23 May 2024 Podcast: Bonus – How to Become a Mortgage Broker

We’re bringing something a little different to you this week! Today, Evelyn is deep diving on how to become a mortgage broker.

There are so many ways to structure yourself as a broker, and different pathways of entry.

Evelyn breaks down some key information such as:

– the qualifications and/or experience you need

– how to choose a mentor

– ongoing education and development

– models as an employed broker – PAYG, Commission, Retainer, or a combination

– aggregators – what they do, how to chose one, how you get paid

– her top 5 tips for new to industry brokers

– how to generate leads

And much more!

We hope this episode is valuable for any buddying brokers out there, and we look forward to hearing your feedback!

Find out your next step in property finance:

You Have My Interest is brought to you by Everlend, a mortgage and finance broking firm built for the purpose of educating and empowering you to make informed financial decisions tailored to your wealth goals. Find out more and book in your free initial consultation at
https://www.everlend.com.au/

There’s plenty more great content to come … so make sure you subscribe now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you don’t miss a thing.

You Have My Interest is brought to you by Everlend, a mortgage and finance broking firm built for the purpose of educating and empowering you to make informed financial decisions tailored to your wealth goals. Find out more and book in your free initial consultation at ​​https://www.everlend.com.au/

Get in touch:

Find out more about You Have My Interest at everlend.com.au/podcast and connect with us at podcast@everlend.com.au

You Have My Interest provides information and educational content relating to mortgages, finance and property. You Have My Interest‘s content is general in nature and does not take into account the individual financial, legal or tax needs or objectives of its audience members.

It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Listeners should seek out a licensed professional to discuss their individual financial, legal and tax requirements.

If you need mortgage or finance advice tailored to your own personal situation, contact Everlend today for a free consultation. Everlend are authorised credit representatives of Loan Market Pty Ltd, Australian Credit Licence number 390222.

Podcast produced with Apiro

 

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Podcast Audio Transcript

(00:02.508) Hello everybody, I hope you’ve had a fantastic week. Today is another deep dive episode. We have a few deep dive episodes recently because I have had a few questions and a few people come across my path recently who have been asking a lot of questions about how to become a broker and what they should be doing to get started in the industry. So.

Today’s episode is actually a slightly different one. It’s not necessarily property or finance related from a personal perspective, but it’s more of a career episode on how to actually become a mortgage broker. So I’ve got also some questions that have come through from a Q &A that I put up on Instagram. 

So I’m going to go through those and answer those directly. There’s a lot about lead generation, how you should start, whether you should start under someone PAYG or whether you should start out on your own directly, what sort of experience you need, how to actually start to build relationships in the industry, all of those sorts of things. So we’re definitely gonna cover off on those questions. 

This is a topic that I am obviously super passionate about and hopefully I can provide a little bit of a leg up to anyone that is starting out in the industry and is wanting to understand how they can be the best mortgage broker that they can be. So without further ado, let’s jump into today’s episode.

 

(01:22.668): So today’s episode is how to become a mortgage broker. And I really want to break this down into a few key components that I see as being really critical components. You obviously have number one, the educational and the experience side of things. 

So in terms of what sort of qualifications and education do you need to actually qualify and get into the industry? And also what sort of experience should you undertake to be, I guess, the best broker that you can be?

Once you have that part of it down pat, then we start to look into things like building relationships. Where do you generate leads from? How do you service your customers the best way possible? 

We also look at things like structures and pay structures in particular because mortgage breaking can be structured in so many different ways. You’ve got PAYG models, you’ve got self -employed models, you’ve got a combination where you may have a lower base and some commission.

You’ve also got models where you might be paid a retainer, which is similar to, I guess, a real estate agency industry, where you might be paid a retainer until you’re able to basically pay that retainer back based on lead generation. And you’ve also got models where you can switch between. 

So you might start out as PAYG and then you might go to fully commission based with different splits, depending on how much you’ve written or how much business you bring in under your own name versus how much business you’re effectively provided from the company that you work for.

So there’s definitely a few ways to do it. We’ll also talk about aggregators and then probably some best practices in terms of tips and tricks that I have certainly uncovered over the last six years of being a broker. So I’m gonna take you through all of that today. 

So starting off at the very, very front end, if you do want to become a mortgage broker, what sort of qualifications do you need? The absolute minimum is a certificate for, or you can also do a diploma.

Now, realistically, the main differences that I see between the cert for and the diploma is the additional education that you get in the diploma around businesses and operating a mortgage working business as opposed to in the cert for that is enough for you to actually know the basics in terms of loan terminology, legal backgrounds and information you need to know around ASIC and APRA and governance. And also

 

(03:42.924) best practices in terms of the best interest duty that we are governed by as brokers as well. So realistically, the cert for is going to give you all of that basic terminology and understanding of how the industry operates and what sort of requirements you need to be adhering to. The diploma is going to give you a little bit more in terms of the business side of the equation. So looking at marketing, looking at Legion, looking at how you set up a business plan, all of those sorts of things. So it’s not necessarily a major requirement for everyone.

I did the diploma myself. The person that I was working for when I started out in the industry had done her diploma. So she just advised me that that was the best way to do it. In terms of what I actually learnt from doing the diploma versus learning on the job, I would say it’s probably worlds apart. You will learn far more doing practical experience than you will in the diploma, but you need to do it to get yourself going basically.

Now, the second component, once you’ve done the qualifications in terms of your educational pathways, you need to consider whether you’re a new to industry broker or whether you have financial experience and a financial background. And if you have financial background or experience, generally from working in a bank, there are a lot of people that go from bank to broking. You may not need a mentor. Otherwise, you need to have a qualified mentor for the first two years of you completing your and getting started. 

And that mentor is going to be someone who can help you with workshopping deals. They can help you with how to generate business. A mentor is really going to give you quite a broad range of assistance depending on what it is that you’re after in a mentor. They’re also going to help you to track and review every deal that you lodged to the bank prior to submitting it. 

So you can ensure that it’s a compliant deal to ensure that you haven’t missed anything from a policy perspective, from a documentation perspective, and that you’ve  given all of the correct,

 

(05:50.252) and that you’ve taken the customer through the journey in both a compliant and a professional way as well. So they’re going to be able to help you with all of that sort of thing. When you’re looking for a mentor, you can kind of go down two paths. 

Most of the time I see a bit of a default mentor methodology where if you’re working in a company, most people take their head broker or director as their mentor. Now that can have its pros and cons. Definitely they are there and available for you to ask any questions in, you know, quite a short space of time. 

So you’re going to be getting a lot of handheld support. However, if you haven’t got a proper, I guess, rules of engagement set up with your mentor on the outset, you may not be getting the right support that you’re needing. 

So you’re definitely probably going to be getting the deal support. But what you can obtain if you do potentially go for an external mentor or if you go through a mentor program, because there are actually a lot of programs now that take you through the first two years of you being in the industry is you’ll probably get a lot more support in terms of where are you networking? 

Where are you getting business from? What sort of marketing activities are you doing? How many people are you speaking to? All of that sort of front end business generation mentorship, as well as looking at your ongoing learning. So not just on the job learning and deal workshopping, but also continuing to ensure that you’re learning new policies, new procedures. 

Perhaps you might be starting with basic residential refinances and home purchases and then starting to look at education in construction loans and then education in development finance and so forth, so far and so forth from there. 

So when you’re picking a mentor, I think my biggest piece of advice is just making sure that you do have a really clear set of the rules of engagement in terms of what that looks for you. What are you expecting to receive from them and what are they going to be providing to you? If you’re working in the business with your mentor, you’ll probably find that you generally don’t pay anything for your mentor. 

Now that’s obviously going to be subject to whoever’s business it is that they’re running. Whereas if you seek an external mentor outside of your business, you will generally pay them either a fee or an hourly rate or something like that. When I started in the industry, just to give you a bit of a background, I started in the industry. I’ve actually been in the industry nearly nine years now, but broken specifically for six years. I was part of that default mentor method

 

(08:11.756) where my boss at the time became my mentor. And I just found that whilst it was fantastic because I’d done so much training with her already on the job training, there wasn’t a structured approach to my ongoing education. 

And I didn’t have someone to really bounce off ideas in terms of where I could get business from. So I actually sought an external mentor and I caught up with him every Monday and Friday for an hour before work from 7 am till 8 am

And as part of that, I had actually, I was a very proactive mentee. So I set myself up a spreadsheet in terms of what I wanted to go through every single Monday and Friday with him. And I went and I sat down and I went through that every single week, twice a week. So I was very disciplined and dedicated in terms of how I was going to set that. 

But by having those rules of engagement set out from the forefront, it propelled me so much further and up because I could see my progression every single week. Whereas if you don’t have that, dedicated time with your mentor to really focus on your development, you may not get the most out of it. So I definitely recommend that people do consider that. 

So we’ve looked at the educational requirements. We’ve looked at when you get into the business in terms of your ongoing educational requirements. Now you are expected to also do CPD, you are expected to do professional development every single year. So you need to have 30 CPD points ongoing every single year.

There are also going to be some other requirements that you need to obtain when you do become a broker, which is going to be your PI insurance, your AFCA, which is the external disputes, external dispute resolution. Yeah. 

Your AFCA membership, which is the external dispute resolution membership base that you need to be a part of. And also you need to be a part of either the MFAA or the FBAA. I’m personally a part of the MFAA. It doesn’t really matter, I’m going to say, but you do your research on which one you would rather be a member of. 

And the other person or team that you’re going to have in your back corner is your aggregator. Now, every aggregator will provide a different level of service and they all pay differently as well. They have a different fee structure. So let me tell you a little bit about the aggregators from a…

 

(10:28.108) super, super non -biased perspective. I want this podcast to be really non -biased and just be factual in terms of things that you should be considering. So from an aggregator perspective, when I first entered the industry, I didn’t really think aggregators meant that much or did that much in terms of additional value that they provided me other than just a platform to lodge my applications through. So with an aggregator, they have the licenses

and the accreditations with the bank, meaning that you don’t need to be a licensed mortgage broker. You can be an authorized credit representative of the aggregator who holds the license. That’s effectively like the cheapest way to start out as well. And it means that you have the least amount of risk from the perspective of your aggregator is the one that audits you. You don’t have to report directly to ASIC. 

So I naturally just went in with the aggregator model because I, you know, first two businesses that I worked in when I was a loan processor and then when I was a broker, I was under an aggregator model anyway. So the aggregator will effectively, as I said, take care of all the licenses. They will complete your audits on a six or a 12 month basis usually. 

They have certain softwares which allow you to lodge all of your applications to the lender directly. You get paid through that software as well. So they basically receive the commissions and then disperse it to all of the loan writers or the brokers.

And as part of that as well with your aggregator software, depending on how good of a software is that may be also your workflow tool or your CRM tool where you capture all your lead data, you capture all your application data and you use that for your reporting and your workflow. So we’ll talk a little bit about models and systems and things that you can use, but just know that as a broad overview, that’s what you’re going to be. 

They’re the main things that brokers care about that an aggregator provides. On top of that, an aggregator is a corporate entity. So they will have people that are obviously invested in your success. Meaning that depending on their level of service, if they’re a higher touch service model, they may provide you with almost like business support or business coaches to help you take your business from X to Y or A to B or wherever you want to take your business. So they will be there to help ask, answer questions in relation to bringing on staff

 

(12:50.86) pay structures, how to handle tricky clients, how to deal with compliance issues, how to make sure that you’re keeping compliant, how to, if you’ve got a deal that you’re not sure where to place, they can be there as a support or help with some of the relationships with banks and linking you up maybe with other brokers that are in similar ballparks if you wanna have someone to bounce ideas off.  So that’s what that sort of business support model can provide you. So in terms of aggregators, I would say in terms of most brokers, they’re part of three or four aggregators. The most common that we tend to hear is loan market, which I’m part of and loan markets in the last 12 months to two years took over Plan, Choice and Fast, which was previously owned by NAB.

 So loan market are actually family owned and they’re now the biggest aggregator in the market because they’ve bought purchased three other aggregators effectively. You’ve got SFG who is in terms of, I guess, stereotypically how a lot of people think about these aggregators, they’re very tech savvy. They’re also a slightly smaller aggregator. 

You’ve got AFG who have been around for a long time as well. They are, I’ve heard good things about AFG. I’ve never been under their systems, so I don’t know. I believe that their panel may have slightly more commercial lenders than someone like loan markets. You’ve also got Connective, which is a really big one. I think they used to be one of the biggest aggregators, but since loan market have taken over plan choice and fast, they are definitely now the largest, but they would probably be the key for aggregators that I come across. There’s also outsource, I think I’m actually just not going to say that part. They’re definitely the biggest four that I do come across. 

In terms of structure with the aggregator, you generally have one of two or three options. You’ve got either a fixed fee and 100 % upfront commission and 100 % trail. So that fixed fee is usually gonna be a little bit of a higher fee, because it needs to cover your membership in terms of being able to use their services and support and all that sort of thing. 

But you get 100 % commission from it. You’ve then got a percentage based where you might be on something like a 90 or a 95 % commission base where you receive 90 or 95 % of your upfront and trail commissions.

 

(15:09.74) but you maybe pay a smaller fee or you maybe pay ad hoc fees depending on what you use. And then you’ve also got a combination of the both. But generally you’ll find that there’s either high commission, high commission, low fees or lower commission, higher fees. But usually the lower commission, higher fees comes with the higher service touch model as well. 

So with loan market, I’ve been part of a flat fee and a hundred percent comms. And I’ve also been part of the higher touch, lower commission based. With that higher touch model, you do get a lot more support and it definitely feels like, I think it’s fantastic for newer brokers that may be starting out on their own because you do feel like you’re part of a community and that you have support no matter where you go. 

Because if you’re starting out as a broker on your own, you are on your own and you don’t necessarily want to feel that way. So that higher touch model can work really, really wonderfully for people that are starting out that do want a bit more support and a bit more guidance and maybe a bit more of a community. And then for your longer established brokers, depending on who they are and what relationship they have with the aggregate aggregator, they either stay on that sort of a model because of the community that they have built and the relationships that they’ve built, or they may switch to a 100 % commission and a fixed fee model because it outweighs the cost benefit analysis means that they’ll obviously earn more if they’re writing more. 

So that’s a little bit about aggregators. So that’s kind of like the front end things that you need to consider and what you need to look at. Let’s talk a little bit about models in terms of commission structures and different types of ways that you can enter the industry in terms of whether it be under someone else’s brand, whether it be out on your own. 

And then we’ll talk, we’ll go through the Q and A that I have been sent via Instagram. So looking at the different models, you generally have a few different ways and a few different structures that you can enter the industry. If you are working in a business, in someone else’s business, you can still be PAYG or commission only in their business. It just depends how you want to get paid. So if you’re someone that maybe doesn’t have a lot of leads to begin with, that’s where you would typically go more down the path of PAYG because you’re going to be getting a set wage to begin with. Whereas if you’re

 

(17:31.052) jumping out on your own and going straight into commission, which is what I did when I started Everlend. I was already earning commission at that point, but I started this business from scratch and went out on my own, obviously on a commission only model. Actually scrap that a little bit. We’re gonna go back to the commission part.  The alternative to consider is you can also go commission only under someone else’s business, which is what I did when I started with, when I started as a broker, which was the second company in the industry that I’d worked for. I actually was commissioned only with them. And I started on a split based on the fact that I didn’t have a huge amount of experience at the time. 

I had loan processing experience, but I didn’t necessarily have mortgage broking experience. So I started on a 70 30 split with them, but I processed all my own deals. I found all of my clients and yeah, I did all of my admin and all of my clients myself. So I was sort of a fully self -sufficient broker on a 70 -30 commission model, 70 % of my upfront and trail. 

When I did that, I actually moved back home with my parents for initially, I thought it would be 12 months. I was there for 18 months to two years. And I forecasted to not receive any income for the first six months, because I knew realistically, if it took me one to two months to start to get deals and lodge those, realistically, unless they were refinances, I was not gonna be settling or receiving income for another three to four months. If you’re submitting a purchase application and that settles in two or three months time, you don’t get paid until another month or two months after that. 

So I forecasted and set aside six months worth of savings to be able to get myself and keep myself off the ground. But I went commission only because I knew that I could get the business that I needed to and sustain myself. So I went hard at the beginning and took a hit at the beginning because I knew it would pay off at the end.  If you don’t have the ability to do that, as I said, I moved home, I didn’t have any financial commitments, I had savings. If you don’t have that ability, that is where people go salaried and that’s completely okay to do. It just gives you different things. So if you are being commissioned only in the way that I was,

 

(19:48.14) All of my clients were my clients and I have retained the trail even though I’ve started another business. So if you go PAYG, generally you do not receive any trail. In fact, you generally don’t receive any upfront commissions either. You may receive bonuses on performance, but you generally will be receiving salary. The pros and cons to these are the commission side of things, you do have the potential to earn more, but your upfront costs are gonna be a lot higher. 

You generally have to cover all of your insurances, maybe your aggregator software fees and any other fees or membership fees yourself, as well as if you go out and do networking or if you join groups or if you, you know, whatever business related expenses you incur are generally payable by yourself. Whereas if you go down the PAYG model, you generally have a solid income, you may not earn as much based on the volume that you are writing, comparative to what you could if you were commission only. 

You generally don’t earn trial commissions, but you have the stability of that employment and the stability of a set wage. And on top of that, a lot of your costs and your fees are covered by the business that you’re working for. So that’s definitely, you can see the pros and cons there. Okay, just pause while I think about what to say next.

 

(21:13.58) I’ve also seen hybrid models where let’s say you were new to industry, but you were hungry and you knew you could get business. Sometimes you may look at a low base and that could be 40, $50 ,000 base. So think of it almost like as a supplement to your income with the potential to start earning bonuses or commissions sooner. 

So based on your performance and based on the number of applications that you’re lodging and settling, you may then be able to start earning commissions earlier. So there’s definitely that hybrid element too. And then the final structure that you generally have the option to look at is a retainer where you might have X amount of dollars worth of retainer as a salary effectively on a monthly basis. 

But as part of that, you are expected to repay back that retainer via your commissions as you start earning those. So it gives you a starting point and it gives you the stability and the security, but you know that you’re going to need to start paying that back over time from the commissions that you’re earning. So they’re probably the most common options that I do see if you’re gonna be working under someone else’s business. 

If you’re going out completely on your own, well then you’re obviously looking at 100 % commissions from your own perspective, depending on how much your split is with your aggregator. And you’re gonna have upfront running costs of the business as well. So do factor that into consideration. In terms of other things to consider, we did mention right at the beginning, if you have prior experience in the financial industry, you generally don’t need a mentor. 

Now, whilst I think that that is really fantastic that people coming from a banking background are able to bypass the mentor part of it, I do strongly encourage people entering this industry to go into a loan processing role first because the experience and the exposure that you get to different loan options, different applications, different client types, all of that sort of thing, and literally being able to practise on someone else’s clients is just exponential in terms of what it then provides you when you start to work with your own clients. 

And typically I see, and this is pretty common across the industry, no matter what broker I speak to and what business owner I speak to, typically 12 months to 24 months, so one to two years is the sweet spot for working in a processing position before you can then jump out and you’re really sort of ready to fly as a broker.

 

(23:34.252) There is a lot that you learn on the backend. And I’m always, it always makes me laugh a little bit when I see people ending, ending the industry and they’re like, wow, I didn’t realize how much goes on behind the scenes. There is a lot that goes on in the backend that the more knowledge and experience you get in, the better broker you’re going to be. And the better your handover is also going to then become to whoever is processing your applications. If you’re not going to be processing your applications down the track.

 

So this means that you get a cleaner file, you get better chances of approvals because you’re providing a really, really thoroughly researched and well submitted application to the bank. We strive for what we call one touch approvals in our business as well, meaning that we attempt to always submit an application that we know has the best chance of being approved without the assessor coming back to us and asking any questions.

And if they don’t ask any questions and they issue approval immediately, that’s what we call a one touch approval. I find that people that haven’t had the loan processing experience, their percentages of one touch approvals is significantly reduced, which can impact the client experience. So that’s another reason why you want to really work on understanding the backend and just getting that crystal clear. It also means that when your clients start asking you questions, you’ve done the whole process end to end. So you know exactly how to answer all of those intricate details. What else do I want to say?

 

(25:02.828) So in the interest of time, I’m now going to jump to these listener questions that have been sent through via Instagram. Some of these to a degree we have answered and some I will really flesh out as much as possible. Okay, so the first one is, as a new broker, do you need a lot of money for marketing? How do you go about it? This is a great question. 

I wouldn’t necessarily say you need a lot of money for marketing. It depends what you’re actually putting money into in terms of how expensive that marketing cost is. So, and this I think also depends on whether you’re running a business or whether you’re going to be a broker under an existing business.  So if you are going to be a broker under an existing business, you don’t need to worry then about website costs, branding, setting up, you know, all of those little intricate, intricate sort of branding marketing pieces, which can cost a lot of money.

If we strip all of that out of the equation and we look literally just at a broker trying to get business from a marketing perspective, then I would be thinking about what type of marketing you’re planning on doing. So social media marketing. Well, you don’t need a lot of money at all for that, particularly if you’re doing reels or TikToks or videos on LinkedIn or putting together some pieces of content on Canva. 

You don’t need a lot of money at all for that. It’s when you start outsourcing bits of the the puzzle and certain aspects of the job that it may start costing you some money. But even at the same time, you could get a VA to help you out with a lot of those things as well. Particularly if you’ve got a little bit of a structure that you want to follow and maybe you just need them to produce X amount of content for you per week or per month. 

That’s not going to cost you a huge amount of money. Where marketing gets expensive is depending on what you’re actually spending the money on. So for us from a business perspective, there is a lot more of a marketing budget compared to an individual broker level. We obviously had to think about the website when we started, the branding, getting all of the logos up and running. I did a lot of video content when I first started as well to really sort of heighten and create some excitement around the brand launch and the business launch.

What else did we do in terms of marketing? The podcast obviously costs a fair bit of money. That probably cost me around two grand a month in expenses. But in terms of my one -on -one video content creation

 

(27:17.1) that hardly costs me anything in terms of what I put out on Instagram reels and TikToks. So it depends where you’re going from a marketing perspective. We also hold events. The other thing I would factor into your marketing budget is if you are looking at doing any networking, all of that sort of thing. So that’s going to number one, take time out of your business, but it is also going to potentially cost you some money if you are going to join networking groups.

So when I started as well, I joined a couple of networking groups that I needed to pay a membership for on an annual basis. And all of that would be coming out of your marketing budget.

 

(27:52.3) The next question is from the same person. How long did it take you to get your first five leads as a mortgage broker? Hmm. I don’t know. A few months, I would say. So when I started broking, when I started broking, I was 22. I was still in a PAYG broking position. I hadn’t yet gone into the self -employed broking model that I mentioned earlier.

I had no idea how to get leads. I called everyone that I knew and everyone just sort of gave me a really nice compliment that, that’s great, Evelyn, we wish you all the best. Let us know if we can help when I’d specifically asked if they wanted me to review their loans. So I don’t think my friends or family necessarily had a lot of faith in me at the beginning. I think probably being.

Young had something to do with that when not a lot of my friends were necessarily buying but I didn’t have the runs on the board either and I don’t know whether I would have entrusted all of my finances into someone of my caliber looking back on it now but what I did do from that is I knew I wasn’t going to get anything sitting behind a screen and sitting on the phones. I had to get my face out in front of people and I had to know what I was talking about. 

So for me, I learnt the ins and outs of every single policy I possibly could so that when I was talking to people, I already knew where the line was going. I could give them real life examples. I knew what I was talking about. And I think that was the biggest thing. So if I could get my face in front of people, I had a higher chance of getting leads. My very first lead came from a letter that I sent a financial planner. 

So another tactic that I came up with was I sat down and I printed out the names of, I think I looked up 50 financial planners in my local area or in like the vicinity of maybe 20 to 50 K radius. And I sent them all an email and a physical letter and two of them got back to me. One we exchanged a few emails with and a brief phone call. The other actually asked me to come into his office and sit down and talk to him. And it was funny, I just caught up with him the other day.

 

(30:00.428) And he said he remembers that time when I was in his office and I looked so petrified. But I went in with my boss at the time and within maybe I didn’t really get anything from him that day, but maybe three or four months later, he called me with a lead and then he called me with another lead and he probably produced my first three or four leads directly himself. 

And then from there, it was a combination of that and face -to -face networking that I actually started to get those leads, but it took me a fair while. It started to snowball relatively quickly, but realistically from zero to getting my first five leads probably took me a few months. The next question is, what are my five tips for a new industry broker?

So as I mentioned earlier, new to industry, my number number one tip before anything else is get some loan processing experience. And if you can’t do that, I think you need to work in a business or get a mentor that you’re going to be able to sit down with and go through everything end to end and have a really dedicated training plan with. 

It’s okay to learn things on the fly, but I think you will take longer to get to where you want to get to. And I think you will probably find that if you’re able to have that really sort of strategic educational projection and growth, you will be able to broaden your horizon on, because at the moment, if you’re new to industry broker, you already, you don’t know what you don’t know. So if you can at least have someone that can help you understand what you don’t know, then you can learn it. 

So that’s probably my number one tip. My second tip would be, my number one, my second tip would actually be work out why you want to be a broker and don’t ever let go of that. So everyone has different reasons for being a broker. My reason was to educate people and that is the core of what we do in our business still today. 

So whatever the reason is, you need to make that known and you need to make that a strong proposition and you need to hang on to it. My third tip would be to think about, I’m thinking back to the first year of me being a broker.

 

(32:07.244) It was really difficult to get leads at the beginning, I’m not gonna lie, but the more that I put my face in front of people and the more that I knew, the better it was, the better my chances were and the better I got. So definitely do not give up and you’ve got to work hard. Like you’ve got to put in the time and put in the hours, but it will come back and reward you. 

My next tip would be to think about, this is probably one mistake I made in my first year. Once I started to generate and get some business, I wasn’t looking forward at my pipeline. So all of a sudden I started to get a couple of settlements and then the next month I had nothing. So I had to go back to the drawing board. So just because you start getting leads, don’t stop what you were doing to generate those leads. That’s a big one. And my final of the fifth tips for a new to industry broker. Do you know what? I think surround yourself with people in the industry that lift you up, that you can bounce off.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions because this industry is super, super rewarding. And there are so many people that will put their time and effort into helping you. If you are curious, if you’re authentic, and if you’re genuine. So surround yourself with the right peoples, get some running buddies on board and go for it. The next question is tips for new to industry brokers on how to grow their business. So we kind of covered a little bit of this before in the marketing aspect and also the information that I gave about networking, I think the biggest thing for me is not, it’s not one size fits all in terms of where you generate business from. So you’ve got to find what works for you. I tried the cold calling. 

I tried putting things up on Facebook. I tried the letterbox drops. I tried face -to -face networking. I then started putting out heaps of video content. What else did I do? I joined networking groups. I was a part of two or three networking groups at any one time. And I probably stayed in those for three years. So I looked at fresh networking. I looked at BNI. 

There was a local female business networking group that I was a part of in Brighton. And I also joined Match Alliance. And I also looked at other ones. So I was part of a lot of networking groups and you do see the same people, but everyone is there to build their businesses and support each other. What else?

 

(34:24.044) So I guess what I’m trying to say there is don’t stop just because one method doesn’t work, try everything. And when you find the thing that works, then you can really capitalize on that. Because if I stopped at the first thing, I never would have gotten a lead. Cause I would have just said, my family and friends, they don’t want a loan. What am I going to do? 

The next question is what is the best way to generate your first leads as a new to industry with broker? So that’s very, very similar. So I won’t answer that one, but I’ll jump to the last question, which is, should you start with gaining experience under someone or get a license and begin your own business? Now, if you do not have any industry experience, I would suggest that you do start under someone else for sure. 

If you are coming from, and also this probably goes back to what’s your risk appetite. So do you have the capacity to potentially be, you know, income less for the next three to six months because that’s realistically what I think you should be forecasting. It’s not gonna be anywhere near the income that you are earning in that period of time. If you’re gonna be starting your own business brand new, that’s not to say that it can’t be done. 

So if you’ve maybe got some contacts that you know that you’re gonna be able to get leads from, or if you’ve already got some customers that are knocking on your door from a previous industry or a previous job, and you know that you can sustain yourself at a bare minimum, or you’ve got some savings as a backing, and ultimately you want to run your own business, go for it, find the right people.

Maybe my biggest piece of advice for this would be to hire someone sooner than you think that you need, if you do need admin support or processing support. And if you’ve got someone that has experience as a processor, they can probably also teach you a fair bit. But it’s really gonna come down to your risk appetite, what sort of lead generation potential that you have, what your ultimate long -term goals are in the industry as well, and all of that sort of thing. 

So I hope that’s been helpful. As I said, this is a very, very different episode to what we would normally record, but I wanted to do this because I have had a lot of questions and I often get a lot of the same questions, particularly around lead generation. So I wanted to really cover off on some of those tips and strategies that I’ve used, but also talk about some of the models, what you need to do to get into the industry, the different aggregators, all of that sort of thing from a really non -biased perspective and just give you some practical tools and knowledge.

 

(36:44.076) If you’ve got any questions that have come off the back of this episode, please don’t hesitate to reach out. If you know someone that’s wanting to get into the industry, please feel free to share this episode with them if you think that they will get value from it. And I hope that’s been helpful. 

As I said, guys, I am always looking for different types of content and things to create. So if you’ve got any suggestions or questions you’d like me to ask on the show, please feel free to let me know. Otherwise, I will see you all next week. Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

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