It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch

East to New York City. West to Los Angeles. Pick your poison as the saying goes. Out of one swamp. Into another. For the Louisiana diaspora, home is hard to quit. Home is where the heart is, after all.  Many transplants become boomerangs, a demographic term of art for people who go away and come home. At least, that’s the hope if — like Louisiana — you’re a net exporter of people and talent.  Comi...

There are few words in the english language that more poetic when strung together than "coffee" "weed" and "cobbler." Yes, this is another "only in Acadiana" episode of Out to Lunch. So let's dive in. For a lot of entrepreneurs, the dream of owning a business is about independence. The money helps, of course. But what they’re really after is a kind of self-expression or self-determination. They wa...

Acadiana is famous for ingenuity. Look no further than a crawfish boat to see what I mean.  You might say that innovation is in the water. And that’s because the peoples who settled here needed to be clever to survive. Of course, these days, necessity isn’t the only mother of invention. We live in the sportsman’s paradise, after all.  Fishing is what led Brian Signorelli to his signature invention...

We all like to think of our businesses are unique. We come up with a value proposition or a mission statement designed to stick out in the market. But the reality is, pretty much every industry is crowded with competitors and copycats selling pretty much the same thing. That’s capitalism.  Now throw in the internet and the number of competitors explodes. It doesn’t just affect businesses that are...

Service businesses are tricky. For the most part, you’re selling assistance. And even when folks know they need help, things can get tense.  Imagine making a living when your clientele is by definition struggling. When someone brings you a mess, you need to be able to clean up with confidence, compassion and clarity.  Savings Clarity is where Sonya Colliver starts with her clients. Sonya is the fo...

Follow your dreams. It’s what they tell you as soon as you learn to dance or play guitar. What they don’t tell you is — prepare for building maintenance and customer service.  For entrepreneurs of any stripe, reality is coming and it’s a cold drink of water. It takes a lot of work and unglamorous work at that, once you get to the promised land. Really savvy operators can turn that insight into ano...

Every business has an origin story: the moment where it all clicked and made sense. Most of the time, it’s the stuff of myth and legend. Successful businesses rarely fall from the sky and bonk you on the head. Unless, Sir Isaac Newton had it in his mind to bottle gravity and sell it.  For most entrepreneurs, getting from the idea to success is more about force of will than innovation, especially i...

You know the saying: They don’t build them like they used to. When it comes to homes and buildings, that’s usually said like it’s a bad thing. But with a changing climate and changing marketplace, building things like we used to — brick by brick, nail by nail — just doesn’t cut it any more.  Enter modular construction. The idea isn’t totally unheard of. Prefabricated buildings have been around for...

Balance is everything. Greek philosophers thought of it as the key to happiness — the Golden Mean, the happy medium between extremes.  When you’re out of balance —emotionally or physically — things can go wrong real fast.  In the context of health, we often think of balance as a problem that primarily affects older patients. But there are a wide variety of illnesses and conditions that can quite l...

Making a living in healthcare is a pain.  Whatever side of it you work in, at some level you’re dealing with people. That’s the case if you’re a doctor, a researcher or even an entrepreneur.  When people buy what you’re selling, theoretically at least, they’re hoping to improve their lives. And not just in the way a nespresso machine would. This can be a matter of life and death. Or pain and comfo...

Sometimes the best business ideas are hereditary. And I don’t mean family businesses.  Every family has a secret sauce or skill: maybe a green thumb or a gift for gab. Turning the family tradition into a business may not be so easy — unless you’ve inherited the entrepreneurial gene. That’s because everyone is trying to sell the family recipe these days. Especially in Acadiana, where every last nam...

A good product doesn’t just solve problems, it makes a customer feel good. And that can start with the buying experience itself.  Smart retailers know how to balance a hard sell with a soft touch, making customers believe that they are in control, and most importantly they are special.  For a lot of retailers, that means cultivating an experience. For Rusty Phillips, co-owner of The Bougie Bar in...

Lafayette is home to two hospital systems and has a deep bench of medical providers. It’s the Hub City in a new kind of way. It’s Acadiana’s medical hub. So it might surprise you to learn that access to health care is still a problem. Every parish in Acadiana, except Lafayette, has a federally designated shortage of healthcare providers.  Why? Well, if the answer were easy, it wouldn’t be a proble...

What’s new is new, but what’s old can be timeless.  We can get obsessed with new ideas in business. An innovation. A technology. A new place to put cheese on pizza. But sometimes, a good business model is sourcing an old idea and bringing it back. As the salesman's famous closer goes, "Nobody ever regretted buying quality." That’s especially true in fashion, which we'll get to. And it’s true in fa...

There’s a well documented nursing shortage in the U.S. When Shelley Henry first started nursing, it was pretty common for one nurse to manage 10 patients. Today, it’s closer to 20.  We tend to think of the nursing shortage as something impacting hospitals and primary care. But the shortage is impacting end of life care, too. Hospices need nurses, and it’s getting harder to find them as demand for...

Leadership is a big deal in business. It’s actually a business all its own: Companies big and small operate executive training programs and the world’s most successful entrepreneurs write best-selling books about how they got to the top and what it means to be a real leader in business.  But what about being a leader in your community? That takes a different kind of training. Enter the Leadership...

You know the cliche: Knowledge is power. Even Alexander the Great had a tutor while he conquered the known world. It helped that it was Aristotle.  A good education is a strong indicator of future success in business and in life generally. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a vibrant industry out there in preparing people for getting ahead in school.  Modern education throws a lot of tests...

Let’s say you’ve accomplished all of your professional goals. You’re at the top. Business is good. Life is good. What do you do? How about…something completely different?  Success breeds success, but it can also stir up an appetite for new challenges. For high achievers, that can lead them to keep climbing after they’ve pushed that boulder all the way up th...

Americans are going to get a lot older over the next 30 years. That’s not just an obvious statement about aging: the share of senior citizens in our country is projected to get much, much bigger. Researchers think seniors will account for 25% of Americans by 2060. It’s a population shift often referred to as the Silver Tsunami. The impact of that change is on us now. And it’s putting a lot of pres...

There’s plenty of demand for the good life. Who doesn’t want a taste of luxury or indulgence? And certainly, we indulge a lot in South Louisiana. "You only live once" could be easily the state motto.  Why not? We’re blessed to have plenty of good life to indulge here. So much so, that we yearn for it when we’re gone. For all those expats out there — and there are plenty — a taste of home means sea...

Over the last few decades, we’ve come to understand the role of private enterprise differently. There’s a call to be corporate citizens, and responsible ones at that. Responsibility can be good business. It’s part of why big energy companies have begun to shift their marketing and their products toward sustainability. Think of it this way: You need a planet to run a business on.  We’ve even put a...

What does it mean to invest in a community?  Big economic development projects are usually sold that way.  And if you’re cynical, it can sound a bit like hot air. If a big company puts a new factory in your town, it might bring jobs, but the investment is for the company and its shareholders.  Okay, but that’s not a bad thing. That’s capitalism. But community investment has long been the purview o...

Americans spend about 300 hours a year in a car. That translates roughly into about 14,263 miles annually, at least according to a few minutes of Google research. Take the specifics with a grain of salt but nobody would would dispute that we do a lot of driving.  Yes, traffic is bad in Lafayette, but mostly compared to how we think we ought to be living in a medium-sized town, not necessarily by a...

The more we learn about the human body, the less we seem to actually know. Medicine is always playing catch up with its own science. And more and more, the industry is moving toward individualized care, armed with metrics that help us stay on top of our wellness.  What if we could catch a problem before it happens? If that’s the goal, we’re not talking about preventative medicine; we’re talking ab...

Dancing is a big part of our Acadiana culture. People in Acadiana dance like nobody’s watching; specially when everybody’s watching.  But dance can be more than an expression of tradition or culture. It can be therapeutic. You can look at a couple dancing as a microcosm of their relationship or you can look at yourself dancing as a way of getting in tune with your body.  “Whatever the issues are i...