The IBJ Podcast

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. 

Shawn Fain, UAW’s firebrand prez, was forged in Kokomo’s union hotbed

Shawn Fain seemingly came from nowhere to win the United Auto Workers presidential election in March by a razor-thin margin. He ran on a reform platform promising to toss out the status quo and stand up to the Big Three automakers: GM, Ford, and Stellantis. He took a hard line in contract negotiations, and when the automakers didn’t meet the union’s aggressive demands by the Sept. 15 deadline, the UAW took the unusual tack of striking against all three companies at the same time.

It’s still in the midst of what’s called a standup strike, meaning that it adds more and more of its 145,000 members to picket lines as negotiations continue. The UAW has 13,000 members in Indiana, but no workers in those Indiana plants had been asked to strike as of Oct. 6.

But Fain knows all about the auto industry’s history in Indiana. He grew up in Kokomo, the grandson of two UAW members at General Motors. Another grandparent started at Chrysler in 1937, the year the workers joined the union after a sit-down strike. Fain himself worked as an electrician in a Chrysler foundry in Kokomo and was active in the union for decades. Of course, Chrysler now goes by the name Stellantis, its new parent company, and it employs about 7,000 people in Kokomo and nearby Tipton.

Now 54, Fain is leading a high-stakes battle against the U.S. auto industry, which is remarkable given that he has been such a relatively low-profile player in the union until recently. IBJ reporter John Russell went back to Fain’s old stomping grounds and tried to get a sense of how he was shaped by his decades in Kokomo. It’s worth noting that Fain still carries in his pocket one of his grandfather’s Chrysler pay stubs from 1940. In this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, John tells us what he’s learned.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

 

Phish fan, philanthropist builds huge wireless retail business, branches into cannabis

You could say Scott Moorehead, the 45-year-old owner and CEO of Fishers-based Round Room, is in the connections business. Round Room is the holding company for TCC, which is one of the largest Verizon retailers in the United States, and Wireless Zone, one of the nation’s largest wireless retail franchise systems in the U.S and also a Verizon authorized dealer. Together they count about 1,260 stores in 43 states. Another one of Moorehead’s main preoccupations is finding ways for workers to feel connected to their employers, beyond the need for a paycheck. To that end, Round Room has given its employees the ability to grant millions of dollars per year to not-for-profit groups of their choice. And another firm under the Round Room umbrella provides consulting services for employers who want to strengthen their company cultures by finding the “soul” of their enterprises.

Here's another move out of left field that makes a certain sense to Moorehead via his expertise in the retail industry. He and his wife, Julie, sniffed out cannabis as a simpatico business opportunity and dove in after Michigan legalized it for adult recreational use. Founded in 2020, Stash Ventures is a vertically integrated provider with indoor growing operations, a processing facility and several retail dispensaries. Moorehead also has been lobbying Indiana legislators to take the leap and legalize marijuana use, seeing big growth opportunities in the sector.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Moorehead lays out his journey as an entrepreneur, first buying out his parents in their family-owned company and guiding it through a decade of staggering growth in the wireless industry. He also details how he uses philanthropy to help define Round Room, as well as his hopes for expanding Stash Ventures.

 

On the frontlines of adopting revolutionary AI as firms ask, “What’s in it for me?”

A sudden leap forward in the evolution of artificial intelligence has brought the technology’s benefits and risks into much sharper relief and into everyday conversations. Businesses hear warnings that they need to take advantage of AI or else drift into irrelevancy. But when cheerleaders say AI can make businesses more productive, what does that look like exactly? As with the advent of any major technological evolution, will workers lose their jobs? You’ve probably already heard about professions that are vulnerable, such as tax preparers, law clerks, industrial designers, computer programmers, content creators, market research analysts, financial analysts, graphic designers, and customer service agents. Another question: Since data is the fuel of the AI revolution, how can companies keep theirs safe? How can companies avoid unintentionally stealing existing content fed into AI engines? And how can AI avoid adopting the biases lodged in previous data?

In the latest edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King poses all of these questions to the founders of an Indianapolis-based startup dedicated to helping business clients integrate AI into their operations. Named Stellar, the firm has been up and running for less than a year, but its executives have decades of experience working with AI applications and developing AI products. Brett Flinchum, Stellar’s CEO, and Zach Linder, the chief operating officer, share their account from the frontlines of a revolution as they try to help companies take advantage of the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

 

Restaurateur Mike Cunningham on Pacers’ Commission Row and more new concepts opening soon in Indy

Founded in 1997, Indianapolis-based Cunningham Restaurant Group now counts 17 distinctive dining concepts spread over a total of about 40 establishments in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. A sampling: Mesh, Rize, Provision, Bru Burger Bar, Modita, Union 50, Nesso, Stonecreek Dining Company and the nationally rated Vida and Livery. And the stovetop at CRG’s development kitchen in downtown Indianapolis is full: The company is opening several new concepts in the next year, and founder and CEO Mike Cunningham estimates that the group could have as many as 60 locations within three years.

The highest-profile additions to the CRG roster will be located on Bicentennial Unity Plaza next to Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Indiana Pacers owner Herb Simon is building a 30,000-square-foot dining and entertainment complex called Commission Row, and CRG has been hired to develop and manage its three main components: a 220-seat upscale restaurant called Commission Row, a 110-seat speakeasy-style watering hole called Mel’s at Commission Row, and a 260-seat event space called Above at Commission Row. CRG also is working on an indoor/outdoor casual dining spot called Shindig in the North Mass corridor and a family-friendly joint in Plainfield called Theo’s Italian.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Mike Cunningham discusses in detail his plans for the new eateries, as well as adjustments he’s making to existing properties in central Indiana. He also dives deep into his philosophy for growing the restaurant group and why such a significant chunk of it has taken shape in downtown Indianapolis.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The story behind Peterman’s wild growth across Indiana since brothers took over

Chad Peterman and his younger brother Tyler grew up with their dad’s business, Peterman Heating Cooling & Plumbing. Pete Peterman received at least one offer for the Greenwood-based business, but he kept it in the family and handed over day-to-day operations to his boys in 2015. He couldn’t have imagined how much and how fast the company would grow under the new generation, which had a strategy that required a fundamental change in the business. From 2016 to 2018, Peterman’s annual revenue grew 101% to $15.7 million. From 2018 to 2022, its revenue grew 560% to $88.2 million. Since 2018, its employee base has grown at roughly the same clip, from a little over 100 people to nearly 700. That’s pretty good for a company in an established industry that has been a staple of American life for at least a century.

Chad Peterman didn’t initially think he’d go into the home-services industry, but he since has become CEO and co-owner. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, he explains the strategy shift that led to more lucrative work and an expansion from central Indiana to most of the state. And one of the key factors in the firm’s continued growth has been its out-the-box solution—or you could call it and in-house solution—to training and retaining employees. Peterman essentially can supply itself with as many rookie technicians as it needs as it expands beyond Indiana’s borders and expects to break the eight-digit barrier for revenue.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Brothers behind tech firm Qualifi on being Black founders, raising capital, ‘unwillingness to die’

Darrian and Devyn Mikell grew up in central Indiana, played sports, went to college, tried a few things to get their careers started and ultimately launched a tech firm together. They have some juicy stories from their early days of griding that would resonate with other tech founders: starting with the wrong sales strategy, struggling for months without revenue and slowly building a base of investors. There are a few things that are relatively unique: First, they’re brothers, and we all know that it’s often not easy for family members to work together. Second, they recently reached an important milestone with a $4.5 million fundraising round. Third, they are among the few company founders in any industry sector who are Black. Businesses majority-owned by Black or African American people accounted for only 3% of all U.S. firms that were classifiable by the race and ethnicity of their owners in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. And the Mikells have made hiring people from underrepresented populations a priority at their company, called Qualifi.

The issues of diversity and inclusion dovetail into the mission of Qualifi, which sells software that helps employers automate the hiring process and avoid biases that could slip into the interview process.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, the Mikells join host Mason King for an in-depth interview about how they work together as brothers; the inspiration they’ve received from their family (including an older brother with a Pro Bowl career in the NFL); how they handle the rollercoaster of startup life; obstacles that Black entrepreneurs face; and the importance to them of diversity as they grow the company.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.