(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Business Forward" I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Joshua Gunn.

Joshua is the President and CEO of the Peoria Area, Chamber of Commerce and CEO Council.

Welcome Joshua.

- Hey, thanks for having me, man.

Happy to be here.

- This is gonna be a fun one.

So let's get down to it.

You're fairly new.

I'm gonna say you're becoming a seasoned veteran here in the middle of Illinois, but- - [Joshua] Almost a year.

- Almost a year, but what I find great about it is yet another family moving to our area, moving to our region, and there's a lot of people that are doing that now, aren't there?

- Well, there are- - Not enough.

- There are a lot of people moving in, but we want much more.

- Yes.

- We want many more, yeah.

- Yeah.

- But we're proud to be one of those families, making our home here.

- Yeah, so I look back and I've been here 20 years now.

I'm not originally from here.

I know Chris Setti.

And then you look at Brian Ray and yourself and there's a whole list of people that are coming.

What made you and your family, 'cause this is a family decision, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- What made you come to Central Illinois?

- Well, I can answer that many ways.

Sort of on the surface, with one would say the job.

I was... My previous role four years as vice president at the Durham Chamber of Commerce in my hometown of Durham, North Carolina, reached a bit of a ceiling in that role.

I had a great meeting with my CEO at the time, Jeff who said, "Hey man, doing a great job.

We'd love to keep you.

I think you're outgrowing your role a bit.

And I wanna encourage you to look for something else, a leadership position."

And sorta like the head coach tells you you're ready to get your own head coaching job.

And he's like, "I don't plan to leave anytime soon, so you're not getting my seat."

(Matt laughing) So I started to flip my resume around and it was pretty far along the path of accepting another job in fact, at the state level in North Carolina.

I had some nonprofit offers as well.

So it was really sort of sorting through things when I get this email about Peoria, Illinois.

And a recruiter says, "Hey, we're recruiting for the CEO position at the Chamber in Peoria.

Let us know if you're interested.

If you are, send your resume."

And I went to sleep that night, didn't think...

Thought I wasn't gonna think twice about it, but I did.

I was just wondering, man, I wonder what it's like in Peoria, Illinois.

Sort of random, right?

But I'm somewhat of a spiritual guy and I don't believe anything's random.

So, decided to explore it, sent my resume and told my wife, "Hey, I'm just gonna see what this thing's about."

To make that long story short, went through the interview process, Matt.

And it was the people that I interviewed with that sparked my curiosity.

I have two points of reference for Peoria before, Richard Pryor, everyone know I love Richard Pryor, big fan of him, and then my childhood best friend, actually lived here in Peoria for two years worked for CAD, and neither of which painted the best picture of Peoria for me.

(both laughing) - I don't know if that's funny or not but it kind of hit me as funny.

- It's the true story.

So, but the people on the other side of that zoom with the thick of the pandemic when I'm interviewing, had a passion for this place that was endearing.

And I just wanted to check it out.

Fortunately they thought enough of me to invite me here and once I got to Peoria and saw the city and the potential and the energy here, it was a no brainer for me then I had to sell it to my wife which was a little harder to do.

- I bet.

- But you know how the story ends, I'm here.

- Well, you're here and welcome and we're glad you're here... - Thank you.

- Because this is a... Peoria's great, the region's great, but you said it's the people.

- Yeah.

- It's the people.

- It's a resource that we can't take for granted.

It's just a certain cultural dedication and commitment to community, that I think is the reason why Peoria has remained resilient through a lot of different gut punches and challenges.

So I'm happy to be part of that.

- And we need to get better.

We need to get better too.

- Yeah, that's right.

And we can't rest on our laurels.

We've gotta progress.

The old days ain't coming back.

And whatever date, whatever time period people think of when I say that they ain't coming back.

We've gotta move forward.

So, perfectly named show of yours.

- You took my line.

So what's the exact role of the Chamber?

- So, at its core the Chamber is a business advocacy and networking organization.

We are designed to help businesses connect with one another but also to advocate for an environment that's good for business.

And ideally that means businesses grow and flourish and then that we also attract additional businesses.

Our chamber here in Peoria does a little bit of all of that.

If you've seen one Chamber, you've seen one Chamber.

They all sort of do different things and function differently.

But I like to say that this chamber, in my opinion, is best chamber I've been around, in terms of serving all the functions that a chamber is designed to serve.

Community leadership, business networking, advocacy at the government, local level in particular, and really just providing leadership.

I think our chamber does a really good job.

- Yeah, and when you talk about the people, piece of it, there are so many people at all levels of business that actually care.

But a lot of times we don't know what we can do to better our environment or better the community or whatever that we're gonna get into that but I think that's an important piece of this.

- Yeah, it is.

And I think Chambers were founded sort of based on that principle.

You were running your business, everyone's doing their, sort of, day to day work.

So who's looking out for the businesses while you're out there keeping your store running or your restaurant successful?

And Chambers were designed to be that mechanism to support business.

- So that's the Chamber, what's the CEO Council?

- So the CEO Council is a bit of a unique animal.

It is... And I think a huge asset to Peoria or can be.

It's all of the leading employers in Peoria and their CEO or market lead.

Peoria's a smaller market.

So in the case that we don't have a CEO representative from one of our national banks or something like that, we have their local president.

But for the sort of locally housed companies, we have their CEO.

- Like a Brian Ray from PNCs.

- Brian Ray's our president here.

And so we've got about 60 members.

And it's a nonprofit foundation separate from the Chamber.

And it's really designed, to make Peoria better place to live, work, and play, to give the private sector a voice, but also to allow the private sector the mechanism to impact community.

And, as we talk today, I'll talk a little bit more about how important impact is to me.

I'm not one of those guys that just likes to go to work, do my job and go home.

I wanna be able to see the sort of fruits of that labor in the community.

And I think that's really what the CEO Council should be about.

- Yeah and I think, with the CEO council, few years ago, I remember one of the comments of you have 60 CEOs, you need to leave the ego at the door and know it's about community.

- That's right and we... - Or don't be a part of it.

- Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head.

We went through a very important strategic planning process this past year, really seeking to better align our resources and get on the same page in terms of what we're here to do.

And ego was a part of that conversation.

It's like, "Hey guys.

This isn't about who's the smartest person in the room, who's got the biggest company.

This is about Peoria and the Peoria region and how we can all work together to make it better."

- And no one needs a pat on the back.

- That's right.

- I mean, no one needs that.

So let's segue into one of the initiatives talent attraction.

- Yeah.

- Lay out some of the plans that go along with attracting new talent and some of it's locally, some of it's, middle Illinois, but we're talking talent from all over.

- We should be talking talent from all over.

I appreciate you saying that.

I'm passionate about the fact that Peoria is a great place to live, Peoria is a great place to work.

It's been phenomenal for my family transitioning here.

A little cold in the winter.

But, other than that... - It's not derm - It ain't derm.

(Matt laughing) I've never seen -20 until now.

So that was an experience.

But in all honesty, I'm passionate about the fact this can be a hub for the rest of the country.

You wanna come in a community where you can get a great job, you can raise your family, great schools, great parks, where you can grow your own business, you can be an entrepreneur, you can be an innovator, in a place that's affordable, in a place that's not highly congested, Peoria is that place, Central Illinois is that place.

So, talent attraction is something that I came, it sort of, is in my toolkit before I got here.

Something I did in my previous world.

The Research Triangle park area, Durham-Raleigh-Chapel Hill has sort of received global notoriety as a talent attraction Mecca.

It's rapidly growing, talent from the West Coast, places like San Diego, San Francisco, the whole Silicon Valley to Southern California piece or moving East, and now moving to New York and Chicago, and moving to the Southeast Atlanta, Research Triangle, Charleston.

And a lot of that was based on talent attraction efforts, that happened 15 or 20 years ago.

And it's really centered on, sort of, flipping the way that we think about, economic development, Matt.

So, while things like sites, things like buildings are still very, very important pieces of your economic development mix, talent is probably rising to the top as the most important or one of the most important components of attracting companies to your region.

50 years ago, company sets up shops as I have 3,000 jobs, people would move to that city to get those jobs.

Now, companies are looking at communities and saying, "Is this where my workforce wants to live?"

And if it is, and they feel like we can be competitive, they'll move their businesses here.

So it's an important piece for us.

The CEO council is a part of a collaborative, a talent attraction collaborative, the CEO Council, the Chamber, GPEDC, Discover Peoria and we're focused on sort of three pillars.

One, retaining the talent we have and making sure that the talent's already here gets a great welcome to the community, connections, similar to how it was for me, Matt.

I look at my experience, because I was the Chamber CEO, I'm at the mayor before I even moved here.

City council folks, CEOs of companies, person that runs the library, the person who runs the parks.

I instantly felt like this was a community for me.

And I can know where to go and I know who to talk to if I need something.

For 99% of the people that move here, they don't have that sort of welcome.

If you're just coming to work at OSF as a nurse or you're just coming to work at CAD as an engineer other than your internal company that you may not meet the mayor five years, 10 years here.

You may not meet the CEO of Brian Ray of PNC.

We'll keep giving Brian shout outs today.

- Slow down bro.

- Right, but think about that experience that I had and why I feel so passionate and why I like it so much.

I've spoken with folks who've been here five or 10 years and they even had the same experience.

So how do we create that welcome, Matt and retain our talents that's already here?

How do we better market the region and promote ourselves outside of Peoria?

So people know all the great things that are happening here and combat some of the negative press that we've got.

And the third thing to think about which is probably the most, radical piece of this component and really probably unfamiliar for some folks is the process of incentivizing talent to move to your place.

- Yeah.

- We're familiar with incentivizing business, tax incentive, essentially paying a company to move.

The new practice of buying talent is really working really well in places like Tulsa, Madison, throughout the country.

People are really growing their population through things like, Tulsa did cash payments, $10,000.

Some places are paying off your student loans helping you buy a home.

And people are continuing to up the ante.

- They're upping the ante and Madison is blowing up.

- [Joshua] Killing it, yeah, killing it.

- And so, let me ask you this.

We are within three hours of Indianapolis St. Louis Chicago.

- Yeah.

- Chicago you're seeing a pretty big net migration.

How do you, for people who are, like, I do not want to go to Iowa or Michigan or whatever, how can Peoria as the collaborative, 'cause it takes all, get to these people to say, "Listen, this is what we have."

- Yeah.

- This is Peoria.

And it's four times cheaper than it is in Chicago, downtown Chicago.

- Well, yeah.

So that's a part of this collaborative approach.

Messaging.

What are we selling?

You know, I think one of the Peoria's, you know, maybe cultural challenges is Peoria doesn't brag enough.

Peoria just culturally, it's not a place that pats itself on the back for all the great things that we have.

And that's great from sort of a humility perspective.

Just, sort of, go about your day and appreciate life.

But it's not gonna help us get people here.

So I think part of it is we gotta brag a little bit about some of the great things that we have.

I think I have friends in Chicago, and they've never heard of Peoria.

I mean, heard of it.

They have no idea what's there, they have no idea what it's like.

They have an image in their head of Peoria.

And so I'm a fan of posting our skyline, posting our waterfront on my Instagram and I don't tag the place.

And I get so many people, where are you?

What are you doing?

- Yeah.

I'm in Peoria.

Peoria has a skyline in the downtown, and a waterfront.

They, have one image of Peoria, that part of it's true.

We've got a great agricultural scenes.

We've got some great cornfields and soybean and we've got a great manufacturing sector, but we've also got some fun amenities that I think we need to highlight a little bit more.

- We do.

- From a quality of life perspective to get those folks that are in Chicago, they're like, "Man, I don't wanna live in a 600 square foot apartment for $3000 a month anymore.

- That's my daughter.

Yeah, she needs to move back.

- Come on home.

- I know, come on home.

- Come on home, yeah.

- Let's talk about the black leadership initiative.

- Yeah.

Black leadership initiative is something that was born out of a conversation, between, two former Caterpillar executives.

Al Hooks and William Dunn, and Don Schaefer at PNC bank.

Mostly centered around two topics.

One, this sort of lack of a next generation of black leadership here in Peoria, folks like Al hooks, folks watching this will probably heard of him.

We consider one of the legends of Peoria.

- Right, right.

- But he's getting older.

He's wants to hang and put his feet up.

But who's next?

Who's gonna step in there and make sure that Peoria's black community is represented in the important conversations for our future?

And so they invited me and Jennifer Edmundo into the conversation, to talk about what we can do.

And one of the sort of low-hanging fruit that we found Matt, is representation on boards of directors in the Peoria region.

- Yeah.

- Peoria is about 30% African-American, today.

Our board representation is nowhere near that.

We did a survey of our membership as well as the nonprofits that the United Way supports.

- I responded to that.

- Thank you for responding.

- Yeah.

- And it's a little bit dismal Matt, to be honest.

- I know it is.

- And so there's some work that needs to be done there.

Black leadership initiative is centered around creating a pipeline of black leaders and connecting those black leaders to opportunities to serve in the community.

We think of it as a way to ensure that we're representative of the community we serve.

Both as a private sector and a nonprofit sector.

It's important that we have representation.

We sorta continue to break through glass ceilings and focus on diversity, equity and inclusion but also it's a talent retention mechanism.

When you feel like you're involved in the community you're more likely to stay.

- Exactly.

- Now, that's black leadership initiative I'm proud to say that the CEO council has officially adopted that as one of our new projects.

So we've got the full support of the CEO council to help make this thing happen.

As well as great partners like Jennifer and William Dunn and Al Hooks.

- Yeah, well, I'm very proud of that initiative.

- Well, thank you.

- It's gonna be...

It's much needed.

- Yeah.

It's something I'm passionate about, Matt, I'm a black man in a Chamber of Commerce CEO seat.

There are only a handful of folks like myself in a position like this across the country.

And, I've seen what it means, to have a seat and table and represent a community that, might feel silenced or left out.

And so I'm passionate about continuing to help solve and the problem.

- The big table was a big piece of this.

- Yeah.

- That's happened in this past couple of years because it opened up people's conversations.

People could actually lay it out there.

- That's right, that's right.

- So that feels good.

- And people that would have never seen each other, other than sort of in passing maybe at the grocery store, or maybe not even based on some of the ways our communities are.

Or separate.

- Or don't care.

I mean that happens.

- Yeah, that's true.

And breaking down those barriers and those silos, you know Peoria was already far along that path before I got here, I'm just happy to pick up the Baton.

- That's awesome.

Promise neighborhoods.

- Yeah, so promise neighborhoods is sort of a...

I use the word transformational a lot and I don't wanna overuse that, but in this case, it's the appropriate term.

So in brief, promise neighborhoods is a federal government program, a partnership between the US Department of Education, HUD and a few other federal agencies.

Essentially it seeks out the most distressed communities in the United States and offers funding to create a cradle to career pipeline, essentially.

So what we know Matt is that in most cases where you end up in life is based primarily on where you start it.

You can make different choices, you can overcome obstacles.

And those of us who are exceptional, we get a chance to maybe move up the ladder a little bit.

But in most cases, people are really confined based on where they started.

And so what we're trying to do, what promise neighborhoods attempts to do is provide individuals in our most distressed communities with the resources and services they need, to overcome the circumstances in which they were born.

Peoria has applied for the grant is $30 million significant funding $6 million a year over five years, specifically for the 61605 zip code.

So in order to qualify for this program you have to check a lot of boxes and these are all negative boxes.

Boxes that no one wants to check.

Unfortunately the 61605 zip code checked every box.

So we rank as one of the most distressed communities in the United States, which means we hope to qualify for this grant.

ICC is the lead entity, Illinois Central College is the lead entity on the grant application, along with about 65 agencies and organizations like yours, who are participating.

The CEO council has signed on to support the effort from the private sector standpoint.

The government requires private sector participation, both in cash and in kind, as well as in man hours or people hours.

And we at the CEO council have decided to support that effort in that way.

That support will look differently based on whether or not we get the grant.

But one of the things that I'm also passionate about Matt is irrespective of whether or not we get the grant, this is something we need to solve.

We need to focus on addressing the concerns of the most distress communities.

Not only in Illinois, but in the nation.

- Yeah.

This one's near and dear to my heart because of children's home.

- Yeah.

- I mean we see it every minute.

- Yeah.

- 1700 kids a month flow through our agency.

So we understand it.

Minority owned businesses, and a lot of times when you hear that you think of black owned businesses and which I have many friends that we support and love all business, but we're talking minority owned business is anybody.

And we have a lot of minority owned businesses here in this area, don't we?

- Yeah, we do.

And it's a growing sector.

The black owned businesses in particular continuing to grow.

Latin X or Hispanic owned businesses are continuing to grow probably more rapidly than we even understand.

Right.

I had a great meeting with the Hispanic chamber here and they've seen their membership and their interest continue to grow.

Women led businesses, you name it.

Our minority sector is growing.

We at the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce have traditionally not been as connected to minority led businesses for various reasons.

And what I'm hoping to do in our staff is hoping to do is eliminate some of those barriers.

So we've launched a minority business membership which is $99 for the year significantly discounted because I feel like we need to prove our value.

We need to prove value to that part of our community.

But ultimately if we can be representative of all the business community here in Peoria, we're a stronger chamber, Peoria is a stronger region and that felt like a necessary step to get us there.

- Well, I'm gonna give one of my favorite Young's popcorn, a shout out.

- Oh great.

(both laughing) Yeah, well, I've had the popcorn a couple of times at Keller station, they pop up there.

- There's just a lot of fun.

- Good popcorn man.

- So what do we have to do to build better partnerships?

Just that collaborative piece, but we still need to get better.

- Yeah, that's a great question.

One that I'm sure you've wrestled with for awhile.

Right.

- Years.

- And egos one of the things you touched on that earlier, when we talk about CEO council and the need to do away with egos.

One of my favorite quotes is imagine what we could accomplish, if no one cared who gets the credit.

And I sorta lead that way.

I tend to arise for blame and duck for credit.

I wanna be the person...

I think leadership is standing up when something wrong happens and saying, "Hey I'm responsible for that."

But when you do something right let someone else get the credit.

'Cause there are other people that helped you get there.

But if we can all come to the table with sort of that, no ego, share priorities by focusing on what can we do to make Peoria better?

I think collaboration is a little bit easier but the last thing, Matt that might be a little bit unexpected on that note is also addressing some of the reasons why we haven't collaborated well in the past.

I'm a big believer in what's called truth and reconciliation.

So, hey, Matt, I didn't wanna come talk to you 'cause you said something wrong to me.

This is not a real thing, but most people will just sort of take that on the chin, and just disengaged from one another.

I think collaboration happens when you and I can sit down and say, "Hey man, you know when you said X to me, I didn't appreciate it," and then we can reconcile.

And now we can work together in earnest, in a true partnership.

So seeing a little bit of that in Peoria, Peoria is a small, big town.

And there's a lot of baggage that people bring to the table.

I'm interested in, you know let's get around that table together put all the bags on the table, dig through them find out what we can keep and throw away everything else.

- All right.

I'm gonna totally pivot away here.

Vaccine availability to restaurant workers.

I know people are thinking that.

So where are we at with that?

- Vaccines are completely available right now to all restaurant employees, staff, ownership, management, through the Illinois department of health.

So in our case, the Peoria County Health Department is a great resource for that.

If you have questions on where to get it how you can get in line, I'd reach out to the department of health.

Got to participate in a press conference along with Monica Hendrickson.

And they're excited about it because a lot of the outbreaks that we're seeing are happening while people dying.

That's the place where we let our guard down, we take our masks off.

And while we continue to make progress with vaccines and the pandemic is slowing.

I feel that and I'm sure you do.

We have to remain vigilant, and one of the places where I think we're getting a little lax is when you and I go out for beer or for bite to eat, we've got to remember that we're still in a global pandemic but we can protect our restaurant workers by getting them all vaccinated.

So we at the Chamber and encouraging everyone to get vaccinated as soon as you can and excited that our restaurant sector is now eligible to receive that.

- And people need to call the local health department figure out where they are in line, because there's some sectors that haven't... Is it available to everybody right now?

- April 16.

- April 16th.

- It will be available to everyone.

- So when you talk about the restaurant piece that's a very, very important piece.

And we have a lot of great restaurants here in Central Illinois.

- They're great restaurants.

And you know our restaurants have done a really good job.

I mean, you know, spreading it out, pivoting.

I saw at the early part of the pandemic when it was getting colder, people were building these outdoor shelters, you know to accommodate us and you know, they're doing a great job, we just need to help them, and vaccines is one way we can do that.

- We need to help them.

And I am going to have you back on because I think we need to turn this into about a 90 minute show.

(Joshua laughing) So I hear you, Joshua Gunn, you're doing great things for our community.

If you ever need anything feel free to reach out and keep caring.

And this wraps another show.

I'm Matt George, another episode of "Business Forward."

(upbeat music)