Russ: This is the Business Maker Show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com. This is episode number 373 of that show that feature entrepreneurs and innovators.

Leisa: It's featuring me a lot too lately.

Russ: That's right. For those of you who normally know, the kickoff segment each week in the School of Business is co-hosted by John Beddow, publisher of the Houston Business Journal, but not today. In fact, a regular substitute for John, Leisa Holland-Nelson, founder and COO of Content Active, and author and voice of Women Mean Business. It's great to have you here once again.

Leisa: You know I love doing this. I love just reading through what I'm getting ready to do. I'm thinking about everything I'm going to share, about This Week in Business History. This is a major week.

Russ: Well, I know, and you've sort of added a new dimension to This Week in Business History, not that John Beddow doesn't do a fabulous job. You just look at it a little differently, and it's kind of invigorating to hear your perspective. All right, and here's today's line up on the show. First up, Bill Blossom, founder of Blossom Communication, and this is a cool company. It's a cool guy with a cool company. He's real passionate about his company, that really is a medical animation company. In fact, that many of the things that you see on television nowadays - you know, describing your arteries filling up with plaque because you have high cholesterol -showing all sorts of aspects about anatomy. This is the company that builds it, and this guy loves it, and he's been on the show before. It was about four years ago. We've got him back today.

Leisa: Is he from Houston?

Russ: Yeah - well, not originally, but he came here back in the 70s to go to work for Dr. Red Duke, and never has left, and has built a real interesting company.

Leisa: Amazing.

Russ: Cool guy. And then that's going to be followed by - I get to sit down once again and interview Sheryl Rapp, founder of The Up Experience. Recently on Women Mean Business. We're getting closer and closer to this year's Up Experience, and she's gonna share more detail about some of the participants.

Leisa: I think they're up to number ten - like announcing.

Russ: Well, they are. You bet. You bet. All right, and also this week on the Entrepreneur's Playbook, Greg Price sits down once again with Jeff Hall of Microsoft. And then this week on Women Mean Business is who?

Leisa: Sherry Roberts Updike, from Tyco. She's one of the - I think one of the division presidents and CEOs, and she is a powerhouse.

Russ: In the energy space, right?

Leisa: In the energy space, and we recorded her at the Greater Houston Women's Chamber of Commerce Conference for Women this year. So I'm excited to get her on.

Russ: All right. I'm looking forward to hearing that as well, but first [Break in audio]. That's right. It's time for the Business Maker's School of Business, and we like to refer to this as not being business as usual school, and we kick it off each week with a quote of the day, and today, for the first time ever, is a quote from Sigmund Freud, and it goes like this - pretty cool: The first human who hurled an insult, instead of a stone, was the founder of civilization.

Leisa: Wow.

Russ: Pretty cool, though, isn't it.

Leisa: That is very cool, and really, really intelligent.

Russ: Right, and these days it wouldn't hurt for us to try to get back a little bit more in the direction of civilization, but prior to the person hurling this insult. I mean, we just fought it out.

Leisa: Sticks and stones.

Russ: That's right. Absolutely. All right, and that brings us to your part of the School of Business, This Week in Business History. So what happened during this end of July-early August week in Business History, Leisa?

Leisa: I think some unbelievable things. In 1790, believe it or not, the first census of the United States was conducted. I think that's incredible.

Russ: 1790?

Leisa: 1790, and it showed 3,929,326 people were living in the United States, of which 697,681 were slaves, and that the largest cities were New York City, with 33,000 inhabitants; Philadelphia with 28,000; Boston with 18,000; Charleston, South Carolina was 16,000; and Baltimore with 13,000. The population of the United States was not as big as the population today of Houston, Texas.

Russ: Of course, 1790 was a long time ago.

Leisa: I know, but -

Russ: And probably, I think, there was nothing on the grounds that today are the city limits of Houston, Texas, in 1790.

Leisa: It wasn't mentioned here. I guess we were not even -

Russ: We didn't exit.

Leisa: Yeah.

Russ: Cool.

Leisa: How about that? Okay, let's fast forward four years. Not long. The Whiskey Rebellion began this week. The Whiskey Insurrection - get this - was a popular uprising that had its beginnings in 1791, and culminated in an insurrection in 1794 in Pittsburgh, in the Monongahela Valley. During George Washington's presidency, the government decided to tax whiskey in order to pay off the national debt. This infuriated the citizenry and led to the Whiskey Rebellion. I don't even want to go to what that reminds me of.

Russ: Well, taxes always kind of stirred us up.

Leisa: I mean, they stirred them up. They had a war. I mean, they opposed each other, and the interesting thing was they were taxing the entrepreneurs.

Russ: Oh, God.

Leisa: Not the users. It wasn't a sales tax or an user tax. It was a distributor or corporate tax. It was the first corporate tax. I don't really know. Seems to me we're still having the same conversation 200-and-something years later.

Russ: We are.

Leisa: We are. Here we go. Okay, let's fast forward 80 years to 1873. A test drive for the world's first cable car.

Russ: 1873.

Leisa: How about that.

Russ: Who? You know?

Leisa: Yeah, Andrea Smith Hallidie was born in London, but immigrated to America in 1853, and 1867, he started developing the system, moving freight across canyons and rough terrains with rails, and by 1873 -

Russ: He led to the rural cable car, and I think he did it actually in San Francisco.

Leisa: Yes, yes.

Russ: Wow, and those are -

Leisa: An underground moving cable powered by a steam engine hauled the street car up and down 2,800 feet of sometimes steep hills of San Francisco.

Russ: Wow, cool.

Leisa: So it wasn't easy to get up and down anyway, and the exciting thing was that the brakes worked. They were worried about that.

Russ: That is good.

Leisa: And at two years later, the first roller skating rink opened in London. There's a lot of movement going on this week.

Russ: Did you go to roller skating rinks when you were young?

Leisa: Of course.

Russ: But since you were up east a lot - no, but you were down here too.

Leisa: I was here.

Russ: So were they - did you see such a thing as portable rolling rinks?

Leisa: No.

Russ: Okay, well in my part of Texas - which is small-town, Texas, we didn't have permanent roller skating rinks, but these people would show up and lay a floor, and put a tent over it, and they would have a bunch of roller skates, and for like two months - maybe not two months - probably one month - they would stay in town, and everybody would roller skate, then would pack up and go to the next small town.

Leisa: That is beyond cool. Well, you know I lived in Houston.

Russ: So it's a big city.

Leisa: It was a big city. Okay, 1900, the Firestone Tire and Rubber company was founded by Harvey Firestone, to supply pneumatic tires for wagons, buggies, and other forms of wheeled transportation.

Russ: Well, my goodness. They've got staying power too.

Leisa: I mean, no kidding. I mean, that's really pretty cool. All right, here's one I really like. 1941. The first jeep was produced. I didn't know anyone who didn't own a jeep. I mean, it's the oldest off-road vehicle, and also sport utility vehicle brand ever, ever, ever, and the original vehicle first appeared as the prototype Bamtam BRC, whatever that means.

Russ: Okay, they were cool, but compared to today's safety restrictions, they weren't very safe. You didn't have seatbelts, and you really didn't even have doors that -

Leisa: They were dangerous. They were known for tipping over also.

Russ: Oh, yes.

Leisa: But I remember, like what I really remember was seeing the first really cool guy I knew in a black jeep in New York City, driving it, on the way to the Hamptons or something, and I knew that it had arrived.

Russ: Wow, cool.

Leisa: It was all black.

Russ: Neat.

Leisa: I mean, really cool. 1958. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates NASA.

Russ: Wow, 1958.

Leisa: That was a big day for us in Houston.

Russ: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, and I think it was really LBJ that came along afterwards that really gave the Houston presence, but the forward thinking in 1958 - to think that the government should go out and be involved in space exploration was really cool.

Leisa: I mean, really amazing. 1960. Chubby Checker sparks a new, worldwide dance craze as the Twist hits the American chart.

Russ: That was amazing that a dance took off, totally tied to that song.

Leisa: And I just remember my parents. I was so mortified they would do the Twist.

Russ: I thought _______ she would catch you and your friends doing it.

Leisa: Oh, no. I mean, we did the Twist. We did the Hula Hoop. We did all that, but that they wanted to do it?

Russ: Yes.

Leisa: I mean, give me a break. It was frightening.

Russ: I can understand.

Leisa: Oh, no. I mean, we did the Twist. We did the Hula Hoop. We did all that, but that they wanted to do it?

Russ: Yes.

Leisa: I mean, give me a break. It was frightening.

Russ: I can understand.

Leisa: 1965. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid.

Russ: Oh, thank God.

Leisa: It's been around a long time.

Russ: Yeah, and it grew, and now the population mixture like it is, that we're kind of on a collision course and have to adjust them. It's rare to see a politician that has the courage it takes to do it, but it must be done. It must be done.

Leisa: Okay, 1972. Watergate breaks. Isn't that incredible? August 1st. The first article.

Russ: So the first -

Leisa: Bernstein and Woodward.

Russ: Okay. Well, I was -

Leisa: Unbelievable.

Russ: I was so tuned in to the entire process, particularly the Senate investigative sessions that took place -

Leisa: Oh, I just watched for hours.

Russ: - live on television. It was just - it was scary. It made you feel bad, but it was sort of cool, seeing the way the investigation proceeded.

Leisa: I mean, and those guys were arrogant.

Russ: Oh, absolutely.

Leisa: I mean, they were really - John Dean?

Russ: Oh, yeah. Totally.

Leisa: I mean, no one doesn't remember Maureen and her perfect hair. I remember that more than anything else, of course.

Russ: She was an attractive woman.

Leisa: She was. I wonder where she is now. Okay, here's a big one for those that were excited about the Twist. Fast forward a few years, and in 1981, MTV makes its maiden broadcast on August 1st. If advertisers make the video disco channel a success, the implications for cable television and the recording industry could be far reaching, wrote a New York Times business columnist in the summer of 1981, about the upcoming premier of a new cable television network dedicated exclusively to popular music.

Russ: And I think whoever wrote that was right about the impact, and it was so interesting, that in the beginning, it was total music videos.

Leisa: And it was only one tiny New Jersey cable station, so very few people actually saw the launch.

Russ: The very beginning. But it's certainly morphed into something completely different nowadays, but certainly launched the whole idea that popular acts have to have videos that accompany their songs.

Leisa: It changed the way we - well, we watched music, instead of just listening.

Russ: Absolutely.

Leisa: So it really brought the video, which is so important. 1987. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President of France, Francois Mitterand, signed the agreement to build a tunnel under the English channel. The Euro tunnel.

Russ: Yeah, it's also called the Chunnel. Have you been through it?

Leisa: No, I have not been through the tunnel. Actually, I did go through the tunnel, on a train, but I didn't - yeah.

Russ: So you were underground, under the English channel, for several hours. I've not - we were over there and chose to fly instead, but I thought it would be kind of fascinating, but a little bit eerie, being down there, if suddenly you couldn't even -

Leisa: I don't remember even thinking about it much. I'm sure I was doing something else.

Russ: You probably didn't.

Leisa: Okay, but here is a biggie. I'm closing with this, and I know that everyone's going to think that I'm music made, between the Twist -

Russ: Yeah.

Leisa: And MTV.

Russ: Yeah.

Leisa: But in 1996, on August 3rd, the Macarena begins its reign atop the U.S. pop charts. Do you -

Russ: Oh, yeah.

Leisa: I could do it for you right here.

Russ: Well, go ahead. John, put a little music. Really cool. All right, and that wraps up today's history lesson.

Leisa: There you have it.

Russ: Good job. I like the way you handle it. All right, and that brings us to navigating business jargon, which is our vocabulary lesson, where I get to go out and choose a new word. It can be technospeak, and acronym, but it's got to be jargon, and whoever is in the position that Leisa is in today has to guess the meaning without even knowing what the word is.

Leisa: I think I got one in all the time I've been doing this.

Russ: I think you might get this one. Now this one's kind of interesting. The word is "drunkorexia."

Leisa: Well, let's think about that. Drunkorexia, I think probably would mean - it's sort of like alcoholism to me. I think it's either, yeah - I would say it's - drunkorexia is probably like alcoholism, or a version of addiction.

Russ: Well, it's - that is a good guess, but it's a little bit more creative than that, and it works like this. It's eating less to offset the calories consumed while drinking alcohol. Probably leads to alcoholism.

Leisa: I should have thought about that, because I'm a - I think at some point of my life, was a tanorexic. I was never an anorexic. I've been known to be a lashorexic.

Russ: A lasher - what's that?

Leisa: Well, because I think it - the one thing I would take on a desert island would be my eyelash curler.

Russ: Okay.

Leisa: I've said that many times.

Russ: Okay. But drunkorexia -

Leisa: I love it.

Russ: - probably leads to alcoholism. I mean, if you're eating less just so you could drink more, I think you're in trouble, don't you?

Leisa: Yeah, yeah. So I get a half a point.

Russ: All right, before we wrap up today's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF of Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook. So let's welcome Mr. Greg Price. [Break in audio]. All right, and that wraps up today's School of Business. Stay tuned in for our interview with Bill Blossom, founder of Blossom Medical Communications, followed by my interview with Sheryl Rapp, the founder of The Up Experience. This is the Business Maker Show, heard on the radio and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com.