60 Years of Lessons (Part 1): Bunny Terry

Bunny: (00:01)
Hi there and welcome to the lifesaving gratitude podcast. We are just now post Thanksgiving 2021. And, as you guys probably well know because of the name of this podcast, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. My producer and my cohost isn’t able to join me today because she is still recovering from all the things she had to do over Thanksgiving for my business and for a book signing that we had last week. That was really, really exciting. I just want to let you know right now that I am available for book signings and readings, and we also we’re offering signed copies of my book so that you can give them to your friends and family for Christmas. That’s what a lot of people wanted to buy last week. And so that’s what we’re going to offer. And the shipping will be free if you order those this week in honor of cyber Monday.

Bunny: (01:04)
But all of that aside, this is a special podcast. I decided that I wanted to have a conversation with my listeners and talk about what it feels like to be finishing 60 and starting at 61, who knew that I would get to be this old and who knew that I would have such an, a convoluted and interesting life that got me here. I still can’t believe that this is the life I get to lead that I get to show up here every week and talk to you. But I’ve learned some really hard lessons along the way. And if, if there is one person out there who might benefit from the lessons I’ve learned, I want to record those and make them a permanent part of this podcast. This is going to be done in two parts because I got to tell you when I get started talking, I can’t stop. And on today’s podcast, I get through the first five. And then next week you’ll hear the second five. So we’re very excited to present this and I hope you enjoy it. I hope you stay to the end because I give you some really, really interesting statistics about how our brains work and how you can use your thoughts to be your most productive and fulfilled self. At least that’s how it’s working for me. Anyway. Thank you for being here. Thank you for following us for your reviews for rating and subscribing, wherever it is that you listen to podcasts and stay safe, stay grateful and have a wonderful holiday season. Thank you.

Bunny: (02:43)
I’m recording on my own today because I had an idea that it would be helpful to me, maybe most of all, to look at the things that I’ve learned in this crazy life of mine. I’m going to be 61 on December eighth. And while I never ever thought when I was younger, that I was going to make it past 30, I actually did. And I survived a lot of things. I survived being broke and being a single mom and being divorced three times and I survived stage four cancer. And I say over and over that, I am not an expert on anything except my own life. And, and perhaps there is one person listening today that might benefit from me sharing some of my expertise at living a life that is really perfectly imperfect. I’ve done everything incorrectly that I could possibly do. I’ve done everything the hard way, and yet I’m still here. I’m still showing up every day. And so I thought it would be fun for me to write down, 10 of the most important things I’ve learned in this lifetime. Um, things that still surprise me and that are maybe insights that will make a difference for you. So the only thing I know to do always is just to begin to just start here. So, number one on my list is that coming from contribution is always the answer. Um, I, this is an idea that I grew up with. My parents are both very giving. They, um, were lay missionaries. And for those of you who don’t know what that means, it means that they weren’t sanctioned by a denomination or a church. They just saved up all their money all year long, which wasn’t much. And they did garage sales and they sold things that they owned. And they had a lot of multi-level marketing experiences where they were trying to make money above and beyond what they were making in their regular jobs, which were varied. But every year they would save a specific amount and then they would finance their own trips to places where they felt led to go and speak about their faith. And, and that’s what I learned from a very early age is yet just give back. They were volunteer firemen, they were volunteer EMT. They did things for their community that perhaps a lot of other people didn’t do, but it felt important to them that they stay involved, that they give, they give away that they give their time and their energy. And really that was all they had to give except for this amount of money that they would save every year. So I grew up with the idea of coming from contribution, but I was so in meshed in survival mode that I didn’t really have time to think about it as a life practice. I spent a lot of my life in survival mode. I was a single mom from the time that I was 21 until Johanna went to college in 2009. So, so that was about 30 years. And, and as you know, even though your kids go to college, you’re still their single mom. And there was more than one time when Zach who was in the third or fourth grade at the time would call and say, mom, there’s something wrong. The light switches don’t work. And what that always meant was that I hadn’t been able to pay the electric bill. I can remember it happening at least twice. I remember really clearly one Monday afternoon in December when it was cold. And he called me after he had gone home, he was a latchkey kid and he went home and let himself in the house. And he called and said, mom, I can’t get the light switches to work in any of our rooms. And I, you know, I put him off. I said, well, buddy, let me check and see what’s wrong. You know, go over to your friend’s house and hang out for just a little bit. I remember I was driving up Wyoming Boulevard in Albuquerque. I was headed home. I was headed home, not home, but back to the office after a court run for the law office where I worked and I was expected back at the office, but I made a little detour and went to the bank and was praying that there was something, there was a single cent in my bank account. This was before we had internet banking. So I had a checkbook, but, you know, I was also juggling kids and buying diapers and worrying about healthcare. And this job that was really stressful. And I was in the middle of getting divorced and I needed to go to the bank and see, you know, do we have 50 bucks maybe? And because when the electric, when the electric company turns off, you’re like, they don’t take a check, you have to take cash. And I discovered that there was not a single cent in my bank account. In fact, I had a $29 overdraft and a $35 overdraft charge. I owed the electric company about $45, but you know what, in my life, at that moment, it could have been $700. I didn’t have that hundred and $9 or whatever it all added up to. I was brand new at my job. Johanna was about nine months old. I was really struggling to put food on the table and I knew there was going to be daycare that I needed to pay on Friday. There was going to be food I needed to buy between and then, and payday wasn’t until the following Monday. And that was at a time in my life. When the difference between surviving and crashing was about $300 to me, $300 was a huge sum of money then. And I, and I don’t say that lightly now, because I know that $300 is still a huge sum of money to a lot of people at that moment, I was ashamed to call my parents and I got to tell you, they probably, they didn’t really have the cash to spare. I was ashamed that I was getting divorced for the second time. And besides my parents were 200 miles away, and this was in the day before they could just shoot me cash, you know, through Venmo or some other electronic method.

Bunny: (09:45)
I didn’t want to ask my lawyer, friends who had helped me get resettled. And I didn’t know where to go. So I swallowed my pride and I went into my boss’s office. Cause I thought, you know, we’ve got to turn the heat on tonight. I have two little kids and I asked him if I might get an advance of $110 so that I could pay my electric bill. And he looked really concerned and he said, wow, that’s a high electric bill. I mean, remember this was like 2000, let me see. No, it was 1991. He said, that’s a high electric bill. Do we need to do a check and see what’s going on with your circuits or your heating? And then I swallowed my pride and I, again, which I seem to do a lot in those days. And I said, well, actually I have this little tiny overdraft and this larger overdraft charge. And if I could just get $110, I could cover all of those charges. And Mickey Barnett, who was the, my boss at the time did one of the kindest things that anybody has ever done for me kind of makes me want to cry. And he reached into his wallet and he, he had only known me a couple of months and he reached into his wallet and he handed me three crisp $100 bills. And I tried to give it back to him. And I insisted that he take it out of my salary. And he said, you can call this alone if you want. But what I’d really like is that you give the same amount to someone else someday. That’s what I’d really like for you to do. And $300 is nothing in today’s money, except he saved my life that day. He saved my pride and I was able to go to the electric company and pay my bill. And we were able to turn the lights and the heat back on, which is a big deal. You know, he gave me the rest of the afternoon off to handle my life. And I’m going to tell you that up until that moment, um, I didn’t understand what coming from contribution really meant. It was a real, it was a vague family theory, um, that had something to do. I thought with my faith or, um, you know, being like Jesus, I don’t know what I thought it was. But at that moment, somebody that I hardly knew had come from contribution and I’m never going to forget. I’ve never forgotten what it felt like to be that person who had no resources and I’ve never forgotten what a difference, such a small amount, at least in today’s numbers meant to me on that really hard day of my life. At another time in my life, I was just finished with chemo. I was post-surgery and I was, I was recovering from the recovery portion of my stage four cancer diagnosis. I was hoping it would never had come back. I’d spent hours, I’m sorry. I’d spent months being sick and then being in treatment and then having part of my gut removed and I wasn’t in the best financial shape of my life. My credit cards were maxed out and, things were tight. And one of the things that, um, that happens when you’re undergoing chemotherapy is that they tell you, you can’t have any dental work done. Johanna. And I just happened to be at a church luncheon and we were standing behind these two tall young men. And my cousin, Jennifer, who’s always proud because she was part of my cancer journey. She’s always proud to tell people what she feels like I accomplished. She came and stood next to me and she said, oh, I want to introduce you to Patrick. And this young man turned around and his name was Patrick Mcquitty. And we afterwards always called him Dr. McCutie, because he was so handsome, but she introduced him and she said, I want you to meet my cousin. She survived stage four cancer. And I said, you know, we visited for a minute. And I said, you know, I really need to see a dentist.

Bunny: (13:54)
And because I’ve been months without any sort of dental care a year, at least. And so I called, he said, well, call my office, make an appointment. I went in, I visited with him. He did x-rays and an exam. And he came in and sat down afterwards and he said, well, you need seven fillings and three crowns. And he might, this is like, when my electric bill could’ve easily, if it had been $700, it wouldn’t have made any difference. That was such any. And he handed me this little estimate and I looked at it and then I looked at him and I said, well, what if we do this over a very long period of time? Um, you know, it’s it, I think that the final tally was going to be like $4,600 and I was freaked out. And I didn’t, I wasn’t even sure that I could pay for the exam that I had had that day. And I said, you know, my daughter is in graduate school. I’m just getting back on my feet. I’ve got to figure out a lot of things. And he reached over and put his hand on my arm and he said, let me do this for you. And I said, um, well, wait, no, let me let’s do this all. We’ll do it on a payment plan. And he said, no, no, no. I mean, let me do this for you. And then at some point in your life, you can pay it forward to someone else. I still am blown away by that generosity. I went in, I had a number of visits. I got three crowns. I finally got my dental care up to date. And for those of you who know what it’s like when you can’t afford to do those sorts of things, it is such a powerful experience for someone to be that kind. Now I’ll tell you, I have never referred another person in Santa Fe to a different dentist. Um, he was generous in a way that he didn’t have to be, and he didn’t know me. And, um, he never asked a single thing of me other than I take care of myself and that I pat pay it forward. Um, I then learned the phrase come from contribution from somebody. When I first went to Keller Williams, I was blessed with both a friendship and a mentorship with my friend Judy camp, who happened to be my qualifying broker.

Bunny: (16:42)
And Judy camp is such an inspiration that I keep thinking, I need to write a book. What would you do camp say? And every time I would go, I was brand new in the Santa Fe market. I didn’t know what I was doing. And every time I would go to Judy with a question, she would say, well, how can you come from contribution? And I was saying, well, I don’t even know what you mean. And she would say, no, your client is in a tough spot. They want this done for their house, but they also don’t want to offend the seller. They, you know, they’re asking for things that, that the seller may not be able to provide. How can you come from contribution? And I would think, well, um, I can sit down with my buyers. I can very gently tell them that the ask they’re making may not be in their best interest. I can help them make informed decisions. All she said to me every day was you have to be in a mindset of coming from contribution that rolled over into what became my advocacy life, which is if every day you come from contribution. If you get up in the morning saying, show me the people that I can help today. If you have an affirmation that says, please let me be the answer to someone’s prayer today. Then you’re going to be just like Mickey Barnett. And Patrick Mcquitty were for me at a time when I desperately needed some help generosity and coming from contribution were things that I learned from my parents. But until I put them into practice, my life didn’t begin changing. There is no feeling that is more powerful than giving something to somebody who needs it and doing it in a way where it’s either anonymous or where you don’t expect a single thing back from them. I would say that my life has been enriched beyond belief by the ability to be generous when people need it the most expect it the least. And when you don’t care, what the payback is. So one of the most important things I’ve learned up to this point in my life for myself is that coming from contribution is always the best practice. Number two, on my list, which is a hard one for me to admit to, because I’m still in the business of doing this is that you can’t please everyone all the time. I am a professional people, pleaser. It’s my special gift. I can make a really good lemon pie and I throw good parties that no one wants to miss, but my first and best talent is thinking that I can make everyone happy, every single person. And it wasn’t until recently that I learned that’s really selfish and it’s, it’s really controlling. I had to get to be 60 years old before I learned that my trying to make everybody that by trying to make everyone happy, I wasn’t really making anyone happy and that you can’t make anyone happy. And least of all. I couldn’t make myself happy by trying to please everybody els e. And I also learned that there’s a level of control that people pleasers use to exert over the world. So it’s like this, wait, wait, if we’re going to, if I’m going to plan a dinner or a trip or an event and I want, and I want everybody to be happy, happy, happy. I need to be in control of all the details. I need to be in control of how the dinner goes, where the trip takes place, what the event entails. And I’m basically saying to the world that I know better than anyone else, what they want. The best example is, is when I’m planning stuff with my kids and my grandkids for driving to the lake. And I, my kids are bringing their kids. I feel like I should plan the perfect route so that there are bathrooms and snacks and scenery. And I exhaust myself trying to take care of all the contingencies and you know, what that results in results in this teeny tiny bit of resentment on the parts of others. And it conveys that I don’t trust them to make their own choices about what they want to do. It is the same with writing. It’s the same with being a leader. You can’t please everybody. And when you try to, it’s sort of like in advertising where you can’t be all things to all people, you have to choose what you’re best at and be that I wrote a blog post about 12 years ago about being in the second grade in Logan, New Mexico. I wanted to capture what it felt like to be a geeky six year old with bangs that were too short. And the older siblings that intimidated me and a teacher that scared the bejesus out of me, people in my community that I found both fascinating and bewildering like the custom of smudging foreheads on Ash Wednesday. I didn’t understand that. And I wrote it from the point of view of a second grader who had only recently learned to read and who was afraid of her teacher. And at the time I wrote it, the praise for that blog post was really high. I had, I have rows of comments on that original blog that said they knew exactly how I felt that it brought up all these memories of their own childhood, that they could just see where I was at the moment. I felt those things and that post about being in the second grade in Logan, New Mexico has been reposting on my blogs. About six times, maybe more. I thought it was a really sweet story about how fortunate I was at the end of the day to get off that big yellow school bus and run into our warm farmhouse, where it smelled like baking cookies and music was playing on the stereo system that my parents had just bought on a revolving credit account at Western auto. I wrote about my parents dancing in the living room and how fortunate I felt, even though I was in the second grade, I understood that what we had in my family could be different from what other people had. So a couple of weeks ago, we re posted that same blog post on the, I love New Mexico blog and there was still a lot of praise. And then there were a couple of comments by people. I went to school with who honestly, a couple of them were intimidating bullies. To me when I was a child, there were accusations that I was bullying the people that I wrote about there was citations of New Mexico law, about what I could say and what I couldn’t say. And I received a Facebook message from another person. I grew up with a copy of a post that she had written saying, well, here’s some, here’s something written by a person who professes to be a Christian and wow, check out the ugly thing. She about our community, especially about people who aren’t alive and can’t defend themselves. And I took the post down because it just didn’t seem worth it to offend someone so badly. But it also really rankled me. I thought, wait a second. You know you can write your own story about what it felt like to you to be in the second grade. If you need to say ugly things about me, then I probably deserve them. I had to remember you can’t please everyone all the time. And the sooner you stopped trying the sooner you and they will be happy. I can’t tell you what I’m going to do about the blog post. It’s one of my suite. It’s what I consider one of the sweetest pieces of family writing, but I’m going to leave it alone for now. I’m going to think about it. Number three, on my list of things I’ve learned mostly the hard way is to love myself and my body and my life right now, or as I like to call it, joy is the best makeup. It’s a phrase that I learned from Anne Lamott. I want you to know that if I added up every moment during my lifetime, that I’ve wished that I were thinner or taller, or I had straighter teeth or, or, or even I’m going to admit larger breasts.

Bunny: (25:07)
I suspect that all of that total time that I have wasted wishing for a different body would amount to a couple of years out of my life. I mean, it’s like I’ve wasted at least two years of my life, wishing that I looked different. And I know this because every day of my life, I’ve thought I was missing some mysterious mark of perfection. And then if I only count more calories or run another half mile. And, you know, I don’t know who I’m kidding because it’s been years since I ran rather than walking, but I always thought if I took better on my better care of my skin, or I had my nails done, you know, I mean, you know, the drill every day of my life, I have found some deficiency in my physical appearance. I’m right now I’m wishing I had on some lipstick. And this my friends is despite my daily practice of that. I promised myself viewing myself naked in the mirror and saying, thank you to my body for being so functional and added to that daily practice is also my practice of admiring some peace. Some part of my experience exterior. I learned this tip from my friend, Oprah, who suggested it in a column about 10 years ago. And I, I really took it to heart. I mean, most days I w it was my right elbow, um, which is really quite symmetrical. I’ll have, you know, or the small on my back where it curves down to what I’ve always, I swear, always thought of as too large. Although the small on my back was quite attractive. I told my husband this morning that I had always thought I had a big button. He laughed. He said bigger than what. And I thought about it because really why would I think that, and I think that because it’s conditioned, because especially as females in this world, we are conditioned to think that we don’t meet the mark because somebody, somewhere when I was probably 14 years old, said, God, Bunny, you have a big butt. And I took it to heart. And those words became a part of who I am. And I’m going to talk more in a minute about one of my other points, which, which is that your thoughts, you can choose your thoughts. Um, but what I, what I want you guys to know is that my butt really isn’t any bigger than anybody else’s and what an odd and silly and destructive thing to think about myself. So as I said, as I said earlier, if I had every one of those moments back during which I beat up my body, I could have written like 12 best-sellers and possibly cured cancer. I mean, all that energy was lost on something. That number one, wasn’t true. And two didn’t matter. I had to get stayed for cancer before I learned to love my body for its imperfections and for its scars and for its functionality. So my rule number three, that I’ve learned in this life is love your body. Don’t wait until it nearly fails before you start being joyful about the gift that it is. Does it walk, does it move? Do your knees bend? I mean, what, what, what a miracle we are physically, but, and who knows, once you start loving your body, you might just start treating it with more love and respect. You might take it out for a walk on occasion. I think that’s what I’m hoping for, for myself. Anyway, my rule number four that I have learned the hard way, but I’m learning is that happiness is right in front of you. It’s not about to happen. It’s right there. I’m working on a book right now that talks about all the failed relationships I was in and how the entire time I thought that if I could just find the right mate, my life would fall into place and it would look just like my parents’ life did. I watched them being crazy in love with each other every day. And I somehow believed that happiness was outside myself, particularly in the form of another person who would love me exactly the way I was. I always said I was gonna finally be happy when something else happened. When I found the right guy, when I found the right job, when I found the right place to live and, and to reflect on the last point, when I weighed the right amount and had my nails perfectly done, except, you know what, I was already happy. My life was already full. I had these two kids who generally liked me most of the time, who were healthy and thriving. And most of all, at least in my book, funny and kind and interesting. We had a lot of fun together. I had great friends. I was respected by my work colleagues. And I went on a lot of really cheap adventures. I had a supportive, extended family, and I lived in New Mexico, which is my favorite place in the world. Happiness was right there in front of me all the time. And all the searching for it was exhausting. It’s really true that you sometimes can’t see the forest for the trees. And what I’ve learned is that if we will take time to sit still and reflect on what we have, rather than what we don’t have, we’re going to recognize that joy and happiness are right in front of us. They are an integral integral part of our world.

Bunny: (30:41)
Here’s another, here is another law that I learned that that really shocked me. This may seem so elementary to everybody else, but you know what? You’re in charge of your thoughts. You get to choose your thoughts. Now you have a lot of first thoughts that show up and you can immediately recognize them and let them go. But you are in charge of what your brain decides to process. So create a safe Harbor. And remember that your mind doesn’t know the difference sometimes between reality and imagination. So when I was, when my kids were little, I had a bulletin board at work on which I posted a lot of things that mattered to me. There were pictures of both of my kids, usually candid shots of them laughing together. There was a family photo of me with my mom and my sister and my nieces and my beloved at Ruby was a group of strong women who all inspired me. And it made me smile. I had a copy of the article about Cal Ripken Jr. 2131st baseball game in which he broke Lou Gehrig’s record for most consecutive baseball games played. I got to tell you I loved baseball, but this was also a daily reminder that just showing up is more important than anything else. There were a couple of Dennis Robinson rookie cards that Zach had given me for my birthday that year before, because he knew how much I loved basketball on the San Antonio spurs. There was also a far side cartoon with a drawing of a wrinkled shirt, speaking to an iron say, don’t press me, which reminded me to sometimes say to my bosses, hang on. My plate is full. I can only do so many things in one day. And there was a black and white photo. It was actually an advertisement that I got out of a magazine of three, really scruffy looking young little boys that read the stress The average mom goes through on a daily basis would bring most executives to their knees. And finally, there was a quote that I had cut out of a magazine that read be brave, even if you’re not pretend to be, no one can tell the difference. It was really true, even when I was terrified to be alive, to have to get up in the morning and be an adult and a mom and a paralegal and get it right and make sure everybody got to school and that the backpacks were packed and that there was enough money in the bank to pay the electric bill. Of course even when I was afraid of life, I acted like I knew exactly what I was doing and you know what, no one knew the difference. And what I didn’t know at the time was that my brain didn’t know the difference either. And I steadily became somebody who my friends thought was really brave. So there’s a lot of controversy surrounding the idea that your brain doesn’t know the difference between reality and your imagination. So just let me say upfront that I’m not going to take on that argument right here. What I do know is that if I tell myself something on a regular basis, negative or positive eventually becomes my reality. And that’s because my mind is the most powerful tool I own. And one of the things I’ve learned over the past 10 years is that I have the power to choose my thoughts and the power. And, and I’ve also learned that the power of hope is a better predictor of success than any skill I possess. So if I choose thoughts that are hopeful, that is a better predictor of success than whether I’m a good writer or a good leader or a good podcast, or it’s just knowing that I hope that I’m making some sort of an impact is a really powerful predictor of my success.

Bunny: (34:48)
So I read like everybody else in the world, I read Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray Love. And when I read, I tend to doggy or the bottoms of pages that have phrases I want to go back to. And I’m just going to tell you, I mark up books more than I used to. I treat them more like old friends and less like their prizes. And, and that’s why I appreciate physical books rather than eBooks, but the part of eat pray love that I always refer back to was when Elizabeth Gilbert is at an ashram and she learns unexpectedly to her and certainly unexpectedly to me at the time that she can control her thoughts rather than allowing her thoughts to control her. And she says, we’re not, she’s not talking about repression or denial, but awareness. We’ve talked about mindful mindfulness on the podcast before. And I just want to demystify that term. It’s just being aware and you need to be aware that you can treat your mind as if it’s a safe Harbor for positive, rather than negative thoughts. And that when unhealthy thoughts show up, you can recognize them and just say, you know what? This is a safe Harbor for good thoughts. And, and you bad, unhealthy, ugly, angry thoughts. You’re just not welcome here. You can just simply recognize those thoughts and reject them. And I got to tell you, this is a hard truth for me, because I had never considered that I was able and allowed to choose my thoughts. And as I said, in the beginning of this podcast, I’ve been in survival mode for so long at the time that I didn’t know a different way other than just letting life happen to me. So I eventually wrote a book about the power of gratitude, and I knew that learning how to see and acknowledge, and then choose my thoughts was the beginning of my gratitude journey. You know, I had a dad, I still have him. Thank goodness. I’m very grateful for that. Who said every day, that if he were any better, he’d have to be two people. And hearing that on a frequent basis was also part of the journey. So I want to talk for just a second about self-talk. I was coached by a guy named price Pritchett, who is the author of a book called use squared and the quantum leap strategy. That’s a real cult classic. I mean, those are 39 page books that will change your life if you can pick them up. And I’ll put a link to those books in this podcast, but price Pritchett says in the quantum leap strategy that your most active, most personal most powerful coach is you. So here’s some numbers just so you have these for those scientific types up there, we say 300 to a thousand words to ourselves every minute, every single minute. And I find, I find that hard to believe, but that’s what the science says. And when I think about all the self-talk that I give myself, including those, that those two years of saying that my body wasn’t perfect. I understand what he’s saying. You also have about 3000 daydreams per day that tell you little stories. And of all those words you say to yourself and all those daydreams that you have every day that tell you stories. None of those are necessarily true, but your brain doesn’t know the difference. And here’s something else that’s really important to remember. I’ll always want to remember this concept because it feels to me like the most important part of controlling thoughts and choosing your thoughts. There are two voices in my head, and there are two voices in your head. I suspect there’s a critic and there’s a positive voice. And the critic is there to safeguard you. It’s it’s, it’s the part of your voice that says don’t step into the street when cars are coming, but it’s also the part of your brain that says, oh, you don’t need to think that you can write a book, think how people are gonna make fun of you. Who are you to think that you can run a marathon in 2022, really, really, you think you can do that. It’s there to safeguard you, but it’s also there to undermine you. Then you have your positive voice, which is your hero voice. It’s the voice that most of us push aside because we don’t believe ourselves. When we tell ourselves we’re pretty amazing.

Bunny: (39:29)
You can make the positive voice, the voice that leads you. You can choose, you get to choose which voice you listened to. There’s a magic ratio of five to one. And this ratio says that for every negative thought, you want to strive to replace that thought with five positive thoughts. Remember because your brain doesn’t know the difference. And remember the voice I had in my head that told me I had a big butt. Well, what if they’re in wha what if, instead of believing that voice, I had consistently told myself that I have a great body and a functional body and a cherished body five times over. I want you to hear today that what has worked for me is learning how to choose my thoughts. I’m not an expert at it. I’m not even very good at it. Like Anna Lamott says at the moment that I think I’m the most evolved. I’ll have some really uncharitable thought about somebody and think, and these are Anne Lamott’s words, not mine. The things I think about other people would make Jesus want to drink vodka from the dog bowl. I am not perfect, but boy, am I working hard at, at fulfilling that magic ratio of five to one?

Bunny: (40:50)
What I realize in all of this talking is that I have said a lot. And we’re at about probably 38 minutes. And I still want to take time to do an intro. So I’m going to do this in two pieces. So you got the first five of my favorite important life lessons. I’m just going to go through them again. Real quickly. Coming from contribution is always the answer. And I want to remind you, these are laws for me. I don’t know what your laws are. You can’t please everyone all the time. You got to love yourself and your body and your life right now, because joy is the best makeup and happiness is right in front of you. It’s right there. You’ve already got it. You just need to sit, still pay attention, figure out what you’re grateful for and recognize that you can be joyous because happiness is right in front of you. And number five, which is really, really powerful. You are in charge of your thoughts. You can create a safe Harbor. You can choose what you want to think, and your mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and daydreaming. So pick five positive thoughts for every negative thought you have. I’ll be back with more. You’re going to, some of these are really funny, but I got to tell you that, that one of the things I’m going to talk about in my next podcast is that it’s not failure. If you don’t quit and you really don’t have a lot of time. Thanks for being here. Thanks for checking in. And thanks for listening to my rambling. I’m pretty excited to get to be 61. It’s a gift to be alive.

Bunny: (42:43)
That’s all we’ve got today. Friends. I want to thank you for joining the life saving gratitude podcast with your host Bunny, Terry, that’s me and my producer and assistant Johanna Medina. We feel like we’re in the business of sharing the stories that save us, and we hope you’ll share as well by letting your friends and family know about the podcast follow and like us wherever you listen. And please take the time to leave a review, whether it’s a stellar comment or a suggestion, we are open to suggestions all the time. Also follow us on Instagram at life-saving gratitude pod. You can also follow me personally at Bunny Terry, Santa Fe. You can sign up my website at bunnyterry.com to receive weekly emails about how to become the ultimate gratitude nerd. Thanks so much for checking in.

Bunny: Hi everyone. This is Bunny with the Lifesaving Gratitude podcast. Just in case you don’t know me, I am a stage four colon cancer survivor and the author of Lifesaving Gratitude, which is a book about how gratitude helped me kick cancer’s ass. 

Today we’re going to talk to a special guest about how marketing and marketers can use gratitude to create business and connections with clients and also for themselves to create a really positive way to do their job. But first, I just want to thank you for being here and ask that you download the podcast if you’d like. And certainly subscribe wherever you listen to other podcasts. But enough about me and enough about the podcast. 

I want to introduce you to my special guest, who’s also a friend. Craig Cunningham is currently a realtor with Keller Williams, Santa Fe. And that’s how I met him. However, this is a recent career for him and he was, and correct me if I mispronounce the word, but you were a hotelier. Is that the way to say that?

Craig: Yes. 

Bunny: Yes. He’s spent 30 years in corporate sales and marketing. He’s traveled extensively. I’m going to let him tell you all the places that he’s been to, but he is the founder and principal of Cunningham + Colleagues marketing consultants. He was in the past the VP of marketing and quality for Seaport Hotels and World Centers and the VP of marketing for Core North America. So welcome Craig Cunningham.

Craig: Thanks so much for having me on your podcast.

Bunny: I’m excited. I know you have some great tips for all of our listeners. When I think about these podcasts, I always think about the people that are going to want the information we’re offering. I mean, we’re here to help people and we’re here to figure out how gratitude can make everyone’s life not just easier and simpler, but also fuller. So why don’t you start, Greg? Just tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us how in the world you ended up in this completely different career? And yet the truth is we’re still just marketers first and realtors, second. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell our listeners.

Craig: Yeah. So, as you said, I’ve been in marketing and sales for more than 30 years. I actually started off with an advertising and PR agency and then had the good fortune to be hired by my hotel client at the time, Wyndham hotels. At that time it was a North American chain and it’s now international. 

But from then on, I was in the hotel business. It’s definitely a career where if you are not focused on client service and the whole concept of gratitude, you’re not going to be successful. I always thought of our job as just surprising and delighting our guests and making them feel like they chose the right hotel to be with. And so it was always about waking up every day and saying, “What can I do to make somebody’s day and to give them a great experience?” And, of course, to do this you have to be grateful because they opted to choose your hotel over the million other choices that they had. 

So when I retired from the hotel business two years ago, I was trying to figure out what else I wanted to do with my life. I started doing more volunteering. I volunteer with Kitchen Angels here in Santa Fe to deliver meals to people who are not able to leave their homes. But I also started thinking of whether I wanted to do something else from a professional standpoint and the real estate business seemed like a natural extension, because it’s all about client service. You have to figure out ways to make people feel like they’ve made the right choice in working with you. So it’s all about being grateful every day and figuring out what can I do to help them today. How else can I extend what I’m doing for them in a way that they will appreciate and know that I appreciate them. So that’s what it’s really all about, because of course they could work with a million other other people

Bunny: Right. And let’s talk for just a second. Don’t you think that marketing has changed over the 30 years that you’ve been doing this? I mean, it seems to me that when we were kids, which was back before the crust cooled, we were sort of marketed at. Just talk for a minute about how marketing is different now than it was 10 years ago or 30 years ago.

Craig: It’s funny, because I was going to say the exact same thing. Back in the day, you were running a TV ad or a radio spot or a print ad and it was passive in that you just presented the information, unless you were direct sales. But really with the advent of so much digital media, you are instantly able to forge a relationship with customers through social media, through Facebook, Instagram, where you’re having a dialogue with them from the very beginning. This allows you to work in a much more personal way and to be able to find out much more quickly how you can serve those people. 

So I think it’s changed completely. Before you just sort of put it out there into the ether and hope that something worked, and now you’re able to engage. And I’ve found that so much in real estate where I’m getting emails from folks and then it evolves from the email into a phone call or a zoom call or something like that instantly. I think that’s so much better for both people. Especially for somebody like me who wants to find ways to engage with people and to be of service to them, it makes it a lot easier and more rewarding.

Bunny: I just think about the ways that I connect with my clients. It’s as if you’re somehow conveying to those people that you’re grateful that they showed up.

Craig: Yeah, exactly. I mean, my whole thought is that it’s not a transaction, it’s a relationship. And that relationship can be multifaceted. Once you’ve sold them a house or sold their house, I like to think that we’ve formed a friendship and a bond and that relationship is going to continue. And honestly, I don’t even care if I ever get another piece of business for them. Now think of them as friends. I want to have them to my house for dinner or go have coffee or something like that. 

I think that kind of thing that makes a difference for people in wanting to work with me.  It’s coming from a position of wanting to be of service to them and wanting to make them happy and finding the right solution for them. I’m working with some first-time-buyers right now and I kind of feel like they’re my kids. It’s about, okay, how can I really help them with this? And they’re grateful for the counsel I’m able to give to them, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with them. So it’s very rewarding. I think if you approach business relationships in the same way as you would with your friends, it’s a win-win situation for everybody.

Bunny: Well, talking about those first-time home buyers, I mean, that’s one of my favorite deals. You never make the most money from those transactions, but I’m so grateful to be reminded that we are providing the American dream when we’re selling real estate. Yeah. It’s amazing. It’s my favorite experience.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, for somebody to have their first home and to be excited about how they’re going to decorate it and what they’re going to do. And with this young couple, seeing them excited when they see a house brings out all my empathy and makes me want to really go the extra mile for them to make sure they find the right house at the right price for them. And then I just never want to stop. So then it’s like, “Okay, now I’m going to find this person for you to do the plumbing, and I’m going to find this person, etc, and I’ll be with you with you  to help explain things.” I just want to really continue to be of service.

Bunny: I talk a lot, especially on my blog, about Judy Camp, who was one of my first real estate mentors. She was a great friend and Linda Gammons partner for a long time before she passed away. But Judy Camp always says, “If you come from contribution, you can’t help but be successful.”

Craig: Yeah. I mean, just as I was saying, you can’t think of it as a transaction. I think, coming from contribution, how can I help you? How can I make this a better experience? How can I make this work? Because, especially in a real estate transaction, it can be stressful. It’s the biggest financial transaction for the majority of us. So how do you take the burden and the pressure away from them and sort of guide them through the process? I just think the main thing is that it’s much more fun, whether you’re doing volunteer work or in business, to wake up every day and figure out how I could make it fun for somebody else. Because then it’s fun for you and it gets you excited and passionate about what you’re doing.

Bunny: Well, it sounds like our big “why’s” are really similar. I certainly don’t want to put any words in your mouth, but it sounds like your big “why” is just to make the life of the people you come in contact with better.

Craig: Yeah. Of course making money is nice, but there are lots of ways to make money. It’s more about whether you are getting energy from it. And I think you really get energy when you’re working with someone and trying to figure out how you can help them, how you can make their day better, how you can make the service that you’re providing better. And also just doing things that saying, “What about if I do X, Y, Z?” and they’re  like, “Oh, you’ll do that for me?” And I’m like, “Of course.”

I have another set of clients where the transaction was fairly complicated and we were looking at lots of properties. Coming from a corporate background, I love to do spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations—things like that. And so after about the third thing we had to do, they’re like, “Oh, how are we going to organize all these bids?”  And then one of the guys said to the other guy, “Well, Craig’s going to do a spreadsheet for us. He’s probably already got it done.” So it’s that kind of thing where you’re looking for ways to make their experience better.

Bunny: So this is always a funny question for me to ask, because I have such a loose gratitude practice other than just waking up in the morning and saying, “thank you, thank you, thank you,” and then writing things down, but do you have a practice that you follow that helps you both in your business and your personal life?

Craig: Well, since I came into real estate with Keller Williams, which focuses a lot on being servant leaders and helping people, I’ve gotten into the habit of writing three things I’m grateful for that day. It could be that it’s a beautiful day or a dog or my partner or the opportunity to help somebody or the coffee’s really good that day, but waking up and appreciating what you have in your life is a good way to get in a good mindset for the rest of it.

Bunny: Oh, absolutely. Something I always say is that we kind of rewire our brains. We do. We create new neural pathways every time we say that we’re grateful. So in terms of nuts and bolts, is there a way that you let your clients know? I mean, I find that there are a lot of young people, young entrepreneurs or people who are new to business, who forget how to tell their clients how they’re grateful for them, even if it’s a line in an email. Do you have something that you do specifically over and over?

Craig: I think for me, it’s maybe more in the actions. I think of “This is really going to be helpful if I do this or if I provide this information.” I think it’s always in my voice and the way that I write. I try to always communicate openly and in a friendly and conversational manner. But then I also think “It would be really cool and really helpful if I did X , Y , Z.” I created a whole PowerPoint just on the neighborhoods in Santa Fe, because if you’re out of town it gets confusing. And that came out of a client saying, “Well, I don’t really know the neighborhoods.” And I thought that this would be a great tool for them. So I created it and then I was able to use it with others. 

So I think for me, maybe it’s sort of on the fly. I used to say in the hotel hotel business, “How can I make this a wow experience?” Because the other way to think about it is that every relationship is with people. When you’re in a service business you’re really in the business of creating memories. You can create good memories or you can create bad memory and it’s much more fun to create good memories.

Bunny: And that just comes from a spirit of generosity. I mean, you obviously want this to be the best real estate experience they’ve ever had.

Craig: Right. Right. I’m very grateful for the people that have helped me along the way. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to always work for people who were concerned about my career development and my personal development and became dear friends. And I’ve had a couple of bosses that have hired me twice in two different jobs. So I’m always grateful for the things that other people have done for me. 

So then I want to pay it forward. When I came to Keller Williams and I was introduced to the team here, there was so much openness and willingness to share and help and support. It has been fantastic. What strikes me the most is how grateful I am for what other people have done for me. And how do I pay that back?

Bunny: I mean, this is not a podcast to plug Keller Williams. It’s really more to talk about mindset, but the place where I learned it was sitting in that training room and learning that my mindset was the secret sauce. I mean, that’s the success piece, right?

Craig: Yeah, exactly. It’s not just about production and everything. It’s about weight and having a sense of gratitude and contribution and a sense of abundance. And I don’t mean that in a monetary way. It could be abundance in your health or your friends or all of that kind of stuff. And I think back to you. Your experience with cancer was far worse than mine, but I did have prostate cancer about nine years ago. Everyone I worked with during that entire time when I was going for radiation every day for 10 weeks was so supportive. And then on the last day of radiation, there was this very important meeting, and everyone knew it was my last day.My whole team had a celebration for me on my last day. That was turning something that was obviously a challenging situation into something where I knew they really cared about me and supported me.

Bunny: Wow. I’m interested to hear how your mindset was in the middle of that? 

Craig: I’m just by nature, an optimistic person. So even though it was scary, I felt like I was in good hands from a medical standpoint and I just felt like I was gonna beat it. I had done the education that I needed to and then it was really about having a positive mindset. 

This is probably too much information, but I’ll say it anyway. You’re doing the radiation stripped down to your boxer shorts. And so I jokingly put this Facebook thing about the fact that I needed a new pair of boxer shorts for every day. And people started sending me underwear—different pairs of boxer shorts for every day. So while I was sitting there in the big machine, where you’re sort of in there and it’s buzzing and scanning and all that kind of stuff, it got to be kind of a joke with the techs:  “Oh , what’s he going to be wearing today?”

Bunny: I love that.

Craig: That was a way to keep my spirits up. And also during that process, I really learned how to be very focused. I was in a waiting room with people that were going through, frankly, worse things than prostate cancer. Don’t get me wrong, prostate cancer is pretty serious. It is. People die from it. But I was seeing so many other people that were having a much more challenging time than I was. And we became a family. We all bonded together during that process, because we were all waiting, sometimes for an hour. So it’s things like that. And also things like the kitchen angels service, where it helps reboot you every day for how grateful you should be in your own life and grateful for the opportunity to help other people.

Bunny: Right. There are tons of people who do get what a gift it is. People who don’t even have a specific gratitude practice, but at least an attitude every day that you’re going to figure out something. I just wrote a blog post on limiting beliefs and one of the things that I wanted to convey is that we get to choose every single moment how we view the world. And maybe for somebody out there who’s brand new in business or who’s starting a new business. I just read a statistic that said that the entrepreneur demographics are changing. And now like 48% of new entrepreneurs are over 50. So hooray for the old people! 

But I know that there are people out there right now who are thinking, “Well, I’m not any good at marketing. I’m not any good at that piece of it. I can sell stuff, but I’m not good at the marketing stuff.” I’ve got to tell you, I’m married to a guy who doesn’t believe in self promotion because he came from a generation when you played down your assets, instead of being grateful for them and talking about them. So I’d love to hear what you have to say to somebody who has that limiting belief that they can’t market. And they can’t promote themselves.

Craig: You know, we could all market ourselves, and we do it every day in our interactions.  Whether we think of it as marketing or not, we’re marketing ourselves all day long in how we react and treat other people. The thought I had as you were talking about your husband thinking self-promotion sounds like a dirty word is that it doesn’t have to be you talking  about “me, me, me” and “I did this million dollars in revenue.” This is kind of a turnoff in some ways, because you’re talking about yourself. But if you’re talking about how you can help somebody else and how you can provide a good experience for them with your information and knowledge, you’re not talking about yourself in that context. You’re talking about how you can be of service. I think that’s a much easier way for a lot of people from a generation where we weren’t really supposed to be talking about ourselves.

Bunny: Well, it was pre-social media. Our face wasn’t out there. We just weren’t trained to tell people, “Here’s the reason you should hire me instead of the other person.”

Craig: Yeah, exactly. I mean, now we’re all our own brands on social media. But I think that rather than saying to somebody, “Here’s why you should hire me versus somebody else,” you should just talk about how you can be of service in what you do in an authentic way. Then people are more likely to want to work with you, because you’re radiating a sense of positivity and an interest in them. And they’re not thinking that you just look at them as a transaction and then you’re onto the next person.

Bunny: I frequently use with my marketing coaching clients the example of a dinner party. If you went into a dinner party (and this is for people who are just beginning in whatever business they’re in, especially if they’re self-employed), you wouldn’t simply walk in, take your coat off and say, “Hey, I’m selling something, come and talk to me.” Right? I mean, that’s what you don’t want to do with marketing. You want to start by building a relationship. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

Craig: I think it goes all the way back to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. People do like to talk about themselves. And so the first thing is you should be listening. That was one of the first things I learned in marketing client service. You need to ask questions and learn from your clients. Focus on what they need, as opposed to talking about yourself. You really want to establish a dialogue with them about their wants and needs and hopes and fears and everything else. Then you can talk about how you can address them. But nobody wants to go in and all of a sudden have you sit down and say, “Here’s my PowerPoint about me and what I’ve done.” It should be more of establishing, from the very beginning, a relationship of openness with folks. Then, after hearing from them, you can say “Well, here’s how I think I can you and here are some ideas that I have that I could share with you.” So I think a key thing is really listening from the very beginning.

Bunny: I even found that to be helpful when I used to first go on listing appointments. I was so nervous that I would sit down and I would immediately try to book an appointment. You know, if you’re not in real estate, a listing appointment is just like sitting down with a prospective customer. I would be so nervous in the beginning and really coming from a place of scarcity where I thought, “If I don’t get this listing, I’m not sure I can pay the rent next month.” And if you’re coming from a place of scarcity, you’re likely to self-sabotage. But that’s such good advice because things changed when I finally learned how to sit back and listen: “I’m here to help you. Tell me what it is that you need. Talk to me.” It’s so powerful to give a client time to talk to you. And I think people forget to do that, right?

Craig: Yeah. And I think sometimes we do it because we’re afraid. What I’ve learned so much over the years in business working with people is that people are terrified of silence, so they will immediately start talking. If there’s a second of silence, you jump in and start babbling. Lord knows I do it. But if you just let somebody talk and let it sort of sit there for a second and not just try to be filling in all the time. It drives me crazy when people are doing that. It’s much better if you can have the client talk and then ask some more questions and then be warm and reflective about it. Back to the Dale Carnegie thing, I think one of his first points was if you’re at the dinner party, ask people about themselves. Most people do like to talk about themselves. So ask them and don’t just start talking about yourself. 

Bunny: I think that even people who would say, “I don’t like to talk about myself,” really do want somebody to ask them and listen to them.

Craig: Yeah. And it’s not just asking them to go on and on. It’s more meaningful questions about, for example, why they decided to move here. Just those kinds of questions that get them thinking. Growing up in materialistic Dallas, the joke was that the questions at a party were like, “Where do you live? What do you do? What do you drive?” And so it’s not questions like that. It’s asking them more about their life experience,

Bunny: You just brought me to another completely different point, which is for any realtors out there listening: I think it’s really important to convey to your clients how grateful you are for where you live. I mean, if our lifestyle is such a selling point, don’t you think you should share that?

Craig: Oh, yeah, exactly. I mean, living in Santa Fe there’s so much beauty. I’m looking out my window right now at the beautiful blue sky. When I leave my house in the morning and I see the mountains, and then when I’m coming home at night and the sun is setting over the mountains and I see all the different colors and everything, it’s just breathtaking. It’s great to live in such a great and wonderful environment and in a place that is very spiritual, going back with the native Americans—respect for the earth and nature and all of those things—I think it does help center us more than a lot of other places.

Bunny: How do you convey that to your clients? I know you’re doing something really cool online that’s different from some other realtors.

Craig: Well, I’m not just posting on my Facebook page,” Hey, I just sold this house or just sold that house.” Well, that’s great. But I’m more talking about new experiences in Santa Fe: new restaurants, or a new place to go hiking, or something exciting that’s happening at one of the museums or things like that—enthusiastically talking about the experience of living in Santa Fe. And if down the road, by the way, you’re looking at this stuff and you decide you want to buy a house here, I would love to help you. But it’s more about conveying the reason why we all want to live here

Bunny: And tell us about your blog, because I think it’s amazing.

Craig: So I created this blog, which is called Santa Fe Scenes. It’s that same kind of thing where it’s just talking about having fun in Santa Fe. One of the things was, you know, we’ve got the old Santa Fe trail and we’ve got the old Pincus trail, but did you know that we had a Margarita trail and a Chocolate trail? Stuff like that. Just being whimsical about it and talking about some of the things are unique about the city and sharing my own passion for Santa Fe. I was very fortunate to be able to do a lot of international travel for my job. I was grateful for the opportunity that I was given to see places that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise from Bogota to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and Beijing and places like that. So I’ve always been enthusiastic about travel and now living in such a beautiful place like Santa Fe, I want to share that enthusiasm with people.

Bunny: And you’re getting some good feedback on that I bet, right?

Craig: Yes, I am. I’m getting good feedback on it. It’s been a wonderful thing to reconnect with friends who are saying, “Good for you, you old dog! You’re back out there trying something new.” Because whenever someone says, “Oh, you’re a new realtor,” I say, “Well, I’m an old new realtor. I’m 61 and I’m starting this for the first time.” But it’s been great from that perspective and the support that you get from your friends. Then people are saying, “Oh, well, I know somebody who might be interested in sending you that information.” I think that’s one of the positive things that social media has done where we’ve been able to reconnect with so many people that we might have completely lost touch with.

Bunny: Oh yeah. I did a post not very long ago about how grateful I was, and it was in the middle of all the fear over Facebook and Twitter. And I just said that it’s such a great platform for reconnecting with cousins that I haven’t seen since I was six. I mean, I just turned 60. I’m an old dog and this is a new trick for me, but I think that if you use it the right way, it’s a real gift. I also think there are so many realtors, like you said, who just post either pictures of houses that they have listed or their accomplishments. And I think they’re really missing an opportunity.

Craig: Yeah. Because then you’re just talking at someone. You’re not sharing information and excitement about things with them. People don’t want to look at that stuff. They want to look at things like the fact that there are like six great chocolate tiers in Santa Fe. And then the next time I’m in town, I want to go to each one of them. Or discovering an amazing new hiking trail or a beautiful image of a shop window or a piece of art or something like that. 

Bunny: Yeah, it’s so much better than “I just listed this house at 123 main street. Don’t you wish you owned it?” Exactly.

Craig: Exactly. I think more people would react to it. I’d really like to have some of that green chili chocolate over at The Chocolate Smith or whatever. It’s much more interesting than a picture of a kitchen that has granite countertops. Oh my goodness.

Bunny: And, you know, Craig, I found that people will call me and they’ll say, “Well, I’ve been following you on Facebook for two years. And I feel like you’re my best friend. I think you’d be the right person to show me around and help me find a house.” And I bet that’s happening to you too.

Craig: Yeah, exactly. It’s funny, you mentioned that. One of the people I’ve been mentoring told me a story about how she posted a lovely picture of herself and then somebody called her and said, “I feel like I already know you because you just look like a nice person and I feel like I can trust you.” I think also that it’s our eyes and our smile and everything that conveys so much of what you’re talking about. If you have a spirit of gratitude and service and a sense of abundance, not scarcity, it shows in your face, your eyes, your smile, and your whole persona.

Bunny: Well, we’re going to have to wrap up here in a minute, but I would love to hear if you have just three great tips that you would give to somebody who feels kind of stuck in their marketing. It could be what you’ve learned in 30 years or in the last three days, whatever it is.

Craig: I think one is changing your question from “How do I market myself?” to “What can I do for this client?” or “What can I do that’s going to excite the people? How can I make them feel appreciated and valued?” And this can work in cases where you’re actually working one-on-one with a client or cases where you’re trying to figure out how to promote what you’re doing. How do I find ways to surprise and delight people? So I like to do that with social media buys, where you come up with quirky, little things to talk about that are authentically Santa Fe or a funny picture of my dog or something like that. You want to put a smile on people’s faces. And social media gives us so many opportunities to be able to do that in ways that we couldn’t before. So the main thing at the end of it is to put your client first, and then I think everything else will come from there.

Bunny: You’re absolutely right. I think as long as your passion is helping people, then success is just a natural by-product of that.

Craig: Exactly. People feel that energy and then they want to tell their friends about you.

Bunny: What I’ve found is that people want to be able to trust somebody, especially in this business where they’re making possibly the biggest purchase of their life.

Craig: Right? I’m thinking back to these younger clients. We were touring houses, and they were interested in one particular house and I was like, “No, I’m not going to let you buy this. This is not the right move.” And I think all of a sudden they’re like, “Wow, he really cares. He’s not just thinking ‘Tick tock, tick tock. We’ve seen three houses.’” This is not House Hunters International where there are the three properties and you have to buy one. So again, it’s not a transaction. It’s a journey. It’s a relationship.

Bunny: I think that’s the most important tip for somebody to take away. Whether you’re selling widgets or earrings or house cars or houses, this is not a transaction. It’s a relationship. We want people to trust you and come back over and over. I don’t know how you can love your job if you’re not doing it the way we’re doing it.

Craig: Yeah, exactly. And have fun with it. We get to meet interesting people all day long. We get to see things. We get to use our own creativity to express ourselves. I know there are people that are in jobs that don’t have that. But I also read things about  the janitor in an elementary school who takes real pride in what they do, and they are going to do the best job that they possibly can. So I think in almost everything, you can come at it with a mindset of “How can I make this a great experience for me and for others?”

Bunny: That’s great stuff. Tell us where people can find you and where they can find your blog.

Craig: Well, probably the most fun thing I’m doing is the Santa Fe Scenes blog. 

Bunny: Okay. And we’ll share that on the information page for the podcast. And then, of course, if people want to buy a house from you, they can find you through there?

Craig: Yeah. All my information is on there. So one stop shop.

Bunny: Craig, I’m so excited that you were here. This was fun. I think we could do it again.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Bunny: Because I think this is the place where people get stuck. People who are self-employed get stuck in this part. And so I think there’s a lot of stuff that we can talk about.  But I’m of course really grateful that you agreed to talk with us.

Craig: Oh, thanks. It’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate it. 

Bunny: And to everybody else, thanks for being here. This is once again, the Lifesaving Gratitude podcast. I’m Bunny Terry. You are welcome to go to my website if you’d like to learn more about me and about buying my book, which is all about gratitude and how gratitude helped me kick stage four cancer’s ass. And we’d love to have you follow us and subscribe on spot Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much, Craig.

Craig: Thank you. Next time.