Invest In Ocala with Kevin Sheilley

Josh
 All right, good day, everybody. Welcome to the interview today. My name's Josh. I'm going to be the host kind of having a conversation, kind of walking through the story of Mr. Kevin and kind of hearing, how he got to the point where he is kind of share some life lessons and more about the personal side of Kevin. So Kevin, welcome to the show. 

 Kevin
 Thank you. Looking forward to it. Yeah, I think. 

 Josh
 I always get nervous cause I, I, I ask people questions like, Hey, are there any questions I can ask you? And this and that. And you're like, no, man. Ask me any single question to get them. 

 Kevin
 Listen at this point in time, I've been in quasi public life long enough. It's all out there. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Cool. Why don't you tell us, like were having a coffee at a local coffee shop and I, and I come up and I go, Hey Kevin, I'm Josh. You know, here's what I do. Who are you? What do you do? How do you typically? 

 Kevin
 I, I'm Kevin Sheeley and I get the great privilege of leading the Ocala CEP, which means what I lead the Ocala Metro chamber and economic partnership. We're the voice of the business community in this place. We are the chamber for the Ocala area, which is unique in Florida. Florida likes to have lots of chambers, but we're it for this Metro. And we're the lead economic development organization. We're all about business. How do we help businesses be more successful? How do we help business grow? How do we help people start business? At the end of the day, it's really about how do we help individuals be successful in this place. This is a place where they want to because this is a place where they can be successful. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now how did you come to Ocala? Because like Florida, this is, it's not where you're from. 

 Kevin
 Yeah. It's not, you might hear it in my voice. It's unique one, I am a career chamber, economic development guy. I've been doing this for 27 years. I right out of college, I did some campaign work and I was in Tennessee and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. But my candidate won the primary. We knew he was going to lose the general election and that had been married original approach to, Hey, here's going to be my career path and that wasn't going to work. I was starting to wonder, what am I going to do? I had a college professor call me and say, Hey, the chamber here in Jackson, Tennessee, where I'd gone to college, they need a communication structure. Are you interested? And I went, does the pay money? Yes. And, and I didn't know, like most people really didn't know what a chamber did. 

 Kevin
 I know it's about business or something, but I went to work there and discovered immediately, man, this is what I've always wanted to do. I just didn't know what it was called. I think I'm so fortunate that I, I found that when I did, so I worked there and got into they let me start doing some economic development stuff, just as low man on the totem pole. I had a mentor there, Kyle Spurgeon. Who's now the president of that chamber. Tell me, look, there's two ways you move up in this industry. You, you go to bigger organizations, you kind of work your way up, right? Or you go someplace small and go be the guy. You move up that way. I took the lighter path and along the way, over the last 27 years, 25 now leading chambers or economic development organizations F this is the fourth time I've helped communities, merge organizations that somehow became my specialty, my niche. 

 Kevin
 Flash forward to 2012, they've merged the chamber and economic development council here. They were like, now, what do we do? And a friend had forwarded me. The job description said, man, I, I think this sounds like something you should be interested in. I was looking for my next opportunity reached out and long story short, I became the guy here and to really help lead this new merged organization. And it's been fun. Yeah. 

 Josh
 This is your fourth merge and it kind of became your specialty over your 27 years. Now there's two different groups that kind of merged into this, the chamber and then economic development. Right? Right. Explain in the past which each other roles were and why it was important for them to mark. 

 Kevin
 So, so a little history of chambers, cause I know that's really what you wanted. Chambers have been around since the middle ages. I mean, they were the original business Guild and in the U S you've had chambers early on the chamber here in Ocala dates back to 1887. It is one of the oldest entities still operating in this community, but it was the voice of the business community. It, and it did think to help grow the economy. As often happened in the 1950s and early sixties, you'll find throughout the Southeast that in particular that a lot of chambers created what were then called committees at 100, until these were the 100 traditionally largest businesses or wealthiest individuals who'd come in, they would write a special check, a special investment for economic development. And in sometimes what happened. It happened predominantly here in Florida, is those then spun off to their own entity. 

 Kevin
 They became an economic development council or economic development corporation. The chamber really became the entity that was concerned about quality of life, small business issues. Sometimes governmental affairs that kind of became their area. Whereas economic development councils really became about attracting new primary employers, manufacturer's distribution, large office kind of things. I really, I was very fortunate early on in my career. When I worked at the Jackson chamber, it was an entity in a lot of the Southeast uniquely the chamber still does economic development. It didn't get spun out. I really see that as the most successful that they compliment each other so well that you lose a lot when they're separated, not to say there, aren't great chambers that don't do economic vomit or not great economic development groups that don't do chamber, but I just think they bring so much more value to each other when they're together. 

 Kevin
 I I've been a proponent throughout my career of making sure these entities work together. That's really what happened here is, were coming out of the great recession. This community was arguably harder hit than maybe any other in the nation. That by 2011, 2012, 2013, we're still looking at double digit unemployment. The rest of the nation has started recovering. It just wasn't happening here. So, something needed to change in the business. Community said, look, this is, we need to step up. We, we need to really think about our role in this. We need to take on a role of leadership. A group of business leaders on their own dime of their own volition kind of said what's happening in other places, right? I mean, that's not something they're thinking about on a regular basis. They're not looking at other communities. They went and looked at about a dozen communities and they came back and said, the one common denominator for all of these places is that there's a singular voice of the business community. 

 Kevin
 We, we need to do that. One of the guys on the, in this group was the chair of the chamber. Another was the chair elect. Another guy was chair of the EDC economic development. The other was chair elect and said, look, we're writing the checks for these organizations. We're writing two checks. Why don't we, why don't we bring these together? Why don't we merge them? And, and it made so much sense and really seemed to make, be the right thing to do. They thought who would ever oppose this. It became a very divisive battle. The EDC agreed to the merger by one vote. So it was really contentious. People didn't know that it made sense. They didn't see that the change because change is always hard. I think in the cases, people had a right to be concerned. It was really being able to demonstrate, and I'm moving on to some other idols, but being able to ensure early on that there's real value in these being together, that the chamber representing the small businesses and the advocacy piece and the quality of life piece was absolutely integral to helping recruit new businesses. 

 Kevin
 There were things along the way that got left out, no one was taking care of existing businesses. No one was supporting entrepreneurship. That was a lane for us to really expand that and to make sure that we're covering the whole gamut of business needs. Yeah. 

 Josh
 Since 1887 here in Ocala, so you stepped into something, when you were coming here kind of exploring, cause this is your fourth rodeo, and you're looking at that and you looked at 1887 established where you looking at somethings that Ocala Marion county was a little outdated in that you saw an opportunity. This is what other people are doing. This is what I think Ocala should do. 

 Kevin
 You know? Two things I think are really important. One being able to come in from the outside, being able to see the tremendous potential that was here, that sometimes when we live in a place and we're there day to day, we miss, we saw immediately, man, there's a tremendous amount of potential here. They just don't realize it in one of the things coming from outside. We're the last place I was at Kentucky. I led a regional economic development group. I was the economic development organization for four counties in 16 cities. From my location, you could be in five other states in two hours, it was competitive. Forget my other competitors in Kentucky, he was cutthroat. We are all fighting tooth and nail for these projects. I come to Florida, we know two hours from Ocala, you're in Florida or you're in the ocean. I discovered pretty quickly that economic development professionals. 

 Kevin
 There are some very good ones, but they were pretty laid back. They weren't very aggressive. Cause while it's Florida, stuff's just going to kind of happen here and we'll just kind of wait for it to happen. We saw a real opportunity to go be aggressive that has not happened here in this community. Quite frankly, it wasn't happening much anywhere in this state. The other piece is the great thing about the merger and what they did so well. And this really goes to the leadership. As I said, look, we just don't want to take two things, screw them together and say, okay, we're done. We want to build something brand new. They blew up everything and they said, everything's got a defender. If we bring something back, it's gotta make sense with this new model, how is it helping us be the catalyst for a prosperous community? 

 Kevin
 There are a lot of good things, thanks to there. They weren't bad. There's nothing negative about them, but we can bring back. We may be handed them off to another organization or we just let them go by the wayside so that we could focus on those things, which brought the most value. 

 Josh
 Now, since your start, you came here in 2012, what is like a little hidden gem that you're like you and your family moved here. You're like, this is my favorite part of Ocala, Marion county, Florida, because Kentucky's very different. Yeah. 

 Kevin
 Yeah. It's very different. We'd always been in Kentucky and Tennessee. Right. I think for us, and there are a lot of things we love about this shoe. We love the Springs. We wrote a questioning center. I mean, come on, we love the weather, but were talking beforehand. We in the historic district, my office is here downtown. The, all of our facilities are here. Man, I think our downtown is so awesome. I love what I have guest in whether they're clients or just friends, fishing, whatever. And we come downtown. They're like, wow, this is a really cool area. This there's a lot going on here. That to me is one of the best things. 

 Josh
 Yeah. My kids and I, we walked downtown. We lived downtown as well. We walked downtown to the ice cream shop. I snapped a little picture, sent it to my friend. He's he's in a bigger Sydney. He's like, wow, is this in the name of the bigger city? And I was like, no, that's Ocala. Like Ocala is really cool. The things that we're building now, we, when you're talking to a big corporation and they're going, why should I build an Ocala Marion county rather than Orlando, Jacksonville, Dallas, New York, west coast, what, why do you say why Ocala? 

 Kevin
 So, of course it varies depending on the company and their needs, but a big piece for us right now, as we talk to companies is, look, are you trying to serve? The Florida market are the 22 million people who live on this peninsula, someone that you're trying to reach. If it is one of the things we know, it doesn't matter if it's obviously for logistics, but for manufacturing. Even we're finding more and more related to office. If you're going to be in a Florida, you're going to have to be in Florida. If you're going to do that, you want to be right in the center. And there is no location. We can show statistically that this is the best location to serve Florida. We reach more people in a one day drive truck drives. They're in back than any place else in the state. We have a 39% premium over the I four corridor. 

 Kevin
 We reach 39% more people than I four. We add in, and you take that with the cost of living here. Sure. You can go to Orlando. If you can find space, if you can find a building, if you can find land and by the way, then you have to deal with all four. If you can ever get out of it or you can come here and get all the advantages and we found that to be a pretty compelling statement. 

 Josh
 Yeah. You moved here, what was the, since 2012, went to the annual luncheon where you kind of said, here's all the things we've accomplished. We had some big, hairy, audacious goals. We're going to accomplish this for the business community. Which, what is the thing that you're most proud of that you've that you and your group have accomplished? 

 Kevin
 Man? That's you ask tough questions. You don't, I'm not sure. There's so many things, we could talk about jobs, nearly 10,000 new jobs. We can talk about investment $1.2 billion over the last nine years. That's direct investment from our work, what we've done in entrepreneurship to support entrepreneurship and integrate that into the, to the programming of who we are as a community. I will say this, I think probably the thing of which I'm most proud in most impactful is, we led the effort. I worked very hard to convince the county commission to put the local option sales tax on the ballot. In 2016, I heard repeatedly from people. Marin county is never going to vote for it. They don't vote for a tax in Marion county. It's, you're wasting your time. We've lost all of these other previous attempts. What we really believed that when people understood the need and the value that this sales tax would generate, the numbers that it would in the first phase, that it would support transportation and first responders to things that we very much believe in this community. 

 Kevin
 And we want to fund. In that, being able to tell people, look, this is a tax that's paid by people who come into our community, tourist, commuters, people coming in to be entertained. We know how much we pull from the surrounding region who use our roads, depend on our first responders and don't help fund them. This is their chance to help fund them. They're gonna generate 30% of the revenue. You know, we passed that was 55%. I had a newspaper editor who told me were going to go down in flames. We probably wouldn't even get 40%. It's possible. I called him that night. 

 Josh
 I might've called them. 

 Kevin
 To watch, because we kept saying, when people see the need, and when you're honest with them, just say, here's how it's going to be spent. Here's where it is. Four years later in the middle of the pandemic, we got it renewed with 72% of the votes. We won every single precinct in the community. Every precinct, all 120 precincts in Marion county voted for it. That's probably what I'm most proud of because it's, we have all these roads we're able to move other money around, to give raises to our first responders. We're able to build new fire stations and police stations and buy equipment for them that actually at the end of the day helps all of us. That's probably the thing that I think has been most impactful. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now that's part of my background. I worked with Ocala fire rescue for a number of years. Before that, the public transport on and were always trying to figure out, how do we get paid? How do we grow? How do we make more money? We don't have to have four or five jobs. For all the firefighters police first responders out there, thank you for what you guys are doing. It's really cool. Cause Marion county with I 75, I've worked a ton of racks going through I 75. There's a lot of traffic that goes through. Like you were saying, there's a lot of people that come through Ocala, whether they're up north going south or south going north. We get a lot of people coming in during the winter. One of the things that we've found is, there's a major need for road service for first responders and such. 

 Josh
 If you had to put a price tag, if you can think of a price tag that through the taxes and through that, that movement that you push through or helped push through, like what do you think that has equated to in dollars? 

 Kevin
 Oh. 

 Josh
 Man, can you think of it? Or, 

 Kevin
 Yeah. Let's just take for the companies we've helped locate here and expand here where we only count things where we directly played a role. So it's not a shotgun approach. It's very rifled. I mean, we're zeroing in on those things. We do. I mean, that's $1.2 billion in capital investment in our community. One of the things we know is that over the last 10 years, Marion county and over the last, I think it's eight years, the Siva caliph kept their military flat. We're the only key. If you go to all of our neighbors, you see military that goes up. Yeah. We've grown our revenue more than any of those places. It's because we've been able to bring in, these companies who pay a lot of taxes, don't put a lot of demand on the system that helps for the individuals, the residents live here to keep our tax rate lower. 

 Kevin
 You take that, you add in sales tax, which we're getting now other people to help contribute to, sales tax generates, man, what is it? It's huge, 40, $50 million a year back to the city and county. You take those two pieces together and it gets to be significant. 

 Josh
 Since 2012, you come in here, your team has grown significantly, right? 

 Kevin
 Yes. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Talk to us about some new, new things that you've rolled out with, in partnerships with groups and partnerships with new team members, new programs, like give us an idea of what new has happened and what do you see in the future? 

 Kevin
 One of the things I believe as a leader, as an employer is if it's some, if it's important to do, it needs to be somebody's job and in the nonprofit sector. We're obviously a, we're a, not-for-profit a 5 0 1 C six, the belief tends to be, we'll give someone five or six areas of responsibility. Well, none of those get done well, right? I mean, you can only focus one or two areas. They can only be your primary focus and it, and it work well. I'm a big believer if it's important enough to be done, it's important enough to be somebodies job, so that at the CP, one of the things we were very early on that we said was key. I referenced this a moment ago was we had to have someone devoted to business retention, helping existing companies. We do all this stuff for new companies, but what are we doing to take care of the existing guys? 

 Kevin
 I think that's, again, I would argue our team on business retention is the best in the state of Florida. You could probably make an argument at best in the Southeast. They do a fantastic job of networking, of getting to know these companies, what are barriers to your growth and what can we do remove those, that gets us involved. We have our next working initiative, which is where we engage businesses with the schools with Marion technical college, with CF, really looking at building career ladders around the idea of skills that I think is leading edge. We have our live life here, talent attraction initiative, working to bring talented people to our community impact. One of the things we knew that we began looking is may we're seeing this great growth in our community, but not everyone's benefiting why aren't some people benefiting. We really took a lot of time to study and to understand, and it's about opportunity and we can talk, we talk about inequality of opportunity. 

 Kevin
 Impact is our belief that entrepreneurship, helping someone become an entrepreneur is the best way to overcome inequality of opportunity. When I have a chance to build my own business, to build wealth for myself, I'm enhancing opportunities for employment, to my friends and neighbors and adding goods and services that otherwise wouldn't be available in my community. An impact we focus on are three majority minority communities where it's quickly we can look at the wages are significantly below the county average. The household wealth is well below access to goods and services. The number of businesses per capita is way below our county average. If we can help grow in those communities, we're truly becoming a prosperous community, which is our mission sphere. We, we had a number of our healthcare providers come to us and say, Hey, you do all these great programs, but there's nothing about us. 

 Kevin
 We think, healthcare is becoming the largest portion of this economy, but nothing focused on us and they were right. We figured out a way to create, we look for models, we love to copy. We call it R and D rip off and duplicate, but we couldn't find, we often find that we're the guys creating the new thing. We've created initiative to build healthcare as an economic development driver. The last thing I'd mentioned is in 2015, we did an economic impact analysis. Or what's it mean to be horse capital the world. Yeah. But okay. We have that title and we know that means we have more horses and more variety of breeds, but what's, it really mean dollars and cents. It means $2.6 billion a year to the local economy. Holy cow, if it's that big, we need someone focused on the industry. We became the first and to my knowledge, still the only chamber in this country focused on the equine industry as a way to grow the economy. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now I know that, Kentucky would probably want that title, but we have it here. 

 Kevin
 We have it and they can want it, but they would be mistaken. So quick story. I'm from Kentucky. We'd been here a couple of years and went, went up one summer to go visit my parents. At that time, my son and daughter were probably, I guess at that point they were probably middle school and early high school and my younger two. Went in, in Louisville, there's Mecca Catherine's. This huge underground cavern and among other things, they have zip lining through the Katherine. Very, very cool until the guys take, it's just a small group and he's talking and he says refers to Louisville's horse capital of the world. Well, my son and daughter just unleash on the guy. I mean, they're tag teaming him, poor guy. He didn't know. And they're just beating him up. I mean, giving them why they're not the horse capital world and why Ocala is, and here's the dad and here's the boom, boom, boom. 

 Kevin
 I'm like, Hey guys, that was awesome. When you're doing that to the guy, who's going to clip you and you're getting ready to disappear. Hundreds of feet above the ground, into the darkness. Maybe that's not the right time to do it. 

 Josh
 After, 

 Kevin
 After the fact is when you, 

 Josh
 After you're on safe ground. Yeah. He, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. So, through these initiatives, we look at business retention, we're looking at impact, we're looking at growth. Let's talk about the, the newer companies. New companies, what are you doing for new or start up entrepreneur, and then maybe for the really big companies, the Chewy's of the world, the Amazons dollar trees, dollar generals, right? Like the big ones. 

 Kevin
 Yeah. So let's start with business creation, entrepreneurship. When I came, the chamber had just started, had gone through the city, had worked out a deal to provide the space, what we call the power plant business incubator. And, and they were getting involved in the entrepreneurial space. And, we came in and was here realized that we probably weren't going into the right direction, had to, to readjust right. Brought in Ryan Lilly, who did a phenomenal job, just left us, but did a phenomenal job for eight and a half years. And helping to think through our strategy. We're unique. We have an incubator, that's not aligned with a university and it's not aligned to a government. It is run by the business community. We think that's a real value that no one knows more about how to start and grow a business. The business community and our ability to connect budding entrepreneurs to existing businesses is I would argue unparalleled, certainly unique, but to be able to provide access and resources, to be able to whether you're a resident at the power plant or just someone in our community, starting a business to help you understand the keys to why you need a business plan. 

 Kevin
 One of the things we're going to be doing more of we've done in the past, we're going to be bringing back is more of just understanding finance 1 0 1, what is a balance sheet? Why does that matter? My thing to every entrepreneur, there's three things. That's really important. Cashflow, cashflow. Why is that understand marketing, but being able to do these things, to help support and grow, and that over time has become a number of programs. We have our youth business planning competition, which is one of my favorite things we do FAst tracked from the coffin foundation, which is a 10 week program. We may be one most active, fast track providers in the nation, 1 million cops. We know that we do that in a big and how that helps grow and support entrepreneurs. But, but initially, and the vision has been, we want to make sure oftentimes entrepreneurship really only accounts for high growth businesses, that if you're starting a business, a lawn care business, okay, that's great. 

 Kevin
 We're really not interested. We're really only interested in high growth high-tech businesses. Our vision is very broad. Now we're getting to the point and I'm really excited. I think we're going to see this really unfold in the next couple of years that we're able to give specialties into both of those. I have people who can focus on the person who wants to start the lawn care or the beauty shop or the retail store. I also have folks who can work and grow the high tech, the high growth, so that we support, again, all people, everyone has a chance to be successful and to make sure that they can do that here. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I mean, I grew up on a construction site with my dad and, my dad didn't have a formal education. We had to learn through a lot of failures and, like, so there's the economy of hard worker hammer swinging, ditch digging. I grew up on the back of a post hole Digger, and then there's the technology companies. And, I, I transitioned from construction into technology and I had at the time in 2012, I, we moved to Jacksonville, Dallas, New York, Orlando, trying to find capital, trying to find opportunity. We landed back here in Ocala and we saw what you guys were doing with the business incubator. Now my business is our house here in the business incubator. This morning were here at the 1 million cups, every Wednesday, nine 30 entrepreneurs get to present their businesses, get feedback from the community, connect, support each other. 

 Josh
 Ocala didn't have that when I was here. My goal, I, I tell this selfishly, my goal is that when my kids get 18, 19 20, when they're building their own businesses or trying to look for a high paying tech job, that they don't have to move elsewhere, what is it, the thing that really drives you on the entrepreneurial side? Like what is, what's important to you as we're building businesses here? 

 Kevin
 I think a couple things first off, this is already a very entrepreneurial community, more entrepreneurs per capita. If you look at some of our most well-known businesses, they started here in grew here. Now, maybe they're part of bigger corporations today, but they started here. This is a place that understands how to nurture and grow entrepreneurs and what that means. I think additionally, at the end of the day, what's most important. You want to make sure that your kids have that opportunity, that they can be here. I want to make sure that everyone's kids have that opportunity. And whether that means they stay here. I'm actually, sorry, I got to tell you this. If they leave for that's okay, let someone else train them. What someone else when they're not, they're really not worth a whole lot at that point, let someone else try it. Don't work out the bugs and then let them come back after a couple of years, because then they really value what we have here. 

 Kevin
 They're really ready to contribute, but I want this to be a place. Again, that mission statement is key to be a catalyst for profits community. And that means everyone. Now, everyone wants to go to work for someone else. They want to start and grow their own business. If they can do that, and if that's just for them, great, if they can grow that. We think about a company here, like Rainey's what a great success story or optimum RV, if they can grow those businesses here. Fantastic. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now let's talk about the larger guys, right? We've talked about the, I have an idea, let's start it, in your building self for impact communities that are underserved, you're talking about lawn care businesses, and then maybe high-tech so you guys are building out platforms and opportunity. What about the big guys? What kind of issues are they having? And, and, what does the chamber in the CP do to help support them? 

 Kevin
 As we're working with primary employers, looking at setting up operations here, and it doesn't matter again, distribution manufacturing office, it's the same issues today. Everybody needs to be fast. I remember when I started in this field 27 years ago, it wasn't unusual for a good sized project to take 18 months or 24 months. Now we talk about four months, five months, it kinda move fast. That means you got, have a product that's ready to go land. In predominantly these days, 90% of our clients, they want an existing building. How do, how do we get those buildings here? We've done a tremendous amount of work in getting the private sector to invest. We've got way over 5 million square feet of industrial spec under construction here, and another 11 million in the pipeline. Wow, huge, huge investment. But, but also making sure we're partnered. We have such a fantastic relationship with local government to understand that the city, the county, they're not drawing any revenue off this business. 

 Kevin
 They're not drawing any utility customer center, getting anything as long as there's a piece of paper sitting on someone's desk, the quicker we can move those permits through the fascia. Those projects can get built the faster they start contributing back to the local economy. Really working on that speed to market, everything related to speed to market, we've got all these great pieces, one of the things right now, and we miss businesses every week and it kills me because they need a building. I don't, I don't have a hundred thousand square feet. I don't have 5,000 square feet. So, this spec space is, it gets, a little further down the road. Now we're starting to see, slabs report. We're starting to see steel was delivered at one the other day. We get to the third quarter really going to be rocking really. I think you're really going to see some things happen. 

 Kevin
 We've got a lot of clients looking at that space, but that's key. It's getting those buildings going, telling the workforce story. I want to tell our workforce story because if I have someone in as happened recently in Phoenix, analyze my workforce, they get it all wrong. They, they get it as great as technology is. It really works on their premise. That everything's exactly the same. It doesn't take nuance at all. Understanding workforce is about nuance and we can show where our workforce comes from. If we tell the story, it changes dramatically than if some computer in Phoenix is reviewing it. 

 Josh
 You're telling the story, like what questions do you wish people would be asking you about Ocala, Marion county, the economic drivers here? Like what questions do you wish people would ask you? So you could share that, 

 Kevin
 Oh man, well, we talked to when we're talking to clients. Yeah. When we talk to clients, man, I want them to ask me about speed. Florida has a terrible reputation. Broadly, Tara, Florida's known this place, man. If you need a permit, apply today, come back in a couple of years. And, and that's not an exaggeration. It's, it's a place that moves slow. We love to talk about it when we can get those permits through. Especially if we go to one of these sites, were trying to get everything ready. So it's ready to go. That's great for the community because we know where that growth is going to happen, but it's for grateful client. I want them to ask me about speed and how quickly we can get that permitting done. I wanted to ask me about who's successful here. We talk all the time and again, it comes back to business retention. 

 Kevin
 You're known by the company you keep you're known by the company should keep. If, when someone hears that an Amazon could be successful here, that he wants successful here, that signature. Right. We start telling that story, okay, well, those companies are there and being successful. My company can go there and be successful. 

 Josh
 Right now. Kind of a personal question. If I were to pick up your phone and look through your playlist of songs, what would be like the top three songs like you listen to on the way to work or driving around or working out? 

 Kevin
 I don't know the actual songs it here. Okay. How about some janitors? How about some performers? You're going to see some John Cougar Mellencamp. You're going to see some Broadway. 

 Josh
 Nice. Really? 

 Kevin
 Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Of good. Cause some good show tunes. You're probably the third thing could be no telling what a mix of 80 to modern rock to some country. It's all over the board. 

 Josh
 Now you guys know how to throw a big party at your annual luncheons. Went to one recently and dressed up in the greatest showman and in the past, kind of give us an idea of your motive behind this and some of the crazy stories that have come up of it. 

 Kevin
 If I tell someone, Hey, we're having our chamber annual luncheon, would you like to attend most people throughout from here? Like, oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds great. A rubber chicken dinner, some speeches. Great. I can hardly wait to go. That's not what we want. That's not who we are that doesn't serve. There's no value in that for us. If I could borrow some language from the church, we view annual lunches are Easter. I say that respectfully, this is the largest audience I'm going to have. This is my chance to get people engaged and excited about what we're doing, what the mission is and how they can get involved. So, we really want to focus on how do we really get them excited about what that's going to be. We want it to be a fun environment. We want them to be wondering, what's it going to be this year, right? 

 Kevin
 Which is we get a, to me, it's exciting. I, I will have people who, I don't know, stop me in all kinds of random places. One not long ago, God stopped me in the locker room at the gym said, Hey, you're the guy from the CP. I went to your event and you had the Indiana Jones thing. You talked about this and this, that doesn't happen. 

 Josh
 I mean, man, let me get changed. 

 Kevin
 I was like, that's really cool. Can I go put on some pants? Yeah. I mean, that's that to me is how often do people say, Hey, I remember what you did four years ago. I don't remember what you did five years ago. You talked about these things we want to, and I'm a big believer. I love getting a chance to speak. It's one of the things that I love most about my job. I'm a big believer in synthetic communication. You not only need to hear it. You need to see something to go along with it. It needs to evoke an emotional response. If those things happen, that I'm way more likely to retain what I just heard. It's way more likely to stick with me. That's why sometimes, it's, there's a carry out a theme and am perhaps sometimes we go a little too far, but Hey, I heard it. 

 Kevin
 I saw whatever the prop, whatever the thing was that went with it. And it, hopefully it made me laugh. Those three things, I had an emotion. So, so now I'm much more likely remember, Hey, they talked about how important it was that we found this sponsor for the next friction initiative. They talked about that. We're going to try to get a billion dollars in new capital investment. We talked about the renewal, this, I mean, whatever that is, it's sticks with people. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now this last event, you guys created a goal. What was the goal that you created? And then you pulled them out of. 

 Kevin
 We, our board had just, we do strategic plans. Five-year strategic plans on our board. This isn't just something. Okay. We did, it goes on the shelf. We implement our plans. It is our roadmap to what we're doing. For the last two plans, we've implemented every single item that's in those plans. Our board had just spent the last six months putting together our new strategic plan. We call it forwardable minimum and that they went into effect January one. At the annual lunch, and this was our change to sh to unveil this plan. And, there's, I think a total of 19 goals and objectives in the plan across our different areas. But, but we have three big goals. They're all wrapped in one and in our business creation or business attraction, excuse me, it's what people really want to know. Cause it's going to drive that future growth. 

 Kevin
 And, and our board had adopted that we would impact the announced creation of 5,000 new jobs. Those jobs on average would pay wages, which are 15% above the county average wage. Continuing to push up wages, wage growth, and result in a capital investment in our community of half a billion dollars. Those are, those are big goals. They're bigger than the plan. The last plan was bigger than the first plane. Those are big goals, but I've had several board members who followed up in one. It was our immediate past chairman, or excuse me, a past chairman to turn us back. Now, Ken, honestly, obviously construction who's really been pushing me. You're sandbagging. We, that investment go, we can do bigger than that. You're you're not going big enough. And, and I had really thought about that and it really truly been weighing on my mind. I, I had not at that event, I hadn't talked to Ken. 

 Kevin
 I hadn't talked to the chair, but we threw out there, but Hey, let's raise that goal. Let's take it to a billion. If we're going to do this let's same big intellectual goal. Now we want to impact the announced creation of a billion dollars in new investment over the next five years. Think about what that'll do for our local economy. Think about again, think about that. Miller's right number, right. The ability to generate revenue for local government. If we've got a billion dollars investment, that's going to drive additional job growth. We're yeah, we right now I feel pretty good about it probably by summer, I'm going to be anxious cause that's $200 million a year. We gotta, we gotta drive. Man, I, at the end of the day, I, and here's the deal. This is what triggered in my mind. Cause I said this to someone else about something else. 

 Kevin
 This is what really drove it for me was, but our community is worth it. Our community's worth it. Ocala deserves a billion dollars in capital investment as a goal. That's why we set the goal there. 

 Josh
 How do you measure new capital investment in Marion county? Cause I mean, that sounds like a great number and it was going through slides and stuff, but how do you've hit it? 

 Kevin
 Yeah. For us, and it's always interesting, cause they'll have board members who forget or, newer board members who don't know that, oh, well the hospital investment or this, that, Nope, we may assist. We may do things. We don't count any of that. We're just looking at primary employers who we either recruited in or we played a major role in any expansion helping make that happen. We're looking at their direct capital investment. What are they spending in Landon building and what are they spending in capital equipment. 

 Josh
 So land building and equipment. Yep. Got it. Okay. 

 Kevin
 For manufacturers that equipment number's pretty big. Yep. Generally for distribution is not that big a number though. One of our big projects coming up and they're starting to break ground as dollar tree. They have a, they have a new facility here. It's a half a million square feet. They will be breaking ground this spring on. And that facility is 500,000 square feet. They're going to be breaking ground on about a million square foot expansion. Wow. That's going to be 14 stories tall. 

 Josh
 Here in Ocala. 

 Kevin
 Ocala. Wow. I'll wracking 14 stories of nothing but racking. 

 Josh
 14 stories of storage, 

 Kevin
 Storage, robotics, robotic pick and pull. 

 Josh
 Here in Ocala. 

 Kevin
 And Ocala. The only fanic robotics center in the state of Florida is an Ocala. One of only two in the entire Southeast. Okay. There's something else I wish companies would ask me about. I try to work in there all the time. This a robotics program that they don't know? The FANUC is the premier industrial robotics company. There only center in the state of Florida is on Kayla. One of the things that we very much think we're going to see more and more of in manufacturing and industry solution is the integration of robotics. We all know that's coming. This'll be to my knowledge, there's not another facility quite like what they're building at dollar tree. That's probably gonna become a model. As that gets integrated, then we'll see other companies who want to do something similar. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Five years from now, went to your last lunch and let's just say, five years from now, we have the followup conversation interview and we hit the mark. Right? We hit the mark. What are you going to, what's going to be your costume or what are you, what do you think that's going to look like for your annual luncheon? 

 Kevin
 You know, that is a great question. I have absolutely no idea. I can't even tell you what the, what it's gonna look like for next year as a lie. I actually already know what I'm doing next year. I don't always, but this time I have a good idea of what I want to do, but yeah, it'll be a celebration. If, if we really are board to their credit and sometimes to my consternation there, they don't want to sit still. This is, this is an aggressive plan. There are one or two, what are now becoming secondary items in this plane, which would be lead items and other places we've got to, we're going to drop passenger air service. We have, we want to commitment for passenger air service in Ocala in the next five years. That's a, that could be the goal, the only goal for the organization for the next five years. 

 Kevin
 And that would be absolutely acceptable. We want to create a community development, financial institution. That could be the goal for a five-year period. That's those are just two of 19. 

 Josh
 What was the second one? The community. 

 Kevin
 Development, community development, financial institution, or CDF. I it's a non-bank lender as part of our impact initiative. We, we know that access to capital in particular, in these majority minority communities is a real challenge and our banks want to get more involved in it. And they have limitations. The creation of a CDFI, which is approved through treasury is a great way to address that. That could get us into, to micro lending of which I am a huge fan. I've been very involved in micro lending in the past with love to be able to implement that here. It would also open the door to other pieces. We're going to be starting soon down that path. That's going to be a multi-year process just to get approved. Yeah, these are big goals, but you don't advance community with small goals. If you don't dream big, you don't move. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Your family, you guys live here in Ocala and you're walking around town and everyone thinks that you fix all the problems of Ocala and that you do stuff. The people will, you shared a story recently with me about someone saying, Hey, will you tell them to do this or that? Right. Like what does a normal day look like for you? Okay. 

 Kevin
 You know? I, again, I love my job, man. I love getting up almost every day and going to work for what I get to do. The, the challenge it is, it's become a high-profile job. Right? The CPS very engaged also when you're six, you don't, you don't blend, you don't hide. I mean, people know, oh yeah. The tall guy, I have to say and people ask me all the time. Cause people, I go to the gym, first thing in the morning, five 30 in the morning, go to the gym. 

 Josh
 You look great. 

 Kevin
 Oh, thank you. It's the clothes. People stopped asking me stuff in the gym and other people haven't done the Bali. I, it really doesn't. I, I love for people to stop and talk to me. Either concerns, issues, questions. That's all great. Every day for me is different. You know, I never know. I'm not going to be meeting with a fortune 500 company day. That may mean, especially if it's light stage and maybe getting to meet with a senior executive at a major corporation in our country to tell them why they should consider Ocala. It also may mean that I'm speaking to our retiree group on the 200 corridor and everything in between. So it's fun. It is amazing. The things that people think I have some control over, I get lots of requests where people want stoplights. We need a lot. You need to make that happen. 

 Kevin
 I think the story you're talking about is someone, there was a piece of public art that we did a ribbon cutting for. A lady was very concerned that it could get vandalized. I said, well, that's a fair concern. And, and so the organization that was sponsoring that piece, it was at their location. I said, you really ought to talk to the people here. And, and she said, you're not gonna do something about it. That's what, it's not mine. I'm just here to help cut the, pull the, pull the drape off and unveil it. I don't have any control. She began to get a little irritated with me that I wasn't. I was like, what? No, I, I, I not really sure. I'm I'm not the emperor, but it's fun. Yeah. There's, it's amazing what people sometimes think I can control. Yeah. 

 Josh
 What, when you go home at the end of the day, like your day all day long is, you're promoting Ocala, you're driving, towards our goals. Like at the end of the day, when you go turn off your brain, like, is there a show you watch or games you play? Like, how do you and your wife unwind your brains? 

 Kevin
 I will tell you this, I'm terrible at television. My wife so desperately wants me to sit down with her and binge watch some show. I just I'm good for about an episode. I'm just not good at sitting. I feel like there's something I should be doing. Right. I do like sometimes puzzle, like puzzles on your phone or that kind of thing. That can actually, I'm a big Sudoku fan working through those. People are often amazed and police and I've been married for 27 years. I started in this field right before we got married. She's been part of this rod the whole way. Hey people, all the time, we'll ask her about things that I'm working on or about projects that we're working in. And they just know that she knows. And, and she's like, look, we don't talk about it at home. She goes, I'm as surprised as anyone else when the announcement comes out, because they're just separate places. 

 Josh
 When your kids see you on video, like dressing up and, pretending to be Indiana Jones or the greatest showman, what did they say? Are they like, damn, 

 Kevin
 You know, it's interesting. I think in they're older now. So my youngest, my daughter is 18. I have a son that's 21 and a son that's 28. I think they think it's a little cooler now in part, because they're old enough, they start to see how people connect with it. Now there are times where I'll say or do something. I'm like, oh my gosh. Why did he do that? Especially my sons, my daughter, who is Uber, social butterfly. She's all about it. Yes. When do I get to be a part? The boys are they're a little more reticent about dad, 

 Josh
 Yeah, they're in the spotlight just because, you're always in the spotlight. Yep. 

 Kevin
 Yeah. For better or worse. 

 Josh
 For better or worse. Yeah. That's, that's the part about being a family. There something on your bucket list, right? You have the community goals, the CP goals, all these other goals, but it's like a personal bucket list goal that you have for Marion county that, you'd like to see happening. 

 Kevin
 Someone asked me a couple years ago, I was in a, a forum for main street for downtown. And so a fair question. When do we know the downtown successful? When do we know that we've arrived? I immediately remember putting my hand up. I had answer I knew. It still is when there's a spread in Southern living about Ocala. That's when we've arrived. That means for downtown in particular, then we're there. And, man, we've got this ton of stuff right now in the works. We've got construction happening all over parts of downtown, some more stuff, percolating. We've got some big things getting pretty close on the north side of downtown. We may not be that far away, given another couple of years. We could be, I mean, we could be there. That to me is being able to watch this community, which really suffered from low self-esteem 10 years ago, it was beat up. 

 Kevin
 It was banged up the moniker, no callus, low Calla, certainly exist in people. That's how they saw it. I don't really see that as the case anymore. It's, it's really a place where people believe we can make things happen. It can, if someone on my team likes to say, grow Calla, we can make things. This is the place where things happen and we'll get to play a small part of that. The people are the ones who really make it happen. To watch that change, I think is really rewarding. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I must admit, like I love Ocala, but I grew up, I went to forest high school. I've been here, you know, it's 96. I came from Fort Lauderdale. Come from Fort Lauderdale to Ocala, 96 was a big culture shock for me wearing board shorts, flip flops in silk shirts. Right. But, slow Calla was the, the moniker. I couldn't, moving back was a challenge. When I got here, I saw that Ocala had grown so much and I've always heard this Ocala is a great place to raise a family. I didn't until I had a family, my own kids and such like that, we walked to H street elementary school and the schools around that, like Ocala really is an amazing place to build a family. Part of me wants to keep it a secret. Now your job is to not keep it. 

 Kevin
 Secret. 

 Josh
 So, how do we make sure that we maintain, this is a question, how do we make sure that we maintain the beautiful Ocala while still promoting great growth? 

 Kevin
 I, I think very first thing we have to do is we have to admit who we are. There are people now who say, oh, no, no, but we're such a small town. We're a community of nearly 400,000. We haven't really been a small town in a while. We just need to understand the accept that. I think if we do that, then it makes it a teaser to say, okay, we want to keep the things that make us unique. That's why for the us at the CP, as much as we're pro growth and what the 40% of the county that's the national forest, it's off limits. The nearly 200,000 acres that make up the farmland preservation area are arguably one of the largest farmland preservation areas in the nation. But it's off limits. We're gonna, we're gonna focus our growth on the, the Southern third of the county. 

 Kevin
 Cause we're going to keep all these things unique. The other thing that makes us unique is downtown. If we keep the Springs and we keep the farm land and what keep downtown and grow it and just make it phenomenal, we maintain the things that keep us unique and special at the same time, while still allowing growth while still creating opportunities, still allowing people to be all that they can and want to be here. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Two more questions before we round up, but an ask to the community for those listening in watching. If someone at Southern living, this is a bucket, let's go, come to Ocala, we'll put you up at the downtown a hotel, come check it out, see what you, so if someone at Southern living, connect them with myself or with Kevin, we'd love to show them what Ocala is about. Right. That'd be a bucket list, 

 Kevin
 Your bucket list. Now I've got to say, I want them to wait cause there's some really cool things coming. Yeah, just go ahead and start thinking out 2024 might be an awesome time to come with. 

 Josh
 Copy, copy. Last question is for people who want to know more about Ocala, wanna connect in, maybe start a business here and grow a business here or move a massive organization here. Where could they go to connect with you learn more about your team. 

 Kevin
 Man, there's several places, always, our website, Ocala, cep.com is a great place to go, to get basic information. You can get all of our teams, connection information there, but one of the place I connect with a lot of businesses is LinkedIn. And again, I'm the only Kevin Sheeley. There's no other S H E I L L E Y Sheeley out there. So connect with me that way. Man, there are so many great resources we have out there to talk about this community, why it's a great place and go to live life here.com. That's our talent attraction website, a great reason to help people see why they want to live here. And, but lots of cool resources. Cool. 

 Josh
 For you guys listening in our audience, you could always go directly into the show notes. You could click connect directly with their team, find out all the information. If you have any questions or if you're having difficulty, finding a specific resource, reach out to me, we're in the business incubator, downtown Ocala. So we're right across from Kevin's office. I'll come knock on your door and absolutely, and maybe get some other stoplights or something. But guys, thanks for listening. Kevin, thanks for being a part of this. We'll talk to you all on the next episode. See you guys.