Building Business w/ the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
The Building Business podcast provides compelling stories of the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce's journey, its steadfast commitment to the local community, and its forward-thinking approach to addressing the needs of businesses in an ever-changing landscape. It stands as an invitation to listeners to become part of a movement that values growth, connection, and the collective progress of the Mount Pleasant, South Carolina community.
Be prepared to be inspired, informed, and motivated, as we provide a rich tapestry of stories that celebrate the dynamic interplay of business and personal growth right here, in our own backyard.
Building Business w/ the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
Mount Pleasant Made; Building Economic Futures with Matt Brady
Ever wondered how a thriving community balances rapid growth with maintaining an exceptional quality of life? Matt Brady, Economic Development Officer for the Town of Mount Pleasant, takes us behind the scenes of this delicate balancing act in our latest podcast series, Mount Pleasant Made.
Brady reveals that economic development in Mount Pleasant isn't about pursuing any and all business opportunities – it's strategically focused on attracting companies in the innovation economy, tech sector, life sciences, and service-related industries that create white-collar jobs. "Quality of life is at the forefront of that calculus," Brady explains, noting that every development decision begins with the question: "Is it going to improve the lives of the people that already live in Mount Pleasant?"
This approach has yielded impressive results, with the tech industry growing by 92% in recent years. The town has created a standalone brand, "Mount Pleasant Made," to showcase economic opportunities and connect entrepreneurs with resources. Another key component is the Harbor Entrepreneur Center, which houses over 100 companies ranging from solo entrepreneurs to established businesses, creating an environment of "collision" where ideas cross-pollinate across different disciplines.
What makes Mount Pleasant unique? Brady points to its exceptionally well-educated population, high-earning households, excellent schools, and good infrastructure – all crowned by that enviable quality of life with beaches just minutes away. His passion for economic development stems from personal experience, having witnessed how BMW's arrival in his hometown of Spartanburg transformed the community after textile industry losses. "Economic development changes family trees," he notes, revealing his hope that his own children might someday find opportunities to live and work in the area.
Curious about growing or relocating your business in Mount Pleasant? Visit mountpleasantmade.com to learn more about the resources available to help your business thrive in this innovation-focused community.
Presenting Sponsor: Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
Studio Sponsor: Charleston Media Solutions
Production Sponsor: RMBO.co
Design Sponsor: DK Design
Committee:
Kathleen Herrmann | Host | MPCC Immediate Past President | Mount Pleasant Towne Centre
Mike Compton | Co-host | Marketing Chair | RMBO.co
Rebecca Imholz | Co-host | MPCC Executive Director
Amanda Bunting Comen | Co-host | Social ABCs
Ben Nesvold | Co-host | In-coming President | Edward Jones
Welcome to the Building Business Podcast brought to you by the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce, sponsored by the Charleston Media Solutions. My name is Mike Compton, I am the president of Roomba Branding and Strategy and I'm here with Rebecca, our executive director of the Mount Pleasant Chamber. Hello, rebecca.
Speaker 2:Hi Mike, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm awesome. Thanks for doing this today, Rebecca.
Speaker 2:Rebecca. Hi Mike, how are you? I'm awesome. Thanks for doing this today, rebecca, absolutely Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited to be here and I'm really excited about the conversation we're going to have. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:This guy is super busy and we need to him.
Speaker 1:Actually, we need him to go back to work. Who do we have here, Rebecca?
Speaker 2:We have Matt Brady. He is with the town of Mount Pleasant. He is the Economic Development Officer for the Town. Thank you, Matt, so much for being with us today. You are busier than I can imagine.
Speaker 3:I'm glad to be here. I can always make time for my friends at the Chamber, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, you're a true friend of the Chamber. You actually serve on our board as the town liaison.
Speaker 3:I do. The town loves supporting the Mount Pleasant Chamber. I think we've been there from the very beginning and we'll continue to do that. It's a great organization to help build business east of the Cooper right. That's the tagline.
Speaker 2:That is what we are about, and I want to talk about economic development. What exactly does that mean?
Speaker 3:Well, from a pure nerd perspective, economic development is really about generating wealth for people, that's a good thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:That's why we need them to go back to work.
Speaker 1:Told you.
Speaker 3:So it's about wealth generation. We need them to go back to work, told you. So it's about wealth generation, but what it means in Mount Pleasant is a lot of communities define it differently, so for us, we are primarily interested in helping to attract and support companies that are in the innovation economy, in the tech sector, in life, life sciences and some other sort of service related industry white collar jobs. So we're trying to create jobs. We're trying to make Mount Pleasant stand out as a place that you can be a successful entrepreneur and receive support from us.
Speaker 2:I love that because we know already that Mount Pleasant's a great place to live.
Speaker 3:I love that because we know already that Mount Pleasant's a great place to live. It is. You know, site selection consultants are groups that companies hire when they're looking for a new spot to put their business, and for so many years quality of life has not really been in the top 10, but now it is. I think that because people know that the workers that they want to attract and retain are going to be looking for a high quality of life. It's important to site selectors and companies and when it, when it comes to that, mount pleasant, there's no comparison. We have an excellent quality of life. We have we're five minutes from the beaches, we have amazing schools, we have amazing neighborhoods and communities and amenities and, um, that is something that um is an easy sell for the most part, for us.
Speaker 1:And where did you come from? Again, what city did you come from?
Speaker 3:I was um I was I was at the city of goose Creek prior um for about five years years, born and raised in South Carolina in Spartanburg County, about three miles from where BMW located their North American headquarters.
Speaker 3:So it's an interesting kind of path to get to economic development because economic development changed family trees where I was from. I grew up in the middle of a peach orchard, essentially in Spartanburg County, which was on economic life support at the time because the textile industry had offshored and the textile industry was a very big component of Spartanburg's economy and the economy of the upstate in general. So it's kind of interesting because a century prior they sort of offshored from New England to the southeast and BMW changed everything and there were people that would have probably had to leave the community that now have been working at leave the community that now I've been working at bmw since they graduated high school and it's a um excellent job with excellent benefits and you can raise a family and you change family trees when um you land a big one like that, so you've been a part of this type of situation.
Speaker 1:This is your almost your lifelong journey, it feels like right.
Speaker 3:In a way it is um. You know the reason I like doing it here. We love living.
Speaker 1:You said you wanted to move to charleston. That's where I was trying to get to. Why did you move to charleston?
Speaker 3:so I wanted to be in charleston, um, we were living in the upstate and a job came open at charleston water system, actually to run public affairs for them, and I'd had some experience doing that and that brought me down here, um, and I've loved it ever since. Well, the beaches.
Speaker 1:Was it the economy? It was the growing economy, you saw it.
Speaker 3:you felt it the economy is definitely growing, but, um, I've always loved the, the broader charleston community, um the culture, uh kind of the story of it and um, yeah, it was a great fit. We loved being here and, like a lot of people, wasn't born here but got here as quick as I could. Same exactly.
Speaker 2:Well, we know that quality of life, as you said, matt, is super important. When years, the town does, in my opinion, an amazing job of balancing the quality of life with economic strengths. How does the town do that, and what does the future hold? As our area continues to grow, we want to maintain that quality of life. So what does the town put into place? Is it planning? Is it?
Speaker 3:So we, from sort of a broader public administration perspective, we do have pretty tight land use policies. So anybody who's been around Charleston for a while knows that Mount Pleasant has grown exponentially over the last decades. Right, um, and it's, it has Mount Pleasant not just Mount Pleasant but the low country in general we're a popular place to be. Um, so over time, through our comprehensive planning tools and land use policies um, it hasn't been, doesn't? They haven't been designed to stop growth, but they have been designed to make sure growth happens in appropriate places. So that's kind of something to think about, and Mike and I were talking earlier. And every time we consider are we going to chase a prospective business or help some new development along?
Speaker 3:Quality of life is at the forefront of that calculus, and so by that I mean, is it going to improve the lives of the people that already live in Mount Pleasant?
Speaker 3:And I may be word salad-ing over here, but that's, you know, that's sort of why we want to attract tech and life science and innovators and entrepreneurs, because Mount Pleasant's not really set up for a lot of big industrial projects, nor do we have the workforce that would work in a big industrial facility.
Speaker 3:Now we do have some spec industrial that's going up and I think it's going to be a great asset moving forward. But we're not going to have, you know, like Bushy Park Industrial Park right, we're just not going to be able to do that. So attracting great companies that are in those sectors is not going to adversely affect the quality of life. In fact it'll probably allow people who live in Mount Pleasant and have to cross a bridge or two to work their job in those sectors to stay right here at home. And if anybody's out there listening and wants to evacuate from downtown Charleston and move to Mount Pleasant, we're more than happy to talk about incentives and find you a good place to just locate, and I love the fact that the tech industry is growing in Mount Pleasant.
Speaker 2:It's grown 92%, I think, was the most recent stat that I have seen and I absolutely love that. I'm all about the chamber's, all about keeping local talent local, which is one of our initiatives is partnering with Trident Technical College, musc, college of Charleston.
Speaker 1:East.
Speaker 2:Cooper Center for Advanced State Right Thank you Mike. Where people already live here and they're graduating with those areas that are growing in Mount Pleasant, such as the tech industry, life sciences that you've touched on. I know today's more of a broader conversation about the town and balancing economic growth and quality of life, but I love the fact that, having lived here for so long, I'm seeing such a growth in those areas in tech and life sciences. Matt, mount Pleasant Made, which I I love that mount pleasant made.
Speaker 3:you're wearing a hat I've got a bug got the propaganda going here right now.
Speaker 2:Love it we we love it from the chamber perspective. We have a business resource center on our website and we constantly send folks to Mount Pleasant Made Talk about that, and what was the initiative behind that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when I got the town I kind of thought we need a standalone brand for economic development. So you know most people they go to like the town website to sign the kids up for soccer or to pay a bill or to check some sort of ordinance or something like that. And I wanted something standalone to kind of be our own brand, and that's the concept behind it. Mount Pleasant Made honestly just sounded kind of catchy. So we now have a standalone website mountpleasantmadecom. It kind of dives into the sectors we're looking to attract, um, the parts of town that are designated as economic development zones, incentives, and we even have like a listing of uh properties that are available for sale or lease and um. So it's been great. This is going to allow us to uh be out there beating the bushes on behalf of the town, but with sort of a snazzier non-municipal feel to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's awesome. I love it. I was drawn to it right away. I definitely put the hat on right away too. And you're a business resource too, right, isn't that? Mount pleasant, made sort of like a business resource where entrepreneurs can go to or businesses can go to and kind of get catch our vibe a little bit about yeah, it's like and how to grow a business.
Speaker 3:For sure, we've got um some resources on there. It's really kind of a clearinghouse of information for everything you need to do to start a business. So it connects you to groups like the chamber, but also like do you have you filed your stuff with the secretary of state or do you have an idea and haven't even developed a business plan? Let me send you to the small business development center to help with that, or SBA to get some capital, things like that. So we do have those. I serve as a convener and connector all the time to people who are looking to invest or start a business or both in Mount Pleasant.
Speaker 1:Or have a great idea and want to go to the Harbor Entrepreneur Center.
Speaker 3:That's true. We've got to talk about the Harbor Entrepreneur Center. The Harbor is a separate nonprofit from the town, but the town vigorously and enthusiastically supports them. So the Harbor is all about collision and by that it's kind of a buzzword, but it means getting a bunch of people across a lot of different disciplines under one roof. You're working your particular job at your company, but you're also sort of cross-pollinating. So the the harbor is currently situated at 11 e wall street, which was the original headquarters of a company called automated trading desk. So it's this beautiful 65 000 square foot building that's built like a tank, because those guys, this was pre-cloud. So there's a server room downstairs, which is awesome it's huge, it's amazing, I know what we can do with it.
Speaker 3:It's very, it's very cool, um, but there are over 100 companies in there right now and that that range is amazing.
Speaker 3:It is, and it's everything from my guy at a desk that's starting a business from scratch and he's just trying to figure it out all the way, to some companies that have taken down a whole wing, that have a little bit more maturity.
Speaker 3:So the town invests in the harbor because the concept is those folks get in there, they get established, maybe they launch a product line or two and then eventually it's time for a baby bird to leave the nest Right and they will hopefully go and sign a market rate lease at another space. In Mount Pleasant we have some new office being constructed right now and some good existing office and quite a bit of office that's entitled to be built in town, and so that's what we're hoping to eventually do is spin off a lot of companies, and it's really all across the spectrum of different kinds of companies in there. There's FinTech, there's digital animation, there's some agriculture tech, a lot of cool whiz-bang stuff with a lot of people People are a lot smarter than me in there that will, I think, eventually be high-revenue companies that will hopefully find a home here in Mount Pleasant forever.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, Mike.
Speaker 1:A town of incubators, if you will. Yes, yes, and how long do they?
Speaker 2:incubate. How long do they stay in there you?
Speaker 3:know kind of a standard rule two years, um I don't think, I don't think we they have anything like in place definitively, because I think it's a kind of different case use type situation for everybody. But you do want them eventually to kind of move on and um invest externally so we can get more people in there and get the collision going.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a beautiful campus it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:It's on 18 acres um very pastoral and we're gonna hear all about it in the episode with christina exactly. Let's move on to how it makes, how we're different that. How are you positioning us?
Speaker 3:different than anybody see now mount pleasant is is. There is no other community that's really like mount pleasant in south carolina, right? Um have, and this is in no way a knock on other communities, because I love the state and a lot of cities in it, but Mount Pleasant is a very, an exceptionally well-educated community. Um, we have high earning households, um, and so that alone, uh, differentiates us. We have amazing schools, pretty good infrastructure and we have support that we are from the government, right, us and all of our economic development allies, like the county and CRDA and commerce. They know that we are about this innovation thing, right, and so what makes us stand apart is that we are kind of laser focused on that, and for the first time, we're going to engage with a lead generation firm in my new fiscal year and hope to really make that case to a lot of companies that are looking for a US location, an East Coast location, a second location.
Speaker 3:But Quality of Life makes us stand apart. Our exceptional talent that already exists here helps us stand apart. And I do want to go back. We were talking about Trident and the schools and stuff. There are some excellent talent coming out of all of the schools here and that's something that, uh, it's great to work with these partners because I think we can build this economy and these clusters with a lot of talent that's kind of homegrown, and we just got to make sure that we don't let them leave once they uh get all smarted up and I love the fact.
Speaker 2:Let's keep them here yeah they already. They already live here and, um, we know traffic is a challenge and so, uh, from the chamber perspective, we're all about keeping talent local and using the talented folks that we already have that are homegrown 100%.
Speaker 1:Mount Pleasant made folks. Mount Pleasant made folks. Speaking of that, Dig South, isn't that Mount Pleasant? Well, not Mount Pleasant made, is it? But you probably had a good time at that we did have a good time at Dig.
Speaker 3:South Stanfield Gray is a great partner with the town. They're located in the Harbor Entrepreneur Center, oh, okay perfect yeah and they host a ton of events over there and we try to plug in whenever we can and I know you're going to talk about the Harbor in depth with Christina, but I really encourage people to check it out and try to get to an event out there.
Speaker 2:They've got amazing programming well, we've talked a lot about. You know collectively that we, you know mount pleasant's a great place to work and live. Matt, give us your personal perspective let's hone in a little bit on that why you think it's a great place to work and do business in the future in the future, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So what's the future hold? It's a. I think I'm pretty bullish on the future of the Charleston region generally. I think kind of the the gradual shift toward adding these white collar recruitment efforts is is really smart because in the future, what's manufacturing going to look like with automation and all of that? So having like technical training is going to be super important, right, and so I think we'll continue to do that. I think mount pleasant. If I had a wish list, I would like some more class, a office to be actively going vertical, but office is a moving target right now. Um, from a personal perspective, the reason I like doing this job is because I've got two kids and once they are finished with whatever they're going to learn, if they want to live in charleston or mount pleasant or wherever down here, whatever you want to call it I want them to have the opportunity to do that and work. You know, a good job and I love that yeah and and that's uh.
Speaker 3:I think that is why a lot of people in economic development do what they do. Um, like I said, it changes family trees and uh, not to get too sappy, but it can break generational curses too, right so yeah, you got me.
Speaker 1:That's a whole other segment. So we're lucky enough to have matt brady here. Come, uh, talk to us more than once a like about once a month. We're gonna be dropping episodes to talk about the economy and talk about what's going on and in all matt brady's head, so we'll dive down that one in another segment sounds good. Rebecca, did you have any closing statements?
Speaker 2:no, I mean, matt, is there anything that you want to add before we leave today? And thank you again for your time. I love the fact that it's all about taking care of current and future generations.
Speaker 3:That's why.
Speaker 2:I love my job with the chamber because I would like for my sons to move back here and work.
Speaker 3:So that's my selfish perspective we're working on that, but Matt any closing remarks. No, I'm happy to be here. I love being a part of the chamber and if anyone out there hearing this, truly, if you're interested in Mount Pleasant mountpleasantmadecom all my contact information is there I'd be happy to have a conversation about how we can help you find a home right here.
Speaker 2:And Mount Pleasant is spelled out Same with the chamber mountpleasantschamorg. Um. So I it's a great website. It's easy to navigate. It really does help that business that is in the planning stages any stage really launch really good and for the businesses that are already here, it also will enable you to continue to thrive and grow.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, mike. Well, I'm excited about this new episode that we're having with the Mount Pleasant Chamber in the town of Mount Pleasant, with Matt Brady. Rebecca, thank you so much for co-hosting with us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, Matt go back to work, will you? I'm headed that way now.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you, listeners, listeners, for joining the Building Business podcast powered by the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce and brought to you by the Charleston Media Solutions.
