There are a number of terms people use to try and make talking about business as exciting as talking about football. You’re probably familiar with the football clichés, “We’re going to go out there and play our own game.” “Our plan is to play hard till the final buzzer.” And all-time favorite, “It’s mental.”

In business we hear people describing their business as being so exciting it’s “moving the needle.” A “paradigm shift.” And a “game changer.”  As in football – where most teams don’t play their own game or play hard to the final buzzer – most businesses are not shifting paradigms or changing the game. But, once in a great while, a business comes along that does change the whole game – for their clients, for their industry, or even for all of us as consumers. And that’s the case with Peter’s three guests on Out to Lunch today.

Tom Hayes is the local General Manager of Uber. Against long odds and stiff opposition, Tom has successfully brought the ride sharing business to New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette. 

If you’re a certain age you might remember the term “dial-up.” It referred to the act of getting online. In those days, most of the time your computer was a word processor. You had to use your landline to get onto the internet and to give you an idea of the speed of your connection, it would take around an hour to download a song. Today, if you’re in Lafayette and you’re hooked up online through LUS – the Lafayette Utilities System – you can download a song almost instantly, and download an entire movie in 4 minutes. That’s because LUS has built one of the fastest internet connections in the world. And that is not some sort of wild claim or “moving the needle cliché,” it’s true.

Terry Huval is the Director of LUS. 

If you’re one of America’s biggest and most successful companies like Apple, Fox, Buick, or GMC, you get marketing advice from only the best and the brightest. All of those companies – and many more household names besides – take advice from a consultant company on Jefferson Street in Lafayette called Potenza.

Potenza’s founder and CEO is Frankie Rousseau. 

On this edition of Out to Lunch from Cafe Vermililonville in Lafayette Peter talks with three local guys who are actually moving the needle, shifting paradigms and changing the game.

Photos by Gwen Aucoin.