A Conversation With Global Location Strategies President and CEO Didi Caldwell

Few people have a broader view of South Carolina’s economic development than Didi Caldwell. As president and CEO of Global Location Strategies (GLS), she advises manufacturers and industrial companies on where to invest, giving her a front-row seat to the forces reshaping the state’s economy — from the competition for industrial sites and infrastructure challenges to workforce shortages and the rapid rise of data centers.

According to Caldwell’s bio, Caldwell also has built GLS into one of North America’s leading site selection and incentive negotiation firms. A veteran of nearly three decades in the industry, she led the spinout of the firm’s consulting practice from Fluor and has overseen its growth into a nationally recognized advisory company.

In a conversation with Integrated Media Publishing editor David Dykes in her Greenville office, Caldwell discussed South Carolina’s economic outlook, the challenges of managing growth, and the leadership lessons she’s learned while building her business. The following excerpts have been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Compared to North Carolina, Georgia, how are we doing, do you think?

Caldwell: We are punching well above our weight, and I would say in relative terms stronger, at least over the last decade or so, than North Carolina and Georgia. We are at a point, an inflection point, however, where South Carolina is still a relatively small state, both in terms of population and in terms of land mass. And so we’ve gotten to a point where all the good sites are gone. This is not uniquely a South Carolina problem, but because we are a little bit smaller, I think experience it more acutely. There’s been so much investment in big box distribution, large manufacturing, and now data centers that we have a dearth of good industrial sites.

And just like a lot of places, we’re struggling with how to deal with the power demands that have come on through electrification, large manufacturing, and ultimately data centers, which is the big thing. And we’re pretty constrained from a labor perspective. Now the South Carolina Technical College System is one of the best in the country, and so I think we’re doing a really good job at matching companies with the talent that they need, but the technical college cannot manifest people, right? And people are moving here for sure, but then that also brings into question of quality of life and do we have enough housing? And then I think ultimately we’re dealing with a NIMBY (not in my back yard) problem. Lots of places are doing this, but South Carolina, because of the rapid growth and all of the residential development, commercial development, then you add on manufacturing and big box distribution and data centers, and much like other places in the country, there’s a groundswell of resistance to growth.

… And it’s, you know, a place like South Carolina that’s experiencing growth on many different levels. It’s starting to feel crowded. And so the expectation that you would see that kind of sentiment is not unexpected.

It’s just, how do we put that into the right context? Because I feel like a lot of it is just reaction. I was at a dinner the other day, and someone that’s not in this industry said — we were talking, and they’re like, well, just don’t bring any data centers. I was really curious why she said that. Where was that emotion coming from? Because she was the first to admit that she really didn’t understand what data centers do and how they impact the community and that sort of thing. It’s sort of in the ether.

Q. In talking to CEOs, I hear two things. One is the urban versus rural divide in South Carolina. Urban areas are doing well, rural areas are not. And the Federal Reserve of Richmond has done some studies on that. Do you think that that’s still an issue, a challenge, or is that starting to balance out, do you think?

Caldwell: I think ever so slowly it is starting to balance out. And I think what you have is a difference between exurban and rural. So if you’re in Dacusville, that’s rural, but it’s really exurban because you’re not that far outside of Greenville. And I would say that Pickens County and Dacusville, and if you’ve driven through Pickens lately, you know that Pickens is doing pretty well. But if you go to places like Blackville or Barnwell or, you know, that are not really close enough to an urban center to be called exurban. Like Walterboro, for example, I think falls into the exurban for Charleston. But by the time you get to that, like, you know, Dillon County. I mean, these are places that haven’t really benefited from some of the growth of the urban areas.

Q. Dillon is still one of the poorest counties in South Carolina.

Caldwell: Yeah. And they have that inland port there, which, you know, we were hopeful that that would spur some activity. But I mean, this is kind of getting philosophical now, but I do think that there’s an opportunity there to form public-private partnerships. Because if we’re out of manufacturing sites elsewhere, and what we really need — a lot of times in these rural areas is that we have land, we might have power. We don’t have a ton of gas, natural gas, in the Pee Dee area, but there is some gas. So as long as it’s not a huge gas user. There’s two things that really hold them back: water and wastewater infrastructure, which tends to be very small systems that are not very robust, cannot handle industrial load, and just a small labor pool.

So if we could figure out how to solve those two problems, which I do feel like we could have like a statewide infrastructure program to improve water and wastewater infrastructure. And I feel that communities could do public-private partnerships with developers to build residential, multifamily, single-family, to be able to attract workers to those locations. Because if you build something in Dillon County and you don’t have enough workers, even if the workers want to move there, they can’t because there’s just not available housing.

Q. Let’s talk about leadership. Tell me what your leadership philosophy is. How do you lead?

Caldwell: My leadership philosophy is hire really good people, set the vision, and empower them to do their best. My leadership style is very much navigator and authoritarian, so the closest I can equate that to is being a general. And if you think about a general – a general has to inspire the troops to go in and risk their lives and go into battle. And I think that I’ve been very fortunate to have those kinds of attributes where I can inspire people. I have a vision and I can inspire people to get on board with me. And then when you get into battle, you need a general to make decisions and tell people what to do. And I’m good at that, but that’s also a drawback of my leadership style because it’s not very much about coaching and mentoring. It’s not often compassionate. And I’ve had my business for 18 years, and it started out small and I didn’t really understand that much about leadership. I didn’t understand what my style was. I didn’t understand how to model good leadership. It’s not that I didn’t come in contact with really good leaders over time, but I wasn’t in close enough contact with them to, or under them long enough to really see like, what made them a good leader and how did that relate to me.

… For me, I know that I have weaknesses. I know that I have strengths and I have things that I’m not really good at. I think I was really fortunate at the beginning. I’ve sort of developed it more into a skill now of how to identify and foster good talent to allow them to round out our leadership team because it really does take an entire team to lead a company.

Q. But you describe yourself as authoritarian.

Caldwell: Yeah, I know that sounds really terrible, doesn’t it?

Q. No, but it sounds like, from what you’re saying about having a good team and nurturing people and bringing people along, but if you’re authoritarian, you draw the line somewhere.

Caldwell: Yes, absolutely. We run on EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System – this is our 4th year – and it has completely transformed our business. And it puts into place a structure, and you don’t need EOS to do this, but for me, not coming from an organization where I learned about structure and accountability and how you solve issues and, you know, how do you establish goals and milestones and things like that, EOS puts in place this structure that was really, really hard to adapt to because we were a very entrepreneurial company. It was just whatever I wanted to do. But when Covid hit, we had seven people. Two years later, we had 15, and everybody was reporting to me, and all the decisions were coming to me, and I was a bottleneck. I couldn’t think fast enough. I didn’t know enough what was going on, and I was sort of drowning. And so we implemented EOS. That allowed me to set up an accountability structure so that I could elevate some of the people that had been on my staff and also bring some other people in so that now not all decisions come to me.

So, I’m authoritarian. I’m the owner of the company, so ultimately I get the last say. But there are lots and lots and lots of decisions that don’t ever hit my desk, and they don’t need to because I have really great people that are working for me that are doing all the right things, and they are totally capable of making those decisions.

Q. How many people do you have working for you now?

Caldwell: Twenty-six. We have our principals, who you might think of as like, partners in a law firm, or accounting firm, or something like that. They’re not partners from the standpoint of 'they’re equity owners.' But they’re account managers. They’re responsible for sales and the execution of large projects. Then we have our consulting group which consists of project managers and consultants and analysts. And then we have kind of back office.

Q. If you could go back over your management career and do one thing differently, what would that be?

Caldwell: It would be really easy for me to say implement EOS earlier, but I think that the real root of that is that I would have studied either through more reading about managing a business or through using coaches. I also belong to a founders board here that I’ve been in for probably eight years or something like that. It’s called the Growth Factor Board, and I’ve been in that for about eight years and that was probably the first time, so I was 10 years in at that point, and that was really the first time that I started thinking about, hey, maybe there’s more of an art. I’m not thinking enough about the art of running a business. I’m just focused on getting the work, executing it, collecting money. I’m not necessarily thinking about the people issues. And when you’re only five or six people, it’s manageable. But once you get above 10, it just becomes — every person you add adds an exponential layer of complexity because there’s 10 times as many interconnections. Whereas when you’re four or five people, you just walk around the office and you talk about things.

Q. As good as you are at a variety of things, do you still have a tough time delegating?

Caldwell: I have FOMO. I don’t have a tough time delegating, but I have a tough — I don’t know everything that happens in the company now, and that’s by design. I am the visionary. I am supposed to be out of the day-to-day business. I’m supposed to be thinking about our strategic direction, working on key accounts, making sure that we are front and center in the minds of the industry and our clients, and that’s my role. But I also have FOMO because I want to know about all the things, because there’s like, really cool and exciting things going on, and we’re actually going through a bit of a transition right now where our accountability chart, which is just another way of saying organization chart, but our accountability chart, all of the leadership positions are filled — and nobody is sitting in two seats. And so before, you know, we had Tess leading consulting, but she was also still a principal. Sarah was leading business development, but she was also still a principal. Now we have a VP of revenue, a VP of consulting, which is Tess, and we have a CFO who’s a fractional CFO but is sitting in that role.

And then in EOS you have an integrator, which is like chief operations officer. All of those seats are full. So the company could run without me. I could disappear and it would be fine.

Q. But would you be fine?

Caldwell: Well, that’s what I was coming to. We’re in this period of evolution and we’ve reached this new level where I could disappear, but we haven’t retooled the organization about how to best use me and how to get the benefit of my 28 years of experience and networks and things like that. So we’re sort of finding our way there, and it’s as much a me problem as it is the organization, because I’m like, I want to be involved in everything, you know, because I have great ideas and my working geniuses are innovation and discernment. And so I really like to be involved in the front end, and a lot of times I’m just getting reported to on the back end, and I’m like, “Yeah, but what about?” And they’re like, “We’ve already resolved this.”

So we’re just trying to figure out how to manage that transition, but I think it’s evidence of the maturation of the company.

Q. Did you have a mentor that you were particularly fond of or who taught you more than others?

Caldwell: The first thought that comes to mind is Gary Bernardez. He is CEO of AMECO. They were a wholly owned subsidiary of Fluor, but they’ve been spun off into a separate company now. And I knew him throughout my career at Fluor. I actually went to work for him when I initially left the Site Selection Group. When I started my own company, he was the first one to welcome me back into Fluor and provide me, you know, kind of a sponsorship. And so I really admired him and appreciated the way that he was a big thinker. And then the other person would be my — I initially had a partner whose name was John Sisson. And we had worked together at Fluor, and he had started his own company, and he finally looked at me, he’s like, “why don’t we start our own company? Why don’t we form a partnership?” And at the time, like, I never dreamed I was gonna be an entrepreneur. That was not— it was not on the radar screen. It was just that I had a unique opportunity, it was a unique moment in time. I didn’t realize that I was launching into the world’s worst recession since the Great Depression, because this was in January of 2008.

But it was one of those things I was like, well, now’s a good time as any, even though I was recently divorced and had two young children. But all of those things aside, I took that leap.

And John and I — he was the perfect partner for me at that time. I don’t think I would have had the courage nor the — I needed a thought partner. I needed somebody to share the load with, and he’s old enough to be my father. He’s actually a year younger than my father. He was the perfect partner for me at that time as both a mentor and as an accomplice. And how are we going to figure this thing out? And he was with me till about 2013 in a full capacity, and then I acquired his shares. But yeah, I don’t think without John’s friendship and companionship would I have been able to get to the point that I am today.

Q. What are your goals for the company for the next five years, and you personally?

Caldwell: In the next five years, we really want to establish ourselves, and I think we’re well on our way, but we want to be known as the preeminent North American firm for location advisory services.