Russ: Good morning. This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com, and this is that show about the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the solution group, the solution to our problems, and the people that somehow or another keep getting ignored in all this bailout money.
John: You're right, and it's a phenomenon that needs to be addressed, but the current crew we have running the country right now-I doubt if half of them know the difference between common stock and livestock.
Russ: Common stock and livestock?
John: Yeah.
Russ: Well, I would say that that is true about the group that we have running it right now. I think it's true about the last group we had running it. Man, I think-
John: I know, I know. Well, I think they recognized the power of the entrepreneur. I mean, they did have tax cuts early on-
Russ: Yeah, yeah.
John: You know, these people are actually the providers of government funding, and they should be treated with a little more respect than they are right now-
Russ: Yeah, I agree.
John: -because they're the source of everything the government's collecting.
Russ: I agree. And that sort of segues well into our lineup for this morning because we're going to focus on some young entrepreneurs.
John: Okay.
Russ: Well, we are going to cover the TCU Texas Youth Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. We've been there before and it's quite an event with high school entrepreneurs competing for scholarships. And first up for the AFLAC BusinessMakers Flashback, we're going to roll back to the event, which was about 2 weeks ago when I visited with David Minor, the founding director of the Neely Entrepreneurship Center at TCU and also Brian Happel with Compass Bank. They sponsored the event. And then for our Featured Guest segment, we're going to feature this year's scholarship winners of the contest, and then it's all going to spill over into a Web Extra where we're going to have the remaining participants in the program. But first... that's right. It's time for The BusinessMakers School of Business, and this is not your ordinary business school.
John: You know, some things bear repeating, so I will say this is not your ordinary business school.
Russ: All right.
John: This is several cuts above the ordinary business school because we have taken the time and the effort and, I think, the physical certitude of getting into the real nub of business.
Russ: All right. And we kick it off each Saturday morning with the Quote of the Day.
John: Quote of the Day.
Russ: And this one was produced only about a week ago by Thomas Friedman.
John: Yeah, we talked about this earlier.
Russ: Absolutely, man. He says it well, and here it is: Giving more money to change resistant automakers instead of risk taking innovators is not the way to get out of this quagmire.
John: That's right. He recommends that we take some of the billions we're throwing at government projects and taking that money and give to venture capital funds and have them invest it in the growing companies.
Russ: Imagine what would happen. Jeez.
John: I know. If you're going to give money to somebody, give it to somebody who knows how to create.
Russ: Innovators.
John: Yeah, right.
Russ: Absolutely. All right. And that brings us to This Week in Business History. What happened in this week in business history?
John: Okay. Starting in 1789-actually, that's when the French Revolution started-but in Pennsylvania, they ended prohibition of theatrical performances.
Russ: Wow.
John: I guess they couldn't-
Russ: It was against the law-
John: To have a play, yeah.
Russ: Wow.
John: But it's interesting to know that at one time, Pennsylvania banned the performance of theatrical performance.
Russ: There you go.
John: So anyway, This Week in Business History, in 1854 the Republic Party is formally organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.
Russ: Wow. Wow, so about 155 years old now.
John: That's right. And Ripon, Wisconsin, has never been the same.
Russ: Yeah, I bet.
John: Okay. All right. This Week in Business History, in 1868 the stapler- Every now and then we come up with these inventions or patents that we wonder where they came from, and they came from a long time ago. This is 1868. The stapler. By a guy named C. H. Gould.
Russ: Wow.
John: Yeah.
Russ: Way to go, C. H.
John: All right. I mean, what would we do without the stapler?
Russ: Oh, we'd be in trouble, man.
John: We'd be in trouble. Big trouble.
Russ: Paper clip guys would be doing better.
John: I know. They would.
Russ: But they just don't carry the same function.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1873 the U.S. Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any obscene, lewd, or lascivious books through the mail.
Russ: Wow, okay.
John: Kind of censorship.
Russ: Yeah.
John: But how do you define obscene, lewd, and lascivious?
Russ: That's right.
John: Okay. In 1912 This Week in Business History, a guy named Albert Berry makes the first parachute jump from an airplane. I mean, that takes a lot of nerve.
Russ: From an airplane. Yeah, that's pretty big, man.
John: What he did is he was sitting on a trapeze underneath the airplane, and the parachute itself was up in a canister tied to his harness so when he jumped off the trapeze it pulled the parachute out of the canister underneath the airplane.
Russ: Whoa.
John: It was a 1,500 foot drop.
Russ: Cool.
John: My goodness. Okay. 1923, This Week in Business History, Time magazine debuts.
Russ: Wow, they've done pretty well.
John: Uh, not recently.
Russ: Really? So they're in trouble now?
John: Yeah. Well, see, Time magazine made the decision a couple years ago not to report the news-not to cover the news-because you can get it off the internet and get it anywhere.
Russ: Right.
John: They decided to shift their mission from covering the news in an objective way to offering analysis on what was going on.
Russ: And that was a real conscious decision?
John: Yeah, right. It didn't work out very well. A lot of newspapers are doing it now, which is why-they won't admit it-credibility problems are killing this business.
Russ: All right.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1924 "Happy Birthday to You" was published by Clayton Summy.
Russ: Wow.
John: All right. This Week in Business History, in 1933 New York City premieres the movie King Kong.
Russ: Ooh.
John: Yeah.
Russ: I bet it was pretty big in New York City. I mean, there he is climbing the Empire State Building.
John: I know. People were probably running out on the streets in horror.
Russ: Probably so.
John: It was a very well done movie, technologically speaking, for its time.
Russ: Boy, I'll say so.
John: So a good movie. Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1935 nylon was discovered by Dr. Wallace H. Carothers.
Russ: Wow. Big invention, man.
John: That's right. Very important in World War II because they were making a lot of things out of silk, like stockings and parachutes and stuff like that, so they decided to make them out of other things because the Japanese had the Far East under their thumb and-you know-
Russ: All the silk.
John: -that's where all the silk came from.
Russ: Cool. All right.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1940 Gone With the Wind wins 8 Oscars.
Russ: It's Oscar time, so-
John: Oscar time. Yeah, we just had Oscar time.
Russ: Yeah, so wow. Gone With the Wind.
John: Gone With the Wind. Right. Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1942 birthday of Lou Reed, a Freeport, New York, rock vocalist "Take a Walk on the Wild Side."
[Music: "Take a Walk on the Wild Side"]
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1948 birthday of Billy Gibbons, a rock guitarist with ZZ Top.
Russ: So Billy Gibbons is now 60 years old.
John: Wow.
[Music: "Heard it on the X"]
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1960 the first Playboy Club featuring bunnies-these weren't actual bunnies; these were women that had little rabbit ears denoting the trademark of the Playboy empire-
Russ: That's right. Did you ever go into a Playboy Club?
John: I went into a Playboy Club. Actually, I stayed at the Playboy Hotel in Geneva, Wisconsin.
Russ: My goodness.
John: Yeah.
Russ: Well, what was that like? I bet our listeners would like to know.
John: It was interesting. Yeah, it was interesting.
Russ: Interesting. All right.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1961 John F. Kennedy names Henry Kissinger a special advisor.
Russ: I always thought Kissinger was sided up with the Republican guy. Interesting.
John: He went where the power was.
Russ: Okay.
John: You know, he said power was the most powerful-
Russ: Aphrodisiac. Yeah, I remember that. Okay.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1962 Kmart opens.
Russ: Oh, the Blue Light Special, right?
John: The Blue Light Special. Yeah, that's right.
Russ: Okay.
John: Yeah. Okay.
Russ: And today they're part of Sears, right?
John: But they're kind of passé.
Russ: Yeah, they are.
John: No. Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1965 one of my favorite songs, "My Girl," recorded by The Temptations, reaches number 1on the charts.
[Music: "My Girl"]
John: David Ruffin was my favorite lead singer.
Russ: Yeah?
John: But he had a lot of drug problems and burned out rather quickly.
Russ: Yeah.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1966 Buffalo Springfield formed. This is Stephen Stills, Neal Young, and all that, and they had a very famous song...
[Music: "For What It's Worth"]
John: This Week in Business History, singers Johnny Cash and June Carter get married in a fever.
[Music: "Fever"]
John: Okay. About 11 years later, This Week in Business History, Mr. Ed, the talking horse, dies.
Russ: Oh, how sad.
John: I know, but he really wasn't a talking horse, okay? I mean-
Russ: But the show was about-
John: He portrayed a horse that could talk.
Russ: Right.
John: And what they'd do is they would feed him something so his lips would move.
Russ: Yeah. Were you a fan of Mr. Ed?
John: I kind of liked Mr. Ed-you know-he was okay. But he was not a talking horse.
Russ: Okay.
John: Okay. We need to disabuse our audience of that notion.
Russ: That's right.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1981 Walter Cronkite mercifully signs off as anchorman of the CBS Evening News.
Russ: So you didn't like Uncle Walter?
John: I liked him at first, but I did not like what he did in the Vietnam reporting. He was totally way off base there.
Russ: Was he? You think so?
John: Yeah.
Russ: Interesting.
John: Right. Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1982 the birth of Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh Steelers star quarterback who helped them win their 6th Super Bowl.
Russ: Wow.
John: Only pro football team to win 6 Super Bowls, and Ben was quarterback of 2 of their Super Bowl wins.
Russ: Wow. So that means he's 27 now.
John: He's 27.
Russ: What a guy.
John: And he's still got some years left in him.
Russ: Yes he does. All right.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, in 1997 a law is passed where smokers must prove they are over 18 in order to purchase cigarettes.
Russ: Wow. Interesting.
John: Okay. This Week in Business History, last but not least, gay rights are on the radar here as Oncale versus Sundowner Offshore Services-this was a Supreme Court decision that ruled that federal laws banning on the job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.
Russ: Oh yeah. I remember that came up, so wow.
John: That's right.
Russ: So that wraps up the history lesson?
John: Yeah, that does wrap it up. That is a wrap.
Russ: Well, thank you. Fantastic, uh, lesson once again.
John: All right. Okay. Glad I could oblige.
Russ: All right. And that brings us to our vocabulary lesson, Navigating Business Jargon, where we look at all the new phrases, the new acronyms, the new techno-speak, and present them to our audience so that they can benefit.
John: Yeah, and we discuss them, too.
Russ: We discuss them as well, yeah.
John: And we discuss your arrogant posture when you give me the word.
Russ: No, it's just part of the agreement here.
John: Part of your natural being, I guess.
Russ: I get to say the word and he uses his vast vocabulary to mash words together to come up with what he thinks is the meaning. Here's todays word is photox.
John: Photox.
Russ: Yes.
John: Photox. Well, there's Botox, which is something you put into your skin to look younger.
Russ: Yes.
John: Photox is a photograph that you take that makes you look younger.
Russ: I think we've got a winner. It's improving the appearance of one's face in a digital image using graphic software-
John: Yeah, Photox.
Russ: -primarily using Photoshop. Okay. And that brings us to Dumbest Moments. Do you have one to share with us?
John: This is a result of a dumb moment.
Russ: Okay.
John: Okay. The dumb moment, of course, was Al Gore getting on his high horse and saying the world's coming to an end because of climate.
Russ: Right.
John: First it was global cooling, then it was-
Russ: It was global warming, then it was global changing.
John: Now it's climate change. But anyway, it's gotten to the point now where nobody really knows what the heck's going on, and he has had to delete a slide out of his presentation.
Russ: Oh no.
John: Yeah, it's a slide depicting natural disasters over a period of time, and for a while, just by coincidence, he was able to-
Russ: It looked good.
John: -tie the number of natural disasters with some perceived climate temperature thing going on-
Russ: And it doesn't work anymore?
John: -but it doesn't work anymore, so he had to take the slide out.
Russ: What an inconvenient truth.
John: You know, it was an inconvenient slide. That's what it is.
Russ: All right. But before we wrap up this morning's School of Business, we've got to bring in the guy that does the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook.
John: That's right, and his name is Greg Price.
Russ: That's right.
John: And here he is.
Russ and John: A one and a two and a...
[PKF Texas – The Entrepreneurs Playbook]
Russ: And that wraps up the School of Business. Stay tuned to hear about the TCU Texas Youth Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. And you're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.
