If you live in New Orleans, you’ve probably had this happen: A friend gets in touch and says they’re coming to town for something to do with their work. Usually a convention. They’ll be in touch when they get here and know their schedule. The next communication you get is an apology. They’re on the way home. They went to Bourbon Street their first night here, and everything else is kind of a blur.

That doesn’t do a lot for your friendship. And their bleary-eyed, dragging, hung-over 3 days at the conference didn’t do a lot for their professional standing either.

Vacation

What if your friend could have done this a whole other way? What if making the most of New Orleans was integrated into a visit, so it becomes a part of the professional, work-related reason a business- person comes here? That’s, broadly, the concept behind Lelia Gowland’s business, Strategic Vacations.

Strategic Vacations is a business consultancy for purpose-driven women and non-binary leaders in business, with a very New Orleans perspective. It’s a New Orleans vacation that balances the benefit of getting away from it all with strategic planning and personal consultancy - so attendees get their professional and personal priorities right.

Tattoo Removal

Now, back to your friend who hadn’t heard about Strategic Vacations – the one who’s stumbling around the French Quarter.

Maybe at some point in the evening, after a second Hurricane and a Big Ass Beer, your friend might have the brilliant idea of getting a tattoo.

Some tattoos are awesome. They have cultural significance, or they mean something special to the person wearing them. But time has a way of changing your opinions and circumstances. And if either of those change and your tattoo doesn’t, what seemed like a good idea at the time is now a permanent reminder of a regrettable decision.

Well, the good news about that is, even if you can’t erase the memory, you can now erase the tattoo. As easily as you wandered into the tattoo shop, you can now wander into the tattoo removal shop. It’s called Removery. It’s on Magazine Street. It’s also in 162 other locations across the US, Canada, and Australia, and it’s expanding to Europe.

Removery is the biggest dedicated tattoo removal company in the world. Its Co-Founder and Vice President of Clinical Advancement is Carmen Brodie.

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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