Write for the person they’re trying to become
Someone told me once that she’d started calling herself ‘an investor’ about four months before she bought anything. She wasn’t one yet. She had a deposit and a…
3 min read
Sunday 1 November 2026
Insights from Social Broker
Insights
Words That Move Money
Behavioural science, compliance and content strategy for Australia's brokers, advisers and accountants.
3 min readThe first number you say decides the whole conversation
A broker told me she’d lost a client over a $495 application fee. She was annoyed about it, because the fee was tiny against what she’d saved them.…
What people are actually afraid of when they don’t call you back
Someone fills in your form. You reply within the hour. They never answer. The usual explanation is that they’re shopping around, or they weren’t serious, or the timing…
Why ‘competitive rates’ costs you clients
I went looking through broker profiles last week, about sixty of them, mostly around Perth and Melbourne. Forty-one used the phrase ‘competitive rates’. Nine used ‘great rates’. Four…
Most read
What finance professionals are reading this year.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
The Decision Safety Map™
Read by principle.
Every article is tagged with the behavioural principle it's about. Pick one and read everything we've written on it.
Reduce threat
Increase clarity
Justify the action
Reduce Threat
All reduce threatWhy ‘no obligation, no pressure’ stopped working
Go and look at the last twenty finance ads you scrolled past. Count how many ended with some version of ‘no obligation, no pressure, just a friendly chat’.…
Latest
Justify Action
Write for the person they’re trying to become
Someone told me once that she’d started calling herself ‘an investor’ about four months before she bought anything. She wasn’t one yet. She had a deposit and a…
Increase Clarity
Describe the Saturday, not the settlement
My friend bought her first place last year. I asked her what she’d been picturing through the whole thing – the stressful bits, the waiting, what kept her…
Justify Action
Give away the thing you think you should be charging for
A broker I know tells people to stay with their current lender maybe once a month. Runs the numbers properly, works out there’s nothing in it, says so,…
Reduce Threat
What your licensee worries about in a social post
The most common reason a broker or adviser posts nothing for six months is not time. It is the half-formed worry that something in the post will come…
Justify Action
Nobody reads the second line unless the first one earns it
I spent an afternoon last month reading nothing but the first lines of broker posts. About two hundred of them. Roughly a third opened with a greeting. Another…
Increase Clarity
The first number you say decides the whole conversation
A broker told me she’d lost a client over a $495 application fee. She was annoyed about it, because the fee was tiny against what she’d saved them.…
Reduce Threat
What people are actually afraid of when they don’t call you back
Someone fills in your form. You reply within the hour. They never answer. The usual explanation is that they’re shopping around, or they weren’t serious, or the timing…
Increase Clarity
Why ‘competitive rates’ costs you clients
I went looking through broker profiles last week, about sixty of them, mostly around Perth and Melbourne. Forty-one used the phrase ‘competitive rates’. Nine used ‘great rates’. Four…
Reduce Threat
Why ‘no obligation, no pressure’ stopped working
Go and look at the last twenty finance ads you scrolled past. Count how many ended with some version of ‘no obligation, no pressure, just a friendly chat’.…
Justify Action
Why ‘book a chat’ is the weakest call to action in finance
‘Book a chat’ is on roughly every second broker and adviser profile in the country. It’s polite, it’s low-key, and it asks the reader for the one thing…