It’s been a little quiet around here, so I thought I’d just post a little list of some things we’ve been doing.

1. We went to the beach

Have you ever been to the beach? It’s marvelous.

We went for the kids’ Spring Break back in March and being there made me want to sell everything I own and move there.

This year, as part of our quest to find the perfect South Carolina beach, we hit Isle of Palms. And ladies and gentleman, I think the search might be over. Our stay on Isle of Palms in the middle of March was fantastic.

For all I know, the place could be 10x worse than the Jersey Shore during the thick of the summer, but it was the perfect family getaway while we were there.

2. Tool time with Tim Taylor

Home improvement has been the name of the game for the past few weeks as we’ve been knocking out projects around the house.

Having lived most recently in a house built in 1930, we’re accustomed to having someone around almost all the time fixing old house stuff. The strange thing about being in the new house is that we really haven’t had anyone here to fix anything in the year we’ve been here.

Until a few weeks ago. That’s when we broke the seal on repairs and maintenance. The compressor died on the A/C that cools the upstairs, so we replaced the whole unit with a dual fuel deal that ought to save us a few bucks in efficiency over the long-term.

Since then, we’ve rebuilt our front porch, changed a few exterior light fixtures, and looked at how to landscape a few spots in the yard. And I’ve cut the grass a bajillion times already.

3. We paid our taxes

I guess it would be more accurate to say we filed our return, because the taxes were paid during the year.

When everything shook out, the return showed we’re due for a pretty nice refund.

I set a goal this year of having everything in to my CPA by March 15. I delivered my stuff to his office this year on April 9.

There’s always next year.

4. Someone told me I say “Um” a lot when I speak

… which I have found incredibly helpful to know, but now it is also making me crazy.

5. Facebook is buying Instagram

Okay, this doesn’t really fit on a list of things we’ve been doing, but this is my blog, so I can steer this ship in any direction. Pardon me while I digress for a moment…

Instagram has just about moved into the top spot as my favorite app on my phone. It’s quick, it’s not spammy, it’s just un-anything the other things are.

Plus, it’s fun. It’s not like people Instagram buckets full of dead rats or “Hey, I found this old crab salad sandwich in my trunk. It stinks!” People post pics of sweet things or fun things or good food or cool things they’re doing.

And for now, at least, it works.The following, the liking, the privacy … it all works.

I don’t want to see the Facebook style of following, liking, and privacy applied to Instagram. It’ll jack it all up.

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I said this post would have Five Things, but here’s an important freebie that I didn’t want to miss. I was on a  Twitter sabbatical when this happened, so I didn’t get to mark the occasion:

6. @bluthquotes hits 100K followers

My brother has a couple of Twitter accounts. He has his personal account, and then he has another one.

With the second one, all he does is tweet quotes from the brilliant but short-lived TV show Arrested Development.

A few weeks ago, that account – @bluthquotes – earned its 100,000th follower.

Watching that account grow has been fascinating and hilarious. And the feed is really funny. Congrats, Brian!

A few weeks ago I had to have an ultrasound.

Before we get too far, let’s get something out of the way. Just because I had an ultrasound and I’m sharing that with you on the blog doesn’t mean you’re entitled to know whether I’m carrying a boy or a girl. Stop being so dang nosy.

Anyway, I had an ultrasound because my doctor thought I might have a kidney stone or gall stone. And because I sure as heck thought I might have a kidney stone.

So I showed up at the stroke of 7 a.m. and waited in an empty waiting room for a few minutes while the world’s loudest TV blared the day’s headlines. The TV was so loud I couldn’t make out everything I heard, but I caught, “Meth. Weather. People don’t like taxes.”

Eventually a nice lady in scrubs fetched me and we went back to her room. She very clinically asked me to take my shirt off and lay on my side on the table. So while she cranked up her ultrasound machine, I peeled off my shirt and gave her exactly what she asked for: my ripped, shirtless midwinter goodness, flat on an exam table.

As she slathered that gel all over my ribs (nasty – I don’t like stuff on my skin) I looked around her room. This lady does ultrasounds, alone, in a dark room in the basement of a building all day. From what I could tell, there wasn’t much chance for someone in her position to interact with coworkers, or for that matter, with supervisors.

Depending on the way you’re wired, that setup may sound pretty nice. You’ve got your own space, with no one breathing down your neck. But I’d imagine if you take someone who feeds off the energy of other people and put them in that setup, they’d get a little squirrelly after a while.

Something I’ve come to realize lately is that whether the person you meet works alone or is surrounded by dozens of coworkers, you may be the only encouragement they receive that day.

When I walk into grab my dry cleaning and see people scrambling around getting work done, I assume there’s at least one person back there saying, “Good job! Keep it up!” But there might not be.

And when the ultrasound tech finished studying my kidneys and (reluctantly, I think) invited me to put my shirt back on, I missed the opportunity to thank her and encourage her for the day ahead of her. I was too anxious about getting the nasty ultrasound goop off of me.

You may be the only encouragement someone gets today. Go give it!

Want to try something that will open your eyes?

Think for a minute about how many brands or companies you interact with before you ever get to your office in the morning.

I interact with a host of coffee-related companies, then a handful of soap, shave and shampoo-related companies. I interact with the cable company, Twitter, WordPress and the Today Show. I interact with my kids’ school. I interact with the dry cleaner. I interact with the gas station. And every now and then if I think I need a treat I interact with Dunkin Donuts or Chick-fil-a.

That’s all before 8:15 a.m.

We interact with tons of brands. Tons of companies. Every day.

And while most of those interactions are unremarkable, the broader relationships can be transformed by knowing what customers want. It’s when we know what customers want and when we deliver it well that we make a real impact in a customer’s life.

What do customers want right now? Five things:

1) Customers want connection.

Feeling unconnected is difficult. People want to be connected to you. Tell them how they can contact you. Tell them when they can contact you. In some cases, people want to be connected with other customers of yours. Help them make those links. Initiate connection by calling, emailing, sending a newsletter, texting or DM’ing. Just don’t spam. People want to feel personally connected to a place they send their money.

2) Customers want information.

If feeling unconnected is difficult, feeling ignorant is worse. Who likes being out of the loop? Who likes having a product they don’t know how to use? Who wants to pull into the drive-through at the bank and find that the name has changed? Who likes having the channel lineup change but no guide to go with it? Feed your customers information, maybe more than they want. They don’t want to feel ignorant.

3) Customers want value.

A friend bought a $700 computer for $500 at Sam’s Club the other day. He was attracted to the price, but was he shopping for a $500 computer and the stuff that comes loaded on a $500 computer? No. He was shopping for a $700 computer and the chips and processors and the 1.21 jigowatts that come loaded on it, but got a great price by paying $500.

People will beat you up over price. They’ll burn $50 in gas driving around town to save $2 on AA batteries. But what they want is value. They want to know that what they have is worth something. They want to know that what they have is worth what they paid for it or more than what they paid for it. That’s value.

Always show customers that what they’re getting is worth what they’re paying for it, or maybe even more.

4) Customers want purpose.

You can read a lot into who your customers think they are or who they want to be from the purchases they make. Our spending is often a few steps ahead of us in terms of who we’re becoming.

If your paper goods shop starts selling more calendars and organizers, you can bet some folks are resolved to become more organized and focused. If you sell juicers and vitamins, your customers have made some choices about what they’re putting in their bodies.

But here’s the thing: customers don’t always have purpose. Sometimes they’re waiting for someone else to give it to them.

Tell them they can run a half marathon. Tell them they can write a book. Tell them they can research and build a family tree that goes back nine generations. Tell them they can change a broken system.

And then watch the money flow.

Not to get in their pocket, but because connecting people with purpose is one of the most powerful things anyone can do.

5) Customers want a path.

You want 100% of your customer’s wallet.

Your customer may or may not be willing to do that, but they’re probably not willing to do it all at once.

Show your customers the path. Show your customers what it’s going to be like to take the next couple of steps with you.

We can make a difference in the lives of our customers when we give them connection, information, value, purpose and a path.

Think about some of the brands you use. What do you want more of from them?

This has been a goofy week around our place, so my normal schedule has been off. For that reason, I don’t have as much to share in today’s Friday Linking for Thinking.

But here are two items you might find interesting:

Good marketing vs. Bad Marketing from Simon Sinek at Start with Why.

7 Steps for Creating a Creative System to be More Creative by Jeremie Kubicek on the Catalyst blog. Think they’re committed to your creativity?

And in case you missed it, we had two posts up here this week:

Five ways to make 2012 a great year

Why your information sources matter

Got big plans for the weekend?

Thanks to Brian for jumping in last week and suggesting a name for this weekly feature. We’ll go with Linking for Thinking for now.

Here’s some stuff worth reading from around the World Wide Web this week:

Training Yourself to See New Strategic Options at Fast Company. Get inside the minds of the greatest chess players to know how to make better choices.

Margins by Kelly at Love Well. Kelly writes with clarity and wisdom about priorities and the season of life her family is walking in right now. She got my attention with this post.

Monday was the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. I thought Lora Lynn’s post When Dreams Come True was a simple and symbolic statement of all that Dr. King accomplished.

And from what I can tell, it looks like my RSS feed wasn’t working properly, so there’s a chance you may have missed some of the hot blogging action going on around here. Here are this week’s posts:

What is too much to give?

Five things I know about being a leader

That’s it for this week. What’s something funny that happened to you this week?

Want to help me out?

I’m looking for a name for this Friday feature other than “Friday roundup.” A “roundup” feels like we should be sitting around a campfire in chaps and cowboy hats eating some chili that a guy we call Cookie made for us.

And I’m reluctant to call it “Friday links” because that sounds like something you might eat with eggs and toast. I don’t know. I’m open to your suggestions.

With that said…

Here’s another collection of some great stuff. I hope you find it helpful:

Forget Big Data. How About Starting Small? by Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent put into words something I’ve been thinking for a long time. Companies miss opportunities because they don’t capitalize on what they already have.

Learning vs. Arrogant Organizations: A Lesson in Survival by Maurilio Amorim. Many organizations, rather than merely stumbling towards diminishing returns, are actually headed for obsolescence. Maurilio defines the difference maker.

Stop Waiting to be Picked by Jeff Goins is a must read for everyone. Jeff’s audience is primarily writers, but the truth is good for everyone: You don’t need permission in life. You can give it to yourself. Go read Jeff’s post.

And here’s something to make you laugh this week: Important New Emoticons at McSweeney’s.

In case you missed it, we had two posts up here this week:

Deep relationships and different conversations

Unraveling the web of overcommitment

What has been the best part of your week so far?

I thought I’d end the week by sharing some good stuff I read this week.

The Secret of Life from Steve Jobs in 46 Seconds at Brain Pickings has three video clips of an interview with a healthy, thick-bearded Steve Jobs. Here are some words I found inspirational:

“When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

7 Steps to Making Goals You Can Keep by Jeremy Statton is a helpful post, particularly as we march into a fresh new year. Go have a look.

And to keep things from getting too serious around here, I’d invite you to have a look at A List of Don’ts for Women on Bicycles Circa 1895 at Brain Pickings. My favorite instruction? “Don’t cultivate a bicycle face.” The question I ask myself every day is: “Am I making a bicycle face right now?”

In case you missed it, we had two posts up here this week, so check those out before you go:

Three benefits of being more authentic

Rich experiences create new realities

There’s some stuff to munch on. I hope you enjoy. Now, how’s your week been? How would you describe it in one word?

If you’re flirting with the idea if starting your own blog in 2012, let me say this:

Do it. For many reasons, it’s time well spent.

For some practical and philosophical help on how to get started, here’s a series I put together at the beginning of 2011 that you might find useful.

2007 was my year, is 2011 yours?

Getting started: I don’t have anything to say

Getting started: Create your blog

Getting started: But I can’t write

Getting started: Publicize your blog

If you take the leap, will you let me know? I’d love to be one of your readers!