Lead With Gratitude

You could feel the chill of the fall air, yet no one was cold. The stands were filled to capacity and the crowd…it was the final regular season game and the crowd was electric.

If you've never experienced the intensity, the thrill, the excitement of high school football, you don't know what you're missing. Friday nights are the best!

This was more than the final game of the regular season. It was senior night, a special night for us, the parents of senior football players. We were invited to walk out of the tunnel with our son as they announced our names and talked about our son, Mason's, accomplishments and future plans. It was difficult at best to hold back the tears.

After having our photo taken with our son, we walked back to the sidelines where we were presented with a custom football with Mason's photo along with a note sealed in a handwritten envelope.

This football was more than a gift, it encapsulated the memories of watching our son grow from a little boy into an incredible young man. While we knew there would be playoff games ahead, there was no guarantee they'd take the field at Higley again. This was the end of an era for us.

We made our way to the stands with kickoff just a few minutes away. I noticed my wife, Allison, wiping tears from her cheek. I saw the envelope in her hand, it was open. In her now shaking hand, she held a single piece of paper out to me. As my eyes scanned the page I could feel the tears welling up, It was a note from our son, Mason. He wrote:

The Note That Changed Everything

Dear Mom and Dad,

I want to start off by saying thank you.

Thank you for everything you've done, taught me, and have helped me become. Throughout my life you have done and provided so much for me. Without you two in my life I don't know where I would be. You guys have always been my number one supporters.

You have done so much for me words cannot describe, you guys are always trying to help me in any way possible.

You do so much for not only me, but all of the kids and you don't get enough recognition for it. From driving me to practice my freshman and sophomore year, to taking Syd to soccer, or Josie and Owen to horse therapy and riding lessons, you have always tried to give us our best lives and I can't thank you enough for that.

I love you so much and want you to know I will always be there for anything you need.

Thanks again for everything you do.

Mason

Both of us were sitting there sobbing in the stands as the national anthem began. Our final regular Friday night football game became one will never forget, thanks to our son.

What My Son Taught Me About Leadership

My high school senior knows how to lead with gratitude, do you?

I've spent 40-plus years running an agency, writing more than 100,000 ads, sitting in rooms where nine-figure budgets got decided over a headline. None of that taught me what Mason taught me in one handwritten note. Gratitude isn't a soft skill you bolt onto leadership when things are going well. It's the thing that actually holds a team together when a pitch falls apart, a client goes quiet, or a campaign you believed in gets killed in review.

I run my shop the way I try to run my family: say the thank-you out loud, and say it specifically. Not "great job team" in a Slack channel, but naming the writer who saved a headline nobody else could crack, or the account person who kept a client from walking after a rough launch. I've watched teams get more mileage out of a specific, well-timed thank-you than out of a bonus. Gratitude, said plainly and often, is what keeps good people from quietly checking out -- and it's a big part of why some of the same creatives and clients have stuck with me for decades.

It shows up with clients too. The agencies that survive long-term aren't the ones on the phone every day proving they're busy -- they're the ones who've built enough trust that a client doesn't need daily hand-holding to believe the work is being done right. Gratitude is part of how you earn that: acknowledging what the client risked by trusting you with their brand, not just billing them for it.

I challenge you to lead with gratitude in your business every day -- not as a mission-statement platitude, but as a practice: name names, be specific, say it before you need something. I hope Mason continues to live with a gratitude-first approach to life. It will serve him well and take him far, and it's already made me a better boss than I was before that Friday night.