Young Gun: Marissa Schulze

Marissa Schulze
Rise High Financial Solutions, Prospect, SA






Why did you move into mortgage broking?

I started broking just after I’d had my first child and decided that I wanted to have a flexible career that could still give me job satisfaction, intellectual stimulation, people interaction, but would give me flexible working hours so that I could manage it around my family commitments. 

What were you doing before moving into mortgage broking?

I did a Bachelor of Law and Accounting at Adelaide University. I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer or an accountant, so I got into banking. I worked for BankSA and then moved to Westpac. I was a senior relationship manager at Westpac in commercial banking before I left to have my first child.

What has been your biggest challenge?

I started working for a Refund Home Loans franchise. I was only there for a few months before Refund went into administration. At that point I had to decide what I was going to do moving forward. I was probably a little bit frightened to join another franchise model after that, so I decided to take the leap and start my own business with my husband. That was a huge challenge. I basically had to do everything from scratch: build a brand, find an aggregator, set up the office.

What has been your biggest achievement?

We’ve built a business that we’re really proud of. In a short period of time it’s been really successful and we’ve built a really strong and loyal client base – and a brand that’s quickly gaining recognition in the local market.

And we have been really fortunate to win a few awards. There’s the AMA award [Quality Young Gun of the Year – Independent], and I also won the MFAA Excellence Achievement Award in 2013. And in our first year of operation in 2012 we won AFG’s Best New Business and Rising Star Award in SA. We were also finalists in the AMA award for New Brokerage of the Year.

What are the key strengths a person needs to make a go of mortgage broking?

You definitely have to be passionate about what you do. You have to have an underlying desire to help people to improve their lives. There is a lot of hard work that goes into it, so you have to be dedicated and persistent. And you have to be the sort of person that loves meeting people and networking.

How do you go about generating leads and turning them into satisfied customers?

Adelaide’s one of those markets where word of mouth is pretty powerful, so it really was a matter of getting out there and telling people what we’re doing. Most of our business comes from client referrals; and trying to build relationships with real estate agents, property managers and buyers’ agents – basically going to lots of networking events.

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