The IBJ Podcast with Mason King

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BSU hoops star turned bank CEO talks leadership tips, that UNLV game and making moves Mar 25, 2024

Show notes

Back in 1990, Mark Hardwick had a courtside seat on the Ball State University bench for one of the most memorable games in March Madness history. Those were heady times for the redshirt freshman from tiny Dunkirk, Indiana, and a few years later he would have his chance to start in an NCAA tournament game for Ball State. But it’s the former squad from 1990 that came within a basket of defeating one of the greatest teams in college basketball history and has since been enshrined in the BSU Athletics Hall of Fame.

But Hardwick’s journey as a distinguished alum continues. In early 2021, he was named CEO of Muncie-based First Merchants Bank after more than two decades as an executive for the institution, including a 19-year run as chief financial officer. Over the course of his tenure at First Merchants, the bank’s assets have increased from $1 billion to $18 billion, and its employee base has grown from 200 to 2,100 in its operations over four states.

Hardwick has lived the vast majority of his life either in Muncie or just outside Muncie, but in April 2023 he moved to Carmel. He’ll be working out of the new Indianapolis regional headquarters for First Merchants, the former headquarters building of Duke Realty Corp. The bank purchased the building for a bargain $18 million after Duke was acquired 2022. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Hardwick and host Mason King of course tip things off by talking college hoops and the basketball lessons Hardwick now uses to preach business principles. He discusses the philosophy behind buying the Duke building in the Keystone at the Crossing area and why Muncie remains the bank’s corporate home base although most of the executives work in Indianapolis. And he dives into his passions for making lists of his goals and for developing leadership skills for himself and bank employees.

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Civic Theatre’s music director, fellow BSU alum create Carpenters cabaret show, take it to NYC Mar 18, 2024

Show notes

You don’t need to be 50 years old to remember the Carpenters, the brother-sister duo that helped define pop music in the 1970s with gold-gilded melodies, pristine production and a certain yen for heartache. The music is timeless and has ardent fans online and on music streaming channels. It’s also the basis for a new cabaret show that was developed in Indianapolis with a strong connection to Ball State University. It since has been performed on Broadway’s doorstep in New York City. The most recent production was less than two weeks ago at the Laurie Beechman Theatre on 42nd Street.
Titled “The Carpenters Project: An Offering,” the show is the product of two performers who cut their teeth onstage in central Indiana. One of them you very likely have seen: Brent Marty, the director of music and education at Booth Tarkington Civic Theatre in Carmel, who performs all around the Indy area. His partner in the production is Amy Rafa, a performer, producer and arts and not-for-profit administrator based in New York City. The two of them met in Ball State’s Department of Theatre and Dance in the 1990s and have been friends ever since. Their mutual love of the Carpenters led them over several years to develop the show, which is more an exploration and celebration of the music than an impersonation.
By the same token, this episode of the IBJ Podcast is about more than two people putting on a show. It’s also about how young performers in theater have to hustle and sacrifice to build careers, and how they constantly face the question of whether performing exacts too high a price. It’s about opportunities for collaboration, particularly in Indiana’s close-knit theater community. And it’s about preserving the bonds of friendship and helping each other achieve dreams together.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Startup guru Christopher Day on boosting Indiana’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, getting investors to say ‘yes’ Mar 11, 2024

Show notes

When serial entrepreneur Christopher Day walks into a room, he should be followed by somebody with a boombox playing “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christopher Day gathers no moss. Over the last 30 years, he has co-founded eight businesses in seven distinct sectors—namely, artificial intelligence, software as a service, hardtech, broadband, entertainment, investment banking and real estate. For the last two years, he has been CEO of Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm that invests in high-potential, innovation-based companies with a significant presence in Indiana. Last year, Elevate launched Rally, a three-day innovation conference in Indianapolis that brought together hundreds of companies, entrepreneurs, universities and investors from a broad range of industries. It included a pitch competition with $5 million in prizes.

With his decades of experience and different roles in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Day has a unique vantage point on Indiana’s startup community, its strengths and its weaknesses. He recently served as a panelist at IBJ’s Technology Power Breakfast, and IBJ Podcast host Mason King wanted to follow up with him on several points he made about expanding recruitment of talent, the untapped power of collaboration and transparency, and the five key aspects of a business where entrepreneurs can minimize risk and get buy-in from investors. He also shares some high-level thoughts about Elevate’s plans to relocate from northern Indianapolis to downtown’s Mile Square.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

IU Indianapolis chancellor driving big changes on downtown campus Mar 04, 2024

Show notes

Change can be hard. Systemic change, or massive change across a large organization with lots of stakeholders, can be particularly tough to manage. About three weeks ago, Latha Ramchand started her new job as incoming chancellor for Indiana University Indianapolis, which will be one of the products when IUPUI splits into two campuses on July 1.

Ramchand will preside over the transition, which is billed by IU as a transformation on the IU Indianapolis side. It wants to establish IU Indianapolis as one of the nation’s premier urban research universities, and to that end it’s planning two new research institutes on campus focusing on biosciences. It wants to double enrollment at its Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. And Ramchand wants to strengthen the link between students, academic programs and leading Indiana companies, so graduates can build careers in Indiana.

On this week’s edition of the podcast, Ramchand discusses her upbringing and education in Mumbai, India, which predisposed her to the energy of urban institutions. She also discusses her goals as chancellor of IU Indianapolis, the importance of multichannel communication, the issues that can arise when trying to institute big changes and why she’s up to the task.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Tony Pancake, the PGA's pro of the year, walks fine line at Crooked Stick Feb 26, 2024

Show notes

Central Indiana isn’t necessarily known as a golf mecca, but it's well represented on the national championship stage by Crooked Stick Golf Club and its singular course designed by the legendary Pete and Alice Dye. It recently announced that it will host the 2028 U.S. Senior Open. It last hosted the Senior Open in 2009, drawing nearly 150,000 attendees to Carmel for three days of practices and four days of tournament play.
In the last 20 years, Crooked Stick has hosted the 2005 Solheim Cup, 2007 USGA Women’s Amateur, 2009 U.S. Senior Open, the 2012 BMW Championship, the 2016 BMW Championship, and the 2020 Western Amateur. This brings us to Tony Pancake, the director of golf at Crooked Stick, who has worked at the club for 21 years. He didn’t compete in any of these events, but in late January he was announced as the recipient of the highest award granted by the PGA of America: Golf Professional of the Year. In the words of the PGA, the award recognizes leadership, strong moral character and a substantial record of service to the association and the game of golf.
Pancake walks a fine line. He’s charged with preserving one of the most significant golf courses in the country while pleasing the club’s exclusive membership. He also needs to be sensitive to contemporary trends in golf while remaining faithful to the purpose of the club when it was founded in 1964: to provide a venue for championship-level golf. For this week’s edition of the podcast, he discusses the mix of talents required to do his job justice—from a strong grasp of accounting to an instinctive ability to read people’s unspoken needs. Golf is a people business, and Pancake explains in detail how the skills needed for success as a golf pro are the same tools needed for success in any business. He also shares a hair-raising story about a last-second trip last year to see his youngest daughter compete in the final of the British Amateur Championship, filled with twists and turns and ultimately made possible by the members of Crooked Stick.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Pete the Planner asks, ‘Can ambitious people feel fulfilled in retirement?’ Feb 19, 2024

Show notes

As you know, we discuss retirement planning fairly regularly on the IBJ Podcast, but in retrospect it’s been a little one-dimensional. We almost always are focused on how to hit a particular number—the amount to have squirreled away that will allow you to maintain your current lifestyle during retirement. There’s a little bit of wiggle room in our definition of lifestyle, but we’re usually talking about creature comforts, travel, entertainment, family obligations and health care.

What we have not addressed is ambition. If you’re a company founder, serial entrepreneur and/or C-suite executive, the ambition that drives you will not vanish the day you decide to give up full-time work and hit the pickleball court. Ambition is part of your mental and genetic makeup, and you need to account for that itch while planning for quote-unquote “retirement.”

IBJ personal finance columnist Pete The Planner, aka Peter Dunn, is obsessed with the topic of ambition, and it’s frequently something host Mason King finds himself wrestling with. So in this week’s edition of the podcast, they’re fleshing out how retirees can harness their ambitions while widening their definition of the term to help others. They also have a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of ambition, people who use ambition in a constructive way—with several local examples cited by Pete—and those who are focused on their own interests.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Inside the plan to pack a million meals for food pantries in 24 hours of All-Star Weekend Feb 12, 2024

Show notes

This is the week of the NBA All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis, which officially tips off on Thursday and will run through the 73rd NBA All-Star Game on Sunday night. Over the next week, Indianapolis will be the site of star-studded concerts, exhibition games, fan-friendly activities, multimedia programming and major art installations. For this week’s episode of the podcast, we wanted to focus on a philanthropic feat that deserves to be in someone’s record book. The Indianapolis-based not-for-profit Million Meal Movement is bringing together thousands of volunteers in Lucas Oil Stadium on Thursday in an attempt to pack 1 million meals for Indiana-based food pantries in a 24-hour period.

For a not-for-profit with such an aspirational name, Million Meal Movement is a surprisingly compact organization. It has five employees, including co-founder Nancy Hintz, who is a full-time executive for another firm in the food and agriculture space. But since Hintz and her husband, Dan, founded the group in 2007, it has packed nearly 35 million meals for food-insecure people. Nancy Hintz is our guest this week, sharing the story of how she and her husband met at Indiana University, the game plan for packing one million meals in one day, and the group’s strategy for simplifying its operations so its impact can have such a wide footprint.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Here's what to see and do during All-Star Weekend Feb 05, 2024

Show notes

The NBA’s All-Star weekend is just about 10 days away, and the calendar is filling up fast with official and unofficial events. There are concerts, forums, theater, comedy and lots of art.

Guest host Lesley Weidenbener talked with IBJ arts and entertainment writer Dave Lindquist to talk about the schedule so far and what central Indiana residents can find to do during All-Star Weekend—even if they don’t have a ticket to the game.

One note: After this podcast was recorded, the NBA said rapper Lil Wayne will be the headliner for a pre-game concert at the NBA Crossover. You can find more information about that show and the entire schedule at IBJ.com/All-Star.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

RecycleForce founder on new HQ, hiring ex-offenders and his own story of second chances Jan 29, 2024

Show notes

The concept behind the local not-for-profit group RecycleForce can be stated in a very elegant maxim: “We’re recycling electronics, and recycling lives.” When you get into the nitty-gritty details, RecycleForce is not nearly as refined, but accepting things that are rough around the edges is integral to its mission.
Entrepreneur Gregg Keesling hit on this set of solutions to two persistent problems in the early 2000s: Give people who have just been released from jail or prison a much-needed opportunity for temporary employment by training and hiring them to salvage recyclable materials from electronic waste. The ex-offenders also receive comprehensive services designed to get their lives back on track, including job skills, personal counseling, professional mentoring, literacy training and connections to full-time, permanent jobs.

RecycleForce has employed thousands of formerly incarcerated individuals since 2006 and recycled about 10 million pounds of waste. But there’s so much more to the story. Keesling grew up about an hour outside of Indianapolis, and one of the major themes of his life has been transformation. Beginning at 16, he played a minor role in the drug trade, procuring marijuana with his friends and regularly driving his family’s station wagon to Florida to pick up pounds of pot to transport back to Indiana for people who would pay a delivery fee. He moved to Jamaica for its easy access to pot, but he ended up becoming a straight-laced businessman who developed a vacation resort and joined the Rotary Club.

In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Keesling discusses how RecycleForce’s new headquarters in Indianapolis will help it do more with the recyclable materials and the people it trains. But he also talks at length about his own story and how he has learned the importance of giving people a chance to change and succeed.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Huddling with the Indiana artists painting 24 massive basketballs for All-Star Weekend Jan 22, 2024

Show notes

At least as far back as the 2012 Super Bowl, Indianapolis has built a reputation not just for its excellence in stitching together all of the elements of large sports events but also for finding ways to weave the work of local artists and craftspeople into the fabric of the event. For the NBA All-Star Weekend set for Feb. 15-18, local organizers hit on a way to put a distinctly Hoosier spin on the areas downtown that will host the most visitors, playing off of the concept of Hoosier Hysteria.

Here’s the idea: Create 24 giant fiberglass basketballs that would act as blank canvases for 24 artists. On the balls, they would paint scenes relating to the people, places and specific game we most associate with Hoosier Hysteria. Obviously, the Milan Miracle is on the list—the 1954 state championship that inspired the movie “Hoosiers”. And there’s a ball dedicated to the legendary 1955 champions from Crispus Attucks High School—the first all-black squad to win an open state championship in the nation. You’ll also see balls referencing the annual Indiana-Kentucky game, the effect of Title IX on high school basketball and the never-ending debate over class basketball.

The project is called Hoosier Historia. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King went to the warehouse where artists are working on their pieces before they’re deployed in the Mile Square. He interview to several of the artists, who in some cases were chosen for their close personal connections to the schools they’re depicting. And organizer Julia Muney Moore of the Arts Council of Indianapolis discusses the challenges of mounting a large-scale public art project in February that will only be display for a handful of days before dispersing across the state.

The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

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