The operators actually running finance businesses
We sit down with award-winning mortgage brokers, accountants and advisers to pull apart the exact systems behind their growth: leads, diversification, team structure and nurture. Listen on Spotify, or read the full breakdown.
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Growing by Not Writing Loans: Tracey Franco on Building FinanceCorp Around Her Brokers
Tracey Franco started as a solo broker in 2005, was offered a franchise a year later, and by 2009 had bought the whole company. Her most counter-intuitive decision is the one that made FinanceCorp a top-3 Connective brokerage: she stopped writing loans entirely so she could spend all her time growing the 16 self-employed brokers who each run a business inside hers.
Buying Your Way to Scale: Gerard on Growing Leading Advice Through Acquisition
Gerard and his wife Katrina spent years running the kind of small planning practice that stops the moment the owner takes a holiday. Their fix was unusual for a firm their size: grow by acquiring the client books of retiring advisers, done warmly and fairly, until Leading Advice became a real business, not just an income stream.
Twice as Hard, Twice as Long: Greg Cooke on Starting Simple Fin the Right Way
Greg Cooke spent a decade as a broker and in aggregation before starting Simple Fin, so he knows exactly why most new brokers fail. His advice is refreshingly unromantic: everything costs twice as much and takes twice as long, so run the real numbers, secure your customer source first, and put the client before the deal, every time.
From Fighter Jets to a Fully Offshore Brokerage: Jason Hare on Building Open Plan Financial to Run Without Him
Jason Hare spent a decade in the military and another at Boeing before retraining as a broker and building Open Plan Financial around a fully offshore team. His edge is systemisation: break the loan process into specialised roles, delegate 90% of the work, and build a business that ran perfectly while he took a two-week family holiday.
20 Years, 500 Five-Star Reviews and Zero Shortcuts: Xavier Quenon on Building Go Mortgage as a Trust Business
Xavier Quenon has spent 20 years building Go Mortgage into an award-winning, ~500-review firm for property investors, without ever treating a client as a transaction. His thesis is simple: mortgage broking is a trust business before it's a lending business, and everything, including AI, exists to serve that.
The Broker Who Sponsors Athletes Instead of Buying Ads: Ryan Gray on Building Gray Finance in 18 Months
Ryan Gray walked out of a big-four bank 18 months ago and built Gray Finance and Private Wealth into a four-office brokerage, without paying for a single lead. His edge is a marketing strategy almost no broker runs: sponsoring athletes and their families, then turning that goodwill into a self-perpetuating referral engine.
The Adviser Who Stayed When Half the Profession Left: Brendan on High-Touch Advice, AI and the Best Decade Yet
Half the financial advice profession walked out after the Banking Royal Commission. Brendan from Access Wealth Group stayed, built a boutique firm on relationships his clients still drive across town for, and now uses AI to hand back the one thing advice always ate: his evenings.
The Broker Who Grew a Nationwide Client Base From Her Phone: Ellie King on Content, Consistency and Caring Less
Ellie King had no client book and nothing to bring to referral partners. So she picked up her phone, posted every day for 100 days straight, and built a mortgage business that now serves clients in every state. Here is exactly how.
The Broker Who Built a Business That Runs Without Him: Emmanuel Guignard on Retention, Teams and AI
Most brokers dream of a business that runs without them. Emmanuel Guignard built one, where 74% of loans come from returning clients and the whole thing keeps humming when he takes three weeks off. Here is exactly how.
The Mortgage Broker Who Writes 5x the Loans: Tony Bice on Diversification, Teams and Leads
Most brokers live loan to loan. Tony Bice built the opposite: a business that writes four to five times the volume of a typical broker and keeps clients for decades. Here is exactly how he did it.