The IBJ Podcast with Mason King

The U.S. economy has been sending troubling signals for months now in the form of high energy prices, rising inflation, modest hiring and slowing growth of gross domestic product. The United States began attacks on Iran in late February. Stalled tanker traffic at the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted the global oil market, and stock investors have yo-yoed along with mixed signals from Washington, D.C., about America’s goals for the war.    IBJ personal finance columnist Pete the Planner sees signs that point toward recession in the U.S., as well as a humanitarian crisis in Asia. In this week’s podcast, Pete parses a passel of new challenges and layers on the potential impact of tariff refunds and rising mortgage rates. He also is concerned about the Trump administration’s apparent attempts at influencing investor sentiment with statements about America’s intentions in Iran.

Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor and Purdue president known for campus and curricular reforms. He discusses bringing Purdue business programs to downtown Indianapolis. They explore AI’s threat to entry-level white‑collar work. They debate the true value of a college degree and outline ideas to adapt workforce training and Social Security.

Although it looks like a time capsule from the 1930s, Red’s Classic Barber Shop in downtown Indianapolis was founded in 2007 by Alexandra Ridgway, Michael Ridgway and Roy Stevenson. They wanted to transport customers back to the era of traditional gentlemen’s barbering, populating it with antique furniture, equipment and supplies. In 2022, Red’s was purchased by William Hogg, a barber who has been managing the shop since its early days. He sometimes can be seen cutting the hair of prominent Indiana politicians, and his client list has included our four most recent governors. For this week's podcast, Hogg took a break between appointments to discuss how Red’s benefits from downtown’s big tourism events (including the upcomning Final Four), as well as the recent surges in residential and hotel development. He also digs into the value of the shop’s location at the literal crossroads of the Midwest as Red’s claws its way back from the pandemic years. And he shares his street-level perspective on the growth of downtown over nearly two decades and whether it’s as dangerous as some have persistently portrayed it.

Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation, is one of the nation’s top experts on providing access to higher education and the ways higher education can prepare the future workforce. Several years ago, he realized how the rapidly accelerating development of artificial intelligence could profoundly impact these two vital currents of American life. In 2020 he published a book titled “Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines,” warning that the roles of workers will radically shift and spotlighting the need to redesign education, training and the workplace as a whole. Today, he admits he underestimated the speed of change due to AI. Last month, he delivered an address to the Economic Club of Indiana about what it means for jobs, education and the economy. On this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, Merisotis and host Mason King dig deeper into his conclusions. Number one: AI is here to stay. We humans need to focus on how we can complement AI and excel at work best handled with human traits and skills as AI begins to encroach on the turf of even C-suite executives. In the meantime, higher education must go undergo radical transformation.

Jim Dalton grew up in Indianapolis in a devout, church-going family. He entered college thinking he would become a preacher, but another career path made itself clear – one in which he’d be able to serve and guide children to healthier and happier lives. He didn’t know at the time that he eventually would be able to have an impact on thousands of people every day.   Today he is just the third president and CEO of Indianapolis-based Damar Services, a 59-year-old nonprofit that provides essential support for adults and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. He joined Damar as chief operating officer in 2002 and became CEO in 2013. Over that 24 years, the organization’s annual budget has grown from about $4 million to more than $140 million, and its employee count has grown from 67 to about 1,400, directly serving about 1,800 clients per day. It recently expanded from central Indiana to East Chicago and just launched operations in Richmond. Dalton is our guest this week to talk about his evolution from child psychologist to chief executive of one of central Indiana’s largest nonprofits. He also explains the aggressive strategy behind Damar’s expansion, which in a sense boils down this: “If there are still people who need our services, we should expand to meet them.” Here’s our conversation.

Let’s go back about three decades to the mid-1990s when Indianapolis businesswoman Christel Dehaan sold her company Resort Condominiums International for $825 million. With a new focus on philanthropy and education, DeHaan created Christel House International, a global network of schools with a mission to not only educate its low-income students but to provide the necessary nutrition, health care and career mentoring – even after graduation – to help them break the cycle of poverty. DeHaan established Christel House schools in Indianapolis, Mexico, South Africa, Jamaica and India before her death in 2020.Today, the network is entering a new era of growth. David Harris, probably best known in Indianapolis as the founding CEO of education reform group The Mind Trust, became Christel House’s president and CEO in 2024, succeeding former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson. Harris soon established a new plan for expansion that calls for boosting Christel House’s presence in countries where it already operates while opening new schools in Colombia and Nepal. In this week’s episode of the podcast, Harris discusses the challenges of continuing Christel House’s mission without its founder, how it now finances its mission, the organization’s process for establishing schools from scratch in new countries and the expansion of a global program that’s now helping students from four Indianapolis high schools succeed after graduation.

The canned cocktail known as Mom Water, created by a husband-and-wife team in a small Indiana town, sounds like one of the purest mom-and-pop success stories in state history. The only part of the narrative that doesn’t seem to fit is that Mom Water doesn’t pop, per se—it’s non-carbonated, which set it apart from alcoholic seltzers. Jill and Bryce Morrison created the beverage and the brand several years ago, and it hit the shelves of a few local retailers in March 2021. It's now available in 40 states at retailers including Target, Walmart, Meijer and Whole Foods. The Morrisons didn’t set out make this their careers, but Mom Water’s quick success persuaded them to quit their day jobs. A couple of years later, Bryce decided he needed to step aside as CEO and install a new chief executive to handle day-to-day operations while he and Jill looked at bigger-picture strategy while gathering input from customers face-to-face. They are our guest on the IBJ Podcast this week, and, as they tell it, they’re more of a seat-of-your pants enterprise run by gut hunches than one that invests in megabytes of market research. They also discuss their leap of faith, the wisdom in handing over the CEO reins, and the creation of their new product based on unsweetened tea.

Fishers-based BiomEdit — a startup that spun out of Elanco Animal Health in 2022 — last year raised $18.4 million in a series B round. That’s despite what was a tough year overall for fundraising — nationwide and in Indiana.   In this week’s episode, BiomEdit CEO and founder Aaron Schacht talks about the strategy behind the round and the changes the animal health startup had to make to secure the money it needed to bring its first product to market, which should happen this fall. You can find similar conversations and information about VC funding in The Deal, IBJ’s newest weekly newsletter covering venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, government contracts and the people who make those deals happen. Sign up for the newsletter at IBJ.com.

Doran Moreland grew up in Indianapolis, fell in love with politics and public policy at a relatively young age and became the special assistant for Mayor Bart Peterson after studying political science at Indiana University. That’s a pretty good introduction to how politics and policy work on the local level.   Fast forward a quarter century or so: On Monday, Feb. 2, Moreland returned to the City-County Building for the first day of his new job as chief of staff and chief policy officer for the City-County Council. The 25-member council dominated by Democrats has new leaders, including President Maggie Lewis, who have said they want to emphasize policymaking, collaboration and transparency after instances of internal infighting last year.Moreland’s new job has nuts-and-bolts aspects like budgeting, managing staff, maintaining community access and helping push the council’s initiatives across the finish line. It also entails supplying higher-level policy guidance on topics like data centers, inclusive growth, the city’s built environment and maintaining competitiveness. In this week’s episode of the podcast, he discusses the lessons learned from his father as a small business owner, his own foray into business, the administrative and public policy experience he’s gained since then and what he expects from his new position. [Editor's note: This text has been changed to reflect that Moreland did not receive a degree from Indiana University in 2000. His degree ultimately was conferred in 2024.]

According to the latest federal data, the U.S. economy is chugging along at a strong clip, unemployment is under control, the prices of consumer goods are increasing at a fairly typical rate, and interest rates for mortgages are steadily dropping. Plus, the stock market is regularly hitting all-time highs. What’s there to worry about? The Consumer Confidence Index, which is used to measure how consumers feel about their expected financial situation, is at its lowest point since 2014. Specifically, Americans’ short-term expectations for their incomes, business conditions and the job market have fallen well below the marker that could signal a recession. The misalignment of the big picture numbers and how consumers feel might indicate that not everyone is benefitting from the positive economic indicators. Throw on top of that the amount of anxiety Americans feel about polarized politics, a recent wave of five-figure layoffs at large U.S. firms, and data pointing toward a bear market, and you can appreciate any undercurrent of pessimism. On this week's edition of the podcast, Pete the Planner and host Mason King discuss the role that our feelings can play in our financial decisions even when we’re presented with cold, hard data. To that point, they discuss the return of the vibecession, a term describing the disconnect between positive economic indicators and the public's negative perception of the economy and how they’re doing. Fear can inspire some people to eliminate all risk in their investments, which isn’t necessarily a good idea.