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.    

Given what we know about inflation and the chances for a recession, you could assume this isn’t the best time to start a business that depends on consumer discretionary spending. Shari Jenkins isn’t too concerned. She’s the restauranteur behind the Zionsville mainstays Noah Grant’s Grill House & Oyster Bar and Salty Cowboy Tequileria. She’s now in the process of opening a new restaurant in Zionsville that’s designed to make patrons feel like they’re on vacation and don’t have a care in the world. It’s called Tipsy Mermaid Conch House & Cocktails, and getting it open this spring will require a seven-figure startup investment. Jenkins has faith in her customer base in her native city of Zionsville. Their support helped keep Noah Grant’s going during the Great Recession, and patrons remained loyal to both of her restaurants during the worst of the pandemic. Jenkins also overcame a devastating fire at the original Noah Grant’s during a key period in which she was relocating the restaurant to a new spot in Zionsville. Fears of a mild recession don’t give her much pause. IBJ reporter Daniel Bradley featured the plans for Tipsy Mermaid in the latest issue of IBJ, and Jenkins joined IBJ Podcast host Mason King for a deeper conversation about her emergence as a restauranteur after working as a teacher in Indianapolis Public Schools. She also explains how she surmounted a litany of obstacles over the last 14 years, although elevated food costs continue to be a problem. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

This is the time of year, for better or worse, that we usually take stock of our investments and either count our blessings or lick our wounds. Sad to say, there hasn’t been a year when traditional equity investments—aka the stock market—have behaved this poorly since 2008, and we all know what happened there. Of course, 2022 can’t compare to the financial meltdown and Great Recession, but that doesn’t take any of the sting out of seeing your portfolio slip 20 percent into the red. IBJ personal finance columnist Pete the Planner is in the same boat and isn’t looking forward to his annual financial review on New Year’s Eve, but Pete does have a pocket full of silver linings to pull out. Markets go down and then they go up. It’s a healthy cycle. To benefit from the cycle, you need to make sure that you are taking advantage of opportunities to save money and eliminate. In the podcast this week, Pete shares the questions he asks himself at the end of every year to make sure he’s positioning himself for success. It all boils down to a concept Pete calls the “power percentage,” which he will explain. And he also ventures to make a few optimistic predictions for 2023.   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

No one disputes that Indiana residents rank very low among all Americans in terms of their health. The operative question, which will be posed to Indiana legislators in their budget-writing session beginning next month, is to what extent the state should try to intervene and do something about it. Last year, Gov. Eric Holcomb convened a special commission to conduct the first comprehensive assessment of Indiana’s public health system in more than three decades. It was co-chaired by former state senator Luke Kenley, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee from 2009 to 2017 and one of the most powerful holders of state purse strings for many years. This summer, the commission released its findings and recommendations. Its overarching proposal is that the state increase annual public health funding from about $55 per person—which ranks 48th in terms of state funding per capita in the nation—to $91 per person. That would cost another $242.6 million a year. Kenley’s job now is to convince skeptical state legislators that this added expenditure is worth it. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Kenley discusses his strategy, as well as why the state’s public health spending has been so relatively meager up to this point. And he’s joined by Dr. Kristina Box, Indiana state health commissioner, to discuss the need to improve the health of Hoosiers and how best to deploy the proposed annual injection of $242.6 million. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The U.S. airline industry isn’t just short of the pilots needed to meet travel demand. The demographic makeup of the industry’s pilot workforce remains overwhelmingly male and white. Indianapolis-based Republic Airways, one of the largest regional airlines in America, has a vested interest in trying to stock its talent pipeline—not just with pilots but for other aviation careers as well, including maintenance. And Republic has made a concerted effort in recent years to recruit more women and people of color and to eliminate barriers that might stand in the way of successful careers at the company. The airline’s initiatives include a three-day aviation career summit that in October attracted 1,100 attendees—including 750 students of color—from across the state. Republic is also in in the process of launching a campaign to raise $24 million to help 300 central Indiana students of color start careers in aviation. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King is joined by Rob Lowe, Republic’s vice president of people and culture, and Alisha Spires, senior manager of talent acquisition for pilot recruiting, to discuss the barriers that women and people of color face when they consider aviation careers, and what Republic is doing to widen those horizons.   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The convention and events business that downtown Indianapolis has worked so hard to develop over recent decades has recovered fairly well from the worst days of the pandemic. But there’s a new competitor on the horizon. Nashville, Tennessee—a fellow NFL city that also has positioned its downtown for tourism—is on the brink of building a new football stadium downtown with a covered roof. As we know in Indianapolis, a stadium with a roof gives your city a lot more flexibility in attracting and staging major events—for sports, concerts and conventions. And Nashville officials have been clear that they’ll be going after events that Indianapolis currently hosts or traditionally is in the hunt to host. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, reporter IBJ’s Mickey Shuey tries to gauge the potential impact on Indianapolis of having a tougher competitor for some of the city’s bread-and-butter business. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Although the White House isn’t up for grabs during the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday, there are candidates for federal, state and local positions on the ballot that affect central Indiana residents in any number of ways.U.S. Sen. Todd Young, a Republican, is defending his seat from Tom McDermott, the Democratic mayor of Hammond, and Libertarian candidate James Sceniak, a behavioral therapist. Some polls have shown the race between Young and McDermott to be surprisingly close, given Young’s name recognition and massive advantage in fundraising. On the state level, there’s a headline-grabbing contest between Republican Diego Morales and Democrat Destiny Wells for secretary of state. Morales has been hit by several troubling allegations in recent months, including accusations of sexual misconduct and embellishing his military record.There’s a fascinating race shaping up in Indiana Senate District 31, which includes the Geist area, Lawrence and the city of Fishers. The incumbent, Republican Kyle Walker, has outraised Democrat opponent Jocelyn Vare many times over, but at least one poll shows this race as a toss-up. And in Indianapolis, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears, a Democrat, faces a tough challenge from Republican Cyndi Carrasco. She claims Mears has been soft on violent criminals and she has raised an impressive amount of money to get her message out.For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King is joined by two colleagues from the IBJ newsroom to dig deeper into the four races: Peter Blanchard, who covers politics and state government, and Greg Weaver, IBJ’s government and politics editor. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The guest for this week’s IBJ Podcast is Ben Lytle, whom longtime residents will remember as the former CEO of Indianapolis-based health insurer Anthem. He captained the strategy that turned Anthem into one of the largest health insurers in the nation and a publicly traded firm on the New York Stock Exchange. He also founded, took public and sold the insurance brokerage Accordia. But don’t think of Lytle as a career corporate guy. He started his career as an expert in technology and information systems. He’s an entrepreneur at heart and in recent years has co-founded two companies with his son Hugh—both related to health care. But he’s not interested in talking about the past. He wants to discuss the next 30 years, a period he expects to be filled with mind-boggling changes in the ways we work and live. The pace of life will continue to accelerate and become more turbulent. He says institutions such as government, education, religion, news media and corporate America will be disrupted and become less reliable. So he has written a book titled “The Potentialist: Your Future in the New Reality of the Next 30 Years.” Its purpose is to help us—and especially people at the beginning of their careers—develop the skills and mindset necessary to succeed in that environment. He joined podcast host Mason King to discuss the book and how we can thrive alongside incredible change as we live longer, work longer and develop more intimate relationships with technology. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

IBJ columnist and frequent IBJ Podcast guest Pete “The Planner” Dunn had a piece in the Oct. 14 issue with an uncharacteristically sharp rebuke for a reader who was woefully uninsured. IBJ Podcast host Mason King took it to heart, because he has long avoided getting life insurance, despite being in his 50s, married and the father of a 6-year-old. But he is far from alone in wanting to avoid acknowledging the need to plan for one’s own demise. Dunn’s take is that life insurance is the foundation of good financial planning, as well as being a good spouse and parent. In the latest edition of the IBJ Podcast, King and Dunn dive into some the big questions that usually come up when one finally addresses this dark elephant in the room, including how much life insurance is necessary. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.