Episode 8 | Kevin Johnson

Hello, SEDC, and welcome to the SEDC podcast presented by our friends at Insightful, who everyday provide real-world innovations for economic development. Insightful believes your digital tool should work as hard as you do for your community. That's why Insightful creates Data-rich modules websites and digital outreach designed to make your visitor take notice without complicating your day. From core four modules, three pillars digital marketing strategies and comprehensive websites, to research and analysis, videography, and collateral design, Insightful works tirelessly as your on-call EDC marketing department. So thank you to the team at Insightful for partnering with SEDC to present the podcast, and if you see SEDC at events or on FDI trips or in Germany or select USA, anywhere on the road you'll see the good work of Insightful at our exhibit booth. So thank you to the team at Insightful and AHA created for partnering with us. And today we have a very special episode because we have a great friend to SEDC and more importantly, a great friend to economic development, especially our members on the podcast. So our listeners know this person. He has been a long time member of SEDC. He's an impactful partner to so many across the south and beyond. And he's also a newly placed leader in the council that we're excited to dig in into just a little bit. And we hope Matthew inserts a big round of applause here because we have one of the great friends who are thrilled to welcome Mr. Kevin Johnson of KVD Group to the SEDC podcast. And for those of you who may not have had the chance to meet KJ just yet, Kevin is the senior marketing manager for Kajima Building and Design Group. And prior to that, he led media efforts at Georgia Power. He has almost 20 years of economic development experience. He is one of the nicest people in the business. I hope you don't mind me saying that KJ, but that's true. And like me, he's a father of two and we are so excited that our members will be seeing plenty of him on SEDC media and events going forward. So welcome to the podcast KJ. Before we get going, where in the world are you today? Hey, I am in Georgia. I'm smoking my kid. I live in Newport, Georgia, which is about a good 45 minutes drive. I work mostly in the office. I'm loving the traffic. I'm being kind of sarcastic there, but you know, I've been doing it for so long. So I keep myself occupied on the drive. There we go. Okay. So you're in Buckhead. We are for those that don't know, SEDC HQ one is in Atlanta. So we're on the southern end of town. So now is your commute, are you north or south of Atlanta where you live? I am going on East side. East. You got the matter. It's this. Yes, what is inside. Kind of a good. Okay. Well, I was asking, I was curious as to if you and Matthew Darius could carpool together every day. So he's on the southern end. So you guys will just have to meet for lunch. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm all poor. I'm dead. I'm done. So it's not that far. Matthew tells me about that Atlanta traffic all the time. So I'm in Kentucky. I only get to experience it every now and then, but it's definitely hopping down there in Atlanta all the time. Things to our great partners like you and others that are working in Georgia. So KJ, let's, before we die, we've got a lot of weeds to dive into here just professionally with your organization and then SEDC too. But before we do, I mean, we got started a little bit. But how about we get real here. Let's pull back the curtain on you. How about tell us a little bit about yourself. Okay. Of course, Kevin Johnson, you already mentioned that some folks say, what do we call you? We call you KJ or Kevin. I'll take either one. Most people in my economic development circles, probably KJ. I will respond to every, any one of those names. As Matt alluded to, I'm married. I have two kids. Some fun facts about me. I love to cook. I love to play basketball. I love to work out. I'm working out about three times a week. Those that know me, you know, that's what I do. I'm heavily involved in the church, my local church in the ministry. Helping to train our kids to grow up to be successful young men and women and be stewards to their community and get an education. I've been in, as I said, economic development for about 20 years working for Georgia Power, a powerful economic development firm. Been there for about eight years. I've been now in the construction world for about 20 years. They both go hand-in-hand together, so I'm excited to have those opportunities. I've been involved, this is, of course, SCDC is one of my favorite organizations, the 17 states that bring us a powerful organization. I'm proud to be selected as the chair of the communication committee. I appreciate the trust of the board for giving me the opportunity. In the past, I led a communication committee for another association in Georgia, well-known association in Georgia, TDA. I led that for about three years, because I moved to college and now in college, not in SCDC. I'm enjoying this. I love the associations. I love to meet people. I love to talk. Hopefully, I don't over-talk. No, no way. You said a couple of interesting things there. I want to ask a food question here in a minute, but I really appreciate what you said about your children, about being a great dad and raising them the right way, but in particular, you mentioned about raising them up to be good community stewards. I so much appreciate that, and especially if you think about economic development, because to me, that's what our profession is about. Maybe you're raising future economic developers, but it's all about being community advocates and being a champion and preparing a better tomorrow today for wherever you do happen to be. I find a lot of alignment or a lot of similarities to church for me specifically as well. There was a time when my church at home was asking me to think about going to whatever the schooling would be for that and taking over a congregation, and I didn't feel like that was a little overwhelming to think about. When you think about economic development, it's really similar. It's about a better tomorrow. So I just that just struck a nerve with me when you talked about your children and about your church too. So I really appreciated those comments. Yeah, it's very important to me. I believe that we train our children right. They will be the ones that will kind of help our next future community leaders in our government economic development. Stay out of presence. They had a trouble. Help lift the next person up. And we keep this train going. We'll have a better community. Yeah, I can't wait to just continue to have these conversations with you when we're on the road. But I just really appreciate those comments. But when you talk about cooking here, I know we're going way off track, but okay, you've got one meal to make. The president's coming in. What are you making? I'm definitely going barbecue all the way. I'm smoking some ribs and I'm doing macaroni cheese. I've been in the macaroni cheese recipe. That is always a big hit whenever I take it always. So I'm definitely bringing those two and I'm going to add my soy garlic green beans to that. You have ourselves in there. Oh, there we go. Okay. Matthew and I are coming over here. Next month and just to hang out with you for a little bit. Absolutely. Well, we'll get back into into food here in a little bit. I've got a good one for you when we get into the research and since you're in seed. But let's get Matthew is going to probably want me to get back on track here. So as we as we said, you're the senior marketing manager for KBD group. So talk to us about your organization and what you do every day. All right. A bit about my organization, Kajima building a design group. We are designed, built firm. I would like to say masters of construction, whether that's the USA, little bias, of course. So maybe that's just my own personal opinion. We've been building and constructing projects for almost 60 years. We started in 1964 and about next year will be our 60 year celebration. We are making the right preparations in the market inside to help get the world out. We are on Andrew revenue was about $750 million. We have about 250 employees. Every this is a recent growth. We've been seeing up taken construction and we recently added about eight employees. So we're not seeing the slow down in the construction world. Every decision that we make is based on our core values. The core values is kind of like the blood of our company. There's about six words and safety, passion, integrity, respect, continuous improvement in one team. These are the core values of our company. It shows when you get around this, talk to us. We always have passion in what you do, believe in what you do. We're backed by Kajima Japan, which is a other company. 19,000 employees worldwide. We have opened into that with the 21 billion annual revenue. We are backed by our mother company. Our target markets, of course, maybe somebody would be saying, what do we build, maybe? We don't build everything, but we focus on these three target markets, manufacturing, warehouse, and interior design. These are target markets that we tend to do very well at. Those are the construction projects that normally take on. One of our advantages that we have over the next is we are integrated. We have an integrated planning, design, and construction team. I say integrated. What does that mean? It means that our design team and the construction team is one unit. We work together. This increase, greatly increase our collaboration when you're going from the design to the construction. Some of our competitors who can't offer that, they tend to have the communication tends to break down for design and the construction. We are integrated, which a lot of our clients tend to love that about this, because we're like a one-stop shop for everything. We've been very busy. Over the last five years, we've constructed over 200 projects, and we're still constructing that. We have over 70 projects currently under construction. This is across the United States, particularly in the south. We have a lot of projects in south. Let me stop. I keep going, but I've got to stop somewhere. Let me stop there. Well, yeah, KJ, those are some really impressive numbers, but it's just not surprising when you listen to who you all are and your approach to this space. When you think about just the economic momentum that exists in the south, and that aligns perfectly with your target markets, it's not surprising that you're so busy and that you have just the success that you have. You could have kept going there, because I love digging into the numbers behind. The numbers that drive and are the success of these types of organizations, because it's so impressive. Especially in the south, and especially our members. You mentioned the project activity that you have now. I'm curious. This may be a silly question, but how is it that you get involved, either on the front end or even midway through a project, to help enterprise or help communities or states really accelerate what they're looking to do? What about core values to one team, and this is truly a testament to how we operate. We are truly one team, of course, when the construction project is started, but we'll start to the finish. It is a team effort where our team coming in, we handle most of the RPs and RPs and their early stories about the project. Oh, wow. We also provide information to ourselves, teaming our lives, brochures, presentation, web links from articles that we've written that may support the project that we are after. That process can go from, it can take from either about six months to a year. Sometimes it's a lot quicker. The clients we meet, they want to move fast, it's about two months, but we are cycling through multiple projects, constantly providing information. This client wants to know about this, our client wants to know about this or that, you're pulling into information, we're presenting it to ourselves. There's a presentation that has to be given, we're putting the presentation together. I'm coaching some of our sales team on the communication and that sort of thing, what we're doing and we present to the client. In many cases, when it comes to the early phases of the project, the client will sometimes visit communities to try to get a better grip on where they want to go. We work with the site selectors. We do help our clients pick a site that we also work closely with the site selectors. Our sales team has a great relationship with the site selectors. Also, during the project, our team act as liaison. As liaison with the community, the client, the client, the client, the girlfriend. What does that mean? If there's inspections that needs to happen permits, logistics with utilities, our team would meet, we may provide information and help with the presentations for that. These meetings can happen weekly, it can happen monthly. Sometimes our team, the community will want our team to meet the board members because we have an understanding of the scope of the project, how long it will take and that they rather have us kind of present alongside with them the scope of the projects to their board members. We've been involved in that. Also, our team, which is we're constantly marketing. As long as there's no NDA sign, we get a lot of NDA's with projects. We've got quite a few good projects we're doing in that. The client doesn't want us to tell anybody about it. Our marketing team, we're taking pictures, we're doing videos, we're documenting, we're flying the drone out there, and we're marketing the project. As long as we have the clear, we're marketing the project to also show other people that, hey, we can build this, we can build the U. Our team is involved from the start to the finish to some degree. It's a team that's got our construction professionals, our design professionals, our sales team. The marketing team, we're all involved in the project, the process of the project. I hope that helps. That kind of shows off when team is. If you worked with us before, you would know exactly what I'm talking about. This is when team is at the government. Yeah, for sure. If you think about the sophistication of what you do and just what a mature seasoned professional service that you provide to communities or business or economic developers or think about how important it is to speed through permitting, speed to market or handle the regulatory, all that is critical to success. You mentioned relationships with site consultants. It seems like almost every podcast that we have in some kind of way, I'll say, it's all about relationships, isn't it? It's just so important. We are having a consultant forum in May in Atlanta just to build relationships. There will be a lot of education there, but look, we'll try to build relationships among our people, but isn't that just so critical? That's what makes the sort of relationship so powerful. The SEDC, because it's all about relationships. We're a big family in our job. Also in SEDC, I'd be certain families as well. Yeah, I love to say that. It's SEDC family or American South family. We're trying to get the hashtags going on social media maybe one day with a little bit of strategy that we'll talk about here in a little bit, I know you'll help us on, but I'm so with you on that. We talked about the projects and just your approach, but how about just can we get some shout outs to some SEDC members that you've worked with or some really cool projects in the South? Okay. I can mention a few names, but I don't want to go that bad because somebody's going to get bad. That's right. Why didn't you say my name? But I will tell you, we have heavy project activity in the South. We're building in Georgia, Florida, Texas. The list goes on. We have a lot of projects in the South. We work closely with those economic development officials, especially putting that in fact when we're dealing with what we're building our manufacturing projects. Over the past five years, again, I said we have 200 projects. Currently, we have 70 projects under construction. There's some names at the top of my mouth right now, but I'm like, let me just resist the urge. But you know who you are. We appreciate your help with the projects that we are working with to help us in getting the client feel comfortable and located in the region. With all the projects we've got going on, we are definitely involved with some SEDC members and some government officials as well. I'll leave that back. Here's a perfect example of why you are a better marketing mind than I am. Say if the roles were reversed there, I would have just, okay, I need to answer this. I would have thought the first three or four or five or whatever that came to my mind, I would have said, and I would have gotten trouble from our clients and probably at my own job. That should have been a hot seat question down the road. But thanks for being so careful with that one. But here's a little safer question probably then. You've mentioned your alz momentum, but just momentum in the south just last year. We almost did $200 billion of new corporate investment that will create 250,000 new jobs. It's just incredible numbers. I always like to say we're the third largest economy in the world. That's true. $10 trillion of the US GDP is right here in our states. It's so cool to talk to friends like you because you're in the weeds on all this stuff. On the front lines of this is this activity is soaring in the way that it is. This may not even be a fair question in a short amount of time, but any kind of trends or just any, what are you seeing right now that might be sticking out? Trans. Okay. Okay. So as you said earlier, the south is hot. We support the United States. If I could show you a map, a point map of the activity that we're seeing in the south is live low compared to the north. The south is, I like to say, is the hot south is an instruction bell. What we're seeing as far as the latest trends, we're seeing a trans and renewable industry, and particularly automotive EV, the electric vehicle, we're seeing projects, people want to know more about it. We're supporting somehow. We're seeing a high level of activity in the EV market. You can just open your even up development news and you'll see something about it is a hot market. And because of this, we're also starting to see even we're involved in some projects where either tier one or tier two automotive suppliers as these projects take off, expand our ad electric battery plan. They're going to need supplies. And we're seeing a high-tech automotive suppliers in particular in the south. So the overall market, in my opinion, of course, your others are my job. The south it seems really good. Of course, back in my Georgia Power economic development days, the trend is still the same regarding what do we need to do. It is, of course, have the workforce and order have the education, the access to highways, the infrastructure, the friendly business climate. The south has it that. The south has it that. So that's why we're seeing a lot of companies, especially the manufacturing, move to the south. Warehouse is still a hot market. We're seeing a lot of warehouse basically the last three years. I mean, you can't build a past. Now we're seeing a little slowdown, just a small slowdown based on the banking situation. It seems like some of our developers have to find creative ways to fund. And also, this space is starting to run out. So if you have some space for a warehouse, I would strongly suggest that you market it, market it, market it. If you're looking for that target in the air. That's pretty much what I got to say. That's actually a really good lead-in to another question I was thinking about. I mean, if you think about the momentum and the success and what an iconic economic development global powerhouse we have, that's really amazing. But now the key for us is, okay, how do we sustain, perpetuate, or just really hit the gas pedal on that? And for SCDC, we talk a lot about workforce. We talk a lot about product development. Or we're now establishing ourselves as a player in the FDI space or as the voice of the American South, I'm curious for you. What does, you know, a couple of nuggets on what's the, where do we go from here? What's the future look like? And how do communities best position themselves as we go forward? Okay. The South has got it forward. Regarding the infrastructure, workforce, we have plans, we have the schools, we have the friendly business environment where we provide incentives to different companies to attract our business, the schools that we have also help us to retain those businesses. My strength when it comes to the marketing world is the creative marketing, the digital marketing, that's my wellness when it comes to the marketing. And as we transition to a digital age, some would say we are more in a digital age now. COVID really, really, really enhanced the use of technology. And I would encourage those that are looking to help themselves is to improve their digital equipment, improve their, what they, what they supply to people online. Make sure your website is not static. Make sure you're creating blogs, news articles, even podcasts like this when you can in videos to stay relevant, develop a great email strategy to draw people to your content. I believe as we move forward, you never know what type of pandemic or something will come and put us back into that place. If we get back into that place, you got to have a strong digital strategy. And I believe communities to put themselves in a better place, I think they need to start paying attention to that. I'm trying to develop leads digitally as hard as you develop leads at the fruit underground. That's kind of what I would say about that. You read my mind, I think, because I was a little later on, I was going to ask you, okay, what can, you know, what are some free tips for communities too? So it's just so, so much value. That's why I'm so proud of the podcast because you can just pick up nuggets like this from experts like you. So I really, really, really appreciate that. Now you may get mad on this next one because if you don't mind here, you know, you're a marketing expert aside from, you know, SEDC kind of marketing ourselves as, you know, for membership development or for our services. As I said, we are looking to be pretty aggressive in the FDI space. And who is the voice for the American South? Well, it ought to be SEDC. And I think that it will be SEDC. I mean, we're dipping our toe in the water pretty significantly this year relative to FDI work, but we're at the ground floor. We're eager. We have a lot of momentum. We're committed to it in a serious way. But like I said, we're on the ground floor. So now if you don't mind, you can walk us back here, but we need some free consultation here. As we're looking to craft our message for FDI or for the American South, you know, what are some key strategies or some talking points or if you have any tag lines, we need those in a big way right now. Okay. Go back to digital strategy. Like you just recently talked about, you said free consultation. I think that's pretty cool. I'm all about giving. I helped you a little bit. I'll try my best to give some type of marketing tip. So there's a lot of marketing strategies that I think SEDC can take advantage of to help position themselves better. Of course, each marketing strategy that I mentioned, it's not just a one-time thing where we just add all these elements. It's really got to kind of work it. Take the time to learn it and make the necessary adjustments to make it more effective. Utilizing geofencing is a powerful tool. I don't know if you guys are doing that already. But geofencing, under web, it can allow us to market to different regions, cities, states. Let's say Georgia opened the website. They'll get a different experience versus North Carolina. And I think this is powerful, especially if you're fishing for members. Imagine if you need more members in North Carolina, you can set up a graphic art, the messaging board, when the North Carolina person opened the website right there on the home page, the message will be catered toward them versus someone from Georgia that messages catered toward them. This is about geofencing and utilizing that. I think that's a good thing to take advantage of. Developing a budget, that's your budget. Maybe you guys do what it's want to do. Use pay for good campaigns. That is pretty good. We utilize that. We found the benefits of it. You set up a target audience. You set up who you're going to have to. If you run ads, an ad should go only to the specific people you want them to go to. You can set that up. This is very effective when it comes to recruiting new members. I think it would be effective when it comes to recruiting new members and also getting our members to perform a certain action. Of course, this comes with planning pages. I hope I'm not giving too much. I can keep going. Planning pages, of course, newsletters that will leak to the landing pages, everything should point to a website or some call to action. I believe to get the members or someone to perform a certain action. I'm passionate about this stuff. Tag lines. Let's just go there. Okay. You can make tag lines that can seem not as effective at first, but the way you market it, a tag line can become great. We're not trying to break bad tag lines. I'm thinking of one that's kind of like the smaller letting people know about SEDC. You can say SEDC, driving economic growth and innovation in the south. The best advice page. We like that. I really like that. That's kind of similar to something. It's a little more refined for sure than what we've been using, but it's similar to points we've already kind of put out there. It's really good. Yeah. And, C-MAC, if you established a tagline and it's already out there, it's just how you market that tagline to make it good. For example, Maggie's just do it. If you never saw that tagline, it wouldn't mean anything to you. But because they market so well, not a tagline is an important tagline. Another one may be to encourage members to come, but be like SEDC, join the movement to build a stronger south. Kind of like the sun. Yeah, I do too. I've got a couple I want to run by you on the hot seat. But yeah, I really like building or when I was in Kentucky, we were playing with building Kentucky's tomorrow today. So it's fun to think of it. It is fun. You've got to do it right and put a lot of thought into it. And then you're saying the messaging around that. Or it's just going to be fun to work on that stuff with you. And we've mentioned working on these kinds of things with you because we haven't said just yet. But aside from a really prominent role in your space and in economic development and being a really influential voice in our profession, you're also a big time leader in SEDC and you've recently taken the helm as the communications committee chair. So we can't thank you enough for that. That's a massive piece of what we do at SEDC. It's one of the reasons why we would be successful going forward if we get this right and we know we will with you. So we can't thank you enough for just your volunteer servant leadership. But can you talk to us a little bit about your role and maybe even in a larger way, just your vision for SEDC? And just the communications and just the council as a whole? Absolutely. I think I have to talk about that again. You might be going to the board for giving me this opportunity. I think it's seriously important to make things happen with things happen for the committee. Before I kind of mention the goals, I want to kind of give a shout out to the members if that's okay. And I'll say them by first name just to keep things moving. But we have an awesome team. And I'm just going to mention their names. Ashley, Elizabeth, Gus, Linda, Sarah, Maria, Stacy, and of course, yours truly. Matt and Matthew, we appreciate the awesome communication team that we have. Everyone on this committee is excellent and they're great at what they do. They bring a level of strategic approach and not just that, they're ready to help both of their sleeves and make it happen. So I hats off to the team. But to talk about some of the goals that we have, ultimately, the bigger picture, the overall goal is to improve brand awareness and increase engagement. We want to improve the brand. And again, I'll say that increase engagement. What we're kind of doing, one of the big items is creating a newsletter, looking at our news at a strategy and what we're doing now and improving that and developing content. We're going to need help from SEDC members. So I'll be talking to you when I see you. Hopefully I can meet every single one of you. And we're going to need your help to help us spread the good news about what's going on in your communities that we can put it in this newsletter. We want to utilize video as well. We want to interview some members as well to get your feedback on different events, web and R's, annual conference, site selection conference. We want to get the members involved. We want to hear from you. We also want to take an items. Matt was talking about is FDI support. You want to develop a marketing plan. I know we've got something going on. We just want to look at that and find ways to improve our support for our FDI. We have a subcommittee led by Ashley to help improve how clients or how our community and our members can submit an award to help advertise their communities a good way. So we're working on that. We also want to help our committee, our fellow committee members, our fellow chair members, our other committee teams to help recruit members to their committees. So we'll be talking to some of our fellow chairmen and see how we can help them. And of course, we'll send a talk and later on down the future, we're going to be talking about a magazine, a CDC magazine. That's just in the talks and we're going to continue those conversations and hopefully we can release one in the future. That's just a little bit of what's going on. There's quite a few other things I would like to do. Like for example, the website, look at that, find ways to improve it and stuff like that. But there's a lot going on. And if you're looking at this and you are a market, you listen to me, you are the marketing and communication profession. I'm coming for you. I really want you to join our team because I know you have the skill, you have the ideas, you have the energy and you have the passion. So join our team and let's connect with us and let's make it happen together. And that's kind of like what I want to let you know about what's going on in the future of the communication community. Well you have been warned everyone out there. If you're a marketing expert or have the passion or want to learn, here comes KJ coming after you and right behind him is Matt Tackett and Matt Dairie's because look, we're the fund committee too, right? Like we have such a good time and we do such great work because you know, SCDC serves to break barriers or enhance economies or make economic developers lives easier. So when we're successful, transformative things happen, stronger families, community states, I mean, this, what we're doing here is really important and we're really serious about it. So I'm so glad that you put a call out there to prospective members because we of the committee because we would really love to bring on some more people and you'll see some news on that as we go forward. But you mentioned something that really struck a chord with me. You mentioned, look, we're going to be working on engagement of existing members too. And that, how important is that? Especially when you think about the season that we are in at SCDC. We are reimagining some service portfolio things, we're adding new services and concurrently, we are bringing on a lot of new members in ways that we probably haven't in the past. Our last two months we brought on record numbers of new members in our 75-year history. So engaging those people to take advantages of the things or that we have at SCDC or to meet mentors or friends even or just to really get connected and plugged in is going to be so important. So if you think about we are a 17-state entity, we run from the Atlantic coast to the edge of the Great Plains across the deep south. We're a large organization and that can almost be a little intimidating maybe, but even at the very least it can be something that might be a little bit challenging to figure out where you get plugged in. So just engagement will be so important. So I'm so glad that you're on that. Oh man, I'm excited and I'm looking forward to meeting the members and meeting all you guys over tuning in and tuning into this. I'm looking forward to meeting you. Hopefully you can help us engage members. We'll make you look great. We'll make you a superstar. So hopefully you will help us out. There we go. And you know, if you are not camera shy, we are definitely the committee for you. We happen to have some media partners. I was in studio doing some stuff earlier this week. We'll have cameras at our event. So we are at the fun committee for sure. But KJ, we've dug into a lot of weeds here. And we've been pretty nice with these softball questions, but now it's the time to get real. And we're going to put you on the research uncensored seat sponsored by our great friends at ResearchFDI. ResearchFDI is a trusted investment attraction and trade development partner working all over the world. Our listeners know Bruce Tackifman, CEO and the great work that he does to introduce global enterprise to the advantages and opportunities that we have in America and in the American South. So thank you to ResearchFDI for sponsoring what is the former hot seat segment. So Matti Darius, insert the spooky music here. KJ. Are you ready for the research uncensored seat? Hello, boy. How many is I ever been? Okay, here we go. These will get you in trouble. Where is the best place to eat in Georgia? Oh boy. Okay. So where is the best place? Now I got places. Okay. For barbecue, this was never going to be in the trouble, but for barbecue, back mats and mat mats, my favorite barbecue spot. It's simple. It's a little joint, like a little, I don't want to say hold the wall, but to me to have some of the best barbecue, red chicken. I love that place that you are looking for Korean, like Korean barbecue or fried rice. I'm all the way down to a few places called Danji, the best, and my humble opinion, the best fried rice that you have ever been. I haven't been, people haven't been disappointed when I told them that and they went there. Gosh. Pizza and Tico's out of my Georgia Tech and Tico pizza, my favorite pizza place. I can keep going, but I got some sort of favorite place. I just don't want to get in trouble so much, just in case. So I wanted to mention a few places. Or KJ's house sounds like. I mean, that's the only place to be. Oh, yeah. I love smoking, low and slow. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. You're making us hungry, but you know, if you're a place called fat mats, you know you're good or you better be good, but it sounds like that's really good. So we'll have to check that out. Okay. So we've got that down. I mean, I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about someone with just a catalog of hits. I love that guy. He's got so many good movies. I just saw Remember the Titans the other day too. I kind of forgot about that because I was in high school. He's one of the best. He is. I enjoy his movies. I was always like people would say, when I'm walking my back to, I said, I thought she was dancing in Washington. I'm like, yeah. That makes me feel good. Oh, heck, yeah. It would be too. I get Vince Vaughn sometimes. It's a call me Denzel. I need a better movie star for me too, but yeah, I love Denzel. We can see that for sure. Okay, KJ. Favorite band or musician? Okay, I listen to all types of music, mostly in the pop Christian. I like him in Pentry, Tore and Wales. I also listen to classical. Andre Reaue is one of my favorite classical artists and also contemporary music. I have to go with Don Reaue's. There's a song he does called Dances with Wolf and it's just all instrumentals. Oh, I can play that over and over and over. So those are my music choices. Okay. Well, we're about to broaden our horizons leading up to the May event. Maybe we'll have some new music for our break. We had... You'll see. Okay. Okay. So we had mentioned some tag lines and we have been working on some of our own. Okay, here's one and we need some grades and just be brutally honest with us here. For SEDC, we just made a huge step and repeat and I've been using this a lot. SEDC economy builders belong. Okay. I think that's been great. Economy, derivatives, and all. I used to have women's critique and it just been brutally harsh, right? Or just a grade, I guess. I mean, don't be too honest unless you want to tell Matthew you. No, I'm not going to be too honest. I think it's fine. I think it's fine. I would add maybe an extra word to it. Like probably could wear economic economy builders belong. SEDC where you have to economy builders belong. Something like that. Just to kind of maybe add a little bit more completeness to it. But again, it's all in the market inside it. I told you to destroy it at the night. But I would say a good first step. Okay. Okay. We're moving in the right direction. It'll be really fun whenever we get into the the FDI work because there are so many things that you can play with and it's also a challenge too. Yeah. How do you market a region who also is competitor states in lots of ways but is a southern region that has a massive, massive global advantage and is a massive, massive global powerhouse? So how do we market for that? And that will be really to figure out. Oh, yeah. That's it. Okay. So we're in the middle of March madness here. How about how's your bracket doing in men's or women's whichever one or both that you filled out and who do you have winning the men's and women's tournaments? Okay. Okay. So I'm I watch very little college basketball. But from the back brackets, I'm a Georgia fan. I'm just disappointed that I don't see them in there. It's because I'm born and raised in Georgia, live here all my life. So I would have to say I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to battle a bad but I'm going to take it. They're there on neighbors, even though we're competitive competitors, I'm moving for crimson tides to take it all the way. Yeah. And KJ Georgia doesn't get basketball too. Look, you've got you've got football, you know, that's good enough. You know, so I'm so I'm here. I have a Kentucky hat on my head now, but Georgia beat us in basketball this year. And it was just, oh, that that one stung. But but yeah, but they were there, you know, they're on the rise, I think, just like any other. Yeah. I'm the, you know, I'm a huge NBA fan. So I'm all about the NBA. I guess I just like like the star players that are there this year. And so me too. I recently, so we're looking for siding future conferences. So I found myself in Oklahoma City a couple of weeks ago and we were staying right across the street from the Thunder Stadium. And and then all of a sudden I get to my hotel. Here's Clay Thompson walking around here. Oh, no, here's Draymond Green. They're in my, they're in my hotel and it was like, and it was unbelievable. They were they were walking around kind of without security and just just there, just kind of just there being. And it was so cool. Well, they were they were in town playing the Thunder. So I went to that game that night. It was just so cool. It was first NBA game I'd been to in 20 years, probably, but I'm a big fan too. So. Yeah. I can't believe I can park it. Why? I've got Alabama winning my bracket. I think Matthew does too. Now on the on the women's side, look, no one's going to beat South Carolina. That's just there. They're going to take it back again. I think almost everyone in the SEDC bracket picked South Carolina to win. It was a little more diversified on the men's side. So, okay. So, yeah, I'm going to keep that in mind. But I hear the winners. Yeah. And next year, South Carolina is probably going to win it too. So that's a hint for for all three of us. But so we're almost through here. So as we said, you're the communications chair. So you're you're the boss here. And Matthew and I keep doing the podcast and what do you think? Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The podcast to me is a powerful communication tool because what you guys are doing is highlight the members, people like me and other members. I listen to it. You're in the past. These have been great and very resourceful. I would love to see this maybe for some trips from some of these and do like these short advertisements to draw people to them. If you find like a certain segment in any of them, pull a small clip and then say maybe post up social media and drop people there. But these keep it going. These things are awesome. That's really cool. That's up to you both. Well, KJ, final question and then you're off the hot seat. You've been so generous with your time today and your talent throughout as long as we've known each other. So thank you so much. So how do people get in touch with you? Okay. So, several ways, of course, my email, KJontson.com. That's one way to get in touch with me. You can also look me up on LinkedIn, Kevin Johnson, Katima, Kazuma, I would say it. Just put that in. You'll find me. LinkedIn, follow me. Another thing I would like to say, follow us on our newsletter. We release, call you newsletters, go to our website, KJontson.com. It's going down to the bottom. Follow us on our newsletter. I designed it myself. I have a team to help. But I would love to get your feedback and what you guys do. Anything else? Anything else? Any other feedback you can provide to make a spend? That's it. Well, KJ, we made it. We made it together. You're all in the hot seat. This was a lot of fun. We know you're busy. We can't thank you enough for joining the podcast and more importantly, just your partnership with SEDC and the American South and your friendship. We know how busy you stay. So thanks for getting educational with us and then also having a little bit of fun too. So Matthew Darius, thank you for running this thing behind the scenes. Before we leave, we invite listeners to check out the SEDC website at www.sEDC.org and follow us closely on social media too. Like KJ said, we want our members part of everything that we do. So to get plugged in, reach out to us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, email, or you can give us an old-fashioned phone call as well. And if you happen to be on our website, why don't you go ahead and register for the American South site selection summit set for May 8th and 9th in Atlanta. So thank you KJ. Thank you Matthew. Thank you SEDC and join us next time on the SEDC podcast presented by insightful. Thank you. Bye. You you