Jonathan Wondrusch
How was your Valentine’s Day? Whether you find yourself within a relationship or not, I hope that you celebrated the love in your life. Despite it’s over commercialization, it is hard for me to dislike Valentine’s Day – how can you be disappointed with the opportunity to celebrate love?
Last night I went out to dinner to celebrate the holiday. My girlfriend and I found ourselves waiting with a small crowd of other couples. On a holiday that is meant to celebrate the relationships we all had, we found ourselves in a particularly odd position.
As we stood in the lobby of Buca di Beppo, we were the only people smiling at each other. Hell, we were the only couple engaging in conversation with each other. If it weren’t for proximity, there would have been no way to tell who was with who. While I have no way of knowing the quality or the depth of these people’s relationships, it didn’t stop my mind from working overtime. As an avid people watcher and wanna-be philosopher, I couldn’t help but think about the impact that love has on our lives and how love is a verb, not a noun.
Loving someone for a day is easy.
You can even fake the actions if you want to: Buy the flowers, go to the right restaurant, give away a nice gift with a lovely card, and you’ve got the commercial version of “love” down.
If you’re practicing love in a relationship, you know that these are the rare moments. Every day is not flowers and cards and restaurants – every day is coming home from work and cooking dinner and still smiling after a terrible day at the office.
Love is doing the small things for the ones that you care about because you know they appreciate it or it makes their lives better. Day in and day out, love is showing up and being who you are with another person.
Which is why anyone can fake it for a day, but it takes a special pair of people to do so for the long term.
How does this relate to the Customer Love challenge?
Anyone can love their customers for one day, one week or one month. We’re even giving you actions to help you do it. But beneath those actions, there needs to be a deeper commitment.
The goal of the Customer Love challenge is to love your (potential) customers and then launch a product to meet their needs. You can do that. But what’s next? What happens after this challenge? How will you continue to express your love and gratitude to the people that are helping you move towards making a living from your blog, after the day is gone? I’m sure they’re curious to know.
Here’s what I want you to do: just like you would do with a significant other, I want you to start thinking about your future together. What love, gifts and gratitude will you bring to that relationship? How will you do it and why?
Then tell them.
The more they know that you are going to be around, the more your community will start to trust in you. You can’t have love without trust, right?
Task: Start thinking about your long term vision for loving your customers, and share how you plan to do it.
