A sudden leap forward in the evolution of artificial intelligence has brought the technology’s benefits and risks into much sharper relief and into everyday conversations. Businesses hear warnings that they need to take advantage of AI or else drift into irrelevancy. But when cheerleaders say AI can make businesses more productive, what does that look like exactly? As with the advent of any major technological evolution, will workers lose their jobs? You’ve probably already heard about professio...
Sep 25, 2023•58 min•Ep. 272
Founded in 1997, Indianapolis-based Cunningham Restaurant Group now counts 17 distinctive dining concepts spread over a total of about 40 establishments in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. A sampling: Mesh, Rize, Provision, Bru Burger Bar, Modita, Union 50, Nesso, Stonecreek Dining Company and the nationally rated Vida and Livery. And the stovetop at CRG’s development kitchen in downtown Indianapolis is full: The company is opening several new concepts in the next year, and founder and CEO Mike Cunni...
Sep 18, 2023•55 min•Ep. 271
Chad Peterman and his younger brother Tyler grew up with their dad’s business, Peterman Heating Cooling & Plumbing. Pete Peterman received at least one offer for the Greenwood-based business, but he kept it in the family and handed over day-to-day operations to his boys in 2015. He couldn’t have imagined how much and how fast the company would grow under the new generation, which had a strategy that required a fundamental change in the business. From 2016 to 2018, Peterman’s annual revenue g...
Sep 11, 2023•40 min•Ep. 270
Darrian and Devyn Mikell grew up in central Indiana, played sports, went to college, tried a few things to get their careers started and ultimately launched a tech firm together. They have some juicy stories from their early days of griding that would resonate with other tech founders: starting with the wrong sales strategy, struggling for months without revenue and slowly building a base of investors. There are a few things that are relatively unique: First, they’re brothers, and we all know th...
Sep 05, 2023•57 min•Ep. 269
The process for designing and upgrading interstates in Indiana hasn’t exactly been a two-way street. Typically, the Indiana Department of Transportation draws up plans for its projects and then the public has an opportunity to provide feedback. You’ll recall the uproar in 2017 when INDOT presented its plans for reconstructing the North Split, where I-70 and I-65 meet in the northeast corner of downtown. Nearby residents were vehemently against some elements of the project and proposed a fundamen...
Aug 28, 2023•38 min•Ep. 268
For 25 years, Sam Schmidt has been a beloved figure in the IndyCar Series, first as a driver, then as a team owner and a champion of innovation, persistence and the human spirit. During a practice session in Florida in 2000, he lost control of his car and smashed into a concrete barrier at around 180 miles per hour. Doctors saved his life, but he has been paralyzed from the shoulders down ever since. Within about a year, he had started a racing team, as well as a not-for-profit group dedicated t...
Aug 21, 2023•39 min•Ep. 267
When people say Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour could have a seismic impact on Indianapolis during its three-show gig next year, that’s not just a figure of speech. When Swift performed in July at Seattle’s Lumen Field, the show generated seismic activity similar to that of a magnitude 2.3 earthquake, thanks to a combination of the sound system and the dancing and cheering of fans. When the Indy shows take place in November 2024, Swift’s local fan base will have waited more than a year ...
Aug 14, 2023•33 min•Ep. 266
In 2018, a raft of Purdue University researchers published a report on the impact of climate change on Indiana agriculture. It looked at the ways increasing temperatures and rainfall could affect the growing season for crops, the types of crops that could be planted, the health of farm animals, and the prevalence of weeds, pests, and disease. Even for Hoosiers who spend most of their time in air-conditioned environments, the future of agriculture is a very big deal. About 15 million acres of lan...
Aug 07, 2023•39 min•Ep. 265
IBJ personal finance columnist Pete the Planner has a teen and a tween at home. Pete has been helping people with family finances for decades, and even he admits now to being humbled in this new season of his financial life by numerous large or unusual obligations. As he puts it in an upcoming column for IBJ, Pete is bracing for many years of “financial chaos.” He also finds himself in the uncomfortable position of using the advice he has given older families over the years and realizing that it...
Jul 31, 2023•36 min•Ep. 264
Last July, IBJ Media unveiled the inaugural issue of the Indiana 250—a compendium of the state’s 250 most influential and impactful business and community leaders. The definitions of “influence” and “impact” were intentionally broad, and the list included C-suite executives, not-for-profit leaders, civic bigwigs, lawyers, bankers, board chairs, artists, promoters, judges, philanthropists, and serial entrepreneurs. The biggest caveat was that the list didn’t include elected officials because thei...
Jul 24, 2023•35 min•Ep. 263
It’s not hard to find the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum if you’re a fan of the track: It’s tucked on the inside of the short chute between turns 1 and 2. The ironic thing is that while the Speedway was originally built as a testing ground for new technology and the IndyCar Series has always made a habit of adopting racing innovations, the museum has seemed increasingly mired in the past. Its exhibits have been mostly static, including a gallery of Indy 500-winning cars that some say resembl...
Jul 17, 2023•34 min•Ep. 262
Two years ago, Sajjad Shah entered the Indianapolis coffee shop market with his eyes wide open and a hook that could help differentiate his locations from the herd of java joints. His coffee shops would have a built-in audience through a very popular Instagram account that he founded in 2014, and they would be tied to the account’s overarching mission: promoting the Muslim community and raising millions of dollars for Muslims in crisis around the world. Indeed, the name of the Instagram account ...
Jul 10, 2023•36 min•Ep. 261
The health care industry in America is on the precipice of its biggest change at least since the passage of Obamacare 13 years ago. Passed last summer, the Inflation Reduction Act has given Medicare the green light to negotiate the prices of some drugs for its 60 million-some recipients. The program is expected to save patients many billions of dollars while significantly shrinking revenue for some pharmaceutical firms. Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. is intensely concerned about this devel...
Jul 03, 2023•26 min•Ep. 260
On June 30, Brian Payne will finish a 23-year run as CEO and president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation and president of the Indianapolis Foundation. You can think of CICF as an umbrella organization that includes the Indianapolis Foundation and many other foundations and charitable funds that make nearly $100 million in grants every year to help not-for-profit groups in central Indiana. Over 23 years of Payne’s leadership, the total assets of the CICF collective organization have gro...
Jun 26, 2023•46 min•Ep. 259
As Jim Carpenter tells it, he was “an unemployed bird watcher” in 1981 when he decided to open a feed store in Broad Ripple called Wild Birds Unlimited. Today, there are 365 franchised locations in the chain founded by Carpenter and his wife, Nancy—and the couple has a jaw-dropping new roost for watching birds. In 2021, they bought a former golf course in northern Zionsville so it could it slip back into its natural state. The decision to buy the 215-acre Wolf Run Golf Club for $5.5 million was ...
Jun 19, 2023•37 min•Ep. 258
More than 40 million people in America are about to take a big financial hit, and it could have such serious repercussions on the economy that we could find ourselves back in at least a mini-recession. Federal student loan borrowers haven’t been required to make loan payments since March 2020, due to the economic stresses of the pandemic. But the grace period is almost over: Some 44 million borrowers will be required to either begin or continue making payments in September. Education officials h...
Jun 11, 2023•33 min•Ep. 257
Indianapolis leaders made sports one of the focus points of its downtown economic development strategy as far back as the early 1970s. Today, we have the 70,000-seat Lucas Oil Stadium and the 17,200-seat Gainbridge Fieldhouse, not to mention the 9,100-seat Hinkle Fieldhouse and 6,500-seat Indiana Farmer’s Coliseum a few miles to the north. Apparently, civic leaders believe there is room for at least one more indoor sports palace, and it intersects with another one of downtown’s evolving selling ...
Jun 05, 2023•28 min•Ep. 256
For a century, Indiana’s identity has been informed by the bucolic farms folks can see from the window of an airplane or from the window of their cars as they zoom by on one of our many interstates. But folks on the ground know that the state has become one of the nation’s hubs for plant diagnostics, crop protection, gene editing, biotechnology, food preservation, field management, aerial intelligence, animal health and sources of renewable energy. The companies and scientists involved in this w...
May 30, 2023•43 min•Ep. 255
Dan Wheldon, Kyle Kirkwood, J.R. Hildebrand, Jay Howard, Sage Karam, Oliver Askew, Spencer Pigot, and Rinus VeeKay. Beyond the fact that all of these drivers are either past or current competitors in the Indy 500, what do they have in common? They all competed in the USF2000 series, which is one of the feeder series to IndyCar. Al Morey IV is 17 years old and a rookie in the USF 2000 series, competing for Indianapolis-based team Jay Howard Driver Development. He lives in Fishers, and ever since ...
May 22, 2023•38 min•Ep. 254
In 1977, Rabbi Dennis Sasso and his wife, Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, loaded up their car and drove from New York to Indianapolis. As the first practicing rabbinical couple in world Jewish history, they already had a fair amount of renown and had even appeared on the quiz shows “What’s My Line?” and “To Tell the Truth.” But they were young—just a few years out of rabbinical school—so it might have been a bit of a gamble for Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis to hire them as its spiritu...
May 15, 2023•44 min•Ep. 253
The 2023 Indiana General Assembly wrapped up about a week ago—specifically, 2:47 a.m. on Friday, April 28—after your state lawmakers hammered out a $44.6 billion budget for the next two years, filed 1,154 bills and approved 252 of them. Gov. Eric Holcomb has now signed all 252, as of May 4. As you know, both the Indiana House and the Indiana Senate have Republican supermajorities, so the GOP generally did not need support from Democrats to pass its priorities. And so these laws now venture out i...
May 08, 2023•49 min•Ep. 252
The first episode of the IBJ Podcast was posted on June 4, 2018. This week, we present the 250th episode. As listeners know, the podcast’s only regular guest outside of IBJ’s editorial staff has been Pete Dunn, aka Pete the Planner. He first was featured on March 11, 2019, after becoming one of IBJ’s regular columnists for personal finance. Over about 20 podcast episodes, he and host Mason King have discussed investments, insurance, budgeting, retirement, buying a car, saving for college, giving...
May 01, 2023•41 min•Ep. 251
Joel Kirk doesn’t have an MBA or what you would consider to be a traditional business background. But he is every inch an entrepreneur and promoter, and he cut his teeth in one of the toughest markets in the world: New York City. And he has persuaded some of the most experienced philanthropists in central Indiana to back his venture that makes Indiana a conduit for one of New York City’s most famous products: Broadway-style musicals. A native of Carmel, Kirk is the founder and CEO of Discovering...
Apr 24, 2023•46 min•Ep. 250
You might recognize Indianapolis-based Bosma Enterprises as a not-for-profit that helps Indiana residents who are blind or visually impaired. Its business model includes providing products and services for the public and private sector. This provides jobs for people with vision loss who otherwise would face a 70% unemployment rate. In fact, more than half of Bosma’s employees are blind or visually impaired—including its vice president of external affairs, Lise Pace. She was climbing the ladder i...
Apr 17, 2023•36 min•Ep. 249
In 1979, musician Chuck Surack started a business in Fort Wayne called Sweetwater Sound by creating a mobile recording studio in a Volkswagen Bus. Fast-forward a bit more than four decades, and Sweetwater has evolved into one of the nation’s most prominent e-commerce sites for musical instruments and audio gear, with $1.6 billion in sales for 2022. Surack and his wife, Lisa, had total ownership of the company until 2021 when they sold a big stake to a private equity firm. The Suracks have used t...
Apr 10, 2023•38 min•Ep. 248
I n the 38 years that Steve Sanner has owned and operated Jiffy Lube oil change shops in Indiana, he has laid down some serious tread marks. He is owner and president of Jiffy Lube of Indiana, which counts 51 locations and about 510 employees altogether. That’s the vast majority of the Jiffy Lubes in the state. But he hasn’t been content to simply make his mark as a major Jiffy Lube franchisee. He has volunteered at the highest levels of some of central Indiana’s highest profile organizations, i...
Apr 03, 2023•46 min•Ep. 247
The owners of Homefield, a maker of T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other apparel for college sports fans, haven’t necessarily been upset with all of the upsets during March Madness this year. The firm was founded by recent Indiana University graduate Connor Hitchcock and his wife, Christa, built off of a side project called Hoosier Proud. It seems like college gear is everywhere, and that initially gave Connor pause when considering whether to take the Indiana-focused venture national. But he and Ch...
Mar 27, 2023•43 min•Ep. 246
After the immediate fallout of the Great Recession, apartment development in downtown Indianapolis surged. Just in the last decade, the number of downtown apartment units has more than doubled to the current total of about 15,000 units. Indianapolis and other major cities across the nation are trying to encourage apartment development, especially as downtowns face an existential crisis brought about by the pandemic—namely, the loss of office workers in their downtown cores to remote working. One...
Mar 20, 2023•40 min•Ep. 245
The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again next week as it continues to try to cool inflation. The silver lining is that when lending rates rise, savings rates also rise. It’s not unusual now to see certificates of deposits with 4% or 5% annual yields locked in over 12 to 24 months. Money market accounts are now paying healthy returns as well. Millennials and members of Gen Z should take note, because they probably haven’t experienced interest rates this high for savings in th...
Mar 13, 2023•38 min•Ep. 244
The Indiana General Assembly just reached the midpoint of its 2023 legislative session and passed some deadlines for advancing bills, which has pushed at least two-thirds of them back to the curb—at least for this session. So this is a great time to take stock of the bills that made the cut and those that tanked. As usual, education funding has been at the center of major debate. Lawmakers also are hip-deep in social issues, such as so-called “ESG investing” and potential bans on library books s...
Mar 06, 2023•46 min•Ep. 243
