Just don't call me while I'm fishing
In my ongoing quest to learn about Maine, Mainers and business in the state, I have come across some interesting customs.
Possibly the most interesting to me, coming from Philadelphia, is seeing people's cell numbers on their business cards.
I'm like, Mr. CEO, do you really want me calling when you're out fishing? Or surfing? Or spending time with your family?
Perhaps I'm used to executives who insulate themselves with junior executives and PR teams, so I was unprepared for that.
“You'll find that Maine is a very horizontal state,” Dan Bookham, director of business development at Allen Insurance, tells me. “If you drive up to Augusta and ask for a meeting with the governor, as long as he's there, he'll meet with you.”
I may test that theory some time.
For now, I have been enjoying the open-door attitude that goes beyond business cards.
Mainebiz's latest 'On the Road' event took us to Belfast. There everyone is buzzing about Front Street Shipyard, which in less than three years has established itself as a top boatbuilding and repair shop, spanning seven acres on the waterfront and employing 110 people. JB Turner, the shipyard's president, took valuable time out of his day to show me around the shipyard. And, yes, he has his cell number on his business card.
Yet access is only part of what I'd like to talk about here.
Back in Portland, I tagged along one morning with a delegation of Canadian lawyers and officials from port authorities and economic development agencies. They were touring the city's working waterfront — in this case, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the Fish Exchange and Ready Seafood Co.
Ready Seafood is an interesting case study. It is owned and operated by two brothers in their early 30s, John and Brendan Ready. At an age when most kids are eating cereal and watching cartoons, they were out pulling lobster traps. At Northeastern University, John Ready, who already had a dozen years of lobstering experience, did a co-op program on tiny Beals Island, helping turn around the fortunes of a wholesale lobster operation. Less than a decade later, the brothers are running a live lobster holding facility that serves as a temporary home for 300,000 pounds of lobsters from Maine and Canada that are eventually shipped around the country and as far away as Asia. Between the Portland site and a Scarborough processing center, Ready Seafood has roughly 100 employees in peak months.
The Ready brothers aren't the only innovative young Maine entrepreueurs, as Senior Writer Lori Valigra's story about Maine's Top Gun program shows. The five-month program helps hone entrepreneurial skills. To graduate from Top Gun, entrepreneurs must hone their product, develop a business plan and perfect the elevator pitch. Lori has a knack for bringing people to life and I'm particularly struck by her description of Alden Blease, co-founder of Redd, a maker of superfood energy bars. Perpetually broke in college, he raided the bulk-food section of a health food store, creating his own concoctions. As Lori describes it, the avid runner frequently “stuffed a basketball-sized wad of his new-found food in a pillow case and carried it around campus for meals.” Now you can buy Redd bars at Whole Foods in Portland.
In every industry, you can't grow without a well-trained workforce, as JB Turner or John Ready or nearly any business owner will lament. In his cover story, Senior Writer Jim McCarthy takes a look at two so-called legacy industries, shipbuilding and forestry, and one upstart, the wind-power industry, and what they are doing to bring in a skilled workforce. In each case, the industries cite the need to have employees that are versed in both traditional skills like welding and pipefitting but also technology and software.
Whether you're a shipyard president or a lobsterman-turned-business owner, you're never too busy to learn a new skill or take a call from a potential customer. Or at least that seems to be the case in Maine.
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