Regional broker Steven Toome reflects on his journey from banker to broker and why he chose to rebrand his brokerage in Port Lincoln.
You were in banking for more than 11 years before moving into broking three years ago. Why make the change?
I started off learning telling [at the bank]: how to count, do all the money, open and shut the branch and customer service, before migrating into a home lending role. It was just incredible… taking those customers on the journey and being a part of that monstrous decisions in their life was incredible…
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But the bit that led me to broking were the occasions where I knew, deep down, that [the bank] maybe wasn't the right solution - whether it was interest rates, mortgage insurance policy etc. So, I started thinking more and more about broking.
I knew that broking existed. I'd seen a lot of colleagues go out and become brokers. So I spent a solid 12 months researching and calling my friends to find out what a broker does and how they do it.
How did you choose your aggregator?
I just started narrowing down the aggregators that I thought would work the best for me. And that was heavily biased towards technology and simplicity.
I wanted to be able to be efficient and really hit the ground running. Training and support was also a big part of that.
I’d ask all the aggregators I met the same questions and compared all of their responses. And at the end of that, it was Loan Market Group that really shone out to me. And the icing on the cake at the time was their BYOB model to bring your own brand.
You started off your brokerage as Port Lincoln Home Loans but recently rebranded to Loan Market Link, as a franchisee. Why make the change?
Over the three years I was Port Lincoln Home Loans], I missed a lot of opportunities from the market because [people would say] ‘you couldn't help me buy my investment property in Cairns because you only do homelands in Port Lincoln’. But that wasn’t true!
The first conference I went to with Loan Market, I started learning about the White family and what made them tick and what motivated them. It was this really organic and honest focus on the customer. Time and time again, their brand of Loan Market was genuinely trying to help the customers…
So, we made the leap to Loan Market Link, changed our premises and bought a massive shop front here.
The ‘Link’ part of the name is a little homage to Port Lincoln and the way I feel about being a link between the customers and the banks, particularly across rural outback Australia.
How do you generate leads?
We track every single lead because we want to know where that person's come from.
The majority of our leads are coming from word of mouth and repeat referral stuff. We have as good a relationships as we can have with all of our real estate agents, conveyancers, accountants, to funnel in their clients (and themselves - because if they've had a great experience, it's really easy for them to be an advocate).
Each year, if we're helping 150 or more clients and each one talks to one or two people, that's where our business comes from.
The shop front for us is a massive attractor. Our old premises was a high visibility location with it with a couple of streets next to it… and it was 100 metres away from CBA, so it was great. If people who couldn't get alone at CBA just walk around the corner and go into the office!
But our new premises is architecturally designed, made out of shipping containers. It's a dark navy blue with Loan Market branding. It is stunning and people are just stopping and coming in and asking what we do. It's a point of difference. It is special.
We've also done a lot of sponsorship, always sporting clubs, football, soccer, Eight Ball, and we go out to the local schools as well - years 10 and 11 - to do a financial awareness session.
One of the biggest community pieces that we do is in my spare time. I run one of the biggest tuna fishing competitions in Australia - the Port Lincoln Tuna Classic. I believe it's the biggest cash prize purse in the country! And we do a lot of charitable work too.
What plans do you have for the business? Do you set targets?
I don't want to look at numbers… If I'm doing the right behaviours each day and genuinely caring about my clients, I don't need a target.
After so many years in a bank with targets and numbers and weekly sales meetings and tracking, I made a promise to myself and my team: We are never going to have a sales meeting. We are never going to look at numbers ever. We're just going to go out and try to help as many customers as we can. And that's the plan for this year.
With more bodies, more capacity, we can help more people. But I'm not going to know until I reflect at the end of the year whether we actually did help more people! But it feels like there's more inquiries and it feels like we're getting more applications and pre-approvals lodged and having more conversations and that's part of that 2/3/4/5-year plan.
I think we're going to need another staff member a year to keep up with demand as we grow and have all of the existing client base to service on top of the referrals.
What is the best thing about broking?
It's being along for your client’s journey. Last year we helped 150 clients - but that's not just 150 clients, it’s 150 stories. There are first home buyers, there are investors. And when you break down each person's journey that got them to that stage of being able to get a settled loan, there are amazing things that have happened in their lives. They've studied, they've worked, they've got their dream job, they've sacrificed for years. And you're a part of something so much more.
What advice would you give people wanting to make the move into broking?
If I had started [broking] a day earlier I would have been a day closer to having my first advocate. And if I'd started a week earlier I might have had two loans and two advocates…I look at some guys my age that have been a broker for 10 or 12 years and I look at the clients that they've helped, the books that they've created and the businesses that they've built and I go: ‘Man, I really wish I'd done this earlier’…
So if you are genuinely thinking about being a broker and you can push yourself to learn and be challenged and work hard, go for it.
Tune in to hear more!
You can find out more about Steven Toome in the Elite Broker podcast.
Tune in to the podcast, ‘How the SA/NT Broker of the Year 2024 is ramping up for 2025’, here:
