This Young Gun wrote more than $55m in his first full financial year after prioritising a healthy work/life balance
Young Gun Youeil Shol has just ended the financial year with a bang; writing more than $55m in his first full financial year on the job.
MPA spoke with the Brisbane broker about how he got started and the challenge of working 14-hour days.
Given a chance at Time
Shol was introduced to the world of broking in 2016 when a real estate friend put him in contact with the managing director of Time Home Loans Ruan Burger.
“Ruan palmed me off for, like, a year and then said, get back in contact in 2017.”
“I remember setting a reminder for 2017 June to speak to him.”
After showing some persistence, Shol was offer three months of work experience with the company while he finished his finance degree.
He was then offered a full-time job with Time and spent the next year climbing the ranks from customer care to crunching numbers before he was offered a place as a broker in October 2018.
“It was originally a two-year plan for us, but some things happened and it was kind of sink or swim.”
Thrown in at the deep end, Shol pushed himself to establish a good referral network of real estate agents through Burger’s contacts, and found himself writing about $15m throughout the remainder of the financial year and more than $26m in the year leading up to the MPA Young Gun selection for 2020.
Throughout the past financial year, he has gone on to write about $55-60m – a stunning feat for someone so new to the industry.
Striking a healthy work/life balance
While he has experienced great success in his two years as a broker, Shol says he found striking the right work life balance quite a challenge.
“When I first started, I thought you could just, as we do, work 14-hour days, seven days a week and that would be sustainable.”
“I think it was about June or July last year I realised that you just could not do that because you burn out.”
He overcame this by being strict with his calendar and limiting meetings within a four-hour block on Monday and Wednesday, a one-hour block on Tuesday and Thursday and not having any meetings on a Friday.
This enables him to play football two nights a week, which is quite a passion for the 23-year-old, and spend more time with his girlfriend and large family.
“If a client doesn’t want to see me at this time this week, they can either look at next week, or there’s other brokers in the office that can look after the client.”
“Sometimes for you to keep sane you have to let go of business,” he says, explaining that taking too much on could compromise the job you do for other clients.
The future’s looking bright
His goal for the near future is an ambitious one – write $100m per year, for the next three years.
He also plans to take the time to celebrate more wins and re-energise.
“In this job, when you get a deal approved, you don’t really celebrate – it’s kind of yes, its approved, and then you move onto the next one.”
In stark contrast, when a deal is declined you don’t sleep that night, he says.
He hopes to celebrate the big wins by taking a Friday or Saturday off as a treat.
