Russ: Good morning, this is The BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And this is that show that champions entrepreneurship and innovation and the capitalistic system that stimulates and motivates them.

John: These are the creators these are the athletes, I call them the gallant knights.

Russ: Absolutely, no question about it, and we've got a cool show teed up today but before we get into that we've got a new kind of partner here on the show.

John: A partner, as in sponsor.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: I love those people.

Russ: Well, no kidding. And this one is David Taylor Cadillac.

John: Well what do you know.

Russ: Pretty cool, huh?

John: I know, love that CTS model they got out.

Russ: Oh Man.

John: And their Escalade is a chart-topper and chart-buster, as far as sales are concerned, and I think it only serves us properly, being the Cadillac of business talk...

Russ: Absolutely.

John: ...on the radio, to attract the actual Cadillac's themselves.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: There you go.

Russ: Well I've always been a huge Cadillac fan.

John: I know you have, I know. You've talked many times, about Cadillac's.

Russ: That's right. I still remember the first one I ever rode in in 1956, I believe, it was air conditioned and it was real cool, but the people at David Taylor Cadillac wanted to get in front of our audience, the entrepreneurs. I'm flattered and the audience should be as well.

John: Hey, I'm very flattered.

Russ: All right, and here's our line up for this morning: the topic is energy, and man oh man is energy ever important.

John: You think so?

Russ: I think it's absolutely important. And last week the very active Rice Alliance held their 7th annual Energy and Clean Technology Venture Forum and The BusinessMakers was there, so we're going to share bits and pieces of that in our flashback this morning, the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback, because of the 48 participants, John and I picked out 4 of our favorites, that would be the elevator pitches from this forum. Then we're going to share all 48 elevator pitches from the Rice Alliance annual Energy and Clean Technology Venture Forum as WebXtras at thebusinessmakers.com.

John: I think we should get the president of the Otis Elevator Company to give us his elevator pitch.

Russ: We need to get him on here sometime, that's a great idea.

John: Why don't we do that.

Russ: Let's do that, we need to track him down.

John: Let's get our staff on that right away. Hop to it will ya.

Russ: Go, staff, go. All right, and for our featured guest segment we're going to venture into the energy world that sort of keeps us afloat these days, that's the fossil fuel world, because Bill Shrom, the CEO of Geotrace, that is the company that is successfully using science and mathematics to crack the code of oil and gas reservoirs. This company is so cool, it's a subsurface imaging company that works for those that are out there producing oil and gas and he reevaluates, I stress reevaluates, a variety of data representing what's below the surface. In other words, Geotrace, they don't go out there and drill holes, they don't go do seismic, they don't build pipelines, what they do is take existing producers, look at all of their data and find, actually, more fuel for them. It's really cool.

John: How do they do it? Do they use a divining rod?

Russ: They use something over there, it's really pretty unique, it's cool, Bill Shrom, CEO of Geotrace.

John: There you go.

Russ: But first... that's right, it's time for The BusinessMakers' School of Business-because it's late-September and we really must get back to school.

John: That's right. It's time to get back to school, that's for sure, and it's almost fall. Fall is right around the corner, it may have already occurred for all I know, but fall is here which means the end of hurricane season can't be too far behind.

Russ: That's right.

John: But the thing is about the School of Business is it's just a short version, this is a short course; for those out there who really want to get the full monte, the full information package, just go online to thebusinessmakers.com and you get the full curriculum.

Russ: This is kind of like a Cliff's Notes version right?

John: Yeah, you could say that.

Russ: Not only are there...

John: With all apologies to the Cliff's Notes manufacturing company, of course.

Russ: Not only are there more stories online, but there's longer versions of the stories we're going to share here.

John: And there's more jokes. (laughs)

Russ: That's right, and we kick off...

John: More humor.

Russ: And we kick off the School of Business with the quote of the day, and I'm having to go back to Mr. Mark Twain.

John: My goodness that is three times in a row, whats a matter with you.

Russ: He's just too good, you'll appreciate it. Here it goes: "A banker is a fella who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

John: You know, I've heard that very often, that people who really need the money, when they go to the bank to get the loan, they don't get approved. It's only when you don't really need the money that you get the loan.

Russ: Well, absolutely, and for our audience, that's the reason why these angel investors, these investment bankers, these venture capitalists, really come along and sort of take the risk with you even if it's raining. (laughs)

John: That's right.

Russ: And that brings us to this week in business history.

John: All right, this week in business history, in 1881, William Edward Boeing, the guy that ultimately started the Boeing Aircraft Corporation, was born in Detroit, Michigan. Another one of these college dropouts, how many of those people have we had?

Russ: Yeah.

John: Okay and made a small fortune in timber and later on he became fascinated by aviation and studied airplane design and took off from there. No pun intended.

Russ: It's interesting that you bring up the dropout thing, you know sometimes it seems like there's a formula developing here, that if you want to be a successful entrepreneur drop out.

John: Yeah, you got to go to college but then you drop out.

Russ: Yeah right.

John: All right, this week in business history, in 1902, Levi Strauss, the inventor of denim jeans, died.

Russ: Wow! Died in 1902?

John: I know, you have a classic story-he was a Jewish immigrant, came over here and got into various occupations, but the gold rush, this California gold rush, attracted him and he was making these tents out of this really tough material, the tents weren't moving, but he thought, "Hey, these gold miners need some heavy duty clothing." And he thought, so he started making pants out of the stuff he was making the tents with-look what happened.

Russ: Wow, I got a pair on right now.

John: I know they look nice.

Russ: I can't imagine a tent made out of this.

John: I know, well actually he started going into other materials. This week in business history, in 1913, the guy that invented the diesel engine, Rudolph Diesel, committed suicide for no reason whatsoever that we know about, didn't leave a suicide not.

Russ: Wow.

John: He died at age 55. He must have fallen in love with somebody and that person spurned him later on, why else would a successful guy-

Russ: I think you got something-that's what's cool about The BusinessMakers' School of Business, if we don't know we can usually figure out what happened.

John: We hypothesize from the hip. (laughs) This week in business history, in 1922, two researchers at the US Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory were conducting high frequency radio tests across the river from Washington DC and Dr. Albert Hoight and Leo Clifford Young, and they eventually, because of this research, discovered radar.

Russ: Wow.

John: Because the ships were getting in front of their radio waves and it was showing up on their little oscilloscopes or whatever they were using.

Russ: First they were probably saying, "Hey, get those ships out of the way, you're messing everything up!" (laughs) Then somebody went, "Wait a minute."

John: "Wait a minute we got something here." Look how many lives have been saved because of it.

Russ: Oh man, huge.

John: You've got weather radar as a result of it. This week in business history, in 1942, Glenn Miller and his orchestra performed the last time before Miller enters the US Army. Later, he died-he was traveling in bad weather, entertaining US troops in France and his plane disappeared and they never found the body.

Russ: Until a couple of years after this and man you and I are both big...

John: I think he was trying to get away from his wife.

Russ: (laughs) There you go again, hypothesizing. Maybe he did.

[Music: "In The Mood"]

John: Moving on to 1954, this week in business history, it's the nation-wide debut of "Tonight," which later becomes "The Tonight Show" and it was hosted by Steve Allen, and he was on that show for a couple years and then Jack Parr took it over, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, who-I think that show needs reworked. Now you've got Jay Leno with a show on an hour before and it's just like "The Tonight Show," it's Jay Leno an hour early.

Russ: To me "The Tonight Show" was Johnny Carson.

John: Yea right, it has been and always will be.

[Music: "Tonight Show Theme"]

John: This week in business history, in 1955, "The Honeymooners" debuts, it ended up being a comedy series staring Jackie Gleason and Art Carney and...

Russ: It was hilarious. It was great.

John: The problem is it got ripped off by Hanna Barberra because they did "The Flintstones," which is a blatant rip off of "The Honeymooners."

Russ: I wonder if Jackie Gleason got any money for that.

John: He should have.

Russ: Yea he should have.

John: It's too late now because he's dead.

Russ: Do you think he was dead before they came out?

John: No no no, he died. He did all those Smokey and the Bandit movies, remember those?

Russ: Oh that's right. But this didn't have anything to do with him wanting to leave his wife, did it?

John: No, but I think he eventually did though, he went Hollywood and started drinking a lot. You know where that ends up. OK, this week in business history, in 1960, the first Kennedy/Nixon debates, John F. Kennedy was running against Richard M. Nixon and he was then Vice President of the United States. They met in a Chicago Studio.

Russ: It's the first television debate right?

John: Yea right. And people who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon won and the people who watched it on TV thought Kennedy won because Kennedy looked better.

Russ: That's why we do a radio show.

John: He was the first media-savvy president that we ever had, and it all went downhill from there.

Russ: That's right.

John: This week in business history, September 1968, the Beatles' song-this was a good song, I like this song, "Hey Jude" hits the top of the charts.

[Music: "Hey Jude"]

Russ: What was the song about, do you know?

John: It was written about the same time that John Lennon was divorcing his wife, Cynthia.

Russ: Man, the "leaving the wife" thing has been the theme throughout today.

John: The song started out to be "Hey Jules," which was meant to console John and Cynthia's son, Julian, who later became a rock star of note...

Russ: Sort of.

John: ...Julian Lennon.

Russ: But he probably wouldn't have been if he wasn't known as John Lennon's son.

John: That's right. The tough part about this whole story is John Lennon ended up marrying Yoko Ono.

Russ: Who he really should have left, right? (laughs)

John: Yeah, he should have never met her in the first place.

Russ: Messed everything up.

John: She broke up the Beatles. Yea right. This week in business history, in 1971, Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" hits number one, that's a great tune. Actually, it was the B-side to the single "Reason to Believe," which is another great song.

[Music: "Maggie May"]

Russ: It was late-September and he really had to get back to school, making a living playing pool with his daddy's cue. (laughs)

John: There you go, all right. This week in business history, in 1986, Congress introduces a legislation to lead the US Congress into passing the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was part of the second round of the Reagan tax cuts. Now, unbeknownst to Regan, this caused one of the biggest disasters; this, actually, induced the savings and loan crisis because what it did, this removed the passive loss provision tax break for real estate investing. If they would have said, "From this day forward, this law is not going to...

Russ: Right, you take these loses.

John: You can't do real estate investing for tax purposes." But what they did is they went retroactive-I knew a guy named Bill Seatman who ran the Resolution Trust Corporation and he pleaded with Dan Rostenkowski in closed session, when the Senate was evaluating this tax bill, to not make this bill retroactive, it would wreck the economy. A lot of people went broke because of this. It was not one of Reagan's shining hours, I'll tell you that. Here we go, we're moving right along here. This week in business history, 1990, after years of deriding Democrats as "tax and spend liberals," President George Bush announces his own tax hike to the tune of $134 billion over five years. Now when he was at the Republican nominating convention he said, "These guys are going to pressing me to raise our taxes for this reason, that reason or the other reason. I will tell them once as I will tell them a 100 times, read my lips, no new taxes."

Russ: Until September of 1990.

John: That was back in the days when a presidential candidate or a president, if he got caught in a lie, that would kill his chances for success; those days are gone.

Russ: It doesn't matter if...

John: It doesn't matter if they lie or not it's just their image out there.

Russ: Lying is OK.

John: Lying is okay. This week in business history, in 2007, Guy Kawasaki, the founder of garage.com, is a guest on The BusinessMakers' Show talking about his new book, "The Art of the Start."

Russ: It was a good interview man.

John: It was a great interview. And in this week in business history, in 2008, Dana Johnson, the economist with Comerica Bank, appears on the show and talks about all the signs that indicate the economy is beginning to look good.

Russ: (laughs) Within a week the market had dropped about 700 points or something, right after Dana was on the show.

John: That's why one of my favorite quotes is from a movie mogul, Samuel Golden, that says, "Nobody knows anything." Proof positive of that is look at ESPN and all the prognostications they make about who is going to win the football game, they hardly ever get it right.

Russ: (laughs) That's right, that's because lying is okay now.

John: That's right, who cares.

Russ: Alright, and that wraps up our history lesson?

John: I think I did a pretty good job.

Russ: Yeah, great job.

John: If I must say so myself.

Russ: Yeah, you did a pretty good job. And for those listening on the radio, be sure to go to thebusinessmakers.com to hear even more.

John: And get the full course load, without the homework.

Russ: There you go. Alright and that brings us to navigating business jargon, this is our vocabulary lesson where we go out and find new words, new acronyms, new techno-speak and bring them in here.

John: It's an exhaustive search.

Russ: It is, it's unbelievable. People all over the planet checking around.

John: We have come up with 225 new words, acronyms, and whatever you want to call them.

Russ: That's right. And it's exciting when we come to this part of the show.

John: I've got chills man.

Russ: And I do too.

John: The hair is standing up on my legs.

Russ: Well, it should be, the pressures on you because the way we do this, it's presented as a contest where I get to go out and select the word.

John: I know, or make it up. (laughs)

Russ: I can, that's legal as well.

John: Yea who is going to stop us.

Russ: Then I come in here and I say the word and John does his best to guess the meaning.

John: Because I do not know what the word is yet.

Russ: If John gets it right we proclaim a winner right here.

John: It's great to be a winner.

Russ: Right, and if he doesn't he's just a loser.

John: I know, I hate being a loser.

Russ: Alright, no wagering please.

John: Void where prohibited by law.

Russ: This morning's word, this is interesting, it's kind of a hyphenated word.

John: A hyphen?

Russ: Yes, you ready?

John: Yeah.

Russ: "Put-pocketing."

John: Put-pocketing. Hmmm. Pick pocketing is when you take something out of someone's pocket without them knowing it, put-pocketing is when you put something in their pocket without them knowing it.

Russ: Ladies and gentlemen, hold your calls, we've got a winner.

John: There we go.

Russ: That was impressive.

John: That was impressive.

Russ: Now in fact, put-pocketing is a new form of marketing-when it gets to guerrilla marketing now, nobody does the standard thing anymore.

John: You put marketing message there without you even knowing the marketing message is there until you see it.

Russ: That's exactly right. It started off in London, in fact, the police had to get involved because this company hired a bunch of pick pockets because they knew they were real slick with getting into your pants.

John: Hey, they are slick.

Russ: Yeah, so they equipped them with a marketing message.

John: I know a lot of college students are pretty slick at getting into peoples' pants. (laughs) It's a family radio show, folks, we digress.

Russ: (laughs) All right, that brings us to dumbest moments in business history-do you have a dumb moment business story for us this morning?

John: Yeah, this is pretty cool, actually this comes from the Washington Post, Robert O'Hara Jr., Washington Post staff writer. I love the lead in this one, I'm going to read this verbatim: "The four drafty buildings had been fixtures of the Energy Department complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for more than half a century. They burned energy like 1950s sedans." (laughs)

Russ: So we got this picture of these building that were not energy efficient.

John: I know, right? "The buildings seemed like perfect candidates for a federal conservation retrofit program that relies on private contractors that receive a percentage of the money they save."

Russ: Ahhh okay.

John: Sounds logical, right? "A deal was struck in 2001. The contractor reworked lighting and heating systems, along other things, and began collecting payments." So far, so good. "The project was counted among the department's "green" successes.

Russ: A success story.

John: A success story as we now have it.

Russ: Saving all kinds of energy.

John: "Until auditors discovered that the buildings had been torn down several years ago, and the government had paid $850,000 for energy savings at facilities that no longer existed." The story goes on and on and on. And we want to turn our healthcare system over to these people.

Russ: Well if you think about it.

John: We want to turn our entire energy-cap and trade, come on.

Russ: (laughs) There's no better way to save money than to just take the buildings all the way down.

John: I know. Just think of how much energy they saved.

Russ: All right, before we wrap up this morning's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook.

John: And Greg Price, okay Greg.

Russ and John: A one and a two and a...

Greg: This is Greg Price with PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook. If you're not exploring social media options, or are just dipping your toe in the water, now is the time to make the move. While social media won't eliminate other forms of communication, it has changed the landscape of where, when and how we are communicating.

Erik Qualman author of the Socialnomics blog and book has created a video called the Social Media Revolution, with facts and figures about the rise of social media that will make you realize the power of communicating via social media networks. The video can easily be found on YouTube.com or via the Socialnomics website, Socialnomics.net.

How many of you are using social media for personal or professional reasons? If you're not, why the hesitation? Do you know where your employees and customers are online? If you don't, you could be missing valuable information.

To read and comment on the PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook, visit my blog, fromgregshead.com. PKF Texas – The Fit That's Right!

Russ: All right, that wraps up this morning's School of Business, stay tuned in for the Aflac BusinessMaker's Flashback where we revisit four real cool companies from the 7th annual Energy and Clean Technology Venture Forum.

John: There you go.

Russ: Then for our featured guest segment this morning I'm going to be able to talk to Bill Shrom, CEO of Geotrace, the company that is successfully using science and mathematics to find more energy in oil and gas reservoirs. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online and thebusinessmakers.com.