F-117 by 12me

I didn’t feel like I should write a post this time around. I’ve been pretty invisible this month, and I almost emailed LaVonne and asked her to replace me last week. I felt like I hadn’t taken part in the challenge because I haven’t done anything that’s really visible to the outside world. But I have been loving my customers. Behind the scenes. It’s not visible…yet.

I didn’t plan for it to be that way. In fact,  I had grand plans for being very, very visible in this Customer Love challenge. I released an ebook in May, and I wanted to call attention to my baby by showing all kinds of Customer Love: blogging, interviews, giveaways, and video. I was planning on loving my customers to death as well as tooting my own horn about my first ebook!

Operating in Stealth Mode

Then I bought Danielle LaPorte’s The Spark KIT. More importantly I started reading The Spark KIT and doing the exercises. I began to realize things: my about me page totally sucked and did not reflect me or what I do. My business was changing, and I needed to revision it and rearticulate it.

• I realized my website did not reflect where I wanted to go, and it had to be changed.
• In order to do that my business had to be crystal clear in my head, and I had to KNOW where my website fit into the overall business.
• That meant getting quiet and going deep. I thought I could do both the internal soul searching and the external loving. But I couldn’t.

Maybe the same thing happened to you too.

You had grand plans to show your customers how much you love them.

Then…

• You realized you had work under the hood to do.
• You need a clearer vision.
• You need to figure out who your Perfect People are and where they’re hanging out.
• You need a tighter focus to make products you will be proud of.

One Little Question

Maybe you had more creative mojo and stamina than I have, and you were able to work under the hood and do some cool detailing for everyone to see too. But if you’re like me and didn’t have that much mojo, don’t beat yourself up about that. We can’t love our customers the right way until we’re clear in our hearts and minds on how we can help them.

I’ve found the best way to get clear on loving my customer is to get a little selfish.

For the past month I’ve been asking myself:

What do I really want?

It takes a while to peel back the layers of what you think you want because you’ve been told that’s what you want in one way, shape, or form. You have to keep asking the question.

What do I really want?

Do I really want that?

No. That’s not what I want.

What do I really want?

Don’t worry, you’re not going in a circle. You’re going in a spiral. A spiral that keeps going deeper and deeper, so you can find out the big question: What do I really want?

Because when you find out what you really want, how you really want to help people, then you can love your customers and give them what they need.

Have you been loving your customers in stealth mode this month? How are you loving them in ways they can’t see?

What do you really want?