Russ: Good morning. This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And this is that show about the business builders, the people that most positively affect our lives.

John: They're not only the business builders, they help build the country. And their ideas and savvy and athleticism and artistic ability really have created a great economy for this country, which really everybody benefits from it.

Russ: That's right.

John: I don't know anybody that gets left out of it.

Russ: That's right, but it's kind of upside down right now. Which means these are the guys that are going to save the country.

John: As long as they don't loan money to people who can't pay it back. All right?

Russ: That's true.

John: That's a key thing.

Russ: Well, in fact, I haven't told you this yet, but our application is in now to become a bank holding company.

John: Oh, really?

Russ: The BusinessMaker…

John: That means we get a bailout.

Russ: That's right, the BusinessMakers Bank and Trust Company. But there's a backup plan, too. If we're not able to get bailout money as a bank. I think we will, but if we're not able to, I think we just might fall into that category of too big to fail. You know?

John: We'll get bailed out.

Russ: There you go.

John: OK.

Russ: There you go. All right. And here's the line up today. First up for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback we're going to roll back to this past summer when I made a trip out to the Bay Area and had an opportunity to sit down with Bhaskar Roy, co-founder of Qik, the very popular company that is enabling you to capture and deliver real time video from your cell phone.

John: Wow.

Russ: And for our featured guest segment this morning, I'm going to visit with communications specialist and principle with WP and T, Ray Thompson who has provided individualized communication training and counsel to news makers around the world helping business executives tell their story under difficult circumstances. Also known as crisis management. It's probably prime time for crisis management, don't you think?

John: Everybody's in a crisis.

Russ: That's right. It's a sellers market…

John: In the crisis business.

Russ: In the crisis business.

John: I know.

Russ: You bet. But first... That's right. It's time for the School of Business. And this is that priced right business school. It's not your business as usual school, either.

John: What is priced right? Because it's free. The only problem we have, I think, with that price point is that some people if there's no price on something, they don't attach enough value. Which means, we have to work extra hard in our curriculum.

Russ: Well, we do.

John: Which we do. And it's paid off, I think. Just think of all the good we're doing.

Russ: Are you? I think that's why we've fallen to that too big to fail category.

John: Too big to fail. Yeah, we're too necessary to fail. That's right.

Russ: All right. And we kick off the School of Business each Saturday morning with the quote of the day.

John: Quote of the day.

Russ: And this one's very appropriate. This is a quote from probably about 170 years ago.

John: 170 years ago.

Russ: Yup. By Ralph Waldo Emmerson, the great orator and poet.

John: He was a poet.

Russ: Yeah. And listen to this. It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy. That the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

John: Wow.

Russ: It's kind of like where we are today, right? All right, and that brings us to this week in business history. What happened during this December week in business history, John?

John: I'll tell you the first thing here of this week in business history. 1805 this person passed away, Nicolas-Jacques Conté. He was born in 1755, but he died this week in business history in 1805. Because he studied physics, he painted portraits for clients, and he had a talent for building and fixing stuff. OK, and he also invented the pencil.

Russ: Oh, wow.

John: Yeah.

Russ: That's huge.

John: He opened a pencil factory during the French Revolution. This guy invented the pencil! Pencils were originally made of graphite from English mines, but all that was cut off from France after the start of the revolution. It was dangerous doing business over there.

Russ: That's right.

John: So he invented an artificial graphite by combining clays and cheap graphite. But the similar thing is still being used today, the pencil.

Russ: So that's what we use as pencils today, wow. Cool.

John: All right. Where would we be without the pencil?

Russ: Great story. I heard here on the BusinessMakers School of Business.

John: OK, this week in business history. In 1815, a woman most people with credit having written the world's first computer program, Augusta Ada Byron King, the Countess of Lovelace.

Russ: OK.

John: Was born in London. She was the only legitimate child of the great poet Lord Byron.

Russ: Wow. And she was born in 1850?

John: Yeah, right.

Russ: Wow.

John: At the age of 18, she met a guy named Charles Babbage, the inventor of calculating machines and I'm sure they were very mechanically orientated. Through her relationship, she invented one of the greatest technological things that ever came down the pipe.

Russ: So she did that through Babbage's machine?

John: Yeah.

Russ: She showed instructions on how it could work and that was a computer program, right?

John: Next, Robert Norton Noyce, this week in business history was born. He invented the integrated circuit.

Russ: Wow. Now, so what year was he born?

John: He was born in 1927.

Russ: OK, OK. Wow.

John: He was studying electronics at Grinnell College in his hometown. It's amazing. Everybody thinks you've got to go to Harvard or MIT. This guy goes to Grinnell College and look what happens. You go to Grinnell College and you invent the integrated circuit.

Russ: Wow.

John: Amazing.

Russ: Wow.

John: He worked for a guy named Shockley, who proved to be a kind of boss that's not going to win any best places to work contests. OK? So he left and Noyce and seven others defected and started their own company, Fairchild Semiconductors. This was back in 1957. And Noyce was the new company's general manager and research director. And in 59 he invented the integrated circuit by way of combining transistors on a single sheet of silicone. And there we go.

Russ: Cool.

John: This week in business history in 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Russ: What a day.

John: Darn near sank the entire Pacific fleet.

Russ: Right. I visited Pearl Harbor.

John: I've never been there.

Russ: It's emotional.

John: But the Japanese made two mistakes. First mistake was they didn't attack while the aircraft carriers were in the harbor.

Russ: Yup, that's right.

John: Aircraft carriers were out of the harbor. And if it weren't for that, we never would have won the Battle of Midway, which was about six months later, which actually turned the tide.

Russ: Yeah, OK.

John: And the other thing was, they originally planned to send three waves of attack planes. They only sent two. Now, the reason why they didn't send the third wave was they didn't know where the carriers were.

Russ: OK.

John: They didn't know where our carriers were.

Russ: Big, big day.

John: OK. All right. This week in business history in 1967, Otis Redding dies in a plane crash.

Russ: Oh, what a loss.

[Music: "Sitting on the Dock of The Bay"]

John: It was a number one hit, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. The interesting thing about it is three days before his death and his plane crashed in the water.

Russ: Oh, wow.

John: Yeah. This week in business history, 1970 the Doors played their last and final concert with controversial Jim Morrison, the lead singer. The concert was in New Orleans and it was reported that Morrison now shares an apartment with Elvis. Yeah. This week in business history in 1974, Linda Ronstadt records her only number one hit, at least in the popular field, was You're No Good.

Russ: OK. Cool song. And we love to insert this music because we know we have a lot of young listeners who can't relate to this stuff. And this is back before the long tail, and these were big, successful entertainers.

John: Later on in 1974, this is interesting because I was living in Washington DC. A representative of Wilbur Mills, a Democrat from Arkansas resigned as chairman of the ways and means committee after a public sex scandal. One of the most spectacular, because it involved a stripper named Fanny Fox. Also went by the name Argentine Firecracker.

Russ: I like that name better. I think she should have stuck with that.

John: She went for a swim in the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial, was pulled out by the police and Wilbur Mills' career kind of came to a screeching halt.

Russ: This week in 1974, was that when it happened?

John: Yeah.

Russ: I remember that. Man, that was big news back then. Sex scandals were rare because everybody sort of kept quiet.

John: Well, they occurred, but they nobody knew nothing.

Russ: Yeah, nobody talked about it.

John: Yeah, but now they do.

Russ: OK.

John: OK. This week in business history, in 1980, September 8th, John Lennon was murdered two months after he turned 40.

Russ: I was shell shocked when I heard that.

John: Do you remember what you were doing? I was watching Monday Night Football and they interrupted Monday Night Football to announce it. It took all the wind out of your sails.

Russ: I know.

John: OK. Last but not least, one of my favorite singers. OK, I love this guy. He's great. Roy Orbison dies 1988 at the age of 52. Here's the last big hit he had before he died.

John: That wraps up our this week in business history. This had everything. The pencil, rock and roll, a relative of Lord Byron does something significant.

Russ: Yeah, Fanny Fox.

John: Fanny Fox.

Russ: Yeah. And that brings us to navigating business jargon. This is our vocabulary lesson that we do every morning to try and help you understand all the new jargon, the technospeak. We don't recommend using this stuff. It's kind of like a contest. And I get to say the word, and John uses all of his cognitive skills and he gives it his best shot at what the meaning of the word is. Are you ready?

John: I'm ready.

Russ: Here it is. It's a verb.

John: Haven't had a verb in a while. I'm a man of action.

Russ: There you go. I bet you this is the first verb in about eight shows, too.

John: Yeah.

Russ: Are you ready?

John: I'm ready to go.

Russ: Facipulate.

John: Facipulate.

Russ: Right.

John: That means fake cipulating. Like facipulating…

Russ: That would be fahcipulating.

John: False.

Russ: This is facipulate.

John: Facipulate.

Russ: It's a combination of facilitate and manipulate. And it's when the group leader influences the course of a discussion by indirectly promoting particular lines of thought.

John: Oh, yeah.

Russ: In fact, in most group facilitators do that, in my opinion.

John: Yeah.

Russ: Next time you're part of a panel and they do that, accuse them of facipulating.

John: That's right. Punishable by death.

Russ: That's right, absolutely. All right, that brings us to dumbest moments in business history.

John: Yeah, this is actually, it's one airline. But it's typical of the BS that goes on when people get shafted by the airline. It just happens to be this particular airline. It's called Taca Airline. It's headquartered in San Salvador in the country of El Salvador. And normally it takes four and half hours to fly from San Salvador to LA, but this one took nearly 14 hours.

Russ: 14 hours.

John: 14 hours. Nine of them were spent on the ground over. 190 passengers were all scrunched up under the airplane.

Russ: What took so long?

John: Well, there was a fog alert, so they landed at the Ontario Airport. Which, if you know your geography, is not really that far from Los Angeles.

Russ: Not far at all, yeah.

John: And according to local authorities, did not want the passengers to pass through customs into the country.

Russ: That's what the airline said.

John: That's what the airline said, yeah. The airport officials all but gave a different story. According to statement from the company that owns Ontario, Taca never asked that passengers be allowed to exit the aircraft. So you have these two people pointing fingers.

Russ: And the whole time all the passengers are…

John: All these passengers, yeah. So what gives. Why can't the airport and the airline work together for customer satisfaction?

Russ: Let's get those people on the show and ask them that.

John: That's OK.

Russ: Taca Airlines?

John: Taca Airlines.

Russ: How do you spell that?

John: Taca.

Russ: OK.

John: Yeah. Not Taco Airlines.

Russ: I don't know if I want to fly on that thing. That qualifies as a dumb business story.

John: Yeah.

Russ: All right. And before we wrap up the School of Business this morning, it's time for that very popular vignette called the PKF Texas Entrepreneurs Playbook delivered by none other than Greg Price on the piano.

John: Have a seat, let's do it now. A one and a two and a…

Russ: A one and a two and a…

PKF Entrepreneur's Playbook

Russ: And that wraps up the School of Business for this morning. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. Stay tuned for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback with Bhaskar Roy of Qik and the featured guest segment with Ray Thompson of WP and T.