It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch

There s a great deal of uncertainty in the oil business these days. When times are tough and margins are slim, oil producers find ways to trim costs wherever they can. But, no matter how big or small your company is, there are only so many people you can lay off. There are only so many wells you can close down. Oil producers still need to produce oil. What they want to do is produce it more effici...

If you re a certain age and in business, you might have had a business mid life crisis. It s not about getting a tattoo and a Harley Davidson, it s about being confronted with a massive change in the way business is done, and deciding what to do about it. If you started out before the internet, before apps, before social media, and in some cases before the computer, the relentless onslaught of tec...

This is a show about Acadiana business and, as you are probably well aware if you travel around Acadiana, there are no shortage of fascinating businesses to talk about in this part of the world. From oil and gas companies to jewelers and from accordion builders to app builders. From all these choices, we have a couple of guidelines for whom to feature as guests on Out to Lunch. We only book people...

Thomas Edison was the 19th Century s Steve Jobs. He invented the motion picture camera, the record player, and the lightbulb. Incidentally, Edison was known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park" which is the same part of Northern California where Steve Jobs lived and worked too. Edison explained his genius as being "one tenth inspiration and nine tenths perspiration." That formula can be applied to succes...

Acadiana is different from pretty much every other place in the world. It s even different from the rest of Louisiana. It s hard to know exactly where on the I 10 the difference begins, but you know it when you see it. Because it doesn t just feel different which it does. And it s not just because people are nicer which they are. But you know it when you see it because Acadiana looks different. On...

If you ve ever bought a house, you quickly come to realize that buying something for hundreds of thousands of dollars is not quite the same as buying groceries or a bicycle. If, like an increasing number of people these days, you decide to leave the safety of a steady paycheck and go into business on your own, you can be overwhelmed by the thousands of decisions that confront you, any one of which...

When you travel around Acadiana it s amazing how many talented people live in this part of the world. You can stop in at almost any small town and find a handful of people living there who are doing something sensational. Take for example, Eunice. After being born and raised in Eunice, Michelle La Fleur McFayden went to college for electrical engineering, and got a job with NASA. From 1988 to 1998...

When you own a business you generally believe that nobody knows more about your business than you. But there are times in the lives of many businesses that growth or success complicates things. At these points specialist consultants outside of your company can have greater insight than you about what you need to do to achieve your goals. When your business comes into contact in any way with local,...

Here in Acadiana we take the term "Southern Hospitality" seriously. We re proud of how we welcome people into our homes, and into our businesses. And for some of us, hospitality is our business. On this edition of Out to Lunch, Peter Ricchiuto introduces two people at very different ends of the hospitality industry Herb Schilling and David Billeaud. David is the founder and owner of one of Lafayet...

We often talk about business and creativity as if they are polar opposites. In fact, business is a creative enterprise. Every great business, from Apple to Wal Mart, stems from a great idea. As with other creative endeavors, like movies and music, the execution of an idea takes a team of collaborators. But the undertaking only becomes a success when all of the team players are contributing their i...

There are a number of terms people use to try and make talking about business as exciting as talking about football. You re probably familiar with the football clich s, "We re going to go out there and play our own game." "Our plan is to play hard till the final buzzer." And all time favorite, "It s mental." In business we hear people describing their business as being so exciting it s "moving the...

If you live in Acadiana there s a pretty good chance you re connected in some way with the oil industry. Most of us know somebody who works offshore. These men and women are gone for days and weeks, ferried out to massive oil rigs in the Gulf. So massive that they often refer to them as "floating cities." They call them cities because there s a lot more going on on an oil rig than just drilling fo...

William Shakespeare famously wrote in his play As You Like It "All the world s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts." Like much of Shakespeare s work, you can look at this on many levels. One interpretation is, although we each believe we are masters of our own destiny, in fact much of our life is spe...

Business today is increasingly about information, technology, and service. Before this era, business wasn t so much people making things happen, it was simply about making things. Today on Out to Lunch Peter Ricchiuti is talking about people who make things. With robots. And steam. At the beginning of the 21st Century Missy Rogers and her husband Scott founded Noble Plastics with a bunch of employ...

When we talk about "manufacturing" in the United States it s usually in the context of how many big ticket items like cars are no longer made in Middle America. Louisiana is practically never mentioned in discussions about manufacturing. But there s a surprisingly active manufacturing community here in Acadiana. A lot of it is based on making products large and small for the oilfield. But, despite...

In 1964, Bob Dylan wrote, "The Times They Are A changin ." Perhaps nothing illustrates that the times are still changing better than the fact that Dylan now has the Nobel Prize in literature for that and other observations. There are countless Ph. D dissertations and pages of press punditry examining all the various social forces at work that are changing our country. Hopefully among them a social...

There are very few things that can we all agree on. Employers, employees, politicians, and parents have a range of divergent views on most subjects. Except one. Education. Everybody agrees that education is the fundamental driver of a healthy economy and a healthy society. We attribute a good education system to everything from full employment and a low crime rate to individual self fulfillment. F...

Wherever you are right now, take a look around. If you re in the car, check out the dashboard. You probably take it for granted but somebody had to design every component of it. If you re at your desk, everything that s on it from your computer to business cards to coffee mug had to be designed by somebody. Strangely, seeing every single thing in the world has to be designed, it s amazing how few...

Although Lafayette is a bustling city we like to believe we re a small town where, if we don t all know each other, we know of each other. Jezebel Lobelia may be the exception that proves the rule. Although Jezebel is known nationwide, it s possible you ve never even heard of her. From her home studio here in Lafayette, Jezebel Lobelia is the creator of fashionwear that she sells under the label J...

You ve probably had this experience You go to a great restaurant; you really like it and you go back regularly. But there s hardly anybody in there. Ever. The even stranger thing is, the restaurant across the street is not nearly as good, but it s always busy. Why is that Well, there may be a number of reasons. But the principal ones are usually marketing, branding, advertising, and perception. Al...

Here in Acadiana there s one thing we can all agree on. No matter what our politics, our age, our ethnicity, or anything else that separates us, the one thing we all have in common is a love of Cajun food. You don t have to be Cajun or even raised in Acadiana to be an expert on the exact way you like your gumbo, boudin, and everything else that s native to our neighborhood. And God forbid you have...

If you listen to this show and you ve made it all the way to the end, you ve heard Peter Ricchiuti say, "Our Acadiana business consultants are Pete Prados from Innov8 Acadiana, Zack Barker from the Opportunity Machine, and Dr Blake Escudier." Pete, Zach and Blake all do great work helping people launch new businesses. But it doesn t matter how great of an idea you have a for a business or how help...

There was a time when you could go out to lunch and ask somebody at the table, "What do you do " and you could be pretty confident you d understand the answer. These days things aren t quite so simple. Take, for example, Peter s guests on today s show Tom Allsup and Will Labar. Will has a pretty straight forward job title. He s the Vice President of Consulting Services at a company in Lafayette ca...

We hear a lot about how manufacturing in the United States has declined over the past couple of decades. And we hear an equal amount of talk about various plans to bring it back. Some parts of the Acadiana economy are tied in to the national economy. And some, well, just aren t. Like Faulk s Game Calls. In what used to be the family home, the 4th generation of the Faulk family have been making duc...

If you re at home right now, maybe you ve got some yogurt in the refrigerator. If you re in the car, you might have a pen in the cup holder. Probably one of those free pens you got from a bank, or an insurance company, or the plumber. And if you re at your desk, you more than likely have a computer keyboard in front of you. All these items have something in common. The keyboard has keys with lette...