MFAA Young Professionals: Overcoming the challenges as a young new-to-industry broker

August 27th, 2018

Dylan Salotti on mortgage broking – How he successfully overcame the challenges as a young broker

Dylan Salotti is a highly successful young broker joining the MFFA Young Professionals Panel this year. Dylan won the 2017 MFAA Young Professional of the Year award and is a Finalist again in 2018. His business, Divitis Finance, has seen great success within the Sydney Gen Y market and focuses on assisting young professionals like himself with their property investment and wealth building journey.

We talked with Dylan about the benefits and challenges of mortgage broking as a profession for young people. He had so many fantastic insights that we’ve had to create two articles! In Part 2 of our interview, Dylan talks about his path to broking, the challenges he faced as a young new-to-industry broker, and how he overcame them.

Tell us about your path to broking. What was involved?

I started out by researching everything. I considered the educational requirements, the necessary association memberships, whether I would buy a franchise or start my own business, which aggregator I would join and how their offers would suit my business plan, and the industry requirement of mentoring. I assessed the time and costs involved with all of this very carefully, so I was well prepared.

During this process, I met with Connective. They were very helpful and service oriented, providing me with a lot of valuable information. Because I was new-to-industry, I needed to find a constructive mentoring program and Connective introduced me to Nancy Youssef at Classic Mentoring. This has been a very important part of becoming a broker – Classic Mentoring proved to be the right choice for me and they have really supported me on my journey.

Both Connective and Classic Mentoring were there to give me advice and support about everything from the start. Without them I probably wouldn’t be here. The first 18 months are very hard and because of their support, I was able to push though the barriers and accelerate from that point moving forward.

“Start out by researching everything. Prepare yourself for success by researching the time and costs involved with your personal path to broking.”

Do you think that having the right aggregator has helped you overcome the biggest challenges outlined in the Young Professionals Report?

I think one of the biggest challenges is overcoming the misconceptions that get around. People think mortgage broking is easy – good money and a good lifestyle choice. But they soon find out that it’s a lot more difficult than they thought. They don’t have any idea of the time and effort that goes into every deal, into ensuring that everything goes smoothly and into achieving a good customer outcome.

“The right aggregator is one that will support your strengths and help you overcome your weaknesses.”

I think it’s important to take the time at the beginning and work out what your personal strengths and weaknesses are. I think the right aggregator is the one that will support your strengths and help you overcome your weaknesses. Choosing the right aggregator to support you with your plans is vital.

The YPR found that lead generation is one of the biggest challenges for brokers. How do you overcome this?

 Most people think generating leads would be the easy part, but it isn’t! And you don’t start to make any money until you build up your database. You need to remember to factor that in when you’re starting out.

Connective provides good support and choices in this area – the My Marketing offer, or the opportunity to go with the iConnect Financial franchise with full marketing support and even some leads. We made the decision to do our own lead generation and marketing, however Connective has done a lot of work on My Marketing recently, making it more beneficial and a plug-in service which is great.

The new Connective Digital Marketing Hub seamlessly integrates with Mercury to deliver the right message, at the right time, to each contact. Find out more here.

How do you stay up to date with lender products/policy changes?

Getting your head around all the different lenders and policies is a big mountain you need to climb – even people who come from the banking industry find this a challenge.

Each aggregator has different training programs to get you up to speed. I highly recommend Connective’s program that puts you in touch with Lender BDMs. The Connective BSMs help you with that and building those important relationships. They’ve also helped me make an informed and independent choice about my lender accreditations.

When you choose an aggregator, it’s important to understand the lenders that are on the panel and make sure there is a good spread. You can rely on Connective to keep you up to date with their lender policy changes (I don’t know about the other aggregators).

How do you manage your workload?

Again, I think it comes down to the aggregator who can help with the tools and CRM you need. The tools your aggregator provides can have a big impact on your time management and work process efficiencies.

Mercury is a great system for helping you manage your workload. The software really is the hub – you wake up and go to the office, open the CRM and you’re away. Again, asking questions and finding out how an aggregator helps with this aspect is crucial.

There has been increased scrutiny in our industry. How do you manage your compliance?

Without knowing any other aggregators, Connective is great at this and make compliance easy to understand and follow. They keep you up to date with changes. And Connective has recently updated how they do their compliance auditing which is also great. You can call your Connective Compliance Support Manager if you have a question. There’s no worries.

Did you miss Part 1?

In Part 1 of this interview, Dylan told us about his decision to become a mortgage broker and why he believes it is a good career choice. The article appeared in Connective News on August 13. If you missed it, read it here.