He wasn’t a friend or mentor in the strictest sense, I didn’t speak to him on a regular basis, he wouldn’t know me if we passed in the street and I would be invited to any of his premiers. But, like many millions of budding designers in the 90’s, he inspired me to try website design, look at it in different ways, do better work and try different things.

I always meant to write a second part to Walking the Courageous Path and now seems the perfect time.

His website was a mecca for designers, of all types, eager to see his latest designs and when he changed from web design to films we all wondered how he would manage this with the client list he had, but he did, and then some. We all bought his books looking for that inspiration to rub off and I have to say in a lot of cases it did there are some fantastic designers and art makers out there who credit what they do to Hillman Curtis.

When I wrote the original Walk the Courageous Path this was inspired by a post from Hillman and it really struck a chord with me, if you haven’t read it you can here, but I think the single most mesmerising thing about Hillman Curtis was his unique ability to speak to ‘you’. In his books or videos he had that ability of speaking at though he was in the room with you sitting talking to you, a unique gift.

Take time to visit his site and take in his wonderful work and let it inspire you like it has me and thousands of others.

My tribute to a great man who will be sorely missed and not just in the world of design.

Watch this video on YouTube.

If you would like to see the webinar as it was broadcast you can by clicking here. Because there was a little faffing about at the beginning scroll along to about 10mins in

The guy had some good points but where I take issue is the following:

If Katie had bothered to do some research here, she would have come across some interesting figures….

At the time of writing this article, she currently has 618 ‘likes’ for her company on Facebook.
I have 2,802.

She currently has 8 testimonials on LinkedIn.
I have 233.

She currently has 1,669 followers for her company on Twitter.
I have 19,603

Does anyone else see a problem with her trying to sell me Social Media services here?!!

The big problem is she’s trying to sell me services in an area that I’m positioned far better than her!  Now I’m not saying that it should be ME teaching HER Social Media (although that would have been a funny response to her message!), but I’m saying that she needs to approach this one carefully.

Now to me this isn’t a numbers game it doesn’t matter HOW many people you have following you its the quality of those people in spreading your message.

I get emails and updates from lots of people who have far more followers in their tribe than I do and I also receive them from people who have far less.

To me numbers are not the problem, the problem can be the message. If I receive something that I think is worth sending out to you guys then I will do it. If it’s not I won’t, simples!

This could be the basis of another post on how to get your message across, but I digress

Don’t be afraid to approach one of the so called ‘big guys’ when you are sending out service or promotional stuff, you never know they might just love it. And just because someone has more followers in their tribe doesn’t mean they have a better handle on what’s happening in that particular field. Let’s be honest there are enough programs and services out there that if I wanted to pay for followers I could have over 200,000 in no time, but what use would they be, they don’t know me or the message I am sending out.

I know it’s a bit of a rant but it gets my goat when people should be helping others to succeed and not deflate them.

If you can help someone achieve what it is they want then why wouldn’t you?

Let me know your thoughts on this and what you have done to promote someone else’s work, products or services.

This will be a free webinar that will help you to realise just how much you can save or make by doing all the creative work yourself instead of putting it out to a designer or developer…crazy I know but true!

So sign up and come with me on a fantastic journey