Hi.

I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Enconomic Outlook.

Thank you for joining us.

Each week as we discuss the region's most important economic development initiatives with a panel of experts.

He's new to the governor role, but no stranger to Hoosiers coming off his role as US senator.

Before that, he was an entrepreneur that built a successful business that created thousands of jobs in Indiana and across the country.

We're sitting down today with the Indiana governor, Mike Braun, to take a closer look at his vision for the Indiana economy.

Coming up on today's show.

He's got a degree in economics, an MBA from Harvard, and has a long, distinguished career as an entrepreneur and businessman, building a business that now employs thousands of people in 38 states.

More recently, you know him as a U.S. senator and now as Indiana's 52nd governor.

Joining me today for a discussion about the Indiana economy is Indiana Governor Mike Braun Welcome, Governor.

Hey, good to be with you.

Hey, always good to be with you.

Thank you.

Want to talk?

Really?

Jobs, economy.

You're the you're in the hot seat there in Indianapolis.

A kind of guiding state strategy.

So thank you for carving out a few minutes with us today.

Governor, I teased in the in the opening a little bit about your background.

Certainly the business economics background.

Share a little bit about, you know, that experience and kind of how it has prepared you for this current role.

It was interesting, when I had to start making some decisions back, what college to go to, what I was going to do.

I can tell you it was a work in progress, because ended up going to Wabash College on a premed trajectory until I found out it was going to be nine years.

If you wanted to specialize or be a surgeon, I did the math.

22 plus nine was 31.

I didn't have that much further education.

Inmate.

But my sophomore year, I switched to political science from, biology.

And, that didn't seem like it maybe was what I wanted to do.

I was headed to Vanderbilt on a JD, MBA.

That was four years.

I went to business school at Harvard.

Yes.

And man, was so happy I was going to go to Wall Street because I was good at finance and numbers and and my wife wanted her own business.

We wanted to raise a family.

So we moved back to our hometown.

That was an interesting conversation I had with my dad back then.

That was kind of like almost moving back into the basement, but it was the smartest thing we ever did.

She has had her only job as her business.

It's now going into the 47th year.

I got started three years later in 81, took me 17 years to build a little scrappy business.

And so mostly to farmers to circumvent the farm crisis.

If you remember, interest rates were 10% for a mortgage in late 70s.

If you waited until the early 80s, it went up close to 20.

That was baptism by fire.

But I learned so much, so much more than I did at college.

Or either getting that MBA.

You were surviving.

It was a school of hard knocks that set the stage for then knowing what it took to really scale a company, which I didn't start doing that until 98.

It grew from a handful of employees to 300, from oh eight to the present.

Or when I resigned as CEO, which is when I got sworn in as senator.

It's now got locations in most states with about 1500 employees, even a few locations in Canada.

Three of my four kids run it.

So I learned a lot, got involved in real estate, agriculture about tree farming and row crops.

So when I got to the U.S. Senate, I knew a lot about many different areas.

That's what made our office so effective.

Not to mention, I put together a hell of a good team that was able to help me accomplish a lot.

They're here.

You're the CEO of the state.

It's a little long winded, but I think it's valuable because that's a long trajectory, which puts you in a very good place to probably know what the opportunities are and how to capture them.

Great, governor.

I want to stick in the entrepreneurs space for a second.

So advice to others.

You know, we talk a lot on this show with, you know, with entrepreneurs, people who are, thinking about starting some.

There's a fear factor sometimes with leaving sort of the known and going to the unknown.

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are kind of on the fence, thinking about pursuing an opportunity similar to what you did many years ago?

The difference between me and most entrepreneurs.

I didn't have a specific passion or enthusiasm other than I wanted to run and scale a business.

So often enthusiasts want to try to parlay that into something, and especially if you weren't steeped in accounting and especially finance, you get into trouble because you probably didn't even review the market.

Is there a place for it to be?

I really made that mistake kind of when I jumped at that first opportunity.

But then I had the skills of how to navigate through it.

So do you have the risk profile and do you have the basic understanding of the finance component?

Because most of us start with nothing.

So that means you're going to need to get a Co signature.

You're going to need to be really good at controlling expenses, which is mundane, but you'll never parlay your idea into something you can scale if you don't get real good at low overhead.

And then the most complicated part is growing revenues.

But your risk profile generally will keep you from maybe realizing any of it.

And if you're not risk averse enough, it's really easy to go out of business.

So good risk assessment and, ma'am, good judgment.

Sooner or later, hopefully that will converge to where you, whatever you're doing crosses the five year threshold, which 80% are generally not there.

And then I think 90% don't make it to maybe ten years.

Once you hit ten years, most businesses and plow forward.

Great governor, thank you.

And thank you for sharing that experience.

I think that's so, so helpful to people who are thinking about that.

And so let's let's move on to your new role.

For example, your, Ben now a couple several months, it doesn't feel new, I'm sure a little bit.

But you're the Indians 52nd governor.

And so you've brought some of those lessons you've learned to that entrepreneurial spirit.

Talk a little bit about just sort of this transition into governance, the governor's role kind of leading the state transition was easy because I was an executive, really.

I was a scrappy small business owner for nearly half of those 37 years.

But then you had to be good at a mission statement.

How do you organize good people underneath you?

And basically, this is one of the largest businesses in our state, our state government.

So the transition was easy.

I had the three years of legislative experience in the state House, six years in the big House, as I refer to it, the Senate.

And that made understanding it, you know, fairly easy.

So I had kind of that right tutorial because you got to get along even with a supermajority and within a supermajority you're going to have differing opinions.

So it's I knew what you needed to do in the US Senate, which is really, kind of got a lot of ways a bill can get derailed to make it to the president's desk here.

It's a shorter time frame.

We're generally not dealing with the ideology.

We're dealing with property taxes, education, health care.

I've been involved in things like conservation there, most of those issues.

I know, the structure I was comfortable with and now, it means how do you piece all that together?

So transition has been actually fairly easy going pretty well.

And we're a little over halfway through the legislative session and most of our key bills that weren't necessarily authored by us because it was already in motion, they've been dovetailing with what we would like to accomplish.

A lot of the imprint that we'll make will be in sessions down the road.

So I feel real good about where we are.

Great.

No, I appreciate it and I think you're off to a great start.

We appreciate you highlighting a little bit.

Let's so, again we're kind of jobs in economy focus here.

So Indiana's I think done well in the in the economic development space jobs, economy space.

But now is your chance to sort of put your, your, focus on this talk a little bit about just the Indiana economy as a whole and some of the priorities of the Brown administration to kind of help, further enhance that Indiana economy.

So let's look at the fact a lot of times it's your economy's hampered by high costs.

Health care is a challenge for any business, maybe other than someone that owns a health care business.

I fixed it in my own business 17 years ago to engage my employees as health care consumers on the minor stuff gave them every wellness and prevention tool.

And then we became the insurance company.

All in one renewal meeting.

Be happy to share that with any of your viewers.

I don't have time today, so that is moving along.

And if we go from being one of the highest health care costs states with some of the poorest outcomes, that'll be a burden relieved across the board.

Education is the next arena that ends up not hitting paydirt, and that is mostly that tug of war between workforce development and degrees.

I think we've been two degree focused because half the kids, we got to get one don't make it to the finish line, and many get a degree where there's no market for it in our own state.

So we got to get better at it.

The only degree we under produce that we need more of would be the most important one stamp, but there are 130,000 jobs out there that need a better middle school and high school education.

I'm going to work real hard on that, and if you get that right, they pay more immediately out of high school than most four year degrees would.

So education, health care, property taxes, they've gone way out of hand because of, inflation caused by the federal government.

Many of the municipalities and school districts took their rates, or didn't lower them enough, took their revenues up too much.

The ones that were responsible with their own taxpayers will be in good shape.

We got to get through it.

And then you've seen I've restructured state government to actually be more responsive, whether it's economic development or whatever it is getting involved with, with Hoosier constituents, economic development will be more spread across the state.

I'm going to fertilize the field of small businesses and entrepreneurs still try to get the bigger companies, and that will be strategic for us, but have a broader focus on what economic development is about and especially if we get workforce development done correctly, that throws 3 to $4 billion into our current economy.

That will help current employers without spending anything on luring others in.

Great.

I appreciate it, governor.

When I go to your hometown for a second because because I think of, you know, as you're doing this economic development strategy, there's a lot more Jaspers or towns that are smaller than Jasper than there are Indianapolis.

And you've got to kind of, develop strategy that really helps all 92 counties, not just.

So what kind of advice would with the governor give to the Jaspers or the Plymouth or the oceans of the world?

As to the things they can or should be doing to sort of, help drive economic growth with the state.

So I travel, visit all 92 counties and you're going to see that, there probably 7 or 8 that would be in, oh, basis of kind of prosperity.

Columbus, Jasper and Dubois County, Fort Wayne, you know, our second largest city.

But you get much beyond three, 4 or 5.

It is a rural county, and that is going to be mostly agricultural.

May have lost the 1 or 2 factories in the very small population counties, those in the 5 to 20,000 category, those in the 20 to 40 or 50.

That's where Dubois County fits.

In my home county, we're about 45.

Jasper has grown from eight to around 18,000.

Those are the exceptions, not the rule.

Rural broadband is going to have to be into every nook and cranny.

Folks are going to start a business.

If you don't have high speed internet, even for their own household needs, we're doing decent at that.

We need to do it faster now.

Water and electricity have become issues that weren't even on the governor's, list of concerns up until maybe a year ago.

So that'll be an interesting thing.

And we've got water only available in excess in about a third of our counties.

So places like my hometown I'm less worried about because we've been one of the lucky ones.

The other 70 counties are looking for that second act, and it'll have to be maybe agriculture related, maybe getting some manufacturers that are willing if you put the workforce together to come back to you.

That's where I'll be paying most of my attention to.

Great governor, in your most recent role in in DC, you had a chance to share with your peers across the country, you know, kind of Indiana story to help our viewers understand just generally how Indiana stacks up against, other, states across the country.

So oftentimes, you'll hear that our income levels, lag, well, comparing it to Illinois, California or New York may be true, but when you look at the cost of living, we now have one of the lowest.

You're going to get into an argument there right away with certain economists.

I think we're in the sweet spot.

We need to improve incomes.

But I've told you how to do that.

Get workforce done correctly.

3 to 4 billion goes into our economy immediately attract some of those industries that need the Stem degrees.

We need more of them.

But when it comes to a place like Indiana, you may not know this.

We were one of ten states that had net migration into it, not immigration.

This is folks moving from another state into it, and it's mostly from Illinois.

And they represent very high costs, very intrusive governments and their income levels can't even overcome it.

People are voting with their feet.

Many of them are moving to Fort Wayne, the region some folks in southern Illinois, probably the places like Evansville or Jasper.

So we are, a place that doesn't get some of the notoriety of Florida, Texas, maybe Tennessee closer to us.

But I think we're going to start getting it because we got a lot of stuff going for us.

Great institutions that educate our kids.

They just need to bring that cost down and guide them into marketable degrees.

We need to get better at workforce development.

A lot.

We are the sweet spot for a factory, our logistics business.

Fedex told me the triangle from Indy to Louisville to Evansville is the best place in the country to reach commerce in two days of ground transportation.

We're the crossroads of America.

We just need to be highlighting it a little more.

But most of our potential lies within.

We just need to make sure that we enable it.

And you mentioned a lot of the rural counties.

Then I'm going to work hard on to bring them back into the fold.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, governor, for talking about that.

Let's go back to the, General Assembly for a second.

You sat in each of the seats, now the House, the Senate, now the governor's role.

And you mentioned kind of this work in Prague, in progress right now as you're, advancing some of your some priorities this session and more.

And in future session, talk a little bit, maybe more on, in just that interrelation.

Right.

You've got 150 people there that much like you did in a previous role.

Now, you know, trying to champion their own communities.

You're trying to balance, you know, kind of the greater interest of the state and just help us better understand the maybe the governor or the General Assembly kind of how how this all comes together during a legislative session.

You know, that's going to be some of it's hard wired within you.

Again, I'll, take the analog of building a business.

You know, most of my employees, were ones that were with me from the beginning.

That stuck with me.

And I was very, flexible in terms of how you acquired your talent that was more interested in results.

In other words, you get along with the people you're working closest with.

The Forte in DC, where for most freshman Senate offices, you're expected to sit back and watch.

I was never going to do that.

I put together a great team again.

All of them came back with me.

I served with most of the committee chairs here in 15, 16 and 17, ran in 18 to become senator.

And you got to put a lot of, kind of synergistic help around you to get your goals accomplished.

So I know the process, it's going to be hard not to get along with me because I'm going to make that an easy job, but I'm going to stick firm on the principles and ideas that I think we need to push forward.

And so it's then that, collaboration that we're getting already because you hear it, maybe when it's sifted through media about bills having trouble, property taxes have been out there front and center.

I think we're going to get through the legislative agenda.

We put out there and really pretty good shape.

And that's because all along the way, we're working with the leadership in the Senate and the House, the committee chairs that have to shepherd it through.

And the bill sponsors.

That's why we got the most legislation done of any freshman Senate office that we hardly got any credit for in those six years I was there.

That's a lot more difficult than what this would be, because we're going to be a lot more functional.

It's going to have a lot less ideology involved with it.

So I feel good about where we're going to end up.

Great.

Governor, let's go back to, not Washington necessarily, but but the things that happen in Washington obviously influence what happens in Indiana.

There's a lot of attention now going on about, whether it's tariffs or different kind of things.

Talk for a second just about how, how Indiana is impacted by the decisions that that are going on in Washington.

Well, you're never going to be able to escape it because it's gone way out of size in terms of what it's involved with.

The founders said defend the country.

And I think some good things have occurred.

Sadly, they are the ones that are struggling most financially.

Social security, Medicare, Medicaid is another issue.

They're all three structural drivers of the $2 trillion deficits we have annually there.

Plus not many people there sign the front side of a paycheck, so we're going to be impacted by it.

You can see the, kind of, epic struggle between many there, and it goes into both sides of the aisle that don't want it to really change.

I think that's a mistake, because if you think that what they're producing, which is knocking nothing out of the park that I've observed in the last two decades, and then loading up future generations with debt, something needs to give.

A lot of the functionality needs to come back to the states, because we live within the rigor of a balanced budget amendment, most of our legislators actually have a job in the real world, signing the front side of a paycheck.

We should be where the action is.

In the meantime, we'll be impacted by it.

But I feel real good.

States that are solid like ours, states that have tried to mimic it like our neighbor to the West.

There have some issues, so it'll be a little bumpy.

There needs to be a withdrawal from obviously what's not working, but we'll get through it.

Lucky we're a federal system.

I think the founders would have never imagined that our federal government is kind of morphed into what it has.

We're seeing right in front of our eyes now that trying to be right size and maybe put back to where it should have never gone away from decades ago.

Okay, governor, we're getting to our last few minutes here.

And so, so help me.

You talked about your visiting all 92 counties.

You're walking through manufacturing floors and other things.

What are what are business people in Indiana telling you they need most from the Mike Braun administration in the state of Indiana to help them be successful.

So just like simple things like getting a permit, when you are generally a good state government like we are.

But if you're not probing, if you're not assuming that they're going to be things that need to be better, a lot of them have gone from where you used to get in in a few days to a week to a couple months.

That's low hanging fruit.

We're going to pick that easily and quickly.

I'm going to go into each agency and by reorganizing it in the eight cabinet silos, each with a very good entrepreneurial secretary, all these ideas are going to flow.

They're going to gush up through a system that's now going to be responsive and transparent and they want us not to thicken up bureaucratically like they've seen and observed in the place that I've just come from.

So we are going to run it like a business with good customer service, constituent service.

We're going to fix things legislatively if we need to.

We'll fix it administratively if we don't need to do it legislatively.

And I'm going to be a hands on governor that knows what to look for.

I want to be accessible.

I want you to bring me your great ideas.

I don't care if you're an individual that's never even been part of government.

Bring it up through the system.

And over these next 4 to 8 years, we're going to take Indiana into a place that I think will be a model for other state governments to look at.

Right.

In our last question, governor, you know, kind of in our last minute or so vision or the message to our viewers for, for example, who are who are, you know, either running businesses in their communities, trying to, you know, kind of make a difference.

How can they best help?

The work that you're doing in Indianapolis?

Well, I'll go back to one of my opening statements.

My wife and I moved back here because we wanted to have our own businesses and raise a family.

My goal is to make Indiana that best place to do it.

Keep doing what you're doing.

You're enterprises.

You're living in one of the great communities around the state, arguably a state that sometimes gets overlooked for all of the, pluses it does have.

I want to enhance all of them.

And I want to hear from you.

Keep being movers and shakers in your own community.

Get involved at your local government level on a school board, and keep an uprising.

If we all do that collectively together, we're going to have a state that's even going to be better.

That's my goal over the next 4 to 8 years.

Great.

He's Indiana Governor Mike Brown.

Governor, thank you so much.

I know you're very busy.

We appreciate you carving some time out for us.

Today is great to visit with you.

Happy to do it.

That's it for our show today.

Thank you for watching On WNIT or listening to our podcast Find Economic Outlook at WNIT.org or find our podcasts on most major podcast platforms like us on Facebook.

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I'm Jeff Rea I'll see you next time.

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