Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in Canada. The American one is still about seven weeks away.

Which means right now, this exact stretch of October, is the quietest window of the year for saying thank you. Nobody's doing it yet. Nobody's expecting it.

Six weeks from now, every vendor your clients have ever paid will send them something. A card with a printed signature. A tin of popcorn with three flavors, one of which nobody eats. A calendar with a logo on it. A holiday email with a snowflake animation. It all shows up in the same two weeks, it all says roughly the same thing, and it all goes into the same pile.

I've been on the receiving end of that pile for a long time. I couldn't tell you who sent me a single thing last December.

The ones I remember are the handwritten notes that showed up for no reason at all. Two or three lines from a vendor or a partner, in the middle of a random month, saying they noticed something, they appreciated something, and that working together had made them better at what they do.

No pitch. No logo. No ask.

Those are the people I end up sending referrals to. Was it the note? Not entirely. But a note like that tells you something about a person that their invoices never could.

So this Sunday, let's talk about thanking people while it still means something.

Beating the crowd is nice. But three other things happen when you do this now instead of in December.

It reads as sincere. A December card feels like an obligation, because it is one. Everybody knows you're sending it because it's the holidays. An October note doesn't have a holiday to hide behind. Nobody sends one out of obligation, so they know you meant it. They might not say so, but they notice.

It lands before the decisions. Right now, a lot of your clients are planning next year. They're looking at budgets, deciding which vendors stay, deciding which ones get more work. A real thank you that lands in the middle of that planning is not a sales tactic, but I'm also not going to pretend it hurts.

It gives you room to do it right. In December you're closing the year, chasing invoices, and trying to get a week off. In October you've got time to actually think about each person and write something real. Rushed gratitude reads as rushed.

Sit down with a coffee and a blank page. Not a spreadsheet yet. Just a page.

Write down everyone who made this year work. That means a few more groups than you'd think.

Every client who paid you this year. All of them. Even the small ones. Even the difficult one who paid on time.

Everyone who sent you a referral. Whether it turned into business or not. People who refer you are doing you a favor with their own reputation. They deserve to hear about it.

Your referral partners. The other businesses who send you work and take work from you.

Your team. Everyone. Employees, contractors, your VA in another time zone, the bookkeeper who cleaned up your mess in March.

The vendors who saved you. The web developer who answered on a Saturday. The supplier who rushed an order. The accountant who caught the thing.

The people behind the scenes. Your mentor, the friend who talked you off a ledge in July, the spouse who covered school pickup during your busiest month.

Most owners end up with somewhere north of forty names. Don't panic about that number. You're not doing all of them the same way.

Tier one is the top ten to fifteen. Your best clients by revenue or relationship, anyone who sent you more than one referral, and the people on your team who carried the hardest weight. These get a handwritten note and something thoughtful.

Tier two is the next thirty or so. Solid clients, good partners, helpful vendors. These get a handwritten note. That's it, and that's plenty.

Tier three is everyone else. These get a short, personal email or text. Not a mass email. A real message, written to one person, mentioning one specific thing.

If you want to keep track of who's in which tier and what you sent, I use Clay for this. It holds the notes from every conversation, which matters, because the next step depends on remembering specifics.

Here's the formula I use. Three parts, five sentences max.

Name a specific moment. Not "thanks for a great year." Something that actually happened. "When you called me in May about the Henderson project..." "The day you sent me Rachel's info..." "Your team's patience when we moved the launch twice..."

Say what it meant to you. One sentence. Be honest. "That project carried us through a slow summer." "That referral turned into our biggest client of the year." "I don't think I said it at the time, but it mattered."

Say something about them. This is the part everybody skips. Tell them something you admire about how they run their business or how they treat people. "You're one of the few clients who actually reads what we send." "The way you treat your team is something I've borrowed from."

Then sign it. No P.S. No "let us know if you need anything." No link. No business card tucked in the envelope. The second you add a pitch, the whole thing turns into marketing and they can tell.

Here's what one looks like in full.

"Maria, I've been thinking about the day you called me in April after the Johnson job went sideways. You could have just fired us. Instead you told me what went wrong and gave us a chance to fix it. That conversation made us a better company. Thank you for this year. Dan."

Five sentences. Two minutes to write. She'll keep it.

And a note about AI, since I talk about it a lot in this newsletter. Use it to jog your memory if you want. Tools that keep context on your work, like Littlebird, can help you remember what you actually did with each client this year. But do not let ChatGPT write the note. The entire value of this thing is that it came from you, in your own handwriting, with your own slightly awkward phrasing. Polish kills it.

For tier one, a gift is a nice touch. A few rules so it doesn't end up in the regifting closet.

No logos. If your company name is on it, it's swag, not a gift. Swag is fine at a trade show. It's not a thank you.

Make it about them. The best gifts are tied to something you actually know about the person. The book you talked about at lunch. A bag of coffee from the roaster in their hometown. Something for the hobby they mentioned on a call. That's why your notes from conversations matter so much.

Or feed their team. This is my favorite move for business clients. Instead of a gift for the owner, send lunch to their whole office with a note that says "Thanks for everything your team did this year." The owner gets the credit with their people. Their people remember who sent it. And it usually runs about the same as a fancy gift basket nobody asked for.

Spend what makes sense. Don't send a two hundred dollar gift to a client who paid you a thousand dollars this year. It's weird. A good rule is somewhere around one to three percent of what they spent with you, capped wherever your budget says. And if any of your clients work in government, healthcare, or finance, check whether they have gift limits before you send anything.

This is the one with the biggest return, and it costs nothing.

For everyone who sent you a referral this year, tell them what happened. "You introduced me to Kevin in March. I want you to know we've been working together since June and it's been one of my favorite projects of the year. Thank you for trusting me with him."

Most people who refer you never find out how it went. They stuck their neck out, and then nothing. When you close the loop, you're telling them their reputation is safe with you. Guess who they think of the next time someone asks for a recommendation.

Your team gets a version of this too, and it should be just as specific as the client notes. Maybe more.

"You handled the Davis account when I was out in August and I didn't have to think about it once. That's rare. Thank you."

One more thing that works better than almost anything else I've tried. For key people on your team, write a short note to their spouse or partner. "I know Mike worked some long weeks this fall, and I know that lands on you too. He's a big reason this year went the way it did. Thank you for sharing him with us."

Trust me, that note ends up on the fridge.

Here's the realistic version, because a list of a hundred names is the kind of thing that dies on your desk.

Buy a box of good cards this week. Plain, heavy paper, no printed message inside. Get stamps while you're at it.

Block two hours next Sunday. Write fifteen notes. That's your only goal. Fifteen.

Block another two hours the following Sunday. Fifteen more.

Do the tier three emails and texts in fifteen minute bursts on weekday mornings, five at a time, before you open your inbox.

By the end of October, you're done. Everybody who carried you this year has heard from you before the first popcorn tin shows up.

Then put a recurring event on your calendar for the first Sunday of next October. Call it "Thank people." The second year is when people start to realize it's just who you are.

Is this a growth hack? No. Treat it like one and it'll flop, because people know a tactic when they see one.

But I'll tell you what tends to happen.

People call you to say thanks for the thank you, and those calls turn into conversations about next year. Referral partners send you someone new in November. A client who was quietly on the fence about renewing doesn't end up on the fence anymore. Somebody on your team decides they're staying another year.

Good luck finding any of that on a dashboard. You'll feel it anyway, usually by spring.

Most of the folks who built your year are still around, and a few have no clue they mattered. You've got a few quiet weeks to fix that.

Use it before the holidays get loud.

Talk Soon,

Dan

Dan Kaufman

Founder, Dead Simple Growth and Pinnacle Masters

P.S. Reply with THANKS and I'll send you my October appreciation kit: the tier sheet, a page of note starters for clients, partners, team members, and spouses, the referral loop closing message, and the gift guide I use with the spending ranges built in.