BACKGROUND
Born and raised in Indy, Brian Schutt was the first native Hoosier in his family. His parents, already with two sons in tow, moved here in 1977 from California to lead a non-denominational and ecumenical church called Agape on 46th Street.
In Indy, the couple found a place that felt like home, and there they stayed.
Brian’s lifelong friendship with Seth Morales (C7 podcast - Big Hearted Indy) began in a crib they shared at Agape—and so did a lifelong friendship with Dr. Greg Enas, who, after moving to Indy from a different area of California, met Brian’s dad and ultimately co-pastored the church.
Seth Morales and Brian's lifelong friendship
began in the baby nursery at Agape Church.
That church still stands, although no longer active, and is only a stone’s throw away from Brian’s most recent entrepreneurial project, Refinery 46 (refinery46.com), a 30,000 sq. ft. space he redeveloped as a shared workspace.
“In certain ways, my life in Indy is downstream of my parents choosing this place and making connections,” says Brian. “Seth and I grew up and graduated from Lawrence Central together, and another friend, Tiffany, drove us to school our freshman year.”
Of course, Brian and Tiffany had no idea of the romance that would ensue a decade later or of the future they would share today. But as life unfolded, they both matured over the next decade, graduated college (she from IU and he from Purdue with a bachelor’s in business management), and reconnected.
Brian began to discover his entrepreneurial gifts through an internship in Cabo, Mexico, during his first two years out of college. There, he helped a fraternity alumnus renovate an old hotel, doing everything from conducting interviews to creating a marketing campaign and completing renovations, successfully launching the hotel into its new life.
He was hooked on entrepreneurship but felt that Indy was home, so he returned, gaining greater depth in communications and public relations while working for an issue advocacy firm from 2006-2008. He further honed his skills in marketing, leadership, and writing at a marketing firm.
“Post-Mexico, we reconnected,” Brian says of Tiffany, “and it was like meeting for the first time because we’d had five or six years to grow up. We shared a sense of where we’d come from but also gave each other the space to be different.”
The two moved through the cliché of marrying your childhood friend, ultimately recognizing how good, easy, and fun their relationship was. They married at 28 and 29. Now, with two children—a 13-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter—the couple is expecting their third baby in September.
One of the skills Brian developed as an entrepreneur—and which he employed as recently as the day he and Tiffany found out they would have a third baby—came in handy early on: when things don’t go as planned, get creative.
Right after they married, Brian lost his marketing job due to an economic downturn. One day, he met up with a Purdue friend, Jesse Cross, who was struggling to hire a reliable HVAC company for his real estate investments. On the spot, they hatched a plan for a startup, and that business, Homesense Heating and Cooling (trusthomesense.com), is now 16 years old and still thriving, having served tens of thousands of customers.
“The true story is I didn’t have any other options,” Brian says of the startup. “Necessity was truly the mother of invention—but it is also true that the best businesses start with a lament of some kind.”
Neither Brian nor Jesse spends much hands-on time with Homesense these days. They’ve hired a president to manage day-to-day operations while they pursue separate endeavors they feel more wired for—Brian’s being Refinery 46.
Started in 2018, Refinery 46 is built around Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” It was ahead of the work-from-home and remote work curve but well-positioned when Covid accelerated the movement of people seeking shared workspaces.
“Lots of businesses intuitively understand that isolation is the enemy,” he says. “Putting yourself in a space with activity and energy tends to be, at the very least, a component of growth, relational capital, and accountability.”
Brian is blessed with two unique gifts that God allows him to use throughout his working, personal, and spiritual life: imagination and integration. These skills allow him to initiate a process and build the momentum necessary to achieve lift-off.
“I love the process of starting a business; in the early phases, there is a lot of creative problem-solving, and it’s less about efficiency.”
The integration piece is harder to quantify, but it’s a passion that brings together scientific theory, practicality, business theory, and deep theology. In lay terms, he has a knack for finding non-obvious connections.
“The opposite of entropy is integration,” he says. “Integration pulls things back together, starting from raw elements to create something new, or taking something that exists and making it into something useful. Entrepreneurship can pull things together in creative ways that help solve problems in the world. The gospel narrative is the countervailing force to what nature does.”
Beyond his own startups, Brian’s focus extends to entrepreneurial volunteerism. He currently serves as board secretary for the Orr Fellowship, is an Innovation Advisor for Wayfinders (a Brownsburg startup studio), and recently completed his board term for Innovate WithIN, the nation’s largest high school pitch competition. Additionally, he’s a member of the Praxis Labs Guild, a New York City-based faith-driven entrepreneurship organization, and has served on the Indiana Leadership Prayer Breakfast board since 2007.
In 2022, he taught Marketing and Management for New Ventures in Purdue’s entrepreneurship program and has participated in and supported various accelerator programs.
Most recently, he was a 2023 Civic Renewal Fellow with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., where his project, Incubation for Faith-Based Civic Entrepreneurship, won top honors among his cohort.
“I’m blessed with an abundant, layered community,” he says. An Enneagram 7, he has what he calls “professional ADD” and has embraced it. “I love connecting, have a lot of disparate interests, a variety of friend groups that sometimes overlap, and live on what Richard Rohr calls ‘the edge of the inside’ in many communities.”
Brian, Tiffany, and their family attend Grace Church in Noblesville and live in Carmel.
BRIAN SCHUTT’S IDEAS FOR A BETTER INDY
- DON’T BE THROWN WHEN THINGS DON’T GO AS EXPECTED—HAVE A CREATIVE MINDSET. “We’re called to use creativity to pull the world together where decay is pulling it apart,” he says. “In our faith, for example, passive and active forms of sin try to pull us apart. Instead, we can intentionally and creatively participate in God’s work of reforming, renewing, and revitalizing.”
- BE COURAGEOUS. “Show up and keep showing up,” he says. “A flywheel is always hardest to get moving early.”
- KEEP COMING TO C7. “It’s about convening generations and cultures in friendship. Many of these connections would never happen without the institutional framework,” he says.
BRIAN SCHUTT TRIVIA
- Favorite hobby besides work? Relationships are his hobby, though he also reads and listens to podcasts. Skiing might become his hobby if his 11-year-old daughter has her way!
- Go-to snack & beverage? Protein bars
- Favorite local restaurant? Late Harvest, River Crossing Blvd.
- Favorite vacation spots? Loves the sun in Cabo or skiing at Steamboat Springs
- Secret dream? To write a book about the integration of faith, entrepreneurship, community, and culture
Please Reach Out and Connect with Brian at bschutt@gmail.com.
