David Searns | Co-CEO
I feel like this may be too cliché…
A “Giving Thanks” newsletter two days after Thanksgiving.
Yeah, this may not be the most original topic, but that doesn’t make it any less important…or hopefully any less valuable to you.
Sure, I have a list of people I want to thank. People who mean a lot to me. People I want to recognize for their contributions to our company. People who have gone the extra mile to help our clients. And people who have no idea they’ve had a profound impact on me and others I know.
But before we get to the recognition, let’s talk about the most important aspect of today’s newsletter: gratitude.
Speaking of clichés...
The practice of gratitude is so overused in pop culture that it often lacks genuine meaning. It’s more about “virtue signaling” than truly embracing the powerful feelings and benefits of a gratitude practice.
Why gratitude is essential in your life.
Let’s start with the science.
Our brains are hard-wired toward negativity. We’re keenly attuned to spotting problems, dangers, and discomfort. It’s a survival instinct that dates back to primitive mankind.
It’s why people spend so much time complaining…and gossiping. It’s our tribal way of creating emotional safety (although ironically, complaining actually makes us feel worse!)
Gratitude rewires our brains. It makes us tune in to positive things. It triggers the reward center in our brain, which releases the feel-good hormones: dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
Having a “gratitude practice” – a daily routine of taking time to reflect, think about, and even write down things we are grateful for – can have incredible benefits on your career and your personal life.
With credit to Gemini AI, here are a few benefits of daily gratitude:
Mental health Gratitude can help reduce stress and anxiety, and protect against depression and other mental health challenges. It can also help you cope with difficult times by reframing your mindset and reducing the impact of negative thinking.
Physical health Gratitude can help lower blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. It can also support heart health and help you get a better night's sleep.
Social relationships Gratitude can help you strengthen your relationships and understand others better. Brain activity Gratitude can change your brain activity, making it more distinct from brain activity related to guilt. It can also help train your brain to be more sensitive to gratitude over time. Emotional well-being Gratitude can help you experience greater joy and feel more positive emotions. It can also help you promote a positive outlook on life.
What are YOU grateful for?
Sure, there are the obvious responses: parents, children, siblings, and other family and friends.
In business, we have co-workers (at least the non-annoying ones), clients, vendors, and professional associates.
But can you go deeper?
A true gratitude practice is about learning to see the positives in almost any circumstance. To appreciate the people who have influenced you. The lessons you’ve learned. And the events that made you grow as a person.
True practitioners learn to see the silver lining in almost any situation.
Last Spring, at the MIT Entrepreneurial Masters’ Program, I had the privilege of hearing Barret Ersek talk about “finding your X-factor.”
His talk opened with a photograph of a burned-out warehouse after a devastating fire. Barrett told us that shell of a building was the warehouse for his first business—a lawn fertilization company he ran when he was just 17 years old.
Inside that warehouse (pre-fire) was over $1 million in fertilizer inventory. Now gone. Up in smoke. And uninsured.
Most people, after having lost 100% of the assets of their business…and being buried in debt for the loans taken to purchase that inventory, would probably throw in the towel.
Not Barrett.
As a 17-year-old far wiser than his years, he chose to see that fire as a gift—an opportunity to reflect, to rethink his business, and re-engineer his company.
Barrett didn't just reinvent his business. He reinvented his entire industry!
Back when the fire occurred, in the early 2000s, all lawncare companies operated basically the same way. A customer calls for a quote. A salesperson goes to the homeowner's property, measures the yard, takes the numbers back to the office, and returns with a quote in one to three weeks.
Unsurprisingly, with every lawn care company following the same sales process, the industry became a race to the bottom on price.
So what did Barrett do?
He contacted NASA. He licensed access to the photo images they had of every property in his community (FYI, this was all pre-Google Earth). And he developed software to calculate the yard size from the photos and instantly deliver quotes.
Barrett went from certain bankruptcy to growing a $10 million-a-year lawn care business that he successfully sold to ServiceMaster in 2009.
That’s the power of gratitude. Being able to see—and appreciate—the silver lining in any situation, no matter how black the clouds appear.
Gratitude can change your life.
Let me ask again: what are you grateful for?
Make a list. Write it down.
Better yet, take 5 minutes at the start or end of your day and jot down three things you are grateful for from that day.
If you practice this habit for a few weeks, you will notice that you start to see the world differently. You’ll notice things you might have missed. You’ll appreciate people and events more deeply. And you will find yourself proactively looking for opportunities to be grateful.
You’ll also feel happier.
My gratitude list.
I promise not to bore you with the full list…it would read like movie credits that scroll and scroll and scroll.
But I do want to say thank you to a few very important people.
First, I would not have survived this year without my family. My mom passed away this past January, just two years and three months after my dad passed. I am not sure what I would have done if my wife and kids had not been around…or at least a phone call away.
I also want to thank Haley Marketing’s leadership team. 2024 has been a challenging year as we’ve initiated monumental changes in our business. Change is hard. Big change is exponentially harder. Having a great team is the only thing that makes it all possible.
I want to thank our clients. You give us the opportunity to be of service. You challenge us to find new and better ways to help you sell and recruit. And you are brutally honest when we do something you don’t like. That feedback is invaluable.
A big thank you to our global Haley Marketing team. You make things happen. You bring our company’s core values to life. You deliver meaningful impact for our clients. And you support one another as we navigate the ups and downs of living our missing and driving toward our vision for the future.
And lastly (at least for this newsletter), thank you to YOU…our SMART IDEAS Weekly readers. This newsletter was created for you. To provide insights and actionable ideas that help you sell more, recruit better (and more) talent, and hopefully, make your lives a little better.
For those in the U.S., I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families. And for all, one more big THANK YOU for being here today. |
