Thanksgiving 2024: America’s First Start Up

The history of Jamestown, America’s first start-up, mirrors the often journey of a company: struggle, devastation and recovery. Below is my blurb on how they connect and can help build a great brand any day of the week.

How to gratefully survive. ?

?

Going into its third hard winter in 1623, America's original start-up, Plymouth Colony, finally felt a tingle of survival daylight; an overnight downpour ended a long drought and, for the first time, the little colony clique had some food stored and cured for the grinding cold days ahead.

?

The start-up's leader, William Bradford, colony governor, called for an all-hands-on-deck meeting the next day. There, Bradford asked his beleaguered, malnourished group to express "thanksgiving” that they were still standing as a team with their common mission—don't let the person next to you die.

?

Bradford was a shrewd start-up leader inviting 60 to 90 Wampanoag Indians who had shared backwoods survival tactics with the colonists and helped pull them back from the edge of oblivion.

That meeting showed that gratitude is a strong strategy and force to bond human beings together in tough times, as the little colony-that-could scale to a country called America.?

?

And then, Abraham Lincoln in 1863 declared Thanksgiving a national holiday as the Union and Confederate soldiers were battling to the bloody end. The national tide dead set against the President turned so slightly the other way after the holiday.

?

There is something real about gratitude shown when you are struggling instead of after you are successful.

?

I guess I enjoy seeing companies succeed as much as I love Thanksgiving Day and pumpkin pie. We just need to be aware of congratulating ourselves and showing true gratitude to others or a higher power about our daily life struggles. We all come up short—show some true gratitude and your people will love you for it.

?

True gratitude eats "employee well-being’s" lunch any day of the week—and twice on Sunday. So I don't know why more companies don't use it as a strategy. Of course, happy employees are more productive. What is wrong is how the consultants and management folks tell us how to get there. Put me on the Bradford team—happy to be working with a company and colleagues who care about each other.

?

When I visit companies, I never have employees say to me, “They don't make me happy.” But what I usually hear: “I never heard a word after I worked all weekend to get it done" and "They said nothing when it happened.” By the way, forget the obligatory “thank you”. Tell the truth—you had to work all weekend and that is on me as a leader who did not invest in the systems to match our growth strategy.

?

When the WeWork founder sat down to write his employees a farewell thank-you note, he could never think of anything to say. You think gratitude might have been a root problem?

?

See, here is the other thing about gratitude—it doesn't cost a dime. So it is not surprising that we find many true successful start-ups full of it, just like the Plymouth Colony that turned into a fairly successful economic engine called American capitalism, which thrives in a positive mindset.

?

This will be the best Thanksgiving ever—happy to still be standing!