Michelle Ivanov

“Women need to fight just as hard as men to succeed, and they shouldn’t be saying women are equal to men, because they’re not. Women are not equal.”

This is the opinion of a woman who has succeeded in the tough, male-dominated business of finance broking. It’s from a woman who isn’t afraid to “tell it as I see it”, even if it means she might ruffle a few petticoats.

Michelle Ivanov is the founder and director of Supra Finance and freely admits she can come across as direct and opinionated, but believes it’s not only a strength of her personality, but a strength of her business.

Michelle comments that “I’ve been criticised a lot in business for the way I do things, but I believe it works for my clients. I think they want a direct approach with no pretty edges.

“So if they can’t do what they need to do, I tell them. I’d rather a quick ‘no’ than a slow drawn out answer. I am very direct, which a lot of people either like or don’t like.”

It wasn’t always this way though for Michelle. She was bullied at school and spent much of her childhood trying to be someone she wasn’t, just to fit in.

Looking back, Michelle recalls, “I was a fat kid and received a lot of bullying because of the way I looked. I let it control my life for a long time. I spent many years hiding away from people and putting on a front of who I wasn’t.

“I thought being what other people wanted was the way to make friends and impress people. All it did was make me very depressed and I didn’t like the person I’d become.”

Eventually Michelle decided to “stand up for what I believe in, and it made me a little bitter to start with, but I turned that bitterness into a really strong personality. I wasn’t afraid to say what I like and what I didn’t like.

“It was a massive change for me and I lost all my friends because I became me.”

These days Michelle very much believes she’s “not here to impress people, I’m here to ensure my clients are looked after and because of the bullying, no matter what someone throws at me now, I’ve heard it before. It doesn’t faze me at all.”

That strength of character was put to the test when Michelle was so riled by the attitude of a young man who applied for a job with her business, that she decided to vent her feelings via a post on the corporate social media site, LinkedIn.

“At that stage we wanted to incorporate some younger people into the business. Most of the staff were my age and older and we thought adding some younger blood would be good.

“This young guy, with very little experience, came in for the interview and just thought he was going to get a hundred thousand dollar income straight off the bat.”

Michelle recounts that “he sat across from me with his hat on, playing on his phone for the entire interview and I called him out on it. He basically said to me I’d missed my opportunity to get the next best thing since sliced bread in terms of a broker.

“I tried to explain to him how you have to climb the corporate ladder, that you can’t start at the top. I was so infuriated I wrote a post on LinkedIn; it was a really long, ranting post about how absolutely irate I was, and thousands of people commented on it.”

While many comments indicated agreement with Michelle, suggesting “there is no work ethic anymore and these young people want everything handed to them on a platter”, many criticised her too, “saying I was a cold, old business owner and that I need to adapt.”

In an unusual move, Michelle “decided to respond to everyone who criticised me and it was really eye-opening to say what I thought of these young people.”

Until then, the only social media exposure Michelle had was on Facebook, and that was just family and friends. Now her LinkedIn profile was worldwide and she was inundated with friend requests.

Fair to say at that point that Michelle no longer felt bullied.

“A lot of people try to bully me on social media these days and I welcome them to try because it doesn’t upset me anymore.

“If you don’t like what I’m saying that’s fine, you don’t have to deal with me, but I think it’s very important to own your convictions. You can either be a victim or you can let it mould you into a stronger person.”

Michelle is firmly of the belief that “there should be more women who stand up and say, ‘No! This is how I am and if you like it you can deal with me and if you don’t, on your way.’”

The subject of the #MeToo phenomenon is a step too far though with regard to social media and the workplace for Michelle. Although she agrees there’s no place for sexual harassment in the work environment, Michelle believes the #MeToo craze has become so big that the lines are blurred between harassment and innocent banter, and blames that on political correctness.

“I think women take it too far now; if a bloke gives a compliment they take it as an insult. I think it needs to go back to where everyone’s a little bit more relaxed about having fun in the workplace.”

To understand Michelle’s position you need to share her journey, and bullying is only part of it. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, “I hated school”, her mother gave her a week to find a job.

Michelle found a job with a law firm, “running around to the Land Titles Office covering stamp duties and mortgage settlements. While I didn’t realise it at the time, it gave me a deeper understanding about what I do now.”

There were several career changes along the way before Michelle found herself primarily working in vehicle finance, an area dominated by men.

As the only female in a predominantly male industry Michelle felt “I had to learn to sink or swim pretty fast, I had to be better than them at everything and learn to deal with the comments.”

Michelle believes women have the tenacity to deal with any kind of banter. “I used to love going to car yards because you would have a bunch of guys trying to give you pick up lines to sell a car. I learnt how to sell cars the same way to blokes which was pretty funny.

“Guys would come in and ask for a salesman and I’d say ‘I’m a saleswoman can I help you?’ and their response would always be ‘you’re a chick!’. Then I would dazzle them with talk about turbo-charged fours and V8’s, which was fun.”

Much of her knowledge came from building and racing drag cars with her husband, hours in the pits at Eastern Creek and a genuine love of cars; fast and powerful cars. In her view, “give me a twin-turbo manual anytime.”

So rather than complain about the banter and reporting it, Michelle adapted; she learnt how to deal with it and then turned it around to work in her favour.

“I think too many women feel like victims, they don’t feel like they can be successful on their own. They want rules to allow more women on boards when they should just stand up and fight for that board position. We shouldn’t just be given one.”

For Michelle, “we should be fighting just as hard as the men to get there and we shouldn’t be saying we’re equal to men, because we’re not.

“We’re completely different to men, we have a different mentality, we do business in a different way. We can run a household and a business; it’s how we’re geared.

“Men and women are not equal.”

Michelle knows her comments won’t be appreciated by everyone, but before you open up your computer, type out a complaint and hit the send button, take a moment. Michelle simply wants women to take control of their destiny, not have it handed to them.

She wants to see a change in the prejudice that exists in her industry around mortgages, loans and investments, and believes it can only happen if women ‘stand up and fight’. She’s prepared to fight for you, with you and in the process teach you how to fight.

“I’ve had women ask ‘what happens to my loan if I have a baby?’. It’s a question that should not be asked. Women can be successful and not want to have children and that’s fine, but asking them if they can afford a home loan if they have kids is just ridiculous.”

In the case of vehicle sales, Michelle strongly believes “I won’t get ‘upsold’ just because I’m a woman. I don’t look like I should know anything about cars, but I do and salesmen get taken aback by my confidence. I think women really need to have that confidence in life, they need to realise they don’t need their parents, a husband or a boyfriend to hold their hand. Women can do it on their own.”

It was the treatment a close friend received from a broker which inspired Michelle to start her own company. It was a classic case of a woman who was in danger of losing her house because of a financial deal that suited the broker more than it did the client.

The situation was such that “the broker put her on a massively high rate in order to get the commissions he received. There were a few family issues around responsibility with money, but the broker hadn’t done the best deal for her.

“I went to the broker, gave him a piece of my mind and he actually fixed it and gave her money back to get out of trouble and she was able to keep her house.

“It’s been a passion ever since to make sure nobody goes through that same situation.”

She believes the Royal Commission into the banking industry has highlighted that brokers have been pushing the highest loan commissions ahead of their clients’ actual needs. Putting the client ahead of the commission has been a key to the success of Supra Finance.

“The Royal Commission has been really interesting to watch: brokers, banks and the fee service debate.

“I refuse to charge a fee to my clients. I believe they should be happy with the help we provide and if they’re not they can go somewhere else without any ties to me, financially.”

Proudly, Michelle relates, “I had one client call me ‘the people’s broker’ which I took as a compliment. She was happy because I explained things in a way normal people could understand and I simply told her ‘I’m a normal person’.”

The emotional response to her friend’s situation and her resolve to prevent that happening to others has had “clients who’ve had defaults locked in for twelve months and who’ve almost been in tears when you tell them there’s no fee for helping them over that period. I think being a friend to somebody and letting them know they can contact you at anytime has been a big part of the success of Supra Finance.”

Michelle doesn’t hide the fact she’s a workaholic, or maybe she would prefer the term ‘a client-aholic’ because her sole focus is ensuring her clients are satisfied.

They become such a big part of your life that “my husband knows the second my phone rings, I’m outside on the phone. He runs his own trucking business so he understands. I have my family life and I have my business and he knows that it’s really important.”

Michelle has run Supra Finance for ten years, and until three years ago she ran the business from home. The business survived initially on personal referrals from family and friends, and concentrated primarily on car finance. It has now expanded to cover many different types of finance from car loans to mortgages and investments.

A central focus these days is women who want to invest. As Michelle notes, “women want to be supported with buying properties, building portfolios and going to auctions and car yards.”

Her staff has grown too and Michelle now boasts a team that speaks seventeen different languages.

The business caters to a massive multicultural demographic. “In the past two years refugees have come into this area (Sydney’s South Western suburbs) and they’re starting to rebuild their lives so we have brokers who speak Arabic, Vietnamese, Macedonian and the list goes on.

Michelle lives in a predominantly Asian area within that mix, and “we love the area, especially Fairfield; it has changed so much. You need to have people who can communicate with these clients.”

Even her mother is on the team.

“Mum has a legal background, so she does all the contracts; she’s our in-house conveyancer. She’s the reason I have a strong work ethic. She worked extremely hard when I was growing up and I respect that because she was doing it for the family.”

Mother and daughter have totally different personalities, which Michelle attributes to “the fact I worked mainly in male-dominated areas and became quite strong-willed and direct, whereas Mum has always been more business-focused, and is probably a little more detail-oriented.

“People meet Mum then look at me and say ‘your Mum’s lovely, what happened to you?’”, she laughs.

ADVICE

Michelle has a motto she believes has been crucial to her success – ‘ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it’.

And there have been some great people she’s used as inspiration to help her succeed, people like business mentor Kerwin Rae, who is “open and honest about his failures and how he fixed them.”

For Michelle, “admitting your failures is a big part of business, I think it’s important to own that. It’s okay to look at how you did something and say ‘this is how I would do it differently’.

Particularly in the finance area, “I think everyone’s one step away from failure and that’s why I’m so heavy on compliance. I’ve seen the risk side of the book – the fraud side of the book – and I stay clear of that. I get asked all the time for certain things and I say ‘No, I’m sorry that’s not how it works’.”

Integrity is a big part of the success formula for Michelle Ivanov, but that doesn’t mean she lacks a competitive spirit. In fact quite the opposite.

Michelle believes “I’m competitive but not in a way that I have to beat somebody else. I like seeing the brokers in this industry who have been around for a long time and also the new ones who do really well, but I don’t feel like I have to beat them.”

So success is not about beating your rivals, it’s about being the best you can be.

Having been a finalist several times for awards, “I take pride in that, they are huge for me. I see that as a great accomplishment.”

There’s one other person who sits high on Michelle’s admiration list and you really shouldn’t be surprised. It’s international advertising executive Cindy Gallop.

Gallop was once voted the Advertising Woman of the Year and is known for her tagline ‘I like to blow sh*t up, I am the Michael Bay of business’. Michelle truly believes “she is amazing”.