



THC Tarps
There are two things we know a lot about in New Orleans: partying and hurricanes. For a long time those weren't unrelated. The hurricane party was a New Orleans institution — you'd ride out the storm with your neighbors, a case of beer, and a sense of invincibility. These days, after Katrina and I…

Kitchen Closet
Although each of us is free to believe whatever we want, when it comes to our personal finances, we tend to operate with a number of shared beliefs. One of these is the belief in the benefit of ownership. For example, it’s better to own your own business than be an employee. Financially, that bene…

Visible and Invisible New Orleans
I want to start out today by running through a few notable New Orleans landmarks: The new terminal at Louis Armstrong Airport. The U.S Custom House. The gold/copper skin on the Superdome. The Civic Theater. The W New Orleans French Quarter Hotel. The Xavier University Dormitories. There are a who…

After The Revolution
If you’re under 30, and you have any kind of original, innovative ideas, you might not know that before you were born people like you generally left New Orleans and went to places where forward-thinking was appreciated. Then, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina had knocked the city to its knees, the …

The Best Of All Possible Worlds
In the mid 1700’s, a French author, Voltaire, wrote a biting satire that has remained a classic piece of literature ever since. The novel, Candide, is about a student who is continually beset by all kinds of horrific disasters. It’s basically a buddy comedy in which the kid’s super-upbeat tutor ke…

The Road Less Traveled
If you think it feels like things are speeding up and change is coming faster than ever, well, you’re right. It took us hundreds of thousands of years to get to a worldwide population of 3 billion. We got there in 1927. From there, it only took about 70 more years – one lifetime – to get to a popul…

Solutions From The South
In conversations about business, you don’t hear Karl Marx quoted very often. That’s principally because of his enthusiasm for communism, which is kind of the opposite of business… But Marx was an economist back in the mid 1800’s and the reason we still know about him is because he had some insights…

A Little Help From My Friends
Things don't always work out like you planned. You know, they just don't. Nobody gets married planning to one day get divorced. But, somehow, around 40% of people who get married for the first time find themselves at some point in that position. For people who get married a second time, 60% of th…

The Seen and Unseen World
People who try and explain the complexity of human existence sometimes talk about “the seen and unseen world.” The seen world is the world of everyday reality in which we live. The theory of the unseen world attempts to explain some events in the real world - like love, happiness, and talent - in…

Two of Your Favorite People
When you’re the CEO or Executive Director of a company, you’re responsible for, well, everything. If the company does well, you’re a genius. If the company does poorly, you’re fired. Typically, the definition of business success is how much money a company makes. And that can be a function of mark…