The IBJ Podcast

Statehouse reporters preview the upcoming legislative session

Indiana lawmakers will return to the Statehouse for their 2024 session on Jan. 8 with plans to talk about water rights, literacy and apprenticeships for students. But House and Senate leaders have said they don't expect to tackle any especially polarizing issues this year.

With IBJ Podcast host Mason King off this week, Managing Editor Greg Weaver talks with two Statehouse reporters—IBJ's Peter Blanchard and State Affairs' Kaitlin Lange—about what to expect at the Legislature in the coming weeks.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

“We’re survivors”: How the family firm that founded Clancy’s Hamburgers and Grindstone Charley’s evolved to The Fountain Room

Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Noblesville-based Clancy’s Hospitality has been creating and running restaurants in central Indiana—and much of the Midwest—for nearly 60 years. The names are instantly recognizable for folks who have lived in these parts for a while, including Clancy’s Hamburgers, Grindstone Charley’s, Michaelangelo’s Italian Bistro, Red Rock Roadhouse and, most recently, The Fountain Room at Bottleworks District. But you almost certainly don’t know the name Fogelsong. Carl Fogelsong co-founded Clancy’s in 1965, and incredibly it has stayed in the same family for 58 years. It’s now on its third generation of leadership, with Carl’s grandson Blake spearheading a recent surge of restaurant openings alongside his father, Perry Fogelsong.

The story of Clancy’s Hospitality in many ways is the story of the central Indiana restaurant industry. Clancy’s Hamburgers beat McDonald’s to the punch in many areas in the 1960s, but it eventually was overpowered by burger chains. Grindstone Charley’s was on the front end of the casual American trend in the early 1980s, but the rise of national competitors put it at a disadvantage. But Clancy’s Hospitality is nothing if not scrappy, and it has continued to adjust to new trends while leveraging savvy real estate decisions. It has a successful entry for the food hall trend—actually a version of its original concept—while also embracing high end dining with The Fountain Room.

For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Perry and Blake join host Mason King for a freewheeling conversation about the evolution of Clancy’s Hospitality over 58 years. The family-owned firm currently counts eight restaurants: Two Clancy’s Hamburgers, two Grindstone Charley’s, one Michaelangelo’s, The Fountain Room and two next-generation versions of Grindstone Charley’s—Grindstone Public House in Noblesville and Grindstone on the Monon in Westfield.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Former drag racer Morgan Lucas now in driver’s seat at Lucas Oil Products

His last name literally is up in lights on downtown’s biggest stadium, although he probably could wander through a crowd of 60,000 Indianapolis Colts fans in near-complete anonymity. Morgan Lucas is the president of Lucas Oil Products, and quite literally grew up with the company. His parents, Forrest and Charlotte Lucas, founded the firm in 1989, when Morgan was about 7 years old. His youth and tween years were spent in part making deliveries to early customers and playing with Hot Wheels at trade shows under the table bunting at the Lucas Oil booth.

Then he discovered drag racing, and the die was cast. From 2004 to 2016, he won about two dozen titles and started his own racing team. That experience under the hood of his business gave him a decent footing as he transitioned to the family company and tried to learn all facets of developing, testing and selling engine and gear oils for cars, trucks, marine crafts, motorsports vehicles and industrial machines. It’s a tough company to get your arms around, as it sells more than 300 products in 48 countries and maintains several subsidiaries loosely related to sports, farming, transportation and metal fabrication.

Morgan was named president in 2020 and effectively now serves as the company’s CEO. And in an unusual mirroring of the firm’s founders, Morgan is married to the company’s chief administrative officer, Katie Lucas. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Lucas recounts what it was like growing up with hard-charging entrepreneurs as parents, how he and his wife have geared their relationship at home and at work, the value of being the naming rights sponsor for Lucas Oil Stadium, and the recent decision to relocate the company’s headquarters from California to Indianapolis.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

How Westfield resident Joey Chestnut makes a good living in competitive eating

Joey Chestnut is the king of competitive eating. You almost certainly have seen video clips of him gulping down dozens of hot dogs, boiled eggs, tacos, wings, burritos, Twinkies and/or spears of deep-fried asparagus. He in fact has more than 50 gastronomic world records, including a vaunted 76 Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, with buns, eaten in 10 minutes. He’s the first to admit that competitive eating is a little weird, but he has a natural affinity for it, and it allows him to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He confirms in his IBJ Podcast interview recent reports that he earned close to $500,000 in 2022.

A few things brought him to the IBJ Podcast studio in late November. He recently moved to Westfield, which now is his home base for spending about 140 days a year on the road. He chats about the reasons in his conversation with podcast host Mason King. Chestnut also was preparing for the 10th Annual St. Elmo Shrimp Cocktail Eating Championship, which this year was staged on Dec. 2 as part of the festivities for the Big Ten Football Championship. He explains how he prepares to down somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 pounds of shrimp, plus St. Elmo’s extra-potent cocktail sauce. (He recently hit 40, and it’s not as easy as it used to be.) But the lion’s share of the conversation concerns how he built a career in competitive eating and assembled all of the revenue streams he leverages to make a good living.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Pete the Planner on the five things everyone should know about their financial life

We’re entering the holiday season, of course, and that critical six-week period in which we are encouraged to indulge in conspicuous consumption. IBJ Podcast host Mason King has it circled on his calendar, since his goal this year is to keep from exceeding his modest budget. His plan for this week’s edition of the podcast was to ask regular contributor Pete Dunn—aka Pete the Planner—how best to avoid going into the red this year. But as usual, Pete had the bigger picture in mind.

Pete’s plan is to discuss the five things everyone should know about their financial life. Knowing those should help give you the grounding and confidence you need to guide your shorter-term budgeting decisions. And Pete and King still managed to talk a bit about how to deal with the unwelcome revelation that you and your family are spending more money than you’re making. Spoiler alert: This revelation came about after King and his wife did a line-by-line examination of their credit card and debit card purchases.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

From humble beginnings, apartment developer built $500 million firm in 10 years

Over its first 10 years, The Garrett Co. has been one of the fastest-growing—if not THE fastest-growing—company in the Indianapolis area. Not coincidentally, it also has become one of the largest companies in the state of Indiana. To put it as simply as possible: The Garrett Cos. develops high-end apartment complexes. To flesh it out a bit: The Garrett Cos. has been built to include nearly every element of the apartment development process under one roof—including site selection, design, material sourcing, construction, landscape architecture and even a restaurant company with its own brands of brewhouse and coffee shop for mixed-use projects.

The Garrett Cos is based in Greenwood, where founder Eric Garrett launched the company from a barn in his backyard. He grew up in Evansville, and one of the seminal moments of his childhood was moving with his mom into their very first apartment. He found his niche in real estate, first on the finance side and then picking up experience as part of a development firm.

In this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, Garrett discusses the origins of the company; a business model that you could shorthand as “a rising tide lifts all ships”; the firm’s recent growth to nearly 300 employees despite a very deliberative hiring process; and how his role as CEO has evolved as the firm has sped through several ages of the corporate growth process.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Indy anesthesiologist quit career to become whiskey-making entrepreneur

You certainly hear a lot of people these days talk about changing careers, especially to start their own business—maybe a restaurant, coffee shop or microbrewery. Juliet Schmalz hears from a lot of people who are impressed that she actually did it. In her mid 40s, she left her career as a medical doctor—an anesthesiologist—to start a company that produces high-end whiskey.

That company, called Fortune’s Fool Whiskey—a nod to a line in a Shakespearean tragedy—debuted its first product a few weeks ago in Indiana stores, bars and restaurants. It's called The Prelude. It’s a 109-proof straight rye whiskey that has been aged nearly three years, which, yes, means that Schmalz has had to wait nearly six years to see any revenue from a company she started in early 2018. In the meantime, there is another rye whiskey, a bourbon whiskey and a wheated bourbon whiskey sitting in barrels on the four-year plan.

An Indianapolis native, Schmalz is our guest on this week’s edition of the podcast. Host Mason King asks what possessed her to leave a lucrative and respected profession to make spirits for a living. They also discuss how she brought herself up to speed in a fickle industry, determined how she would position her product, and funded what by necessity is a long-term startup process. 

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

Debby Knox hopes to lose news ‘addiction’ in second shot at retirement

Legendary local newscaster Debby Knox has been on the air in Indianapolis, with the exception of a short break, since 1980 when she joined WISH-TV Channel 8. She worked as a reporter and anchor for 33 years until retiring in late 2013. It didn’t stick. She soon was recruited to help launch the newscasts for CBS4, which had taken over the city’s CBS network affiliation from WISH-TV.  She was paired with veteran news anchor Bob Donaldson and meteorologist Chris Wright starting in January 2015.

Earlier this month, she announced that her second stint in TV news would come to an end with her second shot at retirement, set for Nov. 30. The Michigan native will be 70 years old in February and has a long list of places around the globe she wants to visit when she isn’t spending time with her granddaughter, now 18 months old. Still, she’s concerned about being able to shake what she calls an "addiction" to breaking news.

On this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Knox shares a wide-angle view of her career, including the most difficult and most rewarding days on the job. She shares heart-stopping stories from her interviews with world leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Desmond Tutu. She also discusses how TV news has changed over four decades—and its current value in relation to today’s multitude of news sources.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

Carmel filmmaker, 23, prepares to air 8-hour JFK documentary on History Channel

It might not be surprising that the History Channel is planning to air an eight-hour docu-series on the life of President John F. Kennedy next month to mark the 60^th anniversary of his assassination. You might be very surprised to learn that the filmmaker who researched, shot, wrote, edited and scored much of the documentary is 23 years old, having been born a year before 9/11.

Ashton Gleckman grew up in Carmel and attended local schools, although his ambition to work in the film industry was so great that he left Carmel High School after his sophomore year to work for a collective of film and TV composers. He decided to become a documentarian after a short stint working in Los Angeles, and by the age of 19 had created the award-winning documentary “We Shall Not Die Now” about survivors of the Holocaust.

In this week’s edition of the podcast, Gleckman discusses what he found so resonant about Kennedy that he embarked on the three-year project by doing his own fundraising and without any guarantee that the finished product would win national distribution. (Along the way, he picked up a producing partner in the Academy Award-winning firm Radical Media.) Gleckman also lays out milestones in his lightning-fast and unusual rise as a filmmaker, as well as the reasons he thought the world—and in particular post-Kennedy generations--needed a deep dive into the life and legacy of the 35^th president.

 

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

Pete the Planner on understanding your (and your partner’s) relationship with money

IBJ columnist Peter Dunn—aka Pete the Planner—joins the podcast this week to talk about the ways in which people relate to money. He describes four money personalities—or "scripts," as they are called by Brad Klontz, a Boulder, Colorado-based psychologist and certified financial planner who first wrote about them.

They scripts are money vigilance, money worship, money status and money avoidance.

Pete uses a series of questions to help listeners identify the script that best matches their relationship with money and then explains the pros and cons of each. Plus, he talks about the importance of understanding not just your own relationship to money but that of your partner's as well.