A study does not hire anybody.
Most economic development ends in a report. I research what a place can genuinely support, then build the companies that employ people there — designed to still be hiring long after the announcement.
Three kinds of towns call.
Protecting what works
A strong town is one employer away from a different story. The work is diversification — adding industry that fits the character already there, so prosperity does not rest on a single payroll.
Momentum with somewhere to go
Something has already turned. What is missing is the next employer to make the recovery hold, and the sequencing to keep it from stalling.
A plant closed. A highway moved.
The population that left will not be argued back. It has to be given a reason, and that reason is a payroll rather than a campaign.
Different starting points, one question: what will this specific place support, and who is going to build it.
How an engagement works.
Call or video
Start here. A conversation about the town, what it has, what it lost, and what it keeps asking for. No fee, no obligation, no deck. If there is nothing here, I will say so on that call rather than sell you a visit.
On site
Time in the town, not a site visit. Council, business owners and residents, over meals and in the places people actually meet. Market research, workforce and logistics analysis, and the opportunity made concrete. This is the work, and it carries a fee.
Building
Where something real is found, I stay. The company gets built and operated rather than handed back as a recommendation. Ownership and structure are set per engagement.
Rates are quoted, never published. They differ for municipal, private, and nonprofit or foundation work, because the funding and the constraints differ. That conversation happens after the first call, not before it.
Longer engagements price higher, not lower. There is no volume discount here. Time committed to one town is time not available to another, and the rate reflects that rather than hiding it.
What gets built, and what it owes the town.
Jobs a family can live on. Work that pays enough to raise children, buy a house on the street you grew up on, and stay. That is the measure, not headcount at a ribbon cutting.
And built to last. A company designed for a fifteen-year horizon makes different decisions than one designed to open — in what it buys, who it hires, and what it commits to locally.
A business of the town, not merely in it. The practical, visible things: the jerseys on the little league team, the outfield sign at the high school field, the sponsorship of whatever the community already turns out for.
Small commitments, but they are how residents decide whether an employer is theirs. A company that will not put its name on the local scoreboard was never planning to stay.
Process.
The call
A mayor, council member, economic development office or community group reaches out. Phone or video. No charge.
The visit
On the ground. Whoever should be in the room, over a good meal, in a relaxed setting. No presentation, no pressure.
Listening
Ideas gathered rather than sold. The people who live there know things no dataset contains.
Research
Market data, workforce, logistics, existing employers, and what the surrounding region already supports.
Visualisation
The opportunity made concrete — the company, the site, the jobs, the timeline. Something a council can see rather than imagine.
Crystallisation
Some ideas are accepted on the spot. Others need a feasibility study first. Nothing gets rushed into being wrong.
The build
The company gets built and operated. Where the opportunity warrants it, the stay extends.
The capability behind it.
A town does not need one company. It needs the things around a company that let it survive — capital, systems, trades, a reason to come downtown. Those already exist across the Proselyte Holdings portfolio and can be brought to bear together.
Acquisition and restructuring of an existing local business is often the faster path than founding a new one. Both are on the table.
Approach.
I used to customize cars. Now I customize companies to fit specific markets.
I started in autobody and custom paint. That work teaches something useful: the difference between a repair that looks right and one that is right shows up later, always, and never conveniently.
The same instinct runs through the rest of it. Identify the part that was designed to fail. Replace it with something built to a higher standard. Do it once.
Applied to a town it means the same thing. A campaign that looks like progress is not progress. A payroll is.
The habit is to over-deliver and under-sell. If anything here reads as understated, that is deliberate.
Start with a call.
Phone or video, no charge, no obligation. A few questions first so the conversation starts somewhere useful.
BeginMunicipal · county · state
Chambers and development authorities
Nonprofits and foundations
Private and philanthropic partners