Let’s say you’ve accomplished all of your professional goals. You’re at the top. Business is good. Life is good. What do you do? How about…something completely different?
Success breeds success, but it can also stir up an appetite for new challenges. For high achievers, that can lead them to keep climbing after they’ve pushed that boulder all the way up the hill.
For Michele Ezell, the last mile of that climb was the pandemic. Michele and her husband opened Tsunami Sushi, the OG sushi restaurant in Lafayette, in 1999, adding locations in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans over the next two decades.
Michele Ezell, after founding, growing and running the Tsunami Sushi restaurant chain it was time for a new challenge
But navigating the restaurant through the pandemic put a new burr in Michele’s saddle. In 2021, she and her husband sold the business and Michele started a new chapter in real estate. Today she’s a realtor at Keaty Real Estate. That’s a big change from running an enterprise with 240 employees to working more or less for yourself and on commission.
Michele grew up in Lafayette and says her years in the restaurant industry have given her a solid edge in her new venture.
By the time Alysson Bourque became an award winning author, she’d already been a teacher and a lawyer in the Louisiana attorney general’s office. Now, Alysson is running Foreword Publicity, a boutique PR firm that provides marketing and promotional services for around 400 authors.
Alysson Bourque, taking the lessons learned from her experience turning her Alycat books into a commercial success and sharing them with other authors
Alysson parlayed her own experiences writing and marketing the successful Alycat series to build a playbook for aspiring authors. She and her business partner Lori Orlinsky launched Foreword in 2020 after helping a fellow author shepherd a book to success. They designed a comprehensive line of services that help aspiring and even established authors get their works noticed and sold in the digital marketplace.
Alysson is from Lafayette and has published six Alycat books.
Christiaan Mader moderates Out to Lunch Acadiana at Tsunami Sushi in Lafayette
Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. Photos by Astor Morgan.
