#82: Baiju Shah (Greater Cleveland Partnership)

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:00:00]:

You've got to be rooted in in reality. And that reality is actually much more positive than people give greater Cleveland credit for being. So when you look at again, the last 10 years 10 years that we had data on 2009 to 2019, Cleveland was fifth in business growth. Right? Eighth in jobs growth, eighth in income growth. So we weren't eleventh, which is there was 11 regions that are peer regions in the in the Midwest. 50 eighth and eighth. So if you say that to greater Cleveland business and civic leaders, they're somewhat surprised that that's our rank. Because their perception is very negative. And I think that that perception is driven by the lack of sufficient storytelling about the successes that are going on in our midst.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:47]:

Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:56]:

Welcome to the lay of the land podcast where we are exploring people are building in Cleveland. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Baiju Shah, who is the president and CEO. Of Greater Cleveland partnership. GCP is the region's leading economic development organization, and with over 12000 members, the large metropolitan chamber of commerce in the whole nation. Guided by a board of corporate and entrepreneurial CEOs, the organization focuses on accelerating growth and prosperity for Cleveland through strategic initiatives, business services, real estate development, and advocacy. All of which we will unpack more in our conversation today. Prior to GCP, Beiju served as the senior fellow for innovation at the Cleveland Foundation and previously served as CEO and board member of Biomotive, co led the Harrington Project for Discovery and Development, a 380000000 dollar US and UK drug development initiative, which he helped to launch, and also formally served as CEO, board member, and cofounder of Bio Enterprise. A business formation, recruitment, and acceleration initiative that assisted companies and securing resources and funding to support their growth. During his tenure, bioE assisted more than 110 companies that together attracted 1300000000.0 in new private funding. Beyond this, Baju has a plethora more of experience, has been named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and has been recognized as 1 of Cleveland's most influential leaders. Please enjoy my conversation with Baiju Shaw.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:41]:

When I take a look, I guess, at the arc of of your own career as a as an outside observer, which which I am, it appears to me that the thread that ties it together is is cleveland. And so I'd love to know, pull on that thread and and maybe start our conversation here hearing a little bit about, you know, yourself, your history, your your path to GCP. Sure. And about, you know, why you have chosen to focus and double down so explicitly on impact in Cleveland.

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:03:13]:

Yeah. So, you know, it starts because I'm a Clevelander by birth. Clevelander through and through. This is my hometown. Spent some time away from my hometown for college, early career work, law school, but always had, in my mind, a desire to come back and to contribute in some way. Ill defined, but always had a deep love of my community. And I think as a clevelander, it's not only that it's something in the water, but once you leave Cleveland, you find yourself not only missing the community and its people, but constantly defending it in the face of skepticism from others, which I think you know emboldens the passion that 1 has for for the community and certainly got me excited to to boomerang back now nearly well, now 25 years ago.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:09]:

And as you reflect on now that 25 year period here in Cleveland, you know, how is it that you came to to be in the position that you're in with greater Cleveland partnerships and paint the the picture of of the of your your professional career.

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:04:27]:

You know, it's always serendipity in terms of how 1 ends up in different roles and and positions. I had a mentor who early in my career gave me the guidance to follow opportunities that make sense in the moment, do them well, and do opportunities for the merge. So my background is when I returned to Cleveland, I joined a consulting firm here in Cleveland because I enjoyed the work on the business side when training, but also because the consulting firm did a lot of work in the civic space and enabled me to have an opportunity to be involved early in my career in major civic transformation initiatives around education, around social services, around community development banking, and then eventually around economic development. While I was at that consulting firm, on the private side of the work, what I gravitated to was anything that had to do with business growth or business innovation. And, you know, looking back, I'm not sure what why that sparked in me, but I will let you know that my father is an entrepreneur. So there's probably something that's in the DNA that, you know, makes me more risk favoring and interested in individuals who are risk favoring and wanting to learn more about how to help those types of businesses and support them. From that consulting firm, you know, 1 of our projects was to be heavily involved in Cleveland's economic development, economic transformation. This was over 20 years ago now when we recognized in our community that in spite of significant efforts to move this community forward starting back in the early 1980s, but perhaps dating even earlier than that. From an economic perspective, we were still lagging other peer regions around the Midwest and the Great Lakes. Agents like ourselves that were trying to make the transition from the industrial economy to the knowledge economy. And that led to a series of not only angst ridden sessions back 20 years ago, but a series of new strategies, 1 of which was to really focus in on nurturing startups, high-tech startups in particular, whether those are in the tech sector or the biotech and biomedical sector. I ended up leaving my consulting firm or the consulting firm, it's not mine, to lead the effort in this community to really build the biomedical ecosystem with an organization called Bio Enterprise, a partnership of Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University Hospitals. And our focus initially was really on identifying promising entrepreneurs and businesses in the Cleveland area, assisting them in their businesses principally through getting them ready for and then introduced to capital sources that were and still are largely outside the region. So the healthcare space that was principally in the Boston and Silicon Valley markets. And really being that bridge because we had the ability to build relationships almost like a boutique investment bank would be to these funding sources building that bridge from those funding sources to Cleveland. What we found back then is that successful cities that had really accelerated their Capital had a very simple strategy, which was go and ask the people what the money, what they want to invest in, and then make it easy for them to find it in your hometown. Howard Bauchner: Right? That's that's simple. Don't try to push stuff. Really just try to pull the money in by making it easy to sift through all of the startups that are out there to help them find the ones that fit their investment thesis and serve it up to them. And that simple approach really allowed us to start to build a much stronger pipeline of capital bring split from the East Coast, a little bit from the West Coast, into culinary businesses. Along with the biomedical work, because I'm a cleaving her through and through, I was passionate about many other things that cleaving seemed to be lacking at the time that we needed to nurture and encourage. So got involved in starting some other civic initiatives around talent attraction, in particular college students who try to bring college students into Cleveland for summer internships, summer exposure and getting them convinced that this could be a great place to launch. Their professional careers immigrant talent got involved in starting organizations that were focused on really expanding on Cleveland's wonderfully diverse ethnic heritage to Welcome more immigrant families to this region to help them establish. Immigrants, as you know, are highly entrepreneurial individuals themselves having taken the risk of leaving everything they know and everyone they know to start careers and lives in a whole new land. And many other civic endeavors. That's how I started getting, you know, better wired into the community into everything that was going on and fast forward many, many years of being involved in many civic enterprises and entrepreneurial enterprises on the private side, and I find myself now as the at this organization in a wonderful role that I everyday feel privileged to be in. So so tell us a little bit about about

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:39]:

GCP about Greater Cleveland partnerships. You know, what what is the organization? What what is a little bit of the history? And, you know, we'll we'll get into, you know, kind of your your focus today with All In Plan and some of the other initiatives that that you're thinking about working through, but, you know, just kinda set the stage here for us. Sure. So the Great Cleveland partnership is the region's Chamber of Commerce.

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:10:00]:

We have over 12000 members, 1000 of the largest organizations and companies in the region, all of whom you would recognize a brand name, but also over 11000 small businesses and entrepreneurs that are members of the Great Britain partnership. With over 12000 members, we're not only the leading economic development organization in the region, but we're the largest metropolitan chamber of commerce in the entire country. Now the history of this organization dates back all the way to you can trace it all the way back to the 1840s. But really, I look at kind of 18 93 as a watershed moment for what our organization has become. Because in the 1840s, the business leaders at that time, Cleveland was a growing city, here in the Western Reserve region, if you will, of the country. They came together and they formed something called the board trade in Cleveland. It was really principally to assist the businesses in their trade as the name would confer. That board of trade by the early 18 nineties, the business leadership of Cleveland recognized that the scope and focus of that board of trade was too narrow that at the same time as the businesses had their interest that they were trying to promote, there were many civic issues that needed business attention. Whether those are issues around talent, infrastructure, and growth at the time, taxes and finance policy, many of the same types of things that a Chamber of Commerce would focus on, our Chamber of Commerce would focus on today. So they've formed, they've disbanded the board of trade, formed something called the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce. And the mission of that organization, of course, our organization today, remains explicitly focused on the civic system and the community as a whole. It's about accelerating the growth and prosperity of Greater Cleveland. It's not about any 1 business or 1 industrial sector the way that a trade group or trade association would be focused on.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:53]:

When you think about and focus on this concept of, you know, increasing the greater prosperity for Cleveland. You know, 1 of the things that I I think it's always really interesting is how do you measure that? What are the components of prosperity that that matter? And and how do you hold yourself accountable to to to this concept and and how you define it, I guess? Yeah. So we define it so first of all, so our scope is greater Cleveland. I define greater Cleveland

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:12:24]:

in 2 different ways. On a very specific quantitative basis, it follows the metropolitan area. But then on a where's our scope and where are we willing to use our influence and connections? It's anywhere that anyone's got a Cleveland T shirt in their closet. So we're not very specific about the geography because we think that economies and regions operate across a much larger set of boundaries than just counties or cities etcetera. We're the only organization that operates that has the purview to operate at that type of scale and scope. And because of the leadership of the business community that's involved, it's always the CEOs of these companies that are directly involved on our board of directors or on our various committees. We have the gravitas to convene others, whether it's the public sector, the philanthropic sector, other civic partners, around areas of focus that support that mission of growth and prosperity. You asked me a question on how do we measure 3 overarching measures: business growth, jobs growth, income growth. So we want business growth, jobs growth, and income growth in our region here in Greater Cleveland. To be at the top of the Great Lakes regions on a competitive basis. We feel like we have the potential given all of the assets of our region not only our businesses and our institutions, but our people, to be among the top performing regions in the Midwest, 1 of the great regions in the great lakes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:51]:

When you think about maybe that unrealized potential, right, if ultimately we're you're working to unlock the potential in Cleveland, what what are the what do you see as the the barriers to the city realizing what it what it could from that competitive landscape perspective? Yeah. So there's a couple of things that

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:14:12]:

we've outlined is what we think the region needs. The first is we need an aligned vision. Of what are we trying to get to as a region. Not just in terms of metrics, but in terms of what are the priorities that we want to focus on to, Move us up the leaderboard. We've defined a series of priority focus areas, dynamic businesses that are thriving because of innovation technology, abundant talent, you know, with a real focus on experienced learning at all levels. Inclusive opportunity and appealing community and then business confidence. Those are the 5 priorities that we've set forward to drive this vision of a great region on a great light. Second thing though, with that aligned vision, you need an aligned civic system, an all in civic system. Because to achieve transformative endeavors in any sector, it requires sustained commitment and alignment among many, many different stakeholders. In our case, it's the private sector, the public sector, the philanthropic sector, or the nonprofit sector, working in lockstep against a common vision and working in a common way where everyone is adopting what we call the all in approach our mindset, our spirit, and our values. And the values are outlined in sort of 7 words that all began with the word in, starting with always being a expired setting bold aspirations with the execution, plans that follow, and always ends with working in unity, a working in unity for the community not caring about who leads, who supports, what role you play, and especially not caring about who gets any credit. It's always remembering that all of us are doing this for the community's benefit. So that's the second most important thing about, what do we need to unlock? And LiveVision, an all in civic system. And then the third, it's equally important, you know, you can pick this up as an entrepreneur's business focus on all in and all out execution. Right? So it's 1 thing to talk about things, you know, or, you know, get together and say that we're collaborating, but you've gotta focus on execution, execution, execution day in and day out. So we've set not only long term goals for the region, but for each and every 1 of our strategies as a region, it's not us as an organization, we've set an annual goal. And we want to problem solve around an annual goal just like you would in any business enterprises say, if it's on trajectory, that's great. If it's off trajectory, what's missing? Right? Is it the wrong strategy? Do we not have enough resource? Do we need to adjust certain factors in the system? Are there macro issues that we need to be working around to adjust our strategy? I mean, all of those things are types of questions 1 would contend within a business operation. Same thing what needs to do when we're thinking about driving the region forward so that we've got our eyes on a set of outcomes we're trying to achieve, but we're constantly orienting our strategy and our overall system and resource to make sure we remain on trajectory to achieve those long term outcomes.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:20]:

When we're talking about, you know, greater prosperity, economic growth, jobs, income, and those those components of the the all in envision as you had lined them out don't know if I'll recall them all from memory as as well as you out there. But, you know, business, talent -- Yep. -- opportunity. Right? These are all very macro topics. And 1 of the things that I'm I'm really interested in in your perspective on is, you know, if if the focus really and how you hold yourself accountable is in execution. I feel like in execution, it gets very micro. Yeah. And so you know, how is it that you're, like, testing the efficacy of the actual work you're doing? Great question. So let's, you know, let's drill into 1 that's common interest. Yeah.

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:18:04]:

Research and innovation. So we measure on an annual basis what's the innovation funding in the region. We measure that to include funding that's coming into our major research institutions, which include not only our universities and health systems, but also NASA Glenn. And innovation capital is measured by venture capital coming into the region to fund startup companies. Those are numbers that we can track on a year in, year out basis. And we know what our 20 20 performance had been, just roughly just about 2000000000 dollars of those But then we set a goal for 20 21, saying that's, you know, 2200000000.0, and then we have a goal for 20 22, 2400000000.0. We wanna see this grow you know, by roughly 10 percent a year to get us to a level that we think will be not only comparatively strong vis a vis other regions, but importantly contributing to broader regional GDP growth because innovation, is such an important component for keeping companies competitive, and it's a leading indicator towards sort of the sales growth that 1 would see in kind of the GDP types of numbers. Now to work those numbers, there's a lot of actors involved. This is not, you know, I wanna emphasize, this is not the work of greater Cleveland partnership alone by A stretch. It is an entire civic system. Lot of private actors working with public actors. You've got to work on strategies on how we're going to build the research components And I'll break it down in just a couple of examples. NASA Glenn. NASA Glenn is this incredible institution that in the recent years, its macro budget was about 900000000 dollars a year, but direct spend in the region was just under 500000000 because some of that is flow through money that goes out of the region. Our strategy is to ensure that we both increase the top line of NASA, but also increase the local spend with NASA. Now how do we do that? That works. That's working with NASCLA. NASCLA is not allowed to advocate for itself. But we are able to, as a business community, and as a public community, recognize where N acetone has unique capabilities and strengths. And then marshal the resources of our federal delegation principally, but supported by our state, our governor, etcetera, to go and advocate in DC for not only increased expenditure, but increased program leadership of massive language would then allow for increased local presence. And there's a detailed strategy where we've outlined sort of like the 6 things we want to go after. In the current fiscal year federal budget. In March this past year, because of the leadership of our federal delegation, we were awarded at NASA, and NASA Glenn was awarded up to 80000000 dollars in defense money, not NASA money, but defense money from the Space Force to expand our hypersonic testing facilities and a runway at NASA Glenn. That's the type of thing that we do to actually move the needle, where you go from macro to micro. On innovation capital, obviously, there's a plethora of startups What we want to nurture are more stomachs. What does that take? It takes a couple of things that we collectively need to advocate for. Why? We need to continue to sustain a third frontier and the third frontier support for entrepreneurial organizations that are able to assist entrepreneurs and see their businesses to get them started. Companies groups like Jumpstart in our region, but also a number of seed and angel funds in our region. But we also need to make sure that we have more true venture capital domiciled and headquartered in the region. So we're working on strategies to attract or initiate true Series A and Series B funds here to assist startups as they continue to grow. We know that that will lead to greater innovation investment is having a headquartered fund here will attract more investment from peer venture firms that want to co invest in syndication. With these firms. So those are the types of examples of things that we do as a region, as a system, however you want to call it, to move the metrics and Same is true in the research institution space where we'll see opportunities that are multi institution or institution and corporate partnerships. We have a major initiative or major application, let's say, pending right now at the Department of Commerce for up to 75000000 dollars to support smart manufacturing innovation in the Greater Cleveland region. We look forward to hearing hopefully from the Department of Commerce this fall So whether or not our region, which was kind of shortlisted, actually made it to the final cut for 1 of these major Department of Commerce awards to support, you know, growing our research base and growing our innovation base in the region.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:58]:

I wanna ask about and it you know, recognizing this may not fall squarely under the the purview of of GCP. Yeah. But, you know, when you think about, you know, we'll we'll take that 2000000000 dollar example of, you know, the amount of capital invested over the last year in in right, in in growing companies and start ups. And in and research institutions. And research institutions. And right? And the and the goal for growth of, you know, 10 percent year over year. I'm curious, you know, you know, in a in a magic wand scenario. Right? Should we be asking, you know, how can we 10 x that instead of 10 percent that Right? Like, it where yeah. Yeah. No. It's it's it's a great question, and it's a question of, like, how fast can the trajectory change?

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:23:45]:

Of any metric that we're measuring. Right? So we're putting in place right now. I've been at the Great Britain partnership for just a little over a year now. We put it -- first year was really about sort of defining these strategies, putting in place the metrics, kind of reconnecting nodes in the system to really get ready to operationalize the strategies that have been outlined and starting to deliver some early results. It's a great question you've got on sort of like how do you change that trajectory so that it's not just 10 percent year over year, but you started to get too much faster rates of growth on broadly innovation capital research. And I think we'll get there. But we want to make sure that we've got kind of a annual goal that we can measure against, continue to manage against and continue to improve so that we work our way towards larger and larger leaps as we go forward as a region. I think a big piece of it for us 1 of the things that I'm learning even more, it's something I've always believed, is where we started our conversation, is so much of what's going on in this region is hidden under our noses. We talked about businesses and startups and the plethora of companies that are out there, and now you can go on and on this podcast, always discovering interesting stories. The same is true in large corporate innovation. We're largely unaware of the corporate innovation centers that are in our midst. And maybe even more importantly, they're unaware of each other they're unaware of what's going on in the research institution. So we want to bring more visibility to what's happening so that people can start to connect across the landscape. In the last couple of weeks have been out to the Nestle Innovation Center, the Avian Innovation Center, Avery Dennison, all of which have innovation centers here. And they're just a handful of probably about 25 companies that have R and D functions in the region. And when you meet with these companies, you start to ask them what they're working on, the problems they're trying to solve. All these are global companies. They're working on their needs that they see from their customer perspective on a global basis. What they don't recognize, and as they've got resources around the world, but they don't recognize they might have some peers or even research institutions in our community that they can draw upon to help meet their needs. That they're working on similar types of material science problems, process improvement problems, other types of novel technologies and there's peer to peer learning as well as the opportunity for collaboration in a pre competitive sense for among many of these companies. We're hoping that by bringing visibility to that, that these companies can then start to self connect a little bit more than accelerate the pace by which we're increasing the innovation capacity in the region.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:41]:

No. I I like you mentioned that in many ways was the the founding insight for for a lot of the work I am doing with with this podcast. And, you know, with that, I I think 1 of the things that that is interesting and challenging is I think creating the visibility of of all these different stories is a tool to help facilitate the collaboration But I think at the scale that you're working at, I'd love to understand, you know because I think it's almost like a societal narrative in Cleveland. You know, people are working in silos. They're not fully aware necessarily of all the other things people are working on. How do you actually get people to collaborate and and work together

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:27:18]:

in a -- Yep. -- in a meaningful material way? It's hard. The answer will be basic, but the execution is hard. It comes down to human connections. And the more human connections that we create throughout our region. I don't think there's a barrier to it. I think there's a lack of awareness of it and a lack of facilitation of it. What I was deep in the biomedical sector. I was always stunned at how people within just the biomedical sector were unaware of each other. Because they work within not just their silo of an organization or institution, but the silo of their space. They knew everybody in the neurology space globally But they didn't know their neighbor that was working on orthopedics because there was just no intersection point professionally or scientifically around sort of the work that they were doing. And yet they were right adjacent to each other and they didn't know. And there may or may not be merit in them knowing each other, but I think that there's probably power in it because I strongly believe in the power of the human human interactions, human networks. You know, everyone's got relationships not everyone has knowledge that might help their peer organizations or networks. Everyone's got a relationship. A relationship from their business career, their professional, you know, background, their educational background, sometimes family members that could be useful. The more you understand what someone's looking for, I think -- and people I think, including, are willing to share. To say, oh, you're working on that issue? Let me connect you to someone who I think might be useful to you. But they need to actually come together to find each other. So it gets back to I think it's fairly basic, but how you do it is you gotta get people's attention to come out of their day to day and show up at a networking happy hour. You gotta make it interesting enough that they're going to do that. We have started to do this around interest groups just like any other organization would be. We learned, for example, recently that a lot of our largest organizations in our community are grappling with sustainability requirements that are being or standards that are being put forward by stakeholder groups, whether it's customer stakeholders, financial regulatory stakeholders, investors, etcetera. There's a whole new set of interest in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental considerations. Well, the people that have been tasked with these responsibilities inside the largest organizations in our community, it's all new to them. Right? This is new territory. So we convened recently a private dinner among a number of the leaders that we knew who had been tasked with it by their largest companies to be in this role. And we said, look, come together. You know, if nothing else, dinner's on us. If you find value in the convening, let us know what you find value in it, and we're happy to continue to facilitate it. What we were surprised at is they found incredible value 1 in having a peer group on which they can lean on, right, especially when one's tackling a challenge like that and You don't have a lot of resources to turn to. It's great to have some peers that are in your neighborhood, but maybe not in your industry to get new ideas. Second, they found you know, great value in thinking about what it may mean for not only their own organizations, but what it means for all their suppliers and customers. Because a lot of the information they collect is from these smaller organizations who are going to be blindsided by what would be coming forward as new requirements to be a supplier or to receive goods from these companies that have to now track this for their other purposes. And then third is they're like, well, if we're doing this, to improve our environmental stewardship. You know, we're doing things on a global level. Why shouldn't we be doing things in our home communities? Can we think about collective actions that we do locally that might address things? A great example was, you know, a lot of us are buying a reforestation credits. Well, why don't we do tree canopy recovery locally because we know of the issue of the lack of tree canopy creates, you know, heat a heat sinks in urban environments. Well, why wouldn't we band together and put some of our resources into communities where we live and work and our employees live and work. And so that's the type of thing where you're able to then start to get this group to connect with each other more and start to trade on relationships that they have that can help each other. I don't know how to do that at scale because you can't you can't do that by inviting everyone to the Brown State. You have to do this in groups that are going to show up because they're nationally interested in the same topic, whether it's a health tech corridor, happy hour. You know, there's a DAL happy hour coming tomorrow night. It's a cozy event for our small businesses. It's sustainability gathering. It's diversity professional groups. I mean, we've got all these things that are occurring that we need to keep nurturing people to to work across their org outside their organizations and across you know, boundaries that are really not boundaries, it's just sort of inertia. Let's talk a little bit about the importance of storytelling, if you don't mind. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So 1 of the things that, you know, you and I talked about this at the beginning of your podcast and how much I admire what you're doing and how I've always wanted to have somebody tell the stories of not only the tech startups that we come across, but just business success stories, small businesses that have gone big, you know, the Great Lakes Beers, the Cleveland whiskeys. I mean, there's so many of these great businesses in our midst here, and the stories are fascinating stories because every entrepreneurial journey as its roller coaster to go through it. Yeah. I mean, Tom Leckx, has an incredible story at Cleveland Whiskey. And and I think that what's so critical and this ties into our fifth priority of business confidence is Our first 4 priorities, dynamic businesses abundant town, inclusive opportunity, appealing committee, all get accelerated by confidence. Confidence is that feature that if the region's business leadership, civic leadership starts to express more confidence as Cleveland is a great place not only to live or visit, but Cleveland is a great place to work and build a business. They're going to start sharing that with others in their network, others that could be suppliers or customers, others that could be professional contacts or personal contacts, and that they're going to encourage as individuals to invest in Cleveland or to move to Cleveland. The way we get there is the storytelling. It is about the 20 first century business success stories. And these could be companies that are historic, that are still globally leading their fields, like the Sherwin Williams and the Parker Hannafin's and the Cleveland Cliffs that are doing incredible things here in the 20 first century, innovating changing and therefore still competing and leading, or it could be the startup companies. We have so many of these stories that I think it's critical that we find formats such as your podcast to get channels, to get this information out there. And these are the types of things people want to know about. They want to know about what's going on. They want to know what is cleave and whiskey? What's the story behind it? What was the story behind Great Lakes? Beer, what was the story behind Cleveland Kitchen and so many other things that are consumer facing and so there's some familiarity, but also the things that aren't consumer facing that are growing like gangbusters, an MRI software, a park based technologies, right, an overdrive that too few people recognize overdrive was a cleveland tech startup, is a cleveland tech startup, is still growing here in cleveland. So I think this is critical to Cleveland's success, because when we express that confidence, we're going to attract investment, attract talent, which is going to accelerate our ability to really climb that leaderboard, you know, in comparison to all the Great Lakes regions.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:26]:

Well, I I certainly share the share the sentiment and you know, appreciate the the work that that you're doing. I think just at a much grander scale to to coalesce and bring bring the folks together on

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:35:39]:

what I think is really important for for Cleveland. Yeah. It is I mean, we this is how we get our, you know, this is how we get our group back. This is I mean, it's We know we live in a great city. We have convinced ourselves it's a great place to live. It's a great place to visit. But it's also a great place to work, and it's a great place to work. And it's a great place to work. And it's a great place to work. And it's a great place to work. And it's a great place to about businesses. And as people see more and more examples of it, or hear about more examples because it's all around us. I think that we will get that part of it, and then then we really start thriving as a region. So we're excited about what you're doing, and we want to contribute to that by sharing stories that we come across, you know, through your channel and other channels out there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:21]:

What I I wanted to maybe double click on there is is confidence. Yeah. And, like, how how it it's almost it's not necessarily a chicken and egg problem. Like, what else to come first? You know, us making the progress against those things that you are measuring, economic growth, jobs, income to stand on that progress and be confident in how we are doing versus to just, you know, embody that confidence that we need maybe to make that progress in the first place? How do you bridge those?

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:36:50]:

First, it's sort of, you know, you've got to be rooted in reality. And that reality is actually much more positive than people give greater Cleveland credit per game. So when you look at, again, the last 10 years, 10 years that we had data on 2009 to 2019, Cleveland was fifth in business growth. Right? Eighth in jobs growth, eighth in income growth. So we weren't eleventh, which is there was 11 regions that are peer regions in the in the Midwest. Fifth, eighth, and eighth. So if you say that to greater Cleveland business and civic leaders, they're somewhat surprised that that's our rank. Because their perception is very negative. And I think that that perception is driven by the lack of sufficient storytelling about the successes that are going on in our events. Right? There's a reason that these companies, large ones like Sherwin, Clive and Cliffs, Parker, etcetera, Eton are growing and thriving here, as well as the many, many, many small companies. This is a little bit of the Cleveland sociological or psychological makeup issue. I you know, through the trauma that Cleveland has been through as a community, there is a, what was us? Glass is always half empty, you know, mindset here. A loss mindset, scarcity mindset instead of a growth mindset. And what we wanna demonstrate is when you look at the actual data and you hear stories that really are things that people hang on to. If you hear enough, you start to shift that mindset to a growth mindset. And you start to recognize that it is happening all around you. It's much better than you're giving it credit for. It's not perfect by any stretch. Yeah, a lot of work to do, but it starts to shift our internal mindset so that we're more open to and then start to pay more attention to the success stories that are going on all around us.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:44]:

Yeah. And it's really interesting that framing of it because I I think anecdotally just at a more personal level rather than at a macro level. My observation has been 1 that as someone who's, you know, not from Cleveland, But that Clevelanders really have the simultaneous pride and self deprecation at the same time dealing with this this bar that for the reasons you mentioned is is set quite low from expectations, but that Cleveland is very it's it's pleasantly surprising at a personal level. Like, everyone is just kinda blown away by when they come and see and experience it. It's not as as bad as they think it is. Well, it it's that, and it's also

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:39:24]:

again, part of it is sort of my mindset, my attitude as an entrepreneur, part of it is I worked most of my career in the healthcare sector. Cleveland and healthcare sector leads the world. This is not a place that we don't think of ourselves as globally competitive because we have organizations. We've got individuals that are globally recognized, brands that people know. I like the Cleveland Clinic, of course, that you know you're you're not compromising by being included. You're actually at the top of the field by being included. And so it's a different mindset that we bring to, you know, the work that's here and the clinicians and people, of course, people would want to work in healthcare and clearly. And I think we've got that in other sectors writ large, our business sector. We also have an in our arts sector, Cleveland Orchestra. Right? 1 of the top orchestras in the world. Clearly, our museum. Right? 1 of the top art museums in the world. And we need to bring that perspective to everything else that we're doing, that we're not just, you know, a town that went on some hard times like many other towns, when in hard times. So we are actually you know, we've gone through that, and we are growing, and we are thriving. We can do better. We will do better. But we have to recognize where we are is much better than where we think we are.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:43]:

I think that's a a perfect segue to to kinda bookend the conversation here, which is to talk about not necessarily your favorite things in Cleveland, but for some of the things in Cleveland that other folks may not know about that that perhaps they should. So you're you're hidden gems. Well, my hidden gems are always companies. And entrepreneurs. And so your podcast

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:41:05]:

is laying out many of those hidden gems into view for audiences, but if I go away from businesses and entrepreneurs, which is what I truly love, I'd say 1 of my favorite places well, I love food in Cleveland. Food and cleaving is fantastic. There are lots and lots of hidden gems or gems that were hidden to me throughout cleaving. But maybe I'll go with a place. So 1 of my favorite places to go for a hike that I discovered in the midst of the pandemic is all of us are out hiking every day because it was 1 of the few things that we felt safe doing early days of pandemic. Bedford reservation, There is a hike in the Bedford Reservation, a trail called Hemlock Creek. That to me is a hidden gem. It's not a trail that many people know Many people know that there's a picnic area there. But there's a trail that goes just east of the picnic area where you walk along the bottom of the gorge. It's a beautiful spot in JEM to enjoy Cleveland.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:06]:

Yeah. It is quite beautiful over there. Well, You know, Biju, I really appreciate your time for for coming on and and sharing your own story and more about the work you're doing at at GCP. If folks had anything that they wanted to follow-up with you about, you know, Cleveland GCP, otherwise, what is the the best way for them to do so? Probably the best that you could certainly find me on Twitter

Baiju Shah — Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) [00:42:32]:

and sort of, you know, send me a note, message me on Twitter via LinkedIn. You can drop me an email at b shot trader clay dot com and if folks have ideas.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:43]:

Awesome. Well, thank you again, Biju. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:47]:

That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey at lay of the land dot f m or find us on Twitter at pod lay of the land or at stern FAJEFE. If you or someone you know would make good guess for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of The Land. The lay of the land podcast was developed in collaboration with The Up Company LLC. At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on the show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. Podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.