Day 21: Have You Found IT Yet – Your Perfect Thing? I Have.

Back in the early days of my radio career, I discovered what makes me happier than a pig in shit (are pigs REALLY happy in shit?) – okay, happier than a waitress getting a pedicure/massage after 8 hours on her feet.

I was working as the news director of a suddenly-very-hot new rock station in Las Vegas. All the teenagers were tuning in, so we decided to recruit one teen from every high school in town to be a “Blackboard Jungle” reporter. They would gather the news of their school, call in and I would tape their 1-minute reports. Then, I’d edit them together and play the Jungle Report every morning.

The listeners LOVED the reports, ratings went through the roof (for other reasons too – I can’t take ALL the credit), and we had a blast. It was the most fun I’ve ever had on the job.

I invited the teen reporters to the station and gave them radio lessons, like what makes a good news story, how to deliver a newscast, and how to edit tape (back then, we used razor blades and special tape to splice the actual magnetic tape together.) Later, I threw a party for the Jungle reporters at my home.

And I learned two very important lessons:

• Fun is contagious. People love to see you loving what you do.
• Giving people a voice (by, in this case, putting them on the air) is powerful.

I feel the same kind of connection with you and with the guest bloggers here at CustomerLove.

Now, I want to do it again but in a slightly different way.

I’m starting a new Thing called “one.blue.berry ~ true stories that taste good.”

Much as I love CustomerLove, I know that this new adventure is what I was born for*. I love personal experience stories. I love to tell my stories and I love to read the experiences told by others. You can call them memoirs or autobiography – I prefer true stories.

One.blue.berry is starting off as a blog of my personal experience stories, and those submitted by readers, and will eventually grow into a monthly micromagazine, presenting the best of the submitted stories, beautifully formatted and illustrated. Each story is like a juicy berry, a surprising burst of flavor when you bite into it.

I hope you will read one.blue.berry, and consider sharing your true stories with us all. You can submit them here or email me at lve at oneblueberry dot com. (There’s  no need to reveal your identity if you prefer to remain anonymous.)

And if you’re wondering how I figured out the cool name and what I need to do to make it a great site and magazine, I’ve got three words for you: Red. Hot. Clarity.** (Yikes, I just realized I copied the dots-in-the-middle thing. Sorry, Yolanda!) @YolandaFacio is like, one of the smartest people I know. She’s a no-nonsense business coach who runs two other businesses IRL (In Real Life).

She knows what works and what doesn’t.

So when I saw this testimonial from Pam Slim in Yolanda’s weekly newsletter, I jumped:

“Yolanda worked with me as I was trying to gain clarity on a new brand and body of work. In the past, I would get locked up by just using words to describe my unique gifts and offerings. The use of the image tool helped free up my creativity. I saw things clearly in a one-hour session that would have taken weeks to tease out with other means. If you want to understand your brand in a very deep and powerful way, I highly recommend this session!”

I had my session with Yolanda on Friday, and I gotta say I would not be launching the new site today otherwise. I’d be putting it off until all the other things on my plate are finished, and then I’d probably be letting self-doubt tell me it’s a stupid idea and nobody would be interested, blah, blah, blah. You know the drill.

But Yolanda showed me that there’s no need to wait, nothing to put off, I can start small with just one story and let it grow organically.

Let me describe the session to you – it was seriously cool.

First, Yolanda sent me the login to an online application where lots of images were scattered about on the screen. We got on the phone, and while she watched from her computer, I chose and arranged the images. I think I had five minutes to do that, but it seemed a lot shorter. I was greedy and grabbed as many of them as I could – they were all so pretty! Finally, the time was up and I had a big pile of images, none of them arranged as nicely as I’d planned, but Yolanda pointed out that there was no wrong way to do it.

Then, she asked me to talk about the images. I described the ones I could see – quite a few were underneath and couldn’t be moved again. Yolanda probed deeper about my reactions to them. Finally, she began to tell me what my choices told her about me.

For one thing, I’m very literal-minded. Which, of course, explains why I love true stories so much. When I see a painting of blue sea with the tip of a canoe in the foreground, I don’t think of a journey – I think of blue sea, and I don’t even try to figure out what that brown triangle in the foreground is. When I see a bunch of trees, I think of a forest, not shelter or whatever more metaphorically-minded people think. So, Yolanda advised, I should be just as literal in my copy. No metaphors for me!***

And I should be very clear about what I’m looking for in the stories people submit. I need to create boundaries. She said I like creative structure, messy but confined, which is very true.

Yolanda suggested I create a map of where I might find writers and readers, and she gave me ideas and names I hand’t thought of.

She pointed out that there was a strong line of pictures of nature, diagonally across the pile, that showed how much I’m drawn to nature. Also true, even though I prefer to enjoy my nature on the tube rather than, you know, in person. And she mentioned what I hadn’t even noticed – that every single image I’d chosen had a strong element of the color blue in it. To be honest, I didn’t see any other colors when I was in my grabbing frenzy. Blue, in all its hues, is like eye-candy to me. Yolanda said that was a sure sign that blue should be an important part of the design.

She told me to take my time studying the images, which she sent me in an email along with a recording of our session, and brainstorm names based on them, names that literally convey the meaning of the images. She said they show that I want happy endings, positive stories that show strength and courage, getting through, freedom, solitude, challenge, nature, peace, connection.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I spent a delightful couple of hours looking at the images, writing out keywords, and trying different combinations while I checked them out as domains on GoDaddy.com. BlueSkies.com? Taken. Bluemoonbeams.com? Taken. LaughingMoon.com? Taken. BlueBerry.com? Taken. Then I thought to add the word ‘one’ to ‘blueberry’, and I fell in love. Available!

And so, we begin the next chapter…

Have you found your Perfect Thing yet? Tell me about it in the comments below!

*But no worries – CustomerLove isn’t going anywhere!
**Not an affiliate link, btw.
***Okay, the blue berry turned out to be a metaphor for a story. Sorry about that.