My oldest son waited to accept his West Point acceptance till my birthday. My youngest cleaned up the house and played basketball with me. My wife made feel special. She wrote her own card to me encouraging me to visualize happiness and stability in my 2nd half of life.

My Facebook friends responded with so many birthday wishes it amazed me.

It really made me feel special and loved today. Isn’t that what life is about? Celebrating our relationships not our status or wealth… This is what struck me today. I am blessed to have so many people who love me and took time today to write to me! You all made my day. Thank you to everyone

Mission accomplished you made my day!

Tourism is one of the largest portions of our national economy here in the United States. Yet it remains a very underutilized tool in economic development.

Lets look at what a tourism strategy can do for a local economy first so we address the basis for the justification of this discussion.

First, tourism attracts people to our local economy that bring their cash here from somewhere else. So it imports money to our local folks pocket books. If you use the economic leverage theory of the US government and US Chamber of Commerce that means for every dollar importing it creates between four and eight dollars of additional economic impact. That’s at least double the impact of traditional job creation payroll impact on local economies.

Second, is the ability for it to assist in developing brand awareness of an area to a wide audience and give a favorable or positive view of the locale.

Third, many of the visitors are probably business owners and thus potential clients for attracting to your market for their business needs. So a good passive marketing opportunity.

Fourth, with destination tourism you can create from scratch a project designed to attract visitors and exploit a visitor desired opportunity for leisure, recreation, entertainment and adventure fun genres. So you don’t need a natural feature you can build your own. I would recommend hiring a professional team for this project design and feasibility testing. My preferred partner in such matters is Contour Entertainment (former Disney executives) with global experience in this subject area.

Fifth, these type investments create a large windfall in secondary development to support the tourism visitors needs and thus lots of jobs and high economic impact to the local area.

Lastly, in these dark and tight financial times, cities and counties are starved for revenue and these projects create huge sources of new revenues for them. It includes Hotel Occupancy, Sales Tax and property tax positive new revenue streams.

So in closing I just think more economic developers should look at adding these types of catalyst project strategies to their arsenal of tools to grow their local economies.

If you would like more information on the four step process for evaluating and designing such projects them drop me an email and I will respond: economicdeveloper@gmail.com

Cheers

Don Holbrook

The concept of PPP’s is simply the rebranding of the basic concept of “If Not But For Clause” in action. If not but for the involvement of the various local and/or state government with some shared risk or skin in the game the private sector would not have invested and made this project possible.

Today however far too many cities want to claim they are partners with no real skin in the game. Worse yet their economic development gurus don’t know how to structure such catalyst investments thus no recovery and no new jobs from new or reinvestment.

You could say the loss of the art of economic development coupled with the frozen finance sector for small businesses is exactly why we don’t feel like the recession is over. Wall Street may have recovered but the average American family is still suffering and lacking in any feeling of economic security.

We need a rebirth of the old school art of investing through calculated risk in partnership with public and private sector mutually beneficial outcomes to get our nation back to work and healthy again.

Watch for more of the Rogue’s perspective on this blog and soon in my next book, “The Rogue Economic Developer.” The Lost Art of Creating Jobs and Attracting Investments.

I read the blogger’s comments. What she said was hurtful and fairly ridiculous. She made assumptions and comments that clearly were unsubstantiated opinions without any actual basis in fact.

My speaking may be unconventional but my stories and parables are from my own real life experiences and based on truthful events from my life.

Just because others have had different experiences or haven’t had such experiences, does not make my own untrue or less meaningful.

I don’t get why some people take pleasure in hurting others? Could it be based on something that hurt them from their own childhood or their own failings or perhaps their own feelings of inadequacy?

This person even went as far to comment on my shoes… And she said they were cheap. Just goes to show how little some people know. My shoes are Italian Ferragamo’s and they cost about $700 a pair just to be factual.

She then mistakenly commented on my coffee table book, titled the “Theoretical History of the Knights Templar” as if I had portrayed that to be my soon to debut first fiction novel, which by the way is titled, “the 9th Templar.”

Obviously she doesn’t pay attention to facts. My other book was just a fact book from my research on the Templars. Wow I wish critics would get it right once in a while.

Facts are just too difficult to grasp I guess. The real facts are some people will find fault in everyone and anyone they disagree with. Their perspective is always slanted towards negativity and malicious intent. We can’t stop them from their vicious and hurtful comments, but it is good to look at their history of bashing other folks and just consider the lack of credibility of the source of such nasty people and come to your own conclusions.

As for my own life, I have sure never claimed to have made the best choices always in some matters, but I have never made any choices I am ashamed of. The global meltdown hurt many of us and I was no different than any other during that time. My own career went through dynamic change as most of our major projects failed to find capital, as did most of the real estate projects in our country. These failures were in no way attributable to my work or choices.

My hope is that people will take to heart the message I am discussing in my speeches. You can’t stop living during the chaos of the journey. There is never a perfect time to invest in your own better quality of life. Actions are what matter. Taking action to start today will in my opinion create a much happier and healthier quality of life for folks.

One thing I practice is that concept. Even while my own life went through economic upheaval, I continued to invest in my family, their vacations so we could remain close and have some fun. These cyber thugs blast me for this and for my continued investment in my family during these past economic hardships, but if you think about it, that is exactly what I discuss and recommend in my speeches. So, in fact I am practicing exactly what I advocate. I fail to see the fault in that platform.

In conclusion, I will never allow others to dictate my beliefs, determine my capabilities or constrain me from mine and my family’s choice to live a great quality of life.

I hope you enjoy the article here is the link:

http://www.blackeconomicdevelopment.com/twenty-five-rules-of-disinformation/

Now, there is something special I do believe that is afoot.  I believe what the Mayan’s may have meant is that this is the beginning of a new phase of earth climatic shifts as we have had over the centuries past.  Yes that is possible.  If it is true we will adjust and adapt and still function.

Better yet, I choose to believe this is possibly the year that we begin to awaken and get fed up with our economic crap and horrible political leadership that has taken us nowhere.  People are fed up not having job security, a dignified livelihood that allows them to fully enjoy their lives any longer.  They are fed up with too little health care coverage or none at all.  I believe people are fed up mortgaging their homes and lives and being indebted for decades to pay for their children to get a great education and go to college.  We want sanity back in our lives.

No, we are not becoming liberals or socialists.  We want capitalism to be given the proper ability to unleash true market potential with parameters set that allow and establish meaningful reform for the things that matter to most of us.

We want to manage and fund our own retirement, healthcare, disability and unemployment insurance and pension funds.  We have seen how badly the government has performed and it is time to sunset that Ponzi scheme and let us prepare for our own brighter futures.  Yes, Uncle Sam we are capable of managing our own economic affairs far better than you have demonstrated you can do for us… so move aside and get with the future of self-directed citizen based workforce rights.

Mortgage reform and lending linked to the actual values of our homes and no more mortgaged for life scenarios and inability to force structured write downs on first and second mortgages if we are forced into bankruptcy.  If we need to do a work out don’t force us to move out so someone else gets the deal on our foreclosed house, let us refinance it for what it is worth today and make the banks take the hit.  That was what the TARP funds were for not buying other banks and giving lavish bonuses.

We want the credit markets to open back up for small businesses so they can once again find capital to fuel the growth and create the jobs that our citizens need so badly.

We are tired of the banks and corporate America running everything to their own favor at the taxpayers expense.  We want our voice to count and be what politicians cater to not their corporate sponsors with their PAC monies.

We want our kids to go to safe schools and to not be forced to send our kids to private schools to get exceptional quality educations.  We want college and university’s to not require that we as parents go broke trying to help our kids stay out of the poor house with excessive students loans.

We want energy reform so that our energy costs are not such a huge and ever increasing part of our budget.  Allow us to invest in our own energy efficiency and deduct it fully from our federal tax bill.  Energy efficiency could do more than anything to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Speaking of taxes, we want true tax reform.  We are tired of paying far too much and getting far too little for it.  Big government is not the answer to all our problems.  We want everyone to have the opportunity for success if they put forth the initiative to seek that economic gain.  We do not believe those that work their butts off should have to supplement those that do less or did not take the same risks or work as hard and/or smart with their own lives.  We want all to pay their equal fair share of taxes across the board, with no exceptions.

Perhaps the Mayans knew that we would at this point get fed up being so out of touch with our own goals and dreams and also having elected leaders just continue to fail and lie to us, so that we will finally have a true change of consciousness.

So this Christmas let’s all pray that we begin to take our country to the next level and get our lives, and our nation back on track just as the Mayan’s predicted we would do so long ago.  The eagle shall rise up and once again soar towards the sun and see beyond the horizon of those below her.

Until the next calamity… I wish you peace, progress, prosperity and renewed focus on our mutual desires of a better and more equitable America.  God Bless America, we survived yet another tragedy and we will always rise to the occasion.