Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com. This is episode number 308 of that show that features those that make business happen.

John: That's right, Russ. We are championing those artists and athletes of the free enterprise system without whom society wouldn't be as it is today.

Russ: And speaking of these people, you've got more to share with us about your upcoming huge event.

John: That's right. Celebrate enterprise. Our salute, I mean the Houston Business Journal's salute, along with our presenting sponsor, Sterling Bank. Downey Bridgewater's been on the show. He's one of the inaugural guests -

Russ: You bet.

John: -- of this show. What we're doing is we're putting together a full week, almost a full week of activities and events and programs where we celebrate the best that capitalism brings to Houston.

Russ: You bet.

John: And an event that we're gonna talk about today is the Houston Energy Forum sponsored by - the presenting sponsor is Porter Hedges and our featured speaker for this event is none other than Michael Economides who's been a guest on this show.

Russ: Incredible guest.

John: Profiled many times in the Houston Business Journal and so he's gonna help kick off the energy forum. That'll be Wednesday, May 18th at the Wortham Center in the morning. It'll be a delicious breakfast along with a lot of talk about energy.

Russ: Okay. And when you talk about the Houston Energy Forum that's kinda' like talkin' about the worldwide energy forum -

John: That's right. We're still the energy capital of the world.

Russ: Absolutely. Alright. And here's our lineup for today. First up, Regay Hildreth, the founder and CEO of RMH Marketing and Media, a real cool, modern, digitally focused marketing company and that's gonna be followed by our own Laura Panino sitting down and talking with Loren Steffy, author of Drowning in Oil, but first. That's right. It's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business brought to you by Ambrose Tax Consulting. These are the specialist guys, John, that we keep talkin' about in property tax consulting.

John: Oh yeah. Every business owner who owns his own property and even some that don't, if you're like the majority leaseholder in a major office complex, you should hire these guys or at least ask 'em to work with your building manager/building owner to make sure you're not gettin' ripped off by the government -

Russ: Absolutely. Absolutely. And not only are they experts throughout the whole process, but if for some reason you're not happy with the final results, they are also experts at the appeal process.

John: Oh right. They'll go in there and they'll rattle some cages.

Russ: You bet. They'll go back. They'll go back and they average right now, even just on the appeal process, dispute resolution a 30 percent reduction in property taxes.

John: My goodness.

Russ: So that's right. So we're talkin' about Ambrose Tax Consulting. Check them out -

John: We're very proud to have 'em on here because they're very emblematic for what we talk about on a weekly basis -

Russ: Totally. Totally. Totally. We're all on the same team for sure -

John: That's right. Okay.

Russ: Alright. But back to the School of Business -

John: Oh yes.

Russ: This is not your business as usual school.

John: No, it's not.

Russ: We kickoff the School of Business with a quote of the day.

John: Quote of the day.

Russ: And today's quote comes from H.L. Menkin who lived back in 1889 to 1956 and he's gonna kinda' focus here on that idea of the power of positive thinking as opposed to being real negative.

John: Real negative, right. He's very skeptical.

Russ: Yes. Here it is. A cynic is a man who when he smells flowers looks around for a coffin.

John: That's right.

Russ: It's a funeral, man.

John: I know.

Russ: A funeral with flowers, Man, somebody musta' died.

John: Yeah, I know. Well it doesn't matter whether the coffin is half-full or half-empty.

Russ: That's true. That's a great quote, too.

John: It's who owns the coffin.

Russ: That's right. Alright and that brings us to this week in business history. What happened during this week in business history?

John: Here's an item that should have been during the week of April 20th.

Russ: Oh, we left this one off.

John: Well no we didn't 'cause we didn't know about it.

Russ: Okay.

John: It wasn't reported by ABC News till April 26th, but it was too good not to bring up so I'm bringin' it up.

Russ: That's right. Perfect.

John: Okay. See, on April 20th, the inventor -

Russ: April 20th of this year.

John: Yeah, April 20th of this year -

Russ: Wow.

John: The inventor of the teleprompter dies.

Russ: Oh my goodness.

John: His name is Hub Schlafly, Schlafly dies and here's an invention that changed the entire public address business in the United States.

Russ: Alright. Now to the regular this week's history lesson.

John: Okay. Yeah, this week in business history in 1888 George Eastman patents the Kodak box camera.

Russ: Wow. That rings a bell. Remember? Forever it wasn't just Kodak. It was Eastman Kodak forever -

John: That's right. George Eastman.

Russ: Yeah, cool.

John: Okay. This week in business history in 1912 Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing.

Russ: Wow.

John: And that newspaper is still around by the way and a lot of people think that a lot of the U.S. daily newspapers have kind of -

Russ: Emulated -

John: Emulated. They were s impressed with Pravda's control of information, government sponsored information that other newspapers in the United States have wanted to emulate that business model of becoming an official mouthpiece for the U.S. government.

Russ: So Pravda was like a trendsetter.

John: A trendsetter, right.

Russ: Interesting.

John: Course we say that with tongue-in-cheek.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: But there's some meaningful purpose behind those remarks.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: Okay. This week in business history in 1918 General Motors acquires a Chevrolet Motor Company of Delaware.

Russ: Wow.

John: Yeah.

Russ: Chevrolet, wow.

John: That's back when they were a real business.

Russ: That's right. They weren't a nationalized production line that tried to ______ an IPO that probably made no sense in my opinion.

John: That's right. Here's the real reason why the government shouldn't own private enterprises, okay. They buy the stock at one price, an IPO and then they sell it for about 30, 40 percent less than what they bought it for because they figure well, we need to get out of this business.

Russ: Right.

John: So the taxpayer takes a haircut.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: Okay. This week in business history in 1933 James Brown, the godfather of soul is born in Augusta, Georgia.

Russ: Wow. So if he was still with us, which he's not, he would be 78 today.

John: Yeah. This week in business history in 1940 Winston Churchill becomes prime minister of Great Britain.

Russ: The more I know about him the more I like him.

John: Yeah, I know. I know. Well the thing is he succeeded Neville Chamberlain -

Russ: Right.

John: Who tried to deal with Adolf Hitler.

Russ: Right.

John: For awhile it looked like he was on the right track and Chamberlain woke up one morning and Hitler invaded Poland.

Russ: Right. Didn't look like he was on the right track anymore.

John: No. So this week in business history in 1941 Joseph Stalin, the publisher of Pravda also becomes premier of Russia.

Russ: Whoa.

John: Actually when you become premier of Russia you also become the publisher of Pravda.

Russ: 'Cause that's why we're still trying to emulate Pravda over here.

John: We're still tryin' to emulate that over here.

Russ: Yeah, I get it.

John: And we're getting very close. This week in business history in 1952 Mad Magazine debuts. What a great product that was.

Russ: Yeah, but I don't know if it competed well against Pravda.

John: I know.

Russ: But it probably did.

John: It probably did although I don't think Mad Magazine got wide distribution in the Soviet Union.

Russ: Right. I don't think they did either.

John: Alright. Great magazine. Don't' see it around much anymore.

Russ: That's right.

John: This week in business history in 1957 the Pulitzer Prize is awarded for John F. Kennedy for his book Profiles in Courage.

Russ: Right.

John: Though a lot of the revisionists out there said it was ghost written by one of his speech writers.

Russ: Right.

John: I can't remember the guy's name, but who knows how much Kennedy wrote and how much the other guy wrote, but it's a good book.

Russ: Maybe the other guy wrote it and Kennedy read it. Maybe that's the way it worked.

John: He read the first draft.

Russ: Right.

John: This week in business history in 1961 Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space aboard Freedom VII. It was not an orbital flight -

Russ: No.

John: They went up into space and came back down.

Russ: Right. But it was such a relief for it to happen because we were still lagging behind.

John: Yeah, we were laggards.

Russ: Yeah, we were. That's right.

John: Okay. This week in business history in 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his I Have a Dream speech, which is an iconic speech.

Russ: Totally.

John: I don't think he used a teleprompter.

Russ: I don't think he did either -

John: You can see him on those steps at the Lincoln Memorial.

Russ: Right.

John: This week in business history in 1971 national public radio begins programming. How about that? This week in business history in 1982 American oil companies decided to look at rocks for oil.

Russ: Yep.

John: And there are huge vast shale deposits out there and as we know now, these shale deposits also had natural gas.

Russ: Yeah. Huge, huge reservoirs -

John: So you have huge oil deposits. There's like 1.3 trillion barrels of oil out in Colorado somewhere and then you have trillions cubic feet of natural gas all just sittin' there.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Up till now it's been too expensive to process due to the cost of getting oil the old-fashioned way; putting a drill bit in there and suckin' it out of the ground, but now it's becoming economically feasible -

Russ: Yeah, they can do it with that fracking.

John: But a lot of that interest in getting oil extracted that way occurred this week in business history in 1982.

Russ: That's right. Cool.

John: Okay. This week in business history in May 7th 1982 IBM releases the PC DOS version 1.1.

Russ: Yeah, well it's a Bill Gates product and he was licensing it to IBM and people weren't used to IBM kinda' outsourcing a lot of components of the PC and the software and it kinda' put Mr. Gates on the map and -

John: Right, but ten years prior to that IBM was mainly in the mainframe business -

Russ: That's right. That's right.

John: There were no PCs. There were just some terminals all connected to a big box that had a lot of stuff in it and just a fraction of the power one PC has right now -

Russ: Right; and the feeling is that IBM kinda' just did the PC sort of as an afterthought. Thought it was really like just a little home computer. This is not - and it was minor in the beginning compared to mainframe -

John: It was, right, but it was a convenience item for homes. Now it's more of a necessity.

Russ: Right. That wraps it up.

John: That wraps it up, Kemo Sabe.

Russ: Alright. We went from last week's teleprompter -

John: Yeah, we had to correct an omission although it wasn't our fault, but we're still supposed to be on top of this stuff -

Russ: That's right. That's right. That's right. So everybody go back to your notes that you took last weekend -

John: Right, yeah.

Russ: -- and add that in. The teleprompter -

John: Add that in, the teleprompter.

Russ: At the very end.

John: That the teleprompter inventor died.

Russ: That's right. Alright. And that brings us to the jargon challenge round.

John: Ah yes, yes.

Russ: Our vocabulary lessons.

John: I haven't been doin' so well lately.

Russ: Well, you have, but it's not an exact science -

John: I've been comin' close, but it's still not, ya' know -

Russ: Yeah, yeah.

John: -- the brass ring. Okay.

Russ: And this is where I find a word to challenge John with and it's a new word, techno speak, acronyms, that kinda' stuff and John uses all of his cognitive skills to come forward and guess the meaning.

John: Cognitive skills such as they are.

Russ: Yeah, such as they are. Here it is.

John: Alright.

Russ: Ethnoburb.

John: Ethnoburb.

Russ: Ethno B-U-R-B; ethnoburb.

John: Ethno, ethnic, it's ethnic.

Russ: Right.

John: And no burg. That's a city that has no specific ethnicity -

Russ: Great guess, but I think you divided the syllables wrong. The first syllable would be or the first part would be ethno and the second part would be burb.

John: Oh, okay.

Russ: So really you were close. We're gonna give you a close, but no cigar. It's a suburban area that draws a large number of immigrants from the same ethnic group. Now even though we're all for diversity, we discover at certain points in times that people of a certain ethnicity like living together -

John: That's right.

Russ: -- and they all find a place out of the suburbs and come together and that's an ethnoburb.

John: Right, but they're out there by choice.

Russ: By choice totally. Totally by choice.

John: Yeah, yeah, right. It's not like they're all herded like marched out to the commune.

Russ: No, no, we don't do that in this country.

John: We don't do that so it's kinda' like birds of a feather flock together, right?

Russ: Absolutely. That's it. Alright. Alright. So that brings us to dumb moments -

John: That's why you don't see flocks flying in a pigeon formation or something.

Russ: Right, never see that.

John: Unless they wanna eat one of the pigeons.

Russ: Right. And that brings us to dumb moments in business. Do you have one for us?

John: Yeah, this is a - this is a good reason. If any of you out there ever wanna give to any United Nations agency no matter how well intentioned they are, just keep in mind of what just happened. Someone oughta' be bringing this up big time because the U.S. government is the biggest sponsor of the United Nations.

Russ: Right. What did they do now?

John: We all know about the brutal crackdown that's going on in Syria right now.

Russ: Oh, absolutely; yes.

John: And the Syrian president, Bashar Asad is the main guy behind it. He wants to stay in power -

Russ: That's right. So he's killing everybody that wants him out -

John: That's right. That's right. He's had this huge crackdown where they are just gunning down unarmed civilians at first just wanted 'em to moderate this government, make it a little more liberally democratic.

Russ: Right.

John: Small D democratic, but he hasn't been doin' that. He's been killin' everybody. Okay, hundreds of people and maybe even more. So what happens is the UN is so impressed with all this that they name Syria to join the UN's human rights council.

Russ: This must be a mistake.

John: No, it's not a mistake.

Russ: Are you reading it correctly?

John: Yeah. Here's the headline according to Fox News. "Despite reports of brutality" - I like that "reports of brutality towards civilians, Syria to join UN's human rights council.

Russ: Maybe they're there to present the opposing viewpoint.

John: No, I don't think so.

Russ: You people are for human rights. Let us let you know the other side of the story.

John: Truman and Stalin and Roosevelt, they all had this good idea about the United Nations.

Russ: Right.

John: But what this thing has turned into is an anti-U.S. government anti-American trade association.

Russ: Yeah, that's what it is.

John: So here's this guy. He's gonna join the UN human rights council and they're gonna start lecturing the U.S. and Great Britain and Israel on how to better treat their citizens. Now I'm sure we all have lessons to learn. No one's perfect -

Russ: But not from them -

John: But I don't think the U.S. or Great Britain or France or any of these countries or even Israel have gunned down unarmed citizens -

Russ: That's correct.

John: -- in the middle of the streets.

Russ: That's correct. Alright. Good point. Good story. Alright and before we wrap up this morning's School of Business brought to you by Ambrose Tax Consulting, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook. Alright and that wraps up this morning's School of Business brought to you by Ambrose Tax Consulting. Stay tuned in for our interview with Regay Hildreth, founder and CEO of RMH Marketing and Media, followed by Laura Panino's interview with Loren Steffy, author of Drowning in Oil. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com.