Russ: Good morning. This is the BusinessMakers show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. And this is that show about the innovators. About the ones that most positively affect our lives. We're talking about the business builders.
John: And these are the people that take the risks. Much like athletes and artists do because there's no guarantee that anything's going to happen that is going to benefit these people or create a profit. They just do it on pluck and desire and I'd say a lot of street smarts.
Russ: You bet. And we probably ought to make this clear. It's not only about the person who has the idea. It's not only about the CEO. It's about those that follow him or her. There's a lot of risk takers beyond the top person.
John: Yeah, you can't do it all yourself. I mean, you're only as good as the people around you. I think that's right been proven time and time again on this show.
Russ: You bet. Absolutely. And here's our line up for this morning. First up for the AFLAC BusinessMakers flashback, we're going to row back to early 2007. February as a matter of fact, episode 141 when I got to spend face to face time with Steve Wozniak, founder of Apple. And believe me, his engineering personality comes through loud and clear in this segment. And then for our featured guest segments this morning, we're going to revisit specific pieces with three of our favourite guests from 2008. Fred Smith, founder, CEO and Chairman of FedEx. Lowry Mays, founder and former CEO of Clear Channel. And then Farouk Shami, founder and chairman of the board of Farouk Systems Group. But first... That's right. It's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business. And this is not your "business as usual school".
John: That's right. We don't have a marching band, we don't have football players, we don't have cheerleaders. But the information is so down to earth and so real, I don't see where any other business school can even approach the streetwise information that we -
Russ: That's right. They just can't compete.
John: So why should they?
Russ: That's right. They should just throw away the towel.
John: Plus the price is right. It's free.
Russ: That's right. It's a good deal.
John: It's a good deal.
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 morning's quote comes from Ernest Benn. He is the British publisher, writer and political publicist that was kind of with us in the first part of the 1900's.
John: He sounds like some pencil-necked geek that worked in the British Patent Office or something.
Russ: But I think you're going to like it because it epitomizes politicians. Here it is. "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedy."
John: Wow.
Russ: In my opinion, that's what they do.
John: I tell you, you know what that reminds me of? One of our sister publications is Portfolio magazine, it's in Conde Nast's magazine stable of titles. They have a cover story, I think in the last issue, on the downfall of Wall Street. And I think that quote personifies exactly what was going on.
Russ: The number of mistakes.
John: These weren't politicians though. These were people who were in their 20's and 30's thinking they knew what they were doing and they just kept passing the trouble on to other people. It's like musical chairs. You want to have a chair when the music stops.
Russ: That's right. Or you have to apply for one of those bailouts.
John: Chair bailout.
Russ: All right, that brings us to this week in business history. So John, what happened in this first week of the year in business history?
John: Well I guess a lot of people were kind of getting over their hangovers because this is not a very auspicious week. I mean some of the things that happened are important but some of the things were the bottom of the barrel. They would never make another week.
Russ: They're lucky that they did it then this week.
John: Yeah. January 3rd 1496. This week in business history—get this. Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine. I mean, come on. He wouldn't make it any other week. This week he makes it. He picked a good week to screw up. This week in business history, 1836, January 5th, Davy Crockett arrives in Texas just in time to get wiped out at the Alamo. I mean, come on. Actually, he was a congressman and then ran for re-election. Didn't get re-elected so he decided to go to Texas. And like other Texans at that time, they came in through Nagadocious and came down that big road, Camino Real, that tied everything together.
Russ: So he got here in 1836 this week?
John: And then later in March he left here. In not a very unviolent way, either. 1838, two years later, this week in business history, Samuel Moore, this is a big deal, made first public demonstration of the telegraph.
Russ: Well, I bet that would have been interesting to watch. I mean, people would have wondered, "Wait a minute. I don't know if I get it. This is too high tech."
John: I know, this is high tech. It'd be like twitter or something.
Russ: Right. It's the twitter of his era.
John: Okay. Later on, 1863 right in the middle of the Civil War, some guy patents roller skates. Okay? James Plimpton. So he patented roller skates in 1863 and he later went on to open up some of the earliest roller skating rinks in New York City, Newport Rhode Island.
Russ: Well, he had to have sort of a market for them to be used probably.
John: Yeah, he had to have a place for them to do it because they didn't have a lot of paved streets. It's hard to run those roller skates down there. Plus they had a lot of horses. Can you imagine going down the street in roller skates, dodging all the stuff the horses leave on the street? No thank you. Later on, 1888, this week in business history. I don't know where we'd be without this patented invention, the wax straw by Marvin Stone. He lived in Washington DC. Straws still with us today.
Russ: 1888. What'd that make it? About 120, 121 years old?
John: Something like that. Some of these things are still with us. Okay. January 3rd 1920, this week in business history. The Yankees purchased Babe Ruth from the Red Sox for $125,000. Promulgating the Curse of the Bambino.
Russ: That's right. But $125,000 was probably a lot of money back then.
John: It was. At least 20 times now what it is. Someone asked him why he made more money than the president. He said, "That's because I had a better year than he had." This was back during the Depression. All right. 1927 the Harlem Globetrotters played their first game in Hinckley Illinois.
Russ: I bet they won.
John: I bet they won too. 1956. This week in business history Elvis Presley records Heartbreak Hotel.
Russ: Oh man. That might be my favourite Elvis song.
John: I can empathise with this, with the words of that song.
Russ: Heartbreak Hotel?
John: You bet. 1964, this week in business history. Remember when LBJ held that dog up by the ears? But he did. He declared a war on poverty in 1964. And everybody thought it wasn't going to work. I thought it would never work but it did. I think we can declare victory.
Russ: We've won?
John: That's right. Because if you look at US Census Bureau statistics, you'll find an enormous amount of people who are at or below the poverty line. Own their own home. A big chunk of them own second homes. Some of them have swimming pools. I mean, come on.
Russ: So you can call it a success?
John: We won. I think we should declare victory.
Russ: Declare victory. Mission accomplished.
John: Mission accomplished. Bail out the banks. Okay. In 1966, this week in business history. The Beatles' We Can Work it out. That should be the theme song for 2009. We can work it out. Because of the bailouts.
Russ: We can work it work. We can bail it out.
John: Okay. This week in business history in 1971. Hey, how about this? The Globetrotters lose 100 to 99 to the New Jersey Reds, ending a 2495 game winning streak.
Russ: So wait a minute. 2495 game winning streak until 1971, they lost. Blew it.
John: 1977. Now this is something significant. Apple computers was incorporated in 1977. January 3rd.
Russ: Oh man. 32 years ago. Wow. Wow. Interesting success story there for sure.
John: Interesting. It's like saying Charlie Manson was mischievous.
Russ: It is kind of like that.
John: This week in business history. In 1979, on January 9th, Kmart pulled Steve Martin's "Let's get small" for being in bad taste.
Russ: It was an album, wasn't it?
John: Yeah.
Russ: And they thought it was in bad taste to be saying, "Let's get small."
John: Now you go in the store, there's a crack hose and painkillers or something. And worse. It gets worse.
Russ: That's right. And they don't pull them out anymore.
John: That's right. They don't pull that. They put them it in the end cap shelves. You got to see it when you walk in the place. This week in business history, 1980. President Carter, another dinger here, announces the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics.
Russ: Now that was pretty controversial.
John: It was.
Russ: What do you think of it? Should he have done it or not?
John: He should have sent our guys over there and then the day after the Olympics we should have bombed the hell out of Afghanistan. This week in business history, January 8th 1982. The Justice Department withdraws - this is unbelievable. I fell out of my chair when I saw this - anti-trust suit against IBM that all started back in 1950. No wonder businesses have a tough time of it. I mean...
Russ: They have to fight the government when they're successful.
John: The government's like this nagging, yippy little dog you see that nips at your ankles. We've got to swat it.
Russ: But I tell you, that anti-trust suit was more than a little nipping dog for a while too. I mean, I was an IBM'er during that period of time. It was just amazing what they put IBM through.
John: 1950. I mean...
Russ: It went on for 30 years.
John: Unbelievable. The government should be ashamed of itself for 90% of its actions and this is one of them.
Russ: That's right.
John: Okay. 1987. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts the first female artist, Aretha Franklin.
Russ: That's incredible.
John: You seen her lately?
Russ: Yeah, I have.
John: She does have a nice voice.
Russ: Yeah, she's incredible.
John: No, she has a great voice. 1998, Sonny Bono, hot-dogging it on the ski slope, dies at skiing. He's 62 years.
Russ: I've heard there's a lot more to those kind of accidents than we ever hear about.
John: Yeah, the famous people are the ones you hear about. The Kennedy...one of the Kennedy kids. Someone threw him a football when he was skiing...
Russ: That's right. Throwing the post pattern to catch it.
John: Yeah, he gets a post all right. A bark post. All right. 1999. This week in business history, former professional wrestler, Jesse Ventura's sworn in as governor of Minnesota. He was also an actor.
Russ: Yeah, he was.
John: Yeah. He was in that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger called Predator.
Russ: Well I think to be a wrestler you had to be an actor. And probably to be a governor, you probably have to be an actor too.
John: Yeah, he did some interesting things.
Russ: Yeah, he did.
John: This week in business history. January 9th 2007. This is 30 years after Apple was incorporated, Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, announces the iPhone.
Russ: And man oh man, did that hit the market and sort of changed that whole world. Whether you like it or not, it's had a huge impact.
John: Do you have one?
Russ: Not yet. But I probably will.
John: Well, you got to wait till all the bugs are out. It takes two or three years. And then by the time the bugs are out, you buy one then another revolutionary widget comes out.
Russ: But what an innovator, Steve Jobs. So that wraps up our history lesson for today.
John: It's about time.
Russ: All right. And that brings us to navigating business jargon. And this is that vocabulary lesson that we have here that we present as a contest where I get to come up with the word. And I just say the word. Okay, here it comes. It's going to be tough too.
John: I know it is.
Russ: The word is - it's a hyphenated word. Self-filtering. Self-filtering.
John: That's when you have a lot of ideas crawling around in the brain or something, a lot of things you want to talk about. But some people are gifted enough to know to filter out some of that stuff. Almost as an instinct so the things that...
Russ: Wrong. You're making it sound like it's a neat characteristic. But the definition for this self-filtering, I don't think really is neat. It is wilfully limiting the source of news one receives. And we can do this too easily these days. You know, if you're kind of a right winger, you can kind of listen to right wing conservative stuff all the time. If you're a left wing person...
John: Oh, so that's an individual who seeks the news.
Russ: Yes. But only seeks the kind of news that leans in the direction they do. And I think that's terrible. That brings us to dumbest moments in business history. Do you have a dumb moment to share with us this morning?
John: In recognition of the fact that we've had a couple of religious holidays and New Year, we want to get off on the right foot. We're not going to castigate anybody.
Russ: Oh, wow. Okay. After we just chewed out the whole industry.
John: I'd say there's going to be a whole panoply of dumb moments with the bailout.
Russ: Well, we'll probably have a whole new category.
John: I know. There's a whole wave of mortgages that are going to...one of the people who got refinanced. This is their second chance. They're defaulting on the second chance that they got. There's all kinds of things. And Portfolio magazine has that story on the fall of Wall Street, it's pretty bad.
Russ: So you're going to take it easy today because we've got to -
John: I think we should.
Russ: ...get ready for 2009.
John: In the spirit of the holidays and peace on earth, good will toward men. Let's let it go.
Russ: We'll let it go today. But we're not through yet because we still have that very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneurs Playbook to present. Let's bring in Greg and his piano.
Russ and John: Okay. Here we go. And a one and a two and a...
Greg: This is Greg Price with PKF Entrepreneurs Playbook. We read about it every day, we hear about it on the news. We're in the middle of an economic downturn. For many folks in the business world, this is their first time to weather the storm and they're scared about what the future may hold. So what conventional wisdom can we offer to those who don't know what to do? First, it's important to understand the nature of your business and what its daily cash requirements are. Make sure you've developed an effective cash flow budget that can be used for forecasting your future needs. If you don't know what your daily cash requirements are, you won't be able to effectively weather the storm.
Second, develop an operational and financial budget scenario that are realistic and provide for a wide range of spectrums for you to react to. This includes the development of worst case, moderate case or best case and projecting your business' operations.
And thirdly, while you may have an excellent relationship with your banker, it's always a good idea to meet other bankers because you don't want to go looking for a banker in a crisis. You want to have already established a relationship with somebody who knows your company in advance. To read and comment on the Entrepreneur's Playbook, visit my blog FromGregsHead.com. PKF Texas, the fit that's right.
Russ: Okay. That wraps up the School of Business. And you're listening to the BusinessMakers show, heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. And stay tuned for the AFLAC BusinessMaker's flashback where we go back with Steve Wozniak. And then our featured guest segment where we're featuring three powerhouses from 2009. Fred Smith of FedEx, Lowry Mays of Clear Channel and Farouk Shami of the Farouk Systems Group."
