Mary Crafts Transcript

Clint Betts

Mary, it is actually such an honor to have you on this show. I remember as a little dweeb starting a blog, I guess you could say—I don't know, even that feels like a little too highfalutin, this idea of a blog, because that certainly wasn't what I was trying to do, but I was trying to go around in the state of Utah, maybe about a decade ago, and write about the great things that were happening in this state because it's where I'm from, it's where you're from and we'll talk about that. We've known each other my entire life. The first person, I was like, "The most interesting entrepreneur that I know is Mary Crafts."

Mary Crafts

I remember when you called me and said that and I was like, "You don't know many people."

Clint Betts

I didn't know many people, but that still holds true today. You are, to me, a hero. I think the way you've lived your life and the way that you serve and give back and just who you are as a person, like you exude love in everything you do, I still stand by that. You are someone who I really look up to and respect and love and you've made a huge impact on my life. Thank you so much for being on this show. I want to introduce you a little bit, and I did just barely, but you have built or you did build and now your children have taken the reins of a world class catering company that catered events for Presidents of the United States, world leaders, high executives in the business world. How did that start? What was the vision initially when you were like, "I'm going to build a catering company."

Mary Crafts

It's such a crazy thing because I graduated in social work and with a minor in music because back when I graduated, I graduated from high school in '71, that's before you were born, Clint, so just in case you were wondering, and back then, food service industry was what you did when you were waiting to do something else. No one really chose it for a career and chefs were second class citizens and now they're like rock stars. The food world has exploded literally through my career. When I started out, I simply wanted to save my family, I wanted to keep from being on welfare, I wanted to do something where I could keep my little boys with me and not have to put them in daycare, so all sorts of reasons for survival.

People often ask, "What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Did you love food and hospitality and then you became good at it or did you become good at it and then you began to love it?" And for me, I think actually it was the other way. I worked at it and became good at it and provided for my family and then I began to truly love it and love the idea of serving and what this concept of hospitality really means. It just became my passion, my heart. I no longer did it because I had to, I did it because I wanted to.

I built this little fourth child of mine, this catering business, and people often said to me, "Mary, you're never going to be able to walk away from this." Well, clearly those are people who didn't know how much hard work it was. I always said, "Just watch me." And when the time came, I did. I signed those papers and I never looked back. My children have been with me from the very beginning. Those two little boys were in the little red wagon that I pulled around the neighborhood and they know as much as I know. I really had no qualms about letting the reins go to them because there was something else waiting for me to do and I knew it. I didn't quite know what it was yet, but I knew there was.

Clint Betts

Well, I want to touch on this for a second. You got into this because you wanted to provide a better life for your family and you wanted to ensure, like you said, like "Hey, we don't want to be on welfare. I want to have my kids with me." There were a lot of motivations outside of, and I'm sure it's grown and expanding, and I want to talk about change and leadership and how you evolved as a leader and all that type of stuff, but I want you to think back, and you mentioned it briefly there, where you're pulling your kids in a wagon, selling goods in the neighborhood. What is that Mary Crafts that's pulling that wagon, how is she different from the Mary Crafts I'm seeing right now?

Mary Crafts

Well, I always tell people that if you're ever short on money, buy two small children, get a red wagon, pull it around the neighborhood because anybody will buy anything from you, but that Mary Crafts was so afraid, so full of fear. I lived my entire life in fear, and fear is what motivated my actions. That Mary Crafts was afraid of being stuck on welfare, that Mary Crafts was afraid of doing something that seemed beyond me. I could have been a doctor, I could have been anything I wanted to be, but I didn't know it at that point because I was afraid. I was afraid I wasn't good enough, I was afraid of failure, I was afraid of just about every single thing in my life.

I did that in the little red wagon simply because I was afraid of not having enough, of starving, of not being able to provide for my children. I didn't do it out of love for my family, I did it out of fear that I was going to fail. Now, to be able to admit that and to say that now is a completely transformational thought process and that woman who pulled the red wagon did have some things though; she had grit, she learned resilience, she learned to always have grace in the face of trouble. But this woman now, she knows that those struggles, the struggles I experience even today, are all gifts. They're the things given to me that I've given myself or the universe has given me that I get the opportunity to grow and overcome.

Now, it's very easy to look over your shoulder and say, "Oh, I see how those things were gifts for me. I see how I changed. I see the woman I am today," but let me tell you, when you're in the middle of that stuff, it's much harder to see that. But if I keep pounding that drum and giving that message all the time that what you're experiencing are your greatest gifts and that that's how you're growing, people always... I used to tell brides, "Don't worry if your wedding day is not perfect because the memories, the best memories, will be when someone stepped on your train and ripped it and you had to pick up and go on and someone spilled something on your white entrance rug. You look back and laugh at those things and you treasure those memories not because they're horrible, because they gave character to your wedding."

These things that we're experiencing are what give character to our lives, to who we get to become. Either we ignore them and we don't want to embrace them and we end up crafting a yucky life at the end when you say, "Is that all there was? Is this who I wanted to be?" or you seize every single day with the energy that life brings you and every day, it doesn't matter if it's your last day, you lived life, crafted meaningfully and I get to share that message now with the world and I love it.

Clint Betts

It's so interesting to hear you talk about that Mary Crafts that was pulling the wagon with her two young children doing it out of fear when it seems to me like one of the most fearless acts I could think of and courage acts I could think of is you're out there putting yourself out there, again, to the world, and selling door-to-door. I mean, I just can't imagine. That to me, to hear you say that that woman was driven by fear, it seems so fearless. And the Mary I know now and the Mary I'm seeing right now is entirely fearless. How did you overcome that? How do you overcome fear?

Mary Crafts

That's one thing that my book that's coming out is about is that step-by-step process of actually how, how you do this. And for me, it didn't really begin to happen until my 50th birthday. Now, keep in mind, Clint, at that point in time, I already had been in business 20 years. I already had a lot of awards, I was already very successful, but my motivation inside of me remained the same. It was still fear. You know why I was a great caterer? Because I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of letting someone down. I was afraid of not getting paid for a gig and how would I financially survive that and I was afraid of disappointing somebody. It's how I lived my life and the tension that you feel inside your soul when you live this life of fear is, it's kind of indescribable, but I think people experience that and they think it's normal, but it's not normal.

At age 50, when I looked at those pictures from my 50th birthday party and there I was 284 pounds and nearly 46% body fat, and I just wept and I thought, "This isn't who I thought I would be at age 50. Everything I do is because I'm afraid and it's showing now. I must have laid down so many layers to protect me from all the things I was afraid of." And for me, it was a do or die moment sitting in that Kmart parking lot looking at the photos I had just gotten back from my birthday party. That's before we had cellphones. It was transformational for me as I really looked at those photos and I didn't know quite how I got there, I didn't quite know how I was going to get away, but I knew I had to start the first steps.

I began to look at the different things I really was afraid of and there were so many. I mean, a fear of failure, fear of being laughed at, the fear of not having the right clothes on. I mean, when I tell people, and I'm kind of known as the ultimate networker, when I tell people that even into my 50s, I would drive to a corporate alliance event or a chamber event or any of those kind of networking opportunities and I literally would just drive around the block until I got the courage to park and go in. I was so afraid I was going to walk in there, I wouldn't know anybody, nobody would know me. Maybe they were all dressed in dresses and I had pants on. Maybe people would laugh at me and say, "Who is she and what is she doing here?" I mean, all those fears just in my head nonstop and it's a sad way to live. Sometimes I would park and go in and sometimes I'd just go home.

Clint Betts

Really.

Mary Crafts

So I began to start with a little Post-it note. That's all. People ask me, "Oh, did you read these books or did you read that book? Is that how you learned all this?" To be honest, no. I, to this day, have not read many self-help books. I know that what I need is inside me, it's just a matter of discovering it in the lessons. I allow me to teach me because I kind of believe we came with all the answers we need and we just now have to get to know them and to discover ourselves and spend time with ourselves. People ask me what's the difference between prayer and meditation? Well, prayer is asking, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, help with this, do this, do this, and meditation is when you get to stop and listen and listen back to what's being said and what's being advised and given to you.

We often don't do that in prayer, but I do it every day in meditation. So as I began that step, I put that Post-it note on my bathroom mirror and this is all it said, "What would you do today if you were no longer afraid?" Every day I would look at that and I'd think through my day. If I had one of those networking events, I'd say, "You'd just park and you'd go in and you'd walk up to somebody and you'd start a conversation. You wouldn't have to wait for them to talk to you, you could ask them if they were new, if this is the first time, “Hi. Where do I get those name tags?” You could introduce who you are and ask questions about them. You could be interested and bring energy to them," and it just seemed so clear to me once I let go of the fear.

I mean, I've lived in the shadow of Timpanogos for... I've been out here now nearly 50 years and never thought I would reach the top, but I had set a goal to climb it and this was three, I believe three years ago. Yeah. Later, when I didn't make it that day, but Jeannette Bennett went with me when I actually did make it. I got up that morning and it snowed on top of Timpanogos on September 13th. I was like, "What the heck?" I'm like, "Oh, Oh, I surely can't go now. I mean, seriously, does anybody expect me to go up there in snow? I mean, not really, right?" And I was thinking about how my life was lived that way on just excuses. I could make up excuses for anything. I was a very good liar. I could lie about anything to get me out of something.

I looked at that Post-it note and I said, "What would you do today if you were no longer afraid?" I said, "Climb that mountain," and I did. It snowed up there, I lost the trail, I couldn't find my way. I finally got to the saddle, there was no path and I took two or three steps up that final chimney, I knew that there's a difference between having courage and having stupidity, so I turned around and came home. But I turned to that mountain and said, "I will be back and you and I will be one," and the next year, I did. The following year, I climbed Kilimanjaro. If someone had ever told me, even at age 60, that I was going to be able to climb that and do that and succeed and summit, I probably wouldn't have believed them. But by releasing that fear, that little Post-it note is with me mentally now all the time. It's how I got on this podcast this morning. "What would you do today if you were no longer afraid? I'd talk to Clint."

Clint Betts

What was the Kilimanjaro experience like?

Mary Crafts

It's still with me every day. I trained for about six months. I did a hike every single week, a long hike. I went down to Machu Picchu and climbed that because it goes to 14,000 and they say that's the breakpoint in elevation to whether or not you can go all the way up. Kilimanjaro is at 19,400 and that's the top of where you can go without oxygen. I did Machu Picchu and I didn't have any problems and so I knew I could make it that way. But still, I was that... When I got on the airplane by myself and flew over there and this... It's a long flight and I first went into Paris and then on down to Kilimanjaro. I had a lot of time to think and I thought about all the things that I had left behind. I had never been on a trip where I didn't bring my makeup, my jewelry and my high heels and all my clothes. I did have a 55 pound backpack, but I didn't have all the rest of the paraphernalia that makes me me, and I was alone.

I will tell you that it's the hardest thing, even to this point, that I've ever done. I knew it would be hard physically, but I had no idea how hard emotionally it was going to be, to be alone. I had eight in my climbing team. They were from around the country. Most of them had climbed together, I was alone. Most of them helped each other set up their tents and get their things ready for the next day and did this and that. The first day I arrived in camp with all of them, in fact I led the first day, and our American guy came to me and said, "Mary, I was a little concerned about you at the beginning, but I can tell you've trained. You're ready to do this." I said, "Yes, I am." But that was the only day I led. In fact, it was the only day that I arrived in camp with the rest of them.

When I did arrive, they didn't treat me special. I still had all my stuff to do all by myself. I took a little recorder so that I could record things every day. And on the fourth day, I threw it over the mountain because I was so tired of listening to the whining. Every day was a struggle for me and every day I felt every fear that I had ever had in my life, I faced on that mountain. My fear of being laughed at, all the other teammates were such experienced climbers. They had done Denali and Rainier and some of them had done Everest. I told them I did Machu Picchu and they said, "Oh, that walk up the mountain?" I was like, "Well, I also have done another very difficult mountain. You probably have never heard of this, but I've done Timpanogos." But they were very supportive, but they also knew that they had their own journey in front of them and my journey was to make the summit.

Every day, I was faced with those fears again. What if I don't have the right clothes? Like, as in my gear. What if I didn't have warm enough stuff? What if I didn't have enough layers? What if my boots weren't right? I faced the fear of not being enough, which is the base fear of all fears. Am I enough to do this? And all of those fears were just with me all the time and I had to use all the things that I had learned, starting at age 50, now I'm 65. My goal was to summit while I was still 65 and I summited I think eight days before my 66th birthday. There was no second chance at this and I knew that I could make it if I did not let my fears keep me from it. So all of those things that I had learned, grit, you've got this. What's my hashtag? A Bad Ass Woman With a Purpose, Grace, and Grit. And I had a purpose. I had a purpose to go up there.

The night before I left... This is kind of a fun story—the night before I left, I gathered my grandchildren around me and I was telling them about all these things that I'm afraid of. I was afraid of this and that and this and that and this and that. And Breena, my little, at the time she was nine, opened her eyes about like saucers and said, "Grandma, you're the strongest woman we know. Why are you doing this if you're so afraid?" I said, "Well, for me, to prove something to me. And for you because when I summit, I'm going to shout each of your names to the world and the world will go on record and I named them, Kayson, Breena, Jarem, Hazel, KL, Tristan and Tachious have the same blood running through their veins that I have and that I can do hard things. And when you grow up, you will have the confidence that you can do hard things too."

So when I got back, the very first thing that Breena said to me was, "Did you call out our names?" I said, "I sure did and the world is waiting to see what you do."

Clint Betts

Wow, that's beautiful.

Mary Crafts

It was extremely powerful to know that I had looked all of those fears in the face and won and summited.

Clint Betts

Well, what was the moment like when you got to the top?

Mary Crafts

Well, at the beginning, they knew I couldn't keep up with the group and so they sent the lead African guy to stay with me. I mean, they were kind of gruff with me. I didn't know if it was because they didn't have time for me, that I shouldn't have come or if... It was just something and there were times I wanted to say, "Listen, people think I'm something special in Utah and I'm a badass and I'm really important there. I'm a VIP. You guys shouldn't treat me like this." When you break through the ice in the morning to wash your hands and things, I would think, "I have warm running water at home, why am I here?" But that day they assigned Big John to me, and unlike most of the African guides, he was the lead guide and he was big. He was about six four and big. There aren't a lot of Africans in Tanzania that are that big.

I did feel very safe, but he told me very clearly, "There are three rules. One, you must eat and you drink no matter if you don't feel like it, that we never can rest for more than five minutes at a time." This is a 14 hour hike day and I'm thinking, "We've always had time to rest and I don't understand." He said, "If you stop for more than five minutes, Mary, the sweat and perspiration on your body is going to freeze because you're not moving," and he said, "and then you're going to get hypothermia and we'll have to come back down." And he said, "So we're never going to stop for more than five minutes because that is going to be the end of your journey if we do that." I said, "Okay, I get it. I understand. I understand." He said, "The third thing you are to do is step exactly where I step." "Okay, I got it. I can do that." He looked right at me and he goes, "You're not always the best at following instructions."

Oh, my family and my friends would have a hay-day with that one, but that's how I made it to the top was following his instructions. There were times I didn't, where I thought I knew better. When I stepped a different step than he took because he's tall and he's big. I'm like, "I can't make that step up. I have to step over here and then come up." And as I did that, he was always listening to me, to my footsteps. He twirled around, grabbed my arm just before I went off the cliff and he just screamed at me. "I told you to never step...." I'm like, "I understand." He goes, "I've been up this mountain 166 times. I know the way. You have to trust me." Do you know how hard that is for a person who's afraid? That means they also don't have a lot of trust in others and I realized that day that that was one of my big lessons, trust.

We'd stop and he'd shove that goo down my throat and drink and I kept complaining about how cold my feet were. I said, "Do you think they're frostbitten?" He said, "No, you're moving. They're not frostbitten." I'm like, "But my feet are so cold." Finally, he said, "Do you want some toe warmers?" I said, "Oh, you have toe warmers? Yes. Yes, yes, yes, I want those." We stopped and I tried to get my gators off and my fingers were so frozen, even though I have five... or I had four gloves on at that point in time. He came over, knelt in front of me and carefully took off every layer, all my socks, may I just mention those socks had been on my feet now for a very long time, and he began to help me and put those toe warmers in. I said to him, "Big John, do you have a mom?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "How old is she?" "63." I said, "When you're here helping me, do you think of her?" "No." "Why not?" "Because she couldn't do this, you've got grit." We got my everything back on and by then I realized how I was shaking. I said, "Big John, I can't stop shaking." He looked at his watch and realized we had been stopped for 20 minutes and I had that layer of ice on me. I didn't know what to do and he says, "Well, you're going to have to go down." I said, "No, no, no, I'm not going down. We have to go on," but I couldn't even step because I was shaking so violently. He took off his big parka and put it on me and wrapped me up. The body heat from that parka began to melt my ice. He put his gloves over all of mine and I could finally feel my fingers again. And he said, "Now, we'll walk and we'll climb and we won't stop again. Do you understand?" I said, "I understand," and I made it and we summited.

I didn't know where my climbing team was, I didn't know how far away they were, but just before I got to the summit, I saw them and I was only 15 minutes behind them. I did it. And when I crawled the last few feet to the sign and I grabbed ahold of it and I just hung my head, I held there, I couldn't even stand up. It was the kind of accomplishment that I had wanted. I wanted to do this, to put my stake in the ground that said, "I'm changed. I'm changed for the better. I'm no longer afraid. It's never too late and there is absolutely nothing that's impossible. If I can do it, anyone can do it," and that's what I spent the rest of my life teaching.

Clint Betts

Well, since then, you've started this podcast, Crafting a Meaningful Life podcast, and it's beautiful. Everyone should check it out. Like you mentioned, you're putting out a book this fall, this Christmas season. Is that when it comes out?

Mary Crafts

It's going to do the pre-sell for Christmas and it'll actually come out after Christmas. It's called Unbounded: From Sorrow to Summit. Yes, it is my story, but more than that, it is a how-to. It's a how-to that you can do it too.

Clint Betts

Unbounded. And in this Crafting a Meaningful Life podcast, you talk a lot about living a love-based life. What does that mean?

Mary Crafts

Yeah. Well, if you're going to give up fear, the easiest and best way to do that is to put something else in its place. So going back to the catering example, if I was always catering out of fear, then once I began to embrace what love-based living meant in my life, I could transfer that then into my catering company. And even though my actions were the same, the motivation inside was completely different. So rather than catering for somebody because I was afraid I would fail and doing a great job for somebody because I was afraid of not getting paid or all sorts of other crazy things, I was doing it because of my love for them and that I wanted to serve them and that I wanted to do my very best to help them with these dreams that they had.

Whether it was a corporate event, a brand launch, a wedding, for the most part, Culinary Crafts caters once-in-a-lifetime events and you don't get a second chance at those. But now, I was doing it out of love and it felt different to me and it felt different to my clients. They began to respond to me in a whole different way. I'll never forget one night, this is when Mayor Ralph Becker was Mayor of Salt Lake, they called and they said, "We're having this group come in, they're looking at Salt Lake for their convention. We want you to create an event that they've never experienced before and they've eaten around the world." I thought the same thing during the Olympics when they told me they wanted an event for Sports Illustrated that no one had ever seen before. "What? Do you want me to reinvent chocolate?"

But then I discovered the chocolate fountains in Canada, in Toronto, brought them to our Sports Illustrated events, they were taken photos of and the next thing I know, chocolate fountains are famous around the world. I missed my opportunity because the guy I bought it from in Toronto said, "Do you want to franchise these in the United States?" I'm like, "Nah, I'm a caterer." It was kind of like that and I thought, "I have to do something," and so we did create an experience-based event that night for this group, for the Mayor and something someone said to me afterwards profoundly changed how I catered from that point on. He came up to me and he said, "Mary, I've eaten around the world, I've had so many different styles of service and I've never had anything quite like this where you brought the chefs right to me and you told me about each ingredient and where it came from and why you prepared it a certain way and it was done right at my table in front of me. "He said, "A year from now, I'm not going to remember what I ate, but I will never forget how I felt," and that was so profound for me that it's how I taught my staff from that point on that we're not catering food, anybody can do that, we're not just touting our good food, we're creating an experience for people, one hopefully that they will never forget because they felt what? Love. And sometimes people, most times people can't pinpoint that, but that's what they're feeling. But it's what they feel, love. They feel love enhanced from the food, from the service, from the atmosphere. It doesn't matter if you're a catering company or a tech company, teaching this principle of releasing personal fear and allowing your life to be a love-based life rather than fear-based will do more for your company culture, your bottom line, your profit, your clients than any other training you could do.

I have lectured for a long time at Catersource, which is the international kind of flagship for education. I used to teach marketing, I'd talk about marketing principles. When I used to teach about doing something in the kitchen, I would teach about culinary skills. I would teach about lots of different things; sales techniques, blah, blah, blah. I went this last time and I taught again and this time all I taught was love and how to release fear. So I found myself, now I'm doing a lot of business podcasts for other business podcasters about how to transform their company by this, how for CEOs to lead differently, because this kind of stuff doesn't flow from the bottom up, this flows from the top down, and how to empower each of your management to live this way.

They can then empower others and literally you can transform your company by transforming what you teach them and how you teach them and what you want to be about. Can you imagine the CEO who says, "Profit's important here and I will always focus on it, but living a love-based life within the walls of this company is my number one priority. In other words, you are my number one priority. Together we're going to release fear, together we're going to do this journey ,and I invite you to come with this team and do that." That's powerful stuff. It's different than saying—

Clint Betts

How do you do that? How do you—

Mary Crafts

Rah, rah, sis, boom, bah.

Clint Betts

Yeah, think about in the domain of leadership, you live a love-based life, that is obvious. That's obvious to me and knowing you for as long as I have. I'm sure it's obvious to people who are watching or listening to this right now, who are just seeing you for the first time or hearing you for the first time, but how do you lead in order to... You're talking about, "Hey, I want to teach people how to live a love-based life. I give these seminars. I do these podcasts all the time and stuff." How do you actually lead in a way that makes a difference and makes an impact and actually has these people begin to live a love-based life? I know that you do this. I remember distinctly, there's this trip that you and I went on. I can't even remember what the organization was, in Utah where we—

Mary Crafts

Oh, for Visit Salt Lake.

Clint Betts

Yeah, for Visit Salt Lake. We went to Montreal because I put on a big event in Salt Lake City every year called Silicon Slopes Summit and we were working with Visit Salt Lake. We're like, "How do we work together? Let's go look at this event in Montreal." I don't actually remember much about any of the event or any of that type of stuff, I remember you and who you were and how you were leading and how people were responding to you and all of that type of stuff. Those are the memories that are most vivid of that trip. I wonder how you lead in a way that makes others want to change or live that way as well?

Mary Crafts

And of course when I answer this question, it'll be the next billion dollar book, but this is what I know: you have to start with yourself. You have to begin to discover what your fears are and name them and look at them and discover what behaviors triggered that fear to get in your face that day, and you have to really then think of replacement therapy, which is absolutely possible. It's been proven scientifically that you can change the synapse in your brain from one nerve ending to another nerve ending. Like this is for me and I'm from Iowa originally and we use the word warsh, "We're going to warsh our clothes." I came out here to go to school and I would say that. People would be like, "Mary, there's no R in ‘wash.’" I go, "I know, that's what I said, warsh." When I finally heard it, what I was saying, I began to retrain my brain and change that synapse from when I thought about doing laundry, the word is not “warsh” and it's “wash.”

I retrained my brain. Now, I don't even have to think about it, it's an automatic response to say wash, "I'm going to wash my car." It's possible in anything. When we have fears, they create an automatic synapse to an action. "Oh, what's my response to this fear?" You can change those, actually change those. I know because I've done it. So that when a fear comes up in your face, it's not that you're suddenly fearless, it's just that when a fear comes up in your face, you can make a different choice. Just like my little Post-it note, "What would I do today if I were no longer afraid?" I changed those synapses. This is possible, but you first have to do it on a personal level.

I talk about bringing energy and sometimes management and leaders within our corporations think if they bring enough energy, we've all seen them on the MLM stages that they're bringing all this energy in the world, "Mine. Mine. Mine. Kick, boom, bah." It's not so much about the energy you bring as the kind of energy you bring and people sense manipulative energy, that you're going to manipulate them into an action. But a love-based energy doesn't manipulate people into performing, it invites them to come into your space and that's a very different feeling. It's a feeling and it's a bunch of hoo-ha to some people, but to me I've lived it. I was as much a by the numbers girl as anybody else and it's different for me now.

When I come into a room, I think you're right Clint, I think people do pay attention, they do listen to me because the energy about me isn't about what will you be able to do for me? Sometimes we talk past people or we think past people because we're only talking to them because what can they do for me? If you size them up as not being able to do much for you, you don't have any time for them. But in a love-based life, everyone has value and that's what you bring to them. You see people as who they are and accept them where they are. From there, you can begin to transform and go forward, but it first has to begin here in the shift in your energy. It's all in the book.

Clint Betts

All right. Last question because I have to respect your time here. Did you follow Julia Childs as a kid? Is that like a hero of yours?

Mary Crafts

Yeah, she was definitely my mentor. She was a late bloomer. She didn't start into the culinary field until she was in her 40s. Her husband worked for the state department. He was stationed in Paris. She didn't have anything to do all day. She didn't speak the language. She just really was floundering at what to do with her life. She just decided as a whim to go to Cordon Bleu and she couldn't even speak the language, but she learned it and she had grit and she went back day after day after day. They were teaching knife skills and she couldn't cut an onion. In that great movie, Julia and Julia, they show her with like 50 pounds of onions and she's just been chopping for hours and hours to hone her skill because she loved it, she fell in love with what she was doing.

She became this absolute monarch, this matriarch in the food industry. She got a cooking show and I would watch it every week, religiously. Her dry sense of humor was incredible. I thought, "Someday I'm going to have a cooking show and someday I'm going to have as much knowledge." I really did buy her French chef cookbook and cooked my way through it, at least with what ingredients we could find here in Utah because half of them you couldn't even find in Utah, but it fueled my passion to see how somebody who really had no background in the food industry could really leave a mark and she could really be somebody.

I never had the opportunity to meet Julia before she passed away, but I know that at some point I will and I'm going to share with her the impact that she had on my life, to be a late bloomer. She was not an attractive woman. She's tall and kind of gangly, but her great sense of humor, her energy that she brought to the set and to an event—you'd see her at the Aspen Food and Wine Festival and she was just larger than life and people wanted to follow her and be like her. Why? Because of this absolutely beautiful energy that she would bring to everywhere she was and that came across on TV.

Clint Betts

And you had a TV show?

Mary Crafts

She's my mentor.

Clint Betts

You had a cooking show.

Mary Crafts

I did. Yeah, for 13 years. I wasn't ever as famous as Julia, but it was still a great experience. In fact, it was back when I didn't have the money to market. But by having that show, put me on the map and I became known as the Utah's Martha Stewart because I had the opportunity for that show. I didn't get paid for it, but as I look back, I got paid in way more ways than I ever could have by just having the exposure. What I saw was really hard to do back then was what? A gift.

Clint Betts

Unbelievable. Mary Crafts, thank you so much for coming on. Everyone should check out Crafting a Meaningful Life, which is the podcast that Mary hosts. Also, this Christmas season, make sure you preorder her book. Mary, I love you. You're a hero of mine. I tell you that every time I see you. You really made an impact on my life. Thank you so much for coming on.

Mary Crafts

Clint, and you on mine. I've known you since you were a pup. I always tell people that. I say, "I knew Clint when he was just a pup," and look at you now. Such a rock star and yet you have maintained the same humility, the same focus, the same love of family. You haven't lost that, you've just gained so much more. Hats off to you, my friend.

Clint Betts

Thank you, I love you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Mary Crafts

My pleasure.