2018-11-19
I'm a sole trader mortgage broker working from home and have been doing this job for 31 years. I have been an appointed Representative of Sesame since 2009 and I deal with all aspects of residential/BTL mortgages plus home insurance and protection. There isn't much I will not have a go at placing.
I started using SortRefer nearly 6 years ago when your Regional Account Manager Paul Gregory hammered on my door to tell me of his new exciting job role and how I could benefit from it. I had known Paul for many years as my BDM from Barclays/Woolwich so I knew he wouldn't be wasting my time.
Prior to SortRefer I had been using E-Conveyancer but their overall fees are too high and they have a small offering (Conveyancing only). SortRefer offers me that wider scope to put more on the table for my clients under one roof.
A typical day in the office
I’m never in the office before 9.30am and several mugs of coffee are always at hand. Old habits die hard and my first task is to check my bank balance, scan through my inbox without opening the emails to see if anything requires an immediate reply, look at my notepad from the previous day to see if anything is jumping out at me that screams "next to do". I find about 25% of emails can simply be binned. The rest of the morning will be taken up with updates, answering emails, opening and scanning/processing the post as I operate a totally paperless office. I try to get all of my admin out of the way by lunchtime so I can then start building fact finds for clients and doing lender research in the afternoons. I find most of my mortgages are submitted between 3pm and 5pm. Despite using email as much as possible, I do still prefer to post my clients a pack out with a copy of everything they need so it can be read at leisure and not sat staring at a phone screen trying to read quotes etc.
With a break to eat around 7pm to 9pm, I am often back at my desk from 9pm through to 2am checking progress on online solicitor tracking, firing off chaser emails to solicitors or clients and writing my reason why letters. I find I can do my best letters to clients when the phone has stopped ringing and the email box isn't pinging every 2 minutes.
With nearly 600 active clients and working alone there is never a quiet moment and putting in high number of hours to keep the clients happy has become second nature.
The Financial Industry
All I ever wanted to be when at school was a car mechanic after growing up on a farm and being surrounded by tractors and machinery all of my childhood. Being taught to drive tractors from about 10 years old and having my first jalopy at 11 only fuelled my interest in all things mechanical.
I left private school at 17 having had to stay an extra year as I was only 15 when I took my GCSE's. I took 14 in total but did not want to stay and do my A levels. I was not a fan of school. My biggest issue with my education was trying to enrol at College to do Vehicle Mechanics. I was told I was too bright and had too many GCSE's. They gave in after a struggle and I then did block and day release whilst working for a large motor dealer until I was 21. An allergy to diesel ended that career path for me.
So at 21, driving an old car I was keen to get out and about and earn a living, but a job with a company car sounded great. So off I went selling insurance out on the road for a large life insurer in a brand new shiny Austin Metro! By 1987 I was looking for something more from work and by then I was fed up with driving and living in that car so I joined small mortgage brokers as a self-employed trainee. Nearly 32 years later I am still at it.
I've seen the market change for the better in that time. I've been through two financial depressions and I’m still here, having watched many brokers go to the wall in 2001/2002 and 2008/2009. My motto has always been to build everything slowly, don't be greedy and as my grandmother used to say... take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves. I do not advertise or have a website, all of my work is referrals and two small local Estate Agent introducers.
My passion is to see a happy client getting the end result they wanted at the start of their journey. Yes, it is nice to earn a good living, but I have never charged fees and will take as much care over a £50,000 mortgage as a £500,000 mortgage. I could earn more by charging fees but it is not how I have built my business model since 1987.
The most asked question - Can I buy that house and how much will it cost me a month?
His love for engines
I don’t have a lot of spare time but I’m still passionate about engines. I’ve owned and ran a kart racing team from 2006 to 2015, which got me out of the office 2 weekends a month. Note I used the word karting and not go-karting- there is a world of difference! The machines we ran were 30hp and could do 80mph in a straight line with an engine alone costing £2000. It was a quick way to have a hobby and watch all your hard earnt cash be spent on tyres and bumper replacements!
I did fly a light aircraft from 1999 to 2006, which I thoroughly enjoyed but the cost of flying and karting was crazy and a nagging teenager wanting to race his kart won over the peace of looking down on a patchwork of English fields from 2500 feet up, my aim is to return to this when I semi-retire.
I do like to travel and aim to have at least a one or two week break a year with the aim of leaving the laptop at home. I've got plans for December this year in the making and might yet manage to get away for 3 weeks and actually shut shop for that length of time. There has to come a point where a bit of "me time" becomes vitally important.
The benefits and experience of SortRefer
SortRefer gives you an option to tailor all quotes to the specific client and offer more than just a quick conveyancing quote. It provides me with one central point of contact if someone needs a kick.
I have little issues with SortRefer and rarely have to hassle the office with problems. Having used solicitors for so long you tend to soon work out who is good and who isn’t. It's never a good or bad law firm, It's the specific case handler I'm after. It’s important to have someone who cares about my clients and their goals.
Three important rules to live by
- If you don’t try it, don’t moan about it
- Make it a large
- Never give up as there is an option for 99.99% of us out there
We all make mistakes, but as long as you learn from them, then you'll be a better person at the end of it.
Career advice for aspiring mortgage brokers
Get in there and start earning your living. It’s so hard to find school or university leavers who are interested in this line of work. There are apprenticeships out there through training providers for CeMAP but youngsters these days’ struggle to take their eyes off their phones for long enough to learn anything.
I had an apprentice, who lasted 3 minutes as they were very uninterested in actually working.
They need to realise that with a little bit of effort and time they could easily be earning £50,000 a year within 2 or 3 years of starting. The average age of us advisers out there is increasing annually so there needs to be a massive influx of youngsters to replace us, but hand on heart, I do not know where they are going to come from. I can see many brokers simply working till we drop!
Winning the World Cup Campaign
I won a holiday voucher in your last campaign and had great delight in peeling it away from Paul Gregory's fingers! It was a shock as I don't ever expect to win anything. The voucher is sat on my desk and has holiday December 2018 written all over it.
