From Vegan Coach To Mortgage Man - Aaron Cattell.

holy [ __ ] I got told off by one of the banks Ain all about it they basically went through all of my Tik toks why did you have the confidence just to piss people off and get people to fight in the comments I saw it firsthand Greg's the bakery they brought out a vegan sausage R Pi Morgan he was like I'd rather eat like Tire or something whoever was doing the marketing for Gregs lay into them I was like holy [ __ ] they don't obviously care about their brand from vegan coach to mortgage man Our Guest today is building a seven figure Financial Services business by being just a little bit abrasive on social media and pushing the B countes just a little bit further than the

rest of the industry is okay with tune in today and watch how someone has built this business by dominating a platform that the rest of Industry doesn't want to even try with welcome to the podcast great to have you here thank you uh why don't you quickly introduce yourself and then we'll get into it hey guys I'm Aaron the mortgage man that's pretty much that's enough theand name enough said um cool like I said off camera what I want to do is find out like why did you start this content production game in the first place because it's not a normal thing for a lot of people to do especially people who are in business like yourself so where did it start where did it

come from because there not before morgage man right yeah before the mortgage man I was actually the plant-based coach there we go did did you find that you did see something around there y y before that the vegan coach which was just literally the plant-based coach but I made it more friendly as a brand um and I guess that did start that was the initial part because of the I guess people wanted to know how to be vegan how to be plant-based how to be healthy and there was no one really doing it and I can talk to you one onone or I can post it on social media and believe it or not when you start talking about veganism there is a lot of

content to and fro it's like being in politics it's like there's polarizing opinions and I kind of knew how to stir the pot got it or I learned how to stir the pot it's like it's okay not to be 100% vegan that was one of my most popular posts when I had like 10,000 followers million people commented it was literally vs carniv and every now and then this post hasn't done anything for a while and I'm just but what about this yeah and when you know how to use the algorithm which is what I've learned how to do it yeah you get the polarizing opinions the results that's why Donald Trump is the president yeah 100% yeah yeah he knows how to Stew people up

exactly so so tell me then be because when when did that first out what year were we in so that was so I lived in New Zealand I was a personal trainer I was qualified in nutrition and personal training I worked down in the city in a gym and then my partner at the time and I moved to London okay and I basically had to start my client base from zero I was doing some property stuff in the background which I guess links to what I do now but at the time I was like we just moved to London I need more clients starting PT where do you get clients from and then kind of went vegan yeah yeah you can you can mute that

part out no needs to know went vegan for I guess from a health perspective because I was like I can I still felt the same after being vegan compared to like oh you're going to lose weight or you're going to lose muscles I was oh I might as well just do this and then I saw the business opportunity and I was like I can help people be better healthier Vons cuz there's unhealthy ones and healthy ones and um yeah I created the Instagram branding got my avatar as females that wanted to be healthier as vegetarians or vegans yeah and just started creating content from there in turn got Facebook ads going for my in-person business and then the online side of things and the online

s of stuff was like just like online coaching yeah online coaching so pretty much and I started a podcast and I had my Instagram account Tik Tok I tried and failed because Gary V said so and and I was like this is dumb I don't do this and I wish I keep going with it that was like year-wise that would have been like 2019 2018 is when I kind of got popular and started doing the podcast and doing things like you're doing now I got people that knew more about the subjects like doctors interviewed them and then hijacked Their audience basically like they've got 100,000 followers on Instagram I've only got 12,000 if I can get with them then they'll post it amazing yeah and

through and I started like yeah hosting panels and becoming a bit more of a influencer and it's weird to say the influencer for being the plant-based coach and people used to refer to me then and now I guess it's happening again the mortgage man yeah I love it I want to go back to the like stirring the bot a bit because like for a lot of businesses that is just like I could never do that I could never upset people because there's going to be a reflection on my brand that no one's going to buy from me like for those people saying that sort of stuff like why did you have the confidence just to piss people off and get people to fight in the

comments I saw it firsthand when in London Greg's the bakery do you know them they brought out a vegan sausage R okay Pi Morgan oh yes I remember yeah yeah yeah he commented on there and he was like something I'd rather eat like a like a tire or something and whoever was doing the marketing or the pr for Gregs lay into them and I was like holy [ __ ] like they don't obviously care about their brand or maybe they do and they saw this angle and then from then on I was like this is working and now you've got like Ryan a doing the same thing every time somebody puts a snarky comment they snarky comment back and I think it humanizes the company with the

brand and I guess I had the confidence or maybe I don't know what it was courage out yeah to and I guess are kind of fun fun like just to like in a way and it's kind of the same with my personality question things and if I'm having a good day I'll do it politely and if I'm having a bad day I'll be a bit more snarky but it yeah gives you a personality y um and obviously it's not for everybody yeah but that's fine there's plenty of people that it is for and they're like oh this guy seems straight to the point of honest and when you work with clients they appreciate the honesty they appreciate hey you're like you're dreaming you've got too

much debt you need to do this instead or like that kind of thing like yeah I just saw that it it worked and I don't mind it's just me it's not like I don't have I don't have a big company to be told off by somebody by I yeah yeah and uh yeah like a lot of people would say like a lot of people said to that to us in the past like I can't believe that you're doing this sort of stuff on social media but for us it's always well you find the customers who do appreciate it and those ones you're going to have really great relationships with and the ones you who don't well when they meet you in real life they're not

like you either so you may as well find media beginning yeah so they don't even waste your time yeah so it is it's definitely a part of that but now yeah like there's still arguments yeah like I'd rather rent or mortgage brokers just do it for the money blah blah blah but like it's fun it's fun it's it and again if I'm in a good mood I'll do it politely and it's not be a little bit more yeah not so polite how what was it like was there any times where it got like too much or you just or you just really actually enjoy yeah I mean like it's kind of like online in a way it can be online bullying right people are if

they make it personal I guess um and when you're the vegan coach or the plant-based coach then people did make it personal and I think it got to me more when you saw some of the comments not necessarily directed at me but directed at other people and it's like you don't even know this person and I guess veganism is a very strong polarizing topic it's not as powerful as mortgages you know like um but it does I think it gets to me if somebody like let's say I do a post on like first home buyers that I've worked with that have just bought their first home and like they're obviously celebrating and they given me permission to talk about their study their like situation and

then someone's like blah blah like how dare you like force them into 30 years of De and it's like first off you don't even know these people you don't know their situation more than what I just said and like they wanted to buy a house and you know having a mortgage that you pay yourself that signifies an asset in our home is so much better yeah in their opinion and in my opinion of paying off someone else's mortgage yeah so they have their own problems and I think I learned very very early on that if somebody is getting that upset with you in the comments they probably got stuff going on in their own life that's way worse than what's going on in your life

so you're just kind of like yeah that's you're like like sometimes they just reply like oh you must be having a bad day yeah yeah they always are yeah there's always something El there's no reason to go off at someone random like that unless you've got problems right it just doesn't make any sense yeah or they're being paid by their competitors Yeah well yeah that might be that might be something um speaking of that actually about competitors like how have you found since transition to mortgage man so I'm I'm making some assumptions here that when you started the mortgage broking business you already knew how to build a brand so you went off and did the same similar approach but for a different brand what

was that like with the rest of the industry as you started to do that cuz it's not a normal thing in New Zealand for mortgage advisers to build a brand like this yeah I did pretty much just try and copy and paste what worked so um I guess I'll take you back a bit further when when Co happened I was still living in London okay and my partner had like she wanted to move back she wanted the reassurance of family and I was kinding London's pretty cool blah blah blah and um and and to be honest I probably would still be living there if it wasn't for Co or living somewhere in Europe because I just like the busyness of it yeah and we moved

back and I was like I don't really want to do this anymore like I don't want to have to put up with like the fitness industry which is essentially what it was yeah course I was just like I was kind of over that and I was like okay one of my mates just started his own mortgage broken company I wonder if I can go work for him and do the marketing side of things and I'll sell the plant-based coach the Instagram account and I didn't actually think I could sell it I just said I was closing and someone was like can I buy it and I was like yep 10,000 pound and they're like sweet yeah and still yeah and it's still I think operating

but like it's a different person and F time 33,000 35,000 yeah you could probably do that all day going to make a little 30,000 things and sell them off yeah um there was also a business plan of how to get clients but like the following is what exactly for sure um so I was like [ __ ] I've got to do the marketing for these guys how can do it I set up Facebook ads and I'll tell you what it's a completely different thing coso lead looking at first home buyers in New Zealand on Facebook versus trying to get people to buy $1,200 weight loss programs because you're actually asking them for money yeah whereas here you don't have don't have to pay anything so I quickly

learned everybody wants a mortgage but most of them can't get one yeah so how do you put in place how do you pre-qualify them to make sure you're not wasting your time on the phone because I am someone that does not like wasting time so I'm like how can I just talk to the people that can actually get a mortgage and that was probably the biggest learning curve but like for an email it was like at the time it was like 70 cents versus maybe like five or six dollars back in the UK and it was because it's different and I was like okay and I had to kind of like change my mindset around that um and I was like okay obviously make more

money if I actually can service these leads myself so became qualified in mortgage broking yeah um before that I already bought like a few properties and I decided that property was quite like it was one of those things that I kind of wish my parents told me to do at University rather than Sports Science I was like cool I spent four years doing this instead of doing that yeah um but yeah I just kind of thought that I'll just try and do what I did and I started a podcast it kind of worked it didn't seem to get as much traction as the original plan based one um but yeah I just kind of went from there and then now that you know then Tik

Tok came along and that was like oh I'll just try and see what happens got like my ideal client from that within the first maybe week yeah really yeah like and I was like all right I'm going all in and just started posting three videos a day and I've done that ever since so love it yeah and how quickly like I mean without getting into too much details but like how quickly did you turn that business to like replace Revenue essentially for yourself or like get to a position where you like okay I've got enough money coming in cuz the reason I asked that just to put a perspective is that like I've known a lot of mortgage advisers who had started this and they

usually like added a loss in the first year almost and then by second year they're hopefully making somewhat of a salary and these are the guys who are doing it all through personal networks because they haven't built a brand but like for you that's obviously been somewhat faster I'm assuming because one week of Tik Tok and you got a CLI so like how was it how was that journey to like profitability for you well I guess because it was only my time that I was spending pretty much from day one essentially like because I was also working for another company and and as I still do as a contract to them and they take a percentage for the compliance stuff which is actually changing this

financial year I'm doing everything by myself but um yeah I guess from day one because I was also getting Facebook leads at the same time I paid Facebook leads but the I guess when you weigh up the cost of your decline on Facebook versus what you get from their mortgage yeah that's there's a massive gap between them like you have to do a lot of leg work to get the client yeah once you got them like you get four or5 thousand yeah and so you started converting those leads and people from like straight away it started to happen yeah I guess the the downside of mortgages as it does take time to come through but you can talk to someone and they may not buy

a house for three months and that's the any new broker which I also found the hardest was like you have to kind of love off bre and baked beans for the first couple months until the start coming in and at the moment there's like a six we kind of time from when I talk to someone on the phone to actually getting into our home yeah sometimes less sometimes longer but it is one of those things that yeah just takes a bit of time yeah interesting and have you has anyone like how did the industry react like did anyone has have you had anyone like positive or negative conversations with people from the industry about what you've done yeah I got told off by one of

the banks and got I thought maybe something like that because they Vero all about it well I didn't realize and I did a post just saying that this particular bank had closed its lending to small deposit holders and that's a pretty informative post it was true but they didn't like it because it made them look bad yeah and we as Brokers have contracts with the banks and one of those things is you can't make the rest of the industry look back so I can't call out another broker and say that they crap even though I easily I would love to yeah um and this particular bank then found it I think it was actually the compliant head of compliance' daughter got it saw it on

Tik Tok I mentioned the bank which I no longer do any posts about that particular bank or mention any of the bank's names just to be safe and they basically went through all of my Tik toks and the guys that I was working with was like you need to go through and delete anything that is similar or is worse because there were worse because I just was like they didn't care like I'm sending them business but they're a big bad bank and I'm a little fry and they were just like you need to come in and be told off and you might lose your agencies and at the time because of the way the financial markets are done is like whoever's my boss gets some

more trouble than me yeah and they were like we could lose our agencies and I was like sorry and I think like I look at it now and be like man you could have used this as an awesome marketing opportunity and I see their ads on Tik Tok now and I'm like I would have been better yeah but y it is what it is it's a funny industry like and we've worked with a bunch of clients in that space and like we've had um we we've learned enough as an agency of what you can and can't say which is quite important because we uh had the FMA come down on one of our clients trying to like go through everything and then by the time

they went through it all they're like oh you actually did nothing wrong and just pain in the ass but they had industry people dob him in because that he got so much uh reach I suppose they all got a bit jealous of it and he was gotten new in the thing in the space and that's why I wondered because like yeah I've seen you content yeah it's it's definitely tall poppy right the rest of the industry getting in there and having it go because they can't do what you're doing um so I wondered if that would have happened and I guess it probably did yeah and I'm sure there's probably people that maybe have complained individually I don't know why like yes there are things

that could be in the great area um but it's the Great area that kind of Thrive because no one else is willing to do it so yeah I love it um okay so you've done that you've started the mortgage man that's grown pretty well like it's like full case and purposes like it's like 74,000 on Tik Tok now Instagram's going a bit better I didn't really grow on Instagram at the beginning I just didn't really bother for some reason I just didn't think people were ready for it and and also like Instagram just didn't work quite as well as Tik Tok did at the beginning you know it took them a little while to figure out how to get their videos to people who wanted

do it they've figured it out now but yeah they copied they just copied it exactly um but that's like you know you're probably one of the largest mortgage brands in the country like I don't know really who El sort of social media media yeah there is one guy that I actually am catching up with tomorrow um and he's got more on Tik Tok but doesn't have as much on Instagram and it's interesting because you get different kinds of clients from Instagram versus TK Tok for sure and yeah all I do on Instagram is literally just use repurpose which is an AI thing yeah I don't know if they ready do anything ah yeah I mean you don't need to these days with the way those

algorithms work okay just put the same content same place they'll find Their audience what I was going to ask though is like how has that been like now you're saying you were doing Facebook ads did you were you able to stop spinning in ads and just do organic or did you still do both so when I did Tik Tok when to started coming out like being massive I stopped doing my own Facebook ads Facebook ads were still set for that company um and then I just did Tik Tok and it was all organic and for a time it was all organic probably up until maybe six months ago and then I started doing Tik Tok ads okay cool yeah and then now I've started doing

Instagram ads instag ads and it's weird it's like it's gone full circle because I feel like Instagram and Facebook were expensive and now I've implemented and then Tik Tok was really cheap I was getting like emails for like 30 and then now like Tik tok's G to like a dollar I checked yesterday $140 for an email but Instagram's like 90 and I'm like what and I don't know if it's because of the the brand like when I did them for this other company they weren't established on Facebook or Instagram so it's kind of like you know like a colder audience whereas like obviously on Instagram if they know my face they're like oh yeah TR yeah yeah so um probably up until recently and it

was only because I wanted sort grow I had more potential to get more clients on board so I was like I've got more more money to spend and so did it that way yeah okay cuz what I was going to ask because you also you've got your housing projects on the side well it's another side of your you my own investment your own investment stuff and you're like we're seeing that you like got a few you got a bigger like a six is it a six um house complex or something the plan that was the plan so that's not happening that's not happening okay I don't need details but what I wanted to know is you are doing this development and investment on the side

is the goal to have mortgage man service this investment or or is it to grow the mortgage business as well or is that just really like a service business so then you can build your wealth and property like how are you Frank how do you see it yeah yeah so originally I was like I want five investment properties paid off so I can live you know whatever and but obviously to buy five invest properties you probably need to buy 10 and then sell five 10 years later so like how am I going to do that you need an income if I work for somebody else that limits how much I can earn if I work for myself then I have no ceiling essentially y um

so that six House Development was one of those projects that was potentially going to help with that but the mortgage man then became something that I'm like hold on I could make this more profitable than and faster than doing this investment stuff so now it's almost become like just a different stream of income that is almost like I could sell the mortgage man company or brand in 10 years time and still have investment properties and then I've also got like other Investments like manage funds like most people that are trying to look out for the retirement would hopefully have Ki saver manage funds property business yeah that's kind of just toing off got it okay so that's what I was kind of trying to figure

out from watching your content like it's the long-term strategy here to be a property developer or like a de buy and invest in property and this is like just a servicing business that does it because you're you're on your own right is there anyone else in the mortgage man yeah so at the moment there's the company that I work for that I contract to and then they provide the admin and the compliance so amongst all of us there's six or seven and then going April 1 it's going to be me and only one other okay so I might slow down yeah I will slow down yeah so that's going to be a big mindset shift for me because I don't like doing admin yeah slow

yes some people do some people do crazy you're looking for a job and you're like you um but I think the reason I can do what I can do is because the person that supports me in the admin at the moment is super good at what they do okay and they pretty much handle all the bank side of stuff so like they're checking the documents they're doing the numbers and I'm talking to the clients doing the Tik toks and that kind of thing so if I didn't have her yeah and did everything myself I would say I'm probably like onethird of yeah what I could do today so having that person in the background is super important and hopefully I have someone like that come

April for got someone in mind you know but it's one of those things not as well to start with and that's the next step I think I have to take one or two steps back yeah to go forward do you think that that mortgage man business grows to a larger team or do you think it's just like what what are your plans there and how you thinking about it yeah my plan is I know it sounds like a nice number that everybody wants say for as a million dollar profit per year yep but that's me working in the business and that's not that far off yep but then if I'm working in the business when know I go on holiday I love going on holiday

so and I usually work on holiday like I'm always on my phone I'm doing videos but at least when I've been on holiday recently I can just hey this person wants mortgage send it to the person yeah it helps me kind of do things yeah so the goal was to get it to that Milestone MH and then slowly replace myself okay got it so it's kind of be like because although it's nice to say that you have money time is more valuable yeah and I've got a one-year old as of okay yeah this I think he turns what that's what is that today turns one in two weeks time yeah so like I'm oh maybe actually want to spend more time and at the moment

like I don't actually work that many hours like I know I'm basically on Tik Tok and then I do like five hours a day in the office Y which is crazy compared to yeah how much it could be yeah exactly and that's like that admin support and having those people in the background is like super important super smart too like most small business owners don't do it early enough they're like oh I'll just grind away at it do it all night do Edmond do it poorly hate their life yeah like the like I remember when when I started this business the very first client we signed I hired the first person because I was like there's no way I want to do the work that

I just sold to this person because like I don't like doing the work and it was my dad because I needed to be a to fire him without him taking me to fear work as well so I had my dad but then like every moment along it's like who can help us do the admin because my special isn't that it's it's like building the brand and finding new clients and doing the stuff which I think super important for people to hear because they don't like there's so many so many Brokers we've met through our travel and both insurance and mortgage and all sorts who just like slave away at it doing 12 hours a day do what you're good at do what you enjoy and

high people do the rest exactly and I I guess I learned that from when so my dad used to own a business a glass business and he would say I actually the business does better when I'm on holiday and I'm like what do you mean by that like because my 2 I is better at doing like her job than I am at doing mine I was like [ __ ] that's sounds like a great business to have so and he like he kept her for as long as possible he actually like hired her from another company and then every time she was like I want more money or like I'm kind of over this he's like I'll pay you more I'll pay you more and like held

on to her for pretty much the duration of owning that business until he sold it and I was like that's that's so smart yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah I love that because I was asking I was wondering because like you built such a good brand with the mortgage man and like it is a brand actually because you've used like a caricature as like part of The Branding and you think that it's a brand that can separate from you even though you are the mortgage man it's not your name it's quite easy to probably like in my mind anyway it's it's a good brand that could great why not grow it like I'm not saying you need to but why not grow it into a

bigger mortgage uh advisor your business that could have multiple people with you why why not that path I think I just can't be bothered yeah okay that's that's absolutely Fair yeah like I know I could can't be bothered because of the people side of it or just in general growing the business the more people you hire the more admin the more stuff you like the more things you do that aren't actually why you started the business which means list Tik toks list client facing and just I think list profit like I was listening to that Diary of a CEO podcast and the dude was like the best businesses one where you got six or 10 staff and I was like oh yeah and he's like

because of the profit margins because you can still control who you hire you don't have to really answer to too many people and I just yeah I think in the mortgage business there is such big profit margins if you can get clients cheaply which is now where I'm at at the moment but it may not always be like that yeah and then as soon as you hire a mortgage broker you pay them a base in commission if I can do all the mortgages and hire like there's mortgage brokers that do real good numbers and they have themselves and then they just have heaps of admin stuff and all they're doing is phone calls with the clients loan structure and advice and everything else and I

was like that kind of would suit me better than having other Brokers but then there is that crossover of like if I want to go on holiday for three three months you can't just do everything yourself and have admin you have to have that so yeah I don't like that and I do actually have a a friend that I went to school with who just sold a big mortgage company um and he was like he's like I've tried all these different ways the only way you're profitable in this industry is if you're a oneman band with like one or two or three other people helping you or you go massive yeah and I'm like I don't really want to go massive like I don't need

to like like I the only reason I would go that big is just so I could say so yeah and that's like that's that's not like just for yeah that's just a lot of work to say that like I'm pretty happy I'd rather have 100,000 followers on Instagram probably did that mindset change like has it always been that sort of mindset did it change with kids with your child or like has it just a been you you just wanted to have have that good solid business like or did you did things change over time like when you got older like how how did that evolve out or you just always been like that we not really sure I remember conversation I had when I was

at high school with my with my dad and he was like why aren't you trying harder at school he like cuz I don't need to I can pass NCA without trying I like yeah but don't you want to do better I'm like Noah and he was like he called me lazy and I remember identifying with lazy yeah and now I think he's learned because he sees how I do things yeah maybe he should have replaced that term with efficient yeah like and I wanted to have a business that is efficient because it is not necessarily important to me to not have I mean it is like I hate being in the office if I don't have to be there I hate commuting for an hour

each day it's just wasted time so if I can do the same amount of work as a normal person but in three or four hours I'd much rather do that yeah because then I have time to do my own thing so it's not about being lazy it's about being efficient because yeah having my son I actually was like oh I can actually do the same amount of work before like now I can do it in four hours if I actually just lock myself in a room and focus as opposed to being in the room with everybody else and just talking crap you know like and then I can go play golf or then and like just do stuff or go to the gym like yeah

I think it's just about being efficient and having a big business going back to your other question you're going to be N9 to5 or longer yeah just like no no deal and it's like that right like big growing a big business like I've obviously taken my goal is to grow it as big as we can and it I had to say to my wife like these next 10 15 years are are that it's all in because you have to get it so big until you get the freedom back yeah you know before the freedom comes back and that's what I know now about my what I'm doing in the next year but I'm like it's going to be two years it's not going to be

10 to 15 I just need to get it back to like my goal and the short term is just to get it to the same income or profit that I'm at at the moment which is should be yeah on the two years away yeah cool Tik Tok could be deleted so who knows who knows where it is but I think um from that perspective when you're building that out right so I'm just trying to unpack a little bit here for people watching like how because I think it's a good model that you've taken I think that like most people will see it they'll see what I'm trying to do and build like a you know we're trying to build as big of thing as we

can going for broke right yeah and they'll see that and they'll think that's the only way business is done and like they'll see all the big businesses in the world and they'll run after it and then they'll try to do it and they can't do it because it's not for everybody like not everyone has a skin thick enough to go like what it takes but actually like my brother's also a moin advisor and he's got a really good profitable business he's been doing it for I don't know 15 years of saying he was back when it was National Bank still that's how long he's been doing it yeah and I used to give him [ __ ] about like why AR you growing your business biger like

blah blah blah you could do this and I was trying to tell him social media and like what I learned over the years is actually like [ __ ] he's actually the smartest of us all because he's like got I think there's four of them in their business one's his wife um so there's him and another broker and two Ed and his wife and this other guy and I mean he's profitable as [ __ ] and makes stupid money right and he's really good and then I realized that like oh [ __ ] like there are lots of different ways to make a good business not just one of making it as big as possible so that's really interesting to hear your perspective because I was wondering when I'd seen your

content like is this guy like building a Big Brand like this are you going to use that Big Brand to liage it to build a big business that was where my thoughts were going then I saw that he also did the development stuff on the side so then I was wondering okay what was he using this just to fund this life that was just a separate HBY kind of thing because I was bored after I got back from London I was like we're all the people like I I still have short it she was like where's all the people in New Zealand what can I do to yeah do it so that yeah unfortunately is being actually being sold like so if you want to

buy a house in Glen looking for people yeah so then okay you replace yourself the business is making good money what you just kids in gym yeah and Bary yeah and bar and no I think like it doesn't seem like you it's def the ambition that I have will always be something else um and I don't once I get to that goal that I want now then I'll find the next goal that's one of those it's always a moving Target and I guess going back to what you're talking about with big business vers a personal business almost it depends on the industry right like industry of course yeah like because of how mortgage brokers get paid at the moment is like the amount of time

versus you know the output versus the what you get back as say there's a big difference but not every business has got that and you've got to figure out what suits the industry and yeah for those people that are like thinking that big business is the only way forward like you can just be an individual talk about what you know because people don't know doesn't matter what it is mortgages are boring as how but no one knows about them and it frustrates me that I get these silly questions about how to refix your mortgage and I'm like how long have you had your mortgage for like 10 years and I'm like yeah like and how does an offset account work which is a very common

question but like and that's why I'm building this which I guess is a separate thing we haven't talked about is I'm building something called the first home buyers Academy a free for first home buyers to actually learn how to buy a house not only just how to get a mortgage but how to actually buy a house because until you've done that that's such an alien thing like oh my God how do I talk to a lawyer why real estate agents saying these words it's like a completely different language like like I want to help people and then it means that when I actually talk to them to get their mortgage oh yeah I watched all those videos and I know more about it so it

kind of brings them closer so like the goal of them understanding makes it uh you know faster it's a great little like also pre-qualifier and also like a training your training your clients to be good clients almost yeah but also like they get to know me better and even if they don't use me as a broker then new zealanders become more educated because we suck at Financial education Everybody's Got a Car Loan and I'm like why have so many people got car loans I didn't get a car Lo so yeah it's eye opening when you look at people's pck statements say yeah um okay changing Tech a little bit how like in your industry which is so based on there's two parts of it right

there's the relationship side which is really what you do the brand relationship and there's all the edmin support in the background and whatnot how do you feel the industry changes in the next 10 years when uh things like Ai and stuff come into play like how do you think how do you see that Chang in your industry or does it I mean I see all these videos of people just asking chat GPT what to do with the mortgage I think it will make it easier for someone like me to do the background stuff and I think for a very clear-cut mortgage if the banks are okay with it there's probably a way to get it approved or almost funded without going the traditional route like

one of my mates has actually started a startup that is doing that yeah and new like about to do that in New Zealand and because they start do it overseas so for the clearcut mortgage deals maybe you don't need a broker and may people don't want a broker but then there's the people that aren't clear cup and it's the same when you're filling in a little chat bot on like a website of trying to do something and they're like would you like to talk to our AI assistant I'm like no you're not going to answer the question I want a human and it's like the same thing it's like for the basic stuff it's probably going to be replacing me and the admin stuff hopefully

ad stuff but like anything that's a little bit more complex or you actually just don't trust AI yet you need a real person and having the brand helps obviously with everything um and maybe that brand will be a digital version of me yeah like who knows take the caricature and get it to a well that's what Gary ve was saying is like the next level of influencers aren't actually going to be people they're going to be AI characters and they're going to sell stuff and I was like that's wild oh it's already that's like that just blow why would you follow like a weird looking non-realistic Avatar but oh it's already happening massively like um this is totally off topic now but the amount of

stuff that we've seen when we're following like what's happening on social media the amount of I mean it always starts in the six industry right but like the amount of like AI girls selling well there's a bunch of dudes I suppose Crea AI girls selling only fans content and making heaps of money off of it why would you do it and I had um I had a guy I know who he was telling me that he had done it and he was buying AI content yeah explicit I come in I was like why would you do that like you know it's not he's like yeah but like I can ask it for anything I want you can control it I can control it like it's

my fantasies I get to live out anything and I was like oh that's kind of interesting it's kind of weird but it's also kind of interesting and see where it goes but to your point is these are um why would people follow this like madeup content into it but I guess I mean if they're better looking than real humans then maybe yeah yeah but like how yeah I mean is they going to be characters now that you follow that like the gaming world you follow like the World of Warcraft character rather that's doing the best in the game but it's still controlled by a human right like no it's a weird world that we trying to go into I always wonder about that with like

Professional Services I I used to think probably like five years ago before c gbt and what we've seen AI do in the last few years that service based Industries especially ones that were a lot of like processing of information to make a decision say which mortgages kind of falls into can this person afford this loan and is it the right thing can we structure it right would be wiped out pretty early from technology because it seems like technology can know everything about you so if it knows everything about you it probably can make a good decision if you can pay this loan off or not right yeah but then as I saw AI come out and the way it's actually getting used in implemented it

made me realize actually mortgage advisors are only going to be more important because it's that human touch it's like now when we had the mass produced stuff that lited the world and all we want now is like artisanal products stuff that are handmade it's kind of the similar Pro principle that mortgage advisor actually become more necessary and I was saying I had to like sort of almost swallow my pride of my brother because I was telling him early on like you're going to be taking and now I'm like actually know like you're more important than ever because I trust you and there's just like there's a layer of trust and actually like like to your thing like what when we people ask us about AI

are you worried about AI taking over your business because people can just make content on AI problem is they don't know the questions to ask AI that's the thing they they don't know the problem they've got and how to solve it so they're never going to be able to go just like someone asking you what's an offset account that's not necessarily their problem they've just heard something that they need advice on but actually you digging in with them you're going to be able to go actually it's not off account on the right thing for you how is that any different right from asking Google the same thing then it's the same if I like I've always had like mentors because it is a faster way

to get to where you want to be right and I could get the same information that they're giving me but how do you know which one is actually good for you so it's like oh yeah I heard about structuring my my rates this way or doing offset but like and you could understand it perfectly but you just need a sounding board to be like yeah do it this way and I don't think I mean AI could get smarter and yeah should get smarter it should get smarter yeah but like I think for some people AI would be perfect like they just don't need to deal with a person it's going to be faster and that's fine but there will be others that want The Human

Experience I suppose yeah exactly and especially as that you say as the task that they require is more complex and more Nuance like there no difference to like online banking versus going into to see a banker like we slowly adopted online banking and there's list that we need to go and see tell but there's still sometimes you'd have complex things or you need to transfer money in a certain way that You' need to go speak to someone have you been to have you been to a branch recently I reckon they're like the most depressing places because honestly the the only people that are there are people that are like old and can't figure out the app yeah people that have like had someone die yeah

or going through like some sort of Separation there's no happiness at those places anymore and it's it's like it's sad but like if you ever want to feel good about your life yeah go there it's wild like you don't even think about it but it is like most people use banking apps and if you ever go into a branch you're like what is this place it's like a graveyard there's just no need to right these days unless of course there C complex things yeah exactly which is what when I was thinking about how AI takes over these sorts of Industries well there's always going to be new on when it comes to like someone's personal home that they're buying or something there's always gonna be

some Nuance stuff that AI is just never gonna be able to it's gonna make your life easier like this that's saying where AI won't replace people or businesses but the businesses using AI will replace the ones that are exactly yeah I love that yeah I didn't sto that from somewhere yeah yeah yeah no it's a great say though it's say worthwhile and the reason I bring it up is because there's lots of people who watch this podcast or I know just out there who are asking and worried about AI especially when it comes to like content Creation in businesses worried what it's going to do and they still are they still are worried and I I talk to people in there like have the same

sort of artic that you just had around AI but yet there's still so much angst about it and worried about it and I and I I'm confused by it because I think we all know this right like it's been the way technology has done it all the time like if you adopt it you win and if you don't yeah you're going to lose because you can't compete okay is before we start to wrap up um as we get to the end of this what is next for mortgage man like you I know you've try this next one to two year things but there's no way your brain hasn't started to figure stuff out only knowing you for an hour I can already tell that you're

somebody's always like this thing that thing this thing like where where is that brain going and what do you see what's next for you I honestly yeah something bigger but I haven't figured it out like because you can sell mortgage businesses based on their trailer income right so the bigger that business becomes the more valuable it is but then at the same time if you're making a couple hundred thousand on trailer income then you can just keep owning the business and do that the thing that I'm probably going to struggle with and I and even though you mentioned it before like I've distanced myself of the brand I kind of disagree a little bit like you think about Mike pero real estate or mortgages like

yeah like he's kind of done it but hasn't kind of thing like if and it didn't work really when I sold the plant-based coach because my face was the brand it's the same again which I didn't really learn my lesson but um but how do I go from getting a business that is me and I can obviously do get someone to do the background stuff but a business that is me to be able to sell to someone well without me being there and I think the only answer is that you start to introduce other characters and those other characters then have more screen time y than myself I don't know if I can change it from the mortgage man to the mortgage men something like

that because I agreed yeah like the exit like for most mortgage brokers is to sell the business but it doesn't usually have the face and there's so much value in the brand that you built that if you're just selling the book you'll get the multiplier that books sell and that's pretty standard practice of selling a book and that but you've got so much more in here and valueing the brand and I agree that currently the way you've got it that Brand's going to be real hard to sell because it's you but I you you hit the nail on the head you just introduced characters it was the reason why we invested so much so for the first three years of our business it was all

me it was mostly me on Linkin that's where we grew it all it's still 50% of our Revenue comes from my brand on LinkedIn but when we started to build the attention seeker brand putting Joan's face at the front of it and then making sure all the team in all the content all the time was just a deliberate strategy of like yeah I'm still there in part of it but everyone knows me as the boss but they know these guys are the they're the guys that they love they fell in love with the team especially is the anchor creator for it and then that means that just reminded me of a video oh yeah because obviously when your team reached out to me I was

like who who are these guys and I looked it up and I was like I recognized Stanley but where did I recognize him from and it was in New York and you and Joanie did like a a fake oh can I look at your place in New York and I was like Becca looks like a kiwi like what is he doing inor and I was like I was like is this actually and I actually like tried to figure out if she worked for you or not then I like obviously did find and then I got like obviously more videos but I was like that's wild and then when you guys reached out I was like oh that's that guy yeah yeah yeah yeah no that

was um that that whole that whole point of putting her at the face was for that reason to separate the brand for me slightly but that like that stuff in New York like she came with us obviously and the reason we took her to New York and not one else in the team was because we used her like she was the face of the brand for us me and her were the two main characters yeah but that model we've like said to other brands too like the founder might have built the brand you slowly then siphon off some of that brand power to someone else as a face of it and then you just induce as many characters as possible um but you're going to

have to have a Main's day like he's always going to be a central character there's always a protagonist to every movie right yeah and so for us on the tendency it jany for sure but there's enough supporting characters that like from our perspective as business owners my wife and I um if Janie ever left for whatever reason there's enough characters who can take her place and I mean I'm not going to leave anytime soon so I'm still there as well so there's some you're sort of drisking yourself in that point um but it made our brand super valuable long term because now people do think of us as different brands the Atty and Stanley and now we're getting a lot of our leads that come

through they used to all be like oh hey Stan like I'd love to blah blah blah whatever now they're like hey team hey tcy depending on where they come from um but it was exactly what you're saying like youing other characters the reason why I think your brand can separate is cuz the mortgage man you don't need to say a changer to the mortgage man like like the attention seeker is a singular thing people people were like oh you going to be get the attention Seekers I was like no that's just stupid like the Brand's the brand the brand is what it is same with the mortgage man and the reason I like your brand is because of the caricature that you've got as the

like as your face on it um means that that's one of those things it's like Jim's moment right like so basically any Bard person could do it right exactly but it's like Jim's moment right like it's just his face like yeah okay it might have been modeled of someone originally but like no one really thinks of well that's true now I didn't really think about Jim's M because that's franchised like massively massively like Jim's still a real guy and he still works in the company he's still making all the money he still makes [ __ ] loads of money they just his team have recently put him out on Tik toks which is kind of funny really but he but yeah we don't think of it right

because you're just like oh this Jim B it's just a brand um but it was an actual brand an actual person who started it so I I think your brain's I I really like it like I I seen you early when you started it and I was following Along on your stuff and I thought like it's quite a smart strategy and I'd always tried to convince other advisers and stuff like why aren't you guys like no one in your industry does it very well or I shouldn't say no one there's only a handful of you guys yeah there is in the industry there are people that do I think the the point of difference is maybe I'm a little bit more maybe not honest but

abrasive and like I would say way yeah more abrasive things if I didn't have compliance comp which is a bit annoying yeah maybe that's my my focus as soon as I sell the mortgage man and don't have to answer the financial markets I can just say what I like um but it's also just the amount of like I don't like people I could never do videos because I'd have to film myself a hundred times and get it right I literally just do like half an hour in the office I have a coffee at my usual spot come back to the office sit up with write down three topics film them for a minute each I don't really care if I stutter or screw up or

something I'll just re like just say it again and then I just play on my phone and edit it and i' literally done it for like half an hour posted three videos and like how can you do three videos a day it's like it's literally five minutes per video like it doesn't have to be perfect as long as you find topics based on people's questions and maybe like topical things yeah then yeah just just keep pushing that has that been the Cadence all along through as soon as I got that first client yeah really I was like proof of concept bomb yeah and it's so easy like the worst thing was like finding a good microphone and it's real funny is like people like why

are you holding it clip it to yourself it's like go away um that was the difficult part and then now I'm realizing that there's like other influencers or people not necessarily in this IND in my industry that are getting way more views like this random dude didn't even know him um he's got like 400,000 followers and he's like in South Orland it's like comedian dude and I was like I don't know who you are and he followed me and I was like holy [ __ ] this guy's like massive and I was like how has he done it and it was just because it was all comedy yeah I was like can I add comedy into mine because you look at other influences and like you've got

James Smith the PT do you know him like when I was doing my when I was doing my plan-based coach I was like this guy is [ __ ] getting it like he knows how to do these videos yeah and it was because he was funny abrasive rude but also honest and valuable right and I was like in a perfect world if I could pull that off I'd be like [ __ ] you do it that way but I can't quite do that or I think I can't or I think it comes off a little bit too assholish and I don't really want to do that and I like he could be called an [ __ ] but um it's confidence though it's working for him it's confidence the reason he

could do it like I think you could do it too well most people could if you gave it a crack but the thing is is like he just has the confidence just to do it and doesn't give a [ __ ] like to another level yeah it was the same with us with attention seeking when some of the ideas that Jan and I came up with in the early days and still now some of our team are like what the [ __ ] are you guys doing on this channel but like we just don't care like we know that the attention Seekers Channel doesn't need to sell value it just needs to provide entertainment to people know our name that generates 20 something million views a month on that

brand the people who are inquisitive will go they'll figure out we're a company they'll figure out we do marketing they'll look us up they find me on LinkedIn they see our website or whatever and they'll find out if they want to be part of it and that's been enough so we didn't have to worry about that one channel doing all the work and I think that's where a lot of people like get mistaken with their brand is that they have one channel like say the mortgage man is their Channel they think that channel needs to do everything and it's like that's why you have a podcast because the podcast allows you to do longer deeper conversations as a different Channel and so that was our

thing was like no no JY like literally just take the purse all the time make sure everything is a pisake people will see me on it they'll see you they'll see our stuff they'll find me on LinkedIn they'll see my channel and they'll do different things and if they resonate with us with our humor and then they see what I'm doing on LinkedIn and it works for them W these guys are actually a serious company as well yeah that's it it's like when we um the first time we really knew that was like we're only like six months into the process we maybe 250,000 followers at the time or something like that on Tik Tok we when we took off and only 250,000 well compared

to now 800,000 on Tik Tok we're up to about 800 across all the profiles now it's like 2.6 million or something wild and so at that stage it was like 250 I mean Janie had 400k on her personal profile when she started with us she already had that's why be she already proven but at that point it was about March or February 2023 and one New Zealand reached out and they were our first huge corporate client they had seen us there gone ah I think these guys might be KES then went to LinkedIn found me and like oh they're an actual agency with real staff and actual officers and then reached down and said can you do this sort of stuff like you absolutely can

like yeah sure you got enough money yeah do it but it was just that process of like humor gets the attention there's other ways to get attention but humor is the one we decided to go with and then knowing that other brands would allow the the more serious stuff to come through yeah or isn't it supposed to be humor being weird being sexy or um being like educational supposed to be the thing so if you can knock off some of those in one go yeah absolutely and being humorous like funny content is always the number one genre on all the platforms always it always is it's like it's for everybody being sexy is probably or being weird is probably subjective to who's viewing it some

people will find other people attractive in some W but like most people if it's funny it will be hilarious and if it's not funny they'll be like this is weird but it still gets kind of like the same view like what is happening in this PO like they're trying to figure it out so and you can find that relatable human truth that everyone gets then it's super sharable as well and and going through it okay I'm getting towards the end of hour um that was been that was real cool to listen to because I haven't had someone on this podcast who is in the financial services for sure in this sort of World um and i' and I'd seen you a while back and I

wanted to I wanted to pick your brain because I was trying to figure out like how is this guy what's this guy's angle where's he going and I think it's super cool the way that um you think about business in terms of Highly profitable first I think is a I don't know correct me if I'm wrong here but like profitability is super important for you rather than just scale it all cost it wasn't at the beginning yeah I think at the beginning in business or beginning at the beginning at mortgage man I didn't really see what it was going to be like at the beginning it was how do I get clients okay yeah I can get them from Facebook by paying for ads but

if I've got organic content that goes with the ads that's going to be better M um and like you talked about comedy as like the lead magnet hey here's how you get a mortgage hey here's how you fix mortgage here's how you buy a house that's the lead magnet and then they go through my system to be able to figure out if I can work with them or they can work with me so um it wasn't profitability at the start it was probably just almost I wouldn't say survival but it was like how do I make money yeah and then oh I can make more money by yeah I'd argue that that is still profitability right it's like how do I make as much revenue

possible at the beginning the cheapest find the cheapest leads rather than as much cost to you to get those leads right and yeah you might not S as profit because the revenue wasn't there to to to balance it to support it but the model was how cheap can I get these leads to get as many as possible yeah and I think it does resonate a little bit with how I try and set up a business is like how can you have like minimal other costs like I guess some people would like a like nice big office but I'm like I could do this from home yeah and like the office thing yeah and the office thing is like it's an expense and it's like a

cool thing to have but you don't need like the amount of clients now that I see in person versus what probably is the old school way of doing things is wild like my parents like yeah when we had a mortgage broker they came over to a house and almost had to wait till we finish dinner and they come over and I was like screw that I don't want to do that I just do it on Zoom I love it um but yeah for me it was say interesting to hear that story and that model that you take and I think it's super valuable for people to hear that one how do you find attention and business as affordable and efficient as possible I like the

word efficient because I get called lazy often sometimes too but efficient is like a great term for it and uh excited to see I'm excited to see actually hearing you for only an hour meeting lots of people similar to you there's no way that in one to two years you're just going to be in barley living on your million dollars a year there's just no way so I'm super excited to see what be glad if that is what I'm doing yeah there's no way there's no way see who I mean you might take some time but I'm super excited to see where it leads because I think like you've you've got the formula sorted and I think that's something super powerful there a lot of

business owners just won't try well the formula will change though right of course more the storying won't it we get the another platform might come out who knows but like you know as well as I do that your ability to tell a story is what's made this successful actually you've got something there that you know how what people are looking for you know how to tell that story it'll just move to a different platform I think I'm just answering people's questions because they don't know the answers yet and it's easy to do it when it's on an addictive platform yeah you know what i' I'd say like you're not giving yourself enough credit for it I don't usually just like down keep it's not easy

for to answer someone's question in a way that people give a [ __ ] and want to listen that's a real hard thing to be fair every time before I do a video I'm like how can I make the hook the first couple of seconds a bit better than hey I'm the mortgage man like how can you make it a bit more controversial and there's like and I had tried doing ones like if you go to the bank you're dumb and obviously I can't say that but like if I because like if you haven't used a mortgage broker yeah like then here's what you're missing out on like those kinds of things and it's just like how do you get that and it's the same with every

other person that is doing well is like what's that hook and how do you get the attention in the first two three seconds um and again like the attention seeker brand I'm like I was told when I was younger that I like seeking attention and that was a negative thing now working for me it's the it's the whole currency of the world yeah exactly thank you so much mate appreciate you coming