Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen, online, at thebusinessmakers.com. This is Episode Number 342, the Christmas version of the show that features those that make it happen.
John: That's right, Russ. It's we're around Christmastime, New Year's Eve, peace on earth, good will toward men. It's nice to say those words.
Russ: You bet.
John: And we write about capitalism and entrepreneurship. Sometimes it's just good to take a pause and be thankful for what we've got here, you know?
Russ: You bet. You bet.
John: Okay.
Russ: Because we still have a chance to correct the course and bring back the fact that, here in America, we've had great prosperity by also giving people the right to rise.
John: That's right. Just that article that Jeb Bush wrote, the Number 3 son or Number 2 son, rather, in the Bush Family and I've always thought he was the most conservative of the Bushes.
Russ: He probably is, yeah.
John: Yeah, I met him when I was in Florida. We met with him and a couple of other business people. He was just like at this table we're sitting at --
Russ: Right.
John: he was talking about education and I thought, "You know, this guy ought to, I hope he wins the governorship, which he did, eventually.
Russ: And he was pretty popular there, too, right?
John: That's right. He ran against a guy, I think it was his first election, he ran against a friend of mine, Bill McBride, an attorney there, and Bill didn't fair too well, and, so, anyway, he's a good guy, mmm-hmm.
Russ: Well, the whole thing about the "Right to Rise" is this new article that he recently wrote for The Wall Street Journal that talks about the right to fail also and that that's what all this capitalism was based on and we're trying to re-engineer it now with protections, rules and regulations that --
John: Well, and capitalism, if you fail, it's because it's the market that dictates that, pretty much. I mean, I'm not saying there aren't people out there trying to do bad things to other people but that happens no matter what kind of a system you live under but with the big-government approach, the socialism approach, it's the government who decided who fails and who wins.
Russ: And the statists, all those guys.
John: Yeah, well their apparatchiks in Washington with their levers and dials on their desk and they're trying to control things.
Russ: Right!
John: And you can't control a system that has over 300 million consumers about deciding what to buy and what not to buy and who to - what to invest in and what not to invest in. It's kinda like we're wired for capitalism. That's our operating system here in this country and you can't fix what's wrong in this country with using a software that works with another operating system.
Russ: Right!
John: And it's like the Mac/PC, you know? You can't take a Mac software remedy and apply it to a PC. It just won't work.
Russ: Exactly!
John: And vice versa, exactly, so.
Russ: We wanna let the markets prevail for sure.
John: Yeah the markets decide and should decide and sometimes it's not fair but it's much more fair that way than having somebody, in Washington, or some group of people, some commission, some super committee or whatever it is or a czar, you know? Those people don't even get Senate approval. I mean, they just get named to run something so it's --
Russ: Right and we actually want the markets to prevail even without some of these turbocharged ideas, like subprime mortgage, you know, which was like, "Man, this is gonna work great!"
John: Yeah, well, they knew, you know? They knew there was gonna be some problems but they didn't, most of them, you know, Cuomo and Barney Frank -
Russ: Chris Dodd, yeah.
John: They thought, "Well, yeah, well, this is a roll-of-the-dice but we think the economy can handle it and if some of these mortgages go bad," which had a huge ripple effect on Wall Street and that's what cause the world economy to go sour.
Russ: All right.
John: All right, okay.
Russ: Back to our mission, entrepreneurs.
John: Yes, enough of this bad new here.
Russ: Yeah, and our Weekly Shout Out to that cool group, E.O. Houston, which is a collection of really make-it-happen entrepreneurs.
John: Yes, enough of this bad new here.
Russ: Yeah, and our Weekly Shout Out to that cool group, EO Houston, which is a collection of really make-it-happen entrepreneurs.
John: That's right. These guys are the ones who, I think, would probably be role models if anybody wanted to see what an entrepreneur looks like, you ought to go to one of their luncheons or one of their meetings and there's a whole room full of 'em.
Russ: That's right, that's right, all right, and here's our lineup for today. Our guest today is Michael Fjetland, the Founder and President of Armor Glass. Now this guy's real interesting. He was a practicing attorney in International Law and gave that up to start his own company, called Armor Glass, and he's got a pretty interesting approach to protecting your windows, in your business or your home, from all sorts of outside projectiles during hurricanes and vandals and stuff. It's pretty cool.
John: So is it like these are sheets of metal that you --
Russ: Right, exactly. Hard to see through but you're coming up to another actually translucent, transparent, and they're really cool, but first
Russ: That's right. It's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business, not your business-as-usual school.
John: No, it's actually, we don't know what it is but we think it's better than any of the business curriculums we've seen out there --
Russ: Absolutely.
John: and heard about because this is real-world stuff. We're not flying up there at 30,000 feet, you know, trying to teach young kids how to be CEOs of public companies. We're down there in the trenches --
Russ: Absolutely.
John: and we have real-world knowledge that we're imparting every week, which we think is much more helpful to those people who are running companies or who are thinking about running companies or whatever so if you're a student of business, regardless of the age, we think this is the best way to learn what's going on.
Russ: Absolutely, Number 1 in the country, right?
John: Number 1 in the country.
Russ: Yes, that's right. We kick off the School of Business each week with the Quote of the Day.
John: Quote of the Day.
Russ: And today's quote comes from Mahatma Gandhi.
John: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Russ: And here it is. It kinda synchs up with the discussion right up-front about the Jeb Bush article about "The Right to Rise." It goes like this, "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."
John: There you go.
Russ: Yeah.
John: Yeah, you learn from the mistakes.
Russ: Absolutely.
John: If you're the one making them and you don't learn from them, maybe someone else will find out what you did wrong and figure out a way of making that something more important.
Russ: It won't help you.
John: It won't help you but someone else, yeah, right.
Russ: All right and that brings us to This Week in Business History. So what happened during this end-of-year Week in Business History?
John: Well, let's see. There's a guy named William Pitt the Younger who lived in the financial district in Edinburgh and he's the one who devised the window tax in England.
Russ: In what year?
John: It was in 1695.
Russ: Okay, the window tax.
John: Yeah, in 1695, this week in business history, William Pitt the Younger, and so they were taxing windows and houses and all this and some people rebelled against it and bricked up their windows and so they went and flipped over the window tax.
Russ: Yeah, I wonder what would've happened if you put Armor Glass, like our guest, on the windows _____.
John: Well, then that would be two. That would actually be two windows.
Russ: Oh, wow.
John: See, the armored part of the window --
Russ: You'd have to pay it extra in the tax.
John: And the tax consisted of two parts, a flat-rate house tax, of two-schillings-per-house and a variable tax for the number of windows above ten windows so, for two schillings, they'd spot you the ten windows and then anything over that, of course, they'd get to you.
Russ: So if you were bricking them up, you'd probably just go ahead and leave ten where you could see out, still.
John: Yeah, oh yeah, you gotta see out. You don't want it to look like a bunker.
Russ: Now I've noticed here in the states even some windows that are bricked up. Do you think these are people anticipating?
John: I think so, I think so.
Russ: Do you think Congress might also think that?
John: Oh, they probably heard this because this isn't the first time we've talked about it and we've been on the air, what, for five years now?
Russ: Yeah, no, that's six, actually.
John: Six, okay, six, so --
Russ: So people are afraid that they're probably --
John: Yeah, they've heard this.
Russ: have heard about it.
John: So this is a cautionary tale here that people are taking very seriously.
Russ: That's right.
John: Okay.
Russ: Okay.
John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1849, M. Jolly-Bellin discovers dry cleaning and he accidently upset his lamp, containing turpentine and oil, on his clothing and it created a drastic cleaning effect.
Russ: Wow, does that mean when I send my clothes to be dry cleaned, they're putting turpentine and oil on 'em?
John: I think that there are probably things similar kind of chemicals have some of the same properties but I doubt it's the same thing but I don't know who invented martinizing of clothes.
Russ: Right, that came along the way.
John: It came along later.
Russ: All right, good.
John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1862, the bowling ball was invented and it was a very important invention because before, you know, they had these pins.
Russ: And they didn't know how to knock 'em down.
John: No one knew how to knock 'em down, you know?
Russ: Yeah, so some guy said, "I've got an idea."
John: So let's go to the alley, the pin alley. We can go there and look at the pins and sometimes they would just find a dwarf and toss the dwarf down there and that's where dwarf tossing came in.
Russ: That's right and eventually somebody said, "Maybe it'd work better if we had a big ball."
John: A big ball, yeah because the little guys were getting hurt, you know?
Russ: I wonder if the first guy that invented 'em, he also put finger holes in 'em or if that came along, you know, in version 2 or 3, of bowling.
John: That was one of those game-changing refinements that took this guy's bowing ball and made it obsolete because I'm sure they patented the holes in there so that they would own the thing.
Russ: We need to research and find out who invented the holes --
John: The holes, yeah.
Russ: that you put in bowling balls, yeah.
John: I don't know.
Russ: That's interesting, okay.
John: That is interesting, yes. This week in business history, in 1928, the first U.S. air-conditioned office building opens in San Antonio, 1928!
Russ: Now that's an interesting moment.
John: Yes, it's changed the world.
Russ: Well, it changed Texas for sure. It was unbearable.
John: Well, it's what's made the southern states more habitable and, as a result, you've had these huge population shifts going on.
Russ: Right
John: People leave the frozen north because of the weather and, of course, the high cost of living and the sweltering heat but they had the air conditioning, which kinda takes the curse off of it.
Russ: Right.
John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1935, Charles Darrow patents Monopoly.
Russ: The game!
John: Yeah, the game.
Russ: Whoa.
John: Yeah, Boardwalk, Park Place and Marvin. I like Marvin Gardens I must say.
Russ: Marvin Gardens.
John: I like that. It was a cool name for a property.
Russ: What was? I like the railroads but then, the older I got, the more I learned about the way business really worked and then I liked The Boardwalk and Park Place because, man!
John: You could make a ton of money.
Russ: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Russ: Yeah, those were key properties, too.
John: Key properties but there are only two of those and if your opponents don't land on the property --
Russ: It can be wasted money.
John: It's wasted money.
Russ: Right.
John: So it's very - there's some good valuable lessons to be learned about that.
Russ: Absolutely, absolutely.
John: Okay, where are we here? Okay this week in business history, 1937, Mae West performs the Adam & Eve Skit that gets her banned from NBC Radio.
Russ: Wow.
John: So I have no idea what that was or what she said.
Russ: So in 1937, on radio, she did an Adam & Eve skit?
John: Right and got her banned.
Russ: Yeah, well, I wonder, man. They had different kinda values and principles back then. I betcha it wouldn't get banned today.
John: Oh no, you had, what's-her-name, Janet Jackson with the wardrobe malfunction, which exposed one of her breasts, and NBC said, "Oh, so sorry."
Russ: The Super Bowl.
John: "So sorry." This week in business history, in 1953, Hank Williams dies. Man, oh, man, this guy was a very popular Country & Western singer, died when he was 29 years old, of a heart attack.
Russ: Right.
John: He was sitting in a limousine on the way to a show in Canton, Ohio. I guess he was going there to dedicate the NFL Hall of Fame.
Russ: Yeah, must've been. Well, and for our young listeners, this is not Hank Williams, Jr. This is his dad.
John: This is his father.
Russ: Yeah, of course, who is - who --
John: The NFL Hall of Fame hadn't been built yet.
Russ: Right, right!
John: But the media speculated that his death may have been the result of the substance abuse, the drugs, alcohol, everything.
Russ: Well, I think that was required if you were a star, right?
John: Well, you know, if you're driving from West Virginia to Canton, Ohio, in the back of a limousine, all by yourself --
Russ: Yeah, what else are you gonna do?
John: What the hell else are you gonna do, you know?
Russ: Do some serious drugs.
John: Gotta pass the time somehow. I'm sure he didn't read the equivalent of Jeb Bush's article back there, in 1953, but --
Russ: Right, right, but also for our younger audience, he was an incredible star, maybe even bigger than his son, although his son has lasted so long and has had so many hits, has certainly made lots more money and had a lot more recordings.
John: Yeah, well he had the "Are You Ready for Some Football?"
Russ: That's right, until he lost that job.
John: He lost that gig because he couldn't keep his mouth shut, you know?
Russ: Right!
John: Okay, well, moving right along here, this week in business history, in 1961, The Beach Boys played their debut gig, 1961!
Russ: Wow.
John: Man, oh, man!
Russ: Yeah.
John: And then look how famous they got! I mean, it was almost overnight and then Brian Wilson was able to incorporate that Wall of Sound that Phil Spector came up with.
Russ: In that album called "Pet Sounds".
John: "Pet Sounds".
Russ: That's your favorite, yeah.
John: That just revolutionized everything.
Russ: Now I only recently read that the guys are coming back together for their 50th Anniversary.
John: Oh, that'd be great. Yeah, I'd buy a ticket to that.
Russ: Now you can still see, along the way, you've been able to see a lot of Beach Boys but they're not the original ones.
John: They are not the original ones.
Russ: No, no, now, the guy, what's-his-name --
John: They're a pale substitute.
Russ: Well, but of 'em.
John: Jardine.
Russ: Mike Love is always there. He's always there, you know? But now they're all kinda coming back together, Al Jardine.
John: Yeah, Al Jardine, the ones that are still alive.
Russ: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they couldn't bring the dead guy back, right?
John: Yeah, as hard as they tried.
Russ: Yeah, right, right!
John: This week in business history, in 1968, the crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo is released by North Korea after being held for 11 months on suspicion of spying.
Russ: Yeah, North Korea was even behaving like this back then, in 1968. I remember that, the Pueblo Incident. I couldn't comprehend it, of course. I was young and they still didn't cover things like they do today in the news but I remember seeing photos of the guys in the newspaper. The North Koreans would release 'em and they, kinda, looked like they were trying to smile. They didn't look very happy and then --
John: You know people who are confined to a North Korean prison; it's not like a laugh stop. It's not like a comedy club.
Russ: It's not like staying at The Marriott, either, is it? No.
John: Although, there's some pretty bad Marriotts out there.
Russ: Yeah, there are, there are!
John: I wonder if there are Marriotts in North Korea. Do you think they've expanded into North Korea yet?
Russ: Well, you've seen that new satellite picture of the world at night? North Korea, they must make everybody turn the lights off.
John: There's one light. There's one light on there.
Russ: Yes.
John: That's where Fearless Leader lives.
Russ: Yeah, or that might've been a guy lighting his cigarette or something when that satellite flew over.
John: Yeah.
Russ: Okay!
John: All right, now this week in business history, in 1974, Popular Electronics displays the Altair 8800 Computer.
Russ: Well, and that was a great --
John: That's right up your alley.
Russ: That was a huge deal. That was one of the first, really, kind of, small microcomputers. I certainly - a company I ran owned one from back in the beginning and it was really interesting. There was no keyboard, you kind of drove it completely by, somehow or another, creating commands outside the computer.
John: Uh-huh.
Russ: It was bulky, big and slow --
John: Oh, yeah, right, yeah.
Russ: and it couldn't do much but, man, oh, man, was it ever a step in the direction that we ultimately took, big-time.
John: That's right. Yeah, I mean, my iPhone is probably 100 times, 1,000 times more --
Russ: Probably 100,000 times, yeah.
John: More powerful than this.
Russ: Yeah.
John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1975, the first Hail Mary Pass - I think there were others - I think there were passes that were the same kind of pass.
Russ: Oh, definitely.
John: It was the first time it was called "The Hail Mary."
Russ: By Roger Staubach.
John: Roger Staubach, our guest on the show one time. The Cowboys beat The Vikings, 17-14, on a last-second pass, although I don't know who the Viking Defender but he still maintains, to this day, that he was interfered with by Drew Pearson who was a receiver who caught the ball who scored the touchdown.
Russ: Right, but he didn't do a Hail Mary to try to stop it probably, did he?
John: No, no.
Russ: And therefore it was complete.
John: I wonder what happens if you - okay, the quarterback says, "Hail Mary full grace," throws the ball. Now if the defender is going, "Hail Mary, full of grace, please let me defend this pass properly," I wonder which guy would win.
Russ: Well, that's a good - that's a great question!
John: Although, Tim Tebow, a very religious guy, says, "God doesn't care who wins a football game."
Russ: Yeah?
John: He's said that. He just thanks the lord every time.
Russ: He does and does his Tebow.
John: Yeah, the Tae Bo, right.
Russ: Your earlier comment, there were passes before and there were and I was so perplexed when I learned first that that's when it first happened, in '75. I thought it happened before then but they called it, "He's gonna throw Alley Oop," or they would also call it, "He's gonna throw a bomb."
John: A bomb, yeah, a bomb.
Russ: Yeah, and that just means he's gonna throw it real high and it's gonna come down but it was Roger Staubach who coined - I wonder if he trademarked that.
John: Yeah, well, and then now people who, if they have a bomb, it's usually in their underwear.
Russ: It's true, their underwear, that's right.
John: Or in their shoes.
Russ: Unlike back then it was a pass.
John: A pass.
Russ: You know, yeah.
John: Now you throw a pass, you get written up in note to corporate.
Russ: Right, right, right, exactly.
John: You gotta watch how you use that word "pass."
Russ: It's a complex world we live in.
John: It is a complex world. Okay, this week in business history, in 1991, the - this marks the last day of the existence of the USSR.
Russ: So that was 20 years but they - but Putin's been, kinda, trying to bring it, at least some of the principles.
John: I wouldn't say, "Trying to bring it back." I think he's bringing it back.
Russ: Well, that's kinda interesting what Twitter and Facebook are doing to him over there. There's an actual protest.
John: I know. There's a movement that's rising.
Russ: Yes!
John: You know so it's kinda fun to see that these because if you remember when the USSR failed and there's all these other guys were taking over, the mainstream media would say, "You know there is people in Russia that want to bring back the old Soviet Union" and everything. Well, that's a bunch of B.S. because there's a huge movement over there that don't. They know what it was like.
Russ: Yeah, exactly.
John: They remember the breadlines and the rationing and all that, so.
Russ: And then we got the owner of the New Jersey Nets saying, "Well, heck, throw my hat in the ring," you know, and he's gonna run against Putin, which I think is fantastic!
John: Yeah, which will be the last he'll ever be seen again.
Russ: Right, the New Jersey Nets better start looking for a new owner!
John: Those guys play for keeps over there. I mean, you lose an election, that's not all you lose, baby!
Russ: That's right!
John: All right, okay, where are we? This week in business history, in 2000, the U.S. retail giant, Montgomery Ward, announced it's going out of business after 128 years. I tell you, nobody is safe. I don't care.
Russ: That's the right to fail!
John: That's the right to fail.
Russ: That's the way capitalism works.
John: Yeah, you know, nothing's ever gonna stay the same and it's --
Russ: No, they were doing a sorry job!
John: They were! That's what happens when you don't do the right - you know, you don't keep up with the times!
Russ: Unless you're General Motors and you're failing under the Obama administration. Montgomery Ward, he probably would've saved Montgomery Ward.
John: He probably would've, yeah.
Russ: Yeah, the government would've owned 'em for a while and --
John: And we know he saved S&H Green Stamps or his mother did, or something.
Russ: That's right, had some S&H Green Stamps.
John: Remember those? Whatever happened to S&H Green Stamps?
Russ: We're talking, yeah, they didn't make it, either.
John: How about Raleigh coupons?
Russ: Yeah!
John: Did your parents ever buy anything with Raleigh coupons?
Russ: Yeah, what about Aladdin Coupons?
John: Aladdin, no.
Russ: Did you all ever do those off of notebook paper? You'd have a little Aladdin coupon.
John: Nuh-uh, I don't remember.
Russ: Sorry that we're boring all of our young audience out there.
John: Well, they need to know this stuff.
Russ: They need to know it.
John: Okay, all right, okay, this week in business history, in 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigns as President of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the Acting President. Yeah, Acting President. Guess what folks?
Russ: Dictator but that happened without an election because Yeltsin was pretty much had fallen off the wagon, hadn't he, and he just kinda gave up, you know, although he kinda led a movement.
John: Oh, I remember those photos of him standing up in front of the Russian Army.
Russ: Right, right! He was a good guy but --
John: He was a good guy but he was not a teetotaler.
Russ: Teetotaler, he was not.
John: Okay, at the end of this week in business history, in 2000, the world braced for Y2K. Remember that?
Russ: Yeah, we were braced and what a success that was! Think about that for the Y2K consultants. Man, they made all this money.
John: Of course you could say they could say, "Well, that's why you didn't have Y2K because these consultant industry really stepped up and --
Russ: That's right. If you hadn't have paid us all this money, everybody would be stuck in elevators.
John: All because of one little digit --
Russ: Right!
John: on a computer, you know, they thought all the elevators would - planes would crash in the air and hell, death and destruction.
Russ: Right!
John: What a scam!
Russ: Yeah.
John: But it was good.
Russ: All right.
John: It was fun to watch it not happen. Everyone was glued to their TV, you know, and then when it flipped over --
Russ: Yeah, everything was - it kept going!
John: It kept going, yeah.
Russ: It was just like some of those people that have been announcing the end of the earth, you know that?
John: Well, December 12th, 2012.
Russ: Right! It's gonna happen again, right?
John: This time next year, the Mayan Calendar.
Russ: Well, we better hire some consultants, then.
John: Yeah, now if they were - look, if they were this clairvoyant, the Mayans, don't you think they could've predicted the - the - gotten ready for the Spanish Invasion.
Russ: Yeah, they should have, right!
John: Don't you think they would've already known about that?
Russ: They should've, yeah. That's a good point.
John: Why were they taken by surprise?
Russ: That's right. It's a great point.
John: Yeah, yeah, I can make points.
Russ: You don't get this stuff in regular business school, do you?
John: No, you certainly don't. This week in business history, in 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, I guess is his name, but also known as The Underwear Bomber, puts a bomb in his groin, and keeps it there, while a U.S. flight, onboard - onboard a flight to Detroit Metro Airport and he was found. Someone found it. He was trying to --
Russ: Well, yeah, I think he kinda got it.
John: They beat the crap out of him. I mean, the passengers got up and just literally almost killed the guy.
Russ: Yeah, and it did, kind of, spark and, kinda, start a fire, and stuff, but it was unsuccessful and how embarrassing is it to be the terrorist now known as The Underwear Bomber?
John: Well, just imagine, you know? If you're gonna put a bomb in your crotch, okay, you want it to explode and kill you. You don't want it to fizzle and spark and, you know? Can you imagine what 3rd degree burns down there on a --
Russ: Oh, yeah, and who knows? He might've been wearing, like, Underoos or something.
John: Underoos, yeah, he was wearing --
Russ: Superman Underoos?
John: No, Ahmad Admini Job or whatever his name his, his Underoos. He's got his own line of Underoos, underwear.
Russ: Yeah.
John: Yeah, okay, Ahmadinejad.
Russ: Ahmadinejad.
John: Yeah, okay, Ahmadinejad.
Russ: Ahmadinejad.
John: Ahmadinejad-brand. Hanes makes them over there, in Tehran. Yeah, it's Ahmadinejad Underoos. That's what he was wearing.
Russ: So you think Hanes, over time, might want this guy as a spokesperson?
John: Well, they might because, you know, if you saw the pictures, the Underoos were still intact, pretty much.
Russ: Right!
John: I mean they didn't - you know they didn't disintegrate, so, you know, I guess they do repel --
Russ: Incendiary?
John: extreme heat and sparks.
Russ: Wow!
John: Yeah, so.
Russ: What an endorsement!
John: So instead of Hanes using Michael Jordan, they can use this guy when he gets out of prison, you know, which, with the guy we got running the country now, could be any day, you know?
Russ: Yeah, right, and that wraps up today's history lesson. Yes, what a lesson, jeez, you know, we covered --
John: We might wanna tell people if you're listening to this on the radio, you're probably not getting the full course load.
Russ: Yeah, if you think this is something, if you listen to the radio --
John: Yeah, so if you go online, to thebusinessmakers.com, you can get the full curriculum.
Russ: Yeah, uncensored!
John: Uncensored and unadulterated but martinized for your protection, okay?
Russ: Martinized.
John: Yeah.
Russ: All right and that brings us to Navigating Business Jargon. This is our vocabulary lesson that we present via a contest format, thereby --
John: A what format?
Russ: A contest format.
John: Ah, a contest format.
Russ: Whereby I get to go select a word. I have all week long to select it and the only thing I cannot do is let John know what I selected.
John: No, don't let me know but that - I want the listeners to know this is not any jive. I do not know the word. That's how we, kinda, put a little suspense into the show, here.
Russ: Right, right.
John: Okay.
Russ: And oftentimes he confirms and verifies that he doesn't know it by missing it.
John: By missing it, yeah, but I'd say my batting average is pretty good, considering I don't know the word or hear the word 'til the very time it's uttered on the show.
Russ: Right, you ready?
John: Yeah.
Russ: Today's word's a noun.
John: A noun.
Russ: Hopium.
John: Hopium. Well, opium is a drug that gets you addicted.
Russ: Right.
John: It's an addictive substance and it can kill you. Hopium is when you're addicted to hope and the future of thinking, "Well, tomorrow is gonna be a better day" or something like that. "It's always gonna get better" or whatever.
Russ: I'm gonna give you a win!
John: So which is just as dangerous because, you know, if you're just sitting hoping things are gonna be better instead of making them better then you're --
Russ: Hold your calls, ladies and gentlemen.
John: You're dead man walking.
Russ: He's got it.
John: All right!
Russ: The exact definition is "The irrational belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary," like the deficit, "things will turn out for the best."
John: Yeah.
Russ: What the hell! This will all work out!
John: It'll all work out.
Russ: Stay calm.
John: We'll just print more money! What the hell? There's no paper shortage out there. We'll just print more money and then we'll all be millionaires.
Russ: There you go!
John: All right.
Russ: There you go! All right, well, that brings us to Dumb Moments in Business. Do you have a story for us today, John?
John: Yeah, I don't whether you consider this a dumb moment in business history. I guess maybe a dumb moment in just history!
Russ: Okay.
John: Okay and that is the reaction of the North Koreans to the death of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.
Russ: Right!
John: Okay who we really don't know how he died.
Russ: We knew he was ill, though.
John: We do. That's why they called him that. He was not a very healthy man so they called him Kim Jong Il and Rush Limbaugh now calls him, "Kim Jong dead" because he's no longer ill.
Russ: The good news is he's no longer ill, he's dead, yeah.
John: So anyway he's a 69-year-old man and they were announcing his death with a reporter with the gravest of emotions and then they had - and then there were pictures and reports of people just in uncontrollable, indescribable sorrow and actually gnashing of teeth.
Russ: In the public.
John: In the public, people on the streets prostrate, crying, tears running down their face, people pounding the pavement, and you're wondering, "What the heck is going on here, you know?" This guy was a ruthless dictator. Well, I've got a story here on breitbart.com about this and --
Russ: It explains it?!
John: Yeah, that explains to it and there's a source that they've - you know, unnamed source, you know? If you're a Korean, you know --
Russ: Yeah, all sources are unnamed.
John: Yeah, right. This says, "There were armed soldiers." This is after he died. "There were armed soldiers on the street every four meters and military and intelligence officers are on guard everywhere." This is in one of the cities in North Korea "and quoted a source in a northeastern city of Musan as saying - and the source later said that people are afraid in case they did not show enough zealotry in their mourning, recalling punishments meted out to some after Kim Il Sun's death 17 years ago." Now Kim Il Sung is the father of Kim Jong Il and so if you did not react in an emotional state, suitable enough for the apparatchiks in the North Korean hierarchy, then they might do something bad to ya, so that's why you see all that stuff. Right, yeah, and here's a quote, "Some in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, pounded the grounds with their fists and others wailed at the sky in a testament to the ferocious personality cult built up around Kim Jong Il, which is now being transferred to Kim Jong-un."
Russ: Un.
John: Okay, un. "Under the leadership of Comrade Kim Jong-un, we will turn our sorrow into strength and courage and overcome the present difficulties," like no electricity.
Russ: Or food.
John: Or food or jobs, real jobs, "and work harder for the greater victory of the Self-Reliance Revolution."
Russ: The Self-Reliance Revolution.
John: Yeah, so anyway and this was quoted - this was said by a 43-year-old military officer who obviously wants to further his career.
Russ: Yes, yes, yes.
John: So anyway.
Russ: Well, hopefully those people can straighten out their country over there and live with the rest of us.
John: Well, I dunno. It's - they got all these nuclear missiles. That's a long shot.
Russ: Right, right, all right, all right, but before we wrap up today's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook. All right, and that wraps up today's School of Business. Stay tuned in for my interview with Michael Fjetland, the Founder and President of Armor Glass. This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen, online, at thebusinessmakers.com.
