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

John: That's right, the business builders. These are the artists, the entrepreneurs, the athletes.

Russ: Well, it's tough times that we live in-

John: I know.

Russ: -and actually, tough times for some of our entrepreneurs, but they've just got to buckle down and make it happen, they've got this headwind out there that they've been facing.

[Music: "Against the Wind"]

Russ: That's right, man. They just have to make it happen these days, right?

John: At least they're against the wind and not breaking wind.

Russ: That's right.

John: Yeah, okay.

Russ: And here's our lineup for this morning. First up, for the AFLAC BusinessMakers Flashback, we're going to share with you some of the idea triggers from our collection of 500 interviews. These are successful startup entrepreneurs describing that precise point where they got the idea, the "eureka" moment, that lead to their endeavor, and this morning we'll feature Bill Groux, founder and CEO of Retention Education, the company that effectively is leading the way towards teaching English to Hispanic restaurant workers. And then Lawrence Kersten, founder and CEO of Despair, Inc., the leading demotivation company on the planet. And lastly, Catherine Rohr, the founder and CEO of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program.

John: That's right.

Russ: What an operation there. They're all 3 going to share with us that moment when they went, "Woo, I'm ready to go for it."

John: Aha. The "aha" moment.

Russ: You bet. And then for our Featured Guest this morning, I'm going to spend some time with Bill Pickard, chief operating officer of Vendor Safe Technologies, and we're talking here about protecting important data as in your customers' credit card numbers.

John: Yeah, that could be real important stuff.

Russ: Yeah, Bill's pretty interesting. You know, most of us choose restaurants based upon the menu. He chooses them based upon how they protect the credit card numbers-

John: How does he know?

Russ: Because he'll tell you that in the interview.

John: Okay.

Russ: He's going to tell us that. Now, he still goes to those other restaurants, but he pays cash there. He doesn't pay with his credit card.

John: I'm surprised there's restaurants that still take cash.

Russ: Yeah, there are. That's right.

John: Okay. All right.

Russ: Bur first.

John: But first.

Russ: That's right. It's time for The BusinessMakers School of Business, and this is not business as usual school. In fact, for one thing, it is built for times like these, John, because it's free.

John: It's free. I know. But-

Russ: Free school.

John: But the problem is if you don't put a price tag on things, sometimes the perceived value isn't there.

Russ: Well, you think we ought to start charging?

John: Maybe we ought to get the guy that can secure the credit cards and teach us how to-

Russ: Yeah, get them buying it.

John: -take money from our listeners without them knowing about it.

Russ: That's a good idea. That's a real good idea.

John: All right. Okay.

Russ: All right. And we kick it off with the Quote of the Day.

John: Quote of the Day.

Russ: You bet, and today's quote's subject is the stock market, okay?

John: Oh, okay.

Russ: And this one is for all of you who have some difficulty with the market's regular freefalling sessions.

[Music: "Free Falling"]

Russ: All right, and here's the quote: The difference between playing the stock market and the horses is that one of the horses must win.

John: That's right.

Russ: That's right, and in the stock market-

John: Nobody-

Russ: That's by Joey Adams, the comedian-

John: Oh, right.

Russ: -of a few years back and that brings us to This Week in Business History. What happened at this end of November, beginning of December week in business history?

John: Okay, This Week in Business History, in 1850, a very magnetic individual, William Sturgeon was born in Whittington, England, and he was a pioneer of electromagnetism.

Russ: Whoa.

John: Yeah, that's right, and his truly great achievement came in the mid 1820s when he made his first electromagnet.

Russ: Wow.

John: Yeah.

Russ: Now, how interesting that must have been back then. Jeez.

John: He wrapped a coiled electrical wire around a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron and the thing weighed about as much as an apple but was capable of lifting 9 pounds.

Russ: Whoa, cool.

John: Yeah, okay. This Week in Business History, Winston Churchill is born November 30, 1874.

Russ: Whoa. What a guy, man.

John: I know. Everybody knows about him, the interesting thing about Churchill, his mother was American.

Russ: Oh, I didn't know that.

John: And his father was British.

Russ: Interesting. Interesting.

John: Yeah, okay.

Russ: You know, my favorite-you can't talk about him without me sharing my favorite quote. "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

John: Misery. Right. That's right.

Russ: I love it.

John: I know. Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1933, the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, which repealed prohibition.

Russ: Oh, I'll drink to that, man.

John: I'll drink to that.

Russ: There you go.

John: Can you believe they tried to outlaw alcohol?

Russ: Yeah, it didn't-

John: I mean, a drink.

Russ: It didn't pan out very well, did it?

John: You couldn't get a beer, you couldn't get a whiskey or wine or any of that stuff.

Russ: Okay.

John: But cool heads prevailed and, FDR had taken over as president and he thought, 'Well, I can't give these guys much else but hope, but I can give them a drink.

Russ: All right.

John: All right.

Russ: Hey, but think of it. That was 75 years ago this week. Wow. Cool.

John: I know.

Russ: All right.

John: This Week in Business History, December 2, 1902 the first V8 engine was patented.

Russ: Wow. In 1902?

John: That's right.

Russ: Goodness.

John: The pistons used to be in a straight line, but actually, a Frenchman, uh, with a background in art, Leon Marie-Joseph Clement Levavasseur-

Russ: Yeah.

John: He was an artist, and he decided to put them in a V.

Russ: Wow, because they started probably losing efficiency the more cylinders.

John: Yeah, right. That's right.

Russ: They got longer. Yeah.

John: That's right, so they made the engine more compact and more powerful.

Russ: Okay.

John: He actually named this thing Antoinette, actually named for the daughter of a business associate.

Russ: Yeah, but wait a minute. He named this after an associate's daughter?

John: Right. Uh-hunh (affirmative). Yeah.

Russ: I wonder how old she was.

John: Well, I don't know, but apparently, he had a thing for her.

Russ: I guess he did. He named the V8 engine after her.

John: The Antoinette. Yeah.

Russ: Okay, sorry.

John: Hmmm.

Russ: Go on.

John: It's like one of those things that makes you want to go, "Hmmm."

Russ: Hmmm. Okay.

John: All right. This Week in Business History, December 1, 1958, Phil Spector-

Russ: Yeah?

John: He had this concept of music called the wall of sound, okay?

Russ: Yeah, he did.

John: And, uh, he had a song, "To Know Him Is to Love Him," begins 3 weeks at number 1 in the U.S.

Russ: Wow, by The Teddy Bears.

[Music: "To Know Him Is to Love Him"]

John: Later on he became involved in a murder, okay? And he got off on a hung jury. I think they're going to retry him.

Russ: Yeah, I'd tell you, all the women in California, I'd advise them not to go out on dates with him-you know?

John: Yeah, that's right. I would not-

Russ: You might accidentally shoot yourself in the face.

John: I don't care how much money you have.

Russ: Right. Okay.

John: Okay. December 3, 1967, This Week in Business History, another significant thing here-

Russ: This is big history.

John: The first human heart transplant. Surgeon Christiaan Barnard trained at the University of Cape Town, and in the U.S. performed this revolutionary medical operation, and the patient was a South African grocer, Louis Washkansky. He lived for about 18 days.

Russ: Do you remember it? I mean, it was big news. It was just-

John: Oh, I remember it. Yeah.

Russ: It was hard to comprehend that we had done that, and-

John: Barnard became a very wealthy guy.

Russ: Man, what a history lesson. Is there more?

John: Oh, is there more? Okay. Next, December 3, 1977, Linda Ronstadt, her number 1 hit in 1977 in her Simple Dreams album, and she had a couple of great tunes before then: "Blue Bayou" which was originally a Roy Orbison number.

[Music: "Blue Bayou"]

John: Now, she's very talented. Since all this rock and roll stuff and dating Jerry Brown, who was a governor back then-

Russ: Yeah, right.

John: They called him Governor Moonbeam because he was so weird, and I'm not making that up.

Russ: I know you're not.

John: Governor Moonbeam. She later recorded some Spanish music and some old standards. She's a very talented woman. Okay. In 1982, This Week in Business History, on December 3-here's another heart transplant. A dentist-he needed a new heart, Barney Clark, he lived out his days with a Jarvik-7 artificial heart-

Russ: Jeez.

John: -invented by Dr. Robert Jarvik, who is now doing Lipitor commercials or something-

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: -and it was a big machine, but he was never really mobile after the operation.

Russ: But how long did he live?

John: He lived for about 112 days.

Russ: Okay.

John: This Week in Business History, November 25, 2001, George Harrison loses his battle with cancer in 2001. He was 58.

[Music: "My Sweet Lord"]

John: Now, he was sued by the Shirelles, who had a song called, "Sweet Talkin' Guy" that had a very similar melody to it, and guess what?

Russ: What?

John: He lost the suit.

Russ: Wow, and the Shirelles won?

John: Yeah. It's one of my favorite George Harrison songs.

Russ: Yeah, cool. All right. All right.

John: Okay. December 2, 2001, This Week in Business History Enron files for bankruptcy-

Russ: Man.

John: -Chapter 11 protection, in a New York court, okay?

Russ: The original mark-to-market guys.

John: Oh, yeah. They were hiding debt. How many times do you hear about this? A company goes under. Why? Because they were hiding the debt.

Russ: That's right. They had it off the balance sheet.

John: That's right. Well, they had it on another balance sheet that nobody got to see, okay?

Russ: That's right.

John: And the thing that got Ken Lay in trouble and God rest his soul, especially after Enron folded, he was doing this absent-minded professor shtick "I didn't know"-

Russ: Yeah. "I didn't know what they were doing."

John: But there he was on camera in front of these employee meetings telling his employees to buy more shares while he's selling them.

Russ: Yeah, that's exactly right, man.

John: Okay. All right.

Russ: I bet they wished they'd had some bailout money back then, man.

John: Well, they called the White House to help them-

Russ: Yeah, they tried.

John: -and Bush said-

Russ: And the Somali pirates. They didn't have any money back then, did they? They couldn't go to them.

John: I know. This Week in Business History, December 3, 2001, one of the most worthless devices ever invented-if you look at legitimate use of the device compared to the hype-

Russ: Yeah?

John: It's called the Segway Human Transporter. A guy named Dean Kamen revealed it to the public December 3, 2001.

Russ: Oh, this is the day that we'd all been calling it "It," and he said, "All right, I'm going to tell you what 'It' is."

John: It's also one of the most obnoxious things out there because the people who actually have the gall to ride around on one of these, they have these smug looks of superiority.

Russ: Well, and I thought we're supposed to be in this era where exercise is important, and all that it does is takes away walking, really. You know, aren't we supposed to walk more?

John: I would think so.

Russ: Yeah, instead of a Segway.

John: But when you go to New York or Washington. Washington, D.C., is another place-

Russ: Yeah, I've seen them there.

John: And these pencil-necked, bureaucratic geeks with this smug look of superiority, thinking they're better than everybody, riding around on one of these things with a-you know-discerning sneer.

Russ: Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that feel that way. I don't think that Dean Kamen probably hit his numbers on this device, either. I think he thought by now everybody would have one. I don't have one. Do you?

John: No.

Russ: All right. And that wrapped up your history lesson?

John: Yeah, how about that, huh?

Russ: Holy smokes, man. All this heart transplant-

John: That was action packed.

Russ: -Enron bankruptcy and-

John: I know, and idiots out there-

Russ: Goodness gracious. Phil Spector.

John: -driving around on these stupid things. Yeah.

Russ: Segways. What a history lesson. Woo. And that brings us to Navigating Business Jargon. This is our vocabulary lesson with modern vocabulary.

John: 31 Just remember, folks, just practice these words and phrases and acronyms before you use them on people.

Russ: All right.

John: That's all.

Russ: Okay. And here it is. It's a contest. I pick and say the word, and John has to guess the meaning.

John: You talk about a smug look of superiority-every time you say that-because I don't know the word-you know?

Russ: But these are easy today.

John: But you act like you're Mr. Wizard or something-

Russ: Well, I am. It's part of the job. I get to choose them.

John: Because you invent the word.

Russ: Here we go.

John: All right. Okay.

Russ: Are you ready?

John: Yeah, I'm ready.

Russ: The word this morning is phenomeniche.

John: Phenomeniche.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Okay. Phenomeniche. A phenom is someone who's got extraordinary talents, for a human being. "Iche" is a niche.

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: Okay, so phenomeniche is someone who's got extraordinary talents in a very small area of expertise and is probably not too bright when it comes to street smarts and living their life in general.

Russ: No, no. You were going-you were so close for a while. Instead of a person, it's a product or idea that looks like it's going to be a phenomena, but-

John: Yeah, like the Segway.

Russ: Yeah, exactly. It's not an overall phenomena, but it completely dominates its particular market-

John: Oh, I was close.

Russ: That brings us to Dumbest Moments in Business History. Do you have a story for us this morning?

John: Yeah. Yeah, this is a good one. Back in the '30s, in 1938, there was a wallet manufacturer, E.H. Ferree, of Lockport, New York-

Russ: Okay.

John: -and they made wallets that were sold predominantly in Woolworth. Woolworth-to people who were under 30, that used to be a big retailer.

Russ: Absolutely. Big time.

John: Well, it just so happens that these wallets, well, they put a social security card in one of the windows in the wallet where the pictures go-

Russ: To show what it would look like.

John: -to show how it would look nice and present itself, and it was an actual, real life social security number. It belonged to a Mrs. Hilda Schrader Whitcher, who was a secretary to the vice president and treasurer, Douglas Patterson.

Russ: So Douglas just said, "Hey, Hilda. Let me borrow your social security card."

John: Yeah. "We want to put it in this wallet." "That's all right." Well, anyway, thousands of people-a reported 55 people were using Hilda's number.

Russ: Oh, my gosh.

John: Fathers passed it on to sons and mothers to daughters. Can you believe that?

Russ: That definitely qualifies as a dumb business story.

John: A dumb moment. Yeah. Okay.

Russ: Okay. And before we wrap up the School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook, so let's welcome Greg Price and his orchestra.

John: Here he comes.

Russ & John: A one and a two and a-

[PKF Texas - The Entrepreneurs Playbook]

Russ: And that wraps up the School of Business. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. Stay tuned for the AFLAC BusinessMakers Flashback with the idea triggers from 3 cool entrepreneurs and the Featured Guest segment with Bill Pickard, chief operating officer of Vendor Safe Technologies.