will you have the guts to write a Mountain Bike with me . I said, mr. President , do you have any idea who you are talking to . I said i am going to give you an experience that you can write off on your taxes as education. [laughter] david you were nominated for an academy award, should have one, but didnt win. Its ok. I would not have been able to get out of the chair anyways. [laughter] david what is it like in the back room . What do actually say to each other when former president s get together . Do actually tell secrets that you dont tell anybody else . Generally we say, when is this Program Going to start and when is a going to end. [laughter] [laughter] and he will say to me, give shorter answers. [laughter] david very few people in the world are known by one name. There is oprah, elvis, jesus, very few people. But, i mean there are a few others. David suppose your name was mary or jane . It would not have worked. David you said your secretary pays a higher tax rate than you do. Yes. David you are in favor of changing that. Some years ago somebody from the white house called and said would you mind having a tax named after you. I said if all the diseases are taken, why shouldnt i . I will take a tax. David what about snack products . How are you trying to make snacks healthier . A bag of lays has less salt than a slice of bread. So you should eat your lays with a smile on your face. David i am sure i would eat them with a smile on my face, but i wonder whether i will gain weight. I went with my mother to my old home with my mother for a tv show. I knocked on the door and said, i used to live here a long time ago. Can i come in . They called the police. I think president bush he can talk trash, by the way, and he did with me. He challenged me. I was in the oval office with my family after the surge in iraq and he said, general, when are you going to have the guts to ride a Mountain Bike with me . I said, mr. President , do you have any idea who you are talking to . I said i am going to give you an experience that you can write off on your income tax as education. [laughter] david did you ever do it with him . I did. David is he good . He is terrific. He knew the course. He had the best bike in the world. [laughter] i had a borrowed clunker. Secret service will ditch you if you try to pass him. [laughter] is a full contact sport when you ride with president bush. David you are now both former president s. What is the difference between being a former president and president . One day you have the nuclear codes. Off,an send Nuclear Bombs everybody is working for you. And the next eu leave office and you have no power. What was the transition like . [laughter] nobody plays a song when you walk in a room anymore. [laughter] i was lost for the first three weeks after i left office. I kept waiting for the music. [laughter] so i woke up in crawford. [laughter] the day after the presidency, expecting someone to bring me the coffee. [laughter] laura did not bring the coffee. [laughter] david there was the irancontra scandal. Yep. The new National Security adviser came in and wanted you as his deputy. I said, frank, it cant be that important. He said, it is that important. So then i said, ok, see if you can risk your entire career by saying the next sentence. Well, frank, if it is not that important, then why doesnt the president call me . Half hour later david you get a call from phil hello, general powell. This is ronald reagan. Yes, sir. David when you develop the success you have had, what comes along with it in our society is money. Yeah. David and when you make as much money as you have made and i have been fortunate to make as well, you really cant spend it all yourself, no matter how much you want to buy a new plane. You can try. [laughter] david you can try, but its tough. You can have a really good time trying. Francine founded more than a century ago from humble origins, loreal is now the biggest Beauty Products company. It hosts an International Portfolio of 34 brands and has a euros. Cap of 105 billion at the home, he has covered all facets of the business over four decades. Today, we meet jean paul agon