360 Financial Services

Matthew Burgess

Brothers Matthew and Richard Burgess might have started out with the aim of building a truly online financial broking business, but they soon ran into an unexpected challenge – search engine optimisation.

“Our biggest challenge has been understanding the world of search engine optimisation with no previous experience,” Matthew says.

“We learnt that the so-called experts are rarely that and that it was better for us to control our SEO strategy in-house after learning as much as we could.”

Their SEO strategy might be homemade, but it certainly hasn’t slowed their growth.

The business, which employs 13 people, has posted average annual revenue growth of 86.9% in the past three years and generated revenue of $1.8 million in the 2011-12 financial year.

Matthew says the thing that keeps him up at night is the thought of discovering his next star sales person.

“Our growth is strictly tied to developing new sales staff to increase our revenue.”

Innovation is focused on sales too. Matthew says new ideas in the business are generally around sales processes.

“Our staff who are on the frontline dealing with our customers come up with many of the ideas that are used to improve what we do.”

The brothers have a very clear idea of their exit plan too – the aim to float the company in the next five years.