(Since Jim Morris has been recently (March) selected as the CEO for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Indianapolis, Indy Smallbiz thought it would be a good idea for its readers to become familiar with him and his aspirations for the local Habitat for Humanity. Jim Morris will tell his own story of the formative experiences that have led him to his current job as CEO and contributed to his preparation for his current role. In a subsequent article the specific activities of Habitat for Humanity will be discussed and how persons can become involved.)

My roots are in Indiana. I grew up in Michigan City, Indiana in a working class city neighborhood, and we lived in a two-bedroom, 1100sq ft. home built by my grandfather. In high school I played sports, both baseball and football. I also wrote for the school newspaper, eventually becoming the editor my senior year, and was in the honor society, so I was involved in two worlds that usually don’t overlap, sports and writing and scholarship.

With this overlap of interests, it was natural that I might go in the direction of sports journalism. Maybe I would be another Bob Costas. So I attended Ball State University, majoring in Journalism, thinking that I was going to be a sports journalist or working in some field related to media relations or sports writing. I also participated in a social fraternity, Delta Tau Delta and became the president of the Order of Omega Greek Honor and continued my love for sports by playing intramural leagues in basketball, softball and football.

With the internship that I served while at Ball State came some perks (about those later in the paragraph). The internship was given to those who were excelling in the sports information, media relations department at the school. For one semester I worked as an intern for the Indiana Pacers in the media relations department under then Media Relations Director and eventual marketing chief, Dale Ratermann. My main role was to be the liaison for the visiting locker room during the games, interviewing the players and helping to find the players for the media when needed. This was during the Golden Age of the NBA, so I was helping to facilitate interviews for Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson. Balancing out my duties on the more pedestrian side, I would also help with the statistics and writing for the program.

I graduated with a journalism degree, but began to pursue the public relations end and did not find much in the way of work in that area in 1990, so I began in sales for Davis Homes, which set off a career in residential building and development. I also worked as a manufacturer’s rep for Velux Skylights. My territory was the state of Indiana. The early training in the residential industry and sales and marketing helped teach me a lot about business and sales in particular. I learned that I was pretty good at sales, but loved teaching first-time home buyers how to buy their first home. I was selling our homes, but I found that the teaching aspect and guiding people through the process was the most fulfilling. I also gravitated toward marketing more than sales as I continued in the residential building industry (note applicability of construction experience for my current position).

Off to Florida

From Indiana I left for Florida. It happened this way. My wife graduated from Ball State in architecture and she landed an opportunity to work on designing the new Universal Studios City Walk expansion. It was a great opportunity. I felt confident that I could find work as my experience was transferrable. We thought the time there would be short, but we ended up living there for 12 years.

When asked in team-building events the question: what is something that few people know about you, I usually respond that I have actually acted in several plays, produced and acted in the Orlando Fringe Festival and have acted in commercials. I love the producing role.

So as my wife and I were acclimating to the Florida culture, we acted in some community theatre for just the joy of doing it. It was an avocational exercise for us. I met some people that shared similar values in our faith and we wanted to form a production company that told stories from that shared place. We started Trilemma on the side and turned it into a company. We provided revenue for the company through outsourcing our talent at tradeshows and through event production. We also produced theatre in the area. I eventually quit my job as the VP of Marketing for a custom home builder and decided to run the production company full time, which produced live theatrical productions and events and produced convention acts and touring shows.

While running Trilemma, I was asked to join the board of the Central Florida Theatre Alliance. This was the transition point that moved me toward management in the nonprofit sector. The founding Executive Director said that he needed a full time person to help with operations. I joined the team in this area and also continued to run Trilemma. The founding executive director of the Alliance took another position and the board asked if I would step in as the Executive Director. I had learned a lot about running an organization through Trilemma and that helped me in my new role as the Alliance director. We eventually expanded the organization to include all the arts and eventually served seven counties in the Orlando area.

I love working with and around artists. I don’t consider myself an artist at all even though I am a published writer, having written several articles for various publications. I just enjoyed providing the artist the freedom to exhibit their abilities to the highest level. Most of the artists were not as skilled in marketing or the business side, so we did a lot of training at this level. We also realized that if nobody was participating in the art, the artist would never really see the appreciation they may have deserved. I used my interest and experience in marketing to help create the largest branding and awareness campaign for the region concentrating on increasing participation in the arts. I helped build the collaboration amongst the arts organizations and then we led the effort to raise money for the campaign and we also managed the effort. We also worked with the city of Orlando to build the economic development of the downtown using the arts as a catalyst.

Home to Indiana

After 12 years in Florida, my wife and I moved back to Indiana because we wanted our kids to be raised around family. My wife’s two sisters and their kids live in Indianapolis as does her mom and dad. She grew up in Noblesville. My family still lives in northern Indiana in Laporte.

My first role upon returning to Indiana was with the Central Indiana Community Foundation. It was an invaluable experience as I was able to quickly learn about the various nonprofit organizations and the people running them. I also met many others with a penchant for improving the quality of life in Indiana. That experience also launched me into a role consulting with many local nonprofits. I think my underlying passion for teaching surfaced as I enjoyed helping organizations increase their capacity, particularly around strategic planning.
I learned though that consulting is fairly isolated and I enjoy working with teams. I also like being directly involved in making a difference, so when the Habitat role surfaced, it seemed like the perfect role where I could blend my work experience within the construction area and my education and passion for improving the community.

My career path is not a straight line and I am really grateful for that journey when I reflect back on my various roles. I think that sales training is invaluable to helping you learn how to appreciate what others need when working with them in solving their challenges. My marketing experience provided me the opportunity to exercise my writing and creative side. Marketing is essentially telling your story to your targeted audience, using various tools. A full understanding of marketing is also invaluable as I hope to tell our local story of our impact in Indianapolis in a new way, while also showing how we are connected to an International story that serves in over 100 countries.

Working in the arts also taught me a lot about serving a sector that isn’t looked upon as serving basic needs, so you needed to understand what role the arts play in building the quality of life for people. I believe in having sound metrics to measure outcomes, but the arts also teach us that being human and what provides for quality of life isn’t always measurable in exact objective metrics.

I also learned that I enjoy working collaboratively and working across various nonprofit sectors to help drive the change needed. I work from a theory of abundance in an “industry” that is always facing a scarcity of resources. I believe we have enough resources, so the challenge is access. I think that working together, no matter the sector, to achieve desired outcomes is the most efficient and effective way to achieving results. I have had the ability to work in the arts, economic development, cultural tourism and community development through my experiences.

My vision for Habitat for Humanity is continually stretching our ability to serve those in need of affordable homes and I see us expanding our ability to serve in helping to transform neighborhoods. Our focus is on the individual and family and helping them break either a cycle of poverty and leveraging resources that help provide freedom to a better quality of life. Homeownership is the means for how we serve our mission. We are going to move toward also rehabbing homes and providing repairs to existing homes. The long-term success of those we serve will greatly depend on how strong their neighborhoods are, so we will play a more vital role in helping to transform those neighborhoods on a comprehensive level.

People can connect with Habitat for Humanity by volunteering to be on build sites, work in our ReStore or mentor an individual or family participating in our program for homeownership. People can provide resources by giving donations to our ReStore and by giving financially to Habitat. People can also connect us to their company to learn how their company can get involved in building hope through homeownership. They can also help connect us to families that are in need. People might not know of any one directly, but they may work where there are service workers that could learn about our services in the community. You can reach me at (317) 921-2121 or email me at jmorris@indyhabitat.org.

Jim Morris
CEO
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Indianapolis

http://www.indyhabitat.org/

When Ann was asked what was the most exotic and interesting place she and her husband had ever visited, she picked Easter Island, the most remote inhabited island in the world. As she describes their Easter Island trip you can hear in her voice her infatuation with travel.

“You can only fly to Easter Island from Chile or Tahiti. We went from Tahiti. In case you’re not familiar with it, Easter Island, known to the natives as Rapa Nui, is the home of the Moai statues, those tall monolithic roughly hewn human figures that have been a mystery for a thousand years. No one is sure why they were made or how they got them from the mountain quarry to the coastline miles away where they were placed on pedestals. There are hundreds of these statues all over the island and you can literally walk right up to them and touch them. There is a quarry full of Moai that were never completed that is eery and looks like a moia graveyard.

We were there on New Year’s Eve and stayed in a cabin right on the coast with a view of the Pacific Ocean and the island’s only city, Hanga Roa, which is small and quaint. We rang in the new year with a bottle of champaign while watching fireworks over Hanga Roa from the patio of our cabin. The next day, New Year’s Day, we rented a scooter and set out to explore the island. There isn’t a spot on the island that doesn’t have a view of the beautiful Pacific Ocean. We drove along the rugged, stark coastline and stopped along the way to examine some Moia up close or just watched the waves hit the rocky shore.

An almost treacherous ride up to the summit of the island’s inactive volcano gave us our best view. We could look down into the now-quiet crater that was responsible for giving birth to this tiny island. Near the crater are the ruins of a major Rapa Nui village where you can walk amongst what is left of their homes. We visited ancient caves where the natives left paintings and other artifacts. But mostly we just enjoyed exploring this tropical island that few people in the world have ever seen. There were no crowds anywhere and it was almost like we were the only people left on earth. It was one of our favorite, best days ever.”

After over two decades of waking up the city of Indianapolis as hosts of highly ranked morning shows on stations like WENS and Smooth Jazz WYJZ, the iconic radio team of Ann Craig and John Cinnamon has now made their love of travel into an exciting new business.

As new owners of their CruiseOne travel franchise, Ann and John are ready to send the people of Indianapolis and surrounding regions on some of the greatest adventures of their lives. According to Ann, “John and I decided that it made perfect sense for us to enter the travel business. The Yellow Pages are full of travel agents, but there are probably very few that can claim they have visited all 50 states, 65 countries and six continents across 500,000 miles. John and I can.”

John adds, “In all candor, Ann and I are not just travelers, we’re travel experts. We have cruised extensively, including five Caribbean cruises, two Mediterranean, one Baltic and one Alaskan cruise, plus extensive land travel covering Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, Africa and such exotic locales as Tibet, Easter Island, The Great Barrier Reef and The Great Wall of China. We have enjoyed such famous celebrations as Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carnival in Rio de Janeiro and will be attending Oktoberfest 2011 in Munich, Germany.”

Their new enterprise, CruiseOne is, in fact, is much more than a cruise company. Ann and John can recommend and book land, sea or air travel to most any country in the world. They state, “We’re proud to be part of CruiseOne, one of the nation’s most trusted and well known travel companies with over 30 years of experience. And with our high volume, we’re often less expensive than all the others.”

For Ann, the love of travel came at an early age. She was part of a family that traveled often, across the nation and around the world. Shortly after her first marriage at the age of 19, Ann and her then husband actually lived in Tehran (Iran) for one and a half years. She is currently writing a book about her time there.

It was more than sweet luck and irony when she met John Cinnamon while they were both working at WENS (Now Hank FM/Emmis) in Indianapolis. They soon found out they had a mutual love of visiting every corner of the world. And after getting married in 1995, theybegan to travel together. Ann states, “We both enjoy the traditional places, but even more-so we have a love for the out-of-the way and little known attractions both in the United States and abroad. It’s never unusual for us to visit a country, and rent a car, or even walk, to discover some of the most amazing people and sites on this earth.”

Besides being on stations like WENS and WNAP (where Ann was most likely the first woman to be a permanent part of a morning show on Indianapolis Radio) Ann and/or John have also worked at WIFE, WPDS TV (now FOX 59), Network Indiana, and WZPL, among others.

Additionally, Ann co-anchored The Indiana Business Show aired on WTHR Channel 13. Each has also been a commercial spokesperson on radio and TV for many local and national clients.

It was at WENS where Ann hosted the Riley Hospital Radiothon for Children for seven years, raising more than $2 million. Ann and John have volunteered for many other local charities, including the New Life Home/Amani Children’s Foundation. While at WYJZ, the couple created and implemented an on-air fundraiser for an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. Later Ann and John personally delivered thousands of dollars, clothing and medicine to the New Life Home there in 2005.

Born in Louisville, Ann received her BA degree in the Honors Program at Indiana University.

John is a Toulon, Illinois, native and graduated from Western Illinois University with a BA in Mass Communication.

The mother of two children, Ann resides with John in Greenwood Indiana.

Ann and John are available for media appearances, speaking engagements, travel events and seminars.

Contact: Ann Craig | 317.535.5763 | www.CruiseOne.com/acinnamon_

Jon Quick – President/Partner
absolutemaxpr.com
12115 Castle Row Overlook
Carmel, IN 46033
317-432-0309
jon@absolutemaxpr.com
Qjon79@aol.com

I walked into one of the nicest hotels in Chicago carrying a little box, a monitor under my arm, and wheeling behind me another box. I was going to be a vendor at an international marketing conference starting the next day. As I walk down the hallway, I passed other vendors setting up their booths (mine was near the end). I looked at their monster size banners, pretty graphics, and stuff they have all over their tables.

“Um…” I thought to myself, feeling awkward. This was my first conference as a vendor, and I didn’t have fancy banners, pretty graphics, nor tons of stuff.

I humbly walked to my table and began unpacking…there wasn’t much to unpack. I setup and tried to admire it… I have to admit, I felt embarrassed. I soon brushed that off as I knew I wasn’t here to have pretty graphics, I was here to change my business.

I took with me three other businessmen to work the booth with me. Our team of four, over the following three days, CRUSHED it. We ROCKED. We had the busiest booth at the conference. We had people all around constantly coming up and engaging in conversation. We would give them our brochures, tell them about how Facebook can improve their business, and show them examples on our monitor.

The results? My business now has clients coast to coast and in three different countries. And…I’m charging over $1,000 more in each sale than when I started doing fan pages. As of Tuesday I have officially tripled my business in 2011.

I’m a 21-year-old, Kelley School of Business drop-out, with no long track record to talk about. But no one cares about age, degrees or lengthy track records.

You can triple your business and do far more than me. Here are 3 keys as to why I succeeded that YOU can replicate:

1. Project yourself as as THE expert. My sales coach once told me, “To be perceived as an expert means you have to know more about the subject material than the people you’re talking to.” You don’t have to spend 10,000 hours literally becoming an expert, you ARE an expert to some people. What you need to do is find your audience. With that said, you do need to understand what you’re talking about and bring great ideas to the table that will change others’ lives.

2. Be confident. People want to buy from someone who is confident about what they’re selling. People want to know that you’ll lead the way. Focus on what you do know and that you and your team will GET IT DONE. No one knew I had never done a conference before because my team and I were confident. People want to follow people who know what they’re doing and it’s your job to instill that confidence.

3. Focus on the RIGHT things. Don’t get caught up in the pretty, feel-good stuff that everyone says you “need.” I promise you that had I talked to a company that does pretty graphics, they would have told me I had to have a-b-c-d-e-f-g-h-i-j-k-l-m-n-o-p-q-r-s-t-u-v-w-x-y-z stuff to have a successful booth. I had the most successful booth and I had the most simple stuff. It was my team that made the difference. Focus on building your team, on your clients, on growing your business. Don’t get caught up in how pretty things look or what everyone else tells you you should be doing. Identify the key areas on how you can grow your business and income and do THAT. Most people are NOT growing their business like they would like to be. Listen to those who are succeeding.

Luke W Russell
Online Building Blocks – Lead Generation Tools
luke@onlinebuildingblocks.com

My day is always planned out – almost to the minute.

While that is a good thing from a productivity standpoint, sometimes it gets me into trouble when an unexpected interruption appears (which always happens).

This happened two weeks ago and in my haste to make up time racing from one appointment to the next I got a speeding ticket. Unlike most offenders, I was actually thankful for the ticket. It served as a $150 reminder that I need to slow down.

Life comes at each of us fast and it’s only going to get faster.

Imagine the great scenery we are missing in our lives because we are obsessed with getting to the next item on our “to-do” list.

Maybe, just maybe, we need to create a little breathing room in our daily schedule.

C.J. McClanahan
Reachmore Strategies
317-576-8492
cjm@goreachmore.com