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What’s with the sloughing?

Thursday, February 2, 2012

These past two days we have been fielding the question, “Why sloughing and snake images to describe your business activities?’

# 1 – It’s a vivid image that caught your attention – no?

#2 – It’s an accurate analogy of the process we have undertaken to freshen up our look and to re-introduce our social media and writing services.

#3 – It got us talking with those interested in our business. It was provocative enough to prompt questions.

Our own release is a great example of content that works!  

If you are still not sure about sloughing, check this YouTube video of a reptile shedding its skin. It’s incredible – and some will say, unforgettable (which is exactly what we aim to be).

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“Sloughing” through February

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

CG&A COMM has issued a release to relate the company’s plans to intensify its writing services and advocacy work.  Here is an excerpt from that statement:

     A snake’s sloughing process has it rubbing against rocks and sticks to peel back and shed weathered skin, and reveal it’s bright, new coat of scales. Through this molting, the animal is renewed.

     Through the month of February, CG&A COMMUNICATIONS will be sloughing to take on a renewed, attractive look with its website, the By George Journal and the company’s on-line activities. Along with the new look, President Chris George is unveiling new writing projects and services and has promised to “redouble efforts” on the company’s core wordsmith services. [Read his 2012 resolution in the latest e-newsletter.]

     “We’re intensifying what has always set us apart from other PR firms – our writing services and advocacy work,” explains Chris George. “With the explosion of social media in our business and personal space, the PR adage of ‘Content is King’ is increasingly significant for all of us. Anyone with something to say, wanting to be heard, must confront the hurricane of images and words blasting through the on-line world. You need quality content that is engaging and persuasive just to get noticed.”  

     “We’ll be enhancing our writing services to take full advantage of the direct contact social media tools offer organizations and businesses.” George adds, “While it’s a fact that it’s never been easier to express yourself, it’s never been harder to be heard, understood, and appreciated.”

     In the weeks ahead, Chris George will unveil a new company website, a re-designed By George Journal, and new features on his Facebook and Twitter pages.

Read the full release here.

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Success is the sum of…

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

(ed. – … and repeated again while burning the midnight oil! – cg)

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A dozen quotes to inspire and motivate you

Monday, January 30, 2012

Here are a dozen of our favourite tweets from the last seven days:   

  • The secret to success is constancy to purpose. – Benjamin Disraeli
  • We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. – Thornton Wilder
  • At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. - Albert Schweitzer 
  • When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. – Ernest Hemingway
  • The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything but they make the most of everything. – Unknown
  • Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable. -Denis Waitley
  • As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. - John F. Kennedy 
  • We must build a new world, a far better world — one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected. – Harry S Truman
  • You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. – C.S. Lewis
  • Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau
  • Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. – Theodore Roosevelt
  • Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ – Martin Luther King Jr 

This is a selection of Journal tweets last week. We invite you to follow us on Twitter @ByGeorgeJournal as one of our objectives is to provide daily #quotes to #inspire & #motivate .  Join us today.

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Our resolution “to write more”

Thursday, January 26, 2012

In our e-newsletter delivered earlier this week, I boldly revealed my 2012 resolution to write more.  (BTW – click here to read our e-newsletter which contains a selection of “Our Favs” from By George Journal posts.)

The # 1 question that has been asked of me since this revelation has been “What can we expect this year?” Well, currently on my writing desk, I have a total of 6 e-books which I hope to bring to publication in the next ten months. These projects include:

  • Becoming Better Communicators – a self-empowering handbook for the workplace and social engagements (this is a March release)
  • com-mu-ni-cate (verb) – a look at the discipline of effective communications
  • a lament for Sir John A Macdonald
  • a compilation of political and election campaign jokes

There are a couple of surprise creative pieces that I plan to introduce later in 2012.

And, of course, there are countless articles and postings ready for posting on our By George Journal (though we hasten to add that we intend to keep journal materials both timely and topical – so I anticipate much of our un-published pieces will remain so).

As a final note, to those who are new readers of By George Journal or new followers of our Facebook and Twitter activities, we currently have e-book publications available. You can read more on these publications on the preceding post ( immediately below or here ).

We invite you to join the By George’s Twitter feed and Facebook page.  We certainly would like to hear your freedback on our writings. We hope and trust you enjoy our work!   

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E-books available @ the By George Store

Thursday, January 26, 2012

We have three e-book offerings at this time at the By George Store.          

                 

A Day in the Life of Man – Sustenance for the Soul is a moving collection of verse, thoughts and quotes to inspire and motivate a person through their day. From dawn to dusk, the reader is encouraged to reflect on their daily activities – and challenged to a new level of understanding about man and about life.

1001 Quotes on Politics, Elections, Democracy and Government includes remarkable quotes from Machiavelli to Churchill, from the Greeks to American influencers, and Canadian Prime Ministers from Macdonald to Harper. 

By George Treasury is a collection of the very best from By George from its launch in the mid-1990’s to 2008. This compilation offers a potpourri of information on effective communication to help at your workplace and with your social affairs (see further description below). 

Our By George Store makes the following publications available as PDF files which can be read on your e-readers or at your desktops. (Note that the By George Treasury is also available in print and can be mail-ordered.)  

Payments for these publications can be made on-line via PayPal.

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The empowering wisdom of Albert Einstein

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

 

Here are a dozen quotes from perhaps our greatest, modern-day genius. 

  • Imagination is more important than knowledge; for knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
  • The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing.
  • Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
  • The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
  • Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
  • The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
  • Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
  • Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do — but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.
  • The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
  • Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
  • If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.  
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Creative Thinking is Work

Monday, January 23, 2012

     Creative thinking is work. You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity.

     All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by the major poets than by minor poets.

     Thomas Edison created 3000 different ideas for lighting systems before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability.

     Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music, including forty-one symphonies and some forty-odd operas and masses, during his short creative life.

     Rembrandt produced around 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings and Picasso executed more than 20,000 works.

    Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Some were masterpieces, while others were no better than his contemporaries could have written, and some were simply bad.

This is an excerpt from an article written by Michael Michalko, author of Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques and Creative thinking: Putting your Imagination to Work.  It first appeared in Psychology Today and has reappeared in many forms on the Internet. To read the full article, “Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking” click here.

More on Michael Michalko’s books, read here.

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Monday morning thought on “Creativity”

Monday, January 23, 2012

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

 

This reflection of creativity is from Michael Michalko, author of Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques and Creative thinking: Putting your Imagination to Work.

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Our Stimulus Money at Work

Saturday, January 21, 2012

    

     Here’s an example of how our governments’ stimulus packages have helped us.

     On a cold day in a small town of in southwestern Ontario, the streets are deserted.  Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.

     A politician comes to town and lays a $100 bill on the hotel desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.

     As soon as he walks upstairs, the hotel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

     The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

     The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op.

     The guy at the Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her “services” on credit.

     The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.

     The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the politician will not suspect anything.

     At that very moment the politician comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves.

     No one produced anything. No one earned anything….  However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.

     That is our own stimulus money “at work.”

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