Russ: Good morning. This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at Thebusinessmakers.com. This is episode #286 of that show that features those that most positively affect our lives.

John: That's right. We're talking about the go-getters out there, the ones who start companies based on an idea or a whim, and more often than not build something important.

Russ: You bet.

John: A product or service that most people need. But I'll be quiet now because I know we've got a lot of announcements to make.

Russ: Well, one right up front for those of you that are listening right now, time is running out to jump into that PC Mall Small Business Network Supreme Office Makeover. You've just got to the end of November. So just go to PCMallSBN.com/businessmakers, join the network, and enter to win. All right? And here's our lineup for this morning. First up, Dr. Bernard Harris, entrepreneur, MD, venture capitalist, former astronaut, and now author. He's the guy that is labeled as the first African-American to make a space walk.

John: Wow.

Russ: And we're going to follow that with an interview with Jennifer Heard of Microsoft. She's going to be talking about productivity features for businesses of Office 2010. But first... That's right. It's time for the Businessmakers School of Business. And this is our specially selected curriculum brought to you, powered by, Champion Energy Services.

John: That's right. And you know, we have yet to get an error message for Champion Services.

Russ: I know.

John: That electricity just is always consistent and always there when we need it, you know.

Russ: Yeah. And there's no errors on their bills. And most importantly, their bills are so easy to read and compare.

John: Even a child could read these bills and understand them.

Russ: That's right. Absolutely.

John: Or people like us who act like children sometimes.

Russ: That's right.

John: Okay? All right.

Russ: We can, too. All right.

John: All right.

Russ: And we kick off the School of Business each Saturday morning with a quote of the day.

John: Yes. Quote of the day.

Russ: And this is an interesting one. This quote touches on those gender issues, you know, males, females, females sort of being mistreated, particularly in business. I love the quote, though. It's by Charlotte Whitton. I have no idea when she said this.

John: Yeah.

Russ: It could have been earlier this week. It could have been 20 years ago. "Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."

John: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, I'm getting a little - maybe this was written 20 years ago. If it was written 20 years ago, I'll sort of - okay, but I'm -

Russ: If it's this week, you know, yeah.

John: Yeah. If it's this week, you know, get over it. And, you know, this victimhood thing is not very becoming.

Russ: Right.

John: You know, it's tough to get ahead in life when you're always playing the victim.

Russ: That's true.

John: So come on.

Russ: All right.

John: Get over it.

Russ: All right. That brings us to this week in business history. What happened right here at the end November, beginning of December, in business history?

John: Eighteen fifty, okay, this - you're talking ten years before the Civil War started.

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: William Sturgeon, the pioneer of electromagnetism, died. So that means he was into electromagnetism, you know, finding the relationship between electricity and magnetism, which is the basis for a lot of things -

Russ: Right. A lot of things.

John: Motors and you name it.

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: So that was all done before the Civil War.

Russ: It's impressive. Yeah. Okay. Very.

John: Okay. Twenty-four years later than this -

Russ: So we're talking 1870 -

John: Eighteen seventy-four. Winston Churchill was born.

Russ: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

John: And his mother was an American, and he had a very interesting life. He had - he had tremendous humiliating defeats in his life. He was - he's the one that engineered the disaster at Gallipoli in World War I. Then he had some tremendous successes.

Russ: Yes, he did.

John: His stand against the Nazis, and so -

Russ: Yes, he did.

John: This week in business history, 1902, now this is pretty interesting. The V8 engine, I would - before I read this, I thought the V8 engine might have come around in the thirties and forties.

Russ: I - me too. The V8. You know, and the more pistons, the more power, and it was a V-shaped engine.

John: Yeah.

Russ: Which was why they called it the V, and it had eight cylinders.

John: Yeah.

Russ: Which is why they called it the 8.

John: Right. Okay. This week in business history, in 1929, two music you would say icons were born, Berry Gordy, the guy who started -

Russ: Oh, yeah.

John: - and ran Motown -

Russ: Motown -

John: - in Detroit. And Dick Clark.

Russ: Wow.

John: American Bandstand and - I think they're still alive.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Alive and kicking. Dick Clark, however, had a stroke a while back. This week in business history, 1967, the first human heart transplant. Fifty-three year old guy. Man, that's pretty young.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Louis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at a hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.

Russ: That was unbelievable.

John: And surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who trained at the University of Cape Town, in the US, performed the revolutionary operation. I don't how long he lived after that, but apparently -

Russ: I don't think it was real long.

John: - it was about 18 days.

Russ: Yeah.

John: But hey, you know, if you had a chance to get 18 more days -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - and you think you're going to die in a minute or two, I'd take it.

Russ: Well, it'd probably depend on what conditions those 18 days were in.

John: Yeah. He died from double pneumonia.

Russ: Yeah.

John: You know? But still, that was just a huge - and now it's become so common and stuff.

Russ: Yeah.

John: I just - I also heard along the way one time that Dr. Christiaan Barnard, who did it, was - is good friends, was good friends, with Dr. DeBakey and Denton Cooley.

Russ: Right.

John: All those -

Russ: They all hung out together -

John: Yeah.

Russ: - and played poker and, you know -

John: Yeah. Okay. This week in business history, 1969, the Beatles, "Come Together." That was - you know, they started off with pretty innocent rock and roll tunes -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - but over time, their songs got a little edgier.

Russ: Yeah.

John: And "Come Together" -

Russ: "Come Together" is pretty edgy, man.

John: " - right now, over me."

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: Okay. This week in business history, 1977, Linda Ronstadt, actually a very talented singer, by the way -

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: I mean, you wouldn't know it when she first started out. You'd think she'd probably have -

Russ: Right.

John: - like a very short range.

Russ: Right. She was with the Stone Ponies, I think, in the beginning.

John: Stone Ponies, and she - they got - the Roy Orbison cover song, "Blue Bayou" -

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: - "So Easy," which is Buddy Holly.

Russ: But this is when she came out with ___?

John: Yeah. Right. This is when she first started. And she ended up dating Jerry Brown ____ -

Russ: That messed everything up, didn't it?

John: Right. That messed everything up. But, you know, she was in The Pirates of Penzance and did some - did a - cut an album of Spanish songs -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - that she used to hear as a little girl, and her range is quite - quite amazing.

Russ: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

John: Okay. This week in business history, 1982, a dentist becomes the first human recipient of a permanent artificial heart.

Russ: Man.

John: Now he lived for 112 days. The other guy we talked about lived for 18 days.

Russ: Yeah.

John: So that's pretty good.

Russ: Yeah.

John: You know, over a relatively short period of time.

Russ: Yeah, it is. But boy, that - I mean, I remember seeing him, Barney Clark, on TV with that thing. And it didn't look like it was a lot of fun.

John: Well, that's probably - well, that's probably why it shortened his life, because he -

Russ: He was on TV?

John: - had to do TV, you know.

Russ: Had to put makeup on, and -

John: Put makeup, and rehearse his lines.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Those bright lights shining in his eye, you know. I think it's probably a little self-inflicted there, you know.

Russ: There were variations in the electrical current because of all the gear they had to film him with, and -

John: Yeah. Okay. This week in business history, Roy Orbison, oh, here we go with Roy Orbison again.

Russ: What year? What year?

John: Okay, 1988, performs his last concert in Cleveland, Ohio. Okay. Moving on here, 2001, this week in business history, a little-known company files for chapter 11 bankruptcy, and everybody makes a big deal out of it.

Russ: Yeah. Who was it?

John: We're talking about Enron Corporation.

Russ: The non-company.

John: Now it's defined as an energy trading company based in Houston, but remember when we interviewed Walter Johnson -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - the guy, the banker, the Houston banker?

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: And he was talking about his treasurer or the CFO?

Russ: Yeah.

John: Was - anyway, they were wondering why they'd never get any business from Enron.

Russ: Yeah.

John: And they - he sent his CFO over, and he met with him for an hour or two, and he comes back, and the CFO said to Walter, he says, "You know, you may get angry with me, but I got to tell you, I was over there at Enron - "

Russ: Yeah.

John: This is the CFO saying it.

Russ: Yeah.

John: "And I - for the life of me, I can't tell you what it is they do there." So -

John: And Walter, it was very good that he took the guy's advice and didn't do business with them. So they were touted as an energy trading company, but, you know, it's really hard to tell -

Russ: Well, then they started talking about making markets and making exchanges and -

John: They tried to be an internet company. They bought some water companies.

Russ: Yeah. And they were trading - they were trading water and air and stuff like that.

John: I know. It just -

Russ: Okay.

John: All right. So anyway.

Russ: Yeah. That's a big week in business history. Sheesh.

John: Yeah. I know.

Russ: All right.

John: Okay. This week in business history, in 2001, the true nature of the invention, the It invented by Dean Kamen was revealed to the public. And, you know, it's a high tech scooter, had a gyroscopic thing in there so you wouldn't tip over, although some people did.

Russ: Yeah. I have driven one a little bit, and I wasn't out in public, and -

John: Yeah. Well, yeah. See? Yeah. I wouldn't mind test-riding one as long as it was a closed room, no windows, and I was the only one in the room.

Russ: Right. And it's an interesting machine.

John: Yeah.

Russ: But again, it goes against everything we've been learning, too. You know, what do you do? Instead of walking you do that? And here we are, you know, we're all obese and overweight and we need to exercise, and yet we won't even walk. We get on a little platform to walk around. That's ridiculous. And then the guy that bought the company recently -

John: Yeah. He fell - drove over a cliff in one of them.

Russ: It was supposed to be an all-terrain one.

John: Well, it did.

Russ: He discovered that all-terrain did not include cliffs.

John: Not include cliffs.

Russ: Going over cliffs.

John: Yeah. Did not go down the side of a cliff. It just kind of went into midair.

Russ: Right. Right.

John: Yeah. I guess he - I guess they should put wings on them or something.

Russ: They should. All right. That brings us to the jargon challenge round.

John: All right.

Russ: Also known as our vocabulary lesson.

John: That's right. Yeah.

Russ: The way this works, for those of you don't that don't know, is that I get to select the word or make up the word.

John: Yeah.

Russ: It's got to be a new sort of techno-speak, acronym, jargon.

John: Yeah. It does.

Russ: And that's not already in the dictionary. And -

John: Well, could be. Could be in the pre-dictionary.

Russ: It could be in the pre-dictionary. Yes.

John: Right.

Russ: And John has to guess the meaning.

John: Which was a word a couple of weeks ago.

Russ: That's right.

John: Yeah.

Russ: Pre-dictionary. You're right. All right. I think you're going to get this one this morning.

John: Oh, and see, you set up these expectations, and if I don't get it, I feel like an idiot.

Russ: I know. Well, I -

John: I mean, I may be an idiot, but I don't like feeling like an idiot.

Russ: All right. Are you ready?

John: Yeah.

Russ: It's a two-word noun.

John: I don't think I have a choice.

Russ: Right.

John: All right. Okay.

Russ: Dashboard dining.

John: Dashboard dining.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Okay. That's when you kind of - dashboard of course is that thing on a computer which shows you facts and figures and status or something -

Russ: Let me help you out. There's - that dashboard on the computer was designed to emulate another original dashboard.

John: Okay. Yeah. On an automobile.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Right.

Russ: Maybe you ought to go down that -

John: So dashboard dining is when you put your - you're eating your lunch and you put the food on the dashboard.

Russ: You got it. It's eating while driving. Eating a meal while driving. Not just like a little -

John: Well, everybody does that.

Russ: - candy bar. Yeah. I do.

John: Why is it everybody's getting so upset about people on the cell phones driving -

Russ: Yeah. I know.

John: - when there's people drinking Slurpies and -

Russ: Eating meals.

John: Eating a - you know, eat their hamburgers with ketchup and mustard, and they're trying to make sure it doesn't get on their tie, and they're trying to drive.

Russ: Yeah. I mean, they're looking down.

John: They're looking down.

Russ: The other thing about the cell phone thing, if you outlaw talking on the cell phone while you're driving, then maybe they just outlaw talking while you're driving, even if there's passengers in there. You just can't say anything to them.

John: Yeah. Actually, and then - that would make backseat driving kind of a capital offense.

Russ: It would. Absolutely.

John: Right.

Russ: All right. That brings us to dumb moments in business. Do you have - do you have anything to share with us this morning?

John: Well, I've got a couple of dumb moment updates.

Russ: Okay.

John: Sometimes it's good to kind of - if kind of validifies our dumb moment -

Russ: Yeah. We know what we're talking about.

John: - segment. We know what we're talking about.

Russ: Yeah.

John: First up is Al Gore. You know, we talked about this corn ethanol and what a rip-off it is, and how it - it's a market disruptor on pricing of corn.

Russ: It's ridiculous.

John: And, you know, the corn is - the ethanol is - gets less mileage than the gasoline you blend it with.

Russ: It's more expensive. I think it's -

John: And it's more expensive.

Russ: - I think there's more carbon emissions when you ___ the whole process.

John: Yeah. Right. Well, wouldn't you know, Al Gore finally reverses his position on corn ethanol. I'll just read you the first paragraph. "Former Vice President Al Gore has reversed his support of corn ethanol subsidies. He even went one step further, admitting his original endorsement of them was nothing more than political pandering," or that's what he told the Green Energy Conference, sponsored by the Marfin Popular Bank in Europe. Now don't forget he was running for president, and he's got all these corn farmers out there -

Russ: Right.

John: - in the Midwest, and that's what -

Russ: Political pandering.

John: So all you people who fell into this trap, okay, this is the guy who set it for you.

Russ: And he admits it now.

John: So it pays to listen to this show. We know what we're talking about -

Russ: That's right.

John: - when we get into these dumb moments.

Russ: That's right. All right. You got more?

John: Here's the next one. We talked about The New York Times and even when the economy was good, they were losing circulation.

Russ: Right. Right.

John: And there's a new book out called Gray Lady Down. Have not read the book yet, but there's this interview in the Daily Caller with the author of the book.

Russ: Yeah.

John: And this just goes to show you, if you're an entrepreneur and you're going to run your own ship some day, it all starts with you.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: I mean, everybody likes participatory management, and to have the employees have the input.

Russ: ___ the bus driver decides where the bus goes.

John: But I got to tell you, I've got to tell you, participatory management's not a democracy, and soon or later, it's the -

Russ: Right.

John: - guy at the top.

Russ: Right.

John: This is what happens when you don't make the right decisions. You know, and the guy's asked a question, his name is William McGowan, was asked a question, what has - is there an individual or group of individuals that deserves the lion's share for the blame of the decline of The New York Times?

Russ: Yeah.

John: He says, "I think the current publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, who's been in control now for almost 20 years, bears the most responsibility. Granted, in the last few years, he and other news executives at the Times and in the news industry at large have been dealt a bad hand with a loss of revenues from the competition on the internet."

Russ: Right.

John: "But he has played that hand quite badly, allowing ideology to subtract from the paper's credibility and gravitas."

Russ: Right. Right.

John: Wow.

Russ: So we just sort - we just sort of kind of pushed a couple of ____ -

John: And we've talked about - and we've talked about mistakes -

Russ: Yes. Yes.

John: - in New York - I mean, they had like a - they had a - like the Walter Kronkite obituary had like at least over a dozen factual errors in it, and it was just an obituary.

Russ: Right.

John: They write these things before the guy dies.

Russ: Right.

John: They have plenty of time to research it and edit it and all that. And this man is very respectful of what the Times once was.

Russ: Right.

John: Which was one of the great newspapers ever devised.

Russ: Right.

John: Because it was a - it reported the news straight down the middle.

Russ: Right.

John: But now it's -

Russ: And they don't anymore.

John: Now it's more of a cheerleader for things.

Russ: Right. Right. Cool.

John: Okay.

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 you know -

Russ: And another guy that calls it like it is.

John: I know. And you're right about ever-popular, because it is-

Russ: Yeah.

John: - ever-popular.

Russ: Yes.

John: Okay.

Russ: It is.

John: And the thing I like about Greg the most is he doesn't ride a Segway when he comes in here.

Russ: That's right.

John: He walks.

Russ: That's right.

John: He walks like a man.

Russ: He does. He does.

John: Okay. Here we go. A one and a two and a -

Russ: A one and a two and a -

[PKF Entrepreneurs Playbook]

Russ: All right. And that wraps up this morning's School of Business, powered by Champion Energy Services. Stay tuned in for our guest interview with Dr. Bernard Harris, followed by a discussion with Jennifer Heard of Microsoft. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at Thebusinessmakers.com.