Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com, and this is that show about those that make business happen and that make businesses.
John: I know. They make business happen, but as a result of making business happen, they make our economy happen.
Russ: Absolutely.
John: Now, I'm not downplaying big companies. For example, we couldn't have won World War II without big companies.
Russ: Right.
John: We couldn't have; we couldn't have had some little entrepreneur making tanks in his garage to defeat the Nazis, okay?
Russ: Right.
John: But the majority of the entrepreneurs are successful - not all of them but the majority of them, and the majority of entrepreneurs represents, I'd say, 60 to 70 percent of all the creativity in this country.
Russ: Absolutely, absolutely.
John: And because of that, that's what makes this economy we're in so dynamic, even though we've got two strikes against us with what's going on in Washington, you know?
Russ: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree.
John: Yeah.
Russ: And, in fact, when it comes to innovation and creativity, there's a group here in town called -
John: A group?
Russ: - called EO Houston, yeah.
John: You a groupie?
Russ: No, it's a group of entrepreneurs.
John: I know. I'm just kidding.
Russ: [Laughter]
John: I know.
Russ: But it's a team of entrepreneurs called EO Houston -
John: That's right.
Russ: - and we always like to start off each week we're thinking about it.
John: A bunch of go-getters.
Russ: Yeah, absolutely.
John: You got a bunch of go-getters down there, man.
Russ: Absolutely. So, check them out, yeah.
John: Yeah, all right.
Russ: Yeah, all right. And here's our lineup today. First up, we sit down with Brandy Obvintsev with Energy People Connect, a real cool business idea connecting those people all over the globe, and then that's gonna be followed by an interview with Dr. Don Minnick, Managing Consulting with YSC, a global business consultancy.
John: Right.
Russ: But first - That's right. It's time for The BusinessMakers School of Business.
John: Oh, my favorite thing to do every week, yes.
Russ: Absolutely.
John: Yes.
Russ: We have put so many people -
John: You never get tired of teaching people, you know?
Russ: That's right. And we've put so many of them through school by now. I think our alumni -
John: Oh, yeah. We should have an alumni, a School of Business Alumni.
Russ: We should.
John: That's right.
Russ: We should.
John: You know, and we should have, like, an all -
Russ: And we should, like, charge a whole lot of money to be part of the alumni, don't you think?
John: I know. Well, we -
Russ: 'Cause we didn't charge anything for the school.
John: Oh, yeah, I know, and that's gonna be hard to do because they're used to getting everything for nothing.
Russ: That's right. That's right. [Laughter]
John: It's hard to charge somebody something when they're so used to getting it for nothing.
Russ: Yeah, we'll see. We'll put that under advisement.
John: All right, okay, gotcha. All right.
Russ: And we kick off The School of Business each week first with the quote of the day.
John: Quote of the day.
Russ: And just like last week, I'm gonna quote Ronald Reagan.
John: Mm-hmm.
Russ: "Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets."
John: That's right. That's why you shouldn't just keep pouring money into the government -
Russ: That's right. That's right.
John: - 'cause they're gonna - they're not gonna save it.
Russ: No.
John: They're not gonna invest it.
Russ: No.
John: They're gonna spend it.
Russ: That's right.
John: And they're gonna come up with all wacky kinda ways of spending it, too -
Russ: Yeah, in fact, the only thing wrong with that quote -
John: - some of which make no sense whatsoever.
Russ: That's right.
John: Yeah.
Russ: The only thing wrong with that quote is they find a need for more money than they get.
John: Yeah. Well, they have more needs than they have money to address the needs.
Russ: Absolutely, absolutely.
John: And whenever they get more money, they come up with more needs.
Russ: Absolutely, all right.
John: I'm surprised they don't have a prickly heat fund, you know?
Russ: I think we do.
John: Cure prickly - is prickly heat a - well, I know the heebie-jeebies is covered by Obama Care.
Russ: That's right. That's right.
John: But I don't know whether prickly heat is covered by the Obama Care.
Russ: Well, after they hear this show it probably will be.
John: I know.
Russ: Yeah, all right.
John: All right.
Russ: Okay. That brings us to this week in business history, this November week in business history, what happened?
John: Okay. This week in business history - in 1893 Raymond Loewy, who's considered by some to be the father of industrial design, and he was born in Paris in 1893, and both of his parents died while he was in the French Army in World War I, and actually, I guess his last name is Loewy 'cause it's L-O-E-W-Y and he was born in France. But, anyway, he was fascinated with machines, and he had this burning desire to make them more user-friendly and look more graceful than they actually were.
Russ: Yeah, he was the first guy that ever even talked -
John: So, he included in his portfolio radios, refrigerators, lighters and toothbrushes, Studebaker cars -
Russ: Oh, wow.
John: - which were the rage back in when he was -
Russ: Yeah, it was a cool design.
John: And this is a good quote. It says right here, "Although his designs were streamlined and curvaceous, he believed there is no curve so beautiful as a rising sales graph."
Russ: That's a good line. [Laughter]
John: So, it's good that he knew what side his bread was buttered on, okay?
Russ: There you go. All right.
John: This week in business history signifies the first use of a computer to predict winners of election night.
Russ: And what year was that?
John: This is in 1952 when Adlai Stevenson, a Democrat, was running against Ike Eisenhower.
Russ: Right.
John: The computer, like, early on predicted this was gonna be a landslide for Eisenhower, and the broadcasters in NBC would not reveal the results of the computer models.
Russ: The people that hired the computer to do it.
John: Yeah, right, 'cause they thought that -
Russ: They didn't believe it.
John: Yeah, they didn't believe it, and then sure enough, you know, Eisenhower -
Russ: That's exactly what happened.
John: Eisenhower had did to Adlai Stevenson what he did to the Nazis on Omaha Beach.
Russ: That's right. That's right. [Laughter] Took care of them.
John: He took care of them, yeah.
Russ: Yeah.
John: He took no prisoners. Okay. This week in business history signifies the beginning, I would say, or continuation but also a beginning of the nanny state because there were things that products were packaged in that had some hype in it, you know? Like, they -
Russ: And what year was this?
John: This was in 1966.
Russ: Okay.
John: And, for example, they would -
Russ: Hype was outlawed.
John: The hype was outlawed, okay, because there were some packages that would say, "Containing 12 jumbo ounces."
Russ: Yeah.
John: Okay. Well, an ounce is an ounce. [Laughter]
Russ: So, they outlawed jumbo.
John: Jumbo, right, okay. And then people had to put how much the packaged weighed, the contents and all this.
Russ: So, this is truth in packaging.
John: Truth in packaging, right, yeah.
Russ: I guess that's good, but - you know?
John: I know, yeah, but as a true marketeer, there oughta be jumbo ounces. I'd say I'm gonna bring back the jumbo ounce. This week in business history in 1982 Honda becomes the first Asian auto company that produces cars in the US, opening a factory in Marysville, Ohio. You know, a lot of these anti-capitalists, or I should say anti-globalists, really decry any US companies that open up plants outside the country, you know?
Russ: Right, right, but it's okay if they bring them over here.
John: But, no, nobody ever mentions that.
Russ: [Laughter] Right.
John: And I use that in my argument. I've been on this PBS TV station a couple of times talking about this, and when I bring it up, everybody just is quiet because they have no comeback for it.
Russ: Yeah, they don't.
John: I mean, you look at Toyota; not only does Toyota have a number - they must have at least a dozen plants here in the US, but they have storage facilities, I mean, all these dealerships. Do you realize how many people that employs?
Russ: Yeah, it's huge.
John: It's huge. I mean, I think one washes out the other, to be honest with you.
Russ: Yeah, I do, too.
John: Okay. This week in business history we're really kinda getting into dumb moment territory where I gotta tell you these next three here.
Russ: So, what year are we in now?
John: This is 1993.
Russ: Okay.
John: The Master Treaty comes into effect which - do you know what it did?
Russ: No.
John: It formally established the European Union.
Russ: Okay.
John: Now, it's very ironic because here we are 2011, and the EU's about ready to fall apart.
Russ: Yeah, 18 years later.
John: I mean, all that socialism, you know, and who was it? Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other people's money."
Russ: Yeah, that's - [Laughter]
John: And that's what's happening. They don't have enough money.
Russ: That's exactly what's happening.
John: It's happening over there, good lord. Okay, next, another dumb moment.
Russ: Yeah.
John: I mean, this is full of dumb moments. This week in business history - 2002 a Federal Grand Jury in Houston indicts Enron Corporation Chief CFO, Chief Financial Officer, Andy Fastow, 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice related to the collapse of the company. Now, what they were trying to do there was hide debt.
Russ: Yeah, "Fast Andy" Fastow.
John: Yeah, they had to clear all this debt and they put it off the books into some other company that they supposedly owned.
Russ: Exactly, yeah.
John: I mean, dumb moments, right?
Russ: Yeah, yeah.
John: Now, here we go. Okay.
Russ: Continuing on, yeah.
John: Here's Number 3. They say things happen in threes, okay?
Russ: Yeah.
John: First, we have the - what was the first one?
Russ: The EU.
John: We had the EU, okay, it's almost off the, you know -
Russ: Then Enron.
John: Then Enron which is just totally - okay. 2008, this week in business history, Barack Obama becomes the first African American to be elected President of the United States. Now, the fact that he's African American has nothing to do with it.
Russ: Right.
John: The fact is the guy's a disaster.
Russ: Yeah, he's a socialist.
John: Right. Well, guess what? Just like the EU, we're running out of money. Okay, there's not enough money to go around. Okay.
Russ: What a history lesson.
John: Yeah, isn't that amazing? Three dumb moments in a row -
Russ: Geez, all this week, we have to remember -
John: And I've got two more left to go. [Laughter]
Russ: Yeah.
John: All right, all right, all right.
Russ: Okay. The end of November is dangerous economic times.
John: I know, yeah, yeah. It used to be the Ides of March you had to look out after.
Russ: Yeah.
John: Now it's the -
Russ: Not anymore.
John: Now it's the 30th of - the first of November. Yeah, okay.
Russ: All right.
John: There you go.
Russ: That brings us to the jargon challenger, the vocabulary lesson, and I go out and find a new word and -
John: Oh, you're good at this. You scour the universe.
Russ: I do. I do.
John: You've even been known to go into other galaxies.
Russ: Yeah, I do. I do.
John: Intergalactic Capitor they call you.
Russ: Yeah. I didn't today though.
John: You didn't?
Russ: This word is gonna be so easy that I'm embarrassed.
John: Oh, now you're setting me up now.
Russ: No, I don't think you'll have any trouble.
John: All right. Well...
Russ: Here it is; you ready?
John: Yeah.
Russ: John has to guess. He has no idea -
John: I have no idea, and he sets me up -
Russ: - and he has to come up with it.
John: - and says it's real easy, and I feel inadequate.
Russ: No, here it is.
John: All right.
Russ: Yestertech.
John: Yestertech - well, yesterday is the day before now. It's over. It's through 'cause it's yesterday. Well, yestertech is technology that was good in its day -
Russ: Hold you calls, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a winner here.
John: - like the cell phones that were about the size of a brick.
Russ: Yeah, like the PC Junior, that's yestertech.
John: Yeah, right.
Russ: Even the PC is becoming yestertech.
John: Yeah, Game Boy, you've got the Walkman, the Sony Walkman.
Russ: Yeah, Walkman, yeah - the VCR.
John: The VCR.
Russ: The cassette tape deck.
John: The cassette tape deck.
Russ: It goes on, and on, and on.
John: The abacus.
Russ: Yeah, true. [Laughter]
John: At one time, the abacus was, you know, "the" technology.
Russ: You're right, right.
John: Or the chariot, look at the chariot used to be was - you know?
Russ: And the buggy whip.
John: The buggy whip.
Russ: Yeah, that's gone.
John: Yeah, what else is there? The -
Russ: That might be it. We might've covered them all, you think?
John: I would say the catapult -
Russ: Yeah, that's correct. [Laughter]
John: - in warfare, medieval warfare.
Russ: That's right.
John: Actually, it was the Romans who had that, too.
Russ: Yestertech.
John: All right, okay.
Russ: All right. And that brings us to dumb moments in business. Do you have something for us today, John?
John: Yeah, I've got a couple of them here. We're gonna start off with - here's something that probably needs to be done, but why tell the whole world about it, you know?
Russ: Okay.
John: Okay. It says here that according to the Associated Press, the last of the nation's, the US nation's most powerful nuclear bombs, a weapon a hundred times stronger, hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. That's a quote from the report.
Russ: Okay.
John: And they go down to say, you know, it's yestertech.
Russ: Yestertech, there you go, yeah.
John: Now, the thing is, it may very well be and it may very well need to be put out of commission, but why tell the whole world?
Russ: Right.
John: 'Cause people might get the wrong idea and think we're a weaker country than we were 'cause we're getting rid of this thing and others like it, and that we're leaving ourselves open. We should keep that quiet, to ourselves.
Russ: We don't need to do a press release.
John: I know. It's ridiculous. I mean, and it's just so typical of what the government's been up to these days that they can't keep something secret that should be secret. Okay.
Russ: Yeah. All right, you got another one, too?
John: I've got one more.
Russ: Yeah.
John: I mean, this is five.
Russ: Yeah.
John: We've never had five dumb moments.
Russ: Right. No, we never have.
John: This is when the system, you could say, has run amuck.
Russ: Okay.
John: Okay.
Russ: All right. [Laughter]
John: Here's a guy. He was serving in Ohio - the State of Ohio's 1st Congressional District, and the voters decided - the guy's name is Steve Driehaus; he's a democrat - and the voters decided they didn't want him to be the congressman anymore so they voted him out of office.
Russ: Okay, he lost.
John: He lost. Now, did he go quietly into the night, you might ask?
Russ: Yeah, did he?
John: No. He decided to sue somebody.
Russ: So, who'd he sue, the voters? [Laughter]
John: Well, he sued an organization that contributed to his defeat, and it's a group that supports pro-life candidates for Congress and has been one of the leading groups in that.
Russ: Does it say what the basis -
John: It's called the Susan B. Anthony List. And so, there you have it. Okay. Here's a guy that can't win so what he does is sues people, and it's a pro-life, you know, organization, but that happens all the time.
Russ: Right.
John: What happens when the labor union comes out and says you're anti-education just because you want to, you know, cut something in education? It's ridiculous.
Russ: I agree, totally.
John: All right, okay.
Russ: All right. But before we wrap up today's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas.
John: Ah, yes.
Russ: Entrepreneur's Playbook.
John: Here he is.
Russ: So, let's welcome Mr. Greg Price.
John: Greg Price, man, I love the guy. Here we go.
Russ: A one, and a two, and a - All right. And that wraps up today's School of Business. Stay tuned in for our interview with Brandy Obvintsev with Energy People Connect, followed by Dr. Don Minnick, Managing Consultant with YSC. This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com.
