Her performance skills help her keep in step with her clients
Starting out in dance – and majoring in street dance and hip-hop - may not seem an obvious springboard for a career as a broker, but India Mustafa (pictured), from JMS Financial Services Group, believes it has given her the confidence to build her presence and to grow her customer base in the mortgage market.
“When I was growing up, I wanted to be a dancer, and honestly, I knew nothing about finance,” Mustafa told Mortgage Introducer. “So, I actually trained to be a dancer after school. I did a few dance shows, and my first job was as a cheerleader for West Ham, and that was a dream come true job because we're a West Ham-supporting family. But, my passion just wasn't there. I thought, if I'm going to be dancing for the rest of my life, I'm probably not going to have an income that I would be happy with. It was very risky if I injured myself and I couldn't dance. I had to get a real job. So, I applied for any job, when I was about 20, and the one that come back to me was an admin role in an estate agency in Walthamstow. I was doing that for about nine years before I took my CeMAP and became a mortgage broker.”
The spur for Mustafa to take the next step and take on an adviser role was COVID, when the office she worked in shut down. “I was made redundant and I thought you know what, I love my job so much, I don't know anything else,” she said. “I wanted to make a career. I would say it's definitely been tougher than what I thought it would be, although now I'm used to it, I know exactly what I need to do. If I don't know something, I research it and it goes into my knowledge bank.”
Mustafa specialises in first-time buyer mortgages and enjoys simplifying the process for them. “You know, we've all been there,” she explained. “I'm relaxed, and all my clients feel they can come to me and ask anything, not feeling like it's a stupid question because no question is a stupid question. So, I just love being able to help them, being the person that they trust enough to ask me anything because I will break it down for them and explain it to them in their terms. You can't just dismiss them. You really need to sit down and get to know them, get to know their needs.”
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How a self-employed role maintains motivation
Now several years into her broker role, the young mother-of-two believes it’s important that she is doing so on a self-employed basis. “I knew that if I went to a brokerage and just became an employed broker, then I wouldn't be able to push the boundaries,” Mustafa said. “I'm so much more motivated knowing that I have to bring in the money or I'm not going to get paid. If I don't work, if I don't get the clients, if I don't make these connections, then my family suffers, so I do much prefer being self-employed.”
What would her advice be for other brokers trying to establish themselves and grow their livelihoods? “I would say make connections,” Mustafa shared. “Most of my business comes from referrals. I make really good connections with my clients from the off and I speak to them like they're my friends. We have WhatsApp groups where I'll be updating them, and even after completion, they'll randomly message me for advice on other things int their life as well. I just feel that if I didn't make connections like that, I wouldn't be seeing them again, but I'm keeping in contact with them.”
Mustafa does a lot of networking and speaks with other professionals such as estate agents, solicitors, and accountants, who can refer her. During quieter periods, she boosts her income through her protection sales and promotes herself through social media, fronting information videos to share her knowledge. The performance skills learned during her dance training, and also a following she built on Instagram as a body builder and power lifter, appear to have helped too in presenting herself and communicating with potential customers. “I don't feel like there is enough knowledge about the mortgage industry out there,” she explained. “I didn't know nothing about a mortgage in school. You didn't really hear about it unless it was on the news, and The Bank of England had done something with the base rate. So you don't hear about it enough, and I feel like first-time buyers might not know the options that are out there for them.”
Mustafa doesn’t dance now, apart from messing about with her kids at home, as she puts it, but she does believe her background as a dancer has helped her career and her confidence as a mortgage broker. So, “I think probably through a fear of rejection because there's a lot of rejection going on in dance, feeling like maybe you're not good enough,” she explained. “But you've just got to stick with it, and all my reviews are five star.”
