Ep.141 Boosting Business: Unveiling Florida's Blueprint for Technology & Leadership Innovation with Secretary Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation and Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerc

Joe Toste [00:00:40]:
Laura, we'll kick off with you for your background and for those who you know, who don't know you, and who might not know what a secretary of commerce does. You've held several roles as executive director across a number of associations, deputy secretary and now secretary of Commerce for Enterprise Florida. Now a quick word from one of our brand partners. Nagarro is a leading provider of digital government services, partnering with state, local and federal clients on some of their most strategic technology projects. Nagarro offers expertise in digital services, legacy modernization, case management data and AI service desks, cybersecurity and more. Check out nagarro.com. That's nagarro.com. Besides kicking off your journey in commercial real estate, bird dogging for land and being a voracious reader of trade publications, give us just the two minute deep dive on Laura.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:01:30]:
Okay, this is going to be quick. So I did start off. I graduated from University of Florida. Go gators. Love the jersey. Back in 2001, I got my real estate license straight out of college, more or less for fun. I didn't do it for any other reason besides that just was going to be a hobby, turned into a full time career after a while. And Secretary Griffin is responsible for that license that is still active to this day.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:01:53]:
So I'm a commercial real estate broker, just not allowed to practice. But the twelve years that I was practicing, the last seven of those twelve, my bread and butter client was hospital Corporation of America. So the largest healthcare provider, I think, in the United States, if not the world, private healthcare. And they had me, people that don't realize healthcare is as retail as publix or any of your big box centers. So they had me traveling all over the state looking for land for hospitals, freestanding emergency rooms, all sorts of healthcare and user types. And that was my entree into economic development. I was actually recruited to the economic development world from those activities. Nassau county was the county that brought me over to dark side.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:02:35]:
It was an interesting opportunity. It took me out of waking up unemployed every single day and eating what you kill every single day. But I never lost that mentality. So bringing that into the economic development space was really exciting, especially when I knew what was about to happen there. Did that for five years, two and a half into the five years. It was 2014 to 2019. 2017, I was basically volunteered to be port director for the port of Fernandina. I knew nothing about ports.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:03:02]:
All I knew is that they were important to the economy. I got what was supposed to be a temporary assignment turned into a permanent one. So I wore two hats for two and a half years. And then from there, I was recruited to be the executive director for the Florida Harbor Pilots association, also regulated by Secretary Griffin here. For those that don't know what harbor pilots are or do, they are the top guns of the maritime world. They bring in all the vessel traffic in and out of our seaports. I conveniently came on board three months before the shutdown and supply chain madness began and just wreaked havoc on everything, shipping. For two years, nine months, I worked with them.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:03:39]:
I'm not a captain, I'm not former coast guard, I'm none of those things. And I had to earn their respect, which was a very interesting situation. Glad to say I did. And whenever anybody questions me, I said, just ask the harbor pilots. I said, then you'll get a flavor as to what I'm capable of doing and not doing, because they trust nobody and demand a lot at the same time because they are as good as they are. And it was from there that I was moved into here. So I like to be the deputy, first deputy secretary for enterprise Florida, and now secretary, take it all. I have a proprietary view, I like to say, of corporate America.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:04:18]:
Land aspects of Florida, waterside aspects of Florida, and everything in between. Transportation and local economic development experience now statewide experience. When you're dealing with a state like Florida, third largest in the nation, crushing the competition all over the place, you need to be aggressive and you need to be ready. And we are a public private partnership. Enterprise Florida is, we are the Department of Commerce, but we operate in a very business friendly, business forward fashion. We move at the speed of business, which is way we have to operate here in Florida and why we're seeing the success that we are. So it's a wonderful business model. We started it first here in Florida back in 1996, and other states have followed us ever since.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:05:04]:
And we have numerous verticals, which I will get into in another conversation, but I'll stop there.

Joe Toste [00:05:08]:
Yeah, no, that was great. I'm curious, how did you win over the pilots? Is it work ethic? What was it?

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:05:13]:
They didn't know what they didn't know, basically. So I was their first executive director statewide. They were looking for one, but they didn't know what they wanted at the time. They had lobbyists, they had their marketing, but they didn't have anybody really beating the drum on their behalf in Tallahassee and really addressing, I call it the layer underneath the lobbyists, the staffers, the agency heads that not necessarily touch the lobby area. And the pilots themselves, they have a tremendous amount of needs because of the way they are funded. So they are funded by ship handles alone. And when you take away, if everybody recalls the shutdown, when you take away a huge part of their revenue, which was cruise traffic, which was shut down for over a year here in Florida. We have three of the largest seaports in the world.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:05:59]:
Cruise ports in the world are here in Florida. Canaveral. Miami. Canaveral is now number one. Miami's number two port. Everglades number three. They were devastated. Devastated.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:06:11]:
Take that to an understanding. If the harbor pilots do not have enough revenue to operate, all commerce in Florida shuts down because there is not enough trains, planes, automobiles, trucks, you name it, that can bring in the amount of cargo and fuel, let me mind you, fuel, all of our fuel comes in through our seaports here in Florida. If those that are in charge of bringing those vessels in don't have the money to even operate, we're in big trouble. So I had to put my economic developer hat on and get the. The emergency funding that they needed in order to operate during the shutdown until the cruise activities came back and other grant funds that were available through FEMA and otherwise. So that's how I earned their trust for the 50% of them that didn't know or understand why somebody without that experience to come in. Yeah, that's where it all came about.

Joe Toste [00:07:09]:
That was fantastic. Melanie, let's kick off with your background also, for those who don't know you, how does one become a secretary of the Florida Department of Business and professional regulation? Some background that I already caught. I'm just going to get everyone up. You're a fourth generation family ag business world class attorney in Tampa, and you've been a small business owner who's had to make payrolls on Friday, who's had to make payroll before. Morgan knows what I'm talking about. She's had. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, he knows what I'm talking about.

Joe Toste [00:07:36]:
Just give us the two minute deep dive on Melanie Griffin.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:07:39]:
I'm a native Floridian, triple graduate of the Florida State University. I just want to make sure the tv has a close up on the shoes. Initially, I focused on the jersey. Almost walked off. Just kidding. Not. But I went to Florida State and got an MBA, finance and law degree, and during that time had the opportunity to work a lot in government, worked in the Florida House representatives, did a speaker's House fellowship in the House Regulated Industries committee, which is the committee that really interplays with the department. I clerked twice for the department when I was in law school.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:08:10]:
So by no means was I expert on this position, but certainly it's my third time back and had a lot of the 360 view of being a business owner. As you pointed out, Joe, which is the client that we're oftentimes serving of having worked on the legislative side, having worked internally. And then I also served in undergrad as the staff assistant to the then lieutenant governor Brogan for two years my junior and senior year. So also had a taste for the executive branch. And so I'd really gotten to see that 360 view of what government looked like and then went into private practice for about 15 years, focusing almost exclusively on business issues. But then some of the election sunshine government law there as well. That's been really helpful coming back in this role.

Joe Toste [00:08:53]:
That is fantastic. Laura, let's go back to you. How is enterprise Florida helping small businesses thrive today?

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:09:00]:
Many ways, actually, but it helps put it into context. So there's a bit of a misconception as to what enterprise Florida is all about. They think we're just about the big business, recruiting the big businesses and retaining those big businesses here. And it's not the case. We actually do help out a lot of small businesses because 99.7% of all businesses in Florida are considered small. So we have to be interfacing in that realm, in that arena. So we have a small business division that assists many of those needs, provides grants, works with funding. There's a new state small business, SBCI.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:09:37]:
All the Alphabet soup that we've had today here today, but funds that are now coming down on behalf, to work on behalf of small business interests, and we liaise with the small business development center. But another area of one of our verticals within Enterprise Florida, which really helps on the small business side, is our Florida opportunity fund, which is basically our venture capital arm, where we take. That's my third hat. I'm the president of the Florida Opportunity Fund as well. And we actually take a position, the state takes a position in growing industries here in Florida, seeding interest in these companies. With all the startup activity and all the tech activity that we're experiencing here in Florida, it is an explosive area that we're really getting into. So taking these investments, watching them grow, and then bringing them to a level where my business development team will take over and then grow that project here in Florida as part of developing ecosystems that we want to see as they relate to our targeted industries statewide. So very exciting what's happening there.

Joe Toste [00:10:39]:
Yeah, I'm a big fan. I have a small business. You wouldn't even have to sell me. I really want to move to Tampa. In the meantime, maybe you can help me figure out how I can legally move my business from California to Tampa.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:10:50]:
We can definitely do problem.

Joe Toste [00:10:57]:
The side comment is most folks don't see the behind the scenes of the PNL and the regulation. And then every time, say, California passes, they pass a new tax every year.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:11:07]:
We see it.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:11:08]:
We're all about deregulation.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:11:11]:
We love it. Keep it coming.

Joe Toste [00:11:13]:
Yeah. We're going to bring public sector media to Florida. Just as a quick follow up, how is enterprise Florida leveraging technology modernization today to help respond to the rapid technology needs across enterprise Florida and the state today?

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:11:26]:
Two ways. Internally, we're leveraging everything that's available to us on the data front to really expose areas that we can capture in terms of economic development. Again, building out ecosystems. I like to say that's what we're doing. We're not just grabbing companies, we're building ecosystems here. So we take apart the supply chain of certain industries. One in particular that we're really looking at is our homeland security side, military and defense and homeland security. So looking at where are we missing few key industry players here in this state and going after them, basically.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:11:59]:
I don't want to say they're our lowest hanging fruit, but we can make a, build a good case saying, hey, there's this, this, and therefore you should be here, too. Name the company. L three, Harris, whoever it may be, Lockheed Martin. There's many different areas that we're looking at right now. So it's that data that is being delivered to us that we're leveraging. And then we are hopefully, this legislative session going to receive funding to allow for data platform that we will provide to businesses so that they can capture some data to help them move their seek, whatever their goals are. And that's a free service that we provide as an agency because we are that to the companies here in Florida. We want to be a resource to them in every which way and regard, and we need to build out that research arm.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:12:46]:
So that's where I see a big area.

Joe Toste [00:12:49]:
Awesome. Melanie, in your prior life, before becoming secretary for the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, you had a great podcast called spread your Sunshine, which I absolutely love. Now I would encourage everyone to go check it out. I listened to some episodes on a walk, and Melody was great. And then she called me last night and I'm like, well, you sound just like on the podcast, which sometimes is not the same. You're like, this person is a different person, but it was identical. It was great. I loved it.

Joe Toste [00:13:14]:
And then meeting her this morning, just seeing just how much you exude that optimism, it was really great. How are you taking that optimism of focusing on people and having a heart for them and translating that over to your current role?

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:13:29]:
When I got to the department, we had five secretaries in five years, and it wasn't like each secretary got one year each. We had actually had three in one year. I was a third person appointed in 2021. I started January 1 of 2022, but my appointment came, technically in the newspapers about a month before that. And so, point being is that there hadn't really been time for several of the leaders before me to really invest in the employee morale and the employee culture. And so with that bringing that air of optimism and knowing that they had a leader that cared about them and investing in employees, I think it did at least, at least two things. One is certainly you see more smiles around the place, which I think equates to more productivity. But then two, and the tying this into tech is that it also builds a level of trust with your employees.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:14:18]:
And so for me, we have about 13 offices around the state. I made it a point to visit all of them at least once, several of them multiple times throughout the year. And with that, it's a little dry may not be the word, but there's not a lot of intel coming in on your first visit. People are just wanting to get a feel for you. But, man, you go back that second, that third time, and they start to open up. And so it's those field office relationships that really have given me an insight on what's going on technology wise, because a lot of times, understandably, your leadership wants you to think everything is going well. And so whether they don't exactly know what's going on in the field or they don't want you to know what's going on in the field, there could be a couple of different problems there. But if you can develop the right relationships with employees, they're going to you what it is, the need to do better.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:15:01]:
And that's something you can bring back then to make the enterprise better overall.

Joe Toste [00:15:05]:
Yeah, no, that was really great. And you hinted on this. So you were on another podcast, and you were asked about which big projects were a priority for you. And I loved your response first because you said it. It starts with people first, employee morale. That was the number one project for you. And it wasn't some of the other projects, which I thought was great, but following employee morale. You said that new modernization project, new website, new call center, additional projects for the state to be more efficient.

Joe Toste [00:15:33]:
I think it was $4 million was approved in 2022. What's the update on that and what excites you for 2023? 2024, sure.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:15:42]:
So with that, we have approximately 845 people moving to the state every day because of the incredible policies we've been discussing that Laura mentioned during her responses. We would love to make you and your wife and kids at least four of those transplants one day. We'll put you into our account. But point being is that with that, we don't necessarily get additional employees at the department. And I don't even know that. If I had that opportunity to make that ask, that would be my ask. But what that means is that you have to have better technology and or artificial intelligence to start doing part of the workload to then service all of the additional businesses and individuals who want to be licensed by the state of Florida. And so with that, our CXM project is to modernize our call center as well as functions of our website so that our licensees can get more information in real time.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:16:30]:
So, for instance, as opposed to having to call the call center, you can actually go look up and see where is your document in process, or what is it that you have left to submit. How many days can you expect until you can have this information or have it completed? And so it'll really engage the customer and give them a lot more control over the experience and then hopefully limit the number of phone calls to either those that don't feel comfortable, which is fine. We want to give good service to people that aren't computer savvy as well, or those that have very specific or unique circumstances and questions.

Joe Toste [00:17:06]:
Yeah, no, that is great. I consume business services in the state of California, so I'm very aware of all the stuff. I'm like, oh, I could improve that. I could approve that. I should become the CIO. No, I'm kidding. But that soft crossed my mind. When you consume services, it's empathy, right? You start to realize you're the business owner.

Joe Toste [00:17:24]:
Oh, we could approve that and you could approve that. And I'll go off on my tangent. So, Laura, Florida is often ranked number one for new technology establishments and number two in tech employment. With over 33,000 tech companies, Florida continues to be at the forefront of innovation enterprise Florida, I caught on Twitter, was in the south by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas to learn more topics about 3d printing, robotics, quantum computing, AI, any technology trends or projects that you're looking to implement with Enterprise Florida to help small business owners.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:18:01]:
There's so many, really, but I see AI just, it is turning all of our industries on their head right now. It is truly our targeted industries, for example, in order to help businesses. So as a state, we have targeted industries because they bring of the high wage impacts that they bring to our area. AI is transforming all those industries that aren't part of those targeted industries now. So farming is a perfect example. There's so much AI into vertical farming and everything like that. So farming is not, agriculture is not one. It's our biggest industry, actually, in Florida.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:18:36]:
People don't realize that, but it's not a targeted industry. But if you add an AI layer to it, all of a sudden it turns into a targeted industry. So I see that happening. So the ability to expand our reach into industries not commonly considered a target are now all of a sudden a target because of these overlays there. So it's an indirect answer to your question of what we're seeing, in addition to all of the information that I had mentioned before. So we're just able to capture so much more, identify where we can really expand and move the needle and move the ball down the field, if you will. It's a sports analogy, so it's just really exciting. It's changing the way we are going after business.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:19:20]:
We are the hunters. We're the sales group, the salespeople here. So we're the outward facing group that tackles anything and everything related to business here in Florida. So it is important that we stay on top of trends and on top of information. And it's thanks to the advances that we're seeing that we're able to do that.

Joe Toste [00:19:38]:
Yeah, I was talking to someone at, I think it was deer. The amount of data that they extract from farms and land, it's pretty crazy. And the, in order to actually make sense of all of that data, you need AI, you need tools to be able to not only extract the data, but also make sense of the data. No, I love that. And the last follow up I had was with your maritime experience and recent, you were just in Brazil. Yeah. Did you come back, like.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:20:08]:
Like, still feels like a couple days ago.

Joe Toste [00:20:11]:
A couple days ago, yeah. And what are you seeing from abroad and with Florida's trade partners that you would love to bring back here?

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:20:19]:
Brazil is our largest trading partner by a lot. By four times our second, actually. We have a 22 billion in two way trade with Brazil alone. We need to give them a lot of love and a lot of attention at all times because of that trade, and that's only going to increase with all of the trade lanes changing with just the redirection of supply chain and the evolution that's occurring there. It's known to everybody in this room, but probably not anybody that's not in this space. Is that the amount of tech talent that's down there, the strata activity? We're picking up a lot of talent from the Sao Paulo area. There's a pretty hefty industry there, so we have a lot to learn from them and vice versa. So there's services and goods that we trade with Brazil and that's part of it.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:21:05]:
I see as a large part of it. So a good amount of my conversations were on the startup side when I was there, in addition to your traditional trade and logistics type of conversations. But there's a lot to be had with these relationships and they're one of many. Israel is another one. I'll be in Israel probably around the end of April having similar conversations. We are the most international state in the union and we behave like a country, we should behave like a country. So we are really interacting with other countries and learning from them so that we can continue to be as diverse and economically advanced state in the nation.

Joe Toste [00:21:43]:
I love it. We're going to open it up for audience. Q a right now we're going to get the mic. Morgan Wright, the hand popped up quick. He's excited. Yeah, we'll get to Morgan.

Morgan Wright, SentinelOne [00:21:55]:
Morgan Wright Sentinel one it's actually a question for both of you, but in the form of one question. So both, Madam secretary, so you mentioned deregulation. You're working on a lot of that. You're talking about the expansion of growth. How does Florida maintain a position of where you don't rest on your loyals, you continue to grow, but at the same time applying just enough regulation that you make it business friendly and financially friendly, but not too little regulation, that things go south, things go rogue, and you've created a tempest in a teapot type of issue.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:22:23]:
I'll take it first if you'd like. You know how you do it, a public private partnership model, exactly the way we have it right now, Enterprise Florida, which I like to reiterate is the Department of Commerce for Florida having business at the table saying, hey, government, this is too much. We need to work on this. We need to stay nimble in order to continue to be competitive in the arena and whatever that may be, that having the business voice there is important. And actually this is hitting me really close to home right now because we're under threat of being taken into holistically into government, and that's we as an agency. And I'm not a fan because I feel like we're going to lose our competitive edge by not having business, being in lockstep with business in this regard. So that's how I see us accomplishing that moving forward. I see no other way.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:23:20]:
Regulation is a tricky subject, and for those of you who have followed it in Florida, it's been a super hot topic here the last couple of years. Secretary Bashirs, who was the first secretary in 2021 when I became the third secretary, the under governor DeSantis's leadership, one of the first priorities the governor had was to make business easier in the state of Florida. And so they hosted something called a deregathon, where they got together the department's boards, and I'll take a step back. The department regulates over 30 industries, so everything from construction workers to engineers to accountants, cosmetologists, hair braiders all comes to the department. It's not a perfect science, but essentially, if you have to be licensed as a business in the state of Florida, and you're not a doctor or a lawyer, you're probably going to come see me at some point. And so point being is that they hosted D regathon. And so when I was looking at taking on the secretaryship, everybody talked about D regathon, and I'm like, I got to get me one of those. And.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:24:16]:
But point being is, I quickly learned that not only did they accomplish so much through that, under the governor's leadership, they came up with 51 ideas, and I think they implemented, if I remember correctly, approximately at least 30 of them through legislation the following year in 2020, much of which has already been implemented. But beyond that, then I quickly also realized there's a ying to a yang, which is what you're bringing up. And so one of the first republican members that I met within the legislature was concerned in some ways about the amount of deregulation that occurred. Let me be clear. I think what the governor did was excellent. I think it's made it easier to do business in the state of Florida, but we do keep our eye on the ball. And I think one of the ways we do that is similar to what you were talking about, Joe, in terms of employee morale. One of the best ways to do that is to get in the field, get with your employees.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:25:03]:
I frequently really try hard to visit with all of our associated associations, boards, stakeholder groups. We have over 20 boards for the industries and to see what they're thinking and get their pulse, because a lot of them are concerned about professionality, of their relationships with their constituents, and making sure that their professions are taken seriously. Especially something like real estate, where you're taking the biggest asset. For the most part, an American will ever have their highest tie up of their money, and that if it goes south, they may not have a retirement. And so that's really important to them in figuring out what do they need to do to make sure that even in the face of deregulation and having reciprocity with other states, how do we also then maintain that level of professionalism they want to have in their industry. Can I add one thing about AI? We talked about it in terms of businesses I did want to share for state agencies, and I know we're not the only ones that are doing this, but for us, one of our cutting edge things that we are testing internally is that, speaking of real estate brokers, with so many people moving to the state, about a third of our licensee base is real estate brokers. And so if we can somehow figure out how to process those applications efficiently, it ties up a lot of time. And so we were really excited to roll out about a month ago an AI product that is in the process of reviewing all of our current real estate applications.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:26:24]:
And so we guesstimate that it can probably process about a third, which is my math is bad here, but what is that? About 175,000 applications or renewals. And so if that product can take care of those and free our staff up to do other things, it's a really big deal with all the extra licensees. So just wanted to make me think of that. I didn't want to interrupt you earlier, but throw that in there. I think it's like I said, we're not the only agency that is working on a tool like that to help us be even more efficient and move on to bigger and better things.

Joe Toste [00:26:56]:
Love that one more, anybody?

Morgan Wright, SentinelOne [00:26:59]:
I never passed an opportunity to say what we suck at, and more diplomatically said, like where are we falling short of what future state or ideal state would look like? If you're an agency head, that has to do with it.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:27:11]:
In the said to give a compliment to Jamie. I think one of the things that you have been really helpful with is that you are so accessible. And one of the things I know you challenged me on was to ask more questions of our team. And honestly, I wasn't really sure what you meant by that. At the time we met, I could hear the english words coming out of your mouth, but I thought I was already doing that. I'll tell you, I don't know if I learned to ask more questions or if I just. Through those field office visits that came subsequently. After that, it was the second or third round, people opened up.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:27:44]:
And so just getting out there and getting intel has been super helpful. One of the things I think you're looking to deliver that's going to be really helpful is I know you are looking at having the audits of the enterprise and to providing the scorecards to agency heads. And as you've pointed out, sometimes there is a disconnect for a multitude of reasons between the different levels of leadership within an agency. And so having the outside person that comes in and says, this is how you're performing in this area, this is something you may want to pay more attention to because it can't be assumed. The agency head, even if they're really involved in doing a good job, they may not know for whatever reason. When I got to DBPR, there was years of decisions that have been made, and you referred earlier to legacy systems that were in place, that it takes a long time to peel back that onion and know what's at the core and getting a heads up about that and seeing how you continue to move that forward, I think it's going to be really exciting.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:28:42]:
I would say we used to suck at just working in silos. We're working a lot better as a systematic unit here in the state. There's a lot of cross collaboration. Whereas before, I've been in this space long enough that it didn't really exist. The arms didn't know what the arms were doing. The head knew, but none of us did. Being a very interconnected network that has one mission, one purpose, which is a bigger, better. Florida, I think is really where we are headed and really where we are today.

Laura DiBella, Secretary of Commerce/President and CEO at Enterprise Florida [00:29:18]:
There's always room for improvement. So I know you're dealing with John, who's here, who is my office, so he's my IT cyber guru. We're the most exposed, I would say, of all the agencies, because we are outward facing and we're the ones doing all the talking to the outside world. Any and all assistance that you can provide to my team is critical because I see our public private partnership is a wonderful model, but is also a weak model because of the exposure that exists with our communication to the outside world. That tight relationship that you have with my team is just critical. So I appreciate it. But yeah, working as a unit is where we need to keep going.

Joe Toste [00:29:57]:
Awesome with that. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

Melanie Griffin, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation [00:29:59]:
Thanks for having us.