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Hosted by SRPMIC Assistant Community Manager, Lena Jackson-Eckert, this podcast takes a closer look at the programs, services, and people that help shape our Community. From everyday resources to unique stories and conversations, we’re here to share what matters. So let’s go ahead and zoom in.
Hey, welcome to Lena's Lens. I'm Lena Jackson Eckert, one of the assistant community managers with the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community. From helpful resources to unique conversations, we're on a journey to explore our community. So let's go ahead and zoom in. Today's episode takes a closer look at one of the community's newest and most forward thinking enterprises: Salt River Business Development, or SRBD.
Lena:SRBD was created to help the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian community grow its economic future beyond gaming by exploring new business opportunities off reservation. That includes strategic investments, partnerships, and even federal contracting. And while all of that can sound pretty big and technical, the goal is actually simple: build another strong pillar of long term financial stability for future generations. To help make sense of how SRBD works and why it matters, I sat down with the CEO, Michael Mainwold. I learned so much during our conversation, from how this enterprise was built, the opportunities it's already creating, and to what it could mean for the community several years from now.
Lena:I know you'll get a lot out of it, too. So, enjoy this conversation with Salt River Business Development. Welcome, Mike. Thanks for being here.
Michael Mainwold:Thank you, Lena. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
Lena:Before we get into SRBD, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. So, who is Mike?
Michael Mainwold:Get all introspective. So, my name is Mike Mainwold. I am a Community member, and I am the CEO of Salt River Business Development.
Lena:Nice.
Michael Mainwold:Little bit of background, I guess, about myself leading up to this. I I grew up in Mesa, so not too far from here and went to high school at Mountain View. Went
Lena:Boo, Just kidding.
Michael Mainwold:If you didn't like that, you're gonna love this. I did my undergrad at the University of Arizona.
Lena:Oh yeah, really boo.
Michael Mainwold:But then, after that, I actually did I came back, moved back up, to the valley, actually did some work with the Community. My first position with the Community was actually in administration. I was working, with for Bryan Myers at the time as an Administrative Assistant. Long time ago, long before these beautiful Two Waters buildings were here.
Michael Mainwold:And from there, I actually decided to further my education, and I went to switch hats and went over to ASU. Did law school, completed law school at ASU at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, and I came back and I worked with the Community first for our Defense Advocates Office for a few years, and then ultimately at the Office of General Counsel for almost ten years before making the move into this position.
Lena:I didn't realize it was that long.
Michael Mainwold:It went by rather quickly.
Lena:Yeah, that's awesome. And so, now your current title is CEO, right?
Michael Mainwold:Yes.
Lena:That's very cool. How long have you been in that current position?
Michael Mainwold:I was just looking at a calendar. This this year will be two years, in August. So, when I was on the legal side, my primary focus was working with our enterprises.
Lena:Mhmm.
Michael Mainwold:So, I I worked, with, like, Saddleback and the landfill a little bit, you know, here and there with SRMG, the, spring training facility. Mhmm. So I kinda bounced around, but mostly focused on our enterprise side. So a lot of business law, commercial transaction, corporate governance, that type of thing. So, that ultimately is kind of what led to the transition.
Michael Mainwold:It made it somewhat of a natural transition as I helped structure this new entity that is Salt River Business Development. Somebody was nice enough to throw my name in the hat for leading the enterprise itself.
Lena:Nice. Makes sense. So, now that we know a little bit about you and we can be proud that you're a Sun Devil, tell us, what is Salt River Business Development?
Michael Mainwold:Sure. I'd say there's a short answer and a long answer to this. So the short answer really is that it's the newest, tribally owned enterprise that is focused on economic development opportunities off reservation. So that's the short answer. The longer answer is that we are similar to several of our sister enterprises in that, you know, we're founded in an economic development lens and that really what drives us is we're looking for revenue growth opportunities, diversification, sustainable growth, strategic partnerships, all through the community lens.
Michael Mainwold:So, values are largely shaped by the community's values. And, don't, you know, won't go into all of that, you know, as this several I kind of break it down oftentimes when I'm talking to folks that have no real knowledge or experience with tribal communities. But, you know, it basically boils down, I think, to respect, you know, respect for the land, respect for the culture, respect for the community. Right. But, where we start to branch off and, and differ from our current enterprises really is where we have set our sights.
Michael Mainwold:So, we are looking largely at opportunities off reservation.
Lena:Okay. So, when you compare between maybe like a DevCo versus SRBD, for short, something for business development, what is the difference between those two enterprises?
Michael Mainwold:Right. That's a common question. Get that question a lot, especially with a little bit of the name overlap. In retrospect, might have been able to do better there.
Lena:That's right.
Michael Mainwold:DevCo actually really, and I work with DevCo a lot in that they have kind of been really involved in the real estate portfolio and management thereof on reservations. So, the Chaparral site. So, they've done a great job with that, and they and so I actually use them as a resource when we're looking at any type of real estate investment opportunities off reservation. We're actually a lot broader than that. We while we do have some of those opportunities that pop up from time to time in terms of real estate investment opportunities, we actually have created two divisions within the company and one of those is entirely separate, which is a federal contracting company or a federal contracting division, excuse me.
Lena:Interesting.
Michael Mainwold:That So, doesn't overlap at all. Wow.
Lena:What was the rationale behind establishing this enterprise?
Michael Mainwold:I think the rationale, again, does kind of touch on some of the things I mentioned, which is really to expand and diversify the Community's economic base. So, all of the enterprises do supplement, you know, revenue streams for the community, you know, to diversify from gaming revenue sources, which is, you know, a common goal I think for tribes across the country when they're looking at starting new businesses. So,
Lena:they're not just relying on gaming dollars.
Michael Mainwold:Right. Yep. I'd say that the strategy really was to find areas that we are not currently involved in as a community and try to see if we could gain any foothold and establish a presence. You know, Salt River as a community is known across the country and it's well respected. So, being able to, you know, leverage, I think, our reputation, which is a very positive reputation, and see if there's any areas that we could take advantage of, particularly with our partnerships, formally or informally with other tribes, that was kind of what set us in that direction.
Michael Mainwold:So, before the formation of this business, which, again is, we're coming up on two years, this summer, we went across, kind of the spectrum and looked at different areas that we could, that we could grow. And one of the things that became apparent quickly in talking to other tribes was a federal contracting business.
Lena:Can you give us an example of what a federal contract would, would look like or what it would be?
Michael Mainwold:Sure. Absolutely. To start our our federal contracting division is called Kwolyewm Federal Solutions.
Lena:Okay.
Michael Mainwold:Kwolyewm is a piipaash word. It means tomorrow. The whole goal was behind setting this up was to set it up for for tomorrow's generation and tomorrow's, you know, with the seven generations mindset approach. And so I often, refer to it as KFS, but the the KFS model really is built around some federal regulations and federal programs. In particular, there's a program known as the SBA's, the Small Business Administration's AA program.
Michael Mainwold:And inside that program is a whole kind of sub program that that is designed to benefit tribes, tribally owned entities. And, and really what it does is gives us a, a couple of different benefits when we're looking at contracting partners. And so the types of services really can range quite a bit. The spectrum can range anything from the janitorial and custodial equipment to manufacturing parts that the federal government might need to services that the government might need. You know, the federal government is the largest customer in The United States and that can be even for things like services like administrative type services, program support services, financial management, you name it and you can probably find it.
Michael Mainwold:There's a place in the federal marketplace for it.
Lena:Sounds like a pretty broad range. You mentioned earlier about other tribes getting involved in this type of government contracting. Just wondering, what did we learn from other tribes and their experiences in this realm?
Michael Mainwold:Sure. We did reach out to other tribes, just to name a few. I mean, like Potawatomi was actually I say Potawatomi first because they were actually very helpful in kind of sharing the successes they've had, some of the challenges they had. The structure that they've seen has been very successful to Seminole, to San Manuel. There's there's been a number of tribes that have we had discussions with leading up to it.
Michael Mainwold:And, the key takeaway is that it is worthwhile to get into the federal marketplace. Are you guaranteed success by, by jumping in and, and, you know, setting up shop and putting up your shingle and saying, Hey, we're Salt River, we're open for business and is this revenue just going to start raining? Not necessarily. Probably not. Yeah.
Michael Mainwold:Like anything, the amount of work I think that you put in, at the front end is ultimately going to show and it will ultimately pay dividends in the back. And so, what the approach we've taken, which I think in my experience with working with all of our enterprises is similar in that Salt River doesn't really do anything halfway. Know, if we're in, we're going to go in and we're going to try to be successful with it. So, I'd say that was one of the biggest things we learned is go in, you know, get the right infrastructure in place, get the right people in place, and that was invaluable, particularly as we set up the structure piece. Like I said, you know, we set up the divisions with the federal contracting piece and then also a commercial development piece and kind of building those lines of business straight out of the gate.
Michael Mainwold:That's already kind of helped quite a bit.
Lena:You said you set up two divisions. One is the federal contracting and then the other is commercial development. Talk to us a little bit about what that entails, the commercial development piece.
Michael Mainwold:So the other side of the coin from the federal division is our commercial investment division and that's called Hemapa Holdings. Hemapa is actually an O'odham word. So we had Kwolyewm as a Piipaash word and Hemapa as an O'odham It means gathering. The origin a little bit behind that was really that the idea was to kind of set something up that could be kind of this gathering or conglomerate of all sorts of different types of investments since we were still kind of focusing in on exactly what types of investments we would be looking at. But it can be a lot of different things.
Michael Mainwold:And since inception, I would say, of the business, I would say 90% of the time, of my time, has been focused on establishing the federal piece of the business only because of the regulatory steps it takes to get and through the to establish the business as a viable entity that can do contracting work for the federal government.
Lena:And there you have a guaranteed customer with the federal government contracts.
Michael Mainwold:Right. You kind of know, you establish your customer relatively early on, even though there's a lot of different, you know, departments within the government and everything and, but on the commercial side, it's more broad. So, while most of the effort initially was on that, we were still very aware of any of the investment opportunities that would come forward and really set it up to again be flexible and what types of opportunities we could take advantage of. And really at this point, I think the keyword that stuck out for us was strategic. Anything that came across my desk that seemed like a good strategic opportunity, meaning something we could, you know, hopefully leverage or collaborate with the community on was, was kind of rose to the top pretty quick.
Michael Mainwold:And we did have one investment opportunity that came across that, that kind of checked those boxes.
Michael Mainwold:And so, we made an investment early on and it finalized, in August into, a partnership with the Sanctuary. So, are you familiar with the Sanctuary?
Lena:Yeah, the resort.
Michael Mainwold:Yes.
Lena:Nice.
Michael Mainwold:So, Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain is a resort. It's one of the, I'd say, higher end resorts in the valley. It's, if you've never been there, the views are
Lena:Spectacular.
Michael Mainwold:Yes, they're very nice.
Lena:They have
Lena:a great restaurant there too.
Michael Mainwold:Tangent, I actually proposed to my wife at the Sanctuary. That's not why we did the investment, but it was kind of funny how some stars align like that.
Lena:It's meant to be.
Michael Mainwold:Yeah. So, we do have a minority ownership in the sanctuary now, and it's been very, fruitful thus far. We've had several very positive discussions and we're, we're trying to figure out different ways that we can kind of cross market between the sanctuary and talking sticks. You know, folks come, you know, obviously can come to the entertainment district or to the casino to play and look at folks that might want to stay there, that maybe aren't staying at Talking Stick. So, yeah, there's, we've identified some opportunities there, but thus far it's been a very positive relationship.
Lena:That's exciting. So, in general, what benefits will SRBD bring to the Community?
Michael Mainwold:Great question. The biggest benefit that we are looking to bring to the Community ultimately will be not just another revenue source. And I don't mean to minimize contributions from any of the other enterprises because I've worked with them, they do great work, and you know, they, they make very valuable contributions to the Community. But the thought was to set up another pillar that the Community could lean on in the future. I'm talking twenty, thirty, forty years down the road if gaming, for whatever reason, weren't to be a reliable source of revenue, is some of the examples from some of those tribes that we spoke with leading up to the formation of this business, really impacted us, led me to believe that wow, this really is a big, could be a very big business in terms of how it contributes to the Community.
Michael Mainwold:So, that's long term, right? So, today we, you know, that is not the case currently. Today, we still are trying to contribute back to the Community. First, I'm trying to get the word out, right? This is like doing a podcast or, you know, I went to district meetings early on, try to get out there in the Community and just make everybody aware of what this is because even though today we're still, you know, very much a small business, as it grows, there's gonna be opportunities, whether it's to partner with SRBD or whether it's employment opportunities down the road.
Michael Mainwold:The caveat to that really is that, like I said, this business really is looking for off reservation opportunities. So, for instance, the work and some of the contracts that we've won since inception are great opportunities and we've needed to bring folks on to fill employment needs. They're based in Virginia, you know, they're based in Alabama, they're based in Florida. So, opportunities not on the corridor. So, it's a little bit different, but as it grows, anybody can really learn it, get into it, and figure it out.
Michael Mainwold:So, it's something else.
Lena:Something else we could rely on. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Can you talk a little bit about what has been accomplished so far?
Michael Mainwold:Sure. So, from setting it up and
Lena:Yeah, that's a
Lena:big accomplishment, number one.
Michael Mainwold:The certification process, just to, as I mentioned, get into the program itself on the federal side was, took a whole, an entire year. So that was a bit of an arduous process, but now that that's done, our first kind of big feather in our cap was an acquisition. So the way you can grow the business is organically by starting looking at, you know, there's an entire website, a federal website that is, you know, lists off the contracts that are coming up for award and types of services that the government needs. So you could look at that and start trying to learn that business, get into it, start growing it from, you know, two people to five people to 10 people. Nothing wrong with doing it that way, but, you know, given our resources, a way to kind of inject a little bit of a shot into that and make it grow a little bit quicker is the acquisition model.
Michael Mainwold:And again, that was something we learned doing all the due diligence and research leading up to this. And so, about a month after we were certified, we closed on our acquisition of a business. So, we now have a headquarter federal contracting office in Alabama, in Huntsville, Alabama.
Lena:Okay.
Michael Mainwold:And so, with that business, we took on roughly a little less than a 100 employees. So, we have a pretty central hub out there that can do contracting work. And that really, again, just gave us a good catapulting point to jump off from and just like get into different areas and grow it with the, again, the resources we have. So that was a big, that was a big success. And then from there, using our resources, things that we were bringing from the community side along with the types of performance that they had already done in the past, a couple of the big awards or or at least successes were actually a few contract awards.
Michael Mainwold:Ones that that business would not have probably been awarded but for our acquisition and partnership with them.
Lena:So what has been your focus as the CEO? And really where do you I mean, kind of talked a lot about the setting up of this enterprise and kind of all the due diligence and the work that went into it. What is your focus for the next five to ten years?
Michael Mainwold:My focus will be to grow that federal piece, and to grow it quite a bit, all while continuing to kind of build awareness on both ends, you know, one with the Community, so that the community gets more familiar, has a better understanding of what we're doing. Everybody from, you know, a Community member that maybe has never heard of this stuff to to council members. So continuing to kind of bridge that gap. And then also on the federal piece, like for instance, the acquisition, the acquisition was several of the folks there, the leadership, the own one of the primary owners is an enrolled member of the Eastern Band Cherokee, so is familiar with tribal communities. Yeah.
Michael Mainwold:He does, but not everybody does. So and in particular, very few people are familiar with Salt River. So, of bridging that gap a bit and having, building that understanding of who we are, where we come from, and our value system. That's a little bit more short term. Five to ten years is really just to increase the outreach and engagement and then strengthen our own internal processes for all intents and purposes.
Michael Mainwold:You know, we're still a small business, and so as we grow into a more mature business, I think really having that structure of leadership where, you know, you kind of have almost like a next man up mentality where people can step into certain roles and fill certain gaps, that we will start to see, I see some growth in certain areas. At the end of the day, expanding the community's portfolio while kind of staying disciplined and intentional in how we grow is my main focus at this time. Mentioned how, you know, ultimately we want to be that pillar the community can lean on for future revenue sources and growth, but building it the right way is kind of most forefront on my mind right now. I think we can do it.
Lena:Very cool. Well, thank you, Mike, for being with us today, and we wish you much success in the future, and I look forward to hearing what we're doing in the next couple of years. Again, thanks for spending time with us today. It's always exciting to be a part of something new, and we're glad we could share the story behind the Salt River Business Development with our listeners. This is just the beginning, and its impact will continue to unfold in the months and years ahead.
Lena:Thanks for listening today, and we'll see you on the next episode.