 Well, good morning. Good afternoon or good evening. Whatever you're listening. This is Davisville on KDRT LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. We live at KDRT.org online. I'm Bill Buchanan, and I thank you for tuning in. Well, so have you heard about the book of lists? Did you even know that they exist? They do. There's one for the Greater Sacramento region as well as for other large cities and metros nationwide and they collect information about the region's economy. Not just statistics that might interest an accountant, but also lists like minority or women-owned businesses or largest employer in Yolo County or fastest growing businesses. You can learn a lot about an area by reading them. You can find a job. You can make a connection. And my guest today has helped create them for 36 years in our area, Sharon Haverneck, who is retiring as senior director of research for the Sacramento business journal at the end of 2020. The lists create a different way of looking at the region, and we'll take that different look today. Sharon, thank you for appearing on Davisville today. Oh, well, you're welcome. I'm glad to be here. And of course, we're doing this interview by Zoom like I have been since March. So people might hear odd background noises that just goes to the territory these days. I do want to mention at the start that I worked with Sharon at the journal from 1998 to 2006. I was managing editor or editor for seven of those years, although I've had no connection with the paper since then. American City Business Journals owns the Sacramento publication and it creates these lists at its outlets nationwide as part of its reports on the areas economic and business news. So that's the overall backdrop to what these things are, but now we'll get into more the story of the lists. So Sharon, could you start by just giving us an overview of the lists? How many there are, how you create them, maybe some samples of your favorite topics? Okay, well over the 36 years, I figured it out today that we covered roughly 225 topics. We don't do 225 topics each year as some of them make them and go. There are some that's what we call perennials, you know, we might have law firms, accounting firms, largest private companies, those we do every year. Now, my favorite lists are those that require that businesses have their headquarters in our local area. I think that's really important to focus on the local businesses as much as possible, the homegrown ones. And those lists are the private companies, fast to scrolling, also public companies, but there aren't very many public companies in our area. And then banks and credit unions, which those two lists have shrunk quite a bit over the years. A lot of mergers. So those are just some of my favorites. And so there's a couple things there we should mention, the public versus a private company. A public company is one where you can basically buy stock and privately means it's privately held. And I remember this from my own days at the business journal. The reason it matters if a company is headquartered here is because where the headquarters are, that's sort of where its heart is in lots of ways. That's where you get the people who make decisions. And so if you're looking to create a certain presence in the region, if you, you know, it matters if the headquarters is there because then that's where the CEO is or the other leaders. That's the gist of it, right? Right. Now, even just from that little bit you said there, you can see how these lists start to tell a story, like how there's fewer banks and such than there were before, the consolidation. And the fastest growing list, I imagine that's one that's changed a lot over the years. Back in the dot-com boom era, there would have been lots of little companies that went up like fireworks and maybe not lots, but some only only to vanish a little later along with that whole sort of enthusiasm. Well, we do have companies that appear on the list and then, you know, next year or two, you know, they're gone. But it's interesting that you bring up the dot-com and a lot of the companies being on, you know, those kinds of companies being on the list. I think that was a lot of our assumption in doing the lists earlier, but actually it's always a good variety, including companies that have been around for a long time, which was surprising. But, you know, they've been around for a long time. They obviously know how to do business and grow. These are researched lists. You know, we're all familiar perhaps of, you know, like the sort of popularity contest that newspapers will have, you know, favorite place to get coffee in town or something like that, and people just vote. But in this case, you're really looking at the statistics. You're wanting validation, not just someone says they're really growing quickly, but something that really substantiates it. Could you go into that a little bit? How do you validate? Most of the lists that are surveyed, we do have to trust the people from the companies who are providing the information. The fastest growing list, though, is one where we have an accounting firm that works with us. And they look at the information that companies base their reporting on and agree the numbers. I have to say agree the numbers because review is kind of a legal term and they don't actually do that, but they agree that the numbers that are being reported are reflected in the documents that they look at. So that's how that one's verified. And for fastest growing, that is a very popular list. And we certainly have to be on the lookout for companies that are trying to get on the list that don't belong. I've had to kind of go through the process and then all of a sudden I realize, hey, wait a minute, this company isn't really based here or it's a subsidiary of a company based elsewhere. They get booted off. That happens. Maybe people can hear this in your voice, but I'll just say it. One of the things I liked working with you was your sense of humor in that you took these lists seriously. You wanted these things out of real integrity, but you also sort of laughed at some of the ways that people might try to get around you and then you did your best to not let them do it. Right, right. This makes me how are you able to keep the job for 36 years. I don't know. Right. Well, one thing I have to say is that overall I'm impressed with the honesty of a lot of the companies that report their numbers and they try to be very careful and that is very gratifying. Now there are some lists that I've had problems with where we get phone calls that so-and-so is not telling the truth or they're including, you know, an office that's based elsewhere, that sort of thing. And because most of the lists, we just look at what the local office does. Companies can have their headquarters elsewhere. I mean, the majority of the list companies have their headquarters elsewhere. And so I did have one company that I received a complaint about. They were fairly high on the list and someone called me and said, I really think that they're reporting their office in the Bay Area. They're including that information. And so I called that company three or four times and never got a response. And I said, well, if they're not going to answer my question and verify that they only reported local information, then they're off the list. And so they weren't on the list at all. So you have lists every week. The book of lists collects them at the end of the year. And in fact, some weeks, you have more than one list. Correct. So you're constantly, all year long, you and then you've had people work with you to research and chase down this data. Right. Yeah. Over the years, depending what other duties were involved in the research department, I mean, it's really changed in the beginning. I had assistants that would go out and collect business licenses and they'd have to go to each entity, like to Folsom or to Davis and write down the new business licenses. And then we'd come back and report on that. And it was pretty much done by hand, but now all that is done electronically. Less footwork involved. Right. So, sorry, go ahead. This is Zoom folks. Go ahead, Sharon. Well, I was going to say that, you know, some of these chores, the internet has just made so much easier and also have made it so they can be centralized and they can just have people who specialize in collecting this stuff. So I'm not involved with those sort of things anymore. So let me ask you, you said a minute ago that like the fastest growing list is popular. Why is it popular? Why do people want to be on that list? It's an opportunity, first of all, for them to kind of showcase what they're doing. And so many of our lists are based on size and you have to be big in order to make some of our lists. And fastest growing, you can be a fairly small company and a fairly new company and, you know, make the list. We do have some requirements, but I think it was $250,000 in revenue for the base year. And so that means if we're looking at the three years, 2017, 18 and 19, that means 2017, they had to have made at least like 250,000. And that kind of weeds out the hobbyists. This is how people establish themselves. This is how they sort of become visible in the market and to each other and to their industry. Right, right. And it's just, and I think it's to be celebrated, you know, if they are growing fast, they're doing something right as a rule. You know, and I just think that's something to be celebrated. The value of the list is salespeople use them for leads. I remember economic developers would use them to see who's emerging. Competitors use them to size up rivals. And then categories emerge as the culture changes. One list that's interesting, I think, is the women-owned businesses. Could you tell us a little bit more about that one? Maybe what it says and how it's changed over the years. Did you have that when you started in 19, right, well, 36 years ago? Well, no, we didn't. And one of the things about our women-owned and minority-owned businesses is that we require that they have that certification from a government agency or from a clearing house. I'm not always sure that we always get the largest women-owned businesses by doing it that way, because not all women-owned businesses do get certified or minority-owned businesses actually go through the certification process. Yeah, that is kind of a sign of the times when it was, well, in California, they had set-asides for minority and women-owned businesses. I'm not quite sure how that is now, but I know that a lot of businesses still get certified and we include those. It's something that we're looking at, I think, for next year. If that's the way we're going to continue to do those lists, if we're going to require that certification or just maybe require some sort of validation where they say that I declare that I'm a woman-owned business, at least for videos, that sort of thing, rather than actually going through the certification process. The certification, it's a process, but the reason you go through it is because you want to make sure that the company says it's owned by women, that it really is, that there's not just a false front with a woman who, at least on some piece of paper, is the owner but isn't really running it. Right, yeah. A lot of times what you might find is that California is, of course, community property state, and a lot of times they'll say, well, the husband and wife own it, and they'll say, yeah, it's women-owned, but mainly it's the husband running it, so those are the kinds of things that we're trying to be careful of when we first started the list, make sure that it really was women-owned. Yeah, and as people are looking to diversify the economy, in terms of ownership in this case, obviously something like this that is really useful. Of course, I'm an old journalist, but it strikes me listening to it, this is journalism, this is researching something and trying to validate it and present it in a way that stands up, not just a notion. Why did you make this your life's work? I mean, you've done this 36 years. Well, I would say that the short answer is I wanted to eat. I went to college to become a teacher, and it turned out that I graduated and had a job all lined up for the summer, but that June Proposition 13 passed, and there are a lot of your listeners that don't really know what Proposition 13 was and what it did, but let's just say it really devastated the funding for schools, and then the baby boom was over, and school enrollments were really declining, so you had the double whammy of drastic cuts in funding and declining enrollments, and I did a lot of substitute teaching. I held temporary contracts where they wanted me back the next year, but the enrollment declined, the position was eliminated, or one year there were like so many, quote, surplus teachers who had a lot more seniority than I did, and so they had to give the positions that were open to those surplus teachers. As it turned out, I just started applying for anything and everything. I did have a minor in journalism and English, so you know journalism certainly was of an interest to me, so I ended up a chance meeting at what was then Price Club, now Costco, with a friend and telling me about this company that was taking over the small paper capital business journal, and so I just said oh, okay. So this is maybe a story that says if you're blocked in one area, look someplace else, you might find something you really want to do. Absolutely, and it seems to have suited me. I've learned, I like to learn things, and I've learned a little bit about a lot of different things. I'm not an expert in any one area by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know certainly a little bit about a lot of different industries, and that's just been very interesting. Do a quick ID here. I'm talking with Sharon Havernick. She is the Senior Director of Research for the Sacramento Business Journal. She's held that job essentially for 36 years, and she's returning at the end of the year, and we're talking about the book of lists and the lists in general that the Business Journal puts together about this region. I'm Bill Buchanan, and this is Davisville and KDRT. Let's talk about Yolo County a little bit. One of the lists you do is like the largest employers in the counties, right? Correct. What can you tell us about the one for Yolo? Well, of course, you see Davis dominates the list. University of California, Davis, right? That's not unusual, right? To have the largest local employer be a public entity. Right. In a lot of the counties, that would be the case, and well, certainly for Sacramento County, the state is the largest employer, so, right. Yeah, so I like doing the lists that focus on an individual county because there aren't that many instances where we have a lot of representation from Yolo County, even though we cover it. And so it's nice to do that list. So the lists usually are 25 entries long, right? And so they probably get kind of really interesting the deeper you get in the list because you'll turn up things that otherwise you won't see. So is there anything on the Yolo list, anything else interesting on that list? Well, you know what, let me call it up. A lot of my stuff is back at the office because I'm working from home. Like all of us are these days. I wish I could just rattle it off the top of my head, but I can't. So I would say that for Yolo County, that the top three largest employers in Yolo County are all government related. We have the University of the state of California and you have the U.S. government. Cache Creek Casino Resort would be the largest private entity. And of course, statistics like this become useful when, well, like when a recession hits and people are trying to anticipate where it's headed, public employer tends to be affected in a different part of the cycle than a private employer. So if the largest employers are public, that sort of changes the nature of the economy. And that's the sort of thing that you find in these lists. You've made the point one time that I thought was interesting. You say sometimes the list says something interesting by omission, by what they don't say as opposed to what they do. Well, I'm not entirely sure what I was getting at when I said that to you, but what I may have been getting at is that sometimes there are companies that really belong on the list and I just can't get information from them. And you kind of wonder why. Because most of the information that I ask isn't real complicated. Generally, I'm not asking for their net income. I'm not asking what they pay their top CEO and that sort of thing. But you know, I'm asking for revenue and how many employees. And sometimes there are companies that just don't want to give it and you wonder why. Do I recall correctly that that Apple and Elk Grove was an example of that, that they really didn't want to talk much about what they have there? Yes, that is correct. Over the years, it's been difficult to get a number of employees from Elk Grove. But recently though, we have had a little bit more cooperation on that front. So, you know, if my memory is right on this, but I recall that one year to try to get a sense of it, you even looked at numbers of cars in their parking lot or how deli was across the street. Yeah, we were trying to see if that would give us any insight as to what we were guessing. The number, you know, was probably if it was was correct at all. So unfortunately, we don't have, I don't have as much time to do those sorts of things as I used to do. Well, I admire the ingenuity in any event. And the fact is that it's part of a nationwide company. So that when you then get those numbers and you go to Apple with it and say, look, this is what we have, we're going to run with this. There's some standing behind you, in other words. You know, it's not one person, one place. You're actually trying to, you've got an organization behind you that's going to Apple and saying, come on, tell us a little bit what you're doing here. We want to understand our economy. We need to know this. What's interesting is that I might get it for Sacramento one year and paper in another one of our cities. They won't get information, but I get it or vice versa. Some companies are just secretive, right? And maybe in some cases people get to know you and they trust you, but that they, that probably helps get information. One of the problems has been with companies that are publicly traded is that they become afraid to give any information that's not going to show up in their 10K, which is their annual report. They don't want to get in trouble with regulators. And I have to say that for some people, they may really see that as a legitimate reason for not wanting to share that information. But I don't think it really will get them in trouble to say how many employees they have in a city. Not going to move the price of the stock, which is what they're worried about there. What are some of the most important lists that you've done over the years? Well, absolutely. The largest privately held companies and the fastest growing, I really think those are very important and the largest employers. And then I would say a lot of our construction lists, those are very popular, whether it's general contractors or you know, solar contractors, you know, those tend to be very popular. And I think the list of construction projects that we publish each year, I have a list of private projects, a list of publicly funded projects. And then of course we have the downtown projects. And I think those are important as, you know, historians later on look at what was going on in Sacramento. They can see where a lot of the growth was happening, you know, the major growth and, you know, where money was being spent on projects. Well, yes. And in fact, those lists are another way to sort of read the list. If you go through that and look at the construction projects, they're the largest projects in the region, you will get a pretty clear sense of where a lot of the growth is occurring, where a lot of the economic activity is occurring. Davis does not usually make that list. Because here in Davis, Davis doesn't really want to be on a list like that actually. But there are projects at the university that do make the list. Well, that's true. I mean, that's nothing is really a black and white in that regard. But typically, yeah, it'll be the boom towns of the Roseville's and Folsom perhaps and Rancho Cordova. Are there any lists, any ideas you've tried that just failed didn't work? Well, I will throw these two out. I wouldn't say that they were actual failures because we didn't get a list together. It was published, but maybe we shouldn't do that again. We had, we did Bingo Pollers, I think for three years back in the 80s. And then we also did a list of lottery retailers, which we thought, oh, everybody's got, you know, gonna want to know this. We did that once. It was hard to do because, you know, calling up these retailers that had sold the most tickets, you know, weren't always forthcoming with information about their establishment. But we published the list and I kind of got the idea from probably another market. And then later I found out that when they did the list and believe it was Buffalo, there was a series of robberies. And the police figured out that the robbers were going down the list because they figured that these retailers had the most money on hand. And so I, you know, I thought about that and I said, you know, I really don't want to be responsible for some poor minimum wage worker getting a gun in his face, you know. Well, and I could see that's, that's where the information you get isn't worth the problem it's causing for these businesses. Right. Yeah, that just, yeah, that one was what we didn't do again. So is someone going to take over for you? I mean, the list aren't ending, I'm sure. Yes, somebody will. I don't know who. The job has been, the job is open. But as time goes on, the position changes and the company has been focusing more on data analytics and getting somebody who can do a lot of real, you know, crunching from various other databases. And so the position will be called a data reporter. And, and that is open. So if anybody wants to apply. Well, so there'll still be lists, but I also sense that there's a turn in the road here. It's going from collecting the data, and you were saying earlier, even back to, you know, talking to Dellys, to more about looking at databases and trying to analyze what's in there and what does that mean, things like that. I suppose that's a natural evolution. Right. And let's see. One last quick, because we're right at the end actually, but I wanted to ask, all right, do you, you're retiring any particular, I mean, are you done with things like this, or is there some way you keep going with data in retirement? Well, I really feel an obligation to sit down and gather all those family stories that my mother wrote and also told me about and to get that down as well as the family history. I never had children of my own. So it's not for me, but it's for my nieces and nephews and and it's a very interesting, I think, history, especially in California. So So Sharon, as we end, it makes me think that you're a little bit of a historian here. You've done that with the list, and now you'll do it with your own family. Right. That is correct. History. Sharon, thank you for talking with us today. Sharon Havernak, who is retiring as Senior Director of Research for the Sacramento Business Journal. You're welcome. Bye-bye. And I'm Bill Buchanan. This is Davis Phil on KDRT. Thanks for