Gratitude for Curiosity and Courage: Brindley Tucker Returns

Bunny: (00:07)
Hi there and welcome to the lifesaving gratitude podcast. This is Bunny Terry and I am joined by my co-host and producer, Johanna Medina. And we have a special guest today. She’s somebody who is on our show. I would say about 35 episodes ago, maybe almost 40, because she was in the first 10 guests that we had. And she was amazing. Then she’s amazing. Now, Brindley Tucker runs a business called Your Realty Leverage, and she helps… Well, I’m gonna let her explain that on the podcast, but she really believes in small business owners and helping them succeed. And that is her great joy, but she also is a master at neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and she has this dream and of course this with, with brilliant, it’s not a dream she’s gonna make it happen of helping kids, especially teenagers, um, thrive through NLP. And, um, we talked a lot about goal setting. We talked about goal getting the unconscious mind versus the conscious mind. And I learn a lot with every guest, but Brindley it’s I always end how always have like four pages of notes and I’m taking so many notes. I forget almost to talk to her. I, how was it for you, Johanna?

Johanna: (01:33)
Yeah, exactly. I love talking to Brindley because she’s just energy, energy, energy, like, and you really, like, I feed off of that. I can feel it even, even virtually and feel her energy and she’s just, she’s just going, going, going, like she has something right before like every minute of the day I feel scheduled, but she, um, yeah, exactly. I had, um, I have so many notes written down. I feel like the whole podcast is just like, like little quote quote bubbles I could pull from all day long. I just, the conversation was so great. Like I think our first conversation with her, we were wowed and um, you know, surprised and just like, that was amazing. And then it felt the same way this time. It was great.

Bunny: (02:17)
Well, and I would say one of the things that I felt was the coolest about what Brindley said was that she, she emphasized over and over and, we are hearing this and I wanna take it to heart that we shouldn’t be tied to outcomes that we should, that the growth is really in the process, not in the outcome. And I’m like you, there, there are so many quotes that she’s said, but, um, something that I have that I’ve heard Brindley say before, and that I have written in my day-planner is that always assume positive intent. And I actually, I spoke with somebody, I know who’s has a small business question the other day and she was like, you know, I feel like I’m riding a horse on a horse, you know, I’m trying to figure out, you know, not what is the intent of these people that wanna be my partners, but also, you know, how do, how do I, how do I do this and how do I think about it? She said, I’m so confused. And I said, I think the best thing you can do is always assume positive intent. And I said that after we talked to Brindley and I thought I wanna do that in my life too. I just wanna assume that that’s what people mean to provide. And, and if they don’t, you’ll figure it out in a hurry, but then it makes life so much easier.

Johanna: (03:39)
Yeah, definitely. I loved that. I wrote that down too. I think especially I was gonna say, especially stick to the end because as you learn from the episode, you know, she is always learning, always growing and, um, she gives us a like her book recommendations at the end. I love that I wrote down a bunch of books, so I’ll try to link as many of those as possible. But if you’re someone who just, you know, feeds off of continuing to learn and, you know, kind of self-taught in whatever way, uh, that I think should give some good recommendations there at the end, along with everything, all she says.

Bunny: (04:22)
Yeah. Yeah. And she’s a proven success. I mean, she told us that she, you know, she she’s lost 65 pounds. She’s in the best physical condition of her life. She’s running races, she’s doing things that she never, ever dreamed possible. And it’s just because she decided to grow. That’s what we’re here for. I’m so grateful that we had her on the show. Again, I can’t wait, you know, it’s like we have to wait another six months or so to have her back. But she’s amazing.

Johanna: (04:48)
I know we already planned our next episode with her, like what we’re gonna talk about. So I’m ex I’m excited for that one already. We did.

Bunny: (04:55)
We did. So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, for liking, for reviewing this and for downloading this wherever you find your favorite podcast, because that’s what we wanna be. Just thanks for checking in folks.

Bunny: (05:09)
Hi Brindley. I’m so excited that you’re back

Brindley: (05:12)
I am so excited to be back. How fun is this?

Bunny: (05:16)
I don’t recall exactly which I wouldn’t. She and her first 10 guest Johanna, Seems to be.

Johanna: (05:24)
Yeah, definitely the first 10, because we talked about you in our recap. So I think she was, yeah, pretty high up there, like the beginning. And now we’re at, this will be 42. This will be our 42nd episode.

Brindley: (05:35)
Wow. Wow. Congratulations guys. That’s awesome. 42 episodes. That’s huge.

Bunny: (05:40)
We are having so much fun and, I don’t know what our listening listeners are learning, but man, Johanna and I are giving it in spades. We are learning all the time and I want for you very quickly. I did a long intro last time, but just tell folks what you’re doing. Like what’s your passion right this minute and what are you doing business wise?

Brindley: (06:05)
Yeah, So business wise on, the leverage side, I’m in the business of helping business owners create freedom through leverage. So we help them leverage their way to freedom. And we do this by taking care of all of the stuff that a business owner doesn’t have time for recruiting, training, human capital, administrative support, office support, all of that. And we take all of that on off of their plate so that they can increase revenue by focusing on the income generating activities that actually grow the business. So we want them to stay in that owner space and less in that operator space. And so that’s what we do on the business side. And then on my personal side, I do a lot of work with, um, entrepreneurs and business owners with helping them breakthrough ceilings that may prevent them from going to the next level. I’m a master practitioner in neurolinguistic programming. I do a lot of breakthrough work, a lot of emotion and mental release work because I find that so much of our, experience and mindset is what holds us back from going to the next level in our business, whether that’s limiting beliefs around money or living beliefs around leadership or ourselves or self sabotage. I work with a lot of women, um, that, that suffer from imposter syndrome that holds them back from going to the next level. So that’s truly where my passion is, is helping business owners elevate themselves and then, and then leverage their way to freedom. So they can make as much money as possible and be with their families and do the things they love instead of always being tied to a desk and a phone.

Bunny: (07:33)
Which is so cool. And you and I talked about this business when we met one another, I think, it’s been about six years when we shared a ride in an Uber in LA. And you said, here’s where I think the hole is in the real estate ind industry. I think realtors are amazing at what they do, but they’re not good at hiring or training. Good help. And I knew it was true at the time because I had a couple of people working on my team that made, I mean, I was pouring so much into them that I wasn’t taking care of myself or my business. And I think that’s where we, where business owners find themselves a lot of times,

Brindley: (08:14)
100%. And you know, I recently have become a platinum partner with Tony Robbins and I’m meeting business owners of the real estate industry. And, we’re not unicorns in the real estate industry. This is something that small business owners and, mid-size business owners and corporations deal with across the board is leverage. It’s keeping people focused on the most important things that drive the business forward and less time in those things that have to be done yet. They don’t generate us income. They don’t bring in revenue. And so it’s, it’s interesting because I think sometimes we in real estate get in this bubble. And what I want to tell people is it’s not just us, right? This is across the board. This is a challenge for business owners everywhere across every industry. And so we’re just grateful that we get to be a little piece of helping business owners break through those ceilings and really start to focus on the things that matter.

Bunny: (09:07)
I bet you have some really cool stories about people that have had breakthroughs that were shocking to them at least like deep. Is, does anything come to mind? I’d love to hear how somebody completely changed their business or their life.

Brindley: (09:20)
Yeah, Well, absolutely. I think the biggest one is myself. You know, I always that to start with my, my own story, you know, I discovered neurolinguistic programming and the work that I do in NLP, through, through maps, coaching with Keller when I was a coach for them. And I really became a student of the practice because so much of the way I was raised, you know, my mother did an amazing job and I never wanna discount or discredit how hard she worked to raise me as a single mom and coming from a single mother, no father worked all the time, grandparents that were not happy in their marriage, that I spent a lot of time with, um, a grandmother that was very, very polarized by addiction. And the way her mother had treated her and abused her, she was physically abused growing up. So there was a lot of anger in the home and a lot of anger that poured over into me as a child and my cousin and, and all of these things that you have to think about from the age of zero to seven, you’re in what we call an imprint age. And this is most of your belief system is formed by the age of seven. And most people don’t know that. And so from zero to seven, we’re kind of in this, this imprint where everything that we’re learning, that’s why they say are like sponges, because that’s literally what you’re doing is you’re soaking up everything from your parents, from your teachers from experiences, the first time that you feel shame the first time you’re embarrassed. The first time you’re sad, you’re navigating all of this. And then from seven to about 18, you’re in a modeling phase. So you go from seven to 18, you’re no longer an imprint. Now, everything you’re learning is based on what your friends are doing, what you’re seeing at school, you’re modeling the behavior of the people that you’re around the most. So you’re modeling your parents, you’re modeling your teachers. So you see like your belief systems were not actually even created by you. They were created and, and instilled by your parents by your, by your teachers, by your influencers in those first seven years. And then everything after that, you’re building on by modeling those that are around you. You know, that’s why Gary, Gary Keller, one of my mentors always taught us. You know, you’re the sum of the five people that you you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with and your kids too. He talks about it in our course career visioning with Keller Williams.

Brindley: (11:49)
And, it’s so true because from seven to 18, that’s who you’re learning from right now, in my situation, I was very, very fortunate to be put in a, Christian high school. And so a lot of my friends growing up had a lot more wealth than we did. I was a single raised by a single mom, but everything she did in, in her world was for me. And I’m forever grateful to that yet. I never felt, I always felt less than because I never felt like I had the same amount as my other friends. And I remember one day going to the beach and Lori, and I won’t say her last name for protecting, the innocent and the guilty right needed as right. I remember we went to Dillards and I only got to go to Dillards and buy a dress for like Easter. I could never just go to Dillards to buy a swimsuit, right. And she had her, her dad’s American express card and she was able to pick any swimsuit she wanted. And I just remember having that feeling of, I wanna be that. And I spent the majority of my high school years comparing myself to others and not feeling good enough. And my mother thought what she was doing was what was great for me, putting me in a private school with a good education, surrounded by great families. And yet the behavior I was modeling and becoming was a belief system that I wasn’t good enough. And so, so many of us go through these experiences and have these belief systems that we didn’t even get to choose. And then those start to pour over in our lives. And then we start to have children, and now we’re continuing the patterns.

Brindley: (13:28)
So I think some of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve had, number one are for myself, is being able to reverse a lot of that through the work that I do in NLP, which has allowed me to become a better leader, right. A better human, a better daughter. You know, I still fail miserably every day at all of those things. Yet I deal with the failure a lot better. Right. I don’t look at it as a negative anymore. I look at it as learning and lessons and opportunities to grow rather than being lessons, fan. And a lot of the, business owners that I work with are better leaders because of the things that we’re able to release, the things that hold them back. I have a person in our team that I’ve done a lot of work with. And she grew up in a very, um, controlling environment, you know, very religious, very, everything is wrong and very beat down. And so she beat herself up over everything. And when we were able to do some breakthrough work with her and she started instituting some of the change, she’s lost a hundred pounds. Right. She, wow. Oh yeah. It’s changed her entire life. She’s a leader. She was told her whole life. She wouldn’t be a leader. Now she’s leading an apartment of like six people. So a lot of there’s a lot to be said for going in and shifting that belief system, because there’s so many limit beliefs that we put on ourselves, you know, this funny as a business owner and especially as a female business owner.

Bunny: (14:48)
I know, I know it, and I know Johanna knows it because both she and her wife are social workers. Yeah. So they see, they see this transformation all the time. I mean, you’re, you’re working with adolescents, aren’t you Johanna on some level.

Johanna: (15:01)
Yeah. And, I just, I think that’s amazing Brindley and I know it’s a process. I’m sure it takes time to, to get in like decode those beliefs, especially when you have that generational trauma you were talking about and just kinda all that reciprocal trauma. But that’s amazing that you’re doing that work. It’s so important.

Brindley: (15:23)
Well, it’s interesting. Cause I’m, starting to develop a course for preteens and teens, to start doing some of this release work with preteens and teens. And I went and observed the kids course, and this course was, for six to 12 year olds and it was a lot around beliefs and emotion and someone texted me the following day and said, so how was it? What did you learn? I basically wrote back and said that adults are really screwed up

Bunny: (15:49)
Yes.

Brindley: (15:51)
Yeah. Cause it’s not the kids, it’s the parents right. And, well, it was their parents. They’re not at fault. Right. They’re just doing the best that they can with what they have. And we do have the ability and power of choice to break the cycles if we choose to do the work.

Bunny: (16:10)
Yeah. Well, and that’s the good news is that, we don’t have a lot of power over who, what we, what we, you know, absorb from one, from a birth to seven or what we model from seven to 18, but we, but we do have the power Now. We had this amazing conversation the last time that you were here and you, you were really, really vulnerable. And you told us your own story. And we talked a lot about being grateful for the dark times in our life. And, we talked about moving forward and embracing our past, but not staying in them and about giving ourselves a lot of grace and you. And one of the things that you said that I wrote down that I have, I keep, you know, I’m sure that this is not the most functional way to do this, but I keep a paper calendar and I keep an electronic calendar. And I write stuff down on my calendar on my remarkable only because I find if I write it down, over and over and over, my, my old brain is gonna eventually get it. But I have written several times, things that you you’ve said. And, one of the most important is don’t be tied to the outcome. Don’t be tied to the outcome. The other thing I wrote that you, that you posted last week was let me it’s at the top of my paper calendar says always assume positive, intent. That’s a good one. I love that one. How hard is that?

Brindley: (17:33)
And yet… Hard, hard, hard, and especially.. It’s so hard. It’s so hard. And I say these things, and I honestly, those are reminders for myself, right? Because it’s, you know, it is repetition. How do you change a pattern? You change a pattern by doing all patterns are, habits that we do over and over and over and over and over, right? It’s a belief that’s created a habit or an action that we then repeat over and over and over. And it becomes a pattern also known as a habit. And so what we have to do is we have to rewind, right, erase the belief, create a new habit or behavior, and then just repeat it over and over and over. And that’s why Bunny, when you say you write things down in your neurology, it actually does help because you’re retraining your brain and your unconscious mind to think differently around something, right. And assuming positive intent. This is another good one that recently came up is we also have to be very aware of the labels that we create, right. Because we can actually be holding space for people to stay a certain way. And what I mean by that is I had someone recently come up to me and say that I was a really angry person. And I said, okay, all right, let’s talk about that. And I’m not gonna say I haven’t had my moments. Right. I’m a high driver type a personality. I tend to react more than I respond. I’m very, very transparent about that. It is one of my blind spots that I work on daily. And, um, and I said, okay, can you give me some examples? And this individual said, well, I, I can’t really, really think of anything right now. I’ll have to get back to you. So great. Take your time. Let’s talk through it and just gimme, well, I can’t really, really think of anything. Um, I’ll just, I’ll have to think about it. Okay. And sh and, and they said, um, oh, this morning, when this happened, you were frustrated clearly. And I said, well, no, actually I wasn’t frustrated. I was stepping into health cuz something working and I was asked to help. Yeah, I wasn’t frustrated. And um, and I said, can I, may I give you some feedback? And she said, yes. I said, if you continue to believe that I’m an angry person, then I’m always going to be an angry person to you. You’re actually holding space for me to be angry. May I share a little bit about myself with you that might make a different, create a different perception or a different label in your mind? And she said, sure. I said, I value time at a very, very high level. I think it is our most important commodity that we have in life. And so when I feel that time is not being respected or it’s being wasted, you are going to see me and go into overdrive. And that’s probably what you saw this morning because we were behind schedule. This was going wrong. Four people were standing around scratching their heads and it wasn’t being provided. So I jumped in to provide the solution and fix it. Not angry. Didn’t have really any feelings or emotion around it at all. Yet I could see from the outside house of one could think that I was angry or frustrated. And she was like, huh. And I’m like, and I appreciate you getting into curiosity about it and let’s talk about it. And I think that’s what happens is we create labels and these assumptions, we don’t ever get into curiosity. We’re in total judgment. And now we’ve created stories and hallucinations all over the place about people that then affect our relationships affect where we are in life, affect our mindset, all of that. And so I wanna help people recreate our labels.

Johanna: (21:05)
Sorry. I, was gonna say, yeah, we do that to ourselves too. Right? We put those labels on ourselves. Like, I’m, I’m not a leader or I’m not this or that, or I am an angry person maybe. And so that, that limits us as well. I know, I struggle with that sometimes.

Brindley: (21:23)
That’s right. And our unconscious mind is always listening. So if you say I’m, I’m not this, or I’m not that, first of all, it doesn’t hear negative. So if you say I’m not negative, or I’m not a leader, you’re actually telling your unconscious mind you are. So you’re actually helping yourself a little bit yet. If you say you know, I don’t wanna be fat. You’re basically telling your unconscious mind, I want fat. So you have to be really careful the words that you’re using, because your unconscious mind is always listening and its whole purpose is to help get you what you want in life. So if you’re giving it negative direction, you’re actually confusing it. And it doesn’t know what direction to take you. And it’s always listening. And then remember your cells eavesdrop on your thoughts. So when you’ve got negative mindset or you’ve created these labels on yourself, it’s actually affecting you physically.

Bunny: (22:18)
And okay. I want us to talk about that a little bit more. You said your unconscious mind cannot does not negative.

Brindley: (22:26)
Mm-hmm negative. Yeah. So if you do positive affirmations, cans, IM statements, there’s several different labels of that content. You’re actually, you wanna make sure that they’re all stated in the positive. So instead of I am not fat. You wanna say I am skinny because if you say, I am not fat, your unconscious mind doesn’t hear the “not.” All It hears is I am fat.

Bunny: (22:48)
I didn’t know that. But I do know that when you say things, we interviewed somebody and she was our guest last week Brindley who learned how to love herself and learned how to fill what she calls, um, myself sized hole in her heart. And she became her healthiest self, both mentally, physically, and emotionally. And she lost a hundred pounds. I mean, she wrote a book called you can’t eat love. But she said, I had to learn to talk to say things to myself. Like you are healthy. You and she, and it was small things. It was, you are healthy because you walked an extra 10 steps across the grocery store. Parking lot this morning, you went, you walked an extra, walked around the block one more time. But she said, if I said, I want to lose weight. It’s like, my mind just kept hearing, wait, wait, wait. It’s such a cool segue into what you’re saying, which is, I mean, we know our unconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and what we tell it. Right.

Brindley: (24:06)
That’s right. That’s right. You know, and it’s interesting that in, in an average home, before the age of 18, so a relatively healthy home, you know, mom, dad married mostly positive, not a lot of trauma, not a lot of abuse, nothing out of the ordinary. We are told the word no, 148,000 times by the time we’re 18 in the first 18 years of our life.

Johanna: (24:31)
Wow.

Bunny: (24:33)
Wow.

Johanna: (24:33)
That’s a lot.

Brindley: (24:33)
So just think about the fact that clearly we’re probably not getting as many yeses as we’re getting nos. So all of a sudden with that much, our brains are already wired to think negatively. They’re already wired to go to the no, not to the yes. Right. So we have to, in order to be more successful, we have to start believing in ourselves. We have to take responsibility. I call it selfishly selfless. Right? We have to be selfishly selfless and it, and it goes back. We all, we’ve all heard at the oxygen. There’s a reason you put the oxygen mask on yourself first doesn’t mean you ignore the person next to you. It just means that you are not gonna be as helpful to the person next to you. If you’re not breathing. Right.

Bunny: (25:20)
I’m a huge believer in that. You know, when I was a single mom and when my kids were little, the one thing I heard over and over from somebody that I follow as a parenting expert was you have to take care of your own storehouse before you can provide your kids with the supplies that they need. I don’t. And, yet, I mean, I still said no a lot, but, I did want to talk today a little bit about you’re helping your clients do audacious things, set audacious goals and implement them. I’m, and I know that we plan to do this earlier in the year, but we’re still just in January. And today you post on Facebook that even if you didn’t feel like you made great leaps, Y if you’re just getting 1% closer to your goal, talk about that.

Brindley: (26:16)
That’s right. You know, we, set these big audacious goals and I’ll use weight loss, cuz it’s a big one and it’s a great dramatic effect example. But how many of us go through the holidays? And we come outta the holiday, I’m never eating again. Gonna go to the gym five times a week, right. I’ve been going to spend at 6:00 AM now for almost a year. And that gym has that spin class has never been so full at 6:00 AM in January than it has been in the last six months. And then this morning I go and there’s like 10 people, right? You’re already starting to see the enthusiasm right that everyone had at the beginning of the year, start to kind of plus it’s Florida and it’s 36 degrees out. So I’ll give ’em that right. It is a little cold yet what we do as we, we focus too much on this big, hairy thing, rather than just focusing on a minor improvement that we can make every day, that’s gonna move the needle closer to our goals. It’s very similar in business. My one word this year, I choose a word every year to help me with some area of my life. And, and this year I chose focus. And the reason I chose focus is because as a business owner, and I know a lot of you can relate, a lot of our audience can relate to this. We have 15 open projects at one time, we get to the end of the year and we still have 15 open projects. Maybe we’ve completed one yet. We haven’t really completed anything. We’ve moved the needle on 15 of them yet we haven’t completed any. And that’s because we’re not focused, right? You can’t give a hundred percent to a hundred things. And focus is defined as follow one course until successful. So rather than have 15 open projects, I have committed to focusing on one thing at a time. And then when I’m 80% completed on that project, then I can start a new one. As I’m wrapping up the previous one. If I slow down, then I have to stop the second project. Right? And so it’s number one, having a plan. So by failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail. So goal setting is not just about where you wanna go. And I have to back up just for a minute, even before that is, there’s the why the what and the how of accomplishing anything in life, whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s business, whether it’s a project, whether it’s it’s, whatever it is, there is a why you do it, what you need to do and how you’re gonna do it. And most of us start at how we go straight to, how am I gonna do it instead of starting where we really should start, which is why are we doing it?

Brindley: (28:56)
Because that’s the motivator, right? Why are we doing it? You know, a year and a half ago, almost two years now, I committed to getting in the best physical health possible. I was 65 pounds overweight. I couldn’t go up a flight of stairs without losing my breath. I ate whatever was in front of me. I hardly slept. I didn’t work out. I hated exercise. And I started a journey and I could have stopped that journey many times between now and there, but I’m still not at my maximum health. Have I lost 60 pounds? Yes. Can I now spend a, you times a week? Yes, yet my original goal, I had a vision in my mind of what I wanted myself to look and feel like that was my why. And I, if I did not have that vision and that why I would not have been able to last almost two years on this journey, I would’ve thrown the towel in if I was just in the how, because the how is hard. The how is boring? The how is not fun, right? It’s not, it’s not. Yeah, you’re right. It’s not. But yet we go straight to the how, and then we wonder when we wake up in a month or two, and we’re no closer to our goal because the wows not fun. Are the how’s not fun?

Bunny: (30:09)
No, It’s not

Brindley: (30:11)
Right. And we’re like, screw this. I wanna be happy again because we didn’t have the why. So we have to start with the why, why are we doing it? Why is the goal important to you? What are you gonna receive through it? What are you not gonna receive? If you don’t do it? So what will you get if you get it? What won’t you get? If you don’t get it, then you move to the what? That’s the plan. That’s the action plan, right? So what is it that I need to do? Then you move to the, how the, how is the, and then a hundred percent of success is determined by three things. 10% is the goal. Or I would say the why 10% is the plan, which is the, what 80% of your success at anything is accountability to the how 80% of your success is account to the how. And I love all of my friends out there that say, well, I’m pretty self accountable. Yes. Most talented individuals are yet self accountability will not last when the, how is boring and the how is not fun because your brain is wired to always look for an exit when you don’t like it. When you’re uncomfortable, when you want out and accountability helps close all the exit doors. So if you don’t have a coach, if you don’t have a mentor, if you don’t have someone to hold you accountable, that’s not you. And by the way, that’s not your family. Husbands and wives and partners are not good people to hold you accountable. It’s not really good on a relationship, right? It needs to be somebody that has no emotional tie to your life, to your business. That truly is gonna tell you the truth. When you need to hear it, you may not like it. But you need it.

Bunny: (32:03)
Well. And I think, right. And I think the hard thing about, um, using a friend or somebody in your family as your accountability coach is that they tend to be your cheerleader instead of holding you accountable. Am I right?

Brindley: (32:19)
That’s right. That’s right.

Bunny: (32:20)
Yeah.

Brindley: (32:21)
I’m not here to be anyone’s friend.

Bunny: (32:24)
Right? That’s how my writing coach is. I’ll she’ll, she’ll gimme an assignment. And if in two weeks, when I go back and see her again, say, well, she’ll say, I don’t care. I’m still gonna charge you. It’s your job to do the things that you said you were gonna do. That’s that’s

Brindley: (32:40)
Right. It’s so true yet. We need that. Because again, it’s not our fault. Always assume positive intent. Even with yourself, we don’t wake up in the morning and say, I want to fail. Right? It’s the way we’re wired. Our unconscious mind was built to do one of three things. When we seek danger, when we feel danger and danger is anything that doesn’t feel good, basically. Right? Our unconscious mind is there to protect us, which means it’s gonna fight flight or freeze before we had technology. Mom and I there’s this new documentary on HBO, max, maybe it’s not new, but we just found it called the story of late night. And mom and I were talking today about how the TVs used to shut off at 11, like after Carson was on that’s right.

Bunny: (33:26)
You were just a white screen. It was, it was a gray screen with a little looked like a Parcheesi board or something on it. Yeah, yeah.

Brindley: (33:33)
Yeah. Right. So you have to think like long before, even that, what were we built to? We were built to survive. We were built to kill our, kill our, our food, right. To survive. We were born and we were, we were, um, created to be able to protect ourselves in the winter, gather our food in the spring. Right. There’s seasons, just like they’re seasons in the weather. They’re seasons to life. And so we were wired to always fight flight or freeze that’s we survive. We were built to survive. So anytime in our unconscious mind doesn’t necessarily know what the danger is. Our conscious mind does, but our unconscious mind doesn’t. So we have to use our conscious brain and our unconscious brain to work together. Right. And just know that when we look for that exit, meaning snooze button in the morning, right. Or turning on Netflix, instead of doing your writing or, you know, I’m working on budgets right now, it’s like, I’d rather scratch my eyeballs out yet. I know I have to get it done. So when I know that my unconscious mind is looking for the exit, because it’s not fun. I have to tell my conscious mind, I know we’re not taking the exit. We gotta close the exit door. And that’s when the power starts to happen. Because you can use your conscious mind to direct your unconscious mind.

Bunny: (34:50)
And all you have to do to have any sort of forward momentum is this much, this much it’s, that’s it. And, and our listeners can’t see us, but I’m holding my thumb and my fourth finger to about a half inch apart. It’s such, it’s just forward.

Brindley: (35:09)
That’s right.

Bunny: (35:09)
Movement every day.

Brindley: (35:11)
That’s right. You know, I remember when I started my health journey, my girlfriend, we were reading, this comes from the book atomic habits. I do wanna give credit. I’m sure someone wrote it before he did, but I heard it from a to atomic habits. And she, what’s a 1% improvement that you can do over yesterday. And at the time I was eating like four apples a day, cuz I still love sugar. And right. So I’m like, oh it’s healthy sugar. It’s an apple. Well, no, it’s a lot of sugar when you eat four apples a day. And my 1% was, I’m gonna eat two apples instead of four tomorrow. And then the next day it was, I’m gonna eat one instead of two. And when I gave myself grace and I didn’t put unrealistic expectations on myself, that’s when I actually started to see the forward momentum.

Brindley: (35:53)
And then it was a lot easier to make it up. If I didn’t do that 1% something happened or I felt, you know, I was human. God forbid that I only had 2% to do the next day. I just made up for it. Right when I started exercising, you know? And I think I’ve said this on the podcast before Bunny, I was the girl that said, if you see me running, you should probably run. Because I’m running to something or away from it. Right. I hated running, hated it. And I started with a 1%. I would just walk and then I would run from one stop sign to the next. And then the next day I’d run one more. And then the next day I’d run a whole block. And it was just a 1% improvement over time that I finally was able to get to running a 5k straight through, not out of breath and enjoy and feeling the reward of being able to accomplish something that I said for so many years that I can’t.

Bunny: (36:46)
There’s this great. I read this great article recently about micro habits and how people last year started. Like in the morning they got up and did two pushups, two, they only did two. They did two that’s it. And then the next week they did three. And then, but you know, by the end of the year they were doing 50 pushups and they had changed the shape of their body. And it was this interesting study in how T 90 little steps lead to some pretty incredible results. Yeah. But I wanna be really careful to… there’s so much, you have so much knowledge that you can share with our listeners, but I wanna talk a again, kind of wanna circle back to the NLP. How, how do I mean, we’ve all got these roadblocks in our head. Know and I’m just gonna be, honest, I have a cousin who listens to the podcast all the time and she is, I mean, I don’t know what she said this weekend. I think she feels like she’s about 60 pounds overweight. And she said, I can’t start. I’m too old. You know, she’s a little older than I am. And I said, you can start, but I don’t know what the language in your head is that you need to replace. I mean, what do, what do you tell people in that place?

Brindley: (38:10)
So there’s a couple things to keep in mind. You know, Tony Robbin says, if you say you can’t, then you must.

Bunny: (38:15)
Wow.

Brindley: (38:17)
Okay. If you say you can’t, then you must, I mean, that’s, you have to start to retrain your brain to say, I can’t. If I say I can’t, then I must do it. Right. I must figure out a way to do it. That’s number one. Number two is, think of the conscious mind is the goal setter. So the conscious mind is her, her conscious mind is saying, I want to lose this weight. Right? That’s the captain of the ship, right? The unconscious mind is the goal getter. It’s the crew of the ship. It’s working behind the scenes to get you there. Think about you. Don’t have to think about walking. Right’s your unconscious mind. It just walks. It just knows how do it, you consciously don’t have to think about it. If I asked either one of you to pick a number between one and 10, you’d probably say something right away, because you’ve asked then asked that question.

Brindley: (39:03)
So many times in your life that unconsciously, you can just come up with a number. You don’t have to think about it. So what we wanna do is start to create habits that are based on the unconscious, not the conscious, when you have a goal, the goal setter, conscious mind and the goal getter, the unconscious mind, the behavior is not matching it. You have baggage. There is something that is preventing you from moving forward. So when the goal and the behavior don’t match there’s baggage. And if she’s saying I’m too old to start, that’s a pretty powerful limiting belief.

Bunny: (39:44)
And it’s not true.

Brindley: (39:46)
I mean, because remember whether, I mean, which president said it, whether you say you can, or you can’t you’re right, right. I think it,

Bunny: (39:56)
I think it was Henry Ford. You’re right. Whatever you say, it’s true.

Brindley: (39:57)
He’s saying that’s right. Like there’s plenty. So, so the first thing is you gotta identify the baggage, then you gotta ask yourself, is it a hundred percent true? So if let’s say, I think you said she’s in her sixties. So is it a hundred percent true that no one in their sixties has ever lost more than 50?

Bunny: (40:21)
Not a hundred percent.

Brindley: (40:23)
It’s Not. Again, Okay. Well, that’s awesome because that means we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. And by the way, you very rarely have to reinvent the wheel on. Right? Right. The guys are going space don’t even have to reinvent the wheel and going to space. Right. They’re just modeling it off each other. So then you go find the person that’s it. And you figure out what they did and you model the behavior. So you find your model, you go find the 60 year olds that have lost 50 plus pounds and you find out what they did. And then you come up with your plan and you do it and you tweak it and you do it and you tweak it and you see what works for you. And then you have to have the accountability and place around the how. Right?

Bunny: (41:09)
Right. Right. I mean, it all sounds so simple it’s, you know, sometimes it’s just, a matter of beginning.

Brindley: (41:15)
That’s right. It’s taking the first step and it’s simple, not easy. And then you also have to ask yourself, is this truly what I want? It goes back to the why, why do I, I want it, well, I want it because I think other people judge me, that’s probably not going to be a big enough why or motivator to keep you in the long term.

Bunny: (41:38)
That’s like, I still wanna talk about setting goals because I, you know, I think about realtors that I know and they do, or, or any, any sort of business person they say, well, I wanna be number one in my market, but why, but why, why, why. I mean, why is, um, you know what’s, what’s the reason, I mean, do you really wanna give up that much time and space and effort? Just to say you got to that place or is it because it feeds your soul in some way?

Brindley: (42:12)
Well, and I think that’s what we also have to remember is that our egos are there to protect us and to prevent us from being our highest and best.

Bunny: (42:22)
Right. Wow. Will you say that again?

Brindley: (42:25)
So our egos are either there to protect us, right? Or they’re there to prevent us from being our highest and best. A lot of people think ego is, look at me. I’m amazing. No, we all have ego. We all have the thing that prevents us from becoming our highest and our best. And so we have to be able to separate, right. Our egos to say, this is our ego. That’s preventing us. That’s protecting us actually. Right. Because it thinks it’s danger. It’s just confused. But again, unless you change the root, unless you identify the root of where the belief came from, the belief is always going to be there. Right. So when I have someone that comes to me and says, like, I can’t do something, or I don’t know, or I’m not capable or any at that you have to ask, where does that come from? Where was that belief created? Were they not told they were enough when they were a kid? Did they not make the softball team? Did they not? Like, I mean, it could be a number of things that have caused that limiting belief inside of them.

Bunny: (43:37)
Well, Brindley I…

Johanna: (43:38)
You have to do the self work.

Bunny: (43:40)
Yeah. You have to do the self work, but that’s right. Even if you have the belief, how do you, I mean, I know it’s a lot of work, but really how do we get rid of those limiting beliefs?

Brindley: (43:53)
Yeah. So it’s a couple things. I mean, obviously if you wanna go deep into work, you can work with a, an NLP coach. I’m one. I can also, we have plenty that we can recommend you to nlp.com is a great resource for that. Dr. Matt, James is who I studied under, uh, Mandy Mohan is my coach. Who’s an instructor for him. Um, and the first step is to start the easiest step is to identify the belief and then identify where the belief can would’ve formed. Right. And then recognizing that during that time, wherever that belief was formed, whether it was something that a teacher or a parent did or, or something, you know, I’ll give you, I’ll give you a silly example and this will make you laugh. I had, I remember this time when I was in middle school, that two of my friends, I had just gotten a compact, like a makeup compact for the first time. And, you know, I was putting makeup on and they were making fun of me. And so they, they were gonna call the Maury Povich show and tell Maury that I wore too much makeup and that they were gonna make it a show. Right. And this, I carried this with me for years. You guys, because it hurt, right. It was my friends and they were making fun of me. And so when I think about like my appearance and all of these beliefs that I have around my it, a lot of it ties back to that instance, to that experience. Right. And so what I had to do is identify that they were just kids, right? They were just deflecting from their own stuff. It had nothing to do with me. Right. It was a projection onto me. And it had no determining on my beauty or on my confidence or who I was. And I had to almost detach myself from the situation. And, then I had to follow it up with some really good self talk, right. And some incantations that I am beautiful. I am strong. I am worthy. Right. I love myself. So it can all be reversed yet again, how do you build habit? You know, practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. And it’s not simple. It’s not easy. It’s simple, but it’s not always easy yet by putting some small, like you said, bunny micro habits in place every day over time, you will start to, to reverse that belief. You will start to think differently about yourself. You will show up differently. You will react differently, be because the pain will become great enough will get sick and tired of being sick and tired. Hopefully we can catch it before then though. And that helps through journaling through incantations morning routine, through meditation, through prayer. I mean, all the things that every thought leader talks about.

Bunny: (46:42)
And, I want people to know that that no one is immune. I mean, I grew up in the happiest household in the entire world, and yet I carried, in fact, we posted on this the other day I gave it, I gave the content to Johanna and she put it on my other page that I still frequently think that I am a short, fat farm girl. Who’s not particularly smart and who will never be an incredible success. And I also think, because I surrounded myself with these, I grew up with these girls who were very athletic and tall and slender and much more confident than I was that I always thought I was the ugliest of the pretty girls. And I think that was not anybody’s fault. It was just a result of me being in that place at that time. And it I’m 61. And I still frequently will think, well, I wish, you know, I wish I looked different. I wish I was smarter. I wish, you know, it’s just work every day to become who you’re not anyway, you know, I mean.

Brindley: (47:51)
And we all go through it. I mean, as strong as I seem and, you know, people, people ask me, you know, are you really as happy as you are in Facebook? And I’m like, well, first of all, I don’t put anything out there that I’m not, that’s not real. Right, right. That just wouldn’t be authentic. And that wouldn’t be in line with my values, but do I have days that like, I’m like, I’m sucking at life and I don’t feel absolutely. We all do. We all do. It’s just with constant work. Those times become less. And the time in between them becomes further and further apart. So it’s not every day anymore. It’s every once in a while now. Right. And then we could do a whole nother episode on females and hormones. Oh, let’s do it. How that I I’ve been exploring that whole train. And I’m about to get real vulnerable and out there with that, because I do not believe that we do enough to educate women in their thirties to start looking at hormones and seasons and your cycles and how your emotions roller coaster with all of that and done properly. You can leverage it all in your life to do amazing things. It’s just, we don’t talk about it cuz our mothers never talked about it. Right. And we have to start talking about it. We have to,

Bunny: (49:00)
I love that. So tell me what you’re reading that we ought to be reading. I wanna know about that.

Brindley: (49:06)
Oh gosh. You wanna see? I have a whole stack over here. Could see if I open this up for the next, like four months. So I am going back and actually rereading a lot. I’m putting together content, that is gonna take mental, emotional, physical, and productivity and wrap it all into one. And doing some group programs and things. So I am reading think again by Adam Grant, emotional intelligence, option B. I’m really excited about option B. Option B is actually written by Adam Grant and Cheryl Sandberg. Cheryl was, mark Zuckerberg’s right hand at Facebook. And they wrote that book, um, dare to lead. I’m reading that one again. Another Adam Grant called originals. I’m rereading the untethered soul. I’ve been doing a lot of studying with Dr. So Dr. Aman is change. Change your brain, change your life, change your life.

Bunny: (49:58)
Wow.

Brindley: (49:58)
Yep. And so he’s all about neurology. So I’m like, there’s like the human brain book down there. And then I’m doing some stuff around, um, juggling elephants, which is multitasking and that whole habit. So a lot of I’m doing a lot of different right now. I’m finishing a up rejection proof for the second time. And then I’m also reading the book of joy, which is the Dali Lama and Pope Francis. So a lot of, I’ve chosen thought leaders in each of those spaces and I’m studying their work is basically what I’m doing this year.

Bunny: (50:27)
Well, and I think the cool thing is that you have a plan. I mean, you’re not just randomly surfing Amazon and choosing a book every once in a while you created a plan for this year, the way you were gonna feed your brain.

Brindley: (50:41)
Well, and you know exactly. And it’s all about, it’s all about the brain. And you know, when people ask me, I also don’t read the book that’s on social media that everybody’s reading. Right. I think sometimes we get into that trap that, oh, everybody’s reading this book, so I’m gonna be another one that’s gonna read it. So when people ask me for book recommendations, there’s always a question. The first question I ask is what’s the biggest challenge in your life or business? Tell me what your biggest challenge is right now. and I’ll tell you what book to read, because we read the to educate. I mean, I do, I don’t read for fun. It’s like running, you know, I don’t, I don’t really love to run. I don’t love to read.

Bunny: (51:16)
.

Brindley: (51:18)
I read because it gives me knowledge and I need knowledge to grow and I need knowledge to educate. Right. I have a ton of friends that love reading and that’s why I don’t read fiction because I’m not, I don’t love reading. I read for a purpose. And so I always ask people, what’s your biggest challenge cause you read to educate

Bunny: (51:34)
Well and don’t you love Adam Grant.

Johanna: (51:36)
That was actually one of my, goals that I wrote for this year is to actually like finish five books, which is a small amount. But I Feel like I always pick books up and I do love to, but I always don’t make time for it. And I pick them up and I never finished them. So I’m like, no, I actually want to finish them. And so, having those Good recommendations helps.

Bunny: (52:00)
Well you also have a baby. I mean, you, you have a 17 month old at your house, so.

Brindley: (52:06)
Well, and now you also just put out into the universe, but you’re gonna do it. So it’ll be done. right,

Bunny: (52:12)
Right. Yeah. And dare to lead. It’s one of my favorite books ever. You said something, you said this great thing when you were talking about problem solving this morning, um, where you said you came with cur or, or somebody spoke to you with curiosity and, and I, the idea that you, the future of leadership is courage and curiosity. And I, I think, I mean, we’ve talked about a lot of stuff today and I do wanna come back and talk about women and hormones, but I think if you can view your life and your potential with curiosity and courage. Yeah.

Brindley: (52:52)
And it’s not easy. I’m Here to say, I am by no means a master of this. It is something that I have to work on every day in leadership. You know, I was, I shared this on Facebook the other day, you know, as leaders, we have a responsibility to the professional development of someone, very similar to the way as parents, we have a responsibility to the personal development of a child, right. How we raise our professionals, impacts the world. It impacts the way we do business. And so, you know, there’s moments, trust me in leadership, just like in parenthood where I wanna lose my mind cuz I’m like, you know, I always use the toddler, like the toddler, your potty training, right. It’s like really you pee your pants again. Like we just talked about this this morning. You just had an M&M like, here we are, right. You have those same moments in leadership. Like really? Like you did the again, you know, and we just have to get through it and coach to it and give each other grace and forgiveness and, and know that we’re all here to accomplish a mission and a common goal. And, and that’s what it’s about. It’s about courage and curiosity. Absolutely. And knowing, and taking ownership that it’s a work, we’re all a work in progress.

Bunny: (54:04)
We are now. Can people find you? I mean, are you coaching people on a personal basis?

Brindley: (54:10)
I am coaching people on a personal, basis. So, I do have a, a bit of an application process to get on my schedule, but you can reach out to me. I’m on I’m Brindley, Tucker, B R I N D L E Y. Tucker on Facebook and on Instagram. You can email me. I’m at Brinley, B R I N D L E Y. Brinley, tucker.com. Super easy, my name and then you can find our business at www dot your Realty, leverage.com, your Realty, leverage.com. And we would love your support there as well.

Bunny: (54:43)
At the end, last time I asked you once you’d like to leave our guests with. And do you remember what she said that you, you said no matter where you are today, tomorrow can be better. It’s just a choice. Yeah. Yeah. Is there, do you wanna say that any differently or do you, is, does it feel still feel the same? Wait, what would you leave?

Brindley: (55:04)
I would say I would just add to it and you only have to be 1% better than you were yesterday. I love it.

Bunny: (55:12)
Mm-hmm

Brindley: (55:12)
Yeah, just 1%. Yeah. And then by the end of the year, you’ll be 365% better than you were at the beginning of the year.

Bunny: (55:19)
The sky is the limit. Absolutely. Thank you so much Brindley. It’s always amazing.

Johanna: (55:25)
Yes. Thank you. Yeah.

Bunny: (55:29)
All right. 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 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 Instagram at live saving gratitude pod. You can also follow me personally at Bunny Terry, Santa Fe, you can sign up at 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.