Tommy Smith: Welcome to Sweet Tea and Strategy, a podcast produced by Ackerman Marketing and PR, where we speak with business leaders about challenges in their industry and the communication strategies to take on those challenges over a glass of sweet tea or something else cold. My name’s Tommy Smith, Vice President at Ackerman. Today I’ll be speaking with Mike Odom, the new President and CEO of the Knoxville Chamber. I’m excited to have Mike here and in Knoxville. Mike, welcome to Sweet Tea and Strategy podcast and welcome to Knoxville.
Mike Odom: Thank you, it’s great to be here.
Tommy Smith: New to the gig, not new to the South, but this area of the South maybe—you’re probably familiar with our affinity for a very serious topic, which is sweet tea. So tell me maybe a little bit about your thoughts on the classic drink, or if you have a preference, maybe a different summertime cold beverage.
Mike Odom: Yes, so I have lived below the Mason-Dixon line since I was nine years old, and in that time, I have not attained an affinity to tea—whether it be sweet tea, non-sweet tea, hot tea, nothing. I am on the non-alcoholic beverage side; I am more of a Coca-Cola guy. Not Diet Coke, not Coke Zero, none of that, just the original sugar-all-the-way-up situation.
Tommy Smith: All right, so a hot day in the summer—which we’re about to experience a little bit of—an ice-cold Coca-Cola classic is where you’re going to be?
Mike Odom: That is exactly right.
Tommy Smith: And did anybody kind of coach you into that, or is it just the taste that you’ve acquired?
Mike Odom: Well, my family is in the sugar business. So we are inherently—we have a sweet tooth, and so all sugar, all the time. The only person that is happy about that is my dentist; everyone else doesn't really like that.
Tommy Smith: All right, well I'm sure we can find you a good one in Knoxville.
Mike Odom: I have no doubt.
Tommy Smith: Yeah. So let’s talk maybe a little bit of Central Texas. You’re from Louisiana as I understand it, but coming straight from Central Texas. Maybe a more important question to start with instead of sweet tea is: let’s talk barbecue.
Mike Odom: Yes.
Tommy Smith: All right, so on a scale of zero to ten, how much are you missing barbecue right now?
Mike Odom: It’s not fair yet to give a response because I haven’t had any here yet, only because of the newness of me being here, if that’s even a word.
Tommy Smith: Fair enough.
Mike Odom: But I do—I am a big fan of brisket, and spent the five years trying to perfect it in the way that the Central Texas area has. Unfortunately, I was not successful in that mission.
Tommy Smith: But you gave it a shot.
Mike Odom: I did, and I’m going to continue to work on it. We’re not done yet.
Tommy Smith: All right, what is it—10,000 hours you have to put in to be an expert?
Mike Odom: That’s what Malcolm Gladwell says, yes. I’m about at three, so I’ve got many more to go.
Tommy Smith: All right, so brisket was the favorite. Did you have a favorite spot in Central Texas, a favorite restaurant?
Mike Odom: Um, not really, no. They all do a lot of brisket, ribs, chicken very, very well. So I, you know—now, I didn’t go to any of the ones where you’ve got to stand in line for four hours and—just no offense, I just don’t care that much to—there's a point of diminishing returns.
Tommy Smith: Exactly.
Mike Odom: But they do have some really good donuts in Round Rock, I can attest to that.
Tommy Smith: All right.
Mike Odom: The official name is Lone Star Bakery, but it is affectionately known as Round Rock Donuts. Actually, my first week there—my first day there—the team brought dozen Round Rock Donuts in, really had to jump in. And then I think on my fifth day, they got what’s called the Texas-sized donut, which is a donut that is completely the size of a dozen donut box.
Tommy Smith: Oh my god.
Mike Odom: Which for a sugar guy, I mean, it was great. I thought about sharing and then decided against it, so… some things you just can't share.
Tommy Smith: No.
Mike Odom: But what’s amazing about Round Rock Donuts/Lone Star Bakery is it does not matter what time of day that you go there—morning, noon, the time they’re open at night—it is always packed. Shut down the street, it is just—they do a great job.
Tommy Smith: Right on. So, I was lucky enough with my wife to live in Austin for five years, worked for Dell, so I’m very familiar with Round Rock. But for the rest of our listeners, talk about the business ecosystem in Round Rock; kind of describe that scene.
Mike Odom: Yes, so Dell relocated their corporate headquarters—their international corporate headquarters—from Austin to Round Rock in the 80s, and it completely transformed the Round Rock community. And not just from the sense of obviously more people there and some of the tax dollars that are being generated, but one: it put it on the map internationally. Two: it impacted housing, impacted retail sales, things of that nature, which then led to infrastructure. There is a system of toll roads throughout Round Rock that are almost 100% attributed to Dell and what they were able to do there. So it really transformed the community. It allowed it to recruit other companies, other tech companies there. But they also were forward-thinking enough and visionary enough to realize that it would become too much—if you became too dependent on Dell, it was not good for the overall community. So spent a lot of time over the last ten years or so diversifying that economy, really looking not only in the tech sphere but also R&D, bioscience, even retail starting to really look at sales tax and other ways than just Dell.
Mike Odom: Interestingly enough, in Texas—although this is going around now as being looked at—is sales tax is from point of origin. And because, especially with Dell’s early model which was all factory-direct, all of that sales tax came to Round Rock in the state of Texas. Now it is looking at, you know, the Amazon effect and those kind of things, but still the city drives a lot of its general funding from Dell because of the sales tax piece.
Tommy Smith: Right. Talk about some of those other industries you mentioned, like the bioscience and some of those others.
Mike Odom: So the bioscience one is starting to really—it’s in its nascent stage right now, but because of it being a big part of the University of Texas, it is starting to creep its way north into Round Rock. There’s a few pharmaceutical companies, there’s some what they call BioTech R&D facilities that can look at your cells and tell what you—you know, if you have a propensity for cancer and things of that nature. So that’s really a focus for my former team, the Round Rock Chamber. You see a company, Emerson, which is based in Ferguson, Missouri—their largest regional headquarters is in Round Rock. They do—that's where their automated systems team is based. Matter of fact, one of their offices is here in Knoxville. So there’s a nice synergy there. It’s also their international training headquarters for all of Emerson there. So a lot of not only executives from their customers but also across their company get there. We’ve been seeing a lot of, or excuse me, they are now seeing a lot of some beginning of cybersecurity, a lot of the kind of the ancillary parts of tech that you see in other communities are starting to move into Round Rock.
Tommy Smith: That Central Texas area really is a tech—I mean a central America tech hub.
Mike Odom: It is. I think geography helps with that a lot obviously, but it could have, you know, that tech hub could have landed a thousand miles either way east or west, and so I’m always admirable of kind of the effort that went into make, you know, quickly follow on diversify from Dell’s entrance.
Mike Odom: Yeah, and actually it started not because of Dell, but in parallel with Dell. And this is something I think for our community here we really can look to as a rallying point. Austin was not always a tech hub. It was more services for the oil and gas industry and those kind of things. And in the 80s when they had the really bad oil bust, Austin leadership said, "You know what, we’re not going to play this game anymore. We have got to start diversifying ourselves. We’ve got to look for technology to really be our driver." So working with the university, started putting out more computer science majors, more engineers. The business leaders went out and recruited a semiconductor manufacturing facility as their kind of their first hub. And then they took advantage of the natural resources that they have where people want to live there with the hills and the rivers and lakes and all of those pieces—that is what drove it to where it was. So, you know, because of the timing it looks like Dell drove it, but really it was happening at the same time.
Tommy Smith: And that sounds like—was that a organized concerted effort? Was there a secret code name? How official was this, or was it a few folks, it got organic and kind of the ripple effect from there?
Mike Odom: That is a great question. I don't think it was that secret, but it was a nucleus of probably about ten leaders in the community who said, "We’re going to do this." And there is a great white paper, if you will, called A Tale of Two Cities, which is comparing Baton Rouge, my former hometown, and Austin about how that 80s oil bust really drove them on dissimilar paths. And it talks about how this leadership met, I think either weekly for two years, talking about "Okay, what do we do? What makes sense for us? What can we do?" and then, I don't want to say pressuring—that's too hard of a word—but really trying to influence the university saying, "This is what we need you to produce in terms of graduates for us." And then the business community looking at the organization like the Chamber to say, "Here’s who we need you to go to recruit." And they were really the driver of it. And it wasn't this mass "Hey, let's spend millions and millions of dollars to get it done," it was a group saying, "We’re going to be resolute in how we do this and let's go out and let's make what makes sense for the future of our community."
Tommy Smith: Man, it’s exciting to hear a city kind of collaborate in that way. We’re in the home of THE UT, the original UT, as we like to say. And so, you’re in the start of week three. We won’t ask you to look into a crystal ball and tell us where Knoxville’s going to be in 30 years, but I imagine you’re doing a lot of listening from business leaders and leaders at the University and Oak Ridge. What are some themes bubbling up, if any yet?
Mike Odom: There are a few. Nothing concrete yet, just the statistical numbers are too small at this point. But it’s funny you mention Austin and that transformation they went through in the last 40 years. I tell people here when we talk, we have—I don't want to say three times, but at least double the amount of assets that Austin has, from things that you mentioned. Yes, they have a flagship Tier 1 research university; we have that. They have the natural resources that we have, probably to a much higher extent that we have here. They don't have an Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They didn't have the entrepreneurial ecosystem when they started 40 years ago that we have now. They’re still not a Fortune 500 company headquartered in the Austin MSA. So they don't have the transportation nexus that we do with the multiple interstates coming together. So we have more assets than they do even now.
Mike Odom: So our future is extremely, extremely bright. For whatever reason—and no one has really been able to explain it—ensuring that all those assets and the leadership across our region are aligned, are integrated with one another, seems to be—I think "problem" is too harsh a word—but seems to be maybe the reason why we have not reached that full economic potential yet at this point.
Tommy Smith: And that’s an opportunity.
Mike Odom: Absolutely. And in fairness, the leadership we have met with—Dr. Zachariah at the Lab, President Boyd at the System, the business leaders we've met with—all believe that now is the time to do that. And so it—I know it’s a little Pollyanna-ish to think this and wishful thinking—but like that crystallizing moment 40 years ago in Austin when that group got together, I'm just wondering if now is our crystallizing moment.
Tommy Smith: It sure feels that way.
Mike Odom: Does it? Oh good, I’m glad to hear you say that.
Tommy Smith: Yeah, I mean we work with lots of businesses around this community and outside of this community and it feels like everybody’s beating that drum. So coalescing around a vision will be quite the opportunity.
Mike Odom: That’s a great term. Really is.
Tommy Smith: Well, what else? Are there any challenges that you’ve heard maybe so far as a community, maybe as a Chamber, about you know, how do you think about communications to members of the Chamber and advocating for members on their behalf? Talk about communicating from the Chamber’s perspective.
Mike Odom: Yeah, so it actually is—it’s interesting you mention that. It is—I don't know if it’s a challenge, but it’s one of the things we have heard in having meetings with the stakeholders here, and it’s not unique to this Chamber. But you’re trying to find that balance of ensuring that your members, your investors, the stakeholders understand and appreciate the value that you are delivering in your work and to try to fulfill your mission, but at the same time not becoming braggadocious, not taking credit for all these things that happen because none of these things happen in a vacuum. Just can't do it. So that balance again is not unique to us, but is something I think is maybe a theme that has kind of come out of the discussion so far.
Mike Odom: You know, we are a regional organization. Our mission is to drive regional economic prosperity. Not drive regional economic prosperity in Knoxville or Knox County; it’s the entire region. And that makes it a very vast area which to communicate. So we do have to make sure and ensure, if you will, that we are communicating effectively, that we are doing a lot of listening, because communication, as you well know, is not a one-way street. You know, so I need to know: are we listening enough? Are we putting out the messages to say, "Look, we're here to help—now that may be just stay out of your way, that may be the biggest help we can provide for you, and let's be fair, it'd be the easiest thing for us to do." So that, if anything, any theme that has kind of come out of these first two weeks, that's really been the one focused on.
Tommy Smith: Okay. And I guess personally, how—have you settled in a little bit? That’s not an easy thing to do when you move your family halfway across the country, but…
Mike Odom: Well, family’s not here yet. So they’re still in Round Rock. The Chamber and leadership here was nice enough to allow me to stay until the end of May when my son finished school. But now he’s in sports camps for a few weeks, my wife’s finishing up her job, we’re trying to—we’ve closed on that house over here, closed on this house over here. So I will be flying—I’m not sure when this—you will hear this—but Wednesday the 19th I’ll be flying over there. So I’m in a one-bedroom apartment, which means I work a lot because I have nothing else to do. So I’ll be flying there on Wednesday the 19th and then we’re going to pack up and drive back over here. So next week the family will be here, we’ll have the three of us and a dog in the one-bedroom apartment. Really looking forward to that.
Tommy Smith: Ooh, tight quarters.
Mike Odom: Tight quarters.
Tommy Smith: So you’re in transition to Knoxville. What are some things you’ve been surprised didn’t know about Knoxville, whether it’s business, industry-related, or personally, maybe the mountains? Talk—what are some things that are "I didn’t know that"?
Mike Odom: The one thing—so just so that you know about me, I am very research-oriented. I try to do my research, try to be very diligent about doing the due diligence, if you will. So not a lot on the business community side or the resources side of that. What has been really interesting to me is the level of restaurants that we have here. Local restaurants and the food choices. That has been great. I mean, that really tells something about the metropolitan-ness, if you will, of a community. And it’s been a good surprise. Yeah, it’s been great. As someone who really likes to eat, it’s been tremendous. So I’ve been taking notes about restaurants. You know, in my position, as my son says, all I do is meet and eat. So it’s been great to see all the different places that I can meet the "eat" part.
Tommy Smith: All right, very good. And you grew up in Louisiana?
Mike Odom: I did.
Tommy Smith: And so is Cajun a flavor that you’re drawn to now?
Mike Odom: Absolutely. It is the number one choice. Now, I have not seen that here yet; I'm sure they have it. I'm not—the people back in Round Rock will tell you that was probably the one disappointment I had. You know, what they call Cajun food just means throw red pepper on stuff and… but you know, the staples: gumbo, jambalaya, sauce piquant…
Tommy Smith: And so could you put that together yourself?
Mike Odom: I—only thing I don’t do is jambalaya. I don’t do jambalaya; that is too much work. So I’m hoping for a good jambalaya shop here that we can go get some stuff from.
Tommy Smith: All right, or a side business, who knows? Sounds like an entrepreneurial…
Mike Odom: We have a lot of work to do here. I don’t know if I’m ready for that, if I have that entrepreneurial gene.
Tommy Smith: Okay. Well, when you want to cook something for the community to show folks what it’s really like, I would like to invite myself officially right now.
Mike Odom: It’s a deal.
Tommy Smith: All right, deal. Well, thanks for speaking with us today, we really appreciate it. Welcome to Knoxville. If you need to know any hidden secrets, we’ll take care of you.
Mike Odom: Sounds good, I’ll take you up on that.
Tommy Smith: All right, thanks Mike.
Mike Odom: Thank you.
Tommy Smith: Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Sweet Tea and Strategy podcast. To hear more conversations about business strategy and communication, visit https://www.google.com/search?q=thinkackerman.com. Thanks for listening to Sweet Tea and Strategy.