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Process efficiency and ‘omnipresent’ marketing has allowed The Mortgage Agency founder Tony Xia to create a serene state of work life balance in 2024, with more ‘peaceful’ broking to come in 2025.
Xia (pictured), who operates his business from Bella Vista in Sydney, has a brokerage team that now consists of three supporting associates and a marketing all-rounder that manages a high volume of content.
Together, Xia said he and the team have created a “well-oiled” process supported by strong organic lead generation that will see him writing more loans while working more comfortably in 2025.
“2024 was fulfilling and peaceful. I worked less and wrote more,” Xia told Australian Broker. “The goal wasn’t to write massive numbers, but we ended up doing more in settlements,” he said.
Xia, who is father to a four-year-old daughter and calls himself a “work-life balance person”, said the main goal of 2024 was to process map the business and create a “killer workflow” for efficiency.
The project started with over two days straight of process mapping last year, as well as three to six months of chopping, changing and divvying up work tasks that suited individual associates.
Implementing the process has allowed the business to write more loans, with Xia expecting that the team still has capacity for 30% more volume this year, while still maintaining working hours.
Xia said he embarked down the path of becoming an “attraction broker” just a few years ago, after speaking to his then business coach about how he could rely less on leads from referral partners.
Modelling himself on real estate agents who create inbound leads by having their face everywhere out in the community, Xia decided to do the same with an ‘omnipresent’ marketing strategy online.
“I can’t have ‘for sale’ signs everywhere with my face on them, so the only way to spread my face around everywhere was to aim for anything that can be seen on a smartphone,” he said.
Xia began building a presence on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, search engines, YouTube and online property forums, including starting a podcast, while adding a marketer to help him execute.
“Essentially, I want my face to be on every platform there is; a client will not see me on every single one, but when they see me on one or two or three, they think ‘Tony knows what he’s doing’.”
The business ramped up marketing over the last two to three months, being specific about who was being targeted based on market research, and meeting those clients with the right content.
The content strategy saw him book 18 appointments in his first week back in the New Year, including 14 entirely new customers, all sourced from a spread of different online digital channels.
In 2025, Xia plans to do more of the same but “on steroids” to increase volumes to 90% capacity, at which time he plans to bring on another broker from within or outside the business.
Xia said that, over the last two financial years, the attraction broker strategy has meant only 5% of his leads were sourced by referral from business partners, with the rest from digital channels.
While he said he does plan to work more with referrers this year and next, being an attraction broker means that when people come to him, trust has already been established with the client.
“The conversion rate is a lot higher than a cold or even warm lead,” he said.
Xia encouraged other brokers to overcome their fear of digital marketing, and particularly any fear they have of how they are perceived out in the market or what other brokers might say.
“That is why a lot of people in the industry don’t throw out content like me. But I guarantee if you put your face out on camera, on video, your organic reach will be better than what it is now.”
