November is National Gratitude Month. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Yet, in the day-to-day grind of owning a business, sometimes it is hard to take the time to simply be thankful. We become so worried about putting out fires, about solving problems, about profit and loss and quarterlies and covering shifts and submitting that end of year plan. Our necessary focus on the urgent often leaves very little room for simple reflection on the good.
Today, I wanted to share three things that I do to cultivate an attitude of gratitude in my business. They’re simple actions that anyone can follow. They don’t take up a ton of time, and they cost next to nothing to execute. Heck, I’m not even 100% consistent in sticking to them. If you’ve found yourself feeling like owning a business can be more burden than blessing, try some of these ideas.
Show your gratitude for the people in your business
As the self-declared “Chief Words Officer” of my business, you know I have a strong belief in the power of the written word. But words without action can come across hollow.
My Mom is the Queen of the Thank You Card.
Yes, it is a proper noun.
If that title were to ever be bestowed upon somebody, it would be Sue Sharp. This woman makes hand-made works of art that demonstrate her thankfulness in paper form. They’re intricate, painstakingly put together with fancy tools and tons of creativity. My mom set the bar really high for me in terms of thank you cards.
You don’t need to go Sue Sharp over-the-top with your gestures of appreciation. Consider making it a regular practice to show, through tokens or notes or small gifts, your gratitude for the people who make your business run.
Some great gratitude examples:
I do my best to send a handwritten thank you note to anybody who makes the time to meet with me. Full disclosure, they aren’t hand-made works of art, and sometimes they aren’t sent as quickly as I’d like. My intent here is to share with the human who is considering me as a part of their business success how much I appreciate their time AND their commitment to their customers’ experience.
One of the most impressive candidates I’ve ever interviewed for a job sent me a hand-written thank you card after our interview. The fact that she went beyond sending a standard follow-up email made a major impact on how I viewed her as a candidate.
In my agency days, I would bring in breakfast burritos and favorite coffee orders on days I knew would be particularly intense. These small acts of gratitude weren’t bank-breakers, and took only a small investment of my time and energy. Being proactive in recognizing their efforts helped create noticeable shifts in the office morale, and I don’t think it was just because nobody was hangry.
The magical compounding effect of acts of gratitude
When you see people and acknowledge their efforts, something magical happens. First, it has a compounding effect on the number of above-and-beyond behaviors those people demonstrate. Even more importantly, however, this exercise in gratitude gives you time to think about what you really appreciated about the exchange/interaction/behavior. Focusing on and acknowledging goodness breeds more goodness.
Try it for yourself:
Think of a member of your team, a customer, or a client, that you could write a thank you card for. Then write it. And send it.
If you’re less of a written-word person, think of a small gift, token, or favor you could give to the person you wish to recognize.
Be on the look-out for the positive
In Seth Godin’s altMBA we called this Good Finding.
Being in business can be stressful, especially if you’re the person both selling AND delivering the product or service. When I write my post-meets&treats Thank You cards to new potential clients, it actually helps to focus my perspective on why I’m doing what I do. I love the chance to stew about business strategy and challenges, to present solutions and ideas that might make business owners’ lives better. I am immensely grateful that people take the time to share their business needs with me, somebody they’ve probably just met. And I wouldn’t get to do this if people didn’t contact me to chat. So what might have been viewed through my own negative lens of Sales gets reframed as Opportunity Finding and Solutions Giving. This helps my attitude and likely makes for a much more positive experience for the people I’m hoping to serve, too.
When you’re the one in charge, all the fires come to you, and in many instances your business can go off the rails by the actions, systems, or processes of a partner that are entirely outside of your control. Being on the look-out for the positive helps me to assume the best case scenario in these situations, which almost always leads to a better outcome.
A customer comes to you on a busy Saturday to complain about the service they just received. Are you able to find space for gratitude here? By thanking them for the opportunity to improve your business because of their willingness to speak up, you diffuse the situation and turn a potentially adversarial interaction into a Same Team situation. Win!
A client comes back to you with another round of revisions to the project, and you don’t 100% agree with all their requested changes. What is there to be grateful for here? They wouldn’t ask for more revisions if they didn’t care deeply about the outcome of the project. By focusing on the common ground you share with your client (getting the best outcome from the project), you can work together to identify the best course forward.
Try it for yourself:
Next time you have to send an email to or get on the phone with a vendor, find something to thank them for in the first few words of the interaction.
Before you respond to the next fire, take a second to ask yourself “Where is the space for gratitude in this?”
When it seems hopeless, find one small positive action and take it
Sometimes, things just aren’t going well.
You are at a loss for anything to feel much gratitude about. People are being irrational. Things are broken. It’s raining outside.
Ask yourself: “What do I control right now?”
And then ask, “What’s one thing I can do right now to make that situation better?”
It doesn’t have to be the complete solution to your problem. Sometimes it might not even be an action that makes a dent in your problem. But it’s something you can control. It’s something you can DO, that will make you or somebody else involved feel better, generate momentum, get out of your own way.
Even better, try going all “Obstacle is the way” on the issue at hand.
What is the thing in your way? Inspect it. Dissect it. Lean into it. Hug that bear. Sometimes, the thing that’s standing in your way can force a completely unexpected and wondrously positive outcome that you’d never have imagined if everything had been going peachy keen.
Here are two exceptional book recommendations that center on this theme. They teach on these concepts so much more thoroughly and eloquently than any blog post I write can do justice.
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
An inspiring book about how to turn trial into triumph, with great examples and stoic wisdom littered throughout. Lessons in persistence, creativity, and resilience in the face of challenges and constraints and limitations. In life and in business, we can all afford to embrace some of this wisdom!⠀When we are met with resistance, how do we proceed? Do we give up? Or can we embrace the challenge in front of us as the very thing that will make us successful?
A Beautiful Constraint by Adam Morgan & Mark Barden
An absolute game-changer from my altMBA reading, this one is a hard-copy must-have. From the book jacket, “A Beautiful Constraint provides simple and practical tools to help almost anyone use constraints as a source of inspiration rather than asphyxiation.” And best of all, for those of us whose biggest constraint happens to be TIME, each chapter has a super easy to find and read summary that allows you to get all the concepts in just 21 minutes. Who doesn’t have 21 minutes? I wasted that much time on Instagram this morning!
Summin’ it up
One of the reasons I started my own business was because I believed there was a better way to BE in business, and I hadn’t found an employer who would let me live in that way of being. I was certain that I hadn’t found my dream company yet because I hadn’t created it yet.
Then, I started my business and discovered that even when you are the key decision maker, even when you’re the official and undisputed Decider of the Things, it’s not always going to be sunshine and rainbows.
By being mindful about the things that I control and focusing on spreading positivity in every interaction, I’ve been able to create a business that (even with its stresses and challenges) is towards the top of my “Thing to be Grateful For” list this year.
I invite you to try a few of these ideas out for yourself. Write a few thank you cards. Lead an interaction from a best-case scenario mindset. Take a small action to improve a situation when things seem bleak.
You’ll get more done, find more good in the world, and grow your business in ways you probably never could have imagined.