Tasty Gratitude: Cheryl Alters Jamison

Bunny: (00:11)
Hi there and welcome to the life saving gratitude podcast. This is Bunny Terry, and I’m joined by my co-host Johanna Medina. And we have as always a special guest this week. It’s a bit of a rockstar in the food world. Cheryl Alters Jameson. And I don’t know why I said a bit of a rockstar. She is a rockstar, but the best thing about this podcast is that she makes it clear that it’s not like she started thinking at like 15 or 16 that she wanted to be a rockstar in the food world. She’s really clear that it was serendipitous, that, her life became what it is today. There were some really, really hard bumps along the way, but Cheryl is, and with her husband a four time James Beard award winning cookbook writer. But if you get on the food network or if you do a search on food network, get on YouTube plug in her name, you’ll find out that she is on the food network. She’s in all sorts of magazines. She has published over 20 cooked books. She has a website called excited about food, where she talks about food all the time. She does a podcast called heating it up. It’s a food radio show. And let me tell you, her books have over 2 million copies. She was voted Edible new Mexico’s local heroes, best food writer on two different occasions. And if you are a big fan, well, I’m gonna say if you’re a big fan of food, but if you’re a big fan of barbecue or new Mexican food, especially she’s written a really cool book called published a book called Texas Q, which was a hundred recipes for the very best barbecue anywhere. The Perini ranch steakhouse book she wrote a really great book called tasting New Mexico, which was published on the hundredth anniversary of the state of statehood for New Mexico. So, and she’s also really active of in cooking with kids. So, but we don’t just talk about food. Um, we talk about life and healing and, and about how, um, food and caring for people is healing in its own way. I’m, I’m curious because you didn’t get to sit in on the interview, Johanna, I’m curious how it felt to you when you, you listen to it the second time through.

Johanna: (02:48)
Yeah, honestly, I was gonna say, I mean, yeah, you talk about her, um, you know, her professional experience and her life around food, but I honestly thought this was an episode more about grief and kind of the grief that she’s gone through and kind of not overcoming it, but coming through it on the other side and, and how that was for her, because it’s just like, you know, her epic love story. And then, and then, you know, having to go through the grief of losing her husband, um, because I mean, you do know her personally from the cancer foundation, right. That’s where your kind of connection started. Yeah. So right. That was a big part of it as well.

Bunny: (03:29)
Yeah, she is.She’s very consciously… rebuilding is kind of a funny word, but she she’s very consciously living her, continuing to live her life. Even, sort of like Amber Hale. Who’s gonna be a, a repeat guest soon who lost her son. Um, people who have had unimaginable losses are continuing to live their life and, and doing it in a really generous and grateful way. So it was a gift to have her. I was so excited that she agreed to be one of our guests.

Johanna: (04:08)
Yeah, yeah. It’s a great one. We’ve definitely, you know, been wanting to get Cheryl on for a long time and I’m so glad we did, and hopefully we can get her back again, you know, as you always say, so we can talk to her more or, you know, all of our guests, I wish we could just have a big party and hang out with all of them, cuz they’re all so cool.

Bunny: (04:27)
Well, and she, we wanted her back in September and she was like, well, I’m going on a food tour to France. Yeah. And then I’m gonna go to Egypt, so she talks about all of that and she’s so humble and she’s so clear that every day is a gift that this isn’t the life she planned, but wow. Is it even better than what she had dreamed of and not to minimize the loss of her husband to not one, but two different kinds of cancers. So stick through this, she has, just like everybody else, really great tips at the end. And, um, I’m, I’m so honored that she agreed to be our guest. And I just, I wanna tell everybody, thanks for checking in. Thanks for subscribing reviewing and readiness, wherever you listen to podcast. We’re excited to be here.

Bunny: (05:19)
Welcome everyone. And I’m this, this is one of the most exciting podcasts I’ve done because, um, our guest is somebody that I’ve been stalking for a couple of years. And, um, , it’s, it’s finally worked out that we can spend some time together. Our guest today is Cheryl Alters, Jameson who many of you will know know because she is such a personality in the world of food. Um, she is a, I I’m gonna read directly from your website because it’s so perfect. Cheryl is a home cook cookbook, author and food authority who is passionate about sharing expertise and enthusiasm for exciting food and good eating. And, um, the coolest thing about, well, one of the coolest things about Cheryl is that she lives in Santa Fe, outside of Santa Fe in a converted dairy barn. Holy Macrel where she a small flock of backyard chickens.

Bunny: (06:20)
I’ve always wanted some backyard chickens. I’m a farm girl, but, Cheryl and I connected in an interesting way, like I said, I’ve stalked her and, um, got her to agree, to donate some, a zoom call during the pandemic for the cancer foundation for New Mexico. And, she very graciously agreed and we’re doing that call right now because, um, she was able to make time for you, my listeners. Um, but, but the, but the things that it, that you would know about Cheryl, she, um, has written, over over 20 cookbooks, published over 20 cookbooks, a lot of them with her husband, bill Jameson, who is, who like me, had cancer and then had comp locations and did not survive. And, um, and that speaks, um, that explains a lot of her generosity with the cancer foundation, but, um, between the two of them Bill and Cheryl won over, did you, is it four James Beard award?

Cheryl: (07:40)
Yes.

Bunny: (07:40)
Yeah. Wow.

Bunny: (07:41)
I can’t even imagine that, but, we are going to post a lot of information about Cheryl in the podcast transcript and on the website, but I wanna get to the, to the conversation. How did you come to this life? Cheryl? It’s, it’s such a cool way to live.

Cheryl: (08:04)
Serendipity is what I usually say. , I’ve been very lucky over time. I’ve learned over the years kind of how to make it up as I go along, I guess I could say, I actually, have always loved food and cooking from the time I was a small kid. I had the, uh, the great luck of having the grandparents with the big gardens. This was back in the Midwest, I’m from Illinois originally. And, you know, I was able to, you know, spend time playing in those gardens and picking, uh, produce from them and then having the great, um, experience of cooking with my grandparents and to my, you know, parents with a lesser extent, cuz they were always busier. But yeah, my grandparents and great grandparents that were alive when I was small, took me under their wings and, and I did get to, you know, to cook with them and I always found it such a fun thing and it just meant, you know, family and sense of community and all of that from the time I was really young, but at the era that I was growing up, you know, like in the, the sixties and all there, wasn’t an evident career path.

Cheryl: (09:15)
Let me put it that way. Anything that I could see, I mean basically, you kind of got shunned off into the home economics track, which honestly to me at that time seemed like it was kind of a women’s ghetto. And I apologize if that offends anybody, but I just didn’t see that as direction that I really wanted to go. I mean, I was a FHA, something, you know, future homemakers of America. Holy yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, okay. So when I was, uh, in, you know, high school, junior high and high school there wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t a food network, chefs, weren’t celebrities, food culture was nothing like it is today. Our home had a few cookbooks and all of that, but yeah, there were not hundreds and hundreds of those coming out every year and being available.

Cheryl: (10:07)
So it was just not anything that I saw as, um, a professional track for me. So I went off into, um, arts manage. I loved the arts and culture and such, and I actually studied studio art and I thought I might be an art teacher. And then I found out there was a field of arts management, which was actually kind of a nonprofit oriented thing of, you know, running the types of arts organizations that do support artists and such. And I thought, well, actually I’m a better administrator than I am an artist . So I got off in that direction and uh, I went to a graduate program at the university of Illinois, back, in the seventies. And as a part of that job, I had to do an internship someplace. And I always knew from the time I was young that I wanted to live in the Rocky mountain west. Illinois was a perfectly good place to grow up, but I wanted to be surrounded by mountains. I wanted to be able to do winter sports, like skiing and such. And I just knew that I wanted to get to the west. I’d had the nice experience as a kid of, you know, tling around in the family station wagon around the west. Would we do the family vacations every summer and right. I knew I wanted to be somewhere like Colorado or New Mexico or maybe Wyoming someplace out in this part of the world. So I thought when I had an opportunity to take on an internship in college, that would be my, to get to the Rocky mountain west. Anyway, I was looking for these internships of in graduate school and nothing was coming up. That was the right thing for me in any of these mountain states that I had identified. And my program director came to me and said, okay, hear me out on this. , there’s, a guy who’s a real up and comer in this field of arts management. And I think it’s exactly the kind of internship you’re looking for. I think you would really learn a lot from him. I think you could offer a lot to the, this agency and the thing is it’s west, but it’s not as far west as you wanna go. It’s in Oklahoma city and I think Oklahoma , but I thought, okay, um, they had, you know, money to take me, you know, to send me out, to fly out, do a, an interview. I thought, all right, give it a chance I did. And in spite of being told that this was a real, you know, sharp young guy who was the director of this state arts agency, the Oklahoma arts and humanities council, it was called in that day.

Cheryl: (12:48)
I was still expecting somebody older and very bureaucratic looking to come out and greet me and the person that did come out and greet me and greeted me was my future husband. It was Bill Jameson and he bounded, I love that. yeah, that’s how we met. He was the director of that arts agency and he had long hair and sideburns and all these kind of things. I did not associate with that. And he also had these flat eyes and a great voice. And I, we were not at all really, you know, connecting on a personal level at that point, but I just thought he seemed like such a refreshing character to have as my potential boss there. So anyway, I was hired there to do that internship. I ended up in Oklahoma, I stayed two and a half years and I ended up loving, you know, being in the Oklahoma and running around the countryside. And there’s some very beautiful areas of the state. But we were kind of ships passing. He was only there about six months and he went on, he was on the, you know, the hot career track and he went on to something else and I surprisingly stayed, you know, two and a half years there. Then I was kind of taken with that part of America and decided I wanted to be in Dallas for a while. So I took another arts related job there all this time. I’m cooking, you know, for fun and such, but I’m really on this arts management track. And then in 1980, um, a job opening came up in Santa Fe, the group called the Western states arts foundation, which is no longer based here, but it was a very big, um, agency that did a lot of funding and granting for artists and their organizations back in that era.

Cheryl: (14:29)
And lo and behold, I got interviewed and hired again by their new director, a guy named Bill Jameson. So , so we were back together again, with this whole arts management background. Anyway, that’s how we got together. We discovered that we really worked well together. I mean, we were just colleagues for year and friends for years. And I really think that that had a lot to do with us being when we finally did get together after several years as a couple, that had a lot to do with how well we could work together and how we were a team. And we were very much a team for our entire, you know, marriage and I had 30 or so years with, um, somebody that was this special to me. And that was the love of my life. And my, you know, I’m not my only my business partner, but my co-author and my financial advisor and my everything truly my everything. So that makes it all the harder to lose that when that, you know, that had happens, but what I’ve found out, and I know you I’m sure have discovered in many of your guests that you talk to is that, you know, grief is the flip side of, of love when you have great love, you do have grief and such and you have to work through that. And I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have lots of people who’ve supported me in being able to do that.

Bunny: (15:51)
That gave me a chill. When you said that that grief is the flip side of love because we have, you know, I’ve, we’ve had guests who have, um, E experienced the kind of loss that you have. Um, and, and, and they say they would not trade. Of course they would not trade that life. You know, I I’ve interviewed somebody who lost a child and they it’s like, uh, I however difficult. The grief part is the other part of it is it’s well, it’s well worth the journey. That’s kind of how I, not to wax philosophical, but I, but that’s sort of how life has turned out for me is that for all the, um, difficulty and sorrow boy, the other side of it is so full and rich and all the stuff that I read about the two of you together was that he, bill was a funny and fun guy who had this huge zest for life. I’m sorry. I didn’t get to meet him.

Cheryl: (17:00)
Yeah. I’m sorry. You didn’t either. Yeah, he was an original, he was just a really special guy. And, yeah, we had such a great time and we shared a love for so many things, including food and travel and art culture and all of that. But, you know, just, to be able to share all of that and gardening in our house and, and we worked on this place, so we, you mentioned my dairy barn he found this place back in the seventies. It was the mid seventies and, you know, here in Tesuque and it’s part of what was an old dairy and chicken farm back in the 1920s through forties. And it’s sort of in the Shidoni area. And over on the Shidoni side, there were buildings that had been chicken coops really, and those were turned into residences. And on this side, it was like the dairy barn where I am . And when he first saw the place, he wasn’t even interested in it because it was such a wreck. He couldn’t even imagine, you know, what, you’d have to put into it to turn it into a home. But, eventually he decided it was, it was in his budget and he could get a lot of work done on it. And this is funny, cuz some of your, listeners will know this era, but there was an organization called the armory for the arts here in Santa Fe. That was very active back in the eighties. And because he was, you know, working in the arts, he knew all these folks connected to that and, and to do the interior work and, and you’re listeners won’t see this, but you can see behind me, um, this interior work on the barn was actually done by set designers from the armory front, the arts, because they were cheaper than a construction crew. They were his friends. They came in and yeah, figured out all these different things to do that are really quite dramatic with lofts and fireplaces and, and spiral staircases and stuff. So anyway, it’s always funny to me he was resourceful enough to figure out how to get that accomplished in a, a kind of a, a unique way.

Bunny: (19:04)
Well, it is beautiful. It’s wow.

Cheryl: (19:06)
It’s and we’ve worked on it ever since it’s, you know, it’s a hundred year old house, so it, it always requires something. And I love it though. I’m so glad that I have this place to be, you know, one of the things that was strange to, well, strange to me, it probably won’t be strange to people who’ve gone through, you know, loss and all too. But as much as I’ve loved my home, it was hard for me to be in it for the longest time because it just, it was our beloved home together. And, it was just hard to be in it. It probably the cruelest thing that happened to me was I took no joy in cooking for a good while. It was not something that had been only identified with us as a couple, because as mentioned earlier, I’ve been cooking since I was a little kid and it’s just always been my relaxation and my fun and all of that before life switched. And we can talk about that at some point how we ended up pivoting and finding ourselves in the food profession, but, um, it’s been, you know, part of my being forever. And so it was a real shock to me to discover that was no longer an enjoyable thing. And I think by that time had it had become so much a part of who we were, that identity it just made it really hard.

Cheryl: (20:22)
And so that was pretty darn cruel for the longest time, but you just have to, you know, put one foot in front of the other and figure out how to move forward. And there was a thing that happened to me. Months later it was maybe like five, yeah, six months later, he died in the spring and I was at the Santa Fe farmer’s market in September, apple season here and I saw Jonathan apples, which are not a real common apple in this part of the world. They are something I associate with the Midwest and with my mom and my grandparents and apple crisp was always a favorite family dessert. And I saw Jonathan apples there and I thought, you know, it might be nice to make apple crisp . And I bought the apples and I came home and I finally got out, you know, my peeler and my knives. And I kind of worked at that and it was like one little small healing step for me to reclaim that. And it just, it sounds so minor probably, but it was huge at the time.

Bunny: (21:30)
It doesn’t, I’ve talked to a lot of people about that, that part of grief and recovery. And I also, my husband now lost his partner before me to the exact same cancer that I have. And he, um, was a builder and a creator. And, and he said for the longest time, he just put that away that it was like the thing that he did with his body and his mind stop being an option because he just, you know, it was luckily he had a crew that just kept working and kept making things happen. But I’m pretty curious about that process because there has, you have to have some large chunk of time before, and, and then I, when you were talking about getting the apples and peeling them and cutting their, so almost to me, like muscle memory, like your heart is still broken, but you start it’s like your body takes over and you start doing that thing again, that that was so integral to your wellbeing and, and to your survival. I’m just, I don’t, I don’t understand the process, but I’m really fascinated by it because it seems like if you could bottle that, if you could figure out a way I don’t know. I, you know, and the way I understood from you when we talked before, when you so graciously offered to read my book and write a blurb was that, Bill had cancer, but then he developed a second.

Cheryl: (23:09)
Yes. I mean, we just really got hit with a double whammy. Oh my gosh. You know, , he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. And for any of your folks who have, you know, had any familiarity with cancer, that is not one you want to hear. That is usually a very tough one. And one that usually does not have a good outcome ultimately. And I lost my dad to it, some years earlier anyway, when that happened, it’s like, well, the, the silver lining or so it appeared to us at the time was that it was found, early, usually esophageal cancer is found very late, when it’s, you know, then that’s part of the issue with it, but it was found at what I think they call stage two anyway, because he was having some tests for other things and it was in a sharp eyed doctor, caught it anyway. We thought because of that, and we, you know, interviewed doctors and, you know, key cities around the country that had a lot of experience with that and considered going to MD Anderson and out to New York to Sloan Kettering or whatever, but we chose the Mayo clinic ultimately. And, you know, there is one of those in the Phoenix area and at the time, um, my, my mother had lived, she had just passed away. Oh my gosh, it was quite a year anyway. Wow. Oh, so, yeah. And in fact, we found this out on the Tuesday after my mother’s Memorial service. So anyway, it was just like, okay, how many things is this year gonna throw at us? But, we’ll, you know, keep on keeping on. So, um, we did have my sisters there. We have a number of friend in the Phoenix area.

Cheryl: (24:46)
It’s an area that is, you know, that we’re acquainted with. So it felt reasonably, you know, comfortable to us. Plus we just were so taken with the team that, was, you know, being proposed to us to work with at the Mayo clinic. So we basically up and relocated over there for what we thought was gonna be, you know, maybe forward a six month period. And then a few few weeks actually, oh, maybe, you know, six weeks or something into those treatments and everything was going well. And we were having time to be able to, oh, he’d go in for radiation. And we could then go wander the Phoenix botanical garden and go out and have breakfast or lunch. And for all the trauma of that time, it was actually very peaceful and a very happy time because we had, you know, just decided we were not going to focus on anything, but each other and getting him through this. And, so yeah, without the normal distractions of everyday life, it was a very special period and a very wonderful time together. And then we got hit with another nasty reality and that’s that he had developed a second cancer. That was, as far as all those very smart doctors at the Mayo clinic could recognize, had nothing to do with the esophagal cancer. He developed an acute myeloid leukemia, which is an even more fatal disease more quickly, potentially than esophagal cancer. So the treatments had to be switched up again. I give those doctors so much credit for, um, because they are treated in very different ways. But the two doctor teams met together regularly to figure out, you know, what they could do that could and work on both cancers simultaneously. And I feel like we had the best medical help we could have had at that time under those circumstances.

Cheryl: (26:47)
And this whole period from when this was found cancer, number one was found to when Bill told me he was done fighting and went into hospice and he was in hospice two days and passed away and he knew his own mind was done. And, you know, six months was, I felt like a good death. We had the time to be together to adjust to this reality that with all these treatments, it still wasn’t gonna work. Um, and that it didn’t drag out, um, as it, it can. Um, and we had the time to feel like, yes, that everything was being tried and it’s not gonna work. So, um, he will go gentle into that good night, so to speak. And he did.

Bunny: (27:33)
It’s such a hard story, but what about, how did, how did he see life? How did he, you know, we always wanna talk about gratitude, but he sounds like he was somebody who just took life by the horns and, And rode it hard.

Cheryl: (27:54)
He did, but he, and he was a realist about it all too. I mean, he was, you know, he was 11 years older than me and he was always convinced he would die before me, you know, I mean, which is, yes, it was likely that would be the case, you know, with that much age difference and men not typically living as long as women do and all that. So, I mean, he was always really great at, uh, making sure that, you know, I was gonna be secure, you know, financially and in every other way, you know, at the point that he was gone, this was well before he ever develop cancer and such. And, you know, it was always hard for me to talk about something like that, but he had a, a real, a very realistic idea that, okay, you know, life is not infinite and we live it to the best that we can while we are out there. And there’s that expression that something like, you only get one life and if you live it right, that’s enough. Like he did that. And I feel like I’m attempting to do that myself too.

Bunny: (28:55)
Well, you know, I have this, long held belief that, um, food is healing. I mean, I grew up at, I have this huge extent ended family and, and everything that we do together, the majority of what we do together is eat. And, um, and it, and it feels to me like you’ve done that really well. Siince you lost him and you do it, you provide it for other people too.

Cheryl: (29:25)
I Tried to, you know, and it’s been a real comfort once I got over that initial period that cooking wasn’t a joy anymore for me. And I managed to get back to that. One of the other things that was a part of that, um, in a segue a little bit here was just the whole writing thing. And maybe I should back up a little bit, cause we haven’t talked about how we ever even got to this field. Oh, I’d love to hear that. I wanna hear that. Yeah. Yeah. And that came out of the fact that, um, bill knew in his mid forties that he wanted to be out of the arts related work and just be, you know, just write. And his idea was he wanted to do travel writing and we always have tried traveled. And so it seemed like, you know, a, a great match. And, that’s what he started to do when he left his arts related work, which was at the time that we got married so that I could stay with the organization. And, um, since we didn’t think it was great to have, you know, a couple part of the very small staff that the organization had. So he left and I stayed and so started doing this travel writing and we, um, uh, managed to, and I say, we, because it started quickly encompassed me too because we got all these different opportunities. And, uh, he had done a book called the insiders guy to Santa Fe. That was one of the first books that anybody really, that was a travel guide about Santa Fe. And it was back in the eighties and he was really bothered by, um, oh, the, the sort of glitzy vanity fair Esquire magazine portrait that was being portrayed of Santa Fe at that point of just this, you know, destination.

Cheryl: (30:59)
And he really wanted to, you know, tell the story that was behind it, of the people who, you know, are from in this area, the native Americans, and then the Hispanics who came in later, and then the Anglos who came after that and, and you know, how culture and art played such a big role in this, and of course, food too. So he put that book together and then very quickly it became a book that both of us were involved with. And, because there weren’t any other guidebook on Santa Fe back in that era and Santa Fe was becoming a very, um, hot destination. So to speak that book ended up at the top of all kinds of bestseller lists for years, and, was a real entree for us into other things. Because we live here in the Intermountain west, we like to go to beaches is our, um, you know, getaway .

Bunny: (31:48)
Right, right. I know.

Cheryl: (31:49)
Yeah. When we were talking to the publisher who was doing the Santa Fe book for us. We, you know, posed this idea that we’d like to do a beach Getaway’s book and, and, uh, he, the idea but said, you know, we were going, that’s very expensive to think about, you know, doing this all over the world. And we just, again, serendipity intervened. And he said, well, you know, I’ve got this book that I did best places to stay in new England. And it’s occurred to me that I should make a series out of this. And I’ve been talking to Houghton Mifflin about licensing it to, and I, it looks like this is gonna work and I’m gonna need authors on other areas. So, you know, you’re, you’re talking about the Caribbean and Mexico and Hawaii. Why don’t you do those books in the series? You know?

Cheryl: (32:38)
Yeah. It’s like, oh, sure. We can do that. Oh. And then it was like, you know, later on that day after we left the meeting and we were jumping up and down on a, on the bed in the Shorem hotel in Washington, DC going, okay, how do we do this? . So I took some sabbatical time and, um, he had been doing some, some consulting work on the side too, so that, that fell by the wayside for a while. And we just started concentrating on traveling to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Hawaii and putting those books together. And, yeah, we just, you know, did it by, as I said, I’ve been good at figuring out. And so was he, you know, of what brings us joy, but also just, you know, kind of flying by the seat of our pants of going, oh, sure. We can do that, you know, and then making sense out how to make it happen. So we did, and my long story to make it longer is that people, we got a lot of good, you know, sort of feedback on the books and they were well reviewed and all people always commented on the food information that was in them and to us, food has been part and parcel of, of the travel experience. I mean, it’s, to us, it’s part of every experience, but absolutely it’s a great way to get a sense of the culture of an area that you’re traveling to. And, you know, it’s just to us always such a special piece of, you know, being someplace. And so, you know, as that was happening, um, it was also kind of timed with a point where it was looking like maybe after a few years, it was gonna be time for me to, to leave that arts related job too.

Cheryl: (34:13)
And the writing was, there was enough that was coming our way and generating enough income that we thought I could probably, you know, get out of a full-time job and just get into the writing solely as well. And that did mean we were gonna have more time. And so the idea kept popping back up of a cookbook. And the publisher that we’d been working with was very interested in that. But, you know, in our discussions, it was sort of like, well, nobody knows that we really know enough about food to write a cookbook. I mean, I don’t have any culinary training. I’m just totally self-taught, as I said, it goes back to childhood and I just always loved the process. And I have taught myself everything that I know about cooking over many, many years. And it’s like, well, okay, that’s that doesn’t seem like that it’s really a great credential for doing a cookbook.

Cheryl: (35:05)
So how do we make this work? And, because we had been writing about Santa Fe and people did know that we understood this area, we thought, well, okay, maybe it should be something that kind of deals with food of this particular region and simultaneously the Haram family up at ranch de Chi Mayo. The lovely has restaurant, with a family that has been there since the, what was among the settling families of the Chimayo valley. Some 400 years ago, they wanted to do a cookbook for what was then their 25th anniversary. So we’re talking, you know, around 1990. And, uh, we just got put together by a mutual friend. It was actually bill Richardson, who, and was, let’s see, I think at that time he was still our Congressman, but anyway, he knew us. He knew them. And, he had been in conversations with both of us about the fact that this might be a direction we were interested in. So he’s like, okay, wait a minute. You all need to be talking to each other. And we knew each other sort of, you know, just as visitors to the restaurant to go eat there. But you know, this that’s what actually sealed the deal. And the publisher we were working with was just so decided to come out and, go to the restaurant. And all of a sudden we had a book deal for a cookbook and worked with the Jaramillos on putting that book together. Cute thing I have to tell was that in that era, the cooks were all, you know, women from the village and it was women. And yeah, there weren’t any real set recipe, nothing was written down because everybody who lived there knew how to make Cane Adovada and green Chile sauce and the red Chile, and, you know, all those typical dishes that the restaurant served.

Cheryl: (36:50)
So part of my responsibility was to kind of be a, you know, in the kitchen, you know, just talking with and observing the ladies and what they were doing to make it consistent. In terms of something that we could actually write down as a recipe. So I would, uh, observe that in the kitchen, then I’d come back to Tesuque, I’d make a version of it. And then I would drive that version back up to, Laura Jaramillo, the daughter in the fam and say, okay, does this taste like what the master version of this should really taste like? we might do a little tweaking, but, that’s how we put together the, the initial book and recipes for that. And in the interim bill was working with, um, uh, the family with their, you know, some of their archive and, you know, just, he was a historian actually by training. We hadn’t actually talked about that. He had a PhD in American history. And so he was so good on that background of things. And so he just loved being able to, you know, pour through the family files until that story of, you know, how, uh, that came to be and how the restaurant ultimately came into existence. So that became our first cookbook. And that was going to be our last cookbook. We were just gonna write the travel books, but it started getting a lot of critical attention because people were recognizing that we were writing about a regional cuisine that had not been talked about much before in a, in a big national way, uh, that this was not Tex-Mex. It wasn’t, Cal-Mex, it wasn’t Mex-mex, I mean, this was, you know, something, and it is something that is very special to this area. And it’s a confluence of, you know, the, native American, you know, foods here, with the chilis and such that, you know, came up with the Spanish and, to be able to tell that story, we just happened to again, be at the right place at the right time and started giving a lot of attention because we were, you know, giving, um, a, a platform to, to new Mexican food at that stage. So that became cookbook won and it was going to be the only one, but, you know, things intervene

Bunny: (39:04)
Right,

Cheryl: (39:04)
Right here. I am 20 years later.

Bunny: (39:08)
Well, and I gotta tell you one of the, one of my favorite things about your cookbooks is that they aren’t just a collection of recipes. , they’re a collection of stories about, you know, like the Casey New Mexico book that you did, that was so, um, full of stories. I mean, if you’ve never visited New Mexico, but you picked up that book, you’d get, it sounds, but it’s so the, the, the title is so true because it’s not just a taste of carne Ava and chili renos. It’s a taste of what New Mexico is all about. So that’s, um, I do love all of those stories around food and, and you you’re continuing to do that. I mean, the, the Perini, I’m sorry, I’m saying that wrong. Am I saying that right? The Perini ranch,

Cheryl: (40:03)
Perini ranch, steakhouse cook. That’s one of those That I’ve done on my own Uhhuh. And actually, I mean, I should say on my own, well, I did it with the fabulous Perini who have the steakhouse, Tom and Lisa Perini you who have this place in Buffalo gap, Texas, which if you haven’t been to folks, you should go sometime it is just a gym of a, of a steakhouse. And so captures, a real experience there. They yeah. Wanted to do a book and I thought, well, it’d be such fun to work with them and to tell their story and, you know, right. Yeah. I I’ve had great fun doing that. So that’s one of the projects I’ve taken on, uh, since bill passed away. Yes.

Bunny: (40:43)
Well, it seems to me like your life was taking one direction. And then serendipitously, although you had a passion when you started, I mean, you were passionate of about food. It kind of reminds me of one of my favorite art authors is Ruth Reich. Who didn’t start out thinking she was gonna be the, the food critic for the New York times. She just was, you know, working in and waiting tables in kitchens in California, and then ended up being this amazing writer. And, and I love writing about things. I mean, I’m sorry, reading about things that people are passionate about, and you’ve turned that passion into something that is not just, not just fun to read and fun to practice the food part, but that’s really helpful to people. I mean, cooking with kids. I mean, what, what an amazing organization, and you’re so involved with that, what’s, what’s cooking with kids about.

Cheryl: (41:57)
Cooking with kids is an organization based here in Santa Fe that, is, dedicated to teaching kids about good food and how to take care of themselves and feed themselves. And, um, it’s, uh, it is based in the school, but it also extends then into the homes. And there are several different components of it. Uh, there are super chefs who come in and work with the kids in their school setting. So they get to see what, um, that’s like as a profession, but it’s not, it’s not trying to, you know, turn kids into chefs. It’s trying to, you know, show them, uh, that there’s a world of healthy, that’s really tasty and fun, and that it relates to everything else they’re learning in school, whether that’s geography or other things as well, too. So it’s, um, they do great work and I’ve been very happy to be a part of that for a good while. You know, we were talking about, you know, passion and such. And, one of the things that when people ask me about this, that, you know, and how to live your life or whatever, and I don’t know that I have any particular, um, you know, advice that’s worth anything, but one of the things I do tend to say is that figure out what brings you joy? What are you passionate about? What makes you feel happy to be alive for me, it’s, you know, it’s food and it’s travel and it’s art and gardening and reading and skiing and Dodgers baseball and music, and my pet chickens.

Bunny: (43:25)
I knew, I knew the chickens. I knew the chickens were coming

Cheryl: (43:29)
At some point, you know, and if you’re not doing at least most of whatever things are to you, I mean, start making a plan to get there and do that, you know, that’s, you know, I’ve been so lucky to be able to figure out a, the career path, that has allowed me to do a lot of these things that bring me great joy and connect all that, you know, to connect the dots. But, and also kind of, you know, related to, to that is, you know, have a vision of where you’re going. Um, you know, you may modify it, you may sidestep it. I mean, you might have to switch to plan B or to plan D or M along the way, because things just happen, but you’re never gonna get there wherever that there is without, you know, no what’s important to you. And, you know, I’ve always thought I was gonna work in the arts and enjoy food and travel as a pastime. And it turns out that I can make my living by eating and sleeping around and, and then I can enjoy the art for relaxation. Yeah. But it’s all part of my, you know, my whole thing of what makes me feel, you know, excited about life too.

Bunny: (44:43)
Well. And I just did a retrospective of, you know, I just turned 61. So I wanted to say, you know, 60 years of, of the things I know, and one of the biggest lessons I know is that it’s not failure if you don’t quit. So if the things you try, aren’t exactly what you thought they would be just keep moving. Because as long as you’re passionate about something and seeking joy, I mean, joy is another thing that we talk about a lot when you’ve been through the sorts of loss and trauma that you have been, and, and the, and the, and the little bit of health, a health issue that I have, you gotta decide at some point, that joy is, is a, is it’s not just to byproduct of how you live. It’s sort of, I think what you wanna strive for. In fact, that’s, that’s, you know, people say, what are your, what’s your word for the year? And, and I’ve decided joyful is gonna be mine forever.

Cheryl: (45:46)
I get that. Totally.

Bunny: (45:48)
But you have to Choose don’t you think?

Cheryl: (45:51)
You do, and there are people who just don’t and I mean, I just have to choose to try to be happy and to try to live with joy. And that’s what makes that’s what centers me and I’m. So, you know, and I’m able to see how fortunate I am to have wonderful friends and family, but there’s something about resiliency, uh, that I think that’s related to that, uh, notion of, you know, choosing joy, and to try to be happy and to move forward with that, as your intent, do the things that, you know, that make you feel good.

Bunny: (46:29)
Well, and I, sometimes, I’m sometimes concerned that our listeners will say well, but, you know, look at Cheryl, she gets to be on the food network. She gets to talk to all these famous chefs. She’s no wonder her life is joyful. And, and, and what I wanna say is, no, no, no. She got to do all of those things because she first chose this path of her passion and, and, and joy.

Cheryl: (46:56)
And, I think that’s how come the other things have come and knowing that I liked that direction of, okay. Yes. Okay. How do I make this happen? And, you know, and I was talking to somebody about doing, uh, a radio show about food is like, oh yeah. Well, why don’t I do that? That’s with everything else. Yes.

Bunny: (47:17)
I love that you, were sitting with Richard G Eeds talking about how they oughta have a podcast. And, he said, yeah, when do you wanna start? Because it, I was interview, he, we were talking about the cancer foundation, Richard, and he doesn’t even know he inspires this, but he, we were talking about the foundation and I was telling my story and he said, Bunny, I’ve heard you tell this story three years in a row. You ought just write a book about it.

Cheryl: (47:45)
There You go.

Bunny: (47:46)
I think I have one at home. I just need to do it. But yes. But, but if you’re, if you’re living your life joyfully and open and, um, and using that as a, your strategy, as opposed to a byproduct,

Cheryl: (48:00)
Yeah. You look for the opportunities yes. As they present themselves and they’re out there. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah. And you, you have to be proactive to some degree too. Um, you know, any decision you try to duck yeah. That you just ignore, well, that’s a decision in and of itself, you know? And so, yeah, just, um, you just, we’re all gonna face obstacles and they’re different things. I mean, you know, a death, a job that you thought should have been yours, um, this awful COVID mess that we’ve all been living through. Um, but you know, you just have to, again, put one foot in front of the other and just choose that you’re gonna figure out a way to move forward. And you may sidestep that for here. And there’s a step back now. And then, and boy, you know, just when I was thinking about, talking to you for the podcast, you know, last night I was kind of, you know, going through all this in my mind and, you know, yeah. You have these moments where it’s like, oh my gosh, what happened to my life? Right, right. You know, I, so miss bill still, it’s been six years and, and all of that, but, there’s so much good in my life now, too, in a different way. And I, uh, think of things I never would’ve experienced. If life would’ve just, you know, continued to go the way that it was. And I have a lot of people that have come into my life since then, that I might not have met. And, you just, you know, it’s, it’s not the same and it’s not going to be. And so get on with it and just make the best of it. Because as we were saying, you only get one life and just make it the best one.

Bunny: (49:40)
Say that thing again, you only get one life and if you live it well, that’s

Cheryl: (49:45)
Gonna be enough.

Bunny: (49:47)
Wow. Wow. Well, I want you to tell us real quickly what you’re doing next. I know you just got back from.

Cheryl: (49:55)
in France. I just had a dream experience. I have been, uh, when I was sitting around during COVID with, you know, less to do because, you know, things, weren’t, you know, oh gosh, magazines, weren’t hiring. And I was really from having taken on like three different book projects, just myself since Bill died. And I just wanted a little bit of time to sit and ruminate and think about what I did next and all. And so COVID gave me that time. There was not a lot else going on. So I thought, okay, when I can travel again, where do I wanna go? And what do I want to do? And one of the things that, um, that Bill and I had done for, a decade, back in the two thousands into the, well, the nineties into the two thousands was take small culinary groups to the south of France. And it wouldn’t be just cooking school. There would be, you know, cooking classes as a piece of that, but it would be sort of a full rounded experience of that particular area of France. And we’d, you know, go to the butcher shops and the markets and, and all, but do the site seeing, and that was in the Dodon read, which is where the Lasko caves are. And so we’d see those and, uh, just, you know, go out to eat as well as you know, eat in the meals that we were preparing with our little group of eight or so. And, um, that had stopped, actually while Bill was still alive, because as nurse had become ill and, and they subsequently sold the property and all, so that was a piece of life that had kind of disappeared. And after bill died too, I kept thinking, you know, I would enjoy doing that again if I found the right circumstance, but it needed to be a whole different area and different place.

Cheryl: (51:44)
And, several, I guess it’s been like three years ago now. I had, gone to the south of France, by myself on vacation. And I met up with a, a women’s tour group for some of those days. And I met the woman who had organized that, and I really hit it off with her. And we started scheming about whether we could maybe do culinary, you know, trips, uh, under the auspices of her company, uh, because she’s licensed there in France. And she’s, you know, she’s been living there for years, she’s French Canadian by birth, but, um, she’s had the company for 10 years and it’s like, she was doing no culinary tours. And so it just, again was kind of the serendipitous thing of, okay, here’s my chance. And I’m gonna take that and I’m gonna do that. So that is one of the pieces that started this great long fall adventure. We had been putting off doing one of those trips, and then it finally was able to happen in early September. And it was kind of touch and go there as, you know, the, as COVID was raising its head again and all, but we managed to go. And I also had a, that I had been planning to go on as with the international folk art market. I had booked a trip to Egypt and Jordan with them, and that’s been, you know, a couple of years ago too, so that managed to get rescheduled for November. And so I thought, okay, well, that’s, you know, two great overseas trips. And then my husband’s family, there are people who live in visa, one of the Spanish islands that wanted to do it, get together. We wanted to scatter some ashes, of one of Bill’s nieces and also Bill’s.

Cheryl: (53:22)
If we could manage all of this. And I thought, okay, that’s gonna be October. Well, why don’t I just stay? So what else would I want to do if I was gonna have this kind of fantasy chance to spend this much time overseas, and I’ve always wanted to get to the Mediterranean islands of, um, Corsica and Sicily in particular. So I also had a visa as a part of, you know, this family thing. And so it’s like, okay, they’re you, if you look at a map, they’re right in the middle of the, the Mediterranean, it looks like they’d be easy, but they’re hard to get to. So I thought, okay, I’ve got the time I, I can spend the time getting between all these island destinations, whether that’s by fairies or it’s planes, or, you know, whatever it takes. So, yeah, I did France. A friend met me there, my friend Barbara Templeman here locally, we got a Paris apartment for two weeks. As a fun thing to do, I did the family thing, you know, traveled through the Caribbean or excuse me, the Mediterranean islands that we were talking out, hopped up to Rome, you know, met up with a friend who was gonna be there. And, uh, then went on over to Turkey as I had a week to kill before it was time for the Egypt, Jordan folk art market trip. So my friend who was gonna join me for that said she could come over a week ahead. So we spent time in Turkey. And so all of that, and then another trip I had booked with an international folk art market was rescheduled for right after Thanksgiving. So I came back literally a couple of days before Thanksgiving, um, washed my clothes and then repacked them and went to Mexico on this other folk art market trip. And that’s what I just returned from a few days ago. So I I’ve had a fabulous fall all over. And now that I’m home, I’m gonna figure out what book project, or I’ve got a couple of TV things in the works. And, you know, see what I do when I grow up

Bunny: (55:20)
And , this is the cool thing. You just did a podcast from Oaxaca. So you’re in Mexico on this trip and you just sort of segue into, um, doing this podcast at a restaurant. And I thought, wow, I, I listen, my life is pretty, pretty amazing, but I’m like, I wanna step in your shoes for a couple of months, although it sounds it’s fun. It sounds like so much fun.

Cheryl: (55:47)
Yeah. I did. Some radio broadcasts from, let’s see, from Paris and from the south of France. And let’s see one from Rome. Oh my gosh. Um, one from Chiro, it was just a, it was fun to figure out how to make that happen. And we did, um, yeah, the last one of the, as we were laughingly calling him the glow edition of heating it up. That’s my radio show on hu and broadcasting folks, if I can put in a, a plug please. Yeah, it’s uh, it’s um, if you listen to actual live radio, it’s on am 1260 and FM 1 0 3 0.7. It’s always streamed at santafe.com and it is podcast later, at the same source@santafe.com. And when it airs live, it’s on Saturday afternoons from three to four mountain time on those radio stations and the streaming. So listen in, if you get a chance, we talk about all kinds of things about food. It’s called heating it up.

Bunny: (56:45)
I’m really excited to, to hear, you know, I wanna know what you decide you’re gonna beef when you grow up. But I also, I, we could talk about this sort of stuff for hours, so I hope you’ll consider coming back.

Cheryl: (57:02)
I would do that, and you and I to have lunch or wine.

Bunny: (57:04)
Oh, I can’t wait. Let’s do both. Let’s have lunch all of the wine and, talk about food. I have an idea for a little local cookbook I’d like to do for Eastern New Mexico. I think it could be fun, but, other than that, I just I want folks to hear that life can be joyful after loss and that it’s just a matter of figuring out what you’re passionate about. Don’t you think?

Cheryl: (57:36)
I think entirely, yeah know, you know, know yourself and figure out again, what, what things bring you joy and then work the hardest you can at making those central to your life. And you may have another kind of job that supports the things that you, you know you can do. I’m lucky that I was able to over time. I mean, I loved my arts related work, you know, when I was doing that, I was very passionate about that. But, um, I just feel like I, you know, woke up in some kind of dream that, uh, we were able to turn our love for travel and then for, you know, food into a career that has actually, you know, been very successful, who knew?

Bunny: (58:14)
Who knew, but, but wow. Wow. What a success? What an amazing success. We’ll do this again. Thank, thank you so much. Yes.

Cheryl: (58:27)
It’s good to spend the time with you and your listeners. It is.

Bunny: (58:30)
Thank you so much.

Bunny: (58:33)
That’s all we’ve got today. Friends. I wanna 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 listed. 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 at live 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 here. 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.