Our guest -- Sarah Daniels -- a versatile professional from two very different career streams, shares her remarkable journey of reinvention. She candidly chats about the complexities and challenges faced during her transition from a secure career in television to a thriving role in the real estate industry. The discussion reveals the often-misunderstood nature of the media landscape, contrasting the perceived glamour with the stark realities of personal sacrifice and the pursuit of authenticity. Sarah underscores the importance of trust and genuine connection, and further explores the broader societal implications of financial pressures and the evolving dynamics of community engagement in a rapidly changing world.

Our guest reflects on the burdens of debt and the societal expectations that often hinder individuals, particularly younger generations, from achieving financial independence and stability. The discussion invites listeners to engage in introspection concerning their own experiences with economic disparity and the challenges about the quest for homeownership. The emphasis on truth-telling and community underscores the importance of using our voices to champion authenticity and cultivate a sense of belonging in our communities.

Takeaways:

1. The podcast emphasizes the importance of utilizing one's voice as a powerful tool for change and connection.
2. Listeners are encouraged to embrace authenticity and transparency in their personal and professional lives.
3. The conversation highlights the challenges of navigating the real estate market in a rapidly changing economy.
4. Community engagement and building trust are essential for fostering meaningful relationships in business.
5. The discussion reveals the impact of social media and online platforms on modern communication and community building.
6. The episode serves as a reminder that genuine connection and truth-telling remain vital in today’s society.

Your voice is your superpower.

Use it.

Welcome to Ignite My voice Becoming unstoppable. Powered by Ignite Voice Inc. The podcast where voice meets purpose and stories ignite change.

Deep conversations with amazing guests, storytellers, speakers and change makers.

If you ever have a problem, you need to tell me. Like I can't read mine so you need to let me know. And I have no problem telling people where to go and how to get there.

Today we chat with someone who has lived more lives than most of us dare to imagine.

TV personality, radio host, realtor, author, advocate, straight shooter.

She left a full time media job by choice in an industry where no one walks away.

And now she's a powerhouse realtor who.

Leads with transparency and runs a Facebook community of nearly 100,000 people who adore her. No nonsense heart.

Today we talk debt, trust, truth telling. The business of real estate and of being a good human.

This is a conversation about grit, reinvention and radical relatability.

So let's get loud.

We're Kat and Kevin and here's Sarah Daniels.

But people were shocked when I left because I had to be. I had a full time job on morning television and this was morning television before Facebook and social media had divided that.

So was a much bigger market watching you than it is now. And it was because I couldn't afford to live. I mean I got my real estate license two years before I quit.

I had like a planned exit but people couldn't believe that you were like, but you know, you're on TV and I'd say if you think it's glamorous, I don't know who are you talking to? I get up at 3:45 in the morning, I have to like, there's no makeup artist at work.

It's not like I'm walking in and it's one of these fancy shows that's not happening. You're doing your own hair, you're talking to a robo camera.

Right.

And then you drive home again and you're exhausted all the time because you gotta go to bed at 7:30 at.

Night and you're worried about where you're paying.

Yeah, exactly. Meals for your dogs and God forbid if something happened to my car or like a sudden expense came up.

I mean I was lucky to come from a family that could help me, but most people are not in that position.

You had a vision, you saw a vision. You got your real estate license and you took your skills from the media and translated that into a very successful career.

What do you use now that is from that experience that is really helpful.

I don't know. Yeah, we were talking about this previously. I think like a lot of things, things are personality based.

I mean, if you want to be in sales and television, whether you're an on air personality or a radio personality, you are selling yourself. So you have to is all part of it, right? So if you can't sell yourself and your own personality, you're not going to get too far.

Real estate is much the same thing. I know that people think that we just sit around going like, oh, I'll print some money now.

But it's a lot of it is interpersonal relationships and trust and getting to know people and chatting with them. Much like you're talking on a podcast right here. Right. They have to feel comfortable. They have to feel comfortable trusting you.

They have to feel comfortable that they can call you at any time and ask questions. I mean, you know, I'm sure that we've all had experiences where we've had to deal with an accountant or a lawyer or somebody.

And you felt that when you met them. Cause they're wearing the suit and everything and you're like, oh my God, like they're judging me. And you feel insecure about asking questions.

That's counterintuitive to what they should be doing. So you have to be relatable.

It's one of our essential themes is connections between humans.

Yeah, I know.

It's all about connection. That's at the root. Right.

When I was at Global, I mean, like, you know, I'm an average looking girl.

I would joke about, like, I mean, no, but I would joke about, you know, when I turned 40, I said I turned 40 on the air, which was, oh my God, good lord. Like people, you're admitting that you're turning 40. That's like horrifying.

I mean, I remember once Lynn Collier, who's a good friend of mine and I still talk to all the time, but she looked over, this is how we were exhausted and sleep deprived all the time. And she looked over at me. It was just before the 6 o' clock hour began. It was the end of the half hour break and we were all sitting at the end.

She looked over at me, she said, do you have mascara on? This is live on camera. And I'm probably not. I don't even know if I've brushed my teeth right. Like, I can't even tell you.

Like, you know, is there something sticking? But that was the thing is the audience was 65% women, most likely like 60 to 65. And they were.

Because the show is basically on a loop of information of traffic, weather and high. Like, you know, it's a quick turnover. But a lot of moms and women were watching that. So me being kind of.

Me being kind of like, I don't even know if I've got underwear on. Has anybody like, you know, was relatable to a lot of women?

Authenticity, connection.

But they used to bring in all the, like these, these people from, from Texas, which was hilarious that there were media consultants. And it was, you know, they.

And it's always funny when America tries to please, as we've been seeing for the last year, America tries to put their vision of what Canada should be on Canada.

It's a different culture.

It's a totally different culture. And they tried to do that here to little avail. Right? I mean, it just was not gonna work. They wanted us to be together. We're not gonna do it.

It just strips all your personality, it makes you generic and it takes away your authenticity because you are you.

It's funny because we did have pushback from some of our higher ups at time. They thought we were goofing around and having too much fun and joking around. Oh, how terrible.

And we didn't want, you know, we're like a bad comedy show. So we tried to push back. And then I remember saying to. And it was myself and Steve Darling and Zach, Spencer and Lynn and saying, you know what?

Let's just go along with what they want. And we won't interact, you know, at all. So when we throw to each other and we joke about, we're just going to say, okay. And now for whether here's.

We're not going to do anything. And so we did that for about two days, didn't say anything, and the phone lines were blowing up.

And again, this is before the Internet was really like, as big as it is now, it was like still a thing. But people were. They were very concerned. What's happened? Are they all mad at each other? What's going on? Why aren't they talking with each other?

Especially to younger people that we engage with Legacy medias, completely dead. It does not exist.

They don't see any relevance to it.

I know.

You know, the world has changed since then.

Well, the thing is, what is sad about it is it was like, you know, and this is going way back. People always remembered Uncle Walter, Walter Cronkite. Right.

So you had a shared understanding and a shared experience, and now we don't have any of those things. So, I mean, especially with kids, if they're listening to Joe Rogan, I'm not listening to Joe Rogan.

So where they're getting their information and what Joe Rogan says is completely foreign to me.

And is it real?

Is it fact checking? And is it real?

And far as it'll be in you.

There is no fact checking. Right. You don't need an FCC license in the States to be a podcaster. You don't need a license from the CRTC in Canada to be a podcaster.

You can say or do whatever you want on social media.

And as long as you are not instigating hate speech or crossing certain lines, which people still manage to skirt around anyhow, you're going to be able to get away with it. And. And that's how we end up with blank Trudeau bumper stickers, blank Carney. Is there hope? Is there a way through this?

You've also done something interesting that we were talking about before we started the podcast, and that is the Facebook group that you created a while ago, right?

Yeah.

You've got exposed to some of this stuff.

Yes. Well, so when I moved back from.

And so I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna, I'll start a Facebook group. I belong to some in Ontario, you know, to sort of get acclimated, acclimat with the people there. So I'm gonna do that here.

One of the most important things for me is a safe place for a lot of seniors. Because, I mean, if you're listening to this and you're under 40, you're going, oh, my God, Facebook, Sarah. Like, seriously, like, shoot me now.

Like, that's my mom's site. And you know, Clearly I'm over 40. So yeah, it's my grandma's site. But that's, that's for the older generation.

That is their touch base for social media. They might be on Instagram to look at the pretty pictures. They're not on Snapchat. They're not like.

I mean, I had a Twitter account, but that became so poisonous that I dumped that. I'm on Blue Sky. I don't use it all that often. I use threads fairly often. But Facebook was kind of the dominant thing and it took off.

And especially for older people. And what isn't important to me, especially in that group, is to make sure that older people are well served.

And especially because there is so much crap out there where older people are being taken advantage of, online scammers, et cetera. So a safe place for them. So we moderate the group really strictly.

But on the flip side of that, there are people that when they get online, apparently don't realize that I can see them. We don't allow anybody to post anonymously, which a lot of groups do. You have to standing behind your profile.

If you have something to say, you've got to own it. But people will come on. And it's always, as I've said to you before, it's always the comments of, oh, things are so different.

Things were much better when I was. There's so many people, which is to me always a code for things were much whiter. Things were much whiter.

And like, there's a lot of brown people down here and where did they get. And it's, you know, anti immigrant. It's all that kind of stuff. So I am sounds kinda like maggot.

Taking over my neighborhood.

It is. And it's fascinating because I come across as bossy and I am. But I identify myself there as like, hi, it's me, the benevolent dictator.

And you know what? I'm really not interested in your racism and your hate. I can see who you are and everybody else can, please stop it, we're gonna ban you.

I mean, even when somebody will, which is the. This is the kind of stuff that just drives me wild. There's a pride crosswalk down in White Rock and you know, pride month.

And so we changed the banner during Pride Month on like the sort of the Facebook background and people are, you know, giving angry face emoji.

Oh, that's wokeism.

And we actually will go through and go like, okay, let's, like, let's check every one of these people and then we'll look at their profile to think. Because sometimes people actually hit the wrong thing. Right. So we'll forget. But for the, for the most part, it's like, yep, removed. Removed, removed.

Like we're, you're out of the. You're out of here. We don't need that kind of crap. You want to be crappy person, do it. And the reason. Well, and they. And they do.

But the thing is, a lot of them try to come to the group because again, it's almost 100,000 members. It's a big audience.

Infiltrate.

None of their remaining friends and family on their own, on their own page has any interest in what they're saying. So they're going to try and migrate to a group where they can be an asshole in general to everybody.

Are people standing up for themselves? We were talking about the incident in the United States where the President called a journalist piggy and nobody said anything in the room.

Are people speaking?

I think, I don't think. I mean, oftentimes things will be reported to me and to the other admins and moderators in the group. Like, it takes a village. Right?

We've got like six people that, that monitor this group. It's a full time. Like on weekends, we do small business Sundays. And just monitoring on Sundays is like, you just want to kill yourself.

I spend probably two to two and a half hours a day. That's a lot. Yeah. And nobody's getting paid for this. Right. But do people stand up for themselves? To a certain extent.

The problem is it's often in the comments and it devolves directly to name calling. And as soon as that happens, it's like depending on what it's about, people, I just suspend them for like 24 hours.

If it's really obnoxious, you're out. But that's sort of indicative of the discourse in general and people's bravery online.

And as I point out, it's like, which we were talking about just a few minutes ago. I have pointed out in the group, most of you here are over 40. You all know better. Like, you should know better. Grow up or I'll kick you out.

I mean, it's shocking, you know, this whole, like they're supposed to be modeling to the younger generation. It's, you know, and you're.

And again, like I've said this on radio before, you know, driving around behind somebody who's got like, A Fuck Trudeau or a fuck Carny sticker on the back. You know, clearly, I don't necessarily identify with that side of the aisle, but I wouldn't.

You wouldn't see me with a Fuck Poliev or fuck, you know, whoever Anders you. I would never do that. People are driving behind you with their children, like, what is wrong with you?

And there's one thing to have an intellectual conversation about your likes and dislikes, but to demean other people and to.

Oh, come on, that's free speech. We're allowed.

As I said, people keep on saying to me, it's like, you're violating my First Amendment right to speech. And I'm like, this is Canada. A, so, no, but thanks for coming out.

And B, this is Facebook, and you agreed to the rules when you joined and answered the questions. And if you don't do that, you don't get to join. Or, I mean, you can join, but you can't comment or do anything like that.

So, you know, if you don't like it, take a hike. I don't care. Like, I don't care.

Comment respectfully and intellectually with something to say.

And it's probably my business because I'm sure that there's people out there that go, like, you know, oh, she's so mean, or, she won't let me do this. She won't let me be a racist and a bigot. I want to be a racist and a bigot. She called me out. This sucks, you know? And then those people are also.

I'm gonna say they're the biggest snowflakes when they get called out, right? Like, they're the ones that hate, like, the woke agenda, but they are the biggest snowflakes when things don't go their way. But you're brave.

Like, not many people. You don't think you're brave.

No, I don't think I'm brave. I think I'm like. I just think I'm loud. I come from a long line of loud people.

So this is genetically predisposed to be, you know, shoot from the hip, right? So. So I would love to say that it's a strong, like, such strong moral character and all that kind of stuff.

But the problem is it's very difficult to lie in general to people because then you have to keep track of who you lied to and what you said. It's much easier to tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant it is, because it's just a lot easier to do that. I also think it sort of negates gossip.

So when I move back from Toronto, like, I. I was broke. I mean, I couldn't lie. You know, I'd sold my house when I moved out there.

I'd spent it, like, trying to get, like, I moved to Toronto thinking, I'm gonna restart business. I'm gonna do something different in my 50s. I'm gonna, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Huge catastrophic financial wipeout.

When I came back, like, I couldn't have financed a canoe, like, literally. And I was a former home. I'm still a renter right now. I'm still, like, you know, paying off debts. I'm in my early 60s. What happened?

I say to people all the time in regards to real estate, and they'll, you know, I remember a girlfriend of mine, years ago, going through a separation and, you know, lives in a nice area and, you know, were they gonna have to sell the home? And she said, it's, you know, I drive.

I drive to the elementary school and we drop off the kids and there's all these, you know, moms that look, are wearing their Lululemon and they're driving a new BMW. And I said to her, you know, as a realtor, I can tell you that half of those people are up to their elbows in credit card debt.

That car is leased and they have a huge mortgage. That house is not even fully furnished.

So you're deceiving.

So you're seeing the duck on the water, but you are not seeing the paddling underneath.

That's great. That's wonderful to hear. Now I'm wondering how many coffees Sarah has had this morning. You cover a lot of ground.

I know.

One of my expertise is also policy. Okay, Policy development, whether that's international or Canadian wide or whatever.

So I'm thinking, as I listen to you, that we've covered a whole lot of ground across maybe three or four decades.

I do ramble.

It's beautiful. I mean, we're going from Thatcherism and Reaganism into modern times. Across that period, policy has shifted enormously.

And you come at it from the real estate perspective now. So I got a couple of questions for you.

Okay, hang on.

As policy has shifted, you know, we go back far enough. My parents came to Vancouver from Toronto quite a while ago.

They could buy a house in Vancouver on one person's salary, a large house in North Van, and do. Okay. Something has happened in policy development, financially, on a lot of fronts in the 40 years in between.

Now I'm going back to the young generation that sits in a big city like Vancouver. And has absolutely no hope.

Oh, I know.

Financially, I know. And so home ownership is gone. Living on your own is gone. Things like that, buying a car might be gone.

Now policy has driven a lot of this out of our control. I don't think a lot of young people would say this is the world they want.

No.

What do we do? So, I mean, real estate itself is a story, right? It's blind faith that these things are gonna hold this value.

We've built all these high rises with one bedroom condos, maybe a two bedroom condo, two bedroom condos that are under 750 square feet. We've not made any sort of allowance like they, you know, they wanted Vancouver to be a walkable city.

And that's all fine and dandy when you've got great transit and you don't have 700 bridges. Right. And you know, all the like. But you know, they wanted downtown core to be this walkable area. Not a lot of park space.

If you've got a young family, you know, you might be able to afford that small box in the sky, but you're gonna have no storage. You're gonna have. You're gonna have. Where do you put the kids bikes? Where do you put the kids bikes?

So, you know, obviously people have pushed towards the suburbs, but also people have pushed towards the interior and the island. I have a lot of younger clients that are moving towards the interior and towards the island.

As far as younger clients, like purchasing now, I mean, this is the other thing is they have changed the rules.

So insured mortgages now go up to 1.5 million as opposed to up to 1 million, which is a big deal in the lower mainland because a million didn't buy you much. Million5Now will buy you quite a bit. Prices have come down, definitely, and you get more bang for your buck in the suburbs.

But I think the problem is that we have these beautiful established neighborhoods and then new places, new areas where everybody's packed in like sardines. It almost like makes the gulf between the wealthy established people and the younger generation just seem like growing.

And then developers who were encouraged to build one bedroom and den suites. The other thing is that people aren't. If they're having kids, they're having one. Right. They can't afford to have kids. Right.

And then, I mean, where I live in South Surrey, I mean the other side of the 99 highway, so the east side of the 99 at 8th Avenue up to about 40th, when you're heading south to the States, that whole east Side was like, that was farmland, et cetera. And now it's townhouses and condos and there's a Walmart and a superstore, and they're gonna put in a Costco and yada, yada, yada.

But it's all crowded in there. And there's one new high school there and I think one or two elementary schools.

So when I moved down to subsouri, White Rock, the peninsula itself, people always think of that whole peninsula as being White Rock. It's part Surrey, too, but that whole peninsula probably had about 45,000 people there in general. White Rock, south surrey. In total, 40, 45.

Now when you include the other side of the highway, it's probably about 120. When I moved there, there was three high schools. Now there's four. So we have not. We've not made any allowances. We've got, like, we've.

On one side of the highway, it's relatively, like, loosely populated, as it were. On the other side, it's densely populated. They've changed the zoning. In my neighborhood. All the neighbor.

All the houses are on 50 by 100 lots, and you can now build a fourplex on that same lot. I don't know how you're going to do it, but. And you don't have to provide parking. I met a client just recently who has a property in North Delta.

The neighborhood is changing in the sense that the smaller houses are being torn down, and you can build that much more now. And that's what's pushing up the value of land in many ways, because the zoning has changed. Right.

Okay, so let's. Sarah is queen of Canada, and she is out there to protect youth who are trying to have a future. How would Sarah, in a total dreamland, change policy?

I. Honestly, I have no idea. It is such a complicated issue because on the one side, you could say everybody gets a lot, you get a lot.

And then all of a sudden you've got people that have. I've worked so hard for this, and now you're just giving it away, right? Totally. So you've got.

You've got that angle generation against generation, really?

Generation against generation.

So how do you fix that?

But this is the thing is when I'm talking about, like, even lot value. So where I used to live in White Rock, not. Not just about a block up from me, the lots were larger.

I lived on, like, sort of the White Rock east beach lots, which are narrow and, and, and long. Like only about 4,500 square feet total. But up a block ahead of me was like lots that were 7 to 8,000 square feet.

And they had those traditional 70 builds, basement entries and everything like that. And even like 10, 15 years ago. Well, I'll say 12 to 15 years ago, they were selling in the sevens and the eights.

But those houses have all been torn down now and they've been replaced by 5,000 square foot monster homes which are selling for two and a half to three. So in fact, in a way, the increase of zoning, the ability to build more has actually increased the price of the properties.

Because that lot before that just had. And nobody was looking to rebuild and nobody was.

That value of that lot goes up and then what you've got in that neighborhood is all these brand new houses that young families a don't need and can't afford. What the.

Where am I?

What is this? Right? And again, I'm kind of thinking like, you know, I know most of these units are gonna be smaller. Who's living in here?

And then I worry because we're all sequestered in our little. We don't have the commonality of media anymore. And you're living in a giant.

And there's 5,000 people in your building, but you don't know any of them. And you get on the elevator and you're looking at your phone and you're going down and getting on the sky train, like, what are we doing?

We project. It's kind of ugly, isn't it?

And we're continually putting up blocks and roadblocks to keep ourselves contained. And that again, it really detracts from.

I don't think the high rises are the answer. Yeah, we're gonna have to increase stimulus density. But you know, lower rise with like, you know, communities. Like, we're not build.

When we're building these giant high rises, we are not building any sense of community. Like, in fact, we are actually probably building giant pillars of depression is what we're doing.

Well, that's just about investors making money, isn't it? That's not worrying about community. It's not worry about community.

It's not, you know, you get the zoning changed in an area and you do a land assembly where you assemble a city block, right? And like those houses individually let's say 15 years ago, that whole block could have been bought.

All the houses on the block could have been bought for 15 million. But now, with the change in the zoning, that block is now worth 50 million.

So in order to recoup your money, you've got to go 30 stories up and you're going to charge X amount per. And so that's great. Like, you know, we've changed the zoning, everything. We can get more people in there, but what are we actually creating?

We're not really creating anywhere I want to live. Right. And that's the other thing is like trying to create more affordable housing by building up.

And because we have a limited amount of land, we're bound in by border, mountains, oceans, rivers, and the US border, plus the agricultural land reserve. But I mean, if I was 22 years old right now, my dream would not be like, I can hardly wait to rent on the 45th floor at the corner of Cambion. 41st.

No, shoot me now.

Well, and you couldn't even afford it. My kids can't afford it. What are they, 25, 3,000 for, you know, 500 square feet?

Oh, yeah, I'm in Brentwood in Burnaby, and that just changed dramatically, just like you're describing. So we've lost our sense of community, citizenship, a whole bunch of things. It's a complicated answer, isn't it?

It's bonkers.

It is complicated. But we need discussion about it. We need curiosity. Yeah, we need to talk to each other.

I mean, it's interesting, too, because, like, you know, when I was in Toronto, I mean, much like here, we have suburban spread, but as I just said, here we are abounded by ocean, river, mountains, border and agricultural land. Resort. We have a. It's very finite in this little section in Toronto. It's just. There you go. It's just. It's just all spread out.

It's just going and going forever and ever. I mean, they have a little bit.

A little bit more luck than we do because they've had the go trains and they have a subway, but I mean, but even them, they're trying to do an Eglinton crosstown through the center of the city. And that was supposed to be finished five years ago. It's a gong show.

I think boomers are to blame for everything.

I am a boomer. I'm the last year of the boomers.

Have grabbed the wealth, and what we need to talk about is redistribution of wealth.

I would like to point out, as mentioned earlier, I'm technically a poor boomer so that's, you know, you're talking to people.

We're unusual.

I die, which is like, I mean, a lot of boomers are. The first thing they want to do is retire. And I know that younger people are going retire. Like, how the hell is that ever going to happen?

And will there even be a pension plan by the time I'm not that. That goes very far. But I'll be working till, like, die. Mainly because, well, I think you're probably.

I love what I do, but also, I mean, literally, if I'm not working, I'm going to be driving everybody else crazy, which I do on the regular anyhow. But let's not exacerbate that. Let's not exacerbate that.

Let's take this argument.

We're not arguing.

No, we're all agreeing. Argue with others who don't believe in the redistribution of wealth or whatever. We need that discussion.

We need these difficult conversations, don't we?

But how can you redistribute wealth when I'm just hanging on and it makes it hard for me to support something else or a cause because I still have to take care of my family.

Well, the thing is, I mean, and this is, we're a capitalist nation. So let's say if I, I mean, you know, as I've been suggesting, instead of building high rises, we would build like, like more of a community.

Well, are we going to have to, like, are people going to be. Are we going to build rental communities in that case? Right. So how are we going to do this?

But if we're doing it as a purchase sort of thing, and we're doing this because developers want to do it, are they going to be willing to reduce the amount of profit for the better good?

And then the thing is, if you start saying to people, well, we are expecting you to keep prices down and this, and you're going to have so much rental, then the free market gets upset because you're interfering. So it doesn't like. The problem is there's lots of great ideas. It's trying to get everybody on the same page, which is close to impossible.

And unfortunately, we are now living in the era of billionaires. Right. And what is bonkers to me is that you can have billions of dollars and all you care about is keeping your billions of dollars to yourself.

Sarah is proof that you can build an entire career on trust if you, you actually mean what you say.

She reminds us that authenticity isn't a strategy. It's a lifeline. A life's work.

And she rebuilt her life from a catastrophic wipeout with honesty, humor, and a whole lot of hustle.

Proof that the duck may look calm on the surface, but underneath, we're all paddling like hell.

Community matters.

Connection matters.

And telling the truth still matters.

Sarah shows us you don't need bravery to live boldly.

Just a voice and the willingness to use it.

Ignite my voice dot com.

Ignite my voice. Becoming unstoppable. Your voice is your superpower.

Use it.