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 a bit of a gamble. The Carpenters were banking on Zionsville officials to buy the land from them—albeit at a discount from their purchase price—so it could be a town nature park. It took about two years, but the town council agreed last month to free up funds to pay $4.5 million for the land—which is now assessed at $6 million—and another $1 million to help prepare for its launch as Carpenter Nature Preserve. Jim and Nancy Carpenter have for years practiced this kind of conservation philanthropy. They hosted the IBJ Podcast outside Wolf Run’s old clubhouse—amid a cacophony of songbirds—for an interview to discuss why they took a chance on buying the golf course, how they’ll stay involved with the preserve, and how they envision the property evolving. They also provide an update on how Wild Birds Unlimited fared during the pandemic, riding the sudden wave of interest in backyard recreation. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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 have predicted that there could be historic levels of federal student loan delinquency and defaults. The companies that service these loans for the federal government also are in a tough position, restarting the machinery after years of inactivity or taking on millions of customers for the first time. In fact, it’s estimated that 16 million borrowers will have a different company to deal with by the time payments resume. IBJ personal finance columnist Pete The Planner has been looking into the possible ramifications of this big shift for a sizable chunk of the country. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, he has advice for borrowers and their families to help prepare for the upcoming tumult, as well as some friendly warnings about the possible economic effects. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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 points: the campus of urban university IUPUI. As we’ve discussed, IUPUI is in the midst of splitting into two separate campuses—one for Indiana University, one for Purdue University—with its Division 1 sports programs becoming part of what will be known as Indiana University Indianapolis. In the two-year state budget that they just approved, Indiana lawmakers allotted $89.5 million to design and build the midsize sports facility that would be home for the IU Indianapolis indoor athletic programs. But the local leaders who pushed for the funding want the 5,000-seat arena to play host to a wide variety of events serving the city’s best interests as a magnet for tourism. On this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King chats with IBJ reporter Mickey Shuey about the rationale behind the plans for the stadium, what needs to happen before construction could start, and how it could affect Indianapolis’ sports ecosystem. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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 work have reached the critical mass for creating an ecosystem of innovation, where advancements in one area help drive results in another. Not only is this accumulated expertise good for the state’s economy, but it also plays into national security and global stability. What is more in mankind’s best interest than the production of healthy food in adequate supplies?For the latest edition of the podcast, host Mason King is joined by Mitch Frazier, who draws on his considerable professional experience in technology and agriculture as president and CEO of Agrinovus Indiana. It’s a statewide organization devoted to fueling growth in the agbioscience economy. Frazier, who has one of the most expansive and rounded perspectives of agricultural innovation in the state, details how Indiana is becoming a major player in vital issues of food security. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

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 he started racing karts at the age of 9, he has had his sights on the upper rungs of professional racing. But the road to IndyCar is never easy, in part because it is so expensive. Running an open-wheel car for a full season in USF2000 can easily run several hundred thousand dollars for the driver. That includes tires, engineering and mechanical services, parts and labor, track testing and travel, food, and lodging. Drivers can defray some of those costs with sponsor dollars, but they typically must arrange those relationships themselves. Al Morey’s father, also named Al Morey, says the cost of this season could be anywhere between $400,000 to $700,000, depending, for example, on how often the car is damaged. In the latest edition of the IBJ Podcast, the father and son team talk about what it’s like in the trenches of professional racing, the costs involved, and how they work together to secure sponsors. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

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 spiritual leaders. Dennis was named senior rabbi, a position he has held now for 47 years.The records are little spotty, but congregation officials believe he has led or been involved in more than 2,400 Shabbat services, close to 1,400 bat mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs, 275 weddings, 1,000 funerals, 800 bris and baby-naming celebrations and 470 board meetings. At the end of this month he will retire as senior rabbi, although the weekend of May 13 and 14th will be filled with special events honoring Sasso at the synagogue. On the eve of the May 13th celebrations, IBJ Podcast host Mason King sat down with the two rabbis to discuss Dennis’ decision to step down, the months of preparation necessary for such a transition, what he sees as his legacy and, crucially, what exit music he would want heard as he dances into retirement. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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 into the world to do the bidding of our elected representatives. It was hard to miss the big debates this year over the proposed ban on gender transition procedures for minors, which is now law. As are the controversial proposals to expand eligibility for the state’s school voucher program, ban instruction on human sexuality in grades kindergarten through third, and forbid state retirement system managers from investing in companies based on environmental and social factors. For journalists who cover state government, the end of the legislative session is just the beginning. Now they must follow these laws and report on their consequences. We can assume that lawmakers go into these sessions with the best of intentions, but sometimes the laws they produce don’t work as intended. Sometimes they immediately end up in the court system through legal challenges. And sometimes they require a Herculean amount of work to simply get up and running. The reporters who covered this year’s session already have earmarked the laws that bear more investigation, and we have two of them join host Mason King on the podcast this week: Peter Blanchard, who covers politics and state government for IBJ, and Casey Smith, who covers the same for the not-for-profit newsroom Indiana capital Chronicle. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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 to charities, quitting your job, and how to prepare for the next financial calamity. After nearly every interview with Dunn, King has had the nagging suspicion that at least one important question—perhaps a bit too touchy, or even mercenary—goes unasked.  This week, he asks those questions. The kid gloves are off, and Dunn has agreed to discuss some of the sensitive topics in personal finance. How can you help your spouse or elderly parents when they can’t manage their own finances? Who in a marriage should have the final say on big purchases? How should one prepare for the financial implications of divorce? How much should you ask about your pending inheritance? And, of course: How do you know when it's time to change financial advisers? The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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 Broadway, which brings musicals that are still in the developmental stage to central Indiana so the creative teams can work in relative peace and then stage their work here with a combination of local and national talent. For example, the creative team behind the musical version of “The Devil Wears Prada” rewrote most of the show’s script and created several new songs over the course of about a week in Carmel back in 2021. In this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, Kirk discusses his own incubation period in Carmel and then at Ball State University before moving to New York at the age of 20 and starting a career as a theater director. He also tells the origin story of Discovering Broadway and explains how this one-man show—at least until recently—persuaded producers and creators with international reputations to make central Indiana their workshop. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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 in the banking industry in the early 1990s when she learned that she would eventually lose her sight to a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Married and the mother of a young son, she slowly retreated into a dark and isolated life as she lost most of her sight, stopped working and became a stay-at-home mom. As she says, “I didn’t know how to be someone who was blind.”In this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, Pace tells the story of how her son inspired her to break out of a years-long funk and start volunteering. That led to a full-time job at Bosma and then a raft of promotions that brought her to her current position as a company executive. You could see her as a prime example of how someone with limited sight can excel in the corporate world. Indeed, one of Bosma’s missions is to help clients learn the skills required for succeeding in almost any business environment. But as Pace acknowledges, employers considering visually impaired applicants also need to see beyond sight impediments and trust the results from past work history.

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 that money to help further their already extensive philanthropic giving. Chuck also has more time to focus on Surack Enterprises, a collection of companies unrelated to Sweetwater, including several that stem from his interest in aviation. And that’s the reason why Chuck has been in the news in Indianapolis in recent weeks. The Indianapolis Airport Authority wants to decommission the Indianapolis Downtown Heliport, a move that’s supported by the city of Indianapolis due to the site’s attractiveness for redevelopment. Chuck is helping lead the charge to persuade the Federal Aviation Administration to deny permission to decommission the heliport. Chuck has a helicopter charter company that uses the heliport, but he also joins aviation experts and the Indiana Department of Transportation in arguing that the heliport is uniquely positioned to advantage of new developments in urban aviation. That includes electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Surack sheds more light on his decision to sell a controlling stake in Sweetwater and step away from day-to-day operations. And he explains the reasoning behind his desire to keep the heliport open.The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

In 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, including the Indiana Sports Corp., the local organizing committee for the Big Ten Football Championship and the Washington Township Schools Foundation. And he has used his Jiffy Lubes as a platform for some surprising community-minded initiatives. He has supported Indiana artists by commissioning 30 murals for his stores. He’s kicking off a campaign called “No ticket, let’s fix it,” in which police officers around the state give motorists $25 Jiffy Lube gift cards to get minor car repairs, at a total retail value so far of $300,000. It’s a great way to get motorists into Jiffy Lube, but Sanner says he also wants to promote positive interactions between police and motorists while keeping roads safer.Sanner is the guest for this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast. He starts with a few wild stories about his early days as an entrepreneur and how he got a foothold as a Jiffy Lube franchisee. He reacts to some of the common complaints that consumers have about oil change shops. And he talks at length about his secondary career as a volunteer, including being in charge of all of the laundry in the March Madness bubble when Indianapolis hosted all of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2021. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

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 Christa landed on a formula to help Homefield to stand out: Using premium materials and creating unusual designs that draw on a school’s vintage iconography, and then moving at the speed of the internet when a particular school hits big. So, for example, in the first few hours after Fairleigh Dickinson University beat Purdue in the first round of the men’s tournament this year, Homefield was in touch with licensing officials for FDU, designing a series of shirts and notifying its followers on Twitter. It did the same thing last year when St. Peters University made a run in the tournament. Both schools are squarely in Homefield’s comfort zone as small universities that don’t necessarily have robust apparel programs. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Connor and Christa explain how they parlayed their success with small schools into agreements with the bigger names. They also dig into how they landed on Homefield’s winning strategy and how they’ve grown the firm to 40 employees in five years while maintaining a four-day workweek and keeping the emphasis on their staff’s quality of life. That includes all weekends off, even during the tournament. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

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 of the hottest trends is to take existing office towers and convert them into apartment buildings. And it’s happening with other major commercial structures, like downtown malls. We’re seeing that now in Indianapolis, with the conversion of the AT&T building and the plans for the Gold Building. The redevelopment of Circle Centre Mall very likely will have apartments, and as the city tries to find new uses for past-their-prime municipal properties, it’s often making residential uses a priority.For this week’s edition of the podcast, we have a three-person panel to explore the reasons behind the recent surge, the city’s desire to encourage apartment development, and future prospects for continued development and how that could affect downtown. Joining us are apartment market specialist George Tikijian, real estate developer Eric Gershman and deputy mayor of economic development Scarlett Andrews. Here’s our conversation. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

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 their adult lives. It's difficult to get many Americans to put away an appropriate amount of money for retirement or a financial emergency. Late last year, Congress passed a significant revision to the rules for retirement plans with the intent of extending and expanding your saving opportunities and ability to put away money for retirement. It’s not just for folks preparing to hobble across the finish line. The changes also can help people still paying off their college loans and those who need to establish their first emergency funds. For this week’s podcast, IBJ columnist Pete Dunn, aka Pete The Planner, explains these new opportunities for savings. He also shares a tip for avoiding an interest-rate trap that current homeowners could fall into if they try to level up on housing. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

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 some people believe are inappropriate for minors. The Legislature likes to trumpet its efforts to make the state more business-friendly, and different ways to lower business taxes have been under discussion. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, regular host Mason King is turning the discussion over to Managing Editor Greg Weaver, who’s been covering state government for decades, and IBJ statehouse reporter Peter Blanchard. And they have invited a guest to help flesh out the discussion: Casey Smith, a reporter for Indiana Capital Chronicle, who recently authored a scoop on a major omission in the Indiana House Republicans’ school funding plan.The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

One of the most persistent questions about downtown Indianapolis since its 1980s resurgence has been, “Is downtown safe?” In the Feb. 17 issue of IBJ, reporters  Mickey Shuey and Taylor Wooten presented statistics for violent and nonviolent crime indicating that downtown remains one of the city’s safest areas, in particular in terms of crimes per capita. Here’s the rub: Statistics often don’t matter as much as perception. And good luck quoting statistics to someone who has been the victim of a crime. Since safety is a prime concern of business owners and executives whose operations are based downtown, IBJ Podcast host Mason King spoke to two entrepreneurs who have drawn different conclusions about downtown safety and made very different decisions about their downtown operations. Greg Harris is the founder of Backhaul Direct, and Andrew Elsener is a co-founder of Spot (formerly known as Spot Freight). Harris decided to pack up and relocate Backhaul Direct’s offices to Fishers after being attacked downtown and hearing other employee concerns about safety. Meanwhile, Elsener decided to open an additional office downtown—although he has concerns about incidents of theft and the shaky state of some downtown infrastructure. In fact, Elsener recently moved his entire family to the Mile Square, just a block north of Monument Circle. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Wheeler Mission has been an integral part of downtown for more than 100 years and is intrinsically linked to quality of life issues and downtown’s image. It’s now in the middle of its first leadership transition in 33 years. When Rick Alvis became president and CEO in 1990, Wheeler Mission had 17 employees and an annual budget of about $700,000. Today, it has about 200 employees and an annual budget of nearly $20 million. On any given night, it provides shelter for about 550 people, which is about a third of all people experiencing homelessness in Indianapolis. And it’s widely known for its shelter services—to the chagrin of some downtown residents—although those services account for just one spoke in a four-pronged strategy to help men, women and children get the basic services they need, acquire job skills, move to stable housing and eventually become self-sufficient. Now 70 years old, Alvis is retiring soon and helping ease the transition for his successor, Perry Hines, who became Wheeler’s chief development officer in 2021. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Alvis and Hines discuss Wheeler’s evolution over the last three decades, perceptions of Wheeler in the community, perceptions of the homeless population downtown in recent years and why they think it’s important that Wheeler remain based downtown. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.    

In his mid-20s, Christian Resiak decided to learn how to hand-stitch leather handbags. He went to thrift stores, bought all of the leather jackets he could find and set up a workspace in his basement. He sold his first bag on Etsy within a month. He called his fledgling company Howl + Hide, partly in reference to his talkative Siberian Husky. Eight years later, Resiak has built Howl + Hide into a million-dollar business with 17 employees without the help of any investors or bank financing.Howl + Hide’s flagship location in Fountain Square doubles as its main retail site—where it sells a wide variety of handbags, tote bags, duffels, keychains and wallets—and its main production facility. But that will change in the near future as Resiak plans to at least double his employee base and double—maybe triple—his sales this year, with some partnerships with national brands on the way. In conversation with podcast host Mason King, Resiak details the process of building the business from scratch and his grand plan to become a global brand. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Amy Brown is the founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based Authenticx Inc., one of the hottest technology firms the state. Despite the national slowdown in venture capital funding in 2022, Authenticx raised $20 million just before the end of the year. That’s almost $30 million total since Brown founded the firm in 2018, which speaks to investor confidence in the idea behind Authenticx as well as the management team’s level of experience and ability to execute. But Brown took a very unusual route to becoming a first-time entrepreneur in her early 40s. As an undergrad at Indiana University, she earned a bachelor’s degree in human development and family studies. She then earned a master’s of social work in policy and program administration. She had several jobs with a focus on health care policy and health insurance programs. Before deciding to take the leap to create Autheticx, she was the chief operating office for a Carmel-based travel insurance firm. It was there that the idea for Authenticx took shape: A company that could collect all of the feedback that health care companies get from their clients and suss out major weaknesses in the customer experience. The health care companies, such as pharmaceutical firms, insurers or medical care providers, could then use all of the data about their customers and their concerns to improve the bottom line. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Brown discusses what it took to bootstrap Authenticx and get it off the ground, including her desire to inspire her four children. She also sheds light on the experience of persuading venture capitalists to invest in Authenticx, including one distinction in her presentations that she said was invaluable.The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Celebrated jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery was born 100 years ago in Indianapolis and spent much of his career here, recording and performing on Indiana Avenue, sometimes with his brothers and often with some of the greatest jazz, soul and even pop musicians of his generation. Montgomery died in 1968 at just 45 years old. But during his relatively short career, he won two Grammy Awards and was routinely selected as the top guitarist in Down Beat magazine polls, five times by critics in the 1960s and four times by readers. We’re turning today’s episode of the podcast over to IBJ arts writer Dave Lindquist for an exploration of the ways that Wes Montgomery was an innovator of jazz guitar, why fellow guitarists continue to find inspiration in his playing 55 years after his death and how he was one of many world-class musicians to emerge from the Indiana Avenue jazz scene in the 1940s and ’50s. Joining Dave for the conversation are Rob Dixon, a saxophone player and artistic director of the Indianapolis Jazz Foundation. And Lasana Kazembe, a poet, teaching artist and assistant professor of education at IUPUI. Rob and Lasana will celebrate Montgomery’s legacy during a May 13 special event at The Cabaret, where Kazembe serves as the venue’s first artist in residence. The event is titled “In Our Own Sweet Way: Honoring the Artistic Legacy of Wes Montgomery.”   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

David Becker is considered one of the godfathers of the Indiana technology ecosystem, having started and sold several tech firms over the past four decades. But he’s probably best known for his current effort, which broke new ground in an entire tech sector. In 1999, he launched First Internet Bank of Indiana, an online-only bank that offered typical bank services without needing to maintain any physical branches. First Internet Bank recently passed $4 billion in assets. Becker is 69 years old and says he has no plans to hand over the reins of CEO and chairman, given that developing new products and services for the bank scratches his entrepreneurial itch. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Becker has a wide-ranging conversation with host Mason King, jumping from his motorcycle-trip bucket list to what he’s done to make the bank’s new headquarters in Fishers attractive to employees while the corporate world wrangles with the trend of working from home. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Tom Wood Automotive Group is one of the best-known family businesses in central Indiana, with more than a dozen car dealerships and 1,000 employees. But relatively few people have heard of Jeff Wood, who took over the company after Tom Wood, his father, died from lung cancer in 2010. Jeff Wood grew up in central Indiana and worked in the family business for a while, but he found his calling in the United States Air Force. He served for 20 years as a combat pilot who flew F-16s. As nerve-wracking as it might be to fly an armed aircraft at 1,400 miles per hour at an altitude of 40,000 feet, Jeff Wood wasn’t entirely prepared for the white-knuckle ride of taking over a huge family business at the request of his father. It's been more than a dozen years since Jeff Wood became company president, and he has used that time to diversify Tom Wood Automotive Group—often following his own interests to see where they lead. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, he discusses his dad, flying F-16s and the hair-raising transition to company leader in 2010. It’s been a tough year for the car sales industry, and Wood provides an insider’s look and a sense of how the group is trying to ride out the turbulence. And he provides a 30,000-foot view of this sprawling conglomerate and how he has been able to keep aviation in his life—flying as often as once per week. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

On Wednesday, global tech giant Salesforce revealed in a sparse regulatory filing that it planned to lay off about 10% of its employees companywide. The reason, in a nutshell: Salesforce hired too many people during a recent period of massive growth, and customers now are cutting back on spending in the uncertain economic environment. And speaking of uncertainty, cities with a significant Salesforce presence were left with many questions, since the firm declined to provide any more details about the layoffs than what was in the filing. The company has about 80,000 employees worldwide, about 2,300 of which work in Indianapolis, where its operations are based in the 48-story Salesforce Tower. Although the company is about as high-profile as you can get in Indianapolis, one suspects many local folks are only vaguely familiar with what the company does here and why it’s an important part of the technology ecosystem.For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King and reporters Susan Orr and Mickey Shuey discuss what they’ve learned so far about the restructuring. It's not just a tech story: Salesforce has revealed, somewhat cryptically, that it also plans to shrink its real estate footprint, which could have serious ramifications for Indianapolis’ premier office tower. It all sounds ominous for downtown, which is still trying to recover from the effects of the pandemic on its urban workforce. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

IBJ reporter Dave Lindquist, in this week for Mason King, talks with Emmis Corp. founder Jeff Smulyan about his 2022 memoir “Never Ride a Roller Coaster Upside Down: The Ups, Downs and Reinvention of an Entrepreneur” The book—which he wrote at his daughter’s urging—caps a year of tremendous transition for Smulyan, whose roster of former employees includes David Letterman, Mike Pence, Isaac Hayes and Ken Griffey Jr. Emmis sold four Indianapolis radio stations and Indianapolis Monthly magazine in 2022, ending the company’s four-decade run as a media powerhouse. Although Emmis still owns two radio stations in New York City, the company is now focused on three assets it has in the fields of e-commerce, ergonomics and corporate podcasting. Lindquist talks with Smulyan about his career, his successes and some of his initiatives that didn’t go so well, including NextRadio—a costly effort to make mobile phones act like smart portable radios that never took off. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.