It's a rare workplace where one person getting Covid shuts down the entire operation. But that's life on the set of a motion picture. Emily O'Banion is in charge of preventing the spread of any illness on the set. She, along with local testing provider and support, David Lane of Coast Diagnostics, jump through high hoops and manage thorough protocols to keep the set illness free and the production on schedule. After all, the show must go on. 

T. Bruce MacKinnon is the President of Elevator World, Inc. With offices across the globe, the HQ is in Mobile, Alabama where their team puts out several publications throughout the year focusing on the elevator industry. While the business of elevators is certainly interesting, what MacKinnon offers in our conversation is a tutorial on how to dominate a niche market - something which he and his family know quite well. 

I have not been stirred by a book or a message like the one I discovered reading author Stephen Cope's book The Great Work of Your Life. Many of my colleagues today search for work that provides meaning and purpose as they navigate the final third of their working career, myself included. Cope's book taught me what questions to ask and what types of answers to listen for. 

Chuck Thuss' career as a hockey goalie surged at Miami (Ohio) and then in the minor leagues, including a stint at the Mobile Mystics. When it all ended, Chuck struggled to find purpose - a common struggle of athletes at the end of their playing days. Today Chuck co-hosts a podcast with a former National Hockey League player where they talk with athletes about their struggle to transition into life after athletics. Chuck also runs Compassionate Connection where he works with people of all types who simply feel lost, suffering from an indentiyy crisis. 

I revisit some former show guests and learn how they used the pause in business caused by the pandemic over the past eighteen months to reinvent themselves. These entrepreneurs don't ever stop. Artious Walker and Smac's Shack Food Truck, Mary Beth Greene and MB Greene bags, and Chris Rainosek at The Noble South restaurant. 

Ellis Ollinger began as a summer employee for Flowerwood Nursery and today is the company CEO. Flowerwood grows and distributes plants from Maryland to Missouri to Texas and all points in between. With 650 employees, shared patents on plants, and a business relationship with Southern Living magazine, Flowerwood is a third generation success story that you'll want to hear. Hear how Covid has driven more to gardening but supply chain issues continue to ham-string the industry. 

Known variously as the iGen or Gen Z, the next generation workforce has experienced some doozies that will shape their take on the workplace and our world in general: Covid, election disputes, Afghanistan, vaccine division. The list goes on. How will it impact them? My guest is my 18 year old daughter the day before my wife and I took her to college. I interrupt her and my conversation to add context to what my generational studies have revealed about her world and the workplace's future. 

Rob Holbert is the managing editor of Lagniappe Weekly in Mobile, Alabama. Watt Key is a fiction writer with at least a dozen published books under his belt. I write weekly commentaries for Alabama Public Radio. The three of us read a five hundred word commentary we prepared for this broadcast and then discuss how we go about our writing. 

Why are lumber prices at an all time high? Is it Covid? Labor shortages? Tariffs? It's all of the above plus many more things including the freeze in Texas last year that froze chemical plants, too few long-haul truckers, bugs in Canada, Chinese goods through Vietnam. The list is overwhelming. It's a perfect storm of random events and there appears to be no end in sight. Bert Scarbrough of Premier Lumber and homebuilder Brian Robertson give me the details.

We can't get enough of this guy. Kieron Elliot had us at "sláinte" (pronounced SLAN-ja and meaning "cheers!") when I heard him giving a presentation on Instagram. He agreed to be on What's Working and we discuss The Macallan's plans for bringing Millennials into their brand and he walks me through how to taste two of their signature bottlings for the US - The Macallan 12 and 15 Double Cask. Per Kieron, "chew it." Chewing it gets the salivary gland involved.