How to Get Referrals Through Strategies and Communities With Josh De Beulle

Send us Fan MailWhen it comes to mortgage broker referral strategies in Australia, few people have more practical experience than Josh De Beulle from Phonics Finance in Perth. In this episode of The LVR Podcast, Ruan Burger and Marissa Schulze sit down with Josh — on his birthday, no less — to unpack the three-community referral strategy that has driven nearly 17 years of consistent business growth.Josh's mortgage broker referral strategies in Australia are built around three distinct communities: his existing client database, his online audience, and his real estate referral network. Each one is nurtured differently, but all three share a common thread — genuine connection over transactional chasing.The database community is where it starts. Josh's team conducts proactive annual reviews on behalf of clients — contacting their bank, reviewing pricing, getting updated valuations, and presenting a summary of where they are versus where they could be. It's a strategy he learned in his first two weeks on the job in 2007, and it remains one of the most effective mortgage broker referral strategies in Australia he uses today. The result? Ten to fifteen inbound referral calls every week from clients whose friends were pleasantly surprised their broker reached out unprompted.The online community is built through consistent short-form video content across Facebook, Instagram, and increasingly TikTok — all shot internally on a smartphone with a $12 wireless microphone. Josh's team batches content weekly around relevant topics like stamp duty changes, scheduling daily posts to maintain presence without daily production. Cross-collaborations with clients who are business owners — renovators, plumbers, tradespeople — extend his reach into new audiences while genuinely helping those clients grow their own businesses. The conversion rate from online leads sits around 25 to 30%, which Josh considers strong for cold social traffic.The real estate network is where the loyalty play really shines. Rather than running quarterly sales meetings for hundreds of agents, Josh invites his top ten referral partners each quarter to a golf day or an AFL box — events built around shared interests rather than sales pitches. The brokers who get consistent referrals from real estate agents, he argues, aren't necessarily the most technically impressive — they're the ones people actually like spending time with.Thank You To Our Hosts: Ruan Burger and Marissa SchulzeMore From Marissa and her company, Rise High Financial Solutions:Marissa Schulze Linkedin Marissa Schulze Instagram Marissa Schulze Facebook Rise High Financial SolutionsMore From Ruan and his company, Success and Broker:Ruan Burger Linkedin Ruan Burger Instagram Ruan Burger Facebook Success and Broker