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If you have a business that depends on sales, you can try and sell everything to everybody, like Walmart. \\xa0But seeing there\\u2019s almost no way on earth you can compete with Walmart, you need to come up with a more niche approach.

Having a unique product and finding people who need it is the pathway to success. Supply and demand. Simple enough, right?\\xa0Well, it might have been, when that meant opening a store on main street. Or buying an ad in the Yellow Pages. (If you\\u2019re under 40 you\\u2019re going to have to Google \\u201cyellow pages\\u201d - and even then it probably won\\u2019t make sense.)

My lunch guests today are both in fields that have been upended by technology: photography, and book sales.

Amazon rewrote the rules on how people buy books. And the smart-phone and Instagram have turned everybody into a photographer.\\xa0Within these crowded spaces, both of my guests, Olivia Grey Pritchard and Candice Huber, have successfully carved out their own markets.

Candice is the owner of Tubby & Coo\\u2019s MidCity Bookshop. It\\u2019s been around since 2014. If you\\u2019re saying, \\u201cWhat? I live in New Orleans and I\\u2019ve never heard of it,\\u201d it might just mean you don\\u2019t read the kind of books they sell.

Tubby & Coo\\u2019s describe themselves as a \\u201cLocal, queer-owned, progressive, nerdy, independent bookshop focused on science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, queer, and diverse books\\u201d.

We\\u2019ve talked here before about how the career of professional photographer has been battered by the extraordinary number of amateur photographers in the world \\u2013 everybody who owns a cell phone \\u2013 and the ease with which photographers\\u2019 work is stolen off the internet.

Olivia Grey Pritchard has figured out a way to succeed as a photographer in this tough environment.\\xa0Part of Olivia\\u2019s success is centered on educating other photographers on how to run a successful photography business.\\xa0She teaches online classes and conducts mentoring sessions for professional photographers.

And in her own photography work, Olivia delivers more than just digital files of photos. If you hire Olivia to be your photographer, you end up with a piece of framed wall art, an archival-quality photo album, or a unique family movie.

As a consumer, it\\u2019s frustrating to look for something you want, and not be able to find it.\\xa0Since the Covid pandemic gave rise to an inexplicable labor shortage, and choked supply chains, almost everybody has had a taste of this kind of frustration.

But for some people, this frustration has been going on for a lot longer.

If you\\u2019re a person who has a particular taste in books and you can never find quite what you\\u2019re looking for, Tubby & Coo\\u2019s MidCity Bookshop is a refreshing oasis.

And, in a world where we\\u2019re bombarded by images that only last a fraction of a second before we swipe or scroll them away forever, being able to have a photo of your family, yourself, or even your dog, that\\u2019s good enough to frame and hang on your wall is equally refreshing.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at\\xa0NOLA Pizza\\xa0in the\\xa0NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur\\xa0at itsneworleans.com

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