Michael Tubbs: Don't Despise Small Beginnings

I'm not a technical expert, but from what I've read and from the people I've talked to, it seems like everyone's obsessed with this idea of scale. Like I have this small idea, how do I scale it 100x times and things like that. And in politics, it's almost the same way. People get at one office and they think about, okay, how do I go from city council to UN Ambassador, or how I go from city council to UN Secretary General? And it's crazy. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, start with city council. And the first lesson I've learned since being in office is don't despise the small beginnings or the startup phase, because those lessons I shared with you are really the lessons that help govern the decisions I make every single day. It's have the door slammed in my face and being chased by Chihuahuas and I don't like dogs. So I was very traumatic. So you guys are laughing, but that was trauma for me. But it was those experiences that keep me humble. It's tough talking to the grandmother on the porch or talking to the people who don't vote who really inform the decisions I make. And I think oftentimes we're always in so much of a hurry to move on to the next and get bigger and better when it's really the basics and the small beginnings that set the foundation for any skill that comes on top of it. The second lesson from governing or the ramp up phase is this idea that you don't know everything. And that's okay. And that's really hard, especially in politics, because for some reason people think that you are a fusion of Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, everybody and Tina Selig, John Hennessy, all the smart people in the world in one body. And you have the answers to intractable problems like homelessness and water issues and poverty and crime. And you and you alone have the answers. And there's a lot of pressure to feel like you're the expert. But I realized that not knowing everything has been so freeing because it's opened the door for me to connect with people who do have the answers. So it's been great to work on issues like poverty and realize that I have some Stanford experience and lived experience, but there are some subject matter experts who've been doing this work in this community for 25 years who may not have the degrees or the pedigree, but they know what they're talking about. And it's been so free to say, you guys, you know what? I don't know. I don't know. I know that someone knows. So let's find this answer collectively. So don't feel pressured to know all the answers or have all the answers. Because part of, in my opinion, entrepreneurship and iteration is not knowing if what you're doing is going to work. It's the iteration experimentation that leads to knowledge. The knowledge is not already baked in.