Day 25: Bribery and Blanche Dubois

So, my product for Customer Love is my Adopt-A-Jar scheme. You know, for these crazy art jars that I’ve been making and releasing into the wild every day.

I have been struggling with this sponsorship idea.

I know it’s a good idea: my Inner Businesswoman thought so and so did many other people that I trust. And it’s not as though it needs a vast amount of work. All I have to do is decide what I’m offering at the different levels; set my pricing, finish writing a page and then ask people for money.

Yet that first part was proving surprisingly tough.

The two higher levels of the scheme are mostly organised but the basic level has been giving me conniptions.

The problem is that I keep wanting to throw things at people. Not in a nasty ‘lump of concrete’ kind of way but in a ‘here, have more wonderful things’ kind of way.

Surely I can’t just ask for money and not offer anything tangible in return apart from publicity and a public thank you? Yes, it’s advertising but I don’t get the impression that the people who’ve expressed an interest in sponsoring a jar are doing so for strategic reasons.

But, but, but – I can’t just ask for the money! There must be free handmade art as well. Oh wait, that’s uneconomic. I know, I will make postcards or cards instead. Or a handmade adoption form that I will meticulously fill out and send, even though I am bad at posting things. How about a small cuddly jar on a keyring?

OK, I’m joking – I only just thought of the keyring – but I’ve considered all the others.

Run away, run away

So why were my instincts making small alarmed rodent noises at me?

The thought of adding yet more work to the project made me want to jump in the river. The jars are already taking a bare minimum of two hours every single day and it’s usually much more. I wake up thinking about jars. I go to sleep thinking about jars. I’m at my limits and I know it. The whole idea of offering sponsorship packages is to make the project more sustainable for me, not less.

I knew I was going wrong but I couldn’t quite see where or why. Then I had a Provocateuring session and Catherine Caine, who is a smart cookie and Linda Eaves, who is also an intelligent baked good, pointed out that it wasn’t about me. Nope, not at all.

It was about my jar fans and what they were getting out of the project and why they might want to adopt a jar.

Sure, they might want to support me because they love me but if they decide to adopt a jar it’s because of their needs. The need to be part of the project and claim ownership of it. The need to make a single day special by having a jar that is theirs, even if they don’t receive that jar. The need to experience that feel-good altruism. The need to be the sort of awesome person who supports crazy-ass art projects on the internet. It’s all about them.

Zing! I had my moment of clarity. I said aloud, “I don’t need to bribe my people.”

I don’t need to bribe my people. Wow. What a revelation.

I am not in charge of whether people give me money for the jar project. All I can do is give my best – and my best goes into the jars – and then other people will decide if they want to contribute. They will decide if they can afford it. They will decide if it’s a priority to them. They will decide. I am not in charge.

Let go, let go, let go

For me, the dominant theme of 365 Jars is letting go.

I send my little jars out into the world and I can’t control their fates. Some of the jars go missing completely and that tormented me at first. And whenever I think I’m getting better at letting go, some fresh challenge pops up: just this week someone told me that they might put chutney in the art jar they’d found – eek!

And now I was being told to let go of my anxiety around asking for sponsorship money.

Hmm, anxiety. Now there’s an interesting choice of words. Ooh look, here’s Fear lurking at the bottom of everything like that smell you can’t identify in the fridge.

And what is that fear about? All I’m doing is making an offer to people and letting them be involved if they want to be. Why should that be difficult and fearful?

Oh, here it comes.

Bam. I was afraid of criticism. I was afraid that people would think I was greedy for even asking. I was afraid that some people would think the jars were tainted if other people gave me money for them. I was afraid that I wasn’t offering enough, so no one would sponsor me and then I’d look stupid. I was afraid of being a pitiful Blanche Dubois – ‘aaahhh have alllllwaaaaays depended on the kindness of strangers’.

And most of all, I was afraid that people would think that my lovely, freely given jars – the jars that take me hours every single day and are hugely impacting my life – were some kind of nasty little scam. Ouch!

Conclusion

I am still considering what the basic sponsorship package should contain but I have realised that I need to come at it from a brave place, not a place of fear. If I’m offering ‘extras’ it should be because that’s what my people want and need, not because I am trying to bribe them into buying something they don’t really want.

And it absolutely must be sustainable for me because offering something you can’t possibly deliver isn’t Customer Love, it’s Customer Misdirection.

Are you trying to bribe your customers? Or are you coming from a place of strength, honesty and courage? Tell me about it in the comments below!