Word-Of-the-Week #951: Delight
October 27, 2022 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #951: Delight
Delight – something that gives great pleasure or enjoyment.
When was the last time you felt delight? How often have you taken time to take care of your own needs this past year?
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a tent with a mosquito.” ~African Proverb
The is the follow up to last week’s “8 Simple Ways to Brighten Someone’s Day,” By Krista Butler.
To recap:
1. Leave inspirational notes in random places.
2. Thank someone.
3. Be curious about someone.
4. Send a handwritten note.
5. Do something for yourself.
“Now this may seem a bit backward. How does doing something for yourself impact someone else?
Well, when you take care of your own needs, and give yourself some much-needed self-love, you fill up your own cup. And when your own cup is overflowing, that overflow is the love that flows to others. It’s a beautiful thing.
So take that bath, go to that dance class, go for a walk, and feel the goodness.
6. Make a playlist for someone.
Back in the day, I used to love making mix-tapes. I’d wait by my ghetto blaster, blank tape in the tape deck, and be on high alert to press the record button when my favorite songs came on.
These days, making music mixes are way less labor-intensive! You can make a playlist on YouTube in minutes. Make a specific playlist for someone in your life and send it to them. What an awesome surprise to both give and receive!
7. Take it to social media.
Instead of spending time lurking on Facebook and Twitter, choose three people to give a shout-out to! The guy you used to sit next to in science class, your cousin you haven’t seen in three years, the random person you connected with when you were traveling—post on their wall (or send a private message). Let them know you’re thinking of them.
8. Surprise with a gift.
Whether you send flowers to one of your friends at her workplace or buy a coffee for the person behind you in line, splurging and surprising someone else is a lot of fun.
Do you go to a coffee shop with a loyalty card? I collect all my stamps, and then once I accumulate my free coffee, I ask the barista to give it to the next person in line. It’s a thrill for me, the barista, and the person behind me who doesn’t suspect a thing!
When you brighten someone’s day, you are simultaneously stirring up positive energy within yourself. And you’ll carry this energy with you throughout your day. It’s a great feeling.
So I challenge you to ask yourself, how can something I do today surprise and delight another individual?”
This week’s focus is on bringing delight! Have you stayed in touch with friends and family this past year? When was the last time you surprised someone with a gift? Have you ever given a gift to a complete stranger?
I LOVE feedback! Join my Facebook community on my FUN-damentals Fan Page.
Word-Of-the-Week #854: Delight
December 17, 2020 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #854: Delight
Delight – something that gives great pleasure or enjoyment.
When was the last time you felt delight? How often have you taken time to take care of your own needs this past year?
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a tent with a mosquito.” ~African Proverb
The is the follow up to last week’s “8 Simple Ways to Brighten Someone’s Day,” By Krista Butler.
To recap:
1. Leave inspirational notes in random places.
2. Thank someone.
3. Be curious about someone.
4. Send a handwritten note.
5. Do something for yourself.
“Now this may seem a bit backward. How does doing something for yourself impact someone else?
Well, when you take care of your own needs, and give yourself some much-needed self-love, you fill up your own cup. And when your own cup is overflowing, that overflow is the love that flows to others. It’s a beautiful thing.
So take that bath, go to that dance class, go for a walk, and feel the goodness.
6. Make a playlist for someone.
Back in the day, I used to love making mix-tapes. I’d wait by my ghetto blaster, blank tape in the tape deck, and be on high alert to press the record button when my favorite songs came on.
These days, making music mixes are way less labor-intensive! You can make a playlist on YouTube in minutes. Make a specific playlist for someone in your life and send it to them. What an awesome surprise to both give and receive!
7. Take it to social media.
Instead of spending time lurking on Facebook and Twitter, choose three people to give a shout-out to! The guy you used to sit next to in science class, your cousin you haven’t seen in three years, the random person you connected with when you were traveling—post on their wall (or send a private message). Let them know you’re thinking of them.
8. Surprise with a gift.
Whether you send flowers to one of your friends at her workplace or buy a coffee for the person behind you in line, splurging and surprising someone else is a lot of fun.
Do you go to a coffee shop with a loyalty card? I collect all my stamps, and then once I accumulate my free coffee, I ask the barista to give it to the next person in line. It’s a thrill for me, the barista, and the person behind me who doesn’t suspect a thing!
When you brighten someone’s day, you are simultaneously stirring up positive energy within yourself. And you’ll carry this energy with you throughout your day. It’s a great feeling.
So I challenge you to ask yourself, how can something I do today surprise and delight another individual?”
This week’s focus is on bringing delight! Have you stayed in touch with friends and family this past year? When was the last time you surprised someone with a gift? Have you ever given a gift to a complete stranger?
I LOVE feedback! Join my Facebook community on my FUN-damentals Fan Page.
Word-Of-the-Week #719: Delight
May 17, 2018 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #719: Delight
Delight – something that gives great pleasure or enjoyment.
When was the last time you felt delight? Did it make you want to come back? Did you come up with any ideas last week on creating a defining moment for one of your guests, clients, customers, members, family, or friends?
This is the follow up to last week’s Neil Senturia article “Elevating the ordinary into life-changing stuff”. To recap he wrote, “Why do we remember things? And how does memory influence customer retention and satisfaction?
The Heath brothers had discovered the power of “elevation moments” that transcend ordinary experience. The “I didn’t see that coming” moment – a special glass of wine on the house, a surprise at work, where the cost of the surprise, or the over-the-top delivery is de minimis compared to its effect. They call this the “Power of the Free Popsicle.”
Heath then goes on to mention three other kinds of defining moments – “insightful moments,” (e.g. the discovery of Velcro), moments of pride (think employee recognition) and moments of connection (think weddings and graduations).
Rule No. 554: Surprise! It’s the little things, stupid.
The key is that all of these need to be in the service of the customer or your employee. Heath says, “You don’t have to excel at everything, you only have to excel at a few things that are going to be memorable.” He calls these “peaks.” We know that getting a customer is hard, but once gotten, you should never lose one, never. Whatever it takes. Think about your own relationships with vendors. There are some that you would never switch from. They own you, they have a “connection,” because they never let you down, and occasionally, they just dazzle you. Heath tells of a bank manager who personally delivers the deed to your house when you have paid off the mortgage.
Heath also looks at the power of “pits,” what he calls negative experiences, put downs. He tells the story of Sara Blakely, whose dad would ask at dinner, “What did you fail at today?” And a few years later, when the old white guys told her that footless panty hose was stupid, she went and started Spanx and became the youngest self-made billionaire in history. I love these stories.
You can learn from experiences (pits) and you can create them for others (peaks). But in the end, Heath focuses on one word – delight. You do not need to be perfect, you can apologize for mistakes, but every once in a while, if you just blow their doors off, they never leave you.”
And here’s a great idea on creating a defining moment that delights from Bill Marvin, The Restaurant Doctor from his April 27 post, “Hospitality is about giving, right? Mother’s Day is two weeks away. What would happen if you announced that all Moms would be your guests on Mothers’ Day? The odds are they’d come in with a big family group so the numbers would work … but if they came in alone, they live lonely lives and need to know somebody (you!) still cares about them!
Your local media isn’t going to pay any attention to one more Mothers’ Day buffet, but approaching it like this could be a human interest story worth talking about. The more you give, the more you get.
As an added enhancement, what if you asked the Moms to bring a photo of their family you could borrow for a week? At the least, they’d enjoy sharing the picture with you and your staff, but imagine the impact, the connection (and the message about motherhood) if you put up a huge bulletin board for a week or so and filled it with family photos!”
This week’s focus is on delight. What gives you great pleasure and enjoyment? How would it feel to be able to delight your guests, clients, customers, members, family, or friends? Can you think of just a few things that would make you more memorable?
I LOVE feedback! Join my Facebook community on my FUN-damentals Fan Page.
WOW Word-Of-the-Week #468: Delight
July 25, 2013 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on WOW Word-Of-the-Week #468: Delight
Delight – something that gives great pleasure or enjoyment.
What thoughts come to your mind when you read this week’s WOW? Is it your computer? How about your cell phone? Oh, I know software right?
Believe it or not this is the latest buzz word trend to sell just those things. I kid you not! Chris O’Brien reporting from Palo Alto for the LA Times writes, “Yes, delight. A squishy, subjective, hard-to-pin-down term. So daringly unquantifiable, so proudly immeasurable. And now, suddenly, all the rage in data-driven Silicon Valley.
Like so many other things in Silicon Valley, the word is a legacy of Steve Jobs who often spoke of wanting to “surprise and delight” people. Now, Yahoo Inc. Chief executive Marissa Mayer wants to “put our users first and make their daily routines truly delightful.” Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and mobile payment service Square Inc., wants his companies’ products to “delight the world.” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom suggests, “If you delight people even a little bit with a simple solution, it turns out it goes very far.”
It’s not just Silicon Valley that is drowning in delight. In the surest sign that delight may be on the cusp of morphing from insurgent idea to overused buzzword, Microsoft and Dell have embraced it. It’s the corporate equivalent of parents joining Facebook, making it instantly uncool.
“For Jobs, the word encapsulated the powerful insight that good design could induce people to fetishize their appliances, rather than just being satisfied with them,” says Geoff Nunberg, a linguist at UC Berkley’s School of Information.
I would say by the number of people who seem totally consumed with their IPhones Jobs did just that. They definitely appear to have a fetish!
This week’s focus is on delight. What gives you great pleasure and enjoyment? What do you do to delight your customers, guests, members or clients? Does your computer, cell phone, software, etc, delight you? I am grateful when they all do what they are supposed to do and don’t break down!