OMG.
I've had some lovely things done for me and sent to me over the years to say thank you for speaking at events. Cards. Flowers. Kind emails.
But nothing like this.
A video message. From THE HOFF.
David Hasselhoff. Knight Rider. Baywatch. Looking down the camera and thanking me.
And as if that wasn't enough, there was a second one from a very famous face from a Netflix documentary. (I hadn't seen the show, but even I knew who she was.)
It had already been a surprising week. A few days earlier, I found out I'd won an award for being one of the top 100 virtual event hosts. I didn't even know I'd been nominated.
2020 had pushed everyone online. Events that would have filled a hotel ballroom suddenly happened on a screen in your spare room. Like a lot of people, I'd been learning fast. How to hold the energy of a room when the room is a grid of little faces. How to keep people with you when every one of them has their email open in another tab.
So being recognised for that meant a lot. And then The Hoff turned up on top of it. All of this was for the Summit Talks event, where I was speaking later that month.
The organiser didn't have to do any of that. Speakers would have turned up anyway. A simple email would have been perfectly polite.
Instead, he did something nobody expected. Something people would talk about. I'm still talking about it six years later.
Think about the last thank you you got that you can still remember. I'd bet it wasn't a standard email. A really good thank you surprises people. It makes them feel properly seen. And if you're a business, the person you thanked starts telling the story for you.
Most of us can't book a Hollywood star to record a message. That's fine. A handwritten card when everyone else sends an email will do it. So will a thank you that names exactly what the person did, or a quick video from you, recorded on your phone, saying their name.
I said at the time that if that was how he treated his speakers, you'd be a fool to miss his event. I meant it.
