[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein, welcome to "Side by Side."

My guest today was once a pharmacist who knows how to put people first.

Now he's one of North Carolina's top business leaders.

Today we'll meet Gary Salamido, the President and CEO of the North Carolina Chamber.

- [Announcer] Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

- [Announcer] The Budd Group has been serving the southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction.

Comprehensive facility support with the Budd Group.

- [Announcer] Truist.

We're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

Truist, leaders in banking, unwavering in care.

[bright music] - Gary, welcome to "Side by Side."

You are the CEO and President, is that the title?

President, CEO of the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

That's the big job, but in real life you were pharmacist.

- Yes.

- Tell me how a pharmacist becomes the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce.

- Well, thank you, it's a pleasure to be here today, Nido.

You know, I learned very early on from my upbringing that people are the priority.

And taking care of people and being of service to your community and your family is a top priority.

That's what my family was all about when they came here and I wanted to serve.

And so I went to pharmacy school 'cause I wanted to take care of people.

And the pharmacist in the community was that person who had access to a lot of different people.

So I went there and I learned how to listen and I learned how to understand people and take care of them.

And the evolution was something, as you know, in business, right, as long as you're open and you meet people and you build relationships, opportunity comes.

- That's what it's all about, right?

Building bridges with other people regardless of what they do in life.

So there's so much to talk to you about.

The state of North Carolina is thriving business-wise.

Everybody seems like wants to move to North Carolina.

Great climate, mountain and beaches.

Wonderful place to raise a family.

And so corporations are attracted here because of our workforce, because of our values.

What is it that the Chamber does on a daily basis that supports economic development?

I realize there's another organization in Raleigh for economic development, but the Chamber works hand in hand with existing businesses and with businesses who look towards coming to our state.

Tell us a little bit about what the Chamber does.

- Yeah, two points.

Well, as you know, North Carolina wasn't always the number one place around the country, around the globe, where people wanted to come.

We had some work to do.

So we set out and we put an intentional plan in place through business leaders like yourself and people that you note it says, "We're good, but we wanna be the best."

And the best time to change your game is when you're on top.

So we developed a plan.

So it was intentional that we're here where we are now.

- Are we referring to the 2030 plan?

- Yes, that was back when Stan Kelly was our chairman and decided we needed a long range plan for North Carolina's economic security so people could have a good job.

- We're almost at 2030, right?

- Yeah, and we just finished our last five-year installment.

So the next five years, we'll finish that up.

We've almost achieved everything that's there.

- And what's, summarize the plan for us.

- Yeah, it's divided into three pillars.

Education and talent, supply.

'cause you can get everything else right.

And as you know here, if you don't have the people and you don't have the skill sets necessary for the jobs of today and tomorrow, nothing else matters.

And then you need a competitive business climate.

Everything that goes into the cost of a job.

You know, the tax climate, the legal climate, the regulatory climate.

- Legislation, et cetera.

- Yeah, and then you have infrastructure, roads, water, sewer, ports, all the stuff that people get goods and services to people back and forth.

So what the chamber does, Nido, is we aggregate the voices of the private sector business community and say, what are the plans?

What are the things that transcend across industries that make this state the best place for private sector job growth so that people could have a good job.

- So take those three and rank 'em for me in terms of achievement.

Let's talk about workforce.

So you said education and talent availability.

With all these businesses moving into our state, I think in the triad region, for example, you've got Toyota Battery, you've got Supersonic, you've got all these companies, Honda, et cetera.

They all need workforce that can make the system work.

Do we have enough people?

Do we have enough graduates that can supply that?

Do we have enough capacity for more companies that come here and we can provide for them talent, not just talent that can do manufacturing, but talent that can also be equipped to deal with the world as it is going to be.

Think AI, think about the technology revolution and evolution that we are all facing.

Where would you rank us?

Zero to 10, where would you put us in terms of achievement?

- Yeah.

We have all the ingredients.

We have the schools, we have the public and private universities, we have a world-class community system.

So we have all the ingredients, but nobody has the people, you know, it's just a math problem right now.

The birth rates are less than they were 25 years ago.

Things have changed dramatically in our cultures.

So we have less people than we have the availability of the jobs at this rapid rate of change and innovation has created for us.

- And yet we have migration to the state.

- [Gary] That's right.

- But not enough.

- But not enough.

We have to be the best state in the country and the best place in the world for migration of talent, in addition to creating and taking care of my grandchildren who are here now and that talent that's coming here that's homegrown.

We have to have to be the best place in the world where people want to come to get a good job.

So we gotta protect our business climate, protect our educational institutions, and make sure we have clean air and clean water.

We have to do it all together.

So where do we rank?

We're at the top right now.

But our challenge is, do we wanna stay at the top?

Because, you know, the magic sauce is out now, everybody knows why North Carolina's winning.

Do we have the courage, do we have the initiative, are we agile enough as the business community to act and to make those critical investments so that people want to continue to come here?

- And so will there be a 2040 plan?

- Yeah, I believe there will be.

- [Nido] A 2050 plan?

- Right about 2028 we'll be developing that.

- Yes.

[chuckles] - 'Cause we're almost there.

- I hope so.

Yes.

By the way, I agree with you.

North Carolina's a fabulous place to live, great place to raise a family, great place to conduct business.

Certainly education in North Carolina's second to none.

In terms of public and private community colleges.

We do have the goods.

What is the toughest part of your job?

- Oh wow, that's a good question.

- Whining members who pay too much membership fee or?

- No, the toughest part is addressing all the needs that the people have, right?

And each community is different.

So we have to be really good at listening to understand what's going on in each community and then aggregating that into the policies that'll benefit businesses across all industry segments.

So the toughest part is the needs in the west are different than the needs in the east and then the Piedmont and in the central.

But figuring out what the common threads are and advancing the common thread so that North Carolina wins.

So no matter where you live, you have the opportunity to succeed, that's the toughest job.

- We have rural, we have urban, and over 100 counties and they have all, yeah, different needs and desires.

How many people on your staff at the chamber of council?

- About 28.

- 28.

What's your annual budget?

- About $5 million.

- Okay, well that's reasonable.

With all the things that you do.

Why is it that North Carolina attracts certain kinds of businesses?

For example, biotech, let's start with biotech.

Why are we the fourth largest biotech hub in the us?

- It has a lot to do with the vision back in the '60s that created the Research Triangle Park.

We had the universities, but we didn't have that place for people to come together and collaborate so that the molecules of people's intellect could collide and produce great innovation.

So the research triangle park, that foresight, that vision is a big part of why life sciences are so strong here.

North Carolina is strong because of the diversity of the industries that we have here.

We have good hub here for life sciences, then Charlotte has banking.

We have an incredible manufacturing base and it all works together, 'cause no one industry works without the other.

- How much of your time is invested in legislative communication and, I'll call it lobbying?

- Oh, at least 90% of what we do is advocacy at the North Carolina General Assembly and the agencies.

The other 10% is making sure our members' educational needs are met among those key policy issues.

But we're an advocacy organization whose goal is to advocate for policies and initiatives that advance the economic climate for it, so it's 90%.

- Gimme two or three of those policies.

What are you working on now, for example?

- Oh, right now one of the biggest challenges is workforce.

So when you look at workforce, you know, it's more than just the educational system, which is critically important.

Covid, the pandemic revealed a couple of things that we knew were challenges anyway.

Childcare and the affordability and the availability of childcare.

'Cause as we know, the demographics are changing, we have two parents, two spouses, two partners that are working, either 'cause they have to or they want to.

- Yes.

Yes.

- The culture's changing.

And the other's housing, you know, we need to modernize.

- [Nido] Affordability of housing.

- Yeah, we need to modernize our permitting processes to keep up with, so builders can build safe and good homes for everybody across the economic spectrum.

So we have to modernize our permitting.

Right now, Nido, it takes longer to permit something than it does to build it.

- Isn't that sad?

- With the technology we have and the awareness out there, we can be better than that.

So that's a big one.

And the other one we're working on is water and wastewater.

I mean, critically important.

We need to have water and wastewater availability in infrastructure in communities.

Water is life in so many ways.

And so how do we have a plan for water and wastewater treatment across the state that reimagines how we look at that, looking at public and private partnerships, looking at how do we regionalize the delivery of those services in ways we haven't done here historically.

And then the last one is energy.

We have a good, affordable, reliable energy here now in North Carolina, but what's the future look like?

We should lead the nation in advanced nuclear.

We should make sure that it's a safe place, but a place where our diversified energy sources are here for our people and for our businesses.

So those are the top three right now.

A, it's always about people, and then it's about infrastructure and then making sure that we can deliver childcare in an affordable, safe, and reliable way and build the homes people need.

- And what is the role of government in that?

You say 90% of your time is advocacy, mainly in the legislature.

I assume you're talking about funding and you're talking about laws that expedite the processes.

But how much can government really do versus the private sector?

- The role of government is to do the things that the private sector can't do through the markets and through innovation.

So it's to put to build infrastructure.

Great example, right, across communities, across the state.

So building infrastructure, there's a role there for government to help build infrastructure, public education and education.

- Infrastructure like highways, rails.

- Water, sewer, ports, all those things that have to exist across county and municipal boundaries.

- And what does that take?

Is it money?

Is that what it takes?

- Yeah, it takes money and it also takes planning and it also takes reasonable and thoughtful permitting processes to do that.

'Cause we wanna protect air and water.

We wanna protect our communities.

But the same token, we don't want so much protection that it stifles the ability of the private sector to make the critical investments, as you talked about earlier, to take the risks necessary so that the rewards can come to those people and to those businesses.

So it's a partnership, but it needs to be a partnership in which the government enables and facilitates what the private sector drives through market driven practices in order to achieve it.

- But can legislature, for example, dictate to local municipalities about the permitting?

- Yes.

- I don't understand.

Does does it do that?

Can it do that?

- Yeah.

In North Carolina, the municipalities are granted the authority to do the type of regulation and permitting only through an act of the legislature.

So the legislature gives and enables municipalities with the authority and with the power to do that.

So it's gonna be a little different in every place as communities come together and decide what they need.

So in North Carolina, the legislature here has a lot of influence over what the municipalities can and cannot do there.

So for us it's about, listen to what the community needs.

And not every community's gonna be the same.

So we shouldn't have one piece of legislation that governs everything in a community.

Maybe in some cases it works, maybe in some cases it doesn't.

But they have to listen and then they develop what works for their community in concert with the business community.

I think that's the biggest issue, you know, is that it's about relationships.

It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on, it's about what's the problem and how do we work together to solve that problem so that people can have a good life and have good job and build that community.

- What's the population of North Carolina?

The latest numbers, what is it?

10 million, 11 million?

- Yeah, probably 11 million pushing 12 pretty quick.

- And we're growing at a rate of what?

- We're probably growing at a rate of, I don't know, eight to 10%.

I mean, we're growing fast.

- [Nido] Really?

- Yeah, we're growing very fast.

Our communities are some of the fastest growing in the country.

- Yeah.

So maybe you need to start on that 2040 plan today not 2028.

- We have some plans for it already.

- So, my friend, and I'm sure your friend, Kelly King, chairs a group which the legislature has funded to create innovation in North Carolina.

You're familiar with what I'm talking about?

- Yeah.

Innovate NC, yeah.

- What is it called?

- InnovateNC, NC Innovation.

- Yes, where they've identified three or four universities where they're working with them and they hope to expand that.

How does that fit in that jigsaw puzzle?

- Yeah, we, we think that's a great opportunity, a great vision for our state.

It fits only if we make sure that North Carolina has the most competitive business climate that rewards innovation and risk.

Right, So we have to make sure that- - We're back to laws now, we're back to legislature.

- Climate.

You know, a business climate that is fair and balanced.

And that, what is that old saying?

"Money goes where it's wanted and stays where it's welcome."

- Yes.

- So our role is to make sure that that great vision and those resources have a place where the money will continue to come to.

- But what influences that climate?

What creates that climate?

- It's laws, is it not?

- It's laws, yeah.

- It's a tax system, it's tax code.

- It's the legal system.

- What about quality of life?

Does the chamber get involved at all in quality of life in North Carolina?

- Yeah, we do, in that we work with local chambers very, very closely.

We have a federation of local chambers, 60 to 70 depending on the day, of local chambers who are out there every day telling us what it needs to make sure that their schools are there.

The first question businesses ask when they're gonna expand, "What are the schools like?"

And then they ask, okay, what can I do in my spare time?

- What are my schools for the children or?

- Yes.

- Yes.

Okay.

- Children and grandchildren, my employees, for it.

And then they wanna know, "Okay, what can I do?

What does North Carolina have to offer?"

Well, North Carolina's unique in that from the mountains to the coast, we offer about anything anybody can like, you can live in North Carolina and experience whatever you want to experience.

So for us, it's about making sure that we listen to the local communities, as we talked about, but to make sure that businesses come and make the investment.

Because as you know, when a business invest in a community, they become the community and they build the community.

- And they have nonprofits and they, you know, they get engaged and involved, yeah.

In many, many ways that add quality of leadership and life.

You see, I believe that the quality of life in North Carolina is unmatched.

It's a great place to build, a great place to raise a family.

We have wonderful airports, you can go anywhere in the world.

We have great highways, all you have to do is go up to the, you know, northeast and look at some highways and compare them to what we've got here.

And yet, I am concerned about what lies at 2030 and beyond in terms of sufficiency of workforce.

And you've addressed some important issues, not just sufficiency of headcount, but sufficiency of qualified headcount.

That is to say, people who are equipped to do the jobs and play the roles necessary to expedite the growth of business, right.

Which adds to the economic growth and prosperity of our state.

So you mentioned some of the elements that caused that.

One of them is, or that impede that, one of them is housing.

We know about housing.

I want to talk to you about that.

Housing used to be you own your house, I own my house, the next guy owns his house.

But today we know that there are large corporations that own huge portfolios of houses.

We know that they come in our communities and offer good money for lots of houses.

And two things happen there.

One is, one big company controls a large inventory and therefore can control, you know, it's a monopoly of sorts, right?

It's like somebody owning all the retail stores or somebody owning all the shopping centers or someone owning all the restaurants.

You can monopolize what you're doing in terms of prices and quality of goods and so on.

But you talk about it more in the sense that we have to permit developers, we have to make it amenable to them to invest money and build affordable houses.

There are some creative and innovative ideas going on.

For example, Charlotte has, I know my friend Eric Kimbel, for example, is engaged in a thing in Charlotte where they've raised some money and they're making affordable housing, not just to own, but also to rent.

Because rentals have gone through the roof as well.

What is your take on all that?

Are the other cities doing that?

Is Raleigh doing that?

Is Asheville doing that?

Is Wilmington doing that, and so on?

- Nido, There's a lot of innovation going on there right now.

And so, yeah, it's all of the above, right?

Everything that you talked about, markets will do what they do, which is really important.

So we'll have that happen.

We'll have the permitting reform, we'll have the innovations like you talked about in Charlotte, other cities are doing that also.

And so I think it's gonna take a little bit of everything to get the housing that we need.

We can't put it into one bucket and say, this is the one solution that will work.

Because Charlotte's, as you know, Charlotte's very different than Raleigh and very different than rural North Carolina.

We have a lot of farmland here now.

So we have to be really thoughtful about, okay, as our cities grow, that's important in the collar counties.

But if we're taking away farmland, farming and agriculture is our number one industry in this state, we feed the world outta North Carolina.

So let's be thoughtful about how we do that.

It can coexist, it can thrive together, but it's not gonna be the same in every community.

So I think all of those things are gonna be needed for North Carolina.

We just have to be thoughtful and communicate with each other about what works where - What about healthcare?

Where do we, in your view, where do we rank in healthcare?

I mean, sometimes, to be honest with you, I'm concerned that some of our healthcare is owned outside of North Carolina now, and therefore it's mandated and managed and administered, you know, by people who are not part of our state.

That's part of the natural growth of a national economy, an international economy.

But where do you see some of the pluses and minuses in North Carolina healthcare?

- The pluses is we've got some of the best in the world.

When we look at our healthcare system, our UNC system, or we look at the other systems that exist around the country and the world, people come North Carolina for healthcare, right?

And we can get healthcare in this state as good or as well as anybody can get it.

So its quality is unmatched.

It's really good.

The challenge we have and something we're working on too, Nido, is the bigger businesses that can pay for it, that can fund themselves.

They have options, they can influence their people, they can influence the providers, they can influence the systems.

They can incentivize things in a certain way.

Our biggest challenge if in North Carolina is our small businesses don't have that option.

Our small businesses don't have the option to aggregate the lives of small businesses and then go to a system or go to an insurance, and say, "Okay, I have 100,000 lives here and I know what I need and here's what I need and here's what I'm willing to pay for it."

Small businesses can't do that.

- Yet that concept is mobilized in many, many other insurance initiatives and enterprises, right?

I mean, there are literally, I don't wanna call 'em co-ops, whatever you want to call 'em, that come together and buy life insurance, and buy, you know, negotiate a larger scale buy for lesser dollars, so to speak.

So it's doable, you know, someone has to be innovative enough to pull these people together.

What about childcare?

That's a big one.

How do resolve that issue?

First of all, do we have an issue because, I know it's expensive, but do we have an issue because not enough people are providing healthcare?

And if so, why is that?

- Yeah, I think the issue is multifaceted.

Number one is the system that was developed 30, 40 years ago has not modernized and changed with the changing times.

We have a different population of people now that need it and access it.

We have different needs and economically challenged versus we do in Kerry where I live.

But we're making one size fits all.

And so when that happens, it's hard, right?

The regulatory scheme needs to be modernized so that private healthcare provider can come in and have it be affordable.

So childcare has changed, we got a declining population.

We have two people working in the family now, which for when I grew up, that didn't happen.

Right, they either have to or want to.

My children both want to work.

It's not always because they have to, they want to.

They want to have a professional career.

So I think all those things finally came together.

And that's where the challenge is.

Now we have this opportunity to do it better than anybody else and to reimagine it.

We did a nationwide study and no one's doing it well, Nido.

There are pockets of success and innovations.

So where can the private sector and the government come together and innovate and do public private partnerships that keep our children safe.

Help get them either the safety and security or the education or both that they need, but share resources.

What about all those buildings that we have that don't get used sometimes, right?

How do we facilitate that?

How do we make maximizing our school buildings where people have to go to teach but they have to bring their children somewhere else.

Let's begin to rethink and innovate and reimagine just like we have and you have to do in business all the time, right?

Or you lose.

You gotta be changing your game all the time.

- Well, global competition demands that and commands it.

Not to mention other factors, you know, geopolitical factors.

If you're gonna survive and thrive, you gotta adapt, be resilient, take risks and all of that.

What is it that Gary Salamido worries about at night?

- I worry about if my grandchildren and children are gonna have the same opportunity I had to sit here and talk to you today, 'cause the world has changed so much.

- Does that mean you worry about free speech?

What is it you worry about?

- Yeah, I worry about how the value of relationships has gone down and how we're so polarized and how our society is so transactional that the hard work of solving difficult problems between two people who look and see or feel differently about the world, put each other in a box and don't talk.

If you're not talking and if you're not learning from people that think, look, feel, come from a different background than you are, then you're not gonna make the difference you wanna make.

And you know, those little computers we carry around that are so helpful, young people in particular, but some others have not learned how to communicate as well as they need to.

- Well, we communicate very well, we just don't connect.

- [Gary] That's a better way to put it, we don't connect.

- So I, just for the record, I worry about the same things you worry about.

And I don't think the world's getting worse, I do think the world has to transform in ways that can bring back some of those fundamentals you're talking about.

Gary, you're doing great work, we really appreciate you.

We appreciate what the Chamber of Commerce does every day to make our state thriving for decades to come.

Thank you so much for being here today.

- Well, thank you for being a good lesson for us.

[bright music] - [Announcer] Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors, locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

- [Announcer] The Budd Group has been serving the southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction.

Comprehensive facility support with the Budd Group.

- [Announcer] Truist.

We're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

Truist, leaders in banking, unwavering in care.