In today’s hyper-competitive economy, even if you're a sharp business person you need a lot of tools to run a business - from everyday people-management HR skills to social media marketing, and that's not even touching the nuts and bolts of your business itself. To keep up and stay competitive, local business people are turning to specialized sources for help.

Jody Mitchell is CEO of Directed Analytics, a Baton Rouge-based company focused on helping businesses with a range of services designed to generate ideas, develop systematic approaches, and come up with scalable solutions to help an organization succeed.

Specifically, the firm uses technology and data to come up with new processes, procedures, and ways to measure productivity and performance in areas like accounting, workforce, IT, digital marketing and cybersecurity.

Jody co-founded the firm in 2014 and in the years since has seen it grow to help  clients in a range of industry sectors.

When you get your business humming along and you're making money, you might decide it's a good time to sell. When that days comes along, selling your business isn't as easy as putting up a "For Sale" sign. Brandon Bourgeois is Senior Vice President and Marketing Director Of Sunbelt Business Brokers of Baton Rouge. The company is a local franchise of a national business brokerage firm that boasts it has sold more businesses through its more than two dozen franchisees around the country than any other business broker in the world.  

Sunbelt was started in the late 1970s in Charleston, South Carolina and specializes in helping mostly small businesses, offering an array of services that include not only pairing buyers and sellers together but helping a business owner decide how to price their business for sale and how to market it.

Brandon is a Baton Rouge native and graduate of LSU, who joined Sunbelt in 2012 after learning about it around the family dining table. Brandon's father, Bob Bourgeois, is the local franchise owner, who has grown the company beyond Baton Rouge to include all of Louisiana, parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.com.

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