Karen Camblin

Guiding conversations with community leaders.

In this podcast, we'll explore the human journey of leaders, their stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks and lessons learned. Come join us as we journey together and uncover the questions you've always wanted to know. This podcast is brought to you by the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, providing resources, connections and belonging for business professionals and modern moments.

An event and meeting venue in the heart of Gilbert. Today's episode. We have somebody, but who is that body?

So we actually have a legend in our midst. She's a state champion. She is.

We'll have to get her autograph before she leaves. This guest was.

Do you have her tattoo on your arm?

Maybe I do.

This guest was born on the south side of Chicago, but grew up amongst.

A chain of lakes in a small.

Town in northern Illinois where she became a competitive water skier. A chance meeting on Valentine's Day in 1995 led her to her husband Dave. And another chance interaction changed her path from stay at home mom to a successful career in the mortgage industry where she is a top producer for Guild Mortgage and now a mentor to others in the field. Welcome a wonderful professional and a great friend, Karen Camplin.

Thank you. Welcome.

Welcome, Karen.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

We are excited to have you here today. We're gonna start with what we call rapid fire.

All right, here we go. Would you rather sing in public or dance in public?

Oh, dance in public.

But you've done both, right?

Of course.

Being in water skiing, I imagine you have plenty of these, but what's one of your nicknames?

Lips. My maiden name was Lipinski.

Okay, that makes more sense.

Would your 12 year old self think you are cool today?

Of course. Yeah, I think so.

Confidence. How about this one? Have you ever won a contest?

Yes.

Ta da.

Favorite movie of all time?

Ooh, that's tough. I just gotta go Christmas Story off the top of my head.

Okay, that's a good one. This time of year, how do you overcome failures?

Think through it and know that everything is figureoutable.

Okay, fill in the blank. Joy is family.

Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert or a combination of both?

Combination of both, but more of an extrovert.

Do you have a favorite book?

I have a lot of favorite books. One that I recommend to everybody is Rhinoceros Success.

Oh, yes, that is a good book. I like that one. And what is one thing you're grateful for?

Life and opportunity.

And Dave.

And Dave.

Also confident.

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Okay, let's go back to Illinois. All right, well, competitive water skier years I can't wait to get into.

That's gonna be a good one.

Yeah. Let's go a little bit earlier first. Okay, talk us through it. What's it look like?

Born on the south side of Chicago, my mom and dad, we moved up north. My dad had grown up up north on the chain of Lakes, and it's right on the Wisconsin border. We'd walk through the woods and you'd be in Wisconsin. We had two family cottages up there, which is what the draw to northern Illinois was. So we moved up there, and I just loved it. I loved growing up on there. We could go to church, to friends, houses, to family by boat, jet ski or snowmobile. Hence why I'm now in Arizona. I like that snow part. Huge family. Irish Polish, 19. First cousins on one side, six on the other, and it was amazing.

Yeah. And siblings, how many?

I have two siblings, a brother and sister. I am the oldest.

Yeah.

All right, so school, what was it like there? And what kind of environment was that for you when you were growing up?

School was tight to me. It was very tiny. I graduated with 264 people, good friends. A lot of people stayed in that area. And I broke the mold and came to Arizona. Went to Eastern Illinois University, and as I refer to it, Chucktown, Illinois. But it was Charleston, Illinois. The town of Charleston was 11,000 people and 10,000 of it was the campus.

Okay.

So very small town, but super fun.

Yeah.

Kind of expanded when school was in session.

And then, yes, there was no one in the summer down there.

All right, so take us into your water skiing years.

So I loved the water and I loved water skiing. And I happened to have some amazing friends who introduced me to their cousin, and he was into three event water skiing. And so I water skied every day, twice a day, six days a week, with two neighbors who became very, very good friends. And they took me out, taught me everything I knew.

And.

And who knew that at 13 years old, my parents would let me randomly travel and camp with two men. One of them was married around the state of Illinois to competitive water ski.

That's crazy.

I met a lot of good, good friends.

Yeah. And then you became an instructor?

I did coach water skiing. Yes. Yep. There were two locations on our lake.

And do you still water ski?

I try to water ski once a year.

That's awesome. I love that.

So I gotta know because I've done a bit of this. Are you a barefoot skier?

I've done barefoot skiing and it hurts. It does. It hurts.

So mostly slalom.

And that kind of trick was my big one.

Okay.

So it was fun.

And do your girls water ski?

They both know how to water ski.

Yeah.

Proud moment in my life.

Yeah.

When Dave and I got a boat, we argued. Fishing fish boat. Yeah. Bass fishing boat or water ski boat. And I wanted a Mastercraft, and nope, no, no. We have a fish ski boat, which is fine.

It works. I'm curious out here. A Minnesota guy, where do you go? Where's a good place? The best place to go out here for water skiing.

In our little area, Saguaro. Sometimes pleasant. Depends on what the day is. Mix it up with fishing and water skiing, then saguaro.

Okay, great. So, okay, this water skiing thing took a bit of your life, I should say. What kind of influences does that have on you today, when you look back on that? Like, okay, I learned this and I met people through this. Is there parallels?

Yes. Independence, learn to take care of myself and be with people. I didn't really know when I started traveling with them. Success, friendship. I don't know, a lot of life lessons.

You mentioned your parents kind of just let you do this thing. So what kind of relationship there? I mean, obviously they had a trusting.

Relationship in you, but, yes, amazing relationship with my parents. With Dave's schedule right now, he works nights, and so I make it a point to go over once a week, play cards with them, have dinner, hang out. Super close. I was the oldest, so. So I had to take into consideration that they had to be there for my brother and sister. And water skiing was not an arena to. Unless you were a family doing it together. It wasn't an arena to have spectators and do that kind of thing. But I learned water ski from my dad. Cause he grew up water skiing, so huge influence.

Okay. That had a lot to do with it, sure.

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. So in school, then, where'd you excel?

What was the thing I would say? Social life.

That counts, for sure.

Well, that would explain Valentine's Day, 1995.

Right? Marketing. I had a marketing degree. I loved doing group projects and presentations. Testing was not my thing.

Okay.

More on the creative side.

Right.

Storytelling.

Yes. And I am not a school person. I graduated. I Was done. Never wanted to go back.

You are still learning. Always, right?

Constantly learning.

Great books. So I know that's about it. Okay.

Yep.

Cool. When you think back on those school careers then, especially in college, probably, is there anybody in there that influenced you that you can remember that kind of helped you on this path?

My dad was principal.

Oh my gosh. Well, that explains high school.

You know, my dad was a principal, my sister's a teacher, My sister in law is a teacher. Everybody was, you know, that was the career that was kind of expected and I could not go that path. It just was not my arena.

Do you find though that even though you aren't doing that, you still do it?

I do do it. I am a coach with Guild Mortgage and I am coached. I am coached and I coach, so. And I love it. There's nothing more rewarding to me than mentoring or coaching somebody and watching their success.

So what I find interesting is in the stories that you've shared. You follow your instinct often and you act on hunches. Where does that come from? I mean, that trust in yourself, is that developed over time? Is that somebody who told you to listen to your instinct, what does that look like for you?

Developed over time and probably from just a huge, strong rooted family. It's super interesting. In our family with as many cousins and aunts and uncles and my mom and dad, there is very little divorce. My parents will be married 52 years next year. Dave and I are 26 years. My sister and brother have both 20 plus years of marriage. So I think it's, I don't know, always pushing to commitment and things like that are very important.

Yeah. And so what brings you? Did you meet Dave in Arizona? Oh, you've been. Okay. So what brought you to Arizona?

My aunt and uncle had moved here when I was a sophomore in high school and we flew out and I loved it. I'm a sun person.

Yeah.

So went back, graduated from Eastern. I had done my internship out here with America West Vacations in their marketing department. So my girlfriend and I lived out here for a summer and had a blast.

Yeah.

Went back, finished my senior year, graduated and told my parents there were no jobs available in Chicago or Illinois. No. So I temped with Motorola and beat feet and got out here.

Yeah. And they, they supported that man, they support everything.

I mean, if it's our dream, they are supportive. And even today they look back and because I have an entrepreneurial type job and nobody in our family does, they're kind of amazed by me. And that's Very hard to say, but it's cool.

It is very cool.

They're super proud.

The mortgage industry, how does that kind of evolve and get into that space? And that seems like a tangent from the marketing. But not.

But not. So I was at home with a. Let's see, Samantha and Grace. So we have two daughters. Samantha was two and a half, Grace was turning one, and I was refinancing our house. And the loan officer said, you should be a loan officer. And I laughed. I said, I'm a stay at home mom. She said, yeah, it's a great job for stay at home mom. Flexible hours, all that. I said, I have a marketing degree, know nothing about mortgages. Yeah, marketing degree is what you need. So I hung up the phone, started thinking about it, called a couple girlfriends in the industry, and I was like, okay. So I went down to the school of real estate, which you did not have to do at the time. This is pre licensing. This is pre. Any rules, regulations as far as being a loan officer were involved. Went down to school of real estate, realized it's a big puzzle and I love puzzles. And so I walked into a company that my girlfriend was at and they said, okay, go get loans. So I have no idea what I'm doing. Yeah, well, we'll walk you through it. That branch manager left very quickly and I got a new branch manager who she passed away about two years ago. Was probably the biggest benefit of my career. And I worked for her for eight years and she was amazing. She taught me everything I needed to know about mortgage, introduced me to referral, networking, and I just built my business from there. And my one loan a month that I wanted to do to make a minivan payment went away and here I am.

That's amazing.

It's crazy.

It is. That's awesome.

So over the years, obviously you've seen some ups and downs in the industry. And what are some of the greatest lessons you think you've learned from this career path?

Oh, boy. Push forward, don't give up. And I think I said it best a few years ago. I used to take every mortgage I did personally. I take it personally from a relationship standpoint, but when there's things that are out of your control, starting to recognize that they're out of your control and letting that sit well, not going in the corner and crying it out and, you know, taking it all on myself.

Yeah, well, that's probably a lesson we could just exercise in everyday life, right?

Yeah, it's been a huge learning curve. Yeah, huge learning curve. But 2008, never thought we'd make it through that. And what was my alternative? And Dave would always say, I said constantly, I need to go find a job like that pays a W2. I need to go. He said, so you're gonna be gone 8 to 5, miss everything that the girls have going on. He said, we will make it through this. So I don't think if it, I know that if it was not for his support, I'd be behind a desk somewhere.

And what do you, if you look back at those, you know, those early years in the industry, what would you go back and tell yourself?

I probably would have encouraged myself sooner than later in my career. Oh yeah, I really. But I think timing is everything too. I did not build a big career in the beginning because I was with the girls and I wanted to be there and I always had my priorities and my clients knew it. I would say, I'm, you know, I've got two daughters, but I'm happy to meet you. They'll be with me. Or do you mind swinging by my house and I'll get those documents? So I. It was, it was an amazing, it's been an amazing career. And now that the girls, as they've grown and are on their own or out of the house more, I really, really dove in.

Yeah. Well, and I love the example that you said that you can have both. You can be a hands on mom and have an amazing career.

Yep.

And now your beautiful girls are grown.

They are.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's weird.

Often on the show we dig into those that mentored you and. But I'm curious because you have such an interesting career now. Talk about how you mentor others a bit and some of the things you could give some advice on how to help others in that situation, like kind of some of the leadership things you do.

Okay. So I've always had a knack for helping other people. Maybe that's why I didn't become a teacher in the classroom. I love watching people succeed in business. So a lot of people have business coaches, life coaches, all of that. So I started dabbling with a couple people in the Gilbert Chamber on mastermind groups and getting some coaching. And in 2019, Guild Mortgage decided they wanted the best coached loan officers across the country. So they created this elevate coaching program through Guild and it was higher up. Guild loan officers coaching lower level producing loan officers. So I was sitting at Leadership Summit in San Diego and they rolled it out and I kept thinking I should apply, but Grace is gonna be a junior And I'm so busy. And I just kept making all the excuses, and I finally decided, okay, no more excuses. They're only taking 70 people. If I'm one of those, it was meant to be. If I'm not, it wasn't meant to be. I was one of the 70 that they took. So as we're on our way to the airport, I ran down, did my video, my interview, the whole nine thing, the whole nine yards, and I was accepted. So I've been in since its inception. It was based off the book Rhinoceros Success. And they came to me at the end of last year, beginning of this year, and this is so weird. Said we've noticed your leadership and we feel like you would be a great coach. And I was incredibly humbled, excited. And so I've been coaching. Now I'm just finishing up my first semester. And what I have found is, and I always tell people, I feel like I could grow your business better than I can grow my own, because you're looking at it from the outside. So I started coaching with Guild, and I started putting together some little events and seminars to help people have a better work. Life balance, live life on purpose, Take care of yourself, because if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people. And last or the week of Thanksgiving, I got a card in the mail from one of my students in my coaching group, and it said, thank you so much for helping me and being there for me this semester. I've grown by leaps and bounds, and it's so rewarding to see people that you have mentored be successful. And so I just. I enjoy it.

What? Go ahead.

No, I was gonna say. And oftentimes, as a mentor, it actually sharpens your own toolkit as well.

Exactly. You learn a lot from your students or even from people you're mentoring. I have found the Gilbert Chambers brought that to me a lot. Getting together with great minds and just bouncing ideas off each other, I think has led a lot of me towards this coaching.

What are some of the biggest challenges you hear from your students in the coaching that maybe you can share with others?

Here, you hear it from anybody, whether it's in my coaching group or outside work. Life balance and getting over in. We can talk about the mortgage industry. As far as, you know, where we're at right now, it's a struggle. So they have that struggle. But I feel every industry goes through their own struggles and recognizing how to pivot and do things differently to make it through what you're going through at that time.

Yeah.

So. And thinking out. Yep. And thinking outside the box.

Yeah, absolutely.

So this is all fairly new change for you then. So congratulations on that.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm loving it.

Yeah.

Well, and I appreciate that you take those same skill sets and you put it back into the membership at the chamber as well. And you're a great leader with other businesses, especially those who are just trying to figure out where they want to go and who they are.

Yes. I love that.

So it's maybe too early to ask, but what do you see on the horizon now that you've just started this new phase? You see some more.

So I actually just let them know that I'm willing to take on another coaching group. So I'm hoping to have two through guild. Okay. Continue my mortgage career. I have an amazing assistant who I hired about a year and a half ago and you know, it allows me the opportunity to go out and do some income producing stuff and coach and be involved in the community.

And you have a wedding to plan.

And we have a wedding to plan. Yes. Yes. We're earning an amazing son in law, so.

Yep.

That's fantastic.

Yeah. Good.

Well, so then as far as the next chapters go with that, then do you see beyond that? Like, are you guys staying in Gilbert forever? Is this, this is forever home for you guys or, you know, I can.

Answer that for you. Yes.

Maybe Dave will.

I'm not letting her go.

I believe Arizona will be where we're at. Hopefully a second home somewhere on the water, whether that's South Carolina or who knows where that'll be. But yes, we'll stay here. Dave is headed towards retirement hopefully in the next five years and then I will probably just continue to work forever and ever and ever with the flexibility. I don't know that I could ever truly give it up.

Yeah, well. And you know, we didn't really touch on that, but you have to keep some things light because, you know, Dave has a pretty serious and intense career and I'm sure that that's a role that you have to play in your home life too.

It is. So, yes. My husband's a city of Phoenix police officer, 25 years on the street and it's had its ups and downs, as everybody can imagine. And so to get him to retire and for me to maintain a career is kind of what we're looking at because we do have to keep it light. It's. We're going to be done with this world as soon as we're done with it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, you two make an incredible team. I'm honored to be able to work with you.

Thank you.

I appreciate you and what you bring to our organization and just to my life in general.

Well, thank you. I attribute a ton of my success to the relationships and what I've put into and what I get out of the chamber.

So thanks, Karen. This has been a great story. I loved learning about your journey and thank you. Amazing things. And I want to go water skiing with you sometime.

Well, let's do it.

I want to watch.

Oh, no. Sarah will teach you. It's like walking on pillows, my dad used to say.

Oh, well, if that's the case, I.

Would definitely want to see her try this. Well, thank you for joining us and those out there today. Hopefully you enjoyed this conversation. We certainly did. And if you want more of this, please subscribe to our tribe and you can give them right in your inbox. Appreciate you listening. Thank you. Guiding growth conversations with community leaders.

Ben, let me ask you a question.

How do you see other community members being involved in this podcast?

This is going to be a great opportunity for so many people in the community to have a chance to be heard if they want to tell their story or if they just want to be part of this journey with us and help sponsor in a way that helps bring more people to the table with us. So I think there's many opportunities at hand. Whether you want to again be on the show, reach out to us, let us know what your story is and how you think you could be part of it. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out, let us know and we'll see if we can make that connection.

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