Each week MPA brings you advice from the industry's thought leaders on their biggest business challenge and how they tackled it.
Each week MPA brings you advice from the industry's thought leaders on their biggest business challenge and how they tackled it. This week we speak to Josh Gilbert, mortgage broker at Loan Market St Kilda.
MPA: What has been one of your biggest challenges in business to date and why?
Josh Gilbert: For me it was trying to do everything myself. Continuing to grow the business, knowing when to bring someone else on and knowing what the best way to go about it was.
MPA: How did you overcome this challenge?
JG: I spoke to many different brokers about what sort of assistance they have in their business. There are a lot of options that you can have in terms of support crew, and I had to find out what works best for me.
I now outsource my files to a file-driver. I’m also now looking at outsourcing work like social media, my website and PR. I’m looking at doing articles myself and having people continually update my website and Facebook. It’s all about what works best for myself, and that is looking at what I can outsource. That way my overheads are a little bit lower and I don’t have that burden of having an employee as yet.
MPA: What are some of the key lessons you learnt from this experience?
JG: It’s all about learning where best your time is spent, what activities you’re best completing - and that is face-to-face appointments, finding more referrers and calling the people that are being referred to you - so pretty much eliminating all the admin side of it for someone else to do. Essentially we’re brokers, not administrators.
I’ve also learnt that without making that move you can’t expect to continue to grow or get to a certain level in terms of what business you want to write without getting someone else involved in your business. There’s only so much one person can do.
MPA: How have those lessons benefited you in business since?
JG: I think even though I was quick at the admin stuff it still probably took up about 50 per cent of my time. In the last four months, since I’ve been able to focus on leads and referrers and making appointments, I’ve noticed that my business has now doubled.
It not only has allowed me to spend more time with new clients, but also to keep a better relationship with existing clients, whereas being time-poor in the past that may have been an area I was falling down on.
MPA: If you were to tackle this again, would you do anything differently?
JG: I think what I found was all of the top brokers out there had put on a PA before they wrote business, but I probably took the reverse approach. I wrote business so I had a bit of cashflow so I could then put on someone, but that’s probably the only regret that I have. To write the mortgages you have to back yourself and I would have put someone on a lot earlier because that actually motivates you to go out there and find more work.
I probably should have got a PA or started outsourcing work after the first six months because I think if you’re ready to take on the risk of becoming a broker anyway, to take on another risk of putting someone else on you’re probably only limiting your growth by not doing that.
MPA: What advice would you give to other brokers facing a similar situation?
JG: Brokers need to understand the risk of not bringing someone on compared to the risk of bringing someone on. I think they have to realise that to go into business they need help - put the PA on before they write business rather than waiting to write business and then putting on the PA.
That’s just for me though, and it’s about finding what’s right as well in terms of the business that they have, the volumes that they write, the clients that they see. Whether they were to look at outsourcing someone like a file-driver or getting a full-time PA, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer and I think it depends on the individuals business as to what’s going to have the best fit.
