Well, how do you do this? Come up with a vision and then you sacrifice everything you have. And everybody else says, "Well, I want to join in." I mean, over the last 20 years, [music] from dinosaurs to chocolate, you found a way to bring these two obsessions together that evidence of your love of life, your self-worth. What you're doing [music] is revolutionary. You just want to live.
Where was the memory where you looked around and said, "How the heck do we build all this?" From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between, this is Get In, the show focused on the Hooser State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for [music] today's conversation. Before we dive into today's episode, a quick shout out to our friends at NCW, the team that's been building one of the fastest [music] growing staffing and recruiting companies in America for over 25 years. They specialize in the skilled trades. [music] But here's the thing, they're also growing their own internal team.
If you or someone you know is interested [music] in recruiting sales or just making businesses run smoother, you'll want to check them out at teamncw. com. This is just another job pitch. NCW has been voted a top workplace by the indie star, landed on the IBJ Fast25 list, and made [music] the Inc. 5000 list multiple times. I'll tell you, I've got plenty of friends who work there and they all love it.
Go check out teamncw. com. Now, let's get into the episode. My guest today is Mark [music] Tarter and he is the founder of the Southbend Chocolate Company which he launched in 1991 and has since grown into a well recognized confectionary brand all across the country. He is also the visionary behind the Indiana Dinosaur Museum, a large-s scale project that combines education and entertainment. We just did an entire tour.
This place is crazy. We are live in Southbend at the Southbend Chocolate Factory at the Indiana Dinosaur Museum. I am so excited to hear Mark's journey from a small town in northern Indiana to digging up dinosaur bones in the west. Like all this craziness, I might be sitting down with what many might consider the most interesting man in Indiana. Oh my gosh. Mark, welcome to the show.
Well, I feel the same about you, Nick. Oh, this guy, he's too kind to me. Um, okay. There is so much we can cover. Okay. From chocolate to dinosaurs and everything in between.
Literally the opposite ends of the spectrum in my opinion. And but this whole story starts in a small town in northern Indiana. Yeah. Well, not South Bend small. We're talking small small. Take me back.
Where did you grow up at? I grew up in Leburg, Indiana. Leburg. Population 505 at that time. The brick streets. Yeah.
Yeah. I delivered newspapers to everybody. Okay. You grew up in Leburg, Indiana. Population 505. Yep.
Holy smokes. Is that Warsaw High School or does that go to Wawasi? I think it's a Warsaw. Okay. Is that where you graduated from high school? No, I we moved to Southbend when I was 13.
Okay. So, 13 years old, you guys moved to Southbend. And here's where you started to fall in love with all things Northern Indiana and with Southbend specifically. When you think back to it, what did you love so much about Southbend? I think, you know, I played basketball as every kid did in the 70s. Uh, and uh, I put on a Southbend Clay jersey and I was never more proud of anything in my entire life.
Growing up here, you're playing basketball for Clay, but you go on to play basketball in college, correct? Yeah, I went to Eastern Illinois and uh, played there for four years. And now growing up, was college always the expectation for you or like was college like people around you? Absolutely. It was. I guess it was, but in those days only about 10 or 15% of the people went to college and you know, my dad didn't.
Uh, I was the first kid to go to college. A small town kid from Leburg, Indiana. How do you get into the candy making business? Um, I studied history and had no opportunities. [laughter] No, my my dad was constraints. My dad owned a grocery store in Leburg and then he he he made candies on the side and he started the small candy business and I worked and learned uh the trade there and then I started my own company in ' 91 and um had a vision for Southbend and really high quality chocolate and that's what we've done like was what was your first job coming out of school?
What did you do to pay the bills? Boy, I worked for my dad. Like how did he get into candy making? Um he was an entrepreneur a serial entrepreneur. is always in food. His first job was at a five and dime.
So he he knew where a little tie and he he loved candy stores and serving people and I still do. I'm still doing the same thing today. What were the first candies that your dad was making at his store? Uh you know he made he was a really great fudge maker and we his recipes are still ours. Wow. Yeah.
Okay. So then what happened with his company and how did you end up starting South Chocolate Company in 1991? I started out with three Notre Dame licensed chocolates. In those days, chocolates chocolate was considered a commodity. Wait, while you were while you were at your dad's company, correct? So, you had three Notre Dame.
What is a licensed? Uh, you know, you could use their the the the brand ND and we still make them rock, domers, and nuts for ND. And I think I believe we're the university's oldest ly one of the first food licenses in the nations nation. Wow. So you would be able to make chocolates with the the branding of Notre Dame on and that would be like with the mold. You would like have a mold of whatever it was and you put the chocolate in there and all of a sudden it has, you know, N Rochney's face on it or whatever.
Yeah. And today we make a a a chocolate bar that has gold flake in it. Whoa. So we've elevated our game a little bit and we're going to break a common misconception. You might be a Notre Dame fan, Notre Dame Notre Dame creat but you're not a Notre Dame graduate. No, I'm not smart enough to go to that great school.
You, you and me, you and me both, [laughter] man. Well, they talk about I feel like if you look on up online, there's a lot of like various information. So, hopefully this will be the source of truth for everything. Mark Turner. Well, I hope so, too. Let's go.
Okay, so you guys have three licenses for Notre Dame chocolate. You're working with your dad. And I mean, in Northern Indiana, you slap, this is just the truth. You slap Notre Dame on anything, you're going to sell. Like, it's going to move product. people want to have the same kind of food every year and they give it for Christmas.
So, it's really been an both a gift and an honor to have that relationship with the university. So, you are working there. You have three license like you you have three products rolling again. What brings it to the you going out on your own to start South and what was the old company called? It was my dad's last name and his partner uh Turner Py and they didn't do branding very well. My dad was really good at quality.
Yeah. And they made chocolates for Albanese. And Albanese is a huge company now in uh Maraveville. And uh the home of the gummy bears, right? Those are I like those gummy. They are really good.
And Scott Albanese and my dad were kind of small businessmen and we made chocolates for them and I didn't see a future in that and I saw you know uh a different you have to have a brand to to u like Albanese does. You end up leaving your dad's company. Was that a hard conversation to tell your dad, "I'm just going to stay in the candy business, but I'm going to leave your company." It was uh Yeah, I think it was. I think he thought I was going to um take over his company and he had a partner and I, you know, I love working with my dad, but I saw a different future. Well, and not only are you not going to take over his company, you're starting with a competitor.
I had a great relationship with my father. What was his like niche that he was in when it came to chocolates? Well, he had a couple stores and then he had Albanese and and that was his primary business and I went after a national um audience and I was telling you earlier our biggest customers are on both the east and the west coast today and there's a lot of you know there's a lot of place in the market for different brands and different companies and then I was selling my own brand. So yeah, and and a brand that you didn't have to totally build because South Bend, Notre Dame, Northern Indiana, there is a strong brand here for, again, I keep saying this word across all the content I've shot up in Southbend, but builders and makers and doers, right? And so where did the idea strike you that you should you shouldn't name it something that has to do with candy. You shouldn't name it something that has to do with confectionary or sweets.
It's like South Ben needs to be at the core of this brand, you know? I I don't know. Uh, a lot of people credit me with reviving that the the Southbend brand because everything then was Michigan and because Studebaker closed in 1963. I think we had a [snorts] I don't know we we just were had a problem with insecurity and you know we were this power economic powerhouse and the industrial revolution left us behind. I didn't feel that way, you know, and uh today Southbend is, you know, Studebaker was here, Oliver Plow does seem as though, right building and retaining the brand of Southbend in the identity is important. Yeah.
Why do you think that was important to you? I have to take a sense of ownership to everything that I do. And you know, I I guess I turned um first I converted 100,000 South Bin residents to be my fans. And as you know, I have the store on the circle in Indie. And I was a precocious 30-year-old guy and said, "I'm Indiana's chocolate company." And so I proved it by planting my flag.
How How old were you when you left your dad's company? Uh 28, I think. You were 28 and you set out to build your own chocolate company. I was crazy. How do you even like where do you even start? How do you even make chocolate as like a so a solo founder like going to figure this out?
Well, you know, I I grew up in the business and um it was easier. It was very hard in one way and easier easy if you know if you decide to do something, you just do it, you know, and I was so dumb. I didn't know how hard it was. Uh it took me four and a half years to get a paycheck and then it was extremely modest. Uh so how are you how are you staying? How are you?
Well, my wife and I uh owned a bought and re rehabbed a house that was built in 1872 and she had a good job and uh we we still work together. Well, how did you feel about that? It's like you're setting out to be this entrepreneur and build this company. You leave your dad who has you have at least a steady paycheck coming from right to set out. Your wife's got a good job. You're living in an old house from the 1800s on this journey to build Indiana's chocolate company.
Like internally, were you feeling like you're a winner or you feeling like what the heck did I do? Honestly, I kind of felt like I was a loser. Yeah. You know, I don't not a loser that all my other friends, they wanted to know why I wanted to leave my dad's business, you know? Yeah. You could just sit there and do almost nothing.
Like you could just like hang out and eventually you would own 50% or so of this company with your last name on it. I think I'm just an entrepreneur to this day. You know, I'm 65 now and I'm I don't think I'm done. I know that sounds strange. I want to do something else. I think entrepreneurship, Nate, is in you.
I don't believe it can be taught. I just think it's something in your gut and or is it something that you when you say it can't be taught, it's like in your gut, but do you get better at it the more times you go out and try it? Yeah, I think you do. And you know, in our society today, uh, doesn't really reward failure. And it's like it's crazy because everyone's so scared to fail that they never try anything, right? And and then we didn't really have anything to lose.
But I feel like back, you know, this would have been the '9s, like today, you know, the Mark Zuckerbergs and the tech founders of the world are celebrated. If you make it, you are celebrated. I don't think that I mean I mean there was you Steve Jobs and like a few people but the the celebration of the entrepreneur I feel like it's at its heyday and it gets better every year for you in ' 91 you you spent four and a half years on that journey to get a paycheck like who was the first customer you got the Morrison did you get to keep part of the license like did you have to renegotiate the license with Notre Dame no they just it's you know it's a famous hotel there on campus and a guy named Dave Harve bought some and then I built from that, you know, now we probably have 4,000 active customers nationwide, you know. Uh, but it just built on that one thing. And were you like, okay, so you go out, you get a new customer, you sell a new deal.
Hey, they're going to buy our chocolate. Great. Now I got to go home, I got to make the chocolate, package the chocolate, deliver the chocolate to the door, and then like check back in and say, "Hey, how are things selling?" Like your customer service also. Yeah. But that's, you know, that's part of the deal.
your butcher baker candlestick maker. Where were you making the chocolate at? Um at my dad's plant. I rented it at night. Oh. And then we stored all the boxes in our garage.
Wow. So where along this journey, four and a half years till you got your first modest paycheck, where in that four and a half year journey did your mindset shift from gosh this is so I mean it's always hard but like I'm losing. Where did it shift to start? Like, oh, I got my first few wins. I got like some stuff, some momentum that I'm proud of. I don't think I'm there yet.
And I know this is crazy. You know, I started this everybody last year, we opened the museum and it got 92,000 visitors and I was talking to a man who owns a museum and he said, "Mark, that's an incredible number." And I said, you know, I've never run a museum before. I think, you know, I don't think I will ever feel satisfied. And maybe it's something in me that doesn't want that stability. Yeah.
But uh I think I might, you know, and I've been I mean I I've been Indiana Small Business the Man of the Year. I've been an Inc. magazine. I never feel like I've arrived yet. And I don't know if that's humility or you know or ambition. I'm not very greedy.
I don't know. But like it's not even necessarily like you're trying to go get money or trying to go money is not a factor for me. But it's like you're trying to just go and and continue living life. You know, we talked a little bit early about your journey, you know. Um I don't have a work life balance. I just have one incredible interesting f I'm fascinated with life.
I uh my biggest regret will be when I can't work anymore and I can't be an entrepreneur. That'll be the biggest problem for me. Well, then you have to figure out how you through the stages of life, how you end up. And I feel like every day waking up with a purpose of like I'm going to go be I'm going to chase a curiosity a curiosity today. That's a pretty cool place to be at. Yeah.
You know, and I I uh some of my friends are retiring. I kind of get the feeling and they're like, "Are you going to retire?" I'm like, "No, [gasps] I've done something I've loved to do with people I love, my employees, and you get a sense for them. We love each other. We love to come to work every day. Uh every day isn't great.
You know, we have to face we faced COVID together. uh you know we're facing inflation now and changing the changing culture but I have a work family that's incredible. One thing that's interesting about you is that you carry uh I'll say a healthy obsession for the things that you're interested in and that started with chocolate. Like I mean I walked through the the museum of chocolate that you have up here and you're like, "Oh yeah, I I collected old school chocolate posters and I collected ancient pots from the people before the Aztecs and the Mayans. What were they called?" Theme.
Theme. You have these old school pottery chocolate pots. Like like where along that journey did you become obsessed with making chocolate? I don't know if I'm My wife has said that I can't pick up one shell on the beach. I have to get them all and then I have to understand what species they are. Uh I spend uh time at night kind of dreaming and studying.
It's something in me. I don't I I think it's healthy. It probably isn't very normal. Yeah. Well, I think that being a curious individual is good and like chasing down your curiosities is a great trait to have. Well, you know what we talked about?
I I learn by doing and I you know that doesn't mean I can't read a book. We're obviously in a library, one of my libraries. When I do it and I experience it, I know it. Yeah. I tell people that I've only know what I know and what I learned from my father and that's about all I know. How long uh in the journey did it take for you to stop renting the factory at night and get your own place?
Well, that was probably 3 years. So, you end up investing into a space before you invest into paying yourself a salary. Yeah. If you knew the journey, how hard it was going to be, how many ups, how many downs, all the trials and tribulations, would you have left and started the Southbench Chocolate Company? Yes. But it's a tough, you know, there's a lot of cost to my family.
Uh there are parts of my life I've totally missed. You know, I have great neighbors. I don't see them very often, you know, because I'm constantly moving. I might I have a a neighbor who's a Notre Dame professor, and he says, "Mark, I haven't seen you in six months." And I said, "Well, I get up before you get out of bed and I come back after you're asleep." Yeah.
And I mean it. I But it's not I don't think it's the work ethic. It's the some type of drive, you know. Yeah. And I think people from Indiana, uh, you know, we're a we're a great state of inventors and doers. Uh, I sort of have that culture in me.
I don't know what it is. Uh, you know, and I'm a boomer. I'm the last of the boomers. I feel like I have a role in life to play and I've played it. It's not all this. It's not always been the best and uh or the easiest uh and I may not financially gain from it, but it's been it's been a wonderful life and an interesting life.
Well, you talk about financial gain and you talk about you took four and a half years to get yourself a paycheck 3 years before you had your own place. Where was the first external factory? Like where was the first place that you guys got to go and make chocolate? 3,300 West Sample Street. 3,300 West Sample Street. That's right downtown, right?
Well, pretty close. Pretty close. And it was the old South Bend toy plant and Tyra Rack started there. A large firm just north of us here, development started some business there and now an entrepreneur bought the building and is doing something new with it. Uh it was a great place to start. Yeah.
And from there you ended up expanding. What was the most amount of locations you had open at any one time? Boy, we were uh we had a lot of mall stores. We were from Evansville to Grand Rapids in malls, you know, but the malls went through a massive transition where they were where you could make money and, you know, now uh most of them are closed closing. I was going to say in the 90s and early 2000s being in the mall business in the food court space, you're probably printing money. Yeah, we were.
And our uh we're still in University Park Mall. I think we're the oldest tenant now cuz they've all changed, you know, and that's been an amazing thing to see. or what do you like more, the chocolate and like the making of quality things that people are going to enjoy or the task of growing a business and expanding and becoming Indiana's chocolate maker? I think serving people is what I like to do. Yeah. You know, it's something my dad did in a in a five and dime when he was young.
I just like to people have a need and I fill it and if I can make money that's fine. Uh but I think that's my service is a big thing for me. Yeah. What do you think Southbend thinks of Mark Turner? Hopefully they're proud of me. I don't think there's a part of town that my wife and I haven't reinvested in.
We opened a store. My dad had a small store in uh on Michigan Street downtown and I kind of grew up in there and the downtown sort of fell apart uh in the in the heyday of the malls and I put a big store down there and uh was really one of the first people to repopulate our downtown and prove to other entrepreneurs that you can be successful in our downtown. And that store is 10,000 square feet now. I remember that one. There was so it's a huge space. Do you still have that?
Yeah, it's a it's still a very popular store, but you know, now we have, you know, we sell coffee and we we roast coffee there, too, and everything, but there probably 40 coffee shops in our downtown, but we're still very popular. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that was a good part of my life. And then the state I think in 2012 we were Indiana small business of the uh Indiana's main street business of the year because of that seinal investment in our downtown proving that uh you could make it work and yeah downtown's thriving now. I mean I will say downtown Southbend has come a long way. There's a ton of cool stuff happening.
You can walk around down there. It's uh I mean very very cool. I think that that your journey is just so interesting like you have just committed yourself to living an interesting life. Um so as you started to grow where did you see the shift in malls start to happen and you started to realize hey we've got to make some some changes here or we're going to go extinct. Yeah. Well that's good.
I got that. You didn't have to wink at me for me to get that. Um no. You know, there are transitions you go through. The the rise and fall of the downtown, the rise and fall of the malls, the rise of Amazon, you know, these uh changing taste. Uh these are things that we've overcome and we appear to be thriving uh despite all those things.
Um I'd like to our company be around um after I'm long gone and they'll have to face those same issues. And it's just it's kind of adjusting. it is not going extinct. You know, uh my dad used to tell me businesses have a shelf life and that he should have gone into religion or government because they seem to last, you know, Notre Dame's been around since 1842. Uh so about the city, the South Bend has too. Uh but businesses are shortlived really.
Yeah. And creating Yeah. like multi-generational businesses is is challenging because you do have to adapt. You know, if you were still like just only selling mall chocolate, it wouldn't work. You'd have to learn how to sell other places and build other accounts and and innovate with the times, right? And and brands become old very quickly.
You know, it used to be 50 years and then it's 40 years. Now it can be you're you can be pop. Look at the internet. Look at you know Spotify is hot now, but what did it take out? Pandora. Pandora.
Pandora was so cool. You had Pandora in like the the 2010s, it was like this thing is so cool. And then now it's Spotify and who knows what it'll be next year. Brands are really hard to establish. Yeah. And they're hyper trendy.
And I think that that you are an expert when it comes to brand. I even look around here and like from, you know, the logo, the bold Southbend Chocolate Company, the bold stuff on the Indiana Dinosaur Museum and, you know, the story of this, the story of it's all very very well branded. Is that like a you have that vision or do you work with a great team or No, that's me and and I think they follow that lead. But you know I Nate I realized we have a big company in uh California cost plus world market. Uh they have about 500 stores. They're a customer.
They're a customer and they [clears throat] wanted to private label it one year and they took off the name Southbend and sales plummeted. So you know people especially when it comes to food you know everybody know who's Ray who who Ray Croc was. uh food. You want to know the people that make your food. You want to look at them. You want to Google their families.
That was done way before the internet. Uh because that, you know, there's a Colonel Sanders. I could go on and on, you know, uh Dave Thomas with Wendy's. Uh so in the food industry, we've we always been under that microscope and I think it's a good thing. Yeah. And so along this journey, you know, obviously the business evolves.
you go through, you know, shifting of where to put stores, how much to sell online, all the different things there. But along this for, I mean, over the last 20 years, you also have had another obsession and somehow again from dinosaurs to chocolate, you found a way to bring these two obsessions together. Where did you become so obsessed with dinosaurs? How did that happen? my oldest daughter, and this is the story I tell and I think it's true. Uh she was interested in dinosaurs and we went out west and a Notre Dame professor was digging on a T-Rex and we visited it uh that site and on the way back, I think she was 10 or 12.
She said she wanted to dig up a dinosaur. So, I said, "Let's do this." And then about 10 miles later, she started balling, saying how it was impossible. And I said, "Nothing's impossible." It took me 13 years and I I made it and then she was there of course she was interested in other things uh by that point boys primarily. Uh but I brought her out to the camp where we dug up Juliet this hydrasaura duck bill with skin on it and we called it camp possible and uh I still have those signs somewhere.
So it was a family journey more or less, but to prove to her and to me that I could kind of reinvent myself and do something that very very few people do and it's extremely hard. I think a lot I mean there's a lot of things in life that are hard. Growing a company is hard. I mean uncovering a dinosaur like you know literally finding a dinosaur is hard. It's like literally like the ultimate needle in a hay stack, right? Yeah.
But I'm kind of under the impression too if someone can do it, if there is a human being out there that can figure out how to do something, right? I can probably figure I can if I really put my mind to it, I could give it the old college try and give it but 13 years of a college try like were there moments along that journey where you will give up? Yeah, there, you know, uh, someone the other day I interviewed them for a job and they'd had about 20 jobs and they were 30 and I said, you know, he said, 'Well, don't you ever want to quit? And I said, yeah, every day. Uh, but you know, you you get up and you face the challenge again. Uh, maybe that's part of me.
I'm just a stubborn hoser. How much does your word mean to you? Like in that moment, you know, you talk to your daughter, you say, "No, we can do that. We're going to we're going to dig up a dinosaur. Character is one of the rarest commodities that uh people can have. And I have both character and commitment and self-respect.
And those are hard things to have. But uh and I don't speak about it much, but I think that defines me and will define me. You know, we don't uh money's going to come and go, fame's going to come and go, looks are going to come and go, but you know, having a strong character and staying the course is extremely rare these days. being able to pursue both your dinosaur I mean obsession it's true and I and I don't say the obsession in a bad way I like I think that if you want to be the utmost successful in whatever it is sports business right philanthropy you have to be obsessed with the thing like I had to go out and be obsessed with the state of Indiana to start to like cuz people just like love crazy people they love people that they're like oh I'm like a normal person and you are a crazy person and I'll like watch while you're like like from the outside of the class. People love that. Yeah.
You know, I just came uh last week and I was in New York at the Explorers Club and I'm a member of I think there's 3,500 or 4,000 members. Jeff Bezos is a member. Theor Roosevelt was a member. And my wife when we're in this room, she said, "There's a room full of you's." And I said, "Me?" And she said, "Everybody's passionate.
They're obsessed. They're" And I said, "No, they just want to live. you know, whether you climb Mount Everest or you uh stay working at a factory for your whole life and doing the most perfect job as a machinist or you sweep the floor really well, that's an obsession, too, because it's evidence of your love of life, your self-worth. And we don't talk about these uh old honorable terms anymore. Uh and I I think that's part of the great part about the Midwest, you know, we kind of still can live that story. And so how do you end up merging your love of uh paleontology?
Is that that's what you call it, right? Your love for dinosaur bones and your business of chocolate and like how do you balance all that to bring it together to create the campus that we are sitting on today? You know, it just came to me one and I I I mentioned to you earlier, the Children's Museum in Indianapolis wanted me to move down next to their campus there. And on the way back from kind of turning down their offer, I thought, man, I can do this in South Bend. But at that time, it seemed insurmountable. You know, we're sitting in a $20 million complex.
That's a lot of cocoa. That's a lot of diero. Yeah. Right. Um, and uh, I did it a little bit at a time and then uh, the state helped me, South Bend helped me, uh, people believed in me. Uh, and I don't know if you heard the governor uh, just gave the city of Southbend and the county $40 million to extend the Continental Divide Trail that I found, you know, that I developed out here.
And someone says, "Well, how do you do this?" And I said, 'You come up with a vision and you commit to it and then you sacrifice everything you have and everybody else says, 'Well, I want to join in. And so part of that vision, I think that exists outside of me. You know, I think change makers all have that in deep in them, Nate. And you do too. you what what attracted me to you is you tell a story of our state that we don't tell a very good story and you're out there telling it and it's in the Leburg Indianaas or the Typton or Evansvilles, you know, looking for a new place to call home.
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JC Hart Company where your next home sweet home [music] is waiting. When did you first acquire this land? Probably been 10 or 15 years ago. There are 11 parcels and I slowly kind of got them. 11 parcels over 10 or 15 years. You talk about being 50.
Let's say 15 years. You were 50 when you started. That's about right. You could have just been squirreling this away in a Roth IRA or whatever, waiting for retirement. I should have. But you I mean you're 65 and you've put it all on the line.
like you are are investing. You said being willing to risk it all to like get this thing up and going. Like is that stressful? In a 10-year run, we were making money. We were a lot of money. And my wife and I don't, you know, we I buy used cars.
We live in a house now that was built in 1929 in the city. You moved up 40 years. I was up 40 years. Uh but we're about family and neighbors and our friends. And what do you splurge on? Like if there was one thing you We go we go on vacation once in a while.
I took the first 12 days off in December besides Christmas of my life. We went to Europe and went to the uh those Christmas markets in Germany and always wanted to do that. How do you balance your obsession with whether it be chocolate, customer service, paleontology and growing a family and being a good partner? I have an incredible wife. My dad warned her that never get between him and where he wants to go and she never has and she's been extremely supportive. I would say a lot of my success is based on her either tacit commitment or love of me and the vision.
Yeah. You know, well I mean she supported you guys for the first four and a half years. Yeah. Totally. Like totally and I think a lot of founders are starting to say a lot about that where having a partner is so important like having someone who who sees where they might not be in like he I mean I'm sure there were times that she was making chocolate. I'm sure there are times of that course, but also like even if they're not like coding whatever your software is, but just like understanding what what level of dedication goes into changing a state, changing the world, right?
Yeah. And she didn't come from an entrepreneurial background, you know. Uh I don't know. I think that's that relationship is key to my success. And and I would I I would guarantee you if we ever got a divorce, she would not take the chocolate company from me. I know that sounds crazy, but she knows that that's something that is almost sacred.
Does that make sense? Because we built it not just for us. And when you look at it from an entrepreneurs's perspective, the benefit to society is much greater than I will ever get. You know, uh corporation is the root word is corpus. It's Latin for the body. We're a body of the state.
You know, I generate so much in tax dollars, it's ridiculous. my income should be multiples of what it is. But you know, it's what you do for yourself, your family, and your community in that order and your customers. Yeah. And it's I think that's the American way. You know, I think we focus a lot on making money and capitalism and sort of there's a lot of transactionalism that I see that I don't really like.
There's a story behind that that's deep and sacred and it's in marriage and commitment and staying the course and love and yeah, that's where it's at. 15 years you spent acquiring par 11 different parcels of land here to create where we're at today. Where did it start to become real? Like buying land is one thing. You know, if you if you have money and you live a modest life, like you can acquire the land, but where did the rubber have to meet the road and you have to either write a check or get a grant or like do whatever whatever it took to get an actual building in a museum and a thousand dinosaur bones. like where did it all come to a point and you had to choose do I sail off into the sunset and end up retiring or do I go back into this and and build even more?
Well, I don't know if there was a I had a I had a crisis and uh COVID hit and my sales dropped 97% in 96 hours. 97%. Oh, it was terrible. It was crazy because we were in I have stores in hospitals and in the airports and it was terrible. But I had uh to transfer some money from the construction fund back to the business just to keep it alive. It was $2.
7 million. And when I recovered, I could do everything but the museum. And uh we'd had some grant money and we lost the grant money. And our mayor, I was back here. Uh, we lost the grant money and I left this meeting and went right to work here and I was clearing some trees. Uh, the mayor of South Bend calls me up.
His name's James Mueller and we're, you know, different people in many ways. He called me up and he says, "How are you doing?" And I said, "Not well." I said, "I got millions of dollars extended. I'm toast." And he says, "Well, I'm going to come see you.
I'm sorry we lost that money." And next day he came to see me. And uh within 30 60 days, the city of South Benin wrote me a check out for $2. 7 million and replaced the money that I lost in CO trying to keep my business alive. And I realized it then that it wasn't just me that built this, you know, and I I can't say enough about James Miller. He probably risked his political career.
But, you know, um I heard him tell someone the other day. He said, "Mark Turner is a man you back. He got us $40 million from the state for this, you know, uh but it's faith in me and the mission." I not only sold myself, I sold people around me and my character built that base. Yeah. That's when I knew that it wasn't just me.
Yeah. And building this attraction for the to bring in econ like you bring in people from Michigan and Illinois or Ohio, wherever coming to see this. I mean, you start out in the movie theater, you start out seeing like the hype video about a museum, which is like kind of uncommon. I would say it's not like your typical museum that you think of. Yeah. I wanted to, you know, I I love museums, but they're a little bit boring and, you know, they have one foot in two centuries ago.
Uh, but, uh, it's there's not a whole lot of Latin here. It starts with a movie. You can reach out and touch the dinosaurs. Uh, the story is personal, real. I tell it and we have a storyteller in each room. Uh we think we're the model for the new museum.
Uh yeah, in our own way. I mean, the museum has probably been open for 18 months or so. Yeah, that's about right. The day that that opened and your two passions somehow collided, how did that make you feel? Well, my blood pressure. I just seen my doctor uh for lunch and she wanted to put me in the hospital and I told her I explained to her that the governor's wife was going to open our Eric couldn't be here and and uh I had 900 people showing up so I had to skip the hospital visit.
I mean my blood pressure was I don't know what it was but um it felt in it felt incredible. It felt like uh I looked around and saw all these people and I I had team South been there. Besides discovering something and seeing your child born, that was probably one of the highlights of my life. Yeah. Yeah. What advice would you give to anyone listening at any age, whether you're 50, whether you're 15, about pursuing your dreams with relentless enthusiasm?
I hear all the time people ask me that question or form of that question, Nate, and I everybody says, you know, follow your passions. I think that's kind of [ __ ] you know? I mean, I think you have to have passion. There has to be something in you, something insatiable that you can't feed. And only knowledge or achievement. And it might be small.
It doesn't have to be something like this. I have I I've I've fed that. Does that make any sense? And if I tell people just have faith in yourself once you discover your passion, give up everything and follow that passion and then it'll work out for you. Yeah. The conviction like people follow that conviction.
And whether it be follow as in come and spend their money there, whether it mean come and work here, invest here, whatever it might be, people follow conviction. You have to be to the nth degree convicted that what you're doing is revolutionary. That what you're doing is incredible. Yeah. You know, and if you look at American history, whether it's George Washington, John Brown, Martin Luther King, all these people had tremendous conviction. Theodore Roosevelt, he wanted America to be great.
He thought our traits were world class. Well, he pursued that. Yeah. And then like when even when the world didn't necessarily love him like he loses that election he goes to the river of doubt is an insane book where he goes to South America and like almost dies his whole party almost dies and he's like to clear his like go on some great adventure and one thing about you is you talk about being a part of the explorers club you are an explorer you're an adventurer like you've gone out to Montana and Wyoming I don't know how many times to go explore and to chase this curiosity and obsession. Talk to us about what got you plugged into the paleontology community out west. Well, it took it's a relationship thing.
The ranchers are some of the hardest people to sell in the world. Um, you know, and from the east, we're telling them how to do everything, you know. Uh, uh, and ranchers are smart. They're all small business people. When I think of America, I think of someone uh out there struggling on the prairie to make a living where you and I would, you know, not be able to make it. I went out there primarily in pursuit of uh adventure, I guess.
But what I found is some peace. Uh my wife, I was out there last year in September, and she said, "Man, you smell like a fish." And I said, "Well, I don't smell. I I was out on this ranch and I wasn't close to shower, so I bathed in a river. I said, "That's trout." You know, we don't get to do that much anymore.
Uh cuz we're so civilized. And I think it allowed me to connect with myself, with nature, with our with our really uh I think the American spirit and culture is one of adventure and pursuing your passions. someone who has to always have maybe progress and like an entrepreneur that's like an entrepreneur's vacation because you can still get up every day you dig you're being productive you're like because I think that some people are just born with that itch like it the idea of waking up and just sitting on a beach or like lounging around it's it's like that would be my nightmare like I would not enjoy that like maybe I try to for you know an hour or two or whatever but like the idea of being out you're disconnected you're you're away from chocolate. You're away from hospitality and you're just digging. You're just discovering new things, right? And recharging really, you know, and I think in our complicated world, we don't see the stars anymore.
We don't see our neighbors. We don't see their, you know, we don't see the brightness of the stars and we don't see the suffering of our friends and neighbors and it's because we're so complicated. And that has given me a real sense of uh I don't know, value I guess. Yeah. What do you think the biggest misconception about Mark Tarner is? I can be tough.
Yeah. And I'm disciplined for a reason. It seems like discipline has fallen a little bit out of fashion. I come from a background, you know, the the root word of disciple is discipline. You know, you study disciplines in school. Um, you can't be success unless you're disciplined.
And I'm disciplined in my thought. I'm disciplined in my actions. I'm disciplined in uh my pursuits and goals and I was trained by in smalltown Indiana to be that disciplined person. Uh I think people perhaps don't understand that and I I don't uh it doesn't bother me. I just I know it's has value to me and I'm going to continue to to to be disciplined. Yeah.
But in this, you know, in this society, uh, uh, we've certainly changed and I think we're cycling back to valuing some of those root things like honor and discipline and trust and commitment. Yeah. Integrity and character. Yeah. You know, I'm not saying we don't have that, but it used to be those were your leaders. Yeah.
You know, your ministers and even your business people had to be very tempered. I'm very proud that capitalism was tempered by sort of protest Pro Protestantism where there's an ethic there. You know, Americans have been great donors and benefactors and uh I hopefully I'll be part of that tradition in my small kind of way. When you think about your legacy and the legacy of the Indiana Dinosaur Museum, the legacy of the Southbend Chocolate Company 100 years from now when someone comes back and watches this podcast, [laughter] I mean, think about it. Think if we would have had, you know, a podcast with the Studebakers 100 years ago, like what what do you want people to say about you and the Southbend Chocolate Company a 100red years from now? What do you hope they know about you guys?
Oh, that anything's possible, you know, if you put your mind to it. And and I've always grown up as part of a team. When I meet people all over the country and the world, I always say, you know, Mark Turner from the great state of Indiana, I'm sincerely proud to be from where I am, you know, and I want them to know that we can do great things. We have done great things and prosperity is a lot more complicated and deep than a pocketbook, you know, than money in the bank. Yeah. And I think those are who's your values, too.
So, that's what I'd like people to remember. Whether they will or not, I don't know. I I love that. I'm Mark Turner from the great state of Indiana. So, this question is brought to you by our friends at JC Hart. They're a leader in creating enjoyable living experiences at apartment communities all across Indiana and beyond.
Check them out at homejart. com. My question for you, Mark, why do you call Indiana home? Wherever I go, and I travel a lot. I I I studied in Germany a couple years when I was young. Indiana is kind of the ethos, you know, we're calm people.
If you could give listeners one piece of advice to engineer their passions, their interests, their curiosities into their work and into their life. What would you tell them? Oh, to take the leap of faith, you know, and it's hard. That's the, you know, fear. I who said something about there's nothing to fear but fear itself. Yeah.
Yeah. I wake up every day uh fearing, you know, it's almost like a basketball player. you you're only as good as your next victory, you know. So, um addressing fear and understanding it and having people that support you in that journey because you have to overcome fear. That's the big one. Absolutely.
What's your favorite Indiana memory? We did the Indiana State Fair for 30 years. I had a booth there and at one time uh I was out near the milk um there's a milk stand there, you know, and someone was playing on banjos. uh back home again in Indiana and I just realized what I just you know we have songs about our states on the banks of the Wall Bash and back home in Indiana. I really felt that's one of my greatest memories. You're at the state fair.
This is again we talked about earlier there's five or so I don't know the population of Indiana was smaller and you said a million people used to come through the state fair. They probably still get a million people. Yeah, it's about that you know but 25% of the state's population. And so we were there for 30 years and I sampled millions of people. You know, I kind of fibbed. I said, "We're Indiana's Chocolate Company."
And then years later, people say, "Oh, that there's Indiana's Chocolate Company." Well, I probably planted that seed, uh, you know, shaking hands and kissing babies. Where was the memory where you looked around and said, "How the heck did we build all this?" Almost every day, you know, when I pull into the parking lot. Yeah. Uh, yeah.
But, you know, it's a it's a a small process of doing a little bit at a time. So almost every day. Really? Wow. Well, I have no a cherry here. A chocolatecoed cherry.
But not this is not your grandpa's chocolate covered cherry. Talk me through this and I'm going to do a taste test. Well, you know you It's a great segue. My dad told me I used to hate cherries. Oh. And you know how they have a sugar center that has a truffle center.
And I told him I was going to make America's best chocolatecovered cherry. And when he tasted it for the first time, he said I did. M. It's [clears throat] unbelievable. That is so good. I don't usually like sugarcoed cherries.
Yeah, most people don't. They have a sugar center and sugar is really inexpensive. What do you mean by Okay. So, what do you mean by truffle center versus sugar center? Well, if you look there's there's a truffle center. It's coated in chocolate and there's a truffle center and then there's a cherry.
Wow. And they have to be handone. So, but it's just an incredible That's probably my favorite piece of candy. What's the secret to good chocolate? The quality of the chocolate. What makes it higher quality?
Well, uh, the right balance of chocolate, sugar, and milk. The Swiss put a lot of holes in their chocolate. I hope you aren't Swiss. Not me. Good. But the Swiss and they put a lot of milk in it because Switzerland was known for cows.
And so, I'm really not a fan of Swiss chocolate. It's good. And Cadberries has a lot of milk. Uh, but I think a good American chocolate, it snaps. It's uh, it tastes great. Um, America really is known for its mass chocolate, you know, Mars, Hershey, uh, but, uh, probably American chocolate and lint right now.
Lint lint's a Swiss brand, but they don't, if you taste it, it doesn't have, uh, a lot of milk in it. How much inspiration did you get from Willy Wonka? A lot. Right. Like, I look around here and it's legitimately like you were the modernday Willy Wonka. Well, I don't know about that, but you know, you got the dinosaur museum.
You got the line the long chocolate like assembly line type stuff going on back there. It's an incredible place to come and visit. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I I guess you know it's a that's a really a story. Robert Dah wrote that and it's a story of morality really and you know who gets to inherit the chocolate company and it's someone who's simple, humble and probably would have been a hooer back in the day.
It is a funny thing to use sugar and sweets and candy, a a movie that all kids would love to watch, right? To really teach a lesson about personality traits, right? And when you think about you, you kind of just talked about your discipline, your character, your integrity, like how that is, you know, so important to you. It is a fun full circle moment to use something like chocolate to then, you know, the entrepreneurship side of that and the character that comes out and is revealed in that journey. It's wild. I literally think again if I was making a list of the top five most interesting people in Indiana, we're not saying successful, we're not saying rich, we're not saying I'm saying interesting.
You are an interesting cat. Who beat me out? Would I be one, two, three, four, or five? Come on. Who are in the top five? Maybe the three spot.
So I know a [laughter] is that bad? That's a bronze. Is that a bronze? I don't get for most interesting people in Indiana. There are some interesting Who's ahead of me? Okay, there's one.
Again, I rave about this guy all the time. His name's Will Schuler. He's younger than me. He's probably like 25. He started an excavation company um when he was in high school. He was doing a million dollars in revenue as a senior in high school.
He had an employee, a full-time employee that would go so he would go to the first three periods of school. His employee would show up at the job site, start working. After school, he would go and meet them. They'd work till 5. Employee leaves. He would stay there.
He is a man of integrity. Oh, he got his first big break on like one of the big uh home builders on the north side of Indianapolis. And the guy calls him up, I got a problem. Can you come fix it? Absolutely. And when he got there, he told the guy said, "I will not leave until the work is done."
And he stayed there Friday night, Saturday night, got it done Sunday evening, did not leave. His mom, he's again, he's a young kid. His mom was bringing him out meals and he did not leave until the work was done. Will Schuler, he is like one of the most interesting cats I've ever met. He's one that where I sit in the room and I hear him talk and I'm like there's levels like there's levels to hustle. There's levels to like going and pursuing your dreams with relentless passion.
And he I would say is right near the top of my most interesting people. Sounds like 50 hours worth of work to me. Yeah, just 50, right? Oh man. Who's number two? Okay.
Chuck Surak Sweetwater Fort Wayne. He's an interesting cat. I've heard that. I never met. You two would be best friends. Okay.
You two would get along so well. I got to hang out with Chuck. He again does not care about money. Like his journey through Sweetwater was never about making profits. He like wanted to build a recording studio. That's right.
And he became so obsessed with this specific like keyboard computer thing. Like it was an instrument, but he wanted to get every it was almost like Pokemon. He wanted to get every sound on his keyboard. So, this is like, you know, now you buy like a Casio or whatever and it has 250 sounds. That was not that did not exist back then. So, he was like, "Hey, I'll trade you a three-piece string quartet sound for your blaring bugle."
And then like he would do that and then eventually he got to the point where he had traded with everyone or brought this people in to record that there were no more sounds left for him. And everyone was coming to him saying, "Hey, will you will you just sell me these sounds?" like I know there's nothing to trade in, but will you just sell me? And he was like, "Ugh, fine." Cuz he was trying to build his recording studio, right? And he said, "Ugh, fine."
Realized in like one or in 3 months, in one quarter, he had made like 3x or 5x what his recording studio was making selling these sounds. And like the light bulb moment hit and he was like, "Oh, like that's the business I should be doing." Grew that. Focused on um customer service, focused on all these amazing thing. Like if you call Sweetwater, it is a great experience and but never along the journey was he like trying to like solely focus on profits and he's the most interesting. He is again you Chuck Surak, Will Schuler, three most interesting people in the state of Indiana.
Thank you. It's unbelievable. What you've built here is so incredible. Uh I truthfully believe people need to come up here and check this out and see everything you have going on. Unfortunately, we've come towards the end of the show. good where we get to talk all things Indiana.
And so this is your opportunity. Okay. So obviously we're talking about the Indiana Dinosaur Museum and Southbend Chocolate Company. That's a piece. Come up here and see it. Outside of your spot, if you had to shed some light on a part of the state that more people need to know about, I want to know what is a hidden gem in Indiana.
I like uh Park County. Oh, the Covered Bridge Festival. I like the people in Park County. There are about five families and honestly um the overpacks I can't remember there were five families one of the overpacks uh but there you know was one of the poorest counties in the state and um that's why they they could never replace their bridges I think that's a beautiful part of the state but talk about that taking something that people want to raise money and replace and turning it into an asset a liability turns into an asset I I know this is another trit one the circle monument circle Yeah, there have been moments on the circle, you know, we've been there for, I think, 30ome years. There was one morning where the sun came up and we were there for some event and this the limestone was just pink and it was just this almost surreal experience. Uh I think the circle, the state fair or at least the way it used to be with the old buildings and hearing farmers talk um uh that's a that's a great experience.
Um, in the north, I love the Amish area. You know, I I I I grew up uh we we're I I speak a little German. The Amish are incredible. Uh people, their culture is incredible. Their families are incredible. I just love everything about them.
I don't know. I love parts of Whiting's an interesting town in in the region. The last stop right before you get to Chicago and Illinois. Um uh no, I I I think we have just a phenomenal state. I don't travel enough in it, you know. I've never had a brain sandwich down in Evansville.
That kind of scares me. You got to do it. Okay. Yeah. You talk about branding. That is That is a thing.
Evansville need Oh, let's go eat a brain. That's not branding. That's stupidity. Well, no. So, they have a branding problem. No offense anyone from Evansville.
The problem is they call it the fall festival and it's like, oh, it's like pumpkins and scarecrows and whatever. And it's a legacy thing. Over a hundred years, the Westside Nut Club has put this on. A bunch of guys got together for lunch. The Westside Westside Nut Club. The Westside cuz they met for lunch under an acorn or an oak tree.
So, they became the Nut Club. It's crazy branding, right? It's all about branding. But it is not scarecrows and pumpkins. It's over 100 food booths run by all the local nonprofits. They raise so much money.
Literally almost all the nonprofits like entire philanthropy for the year is done at the festival. There's waffles and this and that and the it's so good. The food is incredible. And the brain sandwich is like one of the staple components and like I had a little bit of trouble getting over not the taste. It tasted fine. It was the thought of eating brain and I was like, "Oh gosh."
Like that part kind of got me. But it tasted pretty good. So I love it. Mark, it has been a a pleasure to share the mic with you and learn more about your journey from starting in Leburg, Indiana, coming up to Southbend and really helping take Southbend to I mean national scope to an international scope. I'm sure do you have Jack Chocolate all over the world? We have a customer in Dubai.
Seriously, like the South Ben name, right? you have helped, you know, put that in airports and hospitals and chocolate shops and coffee shops and all over the world. It's incredible. Like, I think that your story and your continuous pursuit of your curiosity is so motivating. I think when I look back and I get to listen to this episode again, I'm going to absolutely love it. It's going to be one of my favorites.
Robert, I'm looking at you. What do we think? Yeah, it's fire. An absolutely incredible story. I cannot just I can't wait to see you're 65 years old, but you're still as young and spry as ever. I can't wait to see what the next 5 and 10 years offer for you.
If you could leave us with any parting wisdom or a call to action, a way that the Who's Your State can show up for you? How can we do that? Mark, once again, it sounds a little trit, but I I feel like I should give back because I've had so many supporters. I don't really have anything I want from the state. I think buy some chocolate. How's that sound?
support a local person. Understand that your farmers are just small business people struggling to survive and uh and build your local economy. You're really investing in yourself. Yeah, absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for all the hard work you've done in South Bend and Northern Indiana and all over.
Right. If we could all just take one little sliver of Indiana pride and Indiana love like Mark has, the the state of Indiana would be a better place. I don't know. We'll talk to you soon. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all my gear recommendations at [music] Sweetwater.
If you want a behind-the-scenes look at everything we're doing across the state, make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok, Nate Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of what makes the New [music] State great. We'll see you next time here on Get
