Russ: Good morning. This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com, and this is that show that focuses on innovators and entrepreneurs, the ones that bring value to our economy.
John: Yeah. You know, I've been talking about how these people in my estimation are the artists and the athletes and the gallant knights, but I've got another analogy.
Russ: All right. Can't wait.
John: These guys are the Marine Corps of the free enterprise system. I mean they're the ones that are fighting on the front line to preserve our way of life right now.
Russ: Without any help.
John: Without any – no government bailout. I mean the odds are stacked against a lotta these people 'cause their taxes are gonna go up, and there's a lotta – things are gonna increase financially the cost of these people doing business as a result of some of the stuff that you read about in the papers everyday.
Russ: That's – you're absolutely right. Okay, and for those of you that are listening to us on traditional radio, thank you very much. We like for you to be here. But just to be in full disclosure form –
John: Full disclosure.
Russ: There is more of this show on the Web.
John: That's right, especially the School of Business.
Russ: Absolutely.
John: Because what you're getting now on the radio, because of time constraints, you're getting an abridged – kinda like the classic comic book version.
Russ: That's right.
John: If you go on the Internet where we have the full coursework, it's like not only having the classic comic book version but the MAD Magazine version thrown in with it.
Russ: That's right. (Laughter)
John: So there's this expanded version of –
Russ: That's right. That's exactly right. That's right.
John: – total ludicrous of coursework.
Russ: That's right. And that's at thebusinessmakers.com.
John: What was it again?
Russ: Thebusinessmakers.com.
John: That's right. Every good thing bears repeating.
Russ: There you go.
John: Okay.
Russ: And not only that, but there's actually a transcribed version of the School of Business where you can –
John: That's right, if you're too lazy to listen to it –
Russ: Well, yeah, or –
John: – or if you're in your workstation and you don't want anybody to hear it and you forgot your headphones, you can just read it.
Russ: Or you could actually print it out and annotate parts that you really liked and that sort of thing, too.
John: Yeah, you can print it out. Yeah.
Russ: Yeah, you could. It's pretty cool.
John: It's amazing how you can print things out.
Russ: That's right. (Laughter) And put them back in paper.
John: Just put them back into –
Russ: Turn them into a newspaper and publish them every week and sell subscriptions and –
John: Hey, that's a good idea. Yeah.
Russ: – (Laughter) All right.
John: I think I'll do that thing. I think I'll get another one out this week.
Russ: There you go.
John: Okay.
Russ: And here's our lineup for this morning. Our topic is "Practical Energy Solutions," a favorite topic of ours here at the BusinessMakers Show and for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback, we're gonna roll back to February of 2008 when I got to interview Josh Wolfe, the cofounder and managing partner of New York-based venture capital firm, Lux Capital, and Josh is young and is known as a leader in the world in nanotechnology, but what we're gonna flash back to is his cool contrarian and refreshing perspective on energy. Good deal.
John: Right. I remember that.
Russ: And then for our featured guest segment, staying loyal to practical energy solutions, I'm gonna be talking with John Hofmeister, energy expert, former president of Shell Oil Company, former guest on the BusinessMakers Radio Show back in March of '08, but he's on today as founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy.
John: That's right. He tells it like it is. You may not agree with what he says, but he doesn't say things for political correctness. Right.
Russ: Not at all; not at all. (Laughter)
John: Right. No. Un-uh.
Russ: But first – that's right. It's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business, and this is not your business-as-usual school.
John: No, we transcended the business as usual, I would say, our first episode.
Russ: Yeah, I think we did.
John: Not of the show, but when we introduced the School of Business, and we've taken it several levels above, I think most would agree. Actually, nine out of ten entrepreneurs agree that we do a better job of covering of business curriculum and what people really need to know in business than your average run-of-the-mill B school.
Russ: There you go.
John: All right.
Russ: And we can –
John: Nine out of ten.
Russ: Nine out of ten, right. (Laughter) That's rather profound. I'm proud of that.
John: Yeah, and two out of three dentists agree. (Laughter)
Russ: That's right. All right. (Laughter) And we kick off the School of Business each Saturday morning with a quote of the day.
John: Quote of the day.
Russ: And I'm kinda staying with this guy, P. J. O'Rourke, which –
John: Oh, yeah, good guy.
Russ: How'd you like to follow him around and listen to what he says?
John: I know. We ought to get – yeah, we ought to have him come in on the show.
Russ: We should.
John: We should. Let's call him up.
Russ: We will.
John: All right. Okay.
Russ: Here's the quote, though, of today. "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
John: There you go. Yeah.
Russ: Yeah, exactly right.
John: That's exactly right. I used to say giving a politician a dollar was like giving a drink to an alcoholic.
Russ: That's right. That's right. Okay.
John: And they'll never stop.
Russ: Okay. That brings us to This Week in Business History. What happened during the second week in November in business history, John?
John: This week in business history, in 1633, the inventor of the thermostat, Cornelius Jacobson Drebbel, passed away. He was born in 1572 in Alkmaar, Holland, studied glasswork and grading, painting and even mapmaking. I mean this guy was a very eclectic type of individual.
Russ: He invented a thermostat back in that era?
John: I know. I know. The buoyant float was on top of the liquid and the float was connected to the rods and levers that controlled the oven's damper. It's a way to regulate the heat of an oven.
Russ: Oven.
John: Columbus discovered America in 1492, so this guy was born, you know, not that long after. Yeah.
Russ: Yeah. Interesting. Cool.
John: Amazing. Okay. Later on in 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, a German scientist, he discovered X-rays.
Russ: In 1895.
John: Yeah. Benefits a lot of fields, most of all medicine because before he came along, of course, he was –
Russ: Yeah, we just had to guess what was in there. Right? (Laughter)
John: Right. Uh-huh. And it also helped the retail industry because many shoe stores –
Russ: Oh, X-rays?
John: Yeah, many shoe stores in the '30s, '40s and '50s featured shoe-fitting fluoroscopes. They actually used X-rays to enable customers to see the bones in their feet.
Russ: (Laughter) They used them until people's feet started falling off –
John: I was gonna say their feet –
Russ: – from overexposure. (Laughter)
John: Yeah, amazing.
Russ: I do vaguely remember that. I don't know that if I ever saw one, but I remember my sister saying, "Remember the shoe store that used to let you stick your feet in this magic thing and you could look at your bones."
John: Okay. This week in business history, in 1904, this is unbelievable. Harvey Hubbell II patented the electric plug.
Russ: The electric plug.
John: Can you imagine where we would be without the electric plug?
Russ: Oh, it'd be hell.
John: I mean electricity first started in homes around in the 1800s and they were only wired for light, and he came up with a way with this invention to actually not have to screw stuff into the light socket to get it to work.
Russ: To get electricity.
John: Yeah, right.
Russ: Cool.
John: And he was granted the patent No. 774250 for his invention on November 8, 1904.
Russ: Well, thank goodness he did that, too.
John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1918, one of the biggest mistakes in world history, World War I, ends on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
Russ: Wow.
John: Now the problem with all that was the peace treaty that they forced the Germans to sign 'cause that eventually caused World War II.
Russ: Ignited World War II.
John: That's right. This week in business history, in 1927 – it's funny we just talked about someone from Holland. Here, the Holland Tunnel is officially opened.
Russ: Okay, but it's in New York.
John: It's in New York, right. It involved a U.S. president and governors of two states and hundreds of mayors were in the ceremonies. But 20,000 pedestrians actually walked through the tunnel on the first day. Oh, by the way, I understand you have an interesting little known anecdote that you've dug up in researching, helping me research all this.
Russ: Well, it's very cool because back in that era, you know, they didn't have nice working conditions and digging that tunnel –
John: Oh, yeah? Really?
Russ: – the whole time was kinda tough and, unfortunately, Mr. Holland passed away two days precisely before work crews actually finished and then the guy that succeeded him, Milton Freeman, also died soon after taking over, so the two guys that really built it died before it opened. It was quite an engineering feat because to dig it and to not keep all of that exhaust in the tunnel was what Mr. Holland did very well in his design.
John: Okay. This week in business history, in 1938, Typhoid Mary dies.
Russ: Typhoid Mary?
John: Yeah. Now this was a very suspicious type of woman. Her name was Mary Mallon and wherever she went people would catch the disease but she herself would not catch it, and so she was – hmm, yes, hmm. And she was a cook.
Russ: Oh, hmm.
John: Yeah, hmm. And not a very cleanly cook, not a very clean cook.
Russ: And typhoid was kind of hard to control back in those days.
John: Yeah, I know. They finally caught up with her and when they found her and they incarcerated her for the last 23 years of her life, the people stopped getting typhoid.
Russ: Typhoid. Wow. All they had to do was get her off the streets and everything was okay.
John: Get her off the street, and I wonder what she was putting in the food or I wonder what she was doing, you know. This week in business history, in 1940, one of the most infamous structural collapses occurred. The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge, also called Galloping Gertie, collapsed into a narrow section of the Puget Sound called Tacoma Narrows. What happens, when the wind would kick up the bridge would kind of flop up and down and go sideways and everything. Cars would fly off of it. It's like watching a cartoon, you know. You think it's – you expect to see Tom and Jerry fly off of that thing or something.
Russ: That must be why they called it Galloping Gertie, I guess.
John: That's – well, yeah, that's right.
Russ: Golly.
John: And I've seen films of that, and the problem was they say the roadway over the bridge was too narrow. That's why you see wide suspension bridges now.
Russ: Yeah. I heard that people before it collapsed, obviously, driving over it would kinda feel a little nauseous, too. I mean – yeah.
John: Oh, yeah. Well, you'd be pretty nauseous when you get flown off of a bridge in your car and you land in the water 100 feet below.
Russ: You bet.
John: Okay. This week in business history, in 1941, Tom Fogarty of Creedence Clearwater Revival is born.
[Music: "Fortunate Son"]
John: Then later, in 1945, Neil Young is born.
[Music: "Helpless"]
John: And in this week in business history, in 1946, Vincent Joseph Schaefer became the first person to seed clouds to make it rain.
[Music: "Let it Rain"]
John: This week in business history, in 1961, Brian Epstein saw the Beatles perform for the first time. He was at a lunch hour show in 1961 in some club in Liverpool and he arrived in his pinstriped suit. He was very impressed with what he saw.
Russ: And the rest is history, man.
John: The rest is history, yeah.
[Music: "Come Together"]
John: This week in business history, Rolling Stone Magazine publishes its first edition in San Francisco, this week in business history.
Russ: And my, oh, my, did that turn into like a successful publication.
John: Oh, very successful, right. This week in business history, in 1975, the largest Great Lakes freighter, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank. The whole crew perished. That is indeed a disaster.
Russ: Yeah, that's a disaster.
[Music: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."]
John: Okay. This week in business history, in 1992, a daredevil by the name of Jackie Vranken of Belgium, he sets a record for the highest speed ever attained on a rear wheel of a motorcycle.
Russ: That's what we do – talking about a wheelie here, right?
John: He did a wheelie.
Russ: And how fast was he going?
John: Almost 158 miles an hour. Did a wheelie on a Suzuki GSXR 1100 motorcycle. I hope there's nobody out there that wants to try to break this.
Russ: Break the record, yeah. We don't want to be responsible for it.
John: You may – I know you won't break the record, but there's another part of your body you might break, and we don't want it to happen 'cause we could be held liable.
Russ: That's right.
John: So we encourage you –
Russ: Just from telling this story.
John: And if you're not over the age of 21, please consult with your parents before you do this.
Russ: Yeah. (Laughter) And that's another example of a story here on the School of Business that you just don't get stuff like that in regular business school, do you?
John: And I think because of that – I think that's why we'll never be invited to be guest lecturers at a business school.
Russ: That's probably true. (Laughter) All right. Does that wrap up this morning's School of Business?
John: Hey, I – you know, all those funny-sounding names are like – I just can't believe I made it through it.
Russ: I know. I was gonna give you an A plus this morning. That was a good job.
John: Okay. Maybe I'll get an instant A for the word of the day.
Russ: Yeah, you might.
John: I might.
Russ: 'Cause that's where we are now.
John: I know. How's that for a segue?
Russ: Navigating business jargon, our vocabulary word.
John: That's right. We have a vocabulary lesson for you boys and girls.
Russ: That's right.
John: Yes. Mm-hmm.
Russ: And this is our way of bringing up new words that are surfacing on the street every day and –
John: Surfacing. They're just literally surfacing on the street.
Russ: On the street and some of them flying out of people's mouths.
John: I mean there's one. See, I'm looking out the window. There's one right there; there's a word.
Russ: That's right. (Laughter)
John: It's suddenly surfaced.
Russ: That's right.
John: Okay.
Russ: And the way that we do this is that I get to go out and select a word.
John: Or make up the word.
Russ: Or make up the word, and I'm not making this one up. This one's pretty cool. And then I say the word and then John, who does not know the word – right? You don't know the word.
John: I do not know the word.
Russ: Right. And he is to guess the meaning. No wagering, please.
John: Yeah, void where prohibited by law.
Russ: There you go. Are you ready?
John: I guess. Go ahead.
Russ: It's easy.
John: No, it's easy for you to say.
Russ: No, no. That's right. Viewbicle.
John: Viewbicle.
Russ: Yes.
John: That's a cubicle or a workstation where you have a nice view, okay, out the window.
Russ: Hold your calls, ladies and gentlemen. We've got a winner.
John: There we go. That was an easy one.
Russ: I told you it was easy.
John: That was easy.
Russ: Viewbicle. It's a pretty good word, though, isn't it?
John: Yeah.
Russ: You know, you look around your office and next time you can go up to some of the people that work over there for you and you can say, "Well, you shouldn't complain. You have a viewbicle." All right. And before we wrap up this morning's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneurs Playbook.
John: Here he is, Greg Price.
Russ: On the piano.
Russ and John: A one and a two and a –
Greg: This is Greg Price with PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook. Recently, I introduced you to the leadership concept of being a "Learner" as opposed to being viewed as a "Knower". As part of my leadership class we studied this concept for quite a while as many of us were in our mid 40s to mid 50s. As such, we are probably going to be in the workplace for a long time as the boomers start to retire in the next few years. This will put us in contact with lots of young, eager, and passionate, but inexperienced workers. The challenge is how to get them working with you at their optimal levels.
Here are some concepts for you to ponder as you challenge your own view of how others look at you as a leader:
- In order to learn, ignorance "not knowing" is the starting point; yet to admit that we don't know is a threat to our self-esteem and our public image.
- Our culture appreciates knowledge (either real or apparent) more than it does a willingness to learn.
- In order to create learning organizations, it's necessary to allow ignorant organizations
Finally, people trust leaders who are "LEARNERS", because they are confidence-based (vs. fear-based) and are authentic. Ask yourself the following question: "Do you love the truth more than you love your face?"
To read and comment on the PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook, visit my blog, fromgregshead.com. PKF Texas – The Fit That's Right!
Russ: And that wraps up this morning's School of Business. Stay tuned in for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback with Josh Wolfe, cofounder and managing partner of venture capital firm, Lux Capital, and hear Josh talk about a practical energy solution. Then that's gonna be followed by featured guest, John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Company and now founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.
