New Broker Profile Q&A: Blake Edwards, director, B.E. Astute

It was quite an amazing experience. I was lucky to have eight weeks over in Europe. We started in Barcelona, and then headed to Budapest for the FINA World Championships, and then onto France for the World League Super Finals. We had a really experienced team in the last Olympic cycle, picked up a silver medal at the World Cup in Berlin, and a bronze medal at the World League Super Finals in Belgrade, Serbia. So our lead-up to the Olympics and tours was probably disrupted a bit by COVID, and was looking really good to pull out a medal at the Olympics. Since then, we’ve had about eight players retire. So, we’ve got a young, fresh group of enthusiastic players who have joined, and I’ve been lucky enough to be announced as co-captain along with Nathan Powers. And yeah, the results that we had overseas were probably what we expected, started off a bit behind the eight ball but really pushed the US. In the quarter final at the World League Super Finals, we just lost by a goal in that final. To get that close, with a relatively inexperienced team, gives us a lot of hope and it’s really encouraging leading into the Paris Olympics.

And you’ve been travelling for about 10 years with the sport?

Since probably the age of 16, I’ve spent most of our winter in the European summer, apart from the couple of years it was interrupted by COVID and being unable to travel. Yeah, it’s almost become a bit of a second home to me overseas. One of the perks that water polo has to offer is the opportunity to travel.

What are your sporting goals going forward? You’ve mentioned eight people have left the team. What are your aspirations with water polo?
I think for every water polo player it’s to compete at the highest level, which is the Olympic Games and from there you hope to come away with a medal. It’s a highly competitive environment. We do it quite tough in Australia because most of the players and teams that we’re up against, they’re fully professional, they have professional leagues in Europe. A lot of our players and boys are going over there to get some international experience and play in those leagues. But it’s something that’s not really sustainable unfortunately for Australian players and we usually get a drop-off, in their late 20s start to focus on their careers outside of the pool, and so we have a high turnover of players. Whereas in Europe, they’re able to retain those players for a lot longer.

Looking at your career out of the pool, what got you interested in mortgage broking?

When I was trying to figure out where I’d base myself, one of the clubs, Drummoyne Water Polo Club got me in contact with John Kolenda, who’s the former managing director of Finsure, and quite a big name in the industry. My meeting at the time, I thought I was going to speak to him about real estate, and the salesman that John is, he sold me on a life of mortgage broking. I did the best I could in that interview, to pretend like I knew what he was talking about, but to be honest, I had no idea. I must have been pretty convincing, because he said, “How would you like to start with us at Finsure, and we’ll get you in the call centre?” For the first 12 months I was working for the 1300 Home Loan team going through cold calls, trying to qualify leads and distribute them to brokers. And it was a really amazing landing place, because most of the time I’m making over a hundred calls, speaking to all these different clients, who have completely different financial situations. I was exposed to quite a variety of different scenarios and had to quickly have the skill of listening, and I think that’s something that’s really critical in every mortgage broker is your listening skills and then quickly finding solutions. I think it was about 12 months out, I knocked on John’s door and I said, “I’m ready to take the next step and become a broker,” and I would say in less than 30 days, COVID happened.

What was it like starting mortgage broking during COVID?

I chose to look at the opportunities out of the whole thing, “Well, I can’t train now, I’m in lockdown.” It’s actually a good opportunity now to really throw everything into it. And that’s what I did, probably for the first three months, is I just put my head down. It became a great distraction for everything else that was going on in my life, around the Olympics, and obviously the challenges that everyone was facing at that time, around lockdown. I was able to just switch my mindset and my focus towards building my career in broking and looking back it was the best choice I made.

You’ve certainly been successful because this year you were awarded the NSW Best Newcomer at the Better Business Awards. How was that?

I was extremely surprised and humbled. I was just wrapped with all the hard work that I’ve put in over the last 24 months, and then the challenges that I guess every broker has gone through. It was just really rewarding to receive the award. Looking back as well, I wouldn’t have got there without the mentorship that I had through John, and then also the support from Finsure, and then also just other brokers that I’ve met along my journey. We used to call it the “fishbowl” at the 1300 team, which was, we had about six to eight brokers in this kind of glass boxed office, and so I could listen and pick up on the way that they were interacting with clients and I could see firsthand how they processed loans differently. It was just such an amazing learning curve, and just accelerated my knowledge and understanding of the industry before I stepped into it.

Tell us a little bit about your business and your first few years getting started.

I’m probably 24 months now into my business, I would say the majority of my leads come from referrals from existing clients, and then obviously still getting the leads through the 1300 team, as well as that I’ve been using my network in water polo, too. Generally what happens is that we will be allocated leads, which [Finsure have] pre-qualified, so essentially they’re warm leads by the time that they’ve been given to us. The unique thing about it, is that you’ve got such a diverse client base, so you’re not just kind of dealing in with PAYG or you’re kind of [dealing in with] prime products or prime clients, you’re looking at clients who are self-employed looking for or creating paired, non-conforming. It’s been quite good because it has diversified my portfolio quite a lot. From that we run weekly sales meetings and brainstorm in terms of what processes we have in place that are working and so we can learn off each other, as well as learning from each other’s failures too. Then really just structuring our business and processes as well as we can, to get referrals.

Can you draw any similarities from your sporting career to broking?

There are a lot of similarities, I think it’s probably the reason why I’ve fallen so in love with the job. Just to name a couple, you’re always rewarded for your effort and I think that’s something that I like the most about it. If you put the hours in, you do the activity, you do get rewarded at the end of the day. And it’s probably something that I like being in, I guess running your own business, is that you’re in control of your own destiny. And then with that there are also disappointments. You know not every deal’s going to stick, sometimes you’re going to do work for people and at the last minute they go somewhere else. It’s the same with water polo, you know sometimes you don’t get the result you want.

It’s how, I guess you pick yourself up and you move on to the next game, or in this case, the next client, next deal. It’s also, I guess, learning from your mistakes is probably the biggest one. Especially at an elite level, in water polo, you can’t be a player who makes the same mistakes. If you do, they’ll move on to the next player.

Any advice for newcomers who are wanting to make a start into the industry?

If you’re not consistent with the work that you’re putting in, and if you’re very patchy and you know you might have one good month and then not the other, your results are going to be very inconsistent as well. You can’t one day wake up and say, “Oh, I’m going to hit it really hard” and then expect results, it just doesn’t happen. And it’s the same with new brokers stepping into the industry, you can’t expect results overnight. It might take you nine months before you start to get rewarded for the work that you’ve done in the past. So being persistent is really critical and I draw on mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes, but it’s also okay to ask for help and support. I just encourage other brokers to really reach out to people who have been around the industry for a long time, because you can really learn a lot of things from anyone.

You can find out more about Blake Edwards and his Olympic and broking career in The Adviser’s New Broker podcast.

Tune in to the episode, New Broker: An Olympian shares why becoming a mortgage broker was his best move yet, below:

[Related: New Broker: An Olympian shares why becoming a mortgage broker was his best move yet]