One of the biggest challenges in Louisiana is a lack of skilled workers in the technical trades. Companies complain about it all the time. And yet, many young people will tell you they can’t find a good paying job, which is a reason so many of them leave after high school. For the past several…

While New Orleans gets the lion’s share of attention for being Louisiana’s premier tourist destination, Baton Rouge has some offerings of its own.    Michael Day is General Manager of the Raising Cane’s River Center, Baton Rouge’s premier event facility. Built in 1977, the River Center has more than 14-thousand square meters of exhibition space,…

Ryan Grizzafi is the owner of The Cajun Spoon, a four-year-old company that makes healthful, easy to prepare box mixes of beloved Cajun dishes like gumbo, etouffe and shrimp and grits. The Cajun Spoon started out as a food truck in 2014, progressed to become a catering business, and more recently has ventured into retail….

We know south Louisiana has a healthy number of budding entrepreneurs. We’ve met many of them on this show over the past year. But one thing we hear over and over again is that south Louisiana doesn’t have a very well-developed entrepreneurial ecosystem. It’s starting to change, but is it happening fast enough? Arthur Cooper…

Quality education is a challenge. It seems like many of our schools are losing ground, as public funding for education is being cut. At the same time, there’s a greater emphasis on alternatives to the traditional school system and an increased interest in things that helps us think outside the box. Ashley Heard has spent…

Some of us find relief for our stress through exercise or meditation. Others find their salvation after a long hard day in a good strong cocktail. Either way, local entrepreneurs have found a way to build businesses around our inherent need to unwind and escape. Stefan Boone, with his wife, Mercy Kitchen Boone, is owner…

As Americans have become more health conscious in recent years, they’ve begun to pay more attention not only to what they eat but also what they drink. That’s created opportunities for local entrepreneurs, who are building businesses around healthful beverages.   Ash Shoukry is the owner of The Big Squeezy, a local chain of shops…

We live in a media-saturated world, dominated by 24/7 cable news networks and an ever-growing list of social media platforms that keep us updated, informed, and inundated with more information than we could ever hope to process. How do you make sense of it all? And how do you make money at it? On this…

Not so long ago, they used to roll up the sidewalks in downtown Baton Rouge at 5 p.m, or so the saying went. And it wasn’t far from the truth. Today, however, downtown is a burgeoning district, home not only to state office buildings and law firms, but to apartment complexes, restaruatns, museums and galleries…