12/12/11 - 11h17

Pamella Seay

Pamella Seay is a commissioner of the Charlotte County Airport Authority. First elected to the Charlotte County Airport Authority in 1997, she has served continuously for four 4-year term. She is also a professor of justice studies at FGCU.

Background

• Business relationship between Florida and Brazil
• Professional shortage in Florida
• Cost of hiring in Brazil and Florida
• Brazilian regulation, permits and licenses in practice
• Relationship with government representatives

Interview

Tom Reaoch:

Today we’re going to talk some more about business between Brazil and one of its largest trading partners, that’s the State of Florida. I’m happy to have with us Pamella Seay. Pam was part of the Florida delegation visit to Brazil with Governor Rick Scott and was also at the American Chamber of Commerce events, first the CEO forum in Campinas and then in the AMSHAM breakfast meeting with Florida Governor Rick Scott in São Paulo.

Pam also recently hosted a Brazil delegation visit to Florida and we’ll talk about that as well, but Pamella Seay is a commissioner of the Charlotte County Airport Authority and Pamella was first elected to the Charlotte County Airport Authority in 1997 and she has served continuously for four 4-year terms. She has overseen the expansion of the airport from a small general aviation facility into a commercial airport with three regional airlines, a foreign trade zone and international businesses.

Pamella currently holds an appointment as a full professor of justice studies at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Florida where she teaches international and comparative law, constitutional law, criminal law and the environment in the College of Professional Studies; so with that Pamella, welcome and thank you for being part of Talk2Brazil.

Pamella Seay:

Well Tom, thank you for that fine introduction, I greatly appreciate it. Good to be here.

Tom Reaoch:

I can see you’re a very, very busy person. You mentioned you first arrived in Brazil on November 16th, you had all the different visits, got back to Florida then had to help organize a visit on your side of Brazilians returning there, what I’d like to first have you talk about is what were your impressions of Brazil? I see you’ve been here before, but as part of a delegation what were your impressions of the delegation visit to Brazil?

Pamella Seay:

What I felt first was a sense of excitement and certainly a sense of curiosity to find out something more about a different side of Florida; well, we like to call it the friendly side of Florida but what we wanted to do was show that there is something other than Miami when you do come into Florida. Miami has often been considered a center of business and we wanted to show that there’s certainly an opportunity for business elsewhere and they were excited to find out more, very interested in seeing so much of our region and the distribution opportunities, the strategies for investments that we have going on here in southwest Florida.

Tom Reaoch:

Yeah, and I mentioned because last week we also spoke with Kay Tracy and I’ve seen several different delegation visits coming to Brazil, not only from different states in the United States but also from other countries but this is one of the largest delegations that I’ve ever seen, there were 187 strong business persons and 100 different companies as part of that visit, that’s quite an undertaking to get everybody here and set up shop and the show and tell.

Pamella Seay:

The one thing about that is, I think, our governor, our new governor Rick Scott has made it a priority that business and jobs come fist and the opportunity for business relationships between Brazil and Florida seem to be a very top priority for him since, number one, Brazil is our top trading partner. When we take a look at who the business people are that are working with us, it’s Brazil. There are a lot of other countries that we work with of course but that’s where the impact is. When it comes to tourism we have in the entire United States from the last review of statistics that we have, 1.3 million Brazilians come to the United States every year, and of those 1,045,000 of them come to Florida. So we know that there’s a connection. We know people are interested so we wanted to show that there’s more than Mickey Mouse, more than just a lot of very beautiful beaches and so forth here in this state and that there’s opportunities for, whether it’s high-tech industries, I know we already have Embraer here in the state, for more technology-related companies, agribusiness, I know you had mentioned agribusiness when you first came on and our orange groves and lemon groves and our citrus and our sugar cane is huge business here and there needs to be that kind of connection for that kind of agribusiness from us to Brazil.

Tom Reaoch:

Yeah, that really impressed me as well because you were also part of that breakfast presentation by Governor Rick Scott. Not that I have anything against politicians, I really don’t, but he really spoke more like a business person than a politician.

Pamella Seay:

Well that’s his background. This was first foray into politics when he decided he wanted to run for governor of Florida, and quite frankly I’m glad he did. The opportunities here, they’re great but to have nothing but a politician leading the way, I kind of shy away from that, I do like the idea of having someone with business experience with that business acumen that says, “If we’re going to make things work, it has to start from commerce” and that’s his approach and I appreciate that greatly, and so far…

Tom Reaoch:

No, and what he said too was basically what you mentioned, just the fact of the link and how strong the business relations are between the State of Florida and Brazil, that was impressive, and you’re mentioning a million people visiting. I always thought, I guessed that number for some reason I thought it was a little bit lower than that, but then I checked and I saw that about half of those then do go and see Mickey Mouse and go to Orlando.

Pamella Seay:

Orlando’s a great place; it’s a wonderful place to go but to me that’s just something you go for the weekend, you go to play and it’s a very nice side trip and it’s something that if you come here and you’re establishing your business in Florida, you want to know that you family has something that they can do. We’ve got wonderful schools here, some of the top schools in the country, and if you like football we have that too but certainly not Brazilian football, not the soccer, we have our knock ‘em, sock ‘em beat ‘em up football that – we like our American football but there are a lot of activities here as well as good solid business opportunities. In fact several educators had come up here during this past weekend from educational institutions both in Campinas and also in São Paulo that are looking for connections whether it’s as an exchange program for their students, exchange programs for their faculty, connections with our engineering schools, our technology programs, so many of these programs that do have a benefit both in Brazil and here in Florida.

Tom Reaoch:

And these were part of the Brazilian delegation visiting you?

Pamella Seay:

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I was very pleased with that. We had several representatives that did come up and say how do we make this connection…

Tom Reaoch:

I saw [overtalk] there were 27 companies on the reverse then there were 27 Brazilian companies that visited Florida right?

Pamella Seay:

Exactly, there were 27 people that came, some were consultants who represented a number of different businesses, so we were pretty impressed with that, that they would come and say, “Look, I’m looking for this kind of business opportunity and this one.” For example we had one group, we were just driving down the road and they said, “Oh, that’s a nice building, there” and we said well yeah, that used to be a university and it was an internet based university and it had come on some difficult times and it did close its doors and they said, “You know what, that would be a great place for…” and they started coming up with wonderful ideas about a new opportunity for education or a business incubator and things like that. It was the ideas that came from not just from the business people but these consultants and the educators that came along.

Tom Reaoch:

Well, I think that’s one of the advantages of visiting and you mentioned that while we were speaking off-line of coming here and seeing Brazil and then the reverse of Brazilians going there and seeing more specifically Charlotte County in Florida. It’s the seeing and touching and feeling and being with persons that you can share a common moment and common knowledge about what you’re seeing.

Pamella Seay:

And you know, you can look at pictures all day long.

Tom Reaoch:

That’s right, business can be done at a distance but you really only get the feeling of what it really means when you’re up close and you’re talking to people, you’re relating to that, you can see the vibrancy in commerce as you mentioned here so I think that’s all part of these delegations and that’s the plus side. As you just said, just in a car drive you can see something and opportunities literally just pop up in front of you.

Pamella Seay:

And one of the things that we did too, you know I do speak a little bit of Portuguese but I don’t consider myself fluent by any stretch, we have a lot our local folks that volunteered to come along with us and work together with us with the visitors and they were acting as our translators but they are also business owners, they are business people and it seemed to me that their connection with the visitors that came through was even more important than what they were seeing because they were getting it straight from business people that are actively working in the community. Every one of them to a person said, “We want to come back.”

Tom Reaoch:

Well, Kay Tracy mentioned that last week that you do have in Charlotte County, let’s call it a Brazilian community and Brazilian business persons so I guess that’s part of it, that mutual understanding of how to do business in a foreign country is important for someone wanting to set up an operation or looking for opportunities.

Pamella Seay:

Oh, it’s a big a help. When you’re coming into a strange location and that language that most people are speaking is not your first, it does make a difference and it is so helpful to have someone from your home to greet you and say, “Hi, let me tell you how it really works” and they can listen to us all day but when it comes right down to it you know friendships and relationships are the most important thing, and understanding is key.

Tom Reaoch:

I think it’s even more important they don’t say how things work but the fact that they do work. What are some of the concerns that you felt from the Brazilians during this visit to Charlotte County in wanting to start a business what are their first concerns? Are there any priorities in that or just taking a look and see? Do they have any fears?

Pamella Seay:

Of course, it ran the range of all kinds of things from regulations to taxes and what about the economy. One big question that we did get was about our work force and they were concerned that perhaps, you know, “Oh my gosh all the workers are over in Miami” and we said, well wait a minute you know, there’s a lot of people here, we’ve got - you know that little school that I just showed you over here, they have 26,000 students, that’s our local college. There’s another university up the street with another 16,000 students with an engineering college and with a management school and they were quite impressed with that once they could see that yes we are a small community with pretty beaches and tall palm trees but we are business-oriented and educationally-oriented and our labor force is not just a number of old folks that decided to retire to Florida but a lot of young people who are loving the life of Florida and saying, “I want to make this my home forever”.

Tom Reaoch:

But I don’t want to overlook and I don’t think we should overlook the old folks because I am an old folk [laughs] …

Pamella Seay:

So am I [laughs].

Tom Reaoch:

There’s a whole lot of experience from the old folks that can also be a wealth of, you know just general knowledge in a sense of being able to start up and just adapting any company and you can find persons who have just a world of experience.

Pamella Seay:

Oh yeah you’re absolutely right that a lot of the, what we would call old folks, I mean somebody might look at me and say I’m old and heck I’m way away from being that old I think, and we have talented retirees that come here, I can take a look at my own neighborhood, people who are in their fifties that are older than me and retired but are still looking for something to be involved in and they have worlds of experience as heads of companies themselves or experience in technology and design and architecture and machine work and you know all kinds of manufacturing, distribution, management and all of these kinds of things that can come together for the benefit of any business that wants to be here.

Tom Reaoch:

Right, well let’s take a couple of these concerns that you mentioned, you mentioned regulations and taxes and obviously I can understand why those are concerns from the Brazilian standpoint because here in Brazil those are the two major concerns for anybody in business or wanting to start because here the government has a very heavy hand in regulations and taxes are extremely high. I think that’s probably, Brazilian businesspersons going to the States, I’m guessing that would be the first two questions they would want answered, so how much regulation is there in Florida and specifically in Charlotte County for someone wanting to start a business?

Pamella Seay:

We have a program that call a “soft landing” program for businesses that come into our community that if you’re a business, you want to come in, come see the Economic Development office and they’ll walk you through every process we have. Regulations, having been a business owner and having started up a business in our own county, I know what we go through, you obtain your permits, you get your license and you open your doors. If you’re hiring personnel you make sure that you’ve got the right form posted on the window and make sure that you have the Workers Comp and unemployment insurance in place and it’s relatively simple. When we take a look at hiring a person, you usually factor in one third of their income, let’s say that you’re paying them $30,000 a year, you factor in an extra 10,000 for your benefits, for your taxes and Workers Comp and so forth and making sure you have that. When we were explaining that to some of the business people that were coming through, because I look at that and say, “Oh my gosh, that’s a lot of money!” and they said, “Good grief are you kidding, that’s all?” and when we were comparing finally apples to apples we discovered that a lot of the taxes and requirements and programs that are in place in Brazil do require a great deal more regulation and a lot more involvement and a lot more money than [overtalk]…

Tom Reaoch:

Here, the rule of the thumb is not one third but at least 100% or even higher. So whatever you would be paying, you’re going to pay another, whatever, if it’s 30,000 it’ll be another 30,000 over in costs and benefits that you have to offer.

Pamella Seay:

And that was crazy for us and what we were sharing with them to is it’s not only, we are looking at specific businesses that we want to support and that’s certainly in things like green energy and marine science, intellectual property, distribution networks and things of that nature that we have specific incentives available for those kinds of businesses and I know that’s what Kay Tracy’s office works with and …

Tom Reaoch:

Are those incentives then, those are from the county level?

Pamella Seay:

They’re from the county, they’re from the state and from the federal government so what the Economic Development office will do is sit down one-on-one with new business and say, “Okay, if this is the kind of business you’re wanting to do, we can get this kind of benefit here, we can get an incentive over there, and we can do this” and then they’ll look at options to see, well which one works best for your company? And I think that’s one thing that they were fairly impressed with to say, “Really, you can help us do this, you can walk us through this maze of …

Tom Reaoch:

And as we say walking through it sort of even holding hands as you’re walking and take them literally through the whole process.

Pamella Seay:

Exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

Yeah, I would see that that would amaze Brazilians.

Pamella Seay:

Well, we were kind of surprised because for us that’s normal, that’s our way of doing business. We want people to do business here and we want them to do it properly so we figure if we show them and guide them it will work out best for all of us involved and be better for our community overall.

Tom Reaoch:

I felt that from Rick Scott when he said you know, “If you have a problem, call me” and I sort of felt that he would probably answer the phone.

Pamella Seay:

As a matter of fact I got a phone call last Wednesday and I answered the phone, “Hi this is Pam” and on the other end of the phone says,”Hi, this is Rick Scott.” Oh, well hello Governor, how are you? [laughs] So you know, I know what that’s - you know, getting the governor right on the phone.

Tom Reaoch:

Well, you see that’s the feeling I would’ve had that, yeah, he just made himself so open, you know, “If you have any problem we’re here to fix it” you know and walk you through it so that was really impressive.

Pamella Seay:

And he means it.

Tom Reaoch:

I can see that; that’s the impression I got so you just confirmed that that he wants to be in contact, he wants to be in touch.

Pamella Seay:

He wants to make sure that it’s working. We have that same attitude here in Charlotte County. In fact a lot of the people when they walked away they had in their cell phones the personal cell phone numbers of the mayor, the council members and me, I’m one of the commissioners, so if they have a question call, we’re right here, we’re ready to answer your question and if we don’t have an answer we’re going to find it for you.

Tom Reaoch:

Well, I think that’s the amazing part that you would probably answer the phone.

Pamella Seay:

Usually I do.

Tom Reaoch:

That’s different and I really want to congratulate you on that and I think that’s, really we were talking offline of selling, and we were talking about selling a city or selling a county or selling a country, that’s part of it.

Pamella Seay:

It’s personal. If you’ve got a business, that’s your money and it’s important to you to make sure that your money makes money and to make sure that you family is properly cared for and that you’re not wasting your time and your energy and your efforts. In order to do that you have to have a good working relationship with the people that are going to be responsible for – that you’re going to be responsible to so we like to make sure that you know us and knowing us and working with us surely makes it a lot easier so that it’s not management by surprise, it’s not government by surprise, it’s, “Let’s make it work.”

Tom Reaoch:

Find the barriers and take them down.

Pamella Seay:

Exactly, that’s a good way to say it.

Tom Reaoch:

Help me and help our listeners, as I said you are a commissioner for the Charlotte County Florida Airport Authority, what does a commissioner do? What do you do? Are you in charge of this airport?

Pamella Seay:

There are five commissioners for the airport. We are each elected from county-wide. Last time I ran was almost three years ago and I had more votes than any other person that ran on the ballot…

Tom Reaoch:

Oh, congratulations.

Pamella Seay:

[laughs] That was kind of nice, but each one of us is elected county-wide, we are responsible for making the policy for the airport; we’re the ones that decide our master plan, say for example we’ve decided we needed an air traffic control tower so we tasked our executive director with the job of going out and finding the money to do that, which by the way he did, he has built it, we have now added our air traffic control tower which becomes operational later this month we believe, so we are adding to our terminal, we’re tripling the size of our terminal, we have added our commerce park, we are providing opportunities for our foreign trade zone there at the airport, but what we do is set policy and assure that we have the right person in charge to implement that policy; it’s his job to hire staff. We do not get involved with the day-to-day operations; we just make sure that it gets done. So we’ve been very fortunate to have a talented individual name of Gary Quill who is our executive director and who has been behind a lot of the expansion of our airport, extending our runways, adding airplane hangers, bringing on commercial airline service… we’re a small airport, we have three airlines, that’s all. We currently do not have international service but we do have authorization for Customs so for a person who is from Brazil and wants to bring their private jet on up or bring some cargo in, we’ve got that.

Tom Reaoch:

That would be my question so for corporate jets or corporate aviation your airport could be a point of call.

Pamella Seay:

Exactly, yes it can. You know, the jets that land there, the business jets, the corporate jets that land there certainly have the range to reach São Paulo and beyond. In fact we have some people who do come up from Brazil, right at the moment most of them do stop in Miami on the way so a lot of them will clear customs there. We have been waiting to determine what our best methodology and strategy will be for adding that at our airport so, you know it’s something that’s going to be coming, so we’re working on that right now, but certainly the range is there and we’re working on making it happen.

Tom Reaoch:

So in essence you and the other commissioners that you mentioned, you’re in the business of making the airport part of business.

Pamella Seay:

You bet, that’s our job; we do not get any tax money to support the airport.

Tom Reaoch:

Where does it come from? [laughs]

Pamella Seay:

[laughs] We make it from the businesses that we have at the airport. We sell fuel for the airlines that we have and for the other aircraft, that’s primarily where our money comes from, from our parking lots, our rental cars, other concessions at the airport, we lease property, so we have a number of businesses that lease property from us, and that’s where we make our income. We’ve got a budget of oh; I think it was about 18 million, 16 to 18 million last year, so we’re small.

Tom Reaoch:

And you take that and then reinvest it back into the airport then?

Pamella Seay:

You bet because we are a governmental entity, we are part of the government, so we’re not there to make money; we’re there to invest in the airport.

Tom Reaoch:

You’re part of the county government.

Pamella Seay:

No, we are independent. We are what they call in Florida an independent special district that we are authorized by the State of Florida to operate the airport and commerce park. We are elected to do that.

Tom Reaoch:

So this election is a state election not a county election?

Pamella Seay:

[laughs] I can confuse you all day long with this one. We are county-wide, we are elected county-wide but we’re authorized by the state; it’s what they call a special legislation.

Tom Reaoch:

I think that’s something Brazil could learn certainly from you because here part of the difficulties we’re going through from a business side are investments for the different airports that we have and we were talking off-line that obviously the entrance door that business persons and even for the leisure see is the airport that they go into and here the controls and the regulations of the airport are such, they’re just so difficult, here in Campinas specifically we’ve been waiting for like 25 years literally for the airport and different investments to turn this airport into a major hub, and so it, you know, takes a lifetime for something to happen.

Pamella Seay:

It truly does sometimes take a long time for government to get its wheels in motion. I understand that the Campinas airport or one of the airports nearby was planning to privatize a portion of it; that they were going to privatize at least some of the operations…

Tom Reaoch:

That’s what the present president Dilma has said that she expects to do that in December, but again I’ve been waiting 25 years for that so I do hope that that does come about because through the privatization obviously that will probably guarantee the investment needed because obviously it is a huge investment, but it’s not only an investment it’s also the management part and what you just mentioned; if you have a good manager and if you take and look at this as a business operation it needs to make money.

Pamella Seay:

Well that’s the purpose of the airport, it facilitates business, it brings people in, it is a driving force of any economy because when you’ve got people coming in whether they’re tourists or business people, they’re going to be spending money in your community, they will stay in the hotels, rent your cars, eat in the restaurants, buy in your stores, they might be establishing their businesses, they’re going to be bringing people in to work there, this is what makes your economy run.

Tom Reaoch:

Or having their persons visiting the clients and have to fly out so you need that; it’s the essential part of any business.

Pamella Seay:

If your airport isn’t run properly, if your airport’s not working properly you absolutely cannot have a thriving economy.

Tom Reaoch:

I have to agree with you there.

Pamella Seay:

You can take a look at that in any community around the world, if they’ve got a good airport, you can bet that there will be good solid business nearby and a thriving economic community there too. Take a look at some areas that don’t have good airports and look at the economy that they have, so you know that it’s important, so we do our best to make sure that it works right and that we look at it as a business, so when somebody wants to come out and set up shop say in our commerce park or utilize our foreign trade zone, we want to make sure that they’re going to make money, because if they make money, we make money, if they’re doing well, the community benefits.

Tom Reaoch:

Everybody benefits, and more jobs again, back to the beginning of the conversation; just make more jobs.

Pamella Seay:

Absolutely, you know, that’s the key to making this a whole success.

Tom Reaoch:

Talk a little bit about the foreign trade zone then, what is that focus and what are the types of companies that are presently in operation in your trade zone?

Pamella Seay:

Our foreign trade zone is, we established it at the Punta Gorda Airport about – I’m trying to remember the exact date – it should have been about seven or eight years ago. And, it’s movable which we think is actually rather unique for most locations so let’s say that you have a business that is going to be manufacturing, let’s say jewelry, you’re going to be manufacturing jewelry. You’re bringing in pearls from China, amethysts from Columbia, emeralds from Brazil, gold from South Africa and you’re bringing it all together, you’re going to be doing some manufacturing there at my airport. Well let’s say you only need a small portion, let’s say you need maybe 100 square feet, but your warehouse, your building might be 1000 square feet, okay, so it’s still a small operation but the only part that you use as the foreign trade zone section is the only part you pay for; you’re not having to invest in saying, “I’ve got a foreign trade zone for the whole operation,” no, it’s just the portion you use. It’s unique for foreign trade zones.

A lot of the trade zones you’ll find it’s just one solid area and everything you have there, you’re paying a premium for the benefit. The benefit is that you don’t pay import/export, the duty, customs that you would ordinarily have to pay on an item and you’re not having to pay that for as long as it remains within the foreign trade zone area. So let’s say that you’re making these wonderful little pieces of jewelry and you normally have been selling them in gift shops in some of the bigger resort hotels and all of sudden you lose your contract but you have all this jewelry ready, so you’re waiting and say, “Oh my gosh, do I have to pay taxes…

Tom Reaoch:

Now what do I do? Right, now what do I do?

Pamella Seay:

Well the fact is, as long as you leave it within the foreign trade zone area, designated area, you don’t pay taxes on it at all, nothing, not until it leaves there and if it leaves there and never enters the stream of commerce in the U.S., let’s say you ship it over to London and start distributing it there, you never pay a U.S. tax.

Tom Reaoch:

You never pay tax.

Pamella Seay:

No, never pay it. So it can be a tremendous benefit for someone who wants to do some manufacture but needs to have that flexibility. Right now we’ve got a good portion of area available, we’re looking at a couple of airplane refurbishing facilities where people bringing in the airplanes from out of the country have them redone here and then take them out again, so instead of paying that steep cost when they bring it in and the steep cost when they take it out again, as long as it never enters the stream of commerce you never have to pay that tax. So it’s a pretty good benefit.

Tom Reaoch:

It certainly is, it certainly is, and again as you said you can get the size of the area that you need and that’s it.

Pamella Seay:

Exactly, so we work with people to customize what we have to offer. We’re actually a sub-zone of the foreign trade zone that’s located just south of us in Fort Myers Florida so when we work together with them, our area is big but if you need several square miles or, I’m not exactly sure how large their area is, I’m kind of exaggerating there but if you need more space than we have available we’ll refer you down to Fort Myers and we did that with another business a while back that needed a much larger site than what we had to offer so we like to work together with our neighbors.

Tom Reaoch:

And Fort Myers is also an airport?

Pamella Seay:

Oh yes, they’re the southwest regional airport and they are just south of us about 30 miles so they’re about, as the crow flies they’re about 10 miles closer to Miami. [laughs]

Tom Reaoch:

No, as the airplane flies right?

Pamella Seay:

[laughs] As the airplane flies.

Tom Reaoch:

I’m not sure, well airplanes actually don’t fly in a straight line as crows do.

Pamella Seay:

[laughs] Good point.

Tom Reaoch:

So you’re probably right.

Pamella Seay:

Anyway we’re very pleased with what we’ve been able to do at our airport. It’s 1,880 acres, give or take, and we were trying to figure that out what’s the comparison to that because they were asking, “Well, what’s that in square meters?” And it came out to some 7 million square meters and they were floored by the size since from what they were telling us is that that is even larger than the São Paulo Airport.

Tom Reaoch:

I wouldn’t doubt it.

Pamella Seay:

So the footprint for our airport is larger than that of São Paulo. We have three runways, 7,200 feet, 6,500 feet and one little bitty short one that’s about 2,500 feet because we have a wide range of aircraft there from what they call experimental aircraft, the small, just small build-it-yourself kits all the way through commercial aviation. We have some MD80s, we have, I believe a 737 that landed there and a lot of important people that come in and out of our airport too. A couple of former presidents, lots of governors that like to fly in and out of our airport so you know, people like our airport.

Tom Reaoch:

Well you’re talking about the friendly side of Florida so I guess you have the friendly airport in Florida as well.

Pamella Seay:

[laughs] We like to think of it that way; we’ll greet you with orange juice and popcorn.

Tom Reaoch:

[laughs] Orange juice and popcorn. So the whole group, all 27 of the Brazilians that you took – they all did see the airport and I guess the airport was part of the tour?

Pamella Seay:

Absolutely, when they first arrived we flew them over from Miami. We chartered a small jet to bring them over because we just thought it was important that they see us from the air first. We are a waterfront community, we’re on the Gulf of Mexico and we like to think that we are one of the prettiest areas in town but we wanted to show off that side, we landed them at our airport, gave them the grand tour of the airport, our commerce park, adjacent commerce park, some of our distribution networks there, trucking companies, the rail system and all the things that we have close by and then gave them the grand tour of the city so that they could see what we had to offer in the city of Punta Gorda and of course making sure they ate in our nicest little restaurants, visited with us right on our waterfronts, walked through our harbor walk, visited our medical parks area, the park-side community redevelopment areas; we’ve got several areas in our community that we are rebuilding that they found rather fascinating.

The one area we call our Murdock Village for example, which has a new water park they’re adding, I don’t know if you’re familiar with – I think similar to like, Wet ‘n Wild or some of the big water parks that’s going in up there and a technical park that’s going in nearby there too, sports medicine location up there. I don’t know how they came up with that wonderful notion. I guess if they’re going to have a water park people are going to break their little feet, so they need sports medicine [laughs]. Anyway, they were pretty interested with that and a lot of the area is in a – we’re in a building mode; we’re a small community that decided…

Tom Reaoch:

But there’s a lot happening there so you know, business is non-stop, there’s a lot going on and they were all able to see that.

Pamella Seay:

Yes, they were.

Tom Reaoch:

So back to the question of economy then, they can see things happening and understand that the economy in the United States may not be as good as it has been but it’s not stopped.

Pamella Seay:

Exactly, there be some challenges that we’re facing but just like we do in any time we look at it as a challenge not a problem, let’s see how we can face it and fix it and get it done and make it better. So there’s a difficulty, let’s fix it.

Tom Reaoch:

I want to ask one question here, you mentioned the talented retirees; in your area is there any formal groups for these talented retirees or how would one find these persons?

Pamella Seay:

SCORE is one of them…

Tom Reaoch:

SCORE?

Pamella Seay:

SCORE, you’re going to ask me what that stands for too and I’m going to look blankly and say I’m not real sure. It’s the Core of Retired Executives and these are people who have been in business in other parts of the country or other parts of the world, have retired here, they may have been in administrative roles, management roles, active supervisory roles and they were very successful wherever they were. That’s where we usually start, with SCORE and say, okay, let’s bring those people in first. Then we also have, we work with the universities, with our cultural center which is a hub for activity for a lot of the older folks in the area. When I say “older” I say older than me you know they’re 50-something. [laughing] “All these old folks in there, yeah they’re 50”, you know they’re not that old, but …

Tom Reaoch:

Well it depends on your perspective that’s all.

Pamella Seay:

It certainly does, it certainly does, I know the closer I get to that I look around and say “Oh my, that’s not old at all!” [laughs] I used to think that 40 was old.

Tom Reaoch:

But what I will ask you to do later, send me some information on this SCORE group and how I find persons in your area because I think that’s a obviously for other Brazilian persons wanting to start or exactly to find that know-how and find the persons who have that business technology, that’s a great entrance and it’s a great thing that I think I’d like to interview somebody and talk about that more specifically.

Pamella Seay:

I’ll be glad to send you that. There’s also a group here at the Florida Gulf Coast University that’s called The Second Circle and I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, I know it’s operated in several places in Europe and I don’t know how far it’s expanded into South America and all yet but The Second Circle is generally begun by a business college or a business school at the university where their professors will get together and find local businesses that have specific kinds of talent, they might be involved in high-technology, they’re in agribusiness or you know, whatever it is their focus is and have them as part of advisory boards and involved and then the professors and the university will have a connection with a university overseas and that university in turn will have its connections. It’s a second circle, the professors are the first, the business people are the second and the goal of this Second Circle program is to make direct connections between the Second Circle businesses in one in university with the Second Circle businesses at the other, so you know if you’re in São Paulo or you’re in Campinas, you’re at the Unicomp and you know the professors there, that professor would contact say me, here at Florida Gulf Coast and say, “Look, we’re trying to find somebody that does honey manufacturing, we need some expertise can you help me?”. “Oh sure” I would say, “We’ve got little Joe Honeypot over here and he has a great business, we’d like to get you in touch,” and we would make that connection for you. It’s kind of a clearinghouse so-to-speak so that you’re not going in blindly saying, “Oh my gosh, are these people okay?” You’re counting on people that have that knowledge already so we found that it works [inaudible]…

Tom Reaoch:

And also a connection with a university I think is even better.

Pamella Seay:

Exactly, you know we’ve got the research capabilities, we have incubator opportunities, there are all kinds of things that go on at a university that you wouldn’t ordinarily find in a business setting and a lot of times it doesn’t cost you anything for the advice.

Tom Reaoch:

That’s even the best part.

Pamella Seay:

[laughs] I know that’s always a plus.

Tom Reaoch:

And you even get orange juice and popcorn so what do you want?

Pamella Seay:

What more could you ask for? [laughing]

Tom Reaoch:

So it certainly is the friendly side of Florida, so.

Pamella Seay:

Well thanks, we like to think of it that way and I’d like to invite you to come on up and find out for yourself.

Tom Reaoch:

Well, I hope to do that, I really do and having met you and Kay and having the chat that we did have and all the information you’ve sent me and as I mentioned offline, we were talking about some of the confusion from Brazilians of Charlotte and not understanding there’s a Charlotte in Florida so I too, I have to say that I’ve never been to Charlotte in Florida but I certainly will put that on the list and we’ll come up and see you.

Pamella Seay:

Well wonderful, we’d be happy to meet, you greet you, host you.

Tom Reaoch:

And it’s not just because of the orange juice and the popcorn which I like but I think all of these different areas and different things you’ve spoken to all of us about, there are a lot of opportunities there.

Pamella Seay:

Well I’ll tell you one other little thing, on Saturday night several of the business people that remained a little bit longer, we took them out to a race track; there’s a stock car race track here. So we took them out, it got a little chilly late at night but other than that they absolutely loved it to watch these stock cars and race trucks, some of the drivers at this track, and the track is on my airport, so…

Tom Reaoch:

Wow, you’ve got everything at this airport huh? [laughs]

Pamella Seay:

Oh you bet yeah. We’ve got popcorn, we’ve got orange juice and we have a race track. So anyway you come down and I’ll take you to the track too.

Tom Reaoch:

We’ll do that. So for our listeners too, Pam we’re going to have to cut off, we’re coming to the end of our program but I do want to tell our listeners they can find more information about the airport and that is flypgd.com correct?

Pamella Seay:

That’s it, that’s us and we’re in the process of revising that website so please if it’s not quite working well, let us know and come back and look again.

Tom Reaoch:

But again that’s flypgd.com and if you’re wanting to find more about Pamella and everything that she does, because there’s a whole lot more than what we just talked about and your site is pamellaseay.com, correct?

Pamella Seay:

That would be me, yes.

Tom Reaoch:

And we’ll repeat that, pamellaseay.com.

Pamella Seay:

Correct.

Tom Reaoch:

So Pam, thanks again for being part of Talk2Brazil and we hope to be talking to you either again on another interview or there with popcorn and orange juice.

Pamella Seay:

Thanks a lot Tom I’ve enjoyed it and I hope to talk to you again.

Tom Reaoch:

Certainly will, okay? Bye-bye.

Pamella Seay:

Thanks.