Whoa. Can you believe we’re at the end already? Tomorrow is Day 29, the day we’ve been working toward, when Naomi Dunford urges us to “ask for money” — aka launch our products. Are you ready to launch yours?
Don’t worry, the rules aren’t set in stone. In fact, there aren’t any rules, really, except the ones you set for yourself. You don’t have to launch a product tomorrow. You may have good reason to wait a week or two, or even longer.
But please launch SOMETHING.
Otherwise, what was the past 28 days about? Sure, it’s awesome to love your customers but if you don’t have anything to sell to them, you need to rethink your definition of the word customer. And business.
If you look at the logo up there at the top of the page, you’ll see a pink heart, like one of those Valentine candies we used to love as kids. But the heart of Customer Love is more like the real, beating muscle in your chest. Your heart is quiet and powerful, and sends nourishing lifeblood and oxygen to every cell in your body many times a minute… without you having to even think about it. It powers your body and brain.
Products are the core that quietly powers your business while you are doing other things like providing services or writing blog posts. But unlike the central organ that came with your body, you have to create the heart of your business.
That’s been the sticking point for a lot of Customer Love challengers — and even more for the lurkers, the wannabe challengers who were afraid to commit because the thought of creating and launching an actual product was too terrifying to contemplate.
I don’t say that without sympathy. It was my own fear of exactly the same thing that led me to start this challenge in the first place. And you may have noticed I still haven’t launched my own product. Oh, I dipped my toe in the water last time with the free Customer Love eBook (though let’s be honest, David Crandall did most of the work.)
There’s nothing wrong with offering a kick-ass free product that announces to the world that you have Arrived. But a free product is not a product — it’s a giveaway.
The challenge is about “Making Them Love You, THEN Asking For Money.”
So this time, I will be asking for money. My friend, math confidence coach Colin Beveridge (@icecolbeveridge), and I are excited to be working on an awesome product for parents that we’ll tell you more about in the next few days.
And for the next challenge (which will be in February, btw) I’m working on a little something with my co-host for that challenge, Jonathan Wondrusch (@bybloggers), that will help you get over the hump to create the product that will become the beating heart of your business.
In fact, taking part in the challenge every other month or so would be a great way to regularly create and introduce meaty new entries to your core line of products. I’m talking strategy here, folks. If the big kids can do it, so can we!
What product are you working on? Tell us all about it in the comments below — and when you’re ready to launch, be sure to visit the new Customer Love Forum and announce it!
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It’s been a great month, thanks to you Lavonne and everyone in #CustomerLove. I have so enjoyed being part of it, and am looking forward to working with all the great people I have met.
It might not be ready for tomorrow, but I do have a launch! It’s free for the moment, and if I can get my writing head on it will be pretty darn good and practical. Above all I want to make something practical.
ohsoexcited! .ahem. Right. Being all businesslike and stuff. I have a product. In fact, I am supposed to be creating worksheets and editing audio files as I type. But it took up enough computer resources that instead I’m backing up all my important computer files so I can have a little elbow room…and THEN I will be editing audio again.
You know those moments when you can’t think, can’t breathe, can barely move because You Are Having A Crisis!!!!!! and your brain is doing donuts in the parking lot of your life?
You know how DESPERATE you are to get out of that parking lot and onto the highway?
You know how it would be fine to just maybe get out of the parking lot and onto the small one lane roads? Or into the alley even? (That’s laneway for folks who stuck with the Empire longer than we did). Because YOU REALLY NEED TO GET STUFF DONE!
And you note that it is the very same part of your brain shouting about getting stuff done and having a crisis.
Right. Well, I’m here for you. Actually? My Thing is there for you. You are going to turn that Titanic around and make that crisis into a kickstart for creative change…at a launch price WAY below the final price.
That link isn’t live yet. But it will be. Very soon. In fact, depending on when you’re reading this, it might be live right now.
So. Take the crisis. Take all that spinning, whirling, intense energy. Make it into fabulous motion forward. Use it every time. Get out of the habit of having crises altogether. Use the energy for something you like, need, or love. Ahhh. Much better.
Woohooo Leela! Go go go.
Backing up your files and making elbow room on your hard drive is really smart by the way.
@Marlene: thank you! The former life as an IT professional makes backing up double-important, because if it crashes, I KNOW I know better. Nothing worse than knowing you knew to do something different.
Leela, I just got a new hard drive (my backup’s backup died a couple of weeks ago) and am sleeping SO much better knowing it’s working again! Also am starting to use Amazon S3.
But I digress (if it can be called digressing when you haven’t even launched [heh] into the topic you’d be digressing from… Roger?)
YES, I’m launching! Though I’m so scared of the idea of launching that I’ve been calling it a “pre-launch/soft launch/whatever thingy.” Ahem. Because in my mind this thing is still in “beta” mode, so even though the people who buy it may love it to death, I know I will be adding and tweaking over time, so how then could I possibly launch? (Or so goes my thinking.)
But launch I will. I’m certainly not going to wait until it’s perfect, because I’ll go to my grave before that happens!
And though the launch won’t be tomorrow, it will be this week. Though (again), I haven’t decided exactly when (which is driving me crazy) because I don’t have the technological stuff enough under control to feel confident about setting an actual date!
My goal is Wednesday, December 1. A 48-hour launch. But we’ll see…
What, you ask, is my product? Well, I’ve been tweeting and commenting all over the place about it, so if you don’t already know it’s something of a miracle, but it’s my online course, the Thriving Artists Project, inspiration to bust the “starving artist” mindset and help you thrive!
Getting this thing up and out the door is almost killing me (I just blogged about it here), but I’m also really loving it.
I’m climbing a steep learning curve as I try to wrangle web code and the membership site software, but it’s EXCITING to be learning all this stuff! And the people I’ve met as a result of my promo efforts have been incredibly cool.
You know what one of the best parts has been? As I was putting the website together, writing my sales page copy, I realized that dang, this is A WHOLE LOT OF VALUE I’ve put together!
And even though the content is not all edited (or even created!) yet, just seeing everything that’s going into the course written down on the page made me realize that I’m offering something incredibly cool that will really help people!
And I feel incredibly empowered and hopeful for what’s possible for my business going forward!
Wish me luck…. And thank you to everyone in Customer Love. I probably still would have launched this damn thing, but maybe not now. And it sure as hell wouldn’t have been as fun.
xo,
Melissa
I’m good to go, I’m properly launching my Artist’s Eyeball rather than coming up with anything new but I’m still quite excited. Next time around I shall do a brand new product.