Name dropping

All savvy entrepreneurs know that networking is crucial to grow your business.

You’ve got to know the right people who can help you make the hook up to the next big deal.

So with that in mind, I’m going to drop a few names from time to time that are good to know because they're in positions that can help you take your business to the next level.

The name I’m starting with is Jacob (“Jake” to his friends) Stuart.

Jake is president of the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce. Yet that official title is not the main reason I think it’s important to know him. The guy is a visionary – a description I use with great care.

Jake and I have had many differences during the past 20 years, but I have to give him his due.

My favorite story about Jake involvesTri-County Transit.

If you arrived in Orlando after 1994 you probably never even heard of Tri-County Transit. Under Jake’s leadership Tri-County Transit was renamed Lynx, metropolitan Orlando’s public bus system, and they started painting the buses pastel colors.

We – me included – thought Jake was crazy. But what Jake achieved as chairman of the Lynx board, was much more than a name change and a paint job. He elevated the importance of public transportation and made it one of the pistons in the region’s economic engine.

And Jake also deserves credit for expanding Lynx service. Until Jake’s Lynx leadership the public bus system only served Orange and Seminole counties – even though it was chartered to serve Orange, Seminole and Osceola (remember it used to be named Tri-County Transit).

Jake took me up on a challenge I made in an Orlando Sentinel editorial to start providing bus service in Osceola. That development made life enormously easier for Osceola County workers who can’t afford cars. It also helped to accelerate public discussions of transportation that led to the SunRail commuter train system that is scheduled to debut this spring.

But Jake’s contribution to this region is much bigger than buses. He’s the first guy I heard talking about bringing together business, government, education and community leaders from Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Seminole and Volusia counties to collaborate and plan for the growth of this region that we call Central Florida.

Again, it sounded like more Jake pie-in-the-sky, but that collaboration broadened this region’s economic base from hospitality and vacations into high-tech arenas such as medical research and modeling and simulation.

If you own a business – any kind of business -- in Central Florida, you need to know Jacob Stuart!

Now let me drop a couple more names:

Robert Cabana, NASA’s director of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Though the space shuttle program ended two years ago, there are 8,000 people – both NASA employees and contractors working at the space center to support upcoming NASA and private-enterprise launches. Cabana, a Naval Academy graduate and a former astronaut, is KSC’s 10^th director.

Joe Lewis is the British billionaire who founded the Tavistock Group. One of that group’s subsidiaries is Lake Nona Property Holdings, which owns the land where the Medical City has been built east of Orlando International Airport. Lewis donated both land and cash that helped make that sprawling medical campus a reality.

====================

This post was written by David Porter, a former journalist who owns www.david.portercommunications.com, a communications consulting firm that works with small businesses throughout Central Florida, and produces www.B2BFlorida.com