Episode 15 | LIVE from the #AmericanSouth Site Selection Summit Day Two | Interviews with Kevin Johnson, Tim Gibbs, and Chuck Sexton

Welcome to the SEDC Meet the Consultants 2023 coming to you from Atlanta, Georgia. Hi, I'm Ray Methvin and I have happily hijacked the SEDC podcast for the next couple of days. We're going to spend a few minutes talking to the different people that make the SEDC such a wonderful organization. Stay tuned, folks. And we're back with Kevin Johnson. Kevin is with Kojima Building and Design Group. Kevin, welcome to the podcast and thanks for joining us. Happy to be here. Happy to be here. Cool. We are here at the SEDC Meet the Consultants Conference. Kevin. Start by telling us a little bit about yourself and a lot about Kojima. OK, a little bit about myself. Let me see. Just a fun fact about me. I love to cook, love to work out. My love to grill. I should say cooking grilling is a little different. Love to grill. Got a Kamado Joe. I got another upright smoker. Love to grill. Also, heavily involved in the church. I'm a minister there at the church. And so these are what I do on the side. Workout cook church. But for my business, KBD Group, Kojima Building and Design Group, we've been in business for almost 60 years. We are a design build firm. Our target markets are manufacturing, warehouse and industrial construction. We love to build tire plants, automotive plants. We specialize in that. And anything like tier one, automotive suppliers. But warehouses, we can't get them up fast enough. We are building them constantly. So what I do at KBD, I'm the senior marketing manager there. So I do a little business development, but my sole purpose is to make sure our proposals are done right. We manage the website. We manage the social media, video content, graphic design, animation. We have a full in-house studio. Our team is small, but we are a powerful team. And I've been working with Kojima for about seven and a half years. Been loving it ever since. They seem to keep me there. So they love me too. I would like to believe that. So that's just in a nutshell of who we are as a company. Well, I lost count of the number of hats you wear between your personal commitments in Kojima. I think I lost count of about eight or ten. So way to go, congratulations. I get why you need to work out. So good job, good work. Now, I also know that you're really involved with SEDC. You've been really involved, really involved from an imagery point of view here at this conference, but talk about you're involved with SEDC. OK, SEDC, I've been involved in SEDC totaling about four years. I was off. I started in 2015 and I dropped off due to the downward economy for about two years. And I am back in it. I love SEDC. I love these associations. I love the people here. This is like family to me. My involvement, I am the committee, the communications chairman. We have, I believe, about eight people in our group, nine people supporting us. You know, they say I do a lot. They say I'm busy and I am busy. I enjoy what I do. So I'm here taking pictures. Matt, Matt Tackett asked me, can I take photos? I'll be happy to. I've been doing this for associations pretty much half my business career. Not just with SEDC, but also Georgia Economic Developers Association. So this is a passion of mine. My goal is to help spread the word of SEDC and keep members involved. So you'll see me, if you ever come to SEDC, you'll see me with my camera. I'll be doing interviews. Just the sky's the limit. I'll have a team, my committee helping me. And so heavily involved, always moving. I think yesterday I had just in that day, I think I had like 15,000 steps just moving. So I'm getting my exercise. So there's a plus there. Yeah. Look at it on the look of the bright side. Yeah. Definitely. Let me ask you, Kevin, because I'm a little bit of camera nerd myself. What are you shooting with today? OK, so this is a Nikon Z7, it's a mirrorless camera. I'm a Nikon fan. You know, Canon, I know this. There's a rivalry there, but since I've been shooting with Nikon pretty much my whole life. I'm a Canon guy. I see. Yeah. See, we can go back and forth on aperture speed and color, accuracy. But, you know, if you know your tool, you can use it well. And I've been using this for about four years. Excellent. Excellent. Well, it's great to have you here at the event. It's really great to have your really continued involvement with SEDC. Speaking on behalf of Matt, I know everyone here appreciates it. We've seen you everywhere, so I believe the steps part. Thank you. It's great again. We're talking with Kevin Johnson of Kojima building a design group and Kevin as a very involved committee chairperson here for SEDC as well. Kevin, we can close out. I've got some really important questions for you. OK, let's go. Cats or dogs? Oh, dogs. OK. Bourbon or Scotch? I don't drink, but I would prefer bourbon because I cook with it a lot. Ah, OK. Yeah. How do you cook with bourbon? So I will. It's like OK, so white meat, either fish or chicken, mostly chicken. Yeah. So I'll spice up the chicken, throw a little creamer in there and throw the bourbon in there. Also, I do a nice honey glaze. Why'd I say chicken? Salmon, honey bourbon, salmon, which is really good. My wife loves it. So I bought bourbon. People beat me up for that. They say you don't drink it. You buy it. I said I cook with it because I love the flavor and the aroma it gives. Did I mention that I'm available for dinner tonight? Yeah. I just if I need to throw that. Come on. That sounds that sounds amazing. OK. Next question. Most many of us are travelers big time in this industry and your footprint extends over several states. What is your favorite southern airport? Ooh, you know, I have to. Have to say hearts feel Atlanta. And this is this is my favorite airport. And maybe it's a little biased because I live here, but I've been to other airports. So Atlanta, the the heart spell Jackson and Atlanta airport is gotta be my favorite. There you go. OK. Now let me flip that question for one last question. Yeah. What is your most dreaded US airport? Oh, gosh. Oh, OK. I don't go to New York. Often and I know New York may have a good airport, but I flew there one time and my experience was just bad when I got off the plane. So my my kids were there and they made a mistake and bump into a lady. This lady let me have it. I was like, OK, this may not be the airport for me. Apologize a thousand times, but that left the sour taste on my mouth. So maybe I need to go back and get that, you know, changed. And you can you could try it. You can try it. But it may be the same experience. We've been talking with Kevin Johnson of Kojima building a design group. Kevin, thank you so much for talking to us. Really appreciate the time. Really appreciate getting a chance to know you and meet you. So have a great rest of the conference. We're winding it up, take care and we'll see each other soon. We'll see a nice meeting you and nice seeing you. I enjoyed this podcast very much. I did too. Thanks again. Hi. And we're here with Tim Gibbs. Tim is the president CEO of Kentucky's Ashland Alliance. Hi, Tim. Welcome to the podcast. Happy to be here. Thank you. It's exciting times. And thank you for being here at the Meet the Consultants Conference. This has been a really cool conference. But let's start. Tell us a little bit about you and tell us a lot about Ashland Alliance. Well, let's start off with the organization first. How about that? OK. Organization is a regional organization in Northeast Kentucky. Our roots go back 125 years, actually. Starting off as a business support organization that turned into a chamber of commerce. And then about 30 years ago, we realized that regionalism was a strength for economic development for the communities to come together to bring their attributes, to look at their labor force collectively and do the things it takes to not only support what's there, but to think about what also would be good fits for the region. So the Ashland Alliance was formed. I've had the honor for the last nine years to be the president and the CEO of the organization. I'm a kid from Eastern Kentucky. I've worked all over the United States doing economic development, but I had the opportunity to come home. And I think for most Kentucky ins, that's always something in their back, their mind is they wouldn't be able to come home. Nice. I get that completely. All right, Tim, let's talk about you. I know you're wearing several hats right now. Well, I think a lot of professionals are. But for me, when COVID happened, it allowed me to look inside and say, is there anything that I should be investing in myself in? Is there, should I use this time that maybe I haven't had in the past? So I went back to school and I started a doctoral program. Wow. But I wanted to do one in something that would make me better as a practitioner of what I do as well. So I'm in the process of finishing up a doctoral program in educational leadership, but the focus of it is in workforce and it's in training and it's about the alignment of education, workforce and economic development collectively. So I've been excited and it's been a great experience. Oh, cool. That's, that's amazing. I, I applaud you for having the, the grit and the determination just to go out and do it. That's, that's something else. Now, let's circle back to Ashton's Alliance. Tell, what's some success stories? What's going on in the area? Well, we always want more. We do. And we've had some success. We've had some, some great companies that have come in there and then really I'd like to also say success is helping our existing companies. Okay. Because you got to navigate and there's challenges out there. There's workforce challenges out there. The world is just changing. It just is. But out of every new, every new segment and opportunity, there's growth potential as well. And, you know, one of the things talked about at this conference is as the growth of the EV clusters. And we're seeing massive opportunity in that. The amount of companies that we've got to share who we are, what we have to offer and why potentially we'd be a good fit for them. Just in the last six months, it's been staggering. That really leads me in and it almost answers a question that I have for you. Is that your big takeaway from this Meet the Consultants? The conference or what is your big takeaway? Well, I needed some validation of some of the things that we were thinking when we got here. And I also wanted to listen to the best and brightest and kind of develop a little bit of a kitchen cabinet of people that I could turn to to navigate these, these turbulent but opportunistic waters that are out there right now. There are so many things going on and understanding what's driving those, understanding that the federal policy. People may not like it, but for the first time in 70 years, there's actually a federal policy on growth. Now, that's the Inflation Reduction Act. It's actually encouraging EV production. Now, some people like it, some people hate it, but as a practitioner for economic development, these billion dollar projects that we're seeing is because of that act and the money that's being put out there to help either, you know, I'm not going to use the word subsidize, but to offset the cost of building the facilities and also the per 75 kW battery cost that is being offered as well. So there are some fundamental things, fundamental changes going on in the business community that's now coming to local communities and conferences like this allow us to get together here from the national perspective, here best practices and here from the consultants that are driving these projects. Wow, that's cool. You've been a long time SCDC member and supporter. What does SCDC mean to you as an organization? Well, I think there's collective strength to working together. The byline for Kentucky and it's on the flag is United, we stand divided, we fall. And collectively, we have strength and it's not just that it makes us a bigger organization, but it brings the collective knowledge of the South. And if you think about it, a lot of the times the DNA may not be that much different for the people, but the states as well, the things I'm facing in Kentucky is probably not that much different than Tennessee, probably not that much different than Southwest Virginia and such. So if I understand what they're going through, they know what I'm going through, we're working on it collectively, we know what's the economic drivers, what's driving that, what the issues are, what the expectations of the site, the consultants are representing of their clients, then I can be a better practitioner in Ashland, Kentucky and for Northeast Kentucky. We are talking with Tim Gibbs, President and CEO of the Ashland Alliance, Tim. It's really great to spend a little bit of time with you. I'd love to close this out with some really piercing questions for you. Ask away. Question one, cats or dogs? Both. Don't like stupid ones of either. Okay. Question two. I may know where this will head, but bourbon or scotch? I have to say this, you cannot make scotch without bourbon. Every scotch barrel is a one-time used bourbon barrel. Interesting. So you cannot really, you can't age scotch unless you put it in a one-time, you can only use a bourbon barrel once. Okay. It's defined by law. So after it's been used for bourbon, then they go for secondary uses. Bass majority of them is used to age scotch. And so actually what makes scotch a little bit better is it's mellowed out by a little bit of bourbon. And that's why I come to SEDC. I learn something every day, Tim. Thank you for that. Another question, you're a fellow traveler. What is your favorite southern airport? Wow, that's a great question. I'm going to give you the answer that no one else would ever give you. I'm actually going to say Atlanta for a crazy reason. I have flown into so many airports that have had to evolve to what they are, but they weren't laid out and planned. Atlanta was. So I know if I fly into Atlanta and I have 30 minutes to get from one end of the airport to the other, I can do it. Okay. If I fly into another airport like Charlotte and come into E, it'd have to get all the way to A and B. Can't hardly do it unless I'm running because there's no transportation. At least Atlanta was laid out to be the busiest airport in the world. And they did it extremely well. And it still holds that distinction. And it serves people every single day. There's 275,000 people a day that go through that airport. Wow. Wow. All right. Let me flip the question for our final question. What is your most dreaded US airport? Newark, you came to that pretty quickly. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I've been stuck there. Okay. Multiple times. And on that we say, we're sorry, Tim. Yeah. For your experience now. Tim Gibbs with Ashen the Alliance. Thank you for spending a few moments with me. It's always good to see you. I enjoy the chance to talk to you. You've been such a good friend. And thank you so much. Safe travels on your way home. And we'll see you soon. Yes, sir. Thank you as well. Bye. And we're back with Chuck Sexton. Chuck is the CEO of NextMoveGroup. Chuck, welcome to the podcast. And thanks for taking part. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. This is exciting. Chuck, I'm sure you need no introduction. But tell us a little bit about NextMoveGroup. And tell us a little bit about your position with NextMoveGroup. Yeah. So NextMoveGroup, as a lot of folks know, is a full-service economic development site selection consulting firm. Most folks know us for executive search, because we do a lot of executive search. And historically, we've done a lot of executive search. Really proud of that section of our business, but also proud of the fact that it's growing, and has grown tremendously in site selection, and our consulting side for EconaEDO's, power companies, Chambers of Commerce, all kinds of folks. Cool. What do you see over the next, what's the next 12 or 24 months look like for NextMoveGroup? Well, judging by the activity right now, it's going to be a lot of site selection projects. Needing to add some more staff, certainly. We're doing quite a few executive searches right now, which is fantastic. We've added a few things from that standpoint. And then I'll tell you, too, one of the things that we've really started focusing on as a team is doing more strategic planning with communities. And not just communities themselves, but even more power companies and their territories. Really? Doing a lot of that. We are doing a lot of work on the site identification side, and fatal flaw analysis for communities, because as everyone heard in the panels, everyone doesn't have enough real estate, or it's not prepared to the degree that needs to be. And so, we developed that last year as a service offering, and that's really taken off as well. So I think the next 12, 24 months, you're going to continue to see us do more and more strategic planning, and more and more site analysis, site identification for communities. We are talking with Chuck Sexton, CEO of NextMoveGroup. Chuck, you have been a longtime member and very involved with SEDC. Tell us a little bit about your history at SEDC and about the organization. Well, it's funny we talked about this last night. Laura Garren came out and hung out with us, and everybody out there who's been around SEDC a long time, remember Laura, she worked with Jean for a long time with SEDC, and we talked about our YP group. So it was kind of a little reunion for a few of us. So Josh Finn and myself and Laura and Rachel Pearson and a few others, we all just kind of got together and hung out last night. And Laura was the one who kept talking to us. She said, you know, we all started out as these little young professionals in our late 20s together and look at us all now in different directions and this and that. And, you know, it was fun being a part of the young professionals. I think that's a really important thing for SEDC to continue to foster and mentor young folks who are getting into the business and giving them insights and educating them appropriately. And I know at the annual conference, there's going to be a focus on the YPs there. And I think that's tremendous. I think that's an awesome thing. And then of course, I went from being just a YP to being on the board of SEDC. I was state director for State of Kentucky and then all my peers voted me as the Mid-Atlantic regional director as well on the board. And so I served those terms and then kind of moved off and I haven't really been involved really lately because I've been really busy. Yeah, if you had something to do. I don't get to do the board stuff anymore, but I'm always happy when I get invited to come speak at a conference. Cool. Chuck, you also were a very valuable member of the panel yesterday. For those of us who are listeners and couldn't be here, what are a couple of the big takeaways from your panel discussion? Well, okay. So I know a lot of the panel discussions were harping on workforce issues and and power infrastructure and site development. And I wanted to make sure that our panel kind of talked beyond that. And so I kind of tried to prime Courtland Robinson, who is our moderator. And he wanted to focus on some things that were beyond that. We talked about local incentives. That was something I think that I'm not sure anybody really talked about that much, but I think communities right now out there who are wanting to win projects, especially small to mid-size rural communities, who I think have a lot of opportunity to win right now. Being a little more creative with local incentives is going to be key, especially with interest rates where they are. I think if they can develop low interest loan programs either as a community, as a region or even on the state level. I mean, not everybody has TVA. And TVA has some great low interest loan programs. If you're going into Tennessee or one of their other territories, but communities can be inventive and creative and utilize CDBG funds to do some low interest loans on equipment, for example, and maybe do a million and a half, two million over seven years at 2%. I mean, those little things like that can really impact a decision for some companies, just depending on what their critical needs are. And so I think that's important. And then the last thing I did, and I had a lot of people say something to me afterwards, was I felt like we were harping too much on the problems. And I just took the opportunity to say, hey, I think the Southeast is doing a great job. The SEDC states, the communities, the power companies, they're doing a phenomenal job. They're kicking butt right now. And there's a lot of activity, a lot of great announcements happening, and I don't want them getting down. We were the last panel, so I wanted to leave feeling positive and being encouraged. And I see the work that they're doing. I see how hard the economic developers are working in their communities and trying to make an impact and trying to get all these things taken care of. They're working hard, and I wanted to be encouraged. And I noticed it. I see it. And I don't want them to feel down because they hear all the consultants talking about the bad things. Yeah. So no, that's a great point. We're talking with Chuck Sexton at Next Move Group. Chuck, thank you so much for taking a moment to talk to us. I know the SEDC podcast listeners appreciate it. Now, I'd like to close out with some really piercing questions for you. Uh-oh. Chuck Sexton, dogs or cats? It used to be dogs, but it's cats now. I have two cats, and one of them is kind of like a dog. He's a chubby. He's 22 pounds. His name is Tim. Can I interact, interject? 22 pounds is not kind of chubby. That's being really nice. Yeah. He's a tabby cat, but I just call him a tubby cat. Okay. I think I know where this will go, but I'll ask you bourbon or scotch? Oh, bourbon. Favorite bourbon. My absolute favorite is Colonel Taylor, single barrel. It was the first one I really got into, and it's a beautiful bottle, and if you like a little spice with your bourbon, and I don't mean burn. I mean, you're feeling those flavors float through your mouth and across your tongue, and all your taste buds, and then you get a little sweetness at the beginning, but on that finish, there's a hint of spice and that cinnamon. I love that. And so that's my absolute all-time favorite. I'm also a big fan of Elmer T. Lee. Okay. You are a traveler, especially these days. I know you're a big time traveler. What is your favorite southern airport? My favorite southern airport. Honestly, I fly through Atlanta a lot. And so, and it always seems easy getting it out of. I don't have the major problems that I've had in some other airports in Atlanta. It seems like things typically move on time unless there's a pretty bad line of thunderstorms, but other than that, it's okay. It's not like flying through o' hairs. Which leads me to my next question. As our final question, what is your most dreaded U.S. airport, and you might have given us a spoiler? No, it's not o' hair. It's Newark. Really? And it's because the absolute worst experience I ever had was in Newark. Okay. It was just, I was stuck there for eight hours, and there was no vending machines. There was no where to eat, and people started getting rowdy and crazy and screaming at the lady working the desk. And I had to call him a guy down. It was like, it's not her fault. It's like, why are you being mean to this person? And so, Newark, like, I haven't flown through Newark in a long time because of this, but back then, you got stuck in this little pod area and you were stuck there. If your flight was delayed, you're there, and it was the worst. Wow. We have been spending a few minutes with Chuck Sexton, CEO at Next Move Group, Chuck, again. Thanks for the friendship. Thanks for the time. It's always great to talk to you. It's great to talk to you, right? I love you to death, so. Love you to death as well. Safe travels will see each other soon. Appreciate it. Thanks. Take care. Bye. Bye.