Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, Episode Number 324 of that show that champions entrepreneurship and features innovation.

John: That's right, but innovation happens a lot of places. But it happens most often when somebody has an idea - that aha moment that turns into a product or service somebody needs.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: Big companies of course innovate with - they got the big R&D -

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: - budgets and everything. But the entrepreneur is where the classic idea usually comes in.

Russ: Right. Which usually disrupts whatever the big companies are doing, you know?

John: Yeah. Yeah. And generally makes our lives better.

Russ: Generally speaking it does.

John: Right, but also these are the people that when they're successful generally fall into that category, the 49 percent of us that pay taxes -

Russ: Yeah, right.

John: As opposed to the 51 percent that do not. Yeah.

Russ: That's right. That's right, so and there's an ever-dwindling number of people who pay taxes.

John: That doesn't seem right to me.

Russ: It's not. I think, you know, we had an American Revolution because of taxation without representation.

John: Right.

Russ: Now we have representation without taxation-

John: Without taxation.

Russ: Pretty interesting. ______. Okay.

John: Okay.

Russ: All right, and speaking of these entrepreneurs, I'd like to mention once again the EO Houston guys. That's the -

John: EO.

Russ: - Entrepreneur Organization of Houston.

John: That's right. Boy, we like them.

Russ: EOHouston.org.

John: That's right.

Russ: And also speaking of entrepreneurs, here's our line-up for today. We got a single guest, Mr. Tim Girgenti, Chief Marketing Officer of Prose. Now this is real interesting. This is a - Prose is a huge software company, a publicly traded software company right here in our home base, Houston, Texas.

John: Mm-hmm. Right.

Russ: And I had never heard of him. Now perhaps one reason is because they focused historically kind of in the back room of the financial offices of major corporations because their secret sauce is pricing.

John: Pricing.

Russ: They know how to integrate their software through your ERP system and make sure that you're pricing correctly. Kind of interesting.

John: They have any case histories where it's worked?

Russ: Yes, they do.

John: Okay, great.

Russ: In fact, they were big time in the airline ticket operation -

John: Oh really?

Russ: Yeah.

John: Okay.

Russ: Yeah, so they're the guys that know, "Wait, the plane is almost full. We can probably go up a little higher here."

John: So that's - he's the guy we have to blame for the outrageous fares we're having to pay on airplanes -

Russ: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: Along with baggage fees and -

Russ: Right, he doesn't have anything to do with baggage fees -

John: - change fees - yeah, okay.

Russ: Just pricing. All right.

John: Well give him my best.

Russ: I will. All right. But first - That's right, this time the BusinessMakers's School of Business.

John: Ah, yes. Yes.

Russ: Not your business as usual school.

John: No, no. This is a much better - I mean we increasingly get better -

Russ: Continuous improvement.

John: - continuous improvement every week.

Russ: Yeah, right.

John: But I don't ever hear that from the other business schools. They never brag about continuous improvement.

Russ: No, they brag about their -

John: I mean, they're sitting there in their lofty perch, in their ivory tower handing out diplomas, and here we are in the trenches -

Russ: Raising tuition.

John: - raising tuition, yeah - they raise it at the rate higher than the rate of inflation.

Russ: Oh totally, yeah. Right. We don't do that.

John: We don't do it. No. No. Okay.

Russ: All right, we kick off the School of Business each week with the quote of the day.

John: The quote of the day, yes. The quote of the day.

Russ: Today I'm quoting U.S. Science Fiction author Robert Heinlein again. He lived from 1907 to 1988 -

John: Wow.

Russ: Had some good advice, and here's some more. There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

John: Yeah.

Russ: It's true.

John: Well, there are random things that happen to people.

Russ: Well that's what he means by statistical universe.

John: A statistical universe.

Russ: A statistical universe includes random things.

John: Well, I know but you can't statistically analyze randomness.

Russ: Well, I know. I know, you can't.

John: If you get bitten by an ant, how can you statistically say well one out of million times you're going to get bitten by an ant?

Russ: That's on the end of the bell curve.

John: That's on the end of the bell curve. What about the bell? Who made the bell?

Russ: Well, we don't' know about that.

John: All right. Okay.

Russ: All right.

John: Sounds good, though.

Russ: Yes, all right. All right.

John: I didn't mean to pick it apart.

Russ: That's okay. That's your job.

John: That's my job.

Russ: All right, and that brings us to this week in business history. What happened during this August week in business history?

John: Well, I'll tell you this week in business history, in the year 79, bad time to be part of the Roman Empire, specifically if you were a young entrepreneur, a young go-getter in the cities of Pompeii or Herculaneum -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - because Mt. Vesuvius erupted. And it was pretty bad.

Russ: That was that part of the statistical universe as well.

John: Well, again I kind of doubt this, seeing as how a statistician can predict an earthquake. They can't.

Russ: Well they can't. They just say it just happens -

John: It happens.

Russ: Well you know, that's bad luck, you know?

John: That's right, there you go.

Russ: There you go, there is bad luck. There is.

John: But anyway, it wiped out Pompeii and Herculaneum and it was really very terrifying. You can see the bodies, they've excavated, they're covered in ash and had been mummified.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Okay, this week in business history, another Italian, Galileo, demonstrates his first telescope to the nation lawmakers which turned out to be a mistake because they hounded him and put him under house arrest. And -

Russ: He was a disrupter.

John: - that's right. They said he was a heretic and he had a very miserable life after he invited the telescope.

Russ: Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

John: Okay, this week in business history in 1853, a man by the name of - aptly named George Crum prepares, I guess you could say, invents the first potato chips.

John: Wow. We're moving from the telescope to the potato chip in one fell swoop there, right?

Russ: Right, and speaking of random statistics, that one effort started a huge chain of clogged arteries as far as the eye can see.

John: And divinely, somebody came on and said, "Let's make some baked potato chips."

Russ: Baked, well those just don't taste as good.

John: They don't taste as good, and they still have oil in them. They still clog a little bit. Clog a little bit, yeah right. Like being a little bit pregnant.

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

John: Okay. All right. This week in business history, 1859, oil is found in Pennsylvania near Titusville. They dug only 69 feet to get this oil and it quickly replaced whale oil.

Russ: Those poor whale oil guys, though, man.

John: I know.

Russ: They lost their jobs, and there goes the sequel to Moby Dick. There should have been a federal law that said, "Wait a minute, we ought to help those oil - whale -"

John: There should have been a bailout for the whale oil guys, fleets around the globe and there just wasn't a big demand for them until the ____ came out.

Russ: Right.

John: But it was because of the gusher in Spindletop, Texas where it really - I mean, just a huge, uncontrollable amount came out of that well.

Russ: Right. Right.

John: And the other wells that came afterward. So anyway, big - big shift in the business world when these discovered oil in Titusville -

Russ: They learned the efficiency of fossil fuels, man.

John: That's right. This week in business history, speaking of all this, the Cadillac launch - the Cadillac brand was named after the 18th century French explorer, Antoine de Mothe Colac, founder of the city of Detroit.

Russ: Wow. Wow.

John: Okay, this guy founded Detroit and then Henry Leland, a former mechanic founded the company. It would become known as a maker of America's luxury cars. So Henry Leland and I've been - there's a town in Michigan named Leland -

Russ: Yeah, wow.

John: - the guy founded the city of Detroit, this explorer. And what a better way to honor the person who founded what is now one of the worst run cities in the - on the - in the galaxy than the Cadillac.

Russ: Yeah, that's right. And it's still going fairly strong today.

John: What, the Cadillac?

Russ: Yeah.

John: Yeah, I think it is. Yeah.

Russ: I mean they keep hanging in there.

John: Government Motors -

Russ: Yeah, right.

John: Yeah. Okay, here we go. This week in business history, in 1906, the first Victor Victrola is manufactured.

Russ: Wow. Precursor to the iPod.

John: The iPod, right.

Russ: Yeah, right.

John: His master's voice. All right, this week in business history in 1914, a parachute was patented by another Pennsylvanian, Stefan Banic of Greenville, Pennsylvania.

Russ: Wow.

John: I always thought the bravest man in the world was the guy who had the first glass of milk from a cow or goat or whatever -

Russ: ____ step out there.

John: I know, I mean what would give you the idea?

Russ: Right.

John: I don't know. But this guy, he patented the parachute. Just think what the - what it was like when the first guy who ever tested the parachute, a real risk-taker, a real risk-taker jumping off - I mean airplanes were around back in those days, so here they jump out of a frigging airplane.

Russ: Yeah. All right.

John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1966 the lunar orbiter takes the first photograph of earth from orbit around the moon. Now that's an iconic photograph -

Russ: Yeah, absolutely.

John: We've seen it a million times.

Russ: Yeah.

John: I mean a government employee took that shot.

Russ: Right.

John: Too bad he didn't have the rights to sell it to -

Russ: Right. Absolutely.

John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1968 the Democratic Convention is besieged by protesters, this was a very tumultuous time for our country -

Russ: No kidding.

John: - Richard Nixon was running for president, promised to end the war at that time and the Democrats were trying to figure out who they were going to nominate because LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson decided not to run again.

Russ: Right.

John: He had health problems, as it turns out. Plus, I mean everything he did in the war was wrong. He tried to micromanage it from the White House. Robert McNamara, his Defense Secretary, was no help whatsoever. Actually, we were winning the war militarily - I mean it was not even close, if you look at the body counts and the number of battles won and all that. The problem was was the war at home because we could not win that, then you had a lot of left-wingers who decided they were going to be against the war and would stop and do everything to stop it. So they tried disrupting the Democratic National Convention, and it was just a big mess.

Russ: The guy that - Mike -

John: Mike Wallace - It did - it did. Right. Mike Wallace, who was covering the convention got roughed up. Some people might say deservedly so -

Russ: Right.

John: - but anyway, it was a mess.

Russ: The home of the - the mention of the Chicago Eight -

John: The Chicago Eight were the instigators. Jerry Reuben -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - Tom Hayden who was eventually married to Jane Fonda -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - what a couple that must have been. And it was just a mess. It was.

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: It was. And Hubert Humphrey got the nomination, he ended up getting the -

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: -and he lost to Richard Nixon.

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: And Nixon ended the war like he said he was going to.

Russ: Yeah.

John: And so it was a big fuss.

Russ: Yeah, right.

John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1982 a Wall Street scheme is put together when a guy named Martin Siegel meets Ivan Boesky at the Harvard Club and sets off a bit insider trading -

Russ: Huge. Turned into like an industry of its own.

John: That's right, millions of dollars changed hands and lots of information, and eventually they all got caught and went to prison.

Russ: There you go.

John: Okay, this week in business history, in 2007 - this was kind of a stain on our show. Of course we've got to have people on the show -

Russ: We have to have some stains on the show.

John: - whether you agree with them or not. We had Michael Oxley -

Russ: Yep.

John: - one of the proud founders of -

Russ: Yep.

John: - Sarbanes Oxley Bill.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Now Vice-Chairman of NASDAQ.

Russ: Yes.

John: And now look what the - look at the fine mess he's made.

Russ: Yes.

John: All right.

Russ: Yes.

John: All right, and that wraps up today's history lesson.

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

John: All right, good job as usual. Okay, and that brings us to the jargon challenge round. This is that part of the show that's also known as a vocabulary lesson.

Russ: That's right.

John: I get to go out and found a new word, techno speak acronym, whatever. No rules actually -

Russ: Yeah.

John: - on my end. The only rule on John's end is that he cannot know what word I've selected.

Russ: I do not know. And it's not any jive.

John: Yeah.

Russ: We set this up actually by accident because you forgot to send me some of the information you're using -

John: Right. Right.

Russ: And I decided to go cold turkey.

John: Right.

Russ: It worked well -

John: And he still did ____.

Russ: It adds a little drama to the show here -

John: Yes. Yes.

Russ: - because I do not know -

John: Yeah.

Russ: - the word and this big risk - one of the biggest risks anybody could take in the radio business.

John: That's right. That's right. That's right.

Russ: Not knowing what's coming next.

John: Right, and so I just throw it out there -

Russ: Yeah, right.

John: And he gives his best shot ____.

Russ: And I've got a pretty high batting average. I've got to admit.

John: Yeah.

Russ: I usually come up with, you know, something close if not right on.

John: Right.

Russ: Sometimes I miss it entirely.

John: Today's word is retrofuturism.

Russ: Retrofuturism. Well, futurism is when you're obviously looking into the future, trying to predict what's going to happen and using statistical randomness analysis to do so -

John: Right. Right.

Russ: - which is impossible 'cause nobody can predict the future anyway.

John: Right.

Russ: But what was the other - what was the word again?

John: Retro -

Russ: Yeah, retro -

John: -futurism.

Russ: - yeah, retro is when people - they prefer living in the past -

John: Yeah.

Russ: - so instead of looking forward to the future and predicting in the future, they're always grieving and grumbling about what's happened in the past.

John: Oh, you were so close.

Russ: Oh.

John: You had it cooking there for a while, John.

Russ: All right.

John: What it is, it's a return to the phrases and concepts characteristic of the futurism of the past, specifically the '50s and '60s. So it's looking back at what we - to the '50s and '60s, what we thought futurism would be back then.

Russ: Very well said.

John: Thank you very much. That meant a lot to me.

Russ: All right, but before we wrap up today's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook. Let's welcome Mr. Greg Price.

John: Ah, here he is. You know, he bought a piano. He's bringing his own piano with him right now.

Russ: That's right.

John: He's wheeling it in -

John: That's right.

Russ: - sitting down, and here we go.

John: A one and a two and a -

Russ: All right, and that wraps up today's School of Business. Stay tuned in for our featured guest today, Mr. Tim Girgenti, Chief Marketing Officer of Prose. This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com.