It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

I was very tempted to go fishing today, and leave this show to the machines.

If you have any doubt that AI could do my job and conduct a 30 minute interview with local business people, today’s show is going to remove that doubt. In fact, it won’t take the whole show, you’ll probably be convinced in 5 minutes.

Step one: meet Rich Simmerman. We first met Rich a few years ago when he launched a breakfast cereal compa...

If you’ve ever worked in corporate America, you may have had this experience: you’re having a perfectly normal day when you get an email from HR with the subject line, “Team Building.” Now, you might be the most fabulous team player in the company, but do you really want to spend a weekend doing a ropes course with your colleagues? No. You don’t.

But wait up. Read the email. This team building exercise...

There’s a term in psychology that also applies to marketing. It’s called “The Halo Effect.” It refers to how we can make sometimes incorrect assumptions based on a collection of pieces of information.

For a business case study let’s take a look at a lighting company that was founded in the UK in 2015, called Tala.

Tala designs and sells lighting fixtures that are elegant, environmentally friendly, focu...

When people talk about the place of AI in the workforce, it’s mostly doom and gloom about how AI is going to take your job. I’ve even sounded the alarm myself about podcasts entirely produced and hosted without the contribution of a single human being.

My lunch guests today are coming at AI from a whole different angle.

As he sits here eating lunch, Daniel Crowley’s AI employee, Chuck, is hard at work, manning Dan...

Lists used to be the stuff of clickbait. Now even venerable outlets like the New York Times regularly publish lists. Including the Times’ list of the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans.

Those of us who live here know there are so many good restaurants and so much good music in New Orleans, we could make every episode of Out to Lunch about food and music and never exhaust the list of great places to eat, and great music to lis...

Theoretically, we understand the difference between success and happiness. But there’s a big gap between theory and reality. What bridges that gap is often, courage.

Suppose you worked hard, have a great job in a competitive field, are well paid and highly regarded, but you’re not really happy…  Would you have the courage to walk away from your success and take a chance doing something that might bring ...

Generally, by the time someone gets invited on a show like this they’ve figured out how to tell the story of their business in a way that makes their journey seem like a steady climb from humble beginnings to current success.

In telling these histories, entrepreneurs will talk generally about setbacks, but they don’t typically elaborate on specific obstacles. Like, for example, this scenario:

Suppose you’re a star...

As human beings, we have many shared experiences. Most of us, one way or another, get a haircut. And most of us appreciate the fleeting beauty of flowers.

You might think those two mundane observations are devoid of any kind of potential entrepreneurial re-invention. After all, whether your mom cuts your hair or you go to a salon, a haircut is, well, a haircut. Right? And whether you pick your own flowers or buy them from a florist...

When you walk into a home, a room, or a business, you typically have a single sensation. A place feels a certain way. That specific reaction is actually the culmination of a whole range of perceptions that include observations about dimensions, light, color, furniture shapes and sizes, painting on the walls, decorative touches, rugs, even scent.

You take most of these cues in at the same time and your decision about how you feel ab...

Fewer than 400,000 people live in Orleans Parish. Every year we  also have around 19 million temporary residents. Also known as “tourists.”

New Orleanians tend to think of these two populations as distinct – even at odds with each other. But in fact, our local economy is entwined with our tourist economy in ways you might not expect.

A great case study is a business called Chateau Sew.

Chateau Sew is a fabric...

As a society, we’re generally focused on achievement. We celebrate when a person gets into college. And we celebrate when they graduate. In between, when it comes to winning monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily battles - like structuring your day to attend classes and study for tests; and how to budget to afford tuition, books, transportation, food, and rent – well, we typically leave people to figure that out on their ...

There’s a difference between an unintentional and an intentional experience.

For example, you could be wandering down Oak Street at night and unintentionally hear music coming out of The Maple Leaf. It might sound great, but it sounds a whole lot better if you intentionally go into the club and stand in front of the stage.

Likewise with heat and humidity. Living in New Orleans you no doubt gain some benefit from unintentional...

People who own or run factories and refineries love to complain about how onerous it is to comply with the rules and regulations laid out by OSHA – the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. On the other hand, these same businesses brag about their safety record to attract and retain good employees.

A local New Orleans company, American Safety, combines both of these elements in its day-to-day business: it con...

If you’ve got a high school kid in public school in New Orleans and your kid is interested in pursuing anything in the arts – like music, dance, theater, film, even creative writing – you find out pretty quickly, the school doesn’t have a budget for that.

To put on a play, publish a newspaper, learn dance, or most other musical and artistic pursuits, the funds required generally come from fundraisers, or par...

I’m sitting at a table with two people: Patrick and Conway. In front of me, there’s a knife. I could use the knife to cut the food on my plate. Or I could lunge across the table and stab Conway with it.

If I did that, what would you say Patrick is supposed to do?

He could do nothing. He could call 911 – to get an ambulance for Conway and a cop to arrest me. Or he could intervene – try and subdue me befo...

New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods. 73 of them. Each one of these neighborhoods has its own flavor, its unique characteristics, and residents who can tell you about people who were brought up there and went on to do something notable.

Claus Sadlier grew up in Old Metairie. It’s possible you don’t know who Claus is. If you’ve stopped at a coffee shop to grab a cup of joe to go - Claus is the guy who invented th...

You may have heard people who started up businesses talking about how they found investors. Typically, they’ll say something like, “We pitched our idea and raised X amount.”

It sounds simple. But when you dig a little deeper, delivering a successful pitch to investors is not quite as straightforward as describing your business as “The Uber of dating” or “Air BnB for pets.” Financing a start...

There are countless myths and reports throughout human history of places where spirits come down to earth. Where the intangible meets the material world. In the US, there are few places that better demonstrate this crossroads than New Orleans. 

People have tried to explain how the joy of living here triumphs over everyday things like dysfunction and potholes, with slogans like “The Big Easy,” and “The city th...

In the 1800’s Thomas Edison invented, among other things, the light bulb, the record player, and the first motion picture capture device which paved the way for the birth of movies.

Was Thomas Edison a genius? In response to that question Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

Meaning, you can have a great idea, but you also have to have the tenacity and work ethic to bring it to li...