Today we’d like to introduce you to Peter Tokar.
Hi Peter, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
When you grow up in a Navy family and are constantly moving around the country every 3 years or so, you learn to adapt quickly to your new environment. Adaptability continued to be a necessary trait for me as I continued into my professional journey. I graduated in 2002 from Liberty University with a degree in mass communications and graphic design. I had planned to join the ranks of the Mad Men and be a world-class ad executive for a top agency in New York. Following the events of September 11th, that dream quickly faded as marketing and ad positions previously available in the city shut down overnight. With my degree in hand, I relocated from Virginia down to South Florida to move back in with my parents and try to find my professional pathway. I did odd jobs for the next year and a half, from outdoor sales, yes, in Florida, to selling promotional products. Advertising was not working out.
During college, I worked at Outback Steakhouse and made significantly more money than I was currently making, so I made a pivot in my professional journey and returned to hospitality. I started as a server for Hard Rock Café in Fort Lauderdale. Our restaurant location was chosen to move to the newly build Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, and I was promoted to a manager where I worked for the next 4 years. Working in a 24-Hour casino is a tough gig. After a year or so of the 4 pm to 4 am shift, I decided it was time to pivot again. I did what college grads do that cannot find work…I went back to school and got my master’s degree (MBA) from Nova Southeastern University.
Part of the graduate requirements for NSU was an internship. My mother, at the time, was the CEO of a local chamber of commerce, and she helped me find a paid internship with the City of Miramar, FL, in the economic development department. I had no idea what economic development was, but it was a rare, paid internship, so I took it. As it turns out, the internship brought me back full circle to my beginning as my duties for the internship was to do graphic design and create the community brochures and flyers for the city. The department director Gus took me under his wing and showed me what economic development was, and gave me my first job in what has turned out to be my career in economic development.
Fast forward to today, almost 20 years later, and I have had the privilege to serve many different communities and see the amazing transitions that happen through economic development. My current role as President of the McKinney Economic Development Corp. brought me to Texas in 2018. Economic development is a unique field of work and very diversified in scope. Our organizations serve as a marketing and sales vehicle to promote McKinney as a business and lifestyle destination to relocating and expanding companies. We serve as a local business assistance organization to help companies grow and expand. We recruit these companies to create new local job opportunities in our community. We are a vehicle that helps generates new streams of tax revenue for the city to provide safety, infrastructure, and amenities for our residents to enjoy.
My philosophy for economic development throughout my career has been one focused on innovation. If we want to be the best community, region, state, country…we need to be constantly challenging the status quo. I challenge myself and my staff to never be satisfied with the way it is; think in terms of what it SHOULD BE and how it could be better. I want our city and our organization to be leaders in our field, not followers. That is how we will maintain our competitive edge move McKinney into the future.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
For the first 10 or so years, I rode the struggle bus to work every day. Coming out of college, you expect that after this big investment in yourself to place you in a more marketable position to succeed, the road ahead is a smooth one. However, I struggled to get a job after college, let alone one that made a livable wage. I lived with my parents for a very long time until I could actually afford to be out on my own. As an adult and college grad, living with your parents at 25 is not the coolest thing. Then returning to, of all things, working in a restaurant to make a living after spending $80K on your education is a hard thing to do. Now, I will say that I believe that every person living should work in a restaurant for at least one year. Seeing the amount of work it takes to make a positive guest experience in a restaurant is something everyone needs to experience to fully appreciate service staff at restaurants. Be kind to your servers and always tip 20%. But again, it was a struggle. There are so many more things I could share, but struggles and challenges are a part of life. As I mentioned before, the beginning of my journey is nowhere near where I am now. However, every shift, every pivot, every time I had to adapt to a new environment better prepared me for the journey ahead. The sum of my experiences has led me to where I am today. Even though you may have to change midstream, the experience you get from each leg of the journey better equips you for something in the future.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As I mentioned before, Innovation is my niche in our industry. Economic development is a funny industry. We are the self-proclaimed change agents in a community. We bring new, exciting, sometime controversial projects and developments to evoke positive change and growth in our communities. However, as an industry ourselves, we are some of the most resistant to change. My goal and part of my innovation philosophy is to first challenge economic development to make sure that we are doing things the best we can. I have been an advocate within our professional industry organizations to innovate as well as the communities I have served to innovate. Some examples of innovation. In 2014, my community won the Economic Development “Best in Show” top award for the year from the International Economic Development Council for our production of a community brochure that incorporated Augmented Reality. Up to that point, few communities had even heard of augmented reality, and no other community had ever used it in proportional materials. This is an example of seeking out new and innovative ways of presenting our community that no one else had done.
Here in McKinney, we have pioneered the first ever “Innovation Fund,” that is a grant program supporting early-stage start-up tech companies. Traditional economic development funds are used for large corporate recruitments or expansions and can be in the tens of millions of dollars. We decided to go against the grain and start supporting the small companies that have the potential to grow into large companies in the future. Communities all over will market that they support innovation and entrepreneurship, but it stops there, at support. We out our money where our mouth is and found a way to fund these companies, not just develop marketing rhetoric. To date, we have funded over 30 start-up companies, and that number is growing every month.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
“If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.”
-Neil Gaiman
I think that about sums it up.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://uniquemckinney.com/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petertokar/
