Two Sydney-based brokers utilising different business coaching services say it has been game-changing for their businesses as well as their mindsets and lives beyond work.
Pink Finance director Nicole Cannon (pictured above left), who became part of The Broker Ideas Group during 2020, said she first decided to get a coach to keep her more focused and accountable on her business goals.
“I knew I had great potential, but sometimes but you just don’t know what you don’t know,” Cannon said.
“I felt I like I needed somebody to be accountable to – to get the whip out basically. And I get very distracted by a lot of different things, thinking this could be good or that could be good for the business. Having that core person can really keep you on track with your long-term goals.”
Cannon said she had also been looking for business support through the difficulties of the pandemic.
“There was a lot of needing stability and community at a time when we were all being isolated, and that absolutely had its merits. There was so much frustration at the time and fear of the unknown there, and also the challenge of how to manage this immense workflow increase we had.”
Borrower First CEO Kiran Saldanha (pictured above right), who is being coached in a global network of entrepreneurial business owners, said he wanted to access coaching to support his growth as an entrepreneur and business owner, rather than just to become a better mortgage broker.
“I have attended different business coaches in this industry, and they are usually focused on things like how to get more leads, how to process a file better, or on how to use social media,” Saldanha said. “Well sure, I can do all of that, but at the end of it I’m still just a mortgage broker.”
“The reason I started a business in 2008 was because I have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. I’m not into being a piece of a puzzle in a business where your source of income, because it’s commission-based, is a drain on you stepping out and be creative in the entrepreneurial space.”
Coaches help to streamline and grow businesses
Cannon said a key shift in thinking for her that has come out of being coached by The Broker Ideas Group was to see Pink Finance “as a business as opposed to a mortgage broking company”.
“I knew I couldn’t keep going the way I was back in 2020. I wanted to step away from being part of the process otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to manage it,” she said.
The Broker Ideas Group helped Cannon improve business processes, including recommending BrokerEngine software, which has been “a game changer” for processing higher loan volumes.
The team also helped her pull apart her process and work out where there were gaps or lags.
This is where Cannon has hired people. In two years, the Pink Finance team has expanded to five (previously it was just Cannon and a loan processer), and Cannon’s goal now is to look after just 15% of clients.
“Everybody sees Pink as Nicole Cannon, but I’m involved in a lot less of the whole process now. I still have the key client contact, but I have team members handling all of the documentation, the research and the processing. I’m mostly just there for key milestone points now.”
Saldanha said the lessons from his business coach and group, which meets every Sunday night online, had resulted in him hiring five people in the last three months to cover the volumes he had been seeing, and that at the moment, he was basically looking to hire “as many brokers as possible”.
Focusing on brokers as people as well as owners
Cannon said The Broker Ideas Group’s support had helped her direct necessary focus to herself as well as her business goals, and that this was now reaping business and life benefits for her.
“I had a period where I was emotionally and mentally at burnout, and I was so focused on achieving these goals. That’s when Ash Playsted said that my 90-day project focus was to focus on myself and nothing else but focus on myself – it was the best advice I’d ever had,” she said.
“Having a coach is about a business but it’s also about yourself. It’s about investing in someone who can help you achieve the goals through good and bad. Stuff still happens, but having them give you permission to step back like that, well that’s when a lot of magic can happen.”
Cannon said gaining space and time will help her focus on her longer-term plans for the Pink brand.
“They are really just on paper right now, but they are exciting, it makes my heart light up and I have a lot of hope this will be a nice complementary thing to Pink and the greater finance community.”
Saldanha said coaching had energised him on a personal level – he now regularly wakes up at 3.30am to undertake the morning routine of an ‘Olympic winner’. This includes activities such as walking and running, meditation and yoga, prayer and having a cold shower.
“It is shifting my programming of who I am at the core,” Saldanha says.
“For me to go for a walk in the middle of the night like is unheard of. To jog at that time? It’s insane! This is what is coming out of business coaching for me. And people will ask what does that have to do with mortgage broking? Well, it has absolutely everything to do with it.”
