Russ: This is The BusinessMakers show, heard on the radio and seen online at the businessmakers.com. This is that show about those that most positively affect our lives.

John: You're talking about the entrepreneur class. They're the ones that really have most of the ideas out there. I'm not saying that big companies don't have great R and D departments and efforts and everything, but the entrepreneurs, they all come up with an idea first and then they all execute it the best way they know how. Reminds me of a recent movie I just saw on TV called "Startup.com", which is a documentary about these two guys. They were friends in high school and they start this company and it's just pretty amazing.

Russ: Is it a true story?

John: True story.

Russ: All right. Cool. Well, and speaking of those that do this thing, there's a shout out to EO Houston - the Entrepreneur Organization of Houston.

John: That's a whole coven of entrepreneurs. Man, you go in there, you get - the energy in the room is quite amazing.

Russ: You bet. You see them coming you just get ready for everything to get better, man.

John: Yeah, just make sure your heart medicine is available.

Russ: Right, right. And also, I just want to remind everybody, that we've got that new show up and running now. The Energy Makers at TheEnergyMakers.com, a group of entrepreneurs and innovators focused totally on that energy sector and speaking of entrepreneurs, earlier this week I was involved in another one of those very cool doing business over coffee events at PKF Texas and first, I got to sit down with the culture pilot people. Culture pilot is not your business as usual design and marketing firm. I got to interview Tim deSilva, the founder, along with Grace Rodrigues. And I followed that with the founder of the brand new, very early stage, Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company - the founder, Russul Zarinfar. But first, that's right; it's time for the BusinessMakers's School of Business. And this is not your business as usual school.

John: You got that right. We're more ground level, in the trenches type of education and I think over time, if you look at all the history and the new words we've introduced to society, and the fact that we're not afraid to look at companies that have done completely stupid, dumb things and of course, that's how you learn. Cuz not everybody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. Mistakes people make are, you know, you gotta talk about.

Russ: So I don't think you get this anywhere else.

John: I don't either, all right.

Russ: All right. And we kick it off each weekend with the quote of the day.

John: Quote of the day, yes.

Russ: And today I'm quoting James Branch Cabell. He was a U.S. essayist and novelist. Lived from 1879 to 1958 and he focuses sort of on that optimism aspect of life in general and it goes like this. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist fears that this is true."

John: Yeah, right.

Russ: The optimist - "This is great" and the pessimist is going, "Wow, this is as good as it gets?"

John: They're looking at the same set of facts and arrive totally different opinions and outcomes.

Russ: And that brings us to this week in business history. What happened at the end of September in business history?

John: Well, I tell ya it's been a - we've got a big week here. Starting with the death of Levi Strauss, the inventor of denim jeans. He died this week in business history in 1902. And this is your classic story of an immigrant that comes to America, doesn't speak the language. Officially his name was Loeb Strauss. He was born in 1829 in Bavaria and came over here and started selling dry goods. I mean just a lot of little things and man, he really hit on these denim jeans because they were a hardy - California Gold rush, all these people were crawling around on the ground panning for gold and then he used these rivets to hold everything together so these were strong pants. Doesn't get any better than that.

Russ: No, I wonder if he knew, like, centuries later, Calvin Klein would come along and make his version.

John: There'd be some people wearing those jeans right around their rear end, dragging the floor with the pant legs.

Russ: That's right, that's the new style.

John: Carrying side arms inside the pockets. It's really evolved over the years. Okay, all right. This week in business history in 1913, the inventor of the diesel engine commits suicide. Rudolph Diesel - he's one of those guys that the product he made was named after him. It was a very efficient engine and became very popular. It was use prolifically around the world to this day, but he was on a cruiser crossing the English Channel and he jumped off the boat, but some people think he might have been pushed. But we'll never know. I don't think they've ever found the body. Maybe they found the body, I don't know, it doesn't say it here, but it's just one of those things. Maybe his girlfriend got mad at him or something. I've known people commit suicide over a bad breakup. This week in business history in 1922 two researchers - this is one of those - we criticize the government for not being very creative or anything, but occasionally, in wartime, that's when all these innovations happen. Two researchers with the U. S. Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory were conducting tests across a river near Washington D.C. - Dr. Albert Hoyt, Dr. Clifford Young - veterans of the war. This was, I guess, World War I, noticed that ships in the river interfered with their radio signals. Guess what? Radar gets started. And they bounced the radio waves off one another and they can see that there's objects out there and saved a lot of lives, eventually, in World War II, cuz the Brits started using it before the Germans. Helped win the Battle of Britain. Okay, this week in business history in 1928, work begins in Chicago's new Galvin manufacturing company. Now the company officially incorporated the day before - it was a precursor to Motorola radio. The first mass produced commercial car radio. Where would be in the automobile industry if it weren't for a radio?

Russ: Well and where would the radio world be without car radios these days?

John: I remember when my father used to buy a new car every three years it would never come with a radio until we finally convinced him that we need a radio and some air conditioning in here. We didn't have air conditioning. We'd be driving from Pittsburgh to Birmingham, Alabama in the summer time with the windows rolled down. Good Lord it was just - ugh - like being in a torture chamber. Anyway, we got radio and the rest is history. This week in business history in 1960, the first Kennedy/Nixon debate. This is the first televised - I believe the first - televised debate and Kennedy emerged as the winner mainly because he looked better. His suit looked better with the backdrop of the set they used on TV and Nixon declined to wear makeup, which is a mistake, plus he was hurt. Someone slammed a car door on his hand or something like that weeks before so he had just gotten out of the hospital so he was in pain and walking a little stiff. However, I've read extensively about this debate and apparently, people who listened to the debate on the radio though Nixon won, while people on TV thought Kennedy won. And on radio, you couldn't see Nixon's six o'clock shadow, or the fact he was sweating profusely and all that - not profusely, but you could tell there was a little shine. Didn't wear makeup and all that. Big turning point in that election. Had there not been a debate, I think even with all those dead people in Chicago voting, I don't think Kennedy would have won the election. They would've need those dead people in New York, LA and other big cities to pull it off. This week in business history in 1968 the Beatles single, "Hey, Jude" hits the top of the charts. That became kind of their anthem.

Russ: Yes, it did.

John: I mean, they really had a lot of popular songs, but that "Hey Jude" and that chorus at the end. And a little known Rock and Roll history, here that the Rolling Stones - even though they were friends with the Beatles, they were competitive. And the Rolling Stones wanted their own anthem. I mean, they wanted a son, a signature song, so they wrote the song, "You can't always get what you want".

Russ: That was motivated by "Hey, Jude"?

John: It was motivated by this. And if you look at it, it's very similar. It's got the big chorus at the end and all that that and fortunately for the Rolling Stones, that song was in "The Big Chill" that big -

Russ: Right in the very beginning.

John: Right at the beginning after you see the parts of the body of Kevin Costner, who played the dead guy who killed himself. This week in business history in 1968, "60 Minutes" debuts on CBS which began a long line of inaccurate advice, reporting and you were a victim of one of those reports, which you, to this day, will not talk about.

Russ: I don't want to talk about now. No, it was bad.

John: Leslie Stall - and she didn't know what the heck she was talking about. The problem with these type of shows is they are so slickly produced and they look so authoritative and everything. And I'm not saying every report that "60 Minutes" has ever done has been inaccurate. That would be an inaccurate statement, but I gotta tell ya, some of the stuff they pull on that show - not just this show, but it was a "60 Minutes" type of documentary that accused Bush - the second George Bush - of skipping all those National Guard meetings based on manufactured forged documents.

Russ: Right, no, I know, I had a discussion with the editor after my brief encounter and it was interesting the way he handled it. He almost expected a call from me and he made a retraction on the website, which probably 1.1000000 of a percent of people that saw the TV show, went to the website.

John: They should have mentioned it and I've seen "60 Minutes" do that. Sometimes it's so blatant they have to do that. But anyway, okay, this week in business history 1979, CompuServe launches the first consumer internet service, which features the first public electronic mail service. Yeah, '79. Think about that. And you know, the internet was put together by the government.

Russ: Well, yeah, yeah, it came out of that Darpa group, but it was the commercialization with is just connect with the world.

John: But the concept was - and I'm not all of a sudden a government guy buy we have to call a spade a spade.

Russ: That's true. No, that's true. But CompuServe was a private company that took that and ran with it.

John: It ran with it, right. Somebody has to - the government may be good at developing something but some people - you might say, since it's been commercialized, it is kind of new and improved on an ongoing basis. This week in business history 1983, a Soviet Military Officer, Stanislauv Petrov averts a likely worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying reports of incoming ICBMs as a computer error and not an American first strike.

Russ: We should make that guy a hero somewhere.

John: I know. Obama ought to bring him over and give him the Medal of Freedom or something.

Russ: It took courage to say, "Hmm. I don't think that's ..."

John: Especially in that environment. I mean, the Soviet Military - they're not like people descanting. Not that he'd -

Russ: Like he was sitting there looking and he had to say, "I think this is just SPAM" and would go on instead of launching a full onslaught of ICBM's at the U.S.

John: See, what happened was, he got this email from this guy from Nigeria.

Russ: Warning him.

John: Warning him, yeah, saying, "Unless you pay me a couple of hundred million dollars to help me out of this jam I'm in in Nigeria, I can't warn you about these impending ICBM's". This week in business history in 1986, congress introduced legislation that lead to the tax reform act. This was when Ronald Reagan was president and it was intended to simplify the income tax code, broaden the tax space, eliminate a lot of the tax shelters which, I agree, I think a lot of the tax breaks should go away. They should just lower the rates down to where people don't even think about it.

Russ: Like Steve Forbes said five years ago when he was on our show about the flat tax and all the advantages of it. It benefits everybody.

John: I mean, who would need the home mortgage deduction if you're only sending 15 percent of your gross up to - but anyway, it was heralded as pretty good move by the Reagan Administration. However, what was included in this bill that no one could foresee except maybe a few people and I'll name one here in a minute but there was a - they called it the Pass of Loss Provision which before this bill was passed, people could - a lot of people invested in commercial real estate for the tax breaks.

Russ: Just for tax breaks.

John: And what this did was it took away the tax breaks, so if you were gonna invest in a shopping center or build a big building, you were doing it because the market dictated that it should be built. Which is good, but the problem here is what they did is they took the tax break and they went retroactive. They took it away so if people already had these investments, they lost the tax breaks. And they were stuck.

Russ: So they lost the building, too, eventually.

John: Yeah, and it all helped with the S and L because a lot of these people went through S and L's to get them built, get them loans and all that, so anyway, Bill Seedman is a guy who was eventually running the Revolution Trust Corporation which is trying to sell off all these dead assets and he told me that he tried to warn Dan Rostenkowski - he was head of the house committee on finance, the ways and means - and it was a closed session because Rostenkowski didn't want reporters or anybody else in there hearing about this stuff, and of course, they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to all this. This could have been avoided. Okay, next, this week in business history 1990 George Bush, who a year later or earlier had proclaimed, "Read my lips. No new taxes" when he was running for president, decided to become a tax and spend liberal when he raised taxes to the tune of $134 billion over five years, which is around - it's chump change now. Nothing these days. But however, did keep him from being re-elected because of Bill Clinton cuz boy, they kept hammering that. Now true, he did violate his own pledge but he was pushed by the democrats to put this tax increase through because they knew they were gonna be some deficits that are gonna come. Now the problem is, what the democrats said is, "Look, let's raise tax now and then we promise over the subsequent years we're gonna find ways of cutting the federal budget." Well, they never did. Never did. So Bush was stuck and he paid the price for it.

Russ: Yes he did.

John: Okay, and finally, this week in business history in 2005 Hurricane Rita makes landfall north of Houston.

Russ: My goodness, what a debacle that was around here. Now down around Beaumont and Orange, it was a serious hurricane.

John: It was a very serious hurricane. But see, right before Hurricane Rita, we had another hurricane called Katrina and people saw that so they got out of here.

Russ: Many more people left than the roads could handle.

John: Right. I got on an airplane and got out of here no problem.

Russ: Yeah, well, you own your own airplane, right?

John: Yeah, yeah. I own a couple of model airplanes.

Russ: I stayed put and it worked out very well.

John: Yeah, cuz I had to call you to swing by our building here to see if there was any damage.

Russ: That's right and boy; there were people, millions, stopped out on the freeways that were just jammed up. People running out of gasoline, water. I mean it was a disaster.

John: It was probably like, remember that scene in the Spielberg movie about the comet that's gonna hit the earth or something and all those people are stranded out there and they're running for their lives.

Russ: Just like that.

John: Yeah, okay, that's it.

Russ: All right, that wraps up today's history lesson and what a lesson, man. Lots of tax stuff and then with the Rolling Stones.

John: Yeah, a little known fact about the Rolling Stones/Beatles rivalry.

Russ: Cool. All right. And that brings us to navigating business jargon. This is our vocabulary lesson.

John: Ah, yes. Every time we do this we have a vocabulary lesson.

Russ: Right and it's a test. John doesn't know the word. I get to select the word and he gives his best shot a definition right here, right now. Today's word is, it's a two word noun and it's Technology Butler.

John: A Technology Butler.

Russ: Yeah. What's a Technology Butler?

John: Hmm. Well, butler's are people that help you do stuff, so I would say that a Technology Butler is somebody who you hire, either in person or on the internet or on telephone, that is constantly helping you navigate and helping you improve your technical skills.

Russ: I'm gonna give you a half win. You're real close. The only difference - the butler term in this case is tied more to like a hotel butler and so a Technology Butler is a hotel staff member who performs computer related tasks and helps guests with software and hardware problems.

John: Well, that's what I just said.

Russ: Yeah, but you didn't say anything about a hotel. That's why I gave you a half win and until you protested -

John: I strongly protest. I think I got it. Just got there's a hotel -

Russ: We'll take this up with the advisory board. We'll answer it next week.

John: We'll send it to the commissioner.

Russ: Right, the commissioner. The jargon commissioner will decide. All right and that brings us to dumb moments in business. Do you have one for today?

John: Well, here's a road crew that could have used a butler, I'll tell you that. They're up in Maryland, right outside of Alicante City - I don't know if you've ever been to Alicante City. It's kind of a nice little town up there. Close to Baltimore. Anyway, Howard County -Alicante City's in Howard County, Maryland - highway crews had to hold their breath - this is all according to NBC. There's an NBC affiliate in Washington that came up with this story. They had to clean up a manure spill. I mean, I've heard of oil spills and chicken's fall off of trucks. There's all kinds of stuff. But I've never heard of a manure spill and this was liquid manure so this was manure that had been processed by somebody.

Russ: Do we know what created the manure? Was it like, cows, or was it people manure?

John: Who cares? Hey, manure is manure, you know.

Russ: That's right. It was a manure spill?

John: A manure spill, yeah. Covered about a 1.5 mile stretch of road and they're still searching as of this broadcast. They are still searching for the source of the manure. And this is a great quote. A worker at an Alicante City wine bar, Mark Bowman, called the smell, "Disgustingly epic..."

Russ: Disgustingly epic. Was it close to his wine bar, the spill you think?

John: Well, it probably was. I mean, you have a mile and a half stretch of manure, it's gonna smell.

Russ: It will be epic.

John: Especially the way the winds are going. If it's a hot, muggy day.

Russ: Absolutely. It could be bad. And before we wrap up today's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneurs Playbook. So let's welcome Mr. Greg Price. Hey Greg, welcome aboard.

John: He's always early. He's always on time. Sometimes he's early, like today. Okay, here we go.

Russ: A one and a two and a -

Greg: This is Greg Price with PKF Texas' Entrepreneur's Playbook. As the end of 2011 is drawing near, now is the time to utilize a tax planning idea that can potentially save you and your business money, along with preparing for upcoming changes in tax laws, one of which is payroll reporting for 2012 wages and beyond. The Patient Protection and Affordably Care Act sets forth new form, W-2 reporting requirements relating to the costs of health insurance. Employers filing more than 250 form W-2's in 2013 for your 2012 wages, must report the cost of pre-tax employer sponsored coverage of group health coverage. Employers filing less than 250 form W-2's are not subject to reporting until 2014 for 2013 wages, so you get an extra year there, guys. The Act defines employer sponsored coverage as coverage under any group health plan, excludable from gross income except long term care, on site medical clinics, separate dental or vision plan coverage, coverage that is not excludable from gross income and a deduction is not allowed, archer, MSA, HSA, HRA, FSA, unless there is an employer match. Plans not subject to COBRA, plans primarily for military. As always, start planning early. Stay in touch with your accountant. And stay informed. More in depth information about this and other tax topics can be found on our website PKFTexas.com/taxnews. To read and comment on the PKF Texas Entrepreneurs Playbook, visit my blog FromGregsHead.com, PKF Texas, CPA's and professional advisors.

Russ: All right and that wraps up today's school of business. Stay tuned in for our interviews first with Tim deSilva and Grace Rodrigues of Culture Pilot, followed by a discussion with Russul Zarinfar, the founder of the very early stage Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company. This is The BusinessMakers show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com.