Dear brothers,
Once again it’s our pleasure to share a personal story from one of our close friends in the growing Citizen 7 Indy network. As you will see here, Rex is living out the faith he has received to love well his family, neighbors, and our community with the great work he has been called to. Rex’s life and friendship has inspired us for a long time - we know he will inspire you as well.
Your friends,
Don & Greg
Once again it’s our pleasure to share a personal story from one of our close friends in the growing Citizen 7 Indy network. As you will see here, Rex is living out the faith he has received to love well his family, neighbors, and our community with the great work he has been called to. Rex’s life and friendship has inspired us for a long time - we know he will inspire you as well.
Your friends,
Don & Greg
BACKGROUND
Born in Portland, Maine, Rex Fisher has moved a great distance from his geographical roots, but the entrepreneurial and community roots that drove his extended family in Maine – his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather – live on in him, despite the fact that both were deceased before he got to know them.
Back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and just as mass media was ramping up, the two owned several radio stations, a TV station, and a print shop. With his great-grandfather involved in the state senate and his grandfather on the ground as both a sports and political reporter, there was an active interest in politics too. Fisher proudly keeps his grandfather’s press passes to both the 1952 Democrat and 1952 Republican conventions.
“The passing of my grandfather at age 50 left a hole in my family that could never be filled,” he says, “but the ripple effect is seen in how I look at opportunity and community engagement. I would say we have a family culture of both hopefulness and accountability.”
In his early teens, he traded a view of the ocean for a view of cornfields outside Terre Haute, Indiana. Graduating from Terre Haute North and then Purdue, where he received a Bachelor’s of Science in Management from the (now newly named) Mitch Daniels School of Business, Fisher then did a stint at Sony Music, ultimately finding that the Fortune 500 culture didn’t really fit his entrepreneurial mindset.
He turned that mindset into helping a startup in the music industry get its e-commerce analysis and price mix optimization to the right record executives. The results were historic and dovetailed with opportunities in touring and ticketing in both the music and sports worlds. Rose Hulman’s business incubator, Rose Ventures, took an interest and Fisher found himself relocating to Indianapolis 22 years ago for this work.
His research ultimately included using the success of the community around Chicago’s Wrigley Field to identify key metrics for location, community-building, and business success around sports arenas and concert venues – and that led to an interest in a pilot project to redevelop Fountain Square in Indy.
Personally invested, Fisher and his wife, Gaby, begin buying little homes and duplexes in the area and eventually commercial buildings. As the two were exposed to the challenges of generational poverty as well as the value of mixed neighborhoods, they moved into the community with “great intentions and tremendous ignorance,” he recounts. “We spun wheels, tried things that failed, and at the end of a few years no one was doing better, and some were doing worse.”
They decided that their jobs (both were commuting outside the neighborhood) kept them from a presence necessary to helping Fountain Square succeed. “We didn’t understand what our neighbors were experiencing,” says Fisher.
So the couple tightened down their jobs to within five miles of home and Fisher became the Director of Development for Shepherd Community Center from 2011 to 2015, while Gaby taught at the Oaks Academy, Brookside, from 2011 to 2014, when their third child was born.
“It was transformative,” Fisher says of the experiment that has now led him into full time work in and around Fountain Square for @properties. “The proximity of work to home allowed us to have multiplying effect of time in our day, and we learned so much from the organizations we were partnering with about how to have impact and sustainability, and where innovation can pay off.”
“In the end, we understood I was going to be able to have a greater impact in the for-profit rather than non-profit world, so I got my broker’s license 2015, initially joined @properties, then partnered with the brokerage's founder, Mark Nottingham, in 2018.”
The group opened new offices last year in Lafayette and last month in Evansville and has grown from 10 agents to over 200 now. Fisher and Nottingham are truly having fun.
“We agree it’s tempting to take a scarcity mindset,” he says, “but more fun to take an abundance mindset. We have great people and trust each other, assume the best, assume mistakes will be made, but we’ll be honest, and we’ll be okay.” He adds, “The more you do it, the more fun it gets.”
Does he have a secret to success? Yes, and it’s simple at the same time it’s complicated; long at the same time it is short.
“Ten years ago I didn’t want to be around myself,” he candidly shares, citing overcommitment as the reason. But previous to that, he’d begun working on the importance of relationships as key to life success.
"I’ve had one professional KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that I’ve reported on a weekly basis for 15 years now, and it’s been incredibly impactful,” he shares: “My goal is at least 10 face-to-face meetings each week where I listen well, ask good questions, share a bit of my story, and come out of it looking for ways to help.”
Fifteen years with that simple metric and a missional focus has made a dramatic difference in his life.
“If I focus on developing relational wealth,” he says, “I’ve found the rest will take care of itself. You can make more money but you can’t make more time; you can develop more relationships but it takes time. The relational well just provides an ecosystem for everything else.”
On the flip side, Fisher says a lack of investment or fracturing of relationships leads to isolation.
“The whole cycle of investing begins with the Lord, then with my spouse and children, and moves out into other areas,” he says, making this powerful analogy: “Relational breaks create isolation and isolation is a great taste of hell.”
Perhaps it’s the window on the world his extended family in Maine nurtured in him, or perhaps it’s his own passion for healthy connection, but whatever the reason, Fisher is keenly aware of how our connections are being stretched and even warped in the era of digital communication.
Even though he experiences central Indiana as a place where the sense of belonging is strong, “Our feeling of where we belong has changed with new rhythms of how we work, talk, and find a sense of place,” he says. “There’s a dependence struggle and a disconnect from the places of the past where we found ourselves around a critical mass of people who were different than us.”
Fisher calls these “analog” places versus the digital places where people more often seek belonging these days.
“Analog places provide data points that help us understand who we are, who we are becoming, and where we want to move – how to take the next steps forward in our lives,” he says. “Tech is a tool that can operate for health or for destruction, and if we don’t give it appropriate weighting there’s a natural drift toward online communities that don’t fully contextualize the realities of the world around us.”
He harkens back to his experience at Sony for an example. “It’s just like a digital recording that offers highs and lows and so much in the middle is missing. That context was inherent in analog recording.”
He has a special concern for young people amidst the radical changes of digital communities. “The risks are profound and concerning especially in young people whose brains are still developing,” he says.
One antidote to isolation he’s pioneered in the Fountain Square community is co-working spaces – two vacant churches that now house 60 offices with conference rooms and shared spaces and even some childcare, where work-at-home folks and students can emerge back into an environment where face-to-face (think “analog”) connections are made. Calling it “the most personally fulfilling real estate developing I’ve ever done,” Fisher says it met a need in his own life as well as being good for the community.
Fisher believes that each of us has significant opportunities to step proactively toward others and help create communities where life is enriched by others’ differences and gifts and needs. Such is the community created by Citizen 7 Indy.
“Look at the individuals who started it over a decade ago and you have this group that intentionally made a decision to wave in others, those coming up, those who are wondering ‘what do I do next?’ C7 is a place someone can walk into and get those different stories, the connectivity, that culture of crossover – it’s more impactful than they may ever know.”
FISHER'S IDEAS FOR A BETTER INDY
REX FISHER TRIVIA
Favorite hobby besides work? Golf; Sarah Shank in Indy and Ulen in Lebanon, IN
Go to snack & beverage? Diet Coke and pistachios
Favorite restaurant, locally? Chili Water Brewing Company, Virginia Avenue
Favorite places for a vacation? Southern coast of Maine
Secret Dream? “I want to continue to learn in the most surprising of places. This week I made kombucha. I continue to welcome failure but it’s exciting and keeps me engaged.”
Please Reach Out and Connect with Rex at rex@atpropertiesind.com.
Born in Portland, Maine, Rex Fisher has moved a great distance from his geographical roots, but the entrepreneurial and community roots that drove his extended family in Maine – his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather – live on in him, despite the fact that both were deceased before he got to know them.
Back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and just as mass media was ramping up, the two owned several radio stations, a TV station, and a print shop. With his great-grandfather involved in the state senate and his grandfather on the ground as both a sports and political reporter, there was an active interest in politics too. Fisher proudly keeps his grandfather’s press passes to both the 1952 Democrat and 1952 Republican conventions.
“The passing of my grandfather at age 50 left a hole in my family that could never be filled,” he says, “but the ripple effect is seen in how I look at opportunity and community engagement. I would say we have a family culture of both hopefulness and accountability.”
In his early teens, he traded a view of the ocean for a view of cornfields outside Terre Haute, Indiana. Graduating from Terre Haute North and then Purdue, where he received a Bachelor’s of Science in Management from the (now newly named) Mitch Daniels School of Business, Fisher then did a stint at Sony Music, ultimately finding that the Fortune 500 culture didn’t really fit his entrepreneurial mindset.
He turned that mindset into helping a startup in the music industry get its e-commerce analysis and price mix optimization to the right record executives. The results were historic and dovetailed with opportunities in touring and ticketing in both the music and sports worlds. Rose Hulman’s business incubator, Rose Ventures, took an interest and Fisher found himself relocating to Indianapolis 22 years ago for this work.
His research ultimately included using the success of the community around Chicago’s Wrigley Field to identify key metrics for location, community-building, and business success around sports arenas and concert venues – and that led to an interest in a pilot project to redevelop Fountain Square in Indy.
Personally invested, Fisher and his wife, Gaby, begin buying little homes and duplexes in the area and eventually commercial buildings. As the two were exposed to the challenges of generational poverty as well as the value of mixed neighborhoods, they moved into the community with “great intentions and tremendous ignorance,” he recounts. “We spun wheels, tried things that failed, and at the end of a few years no one was doing better, and some were doing worse.”
They decided that their jobs (both were commuting outside the neighborhood) kept them from a presence necessary to helping Fountain Square succeed. “We didn’t understand what our neighbors were experiencing,” says Fisher.
So the couple tightened down their jobs to within five miles of home and Fisher became the Director of Development for Shepherd Community Center from 2011 to 2015, while Gaby taught at the Oaks Academy, Brookside, from 2011 to 2014, when their third child was born.
“It was transformative,” Fisher says of the experiment that has now led him into full time work in and around Fountain Square for @properties. “The proximity of work to home allowed us to have multiplying effect of time in our day, and we learned so much from the organizations we were partnering with about how to have impact and sustainability, and where innovation can pay off.”
“In the end, we understood I was going to be able to have a greater impact in the for-profit rather than non-profit world, so I got my broker’s license 2015, initially joined @properties, then partnered with the brokerage's founder, Mark Nottingham, in 2018.”
The group opened new offices last year in Lafayette and last month in Evansville and has grown from 10 agents to over 200 now. Fisher and Nottingham are truly having fun.
“We agree it’s tempting to take a scarcity mindset,” he says, “but more fun to take an abundance mindset. We have great people and trust each other, assume the best, assume mistakes will be made, but we’ll be honest, and we’ll be okay.” He adds, “The more you do it, the more fun it gets.”
Does he have a secret to success? Yes, and it’s simple at the same time it’s complicated; long at the same time it is short.
“Ten years ago I didn’t want to be around myself,” he candidly shares, citing overcommitment as the reason. But previous to that, he’d begun working on the importance of relationships as key to life success.
"I’ve had one professional KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that I’ve reported on a weekly basis for 15 years now, and it’s been incredibly impactful,” he shares: “My goal is at least 10 face-to-face meetings each week where I listen well, ask good questions, share a bit of my story, and come out of it looking for ways to help.”
Fifteen years with that simple metric and a missional focus has made a dramatic difference in his life.
“If I focus on developing relational wealth,” he says, “I’ve found the rest will take care of itself. You can make more money but you can’t make more time; you can develop more relationships but it takes time. The relational well just provides an ecosystem for everything else.”
On the flip side, Fisher says a lack of investment or fracturing of relationships leads to isolation.
“The whole cycle of investing begins with the Lord, then with my spouse and children, and moves out into other areas,” he says, making this powerful analogy: “Relational breaks create isolation and isolation is a great taste of hell.”
Perhaps it’s the window on the world his extended family in Maine nurtured in him, or perhaps it’s his own passion for healthy connection, but whatever the reason, Fisher is keenly aware of how our connections are being stretched and even warped in the era of digital communication.
Even though he experiences central Indiana as a place where the sense of belonging is strong, “Our feeling of where we belong has changed with new rhythms of how we work, talk, and find a sense of place,” he says. “There’s a dependence struggle and a disconnect from the places of the past where we found ourselves around a critical mass of people who were different than us.”
Fisher calls these “analog” places versus the digital places where people more often seek belonging these days.
“Analog places provide data points that help us understand who we are, who we are becoming, and where we want to move – how to take the next steps forward in our lives,” he says. “Tech is a tool that can operate for health or for destruction, and if we don’t give it appropriate weighting there’s a natural drift toward online communities that don’t fully contextualize the realities of the world around us.”
He harkens back to his experience at Sony for an example. “It’s just like a digital recording that offers highs and lows and so much in the middle is missing. That context was inherent in analog recording.”
He has a special concern for young people amidst the radical changes of digital communities. “The risks are profound and concerning especially in young people whose brains are still developing,” he says.
One antidote to isolation he’s pioneered in the Fountain Square community is co-working spaces – two vacant churches that now house 60 offices with conference rooms and shared spaces and even some childcare, where work-at-home folks and students can emerge back into an environment where face-to-face (think “analog”) connections are made. Calling it “the most personally fulfilling real estate developing I’ve ever done,” Fisher says it met a need in his own life as well as being good for the community.
Fisher believes that each of us has significant opportunities to step proactively toward others and help create communities where life is enriched by others’ differences and gifts and needs. Such is the community created by Citizen 7 Indy.
“Look at the individuals who started it over a decade ago and you have this group that intentionally made a decision to wave in others, those coming up, those who are wondering ‘what do I do next?’ C7 is a place someone can walk into and get those different stories, the connectivity, that culture of crossover – it’s more impactful than they may ever know.”
FISHER'S IDEAS FOR A BETTER INDY
- BE CURIOUS AND SEE FAILURE AS A REQUIREMENT. Fisher considers his unique God-given gift or skillset to be curiosity and the acceptance that failure is a requirement for a life lived well. “We have to fail well and that requires curiosity upfront and a determination to stay with it all the way through. It’s critical to find a way to fail – if we’re going to grow and get past what’s holding us back.”
- WITH A PROJECTED POPULATION GROWTH OF 240,000 BY 2030, THE 11-COUNTY INDY METRO NEEDS INNOVATION. His personal investment has been with IU Health in the development of its downtown campus. “Indiana is one of the least healthy states in the union,” he shares. “There’s as much as 25-year swing in life expectancy from our inner city to to our wealthier suburbs. Many people are getting sick care, not health care. There are ways we can use our relational capital to engage at the preventative level. It’s a tremendous challenge that needs innovation.
- STEPPING PROACTIVELY TOWARD OTHERS IS A STRENGTH. “Be the one who walks across the room and introduces yourself,” says Fisher. “We are an accessible community, even for an introvert. If we walk towards others, get curious about them, I believe good things will come of that. We’re all waiting for that on some level. If we make it a point of accountability, it’s an incredible differentiator.”
REX FISHER TRIVIA
Favorite hobby besides work? Golf; Sarah Shank in Indy and Ulen in Lebanon, IN
Go to snack & beverage? Diet Coke and pistachios
Favorite restaurant, locally? Chili Water Brewing Company, Virginia Avenue
Favorite places for a vacation? Southern coast of Maine
Secret Dream? “I want to continue to learn in the most surprising of places. This week I made kombucha. I continue to welcome failure but it’s exciting and keeps me engaged.”
Please Reach Out and Connect with Rex at rex@atpropertiesind.com.
