Welcome back to the daily gratitude minute. This is Scott Colby from say it with gratitude. In my book, the grateful entrepreneur, I gave a tip for businesses. If they wanted to stand out from their competition and that's to send out cards on weird holidays. Now it's. Not that common for businesses to send out cards as it is, you know, many businesses don't send out. Thank you cards. But I think if there's one time, a business does a pretty good job.

Sending out cards it's during the Christmas holidays. Well, if you could imagine the average, person's getting lots and lots of cards during the Christmas And those don't really stand out. So, what I recommend is that you send cards on other types of holidays, such as Groundhog's day St. Patrick's day, 4th of July. Thanksgiving is a good one too, which is coming up.

Uh, since it's a holiday specifically to express gratitude. Now when I was doing research for my book. I found an example of a company that was doing this well and was getting a great return on their investment. Joe, John Bachmann, who owns Bachman's auto care in Illinois for eight years, at least at the time of the article that I read.

He had spent an average of $1,858 per year on thank you cards for his entire customer base. So almost $2,000 he was spending on. Writing and mailing. Thank you cards. Now that seems like a lot, right? Well, John has consistently seen between a 35,040 5,000 return on his yearly. Thanksgiving and Christmas and July card. So those are the two times during the year he sent out

Thanksgiving and Christmas in July and his customers weren't getting cards from anybody else during that time. So he was able to stand out from his competition. He initially tried sending out cards during Christmas and was not getting a good. ROI return on his investment. So he changed his plan. Started to send out cards twice a year during the weird, not very common times to do that and his results skyrocketed. So.

Really cool idea. It's not too late to get your cards out for Thanksgiving, get those cards out. And if you don't get Out for Thanksgiving this year. Think of the next time. That there's a weird holiday, so not Christmas, but maybe Groundhog's day that you start to send out cards to your customers and your clients.

One last thing. If you want to download a digital copy of my book, the grateful entrepreneur for free. Go to gratitude, toolkit.com.  And you can enter in your email and i'll send you a digital copy of the entire book 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 want to give you a quick connection tip that you can. Use at work now I didn't make this up. There's a book I recently read called connectable all about creating connections and belonging. And the workplace and the authors have come out with a connection deck, which are 30 challenges that you can do to.

Build connection in the workplace. And so one of the challenges in the connection deck is asked for advice. So they say, if you want to earn someone's trust and empathy, which is important at work, right. Ask them for advice. So they say share a small decision or minor problem with somebody at work to get their advice, pulling someone into your day prompts, connection, and allows others to demonstrate empathy.

As an example. I'm trying to make a decision about X, Y, N, Z. If you were me, what would you do? So, if you want to strengthen your connections at work. Build somebody's trust and empathy, then ask them for their advice.  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 with Gratitude. I just started reading a book called Mr. Thank You, by John Israel. I've known John for a few years. Mainly online, I guess only online. We've chatted, we've done a Zoom call together. Uh, but he wrote this book a few years ago and I'm surprised that I'm just now reading it.

But it tells of his journey and lessons learned from. Writing five handwritten notes. So he wrote five thank you cards every day for a year. Now, that's incredible to me because I sometimes give myself a challenge of writing one thank you card a day for 30 days, and I struggle. So I'm interested in knowing how he did it and how he kept himself accountable and going.

I know one of the things he did, cuz I'm still at the beginning of the book, but he outlined some rules up front that he must follow and I wanted to share four rules with you. Number one, all notes about must be handwritten so he can't copy and paste an email and send it out to a bunch of people. These need to be handwritten notes.

Number two, every day, five cards must be written and every morning starts at zero. So in other words, he can't save. For the entire week, let's say on Sunday and write 35 cards, he needs to write five notes every single day. Rule three, a maximum of three cards count per individual. So in other words, he can't write 365 cards to his wife.

He could only write to his wife or any one individual three times throughout the year. So he has to come up with a lot of different people to write notes to. And number four, this is really interest. if he writes less than five thank you cards in a day, he needs to donate $1,000 to charity. So imagine such a big kind of penalty, kind of, I mean, you're donating to charity, but it is a penalty in that it's a thousand bucks out of your pocket any day he forgets to write or doesn't write five handwritten notes that's gonna keep him accountable.

When he first put together rule four, he was going to donate a hundred dollars to. If he wrote less than five notes in a day, and his business coach at the time said, I don't think that's a big enough penalty. And he asked him, Would you have donated a hundred, 200 or 200 bucks to charity anyway this year?

And John said, Yes. He said, We need to make that rule even more strict. And they came up with donating a thousand dollars to charity for any day that. misses his five thank you notes. Incredibly powerful tool to keep yourself accountable. So I'm just at the beginning stages of this book. I can't wait to dig into it.

It's again, it's Mr. Thank You by John Israel. I'll do another gratitude minute, um, once I finish the book and share with you my big takeaways. If you've read it, would love to hear from you. You can always send me a DM on Instagram over at Scott Colby dot. I'm Scott Colby with Sat With Gratitude and this has been your daily gratitude minute.

Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby with Say It With Gratitude. I often talk about listening as a form of gratitude, but only if you're present. So what do I mean by that? Well, oftentimes when somebody is talking to us, we're doing other things. We're checking our phones, we're thinking about our emails, we're thinking about what we need to do during the.

notifications come up and we look at those instead of paying attention to the person who's talking to us. This sometimes happens in meetings, just one-on-one conversations, even at meals or just having a cup of coffee with a friend. So the issue with this is if you're checking your phone when somebody's talking to you, how do you think that person.

They don't feel cared for. They don't feel listened to, They don't probably feel understood, they don't feel valued. But if you can do away with all the external noise and be in the moment with the person that's having the conversation with you, and even don't even get out your phone, even put that phone.

So the study's been shown that even if your phone's on the table and you're not using it, the level and the quality of conversation goes down just by the mere presence of having your cell phone on the table. So don't even bring it out. Leave it in your bag, leave it at home, leave it in your car. Be fully present with somebody that's having the conversation with you.

That way you can be a better listener. They're gonna feel cared for, valued, and. And that is a form of gratitude. That's a great gift that you can give somebody else. The act and art of listening seems to be harder to do these days, but practice it without your phone than being fully present. 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 with Say It With Gratitude. Yesterday I mentioned a nonprofit here in Knoxville, Tennessee called Send Senior Citizens Love their mission. Is to keep the connections alive for senior citizens at risk, for isolation and loneliness by collecting handwritten notes and delivering them to seniors all across the country.

Seniors who are at risk of being lonely, they're in hospitals, they're in nursing homes, and I wanted to give a suggestion on how your organization could do. While helping your team bond and build deeper connections with one another, it's simply this once a week or once a month, or even just one time, your team can pledge to come together.

Let's say at a, at a lunchtime, you come together and your right handwritten notes that go to seniors who are in hospitals battling loneliness. So just think about. It's a Thursday, it's noon. It's when you usually have lunch. You come together as a team. Everybody's got their lunch, their food. You're writing handwritten notes for a good cause.

You're bonding over the act of writing handwritten notes, but you're also getting to know each other on your team personally. You're getting to ask your team members questions. You're learning their hobbies, learning about their families, what they like, what they don't like, what they're struggling with, some successes or good things happening in their life, all while bonding over the act of writing handwritten notes for a good cause for senior citizens who are lonely.

So doing this can bring your team together. Number one, you're bonding over the act of writing handwritten. But specifically these handwritten notes are going for a good cause. So you're also bonding and coming closer together by doing something for good. What a powerful way to build connection amongst your team.

When you have connection like this, your team will be more engaged. They'll be more productive. They're gonna wanna stick around a lot. So give this a try and let me note Nephew specifically want to write cards for my friend's nonprofit. Send Senior Citizens Love. You can go on their website, send senior citizens love.org and contact them or get ahold of [email protected] and I'll put you in touch with Ashley, who's the founder of the nonprofit.

I'm Scott Colby with Sat With Gratitude and this has been The Daily Gratitude Minute cheer.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby. With Sat With Gratitude. I want to briefly talk about, uh, a woman's nonprofit here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Now, I met her online through a kind of a local Facebook group here in Knoxville, and I was intrigued when I learned what she was doing.

She has a non-profit, well, first of all, her name is Ashley Lynch. Ashley has a nonprofit called Send Senior Citizens Love Send, Senior Citizens Love, uh, and her mission is to end isolation and loneliness among seniors. Of course, I love that mission. Her inspiration was kind of fairly recently. Both of her grandparents passed away.

And she had noticed they were a little bit isolated and lonely, um, I think in the hospital. And she realized there's other seniors that are lonely in hospitals and nursing centers. So she wanted to do something to make them feel less lonely. So what she does is she actually collects handwritten notes from people all around the world that she delivers to senior citizens in hospitals and rehab.

So, you know, I've talked about the way that handwritten notes can connect people together and help you feel cared about and less lonely. And that's her mission. And she does this for certain population, senior citizens, and I just love it. You can actually write notes and send it to Ashley's nonprofit organization and she'll get it to a senior citizen.

In a hospital or a rehab center, so it's really cool what she's doing. You can check out more information about her nonprofit at Send senior citizens love.org. Send senior citizens love.org if you, um, want to connect with her. Kind of personally, just let me know. You can shoot me an email to [email protected] and I'll connect you with her, or you can just contact her through her website.

Again, I love her mission of ending isolation and loneliness among seniors. 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. When I talk about gratitude in the workplace, one of the things I like to mention and encourage is for you to be specific with your gratitude, especially when you are expressing appreciation for somebody at work.

So what I mean by that is instead of just saying, Thank you or good job. Be specific about what you appreciate about that person, and I would encourage you not to even tie it to performance. So a great example of this recently actually happened to me. One of the things that I do besides talk about gratitude, I'm a health and fitness coach for a company called Metabolic Living, and there were six coaches and one of them recently, uh, decided to leave her position with the.

And before she left, she took a moment to express appreciation to all of the other coaches. So for me, she said a few nice words. And then she ended by saying, Three of my most favorite things about you are your calm presence, your heart for all of humanity, your creativity and spirit of exploration. So she was expressing what she loved about.

And that meant so much more than just saying, Hey, you know, great job as a coach of these last three years that we've been working together. So when you are expressing gratitude to a team member, be very specific and tell that team member what you love 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. This is Scott Colby. I want to talk a little bit about. Workplace wellness. Now, a Surgeon General's report that just came out declared that toxic workplaces can be harmful to a person's mental health due to factors like long hours, chronic stress, and being underpaid.

Now, that's pretty obvious. The report highlights that 76% of workers in the US have at least one symptom of a mental health condition. While up to 84% of people said their workplaces contributed to mental health issues, these numbers are incredibly high. The surgeon general outlined five essentials that would help workplaces support well.

These include protection from harm, connection, and community opportunity for growth matter at work and work life harmony. Now, all these are important. My eyes are drawn to connection and community because it's something that I talk about in my keynotes when I'm speaking at conferences and in into organizations.

So how can you have more connection and community in the workplace? Well, lots of ways you could do that, but something I talk about is just asking meaningful question to spark meaningful conversations. Really to help you get to know your coworkers on a more intimate level so that you can have a deeper relationship, possibly even friendship.

Friendships at work have been shown to. Correlated with happiness in the workplace. So how do you ask questions or know what questions to ask? Well, I designed the Grateful Deck, which is 120 questions to spark meaningful conversations. You could do use these questions in the workplace. I just drew one at random so you can get an idea of what one of the questions is like.

Um, the question says if you could spend a day off work doing one thing that you would. What would it be and why? So if you ask a coworker this question, you can get to know a little bit about one of their hobbies and why they started, um, to, to like that hobby. And that can give you some insight about this person.

So, uh, if you want to download all 120 questions digitally, you can go to gratitude toolkit.com, put in your email address, and I'll send you all 120 questions in the Grateful Deck. These questions are great for. Perhaps starting a meeting, or maybe you can pull a coworker from work and go through a few of the questions and just go back and forth and create a bond between you and one of your coworkers.

And if you want to purchase the physical deck that I'll mail to you, I've got 'em over at my website. Sat with gratitude.com. I'm Scott Colby from Say It with Gratitude, and this has been the Daily Gratitude Minute. Cheers.

Welcome back to the Daily Gratitude Minute. This is Scott Colby. Thank you so much for joining me as I record this. It is November 9th, 2022, and I've set a goal to write one. Appreciation card, uh, in the month of November and in the month of December. So I'm gonna be writing a card every single day for two months.

And if you set a goal like this, you might wonder like, how do I know who to send a card to? I don't have that many people to appreciate, but in reality, you probably have more than enough people to appreciate if you really sit down and think about it. So, It can be a struggle to figure out who to write a car to, but let me just share with you a few people that I've written a car to.

In the past week I wrote a card to my veterinarian who always takes really good care of my cat Mia, and uh, I really appreciate her kindness and. Looking after Mia's best interest and making her feel as comfortable as possible. I sent a card to my friend John and Lauren, who let me stay at their place, uh, overnight in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, while I was traveling on my way back from a speaking gig in Wisconsin.

I sent a card to my friend Geoff, who, uh, I'd met online. He's a fellow speaker. He lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and when I spoke in Spokane in September, he made the 40 minute drive to see me speak, and then he invited me to see him speak and also gave me some pointers on how I could engage with the. Uh, so I really appreciate that.

Um, and then lastly, I recently wrote a card to a woman named Lauren who saw me deliver a breakout session in my, um, conference I went to in Wisconsin. And she just sent me an email saying how much she enjoyed, uh, my session. So being a guy who is appreciation language is words of affirmation, I really appreciated her kind words.

And I wanted to let her know that. So those are just a few examples of who I've written cards to. Uh, in reality, you can write cards to people for any reason. It doesn't have to be somebody that's done something for you. You could just appreciate a friend and tell them how much you love about them. Or it could be somebody that is not a friend, but just you've seen or had an engagement with them in passing such as.

Your barista at your local coffee shop. Maybe they asked you how your day was. Maybe they smiled at you, and just let them know how much you appreciated that. So plenty of people to write cards too. I'm enjoying the process of writing these daily cards. Maybe it's a habit you wanna pick up. If you do, would love to know about it.

You can always send me an [email protected] or uh, DM on Instagram, Scott Col. Hope this helps you get those cards out in the mail. I'm Scott Colby with Sat With Gratitude and this has been the Daily Gratitude Minute. Cheers.

What you plant in your mind will be returned to you. If you think about positive things and have a grateful attitude, that's what you'll get in life. If you complain and think about all negative things, that will be returned to you.