Russ: This is the BusinessMakers show, heard on the radio and seen online at the businessmakers.com. This is that show about those that actually make businesses that make jobs.
John: That's right. This is the right way to make jobs, because these are jobs where people actually make things or products and services that people eventually want and need and are willing to pay top dollar for. Fortunately, there's still an entrepreneur class out there.
Russ: That's right.
John: I think that's sizeable enough to help us get through the downgrade, but from AAA to AA plus.
Russ: Right.
John: Now as a BusinessMakers's radio show, we're still, we're still the highest the rating.
Russ: That's right, we haven't been downgraded, yeah right. We pay our bills.
John: And I just checked with our rating agency, Substandard and Rich, who maintained that we are keeping that rating pretty high.
Russ: That's right. That's right, alright. That's good and we are talking about the private sector here, which always is appropriate to give a shout out to our fellow entrepreneur's over at EO Houston, the entrepreneur's organization of Houston.
John: Correct, uh-huh.
Russ: eohouston.org
John: Right.
Russ: And I'd also like to give a shout to our sister show now, I don't know if they are sister, or our brother show.
John: I don't know, I think they're an orphan, or they're just picked up off the street.
Russ: We're talking about the energy makers which you oughta just check that thing out at the energymakers.com. Right now on the site you can see a video interview with Michael Skelly, with Clean Line Energy and John Huffmeister, but here's who've we got this week on the BusinessMakers show. First up, Mike Floreani, the founder and CMO of Flocast, now this is almost like a competitive media company.
Flocast is Austin based and they broadcast on the web all the underserved sports. In the old days you could watch a track meet, a wrestling match, a sailing event, on television you can't anymore. If it's not football, basketball, or track, sometimes soccer, they don't show it. So Mike Floreani, a former track athlete, has started his own, his own media company.
John: Media Sports.
Russ: Yeah, Flocast.
John: So if I wanted to see some Parcheesi, I can go the station.
Russ: Parcheesi has not been launched yet, but they're considering it.
John: Or Canasta.
Russ: Canasta, yeah you could go onto Canasta a bit.
John: Right. [Talking over each other]
Russ: Yeah, cool.
John: Is this a paid cable station?
Russ: No, it's free.
John: Wow.
Russ: You just sign on.
John: Wow.
Russ: You want Parcheesi, you bet. And then that interview gonna be followed by an interview with Scott Breimeister, the founder and CEO of LoanBox.
John: Right.
Russ: Another company you guys have been featuring.
John: That's right. He's got a quite a novel concept there.
Russ: It is, it really is. In fact, and I say this, right up and, I'm going to say this right up front with him, that seems like an idea that certainly already happened, but it's not. So it's pretty cool.
John: I know, I know. You think why hasn't it happened -
Russ: Right.
John: - like 50 years, 100, you know.
Russ: Right, yeah.
John: I don't know.
Russ: I thought all the good ideas had surfaced, but -
John: That's right, I was ready to advocate shutting the down the patent office.
Russ: Right, right.
John: So all these, every things been invented, has to be invented, has been invented.
Russ: That's exactly right. Alright, but first -
John: Yes.
Russ: That's right, it is time with the BusinessMakerss School of Business and this is not your business as usual school.
John: No, no. We are, again, we maintained our AAA rating from Substandard and Rich and we're doing a very good of upholding our credit rating, because we have no assets.
Russ: That's right.
John: We have no, very little revenue.
Russ: That's right.
John: We don't make any money.
Russ: That's right.
John: We don't, we don't lose any.
Russ: Right.
John: We don't have any, the good news is we're not losing any money. The bad news is we don't have any money.
Russ: Yeah, right.
John: That's the way it works.
Russ: That's a good way to live.
John: That's right, in my book.
Russ: That's right. Alright, we kick off the School of Business with the quote of the day.
John: Quote of the day.
Russ: And I'm gonna go back to the guy I've really liked lately, a US science fiction author, from 1907 to 1998, Robert Heinlein.
John: Uh-huh.
Russ: Always listen to experts, they'll tell you what can't be done and why, then do it. That's all you gotta do. Like the president says, "Well we can't balance the budget without income stream"
John: Well right.
Russ: I could figure out a way to do it.
John: That's right.
Russ: I mean, the fact of the matter is, we just don't have enough money to do all the things that we think we need to do, so you just don't do all the things that you think you need to do.
John: That's what you, yeah right. Because, I mean, we do have an income stream, he wants -
Russ: That's right.
John: -he thinks by charging us more -
Russ: Right.
John: -the income will go up -
Russ: Right.
John: -and that's not necessarily true.
Russ: Right, well but if we had more -
John: Yeah.
Russ: -then we could give college kids food stamps.
John: That's right, which is part of my, one of my segments.
Russ: I know, I was just trying to come in an intro back.
John: Give me an intro, yeah.
Russ: Right, right.
John: College kids getting food stamps.
Russ: Right.
John: Okay, alright.
Russ: Alright and that brings us to this week in business history. So what happened during this August week in business history, John?
John: This week in business history, in 1841, President John Tyler vetoes a bill that would've established the Second Bank of the United States. By his action he sparked a riot, kind of like what they're having in London right now.
Russ: Yeah.
John: A bunch of drunkards bombarded the White House with stones, fired their guns in the air, burned Tyler in effigy and it's one of the most violent demonstrations ever held outside the White House.
Russ: Which is interesting, because you would think with the tension right now -
John: Yeah.
Russ: -that there would be drunken people out in the street, throwing things at the White House and at the Capitol Building probably too.
John: Yeah.
Russ: So it's the way the White House is protected, I mean, it's hard to reach it.
John: It's hard to reach it. If you've ever been over there, I mean, you have to have a pretty good arm just to even reach the concrete pillars.
Russ: Right, right, so.
John: Anyway, this week in business week history, also in 1841, the first bankruptcy laws were established.
Russ: Huh.
John: The laws were appealed a few years later, but they proved popular during the brief tenure and eventually ever brought back.
Russ: Right.
John: And bankruptcy these days really doesn't have the stigma it used, but some people and companies use it as a cash management advice.
Russ: Right.
John: And some people or companies don't need it all because they'll just get a bail out from the government.
Russ: Right, if you're real big, they don't apply to you.
John: No.
Russ: Because the government comes in and bails you out, owns part of your company -
John: Yeah.
Russ: -and makes people buy it.
John: And the government should own these companies, they do such a, they have such a marvelous track record of running the government, it's great to have that expertise spill over into the private sector.
Russ: Well we all know around the world you can see how well governments doing. Now Hugo Chavez, he's doing a good job.
John: Oh he does a fabulous job.
Russ: He shows at a CEO, man.
John: I mean, those people are so much better off, let him in charge. I mean, the food lines before he became the dictator for life -
Russ: Yeah, yeah.
John: -like five or ten people in front of a supermarket.
Russ: Right.
John: But since he's been in office, those food lines stretch for miles. I mean, he's real popular. I mean they're so popular, there's more people lining up for food -
Russ: Right.
John: -because Chavez.
Russ: Right. There you go. Okay.
John: Alright, okay. This week in business history, August 19, 1879, is Orville Wright's birthday.
Russ: Okay.
John: Okay, the Wright's brother, Orville and Wilbur, were two Americans given most of the credit for inventing for the first successful powered flight, the airplane, they had their first inaugural there in Kitty Hawk.
Russ: Right.
John: Now people had done, had engaged in other types of flight, like hot air balloons and stuff like that. This was the first airplane, they called them airplanes, and once they figured out the curvature of the wing -
Russ: Yeah.
John: That was pretty much it.
Russ: Yeah, okay.
John: It was 140 years ago this week he was born. That's when Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play, 140 years ago today.
Russ: Right, right.
John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1888, the first adding machine in the United States was patented by William Seward Burrows, which is the forerunner of the Burrows Company. Now a few years later, after the first adding machine, then they had the first subtraction machine.
Russ: Right, that's good.
John: Right after that and then they went into long division and fractions and decimals.
Russ: And casting out nines.
John: And casting out nines, but I wonder in that first adding machine, I'm sure the adding machine also did some subtraction, but who knows.
Russ: But I bet it you couldn't add the kind of numbers that we have to deal with these days with the deficit and stuff, there just wasn't enough room for that many zeros.
John: And that's probably why there wasn't a deficit back then, because they couldn't compute it, so they had to stop.
Russ: Right.
John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1896, the dial telephone was patented, but it's mounted on a telephone, it's interrupted electrical pulses, none of this pulse dialing and it's amazing how that technology hung around for so long because -
Russ: Well I don't know, I mean I know you're, I think you're one year older than me, but I don't know, but you live in a different part of the country. I remember when we progressed from just pick up the phone and tell the operator, call 25, to the dial. Do you remember that?
John: I don't remember picking up the phone.
Russ: I do. Yeah, you just tell it to dial zero, with my rotary phone.
John: Well maybe it was where I was from, we didn't have it.
Russ: I grew up in Texas and we were behind, you were up in Pittsburgh and we didn't have dials on the phone until I was, I think 35.
John: Oh, okay.
Russ: No, I mean, it was about ten, but so anyway it was advancement.
John: It was, it's been and that technology hung around until about what, 30 years ago.
Russ: Yeah, right.
John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1905, the trademark was filed for the Cadillac Crest, one of the most popular in long lasting trademarks, you might say, in the history of Commerce.
Russ: Yeah.
John: It's still used today as, I think it's been adapted somehow, they probably modernized it a bit, but it's still -
Russ: Yeah, it's higher resolution now. In the beginning it didn't have to be so clear.
John: Yeah, it's Hi-Def.
Russ: Yeah, right.
John: It's not analog anymore.
Russ: Right, right.
John: This week in business history, in 1937, the Toyota Motor Company is established. It began as a division of the Toyota Automatic Loom Works. I mean, what a change in a product extent, it's not even a product extension, it's just like, hey let's get out of the loom business and start driving cars. It went under huge expansion in the '60's and '70's, started importing their cars back then and they were known for quality. Now before the '70's and even the '60's anything stamped made in Japan was considered cheap.
Russ: Right, right.
John: But what happened was a guy named Edwards Deming, ______________,
Russ: In America.
John: Born in the United States, World War II vet, started at this theory about how quality control should be a frontend process, as opposed to a -
Russ: A continuous improvement.
John: Right continuous improvement and not wait till whatever you're making falls off the assembly line.
Russ: Right.
John: He was laughed at in the United States, so he goes to Japan and boom.
Russ: And then they have Toyotathon, right?
John: Toyotathon, yeah. Actually, he was the, he said, that was actually part of his strategy with Toyota, because he said, "Once you get these cars built, then you need a Toyotathon, but don't do Toyotathon until you have improved these cars"
Russ: That's right
John: But once you've got the cars back down, where they, then you start the Toyotathon.
Russ: I wonder what he would say today about them. They've had those runaway accelerators, which is debatable.
John: That proved to be a specious.
Russ: And the people's imagination.
John: Right, right and that was on a TV show, we were debating that.
Russ: Yeah.
John: I mean these people that were on the show, they were kind of piling on -
Russ: Right.
John: -and it got to me, and I said, "You know I've learned in the past that when something with story like this gets out, you better hold back on your judgment until it all comes out"
Russ: Yeah.
John: To see, you know.
Russ: Because they've been bottled up with you saying, "You know John, you were right"
John: No, I've never been asked back on the show again.
Russ: Turned you off.
John: Alright, this week in business history, in 1962, the Beatle sacked their original drummer, Peter Bess, he was sacked and bring in Ringo Starr.
Russ: I wonder if he got any severance.
John: Well see he was a customer of one our first guest, Herb Brockstein, he used to bring Ringo Starr with him and I thought, "Well hell, if this guys buying drumsticks from some guy in Texas, we need him, put in on the van.
Russ: That's true. Ringo Starr bought drumsticks from Herb Brockstein, former guest on the show.
John: Right, okay. This week in business history, in 1969, the Woodstock, that pharmaceutical event called the Woodstock Music & Arts Festival, begins on a dairy farm, Bethel, New York, about 450,000 people attend. The way you can tell whether someone has actually been to Woodstock is if they say can remember who them artists were, they were not there.
Russ: They were not there.
John: Yeah, right.
Russ: Well when you look at photos or the movie from that event, I mean, it was an event, it was a happening, it was a movement, but you also look at those photos and you go "My god, it looks like those people are miserable, they all look ugly and out of shape"
John: Yeah, they look all pasty, there was all drugs.
Russ: Well they're sitting out there in the mud and the rain for three days.
John: I know. Alright, this week in business history, in 1977, Elvis Presley dies. [No audio - 13:59 to 14:08] and I was on a train from New York to Washington DC, the metro line, didn't know about till I got off the train and was driving back to the house.
Russ: The King of Rock and Roll, I mean he had died in his bathroom.
John: Yeah.
Russ: I mean, he's laying next to the toilet.
John: Yeah.
Russ: He had severe intestinal problems because of his diet and the drugs he was taking.
John: Yeah.
Russ: And it just kind of backed up on him and gave him a heart attack.
John: Yeah. You know, I don't know whether it was a heart attack, but he obviously had some sort of seizure.
Russ: Yeah.
John: There's not too many people fall off the toilet and are pronounced dead.
Russ: But we're pretty sure he is dead, right?
John: Yeah.
Russ: Well there's been rumors.
John: There's rumors, right. There's always rumors.
Russ: Yeah.
John: And some of them are true, some of them true and they cease to become rumors at that point.
Russ: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
John: But this one, until he shows up, you know.
Russ: On the show here.
John: On the show, yeah.
Russ: We're not gonna believe it.
John: And Elvis Presley ever makes an appearance on the BusinessMakerss show, then we'll have something.
Russ: Right. I think we'll have now - now, one little side of note, because you mentioned Herb Brockstein.
John: This Brockstein, man this guy -
Russ: Shows up again.
John: -this guy's like an apparition.
Russ: Herb Brockenstein is a guest on the BusinessMakers show because he's the founder of Pro-Mark Drumsticks.
John: Right, uh-huh.
Russ: And he told, he had an Elvis Presley story.
John: That's right, about Presley brought his, bought his drum set.
Russ: Yeah, the drum set that Elvis Presley used in the first Ed Sullivan show, was bought from Herb Brockstein.
John: That's right, yeah.
Russ: Yeah, so we're just connecting the dots.
John: That's right and a lot of great songs by the King, right?
Russ: Yeah, right.
John: This week in business history, in 1982, Wang Laboratories falls prey to brutal competition, the computer industry, which really hasn't subsided any, it's still pretty brutal out there.
Russ: Right, right, yeah.
John: And it was an older standout, very well-known company, brainchild, and Wang, a Chinese born computer whiz, with a PhD from Harvard.
Russ: Yep and had to put the company into bankruptcy, as we talked about earlier, as you talked about earlier in the history lesson, the bankruptcy rules.
John: That's right, that's right.
Russ: These are connecting the dots.
John: If he just would've held out 30 or 40 years, he wouldn't had to go out.
Russ: Yeah. Now he did not buy drumsticks though from Herb Brockstein.
John: No.
Russ: No. He should have.
John: I think Brockstein may have used one of his computers.
Russ: Might have.
John: Or may have thought about using one of his computers.
Russ: He probably thought about it.
John: Thought about it, right.
Russ: Right.
John: Okay, last, but not least, this week in business history, in 2008, Usain Bolt sets a new 100 meter dash record, 9.69 seconds at the Bejing 2008 Summer Olympics.
Russ: And best we know, he had no steroids in his system.
John: Right.
Russ: Which is just unbelievable.
John: And as far as we know, it wasn't a computer generated performance.
Russ: Right.
John: Because the Chinese used computer, used CG animation for their fireworks display.
Russ: Right.
John: Remember that?
Russ: Right, yeah.
John: For the cameras, people sitting in the stands only saw a few firecrackers going off.
Russ: Right.
John: So, we think it was a real race, because we know about those crafty Chinese.
Russ: Right, there you go. You don't know. Alright, and that wraps up the history lesson?
John: That's it, yeah.
Russ: Great lesson, man. Gheez, whoo.
John: Wow, wow.
Russ: All right.
John: Okay.
Russ: And that brings us to navigating business jargon, also known as our vocabulary lesson.
John: Yeah, that's right, yes.
Russ: It's a presented in a contest format where I get to go choose a brand new word and hide it from John until this very moment -
John: Yeah.
Russ: -when I announce the word and he tries to guess the meaning.
John: That's right.
Russ: All right, you ready?
John: Yeah.
Russ: Today's word is juvenoIa.
John: Juvenoia?
Russ: I'll spell it for you.
John: Okay.
Russ: J U V E N O I A
John: Okay. Juvenile, okay that's a, there's a kid, underage children.
Russ: That's correct, you're headed in the right direction.
John: Juvenoia are people who are fearful of these kids because of the violence, I mean I don't know what the reason is, but if you've got juvenoia, that means when you see a kid walking down the street, you get a little panic attack.
Russ: No, I think I'm gonna give a win, this is one of those occasions where -
John: No, look I either get it or I don't.
Russ: Well, that -
John: I'm looking for chair, I'm not looking for a government handout here.
Russ: I know, but I think your definition is better than the definition that's out on the street today.
John: Oh, okay.
Russ: I think they're, it should be a fear of juveniles. They say it's the baseless and exaggerated fear that the internet and current social trends are having negative effects on children.
John: Oh.
Russ: I think your, I think your definition better.
John: Yeah, that's a stupid, that's not, yeah.
Russ: All right, I'm gonna change it right now, send it into the authorities. I'm taking a note right now.
John: Yeah, I saw that note, yeah, that's entrepreneur.
Russ: All right.
John: All right.
Russ: And that brings us to ten moments of business, do you have one for us?
John: Yeah, here's, if you want to know why our State governments and Federal governments are hurting for cash, I mean, because the way they're spending it and every now and then you hear something so outrageous about what the government's been spending that money on and people have had no clue that they were doing this.
Russ: Right, right.
John: In the case, in this case, it's in the State of Michigan who announced that we were removing 30,000 college students from its food stamp program.
Russ: Those poor kids.
John: Now I'd venture to say that nobody knew, I guess the college kids knew they were getting food stamps, but nobody really generally probably thought of the fact that their tax dollars were going toward beer drinking, you know, students swirling beer one day and then taking food stamps to go buy a steak to wash down the beer.
Russ: And they're cutting them off?
John: They're cutting them off.
Russ: The poor kids.
John: The poor kids right.
Russ: And they got to raise their taxes up.
John: There's one government official, actually former Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, said, "Maybe these students could get a part-time job, that's what I did"
Russ: But these stamps are free though.
John: We're talking about 75 million dollars a year -
Russ: My goodness.
John: -we spent on these college kids.
Russ: All right, all right. And before we wrap up today's school of business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook.
John: And here's Greg Price.
Russ: On the piano.
John: On the piano.
Russ: A one and a two and a -
Russ: All right and that wraps up today's school of business. Stay tuned in for our interview with Mark Floreani, the founder of Flocast, the new media outlet that focuses on underserved sporting events and then that's gonna be followed by our discussion with Scott Breimeister, founder and CEO of LoanBox. This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at the businessmakers.com.
