Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com. Episode number 345 of that show that champions the cause of the private sector. We're talking about the innovators and the entrepreneurs.

John: That's right. These people are the engine of the economy and we're here to talk about them on a weekly basis, interview some of them and just generally have a good time, because I think we're the only ones that really consistently cover this very important niche of the economy.

Russ: Well, it's the niche that creates jobs. I mean we're talking about real jobs here.

John: Yeah, not these phony government jobs.

Russ: That just doesn't work. But every time I hear that, regardless of which party it is, I'm going, "Wait a minute, you're not the guys that can make jobs. You can help the climate be right for them."

John: And then many times when the government gets involved in the private sector it just doesn't quite work out, like these Chevy Volts are all being recalled, you know, because the batteries are catching on fire. But these are government sanctioned vehicles.

Russ: But Fannie May, Freddie Mac, that kind of worked, didn't it?

John: Oh yeah. Yeah, it worked real well for Newt Gingrich, who moved in out on a take there.

Russ: And Chris Dodd.

John: Chris Dodd.

Russ: Barney Frank.

John: Yeah, and Newt's not the only one. It just goes to show that you can't have a bunch of apparatchiks in Washington, you know, with dials and levers trying to operate the economy.

Russ: Right. You need real entrepreneurs.

John: It's the customers. It's the marketplace.

Russ: The marketplace decides. Yeah. Yeah.

John: Yeah. Right. Okay.

Russ: And you need real innovators and entrepreneurs, like the EO Houston Group, it's the very active organization of very serious entrepreneurs.

John: Yeah, there's a whole bevy of those people. You know, they're just-

Russ: Out there creating jobs.

John: Right. Most entrepreneurs just want to be left alone; they don't want any government help because it's all those strings that are attached to it, you know.

Russ: That's right. That's right. All right, and here's the lineup for today. I'm going to have the opportunity to sit down and talk with the owner and CEO of Westside Tennis and Fitness Center; we're talking about Linda McIngvale.

John: Yeah.

Russ: The other McIngvale.

John: Yeah, we had her hubby on here a long time ago.

Russ: Yeah, we did.

John: When we first started.

Russ: We did. We did. And for those of you listening outside of Houston, this is quite an extraordinary family. Jim McIngvale has a furniture store, which by every measurement I've ever seen is probably the highest volume per square foot furniture store on the planet.

John: In a single location.

Russ: Yeah, in a single location. Yeah. Great story, looking forward to that. But first-

Russ: That's right, it's time for the BusinessMaker's School of Business. And we kick off the School of Business each week with the quote of the day.

John: Quote of the day.

Russ: Yeah, this quote I chose today, I kind of liked it because it came from 250 years ago or so, from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg,-

John: Lichtenberg.

Russ: -a German author, physicist, and art critic.

John: Wow. That's kind of a mixed bag.

Russ: Yes, it is. Well I think back then diversity meant a little bit more. You could be an art critic-

John: And a physician.

Russ: Yeah, you could. All right, now he wasn't a physician; he was a-

John: Just imagine if he operated on an artist, not only could he operate on the guy, but he could criticize his art at the same time.

Russ: That's right. He was a physicist.

John: Not a very positive way of recovering your patient.

Russ: All right, and here's his quote, "What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes." Now I think that's a good point.

John: That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Russ: You can't do that. I mean you can hold your hands over your ears.

John: But you still hear.

Russ: Yeah. And people can tell you're doing it.

John: Yeah, although some people have what they call "translucent eyelids," so even if they shut their eyes they can still kind of see shapes and, you know, all that.

Russ: And that brings us to This Week in Business History. What happened in business history during this third week in January?

John: This week in business history in 1880 the first U.S. sewage disposal system separate from the storm drain started in Memphis, Tennessee. Now before then, you know, anything, any other sewage just went into the drainage and into the rivers and the lakes and the ponds.

Russ: Yeah, so this was quite a step up for civilization.

John: It was. Yeah, yeah, it probably helped with the disease rate in Memphis, Tennessee.

Russ: Right. Right. Right.

John: You know, but I mean it's just shocking how, you know, people talk about the good old days being, you know-

Russ: Yeah, those - those-

John: Average life span back in those days is like 40 years old because of this kind of stuff mainly.

Russ: Right. Right. Right.

John: Okay, cool. This week in business history in 1883, the first electric lighting system using overhead wires began service in Roselle as built by Thomas Edison. He wanted to prove to people that he could light an entire community with electricity.

Russ: Wow. So, you know, before then everything kind of looked I guess like North Korea, right?

John: In the dark. Yeah, it was like - yeah, yeah, the people had, what, lanterns, something like that?

Russ: Right.

John: Torches or something like that. Okay, this week in business history in 1899 is the birth of novelist Nevil Shute from Norway. He was a novelist, his famous, most famous writing was a book called On the Beach-

Russ: On the Beach.

John: -which is about a post-World War III apocalyptic model, and it featured a submarine, an American submarine, and it was in Australia.

Russ: Yeah, 'cause Australia was the only thing - the southern hemisphere was the only thing that was alive, right?

John: Yeah. Right. And they - this - you know, America has been wiped out and they're trying to decide whether they should stay in Australia or go back home to America, and they - I think they all decide to go back home. I would've stayed in Australia.

Russ: Well though, the punch line was they were getting some kind of little Morse code system from the U.S. It wouldn't make sense, but they kept thinking, "Wow, somebody's alive." So they went back, and for those of you who still are going to go see the movie or read the book, close your ears now, you don't want to hear this, but-

John: Yeah, you've read the book obviously.

Russ: Yes. Yes. They go all the way back, I think they go to the San Francisco Bay, where they felt like the Morse code was coming from, and a couple of people get out in those hazmat suits, you know, and walk around, and eventually find the source of the Morse code, and it just happened to be like a Coke bottle that was strung in the string of a window shutter thing that was blowing up and down and would send Morse code, which meant that there were no survivors. There were dogs, plenty of dogs, but no humans. There you go.

John: Yeah. A very upbeat ending.

Russ: Yeah, it really was.

John: A Coke bottle. Yeah, all right. This week in business history in 1903 a new bicycle race is announced called the Tour de France. The idea came from a cycling journalist, 26-year-old Geo Lefevre. And he and his editor discussed it, they were having lunch, and that's how the race got started, you know, a bunch of guys had lunch and said "Hey, let's have a race," and that - yeah.

Russ: I thought - that's it? I thought it was started by a steroid manufacturer who said, "We need to create a market."

John: Well, the amalgamated society of the steroid manufacturers became - they were silent sponsor of-

Russ: Silent sponsor, yeah.

John: All right. This week in business history in 1915 the neon tube sign was patented by Georges Claude. It was a boon to the tavern owner industry worldwide.

Russ: Yes, it was. Yeah.

John: The problem, you know, every positive thing has kind of a negative offshoot eventually, and now we're all faced with these curly-Q neon light bulb the government wants us to-

Russ: Yeah. Well, but they're really fluorescents, which is a little bit different gas.

John: Yeah, you're right.

Russ: In fact, neons are actually better. I like them because I like - do you remember the old country and western song by Brooks & Dunn, "The Neon Moon"?

John: "Neon Moon," right. Yeah.

Russ: It's a great song.

John: Great song.

Russ: Let's hear a little bit of that.

John: All right.

John: And this week in business history in 1922 the Geological Survey said the U.S. oil supply would be depleted in 20 years.

Russ: Well it seems like they were off a little bit.

John: They were off a little bit, yeah.

Russ: Yeah, I mean.

John: Which just goes to show, I mean these things are hard to predict. I mean you can't even predict whether it's going to rain tomorrow accurately.

Russ: And that takes place above the surface of the Earth.

John: Yeah, that's above it. I mean they can measure it with all kinds of instruments and everything, but, you know something thousands of feet below the Earth's crust, you know, there's not - I mean no one has poked a hole every ten feet and went down 5,000 feet all over the globe doing core samples.

Russ: Right. Not yet. Right. No, it's-

John: But anyways, it's one of those ludicrous pronouncements you hear, you get people - that scares the bejeezus out of people and it turns out it doesn't have a shred of proof.

Russ: Yeah. Well, plus the way capitalism works, when it gets a little harder to find it gets a little bit more expensive, and when it gets a little bit more expensive there's more people trying new things to go find it.

John: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Russ: And boy are we ever finding a bunch of it now.

John: Yeah, fracking gas and oil is really something.

Russ: God almighty, whoo.

John: Okay, this week in business history in 1943 is the birth date of Janis Joplin from Port Arthur, Texas, a really good blues-bluesy singer.

Russ: Would be 68.

John: Died an early death.

Russ: Yeah, would be 68 now. I think when we brought this up in prior years I always point out that if you ever get a chance to see that play called Love, Janis and you're a Janis Joplin fan, man go see it, it is fantastic. I mean it really is. Now it depends a lot upon the person that sings the songs, whether or not she can sing them like Janis does.

John: Yeah, if they can't do the singing part then-

Russ: Yeah, it's a bad play.

John: It's a bad play. Okay. This week in business history in 1953 is the birth date of Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, entrepreneur extraordinaire.

Russ: Yeah, he's the guy, you know, trying to get us into space and-

John: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Russ: He's also the guy that recently wrote a book where he completely dissed bill Gates and presented him as a heartless SOB. But, you know, that's kind of in these days. I've been working on one too, about you.

John: What?

Russ: A book. You know-

John: A book about me?

Russ: Yeah, one of these days I'm going to surprise the community with the real John Beddow.

John: Oh god.

Russ: Just like Paul Allen did on Bill Gates.

John: All right, well, hopefully I'll be dead by the time it comes out.

Russ: Right.

John: Okay. This week in business history in 1967, the Summer of Love is organized, put together in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, kind of launching the communal living hippie way of life. And it's fitting because, you know, the beat generation, Jack Kerouac started in San Francisco, and how you got the hippies in 1967, which, you know, love in and Age of Aquarius and all this, and it didn't turn out the way they wanted it.

Russ: Well, it did or a while at least. Well, for them a temporary pleasure, you know. But I think they even - the actual event was called the Human Be In, and it was kind of a takeoff on human being, but it was an N.

John: Yeah, and it launched the Summer of Love.

Russ: Yeah, the whole higher consciousness that took place.

John: In Haight-Ashbury district. That was the symbolic nexus of the whole _____ movement.

Russ: Yeah. Yeah.

John: Yeah. Okay. This week in business history in 1981 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan is inaugurated at the age of 69 Iran released 52 American hostages that they've been holding for I guess a couple of years.

Russ: That almost seemed rigged, they were so quick at doing it. It was almost like they were for Reagan, "All right, if he gets elected we'll let them go."

John: That's right.

Russ: But in reality it was because-

John: Yeah, they were afraid he might, you know, nuke 'em or something.

Russ: Right.

John: So anyway. This week in business history in 1983 the Apple release of the first commercial personal computer from Apple to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse is announced. Can you imagine that, back in 1983?

Russ: Well, yeah, it was-

John: How that technology is just-

Russ: Yeah, it was a huge deal, but-

John: Yeah, the mouse. Yeah.

Russ: Yeah, from what I remember, though, the Lisa itself was not necessarily a huge success. You know, it was followed by the Macintosh, which kind of did this in a better way, and that's when everybody got excited.

John: Right. Mm-hmm. This week in business in history the song "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen peaks at number nine on the charts.

Russ: Good song. Kind of a little controversial politically, but-

John: Well, when it first came out everybody thought it was going to be a real positive patriotic song, but it's anything but that, so.

Russ: Right. Right. Right.

John: Okay, this week in business history in 1991 Eastern Airlines goes out of business after 62 years. They go out, I like this, citing financial problems. What else is there, you know?

Russ: Well I think the reason it says that--

John: Lack of customers.

Russ: -is that in this era that wouldn't happen; financial problems are not a problem, the government steps in.

John: Yeah. Right. You get bailed out.

Russ: The government would come along and cure that.

John: if you're - they think you're too big to fail.

Russ: Right.

John: Whatever. Okay. This week in business history in 1991 Operation Desert Storm begins. U.S.-led allies begin the liberation of Kuwait, which had been invaded by Iraq, and we were in there to throw them out.

Russ: In a fairly clean execution of a-

John: Well, from our standpoint it was. From the Iraqi standpoint it was-

Russ: It was messy, right?

John: Yeah, it was like - I don't know, it was like-

Russ: Yeah, but - but we-

John: -George Custer had a better chance against the Sioux than they had - than the Iraqis had against the U.S. military.

Russ: But, you know, there's all that controversy about Bush One versus Bush Two, he should've gone in there and gotten Saddam, and he didn't because he was so principled at, "No, our mission is to free Kuwait," period, end of sentence.

John: Yeah, but the one thing Bush the First said that was really out of line was he was encouraging the Kurds to rise up against the Iraqis and then-

Russ: And that didn't work out very well, did it?

John: -with the suggestion that we'd be there to help. Well, we weren't there to help and the Kurds just got annihilated, which is why that no fly zone got set up in Iraq, to keep the Iraqis from, you know, conducting bombing missions-

Russ: Well, which also showed that the Iraqis-

John: -in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Russ: -knew how to use poisonous gas and stuff very effectively.

John: Yeah, right Yeah. Right. Yeah, it was very effective. Very efficient.

Russ: Okay.

John: Okay. Now this week in business history in 1992 IBM announced a yearly $5 billion loss for 1991.

Russ: Yeah, well that was kind of the beginning of the end of the old big blue. John Acres was CEO, and was I think - I think, and I might have this wrong, but I think he was the last internal CEO, and then they started getting high-powered people outside.

John: Yeah, he - yeah, they _____ operate off a new paradigm and, you know, when you're bringing these people up from within, and the paradigm shifted really hard.

Russ: Right. Right, and they were - and the company, and this is kind of an interesting capitalism story, the company was so committed to full employment, I mean they would say that in rules reviews in meetings when I was there. And they wouldn't say, "We'll never lay anybody off," but they said, "We haven't laid anybody off in 50 years except for two guys," and-

John: Who were those two guys?

Russ: I don't know. We need to find them, though.

John: They were probably embezzling money.

Russ: Right. Well then they were fired for cause. But full employment is a great goal, but if you hang onto it too long - I mean they had like 400,000 people and they were losing $5 billion a year. And the new guy came in and cut the ranks. You know, that's part of capitalism.

John: That's right. You know, nothing lasts forever, that's for sure.

Russ: Yeah, and they're in great shape today.

John: Yes they are. Yes they are. Okay, this week in business history in 2009 U.S. Airways flight 1549, which was captained by Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger makes that amazing emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia and New York Air - and everybody survived, nobody got hurt. I mean it was amazing, amazing pilotry or - I mean, he just did a great job.

Russ: Is a success story.

John: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Russ: So we're wrapping up the history lesson with a success story.

John: Yeah, right. We start with storm drains and end up with a U.S. Airways flight that almost went down the drain.

Russ: All right, good history lesson, as usual.

John: All right. Okay. All right.

Russ: All right, and that brings us to Navigating Business Jargon, also known as our vocabulary lesson.

John: Right. Mm-hmm.

Russ: And this is that part of the show where I go find a new word that's not really out there actively used and I keep it away from John all week-

John: That's right, yeah. I don't know what it is.

Russ: -present it to him right here, right now, and see if he can come up with the meaning.

John: All right.

Russ: Today's word is neurobabble.

John: Neurobabble.

Russ: Neurobabble.

John: Hmm, babble, that's when people talk incessantly about nothing, I guess.

Russ: Pretty much, yeah. Yeah.

John: That's the product _____. So neuro is bab - you know, non-sensical talk about the human brain and its capabilities.

Russ: I think we're going to give you a win on this one.

John: Wow. Holy-

Russ: Everybody hold your calls, please.

John: Yeah, stop the - yeah, stop the-

Russ: The verbatim definition is neurological jargon used inaccurately or simplistically. So, you know, we have-

John: That's about right.

Russ: Yeah, we have a lot of people these days that study the brain. There's a guy here in town named David Eagleman that keeps getting national press everywhere, a young kind of rock star stud that's a scientist, a neurological scientist. But he doesn't give out neurobabble, he tells the truth. You ought to check him out someday. It might help you.

John: Okay.

Russ: That brings us-

John: I'll need more than that.

Russ: -to Dumb Moments in Business. Do you have a story for us today?

John: Yeah. Yeah. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and-

Russ: Getting the same results.

John: -getting the same results. Well that's true, that definition is true; the entire state of California is an insane asylum, because Jerry Brown is proposing a $92.6 billion in spending for the year starting in July, so an increase of about 7-percent, which will count on voters approving $7 billion in higher taxes. Now these taxes are to come from people making over $250,000.00 a year.

Russ: Which is everybody in California.

John: Yeah. So it's going to rise from 9.3-percent to 10.3-percent.

Russ: There's what - what's that, their state income tax?

John: Their state income tax for those people. And the sales tax levies will go from 7.25-percent to 7.75-percent. So the exodus from California is going to be probably increased because of this.

Russ: Well, he thinks it's going to stimulate the economy.

John: Yeah. Right.

Russ: And yet you and I know exactly what he needs to do. Maybe they could bring back just in California a sub-prime mortgage program to give mortgages away to people that would come there and buy homes.

John: Yeah, 'cause it's not fair that they would ______ _________.

Russ: No, and it would - but people would be coming in there and everybody's value would go up and everything would be fixed.

John: Right. They could raise the minimum wage to $1,000.00 a week.

Russ: That would help too.

John: Maybe $2,000.00. I mean who cares? You know, just keep raising that, and then everybody will have a livable wage and everybody would be rich.

Russ: They need to put us in charge of California.

John: That's right. _____ ____ that does it.

Russ: Before we wrap up today's School of Business it's time for the very popular PK of Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook. All right, and that wraps up today's school of business. Stay tuned in for our interview with Linda McIngvale, the owner and CEO of Westside Tennis and Fitness Center. This is the BusinessMaker's Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com.