The IBJ Podcast

Jeff Smulyan talks radio, owning a baseball team and David Letterman

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.

 

 

Shari Jenkins of Noah Grant’s, Salty Cowboy on taking a third leap

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.

Pete the Planner on making the best of a terrible year for investments

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.

Former budget hawk flips role, makes case for big increase in state health spending

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 48^th 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.

Indy-based airline charting path to more diverse workforce

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.

Could Nashville steal Indy’s conventions-and-events thunder with new stadium?

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.

Four races to watch on Election Day

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.

Ben Lytle on navigating coming disruptions in tech, culture

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.

 

Pete The Planner has a frank message on accepting your future demise

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.

Rahal, Frye on why race teams are investing now

Three of IndyCar’s most prominent teams—Andretti Autosport, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Arrow McLaren SP—are investing a total of $250 million to expand their operations and add as many as 750 jobs in central Indiana.

In this week’s podcast, IBJ reporter Mickey Shuey takes on hosting duties and talks with IndyCar President Jay Frye and Rahal Letterman Lanigan co-owner Bobby Rahal about why teams are investing now and what it says about the state of racing globally and in the Indianapolis area.

But Shuey starts by talking with IBJ reporter Daniel Bradley to get the details about the teams’ expansions, which are taking place in the suburbs north of Indianapolis that he covers.

For more, read the story Shuey and Bradley wrote about IndyCar investments for the Oct. 14 issue of IBJ.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.