Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - UWM’s Marketing Success ft. Sarah DeCiantis | Coffeez for Closers ft. Joe Shalaby Ep. 37

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of coffees for closers. Today we're sitting down with one of the most brilliant minds in all of marketing. She's a catalyst to the success of United Wholesel Mortgage becoming a household brand. She was named Housing Wires Woman of the Year and Inman News, Woman of Vision. She's one of the most brilliant people you will ever speak to and a true inspiration to millions around the world. please welcome the chief marketing officer of United Wholesale Mortgage, Mrs. Sarah DeSantis. Thank you, Sarah. You bet.

Starting point is 00:00:40 Thank you. All right. I'm incredibly blessed and honored to be sitting down with you today. Obviously, I've been following you for years and years now. You're just such a tremendous and influential figure in the mortgage space and really someone who's really been able to push the mortgage marketing front to a whole new sphere. and, you know, your work has inspired thousands of people. So thank you for this opportunity to sit with you. Thank you for this opportunity to learn from you.

Starting point is 00:01:10 Now, whenever I sit with someone who I feel blessed to be around and someone who's inspired me to get better, to learn, to push my own marketing vision to another level, I like to ask them, you know, questions that help everybody, you know, progress. So the first question that I think helps everyone, everybody is how someone starts their day. So what's your morning routine? How do you start your day every single day? So I usually get up around 530 and I have two little kids. So I get myself ready first. And then I check my email. That's always. I always like open my phone, check my email.

Starting point is 00:01:50 Make sure there's nothing that like, you know, blew up between midnight and 530 a.m. And then I get ready. And then I get my two kids ready. So I have two little boys. They're going to be 11 and 8 in June. And oftentimes I have the privilege and the opportunity to take them to the bus because their bus actually leaves quite early in the morning. So I get them ready, get their breakfast, get them started off to a great day, make sure they have their snacks in their backpack and their water bars are full and all those good things. And then get them off the bus. And then I come into work. Nice. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:02:20 It sounds a lot like my schedule. I just fit in some stretching and some. Yeah. I need to do more of that. Yeah, yeah. A little bit, it may possibly a workout. So I noticed something you said that you said midnight. and 5.30. So that's it. That's all the sleep you get.

Starting point is 00:02:33 I mean, it depends on the day. I try to be asleep by 11, but that doesn't always work out. Now, you've been with United Wholesale Mortgage for the last 10 years, correct? Correct. And then what did you do when you started at UWM? So I was VP in marketing when I started. So I always been in marketing. I was the VP for about three years and then been the CMO for the last seven. That's awesome. So how did you get started in marketing? I went to school for it. I went to school for marketing. marketing and advertising and I my kind of dream or the the vision was that I was working an ad agency like that was the pinnacle right if you were in marketing and

Starting point is 00:03:10 advertising that's you're going to school for that's where you wanted to be right that was the cool brands were there and all the fun stuff and I did that I did that for about 10 years and I kind of did my you know agency tour in the Detroit Metro market I learned a ton I got to work on some very well-known prominent brands fun brands but there's a lot of hours, a lot of hours. And so I ended up making a switch from at agency to sports entertainment, thinking that that was going to give me a little bit more structure, like, you know, concerts don't pop up, you know, NBA games don't pop up. You can plan and schedule for that. But I was

Starting point is 00:03:49 on the side of the business that was partnerships. And so I was at the games. I was at the concerts. I was doing all these things. So a lot of times, you know, it would be, you know, four, sometimes five nights a week, I wasn't getting home until 11 o'clock. And so when I had my first son, I realized if I wanted to be a working mom, which I knew I wanted to be, it was not going to work for me to be at work until 11 o'clock consistently, you know, five days a week and miss all the things, miss the games, miss the, you know, the crawling and the walking. And all the things I was going to end up missing anyway. But did I want to be home for dinner by 6 o'clock, 630? Or wasn't going to miss all of that, So I really wanted to stay in marketing and I started looking for a job in marketing that would just simply have work life balance.

Starting point is 00:04:37 That was really my sole focus. And I was introduced to UWM and I was introduced to Matt Ishpia and sat down with him. And it was an inspiring interview when I sat with him. One, it was kind of, he just kind of opened the floor to say, what do you want to do? What do you think you can do? And at that time, UWM was known, but not like we are now. We are maybe ranked in like the top 10 at that point in time. You know, we still kind of had a identity crisis a little bit.

Starting point is 00:05:09 And so there was a lot of opportunity to kind of create a brand that was as modern as we are internally and showcase that externally. Because we were doing all the same things from a, you know, a partnership standpoint and client experience standpoint and focus on. focus on our clients and all those things were already happening. We weren't just, we weren't doing a great job of shouting that from the rooftop externally. So, um, thought I would,

Starting point is 00:05:35 you know, help them do that for a couple of years and then would be on to whatever the next thing would be and fell in love with it here. Love it. Well, you know, you caught, something caught my attention here.

Starting point is 00:05:45 It's like, you started in a marketing agent, uh, you know, marketing for something more fun, you know, you know, like in the sports space.

Starting point is 00:05:53 And then you went to mortgage. Yeah. Like, what was that transition like? to go from sports to mortgage. Oh, trust me. I thought many times, are you crazy?

Starting point is 00:06:01 Are you crazy? You're leaving sports and entertainment to go into the mortgage business. But, you know, honestly, I never thought that this would be a space that I would enjoy and feel as much fulfillment as I did working on, you know, progressive interents or six flags, you know, amusement parks or, you know, Cadillac or like all these, big, well-known brand names that, you know, you just, you say in every. everyone knows who they are, right? But there's a different opportunity that exists in the marketing space that we or the marketing opportunity that we have. We really, from a UWM standpoint, I'm fortunate enough that although we're one company, there's actually four brands that we have and that we manage that really has their own

Starting point is 00:06:46 identity and their own tone. And so, you know, we have UWM, which is obviously our client, our main client facing brand. And then we have UDM careers, which is all of our, I mean, we are hyper local from a recruiting standpoint. We only, everyone comes to campus every day. So if you live more than an hour away from here, you probably aren't going to work here. So we're hyper local with that. And we have, you know, some sports sponsorships that we have as part of that branding and that partnership. And then we have mortgage matchup, which is our B2C brand.

Starting point is 00:07:15 And how do we educate consumers and real estate agents that a broker is the best place to go? And then we have B a mortgage broker. How do we get more, you know, or how do we get more, clients into the space and how do we get people to switch over from retail to wholesale and understand the value there so while it is one company there's actually a lot of different hats that not only myself but my team get to put on and off um which makes it exciting too because that you know you don't it's not just all the b to b side we have b to c kind of two brands are b2b and two brands are b2c you you know one thing i want to ask you and i think a lot of people are listening um that are marketing

Starting point is 00:07:50 things that are proclaimed boring is like how do you make something boring fun yeah what are some the strategies that you yeah i mean i think that it's really tapping into like with with anything is what at the end of the day what is the end value or the end benefit that's going to get that client consumer whoever it is excited or get them to pay attention right because you know mortgages aren't necessarily exciting but to our to our direct clients you know our mortgage brokers they need to know the information that we have we just have have to position it in a way that catches their attention. From a consumer standpoint, they don't know a lot, right? And so a lot of our focus in the B to C space is making something

Starting point is 00:08:32 that seems intimidating, that seems unattainable easier and more friendly. So when we did the rebrand earlier this year from find a mortgage broker.com to mortgage matchup, that was really the focus, is who is our, who is that next generation of homebuyers that we can really tap into with this rebrand that's going to make it seem friendly, humanize it, not make it seem so intimidating or scary or unattainable. And so really at the end of the day, no matter what it is that you're marketing, or matter what brand you're really focused on, how do you grab the attention of your end consumer?

Starting point is 00:09:08 And that's what makes it fun and that's what makes it challenging sometimes. Yeah, yeah, because be a mortgage broker just sounds boring, right? Right, yeah. But mortgage matchup sounds more fun. So how do you get that inspiration to like make it more fun? And then when did you realize you needed to make that shift with Find a Mortgage Broker? Well, find a mortgagebroker.com. I'll tell you a little story about that one.

Starting point is 00:09:29 It was stood up over about a three-day period roughly eight years ago. It was the very first time that Matt was going on national TV. He was going on CNBC. And he called and he said, where am I directing people? What am I telling them? Because no one cares who UWM is. And if a consumer who's watching CNBC goes to UWM.com, we don't have anything for them because that's our broker site. And we were like, a great, great question.

Starting point is 00:09:59 So we stood up this site over a weekend, essentially, and called it find a mortgage broker.com. It was the URL that was available. Didn't think it was going to be something that, you know, stuck for as long as it did, but it did. And then it's just really about figuring out what's the right time to make that switch. and you know sometimes things take priority and things take precedent so we'd known for you know quite a few years that find a mortgage broker.com was not exactly the most appealing B2C brand name I mean first of all most people don't know what a mortgage broker is and so that was a hurdle in and of itself the name was clunky it was long it was you know it still had the stigma at the time too

Starting point is 00:10:40 yes exactly so making the switch was something we knew we wanted to do and so we did a lot of research We interviewed a lot of consumers at a lot of different stages in life, people who have purchased a home before, people who have not, you know, are they, you know, what are they looking for? What was for those that bought a home previously? What was intimidating about the process? What didn't they like about the process? How could we make it more friendly? You know, and then we showed them a variety of different brand names, a variety of different iconography and colors and all of all the things that goes into, you know, researching a new brand to make sure you can. make it as impactful as possible. And that ultimately is how we landed on mortgage matchup. I love that. Now, you come up with so many cool ideas for UWM. I mean, a lot of the inspiration that UWM has and a lot of the vision and everything that the mortgage broker sees, a lot of the, you know, the front end social media imagery is all derived from your vision. What do you think invokes that vision? Just to be human. I mean, I really, I will often tell the team we just need to humanize things.

Starting point is 00:11:51 We just need to make it feel like people are having a one-to-one conversation with the content that we're putting out there. Like at the end of the day, that is really what you're trying to do in so many different spaces is really have that one-to-one connection, that one-to-one conversation, and how do you really take something that sometimes is complicated, right? I mean, you know this. Like, the mortgage business can be complicated. Even some of the products that we roll out.

Starting point is 00:12:16 It's like how do we find that one hook or that one positioning statement that makes somebody look at a story on Instagram and go, I get it. I know what this is, even if maybe it's a little bit more complicated on the back end. But I think it's really keeping in the forefront, you know, the human factor and just the conversational factor. Like don't overcomplicate it. Don't make it too challenging. Don't try to squeeze every single thing you want to say into, you know, this tiny little space. like what's the hook? What do I what is what is the end consumer whoever they are? What do they care about and what do they need to know? And that a lot of times is what what drives what we put out

Starting point is 00:12:52 there. You know, I noticed one thing when I'm when I'm walking through here, Sarah, it's like you're such a grinder. You're you're running around. You work so hard and you got two kids, household to manage. You're doing so much. You know, like being the CMO of this massive company. where do you think all that passion that drive comes from for you you know i i i love what i do i love i mean everything i love i love i love being a mom i love you know i'm you know my my husband is wonderful and helps to support so much of what i do and if i didn't have that relationship it would be a lot harder to do what what i do but um you know i have a great relationship you know a great marriage i have a great relationship with my kids and i love what i do at work and i have a great

Starting point is 00:13:38 I have great relationships with people I work with, not just from an executive level standpoint. Like, yes, we all have great relationships. We all get along very well. We're, for the most part, really like-minded, which makes things gel very well from a, you know, vision standpoint and how we execute. But I have a great team. I mean, I really, there's, you know, not a lot of people, I think, that are fortunate enough to have a team like we have. Like, we're not that big. I mean, we have about 55 people on the marketing team, you know, for a company of, you know, over 7,000 and serving, you know, 40,000 brokers every day and all these consumers every day.

Starting point is 00:14:17 Like, we're, we're not a huge team, but we are all very focused on what needs to get done. And we all grind. It's not, it's not just me. I might maybe set the tone. But, you know, ultimately, I think we all just enjoy what we do. And we all love working together and focus on the things. and we all just, we do it together. Like it's not, we're in the weeds together.

Starting point is 00:14:41 We focus on things together. And I also am fortunate enough that my leadership team has all been with me for quite a long time. And even team members that are part of the team today, like some of them have been here longer than I have. And we're fortunate that we just all gel really well together and we all can focus on the same things. And, you know, it's not, I think often that, you know, you, you have an opportunity to work with a team of people that are all really rowing in the same direction, really understand the overarching vision. Oftentimes, you know, that, you know, you get some kind of, you know, maybe there's negative

Starting point is 00:15:21 pots or little like spaces on the team. And frankly, we really, we really don't, we don't have that. And it really makes everyone stay focused on what it is we got to, we have to do. And as you know, from walking around here, like we have a very, very, very positive culture. And that is, I think, what drives a lot of how we're able to achieve as much as we're able to achieve as quickly as we achieve it. Because, as you know, we move very, very fast. And if you're not all in it together, it's hard. And if I'm not doing what I do and if I'm not grinding like I grind, then I can't really expect that of the team.

Starting point is 00:15:57 And so when you set the tone as a leader that this is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it. And we're going to get it done together and it's going to be great. And it might not be perfect, but it's going to be great. And you just do it together, you know, it makes things work a lot better. You hit a lot of things that I want to ask you about in that. The first thing is like, who mentor, do you have a mentor or how have you become the way you are? Gosh, do you have people that mentored you? Do you have people that you really look to be like?

Starting point is 00:16:25 Like, how did you become this way? You know, there are so many people that have influenced where I have gotten at this point. you know, I mean, a lot of them, you know, from here. I mean, Matt is a huge mentor. Melinda, I know you've interviewed a huge mentor, you know, Desmond, like there are so many people that just even that I am fortunate enough to interact with on a daily basis that I look to and admire. And we all have kind of different approaches or different ways of looking at things or, you know, just are different lanes of expertise. And, you know, so a lot of it, I'm very fortunate enough to get to, you know, interact with and spend time with and learn from my mentor.

Starting point is 00:17:03 tours on a on a daily basis. But I also, you know, have, you know, I have, I have friends that aren't even in this space at all that I look to and admire that, you know, maybe they're, you know, a stay-at-home mom and the things that they're able to do and accomplish and achieve, like, inspire me. You know, I have, I have friends that, you know, have gotten to places in, in their, their careers that, that I really, really admire. I have, you know, family members, my parents, like, siblings, like, there's just so many people. I can't. I really like to draw from a lot of different individuals because I don't think that there's any one perfect or right way to do anything. And the more I think you can draw from different experiences and different opportunities and kind of just make it your own and how you want to take what you really like about somebody.

Starting point is 00:17:56 And you're never going to replicate it 100%, but how you just take those bits and pieces and kind of weave it into what you do. You know, it's, I really can't say, though, there's just one person that just, you know, was the pivotal factor. It's really a combination of a lot of different people. A culmination of several people. Yeah, I love that. You learn from everybody. You do. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:18:16 And I want to also talk about the culture because it's such an incredible culture here. Just like you said earlier, it's like, 7500 smiling faces. And I go, I get lost. I'm like walking out of the bathroom and get out of the other door. And I, you know, I'm like, where am I? It's like, the people are like, oh, you know, just try. Turn around here and they're just like, these are the nicest people on the planet. Yeah, good.

Starting point is 00:18:37 How do you create such a great culture? And I know you're a pivotal part of that because you have to relay that message of culture. Yeah. I mean, I think like anything, it starts at the top, right? I mean, and it doesn't, not necessarily talking about myself, but, you know, Matt, Matt's dad. Like, Matt's dad still walks around here. He's here in our Monday morning meetings and he's just as kind and as genuine, you know, and is caring as, you know, what you see here.

Starting point is 00:19:04 And so I think when the tone gets set, you have to keep repeating the tone every single day, right? You have to reinforce it. You have to keep people focused on the positive. You have to keep people focused on. We hold doors for people. When you see a client or anybody, you see somebody that's lost, you know, maybe there's a new team member. Like, ask them, you know, are you lost? Can I help you?

Starting point is 00:19:26 Like, is there anything I can do? Like, you know, buy somebody coffee at Starbucks if they're waiting in line behind you. Like just the little things that help solidify the culture that we have, I believe comes more naturally to majority of us than it does feel like, oh, God, I got to do this. It's just who we are. It's just who we are as people outside of UWM, but also who we are inside of UWM. And a lot of, you know, the things that even I've learned here, I use in my personal life. Like, you know, just, you know, even with my kids, like, you know, the easiest thing for them to kind of wrap their heads around a lot of times as, you know, obviously being positive, but also like taking accountability. Like, you know, they're going to be 11 and 8. They're getting to an age now where, you know, you can't just, nothing in life is ever somebody else's fault, right? Like you have ultimate control. And so our whole saying of, you know, be a, you know, a thumb pointer not a finger pointer. I use that all the time. I use that all the time. And I use it even my own. head. Like sometimes when I'm like, oh, something happened or whatever. And it's like, my first

Starting point is 00:20:33 reaction 10 years ago wouldn't have been, what could I have done differently to change that outcome? It would have been so and so did this and so and so do that. And so and that's how we got here, right? But 10 years later, your whole mindset shifts. And there's this different focus and there's a different, you know, collaborative focus. Because things are going to go. wrong. It will happen. And if you can keep focused on like, sure, there's always going to be two or four or maybe ten things that impacted the end result. But there's also two or four or ten things to learn from that can change the result for the next time. And when you can be focused on, you know, okay, let's fix it and solve it and then we'll regroup and figure out how it doesn't happen

Starting point is 00:21:21 again versus the finger pointing. It just kind of changes the way that you focus on things. And I think that's a big part of our culture too. Like we don't walk around saying things were somebody else's fault. What could you have done to change the outcome of that? And chances are 99.99% of the time, there was something you, that was in your control that you could have done differently. Maybe it was just a small communication piece. Maybe it was just a small conversation or a follow-up or who knows what it was.

Starting point is 00:21:50 But there's always something that was in your control that could have changed the outcome, too. That actually leads me in my next question because, everything you just said ties into this question. It's how are you guys continuing to foster such great talent? We do a lot of training. A lot of training happens around here. And not just, you know, mortgage training. We have leadership development trainers.

Starting point is 00:22:12 We have people. I mean, we all as even executive leaders, like Matt included, we all meet with leadership coaches. We all go to trainings every, you know, sometimes it's every month, sometimes every quarter, like depending on what the cadence is. But we learn and we grow and we get better. better and we focus on it. I mean, if you just say this is what our culture is going to be, but nobody ever focuses on it or nobody ever emulates it, no one ever shows you what we

Starting point is 00:22:40 expect, it's not going to go anywhere. But when you have all of these leaders that are rowing in the same direction, those team members are going to row in the same direction. And then their team members are going to row in the same direction. And you just, you just create this environment that it's all one team. And really we're going to figure out how to get to the best solution as one team. Nice, nice. I love that. Now, one thing that is on a lot of people's minds is artificial intelligence lately.

Starting point is 00:23:11 And how do you think AI is going to impact marketing, especially at UWM in the next couple of years? So it will be interesting to see. I mean, we're already using some elements of AI from, you know, a digital marketing standpoint. I think that a lot of people believe that AI from a marketing standpoint is going to take over everything from a creativity space, right? It's going to take over, you know, photos and it's going to take over writing and it's going to take over all these things. I don't believe that's going to happen. I really don't. I think that, you know, maybe in a future generation, you know, 100 years from now, AI get smart enough to be able to do some of those things.

Starting point is 00:23:51 But you can't take the human element out of something that, like I was saying earlier, that you're trying to humanize, right? If you take the human element out of everything, it's just going to be robotic. It will sound robotic. It will be robotic. So I think from a creative space standpoint, it'll be interesting to see how we're able to leverage some, you know,

Starting point is 00:24:09 tools from, you know, maybe video production or how we're able to audio production, like those kind of things. I think really where AI is going to influence a lot of what we do is allowing us to be smarter from, you know, digital placements, allowing us to be smarter from really anything on learning more about the people that are coming to our websites like and how do we customize that experience even further and how do we drive that that that human that personalized experience further i think that's where we're going to see the greatest influence hopefully from a uwm standpoint too because i think that it's critically important for us to

Starting point is 00:24:47 for us to understand who we're talking to and what they do what are what are you know is it somebody who is very heavy on VA loans. Well, let's make sure that when they land on our website, we're serving up all that content about VA as we possibly can to help educate them and train them and let them know what we do and versus it being more from a creative space standpoint. So extremely enhanced analytics on your demographic.

Starting point is 00:25:16 Absolutely. I love that. So what are some other marketing trends that you're seeing right now in the more mortgage space that you can share with people listening? I mean, I think AI is really the biggest thing. I think that that is really, everyone has, has their eyes on AI because it's the newest thing. I actually was very funny.

Starting point is 00:25:39 I saw this thing pop up on Instagram and it was a news broadcast from 1994. And they had this whole segment on the internet. And they had this whole segment on how are you supposed to? to say the at symbol because they didn't know right it was like you know channel seven news is it around is it at how do you say it right because it was so new and it was this this new development of um you know that people hadn't heard it before they didn't know they didn't know how to use it they didn't know what was going to mean they didn't know how it was going to impact our daily lives granted that was you know a long time ago but i think it is us sitting here talking about AI now in you know 30 years from now

Starting point is 00:26:23 it's going to be like people in 1994 talking about how do you say the at sign right um because it's just it's so new right now but it's going to have such a massive impact um you know it isn't going to be a trend it's just going to be this ever evolving thing um that is going to allow us to be smarter and faster um and and be able to serve our end consumer um the best way possible yeah it's it's funny um we're on like our company is on probably six or there's seven different AI platforms. Yeah. It's like, and we're paying for this AI platform that does this and then this AI platform does that. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many different derivatives of AI.

Starting point is 00:27:04 Yeah. And then what's going to stick? Yeah. What's going to be ultimately the thing in 10 years from now or maybe it's five years from now. What's going to be ultimately like something comes together, this culmination of, okay, these are all the best pieces of AI and someone's going to figure out. Yeah. One AI platform will just do everything.

Starting point is 00:27:21 Why am I paying for nine? Exactly. Yep, yep. So right now, like a lot of people want to enter the marketing space. Is there any specific skill or a mindset that one has to have to really win in this sort of environment right now? You know, I think it just marketing, I think, is one of the main spaces, IT is another, but where you can never relax on what you think you know, because it's always, going to change. There is always going to be something new that comes out, a better technology,

Starting point is 00:27:58 a better, you know, social media platform. There's always going to be something new. So if you're somebody that likes to be comfortable and kind of do more repetitive things on a daily basis, marketing isn't really for you, nor is the mortgage industry, frankly. But there is a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of go, that goes into how do you keep that mindset of ever evolving of ever never thinking that this is it never thinking i got it figured out because as soon as you think you've got it figured out it's going to change and and we don't know what the next change will be and so reading blogs staying up on the latest trends staying up on you know not necessarily always jumping ship to what the next thing is but paying attention and knowing how that is impacting you know your your clients knowing how

Starting point is 00:28:51 they're utilizing it. How can we be utilizing it? I mean, we didn't even, from a UWM standpoint, we didn't even jump on TikTok for a while because it was like how exactly can we most effectively utilize this new social media platform versus just being on it to say we're on it. And you're on it for UWM life. Yep, exactly. That is one of our best recruiting tools. By the way, that's your highest performing social media. Yeah. That's the highest performing with the most engagement. Yep, exactly. And it took us a little while to jump on because it's like, how do we best utilize it? How do we best, you know, not just to have one more social platform that we're creating content for it and engaging with.

Starting point is 00:29:28 But how do we make sure that that's where the time is best spent? Because, as you know, it takes a long time to create content. It looks easy when you see something that's 20 seconds long. Yeah, like, oh, that was easy. That only took 20 seconds. Right, exactly. 10 seconds. And really, there's all this footage that you took and all this time that you spent and scriptwriting, all these editors and, you know, audio.

Starting point is 00:29:47 And I mean, there's just so many pieces that go into it. But, but yeah, I mean, it's definitely just constantly having kind of your brain on a swivel because it's just ever evolving. And it will continue to. I mean, marketing, I don't think it's ever going to be a space where you're just going to have these, you know, experts, right? Yeah. You can't, you can be really, really good. But to say you're an expert in marketing, that's so broad. That's such a broad.

Starting point is 00:30:17 to make and I think you just have to be an expert learner yeah absolutely now with that said like because you you built up this massive marketing company I think when you started you were the VP how many people were there when you started two two so you're the VP of two people yeah yeah just awesome we got yep exactly and what do you think some of the biggest challenges you faced when you set up marketing for UWM you know I think one of the biggest challenges is in all honesty was demonstrating the value that marketing can bring to an organization. You know, when you have a company that was really built from the ground up with really very

Starting point is 00:31:01 little marketing, you know, there was definitely sales support and there was, you know, ads being placed in Scotsman's Guide and things like that. Trade shows were being attended and things like that. But really demonstrating the impact that marketing can really, really have at a broad scale and how that can really help drive and catapult business. That's easy when you go to an ad agency because everyone understands it. When you come to a company that doesn't really have depth from a marketing standpoint or maybe even depth in understanding what marketing can do, that was probably one of the biggest challenges and you know it was a challenge I was really happy to take on and really happy to sit here

Starting point is 00:31:50 today and say 10 years later like you know they get it and we get it and we you know spend a lot on marketing and and we have a lot of focus on marketing and marketing is very very much so a valued piece of the overall puzzle of how you know UWM you know goes goes to market and communicates things and partners with sales and partners with IT and does all these things you know that that that wasn't that wasn't really the case 10 years ago. We were talking about that yesterday. It's like, Sarah, I need you to tutor these people on explaining this. This is like, you know, it's complicated for people who don't know marketing are not in the trenches with marketing.

Starting point is 00:32:26 And now marketing has evolved so much because there's so many different platforms and there's so many different, you know, ways to market. And it's like, honestly, marketing now it's like some of the stuff, you know, you see me do, it's, I look like I'm crazy. It's okay. You got to have a little crazy in you to be in marketing to begin with. Yeah. So it's like and then explaining it to analytical people in mortgage, it's like, what? No, show me the numbers. Exactly. Don't show me pictures. Yeah. Like, show me how this is more money, more funding. Like that's not how it works. Yep. Now, a couple last questions I have in the one of them is like about your family. Like you got two kids and I know they're grounded. You know, and they're fortunate enough to be, you know, well to do. How are.

Starting point is 00:33:12 are you keeping your kids so grounded to sustain that same level of grit that you have? You know, I think that I think some of it, just like a lot of things with kids, they see what you do and they replicate what you do. I mean, I honestly was leaving. My kids don't have school today. And I was leaving this morning and my older one was awake and he said, mom, why do you have to go? Why do you have to leave? Can you just stay home with us today? And I said, no, I got to go to work. And he said, well, you don't have to. And I said, well, I suppose you're right. I made the choice to be a working mom and because I made that commitment to my team, I have to go to work today. And he was like, oh, okay. So, you know, I think just demonstrating for them, not only I

Starting point is 00:33:54 think it's, I personally think it's good for, I have two boys. I think it's good for them to see that both mom and dad work. But we also make time for that. And we also, you know, there's definitely carve out times like the weekends. We call family days. Like that is, you know, with, with few exceptions, we spend my husband and I both we spend time with the kids like that's what that's what we do whether it's going their sports or we go you know to the zoo we go to a baseball game or whatever it is that they want to do we throw the football in the yard like whatever it is we spend time with them and I think that you know the other piece of it too is I started to or we both my husband I started to they have these like little debit cards they're like kid debit cards and they get they get money

Starting point is 00:34:36 every week for doing chores around the house and then when they all of a sudden want whatever a new squish mellow a new pair of Jordans like whatever it is a lot of times the first question is well what do you have in your account how much do you have in your account is that how you want to spend your money and you know my younger one he's got a lot of money in his account my older one not so much because he wants to buy the you know yeezy slides and he wants to buy all these other things like okay but you're going to spend your money doing that like we obviously get you the things you need and of course you get some things that you want but like you want to go outside of you know kind of the needs and the wants and you just want it because you want it and there's not really a reason

Starting point is 00:35:16 then you need to look and see what you have in your account and so that I think is is hopefully jury's still out but hopefully teaching them a little bit of financial discipline that just because mom and dad have money doesn't mean you have money and you need to earn the money and you need to do the things around right now I mean they're young still but they do things around the house to contribute. Like, you know, we don't have a house manager. Like, things don't get done for them. Like, they do their laundry.

Starting point is 00:35:44 They put away the lawn. They make their beds. They do the dishes. They bring in the garbage cans. Like, they do the things around the house. Because I think it's very easy as working parents to feel guilty. And so to fulfill or to, to plug that guilt, a lot of times you buy himself, right? And it's like, oh, sure, sure.

Starting point is 00:36:06 You want that? You want that? Sure. Sure. Yeah, you know, whatever. So, and not that I'm not guilty of buying my kid stuff. Of course. We go to Target and all of a sudden, there's four things in the basket that I know I didn't put in there. And you're at the register and you're like, oh, okay, I guess so, right? But you're not buying easies.

Starting point is 00:36:20 But we're not buying easies, right? He bought them himself. He can buy them himself. But, you know, I think they think it's a, I don't know that many parents can, you know, fully judge the job they've done with their kids until, you know, they're 30 because who knows what has happened. But I think that just teaching them the basics and teaching them how to, you know, just know the value of something, know the value of not only like just, you know, time with your family, but also the value of money and value of friendships. And then when they see us doing all these things and not doing our best to not just hand them everything, hopefully at the end of the day, you know, that teaches them a little bit of discipline and keeps them, you know, a little grounded. Yeah, and that's something, you know, I'm always asking other parents, especially successful parents who we don't want to give our kids everything because we grew up different.

Starting point is 00:37:19 You know, we didn't grow up like in the same abundance. Exactly. I want to make sure that they're grinding. They have the same work ethic. I came from a third world country and my kids aren't as fortunate to experience that, you know. And in one sense, they're fortunate to be here in the U.S. and have more abundance. instant, but how do we make sure that they grind? Exactly.

Starting point is 00:37:39 Because things aren't going to come easy. Absolutely. But when they see us doing it, you're halfway there, right? Yeah. You know, if we didn't do it, it's hard to tell them to do it. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So how much you give them for allowance, just asking? Ten bucks a week.

Starting point is 00:37:55 Ten bucks a week. And they got to take out the trash, do the bed every day. Yep. Yep. Empty the dishwasher. If the dishwasher needs to be empty. Well, that's my job. See, I got to delegate that.

Starting point is 00:38:04 Yeah, it actually takes a lot off of my place, so I don't have to do it. But no, I mean, they, you know, and not that they do it every single day. You know, there's definitely days and it's like, okay, well, you only got $8 this week or instead of your 10 or. $2 deduction. You missed the trash. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, I think, you think there's a lot of, you know, things you try as a parent.

Starting point is 00:38:26 And, you know, I think that's what is something, you know, cool about, you know, eventually someday maybe, hopefully being a grandparent is like all the things that you're like, oh, I wish I would have done that differently. Maybe you can do a little differently with your grandkids, but they don't give you a trial run on being a parent, right? You just got to figure out as you go. And you do the best you can. Everyone does the best they can, right? And the way we do it might not be the way that somebody else does or the right way for somebody else. But you do your best. And I think at the end of the day, as long as you know, you're propping your kids up and, you know, recognizing them for the things that they do well and they feel loved and appreciated.

Starting point is 00:39:02 and, you know, they feel like, you know, you as a parent, you know, you've got their back. I think those are some pretty good things for kids to feel. That's awesome. And I could tell you're raising your kids right. Well, again, jury's still out. Not until they're 30. Can we judge? But we're trying.

Starting point is 00:39:18 You're doing a really good job. You know, you got all the barometers in place, all the metrics in place. It's like. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. Now, this question, I know UWM also emphasizes this a lot. But this is a three-prong question. So I don't know if they hit.

Starting point is 00:39:32 hit all these metrics, but what is a personal goal that you have for yourself, a family goal that you have for the family, and then a business goal that you have for the whole entire marketing department? That, okay, so that's interesting because I've never been asked the separation of the personal and family, so I have to, I feel like I have to rethink that. But a lot of my personal goals kind of really fold into my family is we take vacations. Like that is, that is something that my husband and I both value a lot with the kids. and, you know, there's, we carve out time to take them on trips.

Starting point is 00:40:06 It's one of the best memories I have from being a kid. Now, granted, we as growing up, like, we went on one vacation a year. Like, that was it. We had our one vacation a year. And it's some of the best memories that I have of my childhood and wanting to replicate with them. And also, too, it's, you know, I have a slight, you know, a strategy tied to that as well is that, you know, if at some point the kids are going to get older,

Starting point is 00:40:30 and they might not want to go on vacation with mom and dad. But when they realize how much vacations cost, guess what? They might still want to go on vacation with mom and dad. So I feel like I may instill this traveling bug in them that both my husband and I have, that, you know, we'll get to hang on to a few more family trips. So traveling is definitely, you know, something that we set goal every year. I mean, we really try to go on three to four family trips a year. They're not week-long trips all the time.

Starting point is 00:40:55 It might just be a long weekend somewhere. But really try to get that family time with. them and then from a professional standpoint you know we just we just redid um one portion of udum.com that is a really um i i believe can be a true sales driver because of the elements that we focused on in in the dashboard the pro rankings and being able to have insight into you know your control your price and all all these elements that really help to drive and grow our clients business um and and it's the it's the very first entry point into our website and so one of my big goals for this year is making sure that that area of the website is working as hard as it can to take a little bit of the lift off of not only the clients having to remember what are the things that I should be doing to help grow and support my business but also supporting the sales team you know we work really really closely with with the sales team as we do a lot of teams but we're pretty tight at the hip with the sales team and you know figuring out ways to you know take things off there because they have so many things to think about and talk about and do all the time too how can we we support and

Starting point is 00:42:00 and with the dashboard launching in January earlier this year, it really is a focus to make that space work as hard as it possibly can for our clients, but also for our sales team. So the adoption of that new dashboard, yeah. And that dashboard is, there's a lot to it. Yes, there is. There's a lot, like I don't. But you remember what it looked like before?

Starting point is 00:42:19 It was like a junk drawer. You couldn't find anything. You didn't know where anything was. Like now it's sectioned out in focusing on the things that makes sense to have in sections, but also when you first get there too, like focus on like the business piece of it. And it used to be focused on the marketing piece of it, if you remember.

Starting point is 00:42:34 Yeah, yeah. I love that. The adoption is very, very important of that page. Yep. So I think more trainings on that would be important. All right, you got it. Yeah, especially for us. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:45 We'll do a dedicated training. Yeah. We need more dedicated trainings. We used to have those, but then Jessica's like, well, we got to, you're not allowed to record them. And then it's like, you can't send, you can't do it on your Zoom room. We'll put them in Academy.

Starting point is 00:42:58 So you guys have them. Yeah, put them in Academy. Yeah. But adoption on Academy has also been tough because people don't want to voluntarily learn. They don't want to do it. Well, it depends on the expectation that gets set, right? We have a lot of clients that are asking for more video content to be put on there because they have forced all of their LOs to go through all 168 videos that we have out there.

Starting point is 00:43:16 So now they're asking for more content because their team's gone through everything. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You could do that when someone, like we run an independent platform. And I could tell them to do that. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:27 But then they got to go do it. Then them doing it is going to be very unlikely because they're independent. Yep. But if they're on my payroll and I force them, yeah, it's easy. Yeah, exactly. And you've got to sit through this before, you know, your next check. Right, exactly, exactly. Proofing we did it.

Starting point is 00:43:42 Yeah. So my last question, and it's a, it could be a very long question, it could be a very short question, depending on how you interpret it, is when you get in front of the pearly gates, when you get in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you? Well, I hope he says good job. job. But, you know, I, gosh, that's a really great question. I think he's probably going to say, great job doing the best job that you could do, or at least I hope that's what gets said. But I don't know, I've never really, I've never really thought about that that far in advance, or at least hopefully it's far in advance. I just try to live each day, you know, the best. And sometimes, you know, there aren't the best. day. Sometimes I know I could have done better. Sometimes at the end of the day, I'm like, today was a great day. Like I did all the things I needed to get done, you know, at work. I did the things with the kids. You know, we maybe stayed up a little bit later, watched a movie, ate popcorn, whatever, whatever it might be. But I think that, you know, it's just, it's, you know,

Starting point is 00:44:46 thinking about a whole life culmination. I'm not sure what it gets that. I just, hopefully, each day, I can have the ability to continue to maximize the, you know, opportunities and embrace the opportunities that are presented because each day presents new opportunities and new challenges. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you for coming on on, coffees, for closures.

Starting point is 00:45:10 You've been an awesome guest. You're such an incredible human being, an inspiration to everyone in the mortgage space, especially an inspiration to all women who are wanting to enter the mortgage space or who are currently in the mortgage space. God bless you. God bless your family. I hope you accomplished all your goals this year. Thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:45:25 Thank you.

Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - UWM’s Marketing Success ft. Sarah DeCiantis | Coffeez for Closers ft. Joe Shalaby Ep. 37

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