My Position on Whiskey

The label if-by-whiskey refers to a 1952 speech by Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat, Jr., a young lawmaker from the U.S. state of Mississippi, on the subject of whether Mississippi should continue to prohibit (which it did until 1966) or finally legalize alcoholic beverages:

"If you mean whiskey, the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.

However, if by whiskey you mean the lubricant of conversation, the philosophic juice, the elixir of life, the liquid that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.

This is my position, and as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle."

More details at wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey

Welcome to my personal blog...

Learn about me, Mark S.A. Smith here. I'll be building out this site over time. I've got lots of fun photos, humor, resources, and good stuff. Come back and see what shows up.

Shifts in Intellectual Property Value: How to Make Money When Everything is Free

If you are an author, create intellectual property, or deliver services, you MUST watch this 25 minute video. How do you make money when everything is moving toward free? Kevin Kelly discusses how to do this.

Key point: It's no longer about ownership but about access. Every song recorded can be housed in $500 of storage; every book written housed on $20,000 of storage.

Key point: The only value is that which cannot be copied easily.

Key point: The attributes we are willing to pay for as immediacy, personalization, authenticity, attention, interpretation, accessibility, embodiment, and find-ability.

Watch and tell me what you think.

Play the Guitar: Get Started Playing the Guitar

When I started to play the guitar, I did things the hard way, trying to play chords and play songs. It was frustrating because my fingers just couldn't find the right position to make the guitar sound good.

Since then, I've learned how to get started playing the guitar that's much faster and much easier and I'm going to show you how you can play the guitar right away.

I love playing the guitar! I'm self-taught until a few years ago when I started working a music teacher. I bought my first guitar in 1989. But it's only been in the past five years that I've really focused on playing the guitar well. And now, I'm pretty good. I can jam with good musicians and I can sit down and entertain myself for hours with my guitar.

Today, I'd rather play guitar than watch TV. Here's why: after watching TV, I'm relaxed and I've wasted an hour. After playing guitar, I'm relaxed and I'm an improved guitar player.

A DIFFERENT WAY: FORGET THE ACOUSTIC GUITAR

How I got to play today was a different route from the way most guitar teachers teach guitar. Most guitarists start out with an inexpensive acoustic guitar and immediately try to play songs with chords.

Here's the problem: cheap acoustic guitars are very hard for a first time guitarist to play. The strings are too sick. The neck is too big. Your fingers don't have the strength to get a good sound.

The truth is, most beginning guitar players have a cheap acoustic guitar lying around somewhere in the house. And that inexpensive guitar is keeping them from being a guitar player.

So don't start off with a cheap acoustic guitar, take a different approach.

ELECTRIC GUITAR TO THE RESCUE

It's better to start playing with a good electric guitar. This will get you going quickly and comfortably to inspire you to keep practicing until you're good enough to play with other musicians.

Go to a guitar store, such as Guitar Center and pick up a used electric guitar for about $300. That's the price where you can get a decent guitar that that will play well and sound good. A professional guitar shop will make sure the guitar "action" is adjusted to play easily. I suggest you forget about the "starter guitars" because they're usually not easy to play.

I don't recommend buying a used guitar from anyone other than a professional guitar shop. You don't know enough about guitars to be able to pick one out that you can play well. The guitar shop once your business for the rest of your life as a musician, so they'll make sure you get what you need.

Most people start with an acoustic guitar because they don't need a guitar amplifier to play. Because electric guitars need a guitar amplifier that doubles the cost of getting started. Even so, guitar amplifiers sound awful.

That's not a problem today because you can run your electric guitar through your iPhone, iTouch, or iPad and get guitar effects worth thousands of dollars for $30 (more about this in another post). You'll pay more for a cheap guitar tuner for your acoustic guitar then for the cool guitar applications. Just plug in your headphones and you'll think that you're playing in front of a Marshall stack.

FORGET THE CHORDS

Before you try to make her fingers contort into positions called guitar chords, get your hands strong. Strengthen your hands by just playing scales. I know, that sounds boring! Yet if you will sit down with your guitar for 15 minutes a day and teach your fingers how to move, in two weeks you'll have much more finger strength, dexterity, and control to easily form guitar chords. If you don't do this, you're going to be frustrated and stop playing the guitar. This is what it takes to play guitar fast.

STRONG FINGERS FROM SCALES

You don't have to play standard scales, all you have to do is move your fingers to make them respond to your mental commands, getting stronger in the process.

Start with your hand at the neck of the guitar and your fingers on the biggest string (that's the E string), and pluck the string while pushing down on the string with your finger, but only hard enough to get a clean sound. This is called fretting the string and it does cause many new guitarists to "fret" about playing the guitar.

With your thumb behind the guitar neck about in the position where it is behind your middle finger, clamped down on the string. You don't have to squeeze the neck, only press hard enough so that the string rests on the metal fret and makes a nice clean sound when you pick it lightly.

Start with your index finger, then to your middle finger, then to your ring finger, then to your pinky, and reverse the direction. Go slowly, making sure that you have a nice clean tone for each string.

Then move to the next string, and repeat. Move to the next string and repeat until you've gotten to the smallest string.

Then starting with your pinky, moved to your ring finger, and so forth so that you practice moving your fingers up and down, and down and up. Work wait your way back down to the big string.

Move your hand up a fret and repeat the process Intel you get all the way up to the 12th fret, that's where there usually is a double dot as a fret market.

Now reverse the direction and go back down until you go to the get to the first fret.

That's enough for the first round of exercises.

REPEAT

Do this for 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening. Over two weeks your fingers will gain strength and you'll increase the dexterity so your brain will know how to move each finger. Now you can start to comfortably form chords. (More on that in another article.)

I learned an awful lot from a downloaded guitar course that I could watch on my computer. It cost less than an hour with a private instructor. I suggest that you check it out. http://playtheguitar.biz

Tagged beginner guitar play the guitar playing guitar

Articles, articles, and more articles

Maybe I'm a little late to the game, but I found ezinearticles.com to be a pretty cool place full articles featuring a wide range of ideas.

So I cranked out a bunch of articles just to see how it goes. I wrote some articles about renting out your house (based on my NewLandlord.com ebook), getting started with woodworking (I know: who knew?), and on playing the guitar (no surprise there!).

And based on the quality of my articles, they have granted me the status of Platinum author. Okay, now that scares me a bit.

Check it out!

As Featured On EzineArticles

Tagged Articles

Fearless Self Promotion: Getting Ahead Fast Video

How is it that you notice some people, but not others? How do some get all the breaks, the luck, and success, and some—maybe more experienced and talented—don’t? How can you rapidly move ahead in your career by becoming noticed by those who can make a difference?

The secret is Fearless Self Promotion: the ability to promote yourself without feeling fear, shame, or concern that you’re a boor.

In this exciting and interactive program, you’ll learn how to get over any self-consciousness about self promotion. You’ll learn dozens of tactics to promote yourself so that you become a person of interest and become sought after by influencers. You’ll leave with your own Fearless Self Promotion plan that you can immediately put into action.

Here is a video of the presentation that I delivered to students of the School of Business and Management and the community as part of the 2010 E.A. Anderson lecture series at Southern Adventist University.

By the way, one of the fastest ways to self promote is through public speaking. Check out my GetSpeaking.com blog for lots of great ideas about this technique. This will get you to the audio recording that I mention in the program.

Click here to watch the video. Running time--57:37 

Click here to download:
FearlessSelfPromotion_CHEATSHEET_V1.pdf (48 KB)
(download)

Your Speaker, Mark S.A. Smith

An SAU alumni, Mark parlayed his communications degree into a career of sales, marketing, and education. He’s written five business books, founded three companies, and works with the Fortune 50. He’s traveled the planet showing business professionals how to be more successful, speaking in 34 countries and hundreds of cities, including Collegedale.

He wants to share with you what he’s learned about creating personal buzz. Just Google (or Bing) him.

 

Tagged self promotion

My Favorite Non-commercial Music Lyrics and Chord Site. What's Yours?

I love playing music, yet I don't know all the words to the songs I know and making them up isn't an option unless I'm doing a parody--think Weird Al Yankovich.

The best non-commercial site I've found for a wide range of songs with charted lyrics and chords is run by Gunther Anderson. He has thousands of songs that he's charted and they are good versions! No tabs for guitars, just chords and lyrics.

What cool non-commercial chord and lyric sites have you found?

Tagged lyrics music

Do You Know David Garfinkel?

If not, you should. If you do, you might learn something about him in this article.

David is the best at writing sales copy of anyone that I know. He's a critical thinker, an innovator, and great fun to be with.

I met David in the early '90's and we quickly became good friends. While I've not spent as much time with David as I would have wished, I still have many great memories and look forward to more great times with him.

To give you an idea of what he's like, here's a recording that I created with David, How to Write Letters that Make Your Phone Ring.

And I'll tell you a secret. Although it sounds like we're sitting across from each other in a recording studio, David was in San Francisco and I was in Roanoke. We conducted the interview via phone and each of us ran a recorder with a good microphone. He sent me his recording and I edited them together.

There are lots of great ideas on this recording.

(download)

And one more of David's recordings, Referral Magic. He's given me permission to post this so you can enjoy his thoughts about how to get lots and lots of referrals.

(download)

To get more great ideas from David, visit his blog at http://www.world-copywriting-institute.com/blog/. He is always very generous with his ideas and I believe that you'll grow to appreciate him as I have.

I Love Air Canada's In-seat iPhone Charger

Thanks to some last minute delays and accommodating airline staffers, I'm on an Air Canada flight from Chicago to Toronto.

Who doesn't love in-seat personalized entertainment and an iPhone charger! That's what I call taking great care of the customer. Now if only United and Continental would do this...

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Having Tough Times? Bounce!

I just finished reading Keith McFarland's new book, "Bounce: The Art of Turning Tough Times into Triumph." Keith is the author of the bestselling book, "The Breakthrough Company."

The book opens with a story about Mike Maloney, the division manager of a manufacturing company faced with yet another round of budget cuts, layoffs, and discontented customers wanting lower prices or bailing for another, "better quality" vendor.

Mike meets his buddy, Joe, a Ranger freshly back from the Middle East, at the gym and begins to get schooled in what it takes to bounce back when times get tough.

Using the simile of how a super ball bounces back, versus an orange that thuds and bruises, or a Christmas ornament that shatters into bits, what happens when one loses altitude depends on what they are made of.

In a series of lessons delivered by Joe in an understated manner, Mike learns new attitudes and approaches to turn around his division and bounce to a new level of performance and excellence.

This is a quick-reading (I ripped through it on a Denver to Las Vegas flight), entertaining, and thought-provoking book aimed at executive management.

The six key principles are useful to consider in any challenging leadership situation.

  • Embrace the bounce: it's not going to go away without you doing something about it.
  • Manage the anxiety: absorb your team's anxiety and redirect it to become a positive resource.
  • Manage the mental factors: it's time to get mentally tough and own the situation.
  • Manage the money: money is the fuel of commerce and it's always better to make more then cut, so uncover sources of money now.
  • Manage the mission (in a military sense): your mission is to direct the company to higher performance.
  • Manage the morale (in a military sense): your team must feel committed to the outcome to make this work.

The book storyline illustrates each of these principals and gives additional insight in the last chapter as it reviews the six key principles.

I found the book an inspiring read for these economic times. If you're a leader or executive facing tough times, get it and read it.

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