How to Use Gratitude as a Growth Strategy
It’s the time of the year when we hear a lot of talk about gratitude. We’re reminded that being grateful is a powerful way to boost morale, reduce stress, improve mental health, and build resilience.
I love this time of the year because I wholeheartedly agree that gratitude is key to improving well-being. But I also think there is something that gets left out of the gratitude conversation.
It’s that gratitude is not only useful for your personal life, it’s also a powerful tool for your professional life. Gratitude can be a helpful growth driver for organizations.
Gratitude at SpotOn isn’t seasonal; it’s structural. We are rooted in gratitude when we select partners, support our team, and show up for our clients and colleagues.
When you bring gratitude to your business (not just at Thanksgiving, but all year long), it benefits your brand, team, and customers. Here’s how we practice gratitude at SpotOn to improve our company culture, customer retention, client satisfaction, and creative output.
Be Intentional and Grateful for Every Partnership
As a marketing agency, SpotOn is built on partnerships with brands who trust us to act as the marketing and growth arm of their business. We would not exist without our clients, and we are mindful of this every day.
We honor our partners by being intentional and grateful for our relationship from day one.
Our key to building mutually beneficial, lasting partnerships is choosing the right partners. We want to be right for them, but we also want them to be right for us. We use a FIT scale to vet clients before we work with them to ensure we are aligned with the same values and intention from the start.
When we use the FIT scale, it’s easy to be grateful for our partnerships because we’re working with teams who share our same foundation of trust, ethics, and professionalism.
Our vetting system has led to long-term, equally beneficial partnerships. Many of our clients have stayed with us year after year. Our process also enables us to consistently bring on new partnerships we believe will have long-term benefits for everyone involved.
Gratitude Takeaway: Expressing gratitude for partners reminds you to be intentional about who you work with and why alignment matters.
Read More: How to Build High-Achieving, High-Value Partnerships with Marketing Vendors
Be Supportive and Grateful For Your Team
Just as SpotOn wouldn’t exist without our roster of client partners, we couldn’t do what we do without our team. SpotOn has a unique workforce model. We aren’t a traditional agency. We’re a team of independent freelancers.
We’ve turned a team of remote independent contractors into our superpower.
Like our client roster, we vet every member of our team. We look for individuals who meet high standards for work ethic and commitment to shared values. This collaborative, community-driven approach allows us to provide the best individual talent to our clients at every growth stage, benefiting both freelancers and clients. Each person brings their own expertise so we can work together and shine in client team cohorts.
Our model works because we are selective with our team and then supportive of everyone who joins us. We consistently show up and offer gratitude to our team of 24 active freelancers. In return, we get the best results by having a community with diverse talent and appreciation for our unique way of working.
Gratitude Takeaway: Being supported and grateful for your team allows you to attract top talent who shares your values and commitment to community and excellence.
Practice Positivity and Gratitude In Your Everyday Actions
There is no escaping the truth that business can be difficult. You will always find times when you face challenges and setbacks. Showing up with positivity and gratitude is how you build the resilience to navigate those moments.
My observed and admired successful business owners all integrate gratitude into their leadership and use positive thinking to motivate their teams. At SpotOn, we put this into practice by:
Regularly acknowledging wins and contributors
Building gratitude into feedback loops
Giving time to our community
As I write this, it’s the day after I participated in a USF Entrepreneurship Speed Mentoring session. Gratefulness and lessons were dropped heavily in the wrap-up of the event. It gave me all the feels to inspire some reflection time and this post. (And by the way, I can assure you the future is bright. I couldn’t have been more impressed with what USF’s future entrepreneurs were up to and the kinds of questions and level of curiosity they have.)
When we feel like we are a part of something bigger, we are more committed and engaged. Working from a foundation of gratitude, we become more confident, thoughtful, and focused rather than reactive, fearful, and unassured. It builds a culture that prevents burnout and churn of customers and team members.
Gratitude Takeaway: Baking gratitude into your daily habits builds a brand that clients and team members want to be a part of.
Put Gratitude into Action
Gratitude fuels connection, and connection fuels growth. I’ve seen it first-hand at SpotOn, and I hope you, too, can embrace similar values that lead to more trust, creativity, and collaboration in your organization.
As SpotOn, we’re grateful to all of our clients and teammates who share our passion, vision, and mission.
We can’t wait to see what our shared support system can lead to in 2026 and beyond!
With Gratitude,
Robyn Spoto
Founder of SpotOn Media