Smart Lending’s Melissa Gielnik has been a quiet achiever in the Australian mortgage industry for almost a decade, and while her first appearance on MPA’s Top 100 is a respectable 17th, she already has plans to smash it next year.
Smart Lending’s Melissa Gielnik has been a quiet achiever in the Australian mortgage industry for almost a decade, and while her first appearance on MPA’s Top 100 is a respectable 17th, she already has plans to smash it next year.
Q. Why did you become a mortgage broker?
A: It was definitely something I fell into. I began my career in corporate retail, moved to the UK and when I returned to Australia I was looking for work. My dad was a broker and he was looking for staff. I went to work for him until I got a real job, and I’m still here. I’ve never looked back.
Q: What was the biggest turning point of your career?
A: Venturing out on my own in 2006, after working for a company for four years. It was scary and I had my own financial commitments. I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing. But I did it – took the bull by the horns, jumped and I guess I landed on my feet.
Q: What do you attribute your success to?
A: Loads of hard work, great planning and an amazing team. Throughout the process of building my business, I’ve totally stayed true to who I am and what I believe in. Both myself and my team work under the principle that we wouldn’t do anything for our clients that we wouldn’t do for ourselves. It’s always about the client and their needs. Over the years, I’ve been able to build good systems and processes that make our process for the client enjoyable and easy. But I really think one of my great attributes is I don’t take myself too seriously.
Q: What keeps you motivated?
A: Definitely achieving what I set out to do. Helping the client with more challenging deals is a huge motivator, and watching the clients grow their wealth is something I get a lot of personal satisfaction from. But on a weekly or daily basis I find that we all motivate one another. We have little competitions in our office and we bounce off one another in my team. Goals are set in my office as a group, not only around our numbers but improvements in the business and the service that we provide. We have a huge visual management board, and that board highlights our successes and sometimes our lack of success. I’m a high-energy person so having a goal and a challenge is what makes me tick.
Q: What is unique about your business?
A: My fabulous team and service proposition – it’s really that simple. We deliver what we promise. We live in such a busy world that sometimes the value of good old-fashioned service and education can be lost. We hold our client’s hand, we educate them and we walk them through the process, whether it’s their first or 10th purchase from start to finish. We also touch base with our clients via a quarterly magazine, birthday cards, interest rate updates, and via our social media platforms. Communication and control of the lending process and beyond are paramount to what we do and we provide service with a smile.
Q: What can other brokers do to emulate your success?
A: Brokers need to put themselves in the client’s shoes and think about the type of experience they would like to have if they were the client. You can never assume that a client is aware of what is going on in the market or that they even understand everything that you’ve said at first. It’s really all about communication and education. I think that’s really important. From running a business point of view it’s trial and error. My model might not work for everyone so you have to find what works for you and run with it.
Q: What kind of advice would you give to a new mortgage professional?
A: I surround myself with people in the industry that I like and trust. People I can bounce all my crazy ideas off and get advice based on my business and my issues. The one thing I really value is my support network. Working as a new broker learning the trade can be quite lonely and daunting, so having a great mentor is a must. I was lucky, I learned 70% of what I know early in my career from my dad. If you have a good aggregator they should be able to put you in touch with a great mentor.
Q: Have you embraced technology and social media in your business?
A: We’ve embraced both and it’s been really challenging for us. This year we’ve embraced the iPad. I’ve implemented an online service, as we’re trying to become paperless. This speeds up process, because anyone from my team, from anywhere, can access the server via their laptop and see all the clients’ information. We also have an online fax finder that downloads my aggregator’s software and that cuts down our processing times. I started about four months ago working with a PR social media coach. As well as being on LinkedIn, I’m now on Facebook regularly. I’ve been blogging and twittering. I find social media exciting, scary and exhausting. I’ve been trying to communicate quality posts and tweets with my followers – things that are relevant to where the market is, and the time of year. I want it to be fun.
Q: Do you diversify and if so, in what areas?
A: Yes, we offer almost all services. I think as a broker it’s smart to keep all the services as in-house as possible. However, in saying that I specialise in mortgages. I’m a big believer that you can’t be a jack-of-all-trades and you should never take your eye off the ball and what you do best. So we offer through referring other specialists, leasing and equipment finance, property advocacy, all the way up to accounting. In house I have two fully licensed conveyancers, and a financial planner. One of the most important things we do is provide all our clients with a free assessment and review for their risk and life insurance.
Q: What business development activities have you focused on?
A: All my growth to date has been organic, so I’ve been very lucky. This year I’ve been targeting groups. I’ve been out forming new alliances with real estate agents because this is where I get my best referral sources. Clients and agents are my biggest referrers. Over the coming 18 months, we want to double our numbers. I think to do that we need to double our referral base. This has been in addition to building my social media platform and trying to get my brand out there. Up until this year, the brand has been me, but I’ve been now trying to get Smart Lending out into the market.
Q: How do you build brand awareness for your business?
A: I don’t do any advertising as such. I was the brand, but in consciously trying to grow the business, I’ve really changed that to a team-based approach and that’s working. I’m getting the team out there via social media sites. We do a lot of fun runs and local festivals. We also had these really cute purple money boxes made and we’ve been handing them out at kinders and talking to the kids about money. It’s really fun, but by doing that we’ve been building trust and our brand with the parents.
