Gratitude and the Conscious Mind: Michelle Andersen

Bunny: 0:01

Welcome to the life saving gratitude podcast. This is Bunny, Terry and I am joined by my co-host and producer Johanna Medina, who just happens to be my daughter as well. And we are having a conversation today with Michelle Anderson, who is an amazing coach, and she is a transformational and a , productivity coach for Keller Williams, but also several other organizations. And this was a fun conversation. This is a conversation where we talked about the conscious and the unconscious mind and how it works. It was pretty amazing wasn’t it?

Johanna : 0:48

Yeah, it was, it was a great one in it. You know, it goes really fast. There’s a lot of great information in it. But yeah, I wrote down so many things. And again, that theme of like mindfulness that keeps coming up in a lot of our episodes. Um, she even kind of runs us through a mindfulness practice, a little , technique, which was fun. I’ve done a lot of mindfulness practices before, and I’ve never done that one before, so it was fun.

Bunny: 1:16

Oh, people will want to stick around for that. And I’ve got to tell you, there’s always one gem. I mean, there’s, there’s more than that. But one of the things, when , when we were talking about accountability, I have had a number of coaches and I’ve had a number of Keller Williams coaches. And every time they start talking about accountability, my brain kind of turns off. I’m just like, oh no, they’re going to hold me accountable. And she completely reframed that in the most positive way.

Johanna : 1:45

She did. She did. And I agree with you, I think accountability or being accountable sometimes, maybe, you said negative connotation, but it’s almost like an intimidating connotation too, because you think like, oh no, I have to be…someone’s holding me accountable. And someone’s going to know if I mess up, but it’s really, doesn’t have to be that scary. It is someone is holding you to it, but it’s because they know you can do it. So that’s makes it way more motivating than scary.

Bunny: 2:17

Right. And it’s really one of my least favorite words. So I like, I really love the way that she reframed it. And then she had that quote , we can never rise. We will….

Johanna : 2:29

Never out perform our own self image.

Bunny: 2:32

Wow . What’s that great.

Johanna : 2:34

Wow. That’s one you kind of like, I need to sit with it for a little bit and like, really think about that because some of us, I don’t know, sometimes you don’t have a positive self image either, so it’s kind of, you can, you can bring it into that too. I think.

Bunny: 2:53

Well, and I think that it’s all about , the more you believe in yourself and the more that, you know, I’ve you know, the less self-doubt you have, the more you’re going to achieve. I mean, the closer you’re going to get to the , to the dream you have for your life. So.

Johanna : 3:12

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so many things that definitely do, you know. Yeah. Again, talking about the conscious mind, the unconscious mind and the kind of, some of the science behind setting goals and how you can’t just really like, think that that’s going to happen without doing anything. So, and you, you know, a lot about that, you have a lot of experience with that.

Bunny: 3:40

Well, I do now, and when I asked her if she had any regrets, what I was thinking was, I wish I had learned this 40 years ago instead of, you know, 10 or 11 years ago, because , um, knowing how your brain works is so , um, it’s, it’s, I , I know I use the word powerful all the time, but it is really powerful. It’s it’s and, you know, I was in survival mode for so many years that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but this, this is, this is good stuff and you’re going to want to stick around until the end.

Johanna : 4:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah .

Bunny: 4:17

And so , um, yeah.

Johanna : 4:19

Oh, well, Yeah. Wait before you do the cut off. Cause that’s what I was, I wrote down actually, I was like, oh, I’m going to ask you that. Then since you asked her , you said, well , what’s something you would have done differently in your wife. And, oh, I was like, well, I want to ask Bunny that. Did you, is that kind of your answer that you wish you’d known things? Or what do you think?

Bunny: 4:39

I wish that I had had some inkling of the power that my mind had. You know, I think in the simplest terms, when I first started paying attention to it was after my kids were gone and I thought, wow I, you know, a whole lot of stuff, I did that it was accidental, or it was because my parents raised me correctly, but I do wish that I had known more about my mindset and about mindfulness. And I wish I had been more conscious of an ongoing practice of gratitude. And I, you know, I feel like some of that was accidental, but as, as Michelle says, nothing’s accidental. So here we are doing a podcast. We’re glad you’re listening and we hope you’ll subscribe and follow us. And please review us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much for being here. We’re here today with my friend and colleague and someone that I met accidentally, but I admire incredibly , Michelle Anderson. Michelle is a Keller Williams coach. She’s also a she’s an expert at productivity coaching. She was a pioneer in the development of the product productivity coaching model for Keller Williams. And those of you who are regular listeners know that I am a realtor with Keller Williams, some, a lot of other things, but I would say that the mindset that I have and the mindset that got me to the place where I felt that I could write my book and tell my story is, is directly attributable to my experience with Keller Williams. So , uh , Michelle has over 15,000 hours in coaching and training. She’s certified by the international coaching Federation. She’s a John Maxwell coach. She’s a certified disc consultant and she’s certified in something I’m really fascinated about called conversational intelligence. But I first want to let folks know Michelle and I met, we went to a, what we call bold in Keller Williams switches . Oh my gosh. Business… wait a second. What does BOLD stand for? I remember the living life by design, but business

Michelle : 7:16

Objectives, Life by life by design.

Bunny: 7:18

Yes. And I accidentally sat at the leadership table and I was not leadership. However, the cool thing was that I sat next to Michelle and we became friends. And , um, I, we want to have a conversation today about your conscious mind and your unconscious mind. We want to talk a little bit about gratitude and coaching, but first Michelle, I want to hear some of your story. How did you get to this place where you’re such an expert and such a great coach?

Michelle : 7:52

It’s so interesting to hear the word expert in your name. I’ve never really thought that way cause I’m constantly growing and learning. I appreciate you saying that and I’m thank you again for just being here today with you guys. And I’m going to be honest, this is my very first podcast. So I’ve done lots of other things , but I’ve not been , um, you know, on a podcast before. So I almost said I’m a Virgin in it and you might want to cut that out. This is my first time being . So , um, and just going back to how we met, I think you and I probably both have the philosophy that there is no such things as accidents and you are absolutely meant to be at that leadership table and that’s how we became friends. So , um, so my journey of getting here, it’s interesting because the role that I am a coach for within the Keller Williams organization, I coached the coaches who coach the newer agents right within the organization. And so back in 2007, I was a high producing agent, my market center on the ALC, which for those who don’t know what that is – it’s agent leadership council . And, and I was already somebody who contributed to the training that was going on in the market center. And Keller Williams literally , um, came up with a role and it was a new role within our industry, which was having a local coach, somebody who’s working inside of a Keller Williams office or a real estate office, coaching those newer agents and helping them with their training and their coaching to get them to a level of production, like the kind of level you’re at bunny, right? So everybody started somewhere. And when that role first came about, and I was doing it for about six months, some of your listeners will have no idea who this person is, but for about six months, I thought I was Julie on the love boat. I was there to have fun and get everybody having , um, you know, doing activities, which is part of the role, but the missing ingredient, all of that was the actual coaching side, which has to do with transformation of thinking and accountability, right. And helping people get what they want. So it started almost , um, I can’t use the word accident because there isn’t such things. And yet it was just a new role. My team leader, my manager at the time said, Hey, I think you’d be great at this. And I said, what is it? And she said, I don’t know, we’re going to figure it out here. I am. And it’s 14 years later from that, from that time where I was one of those productivity coaches and, and, you know, often we say I pioneered in the role because I was one of very few people who were doing it and did it really, really successfully. And then I earned my way into being an actual national coach. Meaning now I’m a maps coach. So I coach those coaches that are coaching those new agents on trusting. That made sense. And if not, it’s too many, too many paths to coach, but, and I’m thinking maybe that you can grasp with that on . So it was, it was just something that fell upon me.

Bunny: 10:48

Well, I love the fact that she said, you know, it wasn’t accidental, but you said, you taught the person in charge, your office said, you’re going to be this. And we don’t know what it is, but, but we’re going to do it. I mean, it’s like, it’s like life, we don’t know about 90% of the time. We don’t know what it’s going to be, but, but we, you know, if you jump in and do it and you have the right mindset, it seems to work

Michelle : 11:10

The right mindset and the right mentor. So I owe so much gratitude to Diana Koska, who was my coach and my mentor. And so there’ll be many people who will know who she is and many who won’t, but you brought up bold and she was the author of bold, but she was also at that time, the president of naps. So she hired me to be a maps coach, but that was after she coached me in the role of being a productivity coach. So I had a great mentor, a great trainer and Diana and I attribute much of my success to that very first mentor from a coaching perspective. So I’d like to give gratitude to her .

Bunny: 11:46

Well, she is amazing. Um, she’s very amazing, but you, when we proposed this podcast, I knew that she would have a lot to say about mindset, but one of the cool things you said was , um, that we’re , you’re in the time of year where you talked to your clients about , working on their thinking, because your conscious mind is the goal setter and your unconscious mind is…

Michelle : 12:17

The goal getter. So it’s goal setter with an S and go get her with a G

Bunny: 12:22

And, and talk to me about what that means. That’s news to me. Yes .

Michelle : 12:28

The reason these conversations are coming up now is because for many people, many industries specifically, let’s say with real estate, we’re all working on what are our 2022 goals look like, right? Like what do we want for next year? So it’s very much a business planning time. So, I’m working with my clients, I’m spotlighting and reminding us, first of all, everything stems from thinking everything, right? Whether it’s how I’m going to feel today, how I’m going to behave today. Everything stems from thinking. So what we think about is what we bring about in a lot of this is what we, what we know we know through bold. And yet we’re only consciously aware of our thinking somewhere between three to 5% of the time. So that means we’re operating on habitual patterns of thinking somewhere between 95 to 97% of the time.

Bunny: 13:24

Wait, can you say that again? Are we really only conscious of our thinking three to 5% of the time?

Michelle : 13:32

Yeah. Yeah. And science shows this. So, so that, you know, we have so many examples of that. Anybody listening today can, you know, think about when you drove your car wherever you got. And if it was a routine you’ve always followed, you never were consciously saying to yourself, oh, now I make a, right now I make a left. And now I put my you’re not consciously thinking you are being driven by your unconscious thoughts. So when we talk about goal setting, for example, we’re in a conscious state because we’re planning and we’re thinking, we’re saying, I want this conscious thinking. Goal-setter and it’s the conscious, the unconscious mind that we say is the goat getter, because that’s, what’s driving. Most of your actions is coming from your own unconscious thinking. There is , I think I got this straight it’s Carl Young, most people know who he is, a Swiss psychiatrist, I believe. And he has a really great quote that says until we make the unconscious thinking conscious, it will direct our life and we will call it fate. So if we think about the unconscious thinking, everything lives there, your biases live, there are blind spots live there. Our limiting beliefs live, there are unlimiting beliefs live there. It lives there, right? It’s in thinking, it’s just, we’re not consciously aware of it. So conscious thoughts as I’m setting this goal. And then oftentimes we don’t reach it because our unconscious thinking and our I’m sorry, our conscious thinking in our unconscious thinking are not in alignment. Okay .

Bunny: 15:05

So how so, how do you, how do you get them in alignment?

Michelle : 15:10

Yeah , that’s a good question. So we’re all working on it. If we have the actual answer, I probably would not have a job. And yet it’s really truly a work in progress for all of us. Cause we all, we all are prey to this. Right? So, so there’s lots of things we can do though, to get the unconscious mind and the conscious mind in alignment or , um, the goal setter and the goal getter in alignment or your audio matching your video. Like all of those things that we can say, but it takes, and it takes conscious thinking. So again, it’s what do we do? Well, we start with what are the goals? And so we were going to write those things out. And as you know, some people will create vision boards and they’ll visualize, and as a coach will ask questions . So what’s important about that goal to you when you achieve that goal, what happens in your life? How are you different? Who is impacted by that goal? What do you feel like knowing you’ve achieved? So there’s all kinds of great coaching questions to get our unconscious thoughts, right. In our conscious thinking. So we can bring things to an awareness, but if it just stops there, because we’ve created a business plan, we did a dream board, then chances are, we will make it because it’s not in alignment. So there’s, we’ve got to do conscious work. Obviously working with a coach will help you because you know, you’ve got somebody who is expecting you to show up at your best, right? You share with a coach, you want something, the coach is there to support you and help you getting it. So that’s a kind of a long drawn out answer to the question that the goal setter is conscious goal getters, unconscious, and we really want to work on what are some of those limiting beliefs are those habits that we have right now that are not supporting us to get what we want?

Bunny: 16:47

Well, you know, we interviewed somebody who spoke about , um, and we, we talked about a lot of practices, but the , uh, somebody who is Brigetta , she spoke , she spoke about I interviewed her last and she spoke about how, you know, our brains don’t know the difference between reality and, and, and what we tell it basically. And she said, if you can train your unconscious mind to know what success smells like and feels like, and looks like, and how you will feel emotionally when you’ve gotten there, then your brain is going to start. And , and what you’re saying is your unconscious mind. If it’s a habit to begin to think in those modes, then your unconscious mind is going to start moving toward getting you to that place. It’s a simplistic way to say it, but

Michelle : 17:47

No, that’s spot on. Can I throw something out there real quick, please, please. So, so if you’re listening to this and you’re somewhere where you can do this, then I’m going to ask people to play along. Okay. So I’ve asked you to play along too , of course. And if you’re driving or somewhere where you can’t do this, please don’t do it because we don’t want to be responsible for anything happening to anyone . Okay . So , um, so what we’re going to do, and this is just to what’s your last guest was sharing with you. And that is that the brain does not know the difference between what is real and what is not real. It only knows what we tell it, which goes to the idea that everything is a story. And we create our stories, recreate them, right. Just like you and I could, we’re having this conversation right now. You’re picking up things on picking up. Things could be similar, could be very different. The brain doesn’t know the difference. So here’s the exercise. So please play along. I think you’ll, I think you’ll really get some value out of this. All right, ready? So here we are. And bunny right in front of you, you have a very big, bright yellow lemon, and I’m going to ask you, and for all of you there listening to grab that yellow lemon it’s right in front of, you can close your eyes if you want and keep your eyes open, but there’s this big yellow, juicy lemon. And now it’s in your hand and I want you to just sort of squeeze it a little bit and it’s pretty juicy. Okay. And maybe you can take a sniff of it and it’s so vibrant. I mean, it’s really very, very flavorful. You can smell it and as you’re squeezing it, I want you to just take a bite of the lemon. Just bite it. Go ahead and bite the lemon. All right. All right. So now you can put your lemon down. Now, the question is, did you actually, somebody was walking by, would they have seen a yellow lemon in your hand?

Bunny: 19:35

Course not. No.

Speaker 4: 19:36

Right. Okay. Now what happened? What did you experience? Did you have any experience while you were doing that? Oh yeah.

Bunny: 19:42

I feel the texture of it and the oil that is on the surface and I could smell it. And then of course, when you said to take a bite of it, it was a shock to me because I knew it’s shocking to take a bite out of.

Michelle : 19:57

And because we’re on a video conference, I could see you like really reactive , right ? So the point to that is there was no lemon in your hand. And yet there was a story presented that you bought into the story because you were squeezing it, you were smelling it. And I would believe that for most people that are listening probably had some similar experiences, right. I’ve talked to people that have literally had tears rolling down their face, right, because of it and goosebumps all over them, because of, and honestly, I’ve done this so many times and every time I do it, I get the same, my mouth waters, the whole thing. And there was no real lemon, but the brain doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s not real. It only knows a we tell it. And that’s the power of thinking. And that’s why thinking about a goal is one, right? That’s one thing, but to create a story and build the habits that would actually get you there and being in alignment with what we say we want, that takes the work. And most of the work is the stories we tell ourselves, right? How do we tell a different story?

Bunny: 21:04

Well, and I think about the exercise that we do in bold and people should know that bold is a six, seven week intensive program that we, that is just basically mindset training. But one of the most powerful exercises is when we write a letter to ourselves and there is, there’s an entire exercise around that, but I’ve used, I’ve suggested that for other people who are having a hard time getting to where they want to be, which is write that letter to yourself, write that, you know , and it’s , it starts with a letter of gratitude of and I wrote a blog post about it, as I recall , um, you know, write a gratitude letter to yourself for a year from now. It’s, you know, it’s sort of like writing your Christmas letter. And I remember that that was a suggestion in the book, simple abundance. I don’t know if you remember that book, but that was a 365 day , um, almost a devotional in mindset where you, we talked about writing your Christmas letter for next year right now, and you think your , you think yourself for what you’ve accomplished. I, you know, I’ve gotten my bold letter and it comes to you in the mail a year later. And , um, you know, the, the one thing I said in my last bowl letter was, I’m so proud of you for finishing and getting your book published. And here we are. So , but I do, they do think that, that well, I know, I don’t think I know that getting your unconscious mind and wait a second, isn’t there don’t you also have to recognize the things that are in your unconscious mind that, that are barriers, like your limited thinking. I mean, you have to be aware of those, right?

Michelle : 23:03

Yeah . You would, you’d have to because, and those are the things we work on. And again, I mean, I can speak to coaching because I’ve been doing it, you know, for a lot of years, do the benefits that come from that. Oftentimes we don’t know what we cause we’ll call them blind spots and it does take somebody else to maybe show a pattern of behavior to somebody that they could say, what do you think of this? Like, I’m seeing this repeating, right? What do you think about this? And that allows somebody to go into their thinking more than likely an unconscious thinking to pull for why that might be the way it is, but to your point, Ben , he absolutely, we’ve got to look and see, we say, we want this and then there’s this gap. So why is there a gap? And that’s the part that’s going to show us what our limiting beliefs are, what habits we have we already created , um , in our lives that we need to undo and redo. And for, you know, it varies for each person. It there’s so many, there’s so many reasons why we don’t get what we say we want, but uncovering what those are, is really important. And again, that’s , that’s why having a mentor, a coach, somebody else that can support you and help you through that thinking process to expose it. Right. Cause we all have them .

Bunny: 24:12

Well, we do. And I’m you know, I’m thinking in the most , in the most practical terms, I mean, in a dream world, everybody would get a coach, right? I mean, every, everybody would find somebody who was a powerful mentor who could help them through this process. But if you were, you know, if I have a listener who’s sitting at home, who’s like, I don’t get it. I don’t understand why, you know, what’s, what’s my blind spot. What’s what are some practical ways that people can figure that out? Are there simple ways?

Michelle : 24:42

I think so it’s going to start with thinking. So really setting aside some time to think, because that will put you in a conscious state.

Bunny: 24:50

Wait, but let me tell you, this is one thing we’re not good at. We’re not good at setting aside time to reflect and think don’t you think that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s one of everybody’s issues like this .

Michelle : 25:05

It could be, it definitely could be. It could also be an unconscious habit to prevent you from getting what you want by saying, you don’t have the time to do it. Could be , it could be that right?

Bunny: 25:21

Yes, absolutely.

Michelle : 25:24

So thinking time, it would start with that. And then it’s the questions that we ask ourselves and how willing are we to ask ourselves the questions, the tough questions. One thing that we know about any of this is that the , the person has the answers. Even as a coach, I don’t have your answers. You don’t have mine. Right. But through a process of questions and examining and observations, then the answer does emerge from the person. So you don’t have to have another person in your role to do this. Certainly can get there faster, right. And yet, if you’re willing to ask yourself some really tough questions and go inward and come up with the answers and you know, it’s almost like I would ask myself what is preventing me from having this what’s stopping me . I would ask them those things. And if there’s no answers coming up there, then I would ask them, what would it have? What would it have to look like for me to do this? Or what belief would I have to have in order for.

Bunny: 26:20

Yeah , those are great questions. And I recall, you know, you and I believe you knew Judy camp, but she was this amazing mentor that I had when I first came to Keller Williams. And first of all, I would go into her office and I would say, oh my gosh, you’re not going to believe what just happened. And, and , or , or I would say something like, I can’t go out on that listing appointment. I’ve never listed house over a half a million dollars. And she would say first, she would do this thing. She would wave our hands in the air and she would say, oh, that’s so fascinating. However , um, that’s a limiting belief. And what would, what would you have to do? What would it look like for you to believe that you were as capable as anybody else of taking a half million dollar listing? And I would say, well, I , she, you know, she would stop, stop us in the midst of our limiting beliefs and say , uh, basically that’s BS now let’s reframe it.

Michelle : 27:24

That’s right. Cause that’s all it is.

Bunny: 27:26

I love that. What would it take? What would it look like?

Michelle : 27:30

Who would you have to be in order to, right? Those are really good questions that we could just be asking ourselves. We have our answers. If we’re not willing to face the answers, that’s a whole different story. And yet if we, if we’re somebody who wants to really start getting in alignment with what we say we want , um, and typically what we want, there’s going to require some kind of action to get there in most cases. Right. Even though I’m all about the secret, let’s say, I also know that , uh , when was it a vision without action is a hallucination, right? So I am of the belief that you do have to take action to get things, you know, I’d love it. If I could just sit here and go home, I would love for, you know, blank to happen or that to happen. But I, I do logically understand it’s going to take something from me to get there. And those are the stories we’ve got to work on. There’s another thing I heard once. And I don’t know if I’m jumping around too much, but I love it is , um, we will never outperform our self image. So how we see ourself matters, the stories we have matter. And they’re just stories. That’s the great part about this, right? So you have the power to create a story that would get you on a path to what you say. You want me, you, all of us. Uh , we have the opportunity to do that simply from our thinking. And I’m not discounting. The fact that life will happen. I’m not discounting, you know, I’m, we’ve got a major change coming in my own family, seeing my mom, which I’m happy enough to say, gets to live with me. But my mom is at the point now where, you know, my mom’s going to be moving in with me. And that’s a major change for my family. It’s me and my husband. We feel like we’ve been empty nesters. We have a blast every single day. Honestly, I’m not making that up . We have a lot of fun in our life and you know, there’s a major change that’s coming. And I go first to gratitude. I go first to gratitude. Number one, cause my mom’s here. Number two because I can, I have the means to support my mom and bring my mom and help my mom. And number three, it’s all a story. So if I’m going to have the best life with my mom, while she’s still here, I get to create that story. And I’m in the midst of doing that right now. Right? So , um, anyway, we won’t outperform ourself image what we think matters. Um, and since we get to create the stories, why not just create the best version of ourselves and then live into that because the unconscious mind what your last guest was sharing with you is that unconsciously, we will seek out. We will seek it out without even knowing, right? If I’m somebody who says I can’t, my brain will make sure I can not , if I can, my brain will find those opportunities.

Bunny: 30:11

Right. You know, I’m a big fan of Price Prichett’s book. You squared, I don’t know if you know that book, but , but he , um, first of all, he says, you shoot , you have to know what you’re aiming point is. So, so we probably need to go back to the piece where you said you have to, you have to set goals. I mean, I, I’m going to be really honest and other than thinking very informally. Um, I re I remember that when I was in college, I wrote out, I wrote on a sheet of paper, the things that I wanted by the time I was 30. And one of them was to own my own pair of skis and to make 30 grand a year, I wrote, well, of course I got there. I that’s that worked out. But, but after that, I don’t know Michelle that I ever, ever , um, very consciously wrote my goals down. And I know there’s a statistic that says, if you haven’t written them down, your chances of getting there are minimal. Am I right?

Michelle : 31:21

It’s slim. It’s really slim. And that goes to the point of, we can take one day and write ’em down. And if that’s the end of it, it’s probably also very slim, but it starts there, right. It starts with what you want. And if you think about that, if you think about in your business life, in your relationships and your finances and your spiritual life, and one of Gary Keller’s books, the one thing he has the Southern circles of life, and you could look at each part of your life and determine, well, what, what do you want to achieve in 2022 in this part of your life?

Bunny: 31:54

Right? And what do you want to achieve in five years? And how do we, what’s the thing, what’s the thing you do today that gets you closer to that? What do you, what’s the thing you do every single day? So just setting goals, I think for, I would say at least 50% of our audience is the first step, but you know, there’s another piece to this that we hadn’t talked about yet. And that’s accountability. You can, you can talk all you want about well, I want to do this and I want to get my unconscious mind. But as you said, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum and it’s not magic. So you have to have some accountability to get you to where you want to go. Right? Yeah. Talk About accountability.

Michelle : 32:40

I do think that that’s probably where there is somebody else involved and it doesn’t have to be a coach. It could be y our, your best friend, your spouse, your partner, your child, doesn’t matter who, I mean, we’ve worked with clients where, u m, specifically with families where the whole family is involved in accountability. I remember years ago, coaching somebody who had a dream to take his kids to, I d on’t remember w here it was now. I don’t think i t w as, it was Disneyland, but he had a dream to do something with his family. And, and so I recommended he went home and told his kids about it, that he was g oing t o take t hem wherever it was providing. He accomplished this, this and this. And so, you know that he would come home and his kids were asking him if he did his job. They want to be a part of it. So I would, I would recommend that from an accountability standpoint, there is somebody else involved. So whether it’s whoever you just, you d etermine that to be. And the ability part it’s more about, it’s not, I can’t make anybody do anything just like you can’t make me. And so the word accountable, it’s really holding. S omebody’s able to do what they say, right. A nd, and accountable. There’s that A bel word. And I think that’s what, what is so great about accountability is we’re providing a space for somebody to be able to do what they say that they need to do to get what they want. And that could look like anything. I mean, it could be just having somebody that, you know, has that expectation from you. Like if we set something up, like you’re saying, Hey, I haven’t really sat down and thought about my o ne-year goals o r my three or my five. A nd, and you said to me today, you know what, I’m g oing t o work on my o ne-year goals. I’m going to take a few things, take some time. I’m going to write down what they would be. I’m going to marinate why those would be important for me and Michelle, I’m going to let you know in, y ou k now, what is today? The 12th I’ll let you know by next week, what my, you know, what my goals are. And if you said that to me, how likely would you be to carry that through?

Bunny: 34:37

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I have a writing coach right now and she said to me on Friday to tell me the day that you will have your outline, your overview to me, don’t, you know, it wasn’t, can you work on this? It was what day at what time will this arrive in my inbox and I’m sweating it, but I’m doing it. And I love the way that you just reframed the word accountable because it has in my mind, at least, maybe not with anybody else has a little bit of a negative connotation and you just reframe that and made that a completely different word. Excellent. Good . Yeah. I mean, instead of saying, I’m going to hold you accountable. You said I’m going to show you that you are able to achieve this, you know, whatever it is.

Michelle : 35:30

I think you’re right . The accountability. And it’s funny because when we start working with new clients and we ask, you know, tell me, what’s the reason that you’ve joined coaching, or you want to be coached. You want to have a coach. And the answer is always accountability. That’s always like nine out of 10, nine and a half out of 10 times. Sometimes I want accountability . So then we have said , well, what does that mean to you? What does accountability mean? Cause that means different things for different people. Right? And then we would want to know, well, you know, how, what would it look like between you and I, from an accountability standpoint, until what you’re writing coaches doing? It is, what do you want, why is that important to you by when will you have it done? How will I know, what will it feel like when you’ve accomplished that, those kinds of things. But accountability is a key ingredient. And that, that is literally why the role of the productivity coach was first brought forward in our organization because Keller Williams has always had incredible training and we still do. And so we would have all these new agents come and get in this incredible training and they still were. And yet we were still saying , seeing the same statistics about new agents, not making it in the business, because what was missing was the coaching, because within coaching is a space for people to show up and be accountable or to be able. And so that’s really why the whole role was, was even developed.

Bunny: 36:50

Well, may I say just that , I think you said something really important when you were talking about your mom, you said the S the story around that is that I’m going to come from gratitude. And it’s, I mean, our hashtag is the stories save us. I think our stories save us and you have to know what your story is, or you have to choose to have a completely different story. I mean, you knowing your story, feeling free to tell your story, all of those are really important. But you said something so true, which is a lot of people would say, oh my God, my mom is going to come live with us. We’ve been having this amazing life. And now my mom who’s , I don’t know.

Michelle : 37:39

I did have those thoughts. Honestly, those were probably the first thoughts.

Bunny: 37:43

Right. But then you get, you know, first thoughts arrived, but you can, you can decide what to do with them, right?

Michelle : 37:52

Yep. Can’t control the first one. You get to control every thought after that.

Bunny: 37:56

That’s really important. I mean, people need to know that they need to know that you really can guard your thoughts

Michelle : 38:05

If you don’t, then what happens, right. It goes back to that whole, you know, Carl Jung the unconscious until we make it conscious, it will direct our life and we will call it fate. Right. It’s a choice. It’s a choice every day .

Bunny: 38:21

Well, talk to me about… I’m so fascinated by this , you’re certified in conversational intelligence. What does that mean?

Michelle : 38:32

That’s the work of Judith Glacier and , sadly she passed away a few years ago. There’s a book you can get the book. And the book is actually called conversational intelligence. Her work is brilliant. It is about the brain and what happens and really how to have effective conversations. And, you know, the first conversations are the ones we’re having with herself, which is part of what we’ve been talking about all along part of what she brings up. And it’s really important to know. And this goes to change is that typically we’re going to resist change and our brains are literally designed to keep us alive. That’s what they’re there for. It’s like, it’s a primitive brain and the fact that we are wired for survival. So anytime anything feels like a perceived threat, right? So change can often feel like a perceived threat, right. And doing something you’ve never done before could feel like a perceived threat. So we could go into fight flight freeze, and she even has a piece that she’s done research on. And so because of chemically, what is going on in our bodies, because your brain literally releases chemicals. And so when we talk about gratitude, which is why gratitude is such a great practice, because the endorphins that are being released are good for you, and it will promote you to do good and to be good. And studies even show that people who practice intentionally practice gratitude, they have less envy in their lives. They sleep better. Like things like that, they’re obviously more positive, but even things to that level appear because of what’s going on in our brains. So her work is I would highly recommend, I mean, if you’re interested in these things, it’s called conversation intelligence. I was really, really blessed and very thankful because I was introduced to her through one of the , um , as one of those ICF, you know , members I was introduced to her through some course I took. And so I was probably one of the very last classes that I got to attend with her for my certification. Because she sadly had I believe it was brain cancer and we were her very last class, but she was even doing research on that because she, her doctors at one point were like, it’s a miracle of what’s going on with her and how her recovery was going. But in the end, she, she, she didn’t make it. So the book is great. It talks a lot about those kinds of things about what goes on in your minds and in our brain . So how that impacts us , um , our physiologic, you know, physical , physiologically, how we’re impacted by that. Um, and it goes back to the stories that we tell, and it seems like most of the things that I studied there , I just like you, they’re so interrelated because it’s all kind of the same. Right, right, right. So, in fact I keep coming back. I mean, it feels to me, like, we talk about the same thing every time, but we come at from so many different viewpoints that it feels, I mean, it feels really enriching. I’m , I’m learning more doing this podcast, but everything I’ve ever done, it’s so much fun. But we talk about you know, there , we didn’t talk about the, the, where you are a certified disc consultant. And I, I think that if people know a little bit, a little bit about who they are and how they operate, that’s gotta be helpful to them. Doesn’t it? Oh, helpful. It’s so helpful. Just the more we can understand ourselves, which I think, you know, the biggest part of the journey here is really knowing ourselves. And the more that we know ourselves, the better we are. And so the disk behavior, and boy, I got, I got certified. I’ve been certified in that for so many years and I’ve done and I still will do up until COVID. I was still doing some in-person disc training. It’s one of those classes. It’s probably one of my own limiting beliefs that I really love . I personally just love doing in-person because behavior is seen in all kinds of ways, right? So it’s not just what people say, it’s their body language or so many things that we can see behavior. But the disc profile is basically , um, some people call it PR personality, but we would say it’s behavior profiling. And , it’s interesting when I first learned about the disc and I first started to utilize disc from a coaching perspective, I literally had people that thought I was a fortune teller. I was like, no, I’m not a fortune teller. I’m just reading to you based on your your assessment that you answered. Right? So you take a simple assessment, you pick out these words and then it feeds back what behavioral style you’re more likely to be naturally. And which behavioral style are you most likely to be when you’re under stress and the DCMS for dominant or direct the, I as an influencer, the S steady stable and the C compliant, and each one of these behavioral styles are they’re, they’re very telling. And we are all probably a combination of most, but most people will know. You know, if you’re, if you’re somebody who’s like, oh, I’ve got to get it done . I want to get it done now. And, you know, you’d rather just do it yourself, then ask somebody else, because you know, you can do it better and faster. And , um, you know, you’re probably a dominant behavioral style, right. And if you’re the influencer and you just love people and you love to talk and you love to be on stage, I know I’m doing the same thing. Right. And you love all of those things, then you’re probably an I or an influencer. And if you’re S which is steady stable, and you’re the person who really does not like the limelight at all, that you love getting things done, re you know, you’ve got a rhythm for things you’re very loyal person. You really thrive in security. Let’s say like, that’s important to you. You’re probably an S and if you are compliant, meaning you’re all about the data and the facts. And even me talking about this whole step , you probably believe it too much, because that just seems a little far-fetched . But that would be the CB hero style. So yeah, disc is really good to learn. It’s good to learn about yourself. And then as you learn about yourself and you learn about those people that you’re with you just learn how to treat each other better.

Bunny: 44:47

Well, and I’m going to say I’m really grateful that I learned about it because it’s also really helpful in, in the business world. It’s really helpful for me to know what sort of, what my clients are like. I mean, if I have an H uh , a high C or an, a special se or an S I have to behave completely differently than if I have an IRA D and I’m a high I with the little bit more of a D than I used to be, but , um, it really makes a difference in the way that you deal with the people that you do.

Michelle : 45:22

Yep . I think they say that the golden rule is treat others as you would have them treat you. And the platinum rule is treat others the way they want to be treated. And when you can understand some of these behavioral style, like you’re speaking to, if you go to a client who’s direct and wants it like this, and you want to show them all the pictures and talk about all the stuff they’re over it. Right. Cause they want to just bottom line it for me, give it to me now. So yeah, it’s important to learn and we can just, you know, the more we know ourselves, the better we can be with others.

Bunny: 45:51

So tell me if you, I always like to ask people, you know, if you could do anything differently , um, is, is, I mean, maybe not, I, sometimes I think, you know, my life would look like a train wreck for years, and now I’m so excited that it was a train wreck because it got me here, but I’m really curious to know if there’s anything…

Michelle : 46:13

Well, you know, I mean, I’m , I’m with you on that. I do believe, you know, I was a young girl and we were homeless at one point. I didn’t even know I was homeless because my mother was so good. She wow. And I say it was homeless because we live, we didn’t have a physical address and we would live out of different motels in places like that. But I, I never realized that I was an actual homeless person. Um, I didn’t find that out until I was like 40 years old. I’m not making that up, which again, led me to, to know what an incredible mother I had. Right. I didn’t even realize that. So I don’t know that there would be something different. I think if there was something that I would like to, that I wish I would have thought differently about would have been to move faster with some of the things that I wanted to do, just move faster. And recently, I didn’t share this with you, but I’ve recently, I don’t think I did. I’ve recently. I have a workshop now that I do, it’s just my own product. And , um , and it’s for any coaching leader, meaning anybody in any organization or in their life where they’re leading or managing people. And it’s really all about the core competencies of coaching and how to get more from people, right. That has a lot to do with some of the things we’ve talked about today. And I waited on that. I waited on it. And so that would’ve been something that I really wish I would’ve done earlier. And it took really COVID and me sitting in a class, I spent a lot of money on and I absolutely learned in the class, I’m not discounting what I learned. I just remember sitting in there thinking, wait a minute, I have an abundance that I could be sharing with people. And I could be doing what this person is doing and help a lot more people than I am right now. And that motivated me to do it. So if there was something, I guess that would be like, I wish I would’ve started in things earlier.

Bunny: 48:01

Well I want to hear about that because we want to let people know about it. So is it an online digital course?

Michelle : 48:07

It’s a digital course. It’s called coaching for better performance. And it is a four week course because it’s two and a half hours in my delivery. And I make the, I have a very small, I cut the class size because I want, since it’s digital, I’m doing my absolute best that we can feel like we’re actually having an experience together. So I don’t want to have to scroll. And I don’t want anybody in the room to have to scroll, to see who else is in the room. So I like everybody on one screen. So I really do limit it to 24 people.

Bunny: 48:38

So this is an, this is a live online course. Wow. That’s so cool. Michelle. I want to do it. I want to do,

Michelle : 48:45

I will invite you to it. I’m really excited about it. And I’ve gotten some really great feedback on how to get better, but I’ve also just had people really excited about what they’re learning and they can implement it. And that’s the most important thing, right? Like not just sitting in a class, but how you can actually make it work in your life.

Bunny: 49:02

So if you had something to tell folks that you want to leave them with today , um , other than I bet you have a list of books that you’d like for us to post with your podcast, but if you, what , what’s the best take? What’s the takeaway you’d like people to have now that they’ve heard you speak?

Michelle : 49:21

I think we’d say that we are so much greater than our habits. We are so much greater than all of that. We are so much greater. And when we can just get up out of our own way or do what you were asking earlier, like spend some real time and thinking about who we are and what we want and how do we get there. Um, I think we have an opportunity to show up greater. I guess that would be, it just were much greater than our habits. Our habits are just that they’re habits, that stems from thinking. We have the opportunity to think it’s such a great level. And that’s what I would leave people with.

Bunny: 49:55

Well, I want to do this again, so, so that we can talk more about mindset. This is great. I’ve written down about 40 things, so yes, yes. So will you come back?

Michelle : 50:07

Absolutely. We’ll come back and I’ll get you some books that I think would go with part of what we talked about.

Bunny: 50:11

Perfect. Perfect. So let’s get our unconscious mind at the same level as our conscious mind. I’m ready. Me too. All right. Thank you, Michelle. That’s all we’ve got today friends. I want to thank you for joining the lifesaving 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 lifesaving 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.