Join host Devin Hillsdon-Smith as he hits the road—and the Great Basin high desert—to explore economic development on a massive scale. In this episode, Devin sits down with Sheldon Mudd, the Executive Director of the NNRDA, who manages a sprawling 40,000-square-mile territory (roughly the size of Iceland!) in Northeastern Nevada.

Far from the neon lights of Las Vegas, Sheldon's jurisdiction is a true 21st-century "Wild West," rich in natural resources, pristine dark skies, and close-knit communities. The two dive deep into the unique challenges and massive opportunities of driving economic diversification in rural America.

In this episode, we cover:

• 21st Century Mining: Discover how the US gold capital is embracing cutting-edge technology like autonomous haul trucks and preparing for the critical minerals boom, including lithium, vanadium, and copper.
• A Tale of Two Towns: Learn how economic development strategies differ wildly from community to community—from building a multi-million dollar industrial rail park in Battle Mountain to fiercely protecting the Norman Rockwell-esque charm of historic Eureka.
• The Housing Bottleneck: Why rural America's biggest hurdle isn't a lack of high-paying jobs (with entry-level mining roles paying $80k+ right out of high school!), but a critical shortage of housing, and why housing must be treated as essential infrastructure.
• Pioneering Next-Gen Energy: Why Northeastern Nevada is loudly waving the flag to become a hub for nuclear power, hydrogen development, and battery manufacturing.
• Buckaroo Culture: Sheldon breaks down the historic and cultural differences between a Texas Cowboy and a Great Basin Buckaroo.

Whether you're a site selector, a civic leader, or just someone fascinated by how remote communities adapt to the modern economy without losing their soul, this episode is packed with candid insights, "Sheldon-isms," and a few good laughs.

Grab your flashlights and double-check your NDAs—things are about to get legally binding.

In this solo episode, Devin steps down from the lectern and heads straight into the interrogation room to open up his own classified case files. We are peeling back the yellow caution tape to examine the dark underbelly of due diligence and the anatomy of a dead deal.

Listen in as Devin recounts the saga of "Project Apex" and Parcel 42: a supposedly perfect, shovel-ready 500-acre megasite pitched by an over-eager economic development director with a glossy brochure and a plate of catered barbecue. On paper, it was a half-billion-dollar golden ticket. In reality, it was a masterclass in municipal desperation. Discover the red flags that killed the deal, from a phantom wastewater pipeline and a crumbling bridge, to a literal toxic secret buried right beneath the surface. Devin breaks down exactly how to spot the lies hiding in the spreadsheets and why, in the high-stakes world of corporate real estate, "boring" can save you half a billion dollars.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why "perfect" is just another word for "motive" in site selection.
• How to use desktop interrogation to uncover phantom infrastructure funding and hidden litigation.
• Cross-referencing drive-time radii with DOT bridge inspection records.
• The critical importance of getting "boots on the ground" to verify environmental claims.

If you survived this due diligence period, be sure to leave a five-star review to help other sleuths find the show!

How do you drive economic growth in a highly affluent community that already has it all?

In this installment of Stories from the Road, Devin sits down with his long-time friend and former colleague, Justin Hage. Justin has done it all—from working in the George W. Bush administration and state government under Governors Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence, to the private sector. Now, he's taking on a unique challenge as Deputy Mayor for his hometown of Zionsville, Indiana.

Zionsville is a beautiful, affluent bedroom community just northwest of Indianapolis, boasting a median household income of around $170,000. But with 88% of its tax base tied up in residential properties, the town faces a critical challenge: how to diversify its tax base to maintain premium municipal services without disrupting the community's charm or inviting unwanted NIMBYism.

Devin and Justin dive into the nuances of attracting the right kind of development—skipping the heavy "smokestack" industries in favor of corporate headquarters, life sciences, and trail-side office spaces that complement the town’s executive-level talent pool.

In this episode, we cover:

• Justin’s fascinating career path from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office to the "Swiss Army Knife" of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
• The specific challenges and strategies of doing economic development in a wealthy, 88% residential bedroom community.
• How to balance the preservation of a community's way of life with the need for commercial modernization and growth.
• The power of regional collaboration: How Zionsville works alongside the Boone County EDC and Indy Partnership to cast a wider net for targeted investments.
• Plus, a fun piece of history about Abraham Lincoln’s connection to Zionsville!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

It’s Friday at 4:00 PM. Your weekend is perfectly planned. Then... ding. A 60-page Request for Information (RFI) hits your inbox, and it’s due on Tuesday. We've all been there, and we all know the "EDO guilt" that follows when you even consider passing on a massive project.

In this episode of Site Selectors Are People Too, host Devin Hillsdon-Smith dives deep into the human impact of the RFI process and gives economic developers the ultimate permission slip: It is okay to say no. A win isn't a win if it breaks the team who landed it. To help you navigate the pressure, Devin breaks down the Hyphen Strategies RFI Gut Check Scorecard, a 4-phase decision matrix designed to help your Economic Development Organization (EDO) protect its people and its community:

• Phase 1: The Internal Human Audit – Checking your team's emotional runway, capacity, and the hidden opportunity costs of a high-intensity response.
• Phase 2: The Consultant & Relationship Context – How to spot a "fishing expedition," why you need to pick up the phone for a clarity call, and the importance of an honesty check.
• Phase 3: Community & Culture – Applying the "Good Neighbor Test" to ensure a company's ethos, wages, and strategic alignment actually fit your 10-year vision.
• Phase 4: The Technical Reality – A hard stop for utility realism, labor truth, and site readiness. (If it's gently rolling, don't call it flat!)

📚 Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Access the FREE interactive Hyphen Strategies RFI Gut Check Scorecard.

Remember: Take care of your sites, but take care of your people first!

#EconomicDevelopment #SiteSelection #EDO #Leadership #WorkplaceWellbeing #CorporateRealEstate #Essentialism

In the Season 3 finale of Site Selectors are People Too, host Devin Hillsdon-Smith sits down with a true titan of the economic development industry: Jim Plump. Having served as the Executive Director of the Jackson County Industrial Development Corporation since its inception in 1984, Jim brings 40 years of unparalleled wisdom to this special Stories from the Road installment.

Tune in as Jim details the incredible transformation of rural Jackson County, Indiana, into a booming global manufacturing hub. He shares the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of how a seamless, team-first effort helped Seymour land tier-one Toyota supplier Aisin in 1986, paving the way for dozens of international investments in the region.

Devin and Jim also explore how the role of a "Community Champion" has drastically evolved over the decades. Moving beyond the old days of "chasing smokestacks," modern economic development now requires navigating AI, championing local housing, and building robust, innovative workforce pipelines. You'll hear about Jackson County's unique, 26-year-old Workforce Partnership—including their brilliant strategy of paying for substitute teachers so educators can tour local industries and bring real-world manufacturing knowledge back to their students.

Whether it's deploying the "shield" to protect the community from bad-fit projects, or using the "sword" to bring high-quality employers like Guardian Bikes to town, Jim’s humble and collaborative approach is a masterclass in economic development.

Note: This is our final episode of Season 3! We will be taking a short break to tee up new guests and will return with fresh episodes in July. Enjoy the show!

#EconomicDevelopment #EconDev #SiteSelection #SiteSelectors #FDI #ForeignDirectInvestment #BusinessRetention #CommunityChampions

In Part 10, the grand finale of our special mini-series, The Architects of Prosperity, we pull the camera all the way back to look at the entire 300-year tapestry of global economic development. The genesis of modern economic growth is not a clean, straight line from the steam engine to the smartphone—it is a messy, violent, and deeply contingent evolution of statecraft, ideas, and institutions.

This episode explores how the grand macroeconomic strategies of warring empires were eventually downloaded directly to the local zip code. We unpack how early state-building, catastrophic financial bubbles, and the clash between free trade and nationalist survival birthed the exact toolkit used by modern site selectors today, proving that modern development economics is just the academic rediscovery of what 19th-century architects learned the hard way.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• The Genesis of Modern Finance: We look at the absolute power of early mercantilism and how the catastrophic Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles of 1720 forced nations to figure out sovereign debt, granting the British state the ultimate competitive advantage.
• The Enabling State: The clash between the British gospel of laissez-faire free trade and the challenger nations (the US, Germany, and Japan) who explicitly rejected it, using the iron fist of state survival to protect infant industries, build infrastructure, and engineer human capital.
• The Birth of Smokestack Chasing: How the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the eventual retreat of federal industrial policy in the 1970s and 80s forced local mayors, counties, and EDCs to fight for capital on their own, localizing the mercantilist battlefield.
• The Nobel-Winning Secret: We hit the "Nerd Section" to unpack the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics, revealing the ultimate mathematical truth of our profession: why the success or failure of a region always comes down to the difference between extractive and inclusive institutions.

#EconomicDevelopment #TheArchitectsOfProsperity #EconomicHistory #Institutions #NobelPrize2024 #SiteSelection #Podcast #SiteSelectorsArePeopleToo

In Part 9 of our special mini-series, The Architects of Prosperity, we look at what happens when the unprecedented wealth of the Industrial Revolution collides with staggering, crushing poverty. By the late 1800s, the global capitalist machine was running at maximum capacity, but the internal contradictions of the 19th-century economic model were tearing society apart at the seams.

This episode explores the intellectual reckoning that followed. We unpack how three brilliant, radically different thinkers—a radical philosopher, a fiercely conservative Chancellor, and an economic heretic—diagnosed the structural diseases of global capitalism and wrote the foundational DNA for the entire 20th century.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• The Socialist Earthquake: We strip away Cold War rhetoric to examine Karl Marx’s purely mathematical critique of capitalism, the "extraction of surplus value," and his chilling prediction that the system was structurally doomed to eat its own tail.
• The Pragmatic Pivot: How Otto von Bismarck, a fiercely conservative Prussian nationalist, invented the modern welfare state—not out of benevolence, but as a calculated state bribe to crush a socialist revolution and keep the German military-industrial complex running.
• The Imperial Bailout: John A. Hobson's heretical critique that exposed 19th-century global imperialism as a desperate, violent corporate bailout driven by domestic inequality, "oversaving," and toxic jingoistic propaganda.
• The Modern Legacy: How these 150-year-old theories still dictate modern economic development, from capital-labor tensions in incentive negotiations to why social safety nets are economic infrastructure, and how underconsumption mirrors the dangerous hollowing out of today's middle class.

#EconomicDevelopment #TheArchitectsOfProsperity #KarlMarx #Bismarck #EconomicHistory #WealthInequality #Podcast #SiteSelectorsArePeopleToo

In Part 8 of our special mini-series, The Architects of Prosperity, we look at what happens when fully industrialized nations run out of room to grow at home. Once the factories are built, the railroads are laid, and the workforces are trained, the great industrial machines of the 19th century needed two things to survive: an endless supply of cheap raw materials, and massive new markets to buy their surplus goods.

This episode explores the dark, outward turn of economic development: The Colonial Model. We unpack how the newly industrialized, hyper-connected powers (like Britain, France, Germany, and later Japan) looked across the oceans and collided on the global stage, using their state power to carve up the world into extractive resource hubs and captive consumer markets.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• The Outward Turn: Why the incredible success of domestic industrialization and massive economies of scale mathematically forced nations to seek out foreign resources and new consumer bases.
• Extractive vs. Inclusive: How the great powers set up purely extractive institutions in the Global South—mining copper, harvesting rubber, and growing cotton—to feed the factories back home.
• The Captive Market: How colonial powers intentionally de-industrialized their territories (like the intentional destruction of India's textile industry) to force colonies to buy finished goods exclusively from the empire.
• The Global Collision: The scramble for territory that redrew the map of the world and set the stage for the geopolitical and economic power dynamics we are still untangling today.
• The Modern Legacy: How the historical scars of the Colonial Model continue to impact global supply chains, international trade negotiations, and emerging market development in the 21st century.

#EconomicDevelopment #TheArchitectsOfProsperity #ColonialModel #EconomicHistory #GlobalSupplyChains #IndustrialRevolution #Podcast #SiteSelectorsArePeopleToo