and fifteen county executive brian you are playing the commitment to increase the percentage of the county's workforce over the next five years with the college degree with dr wong president of mercer county community college who is leading the charge as chair of the new mercer county partnership for education attain focus on two related directives of the college expanding innovative partnerships and investing in organizational and professional effective calling a business outlook series to talk to you about some initiatives that are going on across mercer county we have a phenomenal guest dr jinping wong she's the president of mercer county community college but also a brand new initiative the mercer county partnership for educational attainment we're going to talk all about it and some opportunities for you as business owners to get involved so without any further delay going to welcome dr wong to the show thank you so very much for having me this is my first so i look forward to many more and it's really exciting to talk about the partnership for education attainment our county mercer county executive brian hughes in the state of county address in twenty sixteen announced that this partnership for education attainment project and by forming a blue ribbon the commission and i was really honored to be asked to be the chair of the blue ribbon commission and remind you i was very new on the job as the president of the murphy county community college at that time but i thought it was a great opportunity to serve this great county so i gladly accepted the appointment and after a full year of work working with businesses in the entire mercer county and beyond we conducted the survey and we hold foreigns listening to business small big medium size all across the region and we worked very closely with the two chambers of commerce major the chambre of commerce and princeton regional chamber of commerce over two hundred thirty businesses participated in a very long survey i really applaud them for their commitment it's a long survey but a yield that a lot of information and so we use the information to develop a recommendation report for the counties active she the whole report is available that we can get you the connection the link to the report but i want you to know that the state of the can address that brian hugh held just a week ago he announced the results so i was there and many people attended that event last week and we had another event business for merc cammy and he repeated the results of the report and so we're very excited to get all of you involved and take some action one of the things that i want to do i'm glad you gave that overview i want to give people a little bit of a thirty you a thirty foot view of what the county executive kind of put forth and so he kind of mixed a claimed that we're going to look to increase the count workforce that has a college degree by one percent which relatively equates to about twenty five hundred people or over the next five years yet i just wanted to kind of lay that foundation so that people know what this blue ribbon commission was formed for you absolutely right he really picked that education attainment as a one very big factor to improve the lives of mercer county residents in the success of businesses in mercer county so education attainment is really essential for the new economy the knowledge economy th information economy so many businesses have told us repeatedly that they are looking for skilled workers with educational background both technical skills and the soft skills yes so the soft skills come through the educational process technical skills also come through the educational process so the all the way of educating college educated workforce here in the county that's going to encourage businesses to want to come here and open up shop and so they hear that's exactly right because businesses may come here for tax incentives but those tax incentives will expire and what it keeps of businesses is the workforce because it's not easy to find a talented and well educated and ready workforce in this economy that's exactly right so let's not so queer little bit i want people to understand your role as to cheer because this is a blue ribbon commission there are a lot of players involved in this and so when i actually had an opportunity to come to the new jersey chamber breakfast when you presented and that room was packed full of local business owners we were all there trying to hear you know what's on the horizon so the way you laid it out it was a positive business outlook but there are also opportunities for businesses to kind of get involved so i want to talk a little bit about that for absolute so as i stated to over two hundred thirty businesses participated in the survey and then more businesses participate in the foreign so the consensus outlook of the business for the next three to five years is very positive over eighty six percent of the businesses projected moderate to impressive progress in the next three to five years is excited to hear it's a very very positive outlook and over seventy percent of businesses project that they will be hiring new employees and majority of those hires world be full time salaried employees so that's very very encouraging however over seventy percent of these businesses also report that they have difficulties finding findings killed workers so that really is a very very real challenge for all of us for government agencies for educational institutions for businesses how do we work together hands partnership so the number one and i think the most critical finding of our blue ribbon commission report says that we really really have to enhance educational attainment through intentional and the substantive partnerships between businesses government agencies and educational entities and what it means is you don't just let it go by itself you intentionally forge the partnerships and you make the partnerships really meaningful really substantive it's not just always s exactly and we say we're going to do this but it really doesn't matter whether we do it or not or i'll just give you a couple of thousand dollars to give you a scholarship for some students to go through their college but the business don't get involved what students learn and how they learn because what they learn and how they learn with directly impact their employability i think that's the most critical part of this entire initiative the piece that you just talked about here it's the student and let's not forget the adult learners group them in there as well because we talked about that or you brought that up and it was raised at that breakfast that there are a lot of seasoned professionals that are looking to get back into the workforce or you know kind of their own skills  opportunities for both of these people to be able to take advantage of these partnerships specifically through the education before i forget there are a number of there are about four or five other colleges you want to just talk a little yes the helm of this but who are we have a mercer county is really unique in the country in the sense that we're not a big county but we have five five really really top notch higher education institutions that are serve very different populations so you have mercer county community college open admission institution so anybody and everybody is welcome at a mercer when you have a top notch online education institution thomas edison state university when you have a top notch public very selective institution college of new jersey and then you have a very highly ranked private institution writer university and then you have a major ivy league prestigious research institution princeton university so we each bring a very unique strength to presented to mercer county businesses and future sure can mercer county businesses the unique services educational services that we are able to bring to the table but let's not forget you mentioned the issue of students we're not talking about the just the traditional distances from high school straight up about forty six percent of the businesses told us in the survey that they not only need newly trained educated employees they really educate their current employees to arm them with new skills that they need to continue to be employed or to be promoted because a lot of jobs even though you continue to have the job i'm sure your job is changed absolutely my job is definitely changed so a lot of times new skills are needed and that requires the employers to invest in their current employees to go back for a new skill education that is so key and you know there are education the educational community but there's also businesses that offer training as well and so this is an opportunity for people to so you know i don't have the time of the resources to go back there with my workforce and try to get the more skills partner with the community organizations partner with the would you let them know this is an open door opportunity for all of us to work collaboratively to help when that the number three recommendation of the blue ribbon commission we want the people to know the mercer county has very rich resources in many many ways that government agencies offer services one stop you know services is has been here for a long time we have a statewide a workforce development consortium that has been doing a wonderful job and  workforce investment advisory board which i'm also serving have been working really hard for a long time achieve a great deal of successes so it's time for us to come together in the heart and ships to really collaborate better but a smarter technology is there to allow us to do that collaborate to smarter to publicize utilize and mobilize all resources throughout the county lee and very engaging that it's quite impressive we have a wonderful resource here that is not fully utilized for the cause that we just talked about for those of you who are watching and have never chris winter and like you said i'm c e o of legendary exotics among other things i own winter order here as well so legendary exotics for me is my absolute passion it's something that i've wanted to do for a very very long time like we had talked about  my my idea is to create a lifestyle where people can not only see cars that they've only read about or dreamt about but they can actually drive and experience them for everything that they're worth you can run them at the racetrack you can drive them as fast as you want to go we do scenic tours and vacations all the way up to our lifestyle club which is a membership based program where you get to use the cars whenever you want among other things like boats and bikie sions and you have a really interesting background starting with nascar and although i want you to really take us back and tell us a little bit i want people to believe you are did run nascar run in the truck series back then it was called a craftsman truck series monster by a sears and craftsman tools it was a it was a great experience i got to drive with my heroes  harvick and carl edwards it was a great time and i enjoyed it tremendously then during the downturn in the economy some things had to shift in my life had some changes that i had to make like you and i talked about and i opened it up when winter o repair where i thought the need that people were needing to keep their cars longer because of the downturn in the economy and i enjoyed helping people and in all walks of life but i was missing the passion in my life i was missing that excitement of receiving and and being around the fast cars which is where the legendary exotics actually came from yeah i get that totally how did you make that transition that's not very easy now it wasn't it wasn't easy and it was something that took years and years very long time friend of mine came to me and went to one of these experiences and he came and said we need to do this i know you've been talking about doing this for a very long time and i don't know how but one way or the other i'm going to push you and we're to do this together so i went through a mutual friend of in and hamilton has its credit union and i give them my idea of of what i was thinking of doing and she she agreed she thought that it was a great idea so with the help of hamilton horizons credit union among other small business owners that i know from the area they've gotten me the funding and the legal and everything that i really needed to pursue my passion and we immediately went out to california and we bought our first two cars we bought a ferrari a four thirty and lamborghini gallardo and we introduced the company by doing  cannonball run style drive across the country scenic tour we posted on facebook we went through the southern ridge of the grand canyon we went through last figures who went through the hoover dam through vail colorado eagle pass and all of that was videoed and pictures and it went viral pretty internet which was so scenic uta for see that's a great way to create buzz for your company so we were creating them doing the marketing as you were going to literally as you were coming across the country your marketing your business as well fields then you realize when you have three out of four grandparents that come from the west indies and how prestigious it is to work and the health care field and the health care provider i i realize how i was surrounded by people who wanted to serve other people my mother started out as a dental assistant and then she became a hospital administrator at kings county hospital in harlem hospital my father who is a motor men for the m t a in new york he would never leave the house without a science fiction book and my aunt who is my father's was my father's sister in law she was the second black woman to graduate from yale medical school and she was a pioneer in sickle cell  research and treatment and she was an idol for me so i the first thing i did was to go to school was a bio major pre med and you know just getting into that grind and looking forward to it but like a lot of people who study they get tripped up by organic lamin then you're thinking on maybe not going to get to middle school but there are you know and still read professions that i can get into so i went in to work in the lab in the clinical banking things like that and it's very rewarding because you know a lot of the the exams and the tests that you're doing leads to a diagnosis stress the enough the very last position i had at johnson and johnson was as a brand product manager for the laboratory business and we would sell these car sized analyzers that would go into the navy ships big hospitals and they cost two hundred fifty to three hundred thousand dollars a piece it was a big capital investment and my role there was to price those pieces of equipment train the sales people and find ways to move that equipment what got into the laundromat business because  s and talk about the digital piece of it because i think that's relevant in this wired it absolutely is all at some point while i was going to business school i bought one of those old pocket books that the title  something like how you could take one hundred dollars and make it make yourself a thousand arrow millionaire and it has some really great tips in it i was single and i didn't know if someone would you know marry me and take you know sweeping up my feet are some sugar daddy so i said i have to take care of myself right and it's said by an insurance policy and to get a four one k learn something about the stock market some basic things really important and then it said if you want to move to the next level you might think owning a business at recession proof cash rich things like car washes real estate and vending machines things like that and so when i went looking for the type of equipment that i wanted it had to have that high technology to it that it was a natural tie and it had to be ecologically friendly it had to be easy to use like it had to have that  so before we started getting into the business side of things tell everybody kind of how you got into the food this is in general yes i started off the course of twenty years ago my parents had a taco restaurant on the border with mexico and really find anything that i liked you know something that i was used to for barbecue in texas my ex and just like the everyday food that i normally have you know the way new jersey is with like pizza places and hoagies and some of that was the way that south texas with barbecue and tacos and the like so you know one day i decided you know what i want to do for myself and only go out a limited number cook for myself let me find something that i like and i notice that the people around me like that as well so they business itself off the ground what was that journey like because you know it's one thing to talk about it you see talk you see trailers but i don't think any of us really know what it takes to get out of it is it much different then maybe even starting a restaurant business basically it's i was thrown out there on my own there's no there's no real step by step guide for this maybe because it's a newer industry maybe because people don't like share information honestly i don't know what it is but i had to figure it for me and for me and for anybody else listening that has an interest in pursuing their dream or creating some sort of business that they feel is buried within them and maybe other people keep burying more dirt on top of it you know life just happens so as i was growing up as i was growing up i always studied food and nutrition and all that stuff but i didn't really see how it was going to play into my life and and once upon a time in another life i was married to a developer and and i always understood real estate because of the dirt in the lay of the land and building the homes and so on and so forth and and then we weren't together any longer just going to be the savant in the industry so all throughout my younger years i did you know i always studied food like i'd be on the library and i had interest in chinese medicine and herbs and indian healing and all these folklore remedies or so as i became more successful in the in the industry of real estate working with builders and up and developers very very strong will having to answer to these men on a daily basis about their subdivisions and their you know their multilevel properties why they're not selling and why they're losing money we're in the market was crashing i would say you know i come home and i like i needed to stretch so i would cook and i would cook lots of food  and then give it out to friends and family and what have you but that was it would relax me it relaxed me until i started to hit that that transition point where i'm like i'm really not on purpose i'm not feeling i feel it filled as i did in real estate as i i started to explore and ask myself some questions you know what really is my what right now what really is my why what does this look like what is my my mission if you will like so when i decided that this isn't working for me anymore i need to do something with food what does that look like what does that mean well it means that i see so many people around me in stressful situations and coming down with diseases and illnesses and cancer and chronic illness and auto immune well what can i do to help them i know i can help them all right this this is feeling good how could i help them well i could teach them how to eat right i could cook for them and then teach them i could help teach them stress management because we won't even get into all the other ups and downs of my life that got me to this place and i am ever so grateful for all of those those dark places because for me in those be sure to sign up for 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