Former Commerce director discusses new role, Oklahoma’s untapped potential

After leading the Oklahoma Department of Commerce for more than four years, Brent Kisling stepped down in June to pursue new endeavors. Before the appointment from Gov. Kevin Stitt, Kisling served as executive director of the Enid Regional Development Alliance and state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Program. Velocity recently sat down with Kisling to discuss his next move and where Oklahoma still has opportunities to grow.

Velocity OKC: When you look back at your time with the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, what are you most proud of?

Brent Kisling: I was at the Department of Commerce for four years and six months, which made me the longest-serving director of commerce in state history. It's not one of those positions that typically somebody has been in for a long time. I absolutely loved it and coming out of local economic development, I was the only commerce director who had ever been a local economic developer. So that gave me a little bit of a unique perspective.

There are three things I'm really proud of. Number one is I really wanted to build a strong bridge between the state Department of Commerce and the local communities, specifically local economic development organizations and chambers. I feel like we did that. There were some specific things we did; if a company was asking for a state incentive, we required it to work with the local community to get a letter of support before we would consider it. At any of the incentive hearings, the local community had to be present as well. We kept those local connections, and I am very proud of that.

The second thing is that historically, Commerce has been known more as a recruitment agency. I wanted us to focus a lot more on our legacy companies. The best thing that came out of the last four years was a program called the Oklahoma Innovation Expansion Program which awards up to $150,000 to existing companies to expand or diversify their revenue sources. We were looking for companies that came up with a new idea that would allow them to hire more Oklahomans and invest more capital into their business. We reached a point where we were investing almost $20 million a year in that program and helping hundreds of companies every year.

Lastly, I’m proud of the actions the agency took during the pandemic. We had to figure out how to deal with something we had never seen before that was causing a significant health impact on Oklahomans but also a serious economic impact. How do you keep the economic engine warm during a time like this, and how do you rebuild an economy after everything has been shut down? I remember a phone call with a hair salon owner in Lawton. She was crying, wondering how she was going to feed her children and keep the electricity on. We're proud of the fact that we were the first state to reopen.

Velocity OKC: When you stepped down from your post at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, you said it was time to focus on new challenges. What are those challenges?

Brent Kisling: I've started my own consulting business. It's called NexTo LLC. There's three parts to it: Next to communities, next to businesses and next to people. The people side of it is a local ministry that my wife and I are involved with in Enid related to the importance of Bible reading and the study of Bible history.

On the community side, I have formed a joint venture with a company called Retail Attractions which does retail research and consulting with communities that are aggressively trying to grow. Many smaller communities, and even those suburban communities around Oklahoma City and Tulsa, do not always have a strategic focus on bringing retail to their community. They just let things happen. That is not the way retail growth happens today. Retail Attractions takes a data-driven approach bringing retail to cities. I don’t really consider retail as just a moneymaker for a city, even though it does fund cities through sales tax. It's more about quality of life. People want to live in a community where they have places they can hang out and buy things.

Then on the NexTo business part of the company, I contract specifically with Oklahoma businesses that are growing and help them with finance packages, site selection and community engagement. I get to work on projects again, which is what I love most about economic development – every project is a puzzle. Every time the phone rings, you're trying to solve somebody's issues, either trying to fill a capital gap, get a permit or prepare a site for development. There are winners and losers in this line of business, and it is extremely competitive. I absolutely love that.

Velocity OKC: As you’re working with companies, trying to match together those puzzle pieces, what are the biggest challenges they’re facing?

Brent Kisling: The biggest issue that we have in Oklahoma right now is the workforce. That's going to be true on the retail side and the business side. It’s not unemployment. The rate of 2.7% unemployment is the best in Oklahoma's history. Our issue in Oklahoma is our labor force participation rate, which is about 61%, ranking us around 40th in the nation. We have a lot of folks who are either retired, ill and disabled, or they were formerly incarcerated.

But the biggest workforce issue for us in Oklahoma today is that we have a very high percentage of folks who say they have “responsibilities at home.” These are the stay-at-home moms, dads, and people caring for aging parents or grandparents. One area that we have not recovered well in is workers in childcare facilities. We have parents on waiting lists to get childcare, and when they finally get into a facility, it’s too expensive. So, one of the parents has to stay home to take care of the children. We worked on that when I was in government, and I know they are continuing to work on it.

Velocity OKC: When we talk about Oklahoma’s future, where do you see the most opportunity?

Brent Kisling: One is with our legacy companies. There’s a lot of money flowing into energy right now that Oklahoma has not captured. There are some things we could do to capture more of this energy investment. We have 38 active rigs, and we ought to have a hundred. That would have a massive impact on our economy right now.

On the attraction side, we've always done best whenever we are laser-focused on trying to bring industries into our state. We did that with renewable energy and now we're second in the nation in wind energy production. We've done that with aerospace, which is now our second-largest employer. But the next phase for us is probably automotive, just because it fits so well with the aerospace industry. It's the same skill sets and even a lot of the same companies. The film industry, which the city has nurtured and helped grow, will be big for the next couple of years.

The other big one, especially for the city, is going to be pharmaceutical manufacturing. Oklahoma City is one of the top cities in the nation for researching molecules that are going to make you feel better. Between OMRF (Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation), OU Health Sciences Center and the private sector, there’s a lot of great research happening here. Most of those molecules get sent outside of the state where they’re turned into a syrup or injection or some other treatment. We do not make a lot of pharmaceuticals here, so that’s definitely an area for opportunity.