Russ: Good morning. This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. And this is that show about the private sector going out there and making it happen.
John: That's right, Russ. They are out there making it happen. They're about the only ones who are making things happen I'd say for the positive good of the country.
Russ: All right. And here's our lineup for this morning. The topic is energy and we mean real energy, which of course means oil and gas. First up for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback we are going to revisit our interview with Bill Schrom, the CEO of Geotrace Technologies, the subsurvace imaging company that uses old data to help energy companies recover more oil and gas. And then for our featured guest segment, earlier this week I attended the cool PKF Texas networking event, Doing Business over Coffee. And there I had the opportunity to sit down with Samina Farid and Kemal Farid co-founders of Merrick Systems, the software and RFID company helping exploration companies with their business. But first... That's right. It's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business. And this is not your ordinary business as usual school.
John: I might add, however, that some people may not know, 'cause we haven't really talked about this, but what you're getting on the radio is an abridged version. It's a condensed version. It's almost you might say like the classic comic book version of the School of Business.
Russ: Okay.
John: If you want the full, unexpurgated version, then you go to the Web site, theBusinessMakers.com.
Russ: theBusinessMakers.com.
John: And you go look for the latest School of Business and you will get the full Monty.
Russ: Right. There you go. Just to add to it, this is not like the University of Phoenix, nor is this like the Harvard School of Business where they just do case study after case study.
John: Boring case studies, yeah.
Russ: Right. And this is not like the University of East Anglia.
John: No, no. We're - well, we do make -
Russ: That's not okay.
John: Well, we do make a few things up on the way. We're not making things up so the government can spend billions of dollars on what has turned out to be our generation's Piltdown hoax.
Russ: There you go.
John: We're talking about global warming, of course.
Russ: All right. There you go.
John: The global warming myth, we should say. All right. Let's go. Okay.
Russ: And we kick of the School of Business each Saturday morning with the Quote of the Day.
John: Quote of the day.
Russ: It's by Vic Gold, American journalist and author.
John: Vic Gold. I used to work with Vic.
Russ: Did you really?
John: Yeah, at Washingtonian Magazine.
Russ: My goodness.
John: He was a speechwriter and he was a good man. I think he passed away not too long ago.
Russ: Yeah, yeah.
John: But he and I worked on the staff of the Washingtonian Magazine.
Russ: That's amazing. Wasn't he a speechwriter for George HW Bush, I think?
John: Yeah.
Russ: I think he was. All right. Here's his quote, "The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced."
John: That's right. That is so like Vic.
Russ: Yeah?
John: He was a man of few words, but 5 of his words equaled 500 words of a normal humanoid.
Russ: Well, what I liked about that quote is people always say, "The squeaking wheel gets the grease," but that isn't always the truth.
John: Yeah, it isn't. Well, it's like I tell my staff sometimes, I say, "I don't want a bunch of yes people around me, but I don't want someone fighting me every step of the way.
Russ: That's right. Okay. Good advice.
John: Okay.
Russ: All right. And brings us to This Week in Business History. So what happened during this February week in business history?
John: Okay. This week in business history in 1841, the first continuous filibuster in US Senate history begins, and it lasted till March 11th. Now we all know that in the Constitution there's a provision for the Senate to slow down legislation.
Russ: Do we ever.
John: One of the ways is a filibuster. I mean, you have to recognize when a senator wants to speak, you have to let him speak. And you never know when that's gonna be a filibuster. Now that's when a filibuster was a real filibuster. Somebody got up there like Jimmy Stewart in Mister Smith Goes to Washington, and talked till cows came home. Now they just say, "Hey, if you do this, we're gonna filibuster," and that's it.
Russ: It becomes a threat, yeah.
John: It's a threat. And it's -
Russ: It's kinda like the Scott Brown threat now, man. And what's funny about it is every time a party sorta gets to the point where they can filibuster, the majority party always starts talking about, "We need to change this rule. This is ridiculous."
John: I know. The party in the minority never wants to change the rules.
Russ: That's right.
John: It's the party in the majority.
Russ: There you go.
John: This week in 1849, in New York City. James K. Polk becomes the first serving president of the United States to have his photograph taken.
Russ: Wow, 1849 for the photo.
John: Right, yeah. He had his photo taken when he was president.
Russ: Probably wasn't a digital photo.
John: It was not digital, no. But - okay. This week in business history in 1876, which is the same year as Custer's last stand, Alexander Graham Bell and another guy, Elisha Gray, apply separately for telephone patents. Now we all learned in junior high, that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. "Hey, Watson, come here." We've all heard that story. But they don't tell you anything other than that. And the other than that is that there was another person by the name of Elisha Gray who contested the patent with Alexander Graham Bell.
Russ: Well, meaning he thought he invented it. He said -
John: He thought he invented. And if you look into this thing, this is a very tumultuous episode in business history. And it so happens that Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent on a date that's very mysteriously right before -
Russ: Maybe like some backdating or something? Wow.
John: Yeah. He did some backdating and the diagram he used to illustrate the invention looks mysteriously like the one Elisah Gray put together. And this just goes to show you that there was malfeasance in the business world long before Bernie Madoff.
Russ: And Enron.
John: And Enron. This week in business history in 1878, would you believe that there's more telephone stuff? The first telephone exchange in San Francisco opens up with 18 phones.
Russ: Okay. Wow. So exactly two years after this contested patent on the telephone, San Francisco's opening up an exchange and 18 people are there. Wow, interesting.
John: Eighteen people. They found 18 people that could afford to get a telephone.
Russ: There you go. All right.
John: Okay. Later on in 1899, this week in business history, the US Congress begins using voting machines.
Russ: Wow. I wonder what those first ones looked like, man. They musta been mechanical.
John: I don't know. They were probably were mechanical with dials and gears and all that kinda stuff.
Russ: Yeah, cool.
John: Okay. This week in business history in 1919, the United Parcel Service forms. Two teenagers, Jim Casey, and 18-year-old Claude Ryan founded the American Messenger Company in Seattle Washington with $100.00 in debt. That was their seed money. The first delivery car was a Model-T. They merged with a competitor later on with Evert McCabe and formed Merchants Parcel Delivery. And later on, they changed the name to the current name when the new member was recruited, Charles Soderstrom. And he helped managed the fleet. Then it grew and grew and grew -
Russ: And then we had Michael Eskew on the show a couple years ago who is today CEO of UPS.
John: Yes, we did. And he drove to the interview in a Model-T Ford.
Russ: That's right. Absolutely.
John: Okay. This week in business history, in 1924, IBM Corporation is founded by Thomas Watson. Now imagine if you had any money to put in the stock market. Okay. In 1939, this week in business history, we mentioned this guy's name last week, Victor Fleming replaces George Cukor as director of the movie Gone with the Wind, although he took his money up front because he thought no one's gonna make money on a movie about the Civil War.
Russ: That's right.
John: This week in business history in 1941 is the birthday of Gene Pitney, a guy from Hartford, Connecticut. And his famous song is A Town without Pity.
Russ: What a song?
[Music: "A Town Without Pity"]
John: I gotta ask you Russ, what the heck is a town without pity?
Russ: I don't know.
John: How does town have pity?
Russ: I don't know.
John: Or how does it determine whether they have pity or not -?
Russ: It must be a city council thing, I guess.
John: It's a pretty pitiful thing.
Russ: Yeah, it is.
John: This week in business history in 1953, baseball star and pilot, Ted Williams is uninjured, thank goodness, as his plane is shot down in Korea.
Russ: Wow. So he was a pilot in the Air Force.
John: [Laughs] All right, this week in business history in 1954, the first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles, California.
Russ: Goodness gracious, man. Yeah, science fiction church, right?
John: Yeah, right, based on L Ron Hubbard's musings on the aliens coming to earth or something.
Russ: Wow. What if he's right, man?
John: Well, hey, I doubt if he is.
Russ: All right.
John: Okay. This week in business history in 1959, Fidel Castro named himself Cuba's premier after throwing Batista. And he's still alive. But he -
Russ: That's amazing, though.
John: Well, I'm just glad that Michael and Fredo Corleone got out of Cuba right after this happened and they didn't stick around like they could have and been throw in prison. He never woulda gotten The Godfather saga.
Russ: Yeah. We wouldn't have those good movies, right?
John: He had those great movies, right.
Russ: Yeah. Thank goodness.
John: Thank goodness for that. This week in business history in 1962, a bunch a kids named the Beach Boys introduced a new musical style with their hit Surfin' Safari.
[Music: "Surfin' Safari"]
John: The interesting about this is they were not surfers. They never surfed.
Russ: They still couldn't surf.
John: They still couldn't surf. They probably went to the beach every now and then to get tan.
Russ: Yeah.
John: This week in business history in 1963, Michael Jordan, NBA superstar of the Chicago Bulls is born.
Russ: Wow.
John: Okay. This week in business history in 1967, Aretha Franklin records Respect.
[Music: "Respect"]
Russ: What a hit.
John: Yeah, pretty good song. This week in business history in 1971, Richard Nixon installs a secret taping system in White House. Bit mistake there.
Russ: Mercy, mercy, wow.
John: He's not the only president to have that in there.
Russ: Is that right?
John: LBJ had a taping system and some people think JFK had one as well. As a matter of fact, they think Johnson kept the taping system and somewhat enhanced it.
Russ: Cool.
John: Okay. 1989, this week in business history, the Ayatollah Khomeini orders Muslims to murder satanic versus novelist Salman Rushdie.
Russ: Wow. That's a real critical review, isn't it?
John: I know. That's pretty bad. And Salman Rushdie did convert to Muslim, the Muslim faith.
Russ: He did?
John: And that didn't help him.
Russ: They still didn't believe him.
John: But I think they've rescinded the death sentence off of him I think.
Russ: Have they? Okay. Yeah.
John: This week in business history in 1990 - okay, we all know about Pierre.
Russ: Right.
John: They had to recall 160 million bottles of sparkling water after traces of benzene, a carcinogen, are found in some of the bottles. Now this is not the first time this so-called, quote, healthy, end quote, drinking water is found to be pretty nasty stuff.
Russ: Right, right.
John: Okay? 'Cause you remember I think it was in our Business History, we talked about - it might a been a year or two ago, Fiji Water had that slogan, "You oughta drink our water. At least it's not made in Cleveland," or something like that.
Russ: Right, right.
John: And then the Cleveland authorities tested the Fiji Water and found it had higher traces of arsenic than the Cleveland water did.
Russ: Right, right. Well, also, the environmentalists don't like the idea of taking water all the way from Fiji, bottling it up and shipping it over here.
John: I know.
Russ: That doesn't make a lotta sense.
John: Well, the environmentalists at one time wanted everyone to drink bottled water. Now they don't want you do t drink because of the plastics.
Russ: That's right. And then we had on the show this guy named Craig Zucker, from New York City who's the guy that takes tap water in Manhattan and bottles it up and calls it TAP'D NY.
John: Well -
Russ: It's a neat deal.
John: Funny you should bring that up because like 20 or 30 years ago, Consumer Reports did a blind taste test on water, and New York City tap water won the taste test and they had all these other bottled waters -
Russ: That's right.
John: So who knows? This week in business history in 2001, the first draft of the complete human genome is published in Nature Magazine.
Russ: Wow, yeah, man. There's still some unbelievable potential that we have in our science world by mapping the genome. Sheesh.
John: I know, right. Okay. This week in business history in 2005 - this is really unbelievable - YouTube, the popular Internet site in which videos may be shared and viewed by others gets launched in the US, 2005.
Russ: Wow. So it's just five years ago.
John: Five years ago.
Russ: And it's huge.
John: It's huge. I mean, the adoption rate of some of this Internet technology stuff -
Russ: Well, and it didn't hurt YouTube at all to be acquired by Google along the way. But man, oh man. What a success story. All right.
John: Yeah. I know.
Russ: Does that wrap up this morning's history lesson?
John: Hey, that's enough, man.
Russ: No. That was a great lesson.
John: This is - if you want the full version of this, go to the Web site. You'll be glad you did.
Russ: That's right. That's theBusinessMakers.com. All right. And that brings us to Navigating Business Jargon. This is our vocabulary lesson where we do our best to help our listeners stay up to date with the new words and phrases and technospeak and acronyms.
John: That's right. It's' a vocabulary lesson.
Russ: Absolutely. And the way it works is I go out and find a word or a phrase -
John: Yes, you do.
Russ: I say the word, and then John has to guess the meaning.
John: And I've been doing pretty good so far this year.
Russ: You have been. All right. Please, no wagering. And here's this morning's word. It's a two-word noun.
John: A two word - a person, place, or thing.
Russ: Right.
John: Okay.
Russ: E-mail apnea.
John: Okay. Apnea. That's a sleep deprivation term. Okay?
Russ: Right.
John: Okay. Apnea. Sleep apnea is when you stop breathing.
Russ: Right.
John: For a long period of time. So you can cause heart damage and all kinds of things .
Russ: Right.
John: Okay. So e-mail apnea is when you e-mail somebody and you don't get a reply.
Russ: Oh, you were getting so close.
John: Or, it could be that, or you're someone who just stops e-mailing people.
Russ: Oh. So close. No.
John: Okay.
Russ: You were really doing well, but you're a loser today. You got it wrong.
John: All right.
Russ: It's the unconscious and temporary suspension of regular breathing while checking and reading e-mail.
John: Oh.
Russ: So if you just watch people or watch yourself sometimes, you just kinda - I don't know what it is, but we just kinda go there and quit breathing.
John: Oh.
Russ: E-mail apnea.
John: All right.
Russ: And that brings you to Dumb Moments in Business. Do you have a story for us this morning, John?
John: Well, I listened to a lot of Obama's budget coming up, and I lost count of the dumb moments we could use for that. But instead, this is a real business item and this involves corporate spying.
Russ: Okay.
John: And, of course, all these companies we know are out there competing for a market share, and some of Proctor & Gamble's employees got a little overzealous with their competitive zeal.
Russ: Proctor & Gamble.
John: That's right. In October 2001, their CEO discovered that some of his gophers in the marketing department were investigating the hair products of a rival Unilever in a way that was - which is not recommended, you might say.
Russ: Okay. And what was that?
John: Well, the they were going through the garbage outside the company's Chicago offices.
Russ: Unilever's offices.
John: It's normally called dumpster diving.
Russ: Yes, it is.
John: But I've - in this little paragraph I'm reading, it's now called waste archeology.
Russ: [Laughs]
John: And this - a bunch of people were doing this waste archeology as part of a $3 million spying program that I guess the marketing department initiated the year before.
Russ: Wow. And they got busted or we wouldn't be talking about it.
John: That's right. They had to pay a fine of $10 million to settle the matter.
Russ: Oh, my goodness.
John: Three of these employees were fired, giving the garbage pickers a chance to spend some quality time in the tub testing the difference between Oil of Olay Moisture Body Cream and Nature's Breeze Body Wash. But it just goes to show there's a limit to what you can do.
Russ: Absolutely, man.
John: Dumpster diving outside of a company's -
Russ: Right, is not allowed. That's not cool. All right.
John: That's not cool.
Russ: Good story. All right. And before we wrap this morning's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas entrepreneur's playbook.
John: This guy gives entrepreneurship a good name.
Russ: Boy, no kidding.
John: Here he is, our own Greg Price.
Russ: On the piano.
Greg: This is Greg Price with PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook. How often do you use the Houston Business Journal Book of Lists as a resource for your business?
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The Book of Lists can be your connection to the key businesses, organizations and individuals in Houston poised to help you take your business to the next level.
To read and comment on the PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook, visit my blog, fromgregshead.com. And be sure to check out the new mobile ready website at PKF Texas.com - PKF Texas, The Fit That's Right!
Russ: Okay and that wraps up this weeks School of Business. Stay tuned in for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback featuring Geotrace Technologies, the company that uses old data to create updated subsurface image to help oil companies recover more oil and gas. And then for our featured guest segment we are featuring Samina Farid and Kemal Farid, the co-founders of Merrick Systems, the software and RFID company helping exploration companies with their business. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.
