Taking Sabbatical!

I looked up the word Sabbatical and its definition pretty well describes what I am going to be doing.

A sabbatical year is a prolonged hiatus, typically one year, in the career of an individual taken in order to fulfill some goal, e.g., writing a book or traveling extensively for research.

Well, I guess it is time to finally fess up that none of this stuff out here on the internet really works. I would like to say it is just me, but unfortunately there are a large number of us out here that are now realizing that None of this is really all worth it.

I will be taking a sabbatical to work on my next book that I will be outlining all of the fallacies of the internet…until then you may want to check out my other book to catch up on what is going on.

You can check out the periodic blogs I will post over at my main site, IBGS Blog. Hope you enjoy the archive of blogs I have posted here.

Michelle Wie Going to Stanford: Has Reasoning Set In?

The news on Michelle Wie announcing that she was accepted at Stanford now puts another twist to the plot…is Michelle going to turn Professional?  IS she going to make the smart move and play some College Golf while getting an education to fall back on when the 15 minutes of fame runs out?  Or is this all just another way of staying in the news over the Winter to make her sponsor, Sony, happy and sell a few more large screen TV’s?

I say her heading to College and get an educations would be the smartest thing to do…she has plenty of years to play her way into the Masters…more playing experience at a competitive level will also toughen her up for that challenge she will face…

Trans-Siberian Orchestra & Lasik Surgery Christmas Concert-Dallas

 

This past Saturday, Dec 16, some friends of my wife and mine graciously invited us to go with them to a concert they had tickets for which the seating was in one of the Suites ….nice… the group was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra…and my wife and I were very grateful for the invitation and had a great time.

 

OK, enough of the pleasantries… as concerts go this was more of a show full of theatrics and the like.   The entire production was completely catered to the non-musician market since the focus was clearly on the narrating, the antics, prancing and the band members’ staged movements all looking very canned.  A very insulting event for musicians who understand and appreciate the high level of difficulty the music was performed.   And the music seemed to be third behind the lighting…OH, the lighting.

Now I have been to my share of productions where lighting has been part of or the entire show and this light production at this concert was completely over the top and was so distracting that it took away from the bad acting and the great music….  Mike Daniel of the Dallas Morning News was way too kind in his review this morning of the concert, or maybe he wasn’t and the good part of his review was cut so the Movie Advertisers at the bottom of the page could be provided more space…who knows.

I was not aware until I read Mr Daniel review that Al Pitrelli was part of Megadeath and Alice Cooper…he must be a golfer if he played in SC’s band…there is still a chance for this group then if does play golf…but I digress.

But the bottom-line was:  What a waste of musical talent and energy to power those lights and flames… I would have loved to been able to see the seven members of the band do a set where the house lights were up and there was an arrangement for each musician to be showcased….that would have saved me a whole lot of brain cells from all of the lasers being shot around the American Airline Arena,  or maybe they should have had each person provide medical insurance ID at the door and provided lasik surgery as part of the admission….it would have been much less painful that the full bore strobes…   but the seats we had were nice…

Michelle Wie: Sony Ads

 

I got my paper this morning and after dumping out all of the Christmas ads on the floor so I could to the two articles on golf buried in the sport page, I notice on top of the pile a picture of a lady that look familiar and is usually not seen in this type of media.

But, I guess I better get use to it because it was Michelle Wie, all dressed up with her hair down, most likely covering those jungle-gem looking ear-rings she is best known for.  And she was smiling straight into the camera very uncomfortable holding a Sony camera…

Well I had to pick this ad up.  Not really needing a camera I did look through the ad, which I guess that would be a win for the marketers, but I was looking to see if they had anymore photo’s of Michelle…and there was…a very, very small photo of Michelle being much more relaxed, but not holding a Sony camera.  I would also be much more relaxed not pitching a produce also…

I guess this is what golf has now come to…or is it just what Michelle Wie has now come to…a marketing machine.  Now I am not sure how many cameras this will sell, but for all of the 16 and 17 year old boys who are hitting the paper to get to the comics…I am sure a few of them are going to stop for a second or two when they see this large photo of a girl dressed in a Red dress staring at them with a big smile….  Who knows, maybe they will forget about that Xbox game ad that is in the next ad and want to get outside to pick up the game of golf so to get a chance of finding a girl that looks like that…

Or just by the camera so they can go around taking pictures of girls like…which ever…hopefully there was a slight glimpse of a chance someone getting more involved in golf after seeing Michelle’s photo…it is just a hope.

Casey Martin: Will Always Be Remembered

Every since Casey Martin came on the golf scene I have been amazed of his mental toughness.  He was the kid with the bad leg that was told a thousand times that he would never play golf and made it to the big show proving people wrong.  This little read story of Casey accepting the Head Golf Coach at Oregon State is great from him for golf and the future golfers that will take what he demonstrated and make them better golfers.

Doctor Who: Do We Need A Play-by-Play?

 

OK, for you Dr Who fans, here is a play-by-play of probably the worst episode of Dr Who I have seen…

Studio 60: Poll

To fill in the big void of not having a Studio 60 show this week and the re-run of the Christmas Show this coming Monday get in on this poll on Studio 60 then check out Chris’s TheSunsetStrip Blog Site

7 Ways to Make an Angry Customer Mad

I saw my friend Rajan Sodhi over at Big Marketing for small business Blog and I had to post my thoughts on this….

I am humored with some of the approaches people mention as ways of defusing an angry customer…I spent 30 years defusing more customers’ complaints than I could stand and I can tell ya…this one does not work.

My take is to analyze all possible reasons and situation where a customer would get angry and eliminate them giving them no reason to be angry.   

But, if you want the angry customer to turn to being really mad, use the word ‘Let’s’ at the beginning of each statement… “Let’s” review how Jeff Wuorio at the Microsoft Small Business Center feels is the best way of defusing an angry customer. And Let’s see how you view this if you were angry…

Scot Duke is President of Innovative Business Golf Solutions, LLC and author of How To Play Business Golf.  Mr Duke uses his 30 years of business management experience to help business owners and executives develop their business to be more successful and mentor business people on how powerful of a business tool Business Golf can be towards solving many business challenges. More information on Mr Duke and Business Golf can is available at the Innovative Business Golf Solutions web-site.

 

Studio 60: Two Part Episode Could Be Coming

Chris over at the TheSunsetStrip blog site is telling us that he hear there would be a Two part Episode coming up in January…  Hopefully that is true and Chris gets a WordPress site so the Tag Surfers there can have a feast on his/her blogs.

Scot Duke is President of Innovative Business Golf Solutions, LLC and author of How To Play Business Golf.  Mr Duke uses his 30 years of business management experience to help business owners and executives develop their business to be more successful and mentor business people on how powerful of a business tool Business Golf can be towards solving many business challenges. More information on Mr Duke and Business Golf can is available at the Innovative Business Golf Solutions web-site.

SkyPe: Talk from your PC is going up

I am trying to picture in my mind people walking down the street with earphone and microphone headsets hooked into their PDA or laptop like a cellphone on their belt, talking on the phone…just can’t see how I would want to pay for that…but SkyPe is cool and Techmeme has a lot to say about it today.

Scot Duke is President of Innovative Business Golf Solutions, LLC and author of How To Play Business Golf.  Mr Duke uses his 30 years of business management experience to help business owners and executives develop their business to be more successful and mentor business people on how powerful of a business tool Business Golf can be towards solving many business challenges. More information on Mr Duke and Business Golf can is available at the Innovative Business Golf Solutions web-site.