Giving Thanks

I recently met with some colleagues who were preparing for a quarterly business review with a multimillion-dollar client. My colleagues expressed to me that every time they presented, it was like “being on a hamster wheel." It was redundant information, showcased in different ways, but always the same. They have been in business with this client for over four years and asked me how what I thought about them doing something very different. 

I asked what they had in mind, and they said they wanted to do a thank you presentation. 

They told me what their President & CEO would say to start off the presentation and then proceeded to walk me through their slides that thanked their customer, key people on both sides of the table. They closed by emphasizing how grateful they were for the business and the opportunity and how hard they would work to continue this very important relationship. I didn’t know if I wanted to stand and clap, or cry. It’s time we all put thank you slides into our presentations. We take too much for granted and assume that business will always be there for us. 

But don’t stop with business. It’s time to incorporate those thank yous into our daily lives. We have stopped being nice to the most important people in our circles. We take our personal relationships for granted just like we do our business relationships. It all starts with cutting back on how much we take and then thinking about how much we want to give. Always remember that thank yous are free.

How appropriate that we're days away from Thanksgiving.

Thank you for reading this.