Das set up a Mortgage Pro Academy in March this year, a community of mortgage advisers who are focused on building their business, incorporating an online portal, Facebook and a WhatsApp group chat which has an overall aim of “helping advisers to become better”.
The Facebook group now has 800 members.
The Academy launched when Das – who has been in the industry since 2003 – found that several advisers were asking him for tips on lead generation and how he put his videos together. Furthermore, it was a sense of not belonging that prompted the launch.
“At the beginning of last year I went to one of the networking events for mortgage advisers, and it was almost like the old boys’ club. All the gentlemen had been in the industry for years, the 40- or 50-year-olds and I didn’t really fit into that environment.”
Das argues that in order to be successful, any broker should be able to envision why they entered the business and to stay “true to themselves”.
He says: “It’s easy to get pulled from pillar to post and choose based on need or money.”
Focusing brokers’ efforts
Knowing what it means to be a business owner and leader is another area Das says brokers need training in. He says brokers need to step back from doing “£10 an hour tasks” and think about working on their business and generating higher returns rather than being their business. “Why are you doing your accounts? Why are you posting on social media, when you can have a bookkeeper who can do that for £10 an hour?”
He adds: “You could be bringing in another lead or several leads that would generate you way more money.”
Das acknowledges that once a business has been established, a great amount of time is spent working on the daily operations of that business. “No one tells us [that] if you’re in your business day to day, you’ve created another job – to work on their business not in their business, because there’s a massive difference.”
He also encourages brokers to focus only on the kind of client they want to serve and use traction-based marketing to attract the “ideal client”.
As well as this, he asks brokers to think about what outcome they want to see when helping these clients.
“It’s knowing who you are and what you stand for, understanding the difference between working on your business and in your business, it’s knowing who your ideal client is and being clear on the solution that your company provides to the ideal client.”
A voice for change
Having invested £100,000 in his own business development over the last five years, Das believes the sector needs to work together more, sharing advice to improve standards across the board.
“One person posted in the WhatsApp group, ‘I see someone has got my niche, does that mean I should not pursue my niche anymore?’ I said ‘no’ because if I thought that, the academy would never have even happened.”
He adds: “I really want to be a voice for change and to improve the mortgage industry. My mission is to support mortgage advisers to grow a profitable and/or scalable business so they can focus on the fun stuff. We do this by helping them to improve their brand, marketing, lead management sales and ongoing client relationships. I really am passionate about making advisers’ lives easier and giving them a better chance of business success.”
Das admits that he’s technically “creating competition” for himself with his ‘how to’ video on lead generation before concluding: “Everyone’s a bit scared to share information, but actually there’s so much business going around.”
