Russ: This is the BusinsessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at http://www.TheBusinessMakers.com. This is that show about entrepreneurs, episode number 340.

John: Wow, 340. Actually, I missed last week.

Russ: Yeah, you did.

John: Leisa Holland-Nelson yacked it up pretty good, I understand.

Russ: Yeah. Well, you seemed like you had your plate pretty full.

John: Yeah, we had Technopalooza. Yeah, the Houston Technology - Fast Tech 50 Technology Conference event. Yeah, great event. You did a fabulous job MCing those cantankerous technology CEOs.

Russ: Well, I had some powerhouses there. You, too.

John: Man, they were great, yeah. You know, it was a good thing. And we hopefully will do a better job next year and expand this thing.

Russ: Cool. But back to entrepreneurs - speaking of entrepreneurs.

John: Speaking -

Russ: A shout out for the EO Houston Group.

John: Oh, yeah.

Russ: That stays integrated to the front end of every show of these things.

John: Yeah, they are a very good supporter of this show. And likewise, we are a supporter of them.

Russ: That's right. I think they ought to be on the front end of almost every show.

John: Actually, I think they just ought to be - their picture should be everywhere. Their logo should be flown - skywrite. Skywriting. We should skywrite the logo over River Oaks.

Russ: Okay, okay. All right, and here is the lineup for today's show. First up, I get to sit down with the associate director of the Wolf Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Houston. None other than Ken Jones.

John: Ah, he's a funny guy.

Russ: He is.

John: You know, he is a funny, funny guy.

Russ: He is. I'm glad you say that because he is.

John: He's a funny guy.

Russ: You can say it again, actually.

John: I might say that later on.

Russ: But what people, golly, don't know enough about is that the Wolf Center for Entrepreneurship has been ranked number one again in the United States.

John: Number one again?

Russ: Again, for undergraduate entrepreneurship programs. And John, as you know, I've been around the country and visited all of them almost. I went to Babson. I went to USC.

John: I know. Where do you get the time to do stuff like that?

Russ: I've interviewed the MIT guy, and they have exceptional programs. This one keeps getting rated number one. It was number one this year. It was number one the year before. It was number two the year before that. It was number one the year before that, number two before that, and before that, they didn't even enter the contest.

John: Why not?

Russ: I don't know. They might not have cared or -

John: Maybe they didn't even know about the -

Russ: I think that was it, but they really have a cool program. And then, after my interview with Ken, Leisa Holland-Nelson -

John: Yes, our own.

Russ: Yes, she's going to sit down and interview Jennifer Heard, Vice President at Microsoft over small business, right now over small business for them for I think it's about eight or nine states. Now they define small business as meaning below 100 million per year in revenue. So that would put The BusinessMakers in that category.

John: We'd be in that category, yes. But ordinarily, we wouldn't consider ourselves a small business, or even a business.

Russ: Right, right.

John: This is more like a hobby.

Russ: That's right. That's exactly right. But - but listen to this. Jennifer is being interviewed again because this time, she got a promotion. From what I understand -

John: A what?

Russ: Yeah, a promotion.

John: Wow.

Russ: And this might turn out not to be true because I haven't heard it. But I think she's been promoted, and she's going to be like the vice president of small business for Microsoft over Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

John: Africa?

Russ: Yeah.

John: You know, maybe we can hook her up. Remember that guy we had on real early on? He did these micro loans in Kenya?

Russ: Yes, yes.

John: Maybe those two should do some deals together.

Russ: Maybe they should. That's a good idea.

John: That's right.

Russ: But look, there's even more.

John: Oh, come on. There's more?

Russ: And you should brace yourself. Yeah, because you don't -

John: You didn't tell me there was going to be more.

Russ: Well, I didn't want to tell you because you might try to stop this as you sort of have a vested interest. But also today on Leisa Holland-Nelson's Women Mean Business Show, she's going to be interviewing Candace Beeke. Now you know who that is.

John: None other than my erstwhile intrepid editor.

Russ: Yes, quite an editor at that. I got to interview her on the show like a month ago. It was a great interview. Now Leisa is going to have her on Women Mean Business.

John: Wow.

Russ: Okay, but first - that's right, it's time for The BusinessMakers School of Business.

John: Yes.

Russ: And this is where - you know, this is like our contribution to the business world.

John: That's right. Free education. I'm sure Ken Jones is doing his thing, and rightfully so and doing a good job of it because he's rated number one. But I think we're - I don't think we're any slouch here.

Russ: No. We've got to start a rating thing and see how well we do.

John: Yeah, I think we should encourage the listeners to get on our website and tell us whether you think we should be rated number one. Not you here, but you out there.

Russ: Right, I agree. All right, we kick off the School of Business each week first with a quote of the day.

John: Quote of the day, yes.

Russ: Today's quote is a Will Rogers quote.

John: Will Rogers, yeah. Died in a plane crash up in Alaska. Wiley Post was the pilot.

Russ: Wow.

John: Yeah, died an untimely death.

Russ: So did Wiley die, too?

John: Yeah, both. Shocking, shocking news back in those days.

Russ: All right, all right. Here's the quote. Communism is like prohibition. It's a good idea, but it won't work.

John: That's right. And all that stuff - in liberalism, according to PJ O'Rourke is communism by the drink. That's a good quote, too.

Russ: That's right, that's right. That's a good quote, too.

John: That's a great quote.

Russ: Two for one today. And that brings us to this week in business history. So what happened during this kind of mid-December week in business history?

John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1773 - and this is like about three years before the Declaration of Independence was signed. The Boston Tea Party is held in Boston Harbor. This is a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians, board three British vessels and dump over 300 chests of tea in the harbor. Now what causes this was a taxing issue over tea. Now a lot of people think - and I did it, too, for the longest time until we first started looking into this like many, many years ago is that it wasn't because the British raised taxes on the tea and made it more expensive. They lowered the taxes almost to the point of the elimination of their tea that they bring into the US to bring into the colonies to artificially lower the price and to corner the market.

Russ: And to give them a competitive advantage over tea that was grown and produced right here.

John: Or imported here from other lands. So they dumped it in there. A big brouhaha ensued. This week in business history in 1927, boy, that's a pretty big skip there. Robert Norton Noyce, one of the inventors of the integrated circuits board in Iowa - this is back in December 12th, 1927 - now he studied electronics at Grinnell College. I mean you know, what's Grinnell College?

Russ: Just _____ university.

John: I mean they're more obscure than us. But anyway, he got the education, and he got to work with one of the first transistors which really took the vacuum to, which was a big thing, probably like four or five inches high and three or four inches in diameter and shrunk it down, miniaturize it until I got something about the size of a thimble.

Russ: But the vacuum tubes looked good.

John: Oh yeah, because they made these sounds, and the lights would go and all this.

Russ: Integrated circuits don't look good.

John: It was good for the science fiction movies. Remember those old ones in the '50s? They had the vacuum tube.

Russ: Yeah, and you can't do that with an integrated circuit.

John: No, they don't make any noise at all.

Russ: That's right.

John: They're just a little thing with a couple of metal prongs. Anyway, that was the precursor to a lot of the further administering of nation of computer chips and everything else. Okay, this week in business history, 1928, I would say this was probably the best thing that ever happened to the nerd because this is when the clip on tie was invented.

Russ: Oh, wow. Monumental.

John: In Clinton, Iowa.

Russ: Wow, that's where they did it.

John: That's right. A clip on tie was invented, and later on about a year later, I mean it got such a great reaction from all the nerdy people out there that the same people invented the plastic pocket protector, and it was like - and they matched - they would try to get them to match - they had them in different styles. So we'd match the tie, and sometimes, people would take their tie, and like they'd be going out to dinner, and they would take the tie and put it in the plastic pocket protector.

Russ: Heard right here on The BusinessMakers Show.

John: Yeah, you don't get that anywhere else.

Russ: Do you think in Clinton, Iowa, they have a giant clip on tie at the town square?

John: I think they do.

Russ: We should try to find - if anybody is listening -

John: In Clinton, Iowa, let us know if there's like a monument to the clip on tie, and the plastic pocket protector, which I don't think was - you know, I kind of made that up because I thought it would go good with the story.

Russ: It might be true. It might be.

John: It could be. Good Lord. How are we supposed to know? Just because I make it up doesn't mean it's not true.

Russ: Right.

John: This week in business history in 1944, the famous bandleader Glenn Miller who at that time was a major - was a major. Not a drum major. A military major was lost over the English channel.

Russ: Wow.

John: I'm assuming he was in an airplane that crashed.

Russ: Yeah, yeah. Didn't we hear that it was rumored that it was friendly fire that could have brought him down?

John: It could have been. Yeah, it could have been anything. I mean it's war time. It could have been a German fighter pilot shot him down, or it could have been one of our fighter pilots who didn't like his music or something.

Russ: All we know - "There he is. I hate that music." Ratatatatat. All we know is that this is the week when he went down.

John: When he went down.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Okay, where are we? This week in business history, birthday, Ben Bernanke. Okay, it's his birthday this week. In business history in 1953, Ben Bernanke is born.

Russ: So he's 58 now.

John: Fifty-eight, yeah. Just want the job he's been doing. All right, see, you can't just have one guy control the - this is so ridiculous. You think here we've got this - we're going to put this guy in the federal reserve, and he'll fix it. You know -

Russ: Yeah, somebody could be blackmailing him on the side and we don't even know it. That's what's bad about one person having that much power.

John: I know. Happy birthday, Ben. [Laughs] This week in business history in 1959, the Everly Brothers record Let It Be Me. They had a string of hits. Good group. Not very good looking guys.

Russ: No.

John: They're kind of skinny, scrawny guys, but boy, they could really -

Russ: But they're copied and emulated, and there's a new cover CD out with famous people doing Everly Brothers songs.

John: Oh, really? They're famous. Like who? Name one.

Russ: I can't. But it is true.

John: So you should say semi-famous.

Russ: Linda Ronstadt might have done - well, she's done several of their songs.

John: Yeah, she has. She's a good singer. Okay, this week in business history in 1965, the Astrodome opened here in Houston, Texas. In 1965, this week in business history, and the first event is Judy Garland singing with The Supremes.

Russ: Wow, we don't know. Maybe Judy Garland sang and then The Supremes, or do you think it was Judy Garland with The Supremes?

John: Well, I think - no, here is what usually happens is one star will come out, and they'll sing for like 45 minutes, and then the people who - they'll come out and sing for 45 minutes, and then after they sing separately, then they sing together.

Russ: They'll come sing We are the World.

John: We are the World, yeah. Right. Yeah. Something like that. This week in business history in 1971, one of the - I would say one of the best songs - popular songs I think ever written and often quoted. People often think about just the song.

Russ: And what is it?

John: It's Don McLean's eight-minute version of American Pie.

Russ: Yeah.

John: Madonna came out with a version that was terrible about three minutes long.

Russ: Was it? I don't think I ever heard that one.

John: Yeah, it was terrible.

Russ: But it was all about the loss of the Big Bopper and Crickets -

John: Yeah, the band - and Buddy Holly and the other guy, La Bamba - the La Bamba guy. What's his name? They made a movie about him.

Russ: The La Bamba guy.

John: The La Bamba guy. All right, this week in business history in 1977, John Travolta premiers probably one of the most overrated movies ever made, did have a couple of catchy songs, but it was Saturday Night Fever.

Russ: Was the beginning of disco.

John: Yeah, disco, and the white suit.

Russ: That's when we all went and started wearing those weird shirts and -

John: Yeah, leisure suits and stuff like that.

Russ: Dancing funny.

John: I never did get that. I never could figure out that that's disco - I went to a dance studio one time to try to learn it.

Russ: Try to learn it.

John: That was embarrassing. Because they had the teacher, a woman teacher showing you how, and she's like all over the place. I'm standing there like, "Please, get me out of here."

Russ: We should try to get you some _______.

John: I know. All right, speaking of overrated, this week in business history in 2000, Al Gore finally concedes the presidential election, delivers a concession speech, ending all hopes of him becoming the 43rd president of the United States, highly contested, hotly contested race with recounts in Florida, hanging chads, and all that.

Russ: Don't you think the major issue at the end of the day when you look at that is there was like almost a tie. We're just not equipped - we weren't equipped then with handling it, and that's why it was so weird for so long, and Supreme Court decided it. But what was interesting that people always leave out of the story is that they did do a complete recount in Florida, and W still won by -

John: About the same.

Russ: Two votes. You know? It wasn't even like a slightly over the -

John: As politicians generally do, they try to paint the other side with a dirty brush, and what some people may not realize were the three counties that were in question were democratically controlled counties, which means the supervisor of elections in all three counties were democrats. So but they tried to accused the folks of voter intimidation and all this other kind of stuff to get everybody off topic. But the fact is these were democratically controlled counties that screwed up the election, that screwed up the ballots, the butterfly ballot, and all this other stuff.

Russ: Well, the number of screwed up hanging chads and butterfly - the butterfly ballots was just a maybe a little complex way to vote. But hanging chads -

John: But it wasn't Bush's fault. He didn't say, "Hey, I want you to -" and even his brothers didn't go into those counties and say, "You've got to use the butterfly." This is a local decision on how they -

Russ: Yeah, they acted like these guys contrived this butterfly ballot just to confuse -

John: And we used to know you press the wrong button on these ballot machines, you're looking at Vietnamese. I mean you know, what percentage of the population is Vietnamese here?

Russ: Right, you gotta vote.

John: You gotta vote. Yeah. Right. I don't know. I don't get it. But fortunately, Al Gore did not win. Not to say Bush didn't screw things up on occasion, but I think he was a better president than Al Gore would have been.

Russ: Well, Al Gore would have done that lockbox thing.

John: He would have done the lockbox. He would have tried to pass through all kinds of global warming legislation. It just would have been a mess. And lastly, this week in business history of 2007, the father of modern gaming, Nolan Bushnell who invented Pong, which we talked about a couple weeks ago, and also the founder of Atari and the founder of one of the worst conceived childhood experiences. Not for the child, but for the parents who have to take the child to this place was Chuck E. Cheese. I mean good Lord. Talk about a house of horrors. This big, giant rat running around.

Russ: He was on the show.

John: He was on the show, but I digress. Nolan was on the show.

Russ: I agree. Chuck E. Cheese was the most insidious. It was like painful to go in there. The racket and the noise.

John: You come out of there with a splitting headache and the place smells bad. The carpet. There's God knows how many kids have thrown up on the carpet. I mean it's just disgusting.

Russ: And that brings us to navigating business jargon, and this is that part of the business where we do our best at expanding your vocabulary in a contest format where I go out and choose sort of a new jargon word or phrase and challenge John to guess the meaning. We probably ought to - we haven't done this in a long time. But we ought to get - we ought to set the record straight. I'm giving some extra - preaching some caution.

John: Yeah, caution is very important when you use these words because if you don't know the word, then you're therefore unfamiliar with its meaning and its use in a sentence and all that.

Russ: You could get arrested.

John: You could get arrested, or worse, you could be tarred and feathered.

Russ: Which is not a good -

John: I saw that demonstrated on a TV show on John Adams. So I would strongly urge you to stand in front of a mirror, articulate - use it in a sentence, use it around the house a little bit like you're talking to your dog or something or your cat. For goodness sake, please practice this before you go out into a public setting. Especially with your family because you might use the word in the wrong application. I suggest if you want to press your - a good way to impress your friends at cocktail parties after there's been excessive drinking.

Russ: Right, start using them then.

John: Start using them then, people think, "Oh, this man is very erudite."

Russ: That's good that you chose that environment because it kind of syncs up well with today's word.

John: The word what?

Russ: Here it is. You ready?

John: What word?

Russ: Here it is. Tell me what it is. Drunkorexia.

John: Drunkorexia. Anorexia is when you purge all your food that you eat, and you become skinny.

Russ: You're kind of heading down the right path sort of.

John: So drunkorexia - drunkorexia. That's when you drink too much and you want to get that high, but at the end of the day, end of the evening, you want to get back to normal, so you upchuck all that alcohol so you can get back to normal.

Russ: [Laughs] That's wrong. It's a good shot, though. In fact, it might be close enough for me to correct the real meaning. But the real meaning is eating less to offset the calories consumed while drinking alcohol. There's a lot more people that are concerned now about their weight. They still like to drink a whole lot, and they know, "My God, I'm taking in all these calories. What can I do?" Well, just don't eat. Just keep drinking. That's what it is. Drunkorexia. All right, that brings us to dumb moments. Do you have one for us?

John: Yeah, Detroit. You know, they're in bad financial condition, and so there's this councilman named Kwame Kenyatta.

Russ: Kwame Kenyatta.

John: Kwame Kenyatta, who thinks he has this great idea to fix the Detroit financial crisis by instituting a city lottery.

Russ: They already have like a state lottery.

John: They have a state lottery, and it's a competing city lottery, and it's starting to gather steam, and they haven't voted on it yet because they think they're going to get enough money to help the schools. When they sell these - this lottery business is always to help the schools, the children. And then what they do sometimes is they'll have the lottery, and for every dollar they put into the schools, they take another dollar out the back door and spend it on whatever they want. Now they're saying they're going to do it this way. But I gotta tell you, I believe in good salesmanship, and I think if you want to sell something, you shouldn't have somebody by the name of Kwame Kenyatta to do it. I'm not saying that's a bad name for somebody, but it's not mainstream, and I think they need to get some mainstream support on this.

The thing is, I mean, that's like - and I don't know what nationality the guy is, but he's probably a fine guy. It's like if you had an Anglo by the name of Alfred E. Newman -

Russ: That would not be good.

John: That would not be good either. No, so I think you have to have the sense of the sale. The presentation is an important thing. So I don't know. Whoever - there's a guy named Jimmy Womack, a democrat from Detroit.

Russ: Is that a good marketing name?

John: I don't know, but he wants - he just wants - he also wants to draft legislation to start a Detroit only lottery.

Russ: That's interesting.

John: You can't judge a person by their name, but you can judge them by their action. And anybody who is dumb enough to think that a lottery is going to help solve your financial position, your nuts.

Russ: Yeah, I agree. And before we wrap up today's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook. And that wraps up today's School of Business. Stay tuned in for our interview with Ken Jones, the associate director of the Wolf Center for Entrepreneurship, the number one rated undergrad entrepreneurship program in the country followed by Lisa Holland-Nelson's interview of Jennifer Heard, vice president of Microsoft. This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at http://www.TheBusinessMakers.com.