Russ: Good morning. This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. That's T-H-E BusinessMakers.com and it's about people that make business happen.

John: That's right. These are the people who create the ideas, create the method of selling these ideas, these products and services, to people like you and me.

Russ: You bet. And I understand you got a big event coming up here, too, right?

John: Yeah, we do, Russ. It's Celebrate Enterprise. Actually, though, this event was inspired in part by this radio show we do.

Russ: All right, all right.

John: This is four days celebrating capitalism in downtown Houston at the -

Russ: All right.

John: - Wortham Center, House of Blues and The Tasting Room, which is out in the Galleria area.

Russ: Yep.

John: And we got some great events. Go to celebrateenterprise.com and that'll take you right to the program.

Russ: I'm looking forward to it, yeah, for sure.

John: Okay, you'll be there.

Russ: I will, for sure.

John: Okay.

Russ: All right. And here's what we're gonna do today. Ok, for this moring we are featuring appearal entrepreneurs. First up for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback we roll back to January of this year when our own Esther Steinfeld interviewed former medical salesman, Tommy Patterson, who had an idea for an improved men's undershirt and today is the founder and CEO of Tommy John. And then for our featured guest I am sitting down with Nate Alder, founder and CEO of Klymit, the cool company whose first product is a vest that can be filled with argon gas for very effective insulation. And I might add that you can go to thebusinessmakers.com and see a video version of the interview. But first... That's right, it's time for The BusinessMakers School of Business.

John: Ha ho!

Russ: And this is not your business as usual school, right?

John: Yeah, you're darn - you got that right. I'll tell ya.

Russ: I think so, too.

John: I know.

Russ: And we kick off the School of Business each Saturday morning with The Quote of the Day.

John: Quote of the Day, yes.

Russ: You bet. This comes from Bove's Theorem. He's kinda -

John: Bove's Theorem, yeah.

Russ: Yeah, he's kind of a competitor of Murphy's Law.

John: Or Occam's Razor.

Russ: There you go. All right.

John: Yeah, right. Okay.

Russ: Russ: And here it is. "The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches."

John: Yeah, right. That's uh, Parkinson's Law is kinda like that.

Russ: Kinda. Yeah, that's right.

John: Because time expands and contracts with the time you have available to get the job done or something like that.

Russ: Huh, oh yeah. I wonder if he's got an issue with those guys.

John: Well I don't know but it's so true.

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: No matter what deadline you set for something, you're gonna be rushed at the last minute.

Russ: You bet.

John: At least if you're me 'cause I,I do, you know -

Russ: That's right. [Laughter]

John: I tend to procrastinate a lot and that's why sometimes I don't like to talk about it 'til later.

Russ: [Laughter] All right and that brings us to This Week in Business History. What happened during this May week in business history?

John: Okay this week in business history in 1804 the Lewis and Clark Expedition begins.

Russ: Wow, the starting gun went off, right?

John: That's right, the starting of - these guys were hired by Thomas Jefferson -

Russ: Okay.

John: - to explore the Louisiana Purchase and also, hopefully find a Northwest Passage.

Russ: Right.

John: People back in those days were obsessed with this Northwest Passage, 'cause they didn't feel like sailing around the tip of South America -

Russ: Right, right.

John: - to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They thought there was some natural canal that would take 'em. Of course they were wrong but what they did find was, you know, quite amazing and -

Russ: That's right.

John: - very important. Yeah.

Russ: Cool.

John: This week in business history in 1817 Mississippi River Steamboat Service begins.

Russ: Wow.

John: All I can say is it's about time.

Russ: Yeah [Laughter] right, right.

John: When you think about it, that's quite an impressive invention, the steam engine.

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: Because before then it was like keel boats or -

Russ: Right.

John: - or sail. Or wind-dr - or you had to paddle with oars.

Russ: Right, right.

John: You know but -

Russ: And barges and that sort of thing could go okay downstream in the Mississippi, it was just that return trip that was hell. [Laughter]

John: Yeah, yeah the return trip was a problem. It was problematic.

Russ: Right.

John: Yes, okay. Especially during the rainy season.

Russ: You bet.

John: Okay, this week in business history in 1819 the first bicycles - they were called "Swift Walkers" back then -

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: - in the U.S. were introduced in New York City.

Russ: Swift Walkers. That's the ones that, that probably didn't even have, like, the pedals and the drive. You just kinda ran while you sat on this two big wheeled thing, yeah.

John: Yeah, something like that. You know you'd kind of run a little bit while you're b- where the bike was, you know -

Russ: Right.

John: - and then you'd stop running and hop on and coast.

Russ: Right.

John: You know, which -

Russ: They didn't have, like -

John: - is tough to do if you're goin' uphill, you know?

Russ: Right, right. And they didn't have like 21 speeds like they got today and suspension.

John: No, they, no they did not.

Russ: And all that stuff, right?

John: The did, no - they - no they didn't. Yeah.

Russ: Boy, bicycles these days are fancy, man. They're neat.

John: Okay, this week in business history 1846 the saxophone is patented by Antoine-Joseph Sax.

Russ: That is interesting that his name is Sax and Sax invented the saxophone. Sax pretty cool.

John: Right, it's a great instrument and -

Russ: Oh it is, yeah,.

John: -and we're gonna hear something from one of my favorite alto saxophonists.

Russ: Okay.

John: The late Paul Desmond.

John: This week in business history in 1860 at the Republican Convention in Chicago, the Republican Party finally nominates Abraham Lincoln for President.

Russ: Wow.

John: And it took a while for him to get that nomination.

Russ: Did it? Lotta competition?

John: Well because you had the southern states -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - were gummin' up the works 'cause they were - you know, they knew if Lincoln got nominated -

Russ: Ah!

John: - he would -

Russ: They were already - right.

John: - he was an anti-slavery -

Russ: Slavery guy, yeah. Wow.

John: - guy and they knew there was gonna be trouble, so. Not that it was any violence, it just took a lotta ballots to get him -

Russ: Right.

John: - to get him nominated.

Russ: Cool.

John: And he wasn't very popular for a while afterwards, then.

Russ: Okay.

John: This week in business history in 1874, Levi Strauss starts marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.

Russ: Wow.

John: You can buy a dozen of those things for 13 bucks.

Russ: Wow.

John: $13.50 as a matter of fact.

Russ: Wow, it's interesting to realize that copper rivets in denim pants was an extraordinary innovation at the time.

John: Right, right and these days I don't think they use copper. They use something that looks like copper, 'cause copper's pretty -

Russ: I mean, probably plastic. [Laughter] Right?

John: - copper, yeah, copper's pretty expensive these days.

Russ: Yeah. I wonder if Levi knew that it would ultimately head down the path of these designer jeans and all this tight-fittin' stuff.

John: I don't know. I don't think he had any inkling.

Russ: You don't? [Laughter]

John: Blue jeans started as dungarees for the -

Russ: Right. Worker guys. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John: - for worker guys in the gold rush in California.

Russ: There you go.

John: So I don't think they were designer oriented -

Russ: Right.

John: This week in business history in 1887 welding, okay, was - we now call it welding -

Russ: Right.

John: - but back then it was called the process of an apparatus for working metals by the direct application of electric current.

Russ: Ah!

John: Uh huh and it was patented by Nicholas de Benardos and Stanislav Olszewski of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Russ: So, some Russians patented welding in 1887?

John: Welding, right you know and a lot of - you don't hear of a lot of inventions coming out of the - coming out of Russia.

Russ: Yeah. That's right.

John: I mean, great novels and novelists -

Russ: Right, right.

John: - and music composers and dictators have come from Russia.

Russ: Right, yeah. A few good, a few good weapons, you know, but yeah.

John: A few good weapons, right, and you know, a failed, you know, political system.

Russ: Right.

John: But you don't hear of any, you know, inventions that make our lives better.

Russ: But welding is one. Wow.

John: But welding is one. Yeah.

Russ: Cool. All right.

John: This week in business history in 1891 George A. Hormel and Company introduces Spam.

Russ: Speaking of inventions that make our lives better, so to speak.

John: That's right. That's [Laughter] well, you know, if you're hungry, you'll eat anything.

Russ: Yeah, [Laughter] that's right.

John: And Spam, you know, was quite the dish.

Russ: Well, it was a staple there for a long time.

John: And my wife, you know, growing up in East Texas would have - her mother would make her Spam sandwiches.

Russ: Yeah. I wonder if old George Hormel realized at some point in life his product would be sort of the unofficial name of a process in email that's just despicable.

John: Despicable, right. This week in business history the surgical absorbent dressing was patented by Robert W. Johnson of New Brunswick.

Russ: Whoa.

John: Patented this thing and it was really a bandage.

Russ: Yeah.

John: I mean it was the precursor of the bandage. This is the initial bandage and that's what this guy used, Robert Johnson to start the company Johnson & Johnson.

Russ: And it was patented in what year?

John: 1897. Yes.

Russ: Wow, okay, so it's over - it's 113 years old, the bandage, yeah.

John: Hey man, it seems just like yesterday. Time flies.

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: Okay, speaking of time flying, in 1906 a patent was issued for a flying machine to Orville and Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio.

Russ: That's amazing that a patent was even sort of thought of and required for that.

John: Oh yeah. This week in business history in 1918 the Sedition Act of 1918 was passed by the U.S. Congress which made criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.

Russ: Wow. Isn't it sort of maybe making a comeback these days again?

John: Especially when you criticize liberals.

Russ: Yes. [Laughter]

John: If you criticize conservatives, you know, you don't have to -

Russ: You can get away with it.

John: - you don't have to get outta - not only do you get a get outta jail free card, you get a don't even have to go to jail free card.

Russ: [Laughter] Yes.

John: All right. This week in business history in 1927 Supreme Court ruled that bootleggers must pay income tax.

Russ: Which is interesting 'cause bootlegging was against the law at that time and -

John: Well it still is.

Russ: - so -yeah and somebody calculated and said, "Wow, you know we didn't stop 'em by making it against the law but boy we're missing out on lots of tax revenue." Right?

John: I know. A lot of bootlegging was going on back in those days because of the Prohibition, the Volstead Act, which has prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages -

Russ: Right.

John: - in the United States. So you had a lot of that going on and -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - and to this day you still have some of it going on but not quite that extent, okay.

Russ: Yeah, oh yeah.

John: This week in business history in 1929 the automatic electric stock quotation board was installed near a buttonwood tree in New York City.

Russ: Okay. Well, it looks like it was installed just in time to show the falling prices of the Depression.

John: I know, timing is everything.

Russ: Right.

John: This week in business history in 1933 - I thought this would've been patented a lot later but -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - the drive-in theater was patented by Richard M. Hollingshead of Riverton, New Jersey.

Russ: Wow.

John: The drive-in theater.

Russ: The drive-in theater.

John: Man, you know, Pittsburg - I grew up in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania -

Russ: Okay.

John: - it was like the number two place in the country for their drive-in theaters.

Russ: Was Pittsburg? Wow.

John: Pittsburg, yeah. And there's this whole -Route 51 which connects Pittsburg with Uniontown and then later Morgantown, West Virginia - goes south of Pittsburg -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - there's one stretch where there would be like eight or nine of those things.

Russ: Wow.

John: Yeah.

Russ: Did you spend some time in the drive-in theater?

John: Oh yes. Yes. I liked going to the drive-in theater.

Russ: I just wanted - I did too.

John: Did you ever drive away with the speaker -

Russ: [Laughter] Sure. All the time.

John: Yeah, okay.

Russ: All right.

John: This week in business history in 1954 Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan is bar mitzvah'd.

Russ: Wow. Can you imagine?

John: Coming of age.

Russ: Can you imagine Bob Dylan -

John: I can't imagine such a counter-culture guy -

Russ: I know!

John: - going through such a, you know -

Russ: I know. It would've been great to have had that on some sort of video to see Bob Dylan gets bar mitzvah'd.

John: Yeah, yeah, put it on, put in the Internet.

Russ: Right.

John: With a soundtrack.

[Music: "Like a Rolling Stone"]

John: This week in business history in 1959 - I didn't know about this 'til I read about it - Ford was actually contesting Chrysler to call its new car the Falcon and Ford actually won the battle.

Russ: Okay.

John: And so in 1959 when your car -

Russ: Ford wanted to call it the Falcon and Chrysler claimed to have some possession of that name.

John: Yeah, the name, right.

Russ: Okay, yeah. Wow. Interesting.

John: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah, right.

Russ: It wasn't necessarily a hot Ford, either.

John: No it was not. It was a popular car, though.

Russ: Yeah it was, no question. No question.

John: This week in business history in 1961 the song called "Mother In Law" which is really a really cool song.

[Music: "Mother in Law"]

Russ: Yes it is.

John: By Ernie K. Doe hits Number 1.

Russ: What a song.

John: This week in business history in 1964 LBJ presents another nail in the coffin here by introducing the Great Society. Probably one of the biggest liberal spending programs in the history of the United States.

Russ: Now you would know this, are there still pieces of it that are in existence in - ?

John: Yeah, well the war on poverty as we all know.

Russ: Yeah.

John: And I've always maintained that -

Russ: That we won.

John: - yeah, starting like five, six years ago when I started reading the Census Bureau report -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - on people at or below poverty level. I'm thinking, "Hey we've probably won this thing."

Russ: Yeah.

John: And we might as well just, you know, declare victory and -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - the reason why, of course, is when you look at some of the Census Bureau statistic, you find out that a surprising percentage of people at or below poverty level own homes -

Russ: Right.

John: - some of them own second homes.

Russ: Right.

John: Some of 'em have swimming pools.

Russ: Boats.

John: Boats and some of them have -

Russ: Yachts.

John: - well, I don't know about the yacht.

Russ: Islands? [Laughter]

John: Some of them own, you know, DVRs and get cable television.

Russ: Sure.

John: And all that stuff.

Russ: Sure.

John: Okay this week in business history in 1965 - this is a great Beatles tune - "Ticket to Ride" goes number one.

[Music: "Ticket to Ride"]

Russ: It's a good music week this week.

John: Oh yeah! Oh yeah. Okay, this week in business history in 1965 the staple of every young man's dinner, Spaghetti-Os is first sold on the market.

Russ: [Laughter] Canned Spaghetti O's no less.

John: Well of course, yeah.

Russ: I mean, sure yeah that's all it was, right?

John: They didn't sell it in a raw form where your mother had to give it a little -

Russ: Stamp out the Os?

John: - cookie cutter - stamp out, yes, it was in a can. You know?

Russ: All right.

John: With some glup in there, you know?

Russ: Yeah, somethin' in there with the spaghetti.

John: But I tell ya, when you're hungry enough, you'll eat anything.

Russ: That's right.

John: This week in business history in 1966 the Beach Boys Pet Sounds is released.

[Music: "Wouldn't be Nice"]

John: This week in business history in 1973 President Nixon confesses his role in the Watergate cover-up and resigns shortly thereafter.

Russ: Yeah it's interesting 'cause I mean we'd already concluded that he was engineering it and totally involved but the confession was still, it was a big step.

John: Well yeah but he didn't engineer it.

Russ: Well -

John: It's just after it happened he -

Russ: Engineered the cover up.

John: - engineered the cover up.

Russ: Right, right.

John: Or participated in engineering the cover up.

Russ: Right.

John: Yeah. This week in business history in 1988 Surgeon General, Everett Koop reports nicotine as addictive as heroin.

Russ: That might be a little bit of an exaggeration.

John: It might be a little bit of an exaggeration and I think they started putting warning labels on the cigarettes and cigars back in those days.

Russ: Do you think he was wearing the Surgeon General uniform when he made that announcement? [Laughter]

John: You know, that's - you know that's the thing I don't understand. How they get these - wearing naval uniforms, like - you know, like they're commander of the HMS Puffnstuff or something.

Russ: [Laughter] Right.

John: This week in business history in 1992 polls show that Ross Perot, Bush the First and William Clinton could be in a deadlock in the upcoming election.

Russ: What an amazing three party event and election that was, wow.

John: That's right, unfortunately Perot siphoned enough votes away -

Russ: Right.

John: - he siphoned votes away from both candidates -

Russ: Right.

John: - but he siphoned enough from Bush, I think, to you know, effect everything.

Russ: Right, right and he was like a contender until he reported some Martians or something on his lawn and then he picked that guy for his Vice Presidential candidate -

John: He said, "What am I doing here?"

Russ: Right.

John: In the pro- hey that's a very sad thing because the guy was a war hero.

Russ: Yeah.

John: A highly-decorated war hero just too old to be on -

Russ: Right.

John: - doin' that stuff.

Russ: Right, right and so he lost half - at least half - of his followers.

John: I know.

Russ: And then the rest is history. Okay, that wraps up this morning's history lesson.

John: That's all I got, buddy boy.

Russ: All right, it was a good one.

John: All right. I thought so, yeah.

Russ: I appreciate it. All right and that brings us to the Jargon Challenge Round.

John: Oh yes. My favorite. I won last week.

Russ: Yes you did.

John: Quite proud of that.

Russ: Yes you did.

John: My wife made me a cake for it.

Russ: All right, what - what was the - recombobulate?

John: Recombobulate.

Russ: Yeah, that was a good word.

John: Yes, yes, it goes right up there with duck shuffler.

Russ: There you go. You bet.

John: That's my favorite. My favorite word.

Russ: You bet, you bet. Now actually this is our vocabulary lesson -

John: That's right.

Russ: - where I go out.

John: Every - that's right, this is the one thing where you gotta kinda eat your spinach.

Russ: That's right.

John: All the other things we have fun with but this is where you gotta sit down and learn.

Russ: [Laughter] Yes.

John: Okay.

Russ: You just gotta dig in and do some heavy lifting.

John: Yeah, whatta you think this is?

Russ: Yeah. I actually go out and select a brand-new word and I say the word -

Russ: - and John guesses the meaning.

John: And I've been quite successful this year.

Russ: You have, you have.

John: I don't know what my won-loss record is but -

Russ: I don't either.

John: - I bet it's pretty good.

John: This morning's word's a noun.

John: A n- person, place or thing.

Russ: Yeah. Please, no wagering.

John: Yeah, void where prohibited by law.

Russ: The word is churnalism.

John: Churnalism.

Russ: Churnalism.

John: Okay, we all know what journalism is. That's the craft or the business of finding out what's going on out there so you can tell people about it.

Russ: Right.

John: That's pretty much what it is.

Russ: Right.

John: In an impartial way.

Russ: Right.

John: Churnalism is when you, you overload the senses of the reader or the recipient of the news with so much crap they can't put up with it.

Russ: Wrong.

John: Oh, okay.

Russ: You're a loser today and I'm so disappointed because I think, I think this a present-day phenomena that you actually dislike.

John: Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.

Russ: And it works like this. It's journalism that churns out articles based on wire stories and press releases rather than original reporting.

John: That's right.

Russ: Yep.

John: Now there's some sites out there it's okay to do that.

Russ: Yeah.

John: It's called news aggregation sites.

Russ: Right.

John: But I know there's some supposedly bona fide news organizations -

Russ: That's that's all they do.

John: That's all they do.

Russ: Yeah.

John: And that's really not journalism. That's just -

Russ: That's churnalism.

John: - yeah.

Russ: [Laughter] There you go.

John: All right. There's no business like churnalism business.

Russ: [Laughter] All right. All right, and that brings us to Dumb Moments in Business History. Do you have a dumb moment? A dumb business story for us this morning?

John: Yeah, yeah this is sometimes history repeats itself.

Russ: Yeah.

John: This is from Reuters, so little caveat there, you know?

Russ: Yeah a little journalism, eh? [Laughter]

John: Okay. Apparently in New York, someone is suing Starbucks because this customer allegedly suffered second-degree burns after allegedly being served tea that was too hot. The plaintiff does have a point, here.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Now the plaintiff is - probably gonna butcher this - but his name is Zeynep Inanli.

Russ: Okay.

John: Inanli. Inanli. Okay was served what he called, "unreasonably hot, in containers which were not safe."

Russ: Okay.

John: Okay, now. He's got a point here 'cause when you buy coffee or anything at Starbucks, that cup does -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - it's got a waxed interior or something -

Russ: Sure.

John: - how that conducts the heat.

Russ: Yeah.

John: And so I always, number one, I double cup -

Russ: All right, yeah.

John: - and double sleeve.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Keeps it warmer, longer.

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: Okay, so he does - he's right. And maybe, I'm thinkin' maybe he picked it up and it was too hot.

Russ: Did he have a sleeve on it? Do we know?

John: We don't know.

Russ: He should sue those guys if he did.

John: That's right.

Russ: 'Cause if it didn't protect him he should also sue them.

John: I know. I know but he said he's suffered great physical pain and mental anguish.

Russ: [Laughter] Okay.

John: 'Cause he got - because he spilled the tea and he burned himself.

Russ: And both that physical pain and mental anguish would go away if they'd write him a check for $2 million.

John: If they would write him a check. Actually it's 2.86.

Russ: Ah, I was just guessing.

John: Or no, no that's what they paid Stella Liebeck. That's who -

Russ: The McDonald's woman. 2.86 million.

John: Yeah. Yeah, they - McDonald's was ordered to pay this amount to Stella Liebeck.

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: They later settled.

Russ: Settled. Yeah. All right, so.

John: So we'll try to keep you updated on this.

Russ: Yeah, we oughtta try to get him on the show just to see how he's doing, now. You know, with the mental anguish and stuff.

John: I know. I know - yeah, the mental anguish. We better have security here, 'cause you know how that mental anguish can -

Russ: That's right, boil over.

John: - can avalanche into a full down - you know, break out of outward hostility.

Russ: We always have security here. No problem.

John: I know and we always have a lot of mental anguish here.

Russ: That's right. [Laughter] 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 here's a guy that has no mental anguish.

Russ: None, whatsoever.

John: This guy is always in a good mood.

Russ: You bet.

John: He is wired and he's focused. Here he is. A one and a two and a -

Russ: A one and a two and a -

Greg: This is Greg Price with PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook.

In the past, I have drawn some comments from the book, "Conscious Business" written by Fred Kofman. It's a book that I highly recommend. While the ideas are easy to understand, they are not always easy to implement.

Over the next few weeks I will be commenting on some topics from this book. I hope you find the areas thought provoking and professionally challenging.

Our first topic is "Success beyond success". So how do you define success in your business, your personal life? How do you bring alignment between these two key areas?

Kofman challenges us to ask the following questions:

1. What brings authentic happiness?
2. What is my real life purpose?
3. What is true success?

To be conscious means to be awake, mindful. To live consciously means to be open to perceiving the world around us within us, to understand our circumstances, and to decide how to respond to them in ways that honor our needs, values, and goals.

I was reading some excerpts from others who have read Kofman's guidance and I found this one to be truly compelling, "Kofman solves the false dilemma of "selling out" to pursue financial success or "dropping out" to have a meaningful life. Through conscious Business, he provides the principles, the practices and the tools to become a true leader. At work and in life.

So how do you define success?

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: That wraps up this mornings School of Business. Stay tuned in for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback with Tom Patterson, founder and CEO of Tommy John. Followed by our interview with Nate Alder, founder and CEO of Klymit. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.