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1. Relationships: It’s crucial to get on with the
p eople you work with and go into business
with. If the chemistry isn’t there, forget it.
2. Passion: I have to be able to be passionate
about my work, so it has to interest me. If you
said we could make a fortune selling air con-
ditioners, I wouldn’t be interested. It’s too dull,
and life’s too short.
136 HOW I MADE MY FIRST MILLION
3. Innovation: I need to create new things, to be
imaginative and not have that constrained.
Always dream to the fullest, then pull back if
you have to.
4. Fun: If it isn’t fun, then there’s no point to it. I
want to get up every day and enjoy it.
5. Diversity: I know it’s a cliché, but variety is the
spice of life. I love to have a variety of projects
on the go and different challenges to meet.
X Marks The Spot For
A New Approach
Jennifer nielsen
X Inc. Mortgage
Brokers loan
Market Group
established 1995;
600 employees;
$42 million turnover
When twenty- three- year-
old home- loan queen Jennifer Nielsen went to
the bank in 1982 for her first mortgage, she co-
applied for the money with a single female friend
who also wanted to secure an asset before a hus-
band. ‘I don’t know if the bank manager thought
we were lesbians, but I recall he thought it very
Photo: W
arren Clark
e
138 HOW I MADE MY FIRST MILLION
odd,’ Nielsen recalls with amusement. ‘Now, it
is very common for friends to buy property
together.’
The unconventional loan application was
accepted, and the block of land she and her friend
bought was Nielsen’s first step towards making
$
1 million from shrewd property trades in the
lucrative Brisbane and Sydney markets. ‘I love to
buy and sell real estate and I’ve done well out of
it, especially in Queensland. But Kenny Rogers,
in the song The Gambler, had it right—you never
count your money when you’re sitting at the table.’
Having experienced the satisfaction—and
financial benefits—of putting her money into
bricks and mortar, the chief executive of X Inc
Mortgage Brokers is helping others to do the
same in a complex lending environment now
overshadowed by credit- crunch anxiety. Despite
the uncertainty, X Inc—which effectively dou-
bled its market presence by merging with Ray
White Mortgages last year—is employing up
to thirty new brokers a month. Nielsen and her
business partners John Kolenda and Dean Rush-
ton aim to make theirs the biggest mortgage
broker in Australia by 2010. ‘We want to have
a mortgage broker attached to every real estate
office in the country,’ she says.
So how did she make the leap from young
X MARKS THE SPOT FOR A NEW APPROACH 139
home- buyer to mortgage magnate? ‘It’s tempting
to believe that success is due to individual bril-
liance or a magic formula,’ Nielsen says. ‘In reality,
it comes down to hard work and, in our case,
identifying a gap in the market. We wanted the
white- collar market—the AB demographic. We
made a difference for them. Now, it’s far more
acceptable for those
p eople to go to a
broker for a loan.’
And in tough
times such a service
is all the more wel-
come. ‘P eople need
to talk to someone
like a broker to understand the finance options
and what is likely to happen, because it’s con-
fusing. They are turning to mortgage brokers for
objective advice.’
She sounds as if she’s been in finance all her life.
But Nielsen’s first jobs could hardly have been
further away from that world. She worked as a
cook and deckhand on a tiger- prawn trawler in
the waters between Cairns and Groote Eylandt.
Then she was a regional sales manager for Yellow
Pages. Both jobs, however, taught her how to
run a business and inspire other p eople. ‘On the
trawler, I learned about teamwork. I can’t claim
‘
‘
It’s tempting to believe
that success is due to
individual brilliance or a
magic formula. In reality, it
comes down to hard work
and, in our case, identifying
a gap in the market.
140 HOW I MADE MY FIRST MILLION
it was as bad as the Deadliest Catch TV show
or anything, but there were situations where, if
someone didn’t do their thing, the boat could
literally sink. At Yellow Pages I was a benevolent
dictator, but I learned to listen. I had no choice.’
Nielsen went on to become a recruitment
consultant and worked closely with Kolenda
and Rushton, executives at the time with Aus-
sie Home Loans. In 2004, they asked her to
join them in setting up X Inc. She trusted their
knowledge enough to concentrate on learning.
‘Their competence took enormous pressure off
me,’ Nielsen acknowledges. ‘It’s much harder
learning a new industry at the top than from the
bottom. It changes your leadership style because
the p eople around you know more than you.’
Nielsen applies the lesson she learned on the
prawn trawler to the fast- paced world of finance.
There’s a captain, but when you are riding the
waves it’s all hands on deck. ‘We have built our
brand on limited funds,’ she says. ‘We were taken
to court [by Aussie Home Loans for poaching
staff ] when we were less than two minutes old,
and a major bank wouldn’t work with us until
that case was resolved.’ Now it seems to be plain
sailing, but the same principle of equality con-
tinues: ‘I have an open- plan office. I personally
return calls. I think having a personal assistant
X MARKS THE SPOT FOR A NEW APPROACH 141
is a luxury rather than a necessity. And when
you surround yourself with assistants, they are
between you and the real world.’ Nielsen shares
a PA with three other managers.
Having a child has also changed Nielsen’s man-
agement style. Commuting between Brisbane and
Sydney, she travels with her four- year- old son and
a nanny, who cares for him in the flat above her
Surry Hills office in Sydney. The experience has
made her deeply sympathetic towards employ-
ees who also have young children. ‘I scheduled
my Caesarean, then I couldn’t control it [child
rearing] any more! When a staff member has a
child- care issue, I now say, “Bring them into the
office.” If that had happened before, I’d have been
mentally counting the lost productivity through
gritted teeth. Now I know. The biggest challenge
has been to balance my business life with my
young son and my husband—who runs a global
business of his own. I love my family, and I hon-
estly believe balance is important.’
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