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 official list of healthcare providers is “you.” A local wellness entrepreneur is changing that.

Kwame Terra is Founder and CEO of bEHR Health Systems. The company’s principal product is an app directed specifically at Black Americans. The app doesn’t replace professional healthcare providers, but it aims to put the user front and center in directing their own health outcomes.

The app store summary says, “At bEHR, we aspire to create a healthcare resource free from the shackles of racism that infect our current system and seamlessly integrate health into Black culture. This isn't just a health app for tracking and enhancing well-being; it signifies the initiation of our enduring commitment to stand as Black America’s health partner for life.”

With roughly 14% of Americans – 48 million people - identifying as Black, and a 2024 Pew Research finding that 51% of Black Americans say they believe the U.S. health-care system was designed to “hold Black people back a great deal or a fair amount,” there would appear to be a ready market for this product.

When it comes to the traditional provision of healthcare, the consistently best-regarded group and most trusted providers of medical care, are nurses. Patients and doctors alike typically regard nurses as critical to patient safety and care.

There’s also a critical shortage of nurses.

According to a recent report from the Louisiana Board of Regents, the state is projected to face a shortage of roughly 6,000 registered nurses by 2030. That’s about 40% short of the workforce needed, if nothing changes. One local institution that’s working to change that outcome is The University of Holy Cross, on the Westbank. Among its other courses, UHC has a dedicated Department of Nursing.

RegisteredNursing.org – a nationwide organization of registered nurses – has rated UHC as the best nursing school in Louisiana. And UHC’s nursing department is one of the principal focuses of the school’s President, Dr. Stanton McNeely.

If we did a simultaneous scan of every news-talk radio station and every TV news channel right now, it’s pretty likely we’re not the only people talking about healthcare. But it’s very likely we’re the only people talking about a Catholic-college-driven solution to the nursing shortage, and an African-American-focused entrepreneurial venture aimed at sidestepping healthcare racism.

Even in something as ubiquitous as the healthcare debate, New Orleans manages to be, well, New Orleans.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 depicting decadence and decay in black & white.

The next iteration of uniquely New Orleans artistic reverence for our bar rooms comes from a company called We Might Be On Fire, a creation of textile manufacturer Shaun Watson.

Among Shaun’s collection of rugs, knitwear and pillows with bold prints that include alligators, birds, and flowers, there’s a collection of blankets that feature the exteriors of bar rooms. These aren’t artistic impressions or airbrushed glow-ups, they’re true-to-life, blanket-sized depictions of the outsides of bars, like Snake ‘n Jakes, F&M’s, Pal’s Lounge, The Saturn Bar, Buffa’s, Big Daddy’s, and many more.

Talking of barrooms, whomever keeps records of these things maintains we’re drinking less alcohol these days. Maybe they don't include New Orleans in the collection of this data: W\we’re without a doubt one of the most alcohol-centric cities in the US, if not the world.

You might think that in 300 years of drinking we’ve created every variety of alcohol known to man. Well, Paul Kelly has added one more chapter to the story of local booze brands by creating vodka using Louisiana sweet potatoes and cane sugar.

Paul distills his distinct sweet potato vodka at his distillery in Bogalusa. With the label Paul Kelly Vodka, it’s available at over 60 stores across the state, including Total Wine, Rouse’s, and a wide range of bars and restaurants.

Every evening, as the sun goes down in New Orleans, we’re faced with a decision. Do we stay home tonight? Or do we go out? If you decide to go out, there are a lot of places you can try Paul Kelly Sweet Potato Vodka. If you stay in, you can make a Paul Kelly Sweet Potato Vodka drink at home and curl up with a good book under your We Might Be On Fire blanket that features your favorite local bar. Is that the most New Orleans sign-off sentence in the history of radio? It might be.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 “it” I mean getting into Harvard, and the human brain itself. Let’s start with the brain, then move onto Harvard.

Judy Weber is a Registered Nurse at a company called Cingulum Health, in New Orleans. Cingulum Health specializes in a kind of neurotherapy called TMS – Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.

TMS has been around for some time. It’s an FDA approved therapy which consists of giving a patient non-invasive electrical stimulation to the brain, to treat what is technically called “treatment resistant depression,” or OCD, or migraines. What separates Cingulum Health from other TMS providers is the range of conditions they’re treating beyond depression, OCD and migraines, and the course of treatment they offer. Each course begins with the patient getting a Functional MRI, then having this brain scan interpreted by Cingulum’s proprietary software which then maps out an individual course of neurotherapy treatment.

And the conditions they’re treating include Alzheimer's, Parkinson’s, stroke, tinnitus, and addiction.

Now, as promised, we turn to Harvard. We all know that natural intelligence alone isn’t enough to get through high school and into a good college. Not only do you have to study, but the final arbiter of admission to a good college is getting a high score on the ACT.

For a long time there’s been general acceptance that, like other tests, the ACT has an element of unwittingly systemic bias that makes it more difficult for certain sub-sets of students to do well. But even knowing that, it’s extraordinary to discover what Angelica Harris is up to.

When Angelica first took the SAT she got a score of 16. Which is not high enough to get anywhere near an Ivy League school. She went to a test prep course, and raised her score by 2 points. Still not too good. Figuring that the problem was, she was the only Black girl in a predominantly white environment, Angelica developed her own prep system. The next time she took the test she got 32.

That got Angelica into Washington University in St Louis. On graduation with a masters degree she turned her own college success into a college admission prep system for Black and Brown high school students, called Top Tutors For Us.

With a business whose success can be proven by easy-to-digest numbers, Top Tutors For Us is being adopted by a growing number of school districts. Significantly, not a single school district that has adopted the system has dropped it, so business is booming.

There’s two ways of looking at the path of scientific discovery. In one perspective, one small discovery leads to an incremental change, which taken together with lots of other small contributions, leads to advancement. The other perspective is, the status quo rolls on for years or decades, then someone comes along who completely changes the game and revolutionizes everything.

Of course, both of those are true. Whether or not Top Tutors for Us and Angelica, and Cingulum and Judy are incremental contributors or game-changing revolutionaries, only time will tell. What we do know for now, though, is that they’re both making a significant difference to their respective fields, and to the lives of New Orleanians.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 ahead and opened their doors without any drama, and were instantly successful.

Troy Bergeron spent 30 years in the music transportation business, driving tour buses for rock musicians like the late Ozzy Osbourne and transporting equipment across the country. When he quit all that and came back home to New Orleans, he was wondering what he was going to do with himself when he overheard a woman complaining there was no doggie transportation option here.

And that’s when Doggie Bus was born.

Doggie Bus is Uber for dogs.You book your dog’s ride on the Doggie Bus app; Troy shows up in his specially converted passenger van; on the app you track where your dog is, when he gets where he’s going, and when he’s on the way home.

Troy launched Doggie Bus in New Orleans in January 2024 and he’s already franchising the business to other cities.

Samantha Weiss had never lived in New Orleans. In New York City she’d put her MBA and job in financial services on hold and started pursuing a career in food. Then the Covid pandemic derailed those plans.

Samantha and her friend Kelly Jacques came up with an idea - open a bakery, in New Orleans.

30-seconds of online research will tell you, New Orleans already has 40 bakeries - twice as many per capita as your average city in the US. Nonetheless, Samantha and Kelly moved to New Orleans and in 2022 took over a space that used to be Santa Fe restaurant in the Marigny, and they opened Ayu Bakehouse.

If you live in New Orleans, you may know the rest of the story. Ayu Bakehouse was an instant  success. Since opening they’ve been featured in numerous national publications - including Vogue, The New York Post, USA Today, and Bon Appetit - which named Ayu one of the most exciting bakeries in the country - and you’ve probably either tried or heard about their King Cake which has been voted Best in New Orleans in the Times Picayune readers’ poll.

You’d have to be living under a rock these days not to be impacted by a seemingly endless onslaught of stressful developments - from international conflicts to national politics to local scandals, and even the daily war between your car and potholes. But, no matter what else is going on around us, there are at least two things that are universally bright spots in all of our lives. Puppies. And pastries.

Besides running successful businesses, Troy and Samantha are making the world a brighter and better place for humans, dogs, and Kevin the cat.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

 

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I was very tempted to go fishing today, and leave this show to the machines.

If you have any doubt that AI could do my job and conduct a 30 minute interview with local business people, today’s show is going to remove that doubt. In fact, it won’t take the whole show, you’ll probably be convinced in 5 minutes.

Step one: meet Rich Simmerman. We first met Rich a few years ago when he launched a breakfast cereal company. Then, in 2024, Rich started up another company. This one is called Cantaloupe. It’s the same name as the fruit, but this company’s product is people. Specifically, people in the hospitality and construction industries.

Cantaloupe is an AI tool for interviewing people looking for a job in a bar, a restaurant, or on a construction site. Cantaloupe’s proprietary interviewer - an AI bot  called Clio - interviews prospective applicants then analyzes their responses according to the parameters an employer lays out, and decides whether the applicant would be a good fit.

Cantaloupe’s research says it’s more accurate than a human reading a resume and reduces turnover caused by early quitting by 40%. Cantaloupe’s technology has won awards and Clio is working for all kinds of companies, including multi-location restaurant groups.

I recently had a doctor’s appointment, and for the first time in memory, my doctor paid 100% attention to me. While I was talking, he wasn’t typing anything into my records, like he usually does.

When I mentioned it, he said he was part of an evaluation group who were trying out an AI-based system that would record our conversation and write it up for him as consultation notes.

The pressure is on healthcare systems to incorporate AI into its daily functions, to provide better patient care, and do a wide range of back-end tasks, from accounting to reading X-Rays. The problem is, if you manage a big hospital, or a small medical clinic, whatever skills have gotten you to your current position, they probably do not include a sophisticated knowledge of AI.

So, who do you call about that? The answer is a company called Benzait. They’re dedicated to implementing AI into medical practices, hospitals, and other parts of the healthcare industry.

Benzait’s Founder and CEO is New Orleanian Ralph Whalen.

If you went to sleep in 2020 and woke up today and needed a job on a building site and a doctor appointment - to discuss your sleep disorder - you’d barely believe the changes that have taken place in the last few years.

Your job interview is with a non-human. And the notes from your doctor appointment, along with recommendations for further consultations and a detailed treatment plan, are all available through your patient portal online before you even get home.

Ralph Whalen and Rich Simmerman are ushering us into a whole new world.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’ve ever worked in corporate America, you may have had this experience: you’re having a perfectly normal day when you get an email from HR with the subject line, “Team Building.” Now, you might be the most fabulous team player in the company, but do you really want to spend a weekend doing a ropes course with your colleagues? No. You don’t.

But wait up. Read the email. This team building exercise is a whole other thing. It’s a workshop led by life coach Jaclyn McCabe and you get to choose whether you go to the workshop called “Dream It. Create It,” “Tame Your Inner Critic” or others that are a long way away from a ropes course.

Jaclyn’s workshops are based in creativity and self-expression, and they’re not just about making your work-life better, they’re about making your whole life better.

The nexus between business and creativity is also the wheelhouse of Kerrie Ann Nauseda.

Kerrie Ann is Founder and CEO and Chief Editorial Officer at a company with the enigmatic name, Good Coterie. Good Coterie isn’t a publisher. And Kerrie Ann isn’t an author. She’s kind of a life coach for authors.

Good Coterie works with publishers of books about business – mostly Forbes publishing – to  shepherd an author and a book through the many stages of its creation, from an idea on a napkin to a book on a shelf.

There are any number of encouraging words written and spoken about success being a team sport. “There’s no “i” in team.” “A rising tide lifts all boats.” And many more.

And most successful people are quick to acknowledge the role of others who have helped them along the way.

Having said that, achieving success in business takes, struggle, hard work, perseverance and determination. And when it all comes together and pays off – they’re typically the successful people we get to meet on shows like this. It's less often that we get to meet the people who these folks mention, the team members who helped make success happen for them. People like Jaclyn and Kerrie Ann.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s a term in psychology that also applies to marketing. It’s called “The Halo Effect.” It refers to how we can make sometimes incorrect assumptions based on a collection of pieces of information.

For a business case study let’s take a look at a lighting company that was founded in the UK in 2015, called Tala.

Tala designs and sells lighting fixtures that are elegant, environmentally friendly, focused on sustainability - they’re able to be repaired, and if they have to be discarded they’re recyclable – and they’ve been featured in Architectural Digest. The company has an international reach, is widely admired, and is financially successful. The Halo Effect would have us believe their lighting fixtures must be exclusive and expensive, and the company must have its eye firmly on profit.

Well, the truth is somewhat different. Tala is what’s called a B-Corp – it’s a registration given to companies that focus on using business as a force for good, striving for inclusive, equitable, and sustainable economic practices. And Tala’s lighting fixtures are inexpensive – you can find them online at Wayfair.

And, to complete the expect-the-unexpected list of circumstances at Tala, the Chairman of the Board of this innovative and progressive company is New Orleanian, Anthony Robins.

We can make incorrect Halo Effect type generalizations about other businesses too. For example, when we hear “Wedding Reception Venue” we typically picture a high-school-gym kind of vibe, with a stage for a band or DJ. When we hear “Hotel,” we expect it to be something between a Holiday Inn and the Ritz Carlton – the only difference being the amenities and the cost. A local company called Workshop WDXL (pronounced in speech, "W.D 40") is challenging all of these assumptions.

The W.D. part of the name is the initials of the team’s principals, Jessica Walker and David Demsey, and XL is forty is in Roman numerals.

Some of the Halo-Effect-busting, non-traditional, New Orleans businesses Workshop WD 40 have created are, the wedding venue, Felicity Church, and the hotels and villas, The Syd and The Mitzie. All of these projects have won prestigious architecture and design awards.

When we talk about the environmental impact of human activities, we’re generally talking about burning fossil fuel, the use of plastics, pollution from factories and farms, and even the use of AC systems and aerosols. The one thing that does not seem to show up on these lists is lighting.

And yet, every single home on Earth that has electricity has multiple light fixtures and lightbulbs. And we know that inefficient bulbs burn more fossil fuels, light pollution reshapes ecosystems, and discarded light fixtures add to the world’s growing mountain of e-waste. One of the core values of Tala is to address these issues - and to package the solutions as elegant, attractive, and affordable light fixtures.

Most architects dream about designing cool, quirky, inventive buildings. Most commercial property developers are focused on budgets – bringing projects in on time and as cheaply as possible. Most real estate developers are looking for bells and whistles that will pitch a property as high up the price range as a market will bear. These three goals are often at odds with each other but Workshop WDXL, is juggling all 3 of these balls.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Blake Langlinais at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When people talk about the place of AI in the workforce, it’s mostly doom and gloom about how AI is going to take your job. I’ve even sounded the alarm myself about podcasts entirely produced and hosted without the contribution of a single human being.

My lunch guests today are coming at AI from a whole different angle.

As he sits here eating lunch, Daniel Crowley’s AI employee, Chuck, is hard at work, manning Daniel’s business, Hello Gravel. Hello Gravel isn’t a dating app. It’s a gravel delivery business. You know, gravel. Little rocks. Actually, there are all types of gravel. And before you order a truckload, you’re going to need to know exactly what you want. Chuck can help you with that.

Chuck – who, just to be clear, is not a human being - can also tell you how much gravel you need and answer any and all questions you might have about gravel. He’ll also take your payment and schedule your delivery. AI Chuck is closing gravel sales every day. Last month he brought in $150,000.

Dave Maher is part owner and Chief Digital Officer at a marketing company called Zehnder that’s headquartered here in New Orleans and has offices in Baton Rouge, Nashville, and Rosemary Beach, Florida.

Two things about that sentence:  One, Dave is part owner of Zehnder along with his 64 colleagues. Zehnder is what’s called an ESOP - a business classification that stands for Employee Stock Ownership Plan, in which all of the employees own the company. And, two, having an office in Rosemary Beach Florida is a little unusual. So here’s the skinny on that:

Rosemary Beach is primarily fueled by tourism, and it’s not the kind of place you go for a budget vacation. So, you’ve got a bunch of people with a significant amount of spending power, and there’s only so many hours a day they can spend on the beach. The rest of their vacation they’re looking for something to do that suits their personal interest. They might want to discover a good bookstore, a great yoga class, tennis lessons, or other activities they would enjoy doing on vacation, if they knew where to find them.

That’s where Dave’s AI creation, Ask Seemore, comes in. Rosemary Beach is in Walton County, Florida, and Seemore the turtle is the logo of Walton County Tourism. Dave Maher’s AI version of Seemore is on your phone. He’s on vacation with you. He knows where you are, what you like, what you probably want to do next, and where to do it. Ask Seemore is like going on vacation with a local who totally gets you.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lists used to be the stuff of clickbait. Now even venerable outlets like the New York Times regularly publish lists. Including the Times’ list of the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans.

Those of us who live here know there are so many good restaurants and so much good music in New Orleans, we could make every episode of Out to Lunch about food and music and never exhaust the list of great places to eat, and great music to listen to.

We’re not going to do that. But to make some sort of headway we’ve come up with an efficient idea: talk to someone who owns seven restaurants, and to someone who makes ALL of New Orleans music.

You might be saying, “Wait up. How does one person make ALL of New Orleans music?” Scott Borne does, simply by owning New Orleans Record Press. It’s the city’s first and only independently owned and operated vinyl record manufacturing plant. And these days almost everybody puts out an O.G. vinyl record when they’re releasing new music.

Rami Bader,  along with his brother, owns seven New Orleans restaurants. They’re grouped under the banner of the Oceana Grill Group, and they include The Oceana Grill, Bobby Hebert’s Cajun Canon, Olde NOLA Cookery and Mambo’s Restaurant and Rooftop Bar.

One thing Scott and Rami have in common – besides both being involved in fundamental planks of the New Orleans economy – is, the market for both of their products is, literally, insatiable. No matter how much we enjoy a meal today, you can guarantee we’re going to be hungry again tomorrow. And no matter how much we enjoy listening to a record, you can guarantee we’re going to want to listen to another one.

Even with all the changes and challenges in music and hospitality, the rewards of their hard work are shared by all of us who take away the memory of a great meal, or a record that lives forever.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Theoretically, we understand the difference between success and happiness. But there’s a big gap between theory and reality. What bridges that gap is often, courage.

Suppose you worked hard, have a great job in a competitive field, are well paid and highly regarded, but you’re not really happy…  Would you have the courage to walk away from your success and take a chance doing something that might bring you very little, except, possibly, happiness?

That was the question Skye Jackson answered with, “Yes.” Skye was an entertainment lawyer in Hollywood. She had a great job at The Walt Disney Company. Until 2024. That’s when Skye traded her well-paid job dealing in the precise meaning of words in legal contracts, for a low-to-no pay job dealing in the ambiguous meaning of words, as a poet.

Today, Skye is a published and well-recognized poet, a professor of creative writing, literature and poetry at Xavier University, and Chairwoman of the New Orleans Poetry Festival Board.

When it came time for Crystal Burke to make a change, she wanted something different not just for herself, but for every other woman in the country.

As a registered nurse practitioner for over 15 years, mostly in the fields of oncology and palliative care, Crystal knows a lot about the functioning of the human body. But when she started experiencing symptoms of perimenopause in her 30’s, she was blindsided. Finding that her symptoms were influencing almost every aspect of her life, and simultaneously discovering that doctors, even OB-GYN’s, didn’t seem to know how to treat her, or other women in her position, Crystal decided to do something to change that.

In 2024, Crystal and her medical doctor husband, Steven Youngblood, founded The Menopause Clinic. It’s a tele-health-based clinic where any woman with an internet connection can consult with medical providers who specialize in recognizing and treating perimenopause – which is a phase of pre-menopause - and menopause.

You’ve no doubt noticed there are a lot of memes out there encouraging  women to empower themselves. “You Go Girl.” “You Do You.” “Live Your Best Life.” And plenty more. One of the reasons these women-centric slogans exist at all is, in many walks of life, things are still predominantly male dominated.

There are women though – Skye and Crystal are two of them – who are – for want of a better expression – taking the bull by the horns. Crystal's The Menopause Clinic is a revolutionary idea for women’s healthcare that seems way overdue. And Skye has a voice that resonates with a lot of people, especially young Black women - Skye's poetry seems to give them both her perspective and a vocabulary to reflect on themselves.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.