Ray Reich

Ray Rich, thanks for joining me.

Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited.

Now we're in a different venue. I've never recorded in the Bean Bar, so we may catch more background noise than normal, but it adds to the ambiance, doesn't it though? If nothing else, folks know that Coffee with Cool People isn't just a show name. We are actually drinking coffee and in an actual coffee shop. So this is my first time.

I love it here, but this is the first time recording here, so Well, I'm just thrilled that you thought that I was a cool person. Absolutely.

Well, and you'd be surprised out of my guests so far how many of them mentioned you. So you'd be honored to know, starting with Ed Hoffman. So I appreciate that. Absolutely. So tell me, first question I usually like to ask is, who is Ray Rich?

Well, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a grandfather. As somebody who has been an entrepreneur since age 10, we could spend a whole show just talking about all my little entrepreneurship things that started at 10 and went all the way through college, but we, as I say, that could be a whole show in and of itself. I had really two different careers when I got out of, well, I guess I should start when I was in high school. I got a part-time job working at the local radio station as a disc jockey. And up until that point, I was going to be a dentist. That was— I had a cousin that was a dentist. I thought that was a fascinating career, and that's what I was going to do. I got this job, you know, there's nothing better than playing records and talking to girls on the telephone and getting paid to do it.

It's hard to beat.

Yeah, so that kind of switched me to, I think I really would like to get into radio as a career. So I majored in radio and television communications in college. Got out of college, and I guess the entrepreneurship of me went to work back at the radio station that I'd worked for, and I told the owner, I said, "I'm gonna come to work for you, but I want you to know that I'm gonna own my radio station within 5 years. That's my goal." He said, "Well, you know what? I might just help you buy that radio station." So, Actually achieved that goal after 4 years.

Now, where was that?

That was in Steubenville, Ohio.

Okay.

So I bought a radio station with my then partner and spent some years there. And one day had somebody walk into my office and said, I want to buy this radio station. I used to work here and I just sold a billboard company and I got money and I want to buy this radio station. And it was in the middle of winter. And I was shoveling snow, and I said, you know what, I'll sell you this radio station. I'm going to start looking for something in a warmer climate. And I called our attorney in Washington, D.C. that represents radio and television stations before the FCC and said, I'm about to put myself out of work. If you hear of any stations for sale and they're in a warm climate, let me know. And he said, Funny you should say that. He said, I just got off the phone with a client of ours in Sumter, South Carolina. I said, where in the world is Sumter, South Carolina? He said, well, it's close to, close to Columbia, and he has health issues and wants to sell. So to make a long story short, ended up coming down, bought radio station in Sumter. Few years later, bought out my partner, bought a couple more radio stations. So ended up with 3 radio stations. And during that same time, started a couple other businesses. Had a company called Southern Communications, which did burglar alarm, fire alarm, cellular telephone, two-way radio systems, uh, probably a few other things. They were all technology related because I've always loved technology, and my minor in college was electronics. So did that for over 20 years. And back in 19— you may or may not remember this— back in 1996, Ronald Reagan was president, and he said he was going to deregulate a lot of government-regulated things, and one of them was radio and television. It was the regulations for radio and television stations with the Federal Communications Commission. It was like 500 pages long. Well, when he was done, it was about 100 pages long. And one of the things that came along with that deregulation was it used to be no matter, you could be a billionaire, but you could only own 5 AM or 7 AM, 7 FM, and 5 television stations. That was the most the government would let you own. With deregulation, those limits were eliminated, and the only limit was if the Justice Department determined that you had too much control in a single market, they would step in. Other than that, so that created Clear Channel, which is now iHeartRadio. It created Cumulus and all those other companies that you're well familiar with that are public companies that never existed before because they couldn't own enough stations. And they started going on a buying frenzy. And of course they bought the major markets first, and then they got down to the Sumter, South Carolinas of the world. And brokers started calling me, and I was 48 years old, and they had clients who were interested in buying my stations. And I kept saying no, no. And finally they brought me a client and they told me the number. And I said, you know what, that client wants this radio station more than I do. And so I retired at 48 and thought, I'll be a young retiree. Well, that lasted a little over a year. Two things happened. Number one, my wife started putting on the breakfast table the classified ads and said, "You really need to find something to do because there's not enough room in this house for both of us all day long." And the other thing is we went through one of the many stock market corrections, and so I saw, you know, some of my money disappear, and I thought to myself, you know, 48 is just too young to be retired, and I really was not happy. So I started thinking, okay, well, I'm an entrepreneur, I'll start another business. And my wife really was putting classified ads down on the table. And there was an ad in there that City of Sumter was looking for somebody to do downtown revitalization and commercial development. And I knew the city manager, and so I called him up and I said, "I don't know anything about this." I said, "But Sumter's been good to me, and I'd like to give back. And if you'll give me time to learn, I'd like to take this job. He said, we'd love to have you do that. And I really did start at not knowing anything. I thought I'd do it for 2 or 3 years. Chip, 11 years later, I was still doing it, and the city of Florence called and tried to convince me to come over here to take on their downtown revitalization. And interestingly enough, what motivated Sumter— Sumter had failed twice in downtown revitalization, just like Florence had failed. What motivated Sumter to get back into it is they had an industrial prospect that was an HVAC manufacturer and they'd gotten down to two communities, Sumter and a community in Virginia. 600 jobs and I forget, you know, $100 million investment, whatever it was, but I know it was 600 jobs. Sumter lost. And when they asked the company why they went to Virginia, they said, well, We looked at your downtown and there wasn't any quality of life. We didn't think we could recruit engineers and management people, so we went to Virginia. Well, that was a wake-up call. Well, Florence was seeing some of the same things, and so they too had failed at it. So I decided I would take this job, and my son, who went— who lived in Florence, went to college in Florence, his first degree, He said, "Dad, have you been downtown Florence? Do you know what in the world you're taking on?" And I said, "Son, you see what is. I see what can be." Right. And that's what motivated me to come here and did it for 9 years and then retired 2 and a half years ago. And so that's kind of who Ray Rich is. And now as a retiree, I'm staying busy, as busy as I want to. Right. I tell people the great thing about retirement is you wake up when you want to wake up, get cleaned up when you want to get cleaned up, and if you want to be productive that day, you do so, and if you don't, you don't. And that's—

it's a good place, an enviable place to be.

It is a good place. And I serve on a number of boards, and, uh, I have rental property, so it keeps me busy enough but not too busy. And so And here we are today, and that's basically who Ray Rich is.

So now when you sold the stations, did you continue to own the—

No.

The alarm companies?

Yeah, well, yes and no. I also had, in addition to the Southern Communications, I'd started a company called StationWatch, which again, I loved electronics and technology. And the only thing that kept radio stations, because automation had gotten to the point where a radio station programming-wise could run itself. And when you're listening to the radio today, many times you think there's an announcer there live. That's all being run by a computer. The announcer went into a studio and recorded a 5-hour show in 20 minutes, just records what he says in between, and the computer does it all. So the only thing that required radio stations to have people there all the time was the FCC regulations that somebody had to be there in charge of the transmitter and the emergency broadcast system. So I got to thinking, if I could develop some equipment that could do that remotely, we could allow radio stations to not have to have anybody there, especially nights and overnights and weekends and so on and so forth. So I did that, and we developed, uh, 350 radio stations across the United States that we monitored from little old Sumter, South Carolina. So I sold that along with the radio station. Okay. Interestingly enough, a couple years later, the FCC changed the regulations and stations no longer had to do that.

So good timing on your part.

It was a good time to get out of that. But I did keep the Southern Communications for a period of time, and then it just became more time-consuming than I wanted. It was not the kind of company that you could really sell as a company. I sold off some of the accounts.

Sure.

And that was it.

So interesting. So tell me about when you came to Florence. What was it like at first? Well, because your son, you said, kind of thought you were crazy.

Yeah, my first day working for the City of Florence was almost my last day. David Williams was the city manager, and he's who hired me. And One of the things that I had figured out when I started the downtown revitalization of Sumter is, and it's real basic, but sometimes cities forget this important part, that if you can't deal with the appearance issues, you know, it's like me trying to sell you a house in a neighborhood that's surrounded by slum and blight. It doesn't matter how cheap the house is and how nice the house is, you're not going to buy it. Why would you expect a business person to locate their business downtown where you got buildings that, you know, knocked out windows, you know, screen over all the windows and doors so people can't break in? So you got to deal with the appearance issues first. And I accomplished that in Sumter by getting city council to pass maintenance and appearance codes. So my first day of work, David Williams and I sat down and I said, David, The first thing he said to me, he says, "So tell me, what are the first things you're going to do?" I said, "The first thing we got to do is we need to get some city council, Florence City Council, to pass maintenance and appearance code." He says, "What's that?" And I says, "That's where we require the people that own these buildings to fix up their buildings." I said, "But we need to create some incentives to help them with that." He says, "Oh, you'll never do that." Florence is all about property rights, owner's property rights. They'll never allow you to do that. And I— these are the exact words I said. I said, David, if we can't do that, you're wasting your money hiring me and I'm wasting my time being here because we'll never get off first base. And I said, that's one of the reasons you didn't get off first base the last two times, right? So I said, will you allow me— you know, you can't meet with meet more than 3 members of a city council without inviting the media there. I said, would you allow me to meet with city council members one at a time and convince them why we need to do this? He says, sure. So I did. And when it finally went to a vote, it was 6 to 1. I won't mention who the one vote against was, but he was always the vote against everything that we wanted to do. So that was the beginning of getting it looking nice because, you know, I don't know how long— you grew up in Pamplaco, so you—

Right, yeah, I've been around here my entire life.

So you know, it was the only thing left as far as commerce downtown Florence was undesirable businesses that most of them were dealing drugs out of the back room. So we We had a lot of kickback from property owners, but the more that started complying, the more that others looked and saw how, gee, if they fix up the building, they can get tenants. You know, most of these buildings were empty. So the more we did, the more developers that came on board to the point where we got out-of-town developers, the Emerson, right, that person from Charlotte, which would have never ever happened had we not dealt with the appearance issues before anything else. So, so that was step one.

Yeah, well, there were a lot of steps after that. Yeah, it's a little bit like Seinfeld where it's like, you know, my first day, yada yada, the Emerson. I mean, there was a lot that went into it. Um, somewhere in there, or maybe beforehand, where did the Downtown Development Corporation— where did that fit into the You know, because again, you were an employee of the city, right? Right. But, but then there was this other, we'll call it entity, right? How did that come to be?

That actually went back 10 years. It went back to the year 1999 when Frank Willis was still the city manager. I'm sorry, the mayor. And he basically got together a group people and said, we need to do something about downtown. And they formed the Florence Downtown Development Corporation because at that time the Main Street— there's National Main Street, it's a national organization that provides guidance to downtowns, and then each state has a division of that. So South Carolina has South Carolina Main Street, it's part of the Municipal Association. Their guidance at that time, and it's still kind of is, is you need to form a 501, a not-for-profit. You need to hire a director, and you need to do revitalization through that, because if you get government involved, government's only going to, you know, want to influence it and so on and so forth. In theory, that sounds right because there are a lot of politics of government. The problem with that is unless somebody comes along, a Bruce Lee Foundation or somebody like that, and says, "We're gonna fund this organization with a lot of money," you're not gonna get much accomplished. And they didn't. For 10 years they tried, and you know, they put, as I call, lipstick on the pig. They did a little bit here and a little bit there, but nothing significant. So then the city stepped in and said, "Okay, we're going to get involved. We're still going to keep FDDC, but this is going to be a department of city government." And I would not have come to work at this job had it not been a department of the city, because only a city or a county has the resources to do the things, to provide the incentives, to do the public-private partnerships it takes to make a deal come together. So FTDC then and even now remains an entity that is still important. Number one, all the events funnel through FTDC because many of the events that are done downtown city government really couldn't do. You know, it's very difficult for city government to be involved in an event that there's alcohol served in. There's a lot of liability issues. So all the events go through FPDC, and there's still some of the other activities that are better done through Florence Downtown Development Corporation than the city. But for the most part, the city is the driving force.

Yeah, I would have to think, and again, I can understand the concept of why you'd want them divided, but it seems to me like practically, It would be a requirement that, I mean, to get anything actually done, if you're not involving the city, it could be a bigger hindrance than the gears of government ever could be. How big a part— what you mentioned, Bruce Lee Foundation, and they've obviously, I mean, all over Florence, they've been a contributor. How big a part was that, that relationship, but also kind of the public private that you talked about. I think that seems to me, at least over the last, I don't know, 15 or 20 years that I've been paying attention, and a lot of these things kind of happened at that same time. How big a part has that partnership of those different entities kind of played in all the different kind of success that's been down there?

Huge. Let's deal deal with Bruce and Leigh first. They basically, for the most part, and there's been some exceptions, they don't fund all of anything. They want to be a partner in things like the Performing Arts Center and many other things they've done. Well, that's the beauty of it being part of the city, is the city can bring the resources to be the partner. So Bruce and Leigh, you know, we would not have the Performing Arts Center, we wouldn't have the museum downtown, We wouldn't have that library that we have downtown if it were not for Bruce and Lee. But Bruce and Lee obviously can do partnerships with the government. They, because of their tax-exempt status, they can't do partnerships with the private sector, nor would they want to. So the beauty, and I've said this many, many times, is that one of the things that was a huge step forward for downtown Florence is that we had local people who grew up in Florence, who had become successful in Florence, and wanted to give back. And that became the private partnership to the public sector, to city government, and in some cases county, but it was primarily city, that really made a lot of things click. Uh, you know, I compare Florence with Sumter. When I first took the job in Sumter, because I'd been in radio there over 20 years. I knew the movers and the shakers. I knew where the money was, and I went around and I said, I need you to get on board, do some partnerships. One person agreed to do that, and that person was Greg Thompson, and he, he's taken the ball and something and run with it, and that's wonderful. In Florence, I can sit here and name 15 different people that have put significant money into downtown development, and you know, some people sit back and You say, well, the government, you know, helped pay for all that. Certainly they did, and they should have, because you take, for example, Hotel Florence, which was one of the first big private-public partnerships. When those guys did that project, when they were done with the project, it was only worth about 60% of what they had in it. And the reason was is that when a project appraisers do appraisals. They look at, you know, comps, what's around and all those things. So it took the public sector to come in and bridge that gap through incentives to make it worth— and it was still a high-risk deal for those investors to do it. You know, as time has gone on and we've had more successes and more development downtown, it doesn't take the level of incentives that it did. But it still takes incentives because especially when you talk about revitalizing an old building. When I first started doing this back in 2001 for Sumter, the cost of renovating a historic building was about $40 a square foot. Today the cost of renovating a historic building is higher than the cost of building a new building. And so you've got to incentivize somebody to save that old building. And that's the way you do it.

Well, and it's interesting, you talk about people being committed. I remember, so, the Hotel Florence and Victor's had both committed to moving downtown. Right. And had started work when we got involved with Gray Raines about moving our office. Down to the Waters Building. And it was about, I don't know, maybe a third of the way through when we started talking. I'll never forget going up into where our office is now, and you could see from the back windows, which is where my office is, I can look out and see the Emerson. You could see from there through the front windows on Dargan Street. It was just an empty building. Right. And, um, yeah, we just, we felt like it was important to be part of that. When we committed, you know, we said that, well, at some point an office has to move. I mean, people have to move down here to work from somewhere different. And so in working with Gray and Chris and Tim, and, but I remember one of my best clients saying, well, I'm never coming downtown, never coming to your office downtown, because it was—

let me guess, he said it's not safe.

She did. Yes. And so, um, but it was, it was 18 months from the time we committed, put a billboard out on the side of the building before it was ready for us to move down there. And, but we just felt like it was going to work out. But the reason that we felt like it was going to work out, to give credit where it's due, is because Gray and Timonos had made the commitment to move what at the time, and probably still is, the nicest restaurant in town down there, and a boutique hotel. And you said, okay, well, if they can do it, you know, then we'll go with them. And good for you for doing that. Well, it has, it has been a blessing to us. I'm grateful that, you know, that we had the opportunity to do it, but that they had the vision to commit. Because again, they weren't even finished with the hotel when we committed. By the time that we had the, you know, 18 months later they had finished. Of course, Victor's at the time was famous for kind of ladies night, you know. I don't remember what night it was, but there was a night— well, my client since then had been to a few ladies nights. She was one of the first people to come in the office door because by then she was comfortable with it. I think that's been one of the interesting things for interesting for me to watch is, is that the people who originally were the most skeptical, concerned, whatever, have been big adopters. And you talk about people who— again, it was interesting watching people commit the first time. You've got a handful of people who've committed multiple times. That's exactly right. And doubled down.

And doubled down even before their first investment was starting to cash flow. And that And that's why I say it says a lot for the people of Florence that we had people that did that.

You know, and they really did. You know, another hotel, or I think about Tim and Jim Brown, multiple businesses downtown. And if office space comes up, if you want office space downtown, you better get it before somebody who's already down there decides that they want to stay. And it's really been a And again, I'm not in the restaurant business, but I have to think that it's really helpful for a lot of those restaurants and retail having companies growing down there. Absolutely. You know, it's been a big— so I'm curious, Ray, you've been through— I mean, it's as big a boom in downtown as Florence has ever seen. What are you most proud of?

I don't know that I can point to one thing. I think what I'm proud of is that number one, we really worked as a team. You know, I used to say all the time, you know, it— the beauty of a city is you've got all the different entities you need. You know, you got— it even goes down to sanitation. You know, you got your public works department, you got your sanitation department, you got all these different departments that came together and believed in the vision and, you know, rallied behind it. So I think I'm proud of the fact that we, we created a team that was so supportive of it. Then the private sector that— and I can't say that I had a whole lot of role in bringing together those private sector investors. They brought themselves together. You know, it started out, as you mentioned, with 3, and then all of a sudden it was 5, then all of a sudden it was 10, and all of a sudden it was 15. And, you know, people, I think, have embraced downtown as that if there's anything that's happening in Florence that's worth going to, it's going to be downtown. In 2000, if you'd have said, where are you going to hold an event? Downtown, this person would list 10 different places. You know, you talk about your client who was concerned about safety. One of the first things I did was start going around speaking to service clubs, you know, trying to promote downtown. I could always tell what the first question was going to be when I opened for questions. What are you going to do about the fact that it's not safe to be down there? People aren't going to get down there, especially at night. I'm happy to say that after about 5 years, that question never ever came up again. Right. Of course, then the park question was, where are we going to park? Because parking was not a problem when you didn't have your businesses down there. Well, certainly now with 2 parking garages and the surface lots, that issue has been addressed too. But so, as I say, Chip, I really can't point to one thing. It's the whole thing of how everybody came together and worked towards a common goal. And, you know, downtown now just needs to continue to build. You know, downtowns have— as commerce changes, you know, we've seen downtowns die because people started moving to the suburbs and strip centers started. Strip centers then were affected by the opening of malls. Those two things killed downtowns. Now Malls are suffering. Downtowns are coming back. But the reality is the real gorilla in retail is online, and that's not going to stop. So downtowns, while they, they still need to be able to get as much retail as they can, the reality is it's going to be a place for entertainment, a place to live, and a place to work. As you mentioned, y'all bringing down your office. You've got to have people working downtown to give it that daytime vibrancy. You have all those restaurants. Certainly the diners at night are people who come into the downtown, but the people there for lunch, biggest part of those live—

or I mean, work—

absolutely in downtown.

So all those things coming together and just need to continue to grow on that, and I have no doubt that they will continue Well, I think that, you know, the interesting thing for me is that Florence seems to have, whether it was intentionally or otherwise, I'll give you credit, how about if I do that? Just, um, the mix ended up being right. I think that it's turned out to be that it's very symbiotic and it supports one another. We've got 15 offices in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Kentucky.. And it's fantastic to be able to bring people now into— I mean, we don't bring on a new advisor or advisory team without them coming to the home office in Florence and staying either at the Hyatt or the Hotel Florence and spending time downtown. We get so many compliments. It really has been an asset for us in recruitment. Had a conversation As you know, with Ed Hoffman, and he talked about how it's gone from being a don't— how do we reroute people around downtown to a we can have them stay there and begin to experience kind of what Florence is. Because I think there's a lot of that downtown. We've got two, two final questions. One's going to circle back something you said earlier, and that's, um, you said you were an entrepreneur since you were 10. Are entrepreneurs born or made?

Wow, I never really gave any question for that. Probably a little bit of— some people were probably made and some were born. My father was always an owner of his own business, so I guess, and so was his father, so I guess maybe some of it's genetic. But I think, you know, you can have that genetic leaning towards entrepreneurship, but if you don't have the passion, you're not going to succeed. And I think that passion is something you develop once you get in. I mean, just real quickly, my— I say 10 years old, my first entrance into entrepreneurship was my dad was in the auto glass business, and in his business there was a vending machine that had candy in there, and I'd see him go to a wholesale place to get candy that would go in the candy machine. And I said, I said, Dad, could I buy some of that candy wholesale? And then I could take it around the neighborhood and sell it to the kids for the same price in the stores, and I could make money. Well, he just thought that was wonderful. He bought me a little trailer that hooked onto my bicycle so I could do that. That was the beginning, and it just kind of went on from there, you know. And yeah, and it's all about seeing a need filling that need.

It's funny, one of the, one of the reasons I ended up in the investment business— when, when I was in high school, my granddad gave me a few shares of Coca-Cola and set it up for the dividends to be distributed so that every 3 months I'd get a check. It might have been $15 or $20, but when you're in high school and college, it always seemed to come at exactly the at the right time. And a big part for me was figuring out how in the world is it I get something out there that I'm not going to work and every now and then it sends me a check. And it's interesting how we teach kids intentionally or otherwise, a lot of times just by, by them watching, you know, I do think that, that I think that it's certainly part born. I do think it can be nurtured. And it sounds to me like you're Dad, uh, you know, again, originally probably by example, but then I'm imagining you had to get the seed money for the first round of candy from somewhere. Yeah, you know, um, nurtured that, that, and again, it served you incredibly well. Uh, and so, all right, last question. If you had to pick a fictional character, it can be a superhero, comic book, somebody out of a book, or a story, if you had to pick one character you think best represents Ray Rich, who would it be and why?

Well, you know, there's— that's tough. One that probably comes to mind only because people have said this about me— I told you I love technology, right? It'd probably be— remember the TV series MacGyver? Oh yeah, it'd probably be MacGyver. People said to me, "You can take some bubble gum and baling wire and you can make something work with it." And I can, and I've always loved doing that. So I think it would probably be MacGyver.

I like it.

Well, I don't know that he's a superhero, but he was a fictional TV character.

Oh, he was a fictional character. And now I know that if I'm ever stuck somewhere with a paperclip and duct tape, I hope that you're somewhere to call.

And if it would be somebody on TV that wasn't fictional, It would probably be the guy, I can't remember his last name, his first name is Marcus, that has the show The Profit.

Lamonis.

Where he goes in and helps businesses. Because that's one of the things I loved about downtown revitalization, helping small business people, you know, teaching, showing them how they could be more successful.

That's very rewarding to me. That's awesome. Well, Ray, thanks for spending some time with me.

Chip, thank you for inviting me. It's been enjoyable.

Me too.