Q. How did you manage your transition into broking?
Coming straight into a broking was a very scary thing.
But I was quite fortunate with the cohort that I was with. I got along with a broker that had two or three years more experience than myself. And then he was just like: “Look, come along to my meetings”, and we did interviews together. So, I did learn a lot from him.
Q. Can you remember the first deal you settled as a commercial broker?
It was a butcher. They were struggling with their cash flow, and then we kind of went in and said: “Look we can restructure that to a longer term”. Again, it was a very small deal.
They needed a cash injection to kind of keep up with their day-to-day activities.
Q. What types of loans are you writing now?
I would say it’s probably 80–90 per cent commercial – a lot in the cash flow space and a lot of commercial assets for business.
We’ll also do a lot of commercial properties as well. Because we’ve worked with a lot of business owners for many years, they are now looking to stop renting. They are measuring up their rental costs in their business and considering actually buying a place.
Q. What sort of clients do you typically work with?
We don’t really specialise in any particular industry.
On the smaller side of clients, we have little cafes, restaurants, local grocers, and fruit shops on our books. Then, when you start moving to larger-scale business, we also have manufacturing clients. A lot of people automatically think all manufacturing is happening overseas, but a lot of the steel fabrication and engineering for certain parts of construction still happen in Australia.
We also have medicos – pathology clinics, dentists, physios, general practice – as well as franchise-type businesses, whether they’re in health and wellness or fast food.
Q. And how do you find such a broad spectrum of clients?
I’m sure you would have had several brokers talk about really good referral partners.
Your accountants, your bookkeepers – they’re the ones that are at the forefront with a good range of clientele.
We work with insolvency accountants, and sometimes it’s just like a business that’s gone through a small business restructure or went into voluntary administration, but businesses turned around. A lot of the banks just can’t service these types of clients.
By offering a solution there, it doesn’t niche you down to any particular industry.
Don’t get me wrong – I still go to very specific industry events. For example, if I want more construction clients, I’ll go down to a construction conference or expo.
Q. Are you seeing any particular demand or trends in the types of loans coming through?
We’re doing a lot of restructuring with ATO debt.
Most brokers know how to restructure ATO debt when there’s residential property – a lot of alternative lenders are really assisting. But a lot that we’re doing is looking at situations where there’s maybe not enough equity in residential, or there’s no property security and property equity. We’re really excelling in that space. That’s where we get most of our referrals.
They are harder deals. They are more tedious. It’s all about packaging it and structuring, so the lenders can assess it and understand their risk.
Q. How have you structured your team and implemented tech?
I have three full-time brokers, including myself, and I have three back of house really helping processing, chasing up documents.
We’ve explored things like file invites. We’ve also tried to get client feedback as well, and you get the ones where the reminders annoy them, and you think: “But if we don’t send the reminders, we don’t get the documents”. The thing doesn’t move.
So, we’re really trying to find that balance of what tech becomes acceptable and working out how far we can push to chase a client.
Q. What advice would you give to a new commercial broker?
Find a good mentor. Commercial broking comes in different facets.
Somebody that specialised in tradies, doing utes and tools, isn’t necessarily going to be able to teach somebody about mining equipment for a big operation or engineering manufacturing. Then when you start to look into working capital for small- to medium-sized businesses and cash flow lenders and fintechs, it’s a whole another minefield.
Don’t try to do it all at once – I tell my team the same thing. You will learn it all with experience.
