What Have I Done?!

What have I done?!

One minute I was confident that “I’ve got this,” and the next I was lying in bed at night whispering to myself, “What have I done to myself… and my poor husband?”

I thought I was ready. I even felt ready. But the truth was, I had no idea what I was doing. Zero. Nada. I was lost in a wild jungle of lending policies, compliance and acronyms.

It was a full-blown rollercoaster. No seatbelt. No map. Just me and mild panic attacks every few hours.

My why

I wanted to make my family proud. I wanted to prove that taking a chance on me wasn’t a complete lapse in judgment.

And most of all, I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t just good enough – I could actually be one of the best.

Challenge accepted

So during induction, I did what any slightly unstable overachiever would do: I asked what the highest number of loan applications anyone had ever written in that period… and then I made sure to beat it.

Naturally.

Brokerpedia quickly became my best friend.

In fact, I used it so much that they literally emailed me asking if I wanted a one-on-one session with the founder.

I thought it was spam and ignored it. Turns out, I was in the top 15 users in the entire country and they were serious.

Their first question? “What’s your secret?”

My answer: “Memory of a goldfish and knowledge of one too.”

Working from home was another adventure.

I gained a few kilos, became disturbingly co-dependent on my dogs and got used to hosting Teams calls in some pretty insane circumstances for me and/or my clients.

Calls have happened:

• While I was walking in a snowstorm in Japan.
• With a client in a mine at the literal end of the world.
• From a cattle station in the middle of nowhere, with blood-red sunsets and earth to match.

I once called a client seconds after I woke up from general anaesthetic in a hospital bed to let them know the bank had approved our application.

In hindsight, slurring “congratulations” while hooked to an IV drip may not have screamed professionalism, but hey – they got the loan!

This job is never boring. Ever.

I’ve had a client lock herself in the cleaning cupboard at work to whisper through her application.

I’ve had pub updates in the middle of the night from two clients giggling over each other’s loans.

I’ve talked to doctors grabbing two minutes between emergencies to lock in their refinance.

And through it all, one thing is so clear to me:

Each client is a whole world.

Their hopes, fears and dreams come into my inbox wrapped in NOAs and payslips. But they’re never just numbers. They are people trusting me with one of the biggest decisions of their lives. That’s not something I take lightly.

Being a good broker means juggling a lot of clients. But my mission is that every single one of them feels like my only one.

They know I see them, hear them and will always make time for them.

I always tell them, “If I am awake, I will answer.”

This accidental broker may have started out in freefall… but very quickly I started flying!