Gratitude Can Be a Strategy to Process Grief: Amber Stratton Hale Returns

Bunny: (00:10)
Hi there everybody and welcome to the lifesaving gratitude podcast. This is Bunny Terry and my co-host and my producer is actually on vacation today. So I going to very quickly introduce our guest today. Amber Hale has been on the podcast before she was our third guest 33 podcasts go. We’re pretty proud that we are at 36. I believe this is gonna be 37 episodes. We’re also excited about those of you who take time to join us, to subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcast, to rate and review us because, we just surpassed a big number in downloads, and now we’ve set a new goal. So please forward us to your friends. Take time to write a review if you can, and please let us know how this is helping to change your life. How this little bit of life saving gratitude is serving you. Amber, for those of you who did not hear the first episode that she appeared on, Amber and I met at a real estate conference in 2014, we happened to sit at the same table, although I don’t believe in coincidence, but we were guests at the same table. And, I got up and told a story, as I frequently do about being a stage four colon cancer survivor and how all of my goals at the time, and still are, around being able to raise money, to help other people who are in their cancer journey. And Amber, after I sat down, she came and talked to me at the break and she said… She was adorable young woman, And she had, interesting energy because I could tell she was trying really hard to be a part of that real estate training process. She also had a beautiful tattoo on her arm and I looked new and I said, that’s gorgeous. What is that? And she said, this is a tattoo that I just got honor my son. And I said, oh, tell me about your son. And she said, his name was Thad. And he was 13 years old and he passed away a couple of months ago. And what I learned later is that Thad died by suicide and he was 13 years old. And so Amber has been on a long journey by herself and with her family over the last seven years. And she is a powerhouse of, wow, it’s so hard to describe her, but those of you who listened to her first podcast, get it. She’s a searcher. She is searching for the best way to honor her son and to honor herself. And now, as you’ll hear in this podcast, she’s finally learning to love herself again. And, Amber is, she’s one of my favorite people in the world. She’s certainly one of my favorite guests. And if you wanna hear how how, how your life can be changed and how you can learn to be grateful for an incredible amount of darkness, please stick around and stay at the end because you’re gonna wanna hear what Amber’s doing next. And, I just can’t say enough about her, but thank you so much for being here. Thanks for checking. And here’s our guest, my dear, my very very dear friend, Amber Hale.

Bunny: (04:11)
Hi there, friends. I’m so excited today that we have my friend Amber Hale back for a second podcast. Amber came on as our second guest when we first started this podcast 36 episodes ago, which I can’t really believe, but here we are in the new year and Amber is off on a new adventure. But for those of you who didn’t hear the first episode, um, Amber came very generous to us. She and I are friends and we met under the most fortuitous and it seems, um, coincidental circumstances, although I don’t really believe in coincidences, but, Amber experienced a loss in her life when her son that died by suicide in 2014, right? Amber, correct? And, and she very bravely and graciously came on the podcast and talked about that and talked about the ways that her life changed afterwards. And, Amber, you and I talked a lot then, and we are still talking about how stories really save us and how they don’t just, they don’t, they save us, they save us personally, but they also save other people. And, we are going to get into this incredible new adventure that you and your family are going on, but I just wanna talk for a minute about, you know, the whole concept of life-saving gratitude, not the concept of my book, but the concept of those words and the concept that stories save us. I’m really interested to hear your take on that. Those are a lot of words, but I’d love for you to talk to us about that for a minute.

Amber: (06:12)
Well, yeah, back in 2014, my son, Thad died by suicide. And, fortunately for me, six months into the journey that I’ve been on six months after he passed away, I met you. And you talked to a class full of people about how gratitude helped you get through cancer. And as I was sitting there listening to these words, it dawned on me that I could also use gratitude to help me process, all of the things that come with grief, I wasn’t feeling very grateful at the time. And I just decided to try. I decided to try to find five things every day that I was grateful for. And at first, I wrote the things that I thought I should be grateful for and that wasn’t connecting for me. So I really started like truly looking around and seeing big or small, what I really truly was grateful for. And after a while of doing that, I started experiencing grad everywhere in my life. And as I did that, I really believe that that energy that I put out, um, that energy of gratitude that I put out into the world is what brought, um, all kinds of people, things into my life to help me heal. And it’s been an incredible journey. I can honestly tell you that I am incredibly grateful for the experience of losing my son because it molded me into the person I am today

Bunny: (08:18)
And people, I know, find those words sort of shocking. It’s not that you’re grateful for the loss, no. Or for the agony, but you’re grateful for the experience. It’s sort of like what my friend Josh Wimberley said when he was talking about, um, this a ongoing grueling battle that he has with colon cancer, that may, it may signal the end of his life at a, rather at a, at a rather young age. I mean, we don’t know, I don’t know how things are gonna go, but I know that things are really difficult now. And he said, I’m not just grateful in the darkness. I’m grateful for the darkness. And that feels, um, and I wanna be really careful because you and I, aren’t talking about toxic positivity where we say, everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. Right.

Amber: (09:13)
Toxic Positivity is just that, it’s toxic. It sounds a lot like, well, you may have lost your one child, but you still have another child here or you’re still old enough to have more children. That’s toxic positivity. And I heard that a lot. I think a lot of people grieving hear toxic positivity a lot. And I think it’s important that we recognize that sometimes things aren’t great. And it’s okay to say that this really sucks. It’s also okay to find things in those hard moments that you are grateful for. I firmly believe that even if I’m in a situation that I don’t like, that’s uncomfortable, I’m learning something. I’m learning what I don’t want. Even if the only thing that I can be grateful for in that moment is that I’ve found something I don’t want in my life. That’s gratitude. That’s something I can be grateful for. I’m learning more about what it is that I want and what I don’t want in my life. And I want experiences, in my life that I can enjoy and find gratitude in.

Bunny: (10:31)
Well, you have started this great adventure and I still wanna get to that, but you’ve also started a practice that seems that’s new to you, right? Somewhat new. Yes. Yes. Tell us About that.

Amber: (10:45)
So I, for years I’ve been wanting to write a book, about my experience, because it’s wild. So many people, so many experiences, so many things came into my life exactly when I needed them to help me heal. And it’s, it’s pretty unbelievable in my, in my opinion. But on top of that one, I was when I was grieving, when I was in the very early stages of grieving, I wish I could have had a guide. And you know, I don’t think that people are ready for the mess for a message until they’re ready for it. With that being said, if I would’ve had something to look to to let me know that I wasn’t crazy, that feeling and thinking all of these things at once was quite normal for those that are grieving. I think it would’ve made me feel less alone. And so I’ve decided to write about this, um, in the hopes that I can help somebody else that might be grieving, unfortunately. But I also want to, I want it to be a Testament to people that things can get better, um, and go through something incredibly difficult. It doesn’t mean that’s the end for you. You can find joy again. You can live your life again.

Bunny: (12:22)
Amber that is, that’s so powerful because I talk to a lot of people who say, well, I wanna write a book, but I think what I have to say has already been said. I fall into that trap, you know, I was like, well, other people have written stories about their cancer experience or, you know, I’m writing all the time and I’ll think, well, other people have written short stories about, you know, there’s your voice and your experience is only yours. And, I kind of think that we’re depriving, well, I don’t, I know that we’re depriving the world of our gift. If we refuse to think that our gift is important. Or if we refuse to think that our story is important. And, but I know it took you a while to get to the place where you felt like, let me, let me say, let me say that a little differently. It took me a while to get to the point where I thought that I could tell my story and have it make any sense. It’s almost like you, you have to process it for a while, but I do. But I think just the fact that you started writing so many words a day, and then it morphed into this desire, it’s almost an unquenchable thirst to sit down and write down everything that you, that you that’s part of your story. I mean, it’s just, it’s so important that you start waking up at this. I mean, this may be your experience. It’s my experience. You wake up in the morning with your head full of words. You think you gotta get on the paper immediately. Is that happening with now?

Amber: (13:55)
It is for some future writings, right now the place that I am in this story is, well, it’s the really hard part. It’s the day after my son passed away. And so as I sit writing those words I’m reading, visiting parts that I haven’t revisited for quite a while. And I’m finding parts of the story that were difficult before are quite easy to write. And other parts that I didn’t think were that hard are now hard. And so I think it’s just as I’m going through the, this process, I think it’s uncovering more layers appealing for me. So my ultimate goal is to help others, but in, so doing I’m also helping myself, understand what I went through better.

Bunny: (14:50)
So we do a thing at the cancer foundation. We have all these different support groups for people who are in the middle of cancer or caregivers or in different stages of their cancer journey. And the most popular class is one that’s called riding to heal. And as you were talking about what you’re doing, I thought that’s, what’s going on. I mean, those folks who come to that, it’s so popular that we we’ve had to expand it and add classes. And those folks are so, empowered by the by the ability to sit down and say, and, and they, and I know I’ve talked to the it’s structor and she says that frequently, people say, nobody’s gonna ever wanna write, read what I write. And she said, well, whether you think somebody is going to want to read it, you need this exercise. You know, that’s some of it’s a brain dump. Some of it’s a reliving, some of, but it’s so therapeutic for people like you and I who have been through some trauma to be able to let it go and put it on paper. Don’t you think?

Amber: (16:01)
Wholeheartedly and, you know, I posted something on my Facebook yesterday or the day before and I’m not gonna get it perfect. But essentially what it said was, you have no idea that the things that you’re going through right now that you’re talking about right now will become someone’s survival guide later.

Bunny: (16:26)
Absolutely. Right.

Amber: (16:27)
Absolutely. Yeah. I know when I did find books, about parents that had grieved or different things that have gone through as I’ve unpacked as I’ve gone through my own grief, I was so grateful for the words, of others that have gone through it because there is wisdom in their experience. And my gosh, I am not about recreating the wheel. If I can find something that’s gonna help me, that’s worked for somebody else. I’m gonna use that. I guess I’m lazy that way maybe.

Bunny: (17:09)
No, no, no. That’s the, most wise thing in the world to find to, I mean, we know we don’t wanna recreate the wheel. We wanna, we wanna look to, to somebody else’s wisdom and appropriate it as our own. Yes. That’s how I wanna do it.

Amber: (17:27)
Same.

Bunny: (17:29)
Congratulations on this journey and we’re all gonna be really in to, to hear how it goes. And, we’re all here to help in whatever way we can, but tell me now, you, when I met you, you were selling real estate and you were very bravely jumping into the world after you had lost Thad. And I know some of that was because you felt that you needed an outlet outside of what was going on in your family. But talk to me about how that has changed over time.

Amber: (18:02)
Well, you know, at the beginning of, well, right after Thad passed away, I’d only been in, in real estate for nine days. The day that he passed away, it was nine days in real estate. And, I so wanted, like, it was… Grief is complicated. And at the time when he passed away and I was just starting this new career, I felt like almost the career, that that was a sacrifice for my career. And if I didn’t do well in real estate, then Thad’s death was moot. Because I really felt that my, work-aholic tendencies and as much as I was working on getting into real estate, I was, not spending that time with my family. And so there was a lot of guilt and I thought that I had to be successful in order to justify moving on. And as time went on, as I started to heal these parts of myself, I realized that real estate wasn’t my gig. I was good at it, but it wasn’t,

Bunny: (19:21)
You were really good at it. Yes.

Amber: (19:22)
Well, thank you. But it wasn’t giving me the passion that, you want to have, you want to get from your career. I mean, we spend a lot of time at work and you should enjoy it. And so I’m also stubborn and things weren’t going well in real estate for me. And it was getting more and more stressful, but I fought that and I kept pushing through until the universe decided to tell me no really real, estate’s not your gig. And, my real estate team, my business kind of fell apart. And in March of 2020, I closed my business or I sold it to one of my team member. And, that’s when the real true grief hit. At that point I was grieving my son, but I was also grieving my real estate baby. And, that made me really uncover a lot about myself. I realized that what was really important to me was my family and creating memories with them. And, somehow my husband and I had a discussion one day and we decided to go ahead and sell our house and sell all of our stuff and buy an RV and make those memories and ensure that we are actually living life. And so that’s what we are doing. We’ll be hitting the road in April and currently I’m living with my mother-in-law and step father-in-law and it’s been wonderful.

Bunny: (21:21)
And so, for our listeners who don’t know about you, who have heard the other podcast, you have another child Malakai, and how old is he?

Amber: (21:33)
He is 12.

Bunny: (21:36)
And he, is he wholeheartedly? I mean, is he all about this new adventure?

Amber: (21:42)
Oh, he cannot wait. That is what we hear about every day. I can’t wait to travel. I can’t wait to travel. He goes to school online. So fortunately we can, well, and my husband’s work can be remote. So fortunately we have this ability to do this, and everybody’s a hundred percent all in with our adventure.

Bunny: (22:06)
Well, and I wanna go back for just a second to what you said about the real estate business. You were determined to make that a success because you, otherwise, you couldn’t justify being so busy while Thad was still alive. So you had to, you had to sort of prove to yourself that it was worth that. I mean, that’s what I’m hearing, and I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but and it wasn’t until you stopped that you started to really, sort of break down and grieve, but do you hear from other people that they stay really busy in business or what they’re doing? Is it sort of a way to skirt what’s going on in your heart?

Amber: (22:53)
Yes. And I think that was definitely playing into it too, because if I was working, I didn’t have to think about how sad I was, how devastated I was. Sad isn’t the right word for that. I also, I got highly involved in nonprofit work. I was raising money for, suicide prevention efforts in San Juan county, New Mexico. And so between working like at least 80 hours a week and volunteering probably at least 30 hours a week, um, there was no home life and there was no time to think about, what I had gone through. It was, it was absolutely an attempt to avoid feeling the pain

Bunny: (23:48)
Well, and we talked, you and I have talked a lot offline about how, everybody’s journey is different everybody’s path is different, but if you had a piece of a, a suggestion for people who find themselves admired in really recent grief, what, what might you say? And we know we don’t wanna “should” on people. But if something helpful that you would say to one of your best friends who found themself in the same place, can you think of what that might be?

Amber: (24:25)
Unfortunately I’ve had to say it a lot recently and that is, be patient with yourself. Be so gentle with yourself. You are going to think that you are going crazy. You are gonna wonder why everybody else is walking around, like nothing is wrong and your world has stood still, and that is hard and you are not crazy. So my advice is to be incredibly gentle with yourself, seek help from those that, understand grief, whether that be a counselor, whether that be a friend, find someone that gets it. And man, the biggest piece of advice I can give you is you’ve gotta feel it. And I understand that that’s really hard for people to understand until, until they get it. It’s one of those things that it just has to click. But the best way to do that is to sit with it and think of all of the hard and sad and awful feelings and allow yourself to actually feel the emotion that comes from that. Don’t push it down, just let yourself feel it. And you may have to do this dozens of times. You may have to do it thousands of times, but you’ve just gotta allow yourself to feel it. You gotta feel it to heal it. And there is nothing true in that.

Bunny: (26:02)
Well, and that sounds like a catch phrase, but it’s it’s so… I mean, cliches are cliches because they’re mostly true. And, did you, did you find too, I’m really curious about this because I know that grief and sorrow can manifest itself real physically. Did you find that you had some physical ailments as well?

Amber: (26:27)
Oh my Gosh. Yes. So since my son died, I have had lingering pain in my shoulder blades. And I’ve learned that that is where grief typically deposits.

Bunny: (26:42)
Wow. Is that right?

Amber: (26:44)
It is. And so a lot of times people that are grieving start to have lung problems start to have heart problems and it’s, it’s truly heartbreak that’s causing those things. I remember like in the weeks after that passing away, my brother, um, would come by and just popped my back for me because I was so compressed. And it was literally because my shoulders were hunched forward. I was sad. So yes, in that way but additionally, I started dealing with, a lot of digestive problems and I really, the way I explained that is I was, um, I was swallowing that grief instead of allowing it to process, I was pushing it back down and I had crazy, um, gut problems. There are absolutely physical manifestations of grief in our bodies, 100%.

Bunny: (27:50)
So what I, what I hear you saying to people is as hard as it is, you do have to sit with your grief and you do have to go through it. You know, it’s not, in fact there’s a, a great book and I’m gonna, I’ll have Johanna find it and we’ll put it in the links, but there’s a great book that, a couple, uh, sisters wrote about burnout and they said one of the things that we don’t learn early in life about stress, but that’s really important for us to learn is that it’s like a tunnel that you have to go through. You can’t try to go over the top of it. You have to go through it in order to get to the other side. And they talk a lot about, um, body work and activity to help you, um, process that you gotta start figuring out how to get at active, not to free your body of the stress, but to help it process it in a better way.

Amber: (28:55)
Yeah. So, for me, what first made me feel it, feel the pain was hot yoga and, and I was laying on a mat and hot yoga and sweating uncontrollably and weeping, because my yoga instructor pushed on a spot in my back. And that was exactly where my grief was located. You know, know our emotions are just energy. Just like everything else, they’re energy. And you can feel that like, when something feels good, you can feel it, it feels, it warms your body. It’s a high vibration, well, grief is a super low vibration and you can feel that too. And U using energy work, using body work, moving your body, doing Reiki, um, there’s all kinds of practices that I’ve used to help me, uh, get rid of the physical manifestation of grief in my body. And they are incredibly help. When I first started doing them, I thought it was complete Malarky. I thought it was just crazy. Woo, woo. Hippy stuff. And here I am now, I’m a Reiki master myself. And I talk to people all the time about using energy work, help, move what ails you out of your body?

Bunny: (30:26)
Well, I just think it’s such a new… And a lot of our listeners will go, it’s not new, it’s an ancient practice. But, our Western civilizations’ willingness to recognize that emotions sit in places in your body is that’s, I mean, I still have a lot of people and you’re from West Virginia. I suspect you have a lot of folks in your family who are like, eh, she’s crazy. She’s been in New Mexico too long. She needs to get outta that craziness. But, but it’s true that there are ways to heal to start to heal that also involve doing real body work.

Amber: (31:07)
Yes. Yes.

Bunny: (31:10)
That’s so exciting, but you, we talked offline also about how when you made this decision to go on the road, your house sold quickly. Quickly. I mean, it, it was sort of like you made a decision and the universe said, Uhhuh, we’re gonna help you with that. Right.

Amber: (31:31)
A thousand percent, you know, I really, really, really believe that the universe gives us what we want.

Bunny: (31:42)
What’s, we know what we want. Right?

Amber: (31:44)
Exactly. Well, and the universe gives us what we think about whether we want it or not. And so I wanted to do this and, um, I sold all of my belongings in three weeks, which is insane because my husband and I have been married for 21 years. So we had some stuff. Um, I listed my house and in six days it sold for full price. Well, in real estate, you always know when a house goes under contract, but doesn’t mean that everything is great. And you’re gonna go to the closing table. The process can,

Bunny: (32:24)
That’s really the first step as realtors. We know that people say, oh, she got my household. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I got you a contract.

Amber: (32:33)
And so the whole process that month, long closing process, there were no hiccups. Uh, this is the craziest real estate market. Farmington is seen in decades. And they just, my realtors prepared me. They were like, it will be delayed. You will not close on time. Um, we will probably see X, Y, Z hiccups. None of that happened. I closed on my high house. Um, we found the RV of our dreams the weekend before our house sold. And it was more expensive than we were prepared for. Um, so we decided to pass on it. Well, they called us the Monday after we saw it and told us that their dealership had been sold and that they had to liquidate all inventory. And so it became the price that we needed it to become, um, everything lined up when we made this decision. And it was, well, it was really neat for me to see because it, it just solidified my belief and the power of your thoughts.

Bunny: (33:46)
We talk about that a lot. You know, we talk about when we talked to Daniel Mangena, we talked about how, a lot of people end up in lives that they didn’t want because they don’t, they didn’t take time to think about what they did want. Yes. And, or they made choices that were, um, based on what they thought their parents felt they should do or what they, what they just, just, what, what the world tells us we should become. And, um, he said, that’s where all this, all these midlife crises come from is because we don’t take time to figure out what we want, but you did. And you’re on this journey. You did have a difficult task when you were getting ready to move outta the house. Right. I mean, you went through Thad’s things.

Amber: (34:32)
Yes, yes. That, so when we left, we sold the house that we shared with that, uh, about two years after he passed away. And I was not ready to go through his things. Um, so I had some great friends come over. They boxed his entire room up for me, and it sat in my garage for five years. Um, so over the summer we went through those boxes us and it was hard. It was hard.

Bunny: (35:06)
I can’t Imagine.

Amber: (35:07)
Yeah. And even though it was hard, we did it. I felt an incredible sense of peace once we had done it, we were able to, to, we received over 300 letters from Thad’s classmates. And so I was able to reread all of those and take some pictures of some of them, a lot of them. But then we were able to get rid of those things, those things that were taking up so much space in our house, that was definitely a source of sadness for us. Letting that go helped us heal.

Bunny: (35:54)
Well it’s making me cry right now just to think about it. But, it is, Amber… I don’t wanna pretend to know what that feels like to you, but it’s, it is hard to let go of physical things. That represent his life.

Amber: (36:14)
Yes. And, you know, just like everybody could grieves differently. Everybody has to deal with their loved ones’, things differently. I have friends that, they lost a child over 15 years ago and they have not gone through their son’s things yet. And that is okay because that is what they need to do. And I know people that two months after their loved one died, they wanted the stuff out. And that was okay because that’s what they wanted to do. You have to do it when it feels right to you. And it, I mean, it was probably pushed up a little bit because we wouldn’t really have a place to put these things, but we were ready and we would not have done it if we weren’t ready.

Bunny: (37:01)
Talk to me about Kai. I wanna know how he, you know how he, I mean, because he, when Thad died, how old was he?

Amber: (37:12)
He had just turned five.

Bunny: (37:15)
And so HES had all these years of,… I’m curious to know how he’s done and how you’ve helped him.

Amber: (37:24)
So, oh, early on in like right after Thad passed away, I wasn’t allowed to cry around Malakai that really, really upset him. Um, and so I stopped talking about that at home because it was too painful for him eventually. And this has happened within the last two years. He started talking about that and I think I may have accidentally killed him Kai earlier, but Malakai has been talking about that recently. And he asks him, asks me questions about him. He, unfortunately he doesn’t remember much of his brother. So I am so pleased that he wants to know who his brother was and he asks questions and he’s so proud of his brother. He’s very proud to he, he is the first to tell people that he is not an only child. He has a brother. And that was a big move for us because for a long time, he would not tell people that he had a sibling. He didn’t want people to know. And you know, he has just, he’s grown so much, he’s such a good kid. He reminds me so much of his brother and he is just kind and compassionate and caring, and he thinks about how other people feel is very empathetic. And he’s also a typical kid that sometimes says things that make me a little crazy. He is, he’s definitely a boy and he, he’s pretty, in my opinion, he’s pretty healthy. And we are so grateful for that.

Bunny: (39:22)
It seemed, as I recall, at one point, he said to you, I don’t wanna be known as the kid whose brother died. Did, did that come up? Am I mixing that up?

Amber: (39:33)
That’s correct. When we changed schools, cause everybody in Aztec knew who he was. He was, he was Thad’s brother and that’s how people would introduce him. And I can only imagine how difficult that would be for a young child, to be known as that. And so when we moved, when moved to Farmington and put him in school here, um, I was filling out paperwork for the school and he asked me not to put that he had a sibling on the paperwork. Um, and I asked him why, and that was his reason. He didn’t wanna be known as, um, brother. He wanted, wanted to be known as Malachi. And it took a long, it, that was a hard thing for me to handle. It was hard for me not to mention that around Malachi’s friends. Um, but eventually one of Malachi’s friends told him, I know who you are. Uh, I know who your brother was and the way that little boy handled that conversation with Malakai changed everything for him. And I’m very grateful to that little boy.

Bunny: (40:54)
Well, and he was just growing. He was right. I mean, he was just figuring out he was just finding his way, which is what our kids do. And I guess my point in asking you about that was that we, we also, I would suspect as parents sort of wanna prescribe the way that our children grieve and get through any kind of, um, difficult and, um, and, and had his own way for doing he had to find his own way.

Amber: (41:25)
Yeah. And it was so hard for my husband and I, um, I don’t know that we understood how he was processing it at first. It was concerning to us. Now looking back, that was his way of processing grief. And if I’m gonna preach that, each of us has our own journey that has to apply to children as well.

Bunny: (41:54)
Wow. I can’t imagine losing a sibling or a child, but so, so tell us what’s next. Tell us what you’ve got down the road six months at a year. What, what you’re hoping for. And, because I, I really, I wanna hear about this and I want you to come back in six months and tell us how it’s going.

Amber: (42:17)
Okay. so I am writing 2000 words a day. I don’t know if that means my book will be done in six months, but it’ll be much further along, and in six months we will be in Colorado, near the base of Estes park, enjoying beautiful scenery and beautiful weather. Um, and my husband will be working with his best friend, and Malakai, and I will be playing during the day and playing when Ryan gets home at night and we are stoked.

Bunny: (42:57)
And then, I heard you say in a different conversation that you’re going to go through the south. You’re gonna spend some time traveling the south. That’s gonna be the first leg of your RV journey.

Amber: (43:07)
Yes. So you mentioned already I’m from West Virginia, and I want to go to a place where the humidity is thick as the trees.

Bunny: (43:16)
Wow. Okay.

Amber: (43:18)
We’re headed to Kentucky, well from Colorado, we’ll head to Kentucky then to Tennessee, then to Georgia and then Florida. And we are gonna go along the Gulf coast over to Austin, Texas, and hang out there her for a while. And that’ll be our first year.

Bunny: (43:38)
I’m so excited for you.I wanna go it sounds like so much fun!

Amber: (43:43)
Much fun. Well, anybody can visit me anytime.

Bunny: (43:46)
Nice. Well, I want you to keep us updated. I want us to check back in Amber. Your journey is so inspiring. Nobody wants to live through that sort of trauma. And yet thousands of parents do thousands of siblings like Malakai and, the work you’re doing is really, really important. It’s it really honors that in a way that I’m sure you didn’t, you know, in that first year after you lost him, I don’t know that you might have seen, I mean, I know that I didn’t see it after I, got done with my cancer journey. I didn’t see that the journey really wasn’t over. Yeah. Just the experience had ended, but now it was time for me to start processing. That’s sort of where I see you.

Amber: (44:43)
Yeah. You know, seven years ago, I didn’t think I would hear from parents that it had survived this for a year or two years or 10 years, and I didn’t know how that was possible. And you know, I feel like I’ve had a little guardian angel in Thad, and the last seven years he’s been working with me to forgive myself and learn to love myself. And, interestingly, I started a page called Love for Thad. Not knowing that it would be me learning to love myself for Thad. And now I think this next stage of my journey is about learning to live for Thad and learning to live, to honor myself and honor his life. But really, truly living.

Bunny: (45:38)
Wow. Well, I got nothing else to say to that. That’s a perfect way to end this. I’m so proud of you.

Amber: (45:45)
Thank you. I’m so grateful for you.

Bunny: (45:48)
Thank you for being here.

Bunny: (45:52)
That’s all we’ve got today. Friends. I wanna thank you for joining the lifesaving gratitude podcast with your host Bunny Terry, that’s me and my producer and assistant Johanna Medina. We feel like we’re in the business of sharing the stories that save us, and we hope you’ll share as well by letting your friends and family know about the podcast follow and law 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 bunnterrysantafe. You can sign up at my website at, at bunny terry.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.