Wrapping up the blog year with a special greeting. Use the player if you’d like to hear me read the poem to you.

Click here to download…

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Eid, Winter Solstice, all of the above or none of the above, I hope you’ll enjoy this holiday greeting loosely based on the poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”:

‘Twas the night before Christmas and across many lands
Inspired pros were winding down daily demands
The conference calls were over, the ezines were sent,
The blogs were all written, the budget was spent.

Though Know More Marketing often operates into the night,
For once even Sylvia was turning off the light.
And elsewhere, seen blowing out holiday candles,
Were the hardworking people behind Certified Humane Raised & Handled.

ASPCA’s dashboard team had crunched the last number
And just settled in for some much-deserved slumber.
At PetSmart Charities, they’d also hit the bed sheets
With visions of excelling in forecasting spreadsheets.

Continue reading A Very Special Holiday Greeting

For those who celebrate Thanksgiving in the U.S. this week, I hope you enjoy a very happy holiday and some extra time off.

Last Tuesday’s Washington Post reported that the percentage of people in the U.S. who are hungry has reached its highest level since the data tracking began. And of course, there are millions more people around the world suffering. Those of us able to choose veg/raw/local/organic diets indeed have much to be thankful for this holiday season.

What are you grateful for this year? Here are some things that I’m especially thankful for regarding Inspired Raw Design:

Design Tools
I remember when I started with Boston Consulting Group after college as an analyst. When I developed a line chart a presentation, the graphics team created the image using tape with solid and dashed lines! I’ve written about not having followed my interest in design from when I was young, but sometimes I feel lucky that I waited until we had the amazing software that’s available now. Or can you imagine producing (e)books with a typewriter?
Continue reading Being Thankful – Food, Technology & You

If you receive this blog via email or RSS feed, you may have noted some funky formatting in the last couple of posts. I’m working with a new virtual assistant and for some reason, the posts are coming to you strangely, even though the entry looks great on the site itself.

I appreciate your patience while we work out the bugs!

It’s not always easy to follow your passion. It often looks a lot easier to stay with a known job, paycheck and lifestyle, even if deep down it doesn’t feel right for you.

I’ve experienced those feelings and yet have managed to make 3 major career transitions.

• From corporate employee to self-employed consultant
• From working with businesses to helping animal protection nonprofits
• Adding graphic design services and focusing on raw-inspired businesses

Or maybe you just need some reinforcement that you’ve already made the right move? (Hey, we all have those days where we wonder, right?)

Michele Ashley of Oasis Life Resources interviewed me last week on how I successfully made my changes as part of her UberCoach Uncut Free Monthly Call. Check out the recording at http://oasisliferesources.com (scroll down to the bottom section “On the Horizon” to find the topic Finding Your Passion & Living a Successful, Authentic Life).

In my last post I wrote about 3 Awesome Ideas You Can Use to Increase Response to your blog. Another awesome idea is to make sure you’re writing about what people want to read. So I’m here today to check in to see what’s working and what could be better.

The purpose of this blog is to share design & marketing insight that powerfully supports you and your business. Whether you’ve been reading the posts since launch several months ago or have started more recently, your opinion matters.

So if you’d have just a few minutes to comment, I’d love to know:

• What about this blog do you find most useful?
• How could it be better? Are there topics, formats or changes that would help you in your business?

It would be great to have you comment and get some discussion going here. But if you’re shy, I’d also welcome your thoughts to me at Caryn@InspiredRaw.com.

Thanks for reading this blog. I look forward to sharing more content that makes your business the biggest party ever!