The Business of Brokering: How to Build, Scale, and Sell Your Canadian Mortgage Business

Stop Being the Business. Start Building One.

If you run a mortgage business, chances are you're wearing all the hats. You're managing files, solving problems, generating leads, and holding everything together. You started your business for freedom, but now it feels like the business owns you.

In The Business of Brokering, Doug Adlam shares the hard-won lessons he learned while scaling his own mortgage business. With clarity and candor, Doug lays out what it really takes to grow beyond a one-person show and build a company that runs smoothly, even when you're not in the room.

This book will help you:

• Start strong with the right foundation and fundamentals
• Step back from the daily grind and empower your team
• Shift your mindset from being a producer to becoming a leader
• Build a business with real equity that you can one day sell
• Understand areas where the industry needs to evolve and learn what is challenging the entire mortgage eco-system in Canada

Whether you're planning to start a mortgage business, managing a team, or running a brokerage this book is your guide to building a business that is profitable, sustainable, and no longer dependent on you alone.

This is your playbook for building a mortgage business that’s scalable, sellable, and truly yours.

About the Author
Doug Adlam is a nationally recognized entrepreneur, speaker, and strategic advisor in Canada’s mortgage and financial industries. With a career spanning over 17 years, Doug has co-founded and exited multiple ventures, including an industry disrupting mortgage technology that was acquired in 2020.

Doug began his journey by growing his family's mortgage brokerage 40X. Later he went on to serve as Director of Strategic Growth for a national brokerage, and played a pivotal role in scaling it into a national powerhouse—quadrupling its operations in just two and a half years and helping lead it to billions in annual originations. He also co-founded a successful wealth management startup focused on corporate financial planning, which he exited in 2023.

A former professor at the University of Guelph, Doug taught marketing, consumer behaviour, and information management for six years and founded the university’s Entrepreneurship 4100 course. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing Management and a post-graduate degree in Marketing and Consumer Studies, following an early academic start in Computer Systems Engineering.

Today, Doug is the founder of Adlam Innovations, a strategic platform focused on helping leaders scale businesses that operate—and eventually exit—without them. He is a sought-after keynote speaker, podcast guest, and advisor to founders, executives, and high-growth teams.