Business talk with Craig Parry

Foreign Money, where we show you how to pay your home loan off in up to half the time of a normal bank loan. Welcome to the Crown Money Podcast. I'm Jessie Edge and today I'm joined again by absolute superstar Craig Parry. How are you, buddy?

Always love your introductions, Jesse. Going very well. Thanks for having me again.

Oh, absolutely. It's a pleasure of mine to have you again. So today I would love to pick your brains as a business owner. You've been running a business now for the last nine years. You've built it up really successfully. So I just wanted to kind of share some of your insights to our listeners. So I just wanted to kick off with maybe how you got started in the beginning and possibly some of the challenges that you have faced both at the beginning and throughout that whole nine year journey.

Yeah, thanks, Jesse. It's been, it's been a great journey, I feel. I mean, you always leave the corporate world going into a business to, you know, try and buy some of your time back and, and you know, sometimes that that doesn't happen as quickly as you want it. But it's been a interesting journey for me and, you know, I feel, look, Sami, if I look back on, on my time and what would I have done quicker with building a business, I probably would have put on staff, you know, not knowing that, you know, I'm a big believer that I can do everything. And, you know, you're the business owner and you try and take control of every single situation. But unfortunately, you know, to grow your business, you do need, you do need quality people underneath you. So looking back, I probably would have made the, the call a little bit sooner just to put on people, you know, that are successful in a particular role, which, you know, something like an admin role where, you know, that tends to obviously bog us down a little bit in the finance industry. So would have made that call probably a lot quicker. But, you know, I do like the control, as you know, Jesse. So, yeah, it took me a little bit longer than I expected, but I.

Think that's quite common for a lot of business owners, isn't it? And understanding the value of your time. And if you are incredibly good at sales, which is a challenging role to fill, then you need to be spending as much time as you can on that and outsourcing or, you know, giving those other roles to your staff. So I think that's such good advice and so accurate.

Yeah. And, you know, I love, you know, I love sitting in front of people and that's my passion. You know, we Want to help them and you know, getting them to move forward. And although I can do admin, admin's certainly not my passion. But our clients would know now, if any of them are listening that we've got Mel, we've got Nicola in those, in those admin roles and they've dealt with those people and they love admin. So you know, that's, that's a passion of theirs which is really great. They still get to connect with the clients regularly, which is awesome for them. But I'm super excited that, you know, they can take control of that, that side of the business and just let me do what I love.

That's awesome. Any other challenges that you were facing throughout the journey?

Yeah, look, there's always a, there's always that balance. You've got to, you've got to create. You know, you're trying to grow a business, put as much as you can into it, you never want to fail. But then, you know, things change, you know, you start a family and you know, you've got to start then managing your time more effectively. I think time management certainly for a business, business owner is quite critical and making sure that, you know, you've got that work, life balance is really important. But certainly when you're starting the business it was, it was all gung ho and you know, you're doing, you know, 12, 14 hour days, you know, sometimes, which I still do, you know, Nicola, I always get the phone call from Nicola at about 7:30, happened last night and she's, where are you? And I'm still, I'm still working.

Just hey.

Because I love it. Yeah, I'm just passionate about what we do and I love it. And if I feel that, you know, I can put the time and effort in to get the result for a client that I will and. But yeah, I think the balance, you know, you need to get that balance right. You'll burn yourself out otherwise. So it's really important to get that work, life, lifestyle balance.

That is such good advice and I think that's applicable to a lot of people, to be honest. And I think it's, it's about carving out that time for yourself first because I think whenever we have, you know, as professionals we always, whenever you have time, you're going to fill it with work because you know there's always more that you can do to help your clients. So it's kind of like you've got to carve out some personal time first in your diary because, you know, work will fill in everything else.

Yeah, And I guess the last thing on that is probably something that I didn't do, but knowing that I'm just, I'm very goal driven and if I set a goal, then I'm always going to achieve it. That's just in my nature. But I probably would have done a, a detailed business plan, you know, before I got into the business, just to ensure that, hey, I know what I need to do and done a really detailed business plan, something that I didn't do but probably regret doing. I've done one now, but certainly someone starting out and doing that detailed business plan, you know, really sort of help them, you know, start that business and, you know, make sure that, you know, they're just keeping themselves on track.

That's, that's great advice. What, was there any particular areas of the business plan that you thought kind of helped you, you know, have a plan? That's funny as that sounds.

Yeah, it's probably more so the timing, you know, like, as I said, I'm all about wanting to get things done and achieved yesterday and, and that sometimes just can't happen. So I think the, I think if you go back to your business plan and you know, you've set certain time frames to achieve things that'll sort of keep you on track and also keep the positive vibe going. Because now everyone wants to, you know, achieve everything, grow, grow this to, you know, you know, a huge business and do it as quickly as they possibly can. But sometimes, you know, just taking your time with things and, and going back to that business plan can, can obviously keep you on track and then keep you keep the positive vibes as well, you know, because there's a lot of, you know, heartache in business and not, not everyone's going to get wins. And I think if you go back to that business plan and just, you know, make sure that the timing's right and you're just working towards that, that structure.

That's good advice. And you know, you in particular have been fantastic at growing your business. What do you think has been kind of the key elements of that growth?

I definitely think staff, like, as I said before, when you are growing a business, you do need to then, you know, think about putting on the right people that are going to fit the right culture of the business. And we've certainly done that. So getting yourself to the next level is, is certainly you're going to need some good stuff underneath you. So that's what we did, but probably made that call a little bit too late. But, you know, you've got to have goals, you know, if you don't have goals and if they're not written down, like, I'm just such a big believer of goals. Everything that I've put down as a goal or put on my vision board, I've achieved. Right. And something. I'm a big believer on vision boards, something that you can look at every single day that's got, you know, your goals or targets on or pitches of something that you want to achieve. That's just really sort of pushed me forward. You know, the first thing was the car for me, then it was holidays, then it was the family and everything that, you know, I often sometimes won't look at it for two months and just all of a sudden I'll. It'll glance at it and then there'll be something on there that I've achieved, you know, and then I take a moment to appreciate that. Oh, that just go, you know what? You've worked, you've worked really hard. You know, there was something on there that you haven't even realized you've achieved yet, but you have. So big believer on vision boards if you haven't done one.

The power of the subconscious. Yeah, it's so impressive as well. So that's good. And talk to me about how you are reaching most of your clients like that. First contact, how are they coming to you?

Referral partners are really critical to us in the business. We love our clients achieving a result, then our clients referring us. Business like that is my number one focus to ensure that we've serviced our client enough. So they go and tell their family, friends and work colleagues about the results they're achieving and then they refer and pay it forward. Um, so we can then help those people as well. But, you know, you do need referral partners set up. You know, this can take a long time. I've. I've been doing this for nine years now, and I would say that we've probably got five quality referral partners that consistently refer to us because they love what we do for their clients. But having referral partners is really critical. You know, doing something different to what everyone else is doing, I think is quite important. You need to stand out to these referral partners to ensure that, you know, you're not just the average mortgage broker because, you know, they get knocked on the door thousands, thousands of times a year, you know, to, to partner with them. So I feel we've, we've done really, really well here in South Australia to build a solid network of referral partners. And look, that continues to Grow as well. We're always continuing to look to. To do lunch and learns or. Or do something to ensure that. That we could bring more and more referral partners on and help more and more people, essentially.

Yeah, that's great. And you mentioned the lunch and learns. Can you just explain that in a little bit of detail?

Yeah, sure. It was only the other day. We're actually in a networking group called bni. It's been fantastic for my business growth. And anyone that's starting a business that, you know, is looking for warm leads, BNI is a great avenue for that. And that's how we started out to build those connections. Because there's 25, you know, 30 different industries in the room, essentially, that become your marketing arm or your sales arm that. That's representing you out there in the marketplace. So that was a. That was a great kickstart for me in my business, you know, but the lunch and learns are something that's, you know, I really enjoy. We had a focus to do more and more of those in the next year or two, but that is where we will connect with an accounting firm or a larger corporation and go out there and present to their staff purely just based on education and hopefully making sure that they can make smarter financial decisions. And, you know, it's not about, you know, bringing them on board, it's just about the education session. If anyone wants us to help them afterwards and they can come see us directly. But we will go out to a. To a big corporation. We're doing one in September for Picture Partners, actually, and they're a large accounting firm and they love to, obviously what we do. So they're going to allow us to present to 28 of their staff and then hopefully, you know, connect with a lot of their clients. So we will go out there and present for 45 minutes to an hour. We'll put on lunch for the team and purely just give them education in relation to what we've learned over the last 22 years in finance. And I feel if you're giving more education, then you're in a great position.

Yeah, that's fantastic. They're such great sessions, aren't they? Very valuable to the people in the room.

That's correct, yeah.

Awesome. Before we go, is there anything else you wanted to add to the conversation in terms of running a business and your situation?

Yeah, I think when you're starting out a business, normally a lot of people are scared or, you know, have some apprehension about doing that. I feel when the business really took off for me was when I went all in, you know, I was, I was doing a little bit of mortgage broking on the side from my corporate role, but it wasn't until I left my corporate role and went, you know what? I'm all in. And when you're all in, you've got no other choice other than to succeed. So I feel that, you know, if you, if, if you're taking the risk, then, then just go all in. I know your abilities will, will get you to the stage of, you know, you creating a successful business as we have here in South Australia.

F thank you so much for your time today, Craig. I think that's, you know, incredibly valuable what you're saying and great to hear about your journey and I know that it'll be very applicable to plenty of other people out there as well. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and looking forward to having you on the podcast again very soon.

Thanks, Jesse. Appreciate it. And everyone have a great week.