Want true fans? Start doing this now.
Photo by Jan Střecha on Unsplash
True fans are great. They are the ones who appreciate you so much that they will buy anything and everything you produce. That’s what they say anyway.
I don’t know if I have any true fans or not by that definition as I have never had any evidence that any of my customers will buy “anything and everything” that I produce. I do know though that creating true fans is not for those who take the easy superficial route or who don’t like human to human connection. It takes a lot of working at our empathy muscles to get us to feel what others feel and see what others see, in order for us to be able to touch the miracle of human to human connection.
And that’s just the beginning. Of course we still need to make something worth buying.
A lot of what is written out there about creating true fans really overwhelms me. What I have found very useful is to “do onto others as you would have them do onto you”.
A true fan is someone who appreciates you so much that he will buy anything from you. So by the law of “doing onto others as you would have them do onto you”, you go all out to show appreciation to all the people you come into contact with. Appreciate them for being kind, and appreciate them for being mean. Appreciate those who are generous for being generous, and appreciate the ones who are stingy for being stingy. Appreciate everyone and everything you encounter. Sowing the seeds of appreciation, you will reap the fruits of appreciation.
True fans make you feel important. You are important to your true fans. The only way to reap the fruits of being important is to sow the seeds of making others feel important. Every customer you encounter is an important human being who deserves to be treated with the utmost importance. Repeatedly nurturing this positive state of mind in the people you encounter will in effect make you important in the heart of your customers. You will be irreplaceable and they will be your true fans.
True fans trust you, almost irrationally. So you have a responsibility to ensure this trust is not betrayed. This requires going way beyond the extra mile to ensure that those who place so much trust, almost blindly, in us are covered.
There are many ways to create true fans. It’s not easy and can certainly be done. What I have written are just the basic stuff. And then one has to produce something remarkable and of such value that the true fans can brag about.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing it for your true fans!