Unscripted Generosity

A stranger at a marina reminded me that the most memorable things we do are the ones we can't actually track.

The atmosphere at the Largs marina a few weeks ago was exactly what you’d want for a Sunday afternoon. We were just a few friends walking by the water and checking out the boats before settling into the restaurant for a long lunch. The service was great and the food was delicious, but the real highlight came when we asked for the bill.

Our waiter just looked at us and explained that it had already been paid. Naturally, we assumed he was joking. But the truth was, someone had paid the full total and walked out without leaving a name or even a hint as to who they were.

We spent the rest of the day baffled, calling around to friends we’d seen earlier to see if it was them, but nobody claimed it.

The point is that it wasn’t about the free meal, but the total lack of an agenda. There was no credit taken and no strings attached.

It was a simple act of kindness that completely changed the energy of our weekend. It also felt strangely rare, which probably says more about how we’ve all been conditioned to think.

I couldn’t help but connect this to a recent experience in my professional life where an experienced marketer I admire took a significant chunk of time out of his day to look over something I’d built.

He gave me honest, constructive feedback that he could have easily charged for. There was nothing in it for him, yet that single moment of generosity stayed with me far longer than any testimonial or “like” ever could.

The reason these moments stand out is that we spend so much of our lives online trying to be perfectly efficient.

We obsess over the size of our email lists, the conversion rates of our funnels, and the “lifetime value” of a subscriber. We’re taught that every minute must be billable and every interaction must be tracked. But let’s be honest, trying to optimise everything is the enemy of connection.

Most people already know this, but here’s the thing: it’s far easier to measure clicks than it is to measure trust.

When every move you make is calculated, people can tell you have an angle. They know when they’re being “nurtured” by a sequence and when they’re being “converted” by a script.

The stranger at the marina reminded me that some of the most powerful things you can do for your business are the things that don’t have a tracking link attached. It’s the effort that the data can't track, but the person never forgets.

So, if you want to be someone people don’t forget five minutes later, you have to find a way to be “unreasonably” helpful without immediately asking for something in return.

This doesn’t mean ignoring the money you need to make, but it does mean creating space for interactions that aren’t part of a funnel.

For example, most advice says to give away the “what” and sell the “how”. You might try breaking that rule by publishing a full-length tutorial or a guide that actually fixes a problem today without asking for an email address.

Actually, very few people are willing to do this consistently, which is exactly why it works.

When you help someone without any expectations, you aren’t “losing” a lead; you’re building the kind of reputation that makes people want to work with you later.

This philosophy applies to more than just the content you create; it’s about how you treat the people who actually read it.

We’ve been trained to use “no-reply” emails and automated bots to save time, but you can do something differently by simply picking two or three people who have engaged with your work and giving them a real, unscripted answer.

If a text reply feels too impersonal, you could even record a thirty-second video to show them you’re a real person. It takes a little more effort, but it immediately separates you from most people doing the bare minimum.

This isn’t about hitting a metric; it’s about proving there is a human on the other side of the screen.

In the same way, introducing two people in your network who could genuinely help each other costs you nothing. Neither does recommending a tool or a fellow writer simply because they are excellent.

Yet these are the kinds of gestures that people remember long after they’ve forgotten your last campaign.

Think about it this way: the internet has trained us all to expect a catch, so when you remove it, you create an experience that people actually remember. I’m still talking about that lunch at the marina because it was something I didn’t expect.

You can do the same for your people, whether it’s a handwritten thank-you card sent to an office or a personalised welcome for a new member of your community. It’s that extra bit of effort that wasn’t on the sales page and wasn’t promised in the checkout.

Your audience has seen every funnel trick in the book; they know what clickbait looks like and they can spot a forced sales pitch from a mile away.

What they don’t see nearly enough is someone who is actually genuinely helpful.

Because of this, you should try one small thing this week that isn’t part of your strategy. It won’t pad your list or fix your conversion rate overnight, but it might just happen to be exactly what someone needs to hear.

The stranger at the marina didn’t have a plan. They just did something generous and walked away, and weeks later it travelled from a restaurant in Largs into this newsletter and into your inbox.

That single moment travelled further than most campaigns ever do.