How to Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance (And Increase Your Mortgage Broking Practice’s Revenue)

You’re here because you operate an established mortgage broking practice, already experienced success and wondering if you could or should take your practice to the next level.

The knowledge, skills and tools that you’ve accumulated to get to this point will not necessarily get you to where you’d like to be. If you truly want to grow, the journey ahead does take effort, and on occasion, it can be a testing or character-building experience.

With a host of different variables that influence deal flow, profitability, settlement volumes, asset value, work-life balance and your own sense of accomplishment, Ultimate Broker Insights will look at and discuss these variables so you can level up your broking practice.

Each article has been influenced by the pragmatic experience of working with mortgage brokers in Australia for over 9 years combined with the insights gained from having conducted over 8,500 one-on-one?coaching sessions.

Hopefully they inspire you to realise your own potential so you too can operate a broking practice that provides a sense continued professional and personal reward.?

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Being busy with work is a good thing. But if work is all consuming, it can diminish quality-of-life. Discover how you can free up your time while increasing your revenue.?

The typical broker is a busy professional helping clients meet their goals.?

However, some brokers are so busy that they don’t have time for anything else. So, they’re often tired, overworked, stressed and on occasions, disconnected from the people they’re working hard to support..?

This was the type of situation our client Paul found himself in when we met in 2018.?

Having left the corporate world, he decided to start his own mortgage broking practice so he could build a lifestyle broking practice that would fund his family’s needs and wants.

But he soon found out that serving clients demanded far more time than he expected.?

Paul found himself working long hours, being at the behest of his clients, yet he wasn’t spending quality time with his family nor hitting his settlement or profit targets.?

That was the case until he decided to implement more structure in his daily operations. A decision turned things around for his practice and his life.

Today, his mortgage broking practice settles $50 million per year.?He works less than 40 hours each week and has the time & means to enjoy his success.?

Here are some insights Paul shared that could be useful for you too.

Expect Clients to Value Your Time

Just because clients don’t pay a mandate or engagement fee doesn’t mean your time is free. So, you need to place some value on your time and expertise if you expect others to do the same.

When clients learn to value your time, they won’t take you or your services for granted. Instead, they will invest their time in transactions and be prepared for your meetings. This will increase your productivity and the profitability of your practice.?

Expecting others to value your time needs to start with you doing it first.?A simple way to get started is to be aware of how long your appointments actually take vs. how long they could take.

A broker I helped swore that 90-minute appointments were required to cover off all the client’s questions and I challenged her to reduce them to 60-minutes.??

She embraced the challenge and 30-days later reported her meetings were quicker, clients were easier to work with and there was no impact to the service experience.

Control Where You Meet With Clients

Paul told me about a time when he drove to a client’s house after hours for a refinance of $1.8M.? At the time, Paul didn’t have as many inquiries, so was prepared to do almost anything to win the business.

At the appointment, Paul noticed he was competing with the client’s kids for their attention. The clients were distracted, disorganised and jumping between being a potential client and a parent.?

When Paul asked to see their tax return, they literally had to crawl under the house, which took around 45 minutes and nothing short of a disaster.? But, when you don’t have many deals in the pipeline, it’s easy to look past the chaos and say “that’s fine, just take your time.”?

And boy did they.? 3 hours later Paul left the appointment only to get a phone call the next day to say they’ll stick with their backs because they found him too disorganised.?

In effect, they connected Paul to their own chaos.

The lesson cost Paul about $10K upfront, but it is a lesson he won’t forget anytime soon, as he’s never done an in-home appointment since.? All appointments now happen in the office, on phone or on zoom where everything is organised and leaves a positive first impression.

Have The Courage to Say No

Some brokers find it hard to say “no” or set proper expectations, which is the quickest way to grey hairs or a cardiac arrhythmia.

They aim to please everything, they are reactive and carry other’s people’ stress.

That’s why you should say “no” or “not now” to requests that aren’t a good fit for you.? Like one broker said recently to me, if a client got themselves into a mess, like buying without getting a pre-approval and without knowing their borrowing capacity, it’s not my job to take on their stress.

So, when a client sends you an SMS asking if you can “quickly run some numbers”, send them your Calendly link or ask them to get in touch with your office so you can discuss what they’re looking to do.??

This gives the impression that you value your time. It makes clients perceive you as scarce and your services as valuable, which it is.?

As importantly, it means you can be more focused and effective with your time and effort instead of being spread thin.

You Can Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance

If you’re constantly overwhelmed or reactive and can’t find time for other things, the worst thing to do is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.??

Consider the insights from Paul’s experience that contributed to his personal transformation so you too can achieve your income, impact and quality-of-life goals.

To your continued success.

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I’m James McCracken, Broker Growth Strategist, where for the past 9 years, I've coached brokers to grow their practices with structure and consistency.

Here are further ways I can help:

Speaking & presenting: Would you like a tailored presentation for your conference or PD Day so your brokers can grow their volumes??Send me a LinkedIn message to request my speaker kit.

Deal Flow Plan: Download a personalised plan that pinpoints growth inhibitors and options for operating with more structure, efficiency and consistency.?thesuccessfuladviser.com/dfp/

Ultimate Broker: For established mortgage brokers only, this service provides guided support to accelerate settlement volumes, improve operational efficiency and reduce worth hours.?

Book an initial call?to see if there is potentially a fit.

To your continued success!

James