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Russ: Good morning. This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. And for those of you who are number people out there this is episode 197 for that show that champions innovation and entrepreneurship.
John: All original programming.
Russ: There you go. And here's our programming for today. Our topic is going to be web hosting. First up for the Aflac BusinessMakers flashback, we're going to roll back to episode number 144, a little bit more than a year ago, when we had Erica Douglas on the show. Erica, the founder of Simply Hosting, the company that she started at age 20 and sold at age 26. we talked to her a little bit less than a year after she sold it and she talked about having grown it to over 400 servers. But then for our featured guest segment we're going to have Mr. Doug Irwin, the Chairman and CEO of The Planet. The Planet now has approximately 58,000 servers hosting website all over the planet, and man I am looking forward to this. They've got solid culture over there; I know because I've spent some time there, and it's really a story about executional excellence.
John: I've also spent time over there. As a matter of fact, I've had cigars with him out on his porch, but quite a company, he's done quite a job unifying that staff.
Russ: Absolutely. But first, that's right. It's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business. And as I like to say, this is not business as usual school.
John: It's not; it's better than most business schools. I would venture to say we're in the top 80th percentile as far as originality and silliness and overall tomfoolery.
Russ: All right. And we start it off each Saturday morning with the quote of the day.
John: Yes, quote of the day.
Russ: And this one comes from a former guest on the BusinessMaker's Show, Mr. Phil Morebeto.
John: Oh my.
Russ: And the founder and leader of Pierpont Communications. And here it is. "When it comes to marketing in a down economy, the objective is increasing market share." Period end of sentence. And that's true.
John: He's right about that thing. Because the thing is there's a lot of shrinking violets in the business world when the economy goes soft.
Russ: Man, no kidding.
John: And they have to find somewhere to cut and they think, Well I don't have to lay off any people if I cut my marketing budget.
Russ: That's right.
John: But that's the one thing that lets people know you're open for business.
Russ: It's not the time to stick your head down in the sand, that's for sure. Good point. Okay. And that brings us to this week in business history. What do you have for us, John?
John: This week in business history going back to 44 BC, Russ. Now you know what happened then?
Russ: Well, does this have something to do with beware of the ides of March?
John: That's right. Beware of the ides of March. March 15th, Julius Caesar, dictator for life, stabbed to death by Brutus Cassius and several other Roman Senators. They thought he was grabbing too much power and they wanted to restore the Roman Republic, which by the way, didn't get restored as a result of this.
Russ: Wow.
John: It was a very brutal end for Julius Caesar who expanded the empire into Gaul and Southern Britain. He accomplished quite a lot but that's the thanks he got for it.
Russ: Wow, that happened this week 2053 years ago.
John: Something like that.
Russ: This week. All right.
John: Now, later on in 1493, Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after the first New World voyage and he's credited with discovering the New World.
Russ: Right. So this is when he returned that the people--
John: Hey, look what I found.
Russ: Back in Spain didn't know about any of this.
John: They did not know that, no. They had no way of communicating.
Russ: Until this week in 1493.
John: Queen Isabella, hey look what I found. Okay. This week in business history in 1794 Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, therefore extending slavery in the United States of America for another 70 years or so.
[Music: "Eli's Coming"]
Russ: Wow. But a lot of people sort of credit that as being a fairly significant invention.
John: Well, it was a significant invention because it made it easier to separate the seeds from the cotton ball. Before that came along it was too expensive to do that, even though they were using slave labor to do it because they weren't very productive and they couldn't meet the demands of the consumer for the cotton.
Russ: So separating the seeds from the cotton ball is kind of synonymous with separating the wheat from the chaff, right?
John: But we ain't talking about no chaff here, baby. All right. This Week in Business History in 1830 the New York Stock Exchange slowest day ever, 31 shares were traded.
Russ: Thirty-one. How does that even happen? I mean, that doesn't even justify opening it up for the day.
John: Okay, this week in 1861 Edward Clark became the governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, who was evicted from office for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that. Sam Houston was the governor of Texas. I mean, we all know about 1836 and the Alamo and St. Jacinto.
Russ: Right.
John: Was the governor right around the time the Civil War started and he refused to join the Confederacy.
Russ: Yeah, he was really pro-Union then right?
John: Well, I guess he would be. Absolutely. In 1868 this week in business history the Jesse James gang robs a bank in Russellville, Kentucky. $14,000. In 1869 this week in business history, the Cincinnati Redstockings become the first pro baseball team, then the same day they beat the Antioch whatevers 41 to 7.
Russ: Wow. I guess that proves that being the pro team has an advantage right?
John: Right, with a talent pool, absolutely.
Russ: They were paying and the other guys weren't. 41 to 7 in a baseball game.
John: Yeah. Okay, in 1881 this week in business history Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opens.
Russ: That's big-time show business back then.
John: Oh, yeah, they didn't have TV. They didn't have movies, you know, no radio, no I-Pods. No BusinessMakers Show. What do you think you're going to do, you're going to go to the circus.
Russ: There you go.
John: Okay this week in business history in 1892 the first escalator is patented by inventor Jessie Reno of New York City.
Russ: First escalator.
John: First escalator was patented by this inventor.
Russ: You know, if you think about escalators, pretty high tech compared to an elevator. You know, you just got in this box and went up but here were the moving steps.
John: It gets folded under and came up.
Russ: Gees, I'm impressed.
John: You should be.
Russ: Alright.
John: This week in business history in 1950 the FBI's ten most wanted fugitives program begins.
Russ: I wonder what their hit rate is on that capturing these guys that have been top ten.
John: It probably went up when that TV show, America's Most Wanted, came on.
Russ: Probably did.
John: Yeah, really, they caught a lot of people. This week in business history in 1953 Nikita Khrushchev succeeds Malakoff as Secretary of the Communist Party.
Russ: Well, I suppose this is true for you too. When I grew up and finally was sort of tuning into the world, Khrushchev was it.
John: He was the premier. Remember he came to the U.N. and started pounding his shoe, making a point there.
Russ: Making a point.
John: Okay this week in 1967 this week in business history the Beatles' Penny Lane a great single, goes number one.
[Music: "Penny Lane"]
John: This week in business history in 1971 the Rolling Stones, another British group, leave England for France to escape taxes.
[Music: "Taxman"]
John: I wonder if taxes caught up with them. Okay, this week in business history, in 1985 the first Internet domain name is registered, symbolics.com. 1985. I mean, that just--
Russ: Were you thinking about registering your domain in 1985?
John: I wasn't even doing the business journal thing back in 1985.
Russ: All right, well that's interesting. Well, the domain name registration that far is really impressive.
John: Cool. Okay this week in business history in 1991, Apple Computer head Steve Jobs weds Laureen Powell.
[Music: "Going to the Chapel"]
John: This week in business history in 1992 Farm Aid Five.
Russ: That was the fifth version.
John: That was the fifth version. It started as a benefit concert in 1985 they raised money for farmers, and the idea was developed off the cuff by Bob Dylan. It was a Live Aid concert earlier in the year and he said I hope some of the money can go to farmers to help pay their mortgages. First mortgage bailout plan was actually privately funded as it turns out.
Russ: Well, I remember back then in the '80s, in the late '80s, so this is about Farm Aide 5 in '92, but when I would hear the justification for the difficulties of the farmers I was running a computer reseller then and I thought, man, we need a computer reseller aide too man. This is tough too. But a lot of big-time musicians, right? Willie Nelson, Neil Young.
John: Bonnie Raitt.
[Music: "Helpless"]
Russ: Well, we were pretty helpless in the computer reseller business too.
John: This week in business history in 1995 the Beatles song, Baby it's You with the late John Lennon as a lead singer, is released. First Fab Four single in more than 30 years.
Russ: That must have been one of those sort of found recordings that they thought this is a good idea.
John: And finally this week in business history in 2008 New York state governor Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute. David Patterson later becomes the governor.
[Music: "Lady Marmalade"]
Russ: Okay, man, just another winner of a history lesson. All right, and that brings us to our vocabulary lesson, also called navigating business jargon, this is where we look out there at the new techno speak the new acronyms and try to help our audience stay up to date with what's being said out there. And as always we present this in the contest format where I say the word say the word and then John uses his vast vocabulary to take a shot at guessing at--
John: Take a shot, that's all anybody can do is just take a shot.
Russ: That's right. All right, this one's going to be real easy this morning but it's a phrase and I think you ought to be able to connect it with what's happening these days. The phrase is circling the drain.
John: Circling the drain. Now before water goes down the drain it usually swirls around the drain.
Russ: Yes, sir.
John: Okay, so when you're circling the drain that means you're about ready to go down the drain. So circling the drain is a precursor of imminent failure.
Russ: Hold your calls, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a winner.
John: Yeah.
Russ: It's what a struggling company does just before it goes down the tubes; it's circling the drain. All right that brings us to dumbest moments. Do you have a dumb business story to--
John: Yeah, I would say this is dumb. I realize President Barack Obama has only been in office a couple of weeks relatively speaking and all that. And he still -- however, went through a learning curve and every president goes through one, I don't care who it is.
Russ: And he entered the game under some pretty tough conditions too.
John: Yes, he did. But on the other hand he knew the job was dangerous when he took it. Okay, you can't blame the job for this he's been having. And I would say there's really no excuse for this one. We all know the special relationship with have with Great Britain.
Russ: Oh, yes absolutely.
John: So somebody goes back a long way and I'm sure we have a war with them twice, the revolution and the war of 1812, but since then they've been very helpful to us and we've been very helpful to them on a number of things, most notably World War II. So anyway the first official visit from Great Britain to Barack Obama is a disaster. Prime Minister Gordon Brown shows up and he has a very nice gift. It's a wooden pen holder carved from the ship called the Resolute, which was a ship that effectively ended the slave trade.
Russ: Right. A real historical gesture.
John: A very historical gesture and they also gave him a 12-volume set of the biography of Winston Churchill. In return Prime Minister Brown gets 24 DVDs of movies.
Russ: What movies were they?
John: We don't know what movies and I don't know whether he also got a subscription for three months to Netflix to go with that.
Russ: Maybe they were high-def Blue Ray or something.
John: Yeah, and as it turns out, rumor has it unofficially that the Obama administration has very little regard for Great Britain.
Russ: Now, were they demonstrating that --
John: I guess they were in an offhand way. I would say that's not the way to start off.
Russ: No. I don't know why you'd want to do that.
John: I would say that's a dumb moment.
Russ: And before we wrap up the BusinessMaker's School of Business, it's time for PKF Texas, the entrepreneur's play book. So let's welcome Mr. Greg Price on the piano.
John: He's so timely, so punctual. Here we go.
[PKF Texas - The Entrepreneurs Playbook]
Russ: Okay, and that wraps up this morning's School of Business. Stay tuned for these cool stories about web hosting. First up for the Aflac BusinessMaker's flashback, the story of Erica Douglas, the founder of Simply Hosting when she was 20 years old and grew that company to be able to sell it when she was 26. And then that's going to be followed by our featured guest segment this morning, where I'm going to be visiting with Doug Irwin, the Chairman and CEO of the Planet, the world's largest privately-owned web hosting company. And you're listening to the BusinessMaker's Show, heard here and online at the businessmakers.com.