After a decade leading the Loan Market Group at a national level, Andrea McNaughton faced a life-altering health shock that saw her trading the corporate boardroom for the managing director's seat at Loan Market Razor—but she isn't writing a single loan. Here, we find out her transition, the power of non-writing leadership, and her top advice for new brokers.
You spent a decade helping shape the direction of LMG and Loan Market at a national level as a group executive at LMG. Why make the move into broking?
Right before LMG’s first Growth Summit, I was diagnosed with blood cancer. That was a massive shock and out of the blue. I felt like I hit a brick wall, very hard. I flew through the treatment (including a 8-treatment plan before a stem cell transplant), but it left me with a lot of time. I made lists about extreme clarity, thinking: 'What am I going to do differently when I get back to being awesome?'
I really missed work and the challenge and the culture. I wanted to be a broker, so I decided to bite the bullet, as I had always thought about being a business owner. I was 48 at the time and thought, 'If I don't do it now, I won't do it.'
How did you find the transition to broking?
I quickly discovered I was going to be a pretty poor broker because I just didn't know enough. A lot of my friends were self-employed and they were coming to me saying: 'Hey, what should I do about this?' and I had absolutely no idea, even in terms of the right qualifying questions! I thought: 'This is just going to take me way too long to get up.'
I’m used to leading and running a big business;I know how to do that, and I know how to grow. I needed to back myself in and do that instead. So, I ended up purchasing Loan Market Razor from Toby Edmunds and I’m now a non-loan-writing managing director.
What does your day-to-day look like as managing director of a brokerage?
An average week for me looks like my one-on-ones, coaching the team around their plans, strategy and goals.
The bigger piece I'm spending time on right now is implementing AI and looking at where we put that into the process. For example, the tech we’ve been looking at renames and relabels documents. I’m excited about giving everyone in the team more meaningful work. Solving the repetitive work that AI is designed to do is going to free up really good people to give confidence to more customers.
Thirdly, I’m spending a lot of time with referrals. I’ve loved being back out there with agents. It can be quite hard, as an aggregator, to influence for a small percentage, but as a direct owner, I can guarantee the experience they’re going to get.
What has surprised you most since stepping into the daily operations of a franchise?
I should have had more empathy when I was in head office and challenging brokers and pushing them around why they weren't diversifying, or why they hadn’t recruited. The capacity is just not there. I’ve since made a few apologies for always pushing for more!
I’m also still surprised that the value of the broker proposition is probably still not really well understood by the public. Brokers are providing this amazing service, yet we are a very fractured industry. I wish brokers could be better around having 'one voice' in terms of what they bring to the table.
What advice would you give to anyone who is just starting out as a new broker?
Be really clear about your strategy and don't give yourself too long. Set higher goals—I think $50 million is the new $30 million in broking. If it takes you too long to get there, it actually gets harder.
Join a business or be in an environment where you are exposed to a lot of scenarios. If you start on your own or in a very small team, you're not going to get the breadth of experience to understand how to help the client.
Tune in to hear more!
You can hear more about what it takes to build a business for success as a non-writing broker in the podcast episode, ‘New Broker: Taking the leap into broking without writing a loan’
Click here to listen on your device
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