It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

Things don't always work out like you planned. You know, they just don't. Nobody gets married planning to one day get divorced. But, somehow, around 40% of people who get married for the first time find themselves at some point in that position. For people who get married a second time, 60% of those end in divorce. And if you’re brave enough to try it a third time, your chances of getting...

People who try and explain the complexity of human existence sometimes talk about “the seen and unseen world.” The seen world is the world of everyday reality in which we live. The theory of the unseen world attempts to explain some events in the real world - like love, happiness, and talent - in terms of the intangible. These explanations might range from suggestions of the existence of a soul,...

When you’re the CEO or Executive Director of a company, you’re responsible for, well, everything. If the company does well, you’re a genius. If the company does poorly, you’re fired. Typically, the definition of business success is how much money a company makes. And that can be a function of market share. Both of my lunch guests today are executives of major New Orleans companies. Each of these...

Most people start a business for the same reason: to make money. John Roberts started a business to give money away. John and his business partner, Mickal Adler, would certainly like to end up making money at some point – that is the end goal of their company, Boot 64 Ventures. It’s the word “venture” that’s the key to what’s going on here. Boot 64 is a venture capital company. The money they’re...

When we started out making a show about New Orleans business, people – even in the business community – said, “Well that’s great, but what are you going to do after 6 weeks?” That was 2011. We’ve recorded a new episode of Out to Lunch almost every week since then. And we still haven’t run out of guests. In fact, there are so many people doing interesting things in New Orleans business that we...

I have three questions for you. One - What are your parents’ names? You can probably answer that easily. Two - What are your grandparents’ names? You can probably answer that as well. Now here's the third question. What are the names of your great grandparents? Do you know? Off the top of your head… This is not a scientific survey, but I’ve asked enough people this question to be fairly confident...

In almost every conversation about healthcare, we hear the term, “provider.” Typically, we assume a healthcare provider is a doctor. But, if you look at insurance company definitions of health care providers, the term includes almost every branch of medical care - therapists, podiatrists, imaging centers, home-health agencies, hospice, the list goes on. Ironically, the one person not on any...

New Orleans has been around for over 300 years. From almost the very beginning, bar rooms have been an integral part of our social life. There are French works of art depicting bar scenes as early as the mid 1800’s. Starting in the 1970’s, photographers like Mike Smith and Lee Crum started celebrating the exteriors of barrooms, along with other street scenes, finding an almost romantic beauty in...

Do you ever use the term “brainiac” to describe someone who’s super smart? We use a term like that because we tend to assume that someone is either highly intelligent, or they’re not. In other words, you’re either lucky enough to be born with a high-functioning brain that can get you into Harvard, or not. Well, guess what? Like pretty much everything else on earth, it’s not that simple. And by...

A lot of business success stories contain familiar scenarios. They include a previous spectacular failure; everybody telling an entrepreneur they’re crazy; and an entrepreneur explaining that what might look like an overnight success was anything but. And then there are entrepreneurs like Peter's lunch guests on this edition of Out to Lunch who both had ideas for very different businesses, went...