The Sport of Business Retention
I am extremely honored to have received the International Economic Development Council’s “Lifetime Achievement Award” in absentia last week. I have received several awards in my life: 7th place in...
Five Ideas to be a Better Economic Developer for your Community.
Do you remember what it was like to take a vacation? After working 60-hour weeks, people would leave the stress and pressure of their weekdays and finally use those hard-earned vacation days to get...
A Lifetime of Lessons and Thanks
I am extremely honored to have received the International Economic Development Council’s “Lifetime Achievement Award” in absentia last week. I have received several awards in my life: 7th place in...
A Tale of Two Communities
Do you remember what it was like to take a vacation? After working 60-hour weeks, people would leave the stress and pressure of their weekdays and finally use those hard-earned vacation days to get...
An Economic Developers Inauguration Poem
I have been writing my blog for almost 10 years, Warning small communities of their own worst fears. So, as I sit in my home while in quarantine, My thoughts have now gone beyond Covid 19. ...
2021: It Will Be the Best of Times
Thank goodness the year is finally coming to an end.!!!! Charles Dickens words are certainly prophetic for 2020. “It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times”. In the future, most of us...
What’s Your Million-Dollar Idea?
November has always been my favorite month of the year. You may think I love November because it’s my birthday month. But you would be wrong. It’s July and as the date gets closer, I will remind...
The Great Reset for Economic Development
As we enter the final months of “the most important election of the century”, each candidate warns us that an American apocalypse will take place if you vote for the wrong person. This recalls a...
From Startup to Standup
More than 33 million workers have filed for unemployment since the COVID-19 virus began. Many more don’t know if or when they will be able to return to their old jobs. They are waiting with great...
The Four Horsemen of Disasters
This past week I started watching Season 3 of the award-winning Netflix hit Stranger Things, an American science fiction horror flick. It’s the story of a small rural town in Indiana where a...
And the award goes to…
I love July. I love the warm weather, the weekend barbecues, watching the Seattle Mariners valiantly battle for last place, and because I celebrate another year of being born (it’s the 22nd, in...
It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s economic development!
During my 26-year career in economic development, I got to dabble and later indulge in my secret desire to be a writer. Not a writer of pulp fiction about economic developers lurking in dank...
Evolution of an entrepreneur.
Our lifetimes are filled with firsts that are forever etched in our memories. Who doesn’t remember their first kiss, first car or first job? Some of these memories are so fresh that we use them as...
Art and culture are worth a thousand jobs.
For many years, while working at the Washington State Department of Commerce, I wrote a January blog of New Year’s resolutions for economic developers. They included the usual strategies and...
Preparing for the worst. Hoping for the best.
My adorable granddaughter just celebrated her first birthday this month. That means that she has now experienced all four seasons of winter, spring, summer, and fall. But instead of identifying...
Start, Stop, Continue
When I was young, I use to love watching game shows. Shows like You Bet Your Life, Truth, or Consequences, and What’s My Line were just a few of the 51 game shows that were on television in the...
Follow the real leader.
It has been over 10 years since the Washington State Department of Commerce and the Association of Washington Cities collaborated to produce the Ten Commandments of Community Leadership. This...
An ode to 2018.
Another year has come and gone, There are many things we can dwell on. But as we look to the future, reflect on the past, We hope our good fortune will continue to last. 2018 was certainly a year,...
The road to rural is paved with good intentions.
Winter is upon us. Soon, families will be winding their way through endless lines at the airport, all so they can wing their way to destinations unknown. Or to visit family members, which doesn’t...
It all came flooding back…
As I finish up this blog, Hurricane Michael has just wreaked havoc on the Florida Panhandle, then moved across a swath of the south as an encore. It turned out to be the strongest storm to hit this...
