Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby from Saint With Gratitude. It is middle of December. Just wanted to express appreciation for this time of year. I know this time of year is challenging for some people. Um, and I, I love this time of year as a chance to reflect on my life, but also, , see what direction I want ahead in the, in the coming year.

So I usually take a couple weeks starting now to just see where I want my business and my personal life to go in the coming year. Not do too much work, actually do a lot of journaling, a lot of reflecting, a lot of brainstorming and thinking and getting together. With other people that are meaningful in my life.

And, uh, it's just a chance to, Hey, how can we start fresh for the next year and really design our life the way we want? So I just want to express appreciation for this time of year. I love it. What do you like about December as you head into the new year? Would love to hear from you. Feel free to email [email protected].

Otherwise, thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude today. December 17th is a special day. It's my best friend, Lori's birthday. Happy birthday Lori. Hope you have a wonderful day. Just want to say a few, kind words about Lori. You know, we've been friends for, a better part of 10 years, a little bit over 10 years now.

And she's. Probably the most loyal friend I've ever had. She's an amazing woman. She just cares about all of humanity. She's somebody who's dependable, somebody who is courageous, somebody that you can count on. She's somebody that speaks up for what she believes in and believes in in.

and, just you couldn't ask for a better friend. So I am just really grateful to have her in my life. She's helped me tremendously professionally, but even better, she's helped me personally be a better human. And for that, I thank you, Lori. Again, happy birthday. Hope it's a wonderful.

And cheers to many more years of friendship together. I'm Scott Colby with Say With Gratitude, and this has been the Daily Gratitude Minute. Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude. Yesterday I delivered a virtual gratitude workshop to a company and we were talking about connection in the workplace. One statistic says that 61% of employees are lonely and underperforming. And I think it's important to note that loneliness is not the absence of people.

It's the absence of connection. So if you think about it, you know, you could be married, you could have children, and you could be lonely if there's not meaningful connection between you and your family members. You could work for a company where you work closely with a group of people. It could be up, you know, over a hundred people, and you can still feel lonely if there's an absence of meaningful connect.

So whether we're talking about the workplace or we're talking about your home, loneliness has become a problem. I think it's gotten worse during the pandemic, and it doesn't matter if you are surrounded by people, if there's no connection there. So I really want you to take this message to heart. How do you create meaningful connections?

One way, which I've talked about a lot, is to ask meaningful questions. , and that's one of the reasons I created the Grateful Deck so that we could start having deeper conversations and we need to create that space and invite. People to share what they are feeling. A lot of times at work, we don't share our feelings.

We check our emotions at the door when we get to work, right? And we can have all these feelings of depression, overwhelm, stress, and anxiety, and our coworkers may never even know that if that's the case, that person that has all those emotions is gonna feel lonely. They're not gonna do a very good job.

They're not gonna feel good. and that's gonna cost the company money. So think about how you can create a deeper connection at work. If you go to gratitude toolkit.com, gratitude toolkit.com, you can download all 120 questions from the Grateful Deck and start using it at work or even at home, and create these closer bonds.

Team members so that they feel like they belong and that they're heard and that you acknowledge them. So hope that helps. Go to gratitude toolkit.com, download the questions. If I can help in any way, send me an email, Scott Scott colby.com. This has been the Daily Gratitude Minute. Thank you so much for listening.

Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. My name is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude. . Yesterday I was in a virtual meeting and we were playing a few rounds of the Grateful Deck, which is my card deck with 120 questions to start meaningful conversations. We each took a turn to answer a question, and the question I got was, Tell me about one of your happiest moments.

So, I love this question because it reminds us of the good in our lives, and, and we can recall a memory that we had that perhaps put a smile on my face. So my answer to this question was back in 2003, it was the day after the 4th of July. , that's when I adopted my cat's, Nomar and Mia. Now, Nomar is no longer with us.

He passed away at the, uh, in, um, August of 2019, right before I moved to Tennessee. But back in 2003, I was living in Dallas at the time. I had never owned a pet before, but I knew, um, from my, uh, had a relationship with a girl. got a cat and I loved that cat, so I figured, hey, one day I'll get a cat. And so my sister was visiting me in Dallas and we went to the mall to do some clothes shopping and the S P C A was there, and you know, when.

There's S P C A A rescue. I love to just look, you know, I'll look at the cats and the kittens and the dogs and the puppies. Well, sure enough, I picked up one of the cats. I forget which kitten I picked up first. Uh, and I was talking it over with my sister and. Before you knew it, I had decided to adopt a kitten.

And Jill, my sister, had suggested that I think about getting two. She had had a cat at the time, uh, just one cat and she always kind of wished she had had two cats because whenever she left town, her cat was alone and she felt bad and would have liked for her cat to have the company of another. So I actually ended up going clothes shopping at the mall as my intention.

And I came home that day with two kittens, uh, Nomar and Mia and uh, Mia, who is still around. She will be 20 in April. Uh, both of those cats have put a lot of smiles on my faces, brings a lot of joy to my heart, and I just really have. Memories of the day. I adopted both of them. They were really young, so they weren't from the same litter, but they were from, from the same rescue about two weeks apart.

So we kind of pegged Mia's birthday as April 10th, 20 or 2003, and Nomar as April 27th, which is also my birthday, 2003. So he was just slightly younger and uh, just got, I've gotten to experience the. Of being a pet owner for the last 19 and a half years. Those of you who have a dog or a cat or uh, any pet, you know what I'm talking about, they.

Bring a lot of happiness and joy to our lives. One quick thing before I sign off, so this was a question from the Grateful Deck. I encourage you perhaps to take that question and get a group of people. Maybe it's your family on Christmas morning. Maybe you have a group of friends or even at work to start a meeting.

You can. Learn a lot about some, somebody that you may not know by just answering that specific question. If you want to download all 120 questions, I've got a, of course you could buy the physical version, but if you want this for free, I've got the downloadable version. You can go to gratitude toolkit.com.

Gratitude toolkit.com. I'm Scott Colby with Say It With Gratitude, and this has been your daily gratitude minute. Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude. I had a conversation with my friend Terry yesterday. Now Terry just moved from Colorado to England. He runs running camps, uh, at least he did in Colorado. And we had partnered, uh, doing some adventure trips where we would lead groups of people doing.

Various adventure activities, including hiking. He was asking me how my hiking business and speaking business was going, and I said one of my goals is to lead companies, you know, teams in organizations to come together and get outta their comfort zone and climb a mountain together. And I told Terry, you know, imagine some people sit in the same uh, office and maybe next to each.

For 3, 4, 5 years, and they don't really know the people that they work with on a personal level. And I hypothesized to Terry that I bet after bringing a team together and climbing a mountain, let's say it takes five to eight hours, that that team would know each other better, more intimately than potentially.

working together, sitting next to each other over the last three to five years. Now this is hypothetical. Some organizations do a really good job, uh, integrating their teams and getting to know each other on a deeper level. But for many companies, you go into work, you put your head down, you do your job, you don't really.

Personal or meaningful conversations with your coworkers. You're just all about business. And the research shows that that isn't the most effective way to build a team. So when you get outside of your comfort zone and get out and do something like climb a mountain, you can foster better communication, improved creative thinking, improved critical thinking.

the ability to resolve conflicts better and our overall stronger team oriented foundation. So that's one of my goals in 2023 is to put together hiking programs like these for organizations. If this is something that you. And your company may be interested in at least exploring, we could chat about it.

Just send me an [email protected]. Would love to have a conversation on what this might look like for you. I'm Scott Colby with Say It With Gratitude, and this is Ben, the daily gratitude minute. Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude. Okay. Today's gratitude tip. This is for businesses, especially if you have an actual store location or it can set up outta market, and that's to offer free goodies. Um, so what I mean by this, I'll just give you a couple examples.

Trader Joe's, uh, which is a grocery store chain, they always have complimentary coffee in the front of the store. This freebie lets the store showcase different types of coffee that they carry, and meanwhile, shoppers get a chance to try before they buy and have a warming cup of Joe while browsing the aisles.

Or it's just a way to show gratitude towards. Customers offer something for free like coffee. I know in uh, Denver, when I lived in Denver, there was a cookie company called Marsha's. Cookies and they were always at farmer's markets and they would set up, uh, their table and have free samples of cookies. I would try the samples and then I would buy the cookies.

So not only was it goodwill given away free samples of cookies, but at actually increased, I would imagine an increased sales as well, at least for me. Uh, and then this past weekend I was at a holiday market in Johnson City, up in northeast t. , same thing. There was a, a booth that sold some pretty good quality chocolate, uh, like different types of chocolate bark.

I actually sampled their dark chocolate peppermint bark and I was hooked and bought a package of that. So when you can give away samples, um, you can increase sales or increase, uh, the time that. Customers are in your store shopping and it just creates a goodwill, good conversation starter as well. One last thing.

So this was tip number nine in my book, the Grateful Entrepreneur. If you want a free downloadable copy of the Grateful Entrepreneur, you can go to this website, gratitude toolkit.com. Gratitude toolkit.com. I will send you a free sample of the book, excuse me, a free download of the book, not a sample. The entire book as well as some other gratitude goodies.

So just go to gratitude toolkit.com and you can download it. I'm Scott Colby with Say It With Gratitude, and this has been the Daily Gratitude Minute. Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. My name is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude The other day I mentioned that a friend and colleague of mine interviewed me to express appreciation. About another friend and colleague of ours in the fitness industry, just how awesome a person she is. So I said some really nice words about her and my friend who did the interview.

He's interviewing a bunch of people, he's editing it and putting together a nice video montage to gift our mutual friend. I want to point out, there's actually a service that can do this as well. So if you're interested in doing something like this in your business to express appreciation to somebody, could be a client, could be a coworker, it could be anything.

There's a service called tribute and you can find it [email protected]. And it makes it simple to create a group video gift that you can give on any important occasion. . Once you start a video project with Tribute, they'll give you a link that you can send to the people that you want to have in the video.

They can record just some nice words, and then tribute, the software will put together the montage. It's a really awesome service. I've used it, uh, when my sister, she used to work for me and my business, uh, when she left, and this was when I was doing my video, uh, my fitness coaching program. when she left and, and was no longer working for me anymore, I put together a video montage using tribute.

Had a lot of my fit for photos members, say some nice words about my sister Jill. And it was just a cool way to express appreciation to her for the work that she had done, uh, while working, uh, with my company. So again, tribute.co. If you want to put together a video montage. For somebody expressing some nice words about them, I'm Scott Colby with Say It With Gratitude and this has been the Daily Gratitude Minute.

Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. My name is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude. I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone the other day and he needed some advice on sending handwritten notes and buying gifts for. Some of his clients and customers now, he had read my book, the Grateful Entrepreneur, which has some tips talking about this, but he couldn't remember what I had said, so I gave him a few pieces of advice that I wanted to share with you.

Number one, when it comes to writing handwritten notes, he was curious, is it okay to put business cards in there? And I. You don't do that. Um, that signals that you're writing a handwritten note, almost like you're trying to get more business. When you put in your business card in there, make it a completely personal, um, relationship and appreciation.

So leave the business card out. I wouldn't put it in there. Make it like you're writing a handwritten note to a friend if you're writing. A handwritten note to a friend or even a family member, you would not put a business card in there, so don't do that for your clients and customers as well. Okay, so when it comes to gifts, what makes a good gift and what PO possibly could make a bad gift?

Well, despite that, this being a very popular gift, food items and wine. That sometimes, uh, could be a red flag. And here's why. Let's say you get a bottle of wine as a gift to one of your clients, and I certainly have, so I'm not, uh, saying that I've never done this. But what if they are a recovering alcoholic and you don't know that?

Tour. What if you give them a gift of like cookies and they're gluten free because they have a gluten allergy? So I got this tip, actually I didn't make this up from, uh, John Roland who wrote the book, Giftology. So highly recommend you read that book. And he suggests don't get gifts that are consumables where you're drinking wine or uh, excuse me, where you're gifting wine or possibly a food item because you just don't know.

What the person's situation is in terms of allergies or, or being, um, uh, off of alcohol. number two, and again, this, I got this from John Roland. Uh, he suggests you don't put your business logo on the gift. And I know a lot of people do this, and this, again, is really a promotional item if you do that. And that's not really a personal heartfelt gift.

He gave kind of an extreme but funny example, like if you were giving a gift of. Towels, uh, to a bride and groom at a wedding, you would not put your logo on the towels, right? You would put, uh, possibly have their names inscribed on the towels. So when you are doing a gift for a client and customers don't put your logo on it and maybe even go as far as.

If, depending on what the gift is, scripting their name on the gift, that shows a really nice personal touch. Um, also make it more heartfelt by learning more about your customer and clients and what their, their likes are, what their hobbies are, uh, and also even if you know something about their family members and then gifting them something around that.

So, um, imagine. If your client has a cat like I do, and you got them a gift of their cat's face on a pair of socks, somebody gave me, uh, that gift and it was very meaningful. So something like that is gonna have a lot more meaning than just like a Starbucks gift card. So see if you can learn about what their likes are, if they have any pets, if they have any kids, if they have, uh, a spouse, if they're.

and possibly get a gift that the whole family can even enjoy in you. So imagine if you have a, a client that's important to you and you got a gift that their spouse and kids love, that's gonna go a long way, uh, in cultivating that relationship with a client. So hope this helps. Uh, again, you can. Find out more about strategies like this in my book, the Grateful Entrepreneur.

I sell it on Amazon, but if you want a free copy of the downloadable version, you can go to gratitude toolkit.com. Gratitude toolkit.com, and download it for free. And then the other book that I reference, Giftology by John Ruland. I highly recommend that's a great book in learning how to gift to your clients.

I'm Scott Colby with Say It With Gratitude, and this has been the Daily Gratitude Minute. Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. My name is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude. A couple days ago I was asked to participate in a pretty unique project. A friend and colleague of mine, Eric, uh, he asked to interview me just for a few minutes about another friend of mine and a colleague.

In the fitness industry, Alicia, and the interview was all about appreciating Alicia, you know, what I, I appreciate about her, how she's helped me over the years, whether in my business or or personal life, and just really reflecting, um, about what the type of person Alicia is and. How she just cares for all of humanity, whether it's humans or animals.

And so it allowed me to reflect and say some really nice words about Alicia. So what Eric is doing is he's interviewing a lot of Alicia's colleagues and friends, and even family members. Uh, to express appreciation to her, and he's putting together one big appreciation video that he's going to gift her.

So this is a present for Alicia. I thought it's a really cool thing to do, basically, uh, a video montage of everything that we love about Alicia and who she is as a person. So really unique way to express appreciation to somebody to get a bunch of people together and collaborate on this, uh, montage video.

Something that you could do to somebody important in your life, whether personally or somebody professionally. What a great way to show a tribute to somebody that you care for. I'm Scott Colby with Say It With Gratitude, and this has been the Daily Gratitude Minute. Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby from Say It With Gratitude. I often have people that I'm speaking to, like in at a conference or for an organization, I'll often have the audience members write a thank you card, which is definitely good practice. Right? It's kind of a lost.

But the cool thing about writing thank you notes is not only does the recipient benefit, because obviously they're receiving words of praise and and appreciation, but the person that writes the card feels more grateful to, they benefit as well. In fact, science backs it up. When you write a handwritten note, you become happier.

There's actually a cool video on YouTube, um, and you can look it up. It's called an Experiment in Gratitude, the Science of Happiness and the study, um, had participants write a thank you note and then call the person that they wrote the note to and read the note to them. And the conclusions from the, um, from the study showed that.

when you actually read your note to the recipient, you became even more happier than when you just wrote the note. Uh, so there's actually a deep emotional bond that can connect two people, not only when you write a note to that other person, but when you actually read them, most likely it'll lead to tears.

And the study on YouTube, uh, in this video also showed that the person that came into the study. The least happy actually had the biggest jump in happiness. So if you're feeling down or anxious or just stressed writing that thank you note and then reading it to the recipient is gonna do wonders for your mood.

I'm Scott Colby with Say It With Gratitude, and this has been the Daily Gratitude Minute cheer.