Be the change you want to see in the world.
– Mahatma Gandhi

The above quote fuels a dozen blog posts a day, many of them trying to rally their readers toward the writer’s pet cause. Whether it’s eco-consciousness or stamping out Twilight, most people have a cause that’s dear to their hearts. Some causes have a thousand voices crying out to champion them, others have millions, and some are important only to a handful of people, but everyone’s got something.

I don’t have a pet cause. No one I know has ever been afflicted with some terrible tragedy, and the troubles I’ve had have all been fairly ordinary and — though quite angst-ridden at the time, I’m sure — nothing I couldn’t get over without an army of people rallying to my side. I’ve never had cancer or some obscure, uncurable disease; I’ve never been assaulted or even mugged; I really don’t have the mental energy to indulge in outrage for the sake of itself when I could be using that energy to make art (or play Mouse Hunt).

So I found myself wondering, what change do I want to see?

• I want to see more beauty where people are creating ugliness.
• I want people to have more compassion where there is now callousness.
• I want more kindness, instead of deliberate or thoughtless cruelty.
• I want to see people actually respecting each other, instead of grabbing at superiority under the false label of respect.

Some of these are easier than others.

As an artist, I create things every day that, I hope, add beauty to the world. From the paintings on my walls to the work I do for clients, I try to make things which are pleasing to the eye and the soul, even while they sometimes serve another function.

Compassion is harder for me. While my cynical apathy protects me from spinning myself out into nothing trying to help every person who needs or thinks they’re in need, it also keeps a lot of things from really touching me. Every person’s pain is deeply individual, and it can be very hard to resist the urge to play a rating game — your pain is your own fault so it doesn’t count, your pain isn’t as bad as his pain, your pain is fleeting so it doesn’t deserve as much. It’s hard to figure out, too, how much or how far to be open to things — my lines right now are pretty harsh, but if I move them too far I’ll just end up raw and useless in other ways.

Kindness seems easy, but thoughtlessness trumps it a lot. Kindness requires attention, being in the present and recognizing when someone needs you to give them something, a moment or a dollar or a smile. It’s a lot easier than compassion, though, because there’s a ton of small ways to be kind, and being thoughtful and kind can even help develop compassion. Someone deserving of kindness seems to us then to be more deserving of compassion as well.

The hardest thing to remember is that everyone is deserving of kindness and compassion.

Respect is the last one, and that one’s really hard on so many levels, because so much hides under the umbrella of respect these days. So many people equate “do what I say” with “respect me” and that’s just not the case. I can totally respect you as a human and an equal, and still have my reasons for doing things my own way. What’s ironic is that when people push it, shoving their way of doing and being down your throat, they’re disrespecting you while demanding you respect them. A lot of authority figures run into this issue — they want you to respect them because of their authority, but refuse to respect those who are answerable to that authority.

It’s such a thorny issue, and it pokes into every sensitive place in our society. I’m not intending to write a whole essay here, either, though, so I’ll let what I’ve said stand.

So, there’s the things I need to work on, if I want to be the change. Beauty and kindness, compassion and respect.

What change do you want to see? How can you take a small step today to become more of what the world needs?

I have a confession to make: right now, as of this writing, I only have seven clients. One of those clients has been working with me since I first started out as a lowly desktop publisher back in 1996. One of those clients just hired me at the end of December for a single project. One hired me back in August for a single project that’s just now finishing up, but another hired me for a single project in 1999 and has been with me ever since, so you never know.

The thing is, I never wanted to have so many clients that I needed a CRM and invoicing software just to keep track of them. My needs are, in all honesty, pretty modest — though that’s a confession for another post — and I like having a lot of free time to do whatever I like, whether it’s play Facebook games or participate in NaNoWriMo, make art or read books. It’s that quiet time that gives me the energy and space to incubate my client projects and create something unique, or at least as good as I can manage, for every project.

This small list of clients means that when someone asks to have something changed today, pretty please, I can usually accommodate them. It means I can send out handmade holiday cards, and write something thoughtful and sincere in each one. It means every one of my clients is a person to me, and many of them start as or become friends. It means sometimes I can take a whole day off to go visit someone in their office so we can brainstorm their next big idea together.

I do want to do a little big of expansion this year, and some of that has to do with expanding my own skills. That free time I mentioned above has helped me develop my illustration style on the side, so I can offer some new services. I read marketing blogs as much for the advice I can give to my clients when we’re building their sites as for my own business. What I aim to do is find a balance between money stress and work stress, so that each client gets the best of me, and knows that they’re on a very short list of people who can say that.

Some designers do a wonderful job putting out a site in short time, for a wide variety of clients, and I even sometimes envy them, but that’s not who I am. Every website, every logo, every cartoon requires thought and creativity, trial and error, and time to burble through the creative distillery in my brain until it comes out as refined as I can manage.

With a list the size of mine, each client gets individual attention from me, and while I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I get tired of hand-holding, most of the time I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The actual title of the class is “Stuff Havi thinks you should know about how to get really really great testimonials and referrals,” but that’s a little long for a blog post.

I took this class when it was live, many months ago, and have just recently been reminded of how great the info in it is, so I thought I’d do a review. I’m doing “Other People Tuesdays” on the blog as an experiment, alternating guest posts with reviews.

Back to Havi’s awesome class. First of all, if you’re at all familiar with Havi, you’ll know that she’s a big fan of making things as easy on everyone involved as possible, and her advice about referrals and testimonials is no different. She gives you several ways to get both, too, that work in different situations; I won’t give them away here, but I’ve used all of them to great effect.

Actually, I used the full suite of Testimonial Techniques just recently, when I was gathering people’s reactions to being Cartoonified for my portfolio. A couple of people sent me great testimonials when they got their cartoons, and it started me thinking that I’d like one to go with each of the images on the page. I began to despair, thinking of how hard it can be to get even people who otherwise love and adore you to write up something like this, and then instead of giving in to that feeling, I went and looked over my notes from this class.

If you click the link above, you’ll see that each one has a unique testimonial that fits neatly in the little box. I couldn’t have done that without the info in this class.

Havi’s advice is also brilliant for helping you get past that initial gulp of fear and into the ease of asking, too.

The Twitter version of my review of Havi’s class: The stuff in this class works, if you remember to use it.

PS – If you do go buy the class, Havi’s given permission for me to give away the secret:
Selma is her diva of a duck and business partner (she has her own wardrobe of fan scarves). Stu is her voice-to-text program who delights in tormenting her with really entertaining misunderstandings. Either one of these bits of info will get you $100 off the class, so don’t forget to use them!

Let’s face is, there is no one real answer to why people blog — there’s daddy bloggers and Regretsy, Copyblogger and people who post photos of their pets. Everyone’s got a different reason to start, and a different reason to keep on.

This blog is a marketing piece for me — it’s something I both enjoy doing and that comes naturally to me, but I wouldn’t blog here, about the things I do, if it didn’t help me out in my business. I do put time and effort into making sure that most of my posts offer something, even if it’s only a cute cartoon or the chance to recommend your favorite brand of face wash.

I have had other blogs in other places, but they’re for different things. I post photos of my cat licking milk off his nose, talk about my favorite books and tv shows with like-minded friends, and rant about poor grammar on the internet. Okay, I do that last one here, but it’s a lot nicer. Those blogs allow me to connect with like-minded people for fun, to share things I’ve made or seen, and to be myself (okay, even there I’m perhaps nicer than in real life, where I’m actually deeply cynical and snarky).

What brought this subject up for me is a recent spate of high-end copy writers writing posts on their blogs talking about how it’s a big sweat shop that they’re forced to generate all this content for free, and to me, that seems like they’ve lost sight of the reason why they started blogging in the first place. I’m not talking about little hobbyist bloggers, either — these are people whose blogs serve to bring them into the spheres of their potential clients and customers, so that they can sell services, consulting, ebooks and more. And yet, despite that, they’re suddenly thinking they should also be paid for their blog posts.

So I have to ask, if their blog posts were paid, then how would people find them to know they wanted to pay for the posts? Would they have to start a second string of crappier, less useful blog posts to serve as their marketing? Would they just rely on their charming Tweets and good site design to lure people into subscribing?

There’s a ton, and I mean a ton of great info available on the web for free, because people have chosen to make it that way. But the people who write the best, most informative blogs aren’t doing it entirely out of the goodness of their hearts — they’re making a living off that time, effort and expertise, somehow, some way. Leo Baubuta writes a bunch of different blogs, but also sells books and gets ad revenue. Men With Pens gives a ton of great writing advice for bloggers, copy writers, and fiction writers, but they also sell a whole suite of services. Ittybiz writes excellent marketing and life lessons that are both entertaining and full of swearing, but she’s got expensive consulting, less expensive ebooks, a membership site, and more.

And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Sony spends a ton of money on their commercials, sometimes ones that are entertaining enough they get shared on websites everywhere for free — and yet, they wouldn’t expect you to pay to watch them, because they’re getting their return another way.

I’m not saying all blogs are advertising — but this one is, and the blogs I’ve mentioned above have marketing as a part of their purpose. When I post kitten pictures on my personal blog, I don’t expect to sell anything as a result, and a ton of hobby bloggers out there are posting for love and community.

So, I’ll ask again, why do you blog?

Bridget and I are trading guest posts today — enjoy her unique insight!

I work as an intuitive. I have a very unique job. I look at my clients’ chakras and in doing so, I see metaphors about their lives. Each chakra, to me, looks like a little room, or a set on a stage.

The intuitive experience is strange. It’s like Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo and Lewis Carroll got together and had a party.

In the chakras of my clients, I see swirling or dancing furniture. I see strange people. I see thorns. Broken Glass. Laughing Children. I see colors forming and reforming.

It’s my job to see it and bring it out in the open where it can be useful for people. We use this information to help the client transcend their current conflicts and move forward in their lives.

In intuitive work, we take what’s at the edge of consciousness and make it conscious. We make the metaphors that shape our lives visible.

I want my blog to use visual metaphor just as beautifully, or as interestingly as my clients’ chakras do. So I look to photos and illustrations that capture the feeling of odd, yet familiar.

For example, I was recently writing about working at jobs that don’t sustain you. I wrote a blog post called “What to Do If Your Job is Dead.” Originally, I wanted to find a chalk outline of a dead body. I thought it’d be good to show that you shouldn’t stay in a job that’s killing you, because all you’ll leave is a chalk outline.

I couldn’t find a picture that I liked, but I found this foot with a tag on it, and a sheet behind it, that at first glance looks like ominous clouds. Feet are funny, too. There’s some dark comedy to this shot. It’s memorable, dreamlike and yet, it makes a point. Put a tag on it, it’s done.

Another example: I did a series on the Inner Me. This is an idea where we can talk with our soul and our soul talks back. We can access the warm wisdom within us. I wanted somebody that looks like me to appear in these posts. Since the soul seems ethereal, a hard to pin down concept, I knew I wanted the opposite. I wanted something very warm and accessible.

Coincidentally, I had taken Amy up on her Cartoonify Yourself offer. She had made a cartoon of me with a ball of fire and awesome boots. I realized that I was looking at the inner me! So I used her in a series of posts. Now I use her to illustrate my daily soul notes, a little note from the inner me for my readers. She will come up from time to time as I play with this idea of the inner me.

The most important take-away from this approach to the visual in my blog, is that it is mostly done from the place of “no-thought”. I don’t have a calculating plan of how I want my blog to be. I just find images that speak to me with visual metaphors that personify the idea that I am getting across.

Bridget Pilloud is an intuitive guidance counselor, an intuition teacher and a facilitator of energetic healing. She also works with people and their pets. Her work can be found at http://www.bridgetpilloud.com and at http://www.petsaretalking.com. On Twitter, she’s @intuitivebridge.