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Six months later, have your second meeting. OK, what did we have right or wrong in the first, what are some of the subsets, and let's
discuss it again. Make sure we understand the strategy. Prior to that get together, have guts enough to set up a conference or seminar or a convention of facility planners from around the world. Invite people from
Fantus who do this as consultants, people who do it within a company, people who do it for countries, to a conference. What do you do at the conference? Tell them what your strategic plan is. Tell them in detail and
then listen to what they say about it, because they're the people who could have a lot to do with our future. And pretty soon that strategic plan starts to sharpen up more. How many will show up to the first
conference? I don't think too many, but meet again next summer, then have a conference the following summer after that. The second conference is going to have more people there.
Now, if the leadership doesn't volunteer to do it, just say, you've got to do that. We're not going to go around here trying to figure
out 4,000 bills and what we do with all of them. What we want to do is make jobs for my kids, my grandkids, my in-laws, my folks, and my constituents families, that's why I'mhere so let's get on with it. I would
think, if you're in the legislature eight years, this state will be in the top 10 states in the United States.
When Don Moyer and I finished our report, we felt that if this system (the how to), the budget and the leadership were dedicated to
understanding competitiveness completely and then really selling Maryland, then we would be in the top seven states by 1995. We're in 1995. We aren't even in the middle of the pack, and that's where we were. We were
about the 25th state, and I suspect we're in the bottom 10 states right now. So, this is no longer being comfortably in the middle. It is now a turnaround situation.
We have two great natural resources, and every state has them. The first is the federal government. It's the only growth situation
that has never stopped growing since the day it started. Two hundred and eighteen years worth of growth, but that may change. If the federal government downsizes, one of our natural resources is not going to be what
it was. We found that those counties right around Washington D.C. did much better than those around Baltimore City. Western Maryland was tough, Eastern Shore better.
The other resource that's here in this area is obviously the Inner Harbor. That harbor still stands as a natural resource to be
utilized and exploited for the purpose of making jobs.
It's a very easy job to do. But there is a law known as Schwartz's third law: nothing is impossible for the person who does not have
to do it. I don't have to do this. I'm going back to Florida. But I tell you that it can be done. It's a lot of hard work and you can be a force to make it happen. I can tell you it's a lot more fun winning than it
is losing.
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