Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, episode number 317, of that show that features the innovators and the entrepreneurs.

John: That's right, Russ, these are the people that really make things go. And you can tell that as bad as things are out there in some regards, not every regard. In Texas and in some other parts of the country where entrepreneurship is encouraged and unfettered in the regulatory way, things are looking up.

Russ: Yeah, and I mean the real make-it-happen people don't slow down just because the economy's bad.

John: Yeah, just because everything's crashing around us, they seem to find a way of capitalizing on it in some regards.

Russ: Absolutely, and that's good.

John: Yeah, that's good.

Russ: And here's our lineup for today. I'm going to sit down and talk with Brian Burch of Hewlett-Packard, and we're going to kind of home in on both his company's involvement with this cool business matchmaking initiative that has been going on now for several years in the small business community, and then we're even going to start talking about it and he's going to show on the video version of this interview the new HP TouchPad, their endeavor into the tablet hardware world.

John: That's right.

Russ: Which is pretty cool, a pretty happening thing.

John: It's pretty cool. It's good to see they're not sitting on their hands.

Russ: No.

John: The tablet has revolutionized...

Russ: Totally, the way we do everything. Watch television. I have a couple of questions teed up. Like, number one, will the HP Touchpad handle flash. You know, if you've got an iPad and you get about 30 to 40 percent of the sites that have flash, you don't get to watch it.

John: I know.

Russ: That hacks me off.

John: Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why I don't have a tablet.

Russ: You showed'm.

John: I just use the old-fashioned laptop and the handheld mobile device.

Russ: There you go. I have to say the iPad is cool, but that hacks me off. Plus it hacks me off that you can't do PowerPoint on it. You have to go to Keyfile. It's like they're all sort of playing with their operating systems to try to convert you, so iPad's sort of pulling you over to the Apple way. Simultaneously my Android phone's pulling me into the Google way.

John: Well, that's what got Microsoft into antitrust problems, because they were more than suggesting you use Internet Explorer as your browser. And some of the things Apple's pulling with this tablet business is I think very similar to that, although the tablet is not nearly as prolific yet as the desktop and the laptop.

Russ: Right. So you're suggesting the Department of Justice go after'm, right?

John: No, I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just saying if it happened once, it can happen again. Apple should mind its P's and Q's and make their devices...

Russ: Open.

John: Open universally in a way where it can accept all types of software.

Russ: I agree, I agree. But first... [pause] That's right, it's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business, and we like to refer to it as not your business as usual school.

John: That's right, after our most recent long-winded discussion on things that we know something about but not everything about, it's good to get in something which we really don't know anything about, and that is this week in business history. We do know some things about all these discussion points, but then again, what we don't know, we make up.

Russ: There you go.

John: And we own up to that. Unlike most instructors in college that make stuff up, they don't tell the students they're making it up.

Russ: That's right. Full disclosure here.

John: Full disclosure here, right.

Russ: Right, and we kick off the School of Business with a quote of the day, and the quote of today is relative to our prior discussion about Apple and Microsoft and antitrust and competitive advantages and so forth. I think one thing that's sort of different about Apple encouraging you to be more of a Mac/iTunes guy, compared to Microsoft in the old days, Microsoft had a much larger market share when they were behaving that way. It was okay with me.

John: Yeah, I didn't mind.

Russ: No, and that kind of syncs up perfectly with our quote of the day. It is anonymous, we don't know who said it. You might have said it.

John: No, but it's pretty cool.

Russ: It goes like this: "All competitive advantage is temporary."

John: Right, especially in the technology age.

Russ: That's right. And especially in a capitalistic society and stuff. I mean even when somebody really has a foothold and really is allowed to behave in an anti-competitive way, people find an in the round and come in with a new better idea, it happens all the time.

John: Look at Blackberry. They first arrived on the scene and everybody thought, "Man, this is great, how is anybody going to compete with that?" Well now their market cap is collapsing as we speak.

Russ: That's right.

John: And research in motion, who knows whether they're going to survive in the next year or two?

Russ: I mean, there's story after story, particularly, and it does happen in a compressed time frame in the technology world. But people thought Yahoo had too much of a hold for awhile, and they're kind of non-applicable now. And then, my God, Google does, and Microsoft kind of watched Google and tried to get into their world, and then here came Steve Jobs, and he's sort of changing the landscape, and then Facebook is changing the landscape.

John: That's right.

Russ: We should just disband the antitrust department of the Department of Justice.

John: I know. And lot of this innovation rests on the leader of the innovation group.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: Whether it be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, or who's the guy with Facebook?

Russ: Mark Zuckerberg.

John: Mark Zuckerberg same thing.

Russ: Yeah, absolutely.

John: So when they go, what's going to happen to this innovative tidal wave?

Russ: It's probably just going to go away.

John: Someone else will pick it up.

Russ: I hope so.

John: Pick up the gauntlet.

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

John: This week in business history, in the year 1040, I mean, that's like 26 years before the Norman invasion of England, so we're talking about a long time ago.

Russ: We're going back today.

John: Lady Godiva rides naked on horseback to force her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes.

Russ: Did it work?

John: I don't know, but I think it caused the Norman invasion.

Russ: Why is that?

John: Because they heard of all these naked women riding around on horses, and the French being who they are, you know?

Russ: I don't think so.

John: You don't think so?

Russ: No, I don't think so.

John: Okay, then we'll go on to the next thing.

Russ: No, but wait. There's lots of stories in here. Lady Godiva, were they in the chocolate business back then? Did that have anything to do with this, or do you know?

John: I don't know. But I wish I did.

Russ: Yeah, I wish you did too.

John: Godiva is a very popular brand of chocolate.

Russ: Yes it is.

John: It's very expensive. Lady Godiva was trying to reduce the cost of government.

Russ: Yeah, we're on her side.

John: I'm waiting for someone to reduce the price of chocolate.

Russ: And we will get what we need to get done.

John: We need someone to ride around on a pickup truck naked. I don't know. This is getting us nowhere. This week in business history, in 1776, the declaration of independence the US declares their independence from Britain.

Russ: Okay, big day.

John: It took awhile for that desire to become self-actualized, right, but they had to start with something, and the Declaration of Independence.

Russ: So that was what, 235 years ago? Did I do my math right? Let's see, 200 and 24, yeah, 235 years ago. Cool.

John: Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. So this week in business history, in 1796 the first Independence Day celebration is held.

Russ: Okay, so 20 years later they said, "You know? This is a big day this 4th of July."

John: The first federal holiday, and look what happened, now there's a federal holiday almost every week. I'm waiting for them to make Arbor day a federal holiday.

Russ: They should.

John: Okay, this week in business history, in 1816, is the birthdate of Hiram Walker. This guy was a grocer.

Russ: I'll drink to that.

John: And a distiller. He probably made moonshine or something. Walker began selling his whisky as Hiram Walker's Club Whiskey, very popular. American distillers became angry and forced the US government to pass a law requiring that all foreign whiskey state their country of origin on the label.

Russ: Wow.

John: Canadian whiskey. And the move backfired because Canadian Club Whiskey became more popular. It has more panache to it. I mean, would you rather have Canadian Club or something out of Louisville?

Russ: Or Hiram Walker's Club. But he was making Hiram Walker's Club Whiskey and all his competitors in the US said that's just not fair, he's Canadian, come on, so he changes the name, and it works out even better for him.

John: Actually he was an American grocer and distiller. So I don't know how that figured into him all of a sudden becoming a Canadian. It was probably a shrewd marketing move. Actually the whiskey was distilled in Canada.

Russ: Okay, that was it.

John: He was an American but he was the first one to outsource.

Russ: Okay, he went over there for cheaper labor.

John: Cheaper labor, and maybe the Canadians didn't drink as much of the whiskey.

Russ: Lower taxes, probably.

John: Lower taxes, who knows? All right, this week in business history: three years later Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine was born this week in business history. He's the son of a farmer, worked in a machine shop and realized that machinery was being used in every stage of the textile industry except the sewing part. And that's where he got the "aha" moment and got into the sewing machine business.

Russ: So that was in 1819, wow.

John: No, he was born in 1819. All this happens much later, like in 1845 when he developed a working model of the sewing machine.

Russ: Okay, cool.

John: This week in business history, in 1884 the Statue of Liberty is presented to the US in Paris. Unfortunately, assembly was required.

Russ: It's like delivery was not included.

John: We probably had to chip in on the delivery. They may have shipped it over on their own dime, but we had to assemble it ourselves. Can you imagine what the directions looked like? Imagine the size of the living room you'd have to spread that thing out on? You'd have to check and make sure all the hardware was there, you know how they have the little diagram showing you how many number five bolts. So can you imagine getting that put together? But we did a good job of it.

Russ: Yep.

John: This week in business history - in 1889 the Wall Street Journal begins publishing.

Russ: Wow, and they're doing pretty well these days.

John: Doing pretty good, and their content is all proprietary, even with the new owner, Rupert Murdoch. And because of that, I think that's one of the main reasons why they're one of the few daily newspapers that have not lost paid circulation.

Russ: So every article that you read in the Wall Street Journal...

John: It's their article.

Russ: Their article. They didn't go get Associated Press or anything like that.

John: I have yet to find any wire service or syndicated columns in there. They do buy columns, because they do have an informal network of editorial contributors, but it's not like your average daily newspaper where half the content is wire service from AP or the New York Times news service or what have you.

And this week in business history in 1923, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics forms, starting the spiral of - actually the death spiral of that country, I think, because Communism doesn't work and sooner or later you run out of money, and then that's what happened to them, although it took awhile.

Russ: Yep.

John: Okay, this week in business history in 1925 the USSR's official news agency, Tass forms.

Russ: So two years after the formation of the Soviet Union they came out with their own newspaper.

John: They decided to get in the newspaper business. I don't think you probably ever read a discouraging word.

Russ: No, about communism.

John: In Tass, or Pravda, which is the official newspaper. This is the official news agency. So the news was not fit to print but they printed it anyway.

Russ: And are they still in existence?

John: Pravda is. Whether Tass is, I'm not sure.

Russ: But Pravda sort of changed with the times.

John: For awhile they did have freedom of the press.

Russ: During Boris Yeltsin's rein.

John: But I think now it's back to the old way.

Russ: Just as bad as it ever was.

John: This week in business history, in 1937, spam was introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation.

Russ: My goodness, I haven't commented yet, but this is a huge week in business history.

John: Yeah, the sewing machine.

Russ: Lady Godiva and whiskey.

John: The USSR.

Russ: Lady Gaga.

John: The Declaration of Independence, all these things.

John: All these things, it's a very prolific week in business history. This week in business history is also a huge week for rock and roll. In 1964 the Beachboys "I Get Around" reaches number one. [Pause]

Russ: Great song.

John: Yeah, and the next year the Rolling Stones "Can't Get No Satisfaction," wow. [Pause] And then two years after that, the Doors "Light My Fire" was number one. [Pause]

Russ: All during this July week?

John: Yeah, all during this July week.

This week in business history in 1976 the Israelis raid a hijacked airliner in Entebbe, Uganda, and they rescued 229 Air France passengers. Quite a bold move.

Russ: What a success story too.

John: Very successful, it could have ended in disaster.

Russ: This was successful. I think there was only one death, and it was Benjamin Netanyahu's brother, who was the leader of the Israeli force that came in there, and as the leader, as they came into the room...

John: First in.

Russ: Yeah, and he stood up and he was giving orders. So he was like the only real target and he lost his life, but everybody else was rescued.

John: An amazing story, an amazing story. And then finally, this week in business history 1996, Dolly Parton was cloned. No, Dolly the sheep was cloned, that was just a little joke. Cloning had been around at least since the 60's, but Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from the cells of an adult - an adult sheep that is - a tremendous breakthrough, and it's the beginning, I think, of a lot of biological scientific things going on, some of which I think are okay and others which I think really lead us down into some troublesome paths.

Russ: There's definitely some controversial innovation going on and who knows where it's going to lead.

John: I know.

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

John: That's it.

Russ: I would call that a successful one, man, it was a good week.

John: I would say it's a very, very interesting week, no two ways about it, right.

Russ: All right, and that brings us to our vocabulary lesson, also known as our jargon challenge round. John, it's been a long time since you've handed out the appropriate warning to our listeners about using these words. I think maybe you should do that.

John: Yeah, when you get the word here and you understand it, please practice its use, and the best way to do that is to lock yourself in a room with a mirror so you can look at yourself while you're...

Russ: You lock the door though, right?

John: I would say lock the door if you feel that's appropriate, but then your family are wondering what the hell you're doing in there. But I would say practice the use, use it in a sentence, make sure you pronounce it properly, and start using it in sentences, again privately, that way you'll get very familiar with the word before you then let loose with whatever.

Russ: In public.

John: In public. You don't want to look bad. You don't want people to misunderstand what you're saying because you've made a mistake in the use of the word, and you'll just avoid a lot of problems.

Russ: Have you experienced some problems doing this before?

John: I've got so many problems I've experienced.

Russ: You're an expert on problems.

John: The word of the day usage is minor in comparison. I've experienced a whole litany of problems.

Russ: That's your specialty.

John: Yes, right.

Russ: All right. And the way that we do this, I get to go out and select the word.

John: You've got all the fun and I've got all the pressure.

Russ: I do. And, John, right here, in front of the audience, for the first time hears the word and then uses his background and knowledge that he's developed over all these years of life to come up with the meaning.

John: That's right, and more often than not I come pretty darn close, if not right spot on with the meaning of the word.

Russ: You do. All right, are you ready?

John: Yes, let's just go.

Russ: Today's word's a noun.

John: A noun.

Russ: Ignoranus.

John: Ignoranus. Ignoramus is a kind of a dummy, doesn't know anything kind of a shwab type of person. Ignoranus - how do you pronounce it again?

Russ: Ignoranus. Ignoranus. I-G-N-O-R-A-N-U-S.

John: Okay, it could be one of two. It could be somebody ignorant of the planet Uranus.

Russ: Yeah, that's not it.

John: Or it could be someone who's ignorant and also behaves in such a way...

Russ: I think we've got a winner, ladies and gentleman.

John: He could be perceived as a, you know, something that, a letter that begins with "A" and has the word "hole" in it.

Russ: Yes, you got it. All right. Hold your calls, we've got a winner. It's a person who's both stupid and extremely rude or obnoxious, an ignoramus. That's a good word. Now it might take a lot of practice to get that one.

John: Oh yeah, because it is hard to pronounce. There's plenty of examples of those kinds of people.

Russ: Oh yes, there are.

John: You could say - we were looking out the window high atop of the Houston Business Journal Tower, I'd say every other car passing by had an ignoranus in it.

Russ: All right. And that brings us to Dumb Moments. What do you have for us this morning?

John: Again, we've been talking about the result of dumb moments. It's one thing to come up with a dumb moment. It's even better if you've got why a dumb moment is called dumb. And usually the reason why we think a moment is dumb is the negative aftermath of what happens after the moment. Now, Greece, about a third of the Greek employment base works for the government, a third is a lot.

Russ: Yeah, that is a lot.

John: And that's kind of symbiotic of a lot of the mistakes they've made in that economy. There's huge riots as of the recording of the show. They're going on and people cannot believe that their taxes are going to go up and the services they expect from the government are going away, as well as benefits to these people. They've been cutting a lot of private sector jobs, but until now they haven't cut any public sector jobs, and now they're starting to do that.

Russ: And that's what's causing the riots.

John: That's what's causing the riots. And I've seen some estimates of the US debt that's like 63 trillion dollars by the time you add Medicare and you know _____.

Russ: Are you saying we've got the same problem here?

John: I think there are some warning signs out there.

Russ: Do you think that...

John: That this could happen here? Why wouldn't it happen?

Russ: I watch it, you know, and you wonder, what if they stop the rioters and say, "Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, tell us what you want." And do the rioters really expect that by being on the streets and doing property harm and even putting themselves in danger is going to fix the problem?

John: Well, I don't know. It's the mentality of the mob, you know. If you look at the difference between the French Revolution and the US Revolution, in France the mob ruled, okay, because there was no underlying order in the way that the revolution came about, and there were no founding fathers that knew that the country had to be set up on a certain sense of order that could be lawful, as well as granting rights and allowing people to live their lives. In America it was that way. In France it was a lot of retribution against the monarchy. I mean 2,500 people lost their heads in the Concord de Place, which is one of the main hubs. So here you've got the same thing. It's a mob rule. And once that gets started, the fever pitch and the emotions run pretty heavy and it's just hard to control. It happened here. You look at the race riots after Martin Luther King was shot. There's still parts of Washington DC that have never been rebuilt. They were destroyed during the riots. And the same thing in Los Angeles.

Russ: So the lesson here: riots are bad.

John: I would say so.

Russ: And before we wrap up today's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's playbook.

John: That's right, and here he is right now, Gregg Price, sitting down at the piano and getting ready to educate us. Go ahead, Gregg. A one and a two and a ... [Pause]

Russ: Okay, and that wraps up today's School of Business. Stay tuned in for our interview with Brian Burch of Hewlett Packard touching on the new touch pad. This is the BusinessMaker Show, heard on the radio, and seen on like at thebusinessmakers.com.