Mortgage Broker Secrets : Building Trust and Long-Term Client Relationships | Expert Banking Insights with Eli

Mortgage broker Secrets, building trust and long-term client relationships. It’s something we can all learn from no matter what business you’re in. I have a fascinating discussion for you today with Eli who is going to talk not just about mortgage broking and some of the secrets behind banking and building client relationships, but also about mentoring and the value that has in building the future for your business for other people as well.

And the give back that has as well. It is a really interesting discussion that we are gonna have today, and there is something I promise you for every business thought leader to gain from this particular episode. So stay tuned for this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and I have a very special guest. In fact, I don’t think we’ve had someone in this category on the show in the past, so I’m really interested to see where this conversation takes us. Eli, welcome to the program.

Hi Anthony.

Thanks for having me on, as I will say. And so yes, my name’s Eli and I’m a mortgage broker extraordinaire supposedly. And so I’ve been doing that for probably about 15 years, banking before that. And before that I was in small business myself, so I went across to the dark side at one stage when business was tough and banking was easier.

But that’s, could give me a good insight into sort of both, both sides of the coin and probably what has driven my business for the last 15 years.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? The banking sector probably gone through some ups and downs at the moment. What’s the assessment of the banking sector given the, the global financial crisis and the cost of living crisis and all these things that have happened in the last little while?

I think banks work on the same premise. They’ve always had to retain, basically maintain their margin as best as possible, and, so they’ll put out policies to make sure that’s, that they’re competitive in their space. Not over competitive because they don’t wanna be seen as the, specifically the cheapest or whatever that implies.

But they certainly fight to keep, maintain their margins and that reflects in their credit policy, credit appetite. Obviously they’re driven also by government, policy as well. And so they’ll, I’m sure they make forward plans for any all sorts of different alternatives they might have to to do.

But at the end of the day, they give Australia’s unique in this space that banks give 70% of their profit back to the back, to their shareholders. That’s why most, a lot of people don’t complain about the banks too much because if they’re a bank shareholder, they’re making good money on their shares.

Whereas the rest of the world, you’ll find banks will only give back maybe 25, 30, 40% of their profit, and they retain the rest for their own growth and development. But anyway yeah, I think banks haven’t changed in all time. They just, they’re pretty fluid with what they do.

It is an interesting idea, isn’t it, in Australia where that it, it’s often questioned by the public, who are they more concerned about the clients or the shareholders? And that’s a difficult one, isn’t it? Because it’s fine if you’re sitting in both camps, but not everyone is. No,

I think their first I think first and foremost, it’s always been the shareholders. And then they’ll drive their policy around that to make sure that they’re obviously not losing customer share.

And we’re talking mainly about the big banks, and I’ll throw in Macquarie into there as well, because they still hold the lion’s share of of, in this case, mortgages in the Australian market. Commonwealth Bank being the largest of all. So yeah, I think the shareholders are still.

Primary focus, bottom line. You only have a look at their, this month they all released their profit taking, 4 billion, 3 billion. It’s a massive amount of money, which means they’ve, and so they haven’t actually gone backwards in the last 20 years, have they? So they’re maintaining their margins, which is what they want to do.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s it’s an interesting position. For the public to decide where they go, because I think, we come round to the big thing, which is lending money. Because when it comes to putting money into a bank account these days, you are lucky to get very much interest.

It’s very little interest that you earn anyway. So it’s really about the lending side, which is the thing that most people think about in relation to banks these days, but. There’s a lot of alternatives now and that’s, but how real are those alternatives? What’s the breakup? Is it still the banks dominating?

In terms of share of market, yes. The banks will still dominate because they’re still the reason people are tied to the banks because they’ve got deposits, they’ve got bank accounts tied with them. The rest of the non-banking sector, which are not what they call deposit taking institutions their only re connection to those their clients is.

Generally lending. So they very rarely offer anything else. So you still have to go back to the bank to do all your daily banking needs. But that being said, with open banking and the way technology’s gone that’s obviously a lot easier these days. You don’t have, you don’t have to walk into a branch to do it, but you’re still tired.

For the most part financially to some sort of banking institution, whether you borrow from them or not. So they’ve always got a a leverage which they can, a lever they can pull to talk to those clients. But certainly non-bank lenders have taken a large slice of the mortgage industry, mortgage lending industry.

That continues to grow because the diversity of the kind of clients that the banks will do as opposed to what non-bank lenders will do, has grown. Although the banks are slightly catching up, but so there’s a market for each, but. The banks will never lose their, share, a large share of it because of their intrinsic connection through banking facilities, deposits, transactions that need to be made.

There’s all those sort of things. So it’s a close system in some ways. So

yeah it’s a challenge, isn’t it, because. The, I’ve often heard it said that one of the biggest issues for people is that the actual work that is involved in moving from one bank to another. There’s so much and there’s so little to be gained that it’s hardly worth the effort.

And that’s the biggest lever that they have to pull is the lack of inertia. As far as, most people are concerned. And look, and I could say I’m no different. Look, I was one of those people that I. When I was a kid in primary school that the Commonwealth Bank in those days offered the opportunity for you to open a bank account.

Yep. And that’s what happened as a kid. You opened a bank account there. I think my parents were still banking at the Commonwealth Bank then. I’ve pretty much been a Commonwealth Bank account holder. Then because

movement is hard. Interesting enough that those days the bank was not owned by the, it was not private bank.

It was owned by the government. The people owned it. Yes. So it was. You felt okay. That’s why they were able to go into schools and do all that sort of stuff because it wasn’t a private institution, which changed obviously many years ago. But like you, many others are still there.

They’re still banking with the Commonwealth. They, they complain. They go we don’t like this, we don’t like that. Can’t get hold of anybody but moving. Absolutely. There’s no inertia to move because what’s the difference? It’s another bank with the different rules. Same. Same outcome. You people move accounts and that when they move their lending, then they’ll tend to move everything across.

Business lets less so because there’s much more tied up in their transactional arrangements with the banks. So to move that moving a business is even less likely. So that’s why they ch and, but they’ll, but for the banks, the business accounts are much more lucrative.

Yeah. And I think that’s an interesting one because obviously a lot of the people that are listening into this program are business leaders, and that whole issue of being able to move banks for a business or even to have an alternative one.

I was talking to a colleague recently who showed me a system that he’s developed and it, and it’s more just of keeping things in different. In different pockets.

Yeah.

And we talked about the idea of setting it up in two banks, so it makes it less easy to touch things that you shouldn’t touch so that they can stay in their various buckets, which is a great concept.

And looking at where you can actually go to a new bank as a business holder to set up multi things. So you have multiple accounts. Gee, that’s hard work. They don’t make that easy.

And it’s even harder now because of even though digital technology has made everything a lot easier, but now with the, the fraud that’s going on and all the, and the ability for people to hack into accounts, the compliance regime, the security regime has tripled. So now to open I just recently moved, not bank accounts, but I just moved internet providers and website provider. And I had to change all my Microsoft and all that sort of stuff.

The amount of work. To get that moved across, double authentication. If you had the wrong password, you were locked out. It’s to the point where I think, and why am I doing this? Because it’s a nightmare. Banking much the same, to move accounts. Yeah, applying is easy, but providing all the relevant security information that we now need behind it takes time.

I I think what I find and maybe this is and I’m interested in your view, whether I’ve got a, a where I’m looking through a particular lens or not, do banks really and do many of the other institutions where you can do banking care much about small business. Really,

they all say they do.

And when they say, oh, we care about your business and blah, blah, blah, blah. Really the care of the business really comes down to the people that you’re dealing with in the bank. So the care factor is only as great, only as good as the person you’re dealing with. Even though the bank may have a banner saying, oh, we, we love small business.

But if they’ve got. Poor people in there with poor relationships, that’s where it breaks down. So having been a small business banker myself and a lot of those clients who I used to work with came with me when I became a broker because my relationship with them was strong. But then there are other bankers who just see what they do as transitory in their career path.

So they do what they have to do, tick boxes, blah, blah, blah. Do they really care about their small business clients? I don’t think so. Not only as much as they need to make sure that they, um, get repeat business, that they’re not that they’re not doing anything wrong or they don’t get, or the other way they don’t get any complaints by the, by their small business clients.

So do they really care? No.

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Get repeat business that they’re not that they’re not doing anything wrong or they don’t get, or the other way they don’t get any complaints by the, by their small business clients. So do they really care? No. The caring implies a sort of love, but there’s no love there. It’s, do we make money on you?

Yeah. Great. It’ll stay if we do, we make not make money on you. So move. We don’t care.

And is there a difference between, we talk about the, in Australia we certainly talk about the big four banks, but if you go beyond that to some of the smaller banks, and even if you go to the other alternative organizations. Do you is there a better deal there for business?

I think there’s, again, it depends. Small business has been such a variety of cases. I think we’re, I. Bigger banks for small business are good because they have the facilities, they have the technology to assist small businesses much better than smaller players.

Smaller players tend to be limited with their technology. Can’t do a wide variety of transactions, particularly if it’s overseas. It’s all case by case basis. If you’re just running a if your business is like just an owner owner operator, and it’s very simple. I. It’s just transactional.

You’re not needing much else from the bank. You can really go anywhere. And now with digital, you can just do whatever you need to do. But if your business relies on overdraft facilities, business loans overseas facilities, if you’re an importer or an export, if you’re dealing with overseas money, transactions, all that sort of bigger infrastructure stuff, then the big four unfortunately have still got that, I still own that space because it’s a legacy and that’s built into the world of finance. So for a small player to come along and try and get in there, not gonna happen, right? So everyone, the smaller guys tries niche, their markets. I would, they’re also there for clients that don’t fit the mold in terms of lending, let’s say they’re outside of the scope of what the bank will offer them, then yes, they’ll go to a smaller lender for business loans what they call non-conforming, or they might have built policies around serviceability.

So yeah, they’ll move there. But they won’t move their accounts. I’ll leave their accounts with the big, with the major and just take the lending from the small, smaller player. That answer your question? Not sure.

It’s, no, because it is an interesting thing that having been down this path a little bit and tried to invest, investigate it and what I found as well as we talked about Macquarie earlier on, and they have some specific targets that they have, and I think that’s an interesting thing about Macquarie perhaps versus some of the other banks where they are very specific about who they want as their client.

And they’re not afraid to say no. Yeah. Which is a lesson that really we should all learn in business. That, that that’s not necessarily a bad thing, knowing exactly who your client is and knowing who you say yes to, but importantly who you say no to.

Oh, absolutely. And Mac Macquarie is probably unique in that out of the bigger banks.

They’re very specific about the kind of clients they want to, they wanna bank, and if you don’t meet, and you might have a great business, but if you don’t meet that that criteria, they’ll just, they’ll politely say, look, thanks. But we’ll pass on this one. And it could be for various reasons, but, they know their lane, they wanna stick to that lane. I think it gives them better risk analysis on their client base. ’cause they’re not, haven’t got a wide, it’s not as wide as the bigger banks. Then again, the bigger banks don’t have, don’t really have that luxury in some way because they’re seen as being, part of the community finance structure. You can’t just pick and choose, guys, come on, I’ve got, as long as I service or I’ve got the facilities that you need to take me. Whereas Macquarie probably ’cause it’s a bit it’s not seen as part of the big four. Yeah, they can make their their choices a little bit more obvious.

What does that mean for you in your side of things as a broker? Does it mean that someone like you should also choose a very specific type of client, or does it mean that you’ve just also got, you can take any client, but you’ve gotta know which way to go depending on who the client is.

So as a broker, and I made for myself specifically, I made the conscious choice to stick with a certain kind of client similar to what I was already dealing with at the bank when I was there. So honestly, I don’t deal with first home buyers and I’ll tell a first home buyer. I’ll, if they’re one of my client’s kids, yeah I’ll look after them, but I don’t specifically chase that kind of business.

There are people that are brokers who do it much better than I do. And I’ll tell clients, say, look, I’m not your broker. And sometimes my approach to to lending and things like that doesn’t fit in with the client’s view of how they want things done. So I’m quite happy to say, look, I’ve got another broker.

Maybe he might be, or she might be better for what you need, but this is the way I work. So yeah, I do. Curate my clients, so to speak. ’cause that way I know who they are, they know who I am. And I think other brokers do the same in different areas. There are some brokers who specialize in first home buyers other, maybe distressed clients.

I think if you do that, it gives you a better focus on what your business is like, who. You can deal with in terms of banking or lending, the players you have to go to facilitate good outcomes for your clients. So it’s a, it’s, I think it’s a definitely a focus that I think a lot of brokers miss out, especially new ones coming on board because they wanna do everything, everything goes past their desk, they wanna do it all.

And, being a mentor to a couple of, to a number of brokers, I tell ’em no. I said do that because you need the experience, but start to develop a lane for yourself. It helps you with your marketing, helps you with your understanding of your clients if you try and keep within a specific lane of type of clients that you wanna deal with, and then that reputation comes back to you.

’cause they, oh, you go and see Fred because he’s really good on asset finance. You don’t go to anybody else. So to build your own brand as well, I think.

Yeah. And I agree. I think it’s a principle in business that is often taught, but very little, very often ignored. That whole idea of niching is such an important thing.

And I imagine particularly in a space like yours, we’ve just touched on it, that they’ve got, we’ve got the major banks, but there’s so many other lending options. Out there. And that’s just on the lending side. That alone, the banking side and then keeping it on top of who’s doing what and got what facilities available, including the electronic options and things like actually staying on top of what is in a particular area.

That’s, a massive task within itself, isn’t it?

My inbox floods over every morning with all the new players, new policies. Keeping up with it is I. Becoming a bit of a nightmare. So you’ll ne you, you’ll never know everything about everything even in your own space, no matter how niche you are.

You’ll never know everything. And so having good relationships with particular bank institutions, BDMs, and that is always helpful. And I still do it now. Even though I’ve been doing this for a long time, I think, oh, I’m not sure about that one. Or I’ll key I’ll email my BDM. And sometimes they don’t even know which is a problem.

So yeah, look, it’s, there’s such a, ’cause information is so easy to. Transport. It just, it hits you every day like a wave. So you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta wade through that. And again, if you’re niched, you can get rid of two thirds of it. ’cause it doesn’t relate to you, right? So you’re only concentrating the stuff that that matters.

And that’s much easier to remember. But you’ve then gotta have a system really where you start to put those changes somewhere that you, so you can remember where they are. But it’s not fa, it’s not far safe either. But this information overload is a massive issue I think for brokers, especially if you’re new and nothing.

Gee, it’s n it’s a nightmare.

Yeah. Because I think the volume of options is huge, isn’t it, these days. That’s the truth of it. If, if I come to you and say, okay, I’d like to borrow X amount of money I. What are my options? Like the list is a mile long really, isn’t it?

So you, you can short circuit that, that list because, so yeah, you’ve come to me and said, okay, I need X. So my first response would be, why? Y do you need X? What are you going, what are you? It’s a bit like a financial planner. You’ve gotta get beyond the initial need to understand what the purpose is, what the future looks like for what you wanna do.

And that will actually quite narrow then sometimes the people that you need to go to, because if you need to be able to plan, not just for what you need today, but to make sure that it’s flexible enough for what you wanna do. That it meet your goals down the track. So my conversations and teach that to my mentees as well have a full conversation.

Not about the rate, not about how much they wanna borrow, but understand why your client is doing what they’re doing, what’s the driver. ’cause quite often the drivers might be. Might, you might be a great driver and say, do you really want, need to do this at this point? So you need to question and push back on your clients sometimes as well.

So to make sure they’re thinking in the right way. ’cause sometimes it’s an emotional decision. Oh, that’s it, we’re selling up, we’re doing, or I’m buying, or whatever. And it’s an emotional decision. It’s not always the wisest decision. So I think brokers worth their salt, need to make that discovery.

Piece prime in their initial discussions because whatever comes outta that, it will be the loan, the amount, the product, the rate that, that’s all a consequence of your discussion. But there are many brokers that say, yep, no problems. I’ll find you a deal. Boom. That’s it. That doesn’t take into account really what might be a more important principle for why the client’s doing what they’re doing.

Yeah.

Intrigued about your profession because there’s a lot that I think other business people can learn from it because it is super, super competitive and I think it’s super competitive on three different levels because there is the option of, okay, there are multiple brokers. How do you choose one?

Then there’s also the option of, ah. Look, the big banks particularly do plenty of advertising. So why don’t I go directly to them? And then there’s the third option, which is, look, I’ll just sc the internet and find someone new myself. So in that kind of environment, how do you actually stand out in the first place?

Oh, that’s a good, that’s a good question, Anthony. Thank you. Standing out. So again, it comes down, I think to if, first of all, if you differentiate yourself by as we said before, niche that already sets you apart from all the other brokers that you need to compete with. You need to build a reputation about with clients, about what you do and how you do it and the outcomes you provide, and that builds your brand again, to differentiate you from somebody else.

Your biggest referral source is always going to be. People you’ve dealt with, the people they know. Because generally, I think maybe first home buyers, because they’re out, they’re technologically savvy, they’ll go on the internet and go and they’ll look at Google reviews, who’s got four out of five or five out of five?

I. Especially if their friends haven’t done any lending, but if their friends have all done some sort of lending before the first, per, the first people they’re gonna ask is them, because they’re people of trust. So if they trust their friends, they’ll certainly try their friend’s recommendation first.

They may follow it up with a Google search to see if the people that have been recommended are adequate or if they’ve got other favorable reviews which is no different than it was 20 years ago before Google. You go to mom and dad and say who’s the guy at the bank that I have to talk to?

Or when the brokers came through, you’d ask someone who’d used a broker? I haven’t used one before. ’cause they’re only new. Who do I go to? And so that is probably, I would say 85% of a broker’s business has to come from that because you’ve already got a trust level that starts when someone’s already knows who you are or something about you or being recommended.

By somebody else to you. The rest is all marketing, which is, funnel stuff. Put market, advertise, promise the world, I’ve got the cheapest rates, I’ve got this, I’ve got that, and you will get a certain volume of people through that. The quality, I, I would question the quality of the, of those kind of referrals that come through, but experience.

Will dictate and you will learn where to get your referral network. It’s not to say you don’t go and advertise or network. I think networking is important and you need to decide what kind of networking you’re doing as well. That’s more for referral partners rather than direct to clients. Think ref building, building a business in this industry is hard because you have to have, you have to have the track record to get the, brand up and running, and you can’t get a track record until someone actually refers you a loan. So you’ve gotta start at probably at the bottom end and try and get, as and do, and try and get as many client deals across the table and slowly shuffle through the till you finally start building a rapport with those clients.

Because otherwise why are you different to the guy down the road? No. It’s really just a case. Talk to the people you know, your family, your friends. Everybody know, even network meetings when I go there they always ask, so who’s your target market? Who do you want us to refer you to?

And I go, okay, before we start, there’s 20 people in the room. Put their hands up. You’ve got a mortgage. So 20, quite often. 20 outta 20 will put their hands on ’em and go, I don’t need to go any further. I’ve got 20 people right here, and you all know me, so sure, refer me your business. But how about.

Referring me your own business first, get to know what I do so that if you do wanna refer me to somebody else, you actually know how I work. Otherwise, I’m just a stranger to you that does loans. So I, I push hard saying, let me do the business for you first before you start referring me business.

But then you’re confident. So using the opportunity to plug your trade, especially if you’re going out to and meeting people. Don’t ask for a referral business. So the guy in front of you is the first deal you need to do. Or at least try and do. And that will measure, that’ll give you a measure of success to start building beyond that.

If you’ve if you’ve had a loan for at least a year, that being able to move to somewhere else, if that’s, the process. If you go, if. If you conduct a review and say listen, you can get a better deal by going over here. That’s possible, isn’t it? It’s not that, it’s not that you’re locked in for the length of the loan unless

you’ve got a fixed rate facility, which Australia’s an outlier in that because most other countries, when you get a loan, they’re all fixed rates.

So if you take a loan in America, it’s a fixed rate for 30 years. They’re not variable. So Australia’s a bit of an outlier in some of that, where we do most of our lending’s all variable. So yes, you can move and it’s easier saying I’m moving and move your loan. But then I ask the, I always ask the question, why are we moving?

Oh, better rate. I’m going, how much is it gonna save you? Is it worth one? Is it worth your time and effort? And two, is there a real saving in, in, in doing that? Just for, a small, and so I get a lot, we all get, as brokers saying, get me a better deal. What does that actually look like?

Are you having issues with your bank? Are you paying too much? I have. Look at your rate. Okay. It may be a small, maybe five, 10 basis points off where the cheapest bank is. But how long have you been with these guys? That’s, that’s important as well. People don’t realize that history does is important.

With banking institutions ’cause they see a consistency in what you’ve been doing. And quite often, sometimes that’s a contradiction sometimes and quite often. But what I’m trying to say is that don’t disregard your length of time with a particular institution that. In case there’s a decision to be made and it’s line ball a good reputation with the bank you’ve been dealing with can sometimes sway the bank to say, you know what?

We’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna give you the funding. Even though it doesn’t quite meet our criteria, because we’ve seen what you’ve been doing for the last 10 years with us. And that’s not always gonna be a deal winner, but it’s, it certainly puts weight on your side of the ledger.

Whereas you’re going to a new bank, it’s all lovey Doy. Oh, we love to bring it across. But we don’t like what you’ve done over here. Sorry. We can’t take you.

Yeah. And. I think on the back of all of that, what you are saying there, even from someone new’s coming to you and looking to change, is that there’s a de a large degree of service that needs to be offered by mortgage brokers.

But what fascinates me and is that from what I’ve observed, is that it’s an industry where there’s a lot of service When someone first walks in the door. Then it’s just thanks for coming. We’ll just hope that you sit there for the next 5, 10, 20 years and you will possibly call me if you decide you wanna change, you wanna move house or something like that.

But otherwise we’ll just take the little cut that we get and move on to the new client. Yeah.

So if, so there are two kinds of brokers in that space, there’s the ones that you’ve just described that all lovey-dovey in the first six to 12 months. And then the service level falls away because what?

What do I need to call the client for? Really? I. Their loan’s done and dusted. Then there’s the other half of brokering where is, yes, that’s true, but you need to stay in touch with your clients and technology makes it so much easier now to be able to put out feelers to your client base to see how they’re tra traveling.

Now we don’t actually lot, a lot of banks don’t give us line of sight of what their what their rates or appliance rates are. Some do. And there’s called interest creep where banks won’t always give them the full discount and they’ll all of a sudden, five years later, the margin between what they’ve started with and what’s available now is massive.

But sometimes you don’t get to see that. So that’s, I again, important. Even doing a once a year annual review, send me your. Statement because I want have a look to make sure that one, that you are in a competitive, you’ve got a competitive rate and two gives you an opportunity to talk to you about what are your plans for tomorrow or next week, next year.

They changed since we spoke. It’s a bit of engagement. Now the clients must say, look, no, it’s all good. Thanks very much. Tick box. Go away. Doesn’t matter. The first thing they’re gonna do is if they need something, they’re gonna, they’re gonna call you. Not the last broker they just spoke to 10 minutes ago who’s asked those same questions and you think hang on.

Eli hasn’t called me in freaking three years, not even an email. You know what, I’m, I’ve got no reason to stay with him. Brokers, he is offering me good, good service and change. Thanks very much. I’m outta here. And the broker only gets to know when he gets to know, they’re saying your loan has been discharged.

So for brokers is important because they’re. I don’t know if but we’ve got two parts of our business. One is the upfront commissions, which we make, but more importantly is there’s what’s called trailing commissions. So I’m not sure if you’re aware of what that is. So we get a very small percentage of what the outstanding balance is paid to us every month.

Now, the reason we get paid that is ’cause we’re meant to be servicing our clients. So we’re still getting paid for doing that, but most brokers or a lot of brokers don’t. That builds. That’s your superannuation, that’s your legacy. If you start getting leakage at the bottom, which means you’ve gotta keep replacing it, you’re not gonna grow your book.

All you’re gonna do is keep the book just about where it is, right? So the idea is to one, grow that that trailing book, because that’s really where the value of your business is in dollar terms. You can get up in the morning and know you’re making X amount for the year because it’s just gonna come in.

But retaining that. Is doubly important just as important as doing a new loan. ’cause for every loan that goes out the door, you’ve gotta rewrite another one. So easier to keep the one you’ve got than try and chase a new one. So it’s, yeah, it’s important that brokers do. Keep and stay. Again, it depends on their book as well.

If you’ve got a large commercial book for versus a residential book it would, might be slightly different approach. But certainly as again, with technology today, there is no excuse, no reason why you would not be outreaching to your clients at least once every six every 90 days. Just a quick email, and trigger points like birthdays, anniversaries, if you’ve done your job, you’ve got all that information.

It might seem a bit, oh yeah, this is just autogenerated when it comes through them, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a touch point, people know it’s just auto generated by the system still. It’s a touch point. Might trigger something. Oh, got in touch with Eli because A, B, and C. Yeah,

it’s, it, ’cause it’s fascinates me that, as someone in the early days of me starting a business, I did a lot of the networking and between that and other things I seem to automatically get on the list of a whole lot of mortgage brokers over the years.

And consistently what happens is, with the interest rates announcement comes out every month, you get, swamped with. The standard newsletters telling me what what I could read about in the news anyway. Yeah. And it’s just seems to be a very, consistent line that people tread.

And so that’s why I’m fascinated by the idea of standing out in your profession, because I think there’s a lot for other people to learn, is saying that you’re a very service on the, at the front end. You’re a very service dominated one. There is a degree of automation, as you say, that can happen there, but offering real service in between is ultimately what’s gonna make you grow even better.

And that’s. That’s something that a lot of businesses forget about. Not just only mortgage

brokers. No, absolutely. So you’ve gotta just rehashing what they’re, what clients can already read in the news. The rates have gone up, the economy’s crap, the inflation’s up. You’ve gotta put all that together and say.

Because I understand you. ’cause if you’ve done the right thing in the beginning, you’ve got good notes on what they’re, what the client does, whether they’re in business, whether they’re self-employed and maybe, or sorry, working PAYG in a particular industry. If you’ve got those notes and things change your approach to what you speak to them about, whether it’s by email, phone call, text, or whatever will be more pertinent, if you can then relate that to their own.

Situation. So if you’re dealing with a small business client. And rates have, changed and they can read all that and inflation’s gone up. So it, the reach out is about, look, this has changed. You and I both know that. Has that affected your business? Do you need some support in what you currently got?

Or maybe you’ve, what you’re currently looking at, so you are offering more than just, I’ll get you a better rate. You actually are actually, I’m just trying to get some interest in there. Their life and what’s going on. They might be a c you know, they might be a lawyer on high on, on high income, but they might, the lawyer’s got four investment properties.

He knows that the land tax has gone through the roof. You reach out and say, look, you and I both know land tax has gone through the roof. What have you done or what are you thinking of doing to maybe mitigate some of that? Have you spoken to a financial planner about maybe having a look at your structure and seeing.

What can be done about, so it’s not all by always about offering something that you can do for them, but, and that’s why networking is important to have the right net professionals in your network. Not so much for them to refer you business, but for you to be able to leverage off their expertise for your clients.

So when you reach out to them, that’s the service part. I’m not worried about your loan. What I’m worried about is are you structured right? Have you got the right plans in place? Have you spoken to a financial planner? If you haven’t, I’ve got two or three that I trust really well. Might be worthwhile talking to you ’cause you’ve got four properties and you’ve had them for a while and you haven’t done anything with them.

I’m just concerned that might, that you haven’t prepared yourself for what’s coming down the track. Do you wanna talk to somebody or have you, oh, are you already talking to somebody? And that’s great. Terrific. Move on. Using your networking partners, and I call ’em partners because I put ’em on my, I will put them on my website as partners with me.

Not because I want to get business from them, but I wanna offer their services to my clients to help them improve their circumstances. That doesn’t always translate into a business for me. It doesn’t matter. What it translates is into respecting who I am. And they think, you know what? The next person they speak to about maybe doing some boring, now you gotta go and see Ali.

You just gotta go and see him. Why? Because you just gotta have to see him. So that’s the mindset you put you’re trying to build that there’s a high level of trust in your relationship beyond the initial transaction.

It’s. It’s such an important thing, building that trust and and I like what you’re saying.

There’s a lot for other businesses to learn from, your approach and what makes you stand out. I wanted to touch on one other area just before we wrap things up because you mentioned it earlier and I a couple of times and I’m fascinated by it. Yeah. So you’re obviously mentoring a number of people.

Tell me how do you actually get into that space in the first place, and what does that actually, what does that actually look like and, and ultimately what’s the benefit to you?

Actually we actually, by accident, I actually met another broker at a networking meeting, which unusual, you don’t intend to go to networking meetings where there’s two of you.

But in this case there was we got on fairly well and we hooked up on LinkedIn as you do. And then. She was a mentor with a particular firm and that particular firm was looking for new mentors ’cause their business was growing. So I thought I can do that. Lemme see what I mean I’ve got all this stuff in my head.

I’d like to get it out give back to the industry because I see what Paul. Brokering does to clients. It’s like you get you get to hear them because I dealt with client with broker X and they absolutely screwed up my loan, right? So you, you get the driftwood that comes outta that.

So to be able to so I thought here’s a way I’m gonna be able to give back to the industry by trying to help. New to industry brokers developed their skills, developed their ethos, their ethics help them with deal scenarios, information. So yeah, I, I spoke with the woman who was, who owned it in Sydney and, after a couple of chats and meetings said, yep, no problem. We’ve got plenty of, we’ve got a few to already start giving you. And so that’s what I do. I, we deal, we, I speak to them sometimes, especially new ones. They’ll ring me three, four times a week, sometimes three, four times a day. How do I do this?

How do I, what should I do? The joy out of what you’re do doing that is, yeah. Initially it’s what have I done here? I’ve just adopted, two, four year olds. But what happens is over time is they get more confident, they get more expertise at what they do. And actually, I feel that, that help.

I feel good because I think you’re good. You’ve grown and like your own kids. You, when you see your kids grow and they’re successful. You take some kudos in that, right? So make, it’s always about the giver. The giver gets more than the person who gives who receives.

’cause the giver receives that sort of good feeling about what they’ve done. So yeah. It’s, I realize how much, when I do that with the with mentees, I actually realize how much I actually know that I don’t, that I don’t remember knowing. ’cause unless you actually use it, you don’t remember it.

But it just comes flooding out and I, and then at the end of the conversation go, I should have, I’m glad I remembered that. ’cause I didn’t know actually. You remembered it, knew it. No, it’s a it’s good fun, but also actually you get to weed out the rubbish because sometimes you get.

Guys, girls are coming in and you think, why are you being a broker? And so we have our initial first in interview about how the relationship’s gonna work. And I give feedback to the owner of the business. I’m going, look, this one’s gonna be finished in six weeks. I’m telling you now. How do you know that?

I just know. And lo and behold, six weeks later. They’re gone. But that’s just, I think that’s a good thing. ’cause you don’t you need to it’s a weeding out process. So you want people getting into the industry who know what they’re doing, passionate about what they do and will improve the industry in the whole, which improves our reputation as brokers.

Look, 85% of all lendings done by brokers now, so we can’t be doing it that bad a job.

I love it. And it’s so you can hear the joy that you get by being a mentor from the way you talk about it. And I think that in itself is a good way of describing how much benefit there is to you, is there is or clearly to the people who are who you are mentoring.

Just to wrap things up, a question that I like to ask all my guests on the program is what’s the aha moment? That people have when they come to work with you?

The aha moment? When I haven’t, the aha moment comes when, why haven’t you asked me how much money I want? I’ll go through that process of, tell me the Anthony story.

That’s my first question to all clients. Going back to an old, television personality. He used to ask his invitees on his show. That was always his first question. Tell me the Anthony story and then just sit back and let the floodgates open. And by 20 minutes later, we haven’t even talked about anything financial.

I’ve, I’ve learned about them, their history, much like what we’ve done a little bit today. Yeah. And by the time we get to the point where, okay, let’s talk about what we’re gonna be doing. I’m going, oh, okay. It’s a trust moment. That’s, I think for them it’s a, they feel relieved that the person they’re talking to actually cares about who they are, what they do, and why they want to do it.

But it’s not a transaction for them. That’s the aha moment. And that can take 20 minutes, depends.

Relationships. Relationships are everything. And it starts. From the moment you first meet people, and I love the approach that you take to that. And and I thank you for being so open about, the different choices and the different options that are available to people because I think there’s a lot for people to learn, not just about specifically about where to go for.

And what to look at in terms of mortgage brokers, but even generally about how you approach being a service related business. And I think that’s what being a thought leader is all about. And I appreciate you being part of the program,

Anthony. Thanks very much for having me on. And it’s been a, it’s been an eyeopener for me as well.

Thank you and thank you everyone for listening in. And of course, don’t forget to check out the show notes for all the information on how to get in touch with Eli, as well as other information about the show. And we hope that you will of course, hit the button to subscribe. We look forward to your company next time on this bytes for thought leaders.

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