Business/Disrupted

Musicians invented the gig economy. Living one job to another, having to be performer, CEO, marketing, advertising, and HR, and still find time to keep their skills honed and practice. Add to this the complexities of a global pandemic and it's no wonder life has gotten impossibly complex for working musicians. Our guests (coincidentally, a father and son) speak from the experience of two different stages of their careers - one well-established, the other starting out and building a name, a brand, a following.

Think you know what music stardom is about? Think again. From how they get their starts, to the rise and fall of stardom, the paths musicians take are all unique. The things that influence a career depend a lot of luck, timing and, sometimes, nature. Our guest has a unique perspective on invention and reinvention. Join us as we dive in and learn about what makes a crossover star.

More than a year into working from home, what's the outlook for commercial office space owners and tenants? Some employees want a return to the office, some loathe being around people again. Rents are plummeting and shared office space becomes more questionable when you've been spending a year in a cave. What's the prognosis? Join us as we talk to our guest, commercial real estate broker Ruth Colp-Haber about where the market is going and what it means.

How have restaurants in tourist economies adapted to meet the challenges of operating (or not) during a pandemic? Before considering COVID, these businesses face a number of struggles unique to seasonal populations - challenges finding staff, housing staff, and catering to a fluid, changing customer base that increases tenfold during the season. For an already challenging industry, adding a global pandemic is a death knell unless operators get inventive.

If you’re at all online, you’ve probably been the victim of a data breach. If you work in a technical or competitive field, chances are someone, somewhere, has tried to get into your systems to have a look around and maybe shortcut their own development cycle at the expense of your trade secrets. Hacking has a cost, certainly, but it is also a means for discovery - both positive and negative, for profit and for the public benefit. What is the business case of the dark side of the Internet?

Restaurants have a staggeringly high failure rate - nearly fifty percent don’t make it. But you attract customers, you control costs, you protect your inventory and prevent shrinkage (another term for food walking out the back door), keep your man-hours per customer on target and your food cost low and you might just have a chance - until the whole damn world shuts down. We’ll look at innovation in the face of global panic with our world-class guests. What did restauranteurs of different stripes do to keep their successful ventures going through the pandemic? This is Part I in a series - this episode: The Added Weight of two Michelin Stars