Since launching Manuka Media, formerly known as The Content Hive, from her living room during lockdown, Rosalia Lazzara has become a staple of public speaking, content creation and entrepreneurship in the mortgage industry.
Manuka Media’s mission is, in Rosalia’s words, to "educate our society," and "make property, money and mortgages more human, more relatable and more accessible" to the general public by offering mortgage brokers and financial advisers support with personal branding, digital marketing strategies and social media management.
In doing this, Rosalia aims to bring a creative buzz into financial services: "In a nutshell, we make founders and entrepreneurs feel a whole new level of confidence and tap into a whole new level of potential that they didn't even think was possible.
"That's the feeling we want people to have with our business when they're working with us. It's that increased level of confidence, that blind spot that they had in their business that all of a sudden has been tapped into and has flourished," she explains.
Often recognised by its bee-themed, bright yellow branding, which one financial adviser described as "the splash of yellow this industry needed," Manuka Media aims to spread what Rosalia calls "positive pollination" across the property, mortgage and finance space.
"Positive pollination is that we love to spread that knowledge, that positivity, that support, the motto of paying it forward," she says, adding that it involves sharing "the power of marketing, business, mindset, finance, and property," with the next generation, something which she does by speaking in schools and at events such as the recent Financial Reporter 30 Under 30 Live, designed to encourage and educate the future leaders of mortgages and financial services.
However, a career in finance wasn’t always the plan for Rosalia. In fact, she never saw herself as a "finance person" until 2015, when a recruiter recommended a vacancy for a packager role at a master broker, and her transferable skills secured her the role.
"I was very honest and open in my interview," she explains. "Obviously, I did my research, but I just said, 'Look, I've never been involved in anything like this before. I don't even have my own normal mortgage, let alone a second charge and commercial and bridging.'
"What I really loved about the role was building relationships and helping people develop their businesses, and I saw myself as definitely strong in that category," she says.
Rosalia also notes how much has changed in the industry since she first joined eleven years ago: "When I first entered the industry, it was 2015, I was 25 years old and I just came in and saw this men-dominated, big 'finance bro attitude' kind of atmosphere.”
While she "appreciated" and "respected" her older colleagues and their knowledge, she also recalls how she "didn't look around the room and see anybody that looked like me.
"Fast forward to earlier this year when I did [Financial Reporter] 30 Under 30 Live for you guys. I mean, there was nothing like that in my time," she continues. "I wish there was, but now I'm even more honoured to be able to actually deliver a talk to the under-30s about the power of personal branding and how they should navigate the financial world and their career."
After beginning her career at the packager, Rosalia moved to work as a BDM for a specialist lender. Around the same time, she had her first experiences of running her own part-time businesses, including a network marketing business that she says was influential in teaching her public speaking and presentation skills.
However, after five years of working in the industry and running two businesses on the side, Rosalia found herself facing burnout, and she shut her companies down to focus on her career; but while it may not have felt like it at the time, her journey into being a business owner was really just beginning.
Creating Manuka Media
During lockdown, Rosalia was put on furlough and then ultimately made redundant: "It was a really, really scary moment because I just saw everyone losing their jobs and no one hiring.
"During those six months, obviously I had a lot of time to cry, think, contemplate," she says. "I just shut down two businesses thinking, 'I’m never going to touch them again because I'm happy with my job,' and the irony is quite funny because if I had some part-time businesses, then I probably would have felt a little bit safer.
"That's when I looked at our industry, and I thought, 'Right. I work in the property and mortgage and finance space. I work with financial advisers. I work with mortgage brokers. This industry has taught me how to get on the property ladder, how to sort my finances out, how to prepare for my future and sort my pension out.'
"That's when I realised that I had the power of access to one of the most influential industries of our lifetime. So that's where the mission started."
However, building a business during lockdown came with its challenges, not least the sense of imposter syndrome: "You think, 'What's everyone going to think, how is everyone going to react, and how's everyone going to take this from me?'
"One thing that surprised me was that conflict, because I’d never started any business before while not having a job. It felt really vulnerable to be jobless with no secure paycheck and no job title or anything to fall back on."
Despite the uncertainty, there was one moment when Rosalia realised how determined she was to see the business through: "When I was about to announce that I was going live with the business, so no one really knew about it, I got a job offer come out of the blue. This would have been around September 2020, and because the redundancies had become public by then, someone had obviously got ear of that and called me straight away, someone who I highly respect as a friend still today.
"She is a very influential person in the industry, and she offered me a job, and what surprised me is that I turned the job down and just said, 'I think I'm going to have to give my business a go.'
"Now, bearing in mind that, probably 5 minutes before she rang, I cried about not believing in myself. So when the job opportunity came, I was surprised to have turned it down. I feel like that was a test from the universe to say, 'How bad do you really want your own business? Because you could just go and get another job.'"
Rosalia also learned early on that her business was going to have to start with effectively "a blank slate,” as all but one of the brokers she had previously worked with through the lender did not take her services: "It's not like I lost my job and then started with ten nice clients. It literally was one client. And that was that."
At the same time, however, Rosalia was pleasantly surprised by the people who championed her in the early days: "There were about four or five people who I wanted to call and get their 'seal of approval' almost, because I really respected their opinion."
One of these people was Ying Tan, CEO at Habito by Monzo, who Rosalia reached out to on LinkedIn: "He took my call, and we had a lovely chat, and he really did encourage me. So it's people like that, that really shocked me. They really did give me that time of day, and I really appreciate it."
On a personal level, Rosalia notes that the exposure she has gained from industry-wide public speaking is "a massive opportunity" that Manuka Media has given her, as well as the chance to expand her network. However, seeing her clients benefit from her business has been one of the biggest wins for her.
"The biggest asset I've created that cannot be replicated by AI or anything like that is my contacts, and that's what my clients benefit from," she says. "In fact, when they work with me, yes, they get my branding and marketing and social media wisdom, but they end up doing business with people within my community through referrals, through contacts.
"The biggest opportunities haven't just been me winning; it's my clients winning.
"I've got a long list of clients who would have never applied for an award because they didn't believe that they were ready yet, and then they came away with trophies. So that's been another big win," she adds.
Building a brand and social media
For Rosalia, what matters most in brand-building is being authentic: "Confidence isn't always loud, so I don't want people to look at me and think, 'Oh, she's so confident. I'm not like her because she stands on stage and I would never do anything like her.'
"The importance of branding is to always be yourself."
While Rosalia describes her brand as "very, very on purpose" and "strategic", she also recalls how her association with bright yellow colours in her branding came about in part by "accident," which she says proves that "sometimes things are not perfectly designed and curated."
"Because it was the pandemic and it was lockdown, I didn't have business cards, I didn't have anything visual […] I just went out there on LinkedIn and started telling people what I was doing. Very raw, very not polished.
"But what happened was when lockdown lifted, I needed some photos for social media and for my website. I pulled every kind of nice dress from the wardrobe. There was pink, blue, white, and there was one yellow dress; I'd worn it for my brother's graduation.
"So I had a photoshoot with all of these different dresses. And then on LinkedIn, I did a poll, and I said, 'Hey, everyone, can you help me choose my new profile pic for LinkedIn, please?'"
Although the more "corporate" light blue dress got the most likes on the poll, Rosalia says she chose the yellow dress, both because it was "the one that people were having a fight over" and because it created a lot of positive engagement.
"In our industry, the little things that I did stand out more than normal," she says. "So you’ve just got to be yourself but also understand what your industry is about."
As the No. 1 bestselling author of Social Media Guide For Mortgage Brokers: How to Grow Your Brand on Social Media, managing her own social media and avoiding distractions is also a key part of Rosalia’s brand and business: "I've tried to clean out my algorithm because you can do that now with Instagram and TikTok. It will show you what you want to consume. So, for example, I've got one category which is 'mortgage broker,' that I'll use if I want to engage with mortgage brokers and find out who's doing what.
"Then there's a category called branding, marketing and personal branding. Obviously, those three tabs are going to be very relevant to my niche if I want to get inspiration for content that I want to share and if I want to learn more about that particular topic.
"And then I've got one category about property investing. I'm a property investor, so I want to learn more about that and what's happening. So one is about my niche, one is about what I do as a job, and the third one is what I really want to consume for my wellbeing and my soul.
"I was getting a lot of bridal spam, food spam, fitness spam, and although I love all those things as well, my social media as a business owner has to make sense. It's not there to distract me; it's there to enhance me,” she explains.
As for social media’s place in the wider financial services industry, Rosalia thinks that it is "huge", even for those who don’t believe they need it: "Say, for example, you're a brokerage reading this, and you're not interested in using social media to generate leads.
"But you might be looking to expand and recruit. You might actually be looking to attract talent. So you could be using social media to showcase the diversity, different generations and different training opportunities within your business," she says.
Entering the AI space
In November last year, Rosalia entered the AI space with the launch of MyMoby.AI, designed to automate aspects of marketing for brokers, while removing what Rosalia describes as the "manual, labour-intensive work that we're disguising as AI."
She recalls that Moby was "the birth child of a very dark and turbulent summer," following a miscarriage: "It was very metaphorical where I almost had to give birth to something."
It was during recovery that she kept asking herself the question "'What if AI took over my job?'" which then grew into the question of "'What if I could teach AI how I do my job?'" and then "'What if I could create a new job with AI?'"
"I think this is the positive spin or reframe that we should all be thinking about as business owners," Rosalia says.
"You enter your details, who you are, who your ideal customer is, and the platform [Moby] produces everything for you, from e-mail to LinkedIn to Instagram and Facebook."
Starting a new business meant new challenges, as Rosalia found herself comparing Moby’s AI with her own 'done for you' service, where she works one-on-one with brokers to deliver what she describes as an "MOT of their business, development of the entire sales and marketing process and elevation of their brand."
"I started comparing Moby to Rosalia," she says. “So I kept thinking, 'But I can do this better. Why am I building an app?' But I had to get over that, and I had to stop comparing myself to the app; Moby's Moby and it exists without Rosalia. Rosalia's Rosalia."
Instead of replacing her human service, Rosalia explains that Moby acts as a tool for "brokers who haven't got the budget" for the 'done for you' service, helping them to feel like they’re not left to manage their mortgage marketing on their own.
There were also the challenges and costs of building an AI platform for the first time, which forced Rosalia to adapt her expectations around how to be a SaaSpreneur.
"I had spent a few thousand on people to help me. They absolutely knew I didn't have a clue," she says. "They kept saying, 'Oh, this job's going to cost me three hours to fix.' [...] At one point, I just looked at my husband and said, 'If I continue spending at this rate just to build something that I don't even know is going to work, I'm going to run out of money by the end of the year, and I'm not even going to be able to run Manuka Media.'
"So that's when we decided that Matt, my husband, was going to step in because he's an Excel wizard and he's an accountant. With my language skills and his accountancy and tech skills, we basically decided that we would both spend day and night, just as and when we needed to, fixing things."
Although Moby is designed to help brokers, Rosalia stresses that it’s not there to replace the human connection that is so crucial to intermediaries’ business: "Moby's not going to be your personality. We cannot ever replicate that raw, candid, genuine, behind-the-scenes approach to things.
"When you go to events, your energy doesn't lie. People can feel your energy in a room; they can tell how you're smiling, if you're paying attention, your body language, and with social media, it's quite hard to already portray all of those sensory cues that we get from being physically with a person.
"If you've ever studied anything to do with neuro-linguistic programming, you will know how important that body language is. So we've not created Moby to replace you; it's never going to replace that human touch, but it's there to keep you on track and consistent.
"No one, in my opinion, is going to be able to fully dedicate everything to AI and go sit on a beach doing nothing. After the hype quiets down, all it's going to be is a tool that we're going to be using to enhance our jobs and make our lifestyles better.
"You still have to show up networking. You still have to show up speaking on stage if that's something that you choose to do. You still have to show up and do some videos behind the scenes. We still want our clients to be as authentic as possible, even if they're using the app. Moby won't be doing it for them in that respect."
Championing women in today’s industry
Another opportunity that Rosalia says Manuka Media has given her is "hosting podcasts" and "both women-led and mixed events," helping her to "champion women in the industry."
"I think I've been known for that, and I'm really proud to say that I have put women a lot more at the forefront of their business. I've put them in rooms that they never thought they belonged in, and I hope that anyone who's ever been in my atmosphere and surroundings has always felt welcome, uplifted, held and seen," she says.
Rosalia is also a finalist at this year's Financial Reporter Women's Recognition Awards in the Entrepreneur of the Year category.
Reflecting on the progress that gender equity in financial services has made in the last decade, Rosalia notes that "we've seen the huge, huge impact that has been made by diversity and inclusion initiatives and by women supporting women initiatives. There are award ceremonies, there are seminars, I've done my own events for women, but then I've also attended other people's events that are just for women."
"I've seen more women who were afraid of having a baby and a career achieve both, and I've also seen men unite as well, especially from a mental health perspective," she says.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Rosalia also describes her relationship with women-only events today as "love-hate", explaining that the main reason why she hosts them is to help women in the industry "feel unapologetic about showing up and being unapologetically themselves, but not for the purpose of separating ourselves.
"I do appreciate that we need to have those private moments; people want to talk about motherhood, or they want to talk about the menopause. Those conversations are why I hold these events. It's for women who want to come and be seen, in a room of other people who could actually relate to that."
However, at the same time, she notes there are many events, especially educational ones, that she feels would benefit from "a more collaborative environment" in terms of gender: "For example, what I'd like to see more of is an educational-led event about how we can improve the gender pay gap. But then both men and women need to be available at that event, and we all need to be learning."
Ultimately, while Rosalia aims to motivate brokers across the mortgage industry, she makes it clear that everyone needs to define their own version of success: "There's always another definition of success or the next milestone. The biggest thing that I've learned about myself that I wasn't aware of, because I've always been in sales and I've always been in business development, is I'm not actually money motivated.
"It was the winning of the deal, not the receiving of the deal. I mean, the receiving of the cheque is wonderful. But even in my business, I could work more to get paid more. But what I've appreciated so much about what the business allows me is flexibility. It's the freedom.
"If you're in business and you're reading this, just make your own version of success, the only version that counts."
