The Sport of Business Retention

If you lived in Washington State, the big news has not been about Ukraine, the pandemic, or inflation. The big news has been about the relocation of a million-dollar brand. No, Boeing is not relocating to another state. Instead, people in Washington have been mourning...

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 the 50-yard dash at Mark Twain elementary, the eternally late award...

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 away from it all. You packed your bags, gathered the children, gassed...

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.   Each January I write resolutions that you read online, I thought I would...

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 will remember this year being the worst of times. It reminds me of...

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 you. November is my favorite month because it is the month where people...

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 comparison to the fall of the Roman Empire where arguably emperors and...

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 anticipation for a ground hog to poke his head out and tell us we won’t...

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 laboratory ostensibly performs scientific research for the government but...