Thursday, April 16, 2009

Selling joy

As long-time mom entrepreneurs, we are routinely approached by women who want to pick our brains as they get their own mom entrepreneur businesses off the ground. We love to hear what other women are doing and really like the exercise of thinking about someone else’s business. (Nothing easier to solve than someone else’s problems!)

There are many things to consider, of course, when coming up with the big idea – but here’s a little something we learned the easy way: It’s a whole lot nicer to sell joy than pain. Here’s what I mean: When we were in the process of leaping out of corporate life and into entrepreneurship we considered many different business ideas. We were downright methodical about it – we had a list of criteria and a list of ideas and we connected the dots to see what worked. Baby blankets worked. Throw in some money, sleepless nights and a whole lot of work and presto! A business was born. Something noticeably missing from our criteria were the intangible questions, "what is the ‘feel’ of this business?" "What state of mind will my customers be in?" "Is this a joyful product/experience/service or something that our customers enjoy about as much as they do gingivitis?"

We’ve been on the right side of the happy equation for seven years now. Every time a customer contacts us, something lovely is happening in his or her life – a baby has been born, a birthday has arrived, a holiday approaches. Our customers come to us with joy. As a business owner, this makes a whole lot of difference to your day. Have you ever called the phone company joyfully? Of course not. (Not that they deserve it, but don’t get me started on that subject.) The tax office? Uh uh. We can’t believe how many lovely e-mails we’ve received over the years from gracious customers, not to mention photos for our gallery and kind referrals. We’d like to believe that a good product and solid customer service have a lot to do with that, but we know that state of mind goes a long way toward a positive experience.

Can you base your business concept on a warm fuzzy feeling? Probably not. But all other things being equal, we’d definitely recommend it.

Admiral Road has been making personalized blankets since 2002.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with you on the warm fuzzy feel. I think entrepreneurs use this feeling to keep them moving forward - the instinct of knowing.

    heather
    www.drheathernd.com
    www.humanbodydetectives.com

    ReplyDelete