49. Gratitude Can Transform Your Life: Rusty Gaillard

Bunny: (00:11)
Hi there and welcome to the Lifesaving gratitude podcast. I’m Bunny Terry. I’m joined by my co-host and my producer, Johanna Medina. And today our guest is Rusty Gaillard, and Rusty is a guy who started his life in corporate America. He has an MBA from Stanford. He worked for a long time at Apple. You know, he was on a corporate track and made an abrupt change in his life. After he, as he puts it, had some personal and some professional intersections that made him think about whether he was on the path that he wanted to be on. I mean, I think that he enjoyed what he was doing and yet, um, made a choice to change that. And he became a life coach and a life mastery consultant, and went through an incredibly difficult time to get to where he is today. But wow. Has he got some insight?

Johanna: (01:14)
Yeah, I think it’s interesting because, you know, it seemed like his shift definitely is centered around, you know, when he became a parent and a father. But it also seems like, you know, I’m just reading into what he was saying. It’s like, it’s really evolved for him and it’s, even though it started out as I wanna spend more time with my son, it’s evolved into you know, this is my passion and helping people has given me more per purpose in life than, than, you know, climbing the corporate ladder as he puts it. And I just really love too that, that, um, you know, not to be even, even as we say, like not to be sexist, but it’s amazing to see, um, you know, a man doing this and a man really embracing his, his calling his purpose, his, his oceans, and wanting to put his family above his career. Um, and then that he’s also sharing that inspiring other men, you know, creating a group and then, you know, being an amazing role model for his son. So I think he’s such honestly, just a cool person to talk to. And I think he can be an inspiration to, you know, males and females. I really enjoyed speaking with him.

Bunny: (02:32)
And he wrote a book called, I hope I’m getting this right…

Johanna: (02:35)
Breaking the code.

Bunny: (02:36)
Breaking the Code and to him, the code was, you know, sort of the code that we create for our life. And then, and then we need to break it in order to find or to create our best lives. And he says, I believe that living our best lives makes the world a better place. And this seems, you know, this is a period of time when people are deciding that maybe the choices that they’ve made before the, before COVID especially, um, aren’t, aren’t exactly what they wanna continue. So, and Rusty has some really concrete methods for figuring out you know, if you’re having a hard time figuring out what she wants your life to look like, he has some ideas he’ll tell you he has real concrete steps for thinking about it. That’s what I found really helpful.

Johanna: (03:32)
Yes, definitely. And I know we’ll definitely get him back on sometime in the next few months, because I are so many different topics that he’s kind of an expert on that we wanna keep talking to him about.

Bunny: (03:46)
Right. So listen in, keep subscribing, keep following, keep listening. And thank you so much for checking in today. Our guest on the lifesaving gratitude podcast is Rusty Gaillard. And rusty, as I understand, it was in the corporate world. Spent some time as an MBA from Stanford and was, a successful leader at Apple for a number of years and then became a life coach Rusty, you know, we like to start just by having you tell our listeners a little bit of your story where you were, what the transition was and how you got where you are today.

Rusty: (04:29)
Absolutely. So first of all, thank you Bunny for having me here. I’m super grateful to be able to spend this time with you and your audience.

Bunny: (04:38)
Well, you’re very welcome. We’re excited to have you.

Rusty: (04:40)
Thank you. So my journey from working in the corporate world to becoming a coach really has a personal and a professional component to it. And it was the intersection of those two things that brought me here on the professional side. I had been climbing the ladder and growing in the corporate world for all of my career until the point at which my son was born. And when my son was born, I came face to face with this personal commitment I had to be present and engaged as a parent. I didn’t know how to do that and continue to be successful at work. At the time I was a, the, a finance director at apple and I was leading our sales forecast. So I was responsible for how much are we gonna sell around the world globally? And because it was a global role, that means all sorts of crazy hours of the day, mornings, evenings, all of that. And I wanted to be around with my son. So this was creating a huge conflict for me to the point that I really felt like I wasn’t doing a good job in either place. I wasn’t home when I wanted to be. And I wasn’t at work when I felt I needed to be. And the stress and the tension of that was really eating at me. And I decided I had to make a change. So I basically gave myself a demotion. I took a lower level job, giving myself more time to be at home. And that part was wonderful. I loved being at home and being with my son. It was a job that I could easily manage still working in an amazing company at Apple. So there was a lot of good stuff about that, but my identity had always been about success and progression in my career and climbing the ladder and all of that. And to give that up when I took this step back was a huge challenge for me personally. And I, I really didn’t know how to do that to the point where people would ask me what I did. And I would say I worked at Apple, but I really kind of brush it under the rug and try not to talk about it because I didn’t feel good about what I had, what I was doing with my career. So that’s kind of the professional setup behind all of this. And because I was then in that job for many years on the personal side, not long after this, I went through a very difficult divorce. It just, it really challenged me. I, you know, I had no idea that this was gonna go this way but it was, you know, going to court and being on the witness stand and all sorts of craziness. And it was just, it went on for years. And, up until, again, up until this, that point in my life, I had had a very easy life. Most of what I set out to do, I was able to accomplish you know, I went to great schools. I was working at an amazing company, so many good things. And then I went through this, you know, to me what felt like a complete failure. Um, that’s how I held it at that time. And I didn’t know how to handle that. And so it was really a purse lesson of strength and perseverance, and the ability to go through something difficult. And that was the personal understanding that I got through that time. So these two paths kind of came together as the divorce was winding up. I had learned that I can go through difficult things and I still had a desire to something different with my career. I just didn’t know what. And so it was in a very short period where I got the idea to go become a coach, which is a separate story I can go into and as well, but it was that, and that idea that I could survive, difficult things gave me the strength to walk away from the only kind of career I had ever known, which was working in the corporate world. And I did that and went off to become a coach and have been doing that full time for the last three years. And it’s been amazing.

Bunny: (08:31)
Well, don’t you, I mean, especially, you know, I mean, you started, you went to school, you got your MBA and you, and your identity get so tied up in what you do in the corporate world. I mean, I see this on the other end. I mean, you’re, you’re certainly nowhere near the end of your career, but I see that a lot with people. You know, I’m in my sixties now and people will say I’m dying to retire. And then when they retire, it’s like their identity is so tied up with what they do for a living. And it sounds like you had to make that transition. Am I correct? You had to figure out who you were apart from your corporate identity, right?

Rusty: (09:12)
I did. And it was a challenge. And, you know, I think it’s like, it doesn’t matter what stage of your life you do it, whether you do it when I did it, which was earlier in my career, you do it when you retire. I watched my dad retire after 35 years at the same company, very successful, very hardworking. And I think he was depressed for the, for a co the first couple years. I’m not sure he would’ve said that, but that was my observation. It’s, and it was the same kind of transition that I went through. It’s it’s challenging.

Bunny: (09:44)
I’m just curious about that moment. Like, was there a, did you wake up in the middle of the night, one night and say, I have to do this differently. I’m curious about, is that a slow process for you or was it like, I have to, this has to happen now.

Rusty: (10:00)
You know it came up over a period of months, but for me, it was really this internal conflict, this recognition that most of my life I’ve been able to accomplish everything that I wanted to accomplish. And I felt like I was now situation where I had to choose. I couldn’t do it all. And I wanted to keep going in my career, like, because again, the identity, right, that was this huge pull. And yet I had this personal commitment to be engaged with my child and as a father. And so it, it really did feel like this, moral decision about who am I as a person and what is really important to me. And in the end, I chose being being a parent, and it was not easy. That decision was like a really clear one to me because this drive to be engaged and my identity, so tied up in my career, like that was a big strong pull. It’s just that I had to look squarely at that and say, I get that. And still I’m gonna go choose to be a parent. So it was really a swallowing hard and, and saying that, and not at all sure that it was the right choice for me and what that meant. It was, there was a lot of uncertainty in a lot of angst going on for me at that time.

Johanna: (11:20)
So why coaching? What was it about that career shift that kinda answered those questions and filled those like those spaces for you?

Rusty: (11:32)
Well, when I was going through the divorce, my first realization was I had very few people to talk to about it. I grew up in the kind of family where we didn’t really talk about our challenges, our problems. It was just, you know, pick up and keep going, which that mentality served me very well in life until I hit this very challenging period. And I had a therapist, I had been to therapy for a long time, but it’s not the same as having friends and, and people in your personal network to talk to. So I had to build that. And so I had been in this kind of intensive therapy experience in a group setting. And I said, I wanna do more of that, but I don’t want to go do it. You know, I want to don’t do it through therapy. I was like, how do I create that in my own life? So I started a men’s group and it was a group of six of us. And we met every week for six years. Uh, and so we would spend a couple hours together, a small group of men, and it’s, it still remains to this day. One of the, the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had in my life, and nothing was off limits. We talked about everything. And it helped me to make it through that time. So when this, when I was figuring out my next career, uh, somebody asked me these series of questions that helped me to realize, gosh, what if I could do that all the time? What if that was my job? Like, I got so much value out of being in this men’s group. What if those kinds of conversations that kind of intimacy the ability to talk about what’s really going on in your life? What if that’s what I did as my profession. And that’s what led me down the path of becoming a coach.

Johanna: (13:07)
Yeah. Wow. That’s so great. You’re able to, to turn what you was helping you and what loved into, into a career. It’s awesome.

Bunny: (13:18)
Well, and I think it’s, I mean, I don’t mean to be sexist about this, but in my experience, it’s more difficult to get a group of men to sit down and talk to one another openly perhaps than it is. I mean, good for you that you created that space.

Rusty: (13:36)
You don’t have to worry about being sexist there. It’s absolutely my experience as well. Okay. Because if you had met me before that, I never talked about it. You know, I was like, I’d go up with my friends and we talk about sports, or we talk about whatever, but we never talked about what’s really going on in our lives. Um, and that’s, I think one of the things that made it so, so special, uh, you know, I think I don’t know, there’s a whole, maybe that’s a whole separate conversation about what it’s like to be a man and conversations and intimacy and relationships with fathers and all those kinds of things, but it’s, you know, all of that stuff comes up and having a group of people who are able and willing to talk about that and explore it together and row through it that that’s for me, why it was just so transformative and healing

Bunny: (14:21)
And it’s so healthy. I mean, what a, what a great way to create, to have a group of friends that you, that become your support system.

Rusty: (14:30)
Yeah.

Johanna: (14:30)
Yeah. And what a, what a good role model you have a son right?

Rusty: (14:35)
I do, yeah.

Johanna: (14:37)
So, I mean, that’s, that’s, I mean, I’m also in the mental health field and I also have a son, so I’m thinking, you know, what, what a good, you know, role model and mentor that is for him to see you be able to do that. I mean, your whole story, but especially the fact that you’re able to talk more about emotions and communicate more. I can just imagine how that’s gonna affect him.

Rusty: (15:02)
Yeah. Thank you. And I just wanna put out there for, for anyone listening, who either is a man, or you’ve got a man in your life, who would you think would be like, man, I wish my husband spend, or my son or whatever would, would do this. Um, there is one of the ways I became exposed to this was through an organization called the mankind project, which is a national organization. It’s actually a global organization. Uh, but it’s, they do, you know, it’s starts with a weekend kind of retreat. I’ll use retreat in the loosest sense of the word because it’s a very much a intense kind of experience, but it’s for men. And then there’s opportunity to join groups that are similar to what I’ve just been describing. But, you know if this kind of idea resonates, it’s a really powerful and well-run organization.

Bunny: (16:00)
Nice. Well, of course, in your bio, you said that you believe we have far more capability and potential than we realize in that living our best life makes the world a better place. Talk, tell us about that for a minute.

Rusty: (16:16)
Well, there’s a little bit of, you know, I’ve alluded maybe a couple of times to this transition be from the corporate world to becoming a coach and these serious, the way the, the precipitating event for that happened, because I had been attending a church where my ex-wife was going and just decided that that wasn’t didn’t make sense anymore. So I was looking for a new spiritual community. I found one and a few months later, there was a guest speaker. This guest speaker came and asked us to imagine a life at another level of satisfaction and fulfillment in happiness. Then what we have today, and to do that by way of saying well, where the areas in your life, where your satisfaction tank is not all the way full. Is that your health? Is it your relationships? Is it your work? Is it your ability to operate in the world the way you want? Do you have the time and the money to do that? So we looked at these different areas of life and thought about, okay, where am I not totally satisfied? And what would it look like to be very satisfied? So, for me, the answer was clear that least the first, one of the obvious places was career, cuz I was still in this job that the lower level job I had taken and which is a great job and was wonderful place to work, but I knew I wanted to do something more meaningful. So the problem was I had known that for years and I had tried to figure out what else could I do? And I wrote out a resume and I looked at my resume and I said, who would hire me? And how can I translate this experience to something, something else. But all the answers that I came up with when I asked those questions were another version of what I already had. And there was no reason for me to leave, to go do something very similar to what I was already doing. So she helped this person who was speaking helped me think about things differently. So she asked questions like, well, what if you didn’t have to worry about what your friends and family thought about your decision? What if you could make a living doing this thing rather than assuming that you can’t, what if you can actually get paid to do things that you’d like to do? What, if you didn’t have to worry about how you achieved it? What if you could just wave a magic wand and have it in your life? So she asked all these questions to help me break through my assumptions of about what was possible. And that’s where I got this idea of, gosh, what if I could have these conversations with people about important things in life. And that led me down this path of becoming a coach. So I’ve seen in my own life, this possibility of finding a door that has existed all along, but I couldn’t see it. And when I could finally see that door and walk through it, I could create a whole nother level of satisfaction and happiness in my life fulfillment, but I didn’t know how to get there on my own. And so for me, it’s this, you know, back to Bunny your question about what is the, you know, that we can all achieve more than we think we can. That was my experience of it. It’s like I didn’t know how to get there. I didn’t even know how to imagine it, but to have somebody help me create a picture of what is possible and then actually have the courage to go do it. That was transformative for me. And that’s one of the things I like to bring to other people.

Bunny: (19:31)
Well, and you know we’ve learned, I mean, we’re learning all the time, but we have learned a lot from the guests that we’ve had, that, you know, say once you stretch your mind to imagine a different future or a different set of capabilities, once you stretch your mind, it really doesn’t go back to the old, to your old way of thinking. I mean, you, once you just start to imagine it, it can, your brain starts to think it could be the truth, right?

Rusty: (20:03)
Yeah. Well, and that’s the beauty is, is in fact it is the truth. And this is the thing that I, I find so fascinating is, you know, if you just, just zoom out and take a view, a high level view of life, like we wake up every day, you have a whole day ahead of you. You can do whatever you want to with that day. You you’re alive, you have energy, you’ve got a brain. You can think you can go out in the world and do things like, just think about that capacity. Now, most of us are assume that what your day is going to look like is pre-planned well, I know I’ve gotta get up and have breakfast and go to work and, you know, whatever it is that your day looks like, but in the absolute sense, you can invest that time and energy and that creative capacity that you have, however you want.

Rusty: (20:52)
And when you think about it, that way, it’s like, gosh, the resources we have are amazing. And then we live in this world where so many things are possible and many of us think it may not be possible for me, but it’s possible for other people. And so it’s breaking through those beliefs and just starting to get the sense of, well, gosh, if someone else can do it, of course I could do it. Like they’re breathing just like I am, and I’ve got the same 24 hours they do. And you know, when you start to look at it at a very kind of simplistic human level, uh, I just believe we’re all blessed with this amazing capacity to go out in the world and create things. And when you can live more and more from that place of potential I just think anything’s possible.

Bunny: (21:34)
Well, I wanna shift to a couple of things that you, you know, we, I’m sure we could talk for hours about some of these things, but I’m really interested in what you, how we talk about this going from autopilot it to automatic, because I think you were just talking, you, you alluded to that when you said we all think our days are pre-planned, but how do you go from autopilot to automatic? How does that work?

Rusty: (22:00)
Well, the, the first step is to notice what’s not working in your life. You really have to do that. So, um, uh, the I’ll use the acronym that I spelled out in my book, which I published last year, breaking the code and the acronym acronym is code C O D E. So the “C” stands for confront. You have to confront the parts of your life, that aren’t looking. You gotta have a clear perspective on where you would like more satisfaction in your life. Cuz if you don’t look at that, you’re never gonna make any changes to it. So that’s step one is you have to confront your actual life and what you would like more of the second, letter is, “O”, and that stands for optimize optimizes to optimize your thinking and beliefs. So most of us think about out, all the constraints that we have in life. Most of us think of why we can’t do things. So one way to optimize your thinking is to think about what is possible, what could you do? And that’s just a very simple way, but is starting to expand your thinking into possibilities and creativity rather than in constraint. So the third letter is “D” and that stands for design. So if you can start thinking in the world of possibilities, now you can actually go out and design. What would you like? So I’ll just use an example, right? If somebody, and we’ll use health as an example, cuz we can all relate to health. If you’re not eating well or you’re not exercising in the way you want be, maybe you’ve confronted that. And you recognize that when you go through the optimized section, you might be thinking, well, I don’t have time to do that. Or I don’t have the money to buy the good food or you know, there’s no grocery store close by whatever it is. You’ve got some beliefs around that. So if you start to optimize those beliefs, you can shift your attention into the world of possibility. Well, gosh, I could spend five minutes every day walking around the house or walk up and down the stairs instead of taking the elevator or you know, there’s so many ways you can look for possibilities D gets to design. Well, what does good health look like to you? Everybody’s different in this way, right? But fundamentally we all wanna wake up. We wanna feel good. When we wake up in the morning, we wanna feel well rested. We wanna feel physically and mentally capable to navigate our day and do the things that are important to us and get specific about that. That might be playing with children or playing with grandchildren or being able to go outside and enjoy a beautiful day, walking at the park. Right. But gets clear and specific about what that success looks like for you. So that’s D design and “E” is execute right to actually take the steps to go out and start taking action, recognizing that you don’t get there all at once, but you take it step by step. And as you go step by step, you can absolutely achieve what it is that you set out to.

Bunny: (24:52)
That reminds me of somebody else that we had on the podcast, because she said, you know, if you take it in small bites and you, and you celebrate every small bit of success, I mean, she, she lost to hundred pounds in a year just by learning to love herself. And I mean, she wrote a book about, um, loving yourself, but that’s the, I gotta tell you, I think the execution piece is, do you find with your clients that that is maybe the most difficult part?

Rusty: (25:27)
Yeah. Actually putting it in action is challenging for people and, and the, the two places where people can get caught up on that one is you assume you have to go from zero to a hundred in one step. Um, and I think that’s like a lot of people think that, and then never start because they say, well, gosh, if I’ve gotta go from, you know, not doing anything to running five miles, I can’t do that. So I’m not even gonna start. So that’s why I think, you know, number one is just break it down into those little steps. Uh, so it gives you an opportunity to start. But the other reason I think so many of us don’t start something is we’re afraid we’re gonna fail. And you know, what’s it gonna look like for me? Or what are other people gonna think? Or how am I gonna think about myself if this doesn’t go well. And, you know, starting to reframe our thinking about failure because you know, the, the classic example of that is Thomas Edison. And when they asked him, you know, thousands of attempts to create a light bulb that worked, and when they asked him, like, how did you have the more strength to tolerate failing thousands of times? And he said, I never failed. I just kept getting more and more information about what works and what doesn’t work. And so like, it sounds very simple, but if you think about that in your own life, like what, when you try something and it doesn’t go the way you expected, it’s so easy to go to failure and to shame and the self-criticism, as opposed to just saying, oh, I tried that and it didn’t work. Maybe there’s another way.

Johanna: (27:00)
Yeah. It takes a real mindset shift though. Right. Because a lot of those things, those beliefs are, are ingrained for, you know, our whole lives. Right. So how do you, I mean, do you kind of hit that roadblock with your clients as well? Like okay. We have to change these beliefs and how, how does that, how do you tackle that? I guess.

Rusty: (27:21)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you’re totally right. Joanna, it’s all of these beliefs and assumptions that we have in our head that we have to change. And it’s actually why I called my book, breaking the code because it’s almost like you’ve been programmed you’ve got this code and that’s how you operate. So you’ve gotta break it if you wanna do something different. So, uh, and by the way, this applies to all of us, right. Certainly applies to me. We, we all go through the same thing. The, one of the ways that I work with my clients to help them do that is trying things as an experiment. You know, I think that so often in life we think the stakes are so high that we’ve gotta get it right. And instead of trying, it’s like, I’m gonna do this forever and it’s gonna be this way. It’s just like, well, are you willing to experiment with something for a week? You know, it’s like, Hey, for the next week, are you willing to spend five minutes every day going outside for a walk? Right. Like make it a really simple thing and just try it for a week, see how it goes and evaluate it the end of the week. Did I like that? Did I not like it, could I even do it? Did I do it? If you didn’t do it, what got in the way that’s okay. Just like use it as an experiment to learn

Johanna: (28:31)
Like beta testing. Right.

Rusty: (28:33)
Totally. It is like beta testing, but it’s, you know, it’s like, do you can do it in your own life because we make, we blow things up to be this huge thing. Right. It’s like I love the story you shared about the woman who last a hundred pounds. Right. If she had said on day one, I’m gonna lose a hundred pounds. Like for many of us that would be really intimidating, as opposed to saying, I’m gonna take the first step and being willing to take the first step and see how it goes.

Bunny: (29:00)
Well, and I think there’s this, you know, we live in such a comparison based society that I mean, I’m just thinking about people. I know who, who need to lose a hundred pounds. You know, they, they think, well, I’ve gotta do something that, um, looks like what, what, you know, somebody else has done. So I even to begin, I’m setting myself to, I’m setting myself up to fail because I’m not gonna do it as well as someone else did it.

Rusty: (29:27)
Yeah. So I’ve heard that labeled in – I love this label – comparison despair, because anytime you start to compare yourself to others, it always leads to despair because there’s always someone out there in the world that’s better than you, or faster than you, or smarter than you or whatever. And so it’s just not a healthy path to go down in my experience and very, very, and yet very tempting.

Bunny: (29:51)
Well, because you did this because you made this big shift in the corporate world. I also like this second idea for a main focus, which is rewriting the rules for success, because it feels to me like you had to do that for yourself. How do you do that?

Rusty: (30:11)
What a great question.

Johanna: (30:14)
It’s kind of a big, big one.

Bunny: (30:16)
It’s one of those things that we need to chunk down, but I do and we can extend this conversation and have a second episode. But, I’m curious only because I know so many people who have this idea that, um, in order to be considered a success, I have to do things that outwardly look, you know, if I make X amount of money. You talked about climbing the corporate ladder. I think it’s almost like don’t, you have to rewrite the rules for yourself.

Rusty: (30:52)
Absolutely. And, you know, it really starts with evaluating for you. You know, you can talk about it as values, but, somehow that can even feel like not quite on the right mark, but to think about what matters to you, what makes a good life. And one of the ways I think about that is, you know, at some point I will be, and everybody will be in their last moments of life. And I think it’s inevitable as you approach that point of life to reflect back and say, was it a good life, right? Did I live the kind of life that I want to live? And to imagine that, and what is the kind of life you wanna live? You know, there’s been numerous studies that say one of the best motivators to living a good life is to remember that you’re gonna die. And it can seem very grim, but it’s true, right? If we all know that at some point, we’re not gonna have another day, we’re not gonna have another opportunity. So what is it that you want out of this day and this opportunity? So to bring that perspective that at some point, your life will end and what will, when you reflect on it for you, what is a good life? And I think that’s a really important starting point because that helps to bring it, to make it very personal. And, you know, maybe the answer for you is you wanna make millions of dollars and fly in private jets and, you know, travel around the world. And maybe that for you will be a really good life, or maybe for you a really good life. Like in my case was I wanna be around with my son. I want to be engaged in his life. I wanna be an active parent and have a good, really good relationship with him. Like that was important. That is important to me. And so I invest in that, but I had to do the, that go through that process of evaluation. And so you can call up my values, right? These are things that are important to me, but, you know, it’s easy when you think about values to think about, you know, kindness and relationships and family and this kind of stuff, but are you willing to actually take action on that and put it into practice and make sure that your life reflects those things. So I think that’s a, that’s a good place to start in terms of kind of shifting your, shifting your perspective to be less externally oriented and more internally oriented.

Bunny: (33:20)
And do you talk about that in the book? I mean, is this part of it?

Rusty: (33:23)
I do. And one of the, you know, one of the examples I give is when I was leaving, making the choice to leave apple, I was afraid of that. You know, I had spent 25 years working in the corporate world, the idea of leaving that, leaving check, leaving a great company to go off and start my own business. I was nervous. I, I didn’t know if it was gonna work. And I was afraid and I imagine myself, so I can sometimes call this the rocking chair test. So I imagine myself, 85 years old sitting on a rocking chair on a porch, you know, rocking back and forth while watching the world go by and reflecting on my life. And from that perspective, looking back at this point in my life, this decision point and asking myself what’s the right decision. So as I was leaving Apple, I asked myself that am I better served by staying at apple, which is a safe job, and I’m good at it and is a great company and I’ll have a paycheck, or is it a better choice for me to go off and take a risk, go off on an adventure, try something new that could be this really stimulating positive experience, but it could also be a failure. So I had to ask myself, which of those choices felt right. And for me, what I’ve discovered is when we’re looking ahead at the choices that were, that are coming in our lives, and we’re having to make those, it’s a very different experience from imagining your 20 or 30 years in the future, looking backwards. And from 20 or 30 years in the future, looking backwards, it became so clear to me like, go leave, leave apple, go do this, see what happens. Even if you fail, even if it’s a disaster and you have to go back and get another job, or, you know, whatever, it will still be the right decision, because think of all the experience you will have gained. And just the richness of having an experience of life. And that for me, was, uh, was a really helpful way of thinking about it. So this rocking chair, test pic, picturing myself there in the rocking chair with hindsight,

Johanna: (35:29)
I love that, visualization technique. And I mean, exactly like you can always go and get another job, especially if you have experience or, you know, you have the privilege of, of an education, but you don’t get to go back and have those years with your kid. You like, you know, that time is gone. So I think that’s so important when we yeah. Make decisions like that. And it’s, doesn’t always have to be like all or nothing, or I’m gonna just leave everything. And you know, it’s not just always gonna be, well, if I leave this and I can never go back, you know, I think some people think that too, like, oh, I’m gonna ruin my life. If I give up this career or change lanes, you know, there’s always other options too.

Rusty: (36:17)
That’s such a great point. You know, most decisions that we make, you can change your mind, right? There’s very few decisions where you can’t change your mind. And that’s just important to remember, like and again, this is not under the broad umbrella of lower, the stakes here, allow yourself to try something as an experiment, right? If you feel uncomfortable saying I’m gonna quit my job forever. Well, if you have the ability to do this, say what if I, you know, quit and go try this new career path for a month or six months, and then reevaluate, right? It doesn’t have to be the rest of your life, but giving you, recognizing that you can always change your mind. You can always adjust a course lower the stakes a little bit and give yourself some freedom to experiment.

Bunny: (37:00)
Well, and that’s what I started to say while ago is that this really feels to me like it, it would resonate with Johanna because she, once she had a child and it was time to go back to work, she made a decision to shift her, her, you know, she had a very active career as a social worker and, and, and she made a life change when Milo was what, six weeks? Eight weeks old.

Bunny: (37:27)
Well, oh 12. Yeah.

Johanna: (37:28)
Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was after the, like, you know, three months in maternity leave. And then kind of just thinking, I felt exactly, I felt so, so similar, like, you know, parenthood does change your, just your perspective on things and, um, your priorities, people always say that, but you don’t realize it till it really happens. But yeah. And then similar, I had to reevaluate you know, what was most important to me and what I could not sacrifice, but in no way, like adjust things to make it where it was the life that I wanted. And I mean, luckily I had a lot of support and, you know, people helped me do that, but I’m, I’m so happy with it. And I mean, and then I’m kind of have gotten back into social work, but I’m able to do it online and kind of do it the way I wanna do and not full-time. So, yeah, there’s, there’s plenty of options and ways, and it doesn’t always have to be, you know, around having a kid or being a parent. Maybe you just wanna change things up. So I think it’s really awesome to hear other people do that. And I think I felt the same way a little bit too, obviously I wasn’t in the corporate world, but I felt similar where I was like, well, I went to school for all these years and I, you know, I had invested all this time to get this career. Am I just gonna like, give all that up, but then, you know, it wasn’t, again, it wasn’t giving it up. It was doing something differently for a while because I wanted to be home with my son. So, and it’s all been great.

Rusty: (39:01)
Yeah. I mean, thank you for sharing that. And I love the, the, the two piece, couple pieces that I heard in there. One is just how common it is to feel almost guilty about leaving what you’ve invested so much of your time and your life in. Right. I felt that I was like, well, I’ve spent all these years investing in a corporate career and now I’m gonna walk away and you described the exact same thing, right? Not a corporate career, but you’ve invested in education and time and energy. And then to change direction feels almost like a betrayal of what you’ve done in the past. At least that was my experience. And so being willing, set that aside and say, Hey, you know, I, I’m going forward into what is really motivating to me. And then to hear your story of success in doing that and creating what works for you, right? You get to craft your life in a way that works for you. So many of us forget that we just assume that we have to fit into some mold or some expectation, or what’s offered to us. We have to pick from the offering, but you can actually go out and create something. You can find something that is right for you, if you’re willing to define that and go for it.

Johanna: (40:06)
Exactly.

Bunny: (40:07)
And it seems, and it seems to me like you, it’s almost like people get stuck thinking, um, this, this dream that I had when I was 18 or this dream that my parents had for me when I was 18, is the one I’ve gotta stick with. That’s that’s my prescribed life plan. Right?

Rusty: (40:24)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that you, I love the way you said that, right? This dream that I had when I was 18, or that my parents had, because you know, when we are living at home, we’re heavily influenced by our parents. So there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just, it’s just fact, you know, you think about, think about somebody growing up on a farm in North Dakota, and then think about somebody growing up in Manhattan in a high rise, like they’re just gonna have different life experience, the kinds of things. They see, the kinds of people they see around them, the career path that they assume is open to them. This has nothing to do with their inherent ability as a person. Of course, they’re both amazingly capable people, but just because of the way they grew up, they’re gonna have different assumptions. And so I think that that what you just pointed to is this, you know, we all have an assumption about what our life will look like when we’re young, 15, 18, you years old. But when you get older, you can always reevaluate that you could always question, is this working for me and, and make a choice?

Bunny: (41:27)
Well, I always love to leave our listeners and,Rusty, I’d like to have you come back because we’ve missed, we’ve got a lot more topics to cover, but, we always like to leave our listeners with something really concrete. Let’s say that somebody that who’s listening today is on a path that doesn’t feel exactly right. I mean, what I know we talked about imagining your life in a different level, but if you were gonna, if you were gonna, first of all are you taking more clients, more coaching clients? And second, if you were just talking to somebody on the street and they were like, I can’t figure this out. What are two or three tips you would give them other than they should get your book?

Rusty: (42:11)
Yeah, yeah. Obviously get my book breaking the that’s big. I am taking new new clients. Yes. And the one of the things I describe in the book is what I call is the zone of possibility. And there’s three elements to that. And so I would offer this to, to anyone listening. Who’s wanting to figure out, where to go or how to apply this. So it’s finding the zone of possibility. And the three elements is number one is quiet. We live in, we live such busy lives. But ideas don’t come to you when you are frantically running around, getting stuff done. You need some quiet, and that’s both external and internal. So, you know, external, quiet is turn off your phone, turn off the notifications, turn off the TV, ideally get into nature, or, you know, get outside, change your environment. And that also helps with the internal sense of quiet. So it doesn’t mean you have to meditate. That’s fine. If you meditate, you could do that, but do something that’s calming and relaxing for you to get, to shift your energy out of the frantic pace of life into a place where you actually have the opportunity to listen to yourself, to hear your ideas, to hear what’s coming from you. So that’s leads into the second piece. So the first piece is quiet. The second piece is heart, because you don’t think your way to these answers. We’ve got multiple centers of intelligence in our body and our hearts is one. So listen to your heart. What are you called to what really, really speaks to your heart? What would you love more of in your life? That’s the second piece. And then the third piece is courage because oftentimes what we hear requires some courage to even consider it you know, go back to my example of becoming a coach. There’s part of me when I heard that idea was like, no way, are you crazy? So it takes courage. You gotta have a little courage to listen to the ideas that come to you. So embrace that, try that as an experiment, find some quiet tune into your heart, right? Don’t try to overthink this, listen to your intuition, what, the way it guides you and have the courage to actually listen to what it says. And just imagine what if, what if this were possible? What if you could have that in your life and allow yourself to feel energized and enlivened by that and go with that, find the things that really make you come alive that make you feel energized and vibrant, cuz that’s the, that’s the experience. And that’s gonna guide you in the direction of your next level of personal fulfillment and success.

Bunny: (44:49)
Wow. I love that. What if we all lived our best possible life? Yeah. Thank you so much, Rusty. This has been fun. Can, will you come back? Can we do this again?

Rusty: (45:00)
Absolutely. Okay, great. It’s fun. Fun to talk to you. And I mean, you can tell, I love talking about these things.

Bunny: (45:06)
I love hearing them, so let’s do it again.

Rusty: (45:10)
Sounds great.

Johanna: (45:11)
Thank you.

Bunny: (45:13)
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 found 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 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.