Ep21: High-Value Public-Private Multidimensional Developments with Hollie Zajicek
The Investing in Iowa ShowAugust 13, 202419:42

Ep21: High-Value Public-Private Multidimensional Developments with Hollie Zajicek

In this episode, we sit down with Hollie Zajicek to uncover the driving force behind Norwalk, Iowa's rapid growth. Learn about their ambitious projects and developments, transforming this community into a dynamic hub for residents and businesses alike. Tune in to explore the strategic vision propelling Norwalk to new heights!

What you'll learn from this episode

  • Significant developments in Norwalk and how they are shaping the city's future

  • Economic development vs. community development

  • Reasons why Norwalk stands out as a desirable location for both businesses and residents

  • Insights into how Norwalk has navigated economic challenges

  • Projects, announcements, and potential major developments in the Southwest Development Corridor

Resources mentioned in this episode

About Hollie Zajicek

Hollie Zajicek is the Economic Development Director for the City of Norwalk, Iowa. With a diverse background that spans health and fitness, community development, and economic development, Hollie brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective to her role. She has been instrumental in driving significant projects such as Norwalk Central and the Southwest Development Corridor, which are pivotal in boosting the city's commercial and industrial growth. Hollie's career journey includes owning a gym in Florida, working with USDA Rural Development, and serving as Executive Director at Warren County Economic Development. Her dedication to improving Norwalk's infrastructure and fostering a thriving business environment has made her a key figure in the city's rapid development.

Connect with Hollie

Connect with us

For more insights and updates, follow us on social media and visit our website: https://theinvestinginiowashow.com/.

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_03]: We're really primed for data centers, any type of light to heavy. We really can fit anywhere in that bucket of manufacturing. We love warehouse distribution, manufacturing. We love all of those types. We're pretty heavy in the food industry. We have several different food. We like them, period, because they're good job providers.

[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_01]: From cornfields to high-rises, office to industrial, houses to hotels, and every other asset class in real estate, we cover the people, the projects, and the profit. Welcome to the Investing in Iowa Show.

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_01]: This show is for go-doers, action takers, and business owners. It's for people like you who are sick of Uncle Sam taking a huge bite of your apple. If you're looking to get ahead of what's taking place in Iowa, learn who is doing what and how you can get in on the action. You're in the right place.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Hosted by Neil Timmins, an Iowa native who has been involved in over $300 million in real estate right here in Iowa. Recording in studio from West Des Moines.

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Here's your host, Neil Timmins.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_04]: I've got Holly Zajac here with me. Holly, welcome to the show.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm excited you're here. Say, for the audience's sake, who are you? Where are you from? What do you do?

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, as you said, my name is Holly Zajac, and I am the Economic Development Director for the City of Norwalk.

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, that sounds like a big title. What does that consist of?

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_03]: So, Economic Development Director for that specific community has a lot of different moving parts and a lot of legs to it.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_03]: But I would say if I had to kind of boil it down to just a few things, it would be to grow our tax base in the city of Norwalk, increase our commercial and industrial developments, and bring in goods and services that people need and want in the community, and helping our existing businesses, of course, thrive and continue to grow.

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. Let's go back to kind of the beginning, and then we'll walk back to where things are at today. Where'd you grow up? Where are you from?

[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_03]: So, I grew up a little bit of everywhere. So, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, spent some time in Florida. My father was in the military, so we bumped around a bit, but I would say mostly in Iowa, in the Midwest.

[00:02:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Came back to the Midwest after living in Florida for 10 years as a young adult. I missed it. I missed the quality of life and my family and sisters were having kids and all that good stuff. So, moved back and haven't regretted it since.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Love being here.

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_04]: How'd you end up in your line of work?

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_03]: So, I originally in my early career life started out in the health and fitness industry, actually, believe it or not. And as a young'un, I owned a gym for a while in Florida, which is crazy to think about.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_03]: But I was a manager for a belly total fitness down there, which kind of led into my own fitness career, and I loved it. So, I had the business experience at that end. But as I kind of matured and wanted to come back to the Midwest, I realized that wasn't something sustainable for me or my lifestyle.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to stay in business. And I loved business and development, but ready to kind of get out of that industry on the health and fitness side. So, just did a little bit of a gear shift when I moved back to the Midwest.

[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_03]: I went back to school and kind of got into a little bit more of the community development and economic development end of things. And I first got a position with USDA, and I was in the business program side of that.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_03]: So, we helped in community development side of that. With USDA Rural Development, they have several different entities. And I worked on improving communities, giving grants and loans for various types of projects in smaller communities around Iowa.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_03]: So, that kind of piqued my interest in that development side. And then when that position ran out, it was a temporarily funded position. So, when it ran out, I found the position at Warren County Economic Development and just kind of worked my way up through the ladder there, starting out as like an office manager, just worked up into executive director.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's how I got introduced into the city of Norwalk, being one of the fastest growing cities in the metro, but also for Warren County. And about seven and a half years ago, Norwalk decided to create an economic development department. And so, I was the first director that they brought in and I switched over and off and run. Yeah.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_04]: You mentioned a couple of words, community development and economic development. What are the differences between those two things?

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Sure. Well, they do run together quite a bit. In a lot of cities or municipalities, they'll have just one department and they'll combine those two. Norwalk used to do that, but they found that it really didn't work very well because technically your community development department and your economic development department, they kind of run side by side.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Community development does a lot of the planning and zoning and building inspections, permits, that end of things, kind of the technical side of it. And then economic development does the business outreach, the recruitments, the negotiations, the development agreements.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_03]: Financial packages. So they're really related. We work together, but they're two very separate things. And you know, your education, your personality, everything's very different to run those types of industries. So they separated it and it's been great.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, it's Ava Baukamp, the investment relations manager for Neil's firm, Legacy Impact Investors. I'm inviting you to join us for our next investor workshop, our monthly legacy briefings. In these tactical Zoom calls, we cover topics and case studies for subjects such as taxes and depreciation.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Navigating macroeconomic shifts and evaluating deals as a passive investor. At each virtual workshop, we are joined by an industry guest who covers their topic in 45 minutes or less. No fluff, no pitches, just education and conversation with an expert each month.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Every workshop ends with live Q&A from Neil and our guest. All briefings happen on the last Tuesday of the month at 3 p.m. Central. If you can't make it live, recordings are sent out exclusively to those who've registered in advance.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_02]: To join us on the last Tuesday of this month, visit LegacyBriefing.com. Go to LegacyBriefing.com to register. If you're a first-time registrant, I'll send you a free resource at signup. Head to LegacyBriefing.com and I'll see you soon.

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Norwalk has grown tremendously over the course of the last seven years ever since you've been there. What are the big developments? What are the big movements taking place today?

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh gosh. Yeah. So Norwalk has just exploded in the last 10 years and we know we're not completely unique in the Des Moines metro area. Everybody has grown and done well in the metro. We're lucky to be a part of it.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_03]: But just being connected to the Des Moines metro has helped us, but it also slowed certain types of growth for Norwalk over the years. Residential has never been an issue. That has just continued to grow over the last many, many decades. I think our population grew by 43% in less than 10 years.

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_03]: So when the city council decided to create the economic development department, they said, your mission in life is to grow our business side of this community.

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_03]: They were really focused on large industrial and then any type of retail and commercial that would provide goods and services to people.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Because we have a lot of the service-based retail that most kind of well-to-do suburbs have.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, your insurance companies and your financial planners and your dentists and things like that.

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_03]: But they really wanted to have kind of the full gamut so that people that lived at Norwalk could stay there and do everything they wanted to do.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_03]: So that led into two kind of big planning efforts.

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_03]: One is called Norwalk Central and then one is our Southwest Development Corridor.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's a little bit of a newer one that we're just kind of launching right now, which is enormous.

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_03]: But the Norwalk Central project's been underway for at least five years and it's just exploded and it's been so much fun and it's just amazing.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_03]: But the basics of the Norwalk Central development is a couple hundred acres, but we've been developing, I'd say, 80 of those acres in this last year.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's designed to be this mixed-use area that's very walkable where community members and visitors can come, they can park, and they can walk and do a hundred different things while they're there.

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_03]: The focus of it or the, I guess, an anchor would be the sports campus.

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_03]: We have a really cool high-end turf sports campus that has a lot to do with Major League Baseball and some other really neat things that will be announced soon.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_03]: So that's sort of the centerpiece.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_03]: And then surrounding it is retail, restaurants, recreation.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_03]: We have a lot of announcements coming soon for different types of restaurants and adult recreation type entities that we'll be establishing there.

[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_03]: A couple hotels are building.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_03]: We have a big public trail, a public park.

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_03]: We have our Norwalk of Fame being developed in there.

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_03]: So we have some famous people from Norwalk, several.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_03]: So just a lot of components in there.

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_03]: But I would say, you know, if you drove through there right now, it's completely different than it was a year ago.

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_03]: You'll still see bulldozers and construction going on everywhere.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_03]: You come back next year, I would say it's close to being completed.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_04]: It's incredible where that is headed.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_04]: And it feels like a lot of momentum is taking place over the course of the last couple of years.

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_03]: It has been really, really wild these last few years.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_03]: We got nervous during COVID.

[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, we didn't know what was going to happen.

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, obviously it changed our economy and elections change economies and we've had all this inflation and things that have happened.

[00:08:37] [SPEAKER_03]: But thankfully, just being in Iowa, we're governed very well on the economic side and business side of things.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_03]: So we've stayed really steady.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_03]: And Norwalk and Des Moines Metro has just been able to ride those tides.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_03]: And we've done really well with it, thankfully.

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_04]: Do you expect as a result of Norwalk Central where it's headed that rooftops mean people are going to move there?

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_04]: We're going to see a population increase as a result of all the amenities that are getting added.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, for sure.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_03]: I think that, you know, our population has continued to steadily grow every year.

[00:09:05] [SPEAKER_03]: So we don't see any slowdown in that.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_03]: We've seen a little bit of a change in the number of homes or, you know, townhomes and things that have been developed over the last two years.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_03]: But it's still been very steady.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think there will be a spike in people moving because of the Norwalk Central campus area.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_03]: But overall, you know, everything that's happening in Norwalk, we have a lot of land that we can continue to expand to the south and the west.

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_03]: So we're not landlocked yet.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_03]: And so I don't see a slowdown anytime in the near future.

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_04]: Why Norwalk?

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_04]: So somebody has a choice in the city to move anywhere in the city.

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Why Norwalk?

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Why do they choose there?

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_03]: It's just really unique.

[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_03]: And probably every suburban city attached to the Des Moines Metro proper feels that way and that should.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_03]: But I do think that Norwalk's pretty unique because, you know, we share borders with West Des Moines and Des Moines.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_03]: But we have Highway 5 that kind of separates us.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_03]: So the city or the community of Norwalk still feels like its own baby.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's not just a blurred vision combining into the other suburbs.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_03]: But we're connected enough for business, for travel, for anything you need to do.

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_03]: It is super quick, super easy to get anywhere.

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_03]: We're just minutes from the airport.

[00:10:09] [SPEAKER_03]: So that makes it unique.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Our transportation network in terms of business and investment is very good because we have Highway 28 as our main north-south corridor.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Highway 5 that runs, you know, east and west that we're working on getting turned to an interstate.

[00:10:23] [SPEAKER_03]: And then, you know, just minutes from I-35.

[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_03]: So we're in a really good logistic position.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_03]: And then for development business, again, you know, we just have a lot of opportunity with land.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_03]: And then the southwest corridor, the southwest development corridor that we're working on right now, Mid-American Energy has told us that we're one of three sites in the state of Iowa that can be served with a type of electrical capacity or needs that some of these kind of mega projects require.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_03]: So we're really under a spotlight right now for that.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_03]: And the city's just been heavily investing in infrastructure, sewer, water, roads, you name it, a new water tower.

[00:10:59] [SPEAKER_03]: So we're really kind of primed for that type of investment and development.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's just a beautiful community too.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_03]: It's just rolling hills and we've got cool golf courses and lots of public amenities and trails everywhere.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_03]: So just a little bit of everything.

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_04]: On the southwest development corridor, what types of industries or buildings or, you know, in my world, real estate asset classes would you expect in there?

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Heavily industrial, it sounds like.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_03]: So we do have, I wouldn't classify what we have there now as heavy industrial, just large industrial.

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_03]: So we started out with a certified site, number one, because we're working on number two right now.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_03]: It was the first certified site in the state to reach capacity a few years ago with two big companies took up the entire 60 acre site.

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_03]: And Windsor Windows and then Michael Foods both built right at the same time.

[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_03]: And they both built about 150,000 square feet for their production facilities and they're both expanding.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Right now, Michael Foods is physically underway with their expansion to double their footprint.

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_03]: So it's just a huge facility, a wonderful global company, their subsidiary of Post.

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_03]: So that kind of kicked off our southwest, you know, industrial or development corridor area.

[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_03]: And we've been doing some road expansions to kind of head us out towards I-35.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_03]: So south of that newer road that we've developed, there's just a ton of land.

[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, thousands of bakers between us and 35 that we're looking at for development.

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_03]: And we're really primed for data centers and any type of, I'd say, light to heavy.

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_03]: We really can fit anywhere in that bucket of, you know, manufacturing.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_03]: We love warehouse distribution, manufacturing.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_03]: We love all of those types, you know, building supplies.

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_03]: We're pretty heavy in the food industry.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_03]: We have several different food production companies.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_03]: So we like them, period, because they're good job providers.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_03]: It's great with the tech.

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_03]: They're steady.

[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_03]: They hang in there really well with the economic highs and lows.

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_03]: But data centers are really taking a heavy interest in us right now, which is exciting

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_03]: because we were not last on the list on the metro, but we were one of those communities.

[00:12:52] [SPEAKER_03]: They're kind of locating everywhere in the metro.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_03]: And now all of a sudden it's Norwalk.

[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_03]: And they all realize we have this power capacity.

[00:12:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Before it was all about water capacity and that's shifted.

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, they're starting to engineer things to where it's more about the power.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_03]: So we're ready for that.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_04]: That's exciting.

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Especially exciting for me.

[00:13:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Both from a development standpoint, a lot of money get put in those things.

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_04]: They generate a whole lot of tax revenue.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And high quality jobs, you know, instead of 300 low wage, you know, entry level jobs,

[00:13:18] [SPEAKER_03]: they'll have 60 jobs that are engineering and, you know, architectural and you name it.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_03]: So it's good.

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_03]: It's good for us.

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[00:13:58] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm kind of curious.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to go back.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_04]: How has owning a gym in your past, being a business owner and or being in fitness served you well in what you do today?

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I am sad that I'm no longer as heavily involved in fitness.

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, that changes over time.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_03]: But the business end of it, you know, being a business owner at such a young age, I learned how to do a lot of things through a lot of mistakes.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_03]: I think that everybody that works for government, whether city level or up to federal, should somewhere in their lifetime have either managed, you know, something in the private industry or own something in the private industry.

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_03]: Because you have a completely different understanding of what it's like to invest, to risk, to put everything on the line to create or establish a business in the community.

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_03]: And it's just a different reflection on how things work in the world when you're not just working for a government entity.

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, you're spending other people's dollars on the community, on the people.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_03]: But at the same time, it's just a different feeling when it's your own.

[00:14:57] [SPEAKER_03]: That's your risk and your investment completely different.

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_04]: What are you most excited about this year?

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of just fun things we'll be announcing over the next several months with Norwalk Central.

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I kind of mentioned the Major League Baseball touches there.

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_03]: There's some really cool things going on in there with that.

[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_03]: There's a collegiate team that has just been established through the sports campus owners because most of that's all privately owned, which is great.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_03]: So that's been announced or in the process of going to the media.

[00:15:22] [SPEAKER_03]: We have this Norwalk of Fame that we will dedicate, hopefully in the fall.

[00:15:26] [SPEAKER_03]: You know, Jason Momoa, Brandon Ralph, several Major League Baseball players from Norwalk.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_03]: So we will be doing a pretty cool dedication walk along our park in there that will have QR code that people can scan.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_03]: These little stands with the star and then the star themselves will pop up in a hologram and explain their connection to Norwalk.

[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_03]: So we'd like to do a lot of firsts in Norwalk, first in the metro, and that'll be a first.

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_03]: And we have a first Iowa Amazon Go store, which is pretty cool, located there in the sports campus area as well.

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_03]: And then we will have a really large announcement coming, I would say, maybe in the next four to six months within that Southwest development corridor that we're working with a group right now that would be a major game changer for the whole metro, not just Norwalk.

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_03]: So that's pretty exciting.

[00:16:11] [SPEAKER_04]: I love it.

[00:16:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Leave us on a cliff, Aner.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_04]: I know, sorry.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, no.

[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_03]: I hate that.

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_04]: I love it.

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_04]: You and I both know when you're working in development, a lot of times they're hush-hush as you're starting to put projects together, especially when they're very significant.

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm excited to deal with what transpires there.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of confidential names that we code projects under and even within the city staff will get frustrated with their department if we can't say names.

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_03]: But it's not worth the risk of losing that project until they're ready to announce.

[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Correct.

[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_04]: They make major impacts.

[00:16:41] [SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Final three.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_04]: You ready for this?

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Sure.

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_04]: If you had to give one piece of advice to your 20-year-old self, what would it be?

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, gosh.

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe try to have a little bit more fun and not just so much work, although I am glad that I worked super hard to get where things have come to today.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_03]: But probably would have just tried to enjoy youth a little bit more and not been so focused on business.

[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_03]: So that would be one.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_03]: You said three?

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_04]: That's good for there.

[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_04]: I got three questions in total.

[00:17:11] [SPEAKER_04]: So two books that changed your life.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, the Bible.

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_03]: I will go there first.

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_03]: First, definite life changer for anyone who ever reads it.

[00:17:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_03]: So then the other one would probably be Atlas Shrugged.

[00:17:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Good one.

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Number three.

[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_04]: If you were cast away at an island for a year, you can only get three pieces of information each month about your job, about your business, about how things are going in your world.

[00:17:33] [SPEAKER_04]: What three things must you know?

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_03]: How the business they're doing that I helped establish.

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_03]: If the project's underway when I left, completed.

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_03]: And how my team is doing.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Holly, I've asked a lot of questions here.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_04]: This has been terrific.

[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_04]: I know you and I could talk for a long time.

[00:17:50] [SPEAKER_04]: What's one question I didn't ask, but I should have asked?

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_03]: What city I think is the best city in the Des Moines metro area?

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm kidding.

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_03]: I love them all.

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm friends with all of them.

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_04]: But when you have kids, yours are the best, right?

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_03]: You know?

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:18:06] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:18:06] [SPEAKER_04]: For people, they want to find you.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_04]: They want to follow you.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_04]: They want to connect with you.

[00:18:09] [SPEAKER_04]: They want to reach out to you and the city.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_04]: What should they do?

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Where should they go?

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:18:12] [SPEAKER_03]: So our website is really easy to connect with any of us.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_03]: We have our cell phone numbers, our emails, everything listed.

[00:18:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Each department has its own page.

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_03]: My email address is super easy.

[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_03]: It's hollyz at norwalk.iowa.gov.

[00:18:25] [SPEAKER_03]: And again, my cell phone's listed.

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_03]: That's an easy way to get a hold of us.

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_03]: We are always willing to connect.

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_03]: We'd like to talk to anybody about anything they want to communicate the city's happenings.

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Or interest in the community.

[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_03]: And we have a website called norwalkcentral.com.

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_03]: So if they're just specifically interested in development in that area, I would check that

[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_03]: out for sure.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_04]: What's the URL for the city's website?

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_03]: It's norwalk.iowa.gov.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_04]: Perfect.

[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_04]: Link will be below in the show notes for everybody.

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Holly, thanks for being here.

[00:18:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much.

[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for listening.

[00:18:54] [SPEAKER_04]: If you're enjoying the show, may I ask a favor of you?

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_04]: Naturally, subscribe so you never miss an episode.

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_04]: But would you rate and leave an honest written review on Apple Podcasts?

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_04]: It does a lot for us here at the show.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And I appreciate reading your thoughts.

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Great guests make for a great show.

[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_04]: If you know of another Iowan who would be a great guest, or you yourself have interest

[00:19:15] [SPEAKER_04]: in being a guest, well, get on our radar.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Visit Investing in Iowa to fill out an application or recommend a guest.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_04]: And if you want to connect with me one-on-one, go LegacyImpactInvestors.com.

[00:19:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Click on the Invest With Us button in the top right corner.

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And there, you can pick a time for the two of us to get on the calendar and connect.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Until next time, keep investing in Iowa.

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