Watch the last 20 seconds of this clip. Thanks to Jim Palmer for sharing this video on twitter today.

If you sold shoes, would you deliver pizza to a stranger?

Chances are good, you just gave me the stink eye. I hear you. “Why would I do something so completely out of my realm of business? I sell shoes, for crying out loud!”

Tony Hsieh would disagree. He and his legendary company, Zappos, are known for extraordinary customer service. The kind of above-and-beyond “WOW” experience that has their sales numbers soaring and their repeat and referral business at roughly 75% of their total sales.

While Zappos doesn’t deliver pizza (yet), their customer service reps are more than willing to help you find the pizza parlor closest to you. Tony’s story about the rep that provided the five closest locations to a starving caller reveals the heart of what any business is really about: meeting and exceeding customer needs.

It brings to mind the scene from the 1994 version of “A Miracle on 34th Street” where Santa starts telling parents where they can buy their toys for less. One parent calls the manager aside to let him know that Santa’s willingness “to put the parent before the almighty dollar” made her a shopper for life. “I’m coming here for everything but toilet paper.” she said. The manager then devises a new ad campaign: “if we don’t have it, we’ll find it for you!”

The phones start lighting up, customer service reps are hopping, and the store is saved from the brink of bankruptcy.

Are you still shaking your head about delivering pizza?

“But that’s the movies! And Tony’s got a huge customer service operation! He’s made customer service the focal point of his business.”

Well, duh!

Your business IS serving your customer. Whatever industry you call your own, the reality is without customers, there’s no business. If you don’t serve the customers – that is, to exceed their expectations and deliver “WOW!” – you’ll probably not go out of business today, but it’s only a matter of time.

I remember when my mom first said “anything worth doing is worth doing well.” Within a week, I heard one of my teachers say “if you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” Hearing about Zappos incredible repeat business performance put this into perspective:

“If it’s not worth doing well the first time, why do it at all?”

Scott Stratten says that he doesn’t blog on a set schedule because he doesn’t believe in “mailing in a blog post”. One of my mailing lists hears from me weekly, and another hears from me only sporadically. Why? Because I can crank out a ton of quality, helpful information on a regular basis for one group, and the other – well, I’m not going to “mail it in”.

People who follow me know I don’t have a huge following, and that’s okay, because the people I work with are leaders. They’re a certain kind of person that doesn’t want their life whitewashed or sugar coated. We’re a growing community of people that support one another, rejoice for one another, cry for one another and sometimes we even pray for one another. That’s how I roll.

It would be easy for me to charge more, stop doing stuff for free, and try to “monetize” customer service. To me, though, that’s where humanity ends and greed begins. Sometimes you help because it’s the right thing to do, not because you’re going to make a buck doing it. Sometimes you give more than you should, but that doesn’t mean you should help less in another situation to make up the difference.

Give everything you’ve got to everything you do. That’s how you deliver wow. Tony’s rep could have just hung up on the hungry pizza lady. After all, Zappos sells shoes, not pizza (yet). That rep didn’t know Tony was in the room listening to the speaker phone. Yet that rep provided excellent customer service to a woman that wasn’t even a customer.

And look how the story continues to spread. The video alone has  thousands of views.

Reality Check

You can’t deliver wow to a hundred million people when it’s just you behind the curtain. You can deliver wow to your followers, to your supporters, to your family and friends. And as your following grows, you can’t scale you, but you can scale your organization, and develop a customer service team that understands your mission, your vision, and the value of your customers. People who aren’t just looking for a job, but are looking to make a difference.

So I’m on a mission to create more “Wow!” for my peeps. I’m not sure how to do it yet, but I’m working on it.

When you’re out there making offers to your people, are you delivering products, delivering “satisfaction”, or are you delivering pizzas?

“Wonder why it is difficult sometimes to move past the igniter and into sustainability. What slows us down?”

The answer came to me almost instantly: it’s too much like work for most of us.

There’s effort that goes into moving the car another mile toward the destination.

If passion is the fuel, effort is the engine – and sometimes, we just run out of gas. If we’re not maintaining the vehicle that houses that engine (ourselves), no amount of fuel will get it further down the road. If we’re not stopping periodically to fuel-up and check the fluid levels, it’s only a matter of time before we crack a cylinder, blow a gasket, or abandon the vehicle altogether.

If you’ve ever pushed a car from a dead stop, you know what I’m talking about. The sheer effort involved in getting the wheels to make the first revolution can bring you to tears.

Jim Collins talks about the need for build-up and momentum in his book “Good to Great“. If you abandon the vehicle during the build-up phase, you’ll never reach escape velocity. Momentum only comes after effort has been applied to create that velocity. No velocity, no momentum. No mass, no momentum. Which means, in order to have momentum, you’ve got to have effort applied to a mass to create velocity.

Not to get too scientific, but if any one factor isn’t there, it ain’t happening. Period. You can start to apply effort – that’s where passion comes in to play. Passion is the igniter, the spark, the fuel injected. It makes the effort easier – the car goes when you step on the “gas” – but you don’t have an endless supply.

It’s almost tragic when someone loses passion. Passionless marriages that were once burning bright with intoxicating heat and energy become these dead zones where two people barely co-exist.

What happened to the passion?

They got “burned out”, or “exhausted” with one another. Quite often, one or both parties didn’t take the time to make a pit stop, fuel up, and continue to expend effort together in the same direction.

But this isn’t a diatribe on marriage. It’s a question about how to get, build, and sustain momentum for something that you’re passionate about.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Heal, then bloom. You have to give yourself time and space to recover from the effort your expending.

2. Give and take. You can’t always give, because then there’s nothing left to give. You can’t always take, because there’s nothing left to take. If your fist is clenched, you can’t accept or give anything. Live with an open hand.

3. Recognize the parts of the whole. You can’t just gas up the engine. You have to check the tires, the radiator, the oil level. Everything needs to be in working order to sustain effort for any length of time. In a company, there are many parts (people) that make up the whole (organization). Everyone needs to be in working order to sustain effort for any length of time.

4. Have a destination in mind. You may not need a map for a short journey, but it certainly helps if all the effort is being applied in the same general direction. If you’re pushing a car from the front, and the rest of your team is pushing from other sides, chances are good you’ll get nowhere. Either that, or the side that’s pushing hardest will start building momentum – which might be in a completely wrong direction. With a destination (vision) in mind, everyone can get on the same side of the vehicle, ignite their passion, and start moving toward that destination.

There’s much more that could be said on this. The idea’s not to be exhaustive, but rather to re-fuel your passion and help you generate some momentum during your build-up phase. Once you hit escape velocity, breakthrough becomes imminent.

But first, there’s work to be done.

Our mission is to help 10,000 mompreneurs and working mothers bring balance to their life and work without apologies or excuses. It was a mission God laid on my heart nearly two years ago to the day.

The journey from there to here has not at all been what I planned nor imagined.

“My ways are not your ways.” says the Lord.

Quite.

In truth, for all the forward motion and “tally-ho!” attitude I bring to my work and my life, I’ve probably been the biggest heel dragger of all when it comes to growing this business.

I never really thought of myself as a “mompreneur” or a “wahm” in the first place. I’ve written before about the negative perceptions people hold about those labels. I, too, held some prejudice about those labels. So much, that I felt compelled to create a new “brand” of working mother – The Renaissance Mom.

Renaissance is about re-birth. Despite any scriptural connotations that might bring to mind, we carefully chose our logo to bring to mind the two most recognizable symbols of rebirth – the phoenix and the cross. Simply put, this company is committed to helping working mothers make the transition from reluctance to renaissance.

Why then, have I been dragging my heels on this business? Several reasons:

1. It’s not my business. Yes, I’m the founder, and my name is the owner of record. No, it’s not a company in name only. This is God’s business, not mine. Often times, I get up in the morning inspired to take actions so far removed from my comfort zone, I have a hard time doing them. I constantly ask “why” and find myself doing it anyway. Today I met a charming guy at a local ad agency. We talked for more than an hour as he shared generously some ideas to help promote The Renaissance Mom Experience to a more local audience. I went in with no real idea of what to expect. I walked away with so many blessings, I wanted to cry. It’s hard for me to invest myself fully in something that’s not mine. I’ve been burned by other partners in the past, and trust is hard won from me. The silly thing is, if I can’t trust God as my partner, who can I trust?
2. I like being in control. I like having an agenda that I’ve laid out and can work from. God is more extemporaneous than that – at least with me. And although it bugs me a little, I’m trying to go with His flow. But it’s hard, and sometimes downright frustrating. Letting go is not something that comes easy to me. Particularly when I’m “letting go to let God” so to speak. I have many “other” things to do, and sometimes I think I have better things to do. God and I don’t always see eye to eye. Luckily, He still loves me anyway.
3. Show me the money. To be frank (perhaps a little too frank), The Renaissance Mom has been entirely funded from the beginning by my other business endeavors. I’m not complaining, just noticing that the company is not profitable, and while I’m doing my best to remain faithful to God’s calling, it would be nice to turn a profit from the work we’re doing to help working moms. Perhaps it’s a bad time to start a company like this, but the demand for what we’re doing has been so overwhelming that we can’t stop now. For an unknown start-up, we’ve had the privilege of helping hundreds of women (and a few men) since January gain more balance and clarity in their lives, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s odd for me to run a company that’s not paying for itself, and if this is the mission God has laid on my heart, then maybe it’s not supposed to be profitable. I haven’t figured that one out yet.

That’s been my journey for the past few months, and through it, I’ve made some tremendous realizations:

1. God is always in control. That may sound like a “blatantly Christian” thing to say on a blog, but it’s true. Every time we’ve had a need for this event, there’s been a supply. I’ve been shy about giving the glory for it to God, and that ends today. God deserves the glory, because there’s no logical reason that this event should be happening at all, let alone happening successfully. And it is happening successfully. Whoever heard of bootstrapping an entire 3-day conference? God is miraculous and I need to stop dragging my heels telling other people about it.
2. Business is still business. Partners, sponsors and others connected to the work we do still want to see a return – they want to know what’s in it for them. Having a great idea isn’t good enough. Communicating that idea isn’t good enough. Providing the return makes the difference.
3. I still have a lot to learn. I’ve never claimed to be anybody’s guru. That’s a role for someone other than me. What I do is connect the dots for people, point them to resources, and hopefully help someone along the way. Very much of my success has been accidental, but now I’m in a position where a significant number of people actually look to me for advice/help. God help us all.

There are other lessons, to be sure, and my own renaissance is ongoing. When you step out in faith in a very public way, there’s bound to be obstacles. I’ve tried to stay low-key for a long time, and it’s just not going to work anymore. You may have already seen the shift, heard the undertones, and wondered what’s going on.

I’ve been pulling together a new approach for clients and folks like you that want to move forward with confidence  - out of reluctance and into renaissance. It’s very uncreatively called “30 Days to Renaissance”, and it is my new tool for stopping the heel dragging.

And you can have it free.

In light of my profitability comments earlier, free may be a bad choice, but it’s an e-course, delivered daily to your in-box, so it feels weird to charge you for it. Plus, God said to make it free, so I’m not going to argue with HIM.

You can fill out the opt-in box on our home page or Click here to get more details.

If it takes you from Reluctance to Renaissance, please share it with a friend. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your revelations about moving forward in faith in your life and business.