Russ: This is the BusinessMakers show, heard here and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com, and this is that show that champions entrepreneurship and features innovators.

John: That's right, and we have two versions of this. We have the condensed version, which you're listening to on air right now, and then we have the full monty, the full coursework, the full everything, which you'll find at thebusinessmakers.com.

Russ: You bet.

John: Okay.

Russ: All right! And here's our line-up for this morning. First up, the new director of the university-based entrepreneurship program that's ranked number one by the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine. We're talking about the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Houston, as I get to sit down and talk with Ken Jones. And that's gonna be followed by a BusinessMakers flashback, when we share three of our favorite idea-trigger stories. First up, Bennett Greenspan with familytreedna.com, then Brian Lou, with legalzoom.com, and lastly Farouk Shami with Farouk Systems. But first - that's right. It's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business, and this is not your business-as-usual school.

John: That's right, Russ. This is what you would call a highly specialized curriculum.

Russ: And this is not to be confused with any of those for-profit university programs that are getting scrutinized right now.

John: I know, I know. And it's - well, they're gettin' scrutinized because they're making money, and we know the feds think about people making money these days.

Russ: And we kick it off for each episode with the quote of the day -

John: Quote of the day.

Russ: - and I'm sticking with Mr. P.J. O'Rourke -

John: That's right, 'cause he's as good as anybody there is out there, I'll tell you that.

Russ: Here it is. "America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well pleased.

John: That's right!

Russ: That one quote says it all for me.

John: That's right.

Russ: And there all those in our government that think the government's there for us to all be better.

John: Well, they try to guarantee results.

Russ: That's right.

John: And the government, really, the Bill of Rights is just a guarantee that everybody has an opportunity.

Russ: There you go.

John: The results are up to you.

Russ: Absolutely. All right, and that brings us to This Week in Business History, so what happened during this end of January, beginning of February week in business history?

John: Wow, time flies. This week in business history, 1863, this was smack-dab in the middle of the Civil War, Samuel Clemens becomes Mark Twain for the first time.

Russ: Wow, that is interesting -

John: Nom de plume.

Russ: - that that happened right in the middle of the Civil War.

John: That's right. He lived a long, long time, into the early 1900s.

Russ: You bet. Okay.

John: This week in business history, 1865, Congress passes the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in America. It's about time, but at least it got done.

Russ: You bet.

John: Would have been - unfortunately, that's several hundred thousand people in the process ­-

Russ: You bet.

John: - to get that done. This week in business history, in 1876, Albert Spaulding, with $800.00, starts a sporting-goods company and he manufactures the first official baseball in 1876, tennis ball, basketball, golf ball, and football, okay? In 1876, that's Custer's last stand. Then it gives you an idea, frame of reference there. In 1884, this week in business history, the Oxford dictionary debuts - and, by the way, there's a lot of skullduggery and a lot of mayhem that ensued -

Russ: A little crime -

John: - in the creation - yeah, murders in there somewhere, and everything. I suggest that people go online and really read the total history of this endeavor. But there's over 400,000 words and phrases in ten volumes, and the verb "set" is the dictionary's longest entry with approximately 60,000 words in detailing over 430 uses of the word "set."

Russ: S-E-T. Wow!

John: I wonder if Bill Clinton once said that depends what your definition of the word "is" is - it's probably in here, a couple hundred words, the word "is."

Russ: I wonder if the "set" includes when you go set when you're playing spades.

John: Set - or tennis.

Russ: That's right. A tennis set. Okay.

John: This week in business history, in 1928 - this was one of these things, that you think, "Gee, how come it took 'em this long to come up with the idea?" Scotch tape is first marketed by the 3M company.

Russ: 1928.

John: Now, Scotch tape is kind of a rudimentary way of sticking things to each other, and I was surprised that it took 'em 1928 to start marketing it.

Russ: Maybe they're just talking about the brand, you know? When you put that little plaid insignia on the side, and maybe there was tape before then, I would think.

John: Well, think we're making a big deal out of it, I think it's probably - and our vast research team came up with this - I'm thinking this is the original Scotch tape. This week in business history, in 1940, Glenn Miller and his orchestra record "Tuxedo Junction." This week in business history, in 1958, the U.S. launches its first satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958.

Russ: That was huge because we were behind already because of Sputnik, and finally we got something up there. Explorer 1.

John: I wonder if it's still up there.

Russ: I don't think so. I think they didn't last long back then.

John: No. No. Okay, this week in business history, 1959, the so-called day the music died. Rock stars Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper, J.P. Richardson, are killed in their chartered Beachcraft Bonanza. What in the world were they flying a plane like that in the middle of the winter. But I guess they had to get to the next gig, and Don McLean, the singer, immortalized this whole thing in the song "American Pie." This week in business history, 1961, Houston voters approved the bonds to finance the Luxury Dome stadium, later called the Astrodome.

Russ: But the dome is still there, kind of.

John: Well, it's - yeah, it's kind of a rat-trappy kind of place. They've probably gotta bulldoze - there's one group that wants to turn it into the world's largest movie studio, we can do indoor blue-screen shots and all that, so we'll see what happens to it. This week in business history, in 1977, Radio Shack officially begins creating the TRS-80 computer, which is a milestone, I think -

Russ: Absolutely.

John: - in the computer biz.

Russ: Absolutely. And such a surprise that Radio Shack would be making a computer, I thought. Geez, so - but they did it quite successfully.

John: Well, Texas Instruments, I mean, that spawned Rod Canion, who came up with Compaq computers, so I wouldn't sell that company short. And they came up with the DLP technology for big-screen TV -

Russ: Oh, yeah. Texas Instruments, too.

John: - so let's leave those boys alone over there. This week in business history, 1977, Fleetwood Mac's album Rumors released.

Russ: Rumors is the album that Malcolm Gladwell always talks about in one of his ­-

John: Rants.

Russ: - speeching topics is about how long Fleetwood Mac had been producing albums before they hit this big home run, and how today's society doesn't sort of have the patience to wait for that anymore. If you don't have your home run in the first year, you're toast and you're history.

John: Okay. This week in business history, 1960, the first McDonald's in Russia opens in Moscow and becomes the world's biggest McDonald's. This week in business history, 2004 Janet Jackson was performing at the half-time show, with some other singer, I can't remember his name.

Russ: Justin Timberlake.

John: Justin Timberlake, and she had a wardrobe malfunction. That's what it was called, but her breast was exposed on national television, and I think it really caused the NFL to really tone down the half-time -

Russ: [Laughs]. Yes, it did. It really did. Now they're trying to tone down the football.

John: But most people were at their own Super Bowl parties. They were probably too drunk to even notice.

Russ: Right. Well, I was there at the game -

John: You were at the game?

Russ: And I didn't notice.

John: Well, you were probably up there in the -

Russ: I was. I was way up there. But you could see it all -

John: I mean, Janet - her breast at 300 feet away -

Russ: [Laughs]. It's pretty small.

John: Especially when it's a little wardrobe flap that -

Russ: That's right. That's exactly right. All right, that wraps up this morning's history lesson.

John: I think it does, yes.

Russ: All right, good job. And that brings us to our jargon challenge round. This is where we go out and find new acronyms, new technospeak, and new jargon -

John: Yeah, I guessed the one last week.

Russ: Yes, you did.

John: I'm sure you've got a tougher one this time.

Russ: No, today's is a two-word noun.

John: Two-word. Oh. One word's not enough. You gotta throw a two-word on me.

Russ: You ready?

John: All right, I guess. Gimme a shot, here.

Russ: Velcro dog.

John: Velcro dog. Hm. We all know what Velcro is, and we know what a dog is, so I'm thinking it's one of those dogs that's a - it's a stuffed-animal dog and it's got Velcro on it so you can carry it around with you.

Russ: No, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a dog that always sticks close to its owner, especially by following the person from room to room.

John: Oh, I've got one of those kind of dogs.

Russ: So there you go. You even have one.

John: I even have one, but -

Russ: A Velcro dog. All right. That brings us to Dumb Moments in Business History. Do you have a story for us?

John: Yeah, this is - anybody can sue anybody, we all know that, but without the rule of law, our free-enterprise system's not gonna work, so this was one of those tweener things, where we just have to keep an eye on it, but an Alabama law firm is claiming in a law suit that Taco Bell is using false advertising when it refers to using seasoned ground beef or seasoned beef in its projects. Now, there's an attorney Dee Miles said attorneys had Taco Bell's meat mixture tested and found that it contained less than 35 percent beef, so it looks like beef -

Russ: Well, there's beef there.

John: - and it tastes like beef -

Russ: They're just saying there's beef there.

John: Yeah, there's beef there, but according to, I guess, the U.S. government, if you say you have a beef something, it's got to be more than 35 percent of the -

Russ: What percent does it need to be?

John: The glup that's in there has gotta be more than 35 percent beef.

Russ: What else is in there?

John: Well, they think that the so-called seasoned beef contains other ingredients, including water - that's all right, nothing wrong - wheat oats - okay, well, that's Mother Nature and stuff - soy lecithin, maltodextrin -

Russ: I don't know about that.

John: - anti-dusting agent - [Laughs] - and modified corn starch. Now, corn starch on its own is pretty good stuff. Why did they have to modify it? That's what I want to know. And what's the anti-agent dusting agent?

Russ: An anti-dusting taco.

John: They could say, come to Taco Bell for our beef tacos fortified with a flavor-enhancing anti-dusting agent. So, anyway, it's just a lawsuit. You never know where these things are gonna go, whether this is a dumb moment in history -

Russ: We'll know later.

John: We'll know later. It just caught my attention, and I thought I'd talk about it.

Russ: That's okay. That's good. All right. All right, and before we wrap up this morning's school of business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneurs' Playbook.

John: Okay, and there's no anti-dusting agent with this guy. He's the real deal.

Russ: No, there isn't. Greg Price.

John: He's the real deal. Okay. Greg Price.

Russ: A one and a two and a -

[PKF Entrepreneur's Playbook]

Russ: Okay, and that wraps up this morning's school of business. Stay tuned in to our interview with Ken Jones, the new director of the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship, and then that's gonna be followed by three real cool idea triggers from our history. You're listening to the BusinessMakers show, heard here and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com.