How is HusbandHero going?

Our HusbandHero business has been up for 15 months, and since many people have been asking us how it's going, I thought I'd do a blog post on it and share all the details that I'm sure you're dying to know! I'll try to make this brief since (1) your time is valuable and (2) I'd rather be kissing my husband right now..... Just glance through the bolded topics and read what you'd like--and any comments or suggestions you have for us would be appreciated. Thanks!

Why we started HusbandHero:

A couple of years ago, Eric wanted to plan a great birthday date for me, but he couldn't find much support online. He came up with the idea of providing a service to help husbands be more romantic. It would include monthly ideas organized by cost and a feature where the wife could put in anniversaries she wanted her husband to remember and spell out exactly what she wanted him to do for her.

Eric has been serving as the bishop of our ward at church since January of 2007, and as he's spoken with a variety of married couples, he's realized that most marriages could benefit from a little extra love and concern.

So...when an opportunity opened up for us to devote some serious time to getting the business up and running, we took it. And that is how HusbandHero was born.

Favorite comments from clients and potential clients:

I really don't think we could have nicer clients. Not everyone needs or wants the service, obviously, and we definitely have improvements to make, but we've actually had a lot of great feedback from the husbands and wives who are part of our online community.

Some husbands who travel a lot use our service so they don't forget that their wives need some love and attention when they ARE home. Other husbands have said that they just love their wives SO much, and they want to be better for them. We've also heard things like, "You know, my wife sacrifices so much for me and the family, and I want to be romantic for her. This service helps me to do that." I'm a big fan of our Heroes.

We've heard back from many wives, too, who say that HusbandHero actually works. Their husbands are more thoughtful and romantic, and there's an improvement in their marriage overall. I LOVE that!

One wife contacted us and said that when she signed her husband up for the service, he was kind of upset (you know..."Why do you think I need help being romantic?"). She said, "Fine, I'll cancel it." But then she forgot to cancel it. Well, a few months went by, and her husband transferred email accounts. He said to his wife, "Honey, would you mind getting HusbandHero switched to my new email account?" She was totally surprised (but I don't think she showed it), and she immediately logged in and corrected his account info. Then she contacted us and said, "So that's why he's been so great these last few months!"

As far as potential clients' responses go, we've had a mixed response. Whenever I hand out flyers for the service or tell people about it, I get GREAT feedback. Initially, people think I'm joking when I explain it, but as I describe it in more detail, the idea strikes a chord with them. Men say, "Just having my wife tell me what she wants me to do for all the special occasions is worth the dollar a month alone!" Women get all giddy when I tell them we help husbands be more romantic, and they say, "Thank you! We need this!"

But then there are husbands who say things like, "Yeah, like I'm going to pay someone a dollar a month to remind me what a LOSER I am?" (That one cracked me up.)

I've read several blogs that women have written about HusbandHero, and they've all been great so far. One woman said, "I just found my favorite website in the whole world! I've been reading through it for the past half-hour, and I'm TOTALLY signing my husband up for this!"

So the initial excitement has been great...it's now a matter of growing/improving the site and marketing it to the world....

Where we're going with HusbandHero:

(1) We need an updated admin site to handle our future growth. If any of you would like to refer us to friends of yours who are technology specialists, please do! We're working with a new website/marketing firm right now, but we're always open to other ideas.

(2) We're planning to increase our communication with the husbands and wives and provide more products. The most common request we get from our customers is that they want more emails and more frequent reminders. Once or twice a week would be great for a lot of people. We're also planning to partner with dropshippers who can help us get great romantic products out to our customers. We've had a lot of requests for HusbandHero t-shirts, too. One wife asked us for our logo so she could make an iron-on shirt for her husband for Christmas.

(3) We need to figure out the motivations/hesitations behind our sign-up process. There are some interesting dynamics that go on between husbands and wives when you bring up a service like this. Wives, for the most part, want more romance, but they want their husbands to be the ones to sign up. Or...wives don't want their husbands to have any "help." They want all the ideas to come directly from their husbands, and they think a service like this is "cheating." Any comments on this, ladies? I personally think it's silly to turn down romance because the idea came from an outside source. A sweet note is a sweet note to me.

Husbands seem to fall into one of two categories. Either they're excited to have a service that directly benefits their marriages or they think becoming a HusbandHero is a sign that they're not good enough as they are. We're trying to pitch it as a resource available to help make romance easier for husbands who love their wives. We help the Hero emerge....

(4) We need easier ways to give HusbandHero as a wedding gift, etc. I think mother-in-laws are our best clients...seriously. Printable gift certificates or something like that would be helpful.

(5) We need to fine-tune the types of ideas we send. It's so hard to make sure we're simultaneously meeting the needs of newlyweds, empty-nesters, and couples who have children at home. I'm in the process of preparing a survey to go out to our past and current customres to determine what they liked, what they'd like to see improved, etc. We're also putting together a database of great date ideas, anniversary celebrations, etc. to be available to all our members.

(6) We're planning to provide many more resources to help husbands and wives strengthen their marriages. For those of you who have been on my other website, http://www.powerofmoms.com/, we're planning to use that as a model for the resources that will be available on HusbandHero. Our goal is to have articles, podcasts, eBooks, webinars, and other programs that relate to building stronger marriages. This is what is really exciting to me and Eric. We've learned a lot over the past 11 years about what it takes to make our marriage great, and we're excited to teach those principles in a fun, meaningful way. This has been a wonderful experience for us, and we do our best to "walk the walk."

If you have any ideas for us, please post a comment or email suggestions@husbandhero.com.

And if you're not a HusbandHero/WonderWife yet, but you'd like to be...I'm giving out some free subscriptions. Email me or leave a comment to let me know if you want one.

Have a great day!