Big announcement today

You want business?

You want customers?

You want customers to give you money?

Then you’re going to love me, because today I announce something that I think will help you tremendously…while preventing you from looking like a scammy bastard!

And it’s 100% free!

The “scammy bastard” part

I hate the commercials on TV. Regardless of what anyone tries to tell me, I know that they are significantly louder than whatever show I’m watching. They don’t come quietly into my front room and attempt to persuade me of their message. No, they invade my house and rape my ears in hopes that I’m going to want to buy their crap after being mentally molested.

There’s no way I could ever do that type of marketing.

Aside from the moral and ethical reasons of why I shouldn’t rape someone’s ears, even if it worked, it’s not something I can do financially. I don’t have the funds to make that kind of campaign come to life.

On a much smaller scale I see Twitter fill up with “CLICK ON MY LINK AND BUY AMAZING STUFF FROM ME THAT YOU’LL DIE IF YOU DON’T HAVE” from people who don’t engage with others. I get emails from people telling me about how they have the latest cure for the world’s problems and how it’s priced much lower than it’s worth so I should buy it now before it runs out (even though it’s a digital product).

Now, I don’t mind someone injecting links to their stuff at all. I also don’t mind emails that ask me to buy stuff.

What I mind is people that don’t care about me asking for those things. Because what they fail to realize is that they’re asking for my precious, hard-earned cash…and I couldn’t care less about what they’re selling.

Who DO I want to give money to?

People that make me love them!

Naomi Dunford at IttyBiz.com posted an article last week about how to make money with your business. To boil it down, the two part plan is this

1. FIRST make your customers love you
2. THEN ask for money

Notice the order of those steps. If you’re trying to do step 2 first, you’re doomed (much like the scammy bastards I just discussed). Chances are pretty high if you are reading my site that you don’t have the funds to do a molestation style ad campaign like the ones on TV, so we’re at least safe there.

In fact, the chances are pretty high that you’re bootstrapping it just like me.

And yes, I know it’s tempting, but we all need to stop trying to blast everyone with our message. Instead, we need to be focusing on loving the people whose attention we are seeking.

If you’re a regular here, I’m going to assume that I don’t have to waste the rest of this post convincing you of the logic in this plan. I do have the smartest readers on the internet!

Love first, then (and only then) ask for money.

Story time

Since this “Love first, sell second” is a message I have been trying to live by for the duration of my online life (and more), it struck a chord with me when I read Naomi’s post. It just made so much sense and I loved seeing someone post it who is much closer to where I want to be than where I currently am.

However, I would probably have done little with the actual message had it not been for some of my online friends.

So, here’s that story:

Last week I got a Twitter DM from Abby Kerr. She had copy/pasted the following invitation from another Twitter friend:

Anyone care to join me in a 28-day Make Your Customers Love You challenge, inspired by @NaomiDunford? http://is.gd/eFFDf #customerlove

Her next DM was asking if I wanted to join her.

It looked cool. I had read the article and remembered how much I liked it. But as much as I wanted to join, Cautious David responded with this:

Ok, bottom line: How much is it?

(Don’t you love how I just beat around the bush?)

Abby’s a cool cat so, even though she should have called me a cynical cheapskate, she let me know it was free. That got my attention.

I was in.

I did a search on the hashtag #CustomerLove and discovered that a number of people were on board. Bonus!

However, even though I was in, I was curious as to who had the idea and guts to put together this challenge. I mean, here is someone that decided that they actually wanted to ACT on something they read online! (If only more of us did that, right?!)

LaVonne Ellis

LaVonne Ellis writes at CompleteFlake.com as well as a few other sites (check out her About section). I had connected with her on Twitter just a few weeks earlier and was already enjoying the conversations there. And it doesn’t hurt that for some odd reason, she thinks my Twitter profile picture looks like Leonardo DiCaprio’s long lost brother. (I don’t see it, but cool nonetheless!)

I liked what her message was and she treated people well. I loved that she was showing initiative and responding to a challenge. I really loved that she wanted to involve others and help them too.

So I reached out to her. I wanted to be a bigger part of this!

I approached LaVonne and asked how I could help. Her desire to love on the people around her matched mine. I wanted to make sure this woman succeeded. I wanted to do anything I could to make sure this challenge succeeded. (And I really wanted to do my part to reduce the obnoxious molestation style marketing if I could!)

Long story short, LaVonne agreed to let me partner up with her.

The announcement: Customer Love

LaVonne and I have about as varied pasts and views as you can possibly get. However, despite gender, political, and a host of other demographic differences, we absolutely see eye to eye on loving your customers first! (Not only that, but she has some awesome stories that I’ve not heard from anyone else online!!! She’s rad so you need to follow her on Twitter!)

Which is why we think we have something awesome to offer people!

Starting today we will be working together to bring you a 28 day challenge to make your customers fall madly in love with you. We’ll be offering tips on how to do this as well as actionable items for you to…well, take action on. We’re also targeting people who have amazing skills and specialties to guest post and offer you “How To” advice that is above and beyond what we could bring you by ourselves.

By the time you read this, LaVonne will have already posted the first article on her site CompleteFlake.com. Tomorrow, yours truly (that’s me) will be posting the next article (also on her site).

I’m super excited about this and can’t wait to see the impact we hope to make on people.

How can YOU be a part of this?

Simple:

1. Join in the challenge with us
2. Tweet up a link to this post
3. Check out LaVonne’s post
4. Then start loving on your people!

That’s it. Now, let’s rock this!

SPECIAL NOTE: Our guest posters list has not been finalized which means that if YOU have a unique point of view on how to get your customers to fall in love with then we want to hear from you! Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.

Let’s go get some love!