How to Build an Elite Broking Team with Joe Shephard

Welcome everybody, today we're joined by Joe Shepard, who is the founder of Fin Talent and is a specialist recruiter for the mortgage-broken industry. So this episode is going to focus it's going to be a hiring masterclass. It's all about how do you find good people, how do you build a team? How much do you pay for that team? Everything you need to know around team building. So Joe, welcome. Thank you mate. Thanks for returning the favor and having me on. My pleasure. Yeah, a good time on your podcast and now I'm looking forward to yeah, to grilling you. I was going to say it's nice to be on the other side and like not have questions in front of me and know like oh, shit, this is this, this must what it feels like forever to come to that interview in the past four years. Yeah, exactly right. So Matt, how did you get into recruitment and what made you decide to focus on the mortgage-broken industry? So it's a bit of a long-winded one. I'll try and paraphrase it right. First of all, most people don't really aim to get into recruitment. It's user and needs must reason for getting into it. Like for me, I was working at Tesla. Obviously, used to live in in Bellevue Hill at the top of the Berigger Road. Beautiful place, but I was working out of the North Sydney office here and there and an opportunity come up for me to move to Melbourne. So I'll move there. Long story short, Elon goes a bit nuts, gets rid of 10% of the staff worldwide and my job was first to go, because I was working out of a remote office technically. A girl who I know from my days as a backpacker put a story up, there's a job in recruitment going and I was like, I'll do it because I think I have the right personality for it. Got into doing that and started recruiting your low-level bankers then moved up to doing your relationship managers and the more back-end service in roles for broker-originated deals and banker-originated deals. Then I decided to be a banker. I was like, I really want to work in this environment. I know I can make good money. Probably the wrong reasons, but you know, it's like when I'm young, I know I can make good money. I want to do this, but I didn't want to stay at the business I was at. So I started looking around and a job popped up at LNG. I saw that job and I was like, well, I don't know anything about this space. Then yeah, I got recruiting brokers three weeks into that, four weeks into that, I was like, wow, this is me. I was walking into offices where they had like, you know, people were in casual clothes and they were just, I could just tell it was for the people. So I fell in love with it and decided that I was going to be a broker there and then and my brother-in-law is a broker down here. He said to me, look, you know, it's not a great idea to start from fresh when you have a young baby and you've got a family and people that rely on you, but why don't you focus your energy into recruitment where there's not 23,000 people doing it. So I was like, okay, I'll start doing that. And yeah, naturally, I was like, I'm passionate about the industry. I want to be within the industry, but I don't want to be a broker. I want to do some adjacent and that's where the business kind of kind of came from. I didn't intend to launch it until 2027, but push comes to shove and things happen. Yeah, I launched it and I've not looked back to it on this mate. I hope that was a good way of making it not so long-winded. That was brilliant. So when did you launch the business? I launched it in June 2025. Yeah, so it's just ticked over a year. Awesome. Something I find that when people start new businesses is it never ends up being exactly how they had imagined and you got to take these pivots along the way. And it ends up being a pivot for the best, but you can never predict how it's going to go. So what did you sort of think you'd be doing versus what are you doing right now? Well, the first, let's go right back to the start. I didn't expect to make a penny for like three or four months and I actually had a deal pretty much settle two weeks into running the business. I was like, oh, shit, this is real. Then I went a couple months where I didn't make any money, right? I think it was one or two months where I didn't make money and I was like, oh, maybe it's that, you know, start as confidence. Maybe it's not going to work out. One thing that I didn't expect to be doing is yeah, I mean running a business is not easy, right? As you as you know, like you're spending time in zero setting up your own profile, like this thing's that I've had as an employee where I've looked at and gone, oh, Jesus, why is it taking so long or why aren't they doing this? And then you actually have to sit there and do it yourself and you realize, oh, maybe I shouldn't have been so hard on those people. Because zero, you know, I've set myself up in zero to get paid monthly. Then I was like, hang on a minute. I want to pay myself weekly because it's better for the cash flowing, you know, you have to change all these things in the background. So that's the sort of stuff I would say that I could not expect myself to be doing. But it's a bit of a good lesson. And as far as servicing the brokers go, I mean, brokers or brokerages, what are people really crying out for? And what sort of like what's the number one service that people are turning to you for? I would say, let's say you're an ambitious one man band that's looking to scale up and has the, you know, you can already see that it's a business that's got legs. They need a power broke, they need somebody that can really take the operational load of them. So it could be like a power broke or an ups manager. A good, a good result I had up in Brisbane recently was I just placed the lady who she effectively worked for CBA. She helped settle their e-choice aggregation offering back in the day. She brought 13 new to industry brokers on train them up. She's now working in the client of mines business as their ups manager. So she's going to rip that rip that process apart and build it so it can scale. And that's probably the thing that I think most brokers are looking for. If you look in towards more that, you know, let's say five to ten man, fifteen man business, it really depends on what their model is, right? Are they running the contract to model R? Are they running a salary model? You know, as we both know, there's benefits and pros and cons for the businesses, but it really just depends. Awesome. Okay, let's do a little role play. I'm very curious about myself. Okay, let's say I am a broker who is 18 months into business and I've got $5,000 worth of trail and I'm riding three million per month. Okay. At the moment, it's just me and I'm doing everything. What would be my first hire? And then are there certain points where you think people would start to bring on a certain type of employee? So let's say you're at three mil, this is funny, right? People, my first thing to say to people is, do you have the right systems and do you have the right systems in place? I don't necessarily go straight to how can I make money or how can I place someone into the business? I've got to diagnose the problem first, right? You know, I'm big into the gap selling. What's the gap? Let's understand where you are now in working outside of work and where do you want to get to, right? Does hiring somebody unsure get you there? It might do. If that's the only option, great, that's what we've diagnosed, but usually typically what I'll say to people is, why don't you go and get someone offshore? There's some great quality people over in Nepal, some fantastic candidates in the Philippines, even as far as Vietnam, Fiji, you can get yourself a really solid parabroker in a way that's not going to damage your trail and also damage the cash flow of the business. So keep it cheap from the start, but also, you know, as AI's evolving, as we both know, there's so much stuff out there that isn't being tapped into, maybe pay a bit of money and go and start on get yourself in with the right people who are really utilizing that to the best of the ability. But yeah, that's my advice. Get someone offshore if you can first. If that's what suits the business, going back to a business that I worked with in Bendigo when I was at LNG, their client base did not respond well to offshore. They needed localized knowledge. My kids went to that school or I grew up on that road. Like you have to listen to your clients. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's say that I've made my first offshore hire and you know, I'm able to crank things up to five million a month or something. And now I want to be spending less time on the tools and more time out there promoting myself and my business. So I need somebody who can help me sort of run the back end. And I want to go on shore. What sort of role would I be looking at? Yeah. Going back to that one I was talking about before, that's your credit manager, Operations Manager. This is the way I see it's somebody that effectively could be a broker themselves. Yeah. But it's not their passion. Part of me, their passion is to be the right-hand man or the right-hand woman of someone running the business. That's what I would be looking for an ops manager. That person's there, they manage, they create a layer effectively of a buffer between subsequent onshore hires and the people that are offshore in the business if they exist as well. So that the broker's not managing or checking over files to make sure everything's okay. That's doing the sort of manual work that's slowing them down, right? Because some of the big feedback you do get from people offshore and even though I don't I don't want to lean too much into that is like sometimes it can also it can it can not be time-affected because the broker has to check everything to make sure that everything's okay. So having somebody else there that can pick up that that load and actually ensure that all of the files that are being looked tough to buy the offshore are perfect. That's also very important too. Okay, so let's say I choose to hire an ops manager and they're onshore would those would that particular person would they likely have the cert for a mortgage-breaking or they should do yeah they should do okay yeah they should do take it like like I said from the the lady I placed before she was she spent a lot of time in banking so she's worked at FinTech's banks and then she got a job working for a brokerage and she was there for just under a year she has that experience she has the she has the cert for but she never intends to be a broker. I'm not saying that they should have it because I'm not saying they should have it because it helps the bright loans I'm saying they should have it because it's useful for the knowledge yeah that's what I was thinking yeah and I mean like if I wanted to hire somebody who's got say two plus years experience and those people out there or they're already locked into jobs that they're happy in in an ops manager are in like a credit analyst well I mean some sort of hybrid between those two yeah look they're out there 100% but how can you get somebody into your business if the proposition from the outside we You have to remember, right, these people are not sales people. If you dangle a good character to a salesperson and it makes sense, they'll probably give it a go. If it doesn't work out, you know, more feel me, not more feel you. With the credit people, there are a lot more analytical and the drivers and motivations are quite different. So from the outside, if your business looks a bit lesser than, or it's a different phase than the business they're working in, how are you going to get them over the line by offering the same salary? You're not. Sometimes you have to pay a premium to get an A player. Sometimes you have to offer something that they're not getting. Are they in the office five days a week? Great. Well, maybe you can give them three days in the office. Maybe you can be a bit more flexible that they're not getting. But, you know, to soft sell what I'm doing, that's why I understand people, great, what are you not getting from your business? Okay, present to, you know, actors, the media, actors, the devil's advocate. Here's what they're getting from this business. I know their salary and all their working arrangements. Here's what they're not getting. Can we work on this, kind of make that proposition good for them? Totally. And that's why so many leading brokers are now marketing like themselves in their business. And the content that they're creating is not just towards actual clients who are going to be borrowers. It's, hey, I want people to know how well I run this business and how I'm providing these opportunities for people who want to come and leverage the brand and the team and the backhand and all the infrastructure that they have. Correct. The fling guys are doing that really well. I think there's a guy involved, I think his name is in North Sydney. He's doing that really well. Yeah, even make the podcasts that I've done with brokers. I've used them as part of my recruitment process. You know, I send over my candidate pack which I build out, which I shared with you a version of the other day. And then I also send over, if I've done a podcast, take some time to watch this. You know, I'm not expecting you to watch the full 40 minutes or an hour, but get a really good understanding of who this broker is. You know, this is them in a vulnerable state. This is who they are as a person. This is who you're calling to work with and people have responded really, really well to that. 100%. Yeah. I did a podcast. I just recorded a podcast with Katie Thomas from Focus Finance and man, she's got a really good, like personal brand and ethos and, you know, listening to her talk. It's like that's somewhere that I would want to go and work, particularly if I was in the early stages of my career. So I think that's becoming a big part of of what brokers are focusing on. So say I wanted to hire this person who is either a credit analyst or an ops manager. How much would I need to pay them? Depends on what they're doing. Right? Realistically, I think in today's market, you don't want to be paying less than 80, 85 for a credit analyst. I think the max you would want to pay for a credit analyst would be 110, maybe dependent on who they are. You could also package some, that's plus super, by the way, so that's a 110 base. You could also package some bonuses in there. So some people do growth bonuses. Let's say the business is consistently hitting 15 to 20 milla month. You get paid two grand, three grand, a quarter or whatever it might be, you know, it seems like an insignificant amount, but it adds up over the year and it keeps someone, keeps someone on the toes for an ops manager. But I think realistically they're worth their weight in gold. How much are they going to help the business generate as a net revenue and then figure out on that? Like, I think we've done the figures, paying a salary broker, the business can generate two, three times off a good broker. So having somebody in that operational support role that has the technical now, to build out the business and help them support that, what's the actual return and investment of that person? Make the role, make the offer enticing based on that. Okay. Yeah. I like that approach. All right, let's say that I'm also curious about hiring a broker. So things go really well with the operations manager and now I think, wow, it'd be great to have somebody else who can actually write the loans, you know, from start to finish. What sort of person should I be looking for? What would be the process for me? And then let's also talk about a PAYGverse commission only. So where do I start when I think I'm a broker, Regina, I'm ready to hire a broker? First thing is, what's the reason why I'm hiring? Is there an influx of leads that I can't take the time to manage? Is the service level dropping or am I looking to organically, in organically, supercharged the business, right? So they're the three reasons why people would hire. I think if let's, let's talk about the first one, there's an influx of leads, right? Realistically, those leads are not all going to be in the same category. Some are going to be simple, some complex, some, you know, you vanilla ones. You could identify what you're getting a lot of, and bring in a broker that tends to those needs. So let's say the complex stuff is where you're making the money, but there's also a lot of vanilla deals and the less complex stuff that comes through. You could probably get a junior, not fresh new to industry, but a junior broker, maybe two years, just outside of mentorship. You could maybe get them in running those files, and you could get them on as a, as a salaried role. I think we both know that out there in the market, and I'm seeing a lot of it at the moment, you know, some big names that brands bring people on as, as contractors under the franchise model. And for a lot of people, it doesn't work out because going out and hunting and finding deals is not in their nature. I think you're either a minder or you're a hunter. Minder's are absolutely fantastic in front of clients, sometimes better than hunters. But when it comes to sourcing the deal and bringing it through the door, that's not there. That's not there. Especially. Contractors page model, it really depends on, it really depends on the business and how they're running it to be quite honest with you. There's some businesses that I work with that run contractor models. The broker doesn't have to do anything in terms of lead generation. They give nice splits, you know, they'll give 50% on the upfront and the trail. Obviously, they're writing six mill, seven mill, some 10 mill a month, those brokers, all through the leads that the business is generating, right? So it's a good, it's a good win-win for everyone. But there are other businesses out there that generate and make the same amount of income as them. They just want to do it as a salary model. If we just go back to the contractor model there, if you're giving away 50% of the upfront and 50% of the trail, are you also providing that broker with a backend team or is the broker paying for their own backend team? In this support model, the broker fronts some of the money for it, but the team also, the business also fronts some of it as well. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, that sounds like a very appealing deal for the actual commission broker versus the business owner. If they're not actually going out and hunting for their own leads, let's talk about the PAYG model, which I'm definitely more of a fan of, you know, I'm a fan of it primarily because I think it can be a really nice win-win. I think as the business owner, it's really clear who owns the trail and who owns the clients and you have somebody who's working for you and they're working for you with the security of getting a salary plus attractive bonuses depending on how much volume they write. And I think if you're an employee and you're actually going out and winning the business and you're not actually creating the brand, well, being a PAYG probably makes a bit more sense to me than being a commissionally, but that's my perspective. How do you see really good PAYG arrangements working? I think the best way I've seen it done is between 90 to 110K base. At the end of the day right, you want to attract somebody who is a specialist and has the knowledge to do it. If you're putting salaries out there, it's 60K, 70K, it's basically a retainer. Let's just call it for what it is. It's a retainer. It's a retainer. That's somewhere in between a comms model and a salary model, but the broker actually doesn't make a lot of money and I see a lot of them 60K and on target earnings of 120. Yeah, just go and do it yourself if that's what a business is offering you and you still have to do a lot of heavy lifting, but 90K to 110K plus super and some kind of bonus structure in place where it's, my favorite one is 90K plus super, zero to two mill, nothing, two mill to five mill, 25% or 35%, depending on how being generous you being, and then the five mill plus, that's where you look at doing a 35 or even some do 50% on the upfronts. I like that model because at the end of the day, if you've written 2.5, so if you've written 3.7, 4.2, whatever it is, you know that there's a barrier that you can break through and there's more money that can be made on the other side of that. So it constantly keeps the broker incentivized and naturally, right, like even though you don't have a trail as a salary broker, you still get referrals and you still get people coming back to you. The compounding hard, the compounding benefits of the hard work that you do as a broker still comes back to you because the client doesn't know, they don't know that you're a contractor or a salary or whatever it is. They just know you're the broker that sorted me out and helped me when I was going through a very stressful time with something I've never done before or it could be the opposite. I was going through a very stressful time with something I've done five or six times, but the other broker might have done it wrong, whatever it is, whatever the scenario is. Totally, yeah. And I've spoken with PAYG brokers, you know, many of whom are making more than 350K a year and they've got great referrals in place, their clients just keep sending them deals. They don't have to worry about paying for the backend team that's processing a lot of the loans or paying for the office or any of the stress that comes with being a business owner. They just get this big take home pay and it's pretty consistent that they're making that every year. So, you know, it really is a win-win. I don't know what your perspective is, but I don't think everyone needs to be a business owner. I think there are people who do extremely well being employees. Yeah. What did I always say to him? business owners, the owners of the businesses, leave that on the table when someone's earned it, right? So like, if, you know, for example, those people you're talking about, if they've been in the business for four, five, six years and they've been writing those volumes consistently, maybe, maybe a conversation could be hard if they want it and the broker wants it. That's something I say, leave that, like, don't, don't take it off the table. If you want to retain really good people for the long term, you know, make them, make them feel like it's their business, or literally make it their business by allowing them to buy it and I'll have shares or whatever it might be. 100%. So I've got to handle on how you connect with brokers. And I know that if I was a broker, I'd just be in your ear all the time trying to get a feel for what's out there and what's possible, because it doesn't cost you anything to give Joe a call or just be on his radar. How do you find the candidates? Yeah, I think it takes a lot of time to build trust with people. That's what I'll say. You know, I, I found that after a year and a half, almost two years of putting my content out there and branding myself and building this, this back book of who I am and the way I think and why I stand for when I send a cold message to a candidate on LinkedIn, it gets her applied much, much more than it would do when I was working at Hayes or any of these other businesses, right? Because they, they go actually, Joe's, yeah, I've had candidates even say it like you clearly have taken your time to make it look like you know what you're talking about. And I say, make it look like no, I'm talking about the same thing. But you know, people respond better to it if they're like, okay, this guy is actually a specialist that understands the industry. It's not going to be a conversation that's going to fall on deaf ears. I don't have to dump it down. I can talk the jargon and I can speak the, the ills of the industry and the problems that they would have as an employee. And then we can try and work together and find something that suits them. Joe, you could have chosen any industry to recruit for what made you decide to double down and specialize in mortgage breaking. Could have done. And there's definitely ones out there that pay a lot more. But at the end of the day, right? It would have been coming into work, not enjoying it. Whereas every day I'm talking to people about something that I'm passionate about. I would be lying if I said that these conversations don't feed into the things that I want to do in my personal life in terms of investing in property, commercial property, developing things like that. So that's why I do it as well. Because I'm genuinely passionate about this. I love it because it's an industry where there's people at the one end that come from from good backgrounds and, you know, may already seem set out for life. And there's people that come from right at the very bottom. And these people are mingling working together, finding common ground. It's a very collaborative industry where people are respected for being themselves, not putting on a front, not having to put on a gown or an outfit that, you know, represents them as a, as a person when they're working. And so that's why I would say I specialized in it. Like I feel very connected and passionate about it. And it, and it goes through to the client side as well, right? Like, you know, I speak, I speak to businesses where they're helping people by nine, ten properties. And I speak to people that are just working with person, someone buying their first home. They might be the first person in their family that's gone to uni or the first person to buy their own home. So it's very rewarded. And that's why I would say I double down in it. I think that's so well said, man, working with brokers is fantastic because as you're describing, they're these people who are business owners, they're having a red hot crack. Some of them might be high, you know, tertiary education, university masters, what have you? And others, it's like, you know, dropped out of school in your tent, but have just disthirst for knowledge. And they've learned and learned. And they've done, you know, school of hard knocks, whatever. And, and really built something for themselves. And then I just to reiterate what you were saying, I find that brokers are very transparent and they're open with sharing about how their business is going. And they realize that, you know, it's not a zero sum game. There are plenty of clients out there and sharing something with someone else doesn't mean they're going to come and steal your, your business from you. So yeah, I totally agree. You get all the different characters, personalities. But it's, it's a good industry to be in. I think there's, I think this might not be the exact number, but I'm going to try and give you an exact number. I think there's one broker to every 1237 clients. I think it's something like that. So even though it seems saturated, it's not, you know, I mean, realistically, and this was probably a bigger law for me becoming a broker myself was like, everyone really is, is it is a marketable client? Everyone is, is it is an opportunity? Everyone is someone that you can go out and actually help. And you know, there's brokers out there that are more intra play into that introverted clientele space. There's a broker out there for everyone's probably is how I'm trying to say it. And that's what I like about it being a specialist and being one of the handful of people that service these 23,000, you know, they're not all business owners, but let's just call it that number. I get to have varied conversations with very different people and it's nice. It's wonderful. Totally. What do you know now that you wish in you when you started your business? Yeah, I think the first thing that I would say is taking the conversations to a deeper level, like with my discovery, realistically, from from sitting there reading all of the books and trying to absorb the knowledge that I have, I found out that if it's a one-man business or a 50-man business, the person I'm speaking to is always the CEO or the founder or the director. Everything that they're doing in the business really is to tie them over into their personal life. We all. So it's for me, it's really actually I wish I would have learned from day one, just to be going deep and great. Let's talk about you first. Forget about the business. Let's talk about what you're actually looking to achieve, what you want to do. Do you want to scale up and exit the business? Do you want to remain in the business until you retire? What are your goals? And then we talked down from there. So it was pretty much treating that as if it was like an early stage candidate conversation before we move on to the business discovery. I think that's a really smart insight. I'm trying to do that more now as well. Because at the core of it, there is a human need and usually it's something to do with their family and the quality of life that they want to live and everything else is upstream from that. You know, everything else is the decisions that they're making about, you know, hiring somebody or how to grow their book faster. Eventually it all boils down to what's it's going to do for my quality of life and my my overall happiness. So you're connecting with them on that level, I think, I think is is super important. It's important as well because it leads into the way that I recruit and find candidates for the business. Like, you know, I'll get, you know, I get below the surface with the candidates. If I found somebody that's like has, you know, I speak to people on a deep level. I'm not just interviewing them talk through your business and talk through this. I can look at the resume. It takes me five minutes, but I want to get to know people and who they are. I might find commonalities in the broker and the candidate that they never will have found with each other. You know, maybe maybe six, seven, 12 months into working together, right? But these commonalities are actually things that bring them together and make the placement happen. Whereas, you know, that for other reasons, they might have been a know, you know, but this person actually experienced something you experienced in life. And this is an influence the way they look at things. So I think you guys are going to be really good together because because of this thing that you both experience that similar, you have a good outlook on life wherever it is. Yeah. Yeah. When hiring someone, it comes down to way more than simply, you know, how much experience they have is the price right? You know, there has to be that cultural fit. And even even people, you would see this also, I'm even people who seemingly are so different. One might be extroverted, one might be introverted, they might be from different sides of the tracks, whatever. If there's a common thread or value or something there, it can just stick. And, you know, if you have a good employee who sticks with you for a long time, I mean, there's no bit, no, there's no better asset for your business. Correct. I agree. What would you most like to change about the mortgage-breaking industry? That is an easy one. This is an easy one. It's the inability for people to move between aggregators. And it has a flow on, I was thinking when I was saying this, it doesn't really affect me, it massively affects me. Running a search for that business I was talking about before. Yes, this sounds great. Do I need to change aggregators? I'd go on their website, see what their ACL is. Yeah, you'll have to change. Sorry, I'm not willing to do that because it affects the trail in certain cases. Obviously, there's a period, there's a hand over period where there's deals that are in the pipeline that, you know, might get dropped or might get drawn out. So that would be a big one for me. It's removing that layer that stops people being able to transition between aggregators because effectively it is, you know, it becomes the golden handcuffs and I don't like that. I want to understand this properly. So let's say a broker has currently been working for a brokerage that is under one aggregator. And is this in this instance are they on a commission split? So they're receiving some of the trail. As long as they're right in under their own name, under their own codes, it doesn't matter if they're salary doll commissions, it's still the same process. You still have to get a separation layer from the aggregator and you have to get reaccredited with the new aggregator. Okay. So there's a reaccreditation process even if they're PAYG when they come to the new company and that might take what a couple of months or something until they have access to all the lenders. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, look, depends on how big your business is. You could probably pull some better leave as if you're respected and have a good relationship, but let's say traditionally four to four to six to eight weeks it might take. Yeah. And then do you ever get any pushback based on the aggregator systems? So let's say one aggregator has an amazing CRM and like portal and everything like that. And then they're going somewhere else and it's like, well, I've heard bad things about this. I don't know if I can be bothered to learn this new system. Yeah, all the time. One one that comes to mind is I candid it down here that I didn't end up placing but we build a good relationship he goes are they a connected business as that yes that are and so you know are they an AFG business he said and I was like yeah they are and he said I don't I don't like the systems there and a lot of the businesses I work with AFG systems and they love the systems there right so it's all personal preference and I think another another issue with those systems is because they're so hyper customizable broke a using one system might set it up in a way that's more efficient than broke a B using the same system and I'm kind of working in broke abism as this might think you know the whole system's bad but it's not it's just the way people use it in their own process can be can be quite very different okay yeah interesting I don't know if that aggregator issue is going to be changed anytime soon you know I can't see them sharing or collaborating with the with the systems to make sure that it's smooth as a people to transfer yeah no it's I've got to say I have the similar frustrations in my business where you know we need to get tripartite agreements in place with each of the aggregators and some are totally on board and others it just drags on and it makes the whole deal slow down while the broker and us as the lender are ready to go to and this is the thing with the adoption of AI automation all these tools in the background some businesses are absolutely keen and mad to do it and some aren't and that that's going to be an issue as well for the brokers in there the brokers that are under that group because realistically if you're not adopting the best in class software yes that means that your brokers are going up against other brokers that have best in class software and so that's where I'm seeing a lot of people trying to shift and find solutions that are actually outside of the traditional aggregator systems because they hold their own data they're not bound by the sort of issues if they do need to change between aggregators if I was a if I was a candidate let's say that I'm a broker looking for a PYG role and I want to there's this opportunity you've said this employer you know has a role going I think it'd be a good fit how can I vet them as a candidate to save myself going and trying working for an employer and realizing two weeks in these cars and these are not great how can I how can I work that out it's a good question there's a lot of publicly available data on businesses out there so you could actually go and run a search on LinkedIn and see who's work there in the past if you're noticing that there's a high attrition of people sometimes you might have to pay for this it might cost you $10 $20 whatever it is that's not worth it you know it's so worth it and you can go out and see okay there's a huge here's one for you right let's say I chat to a business that I don't know I'll go and do the search on them have they had a lot of attrition if they have I might bring those people up and just have a conversation hey I've found your details here got chatting I can see you exit this business what happened there are this this and this right and then it'll make me decide whether I want to work with that business or not so candidates can go and do the due diligence there's a lot of stuff out there and this is why I'm encouraging people to create meaningful content you know podcasts all this stuff that shows who they are as a business so let's say they're not the type of business that's updating their website every every month or every week or whatever it's but they're putting stuff out there that shows who they are as a person at their core what their successes are you know talking about the issues that they have as well talking about their weak points like people really want to want to buy into that totally agree from my experience you know being an employee you can tell deep down within like a week or two whether it's going to be a good place to work and I don't think it changes and you know I've heard business I've heard business owners say that to me as well it's like within a week or two we can tell this person's either going to be a superstar not a good fit or summer in the middle you know it's just if you get a bad feeling you really got to potentially just move on yeah it's one of them no no no hire is guaranteed to fit the business it is what it is like it higher in is always a risk but I think over a certain amount of time you start to realize and notice patterns that mitigate that risk like a business of mind down here in in Kilo I've placed four people into those guys in the past 12 months every one of them still there working because I've noticed the patterns okay when they present like this and they have this cadence about them they fit well in with the team you start to you start to notice these patterns in people yes so Jay if I'm a broker a Jonah and I want to work with you let's say to hire a broker what are the fees that are involved I think there's a good question and I'm glad you asked me this because there's a huge misconception on the recruitment industry right and I'll give you a bit of a background on it at a deeper level have you put your permanent places which is somebody like me you have your tent places and then you have your day rate contractors right so let's talk about your tent placements what they'll end up doing is they take a margin off the top business A builds it out at an 80 80 dollar an hour roll and the recruiter might take a 20 dollar an hour fee in between right so that's that's margin based I do is permanent base right so you tell me that you want to hire somebody I recommend that it's a hundred K plus 12% super that's 112 K package and I charge you 15% of that and that's the fee I run off 15% okay and I don't for the first year for the first year oh yeah it's basically a payment on succession of them signing the contract and then that's it you know I think some people get the misconceptions and I've had candidates ring me and be like does that mean that I don't earn as much in the first year because you'll take in 15% I'm like definitely not the employer pays for it yeah so they're just they're front loading up front right and let's say it ends up being a 16 17 K fee if that person's going to add 300K in that revenue to the business they've actually made that back in the first two more I mean the time that some people pour into recruiting only to recruit the wrong sort of person and then you are way better off going going with somebody who is a specialist in that industry and is going to essentially hand deliver a candidate who's been vetted and is ready to go for you that that's the way to do it I agree I think a lot of people I a big thing I'm not doing and a lot of people do this is we say what we do is not rocket science you know broken's not rocket science or a crewman's not rocket science but at the end of the day if you're if you're a broker and you need it to get a homelun settled you know by the end of the month are you going to ring a rocket scientist no if you're if you're looking to hire someone into the business that ticks all of the boxes has been vetted note by somebody who's a specialist you're not going to call on a rocket scientist to do it you're going to call on the specialist yeah there are certain professions that are never going anywhere even it doesn't matter how powerful AI gets realistic agents are never going anywhere because if they can get you an extra two three five percent on the value of your home when you sell it it's absolutely worth it and there's so much nuance and personal relationships involved that there are always going to be there you know I think mortgage brokers for complicated deals where they have to negotiate the banks they have to structure it with the client I don't think that's ever going anywhere and I think recruiters are the same there is this whole gray area that is so important and there's a whole memory bank of scenarios that have worked out in the past and ones that haven't worked out and just being able to read people and that is just irreplaceable so you know I don't think you're in any danger of being wiped out by AI or texture I don't think so either there's a book that I've been reading recently by a recruiter called Greg Savage and he talks about getting recruiter equity you can also get broker equity as well on both sides right so broker equity the client actually trusts that you know what you're doing you don't have to sell to him anymore they're coming to you yeah the credit teams the assessment teams they know that the files that you put through because you've been building this this broker equity over time they know that it's solid right so you can't really replace that all right final question and you know not a simple one what is the future of mortgage breaking oh I mean obviously we're seeing a lot of people wrapping up and rolling up I think the future is definitely in big brands but also small businesses too like there's not you know people are telling you that it's always gonna it's just gonna be big brands people don't want that they want the small businesses too so I think there's a lot of people out there that are saying small businesses are gonna get wiped out and you know all these rolling up things gonna happen I don't think that's the case what I think we will see is there will be bigger businesses that are structured in more corporate ways they'll have divisional heads they'll have teams that look after certain types of lending and they'll suit certain types of businesses or clients but you will also have you small businesses that are still serving a local geographic area a local community whatever it might be it's just gonna be more tech enabled that's the reality of it I don't think much is gonna change in terms of the way that it's going I do think that I do think that slowly and surely we're gonna see a lot more solos not starting I think I think slowly but surely there's gonna be a lot less people starting their own business but people actually realizing there's more value in doing it together grad inside totally agree Joe Shepard founder of Fin Talent Specialist Recruit of the Morbys Broken Industry thank you Matt really appreciate your time thank you Simon thank you for having me on cheers mate bye