Q. Can you take us through your early career in the third-party channel for lenders?
My first actual job was customer service, answering the phones, doing variations, top-ups, product changes, and things like that.
At the very beginning, I was young and the money was quite good in banking. It was a good time pre-GFC. There was a lot of lending going on.
Q. You then moved into aggregation at Connective. What was that like?
As a BDM, it’s a tough slog. The core volumes, the email volumes, the service demands and obviously wanting to always outperform and overperform.
I loved aggregation, and I had got to know quite a few aggregators being a lender BDM. I just thought it was super interesting, because it’s more of a service than a sales model.
Q. What was the moment that made you want to give broking a try?
It was the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns, basically. I’d made the decision just prior to that.
Becoming a broker, again, was more in my mindset about a service proposition. I think as a broker, you can really focus on what you want to do. I really wanted to provide outstanding service without any targets, expectations, or objectives imposed upon me – just to do basically what I want to do from a freedom perspective.
Q. What was it like starting in lockdown, especially when it came to finding clients?
I did what I sort of would advise brokers to do when I was working at Connective – I’d saved up enough cash to survive for six to 12 months without any income. Then, it was about knowing that it was going to be a tough slog. You’re going to have to make calls. You’re going to have to talk to people. You’re going to have to ask for business, and you’re going to have to prove yourself.
It did take some time before I landed my first commission. Obviously, I did go through friends and family first, but my positioning was not, “I want to do your loan”, because I know there’s always that bit of angst or hesitation.
I wanted someone to refer me, because they trust me as a family member or friend.
Q. When you first started, were you just doing residential loans? Did you ever consider doing everything and anything?
I just focused on residential, and I had some good relationships with other trusted business owners who are excellent asset finance brokers and commercial brokers, and we just sort of started shifting work their way when it came up.
Q. Outside of friends and family, how do you approach marketing more broadly?
I started posting on social media regularly, and I just made a commitment to myself to be consistent. I don’t really care if it gets any likes or shares or extra followers or anything like that. But that’s a daily activity for me now, which I think is just part of moving forward.
The concept of that actually came from one of the greatest brokers that I know, Otto Dargan from Home Loan Experts. Back in the day, before AI, you could search a term such as mortgage offset, whatever, and he would invariably come up in searches.
But the way that the concept of that is that he just kept pushing content. And when you push more content, the search engines eventually find and grab onto it.
And so, I just thought, “Look, if I’m pushing content, someone might stumble across it one day. It costs me nothing to post, so I might as well do it.”
Consistency pays off over a long time. It’s compounding. So don’t give up
– James Brett, Truly Finance
Q. And if you were going to give any advice to a new broker just starting out on their journey, what would you say to them?
I think consistency is the number one thing that you have to do, and it won’t work over five days. It’s going to work over five months or five years.
Consistency pays off over a long time. It’s compounding. So don’t give up.
