Environmental Professionals Radio (EPR)

Water, Business Development and the Tampa Mafia with Scott Deitche

August 06, 2021 Scott Deitche Episode 29
Environmental Professionals Radio (EPR)
Water, Business Development and the Tampa Mafia with Scott Deitche
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Scott Deitche, Senior Vice President with GPI, about water, business development, and the Tampa Mafia and the books he's written about them! Read his full bio below.

Special thanks to our sponsor for this episode GPI/ Greenman-Pedersen, Inc.
Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form

1:51  Shout outs

3:32  Nic talks about his recent trip to Hawaii...and yes, we are jealous!

11:49  Interview with Scott Deitche starts

14:04  Scott Deitche talks water quality and spending time on the water

16:40  Scott Deitche discusses his shift to business development and resiliency projects

20:10  Scott Deitche talks about writing and the Tampa Mafia

31:54  The importance of networking

39:44  Outro

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. 

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Scott Deitche at
linkedin.com/in/scott-m-deitche-env-sp-b1292921
scottdeitche.com

Guest Full Bio:
Scott M. Deitche is a Senior Vice President and Director of Environmental Specialty Services for GPI’s Southeast operations. He has over 27 years of experience in various aspects of environmental management, water quality permitting/compliance, water quality monitoring and analysis, environmental monitoring programs, and project management. Scott is also an author who has written nine books and over 50 articles on organized crime as well as case studies for books on sustainability. 

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

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[Transcription is auto-transcribed]

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nick and Laura. On today's episode we give our shout outs, Nick and I ramble about his recent trip to Hawaii. I'm not in the least bit jealous. Then we sit down with Scott Deitche to discuss working on water, business development and his love of writing mafia novels. It is that cool yeah for sure I've known him a while he's a good friend so excited to have him here. And finally, continuing our weird bodies theme I'm sure many of you know that your nose and ears continued to grow throughout your lifetime, or if you didn't know, now you know. But it's not really growing so much as gravity stretching out the cartilage in them over time, which is kind of creepy super creepy science.

Nic
 
Yeah, that's super uncomfortable sounding I don't know what it is about the idea that gravity drags you down back I don't know. Totally. I mean, I get it but it is so weird. It's just, no thanks, no thanks gravity, you know, keep, keep your paws to yourself, Okay, this is 2021 you've got to be less aggressiveness than this, you can't just grab people's noses and ears and pull them down.

Laura 
I think see that it's not necessarily like age, we have an age we've been pulled on for too long.

Nic 
Right. Like, you're actually taller at the beginning of the day, because your back is not compressed and over the day you get shorter, which is also creepy. Thanks gravity. But yeah, super uncomfortable so you got to tell us if you ever want to like be impressive with your height, get measured first thing in the morning.

Laura 
Be sure to subscribe, rate and review, hit that music,

[Shout outs]

Our shout out for today is for the NAEP 2021 best available, or Innovative Technology Award, which goes to the Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority, bridging North America and AECOM for the Gordie Howe International Bridge host NEPA environmental management and compliance program for their innovative way of tracking environmental requirements during construction. Congrats to everyone. Be sure to share your promotions, new jobs professional and project awards with us over on the EPR website so that we can share them here for you. Be sure to register for any NAEP's coastal resiliency webinar on August 26, where we will be discussing coastal and climate resiliency success stories featuring Hollie Schmidt, Doug Bellomo, and Dr Rob Young. It's also narrated by an amazing, talented and all around great guy, our very own Nic Frederick.

Nic 
Hey, thank you Laura, thank you so much for those wonderful words.

Laura  
I meant every one, apparently, head on over to naep.org/webinars-new for more information. Today's episode is sponsored by GPI since 1966 GPI has designed managed and supported their clients on a wide array of projects, they're employee owned, known for their technical knowledge and commitment to getting each job done well. They're widely recognized quality of service rises from a talent and energy of their exceptional team, the work ethic and dedication of all the men and women at GPI allow them to deliver a consistent quality service to government agencies, municipalities, architects, commercial developers and property owners. If you would like to sponsor a future episode and have Nic or I read it in this wonderful fashion, head over to environmentalprofessionalsradio.com, and check out the sponsor form for details. Now let's get to our segment.

[Nic and Laura's segment]

Nic 
Yeah, How are you guys. How was Hawaii. Hawaii was great. It's, it's hard to complain about Hawaii, you know, work was good.

Laura 
Did you work inside kind of a thing did you get to do much outside stuff.

Nic 
Yeah, yeah, you got to take some time. But, you know, the funny thing is when you're new there on the East Coast you're awake at like three o'clock in the morning. So your mornings are pretty free, you know no one else is awake that time that the coffee shops don't open till like seven or eight there. So like if you wanted to make some money that's the investment in a coffee shop that opens at 6am out there would do massive business, and just feel like, Yeah, we did our we did our meeting on Wednesday, and I had some other things I you know had meetings all throughout throughout the day but our main one was our clients was on Wednesday and it was actually kind of funny it was a meeting where they, we started all your clients were like, I don't understand what this is. And we explained you know we're like, you know, we're trying to basically give you a database of all of your projects, all your files, all in one spot. So you can just search for them and pull them up, and we blew their minds. And so that was pretty cool. That was really fun, like you can do that and I mean you know, we're like yeah we can do this heck we can even technically we could also put GIS data to this and make it an actual like map, you know I could do we could do we could do a map or, but you know that's, you know, step two. But yeah, that was really cool. So, honestly that was,

Laura 
Is that step two? I mean, isn't it easier to collect the requirements for that now.

Nic 
Yeah, so what was the record. That's what we talked about you know so it's like okay so for building this database for you and that's what we want to do in the future, we're going to collect all of the information now, but the map actually creating the mapper would be different, a different process, but we would use the data that we are pulling together now. Yeah, which is really, really neat. And yeah, like it got their gears turning they're like we could be a model for all installations, we're like yeah, absolutely, they really could be something that would be great for everybody. So, yeah, that was pretty neat. That was really fun, honestly that was workwise, it was a really cool meeting for that reason, nice, but you know, Hawaii is pretty great, it's hard to be mad about Hawaii so beaches are beautiful, the food. Let's see if he likes seafood we like Asian food just hard to beat, you know, like we had, I had sushi with that Dennis. Dennis Peters who has been on the show. And he said, I was like, Man, that was so good like yeah it's pretty good. And, you know, And it's just funny he's like well this is just pretty good out here then. Next time, we're going to the great place and then, yeah, really blow my mind. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Laura 
So actually I was gonna, you know, contact Dennis next week and ask him if I, if I make my way out there, like, you know, could he help me figure out where to go and stuff so

Nic 
yeah You mean after after I collect, we'll see. Laura, I thought that, getting out there was super expensive that tickets about like what $900 to get out there from the East Coast,

Laura 
I looked it up, it's less than that from here now, which is crazy, like yeah it's going down, I've been trying to go to Denver and it's like, over $600, which is crazy expense for a weekend, I just can't, you know, I just can't. But $800 for a week in Hawaii, hell yeah I could.

Nic 
Yeah but then you'd have your 50th state and that's too much, we can't have that I shouldn't even told you, I'm totally upset.

Laura
You should not have told me because now I shouldn't be super motivated extra motivated.

Nic
Yeah, it just means I have to get there before. Since I'm younger. I have some time I have a few years to get to other states to funny. But yeah, I mean, you know, if you do go I've got lots of other recommendations to, I actually met an old friend of mine out there, and she took me to a place called side street, and Honolulu, which was really fun because I tell people that, and they were like, How'd you know about that. They're almost mad, you know, that's a local place you shouldn't know about. Yeah. They have a lot of great hiking trails out there, too, by the way. And that is really modifying on Honolulu, I was on Oahu, which is where Honolulu is, and I was like wait a minute. Yeah, it's a city, it's a city, maybe it's, it's the most, I think, 80% of the revenue from Hawaii comes from Honolulu and that's where most of the big businesses it's where a lot of the tourism is, if you want to do a touristy thing. You know, you want the Maitais and the you know the resorts and all that, that's Waikiki, that's where you'd go right. Beach is extremely safe and really really calm, but if you want to like you know wild adventure stuff you go to different islands for different things, you know, but yeah the surfing actually on Oahu on the north shores. That's why they do that, the competitions for surfing, so they'll do like the that's always in the winter, because that's when the waves get really strong.

Laura
Do you surf?

Nic
Oh god no, I'm really bad at that. It's all arms, for those of you that don't know if you look at me, you know that that means it's a problem for me. And, you know, the coordination part is kind of fun trying to get up on the board but like by the end of an hour, like you're my arms were dead. It just totally exhausted from trying. And there's actually an old coworker of mine took me out. The first time, and I'll say his name here because Steve Pyle, he was great but he totally just was like Alright cool. See you later I'm like What am I doing he's like just try to stand up. Yeah, and he was so good at surfing, he was just like, Hey Nick what's going on you know like doing like that, almost like a, like a movie. We just wave, you know, fly right past me, I'm like, curse you Steve.

Laura
Just like flailing shark bait.

Nic
Exactly. Flailing shark bait, it's exactly how I felt. But you know like when you're sitting out there on that board and you're looking up on one side you have Diamond Head, on the other you have the city skyline is really really cool. It's hard to beat and the water's warm and like it's not as salty as it is in the parts. So, interesting, it's actually a really really great, really great experience. It's a good place to start if you want to try, just do it,

Laura
I tried. I'm not trying again.

Nic
Yeah, I know it's a hard thing and then board rash is something else I also learned about.

Laura 

I didn't have a problem with board rash I had a problem with board bruises.

Nic 
Yeah, I hurt the next day for sure, trying to get the board back was really funny because I just didn't realize how tired my arms were so I'm just like trying desperately not to drag this thing on the ground is like totally like my whole body's like convulsing. It's really funny. But yeah it's it's kudos to people that they can do that well, because that is so hard, so, so hard.

Laura 
Yeah, I never really got over the feeling of drowning in two feet of water.

Nic  
I know. Well it's funny because I remember actually sitting on the board just like trying to soak in this just beautiful scenery, and then all I can think of is the jaws theme in the back of my head I just kept hearing it every time I sat, you know, just for even a minute, you know, Dun-ah Dun-ah, feet of just dangling off the side of this board. Yeah. So yeah, just to funny, the great experience, you know, because I wouldn't trade it but yeah, it's surfing is for for younger people, I think, and for, just you know just in a challenging thing you have to do a lot of practice to be any kind of good. But, yeah, that's one of the things I guess

Laura 

there's a boogie boarding for the rest of us. Right,

Nic 
right, or body surfing I can do that, that's fun. We did some of that, this time. Yeah, it was fun. So yeah, great trip. Great, great trip.

Laura 
Cool. I can't wait to get there myself soon.

Nic 
All right. No rush though you know it's it's beautiful all year. So, even if the safe time to go is now, because the water does get a little choppier in the winter, but it's not bad just got to be careful where you go, so I don't need you drowning.

Laura  
I don't need me drowning either.

Nic
It doesn't sound fun.

Laura
But anyway, we can talk about our least favorite ways to die in a different episode

Nic  
right exactly that'll be upcoming upcoming episode. Let's get to our interview.

[Interview with Scott Deitche starts]

Nic
Welcome back to EPR today we have Scott Deitche with us. We've been dying to have him on the show because Scott is the vice president for Greenman Peterson incorporated otherwise known as GPI, and he's an author and mob historian welcome Scott,

Scott Deitche
welcome. Thanks for having me on.

Nic
So I know I'm dying to ask you questions about the mafia but Laura says I have to do the environmental ones first. So can you tell us a little bit about the work that you do.

Scott Deitche  
Sure, I've been with GPI now this is my going on 14 years. And, you know, Like a lot of other people in our industry, you know, when I started off 25 years ago I started off with dreams of being a fish biologist and my degree was in marine biology, and I started that way I worked for the Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, really doing primarily fish related work, then I moved over to Pinellas County Water Resources and then I started getting involved more in surface water quality, water quality, and when I came to GPI I kind of really got into the whole realm of surface water quality, water quality regulations like NPDES and TMDLs and we love our acronyms in out business. And a host of others. Absolutely. And, you know over the years have kind of gotten to more of a management role business development, but I still do a lot of project management and occasionally I'll get out in the field once in a while still just, just to keep those technical skills sharp,

Nic  
of course,

Laura 
awesome, Scott, I didn't know how you got started, I've known you for a couple years now. Have you always grown up in Florida and were you always interested in the environment.

Scott Deitche 
Sure I grew up in New Jersey, and I wanted to be a marine biologist oceanographer second grade, I think it was great so I pretty much had my career path figured out early, so I came down Eckerd College in 89, to pursue a degree in marine biology did the, the five year Eckerd plan, graduated in 94 with a degree in marine biology I actually went back to New Jersey for about a year to work in an aquarium on the Jersey Shore and Jenkinson aquarium, and then a position opened up at the Marine Research Institute somebody I knew there said hey, you know there's a position to go out and you get net fish all day long and I'm like, that sounds pretty good. You know, came down here to the Marine Research Institute in St Pete and I've been here since then.

Nic 
Gotcha. And so I mean I guess that means you spent a lot of time on boats, doing environmental work and that's pretty novel I think for some of our listeners, so is that as awesome as it sounds, or is it more challenging than I think it is,

Scott Deitche 
it is pretty awesome. When the weather's good, the weather's nice down here most of the time, you know, I, in my current position with GPI the others go out on the boat. I did get to go out on a kayak not too long ago but I don't get to go out on boats as much we most of the water sampling we do now is primarily out of it's either land based or primarily out of canoes or small skiffs, but one of my first gigs at the Marine Research Institute was actually got to go out on had boats or these large party boats, you know, real far offshore, collect specimens of grouper and amberjack got the fish a little bit. It was fantastic and then when I got to Pinellas County. We did a lot of in Bay, an open water water sampling so yeah it was definitely a lot of fun.

Laura 

That's awesome. Well as you know I spent a lot of time on boats, collecting water samples myself with EPC and Tampa Bay, I know I have a lot of interesting and fun crazy stories from just spending a lot of time getting a boat in and out of the water and then dealing with weather and other things. Do you have any fun mishaps or adventures you could tell us about.

Scott Deitche  
Oh yeah, absolutely. I have launched a boat without putting in the plugs. I ran aground one of my first leading one of my first trips for Pinellas County but, you know, in my book if you have not run aground in Tampa Bay is not truly boated. I've run out of gas in the middle of old Tampa Bay, and how to walk the boat, you know, wrap the rope around my waist and walk the Pinellas boat to shore about as close to a mile luckily the Bay's so shallow wasn't bad. Yeah. And another great one, I remembered in between, right before here is one time we were out doing and Laura you might remember the old the benthic mapping was an Emap sampling, they used to. Yeah, so we had this big ponar on a winch and I tied the rope to the end of the ponar. And we, you know, it was pretty heavy we raised it over the water and let it go. Only I didn't tie the knot. And the grab went down to the bottom so I had to jump in the water and pull that up and tie it back on the winch and I did win an award for the knot tying award for that. Nice. So yeah, I mean, if you spend any time in the field it's, you're gonna have those kinds of crazy stories.

Nic 
Of course of course and you mentioned, you know, the shift you have now, so you're in more of a managerial role and so, so you're responsible for strategic business development, which sounds so daunting when you first start doing it and you have any advice maybe for people that are just starting to do that kind of thing making that transition from being, you know, a field person to management.

Scott Deitche  
Yeah it's you know it's not something they teach in school from a technical perspective, certainly is you know how to manage people how to work with people how to develop business relationships, you know, business development, marketing, it's all about developing relationships with potential clients, understanding where the services where, where things are going 10-15 years ago was resiliency really even on anyone's radar, I mean, it was a little bit but now that's become especially down here in Florida such huge market. So understanding where things are going from a business perspective is, as well as, you know, what are some of the pressing issues. So you know, advice I would give is there a lot of really good trainings online, you know, read up on, you know, what it takes to be a good manager of things, you know, developing one sense of emotional intelligence of, you know, understanding what, you know what people look for in a leader what people look for in a manager, don't watch the Office to get manager. And, you know, if it's something you want to do a lot of people don't want to do that they want to continue on the technical path, I, you know, really I started with just project management which I really liked, and developed into, into what I'm doing now, which I really really enjoy doing that. So my other advice is to be flexible because you know you might think you want to go down this one track of just technical but if an opportunity arises, give it a chance, do something outside of the technical realm or, you know, expand those, those skills that you have, you might find out that you enjoy that just as much if not more.

Nic 
Yeah, that's, I mean that's great, great advice and, you know, talking about trends, you know, and seeing how those come through, you mentioned resiliency in Florida, do you have any recent resiliency projects you could kind of talk through with us.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah, we've been getting more and more into resiliency work here in the state of Florida, one of the first projects we were involved in is going back about five or six years ago was the city of Miami Beach had this huge construction program where they were literally raising the roads at critical infrastructure three feet because of increased sunny day flooding from rising sea levels. So we were involved in that project and that's kind of, you know, kind of springboard into some other work and we've recently done some work with the city of St Petersburg doing a resiliency study for a neighborhood that is already susceptible to flooding, but now with rising sea levels they're even getting sunny day just regular high tide flooding so looking for. Now for a variety of different scenarios a variety of different engineered solutions to that, so you know. We've also recently assisted the city St Pete with looking at how, how do they do that from a code perspective from codes and ordinances which is a whole other part of it is, is, you know, looking at the way that the city or municipality runs and operates from a code and ordinance perspective, how you strengthen that to help strengthen resiliency.

Nic 
Yeah, I would, yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it's a complicated process for sure it's never straightforward, and I think now I'm allowed to ask questions about you being an author. So you are an accomplished author, which is really cool, and it's, but writing is often described as the loneliest profession. Do you ascribe to that belief, or is it more cathartic for you.

Scott Deitche 
It's lonely in the sense that you're the one doing it and I've done some work with co authors before I kind of prefer doing my own thing with writing, and it's all different. Like, no the writing I do GPI these large reports, they're definitely more of a collaborative effort and I welcome that because, from the technical perspective I need that input from my engineers from my other scientists, you know, the GPI here we have a great network here in our environmental group of people that are really good at QA, QC and and all that stuff from the technical perspective from my day job writing, I call it my career writing. I like the collaborative effort, but for the mafia stuff for the, you know, that type of things I do enjoy kind of the, the soft focus of it yeah it's cathartic but it's enjoyable. I mean I love every part of it. The worst part about writing and the hardest part about writing is the actual physical act of writing,

Nic 
yes

Scott Deitche 
Research Oh, yeah, the books out it's cool all that emotion, all that stuff is great, sitting there on the computer. That's the hardest part.

Nic  
It was the best of times, must have been just sat there forever. That's how I feel about every time you know that's the next part I don't know.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah, I would have been terrible writing on a typewriter because I cut and paste like crazy.

Nic 
Oh my gosh, I can't even imagine. Yeah we're in better times now for sure. Oh yeah, for sure.

Laura 
Recently you had a chance though to combine your work with writing to you had a case study in a, in a book.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah, so I've done, I've actually done, I did a green Career Guide back in 2010 right when you know green jobs were getting hot. I did for this company ABC-CLIO which primarily publishes books for universities and educational institutions. So, I've done one or two other small things for them on books on sustainability but they have a new book actually comes out today called sustainable planet, and they were looking for people to do case studies and one of the things they were looking at were case studies and environmental justice so they, they said hey you kind of have a weird niche here with what you write about, in addition to the environmental topics, and they said, Are there any areas where there's criminal activity of criminal gangs that are having an impact on environmental justice and I thought of one immediately in the Campania region of Italy. There's a organized crime group the Camorra that based out of Naples one of the largest organized crime groups in Europe. And one of the things they're known for is illegal dumping or illegal dumping of regular waste but illegal dumping of toxic waste and this has been a problem for a couple of decades. And because of this constant toxic waste dumping there have been really high levels of cancer, cancer clusters, there have been ecological effects there's been affected the agriculture in the area. So it's become a huge environmental justice issue as well so yeah it was a chance to kind of combine, looking at the history of this organized crime group how they got in with the political structure and how that led to them, basically being able to do this, you know pillaging of the environment for so long, you know things have, it's still going on to some extent but things have changed a lot, there's been a lot of law enforcement activity in Italy about it but yeah it was a really interesting study.

Laura 
I'm just picturing the mob family getting together and going, we need to talk about circular economy. How do we keep doing what we're doing to protect the environment. Right, exactly. That's awesome. I do want to mention before I forget that today is not today, so it is already out or in our future world, no worries. But that's a great segue into the next question so because you know I've been on your mob history tours in Ybor City, which is awesome. I've been going to Ybor since I was 13 I love it. I always have to go there when I visit, and I had a fascination with organized crime growing up so I've kind of been watching you, I don't know if you notice I've been kind of

Nic
But not in the stalky way, a normal, regular amount of stalking

Laura
Not stalking, just kind of, you know, I just always thought what you're doing is really cool. It's so neat. I didn't even know this story you just said about, like, it's so crazy how your interests and stuff can come together in these crazy ways but when did you first start writing about Tampa mafia. Was that something you were always interested in.

Scott Deitche 
So I kind of grew up outside New York City so you always got a lot of the mob news out in New York and my mom was a big fan of the old gangster movie so it was always kind of a little bit of a fascination but kind of the kickstart was after I saw Goodfellas, in the movies back in 1990 I was like oh I want to read the, I want to read the book this is based on so I picked up the book Wiseguy by Nick Pileggi and that started like my interest in reading and it was kind of, it just kind of started growing and then in it was like late 94, early 95 Like, when there was nothing on the internet, like this one, tech site that was this guy writing stuff about the mafia. Yeah, and I met a guy, a historian from England and he said, Oh, I see your but I've moved to St Pete at that point so to see you're living in Tampa, I have these congressional hearings from 1950 in Tampa about the mob there, and I really don't know much about it so I'm like oh, so he sent him to me and I read it and it's great stories of gambling and gangland killings I'm like oh, that kind of lit the light bulb up. Fast forward over the next, you know, six years or so I'm just do a lot of research on my own and then I started writing for some long defunct websites in the late 90s, early 2000s.  And then somewhere, somewhere around that time period, I'm like, You know what I'm gonna write a book, how hard can that be that started in my first book came out in 2004 and since then I've written eight other books, I can't count how many articles for newspapers and blogs and other stuff so that's, and I run the Tampa mafia tour that Laura has been on so it's kind of become, you know, very fortunate to be able to do what I love for my career and something else that I love on the side that that's dividends as well.

Laura 
That's really cool, and then you're expanding recently, I just happened to notice you were, you kind of expanding into think you're doing some stuff in Las Vegas.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah, so the Las Vegas thing I'm a member of the Advisory Council the mob Museum in Vegas, and I've been involved with them since the start I donated some materials to them it's been, you know they're one of the, you know they're accredited museum they were ranked like number 19 Last year in the country so my plug for the museum. So that's been a great thing I've been involved with, and you know the cool thing, getting back real quick to how this kind of ties together both of my interest is how I've used these Tampa mafia tours with GPI to our advantage, I've taken many clients out on the tours we've offered his his like kind of client specials and you know it's been a great way to relate to clients through through this other thing other than just, you know, hey, I want to work for you, What do you have to work with and then there'll be people like, Oh, you're the guy that wrote that book and I'm like, Yeah, but I've not to use it to my advantage but it gives you the kind of extra connection, and we, you know, I tell people you know GPI is the only consulting firm that offers our clients mafia tourism.

Nic 
that's too funny and like, you know, I hadn't heard a whole lot about like the Tampa mafia is it like every bit as wild and crazy as the, you know, you hear in New York, Chicago, is every bit like that.

Scott Deitche 
They were closely tied together it was a smaller family Tampa's much smaller city obviously than Chicago or New York City, they all, all the mafia families got their start in New Orleans, maybe the earliest in the late 1800s, but by the early 1900s, the mafia were around in many cities around the country and the Tampa mafia kind of had its height of power and 50s and 60s I would say 50s Definitely because they controlled a lot of the casinos in Havana, Cuba, and there were a lot of very close ties between the mafia in New York and Chicago and Tampa and Orleans so they all kind of knew each other and connected. In fact, you know, one of the things I get asked all the time is Santo Trafficante who is the boss of the mafia here in Tampa, when he got kicked out of Cuba in 1959 he was approached by the CIA and I actually talked to the gentlemen that approached him and he set up the meeting with Sam Giancana the head of the Chicago mob Santo Trafficante and Johnny Roselli this other mobster from Chicago, at the Fontainebleau hotel in the CIA literally paid the mafia couple $100,000 If they would kill Fidel Castro, obviously, Castro just passed away a few years ago so they never did it but yeah right. There's just crazy stuff that people don't even realize that happened 50 Some 60 years ago the our government was paying the mob to get involved in, you know operations against a foreign leader who was pretty crazy.

Nic 
Yeah, that is totally wild and gosh you know it's funny, so this is, you know obviously very important to you and you know, my hobbies, stand up comedy right I enjoy doing that but even as like just a mediocre comic in a small town, or a smaller city, literally everyone I know asked me if I've seen marvelous Mrs Mazel, which is a great show, but it's like they think all comedians must watch The One Show about comedy, does that same thing happen to you, wherever you know, everyone you meet like oh you like the mafia so you know, Godfather right Boardwalk Empire, these must be your favorite shows.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah. The Sopranos are which I like them all like, yeah. And the reason I always, you know, I get asked to how did you get interested in this, that, you know, I know what I'm going to answer ready that everyone wants to know and fine I totally. I like the fact that there's people that interested that won't ask me that stuff. But, yeah, yeah, I used to be like, Oh, these actors I do like, 25, press junkets a day, how do they get tired. Yeah, and you're like okay well I see. But a look we're fortunate that people are that interest in this and want to ask about it that so

Nic 
yeah absolutely for sure.

Laura 
Do you ever get no I think about writing books sometimes and I think like, oh I can't write about that person, but the families are still here in Tampa, I know I know at least one descendent.  Did ever catch flack from people, or do they like what you're writing and or are you in touch with them.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah, so I would say, well, first of all, everything I write in this comes from the technical side background you write a you publish a scientific paper, you're gonna have tons of notes, and attributions and references. Same thing with the books I write even if I don't necessarily structure them as a, you know, more of an academic style book, you know, backup documentation, public records you know I don't just make spurious accusations or allegations that will then get you in hot water for one but I, I tried to be as accurate as

Laura 
They are just scary people to get in hot water with.

Scott Deitche 
you know, most of the stuff I write about is historic in nature and I would say of the of the family members I've met that I've written about I would say about 95% of them positive interaction sure there's sometimes people are like, I can't believe you wrote that or why did you write that. But, way, way more and even in Tampa I've been approached by people like oh that was my grandfather, we never knew this, we always suspected this or, you know, sometimes people will say, well, that's not how it happened. Let me tell you how that really happened. So, yeah, now I think I think for the most part people realize, whether it's the organized crime here in New York, whatever, it's part of the history of the cities and in smaller cities like Tampa and as you know a lot of people, a lot of people know each other than they grew up together. So it's it's an even closer connection.

Laura 
Yeah. That's awesome. Well what's next. So, both for working your, your book writing.

Scott Deitche  
Yeah, so work, you know, last year, obviously, was threw curveballs a lot of people but actually did pretty well and we're looking to expand this year, both in terms of the services that we offer, we're looking at some, some more resiliency projects, I think that's an area that that I'm more interested in as well, and Florida is, in fact, just earlier today I just saw the recommended budget for next year for water projects and they're still pumping a lot of money into water, and hopefully we can avoid another repeat of that red tide Blue Green Algae fiasco, a few years ago. So yeah, you know I'm looking forward to growth in our area where, you know, expanding. So that's, that's always a great thing. And so that's, you know, from, I would say from a career standpoint, I'm enjoying where I am looking forward to expanding what we can offer and where we can offer and teaming with people like our friend Justin Krebs who have been on one of yours before we've talked about teaming up on some stuff with with our Northeast offices and his group, which is another important thing real quick, super big point of advice is networking. Yes, networking is huge.

Laura
100%.

Scott Deitche
That's always my career replaces every single job I've gotten including GPI have been because I've known the person or known somebody rather than just kind of going in there cold. Yeah, I just did one for Eckerd  last week, it was a Zoom meeting with, you know like juniors and seniors and the flexibility networking were the two things that I was talking about with them. Yeah, I used to do life after Eckerd, which I'd go to their Marine Science seminar and, you know, I started back when I was at FMRI and they changed the format up a few years ago so I got to tell them, as I've grown up in my career like things that they should do to get to that next level. So, yeah, yeah.

Nic 
It's 100% Right, I mean like networking is, it's a weird thing because it's so important but it just seems again like an insurmountable mountain, but you just, you take it one step at a time, you know, and people are afraid, I think that you have to just know everybody and that's not how it works. You got to put the time in

Scott Deitche 
And Laura knows it's a bit down here in the Tampa area we have a huge environmental community, but yet it has a small environmental community.

Laura 

So my I mean you wouldn't be here if we didn't have that network, you know,

Nic 
that's how we get people on the show, its networking.

Scott Deitche  
Yeah, and I you know we're remember TBAEP and I guess FAEP. By default, but the Eckerd thing I said this, go to one of their socials when they start up again in person or even their luncheons, because, you know, that's how you build up.

Nic 
Right. Somebody once told me, because I was like, I was like, you know I'm always a little anxious at the beginning when I don't know people I mean a new setting. There's a group of people talking, and he just goes, all you have to say is hey, do you mind if I join you. If they say no, they're assholes, and you don't want to listen to him anyway, so easily. It's like Mind if I join you.

Scott Deitche  
It's just that and I know. Yeah, and I know how hard it is I'm barely social but I'm at conferences, sometimes you walk up to a group of people and there's always a little bit of that moment of discomfort, right how gregarious, you might be is exactly, that's a good advice. But anyway, getting back to what's next and then I just turned in a manuscript for my latest mafia book so that will be out probably, I think they said January of 2022.

Nic 
And so what's the topic. Are we allowed to say I don't want to, I don't wanna spoil it

Scott Deitche  
No, I'll say is, I've always kind of wanted to do in New York book, but I wanted to pick a topic that nobody's ever written about before so there was this group of mob connected drug dealers and hitman in the 70s called the Purple Gang. And there was a little while there where they were like in all the newspapers and magazines as like the secret hit team of the mafia. And it was like for a couple years they were like, you know the boogeyman for the media, and organized crime, both in the northeast, as well as in Florida, and always wanted to write a story, like the truth behind the Purple Gang news is really interesting because I usually come from an area where I have a ton of information I have to winnow it down and this one there was, wasn't much information I kind of had to expand out, but it was like all my books, I love the research part. So, and like all my books, I said I wouldn't procrastinate, but I did.

Nic 
I think that's the rule is actually your you have to procrastinate a little.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah. Someone was asking me they're writing their first book I said well you're never a real author unless you're a. a procrastinator and  b. miss a deadline from your editor.

Laura 
Do you have any aspirations or have you, like, I'm big on manifesting so we can manifest right now if you were looking to get a book turned into a movie or anything like that.

Scott Deitche 
One of my books right now is under option it's been under option for a few years I've had two other ones that have one other one that was formerly under Option and another one, I was approached by so just for your listeners when a book gets optioned a person or creator whatever says, Okay, I'm gonna option this book for three years. that means no one else can do anything other than you reprinting this book so I'm gonna option his book I want to make a TV show out of it, I want to make a movie out of it, it doesn't mean it's going to happen, and very few of them really ever come to that fruition but it takes it off the market for anyone else. So, you know, Nick if you option my book, Laura can't say well I want to make a movie out of your book you hold the rights to do that. So yeah sure it would be great and in on I've heard stories from the people that have option my books that will, what they want to do with it. I don't think I realized how long and difficult to process it is to take something from an idea to like a movie or a TV Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so but you know they're looking for content and I've seen some of the stuff you know there's so much on TV now that I think the quality gets a little watered down in places. Yeah, but with the streaming services and stuff there's there's definitely a lot more opportunity to get stuff made into it into a different format, whether it's a mini series or, you know, Netflix movie or whatever so yeah holding out hope that someday one of them comes to fruition.

Nic  
Yeah, yeah. Awesome.

Laura 
Some of my favorite things I've watched, have been just to season like many, many shows series, you know.

Scott Deitche
Yeah, absolutely. Those are great,

Nic 
and you know if it you know when that happens you know you can also come back here and tell us whether they did a great job with your work or not and you know we can put that out here.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah, well I have heard from people other authors that have had books made into movies and such that, you know, no matter how big of an author you are how, you know, best selling an author, you're in the movie world the writers like at the bottom. Way Down on the totem pole.

Nic 
Yes, it's still cool. Laura, Laura, gave me a note and I missed it. That's what just happened there. You know, I really wish we could talk to you for another hour, and ask you even more mafia questions, it just means that you'll have to come back and tell us mafia stories from time to time, but is there anything else before we let you go, that you could tell us about where people can find you in what you do. Yeah,

Scott Deitche  
well I'm on LinkedIn, Scott Deitche, people can connect with me, professional basis for those interests and it just kind of the mob stuff it find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tampamafia.com is the website for the mafia tours, if you're in the Tampa area and GPInet.com is GPI where i work so a variety of different ways if anyone wants to get in touch with me for either.

Nic 
Okay, great.

Laura 
That's all thanks Scott, it was so awesome to catch up with you and have this conversation with you today.

Scott Deitche 
Yeah, this was great. Thank you very much for having me on. I appreciate it.

[Outro]

Nic 
And that's our show. We want to thank Scott for giving us a taste of the mafia life today really fun having him on, and we'll have to have him back to hear more of those wild and crazy stories so please be sure to check us out each and every Friday, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review.  See  you everybody.

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai


Shout outs
Nic talks about his recent trip to Hawaii...and yes, we are jealous!
Interview with Scott Deitche starts
Scott Deitche talks water quality and spending time on the water
Scott Deitche discusses his shift to business development and resiliency projects
Scott Deitche talks about writing and the Tampa Mafia
The importance of networking
Outro