Plans to grow Florida into the world’s 10th largest economy by 2030—comparable in GDP to South Korea—were displayed at the state Chamber of Commerce’s annual event in Orlando on Oct. 23 and 24.
Titled “Race to 2030 and Beyond,” the two-day conference touched on the Chamber of Commerce’s goals for Florida over the next six and a half years, highlighting some of the statewide achievements over the last few years.
The agenda was structured around “six pillars” of business success: (1) talent supply and education, (2) infrastructure and growth leadership, (3) quality of life and quality of places, (4) business climate and competitiveness, (5) civic and governance systems, and (6) innovation and economic development.
Chamber President Mark Wilson allotted much of his speaking time on Monday and Tuesday to juxtaposing Florida’s recent successes with the chamber’s goals for 2030.
According to the chamber’s data, Florida sits at 2.8 percent unemployment while being the 16th largest economy in the world. The state has the lowest debt per capita at $984 and is number one in the nation for net income migration at $39.3 billion, or roughly $4.48 million per hour.
Florida is also the number one state for business startups while being number two for CEO rank, falling behind Texas. Florida boasts the nation’s number four business tax climate, which the chamber hopes to push to number one by 2030. The state’s regulatory, labor, and operating risk environments are also rated among the top five, according to the chamber.
According to chamber data, Florida’s booming tourism economy ranks as the highest for out-of-state visitors each year. It is also ranked number one for both black-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses with employees, while edging into the number two spot for women-owned businesses with employees, the chamber said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Oct. 23 that Florida is the “most entrepreneurial state in the nation,” according to a recent study published by researchers at The Digital Project Manager. The Sunshine State has the highest per-capita entrepreneurial rate of 13,238 small businesses per 100,000 residents, with Georgia in second place.
“Florida’s pro-business, freedom-first policies make Florida the best state in the nation to do business,” Mr. DeSantis said.
The Race to 2030
Within the next six years, the chamber expects to see Florida grow with 2.8 million new residents, 1.23 million new jobs, 40 million more annual visitors, and 2.5 million more drivers on the road.However, according to several speakers, Florida’s numbers are not pristine across the board, and many of the dire statistics drive the chamber’s goals heading into 2030. Currently, the state has 18.2 percent of its children in poverty, and the chamber hopes to lower that number to below 10 percent in the next six years, with 100 percent of those children possessing pathways out of poverty. More than 50 percent of Florida children living in poverty reside in just 15 percent of the state’s 983 zip codes, the chamber said.
The Chamber of Commerce also sees blind spots in business investments and development. It hopes to push Florida from number 41 in the country for research and development funding to the top three. Likewise, the chamber hopes to see the state go from number 10 for patents issued to the top three.
The push will see Florida trying to improve manufacturing jobs, a value steadily decreasing as the state sits nationally at the number 10 spot. Goals are also in place to position the Sunshine State from number seven for venture capital investments to number three.
The chamber also noted problems with Florida’s legal climate. Right now, the state is number 46 in the nation, and the chamber hopes to see the state climb to the top 12 by 2030. This will require legal reforms, including improvements to occupational licensing laws and closing loopholes that allow frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies, according to the chamber.
Most Floridians—56.8 percent—live in “housing-cost burdened households,” a number the chamber hopes to reduce to less than 10 percent. Although Florida already is ranked 21 for the lowest crime nationwide, the chamber is eyeing a drop into the lowest 10. The chamber also hopes to see Florida climb from the 20th state with the highest “well-being” ranking to the top five.
Talent Supply & Education
President and CEO of Citrus County Chamber of Commerce, Josh Wooten, argued that ensuring every child reads at grade level should not be difficult for a society that successfully sends people to space.Kyle Baltuch, SVP of equality of opportunity for the Florida Chamber Foundation, said that Florida is losing out on $5.4 billion a year on untapped potential, which is three times the amount spent on early learning yearly and roughly equal to the money earmarked for criminal justice programs statewide.
Mr. Baltuch said that lack of access to childcare is the number one reason Floridians are out of work or currently leaving their place of work. More than 150,000 Floridians would go back to the workforce tomorrow if they had proper access to early learning for their children, he said.
Madeleine Thakur, CEO of The Children’s Movement of Florida, mentioned that 68 percent of children ages zero to six live in a house where every adult works outside the home. Unfortunately, if two parents are both on minimum wage, they already make too much money to qualify for many subsidy programs, according to Ms. Thakur. Businesses need to be advocates for their employees with young children, she said.
Nik Nikic, CEO of Sales Optimizer LLC, developed a revolutionary action plan called the “one percent better everyday mindset” that can be applied to any person or business trying to achieve any kind of goal. Mr. Nik Nikic is a business consultant and spends much of his time finding clever and effective solutions for companies struggling with crises. Between his childhood and professional career, he learned that he could solve any problem and achieve any goal by breaking success down into small, realizable steps. As long as one commits to one percent improvement each day, the changes build and compound, he said.
However, Mr. Nik Nikic did not expect to apply this mindset to his son, Chris Nikic, who struggles with Down syndrome and a level 70 IQ. At 18, his son languished on the couch playing video games all day, according to Mr. Nik Nikic. The two decided to reboot and reshape the younger Nikic’s life, all by making small steps towards competing in his first Ironman competition, a first for a person with Down syndrome.
“It’s a growth mindset. It’s a way of thinking about your life introspectively and saying, ‘I can get a little better today than I was yesterday at something.’ And by developing that growth mindset over time, you wake up every day knowing you can be successful,” Mr. Nik Nikic said.
His son refused to give up, going from a single push-up, sit-up, and squat in one day to 430 over several years. On Nov. 7, 2020, Mr. Chris Nikic became the first person with Down syndrome to complete an Ironman competition, and he has not stopped there.
Mr. Chris Nikic has competed in multiple triathlons and Ironman competitions, won two ESPY awards, published a book, and recently bought his own home. His father sees the hard work and determination and wants others to apply the same mindset to their problems.
Infrastructure & Growth Leadership
Cathy Chambers, the director of economic development at Florida Power and Light (FPL), spoke on Monday about the company’s goals for the state. FPL wants to make Florida a place where graduates want to stay and work after they finish higher education.Senior Director of Future of Work at the Florida Chamber Foundation, Rachel Ludwig, said this involves improving Florida’s “talent pipeline.” Much of the effort is realized by simply raising awareness for high-demand careers in the state, she said.
Mike Brannen, SVP of industrial and workforce development at the Miller Electric Company, argued that apprenticeship programs are a key component.
“It’s like playing an instrument—you don’t read a book and start playing the guitar immediately. You have to practice,” Mr. Brannen said. “In today’s market, we are not producing more employees; we have got to learn to do more with what we’ve got—more training, make them more efficient and more effective.”
According to James Heckman, bureau chief of workforce statistics and economic research at FloridaCommerce, more than 50 percent of Florida’s enrollment apprenticeships exist in only three trades—electrical, plumbing, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC)—even though these account for just one percent of the jobs in the state.
Meanwhile, the fastest growing occupations in Florida are healthcare, data analysts and programmers, and security, according to Mr. Heckman.
Key infrastructure is also seeing considerable investments. According to Kimberly Holland, assistant secretary of strategic development at the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), $68.2 billion will be spent on transportation improvements over the next five years.
“There is nothing more important in what we can do than bringing purpose to every dollar,” she said. “Safety remains the top priority at the Florida Department of Transportation.”
FDOT hopes to reduce traffic fatalities by implementing more “rumble strips,” which cause a vehicle to vibrate loudly as it veers off the side of the road, and extensive pedestrian safety efforts. FDOT will invest $45 million in wrong-way driving technology as well.
Some of the state’s numbers are trending high—freight traffic is expected to increase by 34 percent by 2045, while its commercial value increases by 140 percent to $2.1 trillion, according to FDOT.
Quality of Life & Quality of Places
Mr. Baltuch highlighted childhood poverty as a serious blind spot.“Across the state of Florida, we have 763,527 children in poverty,” he said. “Federal poverty is just under $25,000 a year. Just under $25,000 for a family of three. We have nearly 765,000 children living in those dire circumstances across the state of Florida.”
Mr. Baltuch added, “The problems we’re talking about are severe in magnitude, but they are not inoperable. We have seen progress made over the last few years.
“Most importantly, the business and philanthropic community are coming together and saying this, not a charity effort anymore, this is something we need to really strategically address,” he said.
Dr. Robert Roncska, SVP for the Florida Chamber Health Council, has devoted his former military career to combating the mental health stigma after losing his father to suicide. Despite the state’s proven successes, Florida fails its citizens, being ranked 49th in the nation for mental health care, he said.
Dr. Roncska cited a recent survey released by Tampa Bay Thrives that “revealed that 14 percent of respondents missed work in the last month because of medical or emotional conditions, compared to 10 percent in the previous year—up 4 percent in one year. Four percent! Who knows how bad it will be next year,” he said.
State Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that improving Florida’s quality of life is partially achieved through improving its quality of places. Ms. Moody, while earning the status of “tough on crime” throughout the state, explained what it actually means to be “tough on crime.”
“Tough on crime doesn’t mean that you arrest everybody you can find and lock them up forever. That is not tough on crime,” she said.
“Tough on crime is being proactive, aggressive, and ingenuitive and making sure we are tailoring our policies and our practices to keep repeat-dangerous people behind bars and making sure we are mitigating contacts with the criminal justice system. That is being tough on crime.”
Ms. Moody mentioned recent crime trends from states like New York, Illinois, and California and how Florida is better equipped to lower its statistics.
Business Climate & Competitiveness
Day two started with discussions on Florida’s broad business environment. Much of the discourse focused on Florida’s place in the lowest five states for its lawsuit climate.According to Frank Walker, EVP of government and political relations at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Floridians pay more than $5,000 per household in increased costs due to the state’s poor litigation culture. Roughly three percent of the state’s $1.5 trillion GDP goes to litigation alone.
The Chamber of Commerce hopes to see Florida climb to the top 12 for litigation by 2030.
Michael Yaworsky, the insurance commissioner for the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, argued that many of the state’s frivolous lawsuits are directed at the insurance industry. Hurricane Andrew’s onslaught on South Florida in 1992 caused insurance rates to skyrocket while the state scrambled to improve and update building codes. The problem was compounded when litigation against state-based insurance companies spiked in 2015.
Hurricane Irma posed serious problems for Florida in 2017. For the first time, the amount needed for damages exceeded what had been paid through premiums. In other words, the state needed more insurance money than it had paid directly, causing a three-year crisis where insurers filed claims as late as 2020.
According to Mr. Yaworsky, the state had to change a rule limiting hurricane claims to a single year after the date of impact. But despite these improvements, the catastrophic damage from Hurricane Ian and the recovery efforts afterward caused eight insurance companies to go insolvent in Florida last year alone. Fixing these problems is an uphill battle, he said.
Civic & Governance Systems
Ashley Dietz, president and CEO of the Florida Philanthropic Network, emphasized the importance of philanthropy in Florida.
“Oftentimes, philanthropy is tapped to fill in the gaps where government isn’t funding or can’t fund, and/or a business has not stepped up to the plate. So we need to be at the same table so we can all be on the same page,” she said.
Ms. Dietz noted that $780 billion is projected in “generational wealth transfer” within the following years, or money that moves from one generation to another. She tasked business owners with asking themselves how they can leverage their gifts or donations to create prosperity in the surrounding community, with multiplying effects.
Growing Florida’s economy to the size of South Korea’s will require connecting new residents to their communities, according to President & CEO of the Florida Nonprofit Alliance, Sabeen Perwaiz.
Florida’s political demographics are shifting as well. While Democrats used to lead Republicans in the number of registered voters statewide, the GOP has flipped this ratio and now has 626,518 more registered voters than the Democratic Party. The GOP also accounted for 42.5 percent of newly registered voters in September alone.
The Chamber of Commerce polled voters on their feelings towards their family’s financial status now compared to a year ago and found that 46 percent of respondents felt they were “worse off” while 33 percent felt “about the same.”
Innovation & Economic Development
The conference’s last topic spanned the scope of innovation from both personal and economic. The chamber invited Matt Higgins, co-founder and CEO of RSE Ventures, vice chair of the Miami Dolphins, and occasional guest on Shark Tank, to speak about his family’s adversity.He described himself as an “edge case” because, as a child, he lived in abject poverty with an incarcerated father and a disabled mother. He explained how conventional advice from school guidance counselors was unhelpful because they did not understand his family’s living conditions.
“A lot of kids behind that statistic are doing the same thing: they can’t even put words to the idea of having a depressed parent or an incarcerated father—they can’t put words to it,” Mr. Higgins said. “When you’re trying to deal with people on the margins, you’re dealing with edge cases. If the system is not designed to recognize and probe it and then come up with a bespoke solution, you can’t solve the problem.”
He was inspired at 15 years old by the old “burn the boats” parable, which suggests that you commit to success profoundly if you destroy any chance of retreat. Mr. Higgins exploited a former loophole in the New York state education system—he could fail all his classes at 15, earn a GED, and start college early as a 16-year-old. His teachers told him he was headed to a sure failure, but he did not listen.
“I realized if I don’t sabotage my entire life at this moment, I will never be able to go forward with my instincts, which told me to drop out. So what did I do? I failed every single class for two years straight,” he said.
“That was my epiphany—I needed to burn the boats and commit to the goal that I was going to achieve freedom and autonomy, I was going to hopefully rescue my mother, that I was going to rescue my future by making a radical decision, and the only way to do it was to block everybody out.”
Mr. Higgins did the impossible—he not only graduated from college but also earned a Juris Doctor from law school as Rudy Giuliani was hiring him to be the then-mayor’s press secretary. All of this happened right before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, and as a result, Mr. Higgins became one of the first employees working on rebuilding the World Trade Center. These achievements positioned him on the trajectory of success he followed to this day.
That’s why he wants to help students suffering at the same ages that saw him living in “roach motels” with his mother and siblings, while other kids were busy with sports and after-school activities.
The Power of Magnets
Dr. Eric Palm, deputy lab director for the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, discussed other innovations in Florida.
Recent developments in magnets have resulted in new MRI machines that can look at individual cancer cells and determine if a certain type of chemotherapy will be effective within days of the first treatment, something that normally takes weeks or longer.
These machines are revolutionizing how we target, diagnose, and treat cancer and could also pioneer efforts to reduce pollution and wildlife disasters.
According to Dr. Palm, FSU’s machines can isolate 100,000 molecules in a single drop of oil. If oil makes it into the natural environment through a spill or other accident, researchers can determine what is in the oil, where it comes from, and how it was made by analyzing one drop. This process drastically reduces the source-sampling time associated with oil spills.
Moving Forward
The Chamber of Commerce has several events scheduled ahead of 2024’s annual conference. There is a Mental Health Innovation Summit in Orlando on Nov. 8 and 9, while the chamber’s annual Insurance Summit is planned for Dec. 14 and 15.The 2024 Economic Outlook and Jobs Solution Summit will be held on Jan. 25, 2024, and the Leadership Conference on Safety, Health, and Sustainability is scheduled from May 9, 2024 to May 10, 2024.
