Ep. 62 | Senator Jon Husted

0:00Hey teammates, welcome to another episode of It's All About The Team and we are so fortunate today to have our senator from the great state of Ohio, Mr. John Houston. Welcome, senator. I started out life in a foster home. We learned our greatest lessons from our losses. Maybe you haven't made great choices, but you can change that tomorrow. I would pray the coach wouldn't be there, so I could just leave my business card. If they were keeping score, I was competing for them. Thank you, Lieutenant Governor Russell. It's nice to be with you. No, I figured you'd be a senator, a governor, or a president someday. I never thought I'd be a Lieutenant Governor. I'll tell you that. Well, you don't grow up dreaming about being a Lieutenant Ever, but it's a pretty good job. Right. Somebody who had the job, I think it's a great job. Because you can pick and choose to think you want to do. Just like in coaching, timing is everything and it's better to follow someone who stumbled around a little bit. I follow the guy that killed it every day.

1:02And every place I go, they say, well, Lieutenant Governor Houston was here like six times. This is the first time you've been here. But it's been fun. It's been fascinating. And that's why I wanted to see if I could get you on with this. Because our goal in our podcast is to help people that are looking for how they can become a better teammate or how they can go about building a team and see if we can give them some value, some things to think about, some things they hadn't considered. And so just after having been in this role for a little over 500 days, I realized how difficult. And interestingly enough, I was a coach for a long time and that's a small group of people. Still, it takes a lot to build a team. Well, then I was a college president and that's a medium-sized group of people. And I was a little bit harder. And now here serving the state of Ohio of 12 million people, wow, is that hard? I can't even imagine what it's like serving 350 million or whatever you do.

2:05That's why I wanted to get you on. And here's the way we usually roll. We try to elicit the aha moments from our guests as to when they learn certain lessons. And so to give our audience a little bit of a background, Senator Houston, then an Ohio guy, his whole life, he was a national champion football player at the University of Dayton, defensive back. He then went on and began serving with the Dayton development, Chamber of Commerce, I believe, and economic development, and then on into public service in the Ohio House and then Speaker of the House, then the Secretary of State, and then the Lieutenant Governor, and now serving on the federal side of things as our U.S. Senator. And I can't think of anyone I know that has just given their lives to serving others.

3:05And one of the lessons I learned that I know you heard from Governor DeWine every day was our passion to make sure every Ohioan is safe and every Ohioan is healthy and every Ohioer. There's a pillar God-given potential. That's the third one. I hope you said it all this time. Like every day, every Ohioan lives up to the God-given potential. And I know you've done that. And so thinking back, I think your story is fascinating as a youngster, what you had to travel through. And the teamwork that it took for you to not, you know, you didn't have the ideal situation, but there was a team there for you. Tell us your story. It's amazing how you have a different perspective on your life as you get older. You see things a little differently. And the one thing that I, when I think about my life is that I always, I've always been somebody who's sort of had gratitude about everything,

4:08no matter what circumstance that I've been in. And I started out life in a foster home. And it's kind of an interesting story. My, you know, my birth mother had two children, two little ones, and lost her husband somehow in connection with Vietnam, became pregnant and didn't know what she was going to do. And she decided that she would have an adoption. So I got, um, went to this foster home for a couple of months, and I get adopted by two of the greatest people that, because, you know, adopted, you never know where you're going to end up, right? And, um, my mom and dad, Jim and Judy Houston, they grew up in, you know, in rural Northwest Ohio, Northeast Indiana, and so I was in Detroit, that's where I was. And I got adopted and we moved to County Road J, uh, in Williams County near Montpelier, Ohio. So I grew up very rural in a small town. I think I had 86 people in my graduating class. And, uh, and so, you know, you just start out life like that.

5:11And, um, it's great thing about, you know, we talk about sports. Great thing about growing up in a small town, is you get to play them all. That's right. You know, I got to play four sports, track baseball, basketball, and football. Did you have other siblings? I had a younger sister, a younger brother. Okay. My sister was also adopted. She came along five years later. My parents just couldn't have children. And that's why they, they struggled. And then all of a sudden, they have a, my mom is able to have a baby. And that's where my little brother came along. So there are five, six years younger than me. Um, and, um, interesting. You know, I was so interested in sports. Nobody in my family played sports. Like, my dad wasn't athletic. My mom wasn't athletic. Now, if the car was broken, my dad could fix it. Me, I would, you know, if you hit it with a hammer, you know, and it wasn't fixed, then I didn't know what to do. But, so we all have different skills and different gifts and gift, different interests.

6:14But when you grow up in that small town, you get to do all those things. Uh, on the football team, I never came off the field. I was our running back, our linebacker, our punter and our kicker. So, right, you don't get to do that anymore. So looking back at, at the Houston house, yeah. If you had to reflect and think what lessons you learned of being a great teammate, um, and how one went about building a team, a family in this case. Yeah. Anything pop into your mind? Oh, absolutely. So, in my family, work ethic. My dad, um, had a great work ethic. He worked at a machine tool shop, uh, called Mohawk Tools. And he would also do work on the weekends, like with my uncle. They would, you know, help people build houses or garages or things like that, working two jobs. My godfather, my uncle Jack, he worked three jobs. He was literally, he, he was, um, uh, he worked at a factory during the day.

7:20He, he was the janitor at the school in the evening. And he, um, did landscaping on the weekends. And so that's the kind of world I grew up in, where, where everyone in my family had a great work ethic. They worked, they, they lived humbly, I mean, living, you know, below their means saved for the rainy day. Just sort of a very, uh, hardworking humble, you know, uh, save, you know, people saved, you know, because they grew up and they grew up in post depression, you know, and have much. And so when you don't have much, you just, you learn to save and you learn to work. And that was kind of my element that I grew up in. And so from day one, work ethic was all around me. And what lesson could be more valuable than that? You know, if you think about it, I mean, it's not, I mean, you know, if there, there are, there are important things, but having a good work ethic is probably number one.

8:20So as you went off into the formative years and, you know, your favorite subject was sports. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So as you think back to those four teams you played on those four different sports, can you think back to any coach that taught you a lesson about being a great teammate or maybe a great teammate that taught you a lesson about how it is the you should be as a teammate. So yes, you know, there were, there were a lot of, there were a lot of, you know, I think when you're young, having a coach that believes in you, first of all, is important. That somebody sees in you that, hey, you know, you, you might be pretty good if you, if you do some of these things. And, but my ultimately, you know, probably the coach that had the biggest impact on me was my high school football coach, his name was hip clots and he's since passed away. But it's great name for a coach. Yeah, you know, and I remember, because when you grew up in the town like I grew up, you know, like we didn't have a lot of success.

9:25And I remember when I was five years old going to watch my high school football team playing the state championships. Wow. First, you know, like, but that never happened after that. But I remember when you're being a little kid going to like someday, I want to go be a champion, you know, I want to go do that. And he, but he was the one that sort of said, hey, if you want to be good, you're going to have to spend some time in the weight room over the summers. And I know today everybody has a private coach and they have all the stuff. Like we didn't have that stuff. You had to ride your bike into town. And then hopefully somebody would be there and let you in the weight room so that you could work out. And you'd have to plan your whole life around it, you know, on the two hours on a whatever day it would be open. So not to mention you were probably working. Yeah, you're working. You're doing, you know, but you know, it's like, you know, if you want to do more, here's the path to be able to do it. And he was always encouraged and he believed in me. And he said, you know, hey, you can be pretty good if you do this.

10:27And so, you know, he was a, he was a big factor in my life, both both, and also academically by saying. And also, if you, because I didn't grow up in a family where anyone had gone to college, and this is an interesting thing to know. Like of all of my cousins, like there were 20 some of them on my dad's side, none of them had ever gone to college. And none of my family members had undergone, no one even know how to apply to college or even what college was about. I just wanted to play college football. And so there's no, but there's nobody around to explain to you how you go do that. Today, they've got rating systems and camps and all that kind of stuff where it's sort of out there. But then when you grew up in a small town, I mean, when you were coaching, Matt Pillar probably wasn't on your regular coaching tour of places to go. You know, I have to tell you something. True story. My first year as an assistant coach at Ohio State, I was assigned Northwest Ohio.

11:27Yeah. And Earl Bruce had a rule that Ohio State assistant coach will visit every high school in Ohio. Wow. Every spring. And we know they probably don't have someone that can play for us, but we owe that to the school. That's a great, it's a great. I remember trying to hit 10 schools a day because I had like 300 schools in Northwest Ohio. And I would pray the coach wouldn't be there. So I could just leave my business card, you know, because if the Ohio State says the coach shows up, they want to talk to the world. And so I was at Montpelier. I can't remember who the coach would have been in 83, 84 right in there. It would have been Hobie Kraus, then the head coach, but anyway, it's not a place that, you know, where you get a lot of people that, back in the 1980s, that really knew what was going on. And so I didn't even know how to apply to college.

12:28So you had to have a coach who would also help you with that kind of stuff. And it's straight, you know, it's just different. It was different than in this day. I still think that coaches, and because we forget not every kid, even if they have great parents like I had great parents, not every parent knows everything about what to do. If you want to go to the military, if you want to go to college, if you want to be an electrician, not everybody has a family that knows the pathway to do that. So that's why coaches and mentors matter so much. So how about a teammate? What's Montpelier's nicknames? It's a great, it's actually a great, the locomotive. The locomotive. It's a great, great mascot. Okay. Have a locomotive. I mean, that's like Purdue Borlor makers. Does it look like that with the train? It's kind of like a missile. Did you have a whistle like Purdue every time we have one? We did, we did. We have one. But it's, our colors were blue and white. So not Purdue colors.

13:28Yeah. So we were, we were a railroad town. Any locomotive, teammate that you think back, maybe you were younger looking at that person or they were on in your class, that you thought was an extraordinary teammate and why? So, you know, there were, there were guys I remember looking up to when I was younger that, that, that, that did well. But I, I would say this, I, I am been somebody who tries to soak in information from everyone I meet. So I was, I'm always watching everybody. Like, how did this guy, how did this guy succeed and why did this guy fail? You, you can learn as much from other people's failures and their successes, you know, as you can about your own. And so I remember watching them all, you know, how did that, what, what did this person do that made them successful? Because, you know, success comes in many shapes. Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's small, sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's strong, you know, whatever it might be, sometimes it's just outsmarting everybody else.

14:32But, you know, I, I remember watching everyone, you know, and, and whether that's somebody on TV at the time, they would watch as a pro athlete or, you know, Ohio State was a big, you know, rural Ohio, Ohio State matters a lot more. And it does another place. And, but yeah, everybody, everybody that I wouldn't encounter, I try to figure out what made them successful and try to soak that in. So you always talk to young people, the decisions you make are going to have such an impact, the groups you join, the teams you join. Tell us the story, how you selected the date and flyers, you went from a locomotive to a flyer. So, yeah, you went from one mode of transportation to the next. How'd you pick them or how they pick you or so I don't have a great answer to that question. Because I was, I didn't know how the process worked. I literally didn't know. Like, I didn't know. I, I, I get recruiting letters from, and have offers from places like Hillsdale or Toledo or Bowling Green or Dayton.

15:38And they say, hey, do you want to come? I still have this scholarship offer from Hillsdale that I came across like when my parents threw all of my stuff out of. And, and, you know, then Hillsdale was like 30 minutes from my house. It was not the Hillsdale that is today. Now I'm like, why did I take the scholarship to Hillsdale? What a great place to, you know, get an education. But, but I didn't know what I was doing. And, and honestly, I remember the University of Dayton played for a national championship and won a national championship. Even though it wasn't Division I, it was Division III level. And I remember my head. If you remember, see when I was that five year old boy who wanted to win a championship. And we were good, but we didn't win. We won a league championship, but we didn't win a state championship. And I'm like, I would like to win a national championship. So in my 17 year old mind, that was like, okay, well, maybe I can go win a national championship. And that's why I went there. Wow. So I didn't have any other reason. Coach Kelly. Coach Kelly. Coach Mike Kelly, who's a college football Hall of Famer.

16:41He's a great guy. Great one. Great guy. So who was your position coach? He was my position coach as well. He had coach. He was coached DBs as well. Coached DBs. So I went in. This is, this is, I went in as a running back. I'll tell you the story because I think you'll, you'll appreciate it. So I go in as a running back. And, and it's picture day. And I've been there. I don't know person in Dayton, you know, like other than coach Jim Schmidt to have been the guy that recruited me. I get there. I'm there. And, and I'm the seventh team tail back at Dayton. Not Ohio State at Dayton. I'm the seventh team tail back. All right. There's no eighth team. It's like as far down the roster as you can go. I'm the last one. And on picture day, I go to get my jersey and the equipment manager gives me number 63. Okay. So, you can't be running back. We're in number 63. And I say to him, I say, I can't be a, I can't be 63. I'm a running back. And he looks at me and he goes, it doesn't matter what number you are. You're never going to play here.

17:45There you go. Happy. Welcome. Customers. And, and I, I remember thinking to myself at that moment, I remember this vividly as if it happened yesterday. I'm like, well, I'll show you. Like, you just have that moment where you're like, because I'd been there for two weeks. And I knew I wasn't the best, but I knew these guys weren't better than me. Like, I knew that with hard work and some focus, I could, I could get this done. And so, Coach Kelly, the next year asked me if I'd be willing to move to defensive back. He said, you have great speed. We need some, we need some speed in the defensive back field. We'll move you to corner. So, I'd never played the position before, but ended up playing all the special teams and then, and then eventually move into a starting role and then become an all-American defensive back. So, it was great. It was a great path for me, but it didn't start out like you're climbing the mountain, right?

18:47No, but having Coach Kelly was a great position coach. And I just wanted to play. I didn't really care where I played. I just wanted to be on the field playing football. So, the best lesson about being a great teammate that you learned from Coach Kelly? No, he was, he was, he was the best at talking about team, team, team. I mean, you know, the old clichés, no-ion team, all that kind of stuff. Even when you scored a touchdown, it's like, hand the ball to the referee, act like you've been there. Yep. Let's, let's, let's not make it about me, no showboating on the field. You know, you've got everybody do your job. Like, you draw it up on the board. You know this is a coach. It's like corner back. It's like, you got outside, contain no one gets behind you, right? That's like the rule. That's, that's, that's the deal. And so, if everybody does their job, right, better than the team on the other side of the field does its job.

19:50And we all don't try to play hero, that we all just do our assignments. Every play will win. And when you win, you start to buy in. You know, when you start to see success, then everybody as a team buys into that. Not a bad formula for life. Not a bad formula for life. It's a matter of fact, when I watched you coach, and I think about the way coach Kelly coach is very, very similar about assignment football, letting the other team make the mistake, you don't make the mistake, you capitalize on their mistakes. That'll be the margin of victory. How about a teammate that impacted you from the flyers? Really caught your attention. So, you know, we had, I had so many great teammates. You know, one of my teammates was John Grewden, but John was a senior when I was a freshman. So I didn't really know John at, at Dayton. But, you know, guys that I was close with Sean Cannelli, who was a, he's from the Cleveland area. He was our free safety on our national championship team.

20:52Sean and I were, had a great bond. We had a great bond as defensive defensive backs. You know, we all had, you know, your position group has got its special bond as you have a nickname for the position group. You know what, we were just the DBS. We were nothing, nothing special, no special names. I remember one of our championship teams at Youngstown State. I used to hate it, but they named themselves the DBS, named themselves the DUDUZONE. And everywhere they went, they talked about the DUDUZONE. And I was afraid to ask them what the heck the DUDUZONE meant. But, you know, and then other years the DBS would have a different name. But all units are close. But what you just said a minute and a half ago though, if you understand your role in the whole team, yes, great pride in what you do, your unit. But what are you doing for the whole team? So, so yeah, there were, there were games. So we were pretty good. We were, we ended up 43, 6 and 1, the four years that I played.

21:56And I remember we had a really good defensive tackle. He was a division three player of the years, named as Luloncar. And I remember during one game, I'm like, Lou, can you stop sacking the quarterback so that I maybe I can get him to pick off the ass and do something because this is getting pretty boring back here. With you guys doing, you know, where was he from the court? He was from the Cleveland area. Yeah, yep. And had you ever been in a Daytona Ohio? Never been to Daytona. When you going to defiant so high, I was the big city when I was when I was going to Toledo was like going to some places. It was like going to Manhattan. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's how it was compared to where I grew up. But I'd never been in a Dayton before. But yeah, I had a lot of great teammates. And, you know, the, you talk about what, what kind of teammate were you? Actually, the thing that I probably gave the most is my work ethic going back to because, you know, if, if they were keeping score, I was competing for them.

22:56We used to have this physical fitness contest of about who could do the most of this that or the other thing. And, and I was, you know, I was like focused. I'm going to win that thing. And I ended up, you know, being, you know, doing the best at all the stuff. But I think I said a really good standard for being in the weight room, doing your, doing your running, you know, putting yourself into position to make the most out of your, your God given ability. Because look, we're all not, you know, we're all have limitations. There's some people that are that are amazing physical specimens. Most of us are not. Most of us have to work for it. And, and I think that's what I gave. And then you would have other people who would, you know, would be really tough in, at tough moments and make big plays. And we had such a great team bond. There were no, we had some great players, but there was nobody who was like the star. It was everybody.

23:57You could go back and look at that team and you got a E lineman who's that good. You got a star. Yeah, he was a star. He was a star. There's no doubt. But I mean, he was not. We beat Union College. Yeah, 17 to seven in national championship game. And my last play I've replayed as a college football player, I ended up at the past to sort of end the old victory. So that's my walkoff moment. Phoenix City, Alabama, Phoenix City, Alabama. Yeah, that's where my dad's team won their national championship. Yeah, Phoenix City, Alabama. So, yeah. So it's, you know, and so that's, but again, if you talk about life lessons. So remember this, imprinted on my head as a five year old boy. I wanted to be a champion. And then I go to Dayton. We lost the national, we lost a national championship game. First game, I actually ever started and was a national championship game. I'd played in a three way rotation and I'm starting the national championship. But then we lost in the playoffs the year after that and then went back my last game that I was ever going to play in.

25:03And we ended up winning that game and it was the last, you know, so I had a lot of ways to in a career. That's a bad way. It's a pretty good one. So academically. What did you decide coming from that small town? You probably growing up, thought you were going to be playing sports the rest of your life like most little girls do. Yeah, what did you decide to study? So it was an education major. Okay. And I was going to be a coach. Okay. And this is an interesting thing. Why? Because think about this. I had never met anyone that had gone to college. Other than my teachers. Yeah. I know that sounds strange, but I didn't know anyone that had gone to college. Other than my teachers. And so I didn't really know what you could do. So who did I see that I've gone to I saw my teachers and my coaches and I'm like, well, I guess that's what you do. And so I was going to be a coach. So what discipline were you going to teach? So history and science. Okay. History and science were two things. I was you could have got hired fast, but you decided I think you must have fallen in love with Dayton Ohio because coming out.

26:14Is that when you joined the economic development? So this is an interesting thing. I don't know if you know the story, but, but I coached at Dayton and graduate assistant. Oh, wow. My the year after I finished, which by the way, my advice to anybody that is place somewhere. You're not taking a graduate assistant graduate assistant job at the place you just played at. Because you're neither a coach nor a player anymore. I would concur with that. Yeah. You're kind of in this purgatory place. And so, you know, I went and interviewed the next year to be an assistant coach at Toledo 1990. OK. Was that Gary Pinkble? Hang on here. I was a woodman in 1992 would have been the year that I did it. And assistant coach, there was dean piece. Oh. So remember he did had a great year for your coaching in the NFL once I was the head coach at Kent. Yes. That's right.

27:21And they didn't offer me the job after I interviewed. I go back to Dayton, I start volunteering on a congressional campaign. And then I get a call just before camp opens up. They said the guy that they'd offered the job to went somewhere else. If I wanted the job, I need to be there on Monday. And I just was like, I don't know what to do. I needed a job. I didn't have any money. I tell the congressional campaign that I'm going to probably have to leave and go to Toledo and take this job. And they said, well, we'll hire you to stay and manage this thing if you will stay in Dayton. And so that's how I went from coaching to politics and eventually public service. They had coach at Toledo with Nick Sabin. Oh, was Nick. The one year he was there. The one year he was at Toledo. Wow. It was the year that I said, no, so I guess I guess I, I guess I, that was not a very good coaching choice on a, so who was the congressional? So it was a guy named Pete Davis and he lost. So even though, and then the very, so this, so the next job that I get basically was

28:28a job working for a county commissioner in Montgomery County by the name of Don Lucas. I did not know Don Lucas, but his wife saw me working on this campaign and she told him she's like, oh, you've got to hire this guy. You've got to hire him. You need, you need him to do this. He did such a great job. And so I called, he called me out of the blue, didn't know him and he hired me to go work for his office because you know, you, like I had to have a job and I wanted to be in government service in politics. So I, I go to work for the county commissioners in Montgomery County, Ohio, but I always tell a young people who are always asking me for advice of, what do I do to get in politics? It's just like go do something, go volunteer on a campaign, go knock on doors, go answer phone calls, take out the trash because somebody will see you hustling, working hard, doing the right thing or they'll see you as a goof off. Then you won't do very well.

29:29I can attest to that, the group that you left me that I inherited in the lieutenant governor's office, many of whom who began on campaigns, you can see their work ethic. You can see their willingness to night and day, doesn't matter what needs to be done. And that's a great lesson to learn. It is. You know, it's, it's, so Davis was it you said? Yeah. Okay. So looking back as he was trying to build his team, you know, to, to mount his campaign, any lessons there pro or con, you know, it's always, you know, you always look at things I do or I wouldn't do or any good lesson you learn from him. So I guess I can't attribute to him necessarily, but it was, it was an awakening for what, about what it takes to actually succeed in elected office. Right. The amount of people that are involved, the amount of money that's involved, the way the media

30:32behaves, what the issues are, you know, I also learned from that, you know, when you got campaigning, you knock on doors, you learn to listen to people, you learn to hear what's on their minds, you learn how to make persuasive arguments. So it was kind of like the, it was like gives you the feel for what it's like and whether you're going to like this or not. And so it was sort of my awakening that, yeah, this is even though playing football was fun, playing in coaching, as you know, are not the same thing. And here's this other thing that is competitive, fight, get your competitiveness, requires discipline and is about, you know, what do you really believe in in life? And so that was kind of a, that experience was important and that's why I've always told

31:35kids and anybody else, it's like, what's the path, I don't know what the pathway is, just go do something. You got, you're not going to, you don't learn to play from the bench, you got to learn by getting in the game, getting knocked down, having failures, seeing, you know, seeing what sells, seeing what fails, but you got to go do it. You know, like if you're going to be in sales, what do you got it, well, you got to pick up the phone, you got to call somebody. If you want to be in recruiting, you got to get on the road and you got to go see coaches and you got to go see, whatever it is, like you got to throw yourself into it if you're going to be successful. You know, it's funny, we would run into people, how could I be an assistant coach some day at Ohio State? I said, well, you probably need to go to about four or five other places and have the doors slammed in your face when you try to recruit them because, you know, we had a little advantage at Ohio State, but having that experience of it not going all perfect, I think is so important in building teams.

32:35We learned our greatest lessons from our losses. You know, you look at that film and you say, I cannot believe we put this game plan and what were we thinking or I can't believe that the player, you know, made this decision or, you know, but you learn and thrusting yourself in to having a chance to fail is good. Well, in going up to this portion of my life, I have, I have the mindset of a defensive back you can tell because I don't remember any of the plays that I got beat on. Oh, right. You had to have a short memory. You could have a short memory. You have plenty of failures. Right. They're not permanent. Learn from them. You learn from them. Yeah. Uh, the best, you know, the failures are the things that you learn from, but this is important too. Are there some people that can dwell on their failures? You can't dwell on your failures. You're going to fail. You're going to have like bad days. You're going to have moments where you made the wrong play or you, or you, even more so it's like you didn't, you didn't live up to your standard that you know to be successful

33:42that you need to do. Even if it's not a failure, sometimes it can be, sometimes it can be a mediocre success that you had that should have been a home run because you just didn't give it the attention that it deserved. You didn't prepare the way that you needed to prepare. You maybe got lazy. You took a shortcut. You learn from all of those things. Some of the greatest dangers are those that you won, but you really didn't maybe deserve to win or you didn't play well enough as you go. So you moved from being in the campaign to working for the County Commissioner and who was the County Commissioner? His name was Don Lucas. Any lesson from Don? Oh goodness. You know what? Don was, he was not made for politics. He was an engineer kind of mind where it was all black and white. It was this way. It was this way. In a world where everybody's got a point, right?

34:45One thing you need to learn in politics is that it's not nothing's ever 100%. Even when you're right, you might only be 90% right. Can you listen to the 10% of the things that maybe deserve your attention? And so what I learned from Don, because he was this way and he had two other County commissioners that didn't necessarily agree with him a lot, I was. I learned to be the bridge maker, right? I learned how to bring people together, how to solve problems, how to talk to him in a language that he respected and understood, but also knew that he could trust me 100% that I was always going to have his back. It was always going to look out for him. But how could we also figure out a way to get things done with these other folks? So figuring out how to manage different types of personalities doesn't mean someone's

35:45right or someone's wrong. You have, because that's the one thing about politics, you have core beliefs, you have this person, it's like, I'm from my principles and this person I'm from my principles. Well, if everybody's going to be for their principles and you're never going to move towards consensus, you never get anything done. And so you have to figure out how can you hold true to your principles, figure out what's important, but also find out what's important to the other person and figure out how to bring those those forces together. That's probably the thing I work. I learned most about how to get along in that situation. The County commissioners is three people. Three of them. So you had to build a team with those three. So two of them can't talk about a policy under this is an interesting thing about the law. You violate the sunshine law if two of them get together and talk about an issue. So what the commission assistant, which was my job, I had to be sort of the go between

36:49to these others to try to figure those things out. And so it was a great experience to be in that role to try to, to be in that role. And it would be the broker of solving problems. So you move from that to the chamber. So I move to the date and chamber. Yeah. Yeah, work on economic development. In my mid 20s, I think I'm doing that job. And it was my late 20s. And I remember, so you have to understand, like, here's the economic development experiences of having my life. So I grew up in Williams County. The factory, my dad worked at closed, you know, about the time I graduated high school. So he lost his job. I had two uncles, the lost their job. My aunt had lost her job. So my family had to leave Ohio. The unemployment rate there then was eight and a half percent. No place to go to work. Family leaves Ohio.

37:50I get to go to Dayton. I'm in Dayton. In the 1990s, had five GM Delphi plants at the beginning of the 1990s. 30,000 people employed there. By the end of the decade, there was only one left. 2,500 jobs left. The Ohio economy and the Dayton economy were in free fall. And it was tough. And here I am, you know, working in economic development when no one would return your phone call. Right. No one. They were leaving. And I remember now as an adult looking back at this as an older, you know, more experienced person, I'm like, the only reason I got that job is because they really couldn't find anybody else that wanted it. Because it was a tough, tough job trying to fight for job creation at a time when the economy in Ohio was collapsing. So what a valuable. Oh, well, this is this is a great thing about going in because you've heard this with

38:50many coaches before. It's like, well, you know, should I take this job? It's not a very good job. And say, well, that's why they offered it to you. And that's why it's open. That's why it's open. That's right. Yeah. No, because they're trying to find somebody to come in there with enthusiasm to try to fight for it. And I always believed because it was a time when people my age were leaving Ohio. They just weren't staying. They were moving to Chicago and Atlanta. And a lot of my classmates grew up in Ohio, left Ohio from the University of Dayton. But I was there and that was my team. Dayton was my team. Ohio was my team. That community was my community and I was going to fight for it. And so, but it was a great experience to be able to join. It was the chamber president. So Phil Parker was the chamber president. And Phil was always an optimist about Dayton too. He believed he'd worked at the Home Builders Association.

39:50Great lesson to learn. Well, see. Yeah. The chamber had gone through a massive reorganization because there had been some problems there before. So it was a bunch of new people and we had our shot. But it was a tough, tough time in Ohio and in Dayton. But that's the only way that a young person in my age was going to get that job and have the opportunity to learn so many valuable lessons about how businesses make decisions about where they're going to locate, where they're going to, where they're not going to locate. And what factors were involved in those decisions. And that was the value of that. So what was that when you first got that? That would have been, gosh, it would have been 1995, 1996, 1997. 1996, 1997. You got to feel good about the foundation, not just in Dayton, but if you think back, as you said, Ohio was in free fall. And just recently, CNBC said that we're the number one ranked state in the nation to attract

40:56business and or expand business. You got to feel good about being in the foundation of that. So yes. I can't tell you how excited I am about that because I think when I started in public office, we were like the 37th worst. And now we're the best. And I was involved. Teamwork, not just me, there was a lot of things that we did during over those years that changed Ohio for the better instead of a place where businesses are leaving. Now they're moving here. And it just shows, though, that who the leaders are matter because you get the private sector, public sector working together, you can do some amazing things. So how quickly then did you decide you wanted to run, to serve in our public in office? So I had been at the Dayton Chamber for around three years, I think at that point.

42:00And then, term limits came to Ohio. So the state rep who was in my district had to leave. And I had been involved in politics and I thought, you know, so I knew people in the business community, I knew people in the political community. And I said, you know, hey, I think I want to do this. And I got Phil Parker's permission who was my boss and the local party folks had seen, you know, that I had been successful in working at different things. And so they all, they said, sure, we'll support you. But my first race, this is where work ethic and discipline come in. So I had a full time job, young child still at the chamber, still at the chamber. And I went walking door to door every day for nine months. So work my full time job, get off work, you know, race to get your child at child care

43:00before the child care place closes, go to get, you know, go to get your literature and go find your precinct that you're going to walk and knock on doors. We did that every day for nine months, including weekends, goal, every precinct that I would walk, get ten yard sign locations, talk to as many people as you can, keep notes on it all, do it every day. And we ended up, you know, being down, I think in our first poll, we were down by 13 points, but by the end of the race, we won by 13 points. And so I got elected office and I want to share this with you. One of the reasons that I ran was yes, those economic development issues, but I remember Dayton being 613 out of 613 public schools, Dayton public schools in academic performance. And I remember saying, gosh, who could be, we need to have school choice for these kids because who could be against a poor kid trapped in a failing school district from going to a school of their choice? So that's the naive young, this is why you have to have a little naive view of the world

44:05as a young person. And I said, who could be against that? And then I get elected and I find out lots of people were against it. The entire education establishment was against it. But that didn't change things. We fought for it. So that was your first team that was your team. Yeah. How did you go about putting that team together for that house run? So what characteristics were you looking for in the people in? So when I wish I could say that we had some massive organization, but when you're running for state rep, you don't have much. You got a handful. You got a handful of people, which means they got to be good. And I would rather have a small group of mighty and loyal friends than a big group of people who just want to be there for the party, if you know what I mean. Like we had a core group of people who were part of our efforts and they were loyal and committed and helped every day that we would go out and do something to have.

45:08So I'd go out and walk and I'd always have one person with me on the other side of the street. So if we found somebody's home, I'd run to the house where someone was home. They could go to the house where no one was home and drop the literature and just run back and forth and do it. We had a small and mighty group and a discipline group. And you know, it was you just have to find a few people to believe. You don't need everybody. You just have to have a core group that's willing to work. So you got there and there's 99 people in the Ohio house. Correct? So what you learn about the challenges of building a team of 99 people, like you talked about with differing views, hopefully similar goals, but differing views as to how we get there. What good lesson did you learn about? Because that's a tough challenge. So it's amazing how things repeat themselves from the lessons you learned from me for

46:09becoming applicable to the new situation you find yourself in. When I, you know, you had a lot of amazing jobs and you probably remember like the first day you had the job, you're like, wow, this seems overwhelming. Yeah. Like, how am I going to figure this out? But you learn that you're going to figure it out. And you're going to, but the things you need to know is you get to need to know your colleagues. You need to figure out what the levers of influence are. How does this place work? What are the rules? Who are the influential people? How do you build relationships with them? How do you build alliances with people who have common values or interests? And that, that's the kind of stuff that always came very easy to me is figuring out what things were important for victory. It's like, like you, you, when you look at a defense or you look at an offense and you

47:11see an alignment, you've had so much experience with this that came so natural to you. You know exactly what the defense you should call against that set or you know exactly what play you should run against that coverage. Because you just, just, there's something about some people have that and some people don't. And it's just, it's just, it's just, it was easy for me to figure out. Like I figured it's like, hey, this, these are the people, the sort of the decisions get made. It came easy to me. But, but the skills that I learned when I worked for the county commissioner about bringing people together and how you do that. Yeah, listen, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really an important skill in the Ohio legislature. And so that was, you know, that was probably like, when you think about this, so you got to work ethic to get there. You got discipline to get there. All those things still matter after you're there. But then some of the, some of the softer skills about how you, you listen, you pull people together, you find way to build consensus.

48:12Those are the, so now the skills are starting to add up and coalesce around a path. You know, you probably had to be a good listener because it was only four years later that you became the speaker. Yeah. Right. You'll never become the speaker if you're not a good listener. And that was another different type of challenge, correct? Yeah. Being the speaker, that's a different role in the team. Give us some lessons from your time as speaker. This is, well, this is a, this is something to remember about politics. People don't vote for you because of you. Like I think a lot of times people that get in our business of politics and running for office. They think, well, they're going to vote for me because I'm so great or I'm so smart or I'm so this or I'm so, no, they're going to vote for you because they think you're going to look out for them. Sure. Right? That they, they have something that they want in the world or they want to be happen in the world and they think you are the vessel for making that happen for them.

49:16That's how a lot of people, and you care about them and you care about them. That's right. Care about what they care about. Yeah. And so the key for me is you have to get votes from your colleagues, right? So I spent time with every single one of them knowing what was important to them, figuring out what their priorities were and then building trust with them and then asking them for their vote. And I would go to every single one of them and I would say, I running for speaker of the house, I understand what this, this, that and the other thing. This is how I'm going to do the job. I know this is important to you and I need your vote. I would like your vote on the first ballot and every ballot until it takes me to get elected. You just start adding them up. But by the way, I had built a team with some people that were my part of my local delegation friends like Kevin DeWine and Tom Rehga and other people that were part of this. They were in the house. They were in the house. These were other state reps. You build this core group of people and then, you know, and maybe they have a better relationship

50:18with this person than I do. And so maybe you send them out to go explore whether and you just, you just keep building. You build that team. That was, that was how we did it. And so after being in the legislature for years, the speaker of the house was term limit. And so we put it, we put a game plan together, put a team together, expanded that team. So now we're learning the lessons of the past about team and discipline and listening and collaboration and then now we're building that out into more people who were helping with that. And we were able to sew up the votes to get the job. And then move so applicable to anything. You know, you think about finding out, you know, times I'll speak with businesses or educational organizations. And a lot of the talk is, well, how do I get my staff to be better or my workforce or whatever.

51:20And to your point, find out what they care about, find out what's important to them, find out, you know, what you need to do to convince them that you're there to help them. Yeah. And it's not rocket science. It's. Yeah. So, but that was, that was sort of the point in my career where, you know, you probably can hear this, you know, like I was largely moving forward in life. I had a lot of good people, but it was just by force of will. Just like, I'm just going to run through every wall that it takes to get there. But finally, when you, there's a point, you can only do it so much on your own. And then you got to have more people to help you. And that's when you started, I started to learn how to build more relationships with people, hiring great staff, people who knew more about certain things than I did that I could trust that they would, that they could help me navigate this.

52:22And so then you start to build a campaign operation. You start to build a policy operation. You start to build, you know, a finance operation. So now you get a, you got to, you got to rely. And once you get far enough down the road, you can rely on other people. Different world. That's why, you know, that's when getting, you know, having them trust in you and you trust in them starts to become really important as you try to go beyond just the things that you can do on your own. So any, how many years were you the speaker? Four. Four. Yeah. Any good stories for our listeners and viewers about how you were able to coalesce people from all different opinions to kind of rally together. So we did some, we did some great things in the first, very first six months. So Bob Taff was in his last term as governor. I had an amazing partner in the Senate, Senate President Bill Harris, who's since left us. Wonderful man, Marine Corps veteran.

53:25I was young enough to be his son. He actually has a son who's older than me, all right. So we didn't have, we didn't have any of that rivalry that sometimes we had. We had a very wonderful relationship. We were both focused on trying to get things done for our respective people that we represented the House in the Senate. And that's when we got school choice done. The thing that I told that I'd run from the beginning, we did the ed choice scholarship, started out with 4,000 students now. As you well know, it's over 160,000 students using that, giving those kids an opportunity for choice. I can't tell you how many alliances and people you have to build to that. We also did tax reform, which is the foundation for all of the top rate then with 7.25%. Now it's 2.75% Ohio is just, we eliminate three business taxes. So we did a lot of great things, but it was getting your team rallied around where you want to go.

54:26The policies are details, but you get them rallied around the vision. We want to make Ohio a more prosperous state. We've got to be a more business friendly. We've got to be the kind of place that people want to live. People want to invest. Here are the details for doing that. If we want to win the future, we have to have a better educated population. We have to help more kids be successful in life. We got to fulfill that thing that we want to do to allow people to live their version of the American dream. But how can you live your version of the American dream if you're trapped in a bad school? And it helped put people in the position of those who were trying to help explain why it matters and then rally them toward that cause. It was very tough to do all of those things and to get 50 votes for some pretty, what were pretty, at the time, radical transformations and to get people on board to do that.

55:33You don't do it unless people trust you. We built the trust and we had a great team and we had a vision. That was sort of that moment that we can do some big things. We can do this. As you moved on and decided, well, I'm going to run for state-wide office and run for secretary of state. Now you're talking about a bigger team. You're talking about more complex. Talk about how you and about building that team. You're climbing the mountain, right? You're bringing some people with you as you do that. You find out who wants to come along and then you got to build out this coalition, not just around capital square and not just in your legislative district, but now you got to do it in every city in the state. I always tell you may be a big deal when you're in your state house district.

56:34I was the speaker of the house and so around capital square, everybody, you're a big deal around capital square. When you go to Youngstown, nobody knows who you are. That's right. So I always tell first time candidates state why it is like expect to go lots of places and be really enthused about telling them why they should want you to be the secretary of state or the treasurer or whatever and expect a blank look and return because no one cares. But you care. But you're there to find out what they care about. You're there to find out what they care about. And you're going to find a few people that care. This is what I mean. Nobody doesn't have, but if you can find a few, if find one person in every county, then you find two people in every county and then you, and then you just, you meet people, you find out who the doers are, you find out the people that want to help. And then you just, you just stick to them. You stick to the team that you have. And I think a lot of times people think that it's like this, it's, it's, it's not as

57:37many people as you think, but it's a lot of really good people who are willing to be selfless and sacrifice and, and will help, help you meet people and build relationships that you couldn't have done with it had without them. So then you win the election. Then how do you go about building that team that's going to have to run that office that has a lot of different responsibilities, but the one we all think about is elections. Yeah. Well, the important thing is the people you meet along the way. So, so as you start to do this, you meet people like I met, I met a guy by the name of Matt Damströder along the way. It was a good one. You knew very well. He was, he was, he was working at the, that the Franklin County Board of Elections at the time, but I met this guy and I'm like, he really knows a lot about the, the elections process. He's run the Franklin County Board of Elections, which is one of the biggest, biggest places in, in, in Ohio. He knows a lot about a lot of things. He knows a lot about a lot of things. He does. He's a great guy.

58:38But I hired guys like Matt, who I didn't, who I knew of, but didn't know before, but you, you just have, you just have to watch for talent. It's like recruiting, right? You're, you're looking for talent and you're saying, hey, that, I want that person to be on my team because they're, they know what they're doing. And so I brought some of the people from my operations as speaker. I met people along the way. I was like, oh, that's, that's a, that's a person to this person, this person hustle, this person, you know, has, has a way about them that you know is, draws people to them. And so you just, you just, you keep building that team. But that's what a campaign is good for is meeting people. And you meet a lot of good people along the way. And there are a lot of really talented people out there. And you, but you always as a leader have to be looking for it. It's not always going to present itself to you. You, you know, I always tell young people, it's like, you, you just, you just, you know, just, you do a good job and people will notice. And, and, and I notice, I notice people who solve problems before I ask the question.

59:45Right? Yeah. Like if somebody brings you a solution, actually, sometimes even for a problem, you didn't even know you were going to have. You're like, oh, this person's got something on the ball. So you know, someone like that that worked with us both, Haley Dunnehey. Well, she is the best at that. She, she is. And can I tell you, can I, I'm going to embarrass her when she hears this story. So she knows that she knows what story I'm going to tell about her is that she was her first day as an, as an intern for me. We were at a campaign event up in, in Port Clinton. And one of my staff members, I think it was Josh, Josh, Zach introduced me and he says, this is Haley. She's our new intern. She helped us put this event today. And, and she had blood running down her leg. Okay. And I'm like, Haley, are you okay? She's like, oh, yeah, I wiped out, you know, and cut myself, but I would.

1:00:46So here she is bleeding her first day on the job, but she's delivering on everything that we needed to do. And I was like, well, this is somebody who I have to have my jeans, right? You got to, if somebody's going to, because you, I mean, I've had, I've had people who've worked for me who, who, who literally made the excuse that they couldn't come to work because there were a geese between their apartment door and their car and they, and they, and they were scared to get there. So I've had that. Right. And then I have people who wipe out or bleeding and they're like, no, don't worry about it. It's just a flesh wound. I'm, I'm good. I'm going to get. So, you know, you, you see the kind of people who, who you want to reflect the kind of person you are, the kind of operation you have, the, the kind of say, hey, we're just going to get this done. And that's the people you bring to you. You know, there's another part of it to me is interesting and important. So you had that group that you noticed and you came in, you brought your leadership

1:01:46with you, but in all the agencies and all the departments I've noticed in my short time is probably two thirds of the people on the team are on the team for 25 years with different leaders. Yeah. And winning them over and, and making sure that they know you believe in them and you want to hear them. What was that like? I don't know how many employees you had in the secretary of state. So obviously, but it probably was a, was a number. How'd you go about making sure they knew you cared about them? Well, you keep promoting them. And, but also, there's a limit to how long sometimes someone's going to stay with you in a job and government. So even though I wanted to keep them on the team, understand they can also be on your team, not directly working for you. That you got to want good things for them. You want, you want them to know that you come and you can work for me for two or three, four or five

1:02:49years, whatever it is. But I know that maybe you're married, you had some children, you can't afford to work at the, the rate that government can pay because you're, because you're, you're more talented than what we have the resources to offer you. And so for some of those people, you're like, sure, go off and do this other thing. I know that we can, we know we want you to be successful in life, because you're going to build relationships with people that are out there in the world. So you have that group of people. And then the people internally, because they're, they're, they're in government, there are some inside people and there's some outside people. There are people that are supposed to work inside government because they just, that's what they love. There's some people that love the things that government do, but maybe they're outside people that they want to work in a campaign. They're going to want to work for a corporation. They're going to want to do something else. But, but that you, you keep the good ones that you can keep. Every one of them, but you also don't hold back the people who maybe have other things that they want to do in life. And you, you support them and encourage them and you help them find those opportunities as well.

1:03:54So now you're the lieutenant governor and you wake up and you say, oh my gosh, governor, DeWine and I are leading a state of 12 million people. What's the, the greatest lesson you learned as you began your six plus years doing that from governor DeWine? Well, there's so many things that I learned from that experience. You know, you have one of the things that governor DeWine is the most underestimated person I think I know. Because in his, he, what people, when they see him, they don't think, they don't think, because like when we think of competitors, we think of the big, you know, strong, tough people, he's as competitive as anyone that there is.

1:04:59And you will never outwork him. He is, he's, he's relentless in a way that people just don't understand because he's always working, like always working. And, and he knows so many people in this state. But he, you know, he's, he, he just, that's the thing about him is like people underestimate him. They don't understand what kind of competitor is and he's always working. And so it's hard to be a guy like that. It really, it really is in life. It's been amazing. And, and I tell you a story about him. So he'd been a two-term US senator and then he lost. And a lot of people would have said, you know, I mean, he was a senator. There's not many jobs that are better than that. You know, in politics and he decides to come back and run for attorney general.

1:06:01Okay. And my son was, during that campaign, my son was playing a high school football game. And so I'm going to the upper Arlington football game on a Friday night. And here's Mike DeWine standing outside the football stadium as people are coming in just standing there shaking hands with people. The Sunday after that, he's standing at the Cleveland Browns stadium with, with Bernie Kosar, shaking hands with people there. Like, he probably, and he only won that race by like 32,000 votes. I mean, that's not very very much. And in my opinion, he won that race because he literally met 32,000 people. Right. Personally, right? Over the course of his time that probably voted for him only because they knew Mike DeWine. They felt like they knew him personally because he, he's just, he's, you know, who, a first time candidate work ethic going out and doing that stuff.

1:07:06A guy who'd been in office who was a two-term US senator who's coming on a comeback tour, is still standing outside football games shaking hands on a Friday night. There's no ego, it's humility, it's realintinelessness, it's like, he's just going to show up and work every day. You may be taller, you may be more handsome, you may be smarter, but you're never going to work the guy. And that's why he's been a legendary figure in all of a sudden. What amazed me is, you know, we talked early on here about, he constantly talked about every Ohio and, you know, reaching their God-given potential. He clearly cares about every Ohio and knowing full well, they can do nothing for him. Yeah. Whereas so many people, yeah, they'll care about this person over here because they know there might be a benefit coming. And that's to me what's been, it doesn't matter, who has a request, who wants a question answered, who has a concern, doesn't matter if they can do something for him

1:08:09or not. He cares about those people and it's been a great lesson. Yeah. He intentionally looks for people who have been overlooked. Mm-hmm. Oh, question. Yeah. And they remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Because everybody, everybody when he walks into a room, you know, you might, the CEO might be there and everybody's focused on this. He'll go talk, this is a great lesson because I do it too now because I've, he'll go talk to the everybody, the receptionist, everybody in the room. He'll go shake their hand or introduce himself. They matter. They matter. He shows them that he cares just as much about them as he does is the people that they think are the important people in the room. So we both agree, tough team to build, to take care of the state of Ohio because it's so large, but same fundamentals. So now you're at the federal level. We have what, 350 million people or something like that. Yeah. And there's only 100 of you and what, 435, you know, in the house,

1:09:17what lessons have you learned along the way in this different magnitude of team that you're trying to help build? Human nature is the same no matter where you go. It really is. And, uh, do you have the time though? There was 33 senators and 99 house members. Can you get, what's the magic for that? So I don't know that I figured out the magic. Okay. But, but, um, first of all, you, you're in a different place. You have to, you have to, you have to build a whole, so you have to, you have to build a team of the people who know you and then the people who know how Washington works. Because I don't know how Washington. I don't, I don't think I have two teams together. You got to bring two teams together. So you got to bring people with the different talent and skills together. And I think that I've done a good job so far of blending that because I've told everybody

1:10:22from day one that our number one, we may not be able to solve everybody's problem, but customer service will be number one that everybody who has a problem, we will give them good customer service. We will try to connect them to the resources that they need. We will try to solve their problem. We will communicate with them. And even when we can't help them, they at least need to leave knowing that we try. And, uh, that is a universal guiding principle that I've got the team to understand whether you've been with me for a long time and you came because we have operations in Ohio or you've come to DC or you're new with me, they, they need to know what I believe and they need to know that customer service is number one because 12 million people, they only have two US senators. US senators have a special influence that you can't get from other places in your state. And so that's, you get, the team needs to know what the vision is, right? They

1:11:24need to know what they're supposed to be doing. And that's the, I can attest to the customer service. I think I called you like three months ago on an unrelated, it wasn't an Ohio thing, but I had gotten a call from a coach who had a kid who got drafted by the CFL or something. I can't from a Canadian football league and was having trouble, you know, with the, how, how am I allowed to, he was from Australia. Had an immigration. He had an immigration. And you, I'll never forget, you said, Oh, that's not a problem. I'll get my guy on that. Well, three hours later, I get a call back from this coach saying, man, now that you're a lieutenant governor, you got a lot of steam. You got the senator to, you know, but that's the kind of, you know, but you, you should just know this. We do that for everybody. Exactly. Yeah. There's no question. I mean, that's, you do, you do have a lot of steam. And if you call, I, I will quickly respond as you know, but we tried to do that for everybody. It was obvious. I mean, that's pretty neat. We could talk all day, but I have one more thing I want to talk about because this, this has been awesome. So you use the term about

1:12:27governor DeWine that he likes to make sure he has a special passion for the overlooked. One of the things that I've been blessed running around trying to do our workforce things and, and the thing, all those great things that you guys started was that it's so complicated for some of the overlooked people. And one of the things I know that is a passion of yours is to have that overlooked person who really does have that desire to have that work ethic, to make it in life, to, to get there, how they feel about themselves, heading in the right direction. They have a lot of responsibilities, a lot of struggles. And we've got to assist them such that the harder they work sometimes, all of a sudden, the help we give them becomes less. We talk about the benefits cliff and so forth. And probably the one of the most exciting things to me that I know you're working

1:13:30like crazy on is how can we make that overlooked person who wants to work, who wants to do it the right way, not have the rules and regulations make it more difficult. So share with our listeners and viewers your passion for that. Yeah. Well, well, there's so many things there, but I'm working on something my passion project is something called the Upward Mobility Act. And what happens to people who are lowest income earners is that they're trapped in poverty. You might be a single parent with two kids. And you may make $26,000 a year. You work 20 hours a week. But if you made $27,000 a year, you might lose $6,000, $7,000 in benefits. So what happens? They don't work anymore. Because why? They're making a rational economic decision that why should I work more and take home less? So they don't work more. And it's a trap and it's insidious. And it's been the federal government rule

1:14:32for 50 plus years. And so I have something called the Upward Mobility Act that's designed to gradually reduce benefits as people earn more so that it pays to work so that that work ethic is rewarded so that dignity can come with it, that opportunity can come with it, that self-sufficiency can come with it. And hope that one day I can be in the middle class and I can own a home and I can have a better life. Not to mention modeling for your children. Yes. And setting a good example for your children. That's what it does. That's what the Upward Mobility Act would do. And I just think it's so wrong that we trap people in poverty like that. And on the other side of it is that we have lower birth rates. We have a broken immigration system. People are aging out of the workforce. We have to have more people part of the game, off the bench and in the game. But the

1:15:35most insidious part, and I learned this when I was a lieutenant governor and this part of the reason I took the appointment to the US Senate. Because I feel like we've done a lot of things to help kids. We have all these career centers. We have all these pre-apprentice ships. We have all of these ways that they can go to work when they're in high school and graduate career ready with a job. And then I go to the Pike County Career Center. And the principal says, you know, at the time lieutenant governor, he said, we have kids that, um, and a lot of families in our school who can't take these jobs because their income counts against their family income. And so they can't work. And I said, wait a minute, you mean to tell me you got a high school junior high school senior who could go work auto body at this place. They want to hire them, but they can't take the job. I mean, yeah. And so I went around. I started asking some other principal. Is this isolated? Is this a real problem? Every principal, I'd go to say, yeah,

1:16:38we got lots of kids like that. So think about what we've done. We say we want young people to work. We say that we want them to go be responsible adults. But yet we don't let them go do that because we have, by the way, only for the poor kids. Right. Not not not for everybody else, but only for the lowest income families. Do we say you can't work? That is, is stunning to me. And that's why I introduced the upward mobility act because we went into all that. And that overlooked kid, we need in our workforce because I'll go full circle back. It's a proud time for the state of Ohio. We used to be in the bottom, you know, 20% of states when people thought about putting a business or expanding a business. And now we're number one. So we're going to need every workforce we can get. And oh, by the way, it's the right thing. It's the right thing to do economically,

1:17:40morally, culturally, all of those things. We have more jobs today in Ohio than we've ever had in our history. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates we've ever had in our history. But we're saying to a big section of our population, don't go to work. And that has to change. And for all those kids, you know, we started out and talked about, you know, started out in a foster home. And kids who, and we talked about, you know, people who feel like they're looked over people who maybe don't have a lot of confidence in themselves, you know, never feel less than, never feel like somehow you can't do it. Your pathway may be harder than it is for other people, but there's a way. And there are people out there that want you to succeed. And, and so don't give up on yourself. Keep believing. And, and by the way, and maybe you've done some really dumb things in life, maybe you haven't made great choices, but you can change that tomorrow. Like you don't, you're not

1:18:41trapped by your past. It may make it harder, but you're not trapped by it. And, and so we won't help them. And we want to make sure the system doesn't make it harder. It doesn't make it harder. It's hard enough. Hard enough. The way it is. Well, I'll say this. I'm on, I'm on team Houston. And I'll tell you why. Many reasons I've known you for a hundred years. But, you know, you lead with your faith, you lead with your family. We'd even talk about Tina's great golf and, you know, her running triathlons. We could be here for two days. But, you know, you lead with your faith, you lead with your family, and you care about every single Ohio one and every single American. So, thanks. It's good to be on your team. Best wishes to you and, and proud of you. Thanks, Lieutenant Governor Tressel. All righty. Coach Tressel, President Tressel, you've had a lot of great, great titles, and you've served Ohio so well in so many different roles. And still being a leader and a role model for people. So that, the fact that you were on team

1:19:42Houston is, means a lot to me. So thank you. Thank Alan and God bless Ohio. You, amen. Team mates, until the next time, remember, it's all about the team.