The Authority Gap: Why Your Expertise Isn’t Worth What It Should Be

Cold outreach is louder than ever, yet most of it still feels like cardboard in the mail. Host Grant McGaugh sits down with mortgage professional, networking coach, and speaker Sarah Hubbard to get real about what actually drives growth in a crowded sales market and why old school “spend money to make money” tactics can leave you stressed, broke, and disconnected from the people you’re trying to serve.

Sarah shares her origin story: a high-achieving athlete who thought she’d become a physical therapist, got rejected from multiple programs, then unexpectedly fell into mortgage financing. When she moved into origination, she followed the playbook she was handed: heavy direct mail, big spend, little personalization, and wound up $60,000 in credit card debt. That low point becomes a turning point as she discovers a better path: intentional networking built on real conversations, trust, and clear next steps.

Together, we unpack Sarah’s MAPP framework for networking ROI: Mindset and Intention, Authentic Presence, and Precise Messaging, plus how to use AI tools to research rooms, create smarter icebreakers, and make limited time count. We talk about authenticity without performative branding, why introverts can be elite networkers, how to stop saying “I help anybody,” and how to make your message simple enough that people can confidently refer you. If you want more referrals, a stronger personal brand, and business development that feels good, not salesy, this one is for you.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who hates networking, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
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And don’t miss Grant McGaugh’s new book, First Light — a powerful guide to igniting your purpose and building a BRAVE brand that stands out in a changing world. - https://5starbdm.com/brave-masterclass/

See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Transcript

Welcome And Why Resilience Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome everybody to the Firebrand Podcast. This is your host, Grant McGall. We're starting out, we're kicking down doors in 2026. And I want to speak directly to my business development people, people who pick up a bag, people understand sales, whether you're in real estate, you're in finance, you're in insurance, whatever it is that you say, you know what, I got to get out here and I got to sell something. I want to, I want to introduce you to somebody, but I think you might find a lot of insight around someone who's lived this road, who's climbed that path, who's got to the top of a mountain, who's got, you know, got got rolled back down the mountain and got back up on the mountain. We call that resilience, right? So, Sarah Hubbard, we're going to introduce you to her. And I want you to hear her story and really lean in on it. I think it can help you. So, Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself?

From Direct Mail Debt To Networking

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Sure. Grant, thank you so much for having me, first and foremost. Um, it is an honor to be here with you. Um, as you said, my name is Sarah. Uh, my journey here of how I've gotten here today starts a little bit back from being an athlete all the way through high school, college, thought I was going to be a physical therapist, didn't get into schools with a 3.9 GPA, pivoted and fell into the mortgage financing space. Um, I didn't know anything about mortgages when I came into it 15 years ago. And I got asked to be in that job, I was pretty much laughing in my now owner's faces of like, you want me to come work in mortgages? What? I went all in with it, uh, learned a tremendous amount. And then when I switched over to the origination sales side of piece of it, much like you said already, uh, I was working in a company or still with this company, but working in um and learning from them from a very old school mentality. Their only way that they had grown their networks and their databases were direct mailers only. And they would tell me, you have to spend money to make money, Sarah. You've got to spend money to make money. And I was like, uh, okay. And this is all that I knew at that point in time. And I had seen them be successful, and I've seen them ride some down cycles as well. And so I went in all for it. And about four months in, I was 60 grand in debt, all in credit cards and drowning because people were calling and going, what's the rate? And I'm like, what's your name? Who are you? And you know, there was just there was no personalization, there was no connection. Um, turns out I didn't function super well under a tremendous amount of debt, especially when I'm, you know, not honoring who I am as a person. And so I went out there and tried to find some other things, and that's when I stumbled upon networking. I'm sure everybody has heard the word networking. Some people have different connotations on what it means, socialization, work, how do we combine them both? But I learned very quickly that being a mortgage professional, real estate, insurance, financial advising, when you come across them, we're very crowded in these areas. There's a lot of us out doing the same thing. And some of us are not the most genuine humans when we're out doing this. And so I was met with a lot of resistance. I looked super young, they used to tell me. I looked like I was 20. And I'm like, well, I'm I'm 35, 41 now, so thank you so much. Like, that's great. Um, a lot of those kind of old school stigmas were just being slapped on to me without anybody knowing who I am. And I I watched, I made people some mentors for me that I watched were really succeeding out there and not just talking about themselves, but converting, getting leads and converting those leads. Um, and now here we are, um, you know, 15 years later in this in this world, and I am now teaching my community, my referral partners, uh, people that are great at their craft, but not necessarily great at people, or that conversion piece of it on how to actually get ROI from networking.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Well, let's unpack a lot of that because I think your story can be replicated by a lot of people that are out there to your point. You know, they're they it sounds easy when it's oh, I just sell real estate. This everybody needs insurance, just get out there. But you're in a crowded marketplace, you're a commodity out there, you've got to be able to differentiate yourself. And if you're using almost 1980, 1990 tactics to get in front of your ideal client, yeah, I'm not saying it doesn't work, but the expense and time to do that can take a lot, and the toll it's gonna have on you mentally, uh, and physically and emotionally is quite daunting. You were able to pivot. I want to understand the moment when you said, I want to try something different, and that that you you were gonna go in this direction, and there was no way you're turning back, and then take us to where you got that first aha moment where you got that enlightenment. It's like this actually might be the way to go.

The Conference That Changed Everything

How To Add Value On Purpose

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah, so I remember I was I was really frustrated with the owners of my company because I was going to them and expressing my frustrations and like this isn't working, and I'm drowning. I have four credit cards maxed out right now. Like, I I don't know how you guys can just keep doing this and then sending out more mailers. And so I um I went to a conference, a mortgage conference. And I remember sitting with a bunch of ladies. I had somehow connected with them on a Facebook group, like a mortgage originator female-only Facebook group. And there was like 15 of them there, all from Utah. Those ladies were all from Utah. Here I am. I go by myself and I sit with them, and I'm just a sponge at this conference because I am like, I have no idea how I'm going to make this work, but there has got to be a way. There's all these people here, they've got something. And I remember sitting there telling these ladies, like, this is how my company does it. And they're all like, What? Like, you don't have a real estate partner, you don't have referral partners. I'm like, what is that? What does that even mean? And I remember sitting at this conference and them going, you have to add value. And I kept going in my head, how does one add value? Okay. And after many years of answering this question and thinking that, you know, reading books and trying the blanket thing for many types of real estate agents, value is different for every single one of us in every single different path and time in our career. And you can't know what value is unless you ask. And so when you ask and if you can solve it immediately, great. If you can't solve it immediately, whatever that is, the value add, the hurdle that they have in their business or what they're looking to attract, if you're thinking about it enough, you will be able to attract it. But basically, that conference for me was a massive turning point. You know, there's a ton of coaches on stage trying to push their coaching program. I didn't have the budget for that. So I took as much as I could get from them on those stages, came home and poured into those notes that really stuck out and thought, well, what I have right now is myself and time. I don't have a huge budget, but I have me. So what else can we do here? Because I don't really want to walk away from this. I've got to get myself out of this debt first and foremost. And I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to my actual physical job. I've learned a lot. I'm a really, really creative problem problem solver. So let's do this. So I started at a local chamber of commerce in my area. Okay.$450 for the year, and I could go to everything, right? And there was, there it is. That's how I started it. And I happened to my chamber of commerce here in um the Douglas County area in Colorado happens to be a well, I should say it's not in existence anymore, but it was a fabulous community of humans. There was some resistance from some, but for the most part, there were people there that were like, let me show you, let me take you. And I watched a lot from us afar, watching these people just have conversations and show up as who they are as humans, share a little bit about what's going on with them personally, and then bring it back to the professionalism, bring it back to why we are here. I'm here to sell homeowners insurance, I'm here to sell life insurance, right? It's not necessarily being vomited on them, but I watched how they slowly interwove that into all of their conversations and didn't just leave without an ask. They didn't just be like, hey, Grant, this was so great to meet you. And you walk away and you're like, was I supposed to do something? Are we having a meeting? Am I following up with you? There was always that next step kind of clearly defined. And I watched and I learned, and then I just started trying. And I'm sure in the very beginning stages of Sarah out there networking, there were things that I would tell you never to do today that I did, like use the word just following up. I'm sure I did all of the wrong things, but without trial and error, without trying what my magic superpower was, which was just being who I am and being curious about people. I love people. I think they all have a fascinating story, personally, professionally, integrated into one. And that's what I started to let shine through all of this. And I learned that there was a lot of people that I thought I wanted as referral partners because they were doing business, but our values as humans did not align one iota. And that was a okay, they gotta go because I didn't want my phone when they called. I didn't want it to be dreaded, dreaded. I didn't want it to be like they're calling me again and whatever else. So I just over time that that conference was my aha moment that there was a lot of other ways to do this, um, and that you could have that add value, but it doesn't always have to be as complicated as we think.

Digital Tools Still Need Human Talk

The MAPP Framework For Networking ROI

SPEAKER_00 9:27

A hundred percent. And what you just said, I want my audience to really take away from certain things. I think because we live in this uh data world, this digital workspace, that we feel that um the human-to-human interaction is somehow diluted, and it really isn't. You the the whole point of the the digital world is get you to the point of having a human-to-human interaction. That is it. I've been in sales, I've been in business development for well over 30 years, and it has always been the the idea until you get in front of a client, you really are not in front of your client. I mean, the the bottom line, if you're not having actual conversations with people, you're not in the sales pipeline. So, I mean, the whole point of the digital world is to get you to the point of having that human conversation, whether it's through a telephone, whether it's through a conference link, uh, or or person to person in person itself. But that is the purpose. So when you're sending out mailers, you call it snail mail in my in my snail mail. Remember, that's just a piece of cardboard with some information on it. It has that's not you, it's not a personality. It's very, very, very plain. And in a world that there's plenty of people doing maybe what you're doing, there's no key differentiator, right? What's your strategy? What's your communication strategy? You're just another car that came in the mail from somebody that I don't really know, right? But then you can get in the phone call. Well, that would be great if somebody to pick up the phone because co-calling can get very, very tedious. If people don't know who you are, they can't, they most likely don't recognize that number, they're not gonna pick up the phone. Same way with email. You can email, but if they don't recognize who you are, don't know what that email is all about, the likelihood of them responding is going to be very, very low. However, to your point, if you're already making an impression, they kind of know who you really are, and then they know what you're about, you can then make those inroads of actually presenting something of value, which I like how you said that. Something of value that they can then take away, like, huh, Sarah, I trust her, I actually like her, and I actually know her. We always heard no like and trust. Those things go off the tongue. But when you actually know somebody and you actually like them, and and then you can do business with them. I mean, you can get to that next level. Now you have a framework after all these years of doing with you've now taken it to a point where you can actually build this out and present it for other people. Talk to you about your framework.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yeah, so it's called the uh map framework. So M-A-P-P. And I go through it in my book in full detail, but I'll give us some highlight points here. And then also in the book, we mentioned technology, right? We and we all should be incorporating and leveraging it as much as possible. It will cut down the prep time from what maybe took us an hour to maybe 15 minutes. There's prompts in each of my sections for my framework that you can start working with any AI, whether it's Claude, Chat, Gemini, or whoever your preferred um, you know, AI engine is, you can put each of these prompts in and help you get into each of these frameworks and walk you through. So my first one, um, the M is mindset and intention. I hear this all the time that people, you know, I'll use myself, for example. I have a three-year-old daycare drop-off on Monday is brutal. We've been home for two days. He doesn't want to let go of mommy. I'm like running out of there, like my hair on fire, because I've got a 9 a.m. call and it's, you know, 8:40 to get myself centered. And a lot of people just would scooch into a networking meeting and be like, I'm here, I'm present. But you don't really take the time to think about one, what's actually going on and what do I need? And how do I spend my time intentionally in this hour, hour and a half, or two hours? This can be interpreted for a conference, this can be interpreted for any networking event. The same thing needs to be led for mindset intention. You need to see where you are, honor where it is, and what do you need out of it? It makes it a heck of a lot easier to get an ask in in that short period of time when you're connecting with people over five or 10 minutes if you have an ask. That ask can be as simple as, I want to meet two new people in my community. That ask can be, I need help with um, you know, business development or HR or I need a new bookkeeper, right? The ask can be, I need a new daycare for my kid, right? It doesn't always have to be this major thing, but it makes that flow of conversation go a lot easier when you're kind of in those weird initial icebreaker stages when you have yourself prepped and ready before you walk into a room. You know, my networking efforts, I could go to an event for two hours before I had a kid, and then we could go out after for a bite to eat or a beverage. And, you know, it I could be out and I'd walk in and my husband'd like, hey, um, it's nine o'clock, and I had a great time, right? Because there was some socialization. I don't have that luxury anymore. So some groups and some conferences give you like headshot lists of who's gonna be there, or if you can go onto a website and get all of the people that are part of there, you can actually drop that into my prompt and say, Who are the top five people that I need to speak with and tell me why? And give me 20 word or you know, a 20-word icebreaker of why this connection would be good. And I will tell you that AI has picked out some ones that I've been would have never like traditionally thought that this would be good, one of them being uh somebody that helps uh hire like virtual assistants. Um, and I remember meeting him, he came up to me and he was on my list to meet at that this meeting I was at. And he's like, So how do you do it all? And I'm like, I'm superwoman. That was my answer to him. And I was like, No, I actually have no idea how I do it all. He's like, You need a VA. And I'm like, Yes, I do. And I have sent him probably 15 different people in my community that are all in that same space of growth. And that was all because ChatGPT told me I should go meet Mark over here that owns an AI company. But it gave me direction to maximize my time. I wasn't just talking to somebody that I already knew, you know, and then over to somebody else that I already knew, because there's a lot of comfort and socialization in the networking world. And that that is sometimes what people need to get themselves going if they're a little bit more introverted. So don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you only have a short period of time or you've had a day where five clients just totally drained you and you thought you had more, more energy for the bucket of being an introvert, and you're still gonna go because you said you were gonna go, use this prompt to make your time more efficient. Give yourself 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever it is. If you can't find those people, ask somebody else if that person is here, right? And then utilize your time and then off you go. So it doesn't have to be the same thing that you know, maybe you or I could go and work a room and we'd be like the happiest people alive. It doesn't have to be that way, but you need to know where you are, what your ask is, and be a little bit more intentional with your time if it's if it's uh you know a little bit cut down.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Hunter now, what you said there, I want the audience to truly lean in is purpose and do your research, right? Research what it is that you're going to use your time for, because time is very, very valuable. So if you're gonna utilize the time to go there, you want to get the most value out of that time. I used to do the same thing. I remember that. Like, all right, who's gonna be in this particular room? Or I would if I know that they're there, especially if I knew the panel and I know I want to talk to somebody on that panel, I'm gonna do research. Now, before I had to take a lot of time to get a lot of good information to have some kind of conversation that that person would actually find valuable. Now, of course, with these LLMs, you can find information pretty quickly. So now you're like, all right, what ties me and this person together that potentially we could generate a genuine conversation around, right? Yes, and now when you got that going, all those other things in the back end when you got their like their profile, you've got and they connect with you, and then you got their email because typically you're gonna exchange you know information and to get back to that. What I said earlier. Now, when you send an email, they're probably gonna respond. Now you you know, you call them, you're gonna respond, and they pretty much kind of know what you do if they re if they remember you because you've made an uh an impactful state, like, oh yeah, that was Sarah, and she was very influential about things I could really look at when you're talking about mortgage rates or things I didn't even think about. Like, you know, I want somebody more knowledgeable than I am because it's you out of the commodity zone, right? And to the subject matter expert who wouldn't want to talk to a subject matter expert around some of the most important decisions in your life, and it you know, initially we're giving them that free information. You're like, this is exactly what I need, far beyond what you can get from a Google search, far beyond what you can get out of an LLM. This is a living human being who has way more knowledge than I have, and I can have a conversation. So I like your approach. Keep going on on your framework because this is something people could do, like, oh, I can do a prompt. I can do that. Talk to me more, Sarah.

Authenticity And Vulnerability Build Trust

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Yeah, so A is authentic presence. You have this in your framework as well. And this is, I know authenticity and authentic is kind of a buzzword right now where everybody's using it. We have, you know, AI and all these other things that are kind of taking over. But how I mean this is you have to be able to show a little bit of who you are. I'm aware my heart on my sleeve kind of gal. Okay. In my book, I give a story about my fertility journey to get my three-year-old here. Okay. It was not easy for us. We had to go through IVF. Um, but I shared that story, my losses, all of that through my community. Okay. And when I would go, even if I was gray and feeling like poop, sitting in the corner, people were still coming up and talking with me. And I was still just being myself. I ended up having to go and live in the hospital for six weeks and early delivery, really complicated. It was not my favorite time of life. But I had meals at my door for 45 days. 45 days from my community. Some of them were from other mortgage lenders, guys. So I'm saying this because you have to let a little bit of who you are out in order to attract those same type of people. Okay. An introvert that thinks they need to be a Sarah or thinks that they need to be a Grant, you do not. Turns out introverts, really, if you break it down to the base thing of it, are some of the best active listeners that are around. They uh can ask questions because they're wildly uncomfortable about talking with themselves. So they're gonna get this other person to tell all the things. And then because they're such great listeners, they can probably solve all those problems really quickly and build that trust quickly. But if you're out there trying to be somebody else or trying to be something because you think this is what the industry wants or you think this is what the people want, you're gonna start attracting the people that just drain you even more. And that's not what we're looking for. We're not looking for the referral partners that don't align with you. We're not looking for the clients that don't align with you. We will all come across them. This is part of sales, this is part of the cycle of learning what your niche is, what you want to do, who you want to attract. But unless you let part of that go and share that, nobody knows yet. And so you're gonna get the people that are very frustrating and draining on you. And that's why people get so quickly to negate networking because they're just like, well, I haven't gotten anything I wanted. All of these leads kind of stunk. And my my question to them is okay, have you told anybody about the amazing human and the magic that you have inside of you? All of us have it, all of us do. Even some people, I listened to Gary V one time talk about uh uh his father owned a liquor store, and there was a gentleman that worked there that was actually like stealing all of this wine and like had formalized this whole system of like taking these thousand dollar bottles of wine and reselling them on the black market because his family was in desperate need of money. And Gary V's dad was just so mad about that situation. And Gary's like, I'm kind of looking at this guy going, damn, do you know how much smarts that took for you to establish this system? Like, yeah, that was a really crappy situation. Nobody wants that to be stolen from. But like, if you can look at the bigger picture and see that this guy probably Probably had a lot of good talent in him and was a really smart human, just maybe dealt some really bad cards and maybe couldn't, you know, got himself in a loop of whatever it is. Regardless, that story brings back to the authenticity of you all have something inside of you. And, you know, you may not be as comfortable as me to share something as heavy as infertility and loss, but that's okay, right? Share whatever you're comfortable with. Share your weekend plans about you know the trip that you just did. I'm like, that was super great. I want to hear more about that when we jump off because I want to hear, you know, like, but that's the way that you start learning a little bit more about this person, loves travel. You know, they're super embedded in community, they give back to community, you know, whatever it is that you can pull through, that all comes slowly when you start revealing more of yourself.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

I think you're absolutely right. And uh because now the artist is like, well, what is she talking about? Yeah, I just got back from the US Virgin Islands, United States Virgin Islands, St. Croix, which is the bigger island of the three, there's St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix. I work with the uh St. Croix Economic Development Initiative and Caribbean American single economy there. And because I established relationships and I had conversations with the uh brand ambassador from uh St. Croix, I am now a senior advisor uh for them when it comes to personal branding, business development, and um investment banking. And we're standing up a uh marketplace there. Now, I say all that to say this. I do have a framework, and I have a book you see behind me, first slide, that kind of highlights that in a narrative, which is credit great. So things that Sarah just said, which is a part of my framework, which is authenticity. Well, that all starts, you gotta look at the whole thing. Brave, you know, it doesn't make sense if you pull out the A or you pull out all the letters, right? You're gonna have all the letters there. So brave is your brand identity, R is your resilience, your research, things that go into relationships. A is your authenticity, right? What assets do you have? What is the audience that you're looking to influence? But it gets into that V, which is velocity, it gets into vision, it gets into what you're doing. Now I'm gonna put another V in there that's vulnerable because what you're talking about is being becoming more vulnerable in your story. You can execute on it. That's that ease. But being vulnerable, and I learned this for someone else, is that when you when you're comfortable enough to share your vulnerability, or when you were vulnerable, like you talked about, hey, she just went through a process that she was not all that comfortable with, but at the end of the day, the outcome, she's got a beautiful three-year-old, right? But how many people are either beginning that journey or in that journey or can validate that journey? Like, wow, I'm glad she said that because now I'm a part of her world. You know, I I like that Sarah is able to share that, and now we get into what I call brand presence, brand equity. The whole personal brand story becomes a whole different animal. People thinking, oh, that you just want to be an influencer or or that type of thing. It has nothing to do with that, it's about being able to share yourself to a certain degree that you can then have influence between the people that you're working with over time, that they know that you are an actual person with the bolts. We all, if you've been on this planet probably more than 24 hours, you probably already know that you're gonna go through a set of challenges. What are your challenges? You're like, Wow, those are your challenges. You just mentioned the person with in the Gary V story. That person has challenges. This is how they dealt with it. It may not be the most, you know, best way to do it, but they did it. You're like, wow, that was an interesting way, you know, to survive, and and maybe we can repurpose you for something else than just uh uh uh the obvious there of actually letting you go. Like this person's got some ingenuity to them. Share with me more of your story because now this is motivating you to get a book out there. I mean, at the end of the day, people were like, Well, does she sell more mortgage?

Turning Relationships Into A Business Engine

SPEAKER_01 26:06

I mean, originally when I when I looked back at some, I'm a big numbers person, right? You can't necessarily set goals on without some data if you're able to have some data. And I'm also a big proponent of how did it feel while you were doing it? Just because it was super lucrative doesn't necessarily mean it you want to continue to do it, right? And so the last three years in the mortgage world have been tremendously difficult. And over the number one thing that we have no control over, which is interest rates and inflation, right? We can only do so much to combat them and and whatever else. But um, when I was looking at data, like 82% of my business all came from referral partners, people that I know just out in the community. I play softball still. I was I played softball all the way through college. My husband and I met that way. Um, you know, we played against each other for many years. Um, and now here we are married with a three-year-old. But like there's different avenues when I was looking at where each person that I actually closed the loan for came from. It was all relationships in me. And I'm like, okay, great. I can't have 50 one-on-ones a week. I will just burn out faster than I know what to do with. So, how do I get in front of more people, talk about something that really fires me up and that they actually need? And so I started asking some of my referral partners, and lo and behold, I was coaching them on how to grow their businesses through business development with it then through networking without actually knowing that I was doing it, right? They would come, they would come with questions, they'd call me after and be like, Sarah, I've got this group and I've got this going on. How would you handle this? What would you do? You know, how do I? I got four calls this year about like, hey, I know I need to make changes this year, but I'm having a hard time leaving this group. And I'm like, okay, well, let's take the emotion out for a minute and let's look at the numbers. Have you gotten any great leads? I was first, any leads. How many of them are quality? Did any of them close? No, no, no, no. Okay, you how long have you been with this group for? I've been with this group for two years. Okay, that's way too long. We I know you love the people, these people, the relationships will still be there, but it's time to move on and open up the door for something else. But with that, I realized I was like, okay, so I'm gonna start talking and maybe I can get into some real estate aid offices and not just come and talk about some boring 30-year fixed mortgages or the timeline that you have to do for this, this, this, or buy downs. I was like, I can truly add some value to these people that can go out and actually implement and get more business and better relationships. And so I that was originally my plan to fuel my mortgage business. And then a whole nother world opened up where people are like, you should be speaking on stages. And do you know that your stuff is a framework and you have a book inside of you? And so that started about three years ago, and now here I am. Um, I am speaking on stages. I finally am starting to get paid some decent money to speak on stages, but I did a lot of free talks just to pass on because I'm really passionate about physically having something to take and implement into my life personally or professionally. It's my biggest mantra when you go and you go to a conference or you do any of those things, you have to have something to walk away with. And I want people to, yes, feel inspired and empowered and relatable, but I also want to give you things that you can implement into your systems or improve your systems to make yourself actually get ROI. So that's kind of how all of this has come to fruition. I have some people that push me to come present at a various. I'm part of a networking group called Provisors. Um, I spoke at all these chambers in the area and different things. So people were like, yeah, we're not just like blowing smoke here, like you actually got something and it has snowballed much quicker. And um yeah, I'm just really passionate about teaching professionals that you can actually make money and feel good while you do it without feeling super salesy.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

You're singing my song, you know. I I carried a bag for I don't know, maybe 30 years. I was known as the uh as an IT professional. You ask my kids, like, what's your dad doing? Oh, he sells telephone systems, and I did that, you know, for Avaya, Lucent Technologies back in the day, and I did that for a number of years, and then over time, I'll never forget my own origin story as back. I was working for a Century Link, you probably appreciate because you're in Denver, they're called Lumen now. But I worked for them, and I remember going to uh it was training, right? And the training, one of the trainers said, I'm gonna show you a different way of uh uh of sales prospecting that'll probably change your life. You know, you hear that, you'll say, All right, we'll see, we'll see. But it actually did. He he he showed me how to operate in the LinkedIn world and how to digitally uh network and show up and actually create a personal brand behind it. And I got so good at that when I went through a pivot, you know, some years later, about five years later, um, that people came up to me and said, Hey, I, you know, I went through a layoff, that type of thing. And then I, but I was part of a lot of different associations, to your point. National Association of Health Service Executives, the Health Information System Society, which was uh HAMS organizations and a few others. And uh small businesses would say, Hey, Grant, we've loved, love, love, love this network you've built out. How about we we contract with you to actually present our businesses through your network? Now I had built now an intentional network, now up to 20 plus thousand people of C-suite executives and healthcare and finance. I don't think I didn't realize the true value of all of that, but that I had already built a lot of people when they start out, like that's the hardest thing to do. Well, I had already had that. Now I just needed the product or service that made sense. I say that to say this. You are a classic example for a lot of people who either know fault of their own, find themselves, what do I do next? Either they're burnt out in what they're doing, or they just don't know what happens next. And you can dig within yourself, it's like, what do people come to me for? And is that monetizable? Can I make that? You asked that question and came out on the other side with doing more than what you did and adding more value than you did than just doing mortgages.

Precise Messaging People Can Repeat

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Yeah, and I will say most of my clients and referral partners, if they call me, sometimes it's mortgage related, but the other times it's like, hey Sarah, do you know so a so-and-so or a this or a that? And they're coming to me because everything that I have, every introduction that I've given out hasn't been because I have to give it out. It's because it is actually the right fit to be given out, right? The personalities match or that person's trustworthy. They gave honest opinion, like I would have given an honest opinion, and they're not trying to get sold to. And I imagine, Grant, that is probably why you were so magnetic when you were doing this LinkedIn is because that's how you you were able to connect with people. It wasn't just, you know, sell, sell or the right thing. You you truly were putting your name on something because it was the right thing to do with the right person or this person and this person next. Um, and that's a huge, huge thing. And there's a lot of networking groups out there, don't get me wrong, I have done them, I'm in some of them, you know, BI, LaTip, all these other things where it's industry specific, you know, and you're all working for each other and you're forced to pass leads each month. I take that stuff very seriously. I don't just pass a lead because I have a quota to make, I pass a lead or I make an introduction because this person came to mind when I was talking to you, and this person came to mind. And as I'm listening to you talk about what struggles you may have, I'm the a fixer. So I'm I am looking for ways to possibly fix that for you or a solution for that. But really, I just think that this might be a beneficial relationship because I'm hearing this, this aligns with this person that I just spoke with a year ago, six months from now. And it just would be more beneficial for you guys to get to know each other, right? You need to be in each other's orbit for whatever reason. That's the power of networking. That's the power of building relationships. And, you know, 20,000 people on LinkedIn for you, Grant. I mean, that's massive. People say that all the time. They're like, well, I could, yeah, I could have a lot of people, but I am very intentional about who I accept into my LinkedIn. I don't just want messages coming through that are automated about trying to get me to buy something when I have no idea who this person is, right? You did it because you were you're like, oh, this might have started that way, but then you actually got to know them a little bit more and it it came to to fruition. So also leads me to the the next P in my framework is precise messaging, which I'm pretty sure you probably had super dialed in after that training. But this is something that people really, really um need to work on is the way they talk about their business. Whether it's a 30-second introduction on a conversation like we're having right now, um, please don't use the word anybody. It's too broad and nobody can grab onto it and actually make an introduction for you. Pretend you're talking to a 10-year-old, keep it very simple, very concise. And even if you can help anybody, right? I can serve a lot of people with my mortgage product. Talk about the stories or the things that that ideal person that you want to attract right then and there is happening. And it can change, right? You can talk about something for a month, you could talk about something quarterly, you could talk about something for every six months. It doesn't have to be the same product each time, but it needs to be consistent and it needs to be clear. And somebody needs to go, oh, I know somebody that just started a business a year ago and they're talking about wanting to buy a house and they're super frustrated because they don't know what they need to do to file taxes. That's a great introduction for me. And if that that is the correlation that you've been able to make based off of what the way I'm talking about business, you've done the right thing. We all have one of these. Okay. I tell people to record yourself, giving your 30-second introduction. You will be surprised what you see, what you're doing with your hands, how many times you say um and like and be like, oh, I crushed that. That's exactly what I'm going for. Or most people go, uh, that wasn't even close to what I was trying to say. Um, I hate this. Um, and don't be afraid to ask people what they heard, right? If you've got close friends in there, ask somebody what they heard. And if it's what you're trying to say, then great, you've got it dialed in. If it's not, then use the prompt and go back and forth and work on some of the wording and messaging and have it try to be consistent. I tell people a lot of times, any groups that I lead, is it opened okay for you to read off of your phone or a piece of paper if you need to to get practice in? I that's okay with me. You've got to start somewhere. But the messaging has to be clear and it has to be simple. Um, you talk over people's heads when you start using jargon and acronyms. And it may sound super fancy, and maybe back in the day it was a bit of a credibility builder. I promise you, now you have lost the people in the room, and it will take you 10 times longer to build the knowledge and the trust if you continue to use those types of things.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

I I agree with that. You first of all, you to your point about messaging, you have to have a point of view. It's not like you just regurgitate, you know, information or knowledge. Again, if it's something they can get off of Google, then you have it. What is your point of view about what it is that you're you're referring to or what you're talking about? And then having a personal story around that that gives you credibility, you know. And then those acronyms again, outside of your your industry or whatever, nobody knows what you're talking about. Nobody do that, you know. Um, so but practice does make perfect. I I started podcasting because I thought it was the most interesting way for me to get in touch with my ideal clients. He's like, oh, he's he's gonna let's let's share your expertise, and then what based upon that, you can then have you know continuous conversation or where it may be, or they refer you, it becomes a natural exchange uh because people are comfortable about sharing a story. So continue to tell me more of your story.

Judgment Free Money Conversations And Closing

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Yeah, so I will say uh when I look at you know the precise messaging piece of it, I'm sure I have said things that people are like, what? She's talking about the Fed cutting the rate. Like, yes, we've all heard that on the news, but we're like, I still don't quite understand. So, like keeping it dumbed down is really, really important. Because I remember when I was learning about mortgages, they were throwing around all these terms, and I'm like, I just came from like the physical therapy world of like, I'm working with somebody to heal their like hip replacement or knee replacement or shoulder replacement, and we're talking about files and charts over here, and you're talking about something completely different. And I they used to make fun of me so much in my office. They're like, oh, Sarah's back talking about the chart again and the patient notes. And I'm like, well, I'm sorry, this is the world I was in prior to for like many years, not only as an athlete, but like I was physically injured so many times. I went through physical therapy so many times to get through and and the other side. It's why I was so passionate about wanting to be a physical therapist. And when that dream faded, you know, because my 3.9 GPA wasn't high enough and I was rejected from 12 schools. Wow, I was like, okay, uh, I'm not sure what we're supposed to do here. This is what I thought I was supposed to do. And, you know, the mortgage world turns out there's actually a lot of overlap between serving people in a certain way, dealing with the mental that comes along with this decision of investing your money or the largest purchase you're ever going to be. It's not just so black and white. There's actually a lot of coaching and nurturing that goes in with it. That is a parallel to physical therapy. I'm just not healing your physical body, I'm giving you a tool for building wealth or a tool for, you know, saving money or getting equity or tapping into your equity or whatever it may be that you're trying to achieve. But really, without those, you know, failures and losses and all of those things, we wouldn't be where we are here today. And making me the type of person that people can call and share the hardships with and share the there's a lot of um the hardest part that I find in mortgages is when I get to the credit piece of it. There's some people that like are like, yep, I know what I'm at, and I'm at an 800. And then the most of the other people are like, I'm not sure. Or they can go onto their credit karma and they can see, you know, maybe they are in the 600s or, you know, low sevens, and there's like almost shame around it. And I'm like, listen, I am not here to judge anything that's happened in your past, how you spend it, if you've had a hardship and you've had to miss a payment on something, please don't miss a mortgage payment. If you own a home, that's like the worst thing ever. But life happens. We're experiencing it full blow right now with a lot of people struggling to put food on the table and stuff like that. So let me help you and get you to the other side of this in a judgment-free zone. I'm not here to put shame on you because you had a credit card late, you know, last year because things were too tight and you had to put food on the table over paying your minimum credit card payment. You chose to put food on the table for your family. That's okay. A lot of people think that they're gonna get judged by it. And maybe there are people in my industry that do judge on it or immediately stop talking to somebody because their credit's too low. I, on the other hand, I'm like, let me run it through my simulators. Let's see what we can do. If we can do something, I'm happy to share it with you. Here's the plan. The game plan is in six months, a year, sometimes it's three years, guys. This is not always an instantaneous situation.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Track record and how I can move forward. Uh, we've got to wrap up, but I want people because right where you are right now, I want people like this is who I need to talk to. I need to get educated. I need there's some things that you're talking about that um they want to be able to share with you. What's the best way to get in contact with you?

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Yeah, so best way is uh through um email uh or uh any type of social platform. I'm on LinkedIn, which is Sarah Hubbard, and in parentheses, it says formally flannery because that's my maiden name, and I networked for so long with my maiden name, and so many people know me that way. Um, I'm on Instagram at Sarah Ann A-N-N-Flan F-L-A-N-N. I live there with a lot of tips and tricks on on networking and just things that really can help improve you perfect personally and professionally. Um my website is Sarah Hubbard.com. Um, and then my email um is uh Sarah Hubbard at gmail.com. All of those places.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

What's your title of your book and how to how to make note of it?

SPEAKER_01 42:37

The it'll be on Amazon. Um, it is called the Intentional Networker. Um it is meant to be a fairly quick read, not one of those very long ones, but it's meant to be with you in your back pocket when you need a little pick-me-up or a reminder on how to improve something. So I'm with you all the time to continue to improve how you speak about your business, the systems you implement, and how we can use technology and the magic that is you to bring it all home.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

I love that. And we're bringing this home right now. First of all, I want to thank you for sharing so much wisdom and knowledge and expertise uh with me and your and our our audience. And I want to encourage your audience to see all the episodes of Follow Brand. They can do so at five star BM. That is the number five. That is start s t a r, d for brand, d for development, informasters.com. I want to thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks, Grant. You're welcome.