Russ: Good morning, this is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com. And just to be clear, we are not radio guys doin' a business show. No, no, we're business guys doin' a radio show.

John: We're on Show No. 228.

Russ: That's right, we're doin' all right, aren't we?

John: Well, I think we are, yeah.

Russ: And here's the lineup for this morning.

John: Yeah.

Russ: For our featured guest segment, we have serial entrepreneur, Peter Shankman. Our own Esther Steinfeld sits down with the Founder of The Geek Factory and he's also the Founder of Help a Reporter Out. He is quite the interview for sure and therefore, just to do justice to our own Esther, for our flashback this morning, we're gonna roll back to April of this year when Esther first showed up on The BusinessMakers Show after she founded NotAllCEOsareJerks.com.

John: Right.

Russ: That's when we discovered her. We knew, man she is –

John: Right.

Russ: - she's got the same DNA that we have.

John: That's right, boffo box office, too. Esther.

Russ: But Esther is also the personality with Katie Laird on The BusinessMakers Overtime Show.

John: That's right. Overtime, that's right.

Russ: A real happenin' thing that gets podcast every Wednesday. But first... That's right, it's time for The Business Makers School of Business and as we like to say here, if we don't teach it, you don't need it.

John: It's our thirst of knowledge that really makes this different.

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

John: The quote of the day.

Russ: And we're gonna dip back into Mr. Winston Churchill quotes.

John: We're gonna dip, dip.

Russ: Because he's just incredible at these things.

John: Yeah, he –

Russ: Here's the quote.

John: All right. Yeah, I'm, I'm ready for it.

Russ: All right.

John: Okay.

Russ: Play the game for more than you can afford to lose. Only then will you learn the game. The point is man, when you got that much on the line, you gotta get with it.

John: Yeah, I know that – well.

Russ: Which is the case of so –

John: Well, that is the prime motivator.

Russ: That's right.

John: Not to lose.

Russ: Which is the way that many of our guests on this show have played.

John: Have played, yes.

Russ: You bet.

John: Most of them have won.

Russ: That's right.

John: Right. Okay.

Russ: That brings us to this week in business history. What happened during this October week in business?

John: Okay, okay my friend. We're going back to 1797 this week in business history.

Russ: Okay.

John: And the first parachute jump that's been recorded, that people have really known about and okay. It was made by a gentleman named Andre Jacques Garnerin. He jumped from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet above Paris.

Russ: And did he survive?

John: Yes, he did.

Russ: All right, well that's good.

John: And he – I mean, you gotta –

Russ: It's a successful parachute jump.

John: Right and Garnerin was the first to design and test parachutes of slowing a man's fall from a high altitude.

Russ: Cool. Did he also invent the golden parachute?

John: No.

Russ: Okay. He didn't?

John: No, his were made of cloth.

Russ: Okay, okay. The golden ones came years later.

John: The golden ones, yeah, right.

Russ: Right.

John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1867, the U.S. formally takes possession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, about 2 cents an acre.

Russ: Good price.

John: Ah, not bad. Now, that was called "Seward's Folly," –

Russ: Yeah.

John: It took a gold rush later on, several years later –

Russ: And that turned Seward into a hero, right?

John: Yes, it turned him into hero, right, especially the people who found gold.

Russ: That's right.

John: All right, this week in business history, shock among the baseball fans everywhere –

Russ: Yeah.

John: In 1885, when the baseball salaries for professional baseball were set at an ungodly amount.

Russ: How much?

John: Between a - $1,000.00 to $2,000.00 a season. Now if you, you know –

Russ: [laughs] Now, that might be a lot.

John: - you know, you counted, accounting for inflation, that might be 200 times, 300 times that.

Russ: Yeah, it could be up there.

John: But still.

Russ: But it's still pretty low compared to what happens.

John: Yeah, yeah, right, okay.

Russ: But –

John: This week in business history in 1919, the Radio Corporation of America, also known as RCA, was created.

Russ: Wow. Yeah, they were the guys that had the dog with the tilted head.

John: They were looking for a trademark.

Russ: Yeah.

John: So to speak.

Russ: Yeah.

John: For the Victrola side of things.

Russ: Right, right.

John: And, they had his master's voice. They found this painting.

Russ: Okay.

John: Guy found this painting out in Europe, bought the rights to it, brought it back and –

Russ: Wow. That's the way the dog got into be the trademark emblem of RCA.

John: That's right. Uh huh.

Russ: Cool.

John: That's why it's good to know somebody like me, 'cause I know stuff like this.

Russ: [laughs] It is good.

John: I have an amazing amount of surface knowledge, among a great array of subjects, okay. All right, this week in business history in 1931, Tom Alva Edison, obviously one of the most prolific, prolific inventors in history –

Russ: Yeah?

John: He dies in West Orange, New Jersey at the age of 84.

Russ: Okay, 84 is pretty good, though.

John: And, right and a little known fact was – he was good friends with Henry Ford.

Russ: Oh really? Huh.

John: And Henry Ford was so admiring of Thomas Edison –

Russ: Yeah?

John: - Henry Ford actually felt, you might say secondary –

Russ: Wow, inferior to him? Wow, wow!

John: Inferior, yeah, to Thomas Edison because of the genius.

Russ: Right.

John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1926, singer Chuck Berry is born in San Jose, California. He learned guitar as a teenager, moved to St. Louis, where he played in night clubs. Had his first song, "Maybelline,"

[Music: "Maybelline"]

Russ: All, all great hits.

John: Great hits.

Russ: Emulated by all the rock n' roll stars after him, yeah.

John: Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

Russ: Wow, cool.

John: So, anyway. Good, good guy.

Russ: Yep.

John: Okay. This week in business history in 1964, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann reaches No. 1 on the charts.

[Music: "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"]

John: This week in business history in 1967 the Broadway musical "Hair" premiers on Broadway and it's making resurgence now.

Russ: Yeah, well what a, what a controversy it was at the time because of the nude scene.

John: 'Cause there was a n- nude scene in it, right.

Russ: Yeah, yeah and they just didn't do that then.

John: Right.

Russ: Now, it's like walkin' down the street, though.

John: Yeah, singin' doo wah diddy. Yeah.

Russ: [laughs] Doo wah diddy.

John: Diddy, right. This week in business history in 1973, one of the most overrated movies of all time, in my estimation, The Way We Were, starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford –

Russ: Okay, there you go.

John: Okay.

Russ: More surface knowledge there from you but that was, that was opinion surface knowledge right?

John: Well – well no, give you an example, okay?

Russ: Yeah, okay.

John: Robert Redford was so vain –

Russ: Yeah?

John: - okay, 'cause he played a Naval officer right at the beginning of the movie.

Russ: Yeah, right.

John: And back then, and as is now, if you're in the Navy, you've got very short hair.

Russ: That's right.

John: Okay, but in the movie, he refused to cut his hair because he, he thought it looked, made him look good. So you see him with a Naval cap on –

Russ: With lots of hair.

John: He's got hair, hair spilling out, it looked like – almost looks like Troy Polamalu of the Pittsburgh Steelers with his hair cascading back.

Russ: Sideburns, everything.

John: A good song came out of it.

[Music: "The Way We Were"]

John: All right, this week in business history in 1973, oil exports cut – and this really affected the economy big time. A few days later, the Arab oil producers went into an outright embargo that stretched for over a year, so.

Russ: Taught us a lesson, there, didn't they?

John: Yeah.

Russ: Man, don't depend on them, geeze.

John: Okay. This week in business history in 1982, automobile executive John DeLorean –

Russ: Right.

John: - is arrested in Los Angeles, California. He had a briefcase in a airport motel with about $24 million worth of cocaine and he's tryin' to save his auto company, which at first started out very successfully –

Russ: Yeah.

John: Man, that radical design, stainless steel, the gull-wing doors. Everybody went bananas over it.

Russ: Oh yeah.

John: 'Til they found out how much it cost.

Russ: Yeah. [laughs]

John: And then he needed money to resurrect his company, almost –

Russ: Yeah.

John: - 'cause it was, it was floundering.

Russ: Yeah, he was quite the playboy type guy, too, though wasn't he?

John: Oh, he had plastic surgery. He was a, he married a couple of young, young ladies, you know that looked, that weren't too hard to look at.

Russ: Yeah, he sorta got kicked out of Detroit, I think because he was famous, 'cause he, he invented or designed the GTO, right?

John: The GTO. Okay, this week in business history in 1997, one of the most prolific inventors in the history of the U.S. Patent Office, named Luther George Simijian, died on this week in business history.

Russ: Did he really?

John: He had 200 patents. He was born in Turkey, although he was Armenian descent and educated in the Middle East and France and moved to the U.S. when he was 16.

Russ: Yeah. Would we know of any of the things that he invented?

John: He invented the optical range estimation trainer, which is also known as flight simulator.

Russ: Okay, wow.

John: Okay. That's right. And he founded the company called Reflectone and even though the company's been bought several times over the years, it's now called CAE, U.S.A. – it's still concentrates on simulation and control technology.

Russ: Wow.

John: So, so that's one. Okay? He also has 20 patents on technologies usin' automated teller machines.

Russ: Wow! ATMs?

John: You ever use one of those?

Russ: Yeah. [laughs]

John: All right.

Russ: So, so he does play – and I've played Flight Simulator, too, on the computer.

John: Well, there ya go. All right.

Russ: All right and that brings us to navigating business jargon and this is our vocabulary lesson.

John: Hey, I'm on a roll on this baby.

Russ: I think you got three or four in a row?

John: Four – I got, I'm four, man.

Russ: Four? Four in a row?

John: That's right.

Russ: Well, that's right, I knew that. So, I dug a little deeper today. This is –

John: That's, you know, I've been getting more sleep before we do the show.

Russ: That helps you.

John: I know.

Russ: It helps you a lot.

John: I know.

Russ: These are words that are acronyms, technospeaks, new jargon words, and we do this in a contest format and I'm gonna say the word. And then John's gonna guess the meaning.

John: Yes. All right.

Russ: Twintern.

John: Twintern. Hmm. Turn. Twintern.

Russ: You want me to spell it?

John: Yeah.

Russ: T-W-I-N-T-E-R-N.

John: Okay. Tern is a bird, okay? And so a twintern is a couple of birds that have been, joined in holy, bird, birdom married. Matrimony or something and they, and they're, they're on their honeymoon called the...

Russ: The undefeated string is over.

John: Okay, all right.

Russ: It's over. You lost. You're a loser today.

John: Aaah!

Russ: Twintern is a combination of Twitter and intern –

John: Oh.

Russ: - and it's when a company hires an intern just to come in there and, and manage their Twitter activity.

John: Twintern?

Russ: Twintern, yep.

John: That, that's a stupid word.

Russ: Well, I'm sorry but that's used a lot these days. Twintern.

John: Yeah.

Russ: All right and that brings us to dumbest moments. Do you have a dumb moment for us this morning?

John: Yeah, this is a – NBC who ever in charge of show development –

Russ: Right.

John: - or scheduling –

Russ: Right, programming, yeah, yeah.

John: Or programming or whatever you wanna call it. There seems to be a problem with that new Jay Leno show.

Russ: Oh yeah?

John: It's kinda like a virus.

Russ: Is it?

John: Okay, now when they put the Jay Leno show on at 10:00 –

Russ: Right.

John: - on Eastern Standard time, they knew he was gonna track lower ratings than a normal show at that time.

Russ: Oh they did?

John: They went into that but they thought, "Hey, we're savin' money on the production cost, so it's not gonna make any difference."

Russ: Oh, compared to what used to be on at that time, which is a full production show?

John: Yeah, yeah like a sh- full production with actors and –

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: - and overpaid actors and underwritten scripts and all that.

Russ: Right.

John: And the problem is is his show is infecting the other shows.

Russ: All right.

John: This is the lead in to the, the evening news.

Russ: News.

John: And then Conan and then Jimmy Fallon.

Russ: Yeah.

John: And all the ratings are getting hurt.

Russ: I think, I think –

John: Plus, plus the shows leading up to that –

Russ: Yeah.

John: - are getting hurt. So this is a – Jay Leno's become this virus. Now the problem is Comcast wants to buy NBC. This could affect the purchase price for – and affect the shareholders of NBC/Universal.

Russ: Wow. Well, it would make it easier for Comcast to buy –

John: Yeah, it would, it would be favorable for the shareholders of Comcast.

Russ: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John: But if you sunk all your money into NBC when –

Russ: Yeah.

John: - GE bought it and then GE just made a, made a big success of it –

Russ: Yeah. Uh huh. Sheesh.

John: - when Jack Welch was there.

Russ: And all this is because of the Jay Leno show?

John: Right, yeah.

Russ: That's interesting.

John: All right.

Russ: All right and before we wrap up this morning's school of business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas entrepreneur's playbook.

John: And that is none other than Gregory Price.

Russ: On the piano.

Greg:This is Greg Price with PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook. What is your company's plan for taking advantage of opportunities in 2010? As we near the end of the year, have you scheduled an executive retreat to strategize with the key players in your company?

A retreat is an opportunity to get away from the office to focus on your business with your management team. Using tools like a force field analysis, waste reduction process or one page plan help identify your management team's ideas to improve the business. They also aid in creating an implementation plan for any new systems or processes.

Consider bringing in a facilitator to assist with structuring your discussions and stimulating new conversations. The facilitator can also serve as a third party to hold you and your management team accountable for the action items that stem from the retreat.

These meaningful conversations about the future of your company are a critical component of what will help your business continue to grow. You may download white papers about the tools mentioned at pkftexas.com/RTP.

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 but business. Be sure and stay tuned in for the AFLAC BusinessMakers Flashback where we roll back to April of this year. That was Episode No. 202, when we had Esther Steinfeld as our guest. That's Esther Steinfeld, the host of the BusinessMakers Overtime show. As a guest back then, she was the Founder and Author of, NotAllCEOsareJerks.com. And then for our featured guest segment, our own Esther Steinfeld interviews Peter Shankman, the Founder of The Geek Factory. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com.