Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Radio Show, heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com. This is that show about those people, the most important people on the planet these days, in my opinion.
John: Yeah, right. Well, these are the ones who create the wealth. Products, services that people need. You won't find these people working in the government, except maybe advising the government to stop whatever they're doing.
Russ: Right.
John: These are the real people. I'd say they're the artists. I say this all the time. They're the artists and the athletes of the free enterprise system, because they're the ones who have the stamina and the creativity to make our lives better.
Russ: That's absolutely right. We're talking about the innovators and the entrepreneurs, and here's what we've got lined up today. First up, Arun Banskota, the president of Electric Vehicle Services at NRG. This is really pretty interesting because NRG, a private company, just dived right in the middle of this business where many places around our country are using stimulus money - not NRG.
John: Right.
Russ: I'll tell you right up front, I'll bet on the private money over the stimulus money because who knows -
John: Well, and they're probably be more efficient in getting these things up. The Chevy Volt, which I wrote a blog about two weeks ago, the range is about 50 miles. That's depending on driving conditions and all that.
Russ: And the weather, yeah.
John: So, NRG better put these things like everywhere.
Russ: Well, they are. And they're trying to defeat "range anxiety," as they call it. You know, they're going to have them in your home and all over the city. You'll pay a monthly fee like your cell phone. It's really interesting. That's going to be followed by Leisa Holland-Nelson, the author and voice of our brand new Women Mean Business weekly vignette. Boy, I tell you what, women do mean business. They do in my home. Do they in yours?
John: Oh yeah, right. [Laughter] You see, women are no longer a minority. Actually, they never were, because there are more women in this country than men.
Russ: Thank goodness.
John: There are more women voters than men. There are more men in prison than women, which even cuts the odds down even more.
Russ: Right. And, there's more men laid off in this last downturn than there were women.
John: That's right. And women are basically happier people than men. Women live longer than men. So they've got a lot of things going for them and, hopefully, Leisa will bring some of this out in the people she interviews.
Russ: But first, that's right, it's time for The BusinessMakers School of Business. This is not your business-as-usual school. I always feel a certain obligation to share that with our audience. Do you agree or are you on the other side of that issue?
John: Well, there is no other side of the issue. We are very unique, almost a bizarre exercise in educating people about business. I want to remind the listener that if you're listening to this show on the radio, you're getting an abridged version. You're getting like the Cliff Notes version of our curriculum.
Russ: That's right.
John: If you want the full course load, you have to go online at theBusinessMakers.com and go from there. You'll find it to be a very pleasant experience.
Russ: That's great. All right. We kick off the School of Business each week with a quote of the day.
John: A quote of the day.
Russ: And today's contributor is Martin Luther King Jr, and here it is, " Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
John: That's right.
Russ: I think that applies to today.
John: That is so true. You know, the fast-paced life that we lead because of technology tends to take the humanity out of our dealings with people.
Russ: Yeah. It's interesting that you bring that up. I contend that the younger generation is so focused on marketing and digital marketing that they almost look down on that person-to-person kind of -
John: See, marketing gets you leads.
Russ: That's exactly right.
John: I mean sometimes with marketing, someone will buy online in bulk or something like that.
Russ: Sometimes, yeah.
John: Most of the business-to-business operations I know of eventually have to rely on someone meeting a customer and letting them know that the $50,000 or $200,000, whatever it is that they're paying for a phone system, a computer network, or whatever - they make sure that person they're dealing with has no screws loose.
Russ: This is big, what you're talking about. It may be so big and so forgotten that we could kind of announce it and implement it, and we could write a book that we've discovered a new way to get business. It's meeting people, person-to-person, looking at them and talking to them.
John: Yeah. Schedule the appointment over the internet, text or on the phone. Eventually, you've got to go see these people or they're not going to buy from you. I'm telling you right now.
Russ: All right, I think we've gotten off the agenda.
John: Well, that's okay. You know, we tend to do that. Again, this is why we have this school online, because we can be more expository with our definitions and our discussions.
Russ: Right. And we kick it off with This Week in Business History. What happened during this March week in business history?
John: I've got a whole panoply of things.
Russ: I can't wait.
John: This week in business history, in 1806, after traveling through the first Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, the explorers, Lewis and Clark, and the men who followed him, because they didn't just go out there by themselves, from the core of the discovery - they began their arduous journey home. So they had an arduous journey to the Pacific Ocean, and then they had an arduous journey coming back from it.
Russ: But what did you mean when you said, "the first Louisiana Purchase."?
John: That was the first one. The first Louisiana Purchase was when the federal government, the United States, bought the land from Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte was a distressed seller, because he was fighting the British and needed the money.
Russ: Right, he needed the money.
John: Right. So the second Louisiana Purchase involved a distressed female senator named Mary Landrieu -
Russ: Okay. [Laughing]
John: Who was unsure about whether she thought voting for Obama care would be good for the country and good for her state.
Russ: [Laughing] Yeah.
John: So I think someone in the Obama administration picked up a phone and told her they were going to send her a bunch of money if she votes for [laughing] Obama care.
John: And that was the second Louisiana Purchase.
Russ: You don't get this at regular business school.
John: Hell, no. You sure don't. Okay, this week in business history, a patent was awarded for an adhesive, medicated plaster.
Russ: Now what year was this?
John: This was in 1845, and it was a band-aid. It was a forerunner of the Band-Aid. Two doctors named Horace Harold Day and William H. Shecut received patent number 3965 for adhesive, medicated plaster; in other words, a dressing that would stick on its own.
Russ: So before then, what did you do?
John: God knows what they did. They put beaver pelts on there or something. [Laughing]
Russ: [Laughing] Mud.
John: Or they put a leech on there.
Russ: That works.
John: Okay, this week in business history, the Wright brothers apply for a patent on their invention of the airplane.
Russ: And that was in, wow, 1903.
John: This week in business history, in 1937, spinach growers of Crystal City erect a status of Popeye, the cartoon character.
Russ: Well there's some brand marketing there.
John: There is some brand marketing there and, of course, Popeye made spinach amenable to the palates of children everywhere, because every time he got into a fight with Bluto - it just didn't work with the fights he had with Olive Oil, okay, but with Bluto and other villains out there, Popeye would literally get his butt kicked.
Russ: Yeah.
John: I mean, if Howard Cosell was there, he'd say, "If this was a fight - ," well it was a fight, they would have stopped it. What Popeye would do at the very last minute, somehow he would obtain a can of spinach.
Russ: And it was canned spinach.
John: It was a can of spinach, and he would chug it. He'd pop open the can and then look out. He would just -
Russ: Well that's interesting, so the spinach growers in Crystal City did this because he gave spinach a good name. It wasn't that they said they liked Popeye and he felt obligated, therefore, to eat spinach.
John: No, no. Well, there is no Popeye.
Russ: There isn't.
John: No, he's a cartoon character, but whoever invented him -
Russ: Yeah, but it seemed so real.
John: Yeah, [laughing] he looked real then. Okay. This week in business history, in 1941, Glenn Miller begins work on his first movie for 20th Century Fox, In the Mood.
Russ: I think I saw that movie in the 50s.
John: Is it any good?
Russ: Yeah, well his music was so good. Because they played the music, that made the movie good.
John: It made the movie good, yes. Okay. This weekend in history, in 1943, an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler fails. A guy by the name of Colonel Rudolf von Gertsdorff, General Kluge's chief of Intelligence, tried to kill Hitler. A concealed bomb was to be detonated by acid while he stood close to Hitler in the Exhibit Hall. Unfortunately, Hitler had this uncanny ability to avoid -
Russ: He could sense he was getting to be wiped out.
John: He had this wackometer going on in his head.
Russ: A wackometer. [Laughing]
John: I'm going to get wacked here, so I better not go to wherever. This week in business history, in 1953, there was very good news. Dr. Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburg announces his vaccine to prevent polio.
Russ: That was huge. You know, if you lived in that era and you -
John: We all did.
Russ: And you had family and friends that got polio. It was a crippling disease that could kill you. It was God-awful.
John: And now nobody gets it, except parents who don't want to immunize their kids.
Russ: Right.
John: More good news. In 1963, in this week of business history, the Beatles released their first album, "Please Please Me." In this week in business history, in 1969, incredible bad news for Beatle fans everywhere, John Lennon and Yoko Ono are married.
Russ: [Laughing] And it was bad news.
John: Bad news for everyone, except John Lennon. I don't know what he saw in her, really. Okay. This week in business history, in 1972, Evel Knievel breaks 93 bones. I mean, there's only like 150 bones in your body, right?
Russ: Yeah. [Laughing]
John: That's gotta be a hard record to break. And he successfully cleared 35 cars.
Russ: Wow.
John: Now, do you call it a success even though you break 93 bones?
Russ: I guess if you survive.
John: It's like that general in Vietnam who had to destroy the village in order to save it. Remember? It's like hearing of somebody who goes in for an operation and they are successfully operated on but they die of something else.
Russ: Yeah, you die of pneumonia.
John: Yeah, the operation was a success, but the patient died. This is one of those things.
Russ: It's kind of like that, okay.
John: This week in business history, in 1989, up until last year, the worst US oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, spills 10.8 million gallons off of Alaska. It was later determined that the captain of the tanker -
Russ: Was tanked.
John: Was tanked. Yeah. The rest is history. Now this is no longer the US worst oil spill since the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Russ: So the record has been broken.
John: Okay, this week in business history in 1989, the first free elections in the USSR. One hundred ninety million votes were cast, and Boris Yeltsin wins.
Russ: Do you think they are still having free elections over there?
John: They're having elections, but I think they're less free to a degree.
Russ: That's what I think, as well.
John: And yet Boris Yeltsin had his vodka and -
Russ: Tractors.
John: He had some things there. But he was a democrat. I mean a small "d." He was a patriot, and he was a hero there. We should never forget that.
Russ: I thought Gorbachev was cool and a leader, but he was nothing compared to -
John: Well see, Gorbachev was charismatic.
Russ: Yeah, that's true.
John: But the problem was, he thought if you liberalize the Russian economy but still hold them under communism, everything would be okay. You just can't do both.
Russ: That just doesn't work.
John: As the Chinese are finding out right now.
Russ: And Yeltsin did them both.
John: Yeah, right. He did. And Russia was a democracy until the thugs took over, and now I don't think they have a word for what it is.
Russ: I don't think, not yet.
John: Okay. All right. This week in business history, in 1993, Intel ships the first Pentium chips.
Russ: Oh, man. Yeah.
John: What was interesting about that, too, is when it started, 8088 was the first processor. Then it was the 286, the 386, the 486, and finally when they got to the 586, some branding person said, "Wait a minute. We've got to get off that. We're going to call it the Pentium." Regardless, it was an improvement. It worked, and it was great.
Russ: And the look on your face is that you finished today's history lesson.
John: I am done. Finished. Kaputt.
Russ: Good job, though. Man, it was a great week in business history.
John: Well, every week's a good week in history.
Russ: Except for the John Lennon and Yoko Ono marriage.
John: Right. And if it's not a good week in business history, we just make up stuff that sounds good so it is a good week.
Russ: [Laughing] Because we're optimists.
John: [Laughing] We're optimists.
Russ: And that brings us to the Jargon Challenge.
John: All right. Lay it on me.
Russ: This is our vocabulary lesson. This is where I get to go out and find a new word - a new jargon word.
John: You're very good at that.
Russ: And we teach it to our audience by John demonstrating with his cognitive skills, his ability to perhaps guess the right meaning. Right?
John: Absolutely.
Russ: Now we don't have much time, because we've really been going over, but I do think you haven't given them a warning in a long time about what they should do with these.
John: Okay. Before you go out in public, you need to kind of try this at home by yourself. Get in front of a mirror and practice the words. Enunciate the words and use them in sentences. You know, if you use them around the house without practicing, you can really get yourself into trouble, because people might misunderstand what you're saying.
Russ: All right.
John: And then you can go to your cocktail party and pretend like you're smart.
Russ: You can use it all you want. All right, here's today word: skeptimistic.
John: Skeptimistic. Well, optimistic is when you have a very favorable view of the future. Skeptimistic is someone who has more of a, I wouldn't say negative view of the future, but kind of a "I'm from Missouri - you've got to show me before I -"
Russ: So do you think it's right to combine those? I'm going to give you a win. It's a weird definition.
John: Yeah, it is. Right.
Russ: Simultaneously skeptical and optimistic.
John: No, I don't see how you can - you can't be.
Russ: We call that bipolar disorder.
John: Yeah, that word is a contradiction in terms. Really.
Russ: Well, that's what it can be, man. These are just words.
John: Yeah, I know. But the word should be someone who's really not sure what the future is, you're going to have to give me some evidence before I decide. Much like a legitimate reporter for a newspaper, which we have here at The Journal. They're skeptics. They're not going to let you pull the wool over their eyes.
Russ: Right.
John: You're going to have to kind of prove your case.
Russ: Okay. All right. You know, it's interesting. I chose that word because I think next month the National Skeptic Society is having -
John: Oh, really.
Russ: And it's led by this Dr. Michael Shermer, whom we've had on the show before, too.
John: Yeah, right.
Russ: So we get into these topics.
John: It's good to see he's making a living. How would you like to be locked in a room training skeptics. [Laughing]
Russ: [Laughing] Training skeptics. Man oh man.
John: Yeah, but it's not hard when you get into all the conspiracy theories that evolve under everything. You can tear those apart real fast.
Russ: Yeah, well, just being in a room of skeptics. Man. All right, and that brings us to Dumb Moments in Business. Do we have a story today?
John: This is a dumb epic.
Russ: Okay. An epic.
John: I would say this is a dumb period in our history, not just a dome moment in our history.
Russ: Okay.
John: I know we attack the Obama folks left and right -
Russ: When they deserve it.
John: When they deserve it. The negligence that has occurred in the past, I'd say a couple of months, on energy has been - I would say not "dumb," it's almost been criminal negligence.
Russ: Yeah.
John: When that guy set himself on fire in Morocco, it was the next day when these things started happening at other places. The President of the United States very well should have given an executive order to encourage and help energy companies get in the Gulf and start drilling for oil. He should have opened up the natural wildlife preserve up there in -
Russ: And recognize that there's going to be potential for a huge shortage and drive prices sky high.
John: Sky high. And it's going to affect supply and demand, as well as the pricing, as you just said. Then the other thing that's going on now is this huge catastrophe in Japan. I mean, God knows what that's going to do - not that we should be concerned about how much we're going to pay for gas when they've got people that they don't even know where they're at. I mean, they might have been washed out to sea.
Russ: It's unbelievable.
John: But to look at it in a little more pragmatic way, it's going to affect the world economy big time. Japan is a big player. They've got like the fourth largest, the third largest economy in the world.
Russ: Yeah.
John: And this potential damage to the nuclear reactors is probably going to slow that down.
Russ: It's going to slow that down.
John: So what do we have President Obama doing? He's playing basketball. I'm not saying a president shouldn't have some downtime, because I can't imagine the stress somebody like that goes under.
Russ: Sure.
John: But he has really dropped the ball big time on this energy thing.
Russ: And what people talk about all the time is, "Oh, we've got to break that addition to oil." To me, it's not necessarily an addition to oil, it's an addition to energy, and the need for it is huge and growing by leaps and bounds.
John: And so far, oil and natural gas are the easiest sources there are.
Russ: The most efficient, too.
John: And it's green. They're both green. These are natural substances made by Mother-whomever you pray to. Mother Earth or To Whom it May Concern. A unitarian.
Russ: Right.
John: But that's stuff that there, and it's green. It's a natural substance.
Russ: All right. And before we wrap up this morning's school of business. It's time for the very popular PKF Texas-Entrepreneur's Playbook.
John: And the most popular accountant in the BusinessMakers panoply of guests and hosts and everything else is Greg Price. Here he is, always on time.
Russ: And on the piano.
John: Here he goes A-one, and a-two, and a -
[Entrepreneurs Playbook]
Russ: All right. That wraps up this morning's School of Business. Stay tuned in for our interview with Arun Banskota, President of Electrical Vehicle Services with NRG and Leisa Holland-Nelson, the author and voice of Women Mean Business.
