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On the heels of winning the Editor’s Choice award at the Better Business Awards Qld 2023, Aussie Home Loans broker Mel Smith caught up with The Adviser on the Elite Broker podcast to talk about how she got into the industry, why she stayed with Aussie and how she markets her business.
Find out what she said below:
How did you become a broker and how long have you been in the industry?
I’m coming up to my 13th year of broking at the end of this year.
I came into broker from working in agribusiness, that was my original career choice in life. I’d finished an agriculture degree and decided to pursue that as a career but due to some change in tax rules, the company I was working for wrapped up.
It was quite a pivot. I started doing a course for mums returning into the workforce and we made a vision board and through that I started picking things apart. I figured out I like chatting to people, getting to know them and I like people needing me.
During that time, I saw an ad for a mobile broker with ANZ, and it just so happened my footy team, Collingwood was sponsored by Aussie. That was the spark that led me to them, so, I started doing my research and I haven’t looked back.
Why did you decide on that route instead of setting up a franchise?
I think it was because of the kids. I had to borrow money off my mum to put them in day care so that I could get it up off the ground.
The money I got from my retrenchment had to fix our roof because of these big storms in Queensland. So, it was mainly the fact that I could juggle around having a young family.
Do you have any particular area of focus?
I’ll go anywhere my clients need me. Now that we’re post-COVID, there’s so much more stuff that can be done online and the barriers are down for that now. You can have different ways to ID people.
So for me, it’s not as imperative to be out and about seeing people when you can work from home.
Do you still write agri loans?
No, it’s all just residential and asset finance because Aussie doesn’t have an agri avenue and I’m not going to have them reinvent the wheel for me.
However, the organisation I was with was a great introduction and through that, people were getting loans to invest in agri business.
How do you bring broking into coaching?
I sponsor my footy club, so everyone at the club knows who’s who and I do end up getting a out of leads out of it.
We quite often have our Aussie branded coffee van down at AusKick and introduce new families to the fact that there’s an Aussie broker onsite which helps break down those barriers of people in the footy club not wanting to know each other’s personal business.
I ended up writing the president of the club’s home loan at one time, and that opened up more doors for me.
How else do you market your business?
Well, I’ve taken my foot off the gas pedal a little bit because things had started to get quite busy. We were basically keeping on top of all of our reviews and trying to keep constantly repricing what we’ve got and keeping in touch with who’s on our books now.
I worked really hard on getting my Google ranking higher and getting all the reviews on there, keeping content up to date and making an effort to keep similar content across social media.
My social media for Instagram is Mortgage Broker mummy, because I wanted to brand myself as someone who was “mum-ing” it up and keeping it relevant.
That’s the business I’m trying to attract, other mums. If you’ve got a couple of kids, two incomes, and you’re going through the same sort of stuff as me, I can bond with you and you probably wouldn’t mind if I helped you save a bit of money so that your kids can go to a better school.
What do you love about what you’re currently doing?
I love getting to know people, helping them out and being needed. I love that people call me because they’re about to make some sort of decision and they needed to check with me first.
I also love sending people out to look at property, managing my staff and getting to know my staff, hearing their ideas and seeing what they bring to the table. On top of that I love being busy and racing around, I don’t think I’d want to be not busy!
If you want to learn more about Mel Smith and her Aussie Home Loans business, tune into the Elite Broker episode How Mel Smith is kicking goals broking in Qld, below:
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