It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch

Until a few years ago, if you wanted to know what's going on in the world or in your backyard, you had to buy a newspaper. Today we primarily get our news online. In this information society we expect information to be free. That trend has led to the well-documented demise of the daily paper. Except, not here.
Here in Acadiana we are in the atypical position of having a newspaper that is actually expanding - both its staff and coverage. That newspaper is The Advocate.

At The Advocate, one of the people behind this trend-bucking expansion - and the person charged with figuring out how to make money out of information everyone expects for free - is the company's Publisher, Judi Terzotis.
Judi has a massive task making a newspaper profitable. But, as host Aileen Bennett mentions in this Out to Lunch Acadiana conversation, you have your own struggles with money. We all do. Most of us somehow manage to spend all the money we make. Even if we get a raise, or even win the lottery, somehow we find a way to spend it all. So that when it comes time to buy something we really want, or really need, we stress out about it. Or we put it on a credit card and stress out about it every month for years to come.
Wouldn't it be great if you could figure out how to live within your means, have everything you want - within reason - be happy, and even have savings? According to Molly Richard, that doesn't have to be a fantasy. That can be your real life.

Molly's company, Splendor Financial Wellness, takes ordinary people like you and me and, through a unique process that is focused on how our finances are linked to our psychological and emotional states, raises our financial IQ to a state of actual happiness. Molly is unlocking something revolutionary in its simplicity.

Photos at Spoonbill Watering Hole and Restaurant by Lucius Fontenot.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are two ways of launching a successful business these days. One is to come up with an idea. Write a business plan. Create a pitch. Hire a pitch coach to sharpen your message. Go through a business incubator, followed by a business accelerator program. Go to friends and family for financing. Then raise investment capital, and finally become profitable. The other method is to stumble by chance into an already existing business, buy it off the owner, and discover having had no formal training that you re a natural at business, and that before you know it you re expanding and diversifying just like the business planners tell you. Except you don t have a business plan. That s pretty much what happened to Nancy and Jesse at The Kitchen Shop in Grand Coteau. Technically their names are Jesse Poimbouef and Nancy Brewer, but everybody in Grand Coteau and way beyond know them simply as Nancy and Jesse. If you don t know about The Kitchen Shop, and you ve only ever driven past Grand Coteau, it s hard to grasp quite how extraordinary this business is. The range of kitchen equipment and gadgets in the front of The Kitchen Shop is staggering. And in the back of the store there s a small pastry shop and bakery that racks up online and real life reviews that frequently describe the pastries as best ever. If you think The Kitchen Shop in Grand Coteau is more like something you d find in Manhattan, that might be because Nancy was one of Manhattan s leading pastry chefs. And Jesse was an artist there, before they decided, 25 years ago, to get out of New York and move to Lafayette with no plan, no job, and no home. Diversification is the kind of thing successful businesses do to expand. For example, Amazon started off selling books only. Now it s diversified into selling, well, pretty much everything. On a markedly smaller scale, The Kitchen Shop diversified into women s fashion. It started out with Nancy s frustration at not being able to find anything fashionable to buy for herself to wear, and culminated in a spin off business called Pistache Dress Shop. Pistache is an equally unexpected find in a small Louisiana town and is now a stand alone business in Grand Coteau owned by Nancy s former prot g , Alyce Ray. Photos over lunch at Cafe Vermilionville by Lucius Fontenot.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As humans, we have two ways to communicate. Sight and sound. We started out beating on wooden logs and scratching figures onto the walls of caves. We ve evolved to where we are today talking to a hand held device and telling it to play music or movies. The biggest part of those millions of years of artistic and technological revolution has occurred in the past hundred years. First there was the invention of radio. Then TV. For around 30 of that recent evolution that is, for the last 30 years Charles Wood has been an eye witness. And a key player. Today, Chuck is General Manager of Lafayette based Delta Media Corporation, overseeing 6 radio stations and 5 TV channels in Acadiana. Radio and television became an integral part of our lives for a number of reasons, but one of them is because it was free. Radio and TV is principally funded by advertisers. That means, if you own radio or TV stations, no matter how good your content, you are reliant on advertising sales to make money. That means you re reliant on sales people. Sales is both an art and a science. Part personality, part persistence, and part system. One of the most popular and effective sales systems in the country these days is called Salesforce. It s a nationwide platform that s known generically as CRM Customer Relationship Management. Locally, Salesforce is represented by ADP Solutions, in Lafayette. Anne Pyle is Managing Partner of ADP Solutions. Of our five senses, three are most important sight, sound, and sales. Photos over lunch at Marcello s Wine Market Cafe in Lafayette by Lucius Fontenot.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The decision to go in to business for yourself is a big one. On the one hand, you can do exactly what you want at any hour of the day without having to ask for anyone's permission. On the other hand, you're not getting paid. Aileen Bennett's two lunch guests on this edition of out to Lunch Acaiana made the decision to go into business for themselves for two very different reasons. And in two different centuries.

Back in the 20th Century, in 1983, Michael LeBlanc was the victim of massive layoffs in the oil field.Because there were no jobs to apply for, Michael went into business for himself, doing something he hadn't trained for, and that he didn't know a great deal about. Cleaning homes and offices. 35-plus years later, Michael's cleaning company, White Glove Interior Care, is keeping hospitals, offices, and homes clean throughout Acadiana, and in Baton Rouge.

In the 21st Century, in 2017, Brennon Kelly graduated from Life University in Atlanta with a Doctoral degree in chiropractic medicine. Brennon immediately moved back to his native Lafayette and opened his own medical practice, RISE Chiropractic.

Photos over lunch at Chopsticks restaurant in Lafayette by Lucius Fontenot.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the end of the day, business is all about sales. You might have a revolutionary idea for a business or a product. You might even be a genius. But if you can't sell, you might as well just leave all your brilliant ideas in your desk drawer.
The art of sales is a particular skill. And it doesn't come naturally to everyone. That's why Reece Theriot started up his company, Fulcrum Sales and Marketing.

Fulcrum is a professional sales staff who you can hire to sell your great idea or product. The benefit to you as a business person is, you don't have to hire, train, and pay a full-time sales staff. Reece and his team at Fulcrum set up meetings and pitch your product for you. In a world of out-sourcing, cost-cutting, and increasing specialization, it's amazing nobody around here has thought of this before.
Marcus Descant has the polar opposite take on sales. Marcus is a horticulturalist and the owner of a company called The Urban Naturalist.

Marcus was on Out to Lunch back in 2016. At that time he talked about his unique landscaping and gardening business that flipped the traditional concept of planting flowers in the front of your house and fruit and vegetables in the back. It was a concept he was calling the Edible Garden. Marcus hasn't totally quit doing landscaping but he's scaled back that side of his business. Now he concentrates more on selling plants. He grows and sells up to 40,000 plants a year. His nursery is open 24 hours a day. And here's the final statistic - the number of sales people Marcus employs. Zero. Marcus dramatically cut his overhead by disbanding his sales staff and selling his plants and garden products on the self-serve honesty system. And, guess what? Sales have increased!

Photos over lunch at Spoonbill restaurant in downtown Lafayette by Lucius Fontenot.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

No matter who you are, what you do, or where you live, there's no doubt that you're looking for same thing out of life as every other human being in the world: Happiness. Happiness is the stated goal of almost every societal organization in recorded history - from ancient Hindu writings to the United States Declaration of Independence. Here in Acadiana, Taylor McMahon is doing his part to increase the sum of human happiness. One App at a time.

Taylor has created an app called Hope Mindfulness and Prayer. You can download it for free, on either Android or Apple devices. And thousands of people have. The Hope Mindfulness and Prayer app is guided meditation. It has a wide range of choices of music and spoken word. Each meditation focuses on a specific issue, like stress, disappointment, healing a broken heart, and many more. The app's unique niche in the self-help market is its combination of mindful meditations and Christian principles.
Although most of us accept that finding happiness is our own individual responsibility, we also seem to believe that our individual happiness has a greater chance of lasting if we're with someone else. That's why we get married. Ironically, in a search for life-long happiness, most marriages begin with the ultimate stress test: a wedding.
If you've ever been in a wedding, you'll know the seemingly endless layers of drama involved. If you've ever planned a wedding, or had to pay for it, you'll know how expensive it can be. The current generation of marrying Americans - millennials - are getting married later, and when it comes to weddings, they're reportedly more cost-conscious than their parents or grandparents were.

That's why Lauren Bercier's company, Something Borrowed Blooms, is a gigantic success story. Something Borrowed Blooms is a wedding flower rental company. Yes, you heard that correctly. Instead of buying expensive flowers for your wedding, you can rent artificial flowers that look real, and even smell real. Lauren has a staff of 16 people. They're currently providing flowers for 400 weddings a month.

Photos over lunch at Chopsticks restaurant in Lafayette by Lucius Fontenot.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Acadiana is changing. Yes, we still jealously guard our traditions and our culture, but we also embrace change. We re happy to have the fastest internet in the country. We re happy to be home to some very cool tech businesses. And we re happy to be able to go downtown to a coffee shop like Reve, which is as hip as any place in any major American City. But none of this fell out of the sky. Somebody had to build our high speed internet. Somebody had to attract companies to relocate or start up here. And somebody had to create the modern, hip space that became Reve Coffee on Jefferson. That person is Greg Walls. Greg is a contractor. A hands on property developer who uses his background in architecture as a jumping off point. A place to start a job, not hand off a bunch of plans to someone else. Greg picks up a hammer more often than he picks up a pencil. And all of his renovations bear the stamp of a talented designer who can combine traditional Acadiana with modern Acadiana. Blending the building and design traditions of our past, while embracing the future, is also the province of Randy LeBlanc. Like Greg, Randy doesn t just design stuff. He makes it. Out of metal. Randy s company, Metal Head, makes architectural metalwork like wrought iron gates, fences, railings, balconies, and other metal fixtures both artistic and functional that you find in both homes and commercial spaces. It doesn t get much more elemental than wood or metal. Photos at Marcello s Wine Market by Gwen Aucoin.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you re young you might find this hard to believe, but it s only been within the last generation that we have made the link between our health and our diet. It started with the realization that inhaling cigarette smoke can cause the formation of cancerous cells in our lungs. It took quite some time for us to believe that. And, as obvious as it seems now, it took even longer for us to learn and accept that eating processed foods and sugar has an effect on our heart health, and health in general. In Louisiana, food is a part of our culture. And not all of that food is good for us. That s the point Yvette Quantz makes, both in her private nutritionist practice and as Operations and Marketing Dietician for Eat Fit Acadiana. Also in the believe it or not category of physical health, it wasn t that long ago that there were only two types of people who got a massage professional athletes and men for whom the word "massage" was a euphemism for a very specific and localized type of physical therapy. This type of "massage" was conducted in what was called a "massage parlor," which basically came to be code for "brothel." Today we all accept the physical, and psychological, health benefits of real, therapeutic massage. Here in Acadiana, Kate Lemoine is a licensed massage therapist who is taking massage out of the clinic and on the road. Through her company, Open Arms, Kate shows up with her massage table or chair in locations as diverse as festivals and work places. Photos at Cafe Vermilionville by Lucius Fontenot.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There s a lot of talk these days about Artificial Intelligence. Economists and pundits are betting on who s still going to have a job in 20 years and who s going to be replaced by a robot or an algorithm. Some say the jobs most likely to disappear are taxi drivers, Uber, and truck drivers. Others say it s tax preparers and loan officers. As an illustration of how difficult it can be to predict how this is all going to go, you could look at the strangely similar fate of office receptionists and radio personalities. It wasn t that long ago that the person who answered the phone at your business was vitally important. To many customers, the office receptionist was the face of your entire company. Today, all of us have the experience of calling a business and having a conversation with a robot. If you think you re frustrated by this technological development, imagine how much more difficult life is for Jamey Hopper. Jamey is President of a company called Dexcomm. Dexcomm is a communications company that specializes in answering the phone for businesses. It s an answer service. Jamey bought the company when the world was a lot different, in 1989. There were 15,000 answering services in the country then. Now there are 150. In 1909 an Italian inventor, Guglielmo Marconi, won the Nobel Prize for inventing radio. In the past 109 years radio has had an immeasurable effect on all of us. It created the concept of the mass market. For the first time, you could talk directly to hundreds, then thousands, then millions of people. And you could sell them stuff. Including records. And political ideas. Radio became so powerful that the United Sates Government created the Federal Communications Commission to regulate it. Today, radio continues to evolve. Beyond Marconi style broadcasting, we now get radio delivered to us via satellite, the internet, and we listen to it on demand as podcasts on devices that are no longer actual radios. For over 25 of the last century of this evolution of radio that is, for the last 25 plus years Mike Grimsley has been an eye witness and a key player. Today Mike is Regional Vice President and General Manager of Townsquare Media, overseeing 19 radio stations in Lafayette, Lake Charles, and Shreveport. Photos at Marcello s Wine Market by Gwen Aucoin.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.